The dead woman was a mundele, and obviously of high caste — a former Custis wife or mistress, the social privilege of her life now corroded in death. Her elegant dress was moldering and decrepit, her once neat hair disheveled and stringy. The dead woman trembled from Zoe’s touch as Zoe steeled herself against her own mounting terror and pressed deeper, probing.
Please, Zoe murmured, desperately searching. What is your name?
The spirit shook her head and mewled, as if fighting the memories. Zoe closed her eyes and pushed deeper…
…and when she opened them again, she saw herself in the dead woman’s place, clad in her ragged finery, her own features ashen and withered, eyes empty and clouded, mouth flung open in an asylum scream…
No! Zoe gasped, fighting the illusion. I’m not you! Tell me your name! She pressed deeper still…
…and the dead woman’s spirit suddenly took a great heaving gasp, as the light went off in her eyes. She shuddered and collapsed at Zoe’s feet, weeping wretchedly.
I am Priscilla Custiss, it whispered, And I want to leave this dreadful place…
You can, Zoe told her, and helped her up.
The spirit stood, tears rimming its hollow eyes. Its pale fingers reached out to caress her cheek. Thank you… it murmured. Thank you…
Louis, Amy, and Joya came to Zoe then and gently pulled her away. We gotta go, little girl, Louis said. We’ve done what we can…
She’s the last one, Amy told her. We did it.
Zoe turned to see that the attic packed with mad and tormented souls was now empty but for herself and her companions. Just then, another tremor wracked the building. As they moved away, Zoe cast a glance back at the ghost of Priscilla Custis. It smiled at her wanly as it began to glow, dimly at first, then brighter.
Then it crumbled to dust.
They were on their way back down when they heard the soft cries coming from the bedroom. Amy peered in and saw Mia cradling Justin’s head in her lap, stroking his sweat-matted hair.
Oh my God, she gasped and rushed to her friends. She embraced Mia tightly, then looked at Justin. Any joy of their reunion was bleakened by his condition, which had deteriorated massively. He could not stand, much less walk, and could barely talk. Justin looked up at her, shivering through his fever.
Hey, kiddo, he said weakly. Long time no see.
Amy started to cry. Louis knelt at Justin’s side. Justin looked at him; even through his delirium he could see that Louis was hurting too. Justin took hold of his hand, squeezing it.
Look like shit, bro, Justin said.
Look who’s talking, white boy, Louis replied. They smiled grimly, brothers in suffering.
The glow from the windows was growing more intense, casting undulating shadows across the walls. Zoe peered outside and saw the fires, which were spreading, coming closer to the house. She didn’t know Mia or Justin, and she was starting to freak. My mom, she said. Where is she?
Mia looked from her to Joya. They’re out there, she replied. In the heartbeat it took for that to register all pretense evaporated; Zoe looked completely, utterly wired. And for the first time, deeply scared.
Fuck! she cried. We have to get them!
Louis looked at Justin and Mia, then to Amy.
Take her, he said. Meet us downstairs.
That was all Zoe needed to hear. As Louis and Joya helped Mia get Justin to his feet, the two women took off. Running out the door.
And into the now raging Underworld.
Amy and Zoe moved through the fields, desperately calling out. Underworld was literally coming apart at the seams, as the death force that had sustained it gave way to full-on uprising and spirit war. Below them the firmament convulsed; above them the spreading storm, thunderous and wide, churned and boiled toward the spiraling beacon at the slaves’ quarters, which were now burning as well. They could see tiny figures silhouetted against flame, slave spirits taking down guards like enraged swarms of ants as others capered insanely in the shadow of the conflagration.
But just as it seemed all hope was lost, they heard the sound of rapid footfalls crunching through the underbrush and turned to see Josh and Caroline and Seth emerging, ragged and exhausted, from the darkness.
Mom! Zoe cried, and rushed to her. Mother and daughter embraced as Caroline felt the years of pain and alienation dissipate like mist.
Omigod, baby, Caroline said. What are you doing here?
But this was not the place for speeches, or hugs, or explanations. Josh looked at his friends nervously. I think it’s time to get the hell outta Hell, kids, he said.
They couldn’t have agreed more. They took one last look at Underworld, and the warring souls they must now leave behind, then raced madly back to the manor. While behind them the beacon grew towering into the sky, its colors threading through a furious blood red.
Growing deeper, as the storm wormed closer to the light. And impact.
In the grand ballroom, the mirror was cracking: a single glowing fissure spreading serpentine from the uppermost corner. Joya looked at it anxiously as the others huddled behind her uncertainly. Outside, the sounds of chaos and tumult grew louder, the conflict growing ever closer to them.
We must hurry, she told them. The magick can’t hold much longer!
But when Joya pressed her hand to the surface, it did not yield. She looked at Amy.
The dagger, she said. Give it to me!
Amy nodded and complied, trembling as she held it forth. Joya looked at the assembled group and bared her wrist, ready to slice, when suddenly Mia stopped her.
Your blood won’t feed it here, she told her. Mine will.
And with that, Mia took the blade and sliced her hand open. The others gasped as she painted the surface of the spreading rift and two things happened. The blood sucked through the crack, mending it. And the surface of the mirror rippled and went dark.
Go, she told Joya and Louis. They’ll need you on the other side!
Joya looked at Mia, and a hidden understanding seemed to pass between them. Then she nodded and stepped through: the mirror opening to receive her, then rippling dark again. Louis followed quickly behind her, and as he passed through the crack began to grow once more, now joined by another in the other corner. They spidered forth, working their way toward the center. Mia cut, and cut again, sealing the rifts with her essence, then turned to her friends.
Now you, she told them. All of you. Quickly!
But her friends hesitated, looking from her to Justin and back. In that moment a dread passed between them, born of fear and guilt and years of bitter recrimination.
But what about you? Zoe asked.
Mia looked at the girl, at her lifelong friends. She smiled bravely.
You first, Mia said. We’ll follow…
There was no use arguing. One by one, each of them hugged her and stepped through: Zoe first, then Caroline, Amy, Seth, and finally Josh. He paused at the brink and looked at them.
No words were exchanged, but as Justin struggled to his feet and joined Mia, they looked at Josh and nodded.
Then Josh stepped through.
Leaving only two.
42
Silas stared at the angry sky, cursing the reverberations now shaking his domain. In a land of unending nightmares, this was his. The enslaved were rising up to cast off their enslavers, the power of their terror now wild and unchained. The beacon of light rose defiantly in the distance, taunting him.
In the little shack, the moment of Transition was upon him, the doorway between worlds opening. And Silas resolved that upon its completion he would exact retribution that would shudder the legions of the damned.
Inside the shack, the ritual had reached a fevered pitch. Duke knelt, the stench of the smoking pot and their fetid offerings clouding the room as Eli hovered over the bound and helpless child, wildly chanting. Both men were hideous to behold, sweat dripping off their contorted flesh as they manifested the true nature of their spiritual corruption. And as he breathed in
the desecrated vapors Duke felt imbued with foul power, felt the revulsion and mortal dread slip away, replaced by a hunger the likes of which he had never known. Duke was gaining strength even as it leeched from Eli, leaving the older man more and more sunken and decrepit. The pitted iron opening of the nganga itself had become a mouth: a greedy, meaty, dripping hole that offered a glimpse of an even deeper darkness as it yawned wide to accept their offerings. Within was the bottomless darkness of an even deeper hell: that primal bedrock of evil upon which Silas's power ultimately rested.
Suddenly the many blazing candles and bottles of rum began to shimmer and rattle on their coarse wooden shelves.
“Tata Nkisi!” Eli urged. “The Great Night! He is here!”
Duke looked up as the smoke from the fire rose and uncoiled, solidifying into form. And from within the gathering mass: eyes, gazing out with feral intensity. Duke blinked back sweat and saw the smoke coalesce into the face of his forebear. Silas spread his cloak wide to reveal a hideous scarred opening in his chest, a puckering ovoid slit that dilated to reveal his shriveled, putrid soul. He descended, ready to take his tiny, shivering victim…
…and it was then that Lucas appeared behind him, following Silas through the breach and aborting the ritual as he attacked. Silas reeled and screamed, as much stunned as enraged. The two spirits came through the smoke and careened across the interior of the nganga shack locked in a brutal death-dance, their piercing blue eyes ablaze with primal, irreducible hatred. They were the eyes of sworn enemies. Of oppressor versus oppressed. Of father versus son.…
Meanwhile, on the physical plane, Eli and Duke were losing their collective minds. Eli clutched his chest and fell back cardiac arresting as Duke scuttled and scrabbled for safety, in the process knocking over the sacrificial altar, the bottles of rum and dozens of blazing candles. In seconds, the first licks of flame appeared as the dry weathered wood of the shack caught and began to burn. The nganga gaped hungrily as Silas and Lucas hovered over it.
For one terrible second, they wavered in stalemate.
And that was when the storm reached the beacon.
It was a collision of blistering magnitude, a tectonic tsunami hemorrhage of incandescent karmic force. The power of the massive spirit release ripped a hole in the fabric of Underworld. The fires of the barn and slaves’ quarters met and spread across the horizon, voraciously consuming everything in their path. The perimeters of Silas's domain ruptured: the crucified souls of those who had tried and failed burst free, their withered bodies popping like a string of grisly ethereal firecrackers, giving up the ghost.
The tremor reached all the way to the tiny shack, the earth splitting open beneath the nganga. As it began to sink, Silas lost his footing; Lucas seized the opportunity and shoved him in. Silas screamed as his soul released like a tumor, tearing from the black, suppurated web of his heart.
Stripped of his power base, Silas grabbed at the first safe harbor he could: Daniel Duke Custis, his new heir apparent. As he reached up, Silas cried out plaintively, and Duke took his hand.
And that was all it required.
Silas’s spirit form exploded in a vile rain of pus as the nganga sucked it greedily down. Duke’s soul shriveled like a slug under a magnifying glass as the dark and twisted essence of that which was Silas entered him, rocketing through ganglia and neuron, through muscle and marrow, to violently wrench away all control. In the space of one seized heartbeat, Silas had taken possession. In the next, he turned, ready to feed upon fresh and innocent blood.
But the child, and Lucas, were gone.
Raging, his unearthly kingdom in ruin, Silas stepped over the twitching, dying Eli as he fled the island.
And the nganga boiled with infernal fire toward meltdown.
43
Lucas felt the night air on his skin as he carried the little girl. The swamp lay behind him, wooded fields before. As he walked, a faint breeze wafted, bringing the smell of cut grass, mixed with the barest hint of magnolia and dogwood. How long had it been since he had breathed air untainted by the stain of ceaseless pain and suffering? He could not clearly recall. He only knew that the air felt good. That the tiny form huddled in his arms felt good.
And that, if but for one fleeting moment, he felt free.
The little girl stirred and shivered, her dark eyes fluttering open and gazing up at him like a lost and woozy lamb.
“What is your name, child?” Lucas asked gently.
“Ally,” the girl replied in a tiny, frightened voice. “I want my m-mommy.”
“Shhh,” Lucas soothed. “You’ll see her soon.”
The child closed her eyes. “I had a bad dream,” she murmured.
Lucas nodded. “So did we all,” he said.
And so he carried her through the fields toward the road. And for that time he felt something almost like joy. Almost like victory.
And then the pain came from deep within, registering itself with each passing step. As time itself, so long held in abeyance by his purgatorial sojourn, crept back to take its due.
Kevin and Doris had just rounded the bend in the Land Cruiser, ostensibly heading for the plantation but in actuality completely lost. The road was dark and tree lined, not a house or billboard or road sign in sight. Kevin was wired and worried, mumbling under his breath as Doris attempted to navigate from memory.
“Are you sure it’s around here?” he asked.
“I think so,” Doris replied uncertainly. “It’s been so long… Maybe we should have turned left back there…”
Kevin cursed as suddenly the headlights illuminated a figure shambling onto the road, bearing a small bundle. Kevin braked and swerved, barely missing the man, then pulled onto the shoulder of the road. They jumped out and saw what appeared to be a very young child in the arms of a very, very old man.
“Jesus, mister, are you okay?” Kevin asked. “I swear I didn’t see you…”
The man was clad in a loose white shirt and black breaches, his onyx skin astonishingly withered, his once-regal features drawn cadaver tight around the bones of his face. He looked at Kevin with blues eyes at once piercing and infinitely kind, and handed him the little girl.
“Her name is Ally,” the ancient black man said in a voice that sounded like dry leaves rustling. “She wants to go home.”
Kevin took the child in his arms, speechless, as Doris rushed to open the rear door. As Kevin placed the girl gently on the rear seat, Doris called back. “Please, do you know the way to Custis Manor?”
Lucas looked at her and nodded, a strange half-smile on his raisined face.
“Yes, I do,” he replied.
But when they turned back to him, there was nothing left but dust.
In the grand ballroom the reconstructed puzzle of the mirror glowed as the ragged survivors clawed their way back into the world of the living, coughing and gasping — Joya and Louis helping Zoe, then Seth helping Amy and Caroline, and lastly Josh. But as they collapsed shivering and spent on the floor, Caroline looked back to the portal.
And Mia and Justin were not there.
“No!” Caroline cried, falling to her knees and feeling the surface of the glass. For a moment she thought she saw the faces of Mia and Justin smiling through the void. Then the mirror went cold and inert. And they were gone.
“Something’s wrong!” she said. She reached out, and the pieces of mirror scattered to her touch. Caroline freaked as her friends looked on, horrified. “We’ve got to get them out!”
“We don’t have time!”
They turned and saw Louis, who was looking at the detonator. Seth rushed over and saw the numbers clicking down: 00:59…00:58…00:57…
“Oh shit,” Seth muttered, then looked at the others, aghast. “We gotta go. Now!”
Caroline tried to protest, to no avail. Seth grabbed her and herded them all out. They spilled through the front doors and stumbled down the broad porch steps, staggering down the winding drive, driven by adrenaline and sheer will to live. Putting as
much distance between themselves and the manor as possible. As the timer in the ballroom ticked down to 00:00.
And Custis Manor exploded.
Silas looked out to see the house evaporate in a massive fireball, followed moments later by a cascade of flaming debris. And as the vast corona of light and heat belched skyward, reality visibly glitched as lightning flashed and the spirit world bled through to the physical one. He could see the maypoling pillar of light, streaming up to the heavens above the flaming manor, refracted through churning smoke and ash.
Underworld was burning. His earthly realm was burning. Worse yet, the barrier separating the real from the unreal had breached as the nganga itself became like a vast cosmic drain, sucking the tumult in and sluicing it into the earthly world. Though the beacon of light withstood the onslaught, the roiling storm of warring souls was drawn inexorably in, then blew through with hurricane force, ripping the shack to kindling as it spilled out into the placid Virginia night. And burgeoned upward, into clear and unsuspecting mortal sky.
And Silas Custis, his power waning, his soul housed firmly in the all-too-mortal-body of Duke, could do nothing about it. But run for his miserable life.
“What the hell??”
Jackson wrenched the wheel of the cruiser and felt the vehicle lurch and skid on the flat black macadam of the road. One moment he was approaching the sign announcing WELCOME TO CUSTIS MANOR, the split-rail fence demarcating the grounds slicing by outside his passenger window, strobed by the red and blue glow of the police cruiser’s light bar, the next he was witness to the Dresden spectacle of the historic mansion incinerating before his eyes, the blast shaking the ground, the car, and Jackson’s back molars. Jackson swerved and regained control of the car…
… and suddenly found himself engulfed in a billowing black fog that enshrouded and obscured the road ahead and behind and everything in between. Jackson slammed on the brakes and slalomed, tires screeching as his heart pounded wildly…
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