The Skeleton Key (19 page)

‘Stop! I command you!' I finally screamed, and the obsidian ring on my finger grew warm.

I was onto something.

‘I
command
you!' I repeated. ‘I command you to return to your graves!'

I held the ring out and concentrated until the veins in my forehead pounded. The obsidian ring grew hotter and hotter until I almost couldn't bear it. Eventually the walking dead stopped in their tracks. And they turned – two hundred of them, maybe more – and fixed their hollow eye sockets on me.

This was the moment, I realised. Either the necromancer would command them to tear me limb from limb, or . . .

‘As the Seventh, I
command
you to return to your graves!' I declared, one arm raised in a fist.

There was a shocking flash of light, and the obsidian ring burned so hot I fell to my knees and held my wrist, resisting the urge to pull the ring from my finger. But the dead who had stopped at the gates began to move again. They began to retreat, walking right past me and crawling back into the ground from whence they came.

It's working!

I stood up and repeated my command. Again the ring burned, and I gritted my teeth. But it was working.

The zombies disappeared back into the disturbed ground of the cemetery, slipping into the broken earth like it was quicksand, some feet first, others on their bony hands and knees. Gradually, the earth closed in around them, as if patted down by invisible hands, the grass moving back into place. I continued my commands until the cemetery was still, the green mist fading away.

Wow. I did that?

Now the necromancer was at the gates, hovering over the ground, green eyes glowing with silent rage. Finally – unfortunately – it had turned its focus on me, and I felt that awful black magick. The tips of my hair began to rise, as if with static shock. I took a step backwards. Then another.

‘Dr Barrett, wake up!' I yelled, panicked. ‘If you're in there, wake up now! Please!'

The creature opened his arms, fingers spread like claws, and let out a ghastly, furious wail. He threw his arms forward suddenly, as if tossing something, and I was hit with a wall of cold, foul-smelling air that blew my hair back and lifted me right off the ground. The force of it winded me and I fell backwards and crumpled into a ball, head first, striking the hard earth with a crunch. When I got to my feet again, disoriented, the necromancer had already vanished and I saw a wisp of green mist disappear over the cemetery walls.

All was silent around me.

The residents of New York Marble Cemetery had returned to their graves. The spell that had animated them was now absent, and the mist had left with it. I breathed a sigh of deep relief and brought my hands to my head, which ached from the fall. I allowed myself to sit down on the cold grass for a moment, catching my breath. My coat from Celia was grass-stained, and I'd lost my satchel somewhere in all the madness, I now realised. Had I even had it when Deus set me down on the street? And my hand hurt badly, too.

But I did it.

I'd actually commanded the dead, just as Deus said I could. I was about to congratulate myself when there was another ear-piercing shriek, some distance away.

Oh, hell.

There was evidently no time to rest. I got up and ran out through the broken gates, down the alley and into the street. I took only a moment to note that the living humans on Second Avenue had dispersed, walking away from the scene with strange, shuffling slowness – what was wrong with them? – then I rushed as fast as I could towards the strange, glowing mist which had gathered again a mere block away.

And when I saw where it was, I thought,
You have to be kidding me.

It was another marble cemetery, beyond high black gates. I'd forgotten that New York Marble Cemetery, where I had just fought to return the dead to their graves, was very near the similarly named New York
City
Marble Cemetery. It had been built only one year after the first cemetery – and it was larger. With more dead.

This was bad news. Very bad. I could not dash around the entire island of Manhattan, trying to keep the dead in their graves. My skin was already red with burns under the obsidian ring Celia had given me – a ring that had belonged to my great-great-grandmother, the fortune teller Madame Aurora. ‘It is the eyes of the dead pharaohs, the eyes of the Moai on Easter Island, as dark as the soul but with a star of life inside,' Celia had said of the stone. The obsidian stone seemed to focus some sort of power, but I didn't know if I was strong enough to use it again, it took so much out of me. Or even if I
could
use it again.

The large black iron gates of the New York City Marble Cemetery had already been forced open, and I hightailed it inside to see that there were tall monuments marking the locations of underground graves – graves which were already being disturbed, from the inside out. I could hear the knocking on marble, feel the agitation beneath the soil. But where was the necromancer? I could not see him, yet green mist clung to the grass and the monuments, and I could hear the dead threatening to rise beneath my feet. They had already been called.

I steadied myself. ‘As the Seventh, I command you. Be still! Return to your slumber!' I shouted to the empty cemetery. ‘I command you!'

The ring burned, my eyes stung from the pain.
Darn it!
I could feel the flesh swelling up under it.

‘As the Seventh, I command you to return to your slumber!' I repeated, focusing with all my strength on my words, my intent.

Gradually the last remnants of glowing green mist vanished and the cemetery grew dark and silent. The earth beneath my feet became still. No knocking. No shrieking. No green fog. Everything had returned to normal, it seemed. Well, apart from the broken gates.

I closed my eyes and took a breath.

That was close . . . Too close.
It had been hard enough to turn back a few hundred of them. Imagine if thousands of the dead had risen up?

Above me came a distinctive rustling sound. The air shifted and when I opened my eyes a black shape descended, landing just inches in front of me.

Deus.

‘Now, we must get to Spektor,' he told me in his deep, rich voice, grinning as always. He placed his hands on my slender shoulders and I found myself smiling back at him, eye to eye, drawn to those full dark brows and long, lovely eyelashes of his, and the light in his eyes that seemed to dance . . .

‘I commanded them to return to the ground,' I managed, closing my eyes and replaying in my mind what had happened. ‘I actually did it! They crawled right back into the soil and the earth closed up around them. I've never seen anything like it!'

‘Your great-aunt needs us, Pandora English,' Deus said. There was urgency in his voice.

I looked up and found myself caught in his intense gaze again.

‘The necromancer is already at Central Park,' he told me. ‘He will be in Spektor in no time. Get on my back. Now.'

The ancient Sanguine turned around and urged me onto him, and this time I didn't hesitate. I undid the buttons on my coat and climbed up, throwing my arms around his shoulders. I buried my face into the back of his neck, locking my hands around his hard chest and gripping his hips with my legs. We took off into the air in a breathtaking rush, my hair blowing straight back. In seconds we were far above the cemetery, the streets shrinking away.

‘There are groups of people down there, walking and driving around like they're in a trance,' I told him after a minute, shouting against the whistling wind as we flew above the streets.

Deus turned his head so I could see the profile of his classical features and sensual mouth. I had to stop staring at him even as we rocketed over Manhattan.
Darn that blood he gave me
, I thought as I stared.

‘I erased them,' he called back to me. ‘They will be fine by now, acting perfectly normal, but they won't remember any of what they have seen.'

Of course.

I kept my chin nestled into his shoulder as we sailed over Manhattan, winging over towering skyscrapers and passing banks of windows so close I thought I might faint. In a heartbeat we flew past the observation platform of the Empire State Building, eighty-six floors above the street, moving as a dark shape, unseen by the tourists who looked out over the edge.

‘Does anyone ever spot you?' I asked, as we banked again and flew down over the tall trees of Central Park.

‘When I am flying? It is uncommon,' Deus said. ‘Human perception rarely allows for such things.'

And those who might remember could be easily erased, it seemed.

‘Would you ever . . . erase me?' I dared to ask him.

I felt his chest shake under my hands and thought I heard a low chuckle beneath the din of the wind. ‘I fear I could not do such a thing.'

‘But you erased all those people down there.'
From the air. Like it was nothing.

‘And you would lump yourself in with them? You, who commanded the dead to return to their graves?'

Well, I guess I was a little different.

At the far northern end of the park I spotted the distinctive green glow again, and my stomach turned as cold as ice. A sense of terrible dread filled me even before we saw that the zombies were there below us, moving in lines through Central Park – a horde of skeletons walking on fleshless legs of yellowing bone, joined by Manhattan's recent dead, who groaned and shambled along, their wounds still oozing.

At a guess there were at least three hundred of them, maybe more, green mist swirling at their feet and disappearing into the tunnel that led to Spektor. There would be more on the other side.

This is bad. Very, very bad.

Barrett and the necromancer were nowhere to be seen, though I felt sure they were there, leading this grim march forward.

‘We can be grateful you turned so many back,' Deus shouted. ‘And that most of the cemeteries were moved off Manhattan Island. If we were in New Jersey . . .' He shook his head. ‘We'd have a much bigger problem on our hands.'

At that moment I could not imagine a bigger problem.

‘Pandora . . .'

‘What—'

My words were pulled from me as our course changed suddenly. We plunged through the air, freefalling towards the ground, and I hung on, screaming, my arms and legs locked so tightly to Deus's body they hurt. We dropped fifty feet straight towards the treetops and then levelled out again only feet away from our deaths. Or mine, at least.

‘The spell. I'm too close . . .' Deus said as he flew erratically, moving up and sideways, trying to avoid the trees. The necromancer appeared just below us, from behind the foliage, holding both arms up in the air, fingers spread and palms pointing right at us.

He was controlling Deus.

‘No!' I cried as we plunged again. We broke free again and veered sideways, just missing the treetops. Deus was fighting the spell, but now the necromancer was far too close.

Deus could feel it, he'd said. But I could see it.

‘To the left!' I shouted to him and he did as I said. We hit a narrow break in the green mist and Deus winged upwards.

‘Stay left for another fifty feet or more! Now, up, straight up!'

We flew straight into the clouds above the park, freeing ourselves of the reach of those deadly green tendrils. Once we were safe we levelled off, and immediately headed for the thick fog surrounding Spektor.

M
y home of Spektor was host to a most dreadful sight. The dead filed through the streets in lines, moaning and shuffling, stumbling in their rotten burial suits and gowns, all headed for Number One Addams Avenue, where hundreds of their kin already pressed at the iron gates and the mansion door, knocking and pounding with their bony fists. Some actually climbed the sides of the mansion, at times losing their footing and slipping down, their bodies coming apart like broken puzzles of bone on the pavement below before somehow reforming and starting again. Others pulled boards off the windows on the second floor and succeeded in crawling inside, their skeletal bodies fitting through small cracks.

I hung on to Deus, peering down as we flew overhead.

The dead want to get inside. They want to open the portal.

He flew us to the peaked roof of the mansion and landed smoothly. I climbed off him somewhat reluctantly – even after our encounter with gravity in Central Park. The mansion didn't seem a good place to be right now.

‘The protection spell won't work for much longer,' said Deus. ‘Not once the necromancer arrives.'

It looked to me like it had already failed.

Below us the dead grew louder, and now their voices became clearer to me. Though their moans and cries were not like any human language, I came to understand their collective meaning. Many were chanting together, I now realised, using an ancient tongue. The necromancer seemed to be controlling them, as if they were one large organism chanting his words. They wanted to free their brothers and sisters in the Underworld below the house on which we stood. They wanted to set their brothers and sisters on the world of the living, every spirit, every corpse free to roam the streets of New York. The city would be overrun. The
earth
would be overrun, the balance of the dead and living destroyed. Without that balance there could be no life on earth.

I heard a crack, and the splintering of wood. The heavy mansion door would soon buckle.

‘Hurry!' said Deus.

We ran across the roof tiles and he pulled open the door on the turret.

‘I cannot come with you. I must stay clear of its reach. I have grown powerful over the centuries. If it can control me, use me against you . . .'

‘I understand. Thank you,' I said.

I ran inside the mansion, down the curving stairs, and when I reached the penthouse level I burst into the antechamber, leaping out of the casket. ‘Celia! Celia?' I cried. Candles burned, the room smelled of incense, but she was not there. I ran to the lounge room. She was not in her usual spot in her reading chair, of course. She would be fighting off the necromancer downstairs. I pulled open my bedroom door and snatched Lieutenant Luke's sword from under my bed. I unwrapped it and admired the blade for a brief moment.

Here goes.

As I raced back across the penthouse I stopped and turned to look at the plethora of strange artefacts on Celia's shelves. There was something there – something my subconscious was drawn to. I stopped in my tracks, closed my eyes and concentrated for a moment. The two-headed coin flashed into my mind and I snatched it from its glass case and pocketed it, not sure what use it could possibly be. As I passed near the black widow spider in her little glass cage, I yelled, ‘Don't look at me like that! I know what I'm doing!'

I ran with Luke's sword – well, it was more of an awkward jog, the thing was very heavy – out the front of the penthouse, and I looked down over the railing. Sure enough, my great-aunt was standing her ground in the lobby, her arms held out, chanting something I could not decipher, while that terrible green mist poured in through the thin gap under the door. It gathered around her at a distance of a few feet, in a perfect circle, held back by some invisible force. There was no mistaking the sound of the dead beating on the door with their fists and feet. I needed to get down there fast. The elevator was not an option, obviously. Posthaste, I made my way around the landing and was about to duck into that dodgy, unmaintained stairwell when I heard a loud crack. I looked back over the railing just in time to witness the heavy front door finally yield, toppling backwards and landing on the cracked tiles of the lobby.

Oh no.

‘Celia, I'm coming!' I yelled, and bolted into the stairwell.

The stairwell was dark and though I'd forgotten to bring the torch there was simply no time to go back and look for it – not with Celia down there dealing with the invading dead. I held the sword in one hand and kept my other hand on the rail, holding on tight in the darkness as I negotiated missing stairs and stumbled over rotting planks and splintering wood. Finally I reached the fallen mezzanine door that Vlad had dutifully chopped down, and by the time I ran down the steps into the lobby, I could see that the situation was very bad indeed.

Hundreds of them were inside already.

‘The necromancer is here,' my great-aunt Celia said, spotting me. ‘We mustn't let it find the portal!'

The lobby of the mansion was overrun with the not-so-mortal remains of half of Manhattan but, still, there was that clear circle around Celia. The walking corpses – some without arms, one even without a head – filed around her as if she were a pillar, the mist circling but not able to close in. They began to pound on the hidden door beneath the mezzanine stairs.

Oh dear.

‘Where is the portal?' I called out.

Celia shook her head, her arms still held out, palms open. ‘It is below the basement, but beyond that I don't know,' she told me. ‘I have long suspected it was here but I have never seen it.'

I feared that would change tonight.

‘They seem to know,' I said as the door under the mezzanine steps broke down under their fleshless fists. The creatures pushed the door aside and filed in tightly, one by one, doubtless headed for the basement and below. I felt sure the necromancer had discovered the position of the portal in his time here, and had waited until this night to use the strange magick of Friday the thirteenth to aid his powers and open the entry to the Underworld. But if Celia was right, the magick could go both ways.

There was still hope.

‘I'll follow them!' I said. ‘I'll stop them from getting the portal open.'

Somehow.

By now the green mist was no longer circling Celia, but moving past us into the dark corridor, pushing the dead onward on their mission. I really didn't want to go in there but I had no choice. I marched up to the small door, where the zombies passed close to me to squeeze themselves inside. I took a deep breath and held it, as if that would help, then shut my eyes and shoved myself between the corpses. In seconds I was being pushed along between the rotting bodies in that dank corridor, the strong stench of decay surrounding me. I was tightly sandwiched between a man in a tatty top hat and half a suit, and a woman holding a tied bouquet of dried stems, the flowers long since rotted away. In the low light I could see through the man's suit jacket through his ribcage and out the other side.

I took a breath and gagged.

‘Pandora, I am here,' a familiar voice said. Celia had followed me inside. I tried to turn but I couldn't quite catch sight of her behind the wall of . . . of . . .
Ugh.
(Best not to look, I decided.) Nonetheless, I sensed that my great-aunt was only a few ‘people' behind me, and I felt her intense dislike of our predicament like a little beacon indicating her proximity. It would have taken a lot for the ever-elegant Celia, of all people, to enter this disgusting, narrow passageway, considering the crowd that currently filled it.

‘Zombies don't really eat brains, do they?' I asked her, hopeful. So far they seemed not to take any interest in our presence. I could only hope it remained that way.

‘They are dead,' she replied. ‘They don't need to eat, unless their master tells them to.'

Right. Well, let's hope the necromancer doesn't have that in mind.

By now the light coming through the open door from the lobby had faded from sight, and while the glowing mist that covered the floor of the corridor made it harder to negotiate the uneven stone, it did help to illuminate my way, acting as a lit pathway and casting spooky shadows up the walls and across the skeletal faces and bodies surrounding me. I sure hoped that mist had not already reached the portal, along with the necromancer.

‘Darling, can you get ahead?' Celia asked from behind me.

‘I'll try,' I shouted back.

I held up Luke's cavalry sword and tried to muscle in, which should not have been too hard considering the distinct lack of muscle – and flesh – in that twisting corridor. But it was a supernatural strength that animated these creatures, not physical strength. Moving forward seemed impossible. Celia was right though, we had to somehow get to the front of the pack and, if possible, block the rest from continuing on.

‘Stop! I command you!' I yelled, but they did not so much as pause. The necromancer's power here was stronger than mine. ‘I command you to stop!' I said again, and the corpses continued forward, set on their mission. I realised it would take more than my shouting to make them halt.

But what if I didn't have to actually make them
stop
at all?

‘I command you to let us pass!' I called out, and with that the dead nearest to us pushed to the walls, still moving, and let Celia and I through. I held my breath as we passed perhaps twenty-five putrid corpses, each of whom stepped aside to allow us passage. Eventually we ended up at the base of the stone staircase I'd found with Luke. Here the space was a bit more open and I took a deep breath of slightly less pungent air, relieved. Here, though, there were more of the dead. It seemed they were now pouring into the house from all sides.

‘The laboratory is near here,' I told Celia. Were they heading to it? Why?

We followed the path of corpses around the corner and saw that the door to Dr Barrett's laboratory was open, the creatures filing through. We squeezed inside and Celia took in the steel table and frightening metal chair with its heavy leather straps. She frowned. She had not seen the lab before. Over the table the large light was on and the wheel next to me was spinning slowly, as if moved by the same magick that powered the dead. I had the feeling this activity was a side effect of the energy swirling through the room. Green mist clung to the floor and curled around the strange objects. The frog, floating in the formaldehyde jar, jerked.

Barrett's army – the necromancer's army – were filing straight through to his study and out the other side. This, I feared, was it. The icy sensation in my guts told me that the Underworld was very, very near.

‘I think the portal may be open,' I said, horrified.

So Barrett had built his laboratory right on it?

‘Quickly,' Celia urged, and we rushed forward without hesitation.

Sure enough, a door in the charred study was open on its hinge, the lock seemingly broken. Incredibly, when I'd been here with Lieutenant Luke, I hadn't even noticed the door. I'd been entirely blind to its presence, though Luke had experienced that strong aversion to the energy of the portal. He'd begged to leave, I recalled. Where was he now? I stepped through what I feared was the portal to the Underworld, my breath caught in my throat.

Oh boy.

THAT is the portal.

The small door in Barrett's study opened up into a cavern­ous subterranean space. Below me were perhaps twenty-five broad, cascading stone steps leading to a magnificent, echoing chamber of natural rock. The steps vanished into a shallow pool of still, sulphury-smelling water that reflected the fierce, dancing green flames of a series of wrought-iron torches, hung from the rock on either side of the natural underground chamber. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, dripping with ooze and glittering with the water's reflection. Everything swam with that circling green mist. The dead continued to file past me down the stairs, gathering in the shallow water.

Directly opposite, perhaps thirty feet into the cave, was a flat rock wall of great height with an enormous circular portal carved into it, surrounded by what appeared to be runes. On either side of the portal were hundreds of skulls and femurs stacked up in a strange, twisting design, not unlike the double helix, and two frightening stone statues – one male and one female. Each was equally menacing, with the muscled bodies of Olympians and huge death's heads above their shoulders. They carried what looked to be ten-feet-high gold staffs.

I gaped.

This cave was, without question, the most beautiful and terrifying thing I had ever seen.

My great-aunt's cool hand touched mine, breaking me from my awe. ‘We must stop it. Now.'

Indeed, he, or it, was there at the portal, hovering above the water at the giant door, chanting the words I'd sensed in all those gathered dead, the words I could not decipher into any known language, yet understood – words that commanded the dead to open the portal and reunite the decaying bodies with their spirits. He wished to open the portal and have the dead overrun the living inhabitants of the Upperworld, claiming their domain.