The dead girl with the black, hollow eyes turned at the sound of my voice and moved toward the headless man, actually bumping into him.
I nearly vomited when she grabbed the dangling head, brought it up to her face, and took a bite out of the bloody, shredded opening where the head had been severed from the neck. Gore dripped from her mouth as she began chewing.
I heard Kym next to me groan in disgust. Behind me I heard one of the others gagging. I turned away, unable to look at a phantom eating another shade.
I shut my eyes tight for a moment, but I knew I dared not keep them closed for long. I needed to see where the ghouls were if I meant to avoid them.
As I opened my eyes, a chittering sound made my stomach knot with fear.
Beside me, Kym and Caroline both screamed, and grabbed my arm to pull me away.
Out of the nearest treasure pile was rising what I could only describe as a demon-possessed ghost.
It appeared to be a little boy, maybe a year and a half old. But it was not acting at all like a little boy, or even like a specter, for that matter. It rose out of the hill of gold coins and jewels, its head spinning around and around, slowly.
Its eyes were white, its mouth was dripping some kind of black liquid. It was naked and covered in bloody scratches, and sharp claws extended outward from its little-boy fingers. But its head ... its head was the worst.
The tiny blood-filled eyes had a demonic look to them, and there was an evil laugh coming from its mouth. As it emerged, it began to crawl on all fours toward us, like something from hell. Evil laugh and scraping claws, it advanced on us.
Tupu rushed forward and hauled off and kicked the thing. She must have either pulled her boots on at some point, or been sleeping with them on, and they were well made.
The thick dark leather, rigid toes and soles, and forged iron buckles were of the highest quality. She’d bought them at the Tambibo market and was very proud of them.
That demon baby went flying. Tupu kicked it so hard she launched it over the hill of gold coin and far away, completely out of sight.
We could still hear its evil laugh, far off, as it had probably begun crawling back toward us. Well, I thought, it’ll take a while to return.
I high-fived Tupu and thanked her, and she gave me a grim nod in return.
Before we could turn back around, we heard a loud cackle to our left, and I drew my scimitar reflexively. I saw an apparition with the face of a centuries-old woman, her eyes bulging, her toothless mouth open and cackling, and her boney skeletal hands reaching, reaching.
I decided to try to stop her myself, and jumped forward with my sword and swung it in a wide, slicing arc at one of her arms. The scimitar passed through the witch spirit as if she wasn’t there, but at the same time, her ghostly arm dropped off as if cleaved.
She opened her mouth wider to scream, and the sound was nearly supersonic. I gasped and dipped my head, my ears in actual pain from the screech.
I quickly swung my scimitar back and lopped off her head, and the noise stopped abruptly. The head rolled down the floor and stopped almost at my feet, cackling in an evil rasp.
Several spirits then rushed us at once, their entrails dragging behind them as they came. Loops of intestines bounced and flipped in a gruesome yet surreal display, the gore was disgusting.
We regrouped into a tight cluster as the ghosts closed in on us, all five of us.
Wait a minute …
“Where is Christianne? WHERE IS CHRISTIANNE?” Khepri yelped.
I looked around frantically, not seeing her.
“OH!” screamed Kym, pointing.
“Ohhhhh,” I lamented.
Christianne was coming around the corner on the far side of the room, we had agreed upon using the small clearing behind a pile of treasure as a toilet, and had placed a bucket we found and cloth there for that use. Christianne must’ve been attending to her lavatory when Kym had seen the apparitions and alerted me.
She walked toward our makeshift campsite, straightening her tunic, oblivious.
We held our breath. The haunts had not spotted her yet; they were focused on us alone. Christianne kept walking.
She reached the bedrolls and looked around, confused at the sight of the empty camp. Then she looked up and saw us. Her mouth fell open.
We silently gestured to her to stay quiet and get down.
She stood still in surprise.
“AHWOOOOOO!”
Christianne jumped in shock.
The ghosts I had first beheld had seen her, and were creeping up behind her. Sometimes, they seemed almost transparent; other times, as solid as any of us. She swung around and stared, uncomprehending. They were six feet from her.
No need for quiet any longer, I guess.
“Christianne: RUN!” I wailed loudly, and she startled into action, turning and sprinting toward us.
She was nearly upon us when a specter flew rapidly at her, and hit her hard, knocking her to the side.
Is she injured? Did the impact with the phantasm kill her? My heart raced in fear as I ran toward the fallen teen girl. But she was out of reach by the time I got to her.
Several shades had lifted Christianne, and she was ten feet off the ground. I found myself under her, jumping to try to reach her. She screamed in terror, and the ghosts that had hold of her laughed.
Laughed?
That was it. I was instantly livid.
“STOP!” I screamed furiously.
The phantoms that had hold of Christianne both startled and stopped rising. They hovered above me, about fifteen feet off the ground by now.
“LET HER GO!” I shrieked, red-faced with rage.
I held my breath.
The apparitions paused, as if considering what to do.
Then they dropped her.
Christianne cried out as she fell, and Tupu sprinted up to me to help, just as the teen fell into my arms. We all fell to the ground in a heap. I looked into Christianne’s face, and saw that she was terrified but unharmed.
“Are you okay?” I asked, out of breath.
“Yyy-yes, I think so,” Christianne trembled.
We all got to our feet.
I looked around at the room.
A thousand ghostly white faces stared back at me.
I could not believe it.
The phantasms seemed to be frozen in place, as if they were holding their breaths – if they had any – and waiting to see what we would do next. But they had stopped advancing.
“Get your stuff,” I said quietly.
The others obeyed immediately, walking quickly to camp and packing everything away. I rolled up my bedroll, tucked my blanket up and packed my belongings.
Everyone decided to pull just one chest of treasure out: That was as much as we could lift and carry in one trip. We were not eager to return for seconds.
We watched the haunts nervously as we gathered our belongings, but they remained still, watching us curiously. I piled gems in the white mother-of-pearl chest, and decided to toss the old tarnished oil lamp aside.
Kym came up then and picked it up. Turning it over in her hands, she patted the side of it fondly.
“Oh, okay,” I said softly, and tied the thing to my belt, tucking the old rag around it.
We grabbed our things and made our way to the arched hall entrance.
I looked forlornly at the heaps of treasure we were leaving behind. We hadn’t touched most of it, and what we were taking amounted to a drop in an ocean.
As we slowly walked, pulling our chests behind us, I noticed the ghosts moved with us, slowly, slowly, oh so slowly; not chasing us exactly, but moving slowly to keep up with us.
When we got near the arch doorway, I turned and faced them, a scowl on my face.
“STOP FOLLOWING US,” I said loudly and sternly. “JUST STOP!”
I waited.
I’d thought they were going to obey me, as they had before. But maybe they’d only done so the first time out of surprise.
I expe
ct they’re bored and lonely, cooped up in here for eons.
At least that’s what I hoped.
But in a minute, I had my answer:
“NOOOOO …”
And they began advancing on us again. We turned and began to run. The specters near the archway were closing in, moving to block our passage.
I ran out in front, letting go of the mother-of-pearl chest I was dragging, sprinting to make the entrance before the ghosts did.
They were there a split-second ahead of me.
Breathing hard, red hot anger sprang into my chest again.
“MOVE!” I screamed in white-hot rage.
The phantoms blocking the doorway scattered, giggling madly, bouncing ghostly limbs and heads and body parts swinging this way and that as they hurried. Phantom blood and gore spilling out from deadly wounds falling from their shade bodies as they moved, only to splatter to the floor and disappear in a wisp of smoke.
We dashed through the archway and onto the stairs. We’d abandoned the chests we’d been dragging in order to flee, and as we turned, our feet scrambling up the stairs, we could see them through the archway.
The ghosts were pulling the treasure we’d dropped, moving it back to the mountains of gold coins, hoisting it up and tossing it onto the hills of gold.
We ran up the stairs as fast as we could, and the phantoms followed us, crowding into the stairwell like water rushing up a coastal chute.
I breathed fast, panic rising, and I nearly fell looking back down the stairs and then turning to look forward and climb another dozen steps.
This is hopeless, I thought miserably.
Suddenly, a blast of air came rushing from our position, down the stairs at the ghosts. I felt my hair and tunic blow back and turned and saw the apparitions tumble down the stairs: faster than they would have if they’d simply fallen.
They just got blasted backward. What did that?
I didn’t wait to investigate, I just rushed up more of the steps, pushing Kym and Caroline ahead of me. Christianne, Tupu, and Khepri raced up the stairs ahead of us.
Another two hundred stairs, and we were so tired our steps slowed, and the apparitions began gaining again. I kept glancing backward, not wanting to be taken by surprise.
I looked forward again, then back, when I heard the specters getting closer. Soon, my eyes were flicking forward then backward repeatedly, switching every few seconds.
I felt dizzy at one point, because I thought I counted six people up ahead of me, racing up the stairs. Huh?
Another hundred steps and I stumbled.
“Oh, gods!” cried Caroline directly in front of me as she heard me fall.
The phantasms reached for me, and I saw their ghostly hands, dripping with blood and gore, get within a few feet of me.
I scrabbled up the steps backwards, then fell again.
“MISS!” Caroline yelled in panic.
“KEEP GOING!” I screamed, then kicked at the closest ghost.
I wasn’t going to make it.
“Come on,” a voice said beside me, and I felt an arm grab mine and lift me bodily up seven or eight steps.
What on earth?
I looked over and there was a young man, about twenty years of age, hauling me up the steps by my arm.
“Wh… where’d you come from?”
He chuckled. “I’m not a spirit,” he said.
The ghosts made another rush and were nearly upon us.
The man waved his hand at them, and there was another rush of warm air, and the specters dropped back down, this time tumbling almost fifty steps before recovering.
I turned and ran up the stairs, the man right behind me.
After a minute, I asked over my shoulder, “Who are you?” Where’d you come from?”
“The lamp,” he said, and ran up more stairs, pushing me ahead of him.
The what?
I decided to concentrate on escaping, what with the ghouls chasing us, so I put my head down and rushed up more steps, getting a rhythm going.
I had thought I got tired running up stairs, but apparently, all it takes is the specter of death to be chasing you and you can go really, really fast.
We hopped up the stairs two at a time in some cases, and I rushed past Kym and grabbed her arm, dragging her behind me, worrying she wouldn’t be able to keep up in her six-year-old human body.
We finally got to the top of the stairs and ran full speed through the room, around the corner and down the long stone tunnel, panting with exhaustion but not slowing down.
I wheezed audibly, and sweat poured down from my brow and neck as I pulled Kym along.
At one point, I glanced behind me and saw the young man still running with us.
We reached the stone room, where the first trap had been sprung on us, and stopped to catch our breath. I was doubled over, gasping air in, when I heard Khepri’s voice.
“Where’d they go?” she asked.
“Did they come up the stairs after us?” Tupu wondered.
“I thought they were after us,” Caroline took a few steps back down the hall, and Christianne followed her.
None of them seemed to notice the man who’d run with us.
I felt a deep sense of foreboding and rummaged through my pack for the ebony box.
I had it opened and grabbed the key, and I was fumbling with the lock when Caroline and Christianne came screaming back into the room, the haunts after them with a vengeance.
“OH, GOD!” Tupu screamed, and rushed to the door.
I had just gotten it open. I pulled the handle and swung the door wide and was met with a startled face.
“Ahhhhhh … ooooooooo …” the ghosts called behind us. They sounded like they were right on our heels, and we all rushed out the door in a panic, pushing our way past the stunned bandit, knocking him down in the process.
We hurried out of the cave and into the box canyon.
It was pitch-dark night. The marauder hadn’t been alone; several dozen others were there in the dark, waiting for us. We rushed past them, oblivious. They were so startled that we passed them before they could attack us.
Give me a red-blooded, living marauder over a phantom any day, I thought as I ran.
I realized the bandits were hearing the ghouls calling. It was such an unearthly sound that it mesmerized them. They stood stock still as the phantoms poured out of the tomb.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Escape
We ran through the crowd of raiders so fast they had no time to react. Half of them seemed asleep, and were startled awake by the seven of us racing past them.
We got to the horses and found them undisturbed. As we fumbled for the reins and mounted, I could hear the one bandit’s voice inside the cave, he was screaming in panicked fear.
The ghosts poured out the cave and into the canyon, and waylaid the marauders that had thought to ambush us. The men began screaming in fear as they saw what was coming out of the tomb.
“Hold the door. HOLD THE DOOR!” I heard one of them scream. But the raiders scrambled away, heedless of their leader’s commands, and fled into the night.
The sounds of the ghouls grew louder in the night air, and I saw some of them start to rise into the air.
The rocs began to scream in agitation at the presence of the phantasms, and I remembered reading that rocs were very earthly magical animals who did not take kindly to the presence of the dead.
Several giant rocs rose into the air, flapping their wings mightily to gain height. They cried angrily to the sky, and then began to circle.
There were five in the air now, and I watched them as we moved.
One particularly giant bird suddenly dove to the ground, and then rose back into the air, a screaming marauder held in its sharp beak.
It shook its head as it flew, and I saw a piece of the raider fall from its beak. The roc then flipped the man up into the air and swallowed him whole.
Another two rocs began to dive for the running people on the
ground, and one was quite close to us. I kicked my heels into Shêtân’s sides and ducked, hoping to get away.
“Watch out!” I called as I rode.
As I watched the rocs, I saw the closest one to us dive for our party, and a surge of fear rose in my chest.
NO!
Suddenly, the roc bounced sideways and went into a roll in midair, trying to right itself.
Something just tried to knock that thing out of the air, and nearly succeeded.
Shêtân set his ears back, lowered his head and raced away. He had seen the diving roc, too.
I could hear the screams of the bandits, the cries of the rocs, and the unearthly calls of the specters. From the sounds of it, the phantasms had switched from attacking us to targeting the marauders, who were unable to escape. Their panicked cries were giving way to shrieks of pain.
The young man from the tomb had disappeared; I had not seen where he went. I hoped he’d gotten away, and I briefly wished him well, and thanked him for helping us, although I had no idea how he’d accomplished the feat.
We didn’t stay to watch, but hightailed it back the way we’d come. Our horses had smelled what was coming out of the tomb and raced away. Shêtân laid his ears back, stretched out his neck and raced out in front, terrified by my demeanor.
Kym was right beside me, on her pony. I had never seen little Taimim’s legs go that fast. Kym urged her pony onward, her panic transmitted to the small, fierce little horse.
We did not slow down until we were at least five miles away, and I swear I could still hear the raiders’ screams long after I should’ve been able to. We walked our horses for another few miles, their necks lathered with so much white foamy sweat I was worried they’d be ill.
Morning was about to break when we finally stopped and dismounted. We rubbed our horses down and gave them sips of water to cool them off.
We had all gotten out in one piece, although Christianne showed us where the two apparitions had grabbed her and lifted her high into the air. She pulled her thawb up, and we gasped.
There were massive red welts on both sides of her torso where the ghosts had grasped her. They were tender to the touch, and Christianne winced when she lowered her thawb back into place.
“They could have killed you,” Kym gave her a tender, careful hug.
The Pirates of Moonlit Bay Page 22