He smiled softly. “If we make it out of this, I’ll be sure to teach you that.” He held up his finger before I got too excited. “Only that.”
I slapped my hands together and shook out my arms. “Okay, so what’s the plan? Pesta comes through the light over there and, what? We just duke it out to the death? Rake versus broom?”
“That’s the idea. Walk with me, Goosy.” He proffered his elbow to me, and I looped my arm through it like a true lady. I limped along with him as my crutch, and he kept his pace slow enough for me to keep up. Alrik was a solid foot taller than me, so I always felt like a kid instead of a proper woman next to him. I think that’s probably how it’s supposed to be with uncles. He drew my attention to the light we were walking toward. “Stay to the path, dear, and don’t go too near the portal to Be. The hands are stuck to the wall, but they move on occasion. It won’t do to have one of them grabbing at you.”
“What?” I looked around, but on either side of me black fog obscured anything that lay off the path. As we neared the portal, the fog around the glowing gold portal became easier to see through.
Arms. Tens of thousands of arms were nailed to the mud wall. They were affixed firmly at the elbow, but the hands themselves moved slow, like butterfly wings opening and closing on a flower. The fingers curled at me, beckoning me forward in their macabre way that made a scream build in my throat like vomit.
Alrik appeared almost bored at the sight. “The arms Pesta collects. Did you ever wonder what she did with them?”
“I… um… I really don’t like this,” I confessed, nervous at whatever might jump out at me beyond the haze. I looked up and saw that the wall went up higher than I could see through the fog. Several stories high at least, and the mud walls stretched into nothingness on either side of the portal, giving no end to the number of arms Pesta collected as her prize. “This is disgusting! Who the smack thinks of something so sick?”
“Indeed.” Alrik went back to the matter at hand. “The trick is to grab her before she sees the two of us. She knows I’m here. She had a good laugh about it when she came out to snatch up Tonya, but sensing you’re here will need to be confirmed. When Pesta comes out, we must wrestle her away from the gateway that leads into Be. If she pushes us through, there’s no coming back with your soul or your arm intact.”
I clutched the rake close to me. “Okay, so job one: grab the broom. Job two: kill Pesta. Job three: don’t go into the light.”
“You’ve always been a quick study.” He smiled down at me, shifting his robes like smoothing wrinkles from a sheet. “Do you recall how sirens die from the bedtime stories you and Linus enjoyed?”
I wracked my brain, knowing I should have been sussing this out without his prodding. “Bucket of water to melt the witch?”
Alrik chuckled as if my jokes were appropriate, given the impending battle we were to fight at any moment. “I’ll be sure to buy you some ruby slippers when we finish this. No. You take a siren’s power by destroying her hands. Hence, Pesta’s obsession with hands. Then you kill her as you would a human.” He snapped his fingers, and a bead of water bubbled from the tip and trickled down his knuckle. “Sirens do all their magic with their hands. Her trophies nailed to the wall are a statement that we’re handing over our power to her. Powerful magic, but antiquated delivery method.”
I blanched. “Um, I don’t exactly have my hand-severing tools on me. Gross, Uncle Rick.”
“I shall handle the severing, courtesy of the knife Jens simply had too many of. Do you think he’ll be upset I borrowed it for so long?”
I smiled. “I think he’ll manage.”
He reached inside the pocket of his orange cardigan to give me a glimpse of the blade. “No one ever suspects a man in elfish robes to be carrying a weapon.”
“Excellent point.”
“I want you to gather up Pesta’s broom when she releases it.” Despite the conversation, he smiled. “You called me ‘Uncle Rick’. I’ve been ‘Alrik’ to you since our falling out on the ledge in Bedra.”
I looked away. “You know I don’t like to fight with you. You did what you did, and you are who you are. I don’t think there’s anything anyone could do to change that, and I was stupid for trying.”
We walked in silence until we reached the door that was pure light. I wanted to touch it, but Uncle Rick pulled me back. “Not that close, dear. There’s no returning from that door with your soul or your right arm. Best not let temptation fester.” He watched with quiet intensity as the light gave off a faint heat that colored it gold. “Once she’s finished, we tear this gateway to Be down with the rake and the broom. One tool destroys, the other frees. The rake for the portal, the broom for the souls. Then the souls shall be free to rest, and we can take the broom to go back to the world. Then we tear down the human portal, and it’s finished.”
“Step four, step five,” I agreed, though I doubted the simplicity with which he stated the events. I removed my jacket and cast it to the ground, since I’d gone from icy weather to a comfortable warmth. I rolled up the sleeves of my long-sleeved t-shirt and cracked my knuckles in anticipation of the plan’s execution.
“This door gets its light from the bones of the sirens it was constructed from.” He observed the doorway to Be with a look that suggested an utter loss in the faith he had in his people. It was like he was looking at something unredeemable in its sadness, and I wondered what the world had been like with so many powerful creatures roaming Undraland so long ago.
The lights began to shift from gold to white. Suddenly gold burst from the center as if glitter and sunlight were mixing and exploding like a powder keg out at us. I yelped and hobbled back, Alrik standing before me to shield me with his larger body.
I gripped the rake, but almost dropped it when a bare foot crossed over into Limbo.
Then came a knee and a body clothed in a white seventies-style flowerchild dress.
It was the brown curly hair I’d gotten my waves from.
It was the mouth whose words could cut through my shtick and tricks to find me buried beneath.
It was her.
My mother turned toward me with yellow eyes like Harold’s and a missing arm.
31
Monster Mom
I screamed.
I’m pretty sure. The prolonged high-pitched horror had to have been coming from me. My mother certainly wasn’t screaming.
She was foaming at the mouth as she clutched onto an old wooden broom with a raggedy golden straw base.
Yellow eyes and a gait that suggested feral war instead of a maternal greeting told me mama was home. Only it wasn’t her. Pesta was using the body she stole from my world to taunt me, to torture me into cowering.
It was working.
Tears streamed down my face as Alrik stepped to the right so my monster mom could get a glimpse of me with the rake. She growled and hissed, fuming with unbridled aggression.
I wanted to run to her, and in fact started to, but Uncle Rick clotheslined me. I fell backwards, the wind knocked out of me as I gasped out more sobs of agony. The rake punched me across the face, and I scarcely had the wherewithal to hold onto it when my mother came hurtling toward me.
Her movements were jerky and impulsive – nothing like the dancing we’d done in the kitchen while we made Thanksgiving dinners. She sprinted toward the rake I was clutching, fervor and hunger in her yellow eyes.
Again, I screamed. Probably. My brain kept skipping and twirling with sickness as terror upon horror toppled over me while I cried.
I had nothing to fight with. Wrestling Tonya was one thing, but my mother? The agony was too great to even lift my head up off the ground.
“This is not your mother!” Alrik cried out. He intercepted my mom and threw her on the ground, but she sprang back up in the next second with zealous energy. “Pesta took her soul long ago. This is just a shell with a rabid soul inside!”
I watched my uncle fight with his surrogate sister, the same anguish tha
t tortured me twisted the calm in his eyes to the point of non-existence. It was hand-to-hand combat, and Uncle Rick was winning, but hesitant to do so. As much as he wished us to not lose in the final round, the emotional torment tore at us, making fresh wounds that would one day scab over into hideous scars if we were lucky enough to survive.
My monster mom screeched that high-pitched grating metal sound as she launched the broom back through the portal of light as if throwing a javelin.
“Don’t look, Lucy!” Uncle Rick commanded as he whipped out his knife.
The last thing I saw before I obeyed was the determination in my uncle’s eyes. My heart clenched and sank into my churning gut that roiled with regret as I shut my eyes.
There was screaming and a sound like a pin piercing a balloon. The slow pop of air leaking out told me he’d sliced through her lung.
My mother faltered and wheezed. I heard more punching and slicing, opening my eyes just long enough to watch my sweet mom buckle onto her knees, blood blooming like abstract red flowers all over her white gown. Her wild brown curls framed her heart-shaped face just as I remembered, and I saw what everyone commented on so many times growing up.
I looked like my mother. Peach complexion. Curly tangles.
The same look of shock and loss that tore at my face echoed itself onto her. She was gasping for breath as panic constricted my lungs.
My mirror self collapsed onto the gray rocky floor of Limbo. After all the times I fought for closure about my mother’s death when I had no body to bury, I finally saw with my own terrified eyes the graphic evidence.
I turned onto all fours as vomit and tears poured out of me.
Uncle Rick was shouting something as the gold light turned white again, bursting with gold and false beauty as the woman I would live the rest of my days in hatred of waltzed through the portal like a tall, two-legged prancing pony.
Translucent skin I could see veins with glittery fluid flowing through and silver hair that sparkled like it had been dunked in twinkling stars paraded in front of my vision that was tunneling with hatred. I seethed like a bull, not bothering to wipe the dregs of puke from my mouth. She was nearly seven feet tall with a snub nose, round face and thin lips. She looked to be made of malice and pure muscle. She was wrapped in a shapeless knee-length silver bag dress.
Pesta looked down at my mother and my vomit and laughed.
32
Burn and Scream
Somehow I had the sense to clutch onto the rake when Pesta lunged for it. She thought it would be as simple as snatching candy from a baby.
Thanks to her, I was no child.
I moved up and forward simultaneously, rake in hand like a sword. I swung it at her head in a blind rage, determined somehow to remove her head with it. I bashed her temple with the iron end, but other than dazing her for a second, my force had no lasting effect.
“Oh, little girl. The fun I’m going to have with you. Slow down for me.” Silver dust trickled out of her mouth on the last sentence, much like the gold dust of the elves, so I knew it was evidence of her using her magic. Pesta’s voice was dangerous. Every word she spoke brought forth a magic that slowed my muscles until I felt like I was coming at her while fighting through water. I had heard my uncle tell me bedtime stories about the power of a siren’s voice, but until I heard her speak, I grossly underestimated the effect.
Her broom was ready, and she came at me, delivering a crack to my forehead that sent me flying.
My only weapon at that point was the stubbornness that was always my strength and weakness. My fingers clutched the rake, refusing to relinquish the prize even through my siren song-drugged state. A trickle of blood dripped down my forehead onto the rocky floor.
Her laugh was vindictive and beautiful, and I hated her for it. She cackled at Uncle Rick as he moved in between us, her tone telling him she thought very little of his valiant attempts to save me.
Uncle Rick’s knife was ready. In a downward motion, he fought to slice down through her chest.
Pesta clicked her fingers and then sang another command for us to slow down. The action released a magic that delayed our reflexes, and she was able to fend off Uncle Rick’s attack. The levity was gone now, and she regarded him as if he was an annoyance that needed dealing with. She dropped the broom to punch him across the face. “Alrik the Wise. I’ve long anticipated feeding off your soul. Oh, how the mighty have fallen right into my web.” Then she stage-whispered, “I bet you taste delicious. The best are the ones with the most fight in them. Your Hilda was an absolute feast.” She kicked my mother’s body.
Pesta moved toward my supine form that was still struggling to right itself. She smelled like rotting bodies and defecation. She bent down by my head, smiling down at me with a falsely maternal glow. “Dear girl. What to do with you?” She cast a glance to Alrik, who was moving toward us too slowly to be of any use. “Your mother hated the sirens, as did your father. Perhaps you need a new mommy.” A purposeful gaze crossed her face, a decision she was debating now made in full.
Pesta kissed her thumb and rubbed it from my hairline down my forehead, breathing hot air on it as Uncle Rick had done back in Tonttu before the Fellowship of the Rake was formed. Her touch was warm and had a tacky feeling before the sizzle set in. I screamed at the burn her touch left, writhing in slow motion against the pain and the woman. She laughed, amused at my ineffectual fight.
I thought she would end me right then and there, but she stood and moved back to Alrik, who was shaking with rage.
“Oh, Alrik. Sit down, love. You had to know I wouldn’t be satisfied with merely killing her. Where’s the pomp? Where’s the circumstance? You’ll get a good show. Don’t worry.”
I sat up in slow motion as Alrik fell to his knees, weighed down by the gravity of her voice. Silver dust spat out of her mouth when she used her mind-control power. I heard my scream at his impending doom, but I was too far away and too slow moving to do anything that might save him.
His knife was lax in his hand, and fear like I’d never known crept under my skin like so many spiders fighting their way through my veins to birth out of my dermis.
Pesta strutted before him, her seduction one of death, not sex. She grabbed onto his orange cardigan and hoisted him up, breathing haughtily in his face. “Such a brave struggle the fly gives the spider. But in the end, you’re still only an insect. Though I must say, I did enjoy the fight.”
I gasped as his garment began to burn through, her hands searing his clothes where she touched them. She dropped him, cackling as he collapsed like a ragdoll before her, my sobs of horror and fear alerting her that she had an audience.
The gleam in her golden eyes was sheer merriment at making me watch her destroy my last remaining family member. She slapped one hand to either side of his face and squeezed, grinning with childish delight as Alrik groaned while his face sizzled.
“Let him go!” I shouted, climbing to my feet that felt like lead. I could smell my uncle’s skin charring as I tried with all my might to rescue him at my snail’s pace.
Pesta gave me a piteous laugh as she lifted him by his burning face and dragged him over to the portal.
“No!” I screamed.
Though Alrik’s feet had no fortitude with which to move, at the edges of my vision, it registered that his hand was gripping the knife with strength that belied his limp and moaning state.
My pleas picked up to a theatrical begging to distract her. “Please! Take me instead! It’s me you want. I had the rake! It’s my mom that made you look like a fool! Leave him alone and throw me into Be!” The tears were real as the siren turned her head toward me. “I’ve been through too much. I want your world. Mine is cruel and ugly. I need you to take me!” I begged.
“Stupid girl. Patience. After the trouble you’ve caused me? I’ll take my time with you.”
My blood boiled, but I kept the pathetic expression intact as my uncle fought off the slow-motion mojo and seized his moment.
&
nbsp; His knife was steady.
Her screams were operatic.
The blood was beautiful. Silver and gold light poured out of Pesta’s left hand like a waterfall of stars and glitter, spilling out onto my uncle and bathing him in glory.
The knife twisted, retracted and stabbed into her stomach.
Pesta’s haughty expression jerked with the edge of the knife, contorting to pain, and then panic.
My uncle was fierce as her hands fell away from his face. Perfect black and red handprints were seared onto his cheeks, but the pain was secondary to the victory, as it always was with him. He whispered as she spat glitter and stars onto his face, his complexion now glowing like that of an angel. “It’s tragic you chose my family to destroy. Were it anyone else, you may have succeeded.”
Pesta reared back in a last flare of life as she fought to destroy the mere elf who’d bested her. She tore at his face with her burning hands at the same time he raised the knife to stab into her heart.
As long as I live, I don’t think I’ll ever fully make sense of what happened next. The two twisted and writhed in agony and triumph with each other.
Stab.
Burn.
Scream.
Sizzle.
I blinked, and the knife was in Pesta’s chest.
I blinked again, and with a last surge of inhuman strength, Pesta pushed my uncle into the portal.
I watched as all three of us gasped in terror.
Uncle Rick cried, “Finish it!” as he toppled through the white burst of light, the portal swallowing him whole.
33
Reasons
When I came to my senses on the floor of Limbo, it was with confusion and a heavy heart. My hands were coated in Pesta’s blood, which had seeped out of her and crept toward me, rousing my brain with a cool sensation like gel and sparkling water popping on my skin.
The Other Side Page 16