Waking the Dead

by Jane Davitt

  “If you don’t tell me what they said ‑‑” Caitrin was breathing hard now, her face flushed with temper and agitation.

  “Put it this way, love ‑‑” John braced himself against the dashboard. “I believed them. And that’s why we got the hell out of there. Now stop talking and get us to your uncle, will you? And, Josh, if you can’t do whatever it is you do ‑‑” He fumbled in his pocket and took out his cell phone. “Use this instead.”

  There was near silence from the back seat for a moment or two, then Josh, phone still pressed to his ear, said, “He’s not answering.”

  “Of course he’s not.” John was doing his best to keep his eyes on both the road and Caitrin at the same time. “Why would he want to do a thing like that, when it’s what we agreed to?”

  “I think Fred hit something, too,” Josh reported. “A rock, I don’t know. He swerved. He’s a little farther back now, at least.”

  “Uncle John!” The frantic quality in Caitrin’s voice drew John’s attention from the rear windscreen. “People!”

  In front of them, loomed the collection of buildings that made up the town, such as it was. A small crowd of people had just left the pub; they were in the road, which was narrow enough to begin with even if it hadn’t curved in a manner that made quick travel impossible, and how the bloody hell they were going to get through there without killing themselves or someone else was beyond John.

  “We’ll have to stop,” he told her. There was nothing for it ‑‑ he’d not be responsible for anyone’s death, not if he could help it. “Wait until we’re a short distance from Gillian’s shop, then slam on the brakes. As soon as we’re stopped, both of you out of the car as fast as you can, and away from it, you hear me? Josh?”

  “I hear you,” Josh said tightly. Of course he did ‑‑ everything John said out loud and plenty more that he didn’t.

  “Cait?”

  “Okay. I know.” She was concentrating on the road in front of her, just as she should be.

  The group of people had seen them now and were acting like sheep themselves, scattering and bleating and doing everything but getting out of the bloody way. John slammed his fist down on the horn in the middle of the steering wheel and hoped for the best. He had a feeling the car behind them wouldn’t be braking so much as crashing.

  Caitrin was muttering prayers under her breath, or maybe swearing; both seemed equally appropriate responses to the situation. John eyed the rapidly decreasing distance between them and Gillian’s shop and yelled “Now!” as he jammed his feet against the back of the foot well in a reflex action, as if that would somehow slow the car down.

  The car skidded, swerved, and slowed, momentum sending all three of them forward. John grunted in pain as his seatbelt dug in cruelly; he’d have a line of bruising there come tomorrow. He flung his arm out across Caitrin’s chest to keep her pinned back against the seat and felt a thud reverberate through his seat as Josh’s knees collided with it.

  The car came to a halt a scant few yards away from the startled pedestrians and then, just as John was catching his breath, every bone rattled, the car behind them struck them at what felt like full-force, as if the driver hadn’t even tried to brake.

  Second time around, the seatbelt hurt even more as it cut into tender, bruised skin.

  John watched in vivid, eerily clear snapshot detail as the people came closer. He focused on a woman, mouth gaped open in a perfect O of shock, a scarf falling from her hand in a slow, endless flutter of scarlet and white silk. No; they weren’t moving, were they? It was his car that was moving, propelled forward and turning sideways, spinning in a cacophony of tires on tarmac and a reek of oil and scorched rubber.

  It came to rest and there was an instant of silence before John’s ears began to work again and he heard the screaming.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Cait?” John asked.

  “I’m fine, I’m ‑‑”

  “Josh?”

  “Yeah, me, too. Just shaken. God, that was one hell of a ‑‑”

  “Then get out,” John said urgently. “Before he does. Go.”

  The three of them tumbled out; the ground felt so shockingly solid under John’s feet that he stumbled, going to one knee with a hand down to steady himself. He got moving again fast, though, around the front of the car to the other side where Caitrin and Josh were.

  “Get inside somewhere,” he told them. “Where’s not important, just go. Find a door that locks and get yourselves behind it.”

  “Are you crazy?” Josh looked almost angry. “I’m not leaving you here to deal with this by yourself. Nick would kill me, for one thing, and for another, I can actually help.” All three of them were staring at the other car; the front of it was crushed in as if it had hit something much larger and more impressive than John’s taxi. Around them, the people who’d been milling about came closer.

  Someone asked if they were all right ‑‑ John wasn’t sure who. “Of course we are,” he snapped. “We’re standing, aren’t we?”

  “What the hell’s going on?” a man asked, as more people, including Rory Mitchell, Todd the barman, and some of Caitrin’s other friends, came out of the pub.

  “Bloody hell,” John said wearily.

  The other car, Fred’s car, which was presumably a rental he’d never see a return on the deposit for, shut off with a shudder and a groan. The breeze shifted, bringing a whiff of coolant toward them.

  And then the car door opened and the shell of Fred’s body got out, his gaze fixed not on the people he’d been chasing, but Rory. John could have sworn he saw the man scent the air, but maybe he was just sniffing back some of the blood trickling down from his nose to splash on the ground.

  Maybe not. The brothers didn’t seem to care that the body they’d borrowed was hurt; from where he stood, John could see the twist and dangle of a broken arm. Caitrin moaned in horror as, obeying some residual habit, the brothers turned to slam the car door and the bones in the broken arm shifted grotesquely. Fred’s expression flashed between agony and a passive, placid lack of concern. John hoped the pain meant Fred was still in there somewhere.

  When the broken arm proved inefficient, Fred made a soft, exasperating tutting sound and turned his back slightly to use his other hand. John swallowed down his revulsion and nudged Caitrin’s arm. “Get Rory out of here. Take him ‑‑ take him to the church, maybe.” How much protection that would be, given the last time young Rory was in there had probably been his christening, John didn’t know, but it couldn’t hurt.

  “What do I tell him?” Caitrin hissed.

  “I don’t care!” John gave her an exasperated look. “Tell him anything you bloody well like, just get him to the church where there’s at least a chance he’ll be safe!”

  She nodded and went; he couldn’t spare her more than another glance, but he saw her tugging Rory in the right direction, saying something to him urgently. Rory looked confused, but was going along with it, thank God.

  Fred, though, had finished dealing with the ruined car and, continuing to behave as if his ruined body was little more than an uncomfortable inconvenience, began to walk toward them. John’s mouth went dry.

  “Don’t freak out,” Josh told him. Then, to everyone else who was still standing around concerned, he shouted, “Get out of here! Go on, go! He’s…”

  “On drugs,” John thought at him. That’d be the sort of thing the islanders would believe.

  “He’s on drugs! Stay away from him!” Josh wasn’t all that convincing, unfortunately; they were more likely to think he was the one on something, what with how dramatic he was being, but at least they were looking concerned for their own safety now as well as that of the tourist who’d crashed his car.

  Fred stumbled, and Jack Thomson, a softhearted bloke who’d never turn away man nor beast, stepped forward to help him. “Don’t,” John warned, but it was too late ‑‑ Jack reached out. Fred gripped onto his arm like he wasn’t going to do anything more than steady
himself, but at the touch, Jack’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he began to shake as if he were having a seizure.

  Fred smiled, paused to watch with interest as Jack dropped to the ground, still twitching, and started walking again.

  Oh, fuck. They were in so over their heads, and John had no idea what to do other than urge everyone else within earshot to run. He’d opened his mouth to do just that when Josh said, “Look!” and pointed north, up the hill toward home.

  “Blayne! Toran!” It was Nick; Nick walking down the hill into town. He looked unnaturally strong and powerful ‑‑ under other circumstances, John would have thought it was the light, but that was the last thing it was, because Nick wasn’t alone. Behind him walked the ghosts of the villagers, long dead but strangely visible to John’s eyes and, by the gasps of those around him, to everyone else’s as well.

  It should have been dark. Lightning, thunder, all the trimmings. Instead, it was a pleasant early evening with the gulls circling overhead and the faint sound of the endless rush and splash of waves against the rocks. Idyllic. Just what a summer night on a quiet Hebridean island should be. Even the midges weren’t too bad, not that they bothered John much.

  The three of them should have been out fishing, taking a hike to the loch, and letting the only magic be the way the fish rose to the bait, the only words spoken low and contented, with the crackle of a fire as background. Josh would’ve liked that; camping out and, if he could keep his eyes open long enough, seeing the stars above, clustered thickly, bright and dim alike because up here there was no city glow to rob the night sky of its glory.

  It was scarier this way. Without the darkness, there was no way to hide what he was seeing, and no way for any of the rest of them to doubt their own eyes.

  Nick ‑‑ that American, och, you know, the one who writes the books and lives with Anne’s boy, John ‑‑ yes, like that, but live and let live, that’s what I say, and he’s nice enough for all he’s not from around here ‑‑ had raised the dead.

  In some ways, those who thought he didn’t belong, for all that his mother had been an islander, would be silenced now. John didn’t think Nick could have called the sleeping dead from their rest if he hadn’t had roots in the island that went deep. These ghosts weren’t the usual ones Nick spoke with; if they were, they’d have appeared before this. They had died guilty maybe, but they’d slept sound enough while the brothers had been locked away in their cave.

  They were awake now that the spell had been broken, though, their faces filled with a solemnity that didn’t hide the sorrow in their eyes. Some of them would have died before the binding spell had been cast; John saw those who stood closest to Nick, the lingering horror of their deaths clearly painted onto their expressions. The rest had escaped that death, only to live out lives shadowed by what they had done.

  More than the Lennox brothers needed help to rest in peace. John didn’t know what happened to the spirits Nick gentled and soothed ‑‑ Nick didn’t, either ‑‑ but John didn’t really care. Wherever they belonged, it wasn’t here among the living, and what Toran and Blayne were doing was just plain wrong.

  “Whether you believe or not, I’d get yourselves to the church until this is over,” John said to the growing crowd, his mouth dry with a primal fear he didn’t think he’d ever conquer, no matter how many times he stood with Nick, a spirit’s energy swirling around them, unseen by John but most definitely felt. “Or back into the pub, and take a dram for me, while you’re in there.”

  Fred’s attention was on Nick, but he was walking right at a huddle of people ‑‑ shit, they weren’t going to move ‑‑

  “Go, will you!” John yelled at them, putting all the volume into it that he could, all the fear he was feeling. “This isn’t your fight!”

  Most of them broke and ran at that, but not all ‑‑ Todd the barman stayed, looking shocked as the stranger with the crooked arm and the bloodied face came up to him.

  “No!” John shouted and moved toward the both of them, but Josh held him back.

  “You can’t stop it.”

  “I can bloody well try!” John said, but it was too late; Fred was already touching Todd, who began to tremble immediately.

  Then Nick was there. He didn’t say a word, but he gestured and the ghosts behind him moved forward in a surge through him, and through John and Josh as well. It was like having an icy wind blow over you, only a hundred times worse ‑‑ it felt as if it froze every cell in John’s body as they went. He was even convinced that, for a moment, his heart had stopped, and his blood had turned to ice in his veins. Then it was past, and he could breathe again.

  The ghosts surrounded Fred; Todd fell to one side, gasping and pale but looking otherwise whole. He blinked in shock, then scrabbled backward away from the ghosts, who wore expressions that were a bit difficult to translate.

  “What will they do to them?” John heard himself ask. He looked at Nick, who’d surely have the answer, but Nick looked ‑‑ empty. His eyes were vacant, his lips parted.

  “He’s okay,” Josh hastened to assure him. “He’s still there, he’s just ‑‑ I don’t know, connected to them, I think. Not controlling what they’re doing, exactly, but…well. He woke them up, and now he has to stay with them.”

  It did something to John, seeing Nick that way, but he had to accept that what Josh said was true or he’d do something stupid. Like attacking Fred and becoming one more person Nick had to save.

  “He can stay with them until the job’s done,” John muttered, not sure who he was talking to, but hoping Nick heard him on some level at least. “And then I want him back.”

  He wasn’t one for making grand romantic gestures, and he and Nick got by without telling each other they were loved for weeks at a time, though they showed it every day, he supposed, in little ways. But if those ghosts tried to take his Nick with them wherever they were going, he’d follow them.

  To hell and back, if needed, and somehow he thought that was where a few of them might be headed.

  Most of the islanders had run off toward the church at that point, although it didn’t seem as if they were all going to go that far; quite a few had stopped a few hundred meters away and were watching Fred and the spirits that surrounded him.

  “Keep away!” Blayne and Toran sounded terrified ‑‑ they flailed Fred’s arms at the ghosts, the broken one flopping obscenely. “You’re the ones who deserve to be dead, not us!”

  Josh inched closer to John, talking near his ear. “Nick’s talking to them. They want to say something to them ‑‑ to Blayne and Toran ‑‑ but they don’t have enough energy, I think. They can be here, visible, but talking out loud takes more power than they have.”

  John glanced at him. He barely knew where to look, really. At Nick? At Fred, who was backing away from the ghosts, which meant he had to go through them, something John knew was almost painful? “You tell them, then. I mean, if they can tell Nick, and you can hear what they’re saying through him…or can you hear them directly?”

  “It’s too confusing.” Josh shook his head. “I can’t make any sense of it. They’re all talking at once, and it’s not like I can separate out one voice from another. Besides, Nick’s the one who knows how to do this, not me.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t try. Anything’s better than nothing.” John watched as Fred lurched backward, through two of the ghosts, then turned and began to run away as best he could, stumbling. “God, there he goes.”

  “He won’t go far,” Nick said suddenly, his voice hoarse like he’d been screaming.

  He was right ‑‑ the ghosts surrounded Fred again almost immediately.

  Blayne and Toran lashed out at them, shouting. “Get away! Murderers! First, you condemned us to death, then you shut us up in that cave for all those years! You’re the ones who should suffer!”

  “They can’t hear them,” Josh said, a little bit desperate. “Blayne and Toran, I mean. They can’t hear the ghosts, so they don’t know they�
�re trying to say anything at all. But Nick can ‑‑ he can hear what they’re saying. He thinks they should use him.”

  “What does that mean?” John demanded. Nick was gone again, standing there but might as well have been a million miles away, unresponsive to John’s fingers when he snapped them in front of Nick’s face.

  “For power.” Josh didn’t seem able to explain it very well. “They can use his power. I don’t know, his energy, or something. He doesn’t think it will hurt him.”

  John glared at Josh for lack of anyone else to glare at. “It better not!”

  “He thinks if they don’t fix this soon, the ghosts ‑‑ the other ghosts ‑‑ won’t be able to stay at all, and then Blayne and Toran will be free to do whatever they want again. We’re running out of time.”

  “Shit.” John rubbed his hand over his face, trying to scrub away the panic that must be showing on it. “So tell them that. Pick one of them and concentrate on that one.” Josh opened his mouth as if to protest, but John was past listening to what couldn’t be done, not with Nick’s sanity at stake.

  He scanned the ghosts and saw one standing at the edge of the crowd, a woman, her arms folded over her chest, a shawl draped across her face. She was weeping. “That one,” he said. “She’s by herself; see?”

  Josh chewed at his lip and then nodded and moved over to her with John close behind him. Josh came to a halt a few yards away and simply stared at the woman without speaking, though John supposed he was still communicating. This skill of Josh’s was so new that he didn’t hold out much hope of it working but it was all they had, so by some twisted logic, it had to.

  The woman’s head turned slowly, her tears still flowing silently. Josh’s head tilted as if he was trying to listen to a faraway sound and then he spun around, his face pale, and met John’s puzzled look.

  “What is it? Did it work?”

  “Oh, it worked,” Josh said. “I told her and she’s going to try, but John ‑‑”