by Daryl Banner
“We have your big metal bird,” adds the woman with a certain snarkiness. “If there was a way across the river, we’d have your blood, too.”
“Come,” whispers John. “She’s just trying to scare us.”
“You should be scared,” says the woman, hearing him perfectly. She lifts her chin, her one ghostly white eye shining in the dim light cutting through the fog. “They’re always scared before they die.”
Reluctantly, I let John pull me away from the vile riverbank. My gaze never leaves the bald woman on the other side until the thicket of dead trees eventually blocks her from view. Facing front, I drown in the darkness that lies ahead of me and the grief that lies behind. Soon, the only sound I hear is the careless crunching of our own clumsy Living footsteps. I don’t even care if anyone hears us … or anything. I’ve lost all my thrill of this horrible place, and quite suddenly all I want to do is go home.
And that isn’t possible anymore because our big metal bird is on that side of the river. Big metal bird. I might prefer that term over hovercraft, except we might have killed said bird. It flew too far from its nest.
And so have we.
After too much time in silence passes, Dana—I still will not speculate how the hell she snuck onto the ship undetected—gives a dramatic spread of her wrinkly hands and then says, “Here, yes?”
It’s a small clearing of trees where she’s stopped. “Here, what?” I ask, annoyed.
She studies my face, her eyes squeezed with emotion. “The spirits are very calm here,” she answers. “They’ve gone swimming in the mists above, perhaps. We do need a place to recover ourselves for a spell, yes?”
I realize that, despite all of her fake diviner crap, this is actually her attempt at being kind. But why?
“You said something to me earlier,” I remind her. “In the ship. You followed me on campus? You—”
“No need to worry about that, now. We’re among the spirits,” she says with a wave of her hands. “They sleep, and so should we. We oughtn’t be caught by them when they choose to wake. Besides, your friend said it best,” she murmurs, her wild eyes flicking to John. “If we stick together, we will be safe, yes?”
How much did she overhear? All of it? “I have no idea what time it even is,” I mutter miserably. “Dead of night. Dead of morning.” My heart lurches suddenly, my eyes filling with tears that don’t drop. “I can’t let Mari just—”
“No,” says Dana right away. “Your friend is fine, just fine. She is not one with the spirits, otherwise I’d sense her.” Dana blinks her big eyes, waves a hand in the air as if to clear it of cobwebs, then adds, “Yes, I see the truth of it. Marigold is most fine. We will reunite with your friend soon, if the spirits are truthful …”
“Her name is Marianne,” I correct her.
“Oh, of course.” Dana bites her lip, her face wrinkling. “I wonder why I said the other name.”
“We’ll need to ration our food,” the delivery boy cuts in quietly, hugging his satchel. “I didn’t get much.” He stares sadly at the ground, his once white uniform now decorated with ashen stains and smears. His third red eyebrow has turned dark, the blood having dried.
“Let’s rest, then,” I say, despite the incessant pulling in my stomach. I’ll have to take Dana’s sugar-coated lie as my only comfort. Please, Marianne … Please be safe. And if by some miracle you are, then stay safe.
After a little bite of dried, tasteless fruit, and a human function or four done in private behind a tree, we settle in our space for the setting sun—assuming it’s setting, as we have no means by which to tell, the greedy fog floating in the way. Dana leans against a knobby charcoaled tree, petting it as though it were telling her a bedtime story that only she hears. East has made a pillow of his satchel, curled into a ball on the ground with his hands tucked between his thighs, and though he’s supposed to be sleeping, he’s staring despondently at nothing.
John and I share the trunk of a tree at the opposite end of the clearing apart from the other two. His thick arm pushes into my shoulder, but I hardly feel it, picking at my nails and wondering why the hell I didn’t plunge right back across that cursed river in search of my friend.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” I whisper.
John shrugs, the muscles in his shoulder contracting. “I couldn’t have let you go alone.”
“You could have,” I reason. “The food in my condo could have kept you fed for weeks. You could have easily snuck out and gone back home too, if you wanted.”
He turns his head. “Huh? No. I’m not going home to face my sad, disappointed parents, not until I’m an official student at the university. We’ve already gone over this.”
“But now, you’re a criminal because of me. We’re all criminals. If we ever get back home …”
“We’ll be coming back with proof of the Dead,” he reminds me. He brings a hand to my arm, and his fingers brush down the length of it. Pleasant tingles drift through my body. His hand rests on mine, then he turns his body and puts an arm around me, pulling me in close to him. It’s the first time in a while that it feels like we’re truly alone. I wonder if it’s totally inappropriate or selfish of me to want him to kiss me, right here and now.
“You’re warm,” I realize, tightening my body into his. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d gotten. Sometimes it feels like we just met a few days ago. Sometimes it’s like I’ve known him my whole life. “It’s so miserable here. I hate the cold. I want to go home.”
“We will,” he says calmly. “We have to. I’m certain there’s some mechanism on that craft that’s alerted the university of exactly where it crashed. They’ll have a rescue party out to collect us.”
I lift my head so my icy eyes fall right into his muddy brown ones. He’s so damn handsome, even dirtied up and rugged in the Undead wilderness. “Are you sure?”
“We better have our proof by the time they find us.” He smiles. Or, rather, he makes a subtle smirk with his lips, which I know to be his version of smiling. John, the eternally brooding, the stoic …
I bring my lips to his. My heart rushes into my throat. His hand slips behind my neck, caressing me as I melt apart in his arms. For the first time in a long time, I’m reminded what it felt like when we first met. It was right after my embarrassing speech to my class about the so-named Beautiful Dead, and he gave me a moment’s half-distracted consolation before running away from me, escaping the watchful eyes of campus authorities who’d been searching him out for sneaking into classes. That same night, I had a spare ticket to the gardens, and so together we went and created a night for ourselves that neither of us would soon forget.
John shifts his weight, bringing me gently to the ground and crawling over me like an animal. A deep and rumbling growl from within his chest even suggests it more so. I’m in love with a beast, I think to myself. And maybe someday he’ll say the same back to me … sans “beast”, that is. He looks down on me with hunger in his eyes. Right here? I want to ask, astonished. In the middle of the realm of the Dead? In view of the two others? He seems to read my thoughts, a wicked smirk twisting his face as he watches the emotions race across mine. Then he kisses me, and I’m lost in the taste of this beautiful man.
His energy soon expires, and we collapse to the ashen ground holding each other in the semidarkness, which grows darker and darker by the minute.
“That was a lie just to comfort me, wasn’t it?” I ask quietly. “The part about a rescue crew from the university coming to save us?”
He only clutches me tighter and rests his chin upon my head. The sight of his gently rising and falling chest is the last thing I see before drifting off.
When my eyes open, I’ve no doubt that the night has fallen. I shouldn’t be sleeping, I tell myself, blinking my eyes. I’ll sleep enough when I’m dead. A chill runs through my body from the tips of my toes to the end of my nose. I realize John’s grip on me has loosened and he now holds more of himself than anything else, hugging his chest tight
ly as he dreams. The two others still rest on the other side of the clearing, the boy with his satchel-pillow and Dana leaning against her new best friend: a big dead tree.
Soundlessly, I rise to my feet and turn around in a full circle. Every direction shows me the same impenetrable darkness. Gosh, it’s so damn inviting, I wonder why we’re not all sightseeing right now.
Then, I spot a light. My face twists, doubting it at first. What could possibly be glowing in the woods? One of the diviner’s spirits? Despite my inner amusement, I can’t bring myself to smile. The subtle light worries me.
My eyes grow double. It’s Marianne, I realize at once. The light almost glows red as her cheeks, except …
Recklessly, I move through the woods in pursuit. The forest floor snaps beneath my feet every five or six paces, but the light makes no sound at all. Am I mistaken?
It grows dimmer and greyer, losing its color. It’s as if the light retreats the closer I get. Maybe it’s just an illusion reflected off the thick and sleepless clouds above my head, perhaps casting an image of the moon into the woods below. Is it a full moon, or am I being lured to my death?
“Mari?” I call out, my voice quivering with anxiety. “Is that you? Mari?”
I stop. The shifting grey light takes the shape of a person, not my friend’s glowing red cheek, and quite suddenly it looks like someone else entirely. My eyes fill with tears and I bring a hand to my mouth. Is he who I think he is? Is he …
“Dad?” I whisper through my shaking fingers.
The light moves, dancing across the trees the way a reflection bends and twists through unrested waters. I watch it with shock, overcome by what I’m seeing. Have I gone as mad as Dana, or is there merit to her powers? The shape draws closer, closer …
Then it’s not my father at all. I step away at once, my back slamming into a tree as the pale, dead-eyed boy is upon me.
Just as I fill my lungs for a scream, the creature presses his gross dead finger to my lips, then freezes. He doesn’t hiss or growl. He doesn’t bare his teeth. He doesn’t move but for the grey finger he just put to my mouth.
It’s the same pale boy we captured in the hovercraft. I try not to be repulsed by his cold dead digit on my lips.
“No hard feelings?” I quietly ask through the finger.
“Just me,” he whispers. “No sister.”
“The other one … is your sister?” I ask, putting it together. “The one with no hair and one eye? The one who threatened to eat us from across the river?”
His eyes scan down my neck, then my body, then return to my face appearing thrice as hungry as before. I guess the word “eat” inspired a thought in his Dead brain. I ought to be more choosy with my words.
Realizing, however, that he has refrained from eating me thus far, I find myself curious. “What do you want?”
He puckers his lips, considering my question. For a moment, he doesn’t seem to know the answer. I see the conflict in his face. Maybe I’m still not so safe from being eaten after all.
“Is it my friend?” I ask with fleeting hope. “Marianne? Have you come to tell me you have her and you want to propose some sort of bargain for us to get her back? Is that it? Have you come to strike some sort of Undeadly deal?”
The pale boy studies me long and hard. Maybe it’s the emotion John stirred within me before we fell asleep the night before, but I find myself surprised by my reaction to this … person. He has oddly pretty, soft eyes, even with their pale coloring. Though I know what he might intend to do, I find myself trusting that, in truth, he doesn’t want to harm me. I hope it isn’t foolish to believe that.
“No deal,” he whispers.
“Please,” I beg him, unable to be strong right now. “Please, if you have her, if you have my friend, please return her to me. She wasn’t even supposed to come with me. She doesn’t deserve to die.”
“You all deserve to die.”
“No, no, no.” I feel my insides lurching. I can already picture my friend brutally murdered in a million different ways. Eviscerated. Sliced in half. Bitten upon every inch of her body. The sound of her last screams. “Please,” I beg him again. “Return Marianne to me. I beg you! That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it? Have you brought her with you? Oh, please, please tell me you—”
“I’ve come alone.”
I stare at him with hurt in my eyes, breathing heavily. “Will you … tell me at least if she’s … alive?”
He stares at me for too long. In this moment, his pale eyes nearly turn human, touched by a strand of feelings that seem to run through him. Then, in a whisper that I almost doubt I hear, he says: “Yes.”
Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But that means they have her, or else she got away and is on the run. That means … “How’d you get over the water?”
“There is a place down the river where the trees reach for one another,” he says, his full, chapped lips never quite closing as he speaks, “and I am braver than the others. I am agile. I am light.”
“The others didn’t follow?”
“The others don’t know the path,” he says, “and if they do, they don’t risk it. One slip, and you drop.”
“What happens when you touch the water?” The little researcher in me has come out of her office. “I didn’t read anything about water in my studies.”
“Your … studies?” The boy’s eyes narrow, suspicious of the word.
“I’m from the land of the … um, the alive,” I explain, unsure what to call it. “It’s across the ocean. That way.” I point, though in truth, I’m so turned around that I have no idea which way I’m pointing. “I’m just a student at the school there.”
“School?”
“Part of my studies,” I go on, “include people like … well, people like you. And I—”
“Like me,” he echoes, his face turning dark.
I worry I’m not making my situation any better. “See, the people over there, the alive-people, they don’t think people like you exist. They don’t believe in the Beautiful Dead. That’s what I call you,” I add, feeling suddenly self-conscious about the term. “Sorry. I just—”
“Beautiful,” he hisses, shutting me right up. His lips contort into a snarl. Then, too close to my face, he says, “There is nothing beautiful about me.”
I look into his strange, otherworldly eyes. “I disagree,” I reply in half a hush, my breath stolen from me.
The very next instant, the pale boy takes yet another blunt object to the head, and to the ground he goes. In his place stands John breathing heavily and palming a big metal canister. The pale boy, despite being knocked to the ground, doesn’t seem fazed in the least; he’s already twisting his body around to get back on his feet.
John, however, did not come alone. East holds a metal canister of his own, and he’s pulled off the top and holds it threateningly. I don’t catch the significance of this oddly dramatic gesture until I see the boy recoil against a tree, staring at the canister with wide, resentful eyes.
“Make one move,” John dares him, “and my buddy here will douse you in water and I suspect that will hurt.”
The boy scowls defiantly, but the fear in his eyes betrays him. I put a hand on John’s arm. “John …”
“What were you thinking??” he cries out, turning on me suddenly. I jerk back, surprised. “Why did you come out here all by yourself?”
“I saw—John, I saw a light. I thought it was—”
“We cannot separate!” he shouts, furious with me. “We’re vulnerable out here! We are not home, Jennifer! Has that fact escaped you?”
“No, John,” I bite back, annoyed by the scolding. “I know very well where we are, thank you, but I thought maybe Marianne had—”
“And you didn’t think to wake me?! You could’ve died, Jennifer!” He fumes, his eyes wet with despair. “Are you really so desperate to join your father??”
I slap him. The ringing sound of hand meeting cheek echoes through the woods, taking with
it every last word he had left to utter. His jowls shake and he looks away, his face going red. The silence that follows is worse than the silence before when I’d only thought a spirit of my dead dad was coming to find me.
“Maybe so,” I whisper, cold as ice.
“Jen …”
I move to the pale boy on the ground, crouching to bring my face closer to his—but not too close. “What do I call you?” I ask him calmly, determined not to let my dumb Living emotions break my resolve.
He only glares at the fell metal canister, which East still loyally holds above his head, ready to dump it.
“I wish to give you the dignity of a name,” I explain. “Unless you want me to call you Corpsey, or Dead Guy, or Bad Breath, you need to tell me your name.”
For the first time, he pulls his attention from the canister. Then, with a wrinkle of his face, he says, “Bad Breath? I don’t breathe.”
“I can’t imagine it’d be pleasant if you did.”
He looks up to consider the canister, and perhaps his whole situation too. “My sister and I haven’t called each other by our names in so long. They were given to us … literally … a lifetime ago.” Quite suddenly, he looks sad. “I’ve told myself my own story so many hundreds of times, I’m not even sure it’s real anymore. Was I ever alive? Was I ever …” He trails off, lost in his own horror.
I sigh. “Corpsey it is, then.”
“They’re coming.”
The words are Dana’s, who I hadn’t noticed standing behind East until now. She wrings her hands and her eyes dart around the woods in wonder.
I lift an eyebrow. “Who?”
“Oh, no,” groans the pale boy, hugging himself as if a sudden chill had taken him. “You have to let me go. I can’t be here. They’ll end me. Oh, no. I … I …”
“Who is it??” I urge him to tell me.
The canister utterly forgotten, the pale boy clambers to his feet and makes a move to run. John snaps out of a trance that may or may not be him stewing over his prior burst of emotion and my unexpected slap, then tackles the boy to the ground. East shudders, reacting too slow, and some of the water spills upon the Dead boy’s feet, though it didn’t appear intentional. His feet hiss instantly, smoke swirling up like foggy white snakes, and the scream that bellows from the pale boy’s mouth is enough to stir the Dead awake in a three mile radius.