Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3

by Ridley Pearson

  “There is no record,” Finn said. “This is all brand-new to us.”

  “Jess,” Charlene called to her friend. “Remember what I said.”

  Jess gave her a thumbs-up. “Got it!”

  “I’d appreciate it if you told him not to do this,” Charlene said.

  Jess, a dark shape in the limited light, shrugged.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” said Charlene. “Some friend you are.”

  “No question it’s been opened,” Finn said, scraping away dirt from the sides of the coffin and training his dull red beam on it. He kept the sword in his right hand, passed his flashlight to Charlene. “You ready?”

  “No,” she said, her hand shaking so violently the red orb of the flashlight’s glow danced on the earth-encrusted box.

  Finn tried to open the casket from within the ring of chain, but his leverage was all wrong. He stepped outside of it.

  “Finn! No!” Charlene’s voice cracked.

  Finn couldn’t speak. His chest pounded, his heart throbbed, his hands sweated and trembled. Behind him, Maybeck continued his vigorous digging. Finn heaved up the heavy lid a crack, the only sounds that of the damaged wood decaying and crumbling. Another inch. Yet more, the lid now open nearly a foot.

  “Aim it here!” Finn called. But Charlene had looked away. Finn set down the sword and pried his flashlight from her grip, straining to hold the lid open with his left hand. He trained the light inside. “Oh my gosh!”

  He dropped the lid down with a bang. Leaving it askew, he sprang back, and landed on his bottom.

  Charlene leaped to the edge of the chain circle. “What the heck!” She sounded angry.

  “Did you see her?” Finn asked, his voice weak.

  “I didn’t see anything! I wasn’t looking!”

  “You okay?” It was Maybeck, leaning on his shovel to catch a breather.

  “Dandy,” Finn called back loudly, wondering why it had to be his job to open the coffin. Privately, he spoke to Charlene. “A skull with hair like cotton candy. Leathery little ears. But nothing on her face. Just bone.”

  “Her?”

  “A grandmother’s dress, all rotten and torn. Her hands. Her feet. It’s so disgusting!”

  He called over to Maybeck that there was nothing interesting. Finn closed up the coffin, working delicately not to destroy the lid in the process.

  “Let’s leave it like this until we see what Maybeck’s looks like,” he suggested to Charlene.

  “Sure,” she said, in no great hurry to start moving dirt again. “What do you think this is about?”

  “I think Jess’s dream means something. I suppose they always do, but this one’s a keeper, no pun intended.”

  “Got something,” Maybeck called, his shovel also banging against an object as he stabbed it down.

  “So do I,” called Jess from beneath the tree.

  Finn whirled, eyes darting to Jess. “What?”

  “The shed,” she said warily. “The shed. Maybe those same two from last time. But more with them. Ghosts, like the others.”

  “You…dreamed that?” Finn asked.

  “I…I touched the fence and I just saw it. It came and went, like that time in Epcot.”

  “Were we in what you saw?” Finn asked, his throat dry.

  “Yeah. We were…And it wasn’t pretty.”

  “Fighting?” he said.

  “Yes,” she confirmed.

  “The shed,” he murmured. Jess, like the Keepers, knew when to answer and when to be silent. The Keepers could finish each other’s sentences, guesstimate a fellow Keeper’s thoughts, anticipate a reaction and change the way they worded something because of it. They could feel what the other person was feeling.

  Finn might have believed once that none of this was possible, but he’d seen it so many times, had been part of so many strange happenings in the company of this small group, that he knew it was theirs and theirs alone. They belonged to a club that wasn’t any other kind of club, a group that only acted like a group by themselves. Jess, like Amanda, was as much a part of them as any Keeper.

  “Those clouds,” Jess said now, pointing into the yellowish night sky, “were in my vision. Whatever I saw—and I’m not saying it means anything!—happens tonight, when those clouds are a little bit farther to the left.”

  Finn hustled toward Maybeck’s grave, minding the passageways. “We need to hurry. Jess has seen something…bad.”

  Maybeck, already working furiously, took offense to being rushed. He used some creative language to suggest Finn borrow Charlene’s shovel. However, Charlene arrived at nearly the same moment and pitched in. In a matter of minutes, she and Maybeck had uncovered the casket. Once painted with shiny black enamel, it was held together with brass hardware gone green. The moist soil just beneath the surface was a perfect habitat for earthworms and banana slugs, all of which adhered to the coffin’s exterior in a slow-moving tangle, giving it the appearance of movement. The thing looked animated, writhing slowly before them.

  “Eww,” Maybeck said.

  “I second that,” said Finn.

  Galvanized by Jess’s confidence, Charlene dug deep and found her determination, pushing back her earlier wariness. She stepped forward, her shovel on the ground, her sword in hand. “We have to hurry, you two. Really!” She placed the tip of her sword on the first of the coffin’s three fasteners. “It’s been opened. These have all been pried loose. And recently.” She forced the blade into the gap where the coffin lid met the main section and leveraged it open, grabbing the lid with both hands. “A little help?”

  Finn joined in. Together, he and Charlene hoisted up the lid, Charlene’s flashlight at the ready. The casket contained dirt, more than a few spiderwebs, and the same overpopulation of worms, some stretched, some compacted to small blobs that didn’t look like worms at all. Some of these swam in and around anatomic holes in the bony face; others could easily be mistaken for a pattern on the black suit. Most definitely a man’s, complete with what had once been a white pocket square, blue tie, and belt with a silver buckle. The shoes—black with leather soles—had rotted away. Most distressing, and impossible to miss was—

  “No hands,” whispered Charlene.

  “Noted,” said Finn. “No left arm from the elbow.”

  Charlene used the tip of her curving sword to pull back the right sleeve. “Make that a pair. Why just the forearms?”

  Both skeletal arms were missing from the elbow. Finn’s sword stirred the dirt, looking for the missing appendages. Charlene did the same on the left side.

  “Look at the color of the breaks at the elbow,” Charlene said.

  “Not as yellow as the outside of his bones,” said Maybeck the artist. “That’s called white.”

  “As in: recently broken,” said Finn.

  “Someone broke off both arms at the elbows?” Charlene asked skeptically. “It’s not as if there were fingerprints to steal.”

  The skeleton was just that: a skeleton. All bones. Picked clean.

  “Besides,” Charlene said, “why his arms and not hers?” She meant the other skeleton.

  “I think you’d have to be the one stealing bones to know that.”

  “Guys?” Maybeck whispered, his voice implying great concern. “I’m getting the high sign from Jess. I think we have company.”

  ONLY AMANDA KNEW Jess’s best-kept secret, that her ability to dream the future actually frightened her. The kids she’d lived with in Barracks 14 had real powers: moving objects with their thoughts, displacing water with a wave of the hands, like Moses. She had dreams. So what? Where others showed real courage, she had dreams. Where some were brave, she was not.

  Yes, at certain moments she could reach deeply inside herself, discovering a resolve and defiance that surprised her. But most of the time her instinct was to run the other way.

  Like now, for instance: looming in silhouette atop the incline where Wayne had dropped them was a lanky man—at least, she thought it was a man
—with perfectly square shoulders, a pencil neck, and legs like circus stilts. After the shock of seeing him, Jess’s first thought was his clothes were draped over a frame as insubstantial and thin as that of a prisoner of war. Or a skeleton. She often made such snap judgments of people based on their dress, flattering or unflattering, and though she wasn’t proud of judging a book by its cover, it served her well most of the time.

  But the man’s oddly thin frame was nothing compared with the luminous aura surrounding him. There was no light up there to create the illusion of a silhouette, Jess realized. The halo surrounding him from the waist up was emanating from within him. It was like walking into a blindingly bright room only to realize there were no lights anywhere. Maybe, she thought, there’s no one there. Maybe it was just another of her visions.

  No such luck. The figure lifted his arm and gestured toward the shed.

  Jess felt like a drain had opened in her heart, in her nerves, her confidence. It was as if she’d gained a hundred pounds in an instant. She had called to the others only a second or two before, but now her head wouldn’t move, her neck wouldn’t turn, her jaw wouldn’t open, her vocal cords wouldn’t sound. She wasn’t sure she was breathing.

  That motion of the aura threw something through the air. If she could have seen other wavelengths of light, Jess was sure, she’d have witnessed a contrail drawn from the lanky figure to the shed, and from him to her, to the cemetery. It would have been as red as fire or blood, yet feathery and fast as a snake’s tongue. It would have burned the skin or cut a hole through stone.

  From the shed they came. The figure on the hill had called them; Jess felt certain of it! Whether or not a door opened, Jess couldn’t be sure, which made the appearance of the figures all the more troubling. She had seen wraiths sixty years into the present whose entire purpose of being was to absorb the living into their smoky forms. The specters emanating from the shed looked no different, except for the burial clothing that tagged them as residents of a graveyard. Suspiciously transparent hands and heads, open mouths like dark caves.

  “Gate!” Finn shouted. “Swords and flares!”

  Jess found she could move again; she raced to the gate, closing herself in with the others. “It’s an iron gate. This is where we test Philby’s theory,” she hissed.

  Among the dozen or so undead walking toward the plot, Finn spotted the two grave diggers from the Keepers’ earlier visit.

  “Corpses or ghosts?” Finn called out to Charlene.

  “What?” Even in the limited light, it was clear she’d gone ashen.

  “Heads or tails. One or the other. Take your pick,” he said.

  “Ghosts!” Charlene said.

  “Corpses,” called Jess.

  “I’ll take shortstop,” Maybeck said. Whatever that meant.

  “I’m with Charlie,” Finn announced. “Jess is going to figure out what the missing arms mean. Maybeck, you’re in the middle. Whoever needs him most, holler.”

  Finn tugged Charlene by the arm and ran with her toward the oncoming ghosts, the wrought-iron fence the only barrier between them. Finn spoke in a whisper, half prayer, half statement. “I sure hope Philby was right about the iron.”

  Charlene answered in a gravelly voice that sounded nothing like her. “I think we’re about to find out.”

  JESS HEARD THE FIZZING of flares, and the night came alive. Shadows jumped and shifted with each burst of flashing yellow light. She heard the clanging of shovels and swords, shouts and calls.

  But she could not allow herself to be burdened by such distractions. She’d learned from the Keepers that each member of a team had to keep to their assigned job. To deviate from your role was to place the whole team in jeopardy. So Jess tried her best to block out the battle being waged behind her, to block out the ugliness of the open coffin’s contents, and do what was being asked of her.

  Determining why the arms were missing was no easy task. Had the dead man worn a wristwatch or gold jewelry, or something else of value? Perhaps, she thought, the skeletal arms had been removed and discarded once the treasure was bagged. Or maybe the grave robbers sought to identify the deceased by evidence of prior bone surgery or disfigurement, even DNA. The possibilities seemed endless.

  She understood what Finn needed her to do. She just didn’t know if she could do it.

  Their situation demanded that she hurry. Hesitation was her enemy; the others were waiting for her, defending her so she could get the job done. Jess leaned over the grave’s earthen wall, feeling the dirt crumbling beneath her knee, and grabbed hold of the broken elbow. The bones were cooler than the air, dry and porous like stone. Her stomach lurched. She willed herself not to throw up, not to faint and fall into the grave herself.

  Whatever was going on behind her, the fight was drawing closer. Repulsed by touching the skeleton, she let go and closed her eyes, hoping for a waking dream or image. Nothing.

  She slid off the edge and into the grave, far enough down to align both hands with the protruding bones. She took a deep breath of stale, fetid air. She grabbed hold. She shut her eyes.

  The glow on her inner eyelids softened—one of the flares had burned out. Finn and Charlene were shouting. Maybeck was calling out inappropriate names for their attackers. Jess blocked it all. Though it was Mattie who read people’s thoughts by touching them, Finn had wanted Jess to try touching the skeleton in an effort to future-dream it as well.

  Nothing. She kept her hands clasped tightly on the snapped bones. Come on! she thought. Tell me what happened to you! she demanded mentally.

  It was the wrong question. Instantly, she felt a pang in her chest like an explosion. She saw a room, an apartment, maybe, at a sharp angle. She was falling. More correctly: this man she was holding on to was falling. Falling dead of a heart attack. Jess let go, her chest aching painfully. She felt surprised, horrified, curious, and frightened. The man had died of a heart attack. But that wasn’t the answer she wanted. She grabbed hold again. Think!

  What recently happened to your arms? she thought, eyes closed.

  The figure up on the hill appeared before her eyes, that same unexplained glow surrounding him. His image co-mingled with the face of one of the grave diggers from the night before. He raised a shovel like a scepter and lowered it sharply.

  Jess buckled with the blow: he’d hit the right elbow first. Then the left. She felt it. With both forearms in hand, the grave digger turned, offering the separated limbs to someone standing at ground level.

  “Jess! Jess!” Finn’s voice.

  She snapped out of it.

  Finn, Maybeck, and Charlene stood with their backs to her, swinging their swords. The last flare sputtered, about to go out.

  Finn shouted, “Jess! We gotta go over the fence. It’s iron! It’s our only hope.”

  “Right now!” Maybeck shouted.

  She felt a hand grab the neck of her shirt and haul her to her feet. Charlene, Finn, and Maybeck turned and jumped over the open grave. Maybeck hoisted Jess up and dragged her behind him. She scrambled up the far wall of the grave, and they ran as a group for the iron fence enclosing the graveyard.

  “It’s spiked!” Finn said. “Be careful!”

  Maybeck was tall enough to get over easily. Charlene vaulted without a problem. Finn and Jess took longer and required some help.

  A ghost caught up to Finn and tore his shirt as he leaped over. But the ghost and his menacing army stopped at the fence, though the terrified teammates hardly noticed.

  They were too busy getting as far away as possible.

  MATTIE HAD BEEN TOLD to let them come to her.

  Joe had arranged the sudden employment through the store manager, Teresa, who had quickly trained Mattie to run goods between the stockroom and the store floor. Mattie was assigned the hours that no one wanted: in the morning and late at night.

  With the store closed, she and another girl, Jaanavi, restocked and neatened shelves, following the lists generated by the cash registers of what had been p
urchased during the day. Jaanavi, a vibrant girl with a headband braid and gorgeous skin, had six months of experience on the shop floor. She took the chore of neatening the piles and racks of clothing, while Mattie brought product up from the stockroom, wheeling carts, racks, and dollies loaded with sweatshirts, Mr. Potato Heads, and Elsa dolls.

  The stockroom, underground and beneath the store by one level, was roughly the size of a football field. Its narrow, crowded aisles blocked out a good deal of the spotty overhead tube lighting. The abundance of clothing absorbed all sound, like a forest blanketed by a deep snowfall. Mattie didn’t mind being down there during store hours with the other Cast Members, but alone, at night, it wasn’t pleasant. The thousands of dolls, toys, and plush animals looking out from plastic bins brought on a sense of gloom and spookiness. Adding to that was the fact that the far end connected to an underground trucking dock and recycling station. Although Disney security controlled the trailer trucks coming and going, Mattie’s imagination had people sneaking in on foot.

  Mattie’s attention ticked in that direction as she rolled a dolly along an aisle of hanging T-shirts and Elsa costumes. As she passed a pair of four-foot-tall white plastic Stormtroopers, the helmets of the soldiers moved with her. Hearing something, she stopped and glanced back, wondering if the heads had been angled like that a moment earlier. She took two more steps and pivoted, trying to catch them moving—nothing.

  Wary now, Mattie moved ahead more slowly, clicking the talk button on the wire of her radio headpiece.

  “Th…at -ou?” came Jaanavi’s scratchy voice. Reception between the floors was far from perfect.

  “Yeah. Just checking. All good.”

  “No problem.”

  As Mattie moved ahead, concentrating on the list and sorting toys and clothes into specific bins on the dolly, she missed several snakes, three-foot Kaas, which slithered off a shelf, their pink tongues flashing, and oozed silently to the concrete floor. They glided toward her, maintaining a perfect S shape. The two Stormtroopers stepped out of their boxes, snapping the twist ties holding them to the cardboard like tissue paper.