Button Hill

by Michael Bradford

  “Auntie,” Riley piped up, “Mom said Harper called for Dekker on the old phone in the basement. But how can that be, since she was on the train that went farther into Nightside?”

  Aunt Primrose thought for a moment. “This could be a stroke of good fortune. People like Harper, who can travel easily between the realms, are rare. She may be able to lead you back to your heart, Dekker. But you must be wary—she could be changed. The world of the dead is full of danger the deeper into Nightside one goes.” She began to pace the kitchen. “We’ll start your training at once.”

  “Today?”

  “Why not? Shall we scratch the surface and see what we find?”

  Dekker looked up at Aunt Primrose, then at Riley. “Captain Tom said to never underestimate the power of a good scratch.” The black-and-white dog stretched his legs, then flopped down in the sunbeam that crept across the kitchen floor. Dekker looked at his palm. The black half-skull stared back at him. Okay, I’m mostly dead, but I’m not alone. Things could be worse.

  Thirteen

  Dekker lay in the chest freezer. No light sneaked between the lid and the thick walls, but since his return to Dayside, he could see everything in the dark in crisp black and white. If he wasn’t half-dead, he’d be pretty thrilled with his heightened senses. Dekker loved the freezer for another reason—it blocked most of the smells of the outside world. As if to compensate for his loss of color vision, his sense of smell had become painfully acute. If he closed his eyes, he could smell the difference between the frozen utility-grade turkey he was using as a headrest and the several beefsteaks wrapped in brown paper that were wedged between his knees. Here it wasn’t bad. But beyond the freezer, the smell of food he couldn’t eat was torture. And he hadn’t realized before how each person smelled uniquely unpleasant. Aunt Primrose’s signature smell was old garlic. She really needed to use more deodorant. Clinical strength.

  At least the turkey wasn’t poking between his shoulder blades this time. It had been Riley’s idea to line the bottom of the freezer with frozen peas and chopped rhubarb as a kind of mattress. He closed the worn leather journal he held in his hands. Its name, embossed on the cover in what Aunt Primrose had told him was silver and gold leaf, stared back at him: The Book of Night and Day. Supposedly, it contained all the lore about Dayside and Nightside, including all the different ways a person could travel from one side to the other. His aunt had given it to him and told him to study it. But the hotter it got outside, the itchier his skin became. It was all he could do to stop himself from scratching it down to the bone, let alone try to decipher all the handwritten notes that had been inscribed by the book’s owners through the years. Lying in the freezer was his only relief from the heat.

  Over the hum of the freezer’s motor, he heard heavy footsteps descending the stairs. The lid to the freezer swung up, and his aunt’s face appeared above him. He frowned at her. “I hate hanging out down here.”

  Aunt Primrose reached in and took his hand. “Better than rotting out in the sun, I daresay. Don’t blame me for the weather. It’s not my fault we’re having the hottest summer since the Great Depression.”

  “Well, you would know.” Dekker thought of the Miss Primrose listed in the old train manifest in the Nightside basement, then looked at his aunt’s wrinkled arms and face and wondered if she and that Miss Primrose were the same person.

  Aunt Primrose arched an eyebrow but said nothing. Dekker grabbed the edge of the freezer with his free hand as his aunt hoisted him up. She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a new green tomato. “Since it’s too hot for you to go outside, your sister kindly picked this for you before she left for the 4-H meeting at the dairy farm. She has taken quite a shine to one of the cows.”

  Dekker snatched the tomato from her outstretched hand. “Do you have to watch? After thirty days in a row, I’m pretty sure I can do it myself.”

  She crossed her arms. “If it’s not done properly, you could drop dead.”

  “News flash: I’m already pretty well dead.” He lifted up his shirt and in one swift movement tore a small patch of sickly yellow flesh from his chest to reveal a baseball-sized cavity right between his lungs. He scraped out the shriveled remains of yesterday’s tomato from between his ribs and carefully wedged the new tomato into the hole. He shuddered as it sealed over with a thick, fuzzy growth. “There. Didn’t feel a thing. Happy now?”

  “The fact that you feel nothing should concern you. In your condition, the consequences of forgetting how to feel could be dire.”

  He sighed loudly. “It doesn’t seem to make a difference what I do. We’ve been at this a month, and I’m still not any closer to getting my heart back.” He ran his hands through his hair, shaking out the frost like motes of dust.

  Aunt Primrose began to inspect some bundles of roots and leaves that hung from the rafters. “If you applied yourself more thoroughly to your studies, you might be ready. But Nightside is too dangerous for you without proper knowledge.”

  “But there’s so much. How will I ever be ready?”

  She pointed a hard, callused finger at the book she had given him. “The Book of Night and Day contains every known fact about Nightside. Each owner before me added what they learned. You need to do more than just become familiar with it. You must become so grounded in the lessons that you forget you know them. Before you go upstairs, I want you to recite the rhyme of the Nightclock, listing all the times in order.”

  Dekker opened his mouth to protest, but he saw the look in his aunt’s eyes and thought better of it. He tried to visualize the rough sketch of the Nightclock near the front of the journal, and the words scrawled in a spidery script beside it. Then he said:

  Sunset, for opening doors, the dead walk the earth once more,

  Twilight ends the day, the hunted hunts, predator turns prey.

  Dusk, the curfew hour, Dayside creatures cower,

  Cross the borders at Eventide, dream of death by your side.

  The Witching Hour, when all hope flees,

  Blackest Night, when no things stir.

  Bird O’Clock, sings darkness into light,

  Dawn removes the hat of night.

  Aunt Primrose grumbled. “You forgot three.”

  “So what? Good enough.”

  “The Nightshades can be the most dangerous times, especially in the deeper parts of Nightside, where you must go if you are to find your heart. Start again.”

  “Fine. Eventide, blah, blah, blah, / Waxing Nightshade, for the powers that be, / The Witching Hour, yada yada, / Waning Nightshade for the powers that never were. Done. Can I go now?”

  Aunt Primrose glowered. “What about Moontime?”

  “Moontime’s impossible. I’m not doing that one.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because whenever I open the book, the part about Moontime is on a different page and I can never find it. It’s too unpredictable.”

  She nodded as she pulled a few leaves from the bundles in the rafters and folded them into her apron. “Maybe you have learned something, in spite of your stubbornness.”

  Dekker started up the stairs before she could think of some other task for him to perform. Someone coughed behind the door that led to the kitchen. He flung it open, and Riley stumbled back, her face flushed. “What’s this? You spying on me?” said Dekker.

  “I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it.” Riley scrambled to her feet, her eyes shining. “It’s just so interesting!”

  “I thought you loved 4-H now and, like, cows,” grumbled Dekker.

  “Your behavior is unbecoming for a young lady of your age. How much did you hear?” said Aunt Primrose.

  Riley turned an even deeper shade of pink. “Well, basically everything. And I’ve sort of been getting up and following you guys and listening in.”

  “I knew it!” Dekker said.

  She looked up at her brother with big eyes. “Don’t be mad at me. I can’t help it!”

  “What else do you know?�
� asked Aunt Primrose.

  She laughed nervously. “Well, I might accidentally have read the book, when Dekker doesn’t take it into the freezer like he’s supposed to.” She looked at Dekker. “Did you know that daffodils are the same as asphodel? Those are the flowers that grow in Nightside, and you can’t plant them beside other stuff or they kill the other flowers. That must be why Auntie doesn’t have them in her garden.”

  Aunt Primrose furrowed her brow in thought. “How much of this journal have you read?”

  Riley brightened. “Most of it. The parts I get, anyway. Some of it’s written funny, like in a different language or something. I just finished the part on Revenants and other creatures that come back from the dead. You read that too, didn’t you, Dekker?”

  He was quiet for a minute. “Actually, I didn’t know there was a part about that.”

  Aunt Primrose took the book from his hands. She moved into the kitchen, set it on the table and opened it to a page with plant diagrams on it. “I knew you had potential, Riley. Since you have become so knowledgeable, my dear, tonight you will go to the garden to collect a basket of thorn apples. They grow near the tree in the corner. There’s a sketch here, made by my predecessor.”

  Riley peered over Aunt Primrose’s arm. “Can you eat a thorn apple?”

  Aunt Primrose snorted. “Only if you want to be nearly dead like your brother. But properly prepared, they make a substance that can help one move safely from Dayside to Nightside.”

  “How does it do that?” asked Dekker.

  “It puts your body to sleep and allows your spirit to travel through dreaming to Nightside, unharmed.”

  He frowned. “But how can I bring back my heart if I’m only a spirit?”

  Aunt Primrose shook her head. “You won’t be able to get it on your first try. This is just to be a scouting expedition.”

  “But that’s going to take forever. You just said I was learning.”

  “Dekker, learning and doing are quite different, you will find.”

  “I don’t get why I can’t just go down the well again.”

  “The empty well in the cellar is indeed the path your sleeping self will take into the borderland. I could bring your body back from there as I did before. But to find your heart, you must go beyond the borderland into Nightside proper. There I cannot take you, or bring you back if you travel whole.” She took his hand and looked at the half-skull etched clearly on his palm. “With your connection to the Nightclock, you should be able to return from Nightside if your spirit is tethered to your body here. Without your advantage, it took me years of study before I was able to travel safely that way.” Aunt Primrose removed the dried leaves from her apron and began crushing them with a large mortar and pestle. “There is one other way, more dangerous but perhaps more expedient.”

  Dekker grinned. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What do I have to do?”

  His aunt smiled thinly. “We bury you alive with the next corpse put to rest in the Button Hill cemetery.”

  Riley’s jaw dropped. “That’s gross, Auntie.”

  “No way,” said Dekker.

  “Why should you be concerned?” Aunt Primrose asked. “A corpse isn’t much different than what you are now. You could travel in body, following the spirit of the dead, but return to Dayside following their tether. My predecessor did a study on this very subject. The spirit remains connected to the flesh for quite some time after death.”

  “It’s just wrong. I would feel like a grave robber or something,” said Dekker. In a quieter voice, he said, “Plus, I don’t think I could take being trapped in a coffin underground.”

  “That’s the only other way available to you. We bury you, then dig up the coffin the next day and summon you back. The procedure is detailed in the journal; it’s perfectly sound.”

  Riley started flipping through the journal. “There’s got to be a way that’s not so creepy.” She stopped at a page near the middle of the book and pointed at a pencil drawing. “Look—this is the pool in your garden, Auntie. And there’s a person swimming underwater and coming out in some kind of cave. Dekker could go through the water and hitch a ride on the train from there.” Riley grinned. “So we don’t have to bury him alive.” She looked up at Aunt Primrose, and her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is that the currents in the spring would dissolve his body before he was halfway there.” She pointed at the drawing. “Look at how wavy that person in the water is. That’s a spirit traveling. You’d have to be a spirit or human enough to withstand the water. And Dekker is neither.”

  He nodded reluctantly. “Remember when I first saw Cobb? He was there, but he couldn’t get out, like he was on the other side of a window. But there’s no way I’m getting buried alive. We’ll have to think of something else.”

  “Maybe you should try Auntie’s prickly apples,” said Riley.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  The old lady pursed her lips. “Then it is agreed. The thorn-apple potion will take some time to prepare. But in a few days, when it is ready, we shall try it.”

  Dekker raised his voice. “That’s what you really want, isn’t it? To keep us here with you, forever.”

  The old lady sniffed. “As the keeper of this passage between Nightside and Dayside, my only purpose is to aid travelers on their journey. As your great-aunt, how you get there and how you come back makes a difference to me.” She pulled a worn leather bag off a hook on the wall and pressed it into Riley’s arms.

  “What time do I go for the apple thingies?” said Riley.

  “Moontime will do nicely.”

  “Ohh! Like in the rhyme—The inconstant Moon stares down. / All names of night come unbound,” recited Riley excitedly. “That’s my favorite part.”

  Fourteen

  Dekker stared at his watch. Monday, 6:15 AM. Only one more hour until his mother got up and left for the city. He would have to leave the freezer soon and sneak back into bed so she wouldn’t wonder where he was. Out in the basement, the antique phone was ringing again. That’s the third time in the last hour, he grumbled to himself. Stupid phone. Maybe it will stop if I take it off the hook. He climbed out of the freezer and lifted the receiver. The air buzzed with static. He held the phone away from his ear. “Hello? Who’s there?”

  The crackling rose and then faded away, as if someone had turned a dial. A tinny, faraway voice finally spoke. “Dekker, is that you?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “It’s Harper. I’ve been calling forever. How come you didn’t answer?”

  “You mean, answer the old phone in my aunt’s basement that’s not even connected? Yeah, I’m really going to hop right up and grab it.” Dekker’s arm began to itch, and he remembered he was supposed to be trying to be good. “Um, what I mean is, I didn’t know who was calling. To tell the truth, I might not have answered if I had.”

  “Look, Dekker, I’m sorry about what happened. I really am. Things didn’t work out for me the way I thought they would either.”

  He lowered his voice. “Easy for you to say—you’re still in one piece. At least you don’t have to sleep in a freezer.”

  “That’s crazy. What did your mom say?”

  “She doesn’t know yet. She’s not here very much, and when she is, she thinks Riley and I spend all day looking after Riley’s cow, Bluebird, at the 4-H club.”

  More static squalled from the earpiece. “…how long this connection is going to last. I know you’re mad at me, but I need your help.”

  “You need help. And you’re asking me.”

  “You’re the only one who can help me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m in Understory. The city on the other side of the gorge. Where my mom lives.”

  Dekker frowned. “If you want my help, telling the truth would be a good start.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s not the kind of thing I can talk about with most people.”

  “News flash: thanks to you, I’
m not most people anymore.”

  “I didn’t mean to come here, Dekker. My mom’s the governess, and she’s in a royal snit. Your heart is here, and she wants it. It’s to be sold at auction.”

  “If your mom’s the frikkin’ governess, what does she need my heart for?”

  “She won’t tell me. I wouldn’t help her, so she grounded me as soon as I got here. I’m stuck in her ridiculous mansion.”

  Dekker scowled. “Why should I trust you after what you did?”

  “Because I can help you get your heart back. How soon can you get here?”

  “What about Cobb?”

  “Mom’s guards apprehended him. She says he’s out of the picture. I’d forgotten about him, to tell you the truth.”

  Dekker’s mind was racing, but he tried to sound calm. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Well, don’t think too long, okay?” Harper paused. “I miss you.”

  Dekker felt something tighten in his chest. “Oh.”

  “So hurry, then.”

  He hung the receiver back on its cradle and immediately thought of several things he wished he’d said instead. If your mom’s the governess, what does that make you? His watch said 6:47 AM. He could hear heavy footsteps in the kitchen. He wondered what his aunt would say when he told her about the auction. As much as he hated the idea, the coffin was looking more and more like his only option. He climbed the stairs and crept up behind his aunt. “Boo!”

  She closed the fridge and crossed to the sink without looking at him. Her arms were full of carrots. “Ghosts say ‘boo.’ The undead moan. If you’re going to scare people, you need to work on your shuffling. A lazy shuffle looks unrefined.” She dumped the carrots into the sink and turned the water on. “Your sister is already at work in the garden.” She gave Dekker a significant look. “Please retrieve her, and pick your tomato before the sun gets too hot.”

  “What, no breakfast? Just kidding,” he said as his aunt shot him a look and started chopping the carrots with a heavy cleaver. Dekker thought she seemed a little too enthusiastic. He grabbed the leather bag from its hook by the back door and headed out into the yard. The summer sun was already warming the path to the garden.