by Sara Clancy
“You can stay if you want,” she said. However, she quickly continued, “I mean, I would totally do it for you, but apparently I have a different standard for friendship than you do.”
“Are you honestly trying to guilt me into this?”
She didn’t respond. He was about to spit out that he wasn’t her corpse-hunting buddy when he remembered just what was waiting for her down in that pit. It wasn’t just a faceless multitude of dead bodies. One of those corpses had been her friend. Someone she had seen every day of her life. Someone who had become like a brother to her. It had devastated her to keep him within the ground, hidden away, deprived of his proper burial rights, but she had done it because anything else would have risked exposing them both. He couldn’t let her face that alone.
Apparently, the full force of his survival instincts didn’t really add up to all that much because, even as they screamed at him to stay outside, he still pulled his phone out and turned on the flashlight. The brilliant smile she gave him was almost enough to make him forget just how stupid he was being. It was remarkable that for all her willingness to influence people to get her way, she never thought to use the fact that she was stunning. It would make her life a lot easier.
Despite the fact that neither of them would ever forget the first time they were there, it still took them a while to find the trap door. His heart sank when they actually located it under a thick tangle of twisted grass. The bare brittle slabs of wood were nearly the same color as the moist earth that surrounded them. Without a proper handle and the hinges submerged in the dirt, the effect was a near perfect camouflage.
They took longer than necessary to clear it, carefully pushing aside the knotted mess, making sure that they were still usable to hide it again when they left. That was part of the reason. The other was that they were both putting off the actual task they were there to complete. Finally, there was nothing left to do, and the door was exposed. Still, they lingered. It was Nicole who reached for the door first. There was only a slight tremor in her fingers as she hooked them around the planks and yanked the trap door up. The hinges screamed in protest, shedding flakes of rust into the sun-drenched air. They both cringed at the sound and stared into the pit that was now opened before them. Even the midday sun couldn’t penetrate the shadows. The scent of wet earth, mildew and rot, wafted out from the depths, carried upon a cold draft that curled out over the rim and drifted into the air.
Nicole swallowed, but her voice still came out strange. “Remind me to bring out some oil for the hinges later.”
His eyebrows shot up. “We’re doing maintenance now? You want to make the place nice? Maybe get a throw rug? A potted plant?”
For a long moment, she held his gaze. He wasn’t quite sure what she was waiting for, but when she didn’t get it, she settled for rolling her eyes.
“No one ever accomplishes anything with a negative attitude,” she chastised.
He couldn’t help himself. The words were out before he thought about it. “I accomplish being negative.”
She glared at him, fighting down a weak smile as he smirked in response. With a huff that sounded disapproving, she leaned forward, hovering her arm over the open space, vainly attempting to chase away some of the shadows with her phone light. The darkness didn’t budge. That was enough to tell Benton that they really shouldn’t go down there. But Nicole took it as a challenge; one she met with a deep breath. He could actually see her inflate with her mounting confidence. She squared her shoulders, straightened her back, and fixed an almost serene smile onto her face.
“Please, for me, remember that reason has to trump impulse,” he said.
She ignored the comment. “Don’t suppose you want to go first.”
No, thank you, I’m sane. He hurled the thought out to her but still got to his feet and shrugged his shoulders with as much casualness as he could summon.
“Sure. Why not?”
Her surprise was clear, but she had the decency not to mention it. Instead, she waved her hand out towards the dark hole in the earth, her phone passing a thin ray of light over the shadows. It still didn’t help. He still couldn’t see the bottom of the wooden stairs. He couldn’t see anything that lay beyond the first three steps. The wood looked as rotten and worn as the trapdoor. As Nicole repositioned herself, her fingers pushed a bit of dirt over the rim. It felt like a cloud and he could swear he saw the stairs tremble under the additional weight. So, instead of taking a step and hoping that it would still hold him, he sat down on the edge and swung his legs into the abyss. His fingers tightened painfully around his mobile phone as he lifted it up to the level of his eyes.
He hadn’t fully inched his toes onto the first step when it started to groan. He froze, air trapped in his lungs as the soft trickle of dust drifted down into the abyss and scattered against the unseen dirt floor. The wood stilled, the pebbles drifted over the floor, and the world was reduced back into a heavy unbroken silence. Nicole met his worried gaze with one of her own, but didn’t stop him when he slowly edged more weight onto the plank. He kept one hand fisted in the tangled grass and dirt, hoping that the hold might be enough to pull him back up when the stair inevitably gave way. To his surprise and resentment, it held. Now he was actually faced with the task of standing up.
Again, Nicole didn’t stop him. Instead, she hovered one hand along his arm, like she truly thought she could catch him if things went bad. The wood moaned with renewed force, the thin trail of dust became a downpour, but still the step held. Before he lost his daringness, he hurried down, sinking deeper into the frigid earth with every step. Each one creaked and shuddered in turn. The handrail was eroded and he didn’t trust it, but without it, he felt completely exposed.
As he descended, he trailed his dim light over the emerging room. The cellar was carved out of the earth with no care taken for appearance. The walls were rough and uneven and the floor was still layered with a thick coating of soft soil. Roots had grown through the ceiling and dangled down like skeletal fingers. A chill lingered within the depths of the hole. The deeper he went, the more it rose up to meet him. It clung to his clothes and invaded his body with every breath. But it was the silence that made his gut twist sharply. It was as if all life had been gouged out of the space, leaving only a dank pit of nothingness.
The beam of Nicole’s light soon joined his as she followed as close behind him as she dared. Even together, the lights did little against the lurking shadows. The whole staircase rattled with their continued efforts, and despite the sound, he still found himself slowing down. All he wanted to do was run back up into the light and get as far away from here as possible. He forced himself to keep going, Nicole right behind, one hand pressed firmly between his shoulder blades. Before he could give in to his urge to flee, his foot found the earth again. What he had thought would be a relief instead resulted in his heart lurching into his throat, hammering until he could barely breathe around it. The soft dirt under his sneaker was proof that he was actually back here. Back in the room where he had almost died.
The minimal light glanced off the polished surface of the coffins even as they hid within the shadows. It was the Leanan Sidhe’s collection. He had come so close to claiming a place amongst the others. It wasn’t a new thought, but to be here, to see the others, was something else entirely. The sensation hit home with a crippling force as he took his first real step back into the basement. With Nicole’s aid, the glow of their phones beat back more of the shadows and flashed across the polished wood of the coffins that filled the space, each one arranged with care into perfect rows. For the first time, he allowed himself to count them. His lungs nearly squeezed the life out of him as he wondered if they were occupied or if one of them was still empty, waiting for him.
His head spun as his breath became short and shallow. A cold sweat prickled on his palms as he quickly glanced over his shoulder, searching for Nicole amongst the shadows. Her dark hair fanned around her face, surrendering her more to the darkness than
was reassuring. Even though she kept her attention focused around the room, her free hand found his and they threaded their fingers together. He squeezed and she answered with a squeeze of her own. The solid warmth of another human being made it easier to venture further into the room.
Nicole didn’t release his hand as she took the lead. She cut a beeline across the room, refusing to look anywhere else but the spot on the far wall where she had painted the symbol. He followed without comment, constantly scanning, searching each shadow with his dull light and realizing how little he knew about the space. It was strange that some moments were forever engraved in startling detail within his memory, while others were lost to the fog that the demon’s poison had created within his mind. He could remember the mirror-like eyes of the monster in perfect detail. But any actual words that had been exchanged were reduced to vague notions. His ears echoed with the perfect replica of the sound of Victor’s ripping flesh. He could remember the exact resonance of Victor’s blood as it dripped down from his arm and hit the untreated ground, and the slight slurp of it being absorbed into the dirt. Without his permission, his hand navigated the light over the patch of clumped earth that still clutched the teen’s blood. His attempt to force the light aside only exposed the white viscose goo that Benton had choked on as he overdosed on the paranormal poison.
Nicole’s hand tightened around his, the insistent squeeze bringing him back to the moment, forcing his head to snap up and meet her gaze. Even the shadows couldn’t rob her eyes from the obvious concern that dwelled within them. Guilt flooded him when he realized that he was failing miserably in actually being helpful to her. He forced a reassuring smile, but couldn’t keep his thoughts from going back to that night again. It was a jarring loss when she slipped her hand free. Instead of heading to the far wall, she drifted towards the nearest coffin. He watched as her fingers brushed over the polished wood, tracing the same path his fingers had been forced to touch in his nightmares. It was distracting and he didn’t see her fingers finding the gap until it was too late.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
A slave to her curiosity, Nicole forced her fingers around the edge of the top and cracked it open. The scent of decay engulfed them as it crept out from the confines of the coffin. Benton rushed forward to stop her from casting her light into the gap she had created. His hand wrapped around her wrist, but she had already seen the corpse within.
“Nicole, don’t look.”
“It’s not Vic,” she mumbled, like that would be his only point of protest. Her brow furrowed as she ducked down, squinting into the space. “We should have brought flowers. When you visit a grave, you’re supposed to bring flowers, right? I should have thought of that. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I’m sure they won’t mind,” Benton said as he inched closer, still not sure if he should stop her.
Nicole didn’t look away from the gap as she spoke, “He looks like stone.”
Rust hadn’t yet ravaged the hinges of the once loved coffins. The lid opened with a sound reminiscent of a sigh and clicked into place, holding upright to let her examine the corpse. Nicole edged closer still, her curiosity winning over her disgust. The dim glow of her phone light trailed over its occupant. While the man might have been settled into a peaceful pose, his malnourished and gaunt form spoke of the horrors he had endured before his murder. Her hand trembled as she reached out. Benton flinched beside her but didn’t try to stop her. He wouldn’t have been able to anyway. Biting the inside of his cheek, he watched as she traced a fingertip along the smooth marble of the man’s skin.
“It’s the zinc coffins,” Benton explained. It was unnerving to hear his own voice bouncing back to him from the damp walls, and he lowered his voice to a whisper. “When matched with humid conditions like the one in this room, decomposing tissue produces a waxy substance, which in time hardens into what you see here.”
Slowly, she turned just enough to look at him and whispered back, “How do you know that?”
Benton tapped his mobile phone against his head with a bit more force than necessary. “Each time I dream, bits get left behind.”
The confession made him restless. The need to flee built up within him until his feet began to edge back towards the staircase. Admitting that there was one foreign mind, still flicking through the recesses of his brain, made it easier for all the others to rush to the surface of his thoughts. He knew that all the voices in his head belonged to him alone, and that others were only memories. But when they combined within one moment, the voices created a shriek too loud to ignore.
“Can we just check the symbol and get the hell out of here?” he moaned.
He didn’t believe for a moment that he was doing a good job at covering up the mounting stress he was under. It was more that Nicole was far too captivated by her discoveries for her to notice. Rising up onto her tip toes, she lifted her light high above her head like it would somehow increase the source and give her a better look at the rows of coffins.
Memories that weren’t his own began to twist around the edge of his awareness, encroaching so softly that Benton didn’t question them. After all, it wasn’t a completely alien experience. Each time he dreamed, the murderers he inhabited left a stain on his soul and a whisper in his head. Now, standing before the Leanan Sidhe’s treasured possessions, the slivers of consciousness it had left burrowed within his brain started to inch to the surface.
He could feel it. Its dedication to the singular task of making its collections as perfect as possible. The unrelenting pride of what it had created within this room. The grotesquely deformed love it had for each of its victims. Those emotions weaved through Benton’s own disgust until they flowed into each other.
The polished wood slipped smoothly under his fingertips as he dragged them along the side of the nearest coffin. It was perfect. It was a work of art, chiseled and refined; something fitting of the results of his life’s work.
“How can anyone do this?” Nicole whispered on a choking breath.
She looks like she’s admiring the perfection of my work, Benton thought to himself.
“Time and love,” he smiled. He pressed his hand against the top of the coffin and stroked the surface with a lover’s caress. “They all loved me so much. Now they can love me forever.”
The beam of light tilted and focused on his face. He flinched as the light assaulted his unprepared eyes. That split second of reality was enough to jar the Leanan Sidhe from the forefront of his mind. It left a gaping hole within him and he quickly shook his head, rearranging the contents of his brain back into their rightful positions. Blinking into the glare, he couldn’t quite bring himself to meet her gaze.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Not my thoughts.”
“Please tell me you’re not possessed,” she said with a slight croak in her voice. Her eyes flicked over the room like she was searching for a second exit. “I really don’t have the time for that right now.”
Benton huffed a laugh. “No. It’s more like daydreaming than anything else.”
“Does that happen a lot?” she asked, her voice taking on a crisp and all too chipper tone. A happy mask that she believed perfectly hid her concerns.
“It’s worse when there are reminders,” he mumbled as he rubbed his forehead. Pain sparked across his skin as his finger dug against his bruises. It helped to clear his mind a little more. “Can we please just go?”
She nodded hurriedly but closed the coffin with respectful care. With renewed purpose, she crossed back to the painted symbol and resumed her appraisal. Every so often, her eyes would shift to him. For all the ones that he noticed, he gave her a reassuring nod. It didn’t matter what he tried, he could tell that she never truly believed him. Her movements became hurried, the light passing over the clumped earth in short, sharp sweeps.
“Can I do anything to help?” he asked, desperate for some way to convince her that he was in control of himself, or at the very least to be of use.
“
I’m almost done.” That all too excited voice remained. He was starting to hate that sound. “You can wait outside, if you want.”
The offer enticed a relieved sigh out of him, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Not if it meant leaving her down here by herself, with only the corpses and memories. But he did take to pacing the room, prowling around the edges with a desperate need for a distraction. He moved along the wall, passing his light over the encroaching darkness, making it scatter away from the dim light for the simple reason that he could. Then one shadow refused to move.
He jumped back when a blotch of white emerged from the ebony abyss and reached for him. His startled yelp made Nicole whirl around, and she charged her arm up, adding the beam of her flashlight to his. It was enough to cast off the darker shadows, revealing the looming specter of Death before him. No matter how many times he saw the living embodiment of the grim reaper, it was a sight he never really got used to. Its body seemed to shift between a solid mass and whispering smoke within the same moment. Real but not. There but so much like a figment of his imagination.
“Benton!”
Nicole’s sharp snap was enough to make him turn. Idly, he wondered how many times she had called to him before she resorted to that tone.
“What do you see?” she asked.
Benton swallowed thickly and turned back to the figure before him. Death hadn’t moved, the featureless white smear that served as its face watching him from mere inches away.
“I see Death.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Nicole said, the startled edge remaining in her voice. “With you, that could mean a lot of things.”
“Death like the grim reaper.”
“Oh.” She moved closer to him, her eyes searching the space even though she wouldn’t be able to see it. “Where is it?”
Breathing heavy, Benton lifted one finger and pointed towards the ghostly shape. While he moved, the specter didn’t. It simply hovered before him, silently watching. The shape consumed so much of his focus that he hadn’t noticed Nicole shuffling closer until she was practically beside it.
