by Norah Wilson
Had Connie looked in mirrors over the years at herself and seen this empty sight? How would it feel to know that was all there ever was? All there ever would be?
Alex pushed the nervousness aside. Fought it down. “Are you guys ready?” she asked. “Ready to do this for Connie?”
“Ready.” Maryanne’s answer came quickly, if a little shakily.
Brooke nodded, then turned back to the mirror again. “But first tell me, do I look fat in this?”
Alex and Maryanne both snorted a nervous laugh, the kind of laugh that could all too easily get hysterical. But Brooke was already moving away from the reflecting surface, sinking down through the floor boards. Alex and Maryanne followed. Carefully, strategically, they moved through the boards, between where the beams of wood should be, so as to minimize the number of nails they encountered. They’d learned the more iron content in the nail, the bigger the ripping pain. In a house this old, the nails probably had significant iron content.
With a minimum of nail exposure, they made it to the basement. Alex felt the change in the air immediately. Felt it shudder through her caster self as they floated downward. It wasn’t so much a coldness that a caster could feel, more a lack of warmth. There was a dampness to it too. Not unexpected, she supposed, especially with the earthen floor Maryanne had warned them to expect.
She looked around at the physical space. It wasn’t exactly barren, but no one could call it cluttered. It had to be John Smith who kept the place so tidy. Tools were lined up on the pegboard above the workbench, a black-marker outline around each to show where they belonged. There was lumber piled in one corner of the room, left over no doubt from some work he’d done around Harvell House. The yard tools were down here too, save for the lawnmower which Alex knew was stored in the small garage alongside Mrs. Betts’s Camry. But she spied rakes, hoes, old spades, and even the flower boxes that would be coming out in the spring.
“Wheeeeeee!”
Alex turned around.
With her hands wrapped around a copper pipe, Maryanne swung from the ceiling, like a kid on the monkey bars over at the park.
“Omigod!” Immediately Brooke joined her, and the two of them moved back and forth, laughing as they banged into each other. “It’s copper plumbing, right?”
“Will you guys quit it!” Alex hissed.
Brooke let go, then Maryanne. They floated down to Alex.
“You’ve got to try that,” Maryanne said. “I mean, we’re so... weightless.”
Brooke agreed. “Except when we bang in to each other.”
Alex would try it, but it would have to be another time. This night was about Connie. For Connie. “Maryanne, does it still feel... evil down here? Like you told us?”
Maryanne hesitated before she answered. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, it does, but it feels different. Here... but away somehow.”
Of course it would feel like that. Everything felt further away when they were out in cast form. Not non-existent, but removed. Even her pain of the rape. It didn’t leave her out here, but it was at a distance for a while. How different from when she cast in... “What do you bet she’s buried here,” Brooke said. She knelt near the floor, running her hands in and over the dirt of it.
Alex nodded. Connie could be. She really, really could be. She’d known they were coming to kill her. The rumor she’d died in Toronto had been spread around town. Her murderers, faced with the task of getting rid of her body in winter, could so easily have buried her here. Alex was almost sure of it now.
“She could be right below us,” Maryanne whispered. No one chastised her now for her lowered voice.
“Somewhere below us, anyway.” Brooke said. With that they all scanned the huge basement. “Oh, man, we could dig for a month and never find her!”
Brooke was right. A sickening feeling that felt like lead dropped in Alex’s belly—in both her cast and her original—as she realized what she had to do.
“Alex?” Maryanne turned to her. “What’s going on? Why is your original suddenly sweating so much?”
They were huddled that close in the attic, able to feel one another. There was somehow an unspoken security in that closeness.
“We’re not going to dig up the whole basement,” Alex said.
Brooke scoffed. “You’re the one so hell bent on finding Connie’s body for her. Now you’re... ” Brooke stiffened as realization hit. “Oh shit, Alex! Don’t!”
Alex looked up at her. Then up at Maryanne who stood as still as Brooke did now, and watching her. She looked down at herself.
Her body was partially sunk in the floor, as if she were cut off at the knees. Of course, no dirt had been disturbed around her or beneath her. The lower part of her cast had simply vanished into the earth. And with her legs she could feel the earth as her cast moved through it. Feel the dirt and the stones and the darting of small bugs as they scurried away—even creepy-crawly things were afraid of casters, apparently. There was a bottle cap of some kind too. She knew it as she moved a foot and her toe slid through it.
“Get out of there, Alex!”
Maryanne reached for her, but Alex pulled away. She was determined to do this, though her heart was racing like mad up inside the attic.
“Are you crazy?” Brooke yelled.
“Don’t you guys get it?” she said. “We’ll never be able to dig up the basement. We don’t know where to begin. But if I go down into the ground as a caster, find her body—”
“You are completely batshit freaking crazy!” Maryanne shouted.
Both Alex and Brooke whipped their heads around to look at her. Maryanne never swore.
“What if you find more?” Maryanne said. “What if you find iron down there? Bang into an iron pipe or some old rods or a pile of broken machinery bits... anything. Hell, given how superstitious this town is, they could have buried freakin’ horseshoes here for all we know! Do you know how dangerous that could be?”
Damn it, Alex had been scared enough before. But she hadn’t thought of that.
“You’d be screwed,” Brooke said. “Completely and totally screwed! You couldn’t move and you’d be trapped underground.”
“And you’d dig me up,” she said.
“Yeah?” Brooke scoffed. “Wonder where they keep the copper shovels around here?” She turned and pretended to study one corner of the basement. “Let’s see, no, not in this corner.”
Alex stayed half submerged in the ground. “Then cast back in and dig me up.”
“When?” Maryanne asked softly. “When could we do that? It would have to be without anyone else around, because we sure as hell couldn’t get anyone to help us.”
God, that was true. It wasn’t like anyone else could unearth a trapped caster, dig down into that emptiness and find a buried Mansbridge Heller. If she did get trapped down there, she’d be trapped until Brooke and Maryanne could find her, and get her out without being discovered. That might take time. A very long time. What if they couldn’t, ever? What if something happened to them—an accident of some kind—and her cast was buried beneath the ground forever, while her original remained in the world? Vulnerable. Helpless. God, if there was any significant iron down there and she touched it, she would be trapped. Trapped with the bones of Connie Harvell.
Poor, tired Connie Harvell.
“I... I have to try,” Alex said. “I’ll be careful.”
“If you’re not back in—”
Brooke couldn’t finish the sentence.
“We’ll get you out.” Maryanne crouched down beside her.
Brooke lowered herself too. “Promise. Whatever it takes.”
“If I get stuck, don’t get caught searching for me,” Alex said. “There’s... there’s a lot riding on this.”
Maryanne nodded. “We know.”
With that, Alex descended fully into the ground, into the complete darkness of it. The smell changed. And she felt it too, the musty old feeling of the so-long undisturbed earth. She could see nothing, and though h
er cast didn’t breathe air, her original in the attic struggled down a shuddering deep breath for both of them as the claustrophobic feeling of being buried nearly overwhelmed her. She couldn’t imagine being actually trapped down here! But if there was iron... Her chest tightened.
Alex fought to conquer the panic, knowing her will would eventually prevail. She’d had lots of practice, after all. Hadn’t she fought that claustrophobic press almost every day since the rape?
Yeah, she’d fight it. For Connie and herself.
Six feet under. Wasn’t that where people always said they buried bodies? Though she couldn’t know for sure of course, chances were they’d buried Connie’s body a few feet down at least.
Alex began to move forward through the ground. Slowly, carefully. Stretching her hands out before her, then moving that arm’s length through the soil. Again and again she did this. Feeling slightly braver as she went, she began swinging her hands out to the sides as she glided through the earth. Something cold and speedy skittered past her hand. It took all the discipline she could muster not to shoot up out of the ground. It helped to remind herself that flesh couldn’t pass through her caster form. Bad enough to have those creepy-crawlies on you.
Finally, she felt the mortared stone wall. Though she was pretty disoriented by this point, she surmised it was the north wall, facing the river. She pressed both hands close to the stone edge of the wall and moved herself along it. Then she ventured again out through the earth.
Her chest was paining in the attic. Honest to God, if she were being chased by a man-eating tiger, she didn’t think her heart could hammer any harder. And then a new fear hit her.
What if I died up there? What if I had a heart attack and died? Would I be a caster—a Heller—forever, just like—“Connie Harvell!”
Alex almost screamed the name as her fingertips contacted something smooth and solid and round. Beneath her fingers, it felt like a smooth stone, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Her caster hand would have moved through stone. It felt like... her fingers explored further... a skull.
Oh God, it was a skull! And her caster hand couldn’t pass through it. She’d known living flesh could be touched, but had just assumed that bones would be like any other inorganic solid. Well, a solid that wasn’t either copper or iron. Except it kind of made sense. Bones weren’t just inorganic mineral, if she remembered her biology.
Shivering, she touched the object again, discovering that it wasn’t as smooth as she’d thought. There were depressions where there shouldn’t be, as though the rounded vault had been bashed. She shuddered, but kept her hand in place. And opened up her mind.
Conviction came instantly. Yes. It was Connie’s skull, all right. Even though she couldn’t pass her hand through the bone like she’d done that pine tree, she knew it. Knew it just as surely as she’d known the essence of the pine. These grieving, sad, terrified and vehemently angry bones could belong to no one else.
Bones. So sad. These bones were all that was left of Connie’s body now, from when they buried her five decades ago. Where they’d buried her—oh God, no!—alive!
Alex’s hand recoiled from the skull, but the residue of Connie’s horror continued to echo in her mind. Whether they’d done it deliberately or not, they’d buried poor Connie in this hole even as she’d clung tenaciously to life.
On that horrific and horrifying realization, Alex sobbed and shot up through the dirt. She emerged just beneath Maryanne, toppling her over. As Maryanne fell, Alex opened her mouth as if to draw air but all that came out was a gasp of the unholy terror she felt.
“Did you find her?” Brooke cried.
Alex didn’t answer. She just shot up as fast as she could through the basement ceiling.
Chapter 30
Angry Bones
Brooke
All Brooke heard was Alex’s frightened gasp. And all she saw was Alex’s cast shooting straight up and through the ceiling like she’d been fired from a cannon. Then Maryanne falling on her ass. Of course, Maryanne didn’t land with a thump, but sank several feet into the earth. She flailed and scrabbled like a cat dumped into a swimming pool until her momentum stopped. Then, with a yelp—not a primal shriek, thank God!—she rocketed up through the ceiling in a pretty damned good imitation of Alex.
Brooke was wound almost as tightly as the others, but the sight of Maryanne sinking into the earth floor had kept her riveted. Now, realizing she was alone with her raw fear and revulsion, she shot up after her friends. Straight up through the sitting room, which happened to be above where they’d been searching, through God only knew whose bedroom and into the attic.
Maryanne and Alex were sobbing and retching when Brooke joined them. Unfortunately, she knew just how they felt. Was in fact making some very similar sounds herself.
It was the nails.
Horror from the dead-body-hunting expedition aside, they were reeling from the quick, careless trip through the floorboards of no fewer than three floors. All those nails... Just because there wasn’t enough iron in them to paralyze a caster the way that poker had immobilized Brooke, it didn’t mean those little nails didn’t take their toll. The fatigue of this exposure was pretty damned close to what Brooke had felt in the aftermath of the poker ordeal, and it hurt like the devil.
“Weak,” Maryanne said. “Need to get back in.”
They all blundered toward their originals, who lay wild-eyed on the floor, limbs jerking spastically. As she looked down at herself, Brooke felt her original’s heart pounding like a piston in her chest, felt the nausea in the pit of her stomach, the clammy chill of sweat on her skin.
Alex was the first to try to reunite with her original, but her frantic efforts were fruitless, not to mention totally terrifying to behold. It looked as though cast and original were locked in a battle.
For some reason, this scared Brooke more than the episode in the basement. Nearly mindless with panic, she dove into her own body. Or rather, tried to. Her terror level—in both consciousnesses—blasted into the stratosphere when she realized she couldn’t get in.
“We’re locked out!” she cried.
“The window!” Maryanne said. “We have to come back to our bodies through the window.”
Still ridden by panic, Brooke zoomed toward the stained glass, only to be stopped at the last second by Maryanne’s cry.
“No, Brooke! Not that way!” she shouted. “You don’t know what would happen if you go out through the window again. Go out through the wall and come back in like we always do, through the window.”
Of course! The window was the portal. It was through the window that they left their bodies and through the window that they shot back in.
Steeling herself, Brooke pushed through the wall. It was all she could do to bull through it, and the moment she was outside, she shot to the window and started rapping on it frantically.
“I want in, I want in, I want in!” she shouted.
Her re-entry was more forceful than ever before, throwing her body hard across the room. Her shoulder clipped the leg of the old pedestal table. The good news was the force of the impact didn’t budge the table. Middle of the night or not, people would have come running if it had toppled. But that was also the bad news—the table didn’t budge. Her shoulder screamed in agony. She didn’t care, though. She was back.
She barely had time to sit up when Maryanne came shooting toward her. Brooke rolled on her hip to present her backside and braced herself, letting Maryanne collide with her. The other girl let out an umph as the breath left her body on impact. Still, she obviously recognized it for a pretty soft landing, because she muttered a quick ‘thank you’.
Then Alex came sliding toward them. With a lightning fast reaction, Maryanne caught her and pinned her, arresting her slide before she could slam headfirst into the wall.
Maryanne lay partially atop Alex’s legs, her arms wrapped around Alex’s waist. For a moment, all was silent. Then Alex started sobbing inconsolably, but softly.
&n
bsp; Maryanne lifted her head. “What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”
“They buried her... ”
“I know,” Maryanne said, blinking back tears as she hugged Alex. “Right there in their own basement. And left her there all these years.”
“Alive,” Alex choked out. “They buried her alive. When I touched her skull... Oh, Maryanne, I just knew it.”
“What?” Brooke hissed. “Her own family buried her alive?”
Maryanne started to cry. “Those... bastards!”
This time, no one turned a hair at Maryanne’s language.
For that matter, Alex barely seemed to hear anything. “They probably didn’t know she was alive,” she said, her eyes eerily inward looking. “They bashed her skull, I think—it had a big dent in it—so they probably assumed she was dead. But she wasn’t. Oh, God, she wasn’t.”
Brooke felt the tears pouring down her cheeks, but she climbed to her feet and dusted herself off.
“It’s okay,” she said, as much to assure herself as them. “It was a long time ago, and it must have been beyond horrifying, dying that way. But it can’t be helped now.” Brooke drew a long, shaky breath. “We’re okay, though. We’re all okay. That’s the main thing, right? And we know where Connie’s body is.”
The girls just clung tighter.
“All right, make that I’m okay,” Brooke said. “I’m not so sure about the two of you.” With that, she walked over to the window. The window she’d almost tried to shoot out of. What would have happened? Would the second trip through have transformed her cast into something else? And if so, what? Or might she simply have disappeared, leaving her original to live out her days in a hospital bed?
She pondered that horrifying prospect a while, since it was marginally less horrifying than thinking about a 17-year-old girl going through the tortures of hell, only to have her head bashed in and be thrown in a hole and buried alive.
