by E. E. Holmes
“She’s… well…” I gestured helplessly into the back corner of the room, where all of the Hosts, including Savannah, were still gathered around the window, murmuring and pointing like they were all having the same sleepwalking nightmare.
Frankie’s eyes went wide as she watched them. “What are they doing?”
“They’re trying to lead us to a clue somewhere out on the grounds,” I said, “but we can’t let them out of the ward without Council permission.”
Frankie looked utterly horrified. I wanted to tell her something comforting—it would all be okay, or some other cliché like that—but I just didn’t have it in me to lie to the poor girl. I turned back to Fiona. “Now what? We just wait here, doing nothing?”
Fiona pursed her lips, running a paint-spattered finger over them as she thought. Then she walked over to the crowd of Hosts and elbowed her way through them to the window.
“Fiona, what are you—” I began, but the rest of my question was swallowed in a gasp as I watched her lift the catch and push the window wide open.
“We tried to stop her, but she overpowered us and escaped through the window,” Fiona said, shaking her head in mock regret. “We had no choice but to go after her.”
I laughed nervously, and then stopped. “Are you serious?”
“Have you ever known me to joke?” Fiona shot back. “Just Catriona, though. We can’t risk letting them all out. We’ll never be able to keep track of them all, and if we lose one, we are well and truly fucked.”
I turned to Finn. “Alright, let’s have all of your objections.”
He stepped away from the door and crossed his arms. “I have none. As long as we can make sure the other Hosts are safely contained, I think it’s a brilliant idea.”
I gaped at him. “I’d ask if you were serious, but you joke about as often as Fiona does, so I won’t waste my time.”
“We must be careful, though. Someone has to stay here with the other Hosts,” Finn said. “And someone needs to alert the Council that Catriona has escaped once we are safely out of the building.”
“I’ll stay with them,” Frankie said in a voice cracked with fear.
“Are you sure?” I asked her. “Don’t be a hero if you don’t think you can handle it, Frankie, honestly.”
Frankie’s face was set. “No. I can handle it. I can do it. I want to help Savannah.”
“If she says she can do it, then let her,” Fiona said impatiently.
“Who do we send to the Council for help?” I asked, but it was Frankie again who answered.
“There are two girls sitting on the bench out there,” she said, pointing to the door out to the hallway. “I could wait until you’ve gone and then run out there and ask one of them to go for help. Maybe the other one can stay and help me, if I need another set of hands.”
Finn looked surprised, but nodded. “Brilliant. Do you think they would do it?”
“Róisín and Riley have been sitting out there for hours. I think they’d do anything we asked if they thought it would help their mother,” I said.
“Right then, what the hell are we waiting for?” Fiona barked. She turned to Catriona and gestured toward the open window. “After you, then.”
18
Grave Robbing
ONE BY ONE, we led the rest of the Hosts back to their beds, leaving Catriona at the window, where she kept vigil like a seaman’s wife keeps watch on the horizon after a storm. When we were quite sure every Host was calm and resting again, I turned to Frankie.
“Give us maybe a five-minute head start,” I said. “Then send one of the Lightfoot girls for help. The most important thing is to keep all of the Hosts in this room. Fire completely freaks them out, so if you’ve still got that lighter, keep it hidden. Remember the cover story?”
Frankie nodded obediently and repeated it back to me. “Catriona broke free and climbed out the window. You all followed her so that she wouldn’t escape. You are going to bring her right back. I saw you head in the direction of the river.”
“Perfect. Thank you, Frankie. I really appreciate this, and I know Savvy would, too.”
Frankie nodded again, and then went to sit on the edge of the bed, where Savvy lay unnaturally still and quiet.
I joined Finn, Fiona, and Catriona where they stood waiting for me by the window. I placed myself between Catriona and the glass, so that she was forced to look at me.
“The little book. Can you take me to the little book?” I asked her slowly and clearly.
Catriona picked up the familiar refrain, “little book, little book, little book,” and in one swift movement, pushed herself up onto the window ledge and disappeared through it.
“Blimey!” Finn cried, leaping after her. The hospital ward was on the first floor, thank God, but it was still a sizable drop to the ground. Luckily, the December wind had swept the snow up into a pillowy drift against the wall of the castle, and both Finn and Catriona landed softly. I helped boost Fiona through the opening and then followed her, dropping like a stone into the snowbank.
Catriona moved with the blind purpose of a sleepwalker. It was difficult to tell who had control of her body at this moment. Either the spirit was having a hard time maneuvering the body or some part of Catriona was fighting against the spirit’s impulses, but every motion seemed to take an enormous effort, as though Catriona was trying to move and not move at the same time. Nevertheless, she trudged forward across the grounds, plunging through the buried flowerbeds, taking no heed of the paths, and making no effort to avoid impediments. Several times Finn had to rush forward and guide her around a potentially dangerous obstacle. She seemed unable to follow anything but the most direct path between herself and her destination. He pulled a flashlight from the waistband of his jeans and clicked it on, so that a wide golden beam of light could illuminate some of the potential obstacles in our way.
“Do we have any inkling as to where she might be headed?” Fiona asked breathlessly after a few minutes. She was struggling the hardest of all of us to keep up because she kept losing her ratty loafers in the snow.
“That way,” I said unhelpfully, pointing ahead of us. “There’s no way to know, Fiona. We just have to keep following her and hope she isn’t heading for the open countryside. This was your brilliant plan, remember?”
Fiona swore under her breath but kept plowing forward, teeth chattering.
A few minutes later, though, our destination became clear. We were headed straight to the southeast corner of the grounds, where stood the ancient Fairhaven cemetery, nestled in a grove of towering pine trees. Closer and closer we drew, falling in line with a path at last, as it became the shortest possible route leading straight to the wrought iron gates.
No one spoke as the realization set in. I repressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the frigid temperatures and everything to do with the prospect of entering a graveyard in the dead of night. It may seem ridiculous that the place would have any sort of effect on a person who was permanently haunted, but I had to admit I was not thrilled that this was where Catriona had led us. As far as I was concerned, there was a big difference between a spirit and the rotting corpse they left behind. I’d take the spirit any day.
Catriona walked right up to the gates, which were secured with a massive length of chain, and began trying to squeeze herself between the bars. Finn rushed forward and firmly, but gently, closed his arms around her and prised her fingers from the metal.
“Now what?” I asked, clutching at a cramp in my side that had me nearly doubled over. I looked up, trying to judge the height of the fence. “Do you think we could just climb it?” I placed a hand on the nearest bar; it was slick with frost.
But Fiona was already pushing past us. “No need, no need. I know the combination,” she said.
“Why the hell would you know the combination?” I asked her.
“From all the late night grave dancing,” Fiona said baldly, then rolled her eyes. “There are statues and carvings in the gravey
ard. Their upkeep falls under my purview.” She slid the sleeve of her shirt down over her hand so that she could hold the bitterly cold metal against her skin as she whirled the dial on the lock. For a few moments, there was no sound but for Catriona’s ragged breathing as she strained against Finn’s hold.
With a heavy clunk, the lock fell open. I jumped forward and helped Fiona heave the heavy loops of chain off the bars, pulling it link by link until it lay curled on the ground like a sleeping serpent.
The moment the chains were gone, Catriona pulled free and heaved herself against the gate, which swung forward with a deafening screeching sound. Finn lunged forward to catch her before she plunged headfirst into the snow. The silence inside the graveyard was oppressive, intensified by the muffling blanket of snow and the towering canopy of pine trees. The golden beam of Finn’s flashlight did not seem to penetrate nearly as far now, as though the darkness itself was deeper here. The snow was scanter on the ground; the trees had caught most of it, and were now bent nearly double with the weight of it. Graves stuck up out of the ground at strange angles, as though they had sprung up naturally, nourished like plants by the death and decay nestled beneath them. The stones were clearly all very old, the corners and carvings worn to soft curves and vague impressions. Even if anyone ever did come to visit this graveyard, how would they even know who lay beneath the ground? The graves were nearly indistinguishable. And despite the vast number of spirits in and around Fairhaven Hall, the place seemed to be completely devoid of ghosts.
“So strange,” I breathed through my now chattering teeth. “I would have expected this place to be packed with spirits.”
But Fiona shook her head. “No Fairhaven spirit would ever hang around here. Everyone here, living and dead, understands too much about the reality of death. They know the bodies we leave behind are just shells. There’s nothing here for them.”
There was no time to digest this nugget of wisdom, for Catriona had struggled her way up off the ground and was now stumbling forward down the path. We hurried after her, huddled together partly for warmth, and partly to keep to the narrow strip of visibility provided by the flashlight beam.
Without warning, Catriona came to a sudden stop, and we all plowed into her, knocking her to her knees. She did not seem to notice. Her eyes, her attention, indeed every fiber of her being was fixed upon the low stone structure looming out of the darkness in front of us. The sight of it seemed to freeze her in her tracks.
“What is it?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
“A mausoleum,” Finn replied. He raised the flashlight to examine it. The beam illuminated the greenish copper roof, the gracefully curved stone sides, and the arched wooden door before finally revealing the name carved above the lintel: Larkin.
Larkin. I’d never seen or heard the name in my life, but it rang through my body like a current, shooting down to the tips of my fingers, and making them twitch with a desire to draw a now familiar face that had been haunting my sleep for days.
“This is it,” I murmured. “Larkin. This is right, I know it is.”
Catriona had recovered from her shock or whatever it was that had kept her momentarily still. She stumbled forward until both of her violently shaking hands were pressed up against the mausoleum door. Her whispered mantra rose to a shrill, keening cry that raised the hairs on my arms and made me feel, somehow, even colder than I’d already felt.
“Little book! Little book! LITTLE BOOK!” she shrieked to the night. She raised her hands above her head, clenched them into fists, and then began to pound, with alarming force, on the heavy wooden door.
“Stop her!” Fiona cried out. “Stop her before she hurts herself!”
Finn wrestled Catriona back from the door, deftly catching both fists and pinning them securely behind her back. Catriona fought against him like a feral animal; despite her diminutive frame, Finn grunted with the effort of keeping her restrained.
“She’s not going to stop this until we get in there and see what it is she’s trying to show us,” Finn said. “So, what’s the game plan here?”
“What?” I asked, and my voice shot up an octave in my horror. “Get in there? What do you mean, get in there? It’s like… a giant coffin! You can’t just break into it!”
“Well, we shouldn’t, obviously, but we’re going to anyway,” Finn said through clenched teeth. “Fiona, do the Durupinen put any Castings on these things?”
“I can’t be absolutely sure, but I highly doubt it,” Fiona said. “We don’t give a terrible amount of thought to death beyond the spiritual part. In fact, it’s rare for any of us to be buried anymore. That’s why the graves are in such disrepair and the gates are locked; no one visits it anymore, except for me, to repair an occasional statue. We’re usually cremated and scattered nowadays. Still, let me check, just to be safe.”
Fiona began a slow circling of the mausoleum, closely examining the stones. As she worked, I knelt down and clamped my arms around Catriona’s waist, trying to take just a little bit of the strain off of Finn, who was panting heavily now with the effort of restraining her.
After a minute or two he called through gritted teeth, “You about done there, Fiona?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, coming around the far side of the mausoleum. “I don’t think there are any Castings to contend with. Nothing active, anyway.”
“So, how do we get in then?” I asked.
“We just have to force our way through, don’t we?” Finn said.
Fiona nodded. “There’s a window on the back side, near the roof. If you break it, you should be able to get in that way.”
“Okay, then,” I said, steeling myself against the creeping horror that was rising in me like flood waters. “Let’s get it over with.”
“Should we let go of her?” Finn grunted, as Catriona continued to struggle.
“Why not?” I said. “She’s not going anywhere except into this tomb, so the sooner we open it, the sooner she can stop this.”
“I’ll stay right here with her,” Fiona said, her face set in a determined grimace. “She won’t go anywhere, you can be certain of that.”
Finn released his hold on Catriona, and she immediately flung herself once more at the mausoleum door. Fiona rolled her sleeves up and pulled Catriona into a kind of bear hug, preventing her from injuring herself too badly as she clawed at the stones. I followed Finn around to the back of the mausoleum, where we found a very narrow window shaped like an egg that was set into the wall just below the point of the roof.
“Blimey, that’s small,” Finn said. He turned to me and looked me over appraisingly. “You’re probably the only one who can fit through there,” he said.
I stared at him. “Me?”
“I’ll boost you up, and you squeeze through, if you can. Then go to the door and let us in,” Finn said.
For a moment, my brain refused to comprehend a single word he’d said. Then I blinked, shook my head, and drew a long, shaky breath. “Sure. Pitch black room full of dead people. Sounds fun.”
“Well done,” Finn said. He positioned himself beneath the window and pulled the flashlight from his pocket. With one big, grunting leap he sprang into the air and smashed the glass of the window with the blunt end of the flashlight. We covered our heads with our arms as the shards of glass rained down on us. Finn handed me his flashlight, which I tucked as securely as I could into the back of my pants. Then Finn interlocked his fingers and boosted me up to the window. I pushed my head through the hole and then immediately pulled it out again, gagging.
“Oh God,” I cried. “Oh God, it smells like dead things. And there’s dust. It’s dead body dust, and it’s just hanging in the air!”
“Well, just hold your breath, then, and be quick about it,” Finn said impatiently. “And mind the glass along the edges.”
“Get a move on, you two, Cat’s going mad over here!” Fiona shouted.
I made another involuntary whimpering sound and then hoisted m
yself through the window, pulling each of my legs after me with a grunt. With a deep breath that I instantly regretted, because it tasted like death, I dropped to the ground inside the chamber. I attempted to pull the flashlight from my waistband with violently shaking hands, and immediately dropped it on the ground.
“Shit. Oh, shit,” I cried.
“What, what is it?” Finn shouted.
“I dropped the damn flashlight and now I have to touch things to find it!” I answered shrilly. I squatted down and began feeling around on the ground in the impenetrable darkness for the flashlight, silently praying that I wouldn’t accidentally touch anything other than bare floor. Luckily, my scrabbling fingers closed around the flashlight within seconds. My eyes filled with tears of relief as I turned it on, still uttering a constant stream of gasps and curses over which I had no control. Large shapes loomed up at me on both sides in the darkness, and I knew they must be coffins, but I did not stop to examine them. The only thing I wanted to see, the only sight that could keep me from passing out, was the way out. I trained the flashlight beam—and my gaze—on the door directly across from me. Fighting back a recurring, heaving urge to vomit, I forced my feet forward, one in front of the other, until I reached the door.
I could hear Finn’s pounding footsteps outside as he ran around to meet me at the door. I reached down and found the latch, an ancient rusted thing that hadn’t even been locked properly—the only thing keeping this door closed was age and decay.
“Fiona, pull Catriona back from the door. I’m going to try to open it now!” I shouted.
I waited until I heard Fiona’s groans of effort as she muscled Catriona away from the door, and then I pressed a palm against the wood, which was cold and slimy. I pushed hard, but it did not budge. I leaned in with my shoulder and heaved my body weight against it. The door gave a loud creak, and a low grinding noise. A narrow crack of moonlight appeared.