Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy

by Ilsa J. Bick

  She waited a moment as her eyes adjusted to the sudden gloom. The interior was huge, almost a cave with those stone walls soaring to a ceiling of exposed beams of the same dark wood as the slider. Directly ahead and in the center were wooden pallets, stacked three deep and three high, the kind farmers normally used for hay.

  Except now, they held bodies.

  Ellie knew the routine. After a corpse was washed and rubbed with spice-scented oil, it was wrapped in a clean white sheet. Hannah always placed a small spell bag on the chest before sewing the body into burlap, on which she also painted a purple, five-pointed star. The corpse was then laid so the head, supported by a small pillow, faced east. The direction was important—some blah-blah about heaven and resurrection—but Ellie had tuned out. Her dad died waaay east of here and came home in the equivalent of a really tiny shoebox. She sure didn’t see him coming back to life and walking through the door anytime soon. Okay, it was snarky. Still.

  After the ruckus outside, the death house was so quiet Ellie heard her own liquid swallow. Far as she knew, nothing wrong here. Well, if you didn’t count the bodies. Of the dead kids there, two were mauled by people-eaters. But that left five who’d been fed poison because they’d begun to turn. The next-to-last body was the old man with Chris, the one whose neck had been broken by that swinging mace.

  “So, now what?” she whispered, because it didn’t seem right to talk any louder. At the sound of her voice, Mina anxiously shifted her weight and then took a few hesitant steps toward the pallets. Her nails ticked on stone. Ellie thought maybe she should call Mina back but then thought, Wait. See what she does.

  She expected her dog to snuffle each bag. But Mina didn’t. Instead, the dog went to the foot of the last pallet—and the body there, all by its lonesome—before turning a look back at Ellie. Well? the dog’s amber eyes seemed to ask. Aren’t you coming?

  Ellie wasn’t aware that she was moving or had even thought about it until she felt the icy palm of stone on her knees as she knelt next to Mina. The dog wasn’t really staring at the body so much as … well, watching it really, really carefully. But looking for what? Ellie let her eyes drift over the bulge of the head, then sweep down to that shelf of feet and toes. Nothing really to see. Her gaze crawled back to the slight tent of that purple star over the body’s chest. She had no idea what the hex sign meant, or what Hannah put in those spell bags—

  In the next second, her thoughts whited out as Ellie finally did see something that shouldn’t, couldn’t be.

  When the star over the chest … moved.

  24

  Tom had no true memory of moving. But he must have, and very fast, switching from skis to snowshoes and scuffing down in long, sweeping strides to wallow through snow, over rocks, and around broken trees, because there was a jump in time, a bizarre stutter step like the hitch of a damaged DVD, and then he was on his knees, at the ski pole. His daypack and Jed’s Bravo were now on the snow, and he was chopping icy rubble with his KA-BAR. His breath came in harsh, sobbing pants as he stabbed, working his blade to expose a silvered fiberglass spear speckled with a stencil of cheery white snowflakes. When he’d sliced enough away, he slipped his knife back into his leg sheath, then wrapped both hands around the plastic grip and gave a quick yank. The pole popped free. The touring basket was gone, but the hard metal tip was still intact. From the length, he thought it must’ve been used by a boy, or a tall girl.

  It has to be one of theirs. Sweat lathered his cheeks and trickled down his chest. Craning a look over his shoulder, he eyed the swell of land behind. He was in the fall line, and so was the pole. That meant one of three things. In the worst-case scenario, the pole was swept down here while its owner had still been on the rise. In the best case, the owner made his skis and outran the avalanche but lost the pole somewhere along the way.

  And then there’s the somewhere-in-between. He swept his eyes over the flats, hunting for the telltale jut of a broken ski, maybe even another pole. He’s bombing down on his skis, surfing over snow, but then the avalanche trips him up—

  That thought skipped to a halt as his brain registered something protruding from the snow perhaps six feet and change to his right: a small brown hump, easy to miss because it looked so much like a pebble.

  Except it wasn’t. The sun was low enough now that the light on the sparkling snow was ruddy, the color of new blood. He knew, exactly, what that brown lump was.

  A boot. Tom’s breath gnarled in his chest. It’s the toe of a boot, that’s a boot, it’s …

  “No, no! Alex, Alex!” Tearing off his gloves, he jammed his fingers through a thin layer of crackling ice even as his mind screamed that this couldn’t be her; that was insane. But here was the pole, and now there was a boot, and they came for her, and so this could be her, might be, and he had to get her out, get her out get her out get her out! Frantic, he clawed at the snow. In a few moments, the laces appeared, and then a thin rime of blue wool sock. The cup of her heel was solidly wedged in the deep cleft of two large boulders, and he could tell that she’d come to rest at an angle, her head lower than her boots.

  Unless it wasn’t Alex. Wasn’t that boot too big? And the ankle … Thick, too large, but maybe that’s only the sock and the angle and …

  “No, it’s you, it’s you, it has to be you, I know it. Oh God, Alex, Alex,” he said, driving his hands into the snow up to the elbows. His fingers closed around something stiff, wooden. A leg, and it was her right; he knew that from the boot. There was a body here, and it was Alex; she was down there; he knew it.

  Unless … A great black swell of horror churned in his chest. Unless this leg was all he would find. Anything powerful enough to crater a rise and drive a monstrous sweep of snow and rock and trees would have no trouble leaving a person in pieces, snapping bones as easily as brittle twigs, strewing a leg here, an arm there.

  Straddling where he thought her body must be, he began to piston his fists through the snow, driving them like jackhammers. He didn’t dare use the KA-BAR. What if he hurt her, cut her? The snow broke apart in chunks, compacted not only by pressure built up by the avalanche’s momentum but its own weight. There were rocks here, too, that he wrenched free and heaved aside. He couldn’t stop, he wouldn’t, but oh God, he wanted to stop. He knew he should.

  I have to know, I don’t want to know … This can’t be her, because if it is, there’ll be nothing left for me after this.

  But he had to see, he had to know. He dug, heaving out blocks of snow, unearthing this tomb hewn of ice and rock. The curve of her hips, just the barest suggestion, appeared, and then the outline of a torso encased in a frozen balloon: a moss-green parka, swollen with snow, rucked up her sides. He gave this a cursory swipe and kept going. Later, yes, later, he would free her completely, but now he had to see her, find her face, her face, her face.… He plowed through snow, smashing and breaking and scratching his way up to the humps of her shoulders and then her neck, shouting like a crazy person: “Alex Alex Alex Alex Alex?”

  At last—it seemed like an age; it went by in a minute—all that separated them was a thin veil of snow and ice. And that was when he paused.

  I don’t want to see this. A deep, hard shudder worked through his bones. Tiny red pinpricks from his torn hands dotted the snow like candy sprinkles. He’d seen buddies like this, cocooned in yards of bandages into rough, anonymous mummies. Trying to find their faces was always the worst. Sometimes the location of the blood helped, huge blotchy patches of rust leaking over gauze to mark where something wasn’t. But the very, very worst moments came when what he stared at was a blank: no peak of a nose, no broad expanse of a forehead, or even valleys where the eyes might be. The worst was when there was nothing at all.

  This was like that, as if Tom were poised over a satin-lined casket, looking down at a body so brutalized, so utterly destroyed, that the undertaker had draped gauzy linen over the face as a final kindness, an act of mercy.

  Please, God, it can’t be her. I need it to
be, but I won’t be able to stand it if it is.

  “Oh, Alex,” he said, and used the side of his hand, as gently as he possibly could, to sweep the last of that ice-shroud from her face.

  Five stunned seconds later, he began to scream.

  25

  “Aahh!” Screaming, Ellie flung her arms like Wile E. Coyote just figuring out that he’s run off the cliff. Her Savage clattered against stone. Mina yipped as Ellie tumbled from her knees to her butt. Frantic, she crabbed back. She could feel her mouth hanging open, her eyes bugging from their sockets, the next scream boiling its way up from her stomach.

  That was it; she was getting out of here. The crows, this creepy room full of dead people, a bag that moved … Probably a mouse or a rat or something in there, eating the body’s eyes or tongue or—

  But there are no mouse turds, a small voice from somewhere in the more reasonable part of her mind said. There are no holes in the burlap.

  “So it’s a s-s-small h-hole,” she said.

  It’s cold, the voice said, patiently. The bodies are frozen, remember? They can’t rot. They don’t smell.

  “Yeah, but then why are the crows here?” This was stupid; she was arguing with herself. But hearing her own voice made her feel better, too, more in control. “Because they must not be frozen, right?”

  That could be. Unless crows also mean something else, the voice suggested.

  “What?” Ellie frowned. How could crows be anything more than what they were? She was about to ask the voice what the heck it was talking about when she thought, You dummy, you’re talking to you. So what do you think you mean? She had absolutely no idea, and the voice sure wasn’t saying. From her place by the pallet, Mina was looking at her with a perplexed expression, as if wondering what all the fuss was about.

  The star moved, didn’t it? Could she be wrong? Ellie squeezed her eyes tight enough to see fireflies flitting across the dark. Maybe it was a cloud or something. The fact that there was no blue sky and no possibility of a cloud was … well, that didn’t matter.

  Oh, come on, you big baby. Opening her eyes again, Ellie gave her head an angry shake. You walked through crows. You opened the stupid door. So why bother if you’re going to be a little girl about it?

  She retrieved her rifle, her hands shaking very badly. She balled them tight, squeezing out the fear. Her legs felt wobbly, like overdone noodles, so she hitched over to the pallet on hands and knees, thinking over and over again, a little like a prayer, Tom could do this; Alex would do this; Tom could do this; Alex would … But she kept her eyes on the floor the whole way, not daring to look at the body, that burlap bag—not just yet. Instead, she let her head butt Mina’s shoulder just ever so slightly, the way Mina sometimes nuzzled her palm when she wanted a pat. Her dog snuffled at her neck, then dragged a warm, reassuring tongue over her cheek as if to say, Hey, it’s okay, Ellie; we’re all entitled to a freak-out every now and then.

  “Yeah.” Burying her face in Mina’s shoulder, she slid her arms around the dog’s neck. Then she blew out and turned her eyes back to the pallet. The purple star was still. So was the burlap bag. No big, bad boogeyman. Just a dead person in there, a people-sicle.

  The little voice was suddenly back: Yes, but what about the birds, and Mina—

  “Oh, be quiet.” It had been a shadow. Her imagination. For a second, she felt an absurd disappointment, as if her panic had been just a beginning emotion, something you had to get out of the way first before getting down to the real feelings. Like when your Grandpa Jack took you home and didn’t tell you about your daddy, who you thought was in Iraq and not due back for two months. But then you opened the door and there was your dad, and Grandpa’s yelling, Surprise! But you, you’re so stunned that you have to reach to touch your daddy’s cheek—

  “To make sure you’re not dreaming. To make sure he’s real.” Her voice was thick. She was crying again, and how stupid was that? Why can’t anything good ever happen? Still weeping and without understanding why, she laid her hand over the star and the tiny bulge of the spell bag just beneath. The body was still, but …

  No. Blinking, her tears suddenly drying up, she took her hand back and turned it over to inspect her palm like a fortune-teller studying a lifeline. No, that can’t be right.

  Well, the little mind-voice said, you could check one of the others. Then compare, right?

  “This is dumb.” But her right knee crick-crackled in the hush as she rose and sidestepped to another body in the row just above: Travis, dead—well, put out of his misery, as Hannah liked to say—only a month ago. Ellie feathered her palm over that tent of burlap and the spell bag beneath. The hex star’s purple paint was riddled with thin fissures, like a dried-up creek bed. Travis was still. But Travis was also very, very cold. Cold as the stone, as the snow. As ice. So was Rudy, one body over, and Mrs. Rehymeyer two rows up.

  They’re all cold. Returning to the last and freshest body, she eased her hand over the star. They’re ice cubes. But this one is—

  “Warm.” A lance of shock stabbed her chest. “You’re warm.” Not blazing hot or feverish, or even normal-warm like her. But the difference between this body and the others … This is real. She watched her fingers walk the hills and ridges of ribs, reading the chest like a blind person. Lower down, just below that last rib, she traced the bit of wound wood—a piece of an ash tree prepared in some weird Amish magic way—that Hannah had placed over the rip where that killing spike had driven through. I really feel this.

  Her hand drifted back to the star. Now that she was allowing herself to linger, to concentrate, she detected a very light but very distinct flutter, like the flip of a goldfish in a too-large bowl. Hannah said that when you took a pulse, you had to be careful not to mistake your heartbeat for the other person’s. So Ellie pressed her hand just a little more firmly against the body’s chest. The fish-flutter nudged her palm again, but stronger now, as if the spell bag was a heart struggling to fill with blood.

  “Oh!” Gasping, Ellie jerked away again and saw that it was … the star was … “Moving,” she whispered. “You’re really moving.” The words came out sounding too ordinary, but there was no mistake. The hex sign heaved and rolled: not the up-and-down, in-with-the-good, out-with-the-bad of a breath but the slow roll of a wave, like there was something eeling along under there. Animal. She could feel her mind snatch at the idea. A mouse or even a snake, and no, don’t bother her with little details like snakes didn’t come out when it was freezing. There had to be an animal in there. It was the only explanation that made sense.

  But the body’s warm, Ellie, the little voice said. It’s not frozen or ice-cold, it’s—

  Ellie lost track of what the closet-voice said next.

  Because from that burlap shroud came a low moan.

  26

  It wasn’t Alex.

  A boy stared up at Tom. Stared through him and beyond, into the red socket of that dying sky. If a look had a sound, this boy’s was silence. The kid’s eyes were vacant, their color as flat and murky as stones in deep water, and so still. Nearly bleached of color, the boy’s face was frozen in a death mask, a bloodless, gaping scream. Or maybe he’d only been choking to death on that ball of ice, jammed in his mouth like an apple in a roast pig, or suffocating because of the snow plugging both nostrils.

  “Nooooo,” Tom groaned. A weird palsy shook him to the bone. In a saner moment, he might have been glad it wasn’t Alex. Every second he didn’t find her—entombed in ice, torn apart under the snow, broken to bits among the rocks—was one more moment when she still might be alive. Those Chuckies had had the time. They’d reached her, stolen her from him, spirited her away. But for him, this was the rise all over again, the feeling of the earth swelling and heaving and breaking, and then he was gasping, shuddering, staring down through streaming eyes at that dead boy, the bright flare in his chest exploding in a scream: “God, why? What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing?”

  His vision purpl
ed. He didn’t remember picking up the rock, which, he saw later, was jagged and long as an ax head, completely right for the job. But time shrieked to a halt, stuttered …

  And when he came back, it was to sounds, raw and crisp and glassy: the boy’s frozen flesh breaking, the face and skull shattering and splintering to bits. Or maybe that was only Tom’s mind finally blasting apart; the black thing inside cracking him wide, wide open to be birthed on a bellow of agony and grief.

  “No, God, no, no, no!” On his knees, rearing up, his arms hurtling down, the rock-hatchet cleaving air with a whistle, as he smashed and hit and hit and destroyed: “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”

  Why did he stop? Hell if he knew. But that burst of manic energy suddenly drained away; all his muscles went wobbly and weak, and he couldn’t hold on anymore. The rock tumbled from his fingers, and then he was falling back, his lungs working, the sweat running in rivers down his face and neck and over his chest. God, he was burning up. Pawing at his parka, he finally managed to drag down the zipper and flop his way free of that tangled embrace.

  Of course it wasn’t Alex. You knew it was a boy’s boot; look at the ankle, look at the size, you idiot—how could you miss that? “Because,” he choked, pulling in icy air that slashed his lungs, “you want it to be her, Tom; you don’t want it to be her, but you want it, you need it, you need her, and oh God, oh God …”