When he rose again nearly an hour later, he was so clean it was hard to believe he had ever been bloody. He smelled of incense and faintly of charred autumn leaves. The blood dripped from the altar even still, painting the grass dark red. There was so much of it inside a single human body that Jeremy never stopped being amazed by it. When it spread out, pooled and thick, it became a mirror into which he liked to gaze.
Jeremy did not dress because he was only going to get dirty again and make another feast of himself for the shadows to sup on. He walked down the alley of grass, the wraiths following in his wake, sniffing after him like hungry dogs. The faint glow of UV light leaked beneath the door to the office. He opened the door onto the nodding heads of row after row of snowy white poppies. The smell of moist earth and greenery greeted him and he sighed as he took a pair of clippers from the hook right inside the door. The shadows cooed at the sight as Jeremy stroked one soft, paper-thin petal. Seed pods stood amid the flowers, full to bursting with new life. If he scored them, they would ooze white latex; raw opium right there for his taking. He did take, too, but not often because the poppies were not for him; they were part of his offering.
He clipped the heads off thirteen flowers then carefully plucked the petals from them. When he was done, Jeremy gently deposited the petals into a carved alabaster box he kept specifically for them. He gathered the rest of his supplies; heavy thread, a curved upholstery needle, a black taper candle and a long, thin pair of tweezers. He filled a bucket with warm, soapy water and grabbed several thick cloths from the shelf next to the sink. The shadows swarmed around him when he left the poppy room. They clasped his shoulders, whispered in his ears, told him secrets in a hundred dead languages. Jeremy smiled and walked with them back to Corey’s cold, stiffening body.
As he had died, Corey’s eyes opened and stuck there. The pupils were blown wide open, only thin rings of blue left. They were beginning to cloud over already. Corey’s mouth was slack, hanging open like he was gasping in awe. Blood speckled his face in bruised red stipples.
Jeremy began his work by dunking a cloth into the bucket of water to begin washing Corey’s body. He moved him from the altar and washed it down as well. It took four more trips to the sink in the office to refill the bucket, but by the time he was done, the altar was spotless once more. Only the earth beneath the grass was soggy, spongy and muddy with blood and spilled water. He washed Corey’s back half of all the blood that had run beneath him when he lay on the altar before he put him back in his place of pride.
Once he had lifted Corey back onto the granite slab, Jeremy began to fill his open mouth with poppy petals. His mouth stuffed full, Jeremy loosely sewed his lips closed with thirteen long zig-zag stitches then took up the long tweezers. He gingerly pulled flower petals between the stitches until delicate white poppy petals drooped like elegant lace turning Corey’s mouth into a large, showy blossom. He was more than a body. He was art.
“Do you like it?” Jeremy asked the waiting silence. The shadows swirled and twisted, expectant, but they were not what Jeremy was speaking to.
That which he sought did not respond, it did not show itself or speak any of Jeremy’s many names. He always jumped the gun because he always hoped he would be there already, that he would see Jeremy’s offering and heed his call at long last. Jeremy knew he listened, knew he saw. What he did not know was why it was not good enough. He did everything right. He did. He did.
He took a shaky breath and lit the black taper candle. Jeremy held it and let it burn for a couple of minutes until wax ran down the sides of the candle and puddled around his grasping fingers, searing his skin with a gentle, pleasant burn. The smell of patchouli was heavy in the air, mixed with the temple incense and the lingering meaty smell of all the blood.
He leaned over Corey and used the tweezers to pull his eyelid down and hold it closed while Jeremy dripped wax over it. He took the tweezers away when the first coat of wax had been laid and allowed to set for a minute. He then added two more layers, streamers of wax running over Corey’s cheeks like black tears held in stasis for anyone to see how greatly he wept. He repeated the process on the other side then gazed into the candlelit gloom, looking for a shadow that was more than a shadow and seeing nothing. But he hoped; he hoped so much.
“Do you see how I cry for you?” Jeremy hissed at the air. “Do you? Speak to me, I am begging you. Say my name, any of them. Whisper it in my ear. Please, please.”
There was only silence, overwhelming and oppressive, bearing down on him like he had been measured and found wanting. The shadows began to sing to him as Jeremy covered his face and began to weep.
“All I do is for you and still, you ignore me. Why? Why are you doing this?” He sobbed into his cupped palms, the shadows raising their scratching insect leg voices into the hum of a million locusts as they tried to offer Jeremy comfort. He took his hands away from his face and moved away from the altar, Corey forgotten as Jeremy turned his face up to the skylight and the unfeeling moon that loomed above him.
“Answer me!” he screamed up at the night sky.
Barghest came from his hiding place near the office door and sat at Jeremy’s side, howling up at the sky, sharing in his master’s anger and pain.
Jeremy fisted his hands in his hair, tired of all the waiting, all the pain of living so many lives. Every soul he had ever been screamed inside of him as he sobbed harder, folding over on himself like he was made of paper.
“Thanatos!” he screamed through his clenched teeth.
Through the roar of a ghostly surf pounding in his ears, Jeremy heard only silence and he sank to his knees once more. In time, the shadows came and covered him again, loved him until he forgot his pain for the littlest while.
When he rose again, Jeremy’s tears had dried and he was calm as he went back to the altar to gather Corey’s body up. He had one more thing to do then he could take his dark medicine and sleep for a little while.
5
Tobias was looking for something he had lost. He couldn’t remember what it was, but he knew that it was important; if he could remember what it was then everything would be fine. He tore through his gardens, uprooting plants, clods of dirt and roots sailing through the air, a fine rain of soil sprinkling down on him with a sound like soft applause. The more he looked, the more enraged he became. If he could only see it then he would know it for what it was. He could pick it up and hold it. He began to weep, turning the dirt on his face to mud that dripped off his chin. Something was burning nearby, he could smell the thick smoke, faint at first but growing closer… closer… closer until it invaded his senses.
Tobias knew it was a dream; he’d had it for as long as he could remember. There were hazy recollections of waking in his childhood bed, shivering and crying, so upset he thought his heart would break. Then Hylas would climb into bed with him, hug him and tell him it would be all right. Tobias would eventually sleep again, his twin brother lying beside him like a guard dog to keep the bad dreams away.
That it was only a dream made him angry; he wanted to know why he was condemned to an endless search through his subconscious when out there somewhere, a very real something needed to be located. In the trees, crows cawed and screamed, the flapping of their wings like thunder as they flew down from their perches to help Tobias in his search.
Something pulled at the cuff of his trousers and he shook it off, a mere annoyance. A moment later, it tugged again as Tobias uprooted a fig tree sapling and began to dig the hole even deeper and wider. He could hear something down there, calling out to him with a voice that was not a voice at all. He could see a faint glowing light and was reaching for it when something tugged his leg again. Tobias muttered something unintelligible as crows began to light on his back and neck, claws hooking in his shirt, wings beating, stirring up a cyclone of wind as they began to lift him into the air.
Before they could take flight, the tug came again except that time it was a yank so hard Tobias’s hip joint twanged wit
h pain at the force.
He came awake with a yell as he was jerked halfway out of bed, fingers digging at the sheets for purchase. He pulled his foot back with a gasp, scrambling up in the bed into a sitting position. Tobias scrubbed a hand over his face then leaned to the side to look over the edge of the bed. There was nothing there but moonlight puddled like mercury on the dark oak floor. His ankle throbbed and he rubbed it absently as he blinked sweat from his eyes.
“That’s never happened before,” he told the darkness.
Sometimes in his dream there was the sensation of tugging, an insistent pull at his trouser cuffs or shirt sleeves like the plucking fingers of an impatient child. Gallagher House was, surprisingly, not haunted. Everything in its history said it should be haunted, but it wasn’t, so it couldn’t have been a ghost up to mischief. The only one of those he knew that ever got handsy was Gary and Gary did not reside in Gallagher House.
Something had definitely grabbed him and tried to drag him out of his bed. For the life of him, Tobias could not figure out what it might have been though.
He thought perhaps he should be more alarmed than he was, but Tobias seldom ever got alarmed. Weirdness had followed him his entire life because in Sparrow Falls, something strange was always going on. That he himself was one of those strange things inured Tobias to bizarre happenings even more. He was seldom the cause of such things, but he more often than not wound up involved in the fallout. Case in point: the werewolf buried in the little cemetery on his property. There was no better place to hide a body than on Tobias’s land, after all.
Tobias never had properly thanked Hylas for dragging him into that hot mess. He liked Nick though, so it hadn’t been quite the hardship most people would have imagined. Seeing that thing though, well, Tobias could say he had been alarmed by that. The summer a werewolf terrorized Sparrow Falls was definitely a summer to remember for everyone in the area, but particularly for Nick. Its bite had left Nick the resident werewolf of Sparrow Falls, but unlike that great beast, Nick Lange was no monster.
“Calvin Newman,” Tobias said. “Crash. What a strange fellow.”
He rubbed his ankle again then slid out of bed, testing his weight on it to see how bad it was. There was a faint twinge of an ache, but nothing at all to worry about. When he started walking he didn’t even limp. He thought a glass of warm milk and honey coupled with a stroll through his gardens while he drank it would be just the thing to get him back in a mind for sleep again.
Downstairs, he frowned to see light coming from the kitchen. He didn’t remember leaving it on, but he must have since Dawn Marie was out for the evening with Mike, the married man who was going to leave his wife for her. Dawn Marie didn’t like that one bit. She had told Tobias such a relationship would never work out. When he asked why, she’d laughed and given him a very pointed look. Because he’s a cheater, Toby, she had said like that made perfect sense. Tobias supposed it did, too, in an odd way.
Tobias walked into the kitchen and sighed when he found Hylas sitting on one of the stools at the island counter.
“Hey,” Hylas said, looking up from the plate of brownies he was eating his way through. “Did you know that Garth Brooks put out an album of classic rock cover songs? That shit is crazy. He did bad things to “Drift Away,” man. Very bad things.”
“Did you know that breaking and entering is illegal in all fifty states and in every country in the world?”
“Dude, I have a key,” Hylas said. “It’s not breaking and entering if you have a key.”
“I suppose not.” Tobias walked the rest of the way into the kitchen and leaned against the opposite side of the counter. “Still, you shouldn’t go around wandering into peoples’ houses. That could end badly.”
“You make it sound like I periodically make the rounds of Sparrow Falls,” Hylas said. “Don’t be alarmed, citizen, for it is only I, Hylas Dunwalton.” He shook his finger at Tobias. “I am not that guy.”
Tobias snorted laughter and Hylas grinned serenely back at him.
“Where did you get the brownies?” Tobias asked.
“Oh, Wes,” Hylas said. He pushed the plate of brownies over to Tobias. “He sends his chocolaty gratitude to you for reviving his spider plant.”
Tobias looked down at the diminished stack of brownies then back up at Hylas.
“For which you felt honor bound to also partake of my thank you gift?”
“I was hungry.” Hylas shrugged. “Besides, we’re kinda like different halves of the same person.”
“No,” Tobias said. “We’re fraternal twins; we’re not even split from the same egg. We just shared housing.”
“Ouch,” Hylas said. “Just ouch, Tobias. Words hurt, dude.”
“I mean nothing by it.” Tobias put down his brownie to look at Hylas again and assess whether or not he really was wounded. He did look like it and Tobias was instantly sorry for the bad joke. “It was a joke. And yes, before you say anything, I know I should stop that. But I won’t.”
“It’s cool,” Hylas said. “You got any lunch meat?”
“Yes,” Tobias said. “As I am sure you already know.”
“I thought I’d ask anyway,” Hylas said.
“A semblance of politeness?” Tobias asked.
“Yea and verily so,” Hylas said as he got up to go rummage in the refrigerator. “I am very pleased to see you have Black Forest ham.”
“I know.” Tobias kept Black Forest ham for Hylas, but he wouldn’t tell him that lest it go to his head.
“So, I saw Stevie Buttons tonight,” Hylas said while he was assembling a monster of a sandwich.
“Oh?” Tobias asked with raised eyebrows. He was not the only one who could see ghosts, something which he was eternally grateful for. Without Hylas to talk to when he was younger, Tobias would have been even lonelier than he was; trapped in his own little world because he had no one to share it with and would have thought himself quite insane if it had only been him.
“Uh-huh,” Hylas said. He cut his sandwich in half and began eating it right there at the counter. Almost as an afterthought, he tore a paper towel off the roll by the sink, put half his sandwich on it and brought it to Tobias. “Eat, dude. You’re looking a little pale.”
“And I have a bad sense of humor,” Tobias said as he took a bite of brownie instead of the sandwich.
“It is awful,” Hylas agreed. “Anyway, Stevie Buttons… I sometimes think I get why someone harpooned that fucker.”
“Yes, but it was a harpoon,” Tobias said. “By anyone’s estimation, that is rather extreme.”
“Except for the dude or chick that perpetrated the act,” Hylas said.
“Of course,” Tobias said. “What happened with Stevie tonight?”
“Right,” Hylas said, bobbing his head up and down in a nod. He stopped to yawn then continued, “I was riding my bike through the tunnel on my way over to visit Nick and Wes. Well, that little creep-ass asks me, ‘Have you seen my buttons?’ I was like, ‘No, Stevie, I haven’t, now kindly desist with your manifestation.’ He didn’t listen because that shit-head never does. He was all, ‘You wanna touch my special button,’ all pervy and such. Then he moaned. He fucking moaned, Tobias. Stevie Buttons: the masturbating ghost of Sparrow Falls. And how the hell does that even work? You’re not corporeal, fucker, you can’t jizz even if you want to, but he tried. He exposed his ghostly schlong to me and touched it. Well, I pedaled right the fuck outta there and when I told Nick, he just laughed, but fuck Nick, right? Sex to that dude is like a handshake, some ghost spanking his non-meat wouldn’t even faze him… It’d be like… like… A passing nod to a stranger on the street to Nick or something. Wes though, he was in my corner, but Nick just kept snickering about phantom masturbators.”
“He’s never accosted me,” Tobias said. It was at once disturbing and hilarious; he could understand very well why Nick had laughed. “I make him cry.”
“Then you are forevermore nominated as my tunnel buddy,” Hylas said.
“You know, back when he was alive, he was all weird with me, too.”
“He was?” That was something Tobias did not like or find even remotely amusing.
“Yeah, man,” Hylas said. “I was peeing this one time—”
“Wait. Is this going to be one of your sundry bathroom stories? I can’t deal with one of those right now.”
“What? No. Well, yeah, kinda,” Hylas said. “Except not really. Hear me out.”
“Go on then,” Tobias said with a sigh as he picked up his half of the sandwich only to put it down again so he could go get the bottle of ranch dressing out of the fridge.
Hylas waited until he was seated, happily doctoring his sandwich with ranch, before he carried on.
“Anyway, I was over at Pete’s Pasta, right? I was with Nick and Aaron, now that I think about it. We went out later that night and got epically fucked up and Aaron stole some kid’s bicycle, but whatever,” Hylas said. “I went to the john because we’d been in the beer ‘cause this one waitress chick was all about wanting to hook up with me and the manager… Ah… I’m pretty sure the manager had been hooking up with Nick since, like, forever. For a fee, of course. We never got carded there and it was great. So, I was all full of beer pee, you know and I went to relieve myself. While I am doing this, in walks Stevie Buttons like the pretty boy twink from Hell, all sleaze and glitter. He strolls up to the urinal right next to mine and lets go with his own tinkle and I’m like, Jesus, get this dude away from me, because he was always looking at me funny. Not in a sexy way, but in a ‘I might have to press charges’ way. Right when I thought he wasn’t going to do anything freaky after all, he just leans over the partition thing and takes in all of Little Hylas. I mean, he was staring at it like a cat looks at a mouse—a really big mouse, of course, just fucking huge. Biggest mouse ever. Just saying. So he’s staring at my monster mouse and he’s all, Mmm, I’d love to take a thick load of your man cream right in my slutty hole.”
Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2) Page 5
