Nightfall Gardens (13 page)

Lily felt embarrassed at how the servants were looking at her. “I’m no queen,” she said through reddened cheeks.

“You don’t have much say in the matter,” Polly said, sniffling. “There’s no time to mourn your grandmother like we should. There are too many preparations to make.”

“Preparations?” Lily asked.

“We must prepare the feast for the gathering,” Polly said.

“What gathering?” Lily asked.

“Oh dear, she doesn’t know,” Ozy said. He had caught his legs and was attempting to wrap his midriff back together with bandages.

The maid wiped the tears from her face and straightened her uniform. Her bald head gleamed like an exposed grub under a rock in the morning light. “Whenever a head of the house dies, a momentary truce is called and one representative from each of the Gardens is allowed into the house to pay tribute to the deceased.”

“Those things — are coming here?” Lily said incredulously.

“
One
representative from each of the Gardens. They are honor-bound to do no ill while inside. When the feast is finished, your grandmother’s body will be taken outside and burned on a pyre. It’s a tradition that goes back to the founding of this place.”

‘Emissaries from the gardens are coming. Why do I fear this doesn’t bode well,’
Lily thought. She looked once more at the lifeless body of Deiva and covered her mutilated face with the veil. She walked to the window and looked out at the rain-sopped grounds. Her reflection stared back at her in the glass and the amethyst necklace, the one Pandora had worn, mocked her. Her first day dawned as the new head of Nightfall Gardens.

12

Inside the
White Garden

“Smear yourself with this,” Arfast said. “And be quick. It’s not safe to linger so near the Gardens after dark.”

The rider handed Silas a canvas bag filled with a foul-smelling green manure that writhed with juicy worms and glowed green in the gray of night. Silas took one whiff of the contents of the sack and felt as if he was going to vomit. “What is it?” he gagged.

“Manticore excrement,” Arfast said. “But it’s not that we’re interested in. The bettlebaum maggot that grows inside of it contains a special property that, when smeared on a person, makes them appear as whoever the viewer wants them to be. We’ll sneak in, get the Fairy Bells and be out before anyone’s the wiser.”

“If it’s that easy, why didn’t we do it before?” Silas asked.

“Because the bettlebaum loses its power an hour or two after application. So we have to hurry. That is, unless you fancy spending eternity in the
White Garden,” Arfast said. His eyebrows looked devilish in the glow coming from the worms.

“No thanks,” Silas said. He took a huge gulp of fresh air and reached his hand into the bag and tried not to think about the worms wriggling in his fingers. When his hand was full, he smeared it on his face and neck. He held his breath until he thought his lungs might burst and then gasped in the burning stench of manticore poop.

“This — is — too — much,” Silas said, rubbing it through his hair and reaching in to the bag for another handful.

Arfast laughed. “It’s not so bad, especially if you have daisy dollops in your nose.” The rider tilted his head so Silas could see the yellow plugs that were stuffed up his nostrils.

“What do they do?”

“Make everything smell fresh as a daisy,” Arfast said. The grin spread wider on his face.

“I don’t suppose you could have gotten some for me as well,” Silas said irked.

“And deprive you of this once-in-a-lifetime experience? I don’t think so,” the rider smiled.

“Gee, thanks,” Silas said. He rubbed himself vigorously with the contents of the sack and tried to ignore Arfast, who whistled while he covered himself with beetlebaum juice as if he were bathing in a fresh mountain spring.

When he had finished, Silas was surprised to find that he glowed green like the maggots. Arfast rubbed the last of the bag through his hair and he too, was lit with a strange luminescence. The rider brushed off a maggot that was crawling on his cheek. “All right, let’s go. Just follow me and we’ll be as quick as silver.”

The entrance to the White Garden was close; they were there in minutes. Red moonlight spilled on the empty promenade, washing it the color of blood. The hooded ancient statue was cloaked in shadows.

“Keep quiet and don’t talk unless spoken to,” Arfast whispered. “These things have been dead for a long time and many of them are insane. They’re easy enough to fool as long as you don’t overdo it. Stay close.”

With that, Arfast stepped on the pathway that led along the promenade. Silas looked back toward Nightfall Manor and wondered what his sister was doing at that moment.
‘I hope you’re safer than me,’
he thought, then followed Arfast into the White Garden.

Nothing changed. The same red moon shone overhead. The same breeze tickled his neck and cooled his skin. Nothing lunged from the woods to attack them. Only when he looked down did he receive his first shock. The walkway crunched under his boots. The sound was abnormally loud and reminded him of stepping on seashells at the beach.
‘What stone is this?’
he thought, nudging a flake free from the walk. A finger bone poked up from the earth. Nearby, several pairs of rib bones made up the path. How could he have been so blind? Thousands of human bones formed the walk as well as the benches under the trees.

Arfast slowed when he realized Silas wasn’t following him. “I know,” he said. “But we must keep moving, unless you want to end up part of the scenery.”

Silas closed his eyes and hurried after the rider. Seen from the other side, the ancient begrimed statue was clearly the grim reaper, a skeleton face hooded in robes swinging a scythe through stalks of wheat, the strands of which were ornately carved miniatures of human beings. As he watched, Silas saw the figures dance, twisting in torment. Images came into his mind: a homeless man was stabbed to death on a street in New Amsterdam, a flood wiped out a village in Asia, and an earthquake killed thousands in South America. Each moment, one person died and another was born; the cycle repeated itself, over and over. The reaper came for everyone, guiding them along the path to a new beginning. Silas pulled his eyes away. Whatever lived in the White Garden perverted this. Death was the natural order of life, but the creatures here fed off people’s fear of their earthly end. It was the fear that gave them power. He cast one last glance back and followed Arfast.

They came to another part of the garden. Steps of crunching bone led down to a tangled mass of grapevines full of cherry-colored grapes so ripe that they looked as though they would burst at the first bite. Another path split off into an overhang of trees. It was along this path that Silas and Arfast saw a brilliant yellow light bobbing towards them.

“Into the vineyard,” Arfast said. He shoved Silas into the grapevines and they weaved their way among the vines.

Silas’s hands trembled as the beast appeared in the bloody moonlight. He’d never seen anything like it before in his life and hoped he’d never see something so horrible again. The monster had a piggish snout with waxen yellow skin and coarse, bristly hair sprouting in wisps from its head. Its eyes looked as though they’d been dipped in black ink. The creature snorted and grunted as he walked. It wore tattered robes and was holding a lantern in one hoof-like hand that was lit by a pair of sprites. Silas caught a glimpse of them as the creature passed; the sprites weren’t much longer than his index finger and they radiated a powerful light, though one’s glow was much weaker than the other’s. The one with the lesser light collapsed at that moment and his light blinked out before fizzling back into existence. The other sprite rushed to his friend, but the horror holding the lantern shook it with impatience. The sprites were flung from one side of the glass to the other.

“Oh no, you don’t,” the pig-like creature snorted. “You can rest when you’re dead. I didn’t trade good human meat for a bunch of layabouts.”

“You’re killing us,” the stronger sprite said in an insect buzz.

“You just now noticed that, eh? It only took you a decade to figure that out? Smart as a whip, you fairies,” the creature grunted with laughter. “This is the garden of death, don’t you understand that? You’d have been better off staying in the Shadow Garden where you lot belong. Now shut up and light the way or I’ll shake this jar until you turn to jam.”

The stronger sprite dragged his friend to his feet and his light flickered a little more powerfully, illuminating the long whiskers growing out of the beast’s cheeks. “That’s better,” the pig creature said continuing down the path until the light disappeared into the trees.

“What was that?” Silas whispered as they rose to their feet.

“A Jinkinki,” Arfast said. “Malevolent creatures with a taste for the flesh of people who’ve died. To feed that, they live in cemeteries and other dark places. Once they become fixated on one of the living, obsession overtakes them and they’ll do anything to feast on that person’s remains. They’ll follow their prey to the gates of Hell and can even appear in their dreams.”

“They sound lovely,” Silas gulped.

“Oh, there’s much worse here,” Arfast said. “Now come along. We don’t have much time.”

Silas followed Arfast along the path the Jinkinki had just come from until they were deep in the shadows of the walk. Strange plants wrapped around the trees. The crimson moonlight flickered off of a pond up ahead.

“I hope you know where you’re going,” Silas said after they’d been walking for a while. “How many times have you been here?”

“Zero. This is my first time,” Arfast whispered.

“What?” Silas stopped. “I thought you knew where the Fairy Bells grew.”

“I’ve seen the maps drawn by the other riders. Sometimes there’s a need to spy what’s happening in the gardens. Each time, the maps are fleshed out a little more.”

“The gardens aren’t that big,” Silas said, thinking how he’d just walked around the
White Garden with Mr. Hawthorne earlier that day.

“From the outside,” Arfast said. He started walking again. “From the inside, distances are funny. I’ve heard you could walk for days and not see all of what’s inside here. Now, off we go.”

As they approached the still pond, Silas heard the most ear-splitting shriek of his life coming from the direction of the house. The noise was so terrible that he thrust his hands over his ears out of fear his eardrums would burst. The ground shook under his feet and for a moment, he thought the earth was going to open and swallow him whole. The sound stopped as quickly as it began. Then, in unison, all the windows in Nightfall Manor lit up and he could clearly make out Arfast with the dripping manticore dung coating his face and the mossy water of the pond as well as the minutest details of the leaves around him. There was silence for a second and then a cheer burst from all of the Gardens at once: a combination of roars, snarls, screams, screeches, squeals, howls, yowls, gibbering, babbling and hissing. The woods came alive at once and, if Arfast hadn’t thrown him to the side right then, they would probably have both died. Out of the trees shot a shrouded figure traveling at a speed that would have pulverized them if they had collided. The apparition sped past and its mere presence was so foul that Silas felt physically ill at its proximity. The apparition dove into the water and disappeared, sending a spray of water twenty feet into the air. It was gone for several seconds and then burst back out from under the water and shot into the air, spinning in a circle and shrieking with the sound of rusty nails dragging across a sheet of tin. The ghost shot off like a bullet and was away over the trees so quickly Silas pinched himself to make sure that what had happened was real. The Gardens were restless with the sounds that came from them.

“What’s happening?” Silas asked.

“I don’t know,” Arfast said. “But it can’t be good, the way they are celebrating.”

They hurried along the trail, catching glimpses of spirits and other monstrosities that lived inside of the garden. They ran onto a great lawn where dozens of silent black figures stood in circles, forms without features. They were darker than the night, darker than anything Silas had ever seen. They were the absence of light personified.

Silas almost ran into one of the figures, but Arfast grabbed him and they slowly weaved their way through the silent figures until they were on the other side of the lawn.

“Shades,” Arfast whispered to him, once they were running again.

Up ahead, a bridge passed over an archway. On the other side was an abandoned fountain.

“Getting closer,” Arfast said. “I remember this from the map.”

They plunged ahead, bones crunching under-foot.
‘How much time do we have?’
Silas wondered.
‘20 minutes? 30 minutes?’
When they passed under the bridge, they were enveloped in darkness. Silas saw yellow eyes following him and Arfast through the tunnel, then they were out the other side and in the middle of the most raucous party he’d ever seen. Most of the inhabitants of the White Garden were there. The promenade around the fountain was filled with thousands of death’s minions and those that clung to death like barnacles on a ship. There were ghosts and shades, banshees and ghouls that plucked bodies straight from the crypt. Silas saw creatures with tentacles and fangs and apparitions that froze him to his core. Something that looked like a gigantic cockroach with a human face and bisected eyes droned words that were vaguely human.

“She’s dead. She’s dead. The walls grow weaker,” the cockroach said brushing against him.

He saw goat-headed creatures with pentagrams and a white worm the length of the bunkhouse that pushed its way up through the ground, its red mouth open as it sucked in air for the first time in a century.

Horrors. There were so many of them that Silas closed his eyes to block them out lest he go insane. Even Arfast seemed terrified of the countless creatures and mad exultation that was taking place. Among the residents of the
White Garden walked the Lords of Death, with long withered faces and purple skin who were old when the world was new. They tottered amongst the crowd on walking sticks made from Joshua Trees and were so repellent that even the succubi and minor deities cleared a path for them.

“We have to go,” Arfast said, circling the crowd, making sure to stay as far from the monstrosities as he could.

Silas followed, holding his breath, certain that at any moment the bettlebaum would wear off and he would be visible to all of the creatures, just long enough for them to fall on him and feast on his bones. No one seemed to notice them though, and they pushed through the crowd and made their way around the fountain.

“What’s put a penny in their pocket?” Silas asked as they headed away from the celebration.