Something Strange and Deadly

by Susan Dennard

I glanced around. Daniel, Joseph, and Jie looked as confused as I.

  Then applause began from the top of the hill. I jerked my head up.

  My brother’s body stood atop the crest, his grin wide and his hands clapping. Though I did notice one finger hanging limp.

  “Bonjour, Joseph,” he called. “Did you miss me?”

  In three bounding leaps, Marcus cleared the rocky bluff and hit the riverbank. Somehow the wound on his neck was already smaller and scabbing over.

  Daniel and Jie skittered back.

  “My friend,” Marcus said. He advanced along the shore. The hordes of Dead moved with him, mimicking his stride and speed.

  Joseph sped from the water, his movements sluggish but determined. He clenched his fists at his side and tipped his chin high. “Stealing souls was not enough, Marcus? You had to start stealing bodies too?”

  Marcus spread his hands, palms up. His movements were far more elegant than Elijah’s had ever been. “After six years in death, I’d say I deserve a new home.” He flexed his arms and smiled. “This one serves me quite well. Strong, young, and—”

  “Not yours!” I shouted. Fresh rage pulsed in my chest. With my bloodied hand held to my heart, I splashed from the water and stomped toward Marcus. I craved violence. “It’s not your body. It’s not yours!” I bolted over the shore, picking up speed. “I said you would die, and I meant it!”

  I lunged. Daniel sprang forward and grabbed me by the waist, but I kept screaming. “I promise, I won’t let you live! I’ll kill you and send your soul back to where it belongs!”

  I wanted to rip the satisfaction off this monster’s face—a face that looked less like Elijah’s as my fury grew. I wanted Marcus dead, and I wanted to be the one to do it. “It’s not your body!”

  “Enough,” Marcus spat. He arched a single eyebrow. “You’re hardly in a position for such threats, and I’m growing rather sick of your antics.” He pointed at me, his mouth moved with silent words, and the corpses convulsed to life. They hitched forward, hands up, and flowed around Marcus and Joseph. More started tumbling down the hill. I was their target.

  Daniel yanked me toward the boat. The shuffling feet weren’t far behind. Daniel shoved me into the boat, and Jie followed. Then he climbed in with us, and we pushed from shore. Daniel rowed full force.

  “Why are we leaving?” I had blood all down my chest—some of it from my cuts, some of it from Elijah’s dying wound, and most of it from my still-oozing hand. “We have to get Joseph. We have to stop Marcus.”

  “We won’t be any help if we’re dead,” Daniel said. “The Dead aren’t hurting Joseph or Marcus right now.” He pointed to the riverbank.

  I followed his finger. The sun burned in my eyes, but I could see the corpses raging down the slope. Hundreds of backlit silhouettes. They splashed into the river, unhampered by the water. I could just make out Joseph’s tall form in the mass of stumbling figures.

  “What the hell is happening?” Jie demanded. “I thought that was your brother.”

  “Not anymore,” Daniel said. He stopped rowing. We were in the middle of the river, and we watched the fight onshore. My hand shot pulses of pain through my arm and stars through my vision, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from Marcus and Joseph.

  “Do you have any pulse bombs left?” Daniel asked Jie.

  “Just the one,” she said.

  “Shit.” His head spun left and right. “What do we do?”

  “Go back!” I yelled. “We go back. We can throw the bomb.”

  “That’ll kill Joseph, Empress.”

  “Look!” Jie said.

  The Dead had cleared a space around the fighters, and Marcus was beating the life out of Joseph. He flung Joseph around like a loose puppet. Marcus’s fists connected with Joseph’s jaw, nose, stomach. Then the Dead swarmed too thickly around the fight, and I couldn’t see them anymore.

  “Go back!” I shrieked. The current had picked us up and was pulling us away from the cemetery.

  “Yes!” Jie grabbed Daniel’s sleeve. “Row us back!”

  “How?” he demanded. “We can’t get through that!”

  He was right. What remained of the army—likely half the cemetery—was either marching through the river or stepping into it. Decrepit, waterlogged bodies.

  “He’ll die if we leave him.” My voice cracked.

  “We’ll get through another way,” Jie said. “Just row back to the shore somewhere.”

  I watched the Dead and strained to see Marcus and Joseph. When I finally did see, I wished instantly that I hadn’t.

  “No!” Jie cried.

  Marcus had a limp, bloodied Joseph by the collar and was dragging him effortlessly up the hill.

  Jie squeezed her eyes shut. “He’s gonna sacrifice him.”

  Daniel grabbed the oars, his face hardened and his lips compressed into a narrow line. “We’ll get out over there.” He gestured to an empty shore expanse south of us. We slid through the water toward it.

  “Once we’re there,” he continued in a gruff voice, “we’ll try to get into Laurel Hill from another point, like maybe the south gate. If we’re lucky, we’ll find Marcus and—”

  His words broke off. The oars had hit something.

  Daniel’s eyes grew huge. “Shit!”

  Fingers, arms, and claws surged from the water, scratching and shaking the boat. The Dead had reached us, and we were surrounded.

  Jie burst into action. Her sword sliced into the water while Daniel beat at the hands with his oars, but more hands appeared—faster than they could fight.

  All I could do was stare, my hand clutched to my chest and my mind scrambling for a solution.

  The boat tipped dangerously. A skeletal hand was latched onto the rim, and Jie darted at it, almost tripping over the influence machine. She hacked at the hand until the fingers were severed.

  And then the solution locked into place in my mind. Joseph had power—he was gifted with the ability to touch spirits. Elijah had that gift. I had that gift. It was why I could use the earrings, why I could handle electrocution, and why Elijah had used me to resurrect Father.

  “I can use the machine!”

  Jie and Daniel jerked their heads toward me.

  “Start spinning,” I cried. “I can use it to stop the Dead—to stop Marcus.”

  “No!” Daniel rammed his oar into the water, but the splashing and thrashing didn’t cease. “That’s the stupidest thing—you can’t do that!”

  “Stupid or not, it might work,” Jie interrupted. She dropped to the boat’s floor, ripped the jacket off the machine, and gripped the handle firmly. She nodded, intensity and belief bright in her eyes, and before Daniel could stop her, she started turning the wheels.

  I scooted toward the machine. I could do this, I knew I could—and I really had no choice but to try.

  “Clear a spot in the water,” I yelled at Daniel. The boat was pitching and rolling all around. We’d topple to a death of drowning at any moment. “I need to touch the water, Daniel—clear it!”

  He grabbed Jie’s sword, and without another word, he chopped at the corpses closest to me.

  Crack! Blue sparks flew from the machine.

  “Go,” Jie said.

  I shoved my mutilated hand into the river. Then I leaned forward and thrust my left hand into the popping electricity.

  The electricity hit me with a crack. It was like at the library but tenfold stronger. The current raced through my body. The bubbling heat poured through me and into the water.

  Millions of worms crawled beneath my skin, and I could smell burning flesh and hair. Then a light erupted all around. Behind my eyes, in my eyes, through my chest. A sapphire light brighter than the sun. With it came a thunder that shook my soul.

  With it came power.

  It felt like eternity. Like the world spun and spun. I was the river, I was the fish, I was the soil and the roots and the sea, and then I was Jie and I was Daniel. I was Joseph. I felt as large as the entire planet and as
small as the tiniest cell.

  And then I understood how Joseph could use the water to affect the Dead. I could feel the corpses and their corrupt energy. I focused on their hungry souls and the tethers that connected them to Marcus.

  The leashes looked like glowing blue strands of spiderweb, wispy yet strong. I began with the corpse closest to me, though I’d no idea what to do. I didn’t know how to blast the tethers like a cue ball; and when I concentrated on the single thread, nothing happened. I tried to touch it, but I had no physical control. I moved my senses closer to the thread. It was rather beautiful, the pieces of spiritual energy. Beautiful, but wrong. It didn’t belong in this world.

  What had Elijah said to the Hungry? Dormi. Sleep.

  “Go back,” I sang. “Go back to your realm, and sleep.”

  The line grew taut and then broke in the middle. Like a fuse, it shortened in both directions. It shivered and shrank; and when it reached the corpse, the final drops of energy disappeared.

  I moved to the next corpse and repeated the technique. After ten or so, the process grew easier. After thirty, I was adept enough to do more than one at a time. How the dickens Joseph could do all of them at once was unfathomable to me, but my method worked, so I kept going.

  When the last corpse was sent to the spirit realm and I could no longer sense corruption, I searched—or rather I groped much like one does in the pitch of night—for Marcus.

  I found him far away. He was running, and his soul slithered and slid from my grasp. He must have felt the breaking ties and fled the scene. Even if I had been able to grab him, he had fully bonded with my brother’s body, and I didn’t think I could banish his energy so easily—or perhaps at all. The farther he ran, the more my ability to even sense him dwindled. Then he vanished entirely.

  I turned my attention to Joseph. He was still alive. Good.

  Then I noticed the curtain. It was a shimmery, hazy thing that hung before me. Thick like velvet but opaque like prisms. Elijah was there, at the edge, and watching me. I saw his soul. It sparkled like the sun on the river, and warmth washed over me. It was the smile after the storm. He was no longer tormented, but the boy I’d always known. Beside him was a fainter light. A tender, bearlike glow. My father.

  It was right. That was right.

  Then I was Eleanor again. I slammed back into my body and into my own awareness.

  I gasped. I was on the ground, and the stench of rotting flesh was everywhere. I gulped and coughed, and my lungs screamed for breath.

  “Empress,” someone called.

  I panted and panted, my eyes clenched shut. I felt like a big, scratched bruise.

  “Eleanor,” Daniel said. “Miss Fitt! Wake up!”

  I fluttered my eyelids open. “I’m not a misfit anymore,” I rasped. “I thought I told you that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Spirit-Hunters wound up bringing me to Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hospital. My right hand, the one the corpse had bitten, was a bloody pulp and had grown foul quickly. Infection was imminent. Joseph had fared a little better than I, but he couldn’t enter the hospital because of his criminal status. Jie had promised she could heal him, though.

  They’d left me with a strict but able nurse and then departed. I didn’t know if I would see them again.

  I was in a large room in the women’s wing of the hospital, and at least fifteen other patients were with me. Mama couldn’t afford a private room, but I hardly cared. If anything, I enjoyed the companionable pain of the ill. Their hacking coughs were pleasant music to the wretchedness in my right wrist. To the grief in my heart.

  I lost my right hand. The doctor was forced to amputate.

  I’d heard stories after the war with the South. Stories about broken men. So many soldiers came home without legs or forearms or fingers, and I’d always thought that was what “broken” meant. Now I knew it wasn’t the physical pain that had shattered the soldiers’ hearts but everything else. The death and the loss and the constant, heavy choice to keep fighting or give up.

  The days passed, and when I thought of Clarence, I forced my mind to see his beautiful smile. I also clung to my final vision of Elijah and Father. At times I imagined I could see them still, watching me from the spirit realm.

  I knew there would be no going back to the way things were. No more sitting in the cherry tree, no more playing chess, and no more dreaming of a world with Elijah. So I spent the long, empty moments considering what I wanted now. What I would do when I left the hospital. Blazes, I longed to find Marcus and shred his soul to pieces, but first … first I had things in Philadelphia that needed doing.

  It was Sunday, June the eighteenth, three days after I’d destroyed my own brother. Half a week since the final dregs of my old life, of the old Eleanor had been erased.

  At that moment Mary sat on the end of my hospital bed reading Twelfth Night to me. I half listened, my left fingers scrubbing gently at my face. My right cheek constantly begged for scratching. The doctor swore I would have no scars so long as I left the scabs alone.

  The murmur of Mary’s words echoed like a soothing wind through the hospital wing. Mary visited daily since Mama would not. I suspected guilt ate at Mary’s insides for letting me leave the house.

  I cleared my throat, and Mary stopped reading.

  “If we sell the piano, we can afford to keep the house. For a while at least. Have you told her that?” I eased myself into a sitting position.

  “Aye, and your ma won’t let me sell it.” She closed the Shakespeare volume and looked at me warily.

  “Do it anyway. Tell her I told you to.” I massaged the nape of my neck. “And sell all my evening gowns and jewelry. The gowns alone should cover the hospital bill.”

  “True.” A flush grew on Mary’s cheeks, and she picked at the book’s spine. “I’ve got some amethyst earrings that … well, if you’re willing, I could sell them.”

  I laughed, a hollow sound. “Keep them, Mary. I doubt you’ll get paid for a long time. Hell, I don’t even know why you’re still working for us.”

  “You oughtn’t cuss, Eleanor.” She wagged a finger at me. “Anyway, I got nowhere else to go, and your ma’s always treated me right. And … and you too. You don’t deserve all this.” She waved around the room.

  “Oh, I deserve it. Trust me.”

  “I find that hard to believe. Nobody deserves what that reporter’s gone and done to ya.”

  My throat tightened, and I clenched the cotton sheet in my left fist. Mary had brought me the paper the day before, and it hadn’t been pleasant reading.

  Once the amazement had worn off over Laurel Hill’s ruins and the hundreds of corpses floating in the Schuylkill, and once people had realized the Dead would no longer plague the city or Exhibition, the Philadelphia Bulletin—or rather Nick Peger—had latched onto a new campaign: me. It had somehow reached his ears that Clarence was with me the night of his death, and Peger had bitten into this juicy news with rabid, Deadlike ferocity.

  Though the speculation did not spread to other newspapers, the damage was done. Mrs. Wilcox and Allison publicly denounced my family. I knew it was the final blow for my dragon-mother. If Mama had ever intended to swallow her devastation and leave her bedroom, she certainly wouldn’t now.

  I rather thought my family deserved the Wilcoxes’ hatred. Though no one knew the exact truth, my family was the cause of Clarence’s death.

  Of course, Peger could prove none of his accusations against me. Soon enough, some other story would come along to replace me. I hoped.

  I settled back onto my pillow. “You don’t have to stay, Mary. I’m tired now, and I think I’ll sleep.”

  “Ah’right.”

  “Don’t forget what I said about the gowns. There must be someone who will buy them.”

  She nodded.

  “And,” I added, my voice tight, “if she’ll listen, tell Mama I love her.”

  “Wake up,” said a voice. “Eleanor, wake up.”

 
; I opened my eyes, groggy and confused. The room was dark, and except for the heavy breaths of slumber, it was a silent Sunday night.

  Someone sat on my bed, much like Mary had, but this person was small, and her voice was like a sharp-edged music box.

  “Jie,” I breathed. “How’d you get in?”

  She grinned, a flash of white in the dark. “The window by your bed.”

  “But I’m on the second story.”

  “And that’s what trees are for, yeah?” She helped me sit up.

  “Why are you here? Have you found Marcus?”

  “No, but we think we know where he’s gone, so we’re leaving town.”

  “To be honest,” I said with a sad twist to my lips, “I thought you’d be long gone by now.”

  “Nothing personal, Eleanor, but I would have. It’s not safe for us, yeah?” She cracked her knuckles against her jaw. “But Daniel wouldn’t go until one of us had gotten in here to see you.”

  My heart twisted, and I turned away. “Ah.”

  “We also wanted to give you this.” She set a fat, dirty envelope on my bedside table. “It was in the grimoire pages. It’s full of letters … from your brother. To you. We thought you might want them.”

  My throat stung. “Thanks,” I whispered. “S-so where are you going?”

  “Chicago. A headless corpse was found there. It must be Marcus’s work.”

  “Was the corpse walking?”

  “Naw. Marcus probably sacrificed someone for the power. We’re not completely sure it was him, but chances are pretty high it is.” She scooted closer to me. “I wish you could come with us.”

  A breathy laugh broke through my lips, and tears glossed over my eyes. “I wish that too, Jie, but I can barely walk.”

  “We could wait a little longer.” She opened her hands wide. “There’s nothing but hate left for you in this town.”

  “I know.” I sniffled and wiped my nose on my sleeve. “But I can’t leave. I have to take care of my mother.”

  “Have you told her about your brother?”

  “N-no.” My voice broke. If I wasn’t careful, I would be crying soon. “Not yet, but I will.”