“Nothing,” I tell Aimes. “Everything. I don’t know.”
“Genny and Paula have found nothing but more charts and papers in the other rooms,” Aimes states, looking relieved.
“Then we go back to the house.” I’m nodding with my words, as if that will make them sound more of a good idea. “I want to know what else is out here before we head back.”
“You think there’s more?” Paula asks from the doorway of a room.
“You think there isn’t?” I return.
The silence among us is the answer. We know there is. We just don’t know if we want to know what it is.
“We still haven’t found the lake,” Genny offers. “Wren said that’s where she got their food.”
“She said it was the old stuff. I wonder what the new stuff would have been?” Aimes joins in our debate. She and Genny alike, have crossed their arms, hugging themselves for some comfort due to where their minds have traveled.
“Where does a child get such things?” Paula’s shudder is visible.
Paula is traveling a motherly path. The rest of us are tripping along mental images of things only movies once held; things we thought were impossible have become warning tales for others.
I don’t wait for my mind to travel too far into the darkness. My darkness has teeth, and songs of twisted comfort. My darkness isn’t just a space to keep me awake at night. Mine is a whole dwelling of things waiting to remind me of what can go wrong should I stay too long. In the darkest of the rooms, is a little girl watching me through blonde hair with blue eyes that condemn better than any holy scripture translated by man. I don’t stay in my darkness long. As I climb the ladder in silence, a part of me knows I’m always one step from landing there forever.
“To the house we go,” Aimes calls from behind me. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“Nothing,” I call back, helping Genny onto the barn floor.
“And everything,” Aimes whispers.
“And everything,” I agree.
Her pink-streaked hair isn’t as vibrant as it was when we started that day in the bar. Her brown roots are seeping through, coloring her blonde with truth. As she stands now, hugging herself while waiting for us all to be regrouped, she too isn’t as vibrant or playful. It’s not just her hair which has become truth-covered, but her reality, too.
Truth can be a damning thing. She robs one of joy while providing glimpses of hope. She steals with one hand, while placating with the other. The trick to Truth is to understand her game. Unfortunately, she makes up the rules to her game as she wants. Right when you think she’s going to be kind, and everything is going to be okay, she shows her other hand. As of late, her other hand is blood-covered, and sin-scented, reaching from dark corners and thick, hidden woods. It’s this hand we’ve come to learn is always waiting for us. Everything could go wrong, and she’ll smile with delight as we fall.
Chapter 30
“Where do you want to start?” Genny asks me.
We are standing in what is left of the kitchen. It has just enough appliances to understand what the room is intended for. The wallpaper hung long ago with pride is almost bleached to non- existent patterns. Scraps are drifting, hanging limply from where they were once glued in long rows. The sink is full of dirty pots and such items, lending proof this house isn’t empty of inhabitants.
Aimes strolls over to the back door we entered through. Without any style of a word of warning, she bangs the screenless door a few times against the frame of the doorway. It’s as loud as gunshots with the deep silence enveloping the dwelling.
“What the fuck?” Genny asks, forgetting to hide her teenage slips among the adults. I should disapprove, but it’s perfectly phrased.
“What?” Aimes asks, appearing to be confused by our reactions. “Look, if something is going to barrel out from somewhere to eat me once it realizes I am here, I want to be by a door. A clearly marked exit. You two can play murder buffet if you want, but unless it’s my eyebrows, I prefer to keep my body thread free. No offense, Paula.”
“None taken,” Paula half-heartedly responds.
She’s listening for any sounds Aimes may have triggered, instead of listening to Aimes herself. Our eyes follow hers, traveling the length of the ceiling above us. The silence remains tight and heavy like a tomb.
“Well, that’s a plus, right?” Genny asks. “If something bad was here, she would have woken it? We would know?”
Genny is asking the question as if she’s a child wanting a mother to rationalize the fear away. She watches the three of us with hopes we will calm her with some truths, or even a well-told lie. It’s times like these I remember how very young and fragile she really is despite the bravado she hides behind.
“Let’s hope,” Paula offers to calm her.
“Let’s find out.” Is what I offer. I’ve never been the one for comforting but confronting, that I do well.
I pull the knife to my side when I exit the kitchen. It fits into my hand like a lost lover, molding to my flesh with warnings of what may come. My boots click along the discolored wood, tapping with each cautious step. The small sounds seem impossibly large in the slim hallway.
Nothing looms around any of the corners we cross. There’s no smell of death in any of its branded scents lingering in the air. The house feels empty, deserted, and forgotten with the perfume of neglect clinging to its surfaces.
“All’s that left is up,” Aimes says, as we stand at the bottom step.
“Any more doors you want to bang first?” I ask her.
“Any more opportunities to stall?” Aimes banters back.
“Asks the one who’s always in the middle,” I tell her, refusing to admit that I am stalling.
Stairs are slowly becoming my new style of purple doors. They hold the same stomach knotting fear when I see them; the same unanswered puzzles which are normally nothing like what their boxes promise.
“You’ll just waste your time going up there,” a voice calls from the front of the house. “Unless you risked everything just to say hello to our elderly? Did you risk it all for them?”
Marigold stands proudly in the rounded archway. She’s traded her robes for jeans and a long grey sweater. In front of her is the little girl we had met in the barn, Wren. Wren waves to us, but Marigold wears a smile of warning. Like ethylene, she appears sweet, but too much trust in her would be deadly and she’s been saving several doses for me.
“We were just bored,” Genny speaks first. “The men were being stupid so we thought we would get out. You know, like a girls’ night?”
Genny tries to look convincing. Her brown ponytail even seems to sway with the show. She tugs on her pink flannel shirt trying her best to look harmless, just one of the girls. She cocks one hip, as if resting on the banister while exploring old homes is our normal evening outing.
Marigold looks to each of us to see if we will contradict Genny’s story. I shouldn’t. I should for once just be silent and see where things go, but I won’t.
“Why are there dead kids under the barn?” I ask without hesitation.
Genny turns to me. Her face explodes in an expression of disbelief. She looks at me like I just ratted her out to some authority figure. Maybe I have, but with Wren standing with Marigold, chances are we were ratted out some time ago.
Marigold’s deadly smile widens. Her eyes almost light up with excitement when I asked. Running her hands through what she can of Wren’s brown clumps of hair, she appears to be petting a cherished pet, not a small child.
Marigold says to me, “I was wondering how long we would play this charade. I knew that moment in the dining area when I first saw you, you would be bold, direct, truthful even. I wondered how long it would be until this day arrived. I must admit, it came much quicker than I had anticipated.”
She takes Wren’s hand in hers and begins to walk to one of the larger rooms of the home. We follow as she continues to talk.
“Where did you find Leigh?” Marigold asks.
/> She leaves the question to the room, but I know she’s asking me.
“In a daycare. Locked in a room.” I take the bait.
“Was anyone else there?” Marigold asks.
“Alive or dead or in-between?” Aimes flashes a warning look to me when she answers. She’s once again picked up on something I have yet to.
Marigold stops. She spins slowly to look at us, wanting to see our faces with her next question. “Were there any children there?”
“Alive or dead or in-between?” Aimes asks, again.
Marigold is chewing on her words. Her jaw moves with either the self-control she is fighting for, or the correct phrase to get past Aimes’ riddle.
“In general?” Paula asks. “Yes, there were children there.”
“What happened to them?” Marigold is looking at me with her question. Once again, we were ratted out long ago.
“We killed them,” I tell her what she already knows.
“The boy?” she asks.
“Oh, pick me!” Aimes excitedly says, raising her hand as if waiting for a teacher to call upon her in class. “I shot him. Well, he stabbed Hells. So, I did what besties do. Murder!” She widens her eyes with the last word, making it the exclamation point in more than just tone.
“Why? Did you know him?” Genny tilts her head with her question dripping every ounce of mock sincerity.
Marigold is staring at the two the way a cat does its prey. She says nothing but turns to continue whatever path she had started on. She drags Wren along with her, making the little girl stumble in attempts to keep her feet under her.
“Did you know him?” I ask, in a nicer tone than Genny had as we again follow her.
“Yes. You could say I knew him,” Marigold answers me, leaving no eagerness to explain further.
“And those kids under the barn? Did you know them?” I push for some answer; something to settle the many currents of questions running through this whole night.
“I know them,” Marigold tells me. “But it’d be so much easier to just show you.”
“Show us what, crazy lady?” Aimes asks. It’s not her best punchline, but at least she is still trying to hold on to her spark.
“Why there are kids under the barn,” Marigold answers with the same cyanide style of a smile.
I look to Paula when I notice Marigold left out the word ‘dead’. She arches her eyebrows quickly as her answer and as her plead to let it go. Pursing my lips, I nod, letting her know, for once, I’ll play along. I’ll even play nice, so to say.
When released from Marigold’s hold, Wren runs to push back a corner of an old rug that serves as the only décor in the large room. It’s threadbare, sun-bleached of most of its once red color, but it did the job of hiding yet another trap door.
“The most paranoid people in the world built this house,” Aimes loudly whispers.
“Nonsense,” Marigold says, still with her back to us. “Where do you think they kept their spare meat and such things?”
“Obviously, under the barn. Maybe in a lake?” Aimes answers boldly. I may have agreed to play nice with others, but she did not. She never does.
If Aimes struck a nerve, Marigold doesn’t show it, at least not from where we are standing. Wren doesn’t hesitate to scoot down another matching ladder upon hearing Aimes’ answer. We may not see what is across Marigold’s features, but whatever Wren saw was enough for her to hurry the show-and-tell along.
With a defiant glance towards those of us behind her, Marigold also descends into whatever is below us. Before she fully disappears, she stares at me with a mixture of a challenge and a warning. Whatever she is hiding under there, and as eager as she claimed to be to share it with me, there’s a part of her warring with doing it. Glad to see my reputation still holds everywhere we go.
“We aren’t really going to follow the female version of zombie Peter Pan down there are we?” Aimes hisses.
“Never heard you use the ‘z word’ before,” I reply. My feet are already taking me to the ladder while my mind weighs out the pros and cons.
“Been reading a lot of books. Oddly enough, they seem to collect that kind here.” Aimes takes my arm, stopping my slow progression. “We do a lot of stupid shit, I agree, but this seems the cherry of our adventures. Like the sprinkles of all sprinkles.”
Her eyes are pleading with me and I’m lost as to why now she is filled with fear. She’s right. We have done a lot of stupid things, but this is the first time she’s showed this level of fear over doing them.
“Since when did you read?” I ask her, trying to flip her back to the banter she uses as her shield to hide the little girl inside of her.
Paula doesn’t miss a thing, saying “Figured you were one more for the pictures type and not the articles.”
“Fine. Make me into your verbal pinata,” Aimes begins, dropping her grasp on my arm, but her eyes still hold the fear even if her voice is steady with false anger. “But don’t come to me when she’s stitching you up again because you became a pinata for whatever the nanny to the dead has waiting for us down there.”
Aimes said the last part loudly. She doesn’t do her battles with a knife in hand. She does them with snark in mouth. Her tongue can become sharper than any blade I’ve ever held and faster than any gun I’ve fired. Like a fighter prepping themselves for battle, Aimes just donned her armor. It’s dented, unsecure, but it’s hers and sometimes that’s the only thing that matters when the battle finds you.
“It’s fine,” I tell her fragile nerves. “What could possibly be worse than the barn?”
“Oh, you just had to put that in the universe?” Aimes asks, with trademarked eyeroll.
She’s right. I should know better than to put such dares into the air around us. I should know the evil sisters are always waiting, listening for their opportunity to remind us who is in charge. They wait in the shadows to teach us there is no escape; to make us always question – are we the hunters, or are we the prey? As I take the first step to descend into the lower, hidden level, I know the game of survival means we are always both. At any given time, we are always both.
Chapter 31
What’s under the house has its own stains of immorality. It holds its own scent of acidic corrosion with their flesh festering under what Marigold has done to these people. It holds sounds of depravity and insanity and we have found ourselves standing right in the center of it all.
There are no cages this time. Thick chains around necks and waists hold adults in random places along the stone wall and dirt floor. They are in different stages of decomposition from their deaths. Each adds a different layer of stench around the small room, matching their fates.
The metal snake-like chains slither, testing their limits before striking. Their eyes watch us with fascination over the prospect of new toys to break and bend with their twisted urges for delight. Growls from the deepest hollows of their throats reverberate along the stones. It echoes inside our bones with a warning. A message understood at the very basic of primal level. We just became the prey.
Marigold stands tall. Her silver clumps of hair tightly round into dreads catch the low wattage of the bulbs. The strands twinkle with the same shine in her eyes. Like a mother proud of her children, she stares at each one of these things. Her eyes take in every aspect of them, making some mental note to jot down later while Wren sits with her back against the farthest wall. She, too, is watching them, but her small face doesn’t hold the same pride or enjoyment as Marigold’s.
“What is this?” Paula is the first to find her voice.
Mine is still caught in the back of my throat. It’s clawing the tender flesh, screaming against everything I am doing as I stand here willingly in the middle of such depravity. The reality of what is around us has tied my feet with fear and pumped my heart with panic.
“Who,” Marigold corrects. She is kneeling next to a young woman. “Who, Paula.”
Marigold runs the tips of her fingers through the woman�
�s red hair spilled along the dirt floor. It mimics the pools of blood I’m sure she’s spilled with its ruby tint of deep red to almost black. Her skin is the pale grey of death, but her eyes hold the color of life. Those jade eyes watch us with boredom. If she’s aware of how close her next meal is, she shows no reaction to Marigold’s touch.
“This is Ranya,” Marigold explains. She continues to pet the woman’s hair and somehow, it’s the most unsettling thing I have yet to see. “She’s new. I have great hope for her.”
“Hope?” Paula asks. There’s something in her voice with hints she already has an understanding.
Marigold looks to the other woman with a smile, confirming what Paula’s voice held.
“That’s impossible.” Paula has lost sense of herself. She’s walking down the middle of the chained possibilities of death to stare at them, just as Marigold had done. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
“Oh, it didn’t,” Marigold says standing. “These are the ones who have survived the different blendings. I’ve lost so many trying to save these.”
“Paula?” Genny’s fragile voice holds so many questions.
Paula sighs, almost in tears she, explains what we aren’t understanding. “To keep combating the sickness the shots were made to eradicate, the antidote’s DNA has to keep evolving. It was supposed to take pieces of the illness each time it mutated and then mutate itself into the cure in the human body. Each time it would grow a stronger strain of itself, fixing what the host lacked to fight the illness.
“Do you remember the strain Travis and Selma had? That was a mutated version, something stronger to go to third world countries where their living situations aren’t as regulated. It’s the reason we were seeing a different type in the woods. They were smarter, using the weaker ones as pawns. The strain has already taken a different hold on those hosts, doing what it was programmed to do; take what the host was lacking and make it better, stronger.
“Marigold has figured out how to make it progress even further. By having the hosts infect each other, it blends the different types of strains the hosts have made making an even stronger version of the mutation.”
The Risen Series | Book 5 | Defiance Page 21