The Reign of the Departed

by Greg Keyes

  She didn’t look back, but after a moment she heard the crunch of his wooden feet on the grass.

  “Do you have any idea where we are?” Errol asked, when he pulled even with her.

  “I guess we’re in the Kingdoms,” she replied. “I think I glimpsed them before, back when I was in my in-between, but the Creek Man wouldn’t ever let me come here.”

  “It feels different here,” Errol said.

  Veronica knew what he meant. “Yes,” she said. “It feels like we belong here. Us freaks.”

  “Kind of,” he agreed.

  “Aster hasn’t told you anything else?”

  “There hasn’t really been time,” he replied. “Things have been happening kind of fast.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want you to know anything,” Veronica said. “Gives her more control over you. Only now—what if she dies? What then?”

  “She’s not going to die,” he said.

  He didn’t snap or say it mean, but something about the way he said it really dug into her.

  “So your mom hasn’t been coming to see you at the hospital,” she said.

  She wished he had a real face, so she could see the hurt on it.

  “I guess not,” he replied.

  “Hanging out with some guy instead. What about your dad? Is he not fond of you either?”

  “He’s dead,” Errol said. And she could hear it, then, the hollow ache in him. “Died of cancer.”

  “Oh, dear Errol,” she said, “I’m so sorry.” She remembered words like that, and knew when to say them, but wasn’t sure what they meant.

  “Don’t bother,” Errol said. “Why don’t you just shut up and quit asking me questions.”

  “Just pulling wings off a dragonfly, honey,” she said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he muttered.

  It was funny that he didn’t get it.

  “Just passing time,” she said. “I figured a little conversation might be pleasant.”

  “That’s what you get for figuring,” he said.

  Half an hour later, Errol noticed a huge buzzard circling overhead. At first he reckoned it had found a dead animal of some kind, but after a while he realized that it was actually following them. When Veronica figured it out, she giggled.

  “He obviously hasn’t had a good look at Aster,” she said. “There isn’t enough meat on her to feed a little bird, much less one his size.”

  “Buzzards like dead things,” Errol replied, still feeling pissed off from their earlier conversation. “Maybe it’s you he’s after.”

  “Well, that would show better taste,” she replied.

  But about ten minutes later, the buzzard flew off and didn’t come back.

  He wondered where the cows were. He saw plenty of signs of them, but he started to realize that most of that could be days old, if it hadn’t rained. They must have been moved to another pasture.

  He thought it odd that they hadn’t seen any trace of a building so far; cows meant people, and people meant houses, barns, fences.

  And they were running out of pasture. He was beginning to think they should go back the other way, skirting the edge of the clearing, when he saw smoke drifting up through the trees. He steered them that way.

  They found the house just inside the edge of the forest. Errol wasn’t sure what he had expected, but what he saw was a small cabin built of slightly overlapping planks with a tin roof. The unpainted wood had weathered to a gray color. Beyond a screen door, a hall divided the house in two—he could see daylight through another door on the other end.

  On the porch, an old man sat, whittling. He looked up as they arrived. He was clean shaven and almost bald. Dark eyes peered at Errol over a dramatically hooked nose.

  “Well, you’re an unlikely bunch,” he said. He ran his gaze up and down Errol. “I guess you’re never too old to see something new.”

  “You don’t seem all that surprised,” Veronica noticed.

  “Well,” he said. “I have seen plenty.” He gestured at Aster.

  “Something wrong with your friend?”

  “She hit her head,” Errol said. “She won’t wake up. We’re looking for a doctor.”

  “Well,” he said, mildly, “I’m something of a doctor. Best in these parts, anyway. Maybe I can take a look at her.”

  He stood and dusted the wood shavings from his denim overalls and stuck out his hand.

  “Dr. William Shecky, at your disposal.”

  Errol shook the offered hand.

  Dr. Shecky opened the screen door and gestured inside.

  Errol hesitated, obviously enough that the man nodded.

  “Wait there,” he said, and went into the house, leaving the screen door to squeak closed behind him.

  “Convenient,” Veronica whispered.

  “Yeah,” Errol said. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  A moment later the man returned, carrying a black leather satchel. He opened it up and showed Errol the interior, which was occupied by a stethoscope and various other medical-looking tools.

  “Well . . .” he said.

  “I don’t blame you, son,” the man said. “But sometimes luck does find you.”

  It sure seemed that way, Errol reflected. First the woman on the horse, now a doctor when they needed one. But what did he know about the Kingdoms? Magic was obviously involved. Maybe this was just how things happened here.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Bring her on in,” Dr. Shecky said.

  He led them down the hall to the second door on the right. He opened it up, revealing a smallish room with an old-fashioned looking iron stove, a big table, and a cupboard.

  “Lay her on the table,” he said.

  Errol did as the man asked. Aster looked ashen and drawn, and he hoped they weren’t too late.

  Dr. Shecky picked up a kettle. “There’s a well out back,” he said. “I’d be obliged if one of you took this and filled it up.”

  “Veronica,” Errol said, unwilling to leave Aster with a stranger. “Would you mind?”

  “Tricky question,” Veronica said.

  “Please.”

  She took the kettle and sauntered out the door.

  “Nothing I can do for her,” Dr. Shecky said, nodding after Veronica. “That one is beyond my skills.” He peered more closely at Errol. “Same for you, I’m afraid.”

  He listened at Aster’s chest with his stethoscope and then checked her pulse at her wrists and temples. He inspected the blow to her head.

  “Fetch me that box over the stove, will you?” he said. “The yellow one.” He began laying out instruments on the table—a scalpel, something that looked like tongs, some vials of powder.

  Errol did as he was told. The box was full of small white crystals. It looked like salt. Smelling salts, maybe?

  “What’s wrong with her?” Errol asked.

  “Head’s busted,” the doctor said. “Pressure building up in there, you know. Fetch me that jug, will you?”

  He pointed, and Errol saw a big ceramic jug, the kind moonshine came in, at least according to the movies.

  Sure enough, when Dr. Shecky opened it, he caught the unmistakable whiff of hard liquor.

  “Anesthetic,” the Doctor said, taking a drink of it. “I would offer you some, but there hardly seems a point.”

  “You’re not going to cut her, are you?”

  “Not much,” Dr. Shecky replied.

  About that time he heard a bloodcurdling scream from outside, and knew instantly it was Veronica. Before a single conscious thought entered his head he had already bolted out into the hall and toward the sound.

  “Don’t do anything until I get back!” he hollered.

  Veronica was still screaming. She knelt at a well with low stone walls and was braced against it with her hands.

  “It’s got me!” she screeched, when she saw Errol.

  That’s when he noticed the pallid hand clasped around her wrist. He couldn’t see what was on the other end of
the hand, because it was in the well.

  “Oh, crap,” he said. He started forward another step, but then he had a horrible, sick feeling. Whatever was pulling at Veronica, she seemed to be fighting it successfully—at least for the moment.

  “I’ll be right back,” he yelped, and ran back into the house.

  When he got to the to the kitchen door it was closed, and when he tried to open it, he found it barred from the other side. Through the heavy oak he could hear Dr. Shecky humming happily, and a sound like knives being whetted on a stone.

  And then he heard Aster scream.

  Veronica saw Errol turn and run back into the house and knew she was on her own. She braced her knee against the stone and pulled, fighting the blackness that waited eagerly at the corner of her eyes and behind her head.

  The bone-white hand clamped on her wrist held on like a steel band, but it wasn’t pulling that hard. It couldn’t draw her into the well. That wasn’t the real problem—the real problem was the voice.

  Come along, it whispered. You belong down here, with your kind.

  Each word was a glob of oil dripped into her ears; each black drop invaded the brightness Aster had put in her, coated a memory. She was turning back into what she was when Aster and Errol found her.

  And why shouldn’t she? Aster’s promises were worthless, and Errol had turned his back on her. His sickening loyalty evidently did not extend to Veronica Hale. If she went into the well, he would eventually come to see what had become of her, and then she would have him as she should have back in her old home. To rest in the water, to caress her bones once more . . .

  But that would mean losing the light again. And forgetting. Again she recalled her tennis shoes, new and white, standing on the rocks above the falls. She tried to hold it as if her mind had a fist, but it was slipping from her.

  “Not again!” she cried, and clawed at the grasping hand, panting, feeling her mind dim.

  And then suddenly she fell back, landing on her bottom and flopping onto her back. The hand still had hold of her wrist, but it wasn’t attached to an arm, anymore. She slapped at it, and it suddenly released her and scuttled back toward the well, leaving a trail of blackish blood across her shirt and pants leg.

  A face appeared above her, framed in a silvery helmet. The rider from the woods.

  “Are you injured?” the woman asked.

  “No,” Veronica said.

  “Rest,” the woman said. “Stay back from the well. I think your friends are in trouble.”

  Aster woke screaming, with a livid pain in her chest. She was lying down, and her arms were pulled over her head and tied to something. Her legs were likewise bound. A strange man stooped over her with a knife.

  “Hush now, child,” he said. “Just let Dr. Shecky operate.”

  She realized with horror that he had cut her shirt open and a bright pool of blood was collecting in the hollow just below her breastbone.

  “Stop!” she said. “Don’t!”

  He just smiled and bent to her, bringing the scalpel down. She heard Errol yelling someplace, and a heavy pounding. She wanted to look around, but her eyes wouldn’t leave the scalpel. It couldn’t be happening.

  And then she felt something else, alongside the fear. She felt the shimmer, the elumiris.

  I’m here! She realized.

  She suddenly felt very still and far away, and she remembered one of the first of the Recondite Utterances she had learned from her father, the Word of the Whirlwind.

  She spoke it.

  She sucked in a deep breath; her ears popped. The man with the scalpel blinked.

  “Oh!” he said.

  Then she exhaled.

  The wind lifted him bodily from the floor and slammed him into the wall, but not just him; everything in the room not nailed down was whirling furiously about; she winced, expecting to be struck at any moment, but then she realized she was in the eye, and thus safe.

  And when the wind died, nothing looked as it had before.

  The house shuddered for a long moment, and Errol heard a roar like a tornado; then everything sort of blinked a few times, and when it stopped blinking, he saw that the door wasn’t there anymore; what he had been hurling himself into was a tree four feet in diameter. The house wasn’t there, either; instead he stood in a thicket of vines and briars. Through them, he saw Aster tied to a fallen tree-trunk, and something coming down on her. Not a man, but creature with gleaming talons and a long, wicked beak. He had an impression of black feathers and smelt a terrible sweet stench of rot.

  “Aster!” He threw himself against the vines and began tearing at them. He had ripped a hole big enough for his head and upper body when he saw something come through from the other side.

  Someone, rather. It was the knight from the forest, slicing through the brambles with her sword. And yes, he saw now she was female, and pretty—and she had a star tattooed on her forehead.

  The thing over Aster was black confusion, at first nothing his eye would take hold of, but then suddenly a huge buzzard flapped heavy wings and leapt to the open sky above. The woman thrust after it with her weapon. The bird screamed as she sliced into his leg, but it flew on.

  The woman looked up. “You would have been better off waiting for me,” she said.

  “I didn’t know—” he was distracted by Aster, who was struggling furiously with the vines binding her hands and feet.

  “What the hell is going on?” she demanded, darting her gaze from one to the other.

  “Let me help with that,” the woman said. She drew a dagger. Aster strained away.

  “For the vines, not for you,” she said.

  “Who are you?” Aster asked.

  “My name is Dusk,” the woman replied.

  Then Aster vomited, and not just a little.

  THREE

  OBSESSION

  David hadn’t believed, at first. Aster’s father was clearly as mad as a hatter, and he’d somehow gotten to Delia as well. She kept babbling about magical spells and other nonsense. Possibly drugs were involved; certainly something had caused him to pass out, because he had a big gap in his memory.

  So when he left, the first thing he tried to do was go to the police, even though the thought of doing so made him a little sad. Still, he had to consider Aster’s welfare. Who knew what went on in that house?

  He only made it half a mile down the road before that diminutive sadness became depression so crushing he almost ran his car into a tree just to make it stop. Moaning, he turned around and headed toward Sugarloaf Road, and almost immediately felt better. He had the overwhelming sense that he was doing the right thing.

  Before long it was difficult to believe he had actually felt as bad as he had, and so once again he turned around, only to return to the deepest despair he had ever known. He didn’t try to escape again, but drove until he reached Sugarloaf Road and saw the narrow logging ruts.

  He had always been skeptical of hypnosis, at least the sort done with a shiny watch and soft words. But Kostyena had been in the Russian mob, and maybe the KGB before that, so who knew what he had training in and access to? Secret brainwashing drugs, possibly. It was like something out of a ridiculous pulp spy novel, but it was the only explanation that actually made sense.

  When the road got steep he got out of the car and stared down into the pine forest. Now that he understood what was wrong with him, his mind had found something else to worry about.

  What was he going to find down in those woods? Aster’s corpse? A gang of Russian thugs holding her hostage? If the latter, what was he supposed to do? He didn’t have a gun or even a knife. Aster’s father had just said to find her and return her. He hadn’t said a thing about what had happened to her.

  Waiting was only making matters worse, so he started down the road. He thought about Aster and her drawings and her strange accent, the way her lips moved when she was concentrating, as if everything she did was some sort of incantation. He had been a lot like her in school; lost in bo
oks, not very popular, a person a lot of people didn’t notice at all.

  But he noticed Aster. He had watched the thing inside her, the glow she kept hidden, first surrounded by the body of a girl, and now by that of a young woman. He had seen that glow before, in others—only to watch it fade, flicker and go out when they became adults.

  He felt he had so much to teach Aster, so much to show her. Sometimes he thought that later, after she graduated, when it was more appropriate . . . after all, he was only a few years older than she . . .

  He tried to shake that out of his head, but he found that the only thoughts that made him feel even remotely happy were thoughts of Aster. So although he knew he should resist them, instead he let them come and play themselves out in scenes. If he didn’t like the way the scenes ended, he would go back and rewrite them. None of it, after all, was real.

  And so the pines gave way to spreading oaks and a deeper forest than he had ever seen, and the logging road became a trail.

  And off in the distance he heard hounds.

  “Probably fox-hunting,” he muttered under his breath.

  The kind of fox hunting people did around Sowashee wasn’t the equestrian sport in which the hunters wore stylish red outfits. It usually consisted of a bunch of rednecks in pick-up trucks releasing first a farm-raised fox and then their hounds. They would then stand around, drinking beer, listening to the sound of their dogs baying as they chased the poor animal.

  David didn’t see how that qualified as sport.

  He continued on, his thoughts alternating between Aster and the increasingly strident yowling of the dogs, until he realized that they were pretty close to him. He swung around, wondering if he should climb a tree. Then he saw them, huge beasts, one sable and the other albino.

  And they weren’t chasing a fox; they were coming right for him.

  With a yelp he turned to flee, and in a dazed panic saw a low hanging branch. He grabbed and pulled himself up the tree, just as the dogs reached him. He yanked his foot up barely in time; the volume and pitch of their howling was terrifying, and he realized he was screaming in abject terror.

  It wasn’t long before the huntsman came along.