When nothing lunges to hurt us, or worse, Paula nudges her way into the shadows. She’s keeping to the center of the building. Gaping sections of the roof allow for the moon to pierce the looming darkness around us. The faint light turns the barn into shades of greys with the outer edges being the pitch of the night.
“You know there are flashlights along the wall here?” Aimes asks.
She’s toying with the hanging objects. Pivoting back and forth from her torment, they almost mock our fears.
“Obviously, we didn’t.” Paula reaches around her to release one from Aimes’ games.
The circular ray dispels any hidden opportunities of the space. Like a monk with his censer, Paula swings the light, chasing away the darkness encircling us. It reveals what one would normally discover in an old, abandoned barn. Stalls are framed with thick timber used to separate the animals they once contained. Various rusted instruments of farm life are strung up along the opposing wall. There are no eyes reflected in the shine of her light. Nothing is crouched, staring at us from the depths of the building. It’s peaceful and still.
“Where is the girl?” Genny, encased in youth’s bravery, has begun to walk the length of the stalls with her own flashlight showcasing each interior and still nothing moves.
Paula, refusing to admit to defeat or insanity, is casting her light towards the rafters. In her mind, or her pride, a floating child makes more sense than an invisible one. Finding nothing, she avoids our gaze.
Refusing to admit defeat, Paula mirrors Genny. She doesn’t just walk to the horse stalls, she enters them. She is still holding to the belief she will stumble upon a small frame nestled into a makeshift hiding spot. I follow mutely behind them. Aimes’ face conveys she’s convinced Paula won’t find anyone. I’m worried she may. Little girls have a way of showing up with sharpened teeth and terror-filled lullabies.
Walking to the last stall, I skip ahead of their efforts. The lock on this swinging door is different from the other’s rusted counterparts. It’s almost glossy with the metal looking new. Having been replaced recently, it’s a stark contrast to the rest of what is around us.
I slide the bolt a few times. There is no tug from age. It slips back into the locking sleeve with no effort. This dare is metallic, and gloss covered. It waits to see if I will cave to the doors’ mockingly, hushed whispers. I do. We both knew I would.
I let the wooden rectangle of the stall door be pulled by gravity. I watch, waiting to see if the hinges will disagree with the lock, telling of a different age. They don’t. They don’t even voice a whine of complaint with the heavy door pulling fully on them.
The other stalls are thick with molted hay. Genny’s investigating steps release their acidic perfume into the air. In this one, what appears to be hay, or other light brown lawn clippings, have settled in a far corner, leaving the rest of the floor clear. Such a simple thing shouldn’t trigger anxiety. It shouldn’t roll my stomach with worry. It’s the simple things, though, which seem to always do the most damage.
In my mind, Fate seems to giggle. She’s calling her sisters, gathering them to see what I will do with what is before me. Truthfully, they already know.
“Hey,” I whisper.
My hushed voice might as well have been a battle cry with how it startles them. Whispers are warnings. Things to be heeded. It’s a simple thing.
Aimes is the first by my side. Genny isn’t far behind her. Paula, just as torn over the hopes of finding who she saw and the fear of it, stands along the furthest timber of the stall.
Aimes is searching for some comical retort to my discovery. She discovers none. Her blue eyes stare into mine with apprehension and fear.
Genny kicks at the ground covering. It’s clumsy. She’s not willing to invest her whole leg into the action just in case the action bites her – literally.
When nothing moves, Genny kicks harder. She’s pushing the hay further along the back wall. It scatters with each effort finally revealing a perfect square of newly colored wood. A thick length of rope has been strung through an opening resulting in an exposed loop. Once uncovered, it’s obvious and yet somehow still holds an unanswered mystery as to what it is.
“Go ahead. Lift it. What could go wrong?” Aimes has recovered her wit.
Her comment motivates no one. It doesn’t have to. The wooden door begins to lift itself. Light escapes from the framed hole. As its rays reach out towards us, we step back to escape them. The knife is in my hand before I realize I had grasped it.
A little girl’s brown eyes with matching brown hair stares out at us. She is shocked for a moment before her child-like voice says, “Oh. Hi.”
Paula exhales the breath she was keeping hostage. “Hi,” she says, to who must be what started this whole adventure.
The little girl lifts the door the rest of the way, flopping it to the ground. “Come on,” she says, slipping back down into the hole.
Aimes and I share an exasperated look to the other. My heart is still pounding from what I had expected to crawl from the space below us. It was just a little girl, as Paula had said. Once again, such a simple thing. All these simple things. The welcoming red beacon, the soft hay, the subtle hints with their whispers and warnings – simple things. Like the small shards of a long-ago broken picture frame, it’s the little things, the simple things, which always cause the most damage.
Chapter 29
It’s a sharp contrast under the ground to what is above. Someone, long ago, built the barn over a stone basement, but it’s not the simple, outdated thing it once was. It’s been renovated to appear almost hospital, or lab-like. Rooms have been built with doors of thick wood and thicker brass locks. Unlike the unguarded barn, something is definitely meant to be kept inside these doors.
The little girl skips ahead of us. She treats us as if we are long-time friends, but I can’t remember ever seeing her. Her long hair is unkempt. The dirty watercolor of the brown sways in clumps instead of curls. The shine is not from health or youth but neglect. Otherwise, she looks to be cherished. There is no gauntness to her frame. Her eyes sparkle with life. She wears an old smock style dress with scuffed black boots, but not even the weight of such footwear slows her joyful passage in front of us.
“Where are we going?” Paula asks.
Her eyes have rested upon every point of the child’s body. I thought it was of a mother’s concern, but with her eyes cold and shoulders rounded, she’s flipped her mind to medical. In the same way I grasp my knife when situations become unclear, Paula grasps onto her rational mind. She lets it encase her thoughts like a protective shield, a barrier between herself and who she needs to be to be safe.
The girl stops skipping to turn back to us. Her forehead wrinkles with confusion before asking, “Aren’t you here to check on them?”
“Yes,” I quickly reply before anyone else. “She’s new,” I say, motioning to Paula. “We wanted her opinion on how they are doing.”
The little girl looks from me to Paula. Paula smiles, nodding to assure the girl of what I said. I don’t turn to see what the other two are doing behind me. With Aimes, one never can be sure.
“She’s the new doctor, right?” the girl asks. She’s looking to me, but side glancing at Paula.
“Nurse,” Aimes corrects her.
The girl’s forehead wrinkles again. “What’s the difference?” she asks.
Aimes squats down to be on the same level as the little girl before answering. “Doctors just tell people what to do. Nurses are the ones who actually do it. Nurses equal action. Doctors equal lectures.”
The girl looks horrified saying, “I don’t like lectures!”
“Me either!” Aimes agrees, standing to her full height.
With the innocence of a child, the girl reaches her hand out to Paula. “I’m glad you’re a nurse. I’m Wren.”
Paula, figuring now is not a good time to do any corrections to Aimes’ logic, extends her own hand to take Wren’s. “I’m Paula,” she says,
shaking the offered hand.
“Cool,” Wren smiles with sincere pleasure over meeting a nurse. “I just fed them all so they should be pretty well-behaved” Turning to me she asks, “You know which ones to watch out for, right?”
I don’t. I don’t even know what she is talking about. I lie. “Sure do.”
“…and that’s how we all died,” Aimes whispers behind me.
I don’t turn to acknowledge her comment. She’s most likely correct. I smile at Wren and she smiles back before leading us to the next door.
Still wearing her smile of complete confidence in me, she slides the lock open. The smell hits me first. It rolls out with a familiar greeting. A greeting we’ve all encountered too many times in the past. Wren is watching me, waiting to see what I do now. I keep my fear corked, sealed tight in the bottle of panic. I can’t let it leak onto my face with her watching.
Genny takes a step back, pulling Wren’s attention to her. Our bluff may not be as strong as I hoped.
“Don’t worry,” Wren says, watching Genny try to recover. “Their meal wasn’t fresh. I had to pull some old stuff from the lake. It’s not that bad.”
Her words were meant to bring some inch of comfort. They resulted in a mile of the opposite direction.
“The lake?” Genny, even as she doesn’t really want to know, asks anyway.
Wren has a moment of confusion again. “Yeah. The lake. Where we store the dead? They have to eat somehow and sometimes it’s just less of a mess to get the old stuff.”
“Small blessings,” Paula says with a smile, recovering for us. It’s thick with sarcasm but Wren being a child misses her true tone.
“Well, have fun,” Wren says, as if all of this is just a normal day for her. She leaves us with the open door standing wide with an invitation. Before she makes it back to the ladder leading above us, she turns, saying, “Be sure to make sure they are all locked up before you leave. Okay?”
She doesn’t wait for our answer. She is already up the ladder and gone. We listen to her feet overhead retreating towards the door that started this rabbit hole. Once the barn doors shut, it's just us, the door waiting to welcome us, and things we must remember to lock up before we leave.
“Do I still have to go first?” I ask, stalling.
“Wuss.” Genny pushes past me, taking the lead I was dreading.
I look toward Aimes waiting for her to invent another joke about family traits. She just shrugs, holding her hands in the air. She already knows we are both sharing the same thoughts.
“There was a time we wouldn’t have been able to keep you from that room,” Paula says. She’s watching me with concern, and something tinted with disappointment for letting Genny go first.
“What’s the matter? Worried you won’t have anyone to stitch back up?” Aimes asks, as she, too, pushes past to follow Genny. “Zombie Barbie is only activated when someone is in trouble. Don’t worry Pauls, if one of us starts to get eaten you’ll have plenty of work to do.”
“How much to stitch her mouth shut?” I ask Paula, as I too follow them in.
“You’re not the first to ask,” Paula responds, with a smile and a song.
The smell doesn’t become any better when we cross the threshold. The lights are low, lending to the smell feeling thicker, suffocating. Genny and Aimes may have entered first, but they haven’t gone far into the room. Both are still hanging in the safety the hallway lights provide.
As the lights overhead brighten to reveal the room better, I wish Paula hadn’t found the dimmer. What is hiding in these shadows is everything and more from what was missing in those above us. Cages, like those of a pound, are stacked on top of the other almost to the ceiling of the room. Inside the cages are mute dolls, gore-covered, and watching us with the blank faces Risen wear. They hold their bodies as if someone had pushed pause, freezing the room in a moment of time. Fingers are wedged inside mouths dripping with liquid my brain doesn’t want to admit to seeing. Hands are pushed into what appears to be limbs, or various body parts, waiting to scoop the meat from the bones. Their eyes are the only things moving. They have been watching us way longer than we were even aware they were here.
“Shit.” Aimes sums up our mutual feelings perfectly.
“Are they all kids?” Genny asks. She’s lost in the waves of horror, fear, and revolt with what the cages hold.
I step closer to the first cage. The child inside doesn’t move. She’s still frozen, paused with her meal hanging from her cupid’s bow of a mouth. Her eyes follow me. She doesn’t react as prey or predator, just watching and completely passive.
“They aren’t reacting,” I comment. “Not a single one is even trying or making a single sound.”
My comment brings a different mood to the room. With the beasts being passive, bravery is easier found. Genny roams the rows, looking into each cage. With her face pressed almost to the bars, not a single creature makes a motion to grab her.
The children range from tiny toddlers to maybe four-year-olds. Their clothes are hanging on with slim hopes for tomorrow. Their many frays confirming the tragedies. Their decomposition should be more noticeable, but other than obvious signs of death, their bodies appear to be intact.
Aimes and Paula are flipping through the charts attached to each cage. Their faces hold different measures to what they are reading. Aimes’ face displays her shock. Paula displays her pure interest.
“They have charted everything,” Aimes says. “Literally.”
She lets the last word hang as a complete sentence in itself. It is.
Paula begins to mummer through her charts. “Date of death. Type of death. Eating habits. It’s all here.”
“Yeah, but what does this mean?” Aimes tilts her chart towards Paula’s trained eyes.
“Not sure. It’s on all of them,” Paula replies.
“What is?” I ask, as I stare into the dead eyes of the little girl in front of me.
“A name. Just a single name.” Paula comes to my cage and opens the chart to show me. “Some have the same name over and over.”
I begin to flip through the chart. “Parent’s names, too.” I point the page to Paula. “Do you know these names?”
I know she does. I know because she’s flipped her mask to cover her thoughts. She stands completely upright, turning to the cage near us. She’s not looking for random facts, anymore. She’s looking for a certain highlighted page. Going from cage-to-cage she turns only to the page I showed her. Her mask never slips, but her hands start to shake.
“These are all people from the fort,” Paula tells us. “These are their kids.”
She’s staring at the little boy in front of her with a different type of horror. This horror surpasses the horror of what he is and rolls into the knowledge of who he was; a little boy collected and kept.
“And these are the people who are able to breed.” Genny has found a different chart. She flips through the pages with the same frustration Paula had done upon finding her chart. “Our names are on here,” she says, handing the pages to Aimes.
“Well that’s a first,” Aimes replies as Genny points to their names. “No one has ever said I’d make a good mother before. Good in bed, sure. Good for breeding, not so much.”
“None of this makes sense.” I’m pacing the row of cages near me as my thoughts pace in my mind. “Why keep them?”
“Better question,” Aimes interrupts. “What’s in the other rooms?”
Paula drops the chart she was studying. It rattles the cage wall and finally, the creature inside reacts. It’s a deep growl, pulled from the bottom of a pit of pure hatred. A sound a three-year-old girl should never make pulls similar echoes from around the room.
There is a shift in the children. They no longer just watch, but crouch low, posed to spring into a form of either self-defense or attack. Their eyes don’t shift from each of us but sway, keeping a note of where each of us stand. Something about their defensive nature is more unsettling than the mindless sla
ughter we are used to seeing from these half-dead nightmares. There are three who make no noise. They aren’t crouched nor do they show any signs of apprehension. Their eyes glint with something familiar, something unnerving and calculated.
“Guess we’ve worn out our welcome,” Genny says. She’s stepping backward, afraid to turn her back to the room. Even in cages, she doesn’t trust them. “Let’s go see the other rooms.”
I’m the last out of the room. Only when they have reached the safety of the hallway lights do they turn their backs to the children. I don’t. I’m watching the three, who are still watching me, as well. The rest of the room has slowly settled back to the meal we interrupted, but those three, their bodies slide the length of their cages to keep me in sight. Their eyes aren’t the glazed, empty orbs of the others. Their eyes almost shine with their thoughts. Something human is still in there. Something dark and twisted, but human.
“Helena,” Aimes hisses, when I don’t follow them right away. “If this is what’s in this room, we may need Zombie Barbie for the others. Get out here.”
“So nice to be needed,” I mutter back to her.
Closing the door, I steal one more glimpse at the trinity of terror. They steal one more glimpse at me, too. Just before I close the door with hopes to seal these nightmares behind it, the oldest of the girls smiles at me. She waves those tiny, gnawed fingers in a goodbye she shouldn’t be able to understand.
“What?” Aimes asks, seeing me leaning against the closed door.
My mind is trying it’s best to dispute what I just saw. It’s throwing all the facts and proof from my past against the walls of the memory, but the vision of her waving stands firm despite all the logic. Death’s army has new tools and she’s so very proud of her children.
The Risen Series | Book 5 | Defiance Page 20