Grim

by Thea Atkinson

  I couldn't help smiling. He knew me well, I had to give him that. I was about to say something, slip into the room and introduce myself into the conversation when Callum asked my grandfather how he was feeling.

  I paused at that and watched as Gramp shrugged with a sense of resignation. "Good enough, I suppose."

  "You haven't told her?"

  "She's always been a handful," Gramp said. "I didn't know how she would react. I had hoped to tell her this week."

  "And now this mess," Callum guessed.

  My grandfather shot him a fleeting smile before lifting his mug to his mouth and swallowing enough to make his throat work. I watched the Adam's apple plunge down his throat and lift again. I couldn't help wondering what it was he was keeping from me that would have him so contemplative as he stared across the table.

  I considered showing myself, but the way they sat together, comfortable and intimate, I wanted to see if Gramp would say more. I tried to press myself closer against the wall while still leaving enough open space that I could hear.

  "I remember her when she first came," Callum said. "I actually tried to talk to her once."

  He was lying. Couldn't Gramp see that? I think I would have noticed him if he'd been anywhere near enough for me to see let alone talk to. A face like that, shoulders like that, didn't blend into the scenery. Something fluttered in my neck. I only realized my hand had gone to my throat when I felt my pulse beneath my fingertips.

  "I imagine she raised her hackles like a cornered cat," Gramp said, and while I expected Callum to chuckle at the joke, all he said was that I had been more like a badger.

  "Well," Gramp said. "Thanks for giving it the old college try. I imagine most of you didn't notice her at all, so it was a nice gesture."

  Callum lifted his mug to his lips and blew on the surface. "Everyone remembers the troubled new kid. She was quite a celebrity even for those of us in high school. Plus, she didn't exactly blend in."

  My throat hurt, listening to that.

  "I almost expected her to remember me when she saw me tonight," Callum said. "But she didn't. I guess she made more of an impression on me in those days than I did on her."

  Gramp gave a short chuckle. "Wouldn't have mattered if you were right in front of her face. I doubt she would remember anybody. She didn't have any friends. Didn't want any."

  It was strange he didn't understand the truth of it when he had understood so much of the rest. I always assumed he'd understood that it was tough for me. It was a small town. They all knew each other. They all knew how long they'd all taken to be potty trained. None of them knew what it was like to be abandoned or to be stuck in foster care or to have to wonder what kind of home you were going to go into or back to. I imagined Sarah, and thought of what she must have had to do over the years to survive.

  Gramp shook his head and let go a weary sigh. "I wish I could've been enough for her, but what do you do with a kid like that?"

  Any other man and I would've taken that comment as an insult, but coming from the man who had held my hair back while I vomited into his garden and then slept with me on the grass wrapped in two sleeping blankets when I refused to go back into the house, I couldn't take it as anything but what it was. A sense of helplessness.

  A twinge of guilt rode down my spine.

  I watched as Callum reached across the table and lifted Gramp's mug from in front of him. I thought he would squeeze his hand, and for a second I couldn't bear to look at the two of them. I backed away silently, made my way back up the stairs. So Callum had known me before tonight, had he? He'd known I was "troubled". Now it made sense why he was so insistent on watching me, making me feel as though he thought I had started the fire. It was disappointing, but I shouldn't have been surprised. Even in a town the size of Dyre, things had a way of getting around.

  I made my way back up the stairs, trying to avoid the step in the middle that always creaked. That was when my phone vibrated in my hand. I took a peek down at it.

  It was shooting off small flickers of blue light. I swiped across the screen so that it would pick up my fingerprint and open without a password.

  I heard my own sharp intake of breath when I saw three messages sitting there. I knew my fingers were trembling as they swiped the app open. My breath froze tight in my chest as I read the first one.

  It was from Sarah.

  OMG. What in the hell happened to the church?

  My calf itched. With an absent hand I dug at it through my jeans as I tasted again the oily stink of the confessional, imagined the smell of banana as it squashed in my fingers. I squeezed my eyes closed. It didn't happen. None of that had happened.

  I texted back. I asked where she was.

  In the crypt. Are you coming?

  Of course I was. A gal didn't just leave her bestie hanging, even if the Angel of Death himself was waiting for her.

  CHAPTER 7

  I shot off a text asking her if she was still there but got nothing in return. I waited with my cell phone clenched in anxious fingers for the next ten minutes, hoping she would reply. I thought of the nights we had spent in the halfway house, she teaching me by hard knocks what it meant to hold your own against a bully. She rapped me several times on the chin before I finally landed a punch. It had been hard enough that the pain of contact sent a jolt of agony up to my elbow, but she just staggered backward and egged me on. She let me hammer at her as I practiced until she was satisfied I could face a bully.

  Now she needed my help. I couldn't just leave her there. It didn't matter how many firemen might be still lurking about the building, how many police might be watching from cars to see if the arsonist returned, I had to risk it. I checked the time on my cell phone. 3:00 AM. Maybe if I was lucky they'd all assumed Callum had taken the arsonist home. Maybe my guilt was a nothing but wary suspicion and they weren't watching the place at all.

  I kept telling myself that as I picked my way down the hallway toward the back stairs. The door was dusty and slatted with narrow boards of wood. It had one of those old-fashioned latches that you slid across into a notch. I flicked it open and pulled it, creaking, open. I was fumbling for the light switch when I heard Callum saying his goodbyes out in the hallway.

  I took a deep breath, bracing myself. With a light flooding down the narrow stairs, I managed to get a bead on how many of them there were. If I crept down quietly enough, Gramp wouldn't even hear me from the kitchen and I could slip out the back porch and be on my scooter before he realized I was gone. No doubt he would tap on my bedroom door and assume from my silence that I was sleeping or still too angry to talk. He never came in my room uninvited. I doubted tonight would be the night he would start.

  I felt a little guilty, but I knew I was doing the right thing.

  I made a run for my scooter in the dark and put it in neutral so I could roll it down the driveway and up the street far enough he wouldn't hear me start it up. It choked to life with all the respect of a toddler running through a graveyard.

  I slipped into gear and trolled my way back to the church and when I found myself in front of it, it looked even deadlier quiet than it had before the fire. Everything smelled of scorched wood and wet ashes. I blew a long gust of air from tight lips. I looked both ways up and down the street, sideways from property to property to see if there was anyone lurking about, waiting for me to show up again. It seemed the street was empty except for the lone volunteer fireman sitting in his car with his head against his window. With the light from the street lamps, I could see his jaw was slack and his mouth was open. Sleeping.

  It wasn't until I was creeping around the back I understood why the firemen hadn't found Sarah in the first place. The door to the crypt wasn't even attached to the church. It stood with its own entry like a mausoleum separate from the main building. A quick pan of the property, with its rolling grounds hinted at a tunnel beneath the earth. If the crypts took up the entire foundation, then finding her could take a while.

  I did a quick ch
eck of the time on my cell phone. 3:20 AM. The sun would be up in a couple of hours. By then it would be much harder to slip out of the building unnoticed. I'd have to hurry. I gave a thought to whether that would be preferable or not. Maybe I did want them to see me exiting with someone else. Prove I hadn't gone in there and set that damn fire on my own.

  However, they might just assume I had an accomplice. Make a few mistakes, and people always assume the worst.

  I swallowed down whatever fears still lurked in my subconscious and I forged ahead for the crypt door. I shone my cell phone light on it, using up precious seconds of battery power, but enough to see that the lock had been knocked free at some point. So Sarah had come in this way, no doubt. I pulled the door open and stepped inside. The stairs, as expected, went down for at least half a dozen stone treads before they disappeared into the dark. I couldn't imagine why Sarah would choose to squat in a crypt no matter who she was running from, but I supposed she figured no one would look for her there. Even so. Damned creepy choice. She hitched up a notch in my level of respect for her. She had some guts, that was for sure.

  I think I would've taken my chances with a dark alleyway before this God-awful place. I was even beginning to doubt I was right until I realized the cobwebs had been disturbed and hung like bits of lace from the ceiling, their tatters waving in the disturbed air. I counted the steps. Six before darkness would swallow me up.

  Too many for comfort.

  "Sarah," I shouted down in a hoarse whisper. "Are you down there?"

  I cocked my head to listen, closing my eyes to shut off all other sensory information. Nothing came back. Inwardly, I groaned. I'd been hoping she would make this easy for me by not having me trudge down into the dark well of blackness. I scuffed down the six steps and discovered that as I moved, my eyes adjusted to the dark pretty quickly. I ran my hands along the walls to guide me and was relieved to discover they were just made of damp cold stone. The grout in between the rocks had gathered some moss, but that was all. No sticky residue of human blood or any other vile thing.

  I was beginning to feel more relaxed the deeper I went until the last step revealed another slatted door at the base.

  I shone my cell phone on it. Old wood, very old, pitted with wormholes and dents that looked like someone might have tried to beat their way inside at some point. Someone had joined the slats together by a large hoop of beaten iron and tacked it to the wood with two cross bars. My boot rolled across something hard and I shone the cell phone down at the floor. Several rusted nails had fallen free of the door. Two of them sat next to a discarded Taco Bell wrapper. I smiled, wondering what the spirits of the priests might think to be so defiled by fast food garbage.

  At least the door was half ajar. Even if the darkness beyond seemed to be deeper, the wrapper indicated Sarah had come this way. I ran my hand along the door, trying to see if there was some lock embedded in it that would close behind me if I went inside. Nothing. Good.

  I craned my head around the door frame.

  "Sarah," I whispered again, afraid to disturb the stillness but really wanting to get this over with. No answer. I sighed.

  The last thing I wanted to do was run headlong into that space for nothing. Bracing myself with a long deep breath, I pressed the on button on my cell phone again and shone it past the door. Just one more long hallway, but this one filled with pottery urns and shelving. Not so bad. Probably just storage. Maybe those long-deceased monks had left a stash of wine or spirits forgotten in those pottery urns. A bolt of booze right then sounded like the ticket. Bolster my spirits.

  I almost stepped past the threshold but thought better of it. As worried as I might be about Sarah, I wasn't stupid. Nor was I all that eager to feel my way through the dark for nothing. Better to check and make sure.

  I tapped out a message, checking to see if she was in there at all. If she was, how far in did she think she was? Give me a time, I wrote. Had she walked for ten minutes? Twenty? I waited with the vain hope she would text me back with something in like five minutes or less.

  Nothing.

  I tapped out another: I'm here, but I can't wait forever. Get back to me if you have your phone on.

  Nothing. Surely she'd see the light blinking on her cell phone even if she didn't hear the sound of it hitting her inbox. I stared down at the face of mine, willing it to respond. And as I did so, it occurred to me that she had probably turned off her cell phone to save battery power. She probably only turned it on intermittently to send out a text. Maybe her cell phone had died.

  I groaned.

  I'd come all this way, and yet it seemed it wasn't fair enough.

  I yanked at the door and propped it open with a wayward stone at the base of the steps that had fallen away from the wall. Whatever light from the outside made its way down into the stairwell, could at least shine through and show me a way out if I needed it, kind of like an exit sign. After my experience in the cathedral, real or not, I was as jumpy as an eel in a frying pan. I wished I had brought some string with me. Shades of the Minotaur and Theseus. I laughed at that and that gave me a little bit of courage. There was nothing here but long departed monks and nuns. I doubted any priests had been buried here in the last century. There was nothing to be afraid of. Absolutely nothing.

  "Except perhaps psychopaths," I mumbled and the sound of my voice echoed off the walls and bounced back at me.

  "I can do this," I said. Not only that, if I kept talking, no doubt Sarah would hear me at some point and that would make things easier. Small bursts of my cell phone to orient myself would help. I noticed several, regular nooks with empty torch sconces and some, older crevices with ancient nubs of wax.

  I was several feet in before I realized that the crypt seemed patterned with the same layout as the cathedral above it. By my estimation, I would be coming in through the priest's door, and the narthex would be to my left with the altar to my right. I turned a corner and was relieved to see a series of flickering lights.

  Candles. Sarah.

  At last.

  "There you are," I said. I felt my shoulders sag with relief. I strained into the darkness to make out the form that was sitting cross legged next to half a dozen candles with wicks flickering in the shadows. Her hair wasn't long anymore and tied in a braid, but I would know that heart-shaped face anywhere.

  "Hell of a night," I said. "You wouldn't believe what has been going on."

  "I think I would," said a voice, but it didn't come from ahead of me, and it certainly wasn't Sarah. I had about two seconds of panic slam through me as I recalled a similar experience from just hours before, and I spun on my heels, fist raised. The cell phone dropped from my hands to the dusty floor. I was all piss and vinegar, ready to take on whatever thing came at me.

  Then I realized I recognized the voice. Callum. A flashlight blinked on and panned over me, then passed over me, illuminating the walls of the space. I tried to ignore the leering faces of white skulls staring out at me from dug out crevices just beyond where I stood. I sagged and let my arms fall, half relieved, half irritated.

  "What are you doing here?" I demanded of him as I stooped to retrieve my phone. "I told you I didn't set the fire," I said, defensively, and I spun back around, leading his gaze with my arm toward where the candles still flickered. "There's your proof right there."

  Sarah sat there, not moving. When I shone my cell phone on her, she didn't even blink. I found myself trying to remember if she slept with her eyes open. I know I tried to plenty enough times back in the day.

  "Sarah?" I said. "Tell this idiot I'm here because you texted me. Tell him you asked me to meet you here. Both times now."

  I felt Callum come up beside me. He smelled of soap and chocolate.

  "Ayla?" Callum whispered. "There isn't anyone there."

  "The candles," I said, my brow furrowed. "You see them, right?" I wondered if he was being dense or stubborn.

  "I see candles," he said. "But nothing else. Who are you talking to?"
/>   I pointed at Sarah as she leaned forward into the candlelight. Thick blonde bangs fringed dove-wing eyebrows. I leaned forward, trying to see the long silver scar on her collarbone that I knew had come from a botched suicide attempt. Despite her wearing a gypsy style blouse that draped open over a delicate chest, the scar didn't show. Blue veins threaded themselves downward from the column of her throat to strangely large breasts for a petite girl. If I could see those details, surely Callum could see an entire girl sitting right in front of him.

  "Come on," I demanded of Callum, suddenly aware of a wash of heat flooding my skin. My pulse roared in my ears. "You can't seriously tell me you don't see her. My friend Sarah. She's been missing since before I came to Dyre. She's the one who texted me. She's the one I was telling you about. "

  "And you think she's suddenly popped back into sight? After that long?" His voice wasn't patronizing like I expected it to be; instead, it was soothing. Too soothing. As though he were trying to calm a crazy woman on the edge of a ledge.

  "I'm not crazy," I said.

  When he took my hand and tangled his fingers in mine, I fought him.

  "Let go of me," I said. "I won't let you patronize me. She's right there. I know you see her." I turned to beg Sarah to say something.

  It was in that moment that I realized something wasn't right. Maybe I should have understood it when she didn't move, but I really got the point when she lifted off the floor without so much as getting to her feet. She hung suspended there like some magical swami. Even then, I assumed I was seeing things. It was so damn dark and the candlelight had a habit of playing tricks with the shadows. But it was when a strange scraping sound started to move across the space that I realized something was really wrong. Even Callum seemed to sense it. His hand squeezed mine.

  "Do you hear that?" I said. The hairs on the back of my neck tingled.

  He didn't have a chance to answer before something slammed into my temple. It struck me so hard, I saw stars blinking behind my eyelids. I fell to a crouch from instinct and pain, dragging Callum with me. I hunched there, swaying, trying to wait out the ache in my head. I might have moaned out loud as I sucked in breath. It wasn't until Callum's hands gripped the back of my neck and head, tucking me into the crook of his shoulder, I realized the air was full of flying things. I got whacked again on the back of the head, then smashed in the shoulder. I was getting battered from all sides except the one nestled against Callum.