by Jack Worr
The next person in line was a woman, and she was crying. Her name was Lily. As she cried over the body, the woman behind her watched the little girl be pulled slowly away, to the pews, where they took a seat. The girl’s gaze never left the coffin, and Emily Penelópē Doyle couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that something was off.
The woman ahead of her, who was someone Emily vaguely recognized, walked away and Emily stepped up to take her turn.
She looked at her friend—more than that—laid out in a coffin, still far too young. This wasn’t something she had expected to have to go to again, not for a long time yet, if ever. And now she’d been to two in one week.
But as she stared at his closed eyes, his unmoving chest, his hands folded neatly, the girl’s words echoed in her head. He’s missing, she’d said, and as Emily gazed at the too-perfect body, she knew what the girl had meant.
Mr and Ms Williams, eighty if they were a day, moved up to the coffin as the young woman moved away without saying anything, without touching the body, as if frightened, or more likely as if embarrassed. Maybe she wanted to pray silently, keep whatever she had to say to herself. And—assuming the rumors the other women in Ms Williams’s apartment complex bandied about were true—they weren’t married, after all, and this was a house of God. Ms Williams wasn’t a big believer in the fire and brimstone God of old, and she doubted people like Emily, or her own gay nephew, would be going to Hell for such small things. No, that was reserved for the truly evil, not for people who made mistakes, or were different through no fault of their own.
But these ephemeral thoughts proved their nature as the body of The Mason Grey (who’d helped her can a hundred and two jars for the local animal shelter) came into view as she and her husband reached the coffin and evaporated under the burning sense of the essential wrongness which she saw laid before her.
She gasped, quite despite herself. Her hand went to her chest, small black purse sliding into the crook of her mildly arthritic elbow. The man before her was dead, of that there could be no mistake. But he was too dead. Like a prop in a movie. Her hand moved of its own accord to touch his cheek, and Ms Williams’s husband gave her a strange look.
He knew she’d known the boy, but now he wondered if he’d been more to her, perhaps the son they never had.
But Ms Williams wasn’t thinking of the miscarriage, or the fights which came after, the almost-infidelity. She was thinking of how real the skin felt under her fingers, how real it was. And yet, and yet…
“A husk… It’s like he’s not here,” she murmured, unwittingly echoing the sentiments of a little girl who was even now being led from the church, her mother disturbed by the things she was saying about the dead man who they, when it came down to it, hardly knew. They only had come because Mason Grey’s hometown had coincidentally been the same one Tom had moved to after the divorce—Los Angeles, where middle-aged men found trophy wives, she thought.
She squinted as they stepped outside into the sun, and made their way through the crowd to the overfilling parking lot.
They had paid their respects, and now it was time to go. They’d get ice cream, then maybe catch a short film, that 3D one Genevieve had been wanting to see. If she remembered right, it was short, just over an hour. Perhaps by then Genevieve would forget about her strange comments, and Tom wouldn’t get the satisfaction of knowing he’d been right.
But Genevieve wouldn’t forget, nor would she say anything of it to her father or the woman he lived with. And that night, in her new bed in her new room in her father’s new house with his new wife—but not her new mother—she would dream of a place where a boy who was a rabbit led a girl down a dark stairwell, where people took medicine that was somehow fragile, where there were dragons, and elves, and fairies, and other things, darker things, like unformed shadows, like unarticulated remainders. And in the middle of it all, the center of her dream world, was something large, something that was everywhere, yet just in one place.
What is it? she thought.
The answer arose from the Aether. Blunderbuss, came the reply, carried by a wind that didn’t exist. And with that, her dream faded to black.
Hey you awesome badger!
Hey! Thanks for reading. This is my first novel and I hope you loved it a lot. I'd love to hear about what you loved and what you didn't. Drop me a line at [email protected]
One of the most important things you can do for me (other than reading my book) is letting other readers know what you thought of the story. It helps me get discovered, and it helps other readers find books they like. So I'd really appreciate if you could leave a short (or long) review by clicking here.
I read all my reviews, so you can let me know what you think that way if you don't want to email me.
Want to know what comes next?
Click here (jackworr.com/vldomg/whatsnext) to be notified when the next book is out and how you can get it for free.
Thanks again for reading,
—Jack
About the world
This book takes place in a world begun in The Dream Engine. Here is a summary of that book:
A truth terrible enough to bury for a millennium …
A mysterious boy calling in her sleep …
A secret city that shouldn’t exist …
When Eila Doyle first sees the strange boy beckoning in whispers from somewhere deep in her imagination, she questioned her sanity. She was used to seeing strange things with her eyes closed — that’s what Eila did all day while strapped to the Blunderbuss, Building whatever the Ministry of Manifestation required — but never before have those images felt so real, or so dangerous.
After Eila learns the terrible truth about her reality and the monsters inside it, she thinks that maybe madness might be her only escape...
This thrilling young adult steampunk adventure is the first in the Dream Engine series by masters of story Platt & Truant, authors of The Beam, Unicorn Western, and many more.
Click here to check it out.