by Sara Clancy
“Oh, come on,” she whined. “It’s not like you have a better idea.”
“Yeah, I do. Leave town.”
She heaved a sigh. “I don’t want you to feel bad, but your plans are stupid and doomed to fail. Let’s do my smart thing instead.”
“Name one thing wrong with my idea and I’ll tag along with you.”
“You can’t drive and there’s no bus service out of town until Wednesday.”
“Fine, I’ll go with you. But if this doesn’t work, come Wednesday, I’m getting the hell out of this town and you’re not going to say one word about it. And I mean not one single guilt trip. Agreed?”
“No.”
“That’s not how bargaining works,” Benton snapped.
Nicole shrugged as she swung open the door and ushered him out with a wide sweep of her arm.
“I’ve never really tried bargaining before. I just go straight to getting my way.”
Chapter 5
Benton slid further down in the passenger seat to try and keep the crown of his head from brushing against the dented roof. The damage was a lot more impressive in the daylight, as if someone had taken a sledge-hammer to the metal. As they left the town, Benton had pulled his feet up onto the dashboard. The position forced his knees tightly against his chest, and the pressure was oddly comforting. Aside from that, he kept his eyes fixed out of the passenger window and spent the trip contemplating his life choices.
Sunlight blazed across the open fields, playing off the lush green and dusted golden colors of the towering grass. The rolling hills stretched under the low sky like a heaving ocean, expanding out to the snow-capped mountain range that lined the horizon. Only the confined road they were on and the Buffalo Jump Museum, perched on the highest point around, disrupted the view.
Everything he knew about the history of Fort Wayward came from Nicole. According to her, when settlers had first started to develop the town, eight properties had been set up on the very outskirts of the town limits. There was nothing really notable about them until a wildfire had swept across the prairies. They had all been destroyed, and given the superstitions of the time, the properties had been abandoned, leaving them as the perfect setting for local urban legends. But, for all her school classes and personal research, Nicole had never been told about a ninth property.
The forgotten basement had served to be the perfect hiding spot for the Leanan Sidhe. It made its nest in a cellar that shouldn’t, and historically didn’t, exist. It was also why, after they had killed it, neither he nor Nicole had felt any need to hide the den. They had simply closed the basement door. A month had passed with people searching for Victor, and still no one had stumbled across it. Why the ninth had been forgotten, or deliberately omitted from the history books, was a mystery that still annoyed the hell out of Nicole. It never seemed to sit well with her when she was confronted with things about Fort Wayward that she didn’t know.
He cringed and sunk deeper into his seat as they passed a slim dirt road. It was barely wide enough to be considered a path, but it was enough to make his spine turn to ice. Weeds and twisted saplings littered the dirt trail. When the wind blew just right, the towering grass on either side of the road bowed and hid the path from view. At the very end of that road, where the grass finally won, sat the basement, a pit carved out of dirt and filled with the Leanan Sidhe’s museum of death. If Nicole hadn’t come for him, if she had been just a few seconds late, Benton would have been a part of that collection. He would be rotting in that hole. Forgotten.
A chill crawled over him like spiders made of ice. Benton forced himself to look away. With determination, he managed to keep his eyes focused on the world passing by the windshield. He took in a deep breath, just to prove to himself that he could. It was easy enough to fill his lungs. Keeping his thoughts from dwelling on what could have been was harder.
When they had first started their trip, he had thought that going to the Leanan Sidhe’s grave first was the worst option. It was the basement where he had almost died. And the basement that still held Victor’s remains. He had wanted to get that pit out of the way, sure that he would lose his nerves if he had to wait. Now, however, he was actually grateful. Having the reminder that the Leanan Sidhe was dead and not lurking in any of the shadows, waiting for him, was going to be helpful.
Nicole turned the jeep onto a new path. The tires bumped and bucked over the uneven road, slowing their progress as they edged towards the dead end. The grass rose higher, swallowing the road and scraping along the sides of the jeep to release ghostly whispers. Neither of them spoke, leaving only the sound of the tires crunching the earth.
There wasn’t enough space at the end of the road to turn the jeep around without entering the grass field. The tiny clearing was just big enough to expose a cluster of pebbles and a patch of disrupted earth. Nicole brought the jeep to a stop a few feet from a slight mound, and put it into park. After she killed the engine, she remained where she was. The hard plastic of the steering wheel squeaked slightly as her fingers tightened around it.
“Well,” she awkwardly broke the silence. “It looks like we buried it deep enough to discourage scavengers. I can’t see any coyote or bear tracks. Can you?”
Benton snapped his head around to face her. “There are bears around here?”
She nodded, looking both confused and oddly proud. “Black bears. I never mentioned that?”
“No, you didn’t. I guess it just slipped your mind every time we headed out into the fields.”
“Maybe you don’t listen.” Nicole shrugged as she, apparently emboldened by the idle conversation, slipped out of the jeep.
He was still seething as he watched her cross the front of the vehicle, one hand constantly patting the keys she had shoved into her pocket. But, no matter how much energy he put into his scowl, she never turned around to see any of his efforts. Grumbling under his breath, Benton yanked off his seatbelt and got out of the jeep to follow her. Swallowing thickly, he followed Nicole to the mound. In another ignored sign of protest, he moved as slowly as he could get away with.
Nicole crouched down by the disturbed earth of the grave and dusted off the loose debris from the large flat stone they had painted the symbol onto. It unintentionally served as a marker for the grave and he glared at it, fisting his hands to resist the urge to hurl it into the field. Nature was well on its way to reclaiming the small area they had carved out for the corpse. The soil of the mound had almost returned to the same color as the surrounding area, and tiny sprigs of grass poked out around the thick clumps. Wiping her hand on her jeans, Nicole retrieved her phone from her pocket, fiddled with the device for a moment, and placed it next to the stone. Benton’s chest tightened as he watched her. Logically he knew that it was dead and not about to reach out of the grave to grab her. Still, his body tensed in anticipation.
Searching for a distraction, he shifted his attention to the glowing screen of her mobile phone. He could just make out the photograph the phone displayed under the glare of the sun reflecting off the surface. It was a copy of a picture taken for a police report, and he wondered just when she had stolen it from the RCMP files. And if her mother knew that she had it. The sun warmed the side of his face as he mulled over the question while Nicole continued to ignore him. The sum total of her focus was on her detailed inspection of the symbol, tracing her finger over the lines on both stone and screen.
“It seems to be fine.” She spoke with the muttered tone that she used only when talking to herself. “Everything’s there. There might be a ritual that goes along with it. Like a chant or something. Or maybe it needs to be engraved into the Leanan Sidhe’s skin?”
“Can we check out the other one before you jump to defiling a corpse?” Benton asked.
Nicole jumped and blinked up at him owlishly. Apparently, she hadn’t been purposefully ignoring him but had legitimately forgotten that he was there. Frowning slightly, she snatched up her phone, brushing the specks of dust off the case, and
stood up.
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” she said as she turned to face him. “It’s not the smartest idea to dig it up in broad daylight.”
“Yeah, that’s what I have an issue with.” He forced a smile as he backed up towards the jeep.
Nicole had the most remarkable talent for tunnel vision. Sometimes he really envied how she could dedicate every cell of her being to accomplishing whatever task she had deemed worthy. But at times like these, it creeped him out. Craning his neck, he checked the back seat before he swung himself into the jeep. Nicole took her time, carefully using the spray can of glue she had found in her garage to coat the symbol in a protective layer. It only occurred to him then that she might actually want to wait until the glue dried. His relief battled with his growing anxiety when Nicole jogged back and climbed up into the jeep as soon as she was done. Not wanting to disrupt the area any more than necessary, she twisted to look between the seats and reared the jeep back until they were again on the main path.
“Maybe we should burn it.”
Benton closed his eyes. “Sorry?”
“You know, cremate it. That way we can seal the remains in a jar and just cover the entire thing with the symbols.”
He didn’t respond as they drove almost casually down the road, but it didn’t seem to bother her. It was possible that she hadn’t really been talking to him anyway. The closer they got to the next turn off, the more it seemed that the ice spiders were burrowing into his flesh.
“How long do you think it would take to burn a Leanan Sidhe to ash?” Nicole asked abruptly as she turned onto the side road.
“I don’t know.”
“The smell might give us away though,” her voice trailed off as her thoughts caught up to claim her.
While she still continued to chat, and every once in a while would throw a question at him, it was pretty obvious that she didn’t need him for the conversation anymore. By the time they had reached the end of the next path, she was attempting to calculate a proper cooking time for a demonic beast by what she knew about preparing turkeys. She brought the jeep to a stop and Benton happily jumped out of the door, grateful for the excuse to escape the conversation.
But without Nicole or the constant grumble of the engine, the world was completely, unnervingly silent. Anxiety rushed back to fill him like a swarm of ravenous insects. His fingers and shoulders twitched as he felt spiders crawl on the underside of his skin. No matter how hard he searched the world around him, there was no other sign of human life. The grass rose up to the height of his hips. The blades swayed in the wind and smothered any hint of roads they had just travelled. From where he stood now to the lines of the horizons, they seemed entirely alone. It left him with a crippling sense of isolation that he couldn’t shake or fathom.
He sought out Nicole’s gaze from across the jeep’s hood to find that she was already looking at him. The first traces of fear trickled around the edges of her expression, and the instant she realized he was watching, she did everything she could to hide it. A small smile served as her war paint, and she pushed the long strands of her hair back over her shoulder. It slipped back like silk and idly swayed across her hips.
Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she turned on its flashlight and brandished it, as if the weak glow would somehow protect them from whatever was possibly waiting for them. The display of incorruptible confidence was weakened slightly when she couldn’t stop her other hand from slipping to her front jeans pocket and patting the bump that the keys had created.
“Ready?” Despite her effort to hide it, her voice still wavered slightly.
“Any chance you’d let me stay in the car?”
“You can stay if you want,” she said. However, she quickly continued, “I mean, I would totally do it for you, but apparently I have a different standard for friendship than you do.”
“Are you honestly trying to guilt me into this?”
She didn’t respond. He was about to spit out that he wasn’t her corpse-hunting buddy when he remembered just what was waiting for her down in that pit. It wasn’t just a faceless multitude of dead bodies. One of those corpses had been her friend. Someone she had seen every day of her life. Someone who had become like a brother to her. It had devastated her to keep him within the ground, hidden away, deprived of his proper burial rights, but she had done it because anything else would have risked exposing them both. He couldn’t let her face that alone.
Apparently, the full force of his survival instincts didn’t really add up to all that much because, even as they screamed at him to stay outside, he still pulled his phone out and turned on the flashlight. The brilliant smile she gave him was almost enough to make him forget just how stupid he was being. It was remarkable that for all her willingness to influence people to get her way, she never thought to use the fact that she was stunning. It would make her life a lot easier.
Despite the fact that neither of them would ever forget the first time they were there, it still took them a while to find the trap door. His heart sank when they actually located it under a thick tangle of twisted grass. The bare brittle slabs of wood were nearly the same color as the moist earth that surrounded them. Without a proper handle and the hinges submerged in the dirt, the effect was a near perfect camouflage.
They took longer than necessary to clear it, carefully pushing aside the knotted mess, making sure that they were still usable to hide it again when they left. That was part of the reason. The other was that they were both putting off the actual task they were there to complete. Finally, there was nothing left to do, and the door was exposed. Still, they lingered. It was Nicole who reached for the door first. There was only a slight tremor in her fingers as she hooked them around the planks and yanked the trap door up. The hinges screamed in protest, shedding flakes of rust into the sun-drenched air. They both cringed at the sound and stared into the pit that was now opened before them. Even the midday sun couldn’t penetrate the shadows. The scent of wet earth, mildew and rot, wafted out from the depths, carried upon a cold draft that curled out over the rim and drifted into the air.
Nicole swallowed, but her voice still came out strange. “Remind me to bring out some oil for the hinges later.”
His eyebrows shot up. “We’re doing maintenance now? You want to make the place nice? Maybe get a throw rug? A potted plant?”
For a long moment, she held his gaze. He wasn’t quite sure what she was waiting for, but when she didn’t get it, she settled for rolling her eyes.
“No one ever accomplishes anything with a negative attitude,” she chastised.
He couldn’t help himself. The words were out before he thought about it. “I accomplish being negative.”
She glared at him, fighting down a weak smile as he smirked in response. With a huff that sounded disapproving, she leaned forward, hovering her arm over the open space, vainly attempting to chase away some of the shadows with her phone light. The darkness didn’t budge. That was enough to tell Benton that they really shouldn’t go down there. But Nicole took it as a challenge; one she met with a deep breath. He could actually see her inflate with her mounting confidence. She squared her shoulders, straightened her back, and fixed an almost serene smile onto her face.
“Please, for me, remember that reason has to trump impulse,” he said.
She ignored the comment. “Don’t suppose you want to go first.”
No, thank you, I’m sane. He hurled the thought out to her but still got to his feet and shrugged his shoulders with as much casualness as he could summon.
“Sure. Why not?”
Her surprise was clear, but she had the decency not to mention it. Instead, she waved her hand out towards the dark hole in the earth, her phone passing a thin ray of light over the shadows. It still didn’t help. He still couldn’t see the bottom of the wooden stairs. He couldn’t see anything that lay beyond the first three steps. The wood looked as rotten and worn as the trapdoor. As Nicole repositioned herself, her fingers push
ed a bit of dirt over the rim. It felt like a cloud and he could swear he saw the stairs tremble under the additional weight. So, instead of taking a step and hoping that it would still hold him, he sat down on the edge and swung his legs into the abyss. His fingers tightened painfully around his mobile phone as he lifted it up to the level of his eyes.
He hadn’t fully inched his toes onto the first step when it started to groan. He froze, air trapped in his lungs as the soft trickle of dust drifted down into the abyss and scattered against the unseen dirt floor. The wood stilled, the pebbles drifted over the floor, and the world was reduced back into a heavy unbroken silence. Nicole met his worried gaze with one of her own, but didn’t stop him when he slowly edged more weight onto the plank. He kept one hand fisted in the tangled grass and dirt, hoping that the hold might be enough to pull him back up when the stair inevitably gave way. To his surprise and resentment, it held. Now he was actually faced with the task of standing up.
Again, Nicole didn’t stop him. Instead, she hovered one hand along his arm, like she truly thought she could catch him if things went bad. The wood moaned with renewed force, the thin trail of dust became a downpour, but still the step held. Before he lost his daringness, he hurried down, sinking deeper into the frigid earth with every step. Each one creaked and shuddered in turn. The handrail was eroded and he didn’t trust it, but without it, he felt completely exposed.
As he descended, he trailed his dim light over the emerging room. The cellar was carved out of the earth with no care taken for appearance. The walls were rough and uneven and the floor was still layered with a thick coating of soft soil. Roots had grown through the ceiling and dangled down like skeletal fingers. A chill lingered within the depths of the hole. The deeper he went, the more it rose up to meet him. It clung to his clothes and invaded his body with every breath. But it was the silence that made his gut twist sharply. It was as if all life had been gouged out of the space, leaving only a dank pit of nothingness.
