by Daryl Banner
Truce’s expression grants me no comfort. I can see her suspecting the reason the boy was the last to see my friend is because he ate her, and I like that not at all.
“I’m sorry,” she offers. “Truly and really and certainly sorry. I will tell the watchmen all about your friend and we will keep every Undead eye open for her, should she appear in our vicinity.” She dramatically sighs with relief, as if considering the issue with my friend entirely handled by those useless words. “Now, my dears, you can rest! In this … scary, forsaken structure,” she adds with a wince. “Anywho, when you wish to see the rest of the city, simply find me down the street if you’d like a guide. It is quite a large city, I do declare! Wouldn’t want you to get lost.” Her eyes nervously scan John again, a giggle getting stuck in her throat. “So handsome. I may even still be down the street when you wake! All the local Dead relax there and socialize. Oh, to have actual guests in Winter’s Retreat! Guests that sleep! What a curiosity! We haven’t had a single guest here since …” Her voice trails off, lost in a thought that grows darker the longer she’s lost in it.
“We are so very fortunate for your hospitality,” Dana offers in the silence, bringing Truce’s attention back. “It is a wonderfully generous thing you’ve done, putting a roof over our weary heads, and troubling the spirits for a bed upon which to lay our faces. Might I inquire,” she goes on, her airy voice annoyingly melodic, “where in this great city we might find some Heart Beater sustenance?”
Truce wrinkles her face. “Sustenance?”
“Food,” I blurt out, my patience lost. “People food. Something to eat. Water.”
“Oh! Yes, of course,” Truce agrees. “Down the street as well. There is a lovely restaurant, though I fear I know little about it. You could perhaps ask the other Livings, yes? Ah, but I know there is a building with water that’s drawn from the ground, though I’m afraid nothing runs in the pipes. Forgive me for my gross and unforgiveable ignorance on the matter; I haven’t had to worry about such things in a lifetime. The others here with noisy chests stay at a lodge just up the street, two blocks. It’s but a short minute or two’s stroll that way,” she explains, pointing. “Maybe you wish to stay in their lodge instead?”
“No,” I answer quickly before Dana says anything stupid. “We’re quite fine where we are. Thank you for your kindness, Truce.”
“Of course, of course. Oh, to be alive again. Are you two … Are you two a couple?” she asks, pointing at John and I. “So sweet, young Living love,” she murmurs with a tinge of sadness before we even have a chance to answer. “So handsome. So strapping and flushed and … just, oh.” Truce spreads her lips into a big curly smile, admiring us as if we were made of gold and glitter. “You bring great joy to my unbeating heart, you sweet noisemakers. Please stay here forever!” Then, with a little waltz, she vacates the lobby, the door shutting gently behind her.
I face the others. “We’re among them now. The real Beautiful Dead. These are the Undead we came here to see, not the ones who nearly ate us at the hovercraft.”
“We can’t be so quick to trust.”
I look at John, the one who just spoke. I still hurt when I look at him, but I’m not sure anymore if it’s just because of what he said in the woods, or something else entirely. What the hell is wrong with me?
“We may have been welcomed,” he goes on, “but we can’t trust anyone but ourselves.” His warm brown eyes glow in the dim light coming in through the window, the sight of which warms me instantly. I hate that I notice this when I’m supposed to be angry with him. “At least not yet. We have your satchel of food,” he adds, giving eyes to a wary East, “and it’s from that satchel that we should maintain ourselves while we stay in our room.”
“Room? One room?” Dana looks between us, her eyes alight with puzzlement. “But there are countless from which to choose. Why must we all—?”
“Stay together?” John finishes. “Didn’t I just say why?”
“Trust no one,” she repeats, defeated.
His eyes graze mine longingly, waiting to see if I will raise any objection. I only offer him my cool silence, too many emotions still making artwork of my nervous system for me to trust anything I might rashly say.
“We will take turns with our rest,” he announces. “We can’t all be asleep when the Dead walk every hour of the days and nights long. Even if this Truce lady can be trusted, she certainly can’t speak for the character of a hundred or more other Dead who live here. What if there are savages among them? What then? Should we look forward to waking up tomorrow morning with our throats missing, or our hearts pried from our chests?”
“John.”
He looks at me, his eyes flashing with anticipation. He wants me to forgive him, or to acknowledge him, or to say anything that would settle his worries. I regrettably find myself incapable of doing any of those things. “We will be fine in separate rooms. Surely the doors lock. If one of us must stand guard outside of them to keep our peace of mind, so be it, I’ll take the first watch.” Without waiting for a response, I make my way up the stairs.
The moment I enter number 209, I make my way to what I presume to be the attached bathroom, put myself inside it, shut the door, and explode into silent tears. I can’t keep this up any longer. Between John’s words that I know he didn’t mean and the ones he did, and the ones I’ve been waiting for him to say since we met … I don’t know what I’m so upset about anymore. I can’t even think about poor Mari. I’m so far away from home, and the whole purpose of journeying to this strange land has already died in my chest. No excitement lives there anymore—just a whole bunch of noise that only the Dead can hear.
“Jennifer.”
His voice is muffled through the door I’m leaning my back against. I sigh through the soundless tears I’ve let out. My face is probably a gross, snotty mess.
If Mari were here, she’d supply me the perfect colors and makeup to put my face to rights. Are you sure you don’t want Icecap Blue for your eyes? she asked me once. They complement your skin so much better. I kept preferring Gaea’s Navel because I loved the color of summertime and grass. Winter, not so much. I hate the cold. It reminds me of trips to the northern lodge and my dad joking about falling through his fishing hole and freezing. I’m terrified of freezing. Still, the next time Mari asked, I finally gave in and took the Icecap Blue. Compliments flooded in like rain in the gardens. Even a rigid icicle like Professor Praun did a double-take in class that first day I wore the icy eyes.
John tries again. “Can we talk?”
I don’t sniffle. I don’t want to give him any indication that I’ve been crying. I’m embarrassed suddenly by it. I hate crying. “Maybe in a bit,” I respond gently. “I just need a moment in here.”
I hear John shuffle on the other side of the door. Then, in a changed tone, he says, “Can we at least share a room? I know I’ve sort of …” He clears his throat, then goes on. “I’ve been a burden on you. For many, many months. I’ve lived in your condo and eaten your food. Your roommate had to get used to me. I make a mess in the kitchen.”
Is this just John securing his place in my condo, assuming we ever make it back home? Is this just another of his countless games to keep me on his side? I’m so filled with doubts, I can’t even think logically anymore. Every one of my rash, spur-of-the-moment decisions is entirely motivated by gut and raw emotion. I doubt that’s a smart or efficient way to operate. Surely I’ve made a choice or two that’s helped secure our impending demise.
“I’ll never be able to repay you for the kindness you’ve shown me,” he murmurs through the door.
“You don’t have to repay me for a thing,” I mutter, feeling awful suddenly. I really should fix up my horrible face before he sees me. I stumble through the dark, making my way to the sink. I twist the handle. It squeaks. No water; I’m gently reminded by the abundant nothing that comes out of the faucet.
He runs a hand down the door. I hear it sliding softly down the bumpy wood.
“I shouldn’t have said that bit in the woods about your dad. That was wrong.”
“You really don’t need to apologize, John,” I tell him, annoyed at the shakiness that comes through my voice from trying not to cry. Really, I don’t have time for all these dumb emotions. “I know you didn’t mean it.”
“Well, in a sense I did,” he says. “I meant … that I don’t want you to die, Jennifer. I meant … I meant that I care too much about you. I … I like you.”
I give a doleful glance at the mirror. A wet and scary version of my face stares back. I don’t look pretty. I’m an ugly crier. I don’t know if John has learned this about me yet, or if now is totally the wrong time for him to find out. Hell, I certainly wouldn’t want to kiss this face.
“Please come out of the bathroom and talk to me.”
I use a sleeve to wipe my eyes as best as I can. I know it does little for me, if anything at all. I take a breath, then pull open the door. John and his chiseled, strong face and his infinite brown eyes and his short, messed-up hair and his thick shoulders greet me all at once. In this instant, I realize I miss him horribly and I don’t want to be at odds with him for a second longer.
He doesn’t move to hug me or anything. John’s never been the lovey type. I’ve known that would be an obstacle for us; he reveals so little about what he feels inside that, when he finally does, it pulls the floor out from under me.
I think it pulls it out from under him, too. He doesn’t seem to know what to say, now that he’s got me out of hiding, so I offer the first words. “The others?”
“The delivery boy’s across the hall. The seer is next to him. No sign of ghosts or … haunted things.” He moves to the bed, gives it a pat. The sheet coughs out a cloud of dust, all the clumpy ashen flakes floating off to new homes. It’s likely the first time anyone’s disturbed them in a century, give or take. “Well, we could sleep on the floor,” he considers instead.
I rush up and slam myself into his firm body to plant my lips upon his, catching poor, ever-stoic John off-guard. He turns into stone but for his mouth, which works a spell and a half on mine.
When the kiss ends, he tries to ask what I’m doing, but I make him swallow the words with another sudden, forceful kiss. His mood changes, all pretense dropped, and quite suddenly it is the both of us competing to see who’s the stronger kisser. Our hands join the competition, running up and down our sides and tugging on each other’s tattered clothes.
He might be using me. He might be no good for me. I shouldn’t want him, but damn it, I do.
I pull too hard. His dirty shirt rips. Neither of us care, because in the next instant it’s on the floor. Then so are we, and the Sunless Reach and all its due worries and fears are long forgotten for hours, traded for emotions far more kind and preferable.
The next time my eyes open, I’m cradled in his big arms, my head against his bare chest, and the room is notably darker. Have we slept to the following evening, or was it never quite nighttime to begin with? My sense of time has been so altered in this creepy realm that I cannot even say, with confidence, how many days we’ve been here. Only one? Two days, yet? It feels like a lifetime.
I rise and slip out of the room, not wanting to disturb John. No, I don’t learn my lessons. For the second time, I leave John sleeping, and I descend the stairs to the lobby of Winter’s Retreat, then sit on the first step and stare at the front glass door and the darkness beyond it.
The rough floor definitely did a number on my back; I wince as I nurse it as best as I can. I’m not used to sleeping on rough, wooden floors. So pampered I am, a Living from the land across the ocean. I smile, hearing Truce’s voice saying that word again. I think I may come to like her, if she gives me a chance to ask about twenty or thirty more questions regarding her deathness.
I pull out the device from my pocket. I know John said to conserve its battery, but I need to know if it holds a key I’ve yet to consider in our journey. Within it are all my notes, all my conclusions … and a legion of unanswered questions. Maybe some mention of a green flame might be lodged somewhere in my forgotten scribblings.
When I tap my fingers on it, the device does not respond. The river, I realize. My device was completely submerged. Panic makes a home in my nerves as I turn the device over and over in my hand, inspecting it with swelling frustration. I know the thing’s suffered a bit of rain before; it ought to survive a brief plunge into dirty, deathly, thousand-year-old water, shouldn’t it?
Finally—and tiredly—the screen emits a faint light, and then my notes appear before me. Oh, thank you. I do realize I may be compromising my device by waking it up and pushing through my notes, but I can’t let this whole journey be a waste. I need to consult my digital brain. As I scroll through glitching, stuttering pages on the cranky device, I wonder if all my life I have unknowingly been preparing for this adventure. I ought to be the expert among us, yet I feel so out of place. I’ve never before appreciated more the vast and incomparable difference between learning a thing and living a thing. Ten years poring over History and Mythology books at the university couldn’t prepare me for this.
Another digital page turns. I read: Crazy Lady Number Five. Her name is Dana. She smells like cat pee. I chuckle, but it dies quickly as thoughts of my father grip me tightly by the throat. Did Dana really see my father’s spirit, or was it all a complete coincidence? Do spirits even exist? Funny I ask that, sitting here in the lobby of a so-called haunted building burned down by some mystery green fire.
I swipe the page again, continuing on. I skim words I’ve read a hundred times. I swipe quickly past notes I’ve written months ago, years ago, hurrying before my device decides that it’s drowned. I wade through Histories and Mythologies, combing for all traces of my Beautiful Dead. I know there’s something in here that will help me.
Professor Praun’s voice seeps into my brain like a ghost, condemning me for my foolish actions. I can see him welcoming me back to the school with a cold stare and bearing an official notice of expulsion. Then, I see the authorities waiting for me at the edge of campus, ready to whisk me away to a prison somewhere.
“Don’t you worry,” I tell the imaginary professor and authorities in my daydream. “When we come back, we’ll have with us evidence that will change the world as we know it. I will justify my crimes. I’ll be the last one laughing,” I tell Praun especially.
“It is always good to laugh.”
I twist my torso, catching sight of Dana descending the stairs as quietly as a cat. She whips past me like a breeze, waltzing across the lobby and casting shadows from the moonlight outside.
“It lets the spirits know you are not afraid,” the diviner explains, dancing by the bar and tapping her fingers on each of the barstools, as if each one were a dance partner.
I scowl. “Why did you follow us onto the hovercraft? You never explained.”
She comes to a sudden and dramatic stop, leaning her back against the bar, and says, “You were to defame me.”
I squint at her. “What?”
“With your article.” Now it’s her turn to scowl, and I hear the hint of anger that so fueled her voice when she screamed at me as I left her house. That moment feels like so long ago. “You were going to tell the world that I was a fake. You had tricked me with that lie of your father. You made a fool of me, evil girl. I followed you back to the campus and I waited and I watched you. I planned to have a word, but …” Her eyes drift somewhere, a dark thought clouding her expression. “I couldn’t speak up. I wouldn’t know what to say. I felt … I thought … I’d …”
“You thought I’d write an article calling you a fraud to the whole university?” I ask acidly.
“I ADMIT THAT IT MIGHT BE FAKE!” she shouts, all that joy she had just a moment ago shattering to the floor like a pretty glass vase. “The spirits! The mists! The summoning! It might all be fake,” she goes on, her voice terse and pointed, her eyes flashing, “but the healing is real! I look upon people’s mourning, thei
r grief-stricken eyes, and I see a need for my service, a need. I summon the spirits of the deceased and I tell the survived what they need to hear to get the closure they deserve. Oh, if only someone could have done that for me when I lost my husband and little girl. It’s a miracle from the beyond that I still stand here in the middle of Death’s home itself, and I’m still breathing.”
I’ve gotten to my feet, clutching the device to my stomach and watching Dana’s eyes roll as she fights her own emotional outburst. I have a sudden urge to rush up and hug her. I have another urge to bludgeon her over the head with my shoe. I think maybe I was ready to hate her the moment I entered that house, equipped with my lie.
My lie, which not hours later became true.
“I had no intention of defaming you,” I tell her. “I’m sorry if you felt deceived, but with all due respect, your entire business is in deception. You were bound to get served your own medicine at some point, Dana.”
To that, she huffs, then paces in a circle around the lobby, shaking her head and seeming to sift through a million thoughts a second. I can’t imagine what’s in that lunatic’s head; I can only assume it’s crowded in there.
She stops suddenly. “Your friend.” She lifts her eyes but doesn’t quite meet mine. “I do not sense her.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I do not sense her spirit in the mists, no matter how hazy they are lately. Do you understand my meaning?” Now, Dana’s eyes find mine. “She is not yet deceased.”
I stare at her, wondering if I’m being served the very medicine I just accused her of serving. Does she mean to simply put my mind at ease with a well-intended lie? Or is there something real about this woman’s power?
I clear my throat. “If only you were skilled in sensing the Living,” I remark with a subtle smile, “then perhaps you’d be useful in seeking her out.”
Encouraged, Dana returns my expression with a tiny smile of her own. “I am so very useless.”
