Dearly, Departed

by Lia Habel

  Dearly, Departed is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Lia Habel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52333-4

  www.delreybooks.com

  Jacket design and illustration: David Stevenson,

  based on photographs © Michael Frost (woman) and

  © Jenkins, R./plainpicture/Corbis (cemetery)

  v3.1

  “It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. ‘They all eat one another!’ he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, ‘They all feed one another,’ and called it good.”

  —CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN,

  The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  “Not many young girls feel very happy about the past, and the past is very beautiful. Very beautiful.”

  —BARNABAS COLLINS

  in Dark Shadows, episode 250, Dan Curtis, 1967

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Bram

  1 Nora

  2 Nora

  3 Nora

  4 Nora

  5 Bram

  6 Wolfe

  7 Nora

  8 Bram

  9 Victor

  10 Nora

  11 Bram

  12 Pamela

  13 Nora

  14 Bram

  15 Pamela

  16 Nora

  17 Bram

  18 Victor

  19 Pamela

  20 Nora

  21 Pamela

  22 Bram

  23 Victor

  24 Pamela

  25 Bram

  26 Nora

  27 Pamela

  28 Bram

  29 Pamela

  30 Wolfe

  31 Nora

  32 Pamela

  33 Victor

  34 Bram

  35 Nora

  36 Pamela

  37 Bram

  38 Nora

  Epilogue: Nora

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE BRAM

  I was buried alive.

  When the elevator groaned to a stop in the middle of the rocky shaft, I knew I was buried alive. Trapped thousands of feet below the earth’s surface and hundreds above the bottom of the shaft, dangling in a dimly lit ten- by ten-foot cage over the black bowels of the very mine I had been so bloody relieved to get work in.

  I pulled myself to my feet and pushed my best friend, Jack, aside, hitting the button that controlled the elevator. I hit it again and again, wailed my fist on it. Nothing. The glass-paned lantern dangling from the ceiling flickered wildly as the kerosene within dwindled, as if it were attempting to ward off its own death with bursts of exaggerated life.

  Dread became a solid, burning thing within me, something twisting my own flesh to its will, speeding my heart and making my skin slick with sweat. Before I knew it was coming up, I doubled over and retched through the grated floor. Jack sat calmly beside me as I heaved, his bloody eye sockets and the gaping wound in his throat mocking me, mocking my attempt to rescue him. He looked like some kind of hellish funhouse clown.

  The dam broke and I finally started screaming. At Jack. At God. At everything. There was nothing left to do but scream. I hadn’t screamed when the monsters descended on us. I hadn’t screamed when I had to run from them, or when I fought them, or when I dragged Jack to the elevator, blood bursting from the hole in his neck. Everything happened so quickly, it seemed like there was no time to scream.

  The monsters. Mad, animalistic, discolored, broken and battered from throwing themselves after their prey, each one thrashing like a person trapped beneath a frozen pond might struggle against the ice in desperate search of air … all teeth and hunger …

  I slid down the wall of the elevator and buried my face in my sticky, itching hands. The coppery scent of the blood on them nauseated me, and I leaned back, my screams echoing back to me through the endless mineshaft. The elevator was covered in Jack’s blood. I was covered in Jack’s blood. I was wearing more of his blood on my ratty waistcoat than remained, still as a stagnant pond, in his own veins. My cheap old pocket watch was caked with it. Even the digital camera still feverishly clutched in his hands was slashed with red. Stupid New Victorian piece of crap. I’d always ragged on him for being so attached to that camera. Couldn’t even get the pictures off it, not without a computer—and no one around here had a computer.

  Still, Jack had been so proud of it, of the snapshots he took. And I’d dutifully posed every time he ordered me to.

  Slowly, trembling, I pried it out of his rubbery fingers.

  The lantern dimmed. I tried not to panic. I figured out how to turn the camera on, hoping futilely that the conspiracy theories were true—that the New Victorians could track every bit of tech their people used, every digital letter, practically every thought. Didn’t they put chips in their citizens, tagging them like cattle? Maybe, if the smuggler who snuck it through the border hadn’t cracked and killed the ability, it’d work. Maybe.

  If nothing else, I could record a message.

  Just as I figured out how to shoot video, the lantern died, plunging me into perfect darkness. I swallowed back a sob and spoke aloud, my throat raw, my voice the voice of a ghost in its tomb.

  “If this thing is working … my name is Bram Griswold. I’m sixteen. It’s … July fourth, 2193. I live at the Griswold Farm, Long Road, West Gould, Plata Ombre, Punk-Controlled Brazil. I worked here to help support my mom and my sisters … in the Celestino mine. And these things, these—these people … they were eating … eating Jack …”

  That did it. I started crying. I dug my nails into the wounds in my own arms, the places where the monsters had bitten me, seeking desperately to use pain to pin myself to reality, to coax my mind back from the edge.

  It didn’t work.

  I said it.

  “I’m pretty sure I’m going to … to die here. Emily, Addy … I’m sorry.” Tears ran into my mouth, a strange relief after the taste of vomit. “I’m so sorry.”

  I slipped a white hand between the heavy velvet drapes.

  “Is it here, Nora?”

  “No,” I murmured.

  The girl standing behind me released a huff of air and tugged impatiently at her cuffs. “You’re so lucky to have your own carriage. Public transport wears on my nerves. If it’s late, you start to suspect that you missed it, and if it’s early, you have missed it …”

  “Then why are you panicking? You’re not taking public transport. You’re coming home with me.”

  “Because we’ve been here for almost an hour! You know me, I grow anxious whenever I have to wait, whatever I’m waiting for. Remember that time our final grades were delayed for a day due to a computer mishap? God, I thought I was going to die.”

  I lent only half an ear to Pamela’s nervous chattering, my gaze drifting back to the yard outside. The wrought-iron gates of St. Cyprian’s School for Girls were flung wide, and a steady stream of electric carriages poured in through them—sleeker and curvier than those of the First Victorians, and designed with room for a driver within. Those belonging to the upper crust of the school were crafted of elegantly molded alloy meta
l, done up in inky purple or mahogany brown and shining like glass. A few of the richest girls had their own carriages, and these were pearly white, to indicate the—largely imagined—innocence and purity of their passengers.

  The carriage that would come for me would not be white, so I felt compelled to add, “And it isn’t mine, Pamma. It belongs to my aunt.”

  “I know.”

  Pamela Roe, my best friend since childhood, stepped in front of me and resumed sitting atop her steamer trunk. She was of Indian heritage and average looks, with black, sweet eyes and long hair the color of chocolate.

  “We could carry the trunks down to the yard,” I offered.

  It was the last day of the term, and the halls of the school were noisier than usual. Everyone was heading home for the holidays. A sea of trunks and swirling skirts churned just outside the alcove where Pam and I had squeezed ourselves and our things. The window there afforded a good view of the crowded courtyard below.

  “We’d end up crushing ourselves.” Pamela cut her eyes to the hall. “Being crushed is very unladylike. I’d rather wait for a porter.”

  “We’ll be here an age, then. Better get used to it.” Every hired porter I’d managed to track down that day had already been occupied, already dedicated to fulfilling the whims of one or more of the upper-class girls. St. Cyprian’s was one of the most prestigious private schools in the Territories, a formidable building set on a few acres of manicured land. It was done in the mid-Victorian style, all real stone and wood and a city’s population of statues and gargoyles—no plastic, no holographic projectors. During my years there I’d often had occasion to feel like I was forever fated to stand, alone and motionless, in the midst of the school’s daily dance … and today the feeling was magnified. Pamela and I were left perched atop our belongings in our relatively plain frocks as bright young things and servants rushed about us. Their belongings were more important than ours, their destinations more glamorous.

  Pam fell silent, leaning against the hallway’s dark wooden paneling. I occupied myself by drawing a pearly stylus over the screen of the digital diary in my lap. I was working on my final paper for history. My shoulders hunched up as I wrote, a habit my mother never could hammer out of me.

  Nora Dearly, I jotted atop the page. December 17th, 2195. Assignment Number 14. Early New Victorian History.

  “How does it feel to wear color again?” Pamela asked.

  The sudden question echoed in my head like a gunshot. My shoulders dropped and I let my pen go still. I glanced down at the high-necked dress of red taffeta I’d put on a few hours ago, at Pamela’s insistence. She’d picked it out for me—indeed, she’d packed my trunk with all of my black mourning weeds, aired out my white handkerchiefs and hidden the black-edged ones, done everything in her power to make the transition easy for me. Pamela had the supernatural speed and invisibility of a born mother when it came to arranging things and caring for people. Today was the year-and-a-day anniversary of my father’s death, and I was no longer in mourning.

  At least outwardly.

  I could wear color again now. I could dance again, sit in the front row of church again, visit friends again, all with the approval of Those Who Supposedly Knew Better. But that didn’t change the fact that I didn’t really want to.

  “Fine.” It didn’t sound right. “I mean … of course I’m glad to wear color again.”

  Pamela didn’t buy it. She saw through my every lie—she always could. I hated and respected and loved her for it. Her eyes fell to my diary. “You’ve been ignoring your work again, haven’t you? Isn’t that due in two hours?”

  I’d heard this before, and didn’t fancy hearing it again. “Pamma, you have your own studies to fret about. Don’t worry about me. Everything’ll get done.”

  She sighed. “You were doing well for so long, but …”

  I reached out to lay my hand on her arm. She was wearing a much-washed dress of blue lawn. “Really, Pam. It’s all right.”

  She bit her inner cheek. “You shouldn’t hold onto your emotions, is all I’m saying. It isn’t healthy. I know that your period of mourning is over and that no one will make exceptions for you any longer. But just don’t let that make you go … cold.”

  This from the girl who’d served as my human hankie countless times since my father’s death? Ha. I decided to let it slide, but I couldn’t help saying, “I’m not holding them in, Pam. I’m saving them up for Aunt Gene.”

  She smelled another lie, and gave me a look of miserable condemnation. But she didn’t press the issue. Instead, after a moment, she said, “If you go off on her, you’d better record it, you know. Video, not just audio. Or it didn’t happen as far as I’m concerned.”

  I knew I was forgiven. “If I do, you’ll be the first to hear about it. I showed you her letter, didn’t I?” Well, more accurately, I’d hurled my aunt’s letter at Pam while raging about her audacity in going to a grand ball the very day we were out of mourning for my father.

  Pam’s eyes flicked away to the window and she hopped to her feet, her high-button boots clopping on the floor. “There it is!”

  With a sigh of my own, I shut my leather-bound digidiary.

  A quick scan of the hallways revealed that there were still no porters to be had. I helped Pamela carry her trunk down the hall, down the sweeping front staircase, and through the ornate wooden doors.

  Aunt Gene’s carriage was an unremarkable black Model V, plain next to its neighbors on the circular drive. By the time we’d set Pam’s trunk down and adjusted our windblown bonnets, Aunt Gene’s part-time chauffer, Jorge Alencar, had found a place to park it and was striding across the lawn toward us.

  “Miss Dearly, it’s been a long few months,” he said, his voice warm. He was a tall man in his fifties with leathery skin and receding gray hair. “Miss Roe, a pleasure to see you as well. I’ll get the trunks up, if you young ladies want to settle in.”

  “Thank you. Mine’s in the alcove with that narrow window.”

  Directions given, Pamela hooked her arm in mine and started to drag me toward the carriage. Her family didn’t have a vehicle of any sort, and she always looked forward to a drive. Why, I had no idea. She usually fell sound asleep the moment we started moving.

  “Let’s try to focus on the holiday,” she started.

  “There isn’t much to focus on,” I argued. “Different day, same—”

  Pam gave me an admonishing look and continued as if I hadn’t interrupted. “What I think we should do is plan something fun, like a party. We could make crackers, play games, put a coin in a pudding, and all of that. We could invite my cousins—”

  “Ah, Miss Dearly, always going out of her way to help those in need,” called a familiar voice from behind us.

  Pam forgot the rest of her sentence. “Nora,” she said warningly as I drew to a stop.

  My fingers tightened on her wrist. I knew who it was without looking. “Miss Mink.”

  “Yes, how astute of you.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for her games, but I turned around. Yellow-haired Vespertine Mink, one of the school’s most popular and powerful students, stood there regarding us as one might an interesting insect. “What do you want?”

  She crooked a sharp little smile at me and bobbed her head in a shadow of a curtsy. “I just wanted to tell you how wonderful it is to see one of our best and brightest literally lending a hand to the less fortunate.”

  Pamela held her head high in spite of the slight. “Miss Mink.”

  “Is that all, Mink?” I asked. Vespertine’s eyes darted back to mine. I wanted them on me. Pamela was a charity case, a scholarship student, and I did my best to take every blow for her that I could. We both lacked the ability to play politics that most of the high-bred girls at Cyprian’s seemed to have been born with, but unlike me, Pamela had to care what people thought of her.

  “Not quite, Dearly.” Vespertine took a step closer. Like us, she hadn’t wasted time in changing out of her teal-and-gr
ay-striped monstrosity of a uniform. She was dressed in a bustled gown of emerald faille with a fashionable ruffled hem that whispered upon the grass. “I have a bit of good news to share with you.”

  “Oh? Make it fast. We have somewhere to be.”

  Vespertine flashed another smile. “My mother will be joining the school board next month, are you aware?”

  Open threats I could work with. I lifted my chin. “Oh? How interesting. Tell me … is Lady Mink less or more catty than you generally are?”

  “Miss Mink?” Pam whispered. Vespertine didn’t acknowledge her, only stood there regarding me with a mixture of hatred and disgust. Ten points for me.

  “Miss Roe is speaking to you,” I said.

  “Who cares?” she replied.

  “Miss Mink?” Pamela edged closer to my side.

  Vespertine’s head whipped up. “What?”

  For a moment Pamela seemed to be riveted by Vespertine’s glare, and I feared that she’d forgotten her brilliant comeback, whatever it was. I’d never known Pam to be particularly handy with a cutting remark. However, after a moment she smiled and asked, “Is there some reason your family cares to commemorate the year 2178? Some special achievement, perhaps?”

  Vespertine’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, shut up.”

  Pamela’s mouth rounded in a beautiful mockery of surprise. “Have I offended? I was only curious, for that’s nearly twenty years ago now.” She directed her attention down the drive, to the unfashionable, dull brown Mink carriage—which had the year 2178 molded right onto its doors. “Your family has, what … fourteen horseless carriages? Heavens, that’s a lot.”

  Inwardly, I did a little dance. Nobody knew why the Mink family sent that ancient thing for Vespertine all the time, unless it was some twisted way of teaching her humility. In which case I was fully on board and would tattoo the date on my forehead.

  Mink tossed her head. “I’m through talking to the likes of you. Dearly, I’d watch my step if I were you.” She gave me one final, nasty look before stalking off toward the open yard, where her well-dressed clique stood watching us.

  “Looking forward to it!” I called after her. Pamela caught the handle of the carriage door and pulled it open. “I can’t believe you said that!” I exclaimed, unable to contain a true grin.