I felt a wave of nausea.
My black shoes were too tight and pinching my toes. Every time I stepped down, I could feel the back of the shoe scraping against the heel of my foot. I knew that I would have blisters, but I didn't care. My black dress felt scratchy, constricting, and suddenly too hot. I could feel sweat beading on my brow. My hands were cold and I could feel them tremble ever so slightly. Though I could feel every uncomfortable sensation, I didn't feel like I was really connected to my body at all. It was as though it belonged to someone else.
I was grateful that Gwydion was right next to me. I could feel dozens of pairs of eyes on us. I knew that practically everyone in the room was staring at us. I could hear the whispering, but I didn't dare look, otherwise I'd lose my nerve.
Because, like Gwydion, I had to see them.
And then, suddenly, the caskets were right there. I was shorter than Gwydion, so I had to stand on my tippy-toes and then—
“Mom?” My voice sounded strangled and as loud as a gunshot in the silent room.
Gwydion dropped my hand as I leaned forward. I peered down at my mother. I'd overheard a pair of adults earlier, talking in hushed whispers about what a good job the mortuary had done on our parents, how they'd looked just like they were sleeping.
Someone had dressed my mother in a charcoal-gray silk blouse that I'd only ever seen her wear once before, two Christmases ago, when we'd had to visit our grandmother. She'd looked vaguely uncomfortable the entire time and she'd taken the blouse off immediately after we'd gotten home. Below the blouse, she was wearing a black skirt and a pair of black high heels. There was a tiny gold cross on a delicate chain around her neck. She'd never worn a cross before.
This was all wrong, I thought, staring down at her with dismay. Why hadn't anyone dressed her in one of the loose colorful dresses she'd loved? Her closet was filled with them. Or even in a pair of overalls? She'd worn overalls all the time during the summer, smudged with dirt from her garden. She'd loved her garden.
I stared at her, looking for something I recognized, but feeling colder with each passing moment as I realized that there was nothing of her left, nothing that I knew was right anymore. She was absolutely motionless and her face was made up in a way that made her seem much too delicate. Her cheeks were faintly pink, as though she were flushed.
She looked more like a doll than my mother. And she didn't look like she was sleeping. She looked like she was dead.
I didn't even look at my father. I didn't want to see him. He'd been the one driving the car. He'd been the one that had killed them.
Instead, I just stared at her, at the mother who would never kiss my forehead again, who would never tuck me in again, who would never again tell me to eat my vegetables or clean my room. A small noise of horror rose in the back of my throat, as the totality of everything that would never happen again struck me all at once.
Distantly, I heard a door opening, then shut with a soft decisive click. I could hear the whispering in the room get louder.
And the noise I was making, somewhere between a sob and a scream, rose in pitch. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't look away. I couldn't —
A sudden crash tore through the room.
A tiny startled noise escaped my lips and I jumped back instinctively.
I turned to look for the source of the noise.
My eyes landed on Gwydion. His back was to me and he was breathing hard. The right arm of his dark jacket was torn. He was standing over something long and dark. Except for the rise and fall of his chest, he was utterly motionless, as though transfixed by what he had done.
It took me a moment to realize what had happened: he had pushed our father's casket over. It was lying on its side on the floor. Dimly, I wondered how he'd summoned the strength to do something like that. Someone behind me screamed.
Ms. Stone, a doughy woman dressed in a cheap black skirt suit, hurried forward. Her graying hair was pulled back in a severe bun and her lips were a dark shade of red, as though stained with berries. Her face was smooth and pale from too much makeup. She loomed over Gwydion for an instant and her face was tight with rage as she glared down at him.
She didn't even look at me.
She looks like a vampire, I thought dimly. Like she should be wearing a cape. I felt suddenly dizzy and my thoughts didn't make any sense. I fought another wave of nausea.
I watched as Ms. Stone seized Gwydion by the arm and hurried him out of the room through a side door next to the platform, primly stepping around our father's body. She said nothing, but the grip on my brother's arm looked murderous. I expected him to struggle to get away from her, but the fight had apparently gone out of him. He let her take him from the room.
I was left alone on the raised platform, beside my mother's casket, with every pair of eyes in the room on me. The room was utterly silent.
I stood, rooted to the spot for a long moment. I stared at the carpet below my shoes, not wanting to look anyone in the eye. My body felt strange, stiff and statue-like.
Why isn't anyone moving? I wondered wildly. Surely, someone should come and fix our father? He's spilling out of his casket. I know he is, even though I won't look. There are people who are supposed to do that. I know there are, I saw them when we came in, blank-faced and apologetic adults, dressed in pristine navy suits.
Then, all at once, the strange spell that had held me motionless broke. I turned and moved toward the door that Ms. Stone had pulled Gwydion through. I felt like I was moving too slowly, like I was trapped in a nightmare. The door was the same dark-colored wood as the paneling. The knob was made out of shiny brass. I reached out to take it. It turned easily in my hand. I pulled the door open and stepped through.
It took me a second to realize what had happened.
I was standing back in that awful room.
Gwydion was holding my hand. His skin felt cold to the touch.
People sat on either side of us, most of them staring ahead blank-faced and distant. A couple of people near the front were crying softly. There was dark-colored paneling that split the walls in half. The top half of the walls was an ugly pink wallpaper. Gwydion and I were standing on a pathway that led to a raised platform on the far side of the room. The caskets were side by side, undisturbed.
There was something about this that wasn't right, but I suddenly couldn't remember what it was.
I wasn't supposed to be here.
“Ms. Stone is right behind me,” He whispered. “She doesn't want us to see them. We have to hurry.”
I started to nod, but then I stopped. “There's something I need to be doing,” I said softly. “This isn't it.”
I frowned.
I suddenly couldn't remember how I'd gotten here. I knew that Gwydion wanted us to see our parents, that they had just died. But some distant part of my mind felt the wrongness of the situation. I remembered our social worker, Ms. Stone, driving us to the funeral, but it seemed like it had happened a long time ago.
Like a memory.
In an instant, I tried to replay the day, but everything else had had happened to lead me here was blank. I felt the first stirrings of dread, like in a nightmare, when you realize that nothing is the way that it should be.
“I've done this before,” I whispered. “Gwydion, let go of me.”
Gwydion tried to pull me forward, but I didn't move. I forced myself to look at him, to really see him. His skin was freezing against mine. He turned to me, his face losing all expression. It was as empty and as cold as his skin.
And his eyes were black.
“We need to see mom and dad,” He said. But his voice was wrong. It sounded deeper than it should have, and completely flat. Emotionless. It didn’t sound human at all.
I stared at him.
Had his eyes always been black? It seemed like they had been. But no, I remembered, his eyes were a strange blue-green. I'd always been jealous, because his eyes were so pretty, the color of the sea. M
y eyes were boringly brown. They had never been black before.
Even as I watched, his eyes changed. The black seemed to creep into the whites of his eyes, until his gaze was like the abyss.
“You're not Gwydion,” I said. I tried to step away from him, but his grip tightened on mine suddenly, and it was like a cold vise crushing my hand.
“We have to see mom and dad!” He roared, pulling me forward. “Don't you want to SEE THEM?”
I tried to fight him, but my shiny black shoes slid on the carpet. Everyone had turned to look at us, and most of them were grinning eagerly at us, at me. Their eyes were black, just like Gwydion's.
“You're not Gwydion!” I said, as we neared the platform, still struggling uselessly against his grip. “This isn't real! Mom and dad died a long time ago!”
It all rushed back, suddenly. I understood where I was and what was happening. I was in the underworld, trapped in a memory. A demon had taken Gwydion's form somehow. Rory and I had gotten separated and I was left to face down this thing that looked like my brother on my own.
We reached the platform.
The thing that looked like my brother pulled me forward. He bent me forward over my mother's casket. I tried to struggle against him, but he was stronger than I was. His fingers were digging into my arms.
“LOOK AT HER!” He screamed.
And, though I didn't want to, I did. And my eyes landed on her necklace. On the tiny gold cross around her neck, suspended in the hollow of her throat by a delicate gold chain.
I remembered suddenly that the cross had never been there at all. On the day we'd buried our mother in the real world, she'd been wearing a pearl necklace. I had noticed it, because our mother had never worn anything like it before. I'd felt the urge to take it off of her, so that she wouldn't have to wear it forever. But I hadn't moved, I hadn't dared. And I’d always regretted it.
I knew what I had to do.
Gwydion's grip relaxed on me slightly. Perhaps he believed that I was under his control again. And I could feel myself beginning to slip back into the pattern of the memory. My breathing was accelerating. I hadn't noticed that before. And that awful noise was building up inside of me as I stared at my mother's motionless body.
From the corner of my eye, I was aware that Gwydion was watching me. He was grinning and his black eyes seemed to drink in my horror greedily. The expression on his face was close to ecstasy. His grip on me was almost completely relaxed.
My hand darted out and my fingers clasped the gold cross. I could feel the chain break in the same moment that the creature wearing Gwydion’s face realized he'd been fooled.
He let out a roar of anger and back-handed me.
The blow was vicious. I fell backwards, black dots swimming before my eyes. The corner of my mother's casket bit into my back.
“I'm going to enjoy this,” He said, advancing on me. “You and I are going to have so much fun here.”
He lowered himself, grabbing me by the hair. I could smell his breath, musty and dank. It smelled like death.
Could he kill me here? I wondered. I didn't know the rules. I hadn't asked Rory. In hindsight, I realized that was incredibly foolish of me.
On impulse, I raised the cross. It hung between us, spinning on its broken chain. It caught the light for an instant and the creature that looked like Gwydion reared back, dropping me. He staggered away from me, moving like a wounded animal. His features contorted in rage. His black eyes seemed to flash as he glared at me. He didn't look remotely human anymore, and he certainly didn't look like my brother.
“This isn't over,” He snarled.
And then he vanished into thin air. The awful viewing room disappeared as well, fading into nothingness around me. I was left lying on my back in the road.
I stood quickly, fighting a wave of dizziness. My body felt strange and my lower back felt like it was on fire from where I had been thrown into my mother's casket. I looked around wildly, half-expecting the demon to reappear at any moment. The cross was still clasped tightly in my fist. I could feel the edges of it biting into my palm.
“Rory?” I called. “Rory! If you’re there, answer me!”
It took me several seconds to process what my senses were telling me. Darkness loomed up on either side of the road, carpeted by thick banks of fog. The chill pierced my bones, worrying its way into me. In moments, I felt as though I would never be warm again. In the distance ahead of me, the town of Hollow Hill stretched out, ghostly and silent. The road was utterly deserted.
There was no sign of Rory.
I was alone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I was in the underworld, I'd just been attacked by an actual demon, and Rory had somehow vanished into thin air, leaving me alone in my quest to find and save my brother. I had no idea what to do next and the thought of venturing forward by myself terrified me.
I allowed myself exactly two minutes to fall apart. I'm not proud of it, but I needed it.
A memory came back to me, unbidden.
It was right after I had realized that Gwydion was starting to use, back when we were in high school. I’d noticed him leaving school grounds with Tyler Flores, one of the resident stoner kids, just before last period. So I’d followed them.
The Hollow Hill high school was practically right on the waterfront and I knew where they were going: to the abandoned shipyard.
When Hollow Hill was first founded, a group of wealthy east coast investors sank plenty of money into building a surprisingly large shipyard. It was thought back then that Hollow Hill would ultimately become a major port town. When Hollow Hill was quarantined back in 1918, the shipyard — like the rest of the town — fell into disuse. By the time that Hollow Hill had been reopened to the public, Port Townsend and Port Angeles had replaced Hollow Hill as port destinations, so the shipyard remained unused. The docks were so rotted and damaged from the years of neglect that the town officials finally decided to simply fence them off. Naturally, it was a very popular place for high school students who wanted to play hooky. It was also an excellent place for less savory happenings.
Gwydion and Tyler, I had no doubt, were up to the latter.
I followed them through the woods and, after waiting for nearly a minute, followed them out of the tree line and ducked through the hole that had been cut in the rusted chain-link fence and into the shipyard. There was a single mostly-sunken wooden schooner in the bay. The back half of the top deck was still above water. The rest of it was submerged, but the shape of it was still visible beneath the water. Impossibly, both masts were still intact. Scraps of canvas sails hung from them. The only other ship docked there was a massive metal hulk that had once been a battleship. It was still floating, but it was rusted a deep orange color and listing ominously to one side. The dock leading to it was twisted and green with rot, with scraps of dark water visible through the sections that had fallen into the bay. A massive wooden structure was built right on the waterline, with half of it on the shore and the other half jutting out over the water, supported by thick barnacle-coated wooden pylons.
I surveyed the scene before me, looking for my brother. I gave a nervous look at the sky. It was an ominous shade of steel gray. It would start to rain soon.
I caught sight of Gwydion and Tyler, just as they disappeared into the building.
I picked my way across the shipyard and followed them inside.
There were no lights, but sections of the roof had collapsed at some point, casting everything in a murky gray light. The interior was massive and open. There were wooden crates and workbenches everywhere. The wooden skeleton of a partially constructed ship sat in the center of the room. The middle section of it was collapsed by a piece of fallen roof. The bow was still intact and covered in years of graffiti. A rusted iron walkway lined the interior of the room. Pieces of railing were missing from it.
Tyler and Gwydion were in the center of the room. Gwydion was holding something. A glass p
ipe of some sort. For a brief moment, Gwydion’s face was illuminated orange from the glow of a lighter. He inhaled deeply and exhaled curling white smoke. Tyler was watching him with a hungry — almost predatory — look on his face.
I don’t remember crossing the room, but I was suddenly in front of my brother.
Gwydion started, his mouth forming an almost comical ‘O’ of surprise.
Before either boy could react, I slapped the glass pipe from his hand. It landed on the ground.
“You bitch!” Tyler swore, stooping down to pick up the pipe. He swore again as his fingers touched the hot glass. The pipe fell again and rolled away.
“Ken, what are you doing here?” Gwydion asked, his words slower, as though it cost him effort to put them together in sentence. He swayed for a moment. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“No, what are you doing?” I demanded, “Ditching class to get high at the docks? What is wrong with you?”
“This is none of your business,” Tyler said.
“No, you know what,” I said turning to him. “It is my business. It’s very much my business. Leave, Tyler. Before I call the cops on your sorry ass.”
“And get your brother in trouble too? Nah, I don’t think so.”
“Don’t think I won’t,” I replied, glaring at him.
In response, Tyler picked up something from the ground. It was a long metal pipe. It, too, was rusted.
I felt a flash of fear and I felt my eyes widen, but I stood my ground.
“Stop it, Tyler,” Gwydion said, following my gaze. “Put it down.”
For a moment, Tyler didn’t move. We were still glaring at each other.
“Tyler, I mean it. Put the pipe down,” Gwydion said, sounding more lucid.
Tyler took a step towards me. I don’t know if he planned to use it, or if he was just trying to scare me. But Gwydion reacted before I could find out.
The Claiming Page 9
