by Lucy Auburn
There's a knock at the door.
Eyes springing open, I look around me for a weapon. There—the original Arizona man himself, Glen Arizona, had a hunting knife that was buried with him. The symbol for the knife is engraved on his placard right next to his name and the year he died.
Steeling myself for what I'm about to do, I pace over to his burial spot and dig my fingers into the sides of the coffin drawer. With a yank—spurred by the sound of banging on the door, an aggressive attempt to get inside—I pull open old great-great-etc-grandpappy's coffin and cough as the dust flies up into my face.
Dust... that could only be parts of his body that have rotted away and fallen into pieces. Which means I have my ancestor's super old ass ashes currently coating my tongue and flying up the inside of my nose. Great, just great.
There's no time to spare for my disgust. With a quick apology to the bones and threadbare clothing left of his body, I reach out and pry the sheathed hunting knife from his hands. Hopefully the fact that his blood flows through my veins will keep me from being cursed for eternity because I went and stole from him.
The knife, shockingly, is in great condition. It practically sings in my hands as I pull it from its cracked leather sheath. The coffin must be airtight, because other than a little oiling, it doesn't need any care or sharpening. From the handle to the tip, the six inch blade is ready for business.
Like being slid between ribs, tearing flesh and slicing bone, until bodies go still and silent.
A thrill goes through me as the doors of the mausoleum crack. Any minute now and I'll be face to face with my hunters, ready to fight—ready to kill or be killed. It's a feeling like nothing else, one I've craved since the day I killed Jack, a desperate hunger I was ashamed of in prison. Now I don't have to be ashamed, because this time, just like before, I'll be acting in self defense.
The doors break open. A figure stands on the other side, one I don't recognize from the diner or what little I saw in Eve’s hallway. Well over six feet tall, broad and muscular, he has deep brown skin and a head that's been closely shaved. Every line of his body scream aggressive purpose—all the way down to the blood on his knuckles from punching the doors in with his body.
Eyes that are almost golden in color look me over, and he slowly cocks his head at the sight of the blade in my hand. He slowly says, “Looking for a fight?"
"You're the one who came looking," I shoot back. "What do you want from me? Why are you after me?"
Like smoke, three other men appear behind him. With a shock, I recognize them from the police precinct, when Eve picked me up and I saw four men who got my attention.
There's the man who broke the doors, and the tall, tattooed man with a long black braid from the diner. The third figure is the one who stands out the most, with a sharp, angular nose in an aristocratic face, wearing all black clothing and holding a cane that looks half weapon in his hands, his shock of red hair somehow only adding to his striking features. Fourth and finally is a slim man with pale silver hair whose footsteps make the most sound as he steps forward, as if he has no clue how to pounce silently with his weight on the balls of his feet. He must be the one who was in Eve’s house, because he’s got a slight injury on his left shoulder that he’s bandaged.
They're here for me. To hunt me. To kill me, I assume, though so far they've failed to even make a mark.
And instead of feeling afraid, I feel invigorated.
Facing off against them, the blood thrumming in my veins, I tighten my hold on the knife and fall into an instinctual fighter's stance. Just looking at them makes me feel alive, my pulse racing, an impossible electricity crackling inside me. Hot desire fills me to take my great-great-grandfather's knife and stab them until their warm blood sprays across my cheeks and slicks my hands.
I'm full of rage.
There isn't a single drop of fear inside me for the men I'm facing off against.
The only person in here I'm scared of is myself.
"You want me?" I crack my neck. "Come get me."
The brawl begins.
Chapter 8
The tall, brawny man who broke down the doors, a Hulk of a beast, roars and grabs one of the statues of the mausoleum. Eyes wide, I duck as he throws it, but it comes right at me anyway.
Instinctively I throw out my hand, fingers splayed, as if to repel or catch it—and an impossibly powerful invisible force springs from my palm, splitting the statue in two. Each half shatters to the ground on either side of me, covering me in white plaster but not harming a single hair on my head.
In a lightly accented voice, the flame-haired man with the cane says, "Physical class. Telekinetic abilities. Levi, weaken her. Mason, do your thing."
I frown as the silver-haired man takes a step forward, bringing his bare hands up and narrowing his eyes at me. It feels like he's trying to do something, but I don't know what—he doesn't even touch me at all.
Then I feel it, deep inside.
A rot in my blood. Poison in my veins. Sudden weakness seizes my chest, and I fall down to one knee, gasping for air. It takes all the strength I have left inside me to keep my grip on the knife, which is slick in my hand from sweat and weakness.
Somehow the silver-haired man is invading my body and stealing my strength.
It's impossible. Then again, so is the fact that I just shattered an entire fucking statue with some kind of pulsing power that came out of my hand. So maybe I have no goddamned clue what is and isn't possible anymore.
The pain and weakness increases. Moaning, I fall down to both knees, clutching my chest. While I manage to keep the knife in my hand, I know that it's useless. I don't have the strength left to lift it up off the ground, much less stab someone with it.
What I thought would be a battle turned out to be a pitiful one-sided thing. My eyes slip closed, and I give up entirely, curling on the ground with the useless knife barely gripped in my hand. Death is nipping at my heels.
Just as I feel myself nearly slip away entirely, the weakness stops. A little bit of strength returns to me. Opening my eyes, I use my hands to push myself up, weakly gripping at the knife, and stare at the four men standing in front of me.
But they're not there anymore.
Instead of four strange and terrifying men, my mother is standing in between the open mausoleum doors. With a small, soft smile on her mouth, sunlight rimming the edges of her long hair in gold, she reaches out a hand towards me.
"Get up, Ellen," she says, in a voice pitched low and clear. "We're going somewhere safe."
I blink at her, wondering if this is yet another one of those times where I'm seeing things. My life recently has been chaos and confusion; it's almost enough to make me long for the simplistic straightforwardness of prison, where nothing like this happened.
I remember her dying.
But she's standing right in front of me. This wouldn't be the first time that my eyes deceived me, but maybe, just maybe, this time the deception was her death, not the life in front of me. The temptation to believe is so overwhelming that I give into it, and with the hand that isn't gripping the knife, I reach out to grasp her proffered hand, palm to palm, fingers intwined.
Electricity flows down my arm and sets my teeth on edge. A strange feeling fills me. I squint my eyes at my mother, and in her place I see the man with the braid, his deep brown hand engulfing mine. Skin to skin like this, there's an undeniable heat.
The sight of his face fills me with a rage that comes from somewhere outside my body and burns the weakness from my blood. Baring my teeth, I yank him towards me and set the edge of the knife against his neck. Shock travels across his features.
"What are you doing to me?" I demand, looking at the other three arranged behind him, visible to me now that I've seen through the lie and to the truth behind it. "What do you want from me?"
"I don't understand." There's panic in the man's voice as he tightens his grip on my hand. "It should've worked."
The man with the cane tel
ls him, "Let go of her hand. Something is happening."
He drops his grip from mine all at once, taking a step back, his expression a mixture of confusion and fascination. Apparently I've done something unexpected by seeing through the hypnotic illusion that showed me my mother. It's not the first time I've surprised people by being something other than what they expect.
Realizing that the four men didn't expect this to happen, and don't know what to do next, I decide to take my chance. The weakness in my blood is gone, and I've got the knife gripped tight in my hand. Lunging forward, I swerve between them, knife out to slash to my right. I feel it bite into flesh and hear a curse behind me as I fly out the door and into the open graveyard.
Passing by the burial places of so many ancestors—like I said, the early Arizona men had lots of children—I find myself calling out to them, wishing the ghostly motherfuckers would do something besides haunt the manor and scare off local kids. After all, if I'm going to be attacked by crazed psychos who can do seemingly magical things, I want a weapon besides an old ass knife.
My call doesn't go unanswered.
Overhead, clouds pass and block out the sun, casting the graveyard into brief shadow. Wind kicks up in the air. I feel something stir beneath the earth, a dozen different presences reaching out from their graves.
And I swear as I walk past Great Aunt Cathy's tombstone that I see her in her nightgown, a shovel in her hands, see-through but still somehow terrifying. She's not the only one; all around me specters are rising up to face the four men who are following closely at my heels.
As I get to the tree line just past the graveyard's edge, I dare to stop and turn around. My eyes go wide at what I see.
The spirits of the Arizona family graveyard are flying at the four men like a flock of birds. They howl and screech, scratch and bite, and just in general make a nuisance of themselves. Though they don't seem to be capable of heavily wounding the men, they sure do slow them down and weaken them. The man with the braid, who made me see things, can't even seem to fend them off at all.
I smile at the sight of it. But just as soon as the spirits come, they disappear the instant the clouds overhead break and the sun beats down on the earth. Their forms dissolve in the bright light, freeing the men to chase after me once more.
This time, it's the man with the cane who puts his hand out and narrows his eyes at me.
I don't want to find out what kind of otherworldly power he has. The poison is still burning out of my veins and giving me back my strength. Jerking my eyes away from his, I turn and run through the woods of the back acreage, knowing that I'll run out of Arizona Manor and reach the edge of the property line soon.
Think, Ellen. You've got a knife, and apparently some ghosts on your side, not to mention that thing you did with your hand. There's gotta be something else you can do to fight these psychos off.
As I run across the soft ground, between tall and spindly trees, I try to brainstorm. Above me, crows caw-caw at my presence, their feathers ruffled as I run through woods that have been undisturbed for several years. Mom always said that the black-feathered birds loved the Arizona Manor, because supposedly my great grandmother had an affinity for speaking to them. She knew enough stories about her late husband's family to fill an entire book with myths and legends.
Or at least, I thought they were stories. Maybe some of them were true.
I can hear the footsteps of the men behind me, gaining quickly. I dare to glance over my shoulder; the strong, hulking man who tore down the doors is closest, the guy with the braid right behind him, the silver-haired man after that, and the man with the cane calmly taking up the rear, seemingly doing nothing to hurry at all. He clearly doesn't think that I'll be fast enough to evade them—especially with the Hulk himself practically crawling up my ass.
There's nowhere left to run. I've reached the end of the property line; beyond this is a thick stream, then a busy street. If I'm going to face the four men, I better do it now.
I stop suddenly, spinning on my heels, and throw my hands up—the knife pointed out. At least I've got the first rule down: the sharp, stabby point goes towards the person chasing you.
Feeling like an insane person, I look to the treetops and the skies to call out for help. "I need you! Protect me."
My voice echoes across the close branches overhead and ricochets through the woods of my father's ancestors, making leaves tremble, stirring the wind. The Hulk pauses and frowns at me, narrowing his eyes and cracking his knuckles, seemingly considering whether or not I've just done something. I have to admit, as the dappled light overhead hits his face and the stark black fuzz of his head, there's something handsome about his brutality. If he grew out his stubbly hair he'd be more of a Jason Momoa and less of a hulking beast.
Too bad a hundred crows are currently diving straight towards his head.
A sigh of relief leaves my lips as they cascade down on him, shrieking and cawing, a cacophony of jet black feathers and sharp talons. I almost feel bad at the shout of alarm that comes from the brute's mouth as he raises his arms to try to fend them off. They're a cloud of angry black moving together as one, dive-bombing his head in perfect sync with anger in their tiny throats.
Waving my hand, I direct some of them to break off and fly for the other three behind the brute, so they don't catch up with me either. A soft weight hits my left shoulder, and I feel a sharp beak delicately run through my hair, plucking a single blonde strand from my head. The crow curls her talons and flaps her wings, nudging me.
Oh, right. Time to run. The crows will only hold the Hulk off for so long. Casting about, I find one last place left to go, towards my right, following the current of the stream.
Those doors I hallucinated have returned.
This time, they're standing all alone, no buildings on either side of them, like something out of a dream. Steps lead up towards their wrought-iron covered beauty, and they glow with warm golden light.
The steps are made out of the water of the stream.
I blink, but they're still there, inexplicable and magical. Just looking at them fills me with raw desperation—and terror, because there's no way something normal and mundane is on the other side of those doors.
A voice says, "You can see them?"
I glance over, spotting the man with the cane, who's managed to swat the crows away long enough to approach me. Frowning, I brandish my knife. "Don't get any closer."
He holds his hands up, a pacifying smile on his face. "You see the doors of Cain."
"I don't know what you're talking about." I stiffen, glancing at the doors then back at him again. "There's nothing there."
"Only special people can see the doors, you know." He cocks his head to the side like a bird. "You'll go through them. It's what you're meant to do."
I flip him off, then turn towards the stream and leap into it, grimacing as I wade through the cold water. The crow on my shoulder flaps her wings and flies off, squawking at me in annoyance, as if I've done something wrong.
Without turning around, I run until my lungs burst, making my path as confusing and tangled as possible, hoping to somehow lose them. But I don't hear the men following me, and when I finally look back they're gone.
Exhausted and out of options, I circle back towards the stream, cross it downriver from where I lost the men, and walk back towards the manor house on foot. There's no sign of them, as if they all vanished into nowhere, and I take the steps up towards the manor's front doors on exhausted feet as the sun sets.
Tomorrow, I'll find Herb's son and talk to him about moving into the garage apartment. Surely the crime scene has been cleared by now, and he'll let me move back, even temporarily. Then I'll look for a job—hopefully someone will give me one despite the infamous murder my name is now associated with—and try to eke out some semblance of a normal life. The first thing I'll do with my first paycheck is buy a cell phone so I'm no longer a ghost wandering through the woods. That was something Mom said she'd hel
p me with, but being killed will change your plans suddenly.
Finding an old Victorian sofa that's only been lightly chewed on by rodents, I curl up on my side and try to fall asleep. This time I'm not afraid of the ghosts. I know they're on my side now.
I wake to a soft golden glow. At first I think it's the sun rising and streaming through the windows of the manor house, but a sense of foreboding tells me I don't have that kind of luck. Warily opening my eyes and stretching my stiff, sore back, I sit up and stare helplessly at the source of the light.
The doors are back.
This time, they've replaced the front doors to the manor house.
I could go out the back. That door has been boarded up, but I bet with enough kicks it would fall down and let me out. Or maybe if I close my eyes and go back to sleep, the doors will go away just as mysteriously as they appeared.
But my instincts tell me they'll be back.
There's something inevitable about the doors. They've appeared to me since the night Mom was murdered. I've tried to escape them, to find safety in other places, but they follow me.
I don't know what's on the other side. All I know is that when I look at them, I feel a sense of foreboding and desire wrapped in one, a push and a pull so strong it rattles my teeth.
So I decide it's time to go through and find out where they'll lead me.
Chapter 9
The doors are warm to the touch. For some reason, despite the golden glow, I wasn't expecting that.
Up close, I can see that the wrought iron scrollwork on them depicts different flowers: hemlock, wisteria, foxgloves, and other poisonous yet beautiful things. Some of the trailing, curling ivy branches are actually long, thin snakes with forked tongues and mouths that bite their tails.
Beneath the scrollwork, carved into the wood of the grand, great doors, are scenes of murder. Two men in an arena face off; one winds up with a javelin through the chest. A man sneaks up on a man with a crown on his head and stabs him through the heart. What looks like a small child pours a vial into a drink and gives it to an assembled council, who all promptly fall face forward into their platters of food.
