The Dark Remains (75 page)

Open the door, Grace
.

She hesitated, then reached out a hand and clutched the knob.

Do it now!

The door was locked, but somehow that seemed not to matter. Metal flowed and rearranged itself beneath her fingers. The door flew open. Silver light gushed out, and in an instant Grace saw everything.

They stood in a semicircle in the cluttered room, seven grown-ups—the whole staff of the orphanage, except for one. They wore black masks like they did when they came to take one of the children away, but it was as if their faces were outlined with shining green threads. If Grace squinted, she could see right through the disguises.

There was Mr. Murtaugh the groundsman, staring at her in fury, and Mrs. Murtaugh next to him, the look of lust on her face twisting into an expression of dread. Broud and all the wardens were there, and in the midst of them all stood Mr. Holiday, his face handsome even in astonishment.

Hanging on the wall behind the grown-ups was a black cloth covered with silver drawings. The drawings seemed almost familiar, although she didn’t know when she had seen them before. Most prominent among them was a single, staring eye. The eye was set in the middle of a vaguely human face that bared sharp teeth in a terrible smile. Whoever the being in the drawing was, it was a thing of hate and hunger.

Her gaze returned to the adults. In front of them, sprawled on a battered chaise lounge, was Mrs. Fulch.

The cook was motionless, her eyes staring upward without seeing. They had torn open her dowdy gray blouse, and her huge, pendulous breasts sagged to either side, away from the ragged hole in the middle of her chest. Blood smeared her skin, her clothes. Even as Grace wondered
what they had done to her she saw the fist-sized lump of flesh in Mr. Murtaugh’s hand, still dripping red liquid, and she knew it was Mrs. Fulch’s heart. Mr. Holiday held another lump of similar size, but this one was a dark, metallic gray.

Mr. Murtaugh was the first to speak, shouting a string of expletives, none of which Grace recognized.

“What do we do?” Mrs. Murtaugh shrieked. “She’s seen us. What do we do?”

Broud glared at the frantic woman. “By His Perfect Dark, shut up or it’s your heart next.” Now she turned her urgent gaze to Mr. Holiday. “Hurry, Damon—finish the act of creation before it is too late.”

Mr. Holiday gripped the dark lump—

It’s iron, Grace. A lump of iron
.

—then roughly shoved it into the gaping hole in Fulch’s chest.

Mrs. Fulch sat up.

Her flabby limbs flopped about as she drew in a wet, shuddering breath. Then she looked up and smiled—a hungry, hateful expression. She spread her sagging arms.

“I am ready, master!” she cried in a shrill, bubbling voice, her eyes mad, her lips flecked with blood. “By our hands shall you return to your rightful world, and the Lord of Nightfall shall rule all!”

Grace took a step back. Despite Mrs. Fulch’s movements and speech, Grace was quite certain the cook was not alive. She looked at the others, looked
deep
, down to the shimmering green threads beneath their skin. Not Mr. and Mrs. Murtaugh, nor most of the wardens. But there—in Mrs. Broud’s chest, and in Mr. Holiday’s—dark, lifeless blots that the green threads could not touch.

Ironhearts, Grace. The eye on the black cloth—it’s the symbol of the Raven Cult. Broud and Holiday were ironhearts, and they made Fulch into one. That’s what you saw that night, that’s the memory you locked away. But there was no way you could have understood, not then
,
not like you do now. That’s why you came back here—to see this
.

But if that was true, why was she still here? Why hadn’t the flames come?

“I’ll take care of the little nit,” Mr. Murtaugh snarled, holding out his big hands, moving toward Grace.

“No,” Mr. Holiday said, stopping the groundsman with a look. “Leave that to … the visitor.”

The metallic light grew brighter and the humming louder, so that Grace thought the sound would scramble her brains. The black cloth with the symbols fluttered, then moved aside as something tall, pale, and impossibly slender drifted through.

The adults fell back to either side. Even Broud and Holiday looked on with a mixture of fear and hatred. Grace could not move as the being drifted toward her.

The wraithling was grotesque and beautiful. Its huge head balanced on a spindly neck, and its eyes were like great black stones in its mouthless face. The wraithling drew close, stretching out delicate arms to deliver its fatal embrace. Grace’s breath fogged on the air. The shadow pressed in from all sides.

Don’t let it touch you, Grace
. Her own voice was dull and distant in her mind.
You’ve got to make the flames come
.

It was too hard to move. The cold of the wraithling had turned her flesh to clay. She felt the first chilling caress of its slender fingers. The shadow seemed to pulsate with glee. It was going to eat her alive.

No, it isn’t, Dr. Beckett. Because you’re not going to let it. Don’t give up on your patient just because she happens to be you
.

Doctor, heal thyself.

Somewhere, deep inside of her, a spark flared to life. It was not anger, nor was it hate. It was simply regret at so many years spent hiding from shadows—years that had kept her from the light as well. But she had escaped them
as a girl; as a grown woman she could do the same. They had stolen her life from her once. Grace would not let them do it again.

It was time to banish her shadows.

She lifted a hand, and the air of the room burst into brilliant flames.

The wraithling raised its spindly arms, its head thrown back in a soundless cry of pain as the fire wrapped around it like a shroud.

Grace backed away. The door swung shut before her, muffling but not silencing the crackling of flames and the cries of human pain. There came a scrabbling on the other side of the wood. Grace glanced at the doorknob, and it melted into a shapeless lump. The door rattled but did not open. Black smoke poured from beneath it instead of silver light.

Slowly, calmly, Grace walked down the corridor away from the door. Flames followed in her wake, licking up the walls, dancing on the ceiling like joyful blue ghosts, consuming wood and shadows alike. She paused to pull the handle of a red fire alarm on the wall, and at once a shrill wail split the air. The others—Sarah, Nela, Lisbeth, Mattie, and all the rest—the children would have time to escape. But only the children.

The entire corridor was burning. The last wisps of the shadow burned away like curls of black paper, yet the flames pulled away from Grace like a gleaming curtain as she passed. But it was her fire, was it not? She had called it, and it had come: the first true spell cast by a thirteen-year-old witch.

Grace descended the burning stairs and left the shadow and the sound of screaming behind her.

Travis pushed against the peeling picket gate. Rusting hinges creaked, and the gate lurched inward, sloughing off chips of white paint like flakes of dead skin. He stepped through and started down the weed-choked path. Weeping willows sighed as he passed, and the house glowed in the purple air of the Illinois twilight as if it were made of bones.

Why had he come here? He had never been back to this place, not since the sweltering day he turned twenty, when he left the farmhouse where he had grown up, had turned his face west, and had never looked back.

But that’s not true, Travis. You did look back. Every day you looked back
.

And now he was here again. But how? He had been in a …

But it was so hard to remember where he had been. It was a vague blur, as if everything that had happened to him since he left this place had meant nothing next to what had gone on within these faded clapboard walls. There had been a shadow, that was all he remembered. But maybe it didn’t matter now. Maybe all that mattered was that he was back.

Travis walked past the garden—his mother’s garden. In his memory it was as neat as her kitchen: everything tucked into its proper place. Now it was a tangle of honeysuckle and clematis and wild zinnias. A few fireflies glowed amid the foliage. They seemed dim and sickly, their time all but spent.

And so is yours, Travis. Why else would you come back here, if it wasn’t the end?

He reached the steps to the front porch, started to ascend the rotten wood, then hesitated. He couldn’t go in there, not yet. He turned and made his way around the house, to the backyard.

It was even wilder than the front: a commotion of thistles, goldenrod, and milkweed. The white fluff of dandelions floated on the muggy air, drifting back and forth but never finding a place to stop and lay down roots. Travis knew all about drifting. Wasn’t that what he had done ever since he left this house? Look for a place that could be his own?

“I guess you never found one,” he murmured. “If you did, why would you have come back here?”

For a moment it seemed like a fragment of a memory shone in the darkness of his mind: a place where he
had
settled down. No, not a place. A valley. Then the shadow was there, blotting out the memory.

The house looked in even worse repair from the back. Half the shutters had fallen from the windows, the gutters slumped, and some of the clapboards curled away from the walls like fingernail parings. Why hadn’t they kept the place up?

Because they’re dead, Travis. Remember? They’re dead, and you didn’t even go back for their funeral
.

The only way he had known about their deaths was from a letter their pastor had written, and which had somehow found its way to him. Travis didn’t remember much of what the letter had said. There had been something about cancer, about how it had been advanced by the time they found it, and how his father had followed not two months after from a stroke. All he really remembered was the last line.

God bless them both, for they have joined their beloved Alice at last
.

Travis shivered.

The trees whispered her name, the weeds echoed it, the fireflies flashed weakly in time. That was why he had come back to this place. Not for them, but for Alice.

His eyes found it in the gloom: a low mound covered with crown vetch. They had buried her right there in the backyard. Not in the center of the yard, but off to one side, where they must have known he would be able to see from his bedroom window: a constant reminder of what he had done.

Killing is a terrible sin
.

It was his father’s voice, hoarse and shaking. Travis had crouched at the top of the stairs, listening when he shouldn’t have been.

Not when it is done in accident, Mr. Wilder
. That was the pastor’s voice. Dry but not unkind.

Yes, an accident
. His mother, her words as faded as the gingham curtains hanging in the kitchen window.
An accident can’t be a sin
.

His father again, lower.
And was it? He was jealous of her. He’s always been an idiot. And she was so perfect, so smart …

A warm zephyr brought on the night, unveiling muted stars in the sky and blowing away the words.

But it
had
been an accident. He had loved Alice more than anything—her piping voice, her cheerful blue eyes. He would have done anything for her. But she had been sick; they had left him to take care of her. Only the numbers on the medicine bottle had danced like they always did. He had mixed them up, had given her too many of the pills. Far too many.

A yellow glow touched his cheek. He looked up. The farmhouse was dark and silent—except for one window in the upper story. Someone had turned on a light there, up in her old room.

Before he really thought about it, Travis tried the kitchen door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open, stepped into the house.

Dark, musty air closed around him. How many years had it been since they had lived there? He didn’t know. It smelled like a long time. It was hard to see; only a faint starglow filtered through the curtains. Then he moved farther in and saw the dim light falling down the stairs.

He fumbled his way toward the stairs, then climbed to the hallway on the second floor. All the doors were shut except for one. Gold light shone beyond. It drew Travis forward, over the dusty rag carpet, past molding wallpaper. He hesitated at the door, wondering what waited beyond, then stepped through.

It took a moment for the scene to register fully, then he laughed—although it was a bitter sound. Had they done this as their last act—had they left this to wait for him until the day he finally came back?

And it didn’t matter. All that was important was that he finally knew what he was supposed to do.

Her room was just as he remembered it. The white shelves were crowded with books and stuffed animals, and more books were piled on a small white desk. A pink canopy covered the bed, matching the pillows and sheets. On the white table next to the bed, beside the clown lamp someone had turned on, were a glass of water and a medicine bottle.

The darkness in the hallway behind Travis gathered in on itself, taking shape, pushing him forward. But he hardly needed its urging. They had joined Alice. But they could never have loved her like he did.

Travis moved into the room, careful not to knock into any of her things. He was tall and clumsy, and he had to be careful around her because she was small and fragile. That’s what his mother always told him.

He crouched beneath the canopy, then lay down on her bed. It was far too small, and he had to bring his knees close to his chest so that he was more sitting than lying, his back to the pillows and the wall. But that was all right. A light, sweet scent rose from the bedspread. Her
scent. He breathed it in a moment. Then he turned and took the medicine bottle from the night table. Pills jiggled inside.

Travis looked at the label on the bottle, but the numbers and letters capered about in a mocking dance. He concentrated, but he couldn’t follow their movements. Not that it made much difference. He opened the cap and upended the bottle, dumping its contents onto his hand.