by Paul Durham
“Goyle!” I hear Viola cry out in alarm.
I grit my teeth. I really have no choice at all.
I turn and rush from the alcove, back into the tunnel and toward the main track. I spot her on the rails, the headlights of the oncoming subway car illuminating her like spotlights.
“Viola!” I call. “Viola? Can you hear me?”
But I arrive a moment too late. The green trolley roars forward. I step aside just before it fills the tunnel with its massive frame. The tight space is alive with rattling metal and flashing light. I see the expressionless faces and dead eyes of the passengers as the windows rush past me.
I pinch my own eyes tight. Oh, no, what have I done?
When I reopen them, the trolley is gone and the tunnel is empty. Reluctantly, I squint down at the tracks, but Viola’s not there either. I hear heavy breathing from the darkness at my side.
Viola is pressed into a small nook, her eyes wide and her hands clutching the violin case to her chest like a shield. I don’t know how the trolley missed her, but I’m grateful that it did.
“Viola,” I gasp in relief, but she doesn’t reply. She steps from the nook, brushes tunnel dust from her coat, and stumbles silently down the track.
Of course, the Black Rabbit is long gone when I recheck the alcove. I think Viola’s shock has worn off by the time I trudge back and join her on the inbound platform. She sits on a bench, blinking at the oversized theater billboard sealed behind smudged Plexiglas. The tortured mask of the Phantom of the Opera returns her stare.
“Viola,” I say tentatively. “Can you talk?” Even if she can, I wonder if she’ll ever speak to me again.
She turns to me and narrows an eye. “I was frightened,” she says slowly.
I try to reassure her. “A lot of people get frightened. No need to be embarrassed about it.”
“Embarrassed?” she repeats hotly. “I’m angry!”
“Angry?” I ask.
Her porcelain face is sharp as she jumps to her feet. “You left me there.”
Oh, that. “I may have gotten a bit carried away…,” I offer.
“It’s not nice to abandon someone like that,” Viola reprimands. She makes a fair point, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to reply. After a moment, she just shakes her head and stares at the dirty tile floor, simmering.
“Did you at least catch your precious Netherkin?” she finally mutters.
“Almost,” I say. “I had him cornered but—”
“What?” she interrupts. “You left me to be squashed and still let him get away?”
I frown. “Well, actually, what happened was—”
“Oh, never mind all that,” she says, waving away my explanation. “Is that who you were looking for? That Black Rabbit creature?”
“No. I mean, maybe. I’m not exactly sure.”
I purse my lips. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the children happened to spot a rabbit in the playground today. And maybe it’s just a coincidence that Hetty’s sculpture and the crude portrait in the subway bear an uncanny resemblance to the wobbly man I encountered in the Fens. But I tend to believe that most coincidences are actually connections that have gone overlooked.
“This is some scavenger hunt you’re on, Goyle,” Viola says in response to my silence, rolling her eyes toward the subway ceiling. It reminds me of the expression Winnie used to give me. “It’s pretty hard for me to help if I don’t know what you’re looking for,” she adds.
“I’m looking for someone—or something—called the Boneless King, okay? I’d hoped some Netherkin might direct me to him.”
Viola’s eyes flick back at me quickly. “Boneless King?”
“I know, it sounds pretty ridiculous, right? But I just happened to run into someone who fit that description the other night. I didn’t think much of it then—when I left him he was all…wet. He looked a lot like that graffiti someone sprayed on the tunnel wall, though.”
I don’t mention Hetty’s clay sculpture left behind on the seesaw. It’s the most puzzling part of all this, and some things are better kept between a Grotesque and his wards.
Viola adjusts the brim of her cap lower over her eyes. “So if there are no Netherkin down here to point you in the right direction, how will you find him?”
I’ve already considered that myself.
“There are some other places to fish for Netherkin,” I say. “I’ll check there tonight. It’s best to visit them after dark.”
Viola hesitates before speaking. When she does, I’m surprised by her words. “I’ll come too.”
“Oh,” I say, furrowing my brow. I wasn’t extending an invitation. “I’m, well, used to working alone.”
“I don’t mind joining you.”
I raise the eyebrow with the thin white scar through it. “Even after the trolley, and the abandoning, and the near-squashing?”
“I’ll get over it,” Viola says flatly.
I consider her offer. “I’ll be out late,” I mention. “I don’t imagine your parents will appreciate it.”
“I can pretty much come and go as I please.”
Again, I hesitate. “I suppose…if you really want to.”
“That’s what friends do, Goyle,” she says, measuring her words. “They stick together.”
I’m not sure what to say. Viola is quiet, as if waiting for a response.
“Don’t you have any friends, Goyle?” she asks after a moment.
I cross my arms, and my eyes wander over her shoulder to the theater billboard. On second glance, the Phantom’s mask strikes me as more sad than menacing. I try to dull the pang in my stomach and push the Twins from my mind. “I used to. They’ve all moved on.”
Viola’s voice softens. “You’re all alone?”
“It seems so.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It happens,” I mutter, and glance back, dismissing her somber look with a shrug. “Friends come, friends go. They can’t stick around forever.”
Her eyes wander over the shadows of my face, probing. It makes me uncomfortable. I break off my gaze.
“I’ll be your friend,” she says quietly.
I should probably say Thanks. Or I’ll be your friend too.
Instead, I say, “That’s nice.” Which is apparently the wrong response.
Viola just blinks and her face tightens. She doesn’t say anything else for a long time.
The looming gates of the Granary Burying Ground are locked after sunset, but tonight an ashen-faced ghoul in a torn Victorian tea dress creeps through the rows of gray headstones. Lizzy Prudence’s eyes are dark and dead, in contrast with her bloodred lips, which glow in the light of her lantern. Her breath fogs the night air as she rants in a throaty crone’s voice.
“Here lies the restless soul of James Otis. He foresaw his own death—struck down by lightning. Do you smell burning flesh? Look to the shadows.” She waggles her blackened fingernails. “Mr. Otis has been known to wander these grounds after dark—his ears still smoking.”
A dozen tourists whisper among themselves. One raises his hand to ask the ghoul a question.
Lizzy Prudence is not a Netherkin. She’s not even dead. She’s a guide for one of the haunted sightseeing tours that operate around the city. This time of year, business is as brisk as the rapidly changing weather. It’s cold and raw. Another unseasonable snow squall may be on its way.
The sightseers stroll past slate markers that have been worn into brittle wafers by centuries of harsh winters. The graveyard flashes with light as photographs are snapped in front of the burial monuments of Paul Revere, John Hancock, and other historic figures. Those hoping to find telltale orbs or vague apparitions in their images will be disappointed—the famous people all moved on long ago.
Contrary to popular belief, cemeteries aren’t exactly teeming with spooks. By the time bodies are actually laid to rest, there’s been plenty of time for their former inhabitants to begin their journey on to what’s Next. If you reall
y want to be creeped out, try wandering the halls of a hospital late at night—those places are thick with the newly dead.
But the really old cemeteries, like this one, are always home to a few stubborn Netherkin. Colonial-era physicians weren’t nearly as thorough as their modern descendants, and it wasn’t unheard of for some unlucky patient to be buried a bit…prematurely. A few of those lie here. They’re some of the oldest Netherkin in the city—the type of busybodies most likely to know who’s been coming and going. The kind who might be able to shed some light on the whereabouts of the so-called Boneless King.
That’s why I’m focused on the ignored graves at the cemetery’s fringes. The ones pressed up against the back walls of the taller, more modern buildings. Once haphazard resting places of lesser-known citizens, these are the ones that have been disturbed and rearranged neatly over the years, making way for tourist-friendly footpaths and easing the burden of modern landscapers and their mowers. These uprooted tombs are where the most restless souls tend to linger.
“Do you see anything?” Viola whispers. She huddles at the back of the crowd nearest to me. Far enough from the tourists so that no one pays her much mind, but still close enough so that it seems like she’s one of them.
“No,” I say, perplexed.
“Is that normal?” she asks.
I shake my hooded head. “There are always a few Netherkin here. Some of them have haunted this burial ground for three hundred years.”
I scan the grounds. The well-tended grass remains still.
“Why are we taking a ghost tour, again?” Viola whispers skeptically. “Do you really need an actress in bad makeup to show you where the Netherkin are?”
Lizzy Prudence is talking about the old hanging tree that once grew on the Common. She tugs the wool scarf of a bemused tourist with mock menace.
“Of course not,” I say with a frown. “But it beats walking. Come on, let’s mingle before we miss the bus.”
After a few more photographs, the tourists file onto the double-decker bus parked on the street just outside the gates. It’s painted solid black with an elaborate pattern of stylized cobwebs that spell out WICKED BOSTON HAUNTED TOURS.
Viola and I slip on unnoticed. Viola’s the only child, and each of the tourists must assume she belongs to someone else. We take two seats in the very last row. Viola taps her fingers nervously on the wood of the violin case nestled in her lap.
“Why did you bring that, again?” I ask.
She runs her thumb over a scratch along its surface. “I never let it out of my sight.”
“Is it valuable?”
“Priceless,” she says, and gently rests both arms over the case.
The bus pulls away from the curb as we head for our next destination. Lizzy cackles over a microphone and embellishes some ghost stories as she navigates through traffic.
“Viola,” I say, “you can see and talk to me.”
“Well, obviously, Goyle. Unless I’m just a figment of your imagination. Do Grotesques have imaginations?”
“And you saw the Netherkin in the subway. The Black Rabbit?” I ask, ignoring her question.
“Yes,” she says with a disgusted grimace. “Don’t remind me.”
I nod in thought. “Have you seen other Netherkin?”
“You mean today?” she replies. “I don’t think so.”
I shake my head. “No, I mean before. Have you always been able to see them? Speak with them?”
Viola furrows her brow. “No. Not always.”
I consider this carefully. The ability to see the dead fades with age. It’s not normally an acquired curse.
“So when did you first start—”
I’m interrupted by what sounds like a theatrical organ from a haunted theme park. It’s the horn of the bus. Lizzy Prudence honks as we roll past a crowded tavern, where creatures of the night in flannel shirts and white baseball caps hoist cups at curbside tables and howl at the moon in reply.
That’s when I finally feel it. The crawl of energy like insects up my spine. No, it’s not the baying of the tavern patrons. It’s a different feeling—one that should have visited me at the Granary.
Netherkin.
I slide across the seat and press my face to the window. I look past the blur of headlights. I filter out the noise of street-side conversations and endless footsteps on pavement.
There, in the alleyway, two red eyes stare back out at us. And they don’t belong to just any old Netherkin.
I’d bet my left wing those are the eyes of a Black Rabbit.
The bus inches along and the eyes blink away. When we stop at a traffic light, they reappear in a darkened doorframe.
I let out a low grumble.
“What is it, Goyle?” Viola asks.
I raise my scarred eyebrow and reply under my breath. “It seems we have company after all.”
We all climb off the bus at the next stop and follow a redbrick path along the sidewalk. It leads up a hilly North End street overlooking the city’s most famous Revolutionary-era church. We’re met by an unexpected welcome party. A stampede of rats scurries past us in the opposite direction. I hear a startled screech of tourists, followed by laughter.
“Gross,” one of them drawls. “Where are they all going?”
I watch the parade of long pink tails disappear behind us and offer a moment of silence in memory of my friend Wallace.
It’s not where the rats are headed that interests me. The real question is what they’re running from.
I don’t have to wonder for long. Immediately I feel a difference in the air when we arrive at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. Viola hovers near the gate without entering while the rest of the tourists slowly file up the granite steps behind Lizzy Prudence. Viola grips the wrought-iron fence as if to steady herself.
“Are you coming?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at her.
“Yes,” she says hesitantly. “I just feel a bit…light-headed all of a sudden.”
She hurries to follow before I can caution otherwise.
Copp’s Hill is the second-oldest burying ground in the city, but this one isn’t home to dignitaries or famous patriots. The grounds are littered with the bones of the working class. Headstones memorialize artisans and merchants, while hundreds of others lie in unmarked graves. Brick buildings and narrow, uneven streets line the plot on all sides.
The tourists seem to sense the difference here too, even if they can’t put a finger on what it might be. Their playful banter has been replaced with nervous whispers. Couples lock arms and hover close to Lizzy—as if the costumed chaperone can actually protect them from what inhabits the dark.
Fortunately, none of them can see what I see, otherwise they might stampede out the gate like the rats.
Over the burial ground, the night sky tumbles in shades of crimson and purple. It’s the color of a violent, bruised sunset—even though twilight was hours ago. The low canopy of clouds is alive with an ominous energy that smothers the city lights.
Viola joins me as I try to focus on one of the rolling patterns overhead.
“Something’s not right,” she says, her voice flat and far away.
“You don’t know the half of it,” I grunt.
I study the mass of energy as it twists and coils. What seemed haphazard at first glance now takes a loose shape. Black and blue fingers curl in on themselves like a divine fist beckoning—although I’m quite certain this hand has not reached down from the heavens. My eyes struggle to trace what would be a wrist and forearm, then a crooked elbow and biceps. After a moment I am able to make out its source. On the far side of the cemetery, just outside its spiked iron fence, a row of closely packed brick buildings glow as if on fire. But they’re not burning.
The sickly, emaciated arm of vapor reaches up from the buildings and across the burial ground, like an enormous corpse grasping from a grave. But I can see it pulse with life, growing thicker and stronger with each passing moment as it draws in the dark, swirling energy
like a magnet.
Lizzy Prudence has directed the tour group toward an ornate memorial not far from the cemetery entrance. She begins telling the story of witch trials and a crazed old minister who oversaw them. But I’m not interested in a history lesson. My eyes are on the field of headstones spread out over the hill. Darting through them, hurrying for the block of glowing buildings on its hind legs, is a dark silhouette.
A hideous, oversized rabbit.
He won’t get away again, but this time I remember not to abandon Viola. Her silent treatment after our trip to the subway was more biting than a Netherkin’s teeth.
“Viola, follow—” I begin, but she’s already taken a few hesitant steps ahead. It’s as if she too has seen the Black Rabbit and is following his path.
I pass by her quickly. “Viola,” I say again, and she flinches as if I just shook her awake. “You’ll need to pick up the pace if we’re going to catch him.”
She nods and hurries alongside me.
The edges of the cemetery are lined with trees, their leafless limbs drooping low as if waiting to pluck the hat of a passerby. The Black Rabbit hurdles the fence and drops down onto the sidewalk. Hobbled but spry, he drags one foot as he rushes across the street.
We’ve gained ground, and I’m sure with a final burst I could clear the fence and tackle him before he reaches the other side of the road. But I halt abruptly and wrap my hands around two fence posts. Viola stops beside me.
There’s something else out there.
The Black Rabbit darts behind a tall, spindly shadow in front of the row of glowing buildings. He peers back like a child taking shelter under the wing of a parent and flashes a sneer full of oversized human teeth.
I might have mistaken the shadow for one of the leafless saplings lining the quiet road, but it is wobbling, balancing on uneasy legs. The sleeves of a stretched wool sweater dangle almost all the way down to its laceless boots.
And on top of its head sits a jagged paper crown.
I narrow my eyes. “I know you,” I whisper slowly. “But what are you?”
