Limbo's Child (Book One of The Dead Things Series)

by Jonah Hewitt

  The shoes shuffled but did not move.

  “But what persecution could not destroy, apathy accomplished far too easily. Too few held to the old ways and soon there weren’t many of us left. Your mother was one of the last.”

  “My mother?” Lucy thought.

  “There must always be one to carry on the burden, Lucy. At least one. That one is THE Necromancer, the champion of Death himself. He makes sure that the will of Death, the Great Master, is done.”

  “Great Master?!” Lucy was panicking in her mind. “What sort of people called Death the ‘Great Master?!’”

  “We have been led by one for a very long time, but he is very old, Lucy, centuries even, and he can no longer lead us.” Amanda paused and said the next word very carefully, “Lazlo Moríro.”

  The name made Lucy shudder uncontrollably with dread, though she didn’t know why.

  “He is your great uncle, Lucy.”

  “Great uncle?!” Lucy thought, “Is that why everyone was asking me about an uncle? How come I’ve never heard of him?!”

  Amanda went on. “From birth, your mother was chosen to replace him.”

  Lucy ran her fingers through her hair, this was all too bizarre to absorb.

  “Haven’t you wondered why she left Pennsylvania? She was running away, Lucy. Running away from her family. She was young and afraid of the responsibility.”

  Lucy held her breath. Amanda was very close. Then the shoes began to walk off again. Lucy breathed a sigh of relief but then slapped her hands over her mouth, afraid Amanda might have heard her. The shoes paused, but only briefly and then kept walking.

  “Haven’t you wondered why she came back after all these years? Why she moved back to your grandmother’s house a year ago? Away from your friends and everything you knew? Why she insisted on home-schooling you here but not in Texas? Haven’t you wondered why she left a job as a librarian at a community college in Texas to take a lesser job as a middle school librarian in rural Pennsylvania? Doesn’t that strike you as a step down, Lucy?”

  Lucy had thought that many times in fact. Every day she had slept or ate or did anything in that musty old house she hated it and wondered why her mother had forced them to live there. Lucy pounded her temples with her fists and tried to force herself not to cry. How did this woman know so much about her and her family?! “It just couldn’t be true,” she thought to herself, but she wasn’t so sure anymore.

  “Your mother left Pennsylvania because she was afraid of who she was. She attempted to run from it, Lucy, but I think she eventually came to terms with it. She came back. She had to come back. The old Necromancer, your great uncle, is very old and near death. He has lost his way. She came back to take his place. Someone had to, and there is no one else. And she also came back for you.”

  “For me? Why?!” Lucy thought. Amanda seemed to sense her thoughts before she knew them herself.

  “You have the gift, Lucy.”

  “The gift?” Lucy thought.

  “She thought you would be safe here. I believe she was trying to protect you, Lucy.”

  “Protect me? From what?” Lucy thought. She hugged her knees and rocked silently, clenching her teeth and trying to think what to do.

  “I believe your mother would have told you everything…eventually. She would have taught you how to protect yourself, but she never got the chance. But I’m here now, Lucy, and I can protect you.”

  “Yeah! Like you were sooo gentle with Dr. Carfax!!” Lucy thought sarcastically to herself.

  “There are dark forces at work here, Lucy.”

  “Dark forces?!” thought Lucy.

  “Dark forces that want to take you from me. Do you think your mother’s death was an accident?”

  “Not an accident?! What was she saying?”

  “Or that boy from the gift shop, Lucy? He’s not who he appears to be.”

  “Sky?!” thought Lucy, “Impossible! Not Sky! He was so nice!” But then she remembered that Yo-yo had said the same thing.

  “It wasn’t an accident that he met you, Lucy. He was looking for you. He was there to kidnap you…kill you…or worse.”

  “Worse? What could be worse than death?” Lucy thought.

  “We call them hunters, blood-drinkers or night-stalkers, but you know them as vampires.”

  “Sky – a vampire? That’s crazy!” Then she remembered the strange daydreams she’d had. Visions of fangs and neck-biting that she had mistaken as flights of fantasy. “It just couldn’t be true! Vampires weren’t real, they didn’t exist!!” she thought. “But then neither do longhaired ghost witches,” she thought again.

  “Do you remember how cold his hands were? Do you remember how overpowering his charm was? Vampires are like that, Lucy. They trick you, make you lower your defenses, waiting to strike. They are the perfect predators really.”

  Lucy bit her lip and tried to prevent herself from sobbing.

  “But I can protect you from them, Lucy. I can teach you how to use your powers against them.”

  “Powers?” Lucy felt totally powerless right now.

  “You can do it now. I can show you how if you want.”

  Lucy gripped the sleeves of her bathrobe so tight that she nearly pulled them off.

  “Listen, Lucy. Can you hear your own heartbeat?”

  Lucy’s heartbeat was pounding in her ears so loud she could hardly hear anything else.

  “Listen to it, Lucy. Listen. Make the beats go…slower. Concentrate.”

  Lucy did listen. Her heart was racing so fast she could hardly make out the individual beats. It was like her head was inside a roaring engine.

  “Listen, Lucy. Listen. Calm yourself. Count the beats.”

  Lucy listened. She didn’t know why or how, but she decided to follow Amanda’s instructions. She started counting the beats, “One! Two! Three! Four!” They were too fast to count. She tried to concentrate, tried to make the time between beats longer. “One…two…three…four…” Slowly, slowly, the pace abated.

  “Good. Now listen. Don’t listen to me, but just listen.”

  Lucy did listen. There was only her heartbeat at first. Then slowly, there were others. A few here and a few there. Some were strong and steady, others thready and weak, soon there were dozens of them.

  “You hear them don’t you, Lucy?”

  Lucy nodded even though she was hidden. She unclenched her teeth. Her jaw went slack. Was she imagining this? No. No, she wasn’t – this was real. They were everywhere. It was overwhelming. As she listened, she could almost tell who they belonged to! Three floors down, fast and angry, overworked – a nurse maybe. And then – someone outside the lobby entrance, someone smoking she thought. His was unsteady, irregular. There were dozens, hundreds! of them. She lowered herself slowly to the floor, laid her head silently on the cool concrete and tried to overcome the shock of it all. It was true. Everything Amanda said was true!

  “Those are the heartbeats in this hospital, Lucy. A necromancer can sense life…a necromancer can sense death…he can sense the thread and tremor of it, like a guitarist knows the strings of his instrument. He knows which ones are strong and which ones are near breaking. Each string has its own tone, a finite number of beats. Can you pick out a single string, Lucy?”

  Lucy listened.

  “Can you find the thread of life down the hall and down the stairwell? Can you find Dr. Carfax’s heartbeat?”

  “You killed DR. CARFAX!!” Lucy screamed inside her head.

  “Can you hear it?”

  Lucy placed one ear to the cold floor and put a hand over her other ear to shut out the other noises. She pushed the other heartbeats away. There, lying on the floor of the landing was a heartbeat, strong and steady. It was Dr. Carfax. She was alive. She was going to be ok. That heart had many more beats left it in.

  “I’m sorry I had to hit her so hard, Lucy, but she’s going to be ok. I just couldn’t have her following us.”

  Lucy curled up slowly into the fetal position o
n the floor. Silent tears, poured down her face. Why hadn’t her mother told her?! Why had she never known?!

  “That’s how you can tell the vampires from the rest of us, Lucy. Vampires are dead. They don’t have heartbeats.”

  Lucy wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “The world is full of hazards, Lucy. For teenage girls.” Amanda’s shoes walked closer to the counter Lucy was hiding behind. “For orphans.” The shoes took another step. “And especially for necromancers.” The shoes came closer still. “There are more than just vampires out there. There are undead and half-dead and things in-between. Zombies and bone golems and shades and wraiths and…” she paused, “demons.” The shoes stopped just the other side of the counter. “You need someone to help you. Someone to teach you how to use your powers. Someone you can trust.”

  Lucy didn’t know who to trust anymore.

  “You can hear my heartbeat, can’t you, Lucy?”

  Lucy could. It was steady and firm and even, certain and absolutely in control. But there was also something hissing and spitting around the edges of it. Something dark surrounding it like a black flame, feeding off of it.

  “You can tell that what I am telling you is the truth.”

  Lucy wasn’t sure.

  “Just as I can hear your frightened heartbeat on the other side of this counter.”

  Lucy tensed.

  “I can tell that you’re scared and that you don’t know what to do. You don’t know if you can trust me.”

  Slowly from the other side Amanda pulled off the plastic sheeting. Lucy sat up and pressed herself against the back of the counter. Amanda walked slowly around to the other side. All Lucy could see were her fashionable black-leather heels.

  “That’s the funny thing about trust, kiddo. It’s like two friends daring each other to go off the high-dive.”

  Lucy stood up slowly, sliding her back up along the counter. She looked up at Amanda. It was the friendly Amanda again. Lucy rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand.

  “Sooner or later one of you just has to jump.” Amanda held out her hand. “C’mon, Lucy. It’s time to go home.”

  Lucy stared at the hand. She reached her own hand forward slowly and just before she touched it, she looked up into Amanda’s eyes, barely visible in the dark behind the amber-tinted lenses. A cold light danced through them and Lucy saw the towering specter of the longhaired woman flash before her once more.

  “NO!” Lucy lunged forward and shoved Amanda hard in her mid-section sending her toppling over backward and ran in the opposite direction.

  “LUCY, STOP!! IT ISN’T SAFE!!” Amanda clawed after her. “LUCY!!”

  Lucy ran and ran her heart beating louder than ever. She could hear Amanda’s heartbeat too. Except the even and steady heartbeat was getting slower and was being consumed by the hissing sound that surrounded it. The hissing sound got louder and louder until it eclipsed the sound of Amanda’s heart entirely. It was now roaring like a fire. The hallway turned a corner. Lucy’s toes slipped on the hard floor and she stumbled. She had to put a hand down to the tile floor to catch herself but managed to make the turn and keep running. Lucy could feel the cold breath of something right above her, the crackling energy of the muffled heartbeat right behind her.

  She saw the end of the next hall and a dim, green exit sign that marked the other stairwell. The hallway seemed to stretch out in front of her like a dream and everything was moving in slow motion, or maybe it was just that her senses, were speeding up. Either way it took an eternity to reach the door. A heartbeat, a footstep, another heartbeat, another footstep, the roaring dark fire behind her always gaining. The exit sign was just a few more feet away, she dared a peek over her shoulder, but Amanda wasn’t there anymore – it was the longhaired specter filling the hallway, its arms outstretched like two, great black wings. It filled the hall like a giant vulture of black flame, its empty face and hollow, cold, grey, hungry eyes burning, it’s wild hair flailing behind it.

  Lucy gasped and quickly turned back around. She was under the exit sign. She turned one last corner and reached for the door to the stairwell but just as she did so, it swung open and out stepped the pimply-faced boy with red hair from the lobby. His beady eyes burned fiercely for a moment with pure malice. Lucy threw up her hands in front of herself and slipped. She crashed to the floor, landed on her bottom and nearly skidded into him. He leaned over her and howled and as he did so his face transformed into a visage of smoke and blackness, like a giant black dog with dagger-like canines.

  “VAMPIRE!!!” Lucy tried to scream but no sound came out. The boy’s face changed back, first to one of slight embarrassment or shame, then he looked up and the face just as quickly turned to shock and horror. Lucy put her arms across her face just in time to miss the collision of vulture-like specter and dog-like vampire.

  The sound of the crash was terrific, like a box full of cats and dogs being thrown down a flight of stairs. Broken pieces of dry wall and glass cascaded over her. Lucy closed her eyes, covered her head and felt for the wall. She crawled away from the sound while being showered with debris. She cut her hand on the broken glass. Some large piece of debris hit her head and she saw stars but kept going. She found the corner, got around it, opened her eyes, got up and ran. She got halfway down the hall before she stopped to look. Large pieces of broken walls and debris were flying past the corner but she couldn’t see the epic fight happening just out of sight. From the sound, it must have been horrifying. She realized she was hyperventilating. She tried to stop and felt something wet on the back of her head. She reached up and felt it. She looked at her fingers…blood!

  A huge crash dislodged some large piece of construction equipment, which came flying past the corner. No time to waste, she had to go. Lucy turned and ran, past the second corner and towards the other end. She skidded to a stop before the elevators. A thundering crash came from the direction of the fight. Should she try the elevators? Did they even stop on this floor? She pressed the button. It lit up. A good sign. There was a huge howl like a wolf in pain followed by manic screeching, somewhere between a woman’s voice and a bird of prey. She pressed the button frantically.

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, C’MON!!”

  The doors opened, but someone was already there! It was the second creep from the Lobby in the hoodie!! He spun to face her.

  “VLAH!!” he hissed at her, exposing sharp teeth that weren’t nearly as long as the other vampire’s, but in Lucy’s state they were still terrifying.

  “I VANT TO DREEENK VOR BLOOOD!!” he screamed and reached out to grab her with both arms.

  Lucy ducked, screamed and ran.

  “Hey!! Com vack!!” the vampire in the hoodie shouted, chasing after her. Only fifteen feet on did Lucy realize she was running in the WRONG direction when she heard the sounds of the terrifying fight coming her way. She skidded to a stop and then turned and ran in the opposite direction. However bad the vampire in the hoodie was he couldn’t possibly be worse than what was happening back the other way. She came face to face with the vampire in the hoodie and screamed again. He winced and covered his ears as she ducked and crashed right into him. He went high, she went low, colliding with him right at the height of his knees. Thankfully, he was so much taller that he just flipped face forward completely over the top of her.

  “Ah, cwapf!!” the vampire muttered as he hit the floor. Lucy slid to just within a few feet of the still-open elevator doors. She quickly crawled in and pounded the button for the ground floor repeatedly.

  “No!! No! No! Cwom vack! Dawn’t vo!” the vampire said as he scrambled on his hands and knees towards the doors. The doors just started to close as the vampire in the hoodie got up and lunged at them.

  “AAAAAHHH!!” Lucy screamed and leaped back to the far corner of the elevator, but the vampire was too late. The doors slid shut and the elevator began to move slowly downward.

  Lucy hugged herself and panted, unable to control
her breathing. She was safe, for the moment.

  As her eyes darted back and forth trying to think of what to do next the thoughts were so jumbled only one thought managed to push itself to the surface.

  “Did that last vampire have a lisp?!”

  “No! no! no! no! no! no! no! no! no! no! no! NO!!” Tim pounded on the closed, metal elevator doors but it was too late. He banged his forehead against them once in frustration. He slowly got up from his knees and muttered around the rancid, blood-tasting plastic teeth, “Skwaiwer is gwonna kwill me.” He repositioned the fake plastic teeth in his mouth. They did taste a little like wheat grass.

  Just then an enormous crash came from around the corner and then everything went silent. Tim took a few steps in the direction of the noise.

  “Mwilz? Ith dat woo?” Silence. “Mwilz? Woo okwaa?” Again nothing. Tim shuffled his feet uncomfortably. The lights were all out and the remaining light that managed to filter through the windows and all the plastic sheeting gave the floor an eerie look. Hospitals were creepy enough as it was. This place looked exactly like the set of “Hospital of Horrors VII.” Tim made a mental note to throw out his horror DVD collection when he got back home. He looked back into the silence for a long while before turning back to the elevators.

  “Whoa!” Tim jumped back. Standing there behind him was a tall, elegant-looking woman in a black business suit and heels. Her short hair was a little mussed, her glasses askew and there was dust all over her front.

  “Oh…sworry Mwam, I didn’ mean to skwar you,” Tim muttered around the plastic teeth. She looked at him with disgust maybe for half a second before she balled up a fist and punched Tim right in the mouth.

  “Ouch!” The plastic teeth flew out of Tim’s bite and landed several yards away. Tim grabbed his jaw and massaged the pain away. “Hey! I said I was sorry! What’s the matter with you?!”