The Ghosting of Gods (6 page)

12
their candles snuff out

The world goes dark. I need to scream, but there’s no breath in me. The mud is grease. Hurtling deeper and deeper, my arms are crossed over my chest like a body prepared for burial. The coffin is tight, boxing me in. At last I scream. The pressure of the narrow tunnel eases, and my arms fling out, making me an angel. A falling angel.

I didn’t keep Emmy safe. Or Ava or Leesel or Poe. I want Poe back.

I’m falling, falling, arms wide, a fallen angel…
I open my eyes. See light.

All tunnels end in light
.

They twist too. The curve is gentle, but I still land hard. The greasy mud makes me glide, and I gradually gather speed to spiral ever deeper into the earth. Refusing to pray, I slide, alone, in silence. The tunnel levels.

Poe reaches in and pulls me out.

We’ve arrived in a tiny underground cavern. My vision is blurred with brown water dripping down my forehead over my eyes, but there is George, busy with a multitude of candles he pulls from his robe. Dappled candlelight shivers on mud walls. Keenly aware of the trickling sounds of the river, everywhere, surrounding me, I instinctively hold my breath.

“You okay, man?” Poe asks with a weird smile. His face is black with mud. “Kind of felt like Jonah getting swallowed by the whale, huh?”

George slaps me on the back. “Good, good. Cough up that mud. Poisons the lungs.” He offers me a candle. A pillar candle, five inches thick and surprisingly heavy, like it’s lead instead of wax. It’s a marvel George didn’t sink like an anchor when he fell
in the river.

Bethany arrives. Her pale hair is streaked with mud. She walks directly to George and slaps his face.

Poe’s hunched over and looking at the ceiling that’s not tall enough for him. It’s wet. Dripping. “George, we’re so…deep,” he says.

George rubs his red cheek. “Indeed, the river is an abyss.”

“We’re beneath it?”

“Barely. Now, this is not the time for polite chatter. We don’t want to alert the tunnelers, do we? Take a candle in each hand. No matter what happens…” Four tunnels like perfect cylinders lead out of the cave den. George considers each of them in turn. He thinks, tapping his finger against his forehead like the proverbial brainless stuffed bear. Bethany watches him, a mixture of hope and despair on her face.

Mud oozes down the tunnel we just slid down. A wave of it arrives, and Bethany’s diary,
The Story of Me
, comes with it. Poe tries to clean it off, but it’s still dirty when he hands it to her.

Slowly, she turns to George. Her chest heaves.

“I’m certain this is the passage,” George blurts. He points at one of the identical tunnels with a shaky finger and rockets into it. Bethany gives chase at high speed—on boot tiptoes.

Poe offers me yet another pathetic smile. “Nothing to do but follow,” he says, holding up his two candles like he’s making a toast with beer mugs.

I nod, pretending like everything is okay. I don’t want him to be scared. At the same time, I don’t want him to be stupid. “Stay with me,” I urge. “We’re not going to get separated again. Do you understand, Poe?”

He nods, his pale face serious. I’m satisfied.

We stoop to fit inside the passage. The air is damp, but the hefty candle wicks burn like they’ve been dipped in the lighter fluid I’m convinced George keeps tucked in the folds of his robe. With four candles between us, the tunnel is illuminated well
enough. The ceiling is a surface of seeping black coffee, dripping on our heads and splashing at our feet at a disturbing tempo. An inch or so of water covers our narrow path. I suppose the rest soaks into the earthen floor, and below, but I don’t want to think about below. Returning my attention upward, I wonder at the engineering of the tunnels. No reinforcement is visible. The walls are perfectly curved,
glazed
, but they’re just mud. No wood or steel.

My steps are tentative. My feet soon lost beneath murky water. “Hell, Poe. This is insane,” I say, losing my determination not to scare him.

“I trust George,” he calls back. “Come on, faster, we’re losing them.”

“You
trust
George?” Anger flares inside me. I’m furious that he let Bethany push him into the hole. Furious that he trusts George. That he’s so naïve. We’re essentially buried, lost with deranged guides. But because Poe is the way he is, I’m responsible for him.

God can’t be trusted. I can’t let anything happen to Poe.

I think of Leesel. Ava. What if Poe had been pressed to the outside of the chapel too?

I think of the thick lashes on Ava’s eyes, how smooth the skin is in the hollow of her neck where she’s tattooed with a flower. A lily. Is she alive?

Little Leesel with her wild hair and comprehension of advanced physics. Have I lost her?

This is why I need forbidden knowledge of the spirit world. To end the separation that death brings. To connect the worlds. To make us all mediums. And so I keep secrets.

Slopping after Poe, I try not to slip, try not to think of my girls dead.

At first the tunnel runs level and straight, but after George chooses which side of a fork to take, the new tunnel angles upward and to the right, then to the left and back, leading us
deeper again. We come to a den like the one we first landed in, and George once again chooses from four tunnels. He mutters. Bethany is silent, and I sense rage despite her bland face when she turns back, candle held by her face, to shush Poe.

We need to be quiet?

“Onward!” George hisses at intervals frequent enough to keep me awake. It’s good the walls are so close—they hold me up as I slosh along.

Unless our guide is a human compass, we’re doomed. There’s nothing distinguishing about the tunnels we ferret our way through. If there wasn’t standing water, we could at least see our footprints and know if we were retracing our steps. As it is, we can’t. It’s a maze of underground sewage tunnels.

Poe is complaining, telling me I have to go faster, that Bethany is really fast, he can barely keep her in sight.

Guilt makes me weak. I prayed for knowledge of the spirit world. For good reason. I begged for it. If this world is where my knowledge is hidden, if the burning bush was a sign God was sending me to the knowledge I seek, who does that make me that I prayed for this, that I endangered my friends and left Emmy behind?

I shouldn’t be here. I need to save Emmy. Frustration propels me through the tunnel. I have to get out. I have to get home, to save Emmy.

A cry echoes down through the tunnel. George. Bethany calls out his name in alarm.

We find them at an intersection of tunnels. Splintered wood, a dumping ground of it, packs one of the tunnels like a dam. George is laid out. Bethany kneels behind him, helping him to sit up. His forehead is gashed. Delicately touching his fingers above his eyes, he looks ready to faint when he sees his own blood. Bethany coos at him, pulls out a large lacy handkerchief from someplace in her robe, and holds it to his wound. George grits his teeth.

“Did you trip?” Poe asks.

“I hit my head on the ceiling. There must be a rock jutting down.”

The three of us look up while George closes his eyes, whimpering in pain. Bethany instructs Poe to hold his candle high.

A board juts from the ceiling. I step closer, getting under it to see if it’s the invisible tunnel reinforcements I couldn’t detect earlier. It’s not just a board—it’s a box, or the corner of one, chipped black. Not what I was looking for.

“Oh, my,” George says, eyes clamped shut. “I do feel faint. Nasty, naughty rock.” Pressing the reddening handkerchief to his forehead, he tries to curb the flow of blood. Bethany tells us to move back so George can get air.

A side tunnel is stuffed with fragments of wood, but pieces of crumpled paper too. Picking a wad from the rubble, I flatten it against my palm. It’s parchment, rough and thick. Letters in black ink have gotten wet so that the writing has bled purple, soaking into the creases of the paper. “Look, Poe, at the top it says
Promised Land
. The rest is a mess.” I hold it up to him. “Can you make out anything else?”

He squints, shakes his head.

Bethany tends to George, ignoring us. I dig out another wad. This one is mostly dry, with only part of the ink smeared.

“Hey, it’s a map,” Poe says. “Look, those upside-down V’s are roofs, and that squiggly line has got to be the river, I bet. It’s the town. And we’re…here.”

Tiny circles are drawn beneath the river. Exits, maybe, for the tunnels? I wonder if the smeared ink at the top of the page used to be a legend. “Get another one,” I say, indicating the dam.

Poe picks out several more wads and flattens them out, but they’re all a mess of blotchy ink. I take the good one over to George. “Does it make any sense to you? Maybe it shows a way out of here.”

He doesn’t even look at the parchment. “Are you questioning my leadership, young man?”

“What? No, I just thought—”

“Dispose of it. It’s polluted. Oh, this hurts. Nasty, naughty rock.”

“Not a rock. A tunneler box,” Bethany says, her voice full of disgust.

“A what?” Poe asks.

“A casket.”

Springing up, George knocks Bethany onto her butt. He pats his robe frantically and pulls out more candles, these bigger than before. He quickly lights them with some sort of crude matches, also stashed in his robe.

Poe asks what the matter is.

“Nothing at all. I’m fine, fine.” Blood trickles down both sides of George’s face. Dragging his robe sleeve across his forehead, he smears it red. “Shall we get along now? Best not to remind tunnelers of lost flesh. Onward!”

“Lost flesh?” Poe repeats. “What does that mean?”

“No more questions!”

“It means they’re crazy,” I say angrily. Why doesn’t Poe understand this?

“Never you mind,” Bethany says. “George, bend low, please.” She manifests another handkerchief and ties it around his forehead. “I think that will do until we get back to town.” She turns to me and Poe. “The tunnelers fear us. Why else do they cower underground? They desire only to indulge their useless fantasies of salvation in hiding. Nevertheless, we shall increase our pace.” She squeezes George’s hand. “Lead on, my brave darling.”

George squares his shoulders, but his quivering goatee betrays his fear.

“Who are the tunnelers?” Poe asks. Neither George nor Bethany answers, and Poe looks at me, as if I might know. Getting
no answer, he comes up with another question. “What’s that ticking?”

George slaps his hands over his ears and whimpers. “Ghosts chained to bodies, ghosts chained to bodies,” he chants.

Ghosts? I brace myself for voices, but all I hear is rhythmic dripping. Poe’s right. It does sound like a ticking clock.

“They’re closing in on us,” Bethany says.

13
lost but now she’s found

George and Bethany bolt.

One of my candles blows out as Poe and I chase after them. Tossing the waxy weight aside, I curse at the big splash it makes. The water’s getting deeper. The ceiling drips badly, so badly I wouldn’t even call it dripping so much as
raining
. “We’re going to have to turn around,” I yell.

“No ticking down this tunnel,” George calls back. Bethany sloshes beside him, until they’re both almost out of sight. All I can see are candle flames—their silhouettes blend with the darkness.

Water creeps up my leg.

“No ticking at all,” George calls back. “Just a bit of a swim necessary. I see—” Their candles snuff out.

“Jesse?” Poe tweets, as a wall of water bears down on us.

His elbow catches me in the gut when the wave hits us. Pain makes me suck in my breath, only I get water. Dragged under like the hapless branch I watched earlier, I wash down the tunnel. Slam into a barrier. I claw at the mud walls, trying to stop the current from taking me away, but it’s too strong.

I let go.

At last, the water recedes. I float gently to the floor and land on a body.

It screams, jerks. My nose explodes in pain.

The body is Ava.

I throw up my arms, blocking several more blows. She’s yelling at me, shrieking at me to get away. She sounds crazed, hysterical. The attack ends. I’m holding my face, dazed. Her voice fades.

Poe calls my name. He’s not drowned, he’s okay. He comes up behind me, and together we scream for Ava to come back.

There’s light. A flame. Her lighter. “Jesse?”

“Yeah, baby, it’s me. And Poe. Don’t run away.” I have to sit down. She hit me hard. I’m dizzy, and my nose is bleeding. God, I think she broke it.

But she’s alive. Poe, too.

Silently, I thank God.

It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. We need Leesel, then we’ll go back home, and I’ll save Emmy. I’ll save her, I’ll protect everyone…no more praying for forbidden fruit…

I steady myself as Ava comes closer, holding out her lighter with a straight, but shaking, arm.

Her face is scratched, scraped. She cranes her neck forward to try and see us better, and I can hardly believe it’s her. She’s so skinny. Her cheeks are hollow, her hair is matted against her head and neck, and her clothes are caked in mud.

For a moment I can see she recognizes me, but then she extinguishes her lighter. She collapses on top of me, sobbing.

“Ava Lily, Ava Lily,” Poe keeps saying, crying with her.

Grasping her shoulders, I shake her, gently. “Ava, what happened to you? Where’s Leesel? She’s not with us. Ava? Do you understand me?” I hold her face in my hands.

Her head nods. “I was r-running, trying to get to L-Leesel, and fell, fell in a hole in the ground. Oh, Jesse. I don’t know where she is! This woman took her, but I couldn’t k-keep up…Where were you? We looked…looked for so long, and the days are so strange…but down here, down here it’s w-worse…”

I hold her, kiss her face, try to calm her. She rambles about the darkness, not making much sense, then her voice turns very, very quiet. I lean forward to hear.

“Things are down here,” she whispers.

“Is it the tunnelers?” Poe asks. He tells her about George and Bethany. How they live in the town, how they led us down here, how we lost them. “They told us we’re in another world, Ava Lily. Called Memento Mori. It’s true. And we’re beneath the river,
it’s an abyss…and we have to be quiet because of the tunnelers. George doesn’t want to talk about the tunnelers, but I think—”

“Poe,” I interrupt. “That’s enough.” I press my forehead to Ava’s. “Baby. Tell us exactly what happened to Leesel.”

“No, no, I can’t…”

“It’s okay. We’re here with you now, all right? But we need to know where Leesel might be. Do you think she’s down in these tunnels? Did you see her fall? Or did the woman take her away in a boat? I need you to think.”

Her face bobs up and down in my hands. “Okay.”

I work the lighter out of her fist and flick it on. It’s almost worse, seeing how she looks. She wipes away her tears, takes a deep, quivering breath. “I remember the vortex. And Leesel blew out the window, and I went after her I think…I can’t remember very well…and then everything was dark, but then I was in the woods again, only the trees looked wrong. Leesel found me. And she said we were in an altered world, because the stars weren’t the same.” She stops. Starts shaking bad again.

“What’s an altered world? Ava? What’s wrong?”

“Turn off the lighter.”

“Why?”

“Lower your voice. Turn off the lighter.”

I flick it closed. She goes on. “She said…Leesel said she had been living in the woods for days when she found me. Weeks. I was worried, you know? She didn’t make any sense. And then, then she showed me how there was a town. We needed help. And so, so we built a fire because I had my lighter. Somebody in the town saw us, but then a woman yelled at us to beware of the townspeople. She was up on the cliff. She said to come back up, that the people in the town weren’t safe, that she would help us…And so Leesel climbed up first, so I could make sure. Make sure she didn’t fall.”

She starts to cry again. My stomach is hollow, but I need her to finish, to tell me what happened to Leesel.

I shake her, not hard, but enough to get her attention.
“What happened to Leesel, Ava?”

“The woman took her! Jesse, I couldn’t stop her. I was almost over the edge, pulling myself up, and Leesel screamed. I got up, got up as fast as I could, and I saw the woman running, carrying Leesel in her arms. I chased after them, but the ground collapsed beneath me, and I was falling and falling…they may have fallen…I’ve been searching…”

This can’t be happening.

I realize I’m squeezing my eyes shut. Opening them, of course I see nothing. Poe is speaking softly to Ava, trying to comfort her, but there’s no comfort to give. Leesel has been abducted, just like George and Bethany said.

We need them. George and Bethany. Poe was right about that. I shouldn’t have let George and Bethany go down that tunnel.

Ava stiffens beside me.

Ticking. Lots of it. Faint, getting louder, but that’s not all. There are clicking noises too. Sounds like Morse code.

My thumb rolls the lighter. I hold the flame behind us, in front of us, trying to see down the tunnel in each direction. There’s nothing, but the shadows are close. Ava reaches out to take hold of my wrist. She lifts my arm high, pushing the lighter flame toward the ceiling.

There’s a hole there, right over our heads, about the size of a softball.

Something glints. Shifting the lighter to the left, I follow the track of a long white bone. It’s human. A femur. Mud obscures most of the pelvis bone, but I trace the spine up to where a skull gapes in a silent scream. My heart beats so fast I feel dizzy as I stare at the skeleton in its mud casket.

Morse code.

I jerk the flame back to the ceiling hole. It’s bigger. A lantern teeters at the edge, on the verge of falling down on us.