The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  “The forest is beautiful, ma’am, but you of all should know that the creatures that live within it have no fear of man,” the driver said as he helped them out of the carriage.

  While Amelia and her children stretched their legs and backs, she said, “Well, then we are fortunate in that I am a woman, Ruth a girl, and Edmund a boy.”

  “Am I not a man?” the driver asked with genuine concern as he watched them move towards the opening in the trees.

  “Of course,” Amelia said. “You’ve brought us through hell unscathed. You’re an odd man, a good man, I think, but a man nonetheless.”

  The driver nodded at this, pleased. He bowed and turned to tend to the horses.

  On the other side of the opening, Amelia and her children found a field brimming with life; it was one of those rare, impossible places that somehow had been left untouched by man’s machines and machinations. The grass came up to Amelia’s knees. Its warm, gentle touch was a welcome change from the cold countryside air and the rigid seats of the carriage. Flowers of all kinds and colors speckled the area through which they moved, and they minded each one like it were the last of its species. Above, from their leafy perches, small birds—blue, white, and yellow—whistled and sang, their voices intertwining, complimenting each other, as though each were telling their own part of a story.

  “Can we stay?” Ruth asked, going silent as she watched a rabbit hop through the field.

  “Can we?” Edmund echoed, much to Amelia’s surprise.

  The city’s palette was limited, uninspired. Amelia was surprised that her children spoke of their intoxication with their surroundings, but there was no denying that she, too, felt dizzied by it all.

  They spent a half an hour in the field. Amon had made Amelia wait years before contacting her; as far as she was concerned, he was on her time now. She regained her senses, her smarts, gathered her children up, and headed for the opening. In her time in the clearing, she became determined to not let Amon’s inevitable invitation to return to the estate sway her as soon as it passed his lips.

  “They’re here, too?” Edmund had lagged behind. He was staring at something in the grass.

  “What’s that?” Amelia, with Ruth in her shadow, went to her son. “Who?”

  She twisted her mouth as she saw what Edmund was pointing to. Beyond the overgrowth, where the land slanted, a tree stump sat with an ax buried in it. The stump and the ax were surely a century old—undoubtedly, the scene had been her father’s work—but somehow, for some reason, the soil around the stump was ruddy and wet, and the ax head glistened, as though recently used. Amelia crouched down and then jumped to her feet. Around the base of the stump, feeding in and out of what was now clearly a puddle of blood, were the vermillion veins from Parish. What were they? Why were they here? Amelia said nothing, took Edmund’s hand, and marched back to the carriage.

  The trees were at their thickest surrounding the house, so as they approached, Amelia was only able to catch glimpses of her childhood home. First, she saw the gate, which was now broken and unmanned—anything could enter the property, and probably already had. Then, she saw flashes of the house’s white pillars, ivy-wreathed and sun-dulled. As the carriage went around natural roadblocks, she saw windows glinting through the foliage, too dirty to do much else but bounce the light off them.

  “Is it close?” Edmund squeaked.

  Amelia nodded and then, as the carriage cleared the last line of trees, took a deep breath as the house came fully into view. The Ashcroft home looked awful. Time had not been kind to it. The white paint had grayed, and the foundation had cracked and sunk into the ground. The porch and the balconies appeared as though they would collapse at any moment. Even inside the carriage, she could hear the house rattling, moaning—complaining about the cruel human creatures that had forced it to go on for so long.

  But despite its state, Amelia could not help but be moved to tears. She wept, and she wept hard. She balled her fists and bit her lip and sucked back the hot saliva in her mouth as she cried and failed to keep her composure. She had never been fond of the house when she lived there; often times, she had dreamt of destroying it, setting fire to it, and yet here it was, as ruined as she would have liked it to be, and she was crying.

  The carriage came to a stop beside the twelve lichen- and weed-choked steps that led up to the house. As Amelia wiped her eyes, Edmund and Ruth burst out of the compartment and started up the stairs, their excitement surmounting what little good sense they had. Amelia didn’t say anything—in fact, she was tempted to do the same—and took the driver’s hand when he came around to help her out.

  “Thank you,” she said, his clammy grip making the hairs stand up on her arm.

  She watched as he unloaded their belongings and left them on the ground at the foot of the stairs. She felt a flare of anger and then hated herself for how quickly her lost sense of entitlement had returned.

  “I can go no farther,” he said, his violent blue eyes downcast.

  Amelia nodded, gathered everything up, and beckoned for her children, who had become almost animalistic in their excitement, to do the same.

  “Thank you, sir,” Ruth said, smiling as she skipped up the stairs with her bags.

  “Thank you, sir,” Edmund said, copying his sister in word and action.

  “You’re a good man,” Amelia said, her arms weighed down at her sides by her belongings. “I couldn’t have asked for a better driver. I hope to see you again?”

  The driver grinned; his teeth looked too small, too closely packed, as though he still had all his baby teeth. “It was a pleasure, ma’am.”

  Amelia bowed slightly and, with her children waiting on the porch, disappeared into the dark of the house.

  The driver stayed where he stood. His waxy lips began to quiver, to tremble. He cracked his neck and a bone broke through. His muscles started to spasm. His pink flesh became cloudy and muddled, and lost its consistency. A viscous fluid like bloody milk leaked from his pores; his shoes filled up with the substance until they overflowed. In a freezing instant, his skin became as hard as bark and by the wind was peeled away like paint chips.

  Behind the driver, or what was currently left of him, the great, black horses, still bound to the carriage, gave out one final whine and then began their reversion. Together, the man and his two beasts decayed in the shadow of the Ashcroft house. They had been born at the same time, so it seemed fitting they should die at the same time as well. Their lives had been simple lives; no more than a summation of commands in the dark. They had done well as forms, but now it was time for them to return, to be whispers amongst whispers, mouths amongst mouths, in the black chambers of their vermillion heaven.

  Amon was waiting for them in the foyer. Amelia’s heart rioted in her chest as her eyes fell upon him. Ruth and Edmund had gone silent as well, their energy sapped by the sight of the fabled uncle who was finally before them.

  Before Amelia realized what was happening, two maids closed in on her and her children and reached out to take their belongings. Amelia relinquished the bags, but not before getting a good look at the women. Their outfits were traditional enough, but covering the lower halves of their faces was a piece of cloth, like a doctor’s mask. Were they sick? Infectious? Were they afflicted with what had run its course through Parish?

  “It’s fine,” Amon said, his voice soft and deep like a practiced storyteller’s. “You are home now.”

  He approached Amelia, smiling behind the loose strands of graying black hair that had fallen across his face. He took her hand and kissed her forehead. She meant to turn away, but he had been quick, and she had wanted it more than she realized.

  Amon led Amelia and her children to the dining room, where they found their meals already prepared and waiting. The dinner table was covered in candles, and the ornate walls that surrounded the room were covered in the wild shadows they cast onto them. Each member of the Ashcroft family took a seat, and not one spoke to another until their plat
es were clean.

  Amelia set down her silverware, wiped her mouth. She smoothed out her dress and, looking at her uncle, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her, said harshly, “Where have you been?”

  “Everywhere,” Amon said, nodding. “China, India, and parts of Africa, and other places I’d rather forget.”

  “Why?” Edmund asked, bits of food pasted to his face.

  Amon smiled warmly. “I was looking for something.”

  “Did you just now return?” Amelia asked, already hanging on his every word like she had when she was younger. She fought away the childish, girlish feelings she felt, but she knew they would be back soon enough.

  “No.” Amon looked into his lap, ashamed. “I’ve been here for eleven years. I’m sorry, Amelia.”

  Amelia put her hand to her mouth. The pain that she felt from his words was greater than any inflicted upon her by the dead and damnable. Eleven years, he had been back for eleven god damn years.

  Sensing her mother’s hurt, Ruth took Amelia’s arm and pressed her head against it.

  Anger left Amelia’s face contorted, ugly. Her cheeks twitched while she held back every curse and insult. “Why did you write me? Why now? After all… after all this time? You could have let me be.”

  “Tonight, when the children are asleep, or tomorrow, if you are too weary, I’ll tell you.” He looked at Edmund and Ruth with his kind, tired eyes. “It’s a tale too frightening for you two.”

  “Not for me!” Edmund said. He stood up to assert his manliness, but tripped over his feet instead.

  “All the same, Edmund, I think your mother would agree.”

  “Edmund?” Amelia looked at Amon, confused. “How did you know his name is Edmund?”

  Amon opened his mouth to answer but stopped as the two maids from earlier entered and began clearing the table. They made no noise as they worked. When the one with brown hair leaned forward to take a plate, Amelia leaned in close, listening for breaths she was sure the maid wasn’t taking, because it seemed like she wasn’t breathing. The maid grunted, reared up, and quickly walked way. But Amelia had noticed another curiosity: The maid’s facial structure seemed peculiar, deformed; the way the mask hung and clung to the curves of her bones… it was as though the maid had no mouth at all.

  “I’m sorry,” Amon said after the maids left the dining room. “I’ve let most of the old ways and customs go over the years. No need when you’re the only one.” He looked at his niece and sighed. “Amelia, we have not spoken nor seen each other for years… years. I can’t believe it’s been… But I did not forget about you. In fact, most of my days were concerned with your wellbeing. Your fortune, you see, was squandered by your siblings. Your father, for reasons I promise to you I’ll reveal later, gave me a share of the wealth much larger than I could have ever expected. So I took it upon myself to help you when I could, from a distance, like a hypocrite, like… like the kind of person you and I swore never to be so many… so many years ago.”

  “What’s a hypocrite?” Ruth asked.

  “Someone who says something is wrong but does that thing anyway,” Amelia said, jaw clenched. “What have you really done, Amon?”

  “Only what I could to see that you were safe. There were some things that I could not stop, but now that I see them before me, I know that it was worth it.”

  Amon looked at Edmund and Ruth. Amelia knew immediately he was referring to their fathers.

  “I made sure to pay those who needed to be paid, but I did not want to control your life entirely. I knew you would have none of that. I wanted you to live, to forget me and this house.”

  Amelia leaned in closer to her uncle. She wanted to stay angry with him, but she couldn’t; however, he didn’t need to know that, not yet. The candles before them were failing fast—it seemed they were good for this night only—and Ruth and Edmund were too tired to sit upright. Like her children, Amelia needed a bed, a place of rest where she could lie and make sense of the madness Amon had brought to her life.

  “Why am I here, Amon?” she whispered. “Why did you bring me back?”

  Amon cleared his throat and brought his lips to her ear and said, “Because I desperately need your help.”

  Twenty minutes later and they were on the second floor, Amon taking the lead, carving away the darkness of the Ashcroft house with the lantern swinging from his arm. His mood had improved after the first wave of confessions. After his plea to Amelia for aid, he changed the topic and shared stories with her children about their mother. Amelia went along with the act; her uncle was a man who had spent the majority of his life in solitude, in the forgotten corners of the world, so she expected some eccentricities. But what did he want of her? As she had watched him laugh and tell jokes, she searched for signs of weakness, for hints of his plight, but there was nothing. If he had told the truth, if he had truly been watching her all these years from his wooded seclusion, then why did he need her at all? That kind of power, Amelia thought, was the kind that could solve just about any problem. Then again, if it wasn’t, and if he had truly saved her, who was she to refuse him?

  “I know a lot has happened today,” Amon said, stopping at Amelia’s old room. “I’ve hurt you, and my reasons for bringing you here are selfish, I know.”

  “Amon,” Amelia interrupted, “did you… have something to do with the buying of my house in the city?”

  “I did.”

  “And the menial tasks my neighbors, my neighbors who otherwise despise me, offered when I was running out of money?”

  “I only asked of them that they would give you a chance. I know how proud you are.” Amon went a few feet down the hall and planted himself before the guest bedroom. “Edmund, Ruth, you’ll sleep here tonight. We should like for your mother to get some good, good rest.”

  “My husbands?” Amelia added.

  Amon looked at her and ushered Ruth and Edmund into the guest bedroom.

  Amelia expected Ruth and Edmund to run out of the room screaming the moment they saw a skeletal tree outside the window, but they didn’t. Much to her surprise, they scoured every corner and crevice. They tested their bed for comfort and the floorboards for creaks that would give away potential late night excursions. In seconds, they had settled in. If she took them away, back to the dreary city, where nothing was good and no one was good to them, what would they think of her?

  “Can you stay in here without bothering your mother?” Amon asked as Ruth and Edmund staked out their sides of the bed. “She needs a good night’s sleep.”

  “After everything, that might be too much to hope for, Uncle, but I am exhausted.” She smiled at her children. “Goodnight, my lovelies.”

  Amelia was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. The dream began immediately; perhaps it had been waiting all this time to show itself. In the dream, Amelia was running—no, gliding—down the hallways of the Ashcroft house. Vision blurred and doubled, she floated towards some unknown, unalterable location. In rapid succession, the walls changed from plaster, to wood, to wet cobblestone, and then earth. Farther on, she spotted torches flaring in their sconces, threatening to set fire to whatever they touched.

  When the deep, raspy breaths started, she tried to steer off-course, but it was impossible: Her body was no longer her own. She panicked, and as she panicked, the darkness itself took form; it thickened, began to contract and expand like a black heart beating fast. She tried to speak, tried to call out for help, but before anyone could answer, if there was anyone that could answer, the darkness surged forward and engulfed her completely.

  For a moment, she stood disoriented in black nothingness, her senses dampened to the point of almost non-existence. They came back to her slowly, but as they did, it may have been better had they not come back at all. Touch returned and suddenly she felt a great weight upon her chest that made it difficult to breathe. Then came hearing, but all she heard was a persistent droning, a thick chord of unending noise that made her teeth hurt. Next was taste. With it a floo
d of foulness—rotted food with notes of excrement—that made her retch. At that point, she begged the blackness to leave it at that, but vision arrived regardless, and oh how she wished it had not.

  Amelia found herself standing in a large and overwhelmingly beautiful ballroom. All along the walls of this room sat men, women, and children, one hundred in all, in various states of death and decay. The fresher corpses, the ones that still possessed a bit of flesh, appeared familiar to Amelia, though she didn’t know why. By the clothing the dead wore, it was obvious they were from different periods of time, but what were they doing here together?

  A whimper of fright escaped Amelia’s lips as her eyes followed the chains that stretched from their feet across the tiled floor, to the gaping hole in its center. She went to it, leaned over it; found within it a staircase that spiraled downward into untold depths.

  The weight across Amelia’s chest shifted and she struggled to breathe. A scratching sound stole her from her moment of discomfort. She looked up to the ceiling—That’s not the ceiling, she realized. The room is upside down—and found Ruth and Edmund above her, over her, on their hands and knees, carving their names into the floor with shards of glass. Blood dripped from their jagged signatures, dotting her arms, getting in her eyes. She reached for her children, then froze. Something moved beneath her skin and started scratching on her bones.

  And then she woke up.

  Her eyes fluttered open. She waited for them to adjust to the dark. And when they didn’t, she realized why. A small, black creature sat on her chest, its mouth agape, staring at Amelia with its infected yellow eyes. Its pointed chin moved up and down as though it were laughing.

  Amelia struggled to be free, but it was no use—her arms would not move, and her ankles were held down by something at the end of the bed. She tried to scream, but the creature shifted its weight until she was silenced. It moved closer, its acrid breath rolling off its sore-marked mouth and into Amelia’s. She threw up all over herself.

  The bed dipped down beside her and she closed her eyes, too afraid to acknowledge the additional horror that had come to torture her. Broken teeth clamped down on her wrist, while leathery lips sucked on the tips of her fingers. Amelia whimpered as a fat, coarse tongue made circles on her thigh and then slowly worked its way up.