“John,” said Mabel. “We’ve got to go.”
“No,” said Mandy. “She says it’s all right. She says there’s something to see.”
John knew what it was. “Where is she, Mandy?”
“Who?” said Smiley.
“I’ll show you,” said Mandy. Concern crossed her face as she looked at John. Maybe he was in pain. His face was pinched and pale.
He waved her on. She got out of the passenger seat, taking the box with her. Without a word, Mandy walked from the road and off among the headstones.
John followed her. He stumbled. The pain in his feet came back with a vengeance, his ribs howled at him, and still that voice called to him, above all his pain. The king to his pain … No. The queen.
The world rested while they walked.
Could she stop time?
Had she stopped time?
He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. Some things were beyond him, beyond all of them. The four of them were together in all of this, from start to finish, but John thought if they ever found out just how big, how God damn fucking massive this was, they would die of insanity.
He didn’t want to know, because he needed to get to Karen. He ached for her. Every day, he dreaded seeing her; now he could concentrate on nothing else but getting to her side.
But time was moving. As they walked, the birds in the trees began to sing the sun up. The cemetery was full of trees. Old trees with fat gnarled trunks.
“Here,” said Mandy, stopping by a grave.
The headstone was black marble. It showed no sign of age. John knelt in front of it and read the headstone.
Here lies Bridget Hill.
Mother, Wife
Never Forgotten
Underneath the simple epitaph was a poem. John didn’t know it.
He read it aloud.
“I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.”
“It’s the Lady, isn’t it?” said Mandy.
“It is. My mother-in-law.”
“But she’s not dead.”
“No,” said John with bitterness. “Not quite.”
“She says to take a breath, John. She says to breathe in now. She says it’s time.”
John pushed himself to his feet. He looked down and noticed his left trainer was almost completely red. His blood soaked through the material. When he stepped back, his foot squelched. Blood stained the grass atop the grave. Then it sank into the grass, and he heard a sigh. Not from the box. From the grave.
The sigh gave him chills. He remembered that the woman who was guiding them was the wife of the rain. She was powerful in her own right. Beyond his or any other mortal’s understanding.
He was being buffeted in the middle of some immortals’ love spat. Pushed, pulled, beaten and drowned.
She was beautiful. But she was terrible too. More terrible than he could imagine.
Perhaps, then, he told himself, you should get moving. Do you really want to piss her off?
“Karen’s waiting, she says.”
“Enough of the commentary. I get it. Come on. Back to the car.”
He turned away from the grave without a backward glance. The calm of the cemetery didn’t feel like such a relief anymore. It felt like the dead were waiting. Waiting for all of them.
When they drove back into the rain, the sky was lighter and the rain heavier. The drowned dead were gone, but the water was a wall. It was blinding. The windscreen wipers were on the fastest setting, but they couldn’t keep up with the rain. The car shook in the wind.
John knew the road well enough. He drove as fast as the car would go. He wasn’t worried about hitting someone. He didn’t think there was anyone left to hit.
The town had been washed clean of life in Rain’s fury. John had fury of his own. He could feel it burning inside him as he drove.
No one spoke. The woman in the box was silent.
Mandy called her the Lady.
John thought that was partly true. But mainly he thought she was a fucking bitch. Rain was welcome to her.
*
Chapter Fifty-Five
The words of a children’s song drifted through Jane’s head.
“Rain, rain, go away.”
Come back again another day, she thought.
Except she didn’t want it to come back. She wanted it dead.
The hallway was deserted. It was also lighter than it had been. A long way from full light, but a hell of a lot better than it had been. The light made her feel strangely hopeful. Because if the sun could still rise, the world wasn’t dead. She wasn’t stuck in some terrible dream where the world fell to eternal darkness. Scratch that, she thought. That’s not a dream. A dream’s a good man by the light of a fire burning in the hearth. A dream’s a boat in the ocean, bobbing in a gentle swell.
The night was pure nightmare. One she’d never forget. She’d bear the scars for the rest of her life.
But she’d bear them gladly if she could just live.
She stepped into the hall. Wendy’s bones were where they’d been left. She half expected Marion to be crouched before the partial corpse, gnawing on a bone like a dog or a troll from a story.
She listened hard. Listened to the sounds that were there and the ones that weren’t.
The rain on the windows and the roof. The wind forcing its way through the gaps in the old double glazing where the seals were blown. The insistent beep of the front door buzzer, running on batteries, unhappy about being left open.
The sounds that weren’t there … the clatter of breakfast trays. The sounds of the morning shift coming in. Banter. Caring talk. The babble of the residents. Toilets flushing. Shoes on carpet. Buzzers sounding.
The sounds of life going on as normal weren’t there. Jane thought that maybe they would never be there. The world might be moving. The sun might rise. But the August House was finished, because everyone inside was dead.
No new shift coming on.
Was everyone in town dead too?
Of course not.
She wasn’t dead. Marion wasn’t dead. Mrs. March? No. The thing that was the rain wanted her for something else. She was alive. In her room, probably. Jane hadn’t heard anyone moving for a long time.
She hoped Mrs. March was just sleeping, but the ghost fingers where her live ones used to be put paid to any illusions. She wasn’t sleeping. She was in terrible danger. But then, so was Jane, and she wouldn’t do any good if she died too.
She needed a weapon. If she was going to face the rain, she needed something to fight with.
Jane looked at Wendy’s corpse. She thought about it. Dismissed it. She couldn’t do it.
A door clicked down the hall, and suddenly she didn’t have time to be choosy. There was a time for stealth, but that had gone. Now it was time to put her trust in a ghost.
She ran for Wendy’s body as Marion came round the corner with a knife in one hand, the other arm flapping by her side. The knife Jane had driven into her stomach was low down, and Jane could help thinking it looked kind of like an erection, the way it bobbed up and down as she walked, but the thought didn’t stay long, because Marion moved way too fast and the time for thought was gone.
*
Chapter Fifty-Six
Marion’s legs and waist were drenched in blood, but she showed no sign of stopping. Jane slid to the floor beside Wendy’s bones. Marion raised the knife.
She was just as much a corpse as Wendy. They were both dead.
Jane could feel the dead walking. She could smell them. August House was full of the dead. In every room, the dead cried out.
The dead were talking to her.
Jane was stunned. She closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears, but the cry of the dead wouldn’t go. A whole world began talking to her at once at the same time as Marion attacked.
One voice leapt into Jane’s mind over all the others.
“Jane!”
It was like thunder in her head. She opened her eyes and saw the blade flash by her eye as she threw herself back out of reach.
She had no weapon but the bones. She kicked out and hit Marion’s kneecap. Marion fell sideways, and her head hit the wall, but she still didn’t make a sound.
Jane knew it was the best chance she was going to get. She pulled at Wendy’s leg with all her strength. She used both hands. Her right hand was stronger, lent power by David Hill’s ghost fingers. She pulled and screamed with rage, and the thigh bone came free of the hip. She put her foot on the shin bones, and the femur broke off with a sickening crunch. She didn’t hear the crunch. The dead were crying out for vengeance.
She couldn’t think about what she was doing. She was blind and deaf to reason at that moment.
Marion pushed herself up and came at Jane. Jane put both her hands on the end of the thigh bone and swung as hard as she could. She put all her rage into the swing, and the dead lent her their fury.
The bone connected.
Marion’s neck snapped under the first blow, but she didn’t go down. Jane hit her again and again, with all her might.
She beat Marion until she fell to the floor, and found she couldn’t stop. Eventually, her old friend was nothing but a bloody, unrecognisable mess on the carpet. She was on top of Wendy’s bones. Marion wasn’t just dead. She was destroyed.
Jane dropped the bloody bone and fell to her knees. She put her face in her hands and sobbed and cried and shouted at the dead to leave her alone.
But they weren’t done.
“Jane.”
“Fuck off!”
“Jane.”
She looked up. Her face was ragged with grief. She saw again what she’d done to Marion, and a sob escaped her.
David Hill stood above her. He touched the top of her head. Like a benediction.
“It’s not done,” he said.
“I can’t go on.”
“No. But you must. He must be stopped. He cannot bear the touch of the dead.”
“Well, you do it then!”
He looked at her sadly. Nodded. Faded back to nothing.
She was alone.
There was no one else. Everyone else was dead. She was the only person living in the whole town. The cacophony of dead voices stilled, but she could sense them there, in the background, waiting for her. Waiting for vengeance.
“Fuck you all!”
But they said nothing. They waited.
“Fuck you!” she sobbed. She took up the bone and stormed down the hall. She didn’t pause. She couldn’t. The dead drove her on, their voices whips, their anger goads prodding her flesh.
She stepped up to Mrs. March’s door and threw it open.
*
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Mrs. March was there. Rain was there too. Except it wasn’t what she was expecting. Rain was everywhere. There wasn’t anything to hit. She’d been expecting Wendy, or the policeman. Maybe his true form, whatever that might be. But it was just mist. The room was full of it.
Mrs. March was sitting up in bed.
“Hello, Jane. Jane Walker. You were always so kind to me. Come in.”
Jane found herself in the room, and the door behind her closed. She had no recollection of walking into the room or closing the door, but she must have done both, because she was at the foot of the bed.
The woman on the bed didn’t resemble the woman she’d been when Jane had saved her earlier. The depression in her skull was still there, but she was radiant. Absolutely the most beautiful woman Jane had ever seen in her life. She was suddenly, completely aware that she was plain. Her hair was lank and greasy. She was disfigured and covered in blood.
The bone in her hand dropped to the floor. Jane didn’t hear the rain sizzle when it touched the bone. The carpet under the bone dried. The air around it hazed where the rain had touched the bone.
“That’s better. There really wasn’t any need to carry that around, was there?”
“No … no. Ma’am?”
“Karen’s fine. Come now, Jane. I feel I know you. How many years has it been?”
“I don’t know,” said Jane. She wanted to have an answer, but the answer just wasn’t there.
“Well, I don’t suppose it matters now, does it? Did you meet my husband?”
“John?”
Her laugh tinkled like Jane would imagine dewdrops would sound. She started to cry because she was wrong.
“No, silly thing! I mean David. He used to be my husband.”
“David Hill?”
“Yes. He’s adorable, isn’t he?”
“He seemed lovely.”
For a ghost. But she couldn’t say that. She didn’t want to upset the lovely creature on the bed. All she wanted to do was make the woman happy. She wanted Jane to call her by her first name. Karen.
Jane said the name over and over in her mind.
“He never really was my husband. He was just a … fad. A fascination …”
She paused and stared into the mist.
“No, that’s unkind. I don’t want to be unkind to his memory. I loved him, after a fashion. But you know…”
“Yes?”
“He was a bit of a bore, to tell the truth.”
“No?”
“Are you disagreeing with me, Jane? I shouldn’t like that.”
“No … I mean … I didn’t mean to.”
Karen smiled. “Jane! Don’t be so touchy.” The laugh glittered through the mist and it swirled, like the touch of her breath was ecstasy.
The mist was the rain.
Jane remembered the rain. Remembered the dead. She was in the halls of the dead.
“Jane? What’s wrong? You’ve gone quite pale.”
“I’m … just …”
The dead were crying out. Jane swayed back on her heels.
“Happy.”
Karen smiled, but she looked unsure.
Jane wondered. Why did she say she was happy? She wasn’t happy. She was surrounded by the rain. She’d come to …
What?
“Kill it. Kill it. Kill.”
Not her voice. She couldn’t say that here. She couldn’t say words like that to Karen. The Lady.
“She’s not the Lady,” said the voice of the dead, calling out as one.
“Jane, my dear friend, whatever is the matter?”
Karen’s eyes swam in her head. The mist turned black. Jane realised what was wrong. The insistent beeping of the alarm, triggered because the door had been left open. It was gone.
All she could hear was the sound of the dead, talking in her head. Her hand became warm. Her dead hand.
“He cannot bear the touch of the dead.”
David Hill’s voice. The voice of the halls of the dead. Calling to her. Shouting to her as one voice, deafening.
The woman on the bed didn’t hear it. Her eyes were full of intelligence. Jane watched that intelligence turn to confusion.
“John?” she said and fell back to the bed with a thump.
The mist in the room buffeted Jane. She cried out and held her arms in front of her face. It tore at her clothes and scoured her skin. Jane fell to her knees, slapping at the rain, but it was everywhere. Her skin turned red under the torrent. Speckles of blood appeared on her face, only to be swept up as the rain tried to kill her. She screamed, and the rain was in her mouth. Her scream faltered as she filled with water.
She knew she was going to die. Then the door blew apart, sending wicked splinters flying through the air, and the rain’s cries drowned out
those of the dead.
*
Chapter Fifty-Eight
John fell through the doorway with the box clutched to his chest.
He hadn’t broken down the door. She had.
The rain flew across the room to the far corner. The farthest it could get from her fury, but full of want and need at the same time. John could feel it in the air. Like the smell of teenagers in love. Desperate passion and fear and hunger together.
He pushed himself to his feet. Smiley came in behind him with Mandy and Mabel. Smiley and Mandy held hands.
They smelled like the rain and his wife. Even here. Even after the dead and the terror and everything they’d seen. After all the losses they’d suffered. The smell of rain’s passion was dank. Smiley and Mandy … They smelled like dew on a spring morning.
Would the Lady smell like dew too?
John thought he was about to find out.
Mabel crouched down with an audible crack from her spine and checked the woman on the floor. She glanced at the thigh bone and looked away.
“She’s alive.”
The rain swirled around and around, faster and faster, like a tornado held in place by sheer force of will. Then it started to take on features. Feet, legs, a torso …
John tore his eyes away and looked at his wife. She wasn’t moving. He ached to go to her, but the swirling, pulsing power of the rain was pushing him back.
“Karen! Karen!”
She didn’t stir.
He could hear a voice from the tornado.
“She’s mine,” it said.
John couldn’t speak. His eyes were full of tears, and his throat was dry.
“Do you trust me, John?”
The voice of the Lady. The voice in the box.
“No.”
Silence.
The wind died, and John rushed to the bed, still clutching the box.
A hand snaked out and slapped him hard across the face. He was flung backwards against the wall. The box jarred free from his grasp, and the lock broke under the impact. The lid flopped open as it came to rest.
Rain stepped across the room to the box.
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 19