The Ghosting of Gods Read online

  “No ticking down this tunnel,” George calls back. Bethany sloshes beside him, until they’re both almost out of sight. All I can see are candle flames—their silhouettes blend with the darkness.

  Water creeps up my leg.

  “No ticking at all,” George calls back. “Just a bit of a swim necessary. I see—” Their candles snuff out.

  “Jesse?” Poe tweets, as a wall of water bears down on us.

  His elbow catches me in the gut when the wave hits us. Pain makes me suck in my breath, only I get water. Dragged under like the hapless branch I watched earlier, I wash down the tunnel. Slam into a barrier. I claw at the mud walls, trying to stop the current from taking me away, but it’s too strong.

  I let go.

  At last, the water recedes. I float gently to the floor and land on a body.

  It screams, jerks. My nose explodes in pain.

  The body is Ava.

  I throw up my arms, blocking several more blows. She’s yelling at me, shrieking at me to get away. She sounds crazed, hysterical. The attack ends. I’m holding my face, dazed. Her voice fades.

  Poe calls my name. He’s not drowned, he’s okay. He comes up behind me, and together we scream for Ava to come back.

  There’s light. A flame. Her lighter. “Jesse?”

  “Yeah, baby, it’s me. And Poe. Don’t run away.” I have to sit down. She hit me hard. I’m dizzy, and my nose is bleeding. God, I think she broke it.

  But she’s alive. Poe, too.

  Silently, I thank God.

  It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. We need Leesel, then we’ll go back home, and I’ll save Emmy. I’ll save her, I’ll protect everyone…no more praying for forbidden fruit…

  I steady myself as Ava comes closer, holding out her lighter with a straight, but shaking, arm.

  Her face is scratched, scraped. She cranes her neck forward to try and see us better, and I can hardly believe it’s her. She’s so skinny. Her cheeks are hollow, her hair is matted against her head and neck, and her clothes are caked in mud.

  For a moment I can see she recognizes me, but then she extinguishes her lighter. She collapses on top of me, sobbing.

  “Ava Lily, Ava Lily,” Poe keeps saying, crying with her.

  Grasping her shoulders, I shake her, gently. “Ava, what happened to you? Where’s Leesel? She’s not with us. Ava? Do you understand me?” I hold her face in my hands.

  Her head nods. “I was r-running, trying to get to L-Leesel, and fell, fell in a hole in the ground. Oh, Jesse. I don’t know where she is! This woman took her, but I couldn’t k-keep up…Where were you? We looked…looked for so long, and the days are so strange…but down here, down here it’s w-worse…”

  I hold her, kiss her face, try to calm her. She rambles about the darkness, not making much sense, then her voice turns very, very quiet. I lean forward to hear.

  “Things are down here,” she whispers.

  “Is it the tunnelers?” Poe asks. He tells her about George and Bethany. How they live in the town, how they led us down here, how we lost them. “They told us we’re in another world, Ava Lily. Called Memento Mori. It’s true. And we’re beneath the river, it’s an abyss…and we have to be quiet because of the tunnelers. George doesn’t want to talk about the tunnelers, but I think—”

  “Poe,” I interrupt. “That’s enough.” I press my forehead to Ava’s. “Baby. Tell us exactly what happened to Leesel.”

  “No, no, I can’t…”

  “It’s okay. We’re here with you now, all right? But we need to know where Leesel might be. Do you think she’s down in these tunnels? Did you see her fall? Or did the woman take her away in a boat? I need you to think.”

  Her face bobs up and down in my hands. “Okay.”

  I work the lighter out of her fist and flick it on. It’s almost worse, seeing how she looks. She wipes away her tears, takes a deep, quivering breath. “I remember the vortex. And Leesel blew out the window, and I went after her I think…I can’t remember very well…and then everything was dark, but then I was in the woods again, only the trees looked wrong. Leesel found me. And she said we were in an altered world, because the stars weren’t the same.” She stops. Starts shaking bad again.

  “What’s an altered world? Ava? What’s wrong?”

  “Turn off the lighter.”

  “Why?”

  “Lower your voice. Turn off the lighter.”

  I flick it closed. She goes on. “She said…Leesel said she had been living in the woods for days when she found me. Weeks. I was worried, you know? She didn’t make any sense. And then, then she showed me how there was a town. We needed help. And so, so we built a fire because I had my lighter. Somebody in the town saw us, but then a woman yelled at us to beware of the townspeople. She was up on the cliff. She said to come back up, that the people in the town weren’t safe, that she would help us…And so Leesel climbed up first, so I could make sure. Make sure she didn’t fall.”

  She starts to cry again. My stomach is hollow, but I need her to finish, to tell me what happened to Leesel.

  I shake her, not hard, but enough to get her attention. “What happened to Leesel, Ava?”

  “The woman took her! Jesse, I couldn’t stop her. I was almost over the edge, pulling myself up, and Leesel screamed. I got up, got up as fast as I could, and I saw the woman running, carrying Leesel in her arms. I chased after them, but the ground collapsed beneath me, and I was falling and falling…they may have fallen…I’ve been searching…”

  This can’t be happening.

  I realize I’m squeezing my eyes shut. Opening them, of course I see nothing. Poe is speaking softly to Ava, trying to comfort her, but there’s no comfort to give. Leesel has been abducted, just like George and Bethany said.

  We need them. George and Bethany. Poe was right about that. I shouldn’t have let George and Bethany go down that tunnel.

  Ava stiffens beside me.

  Ticking. Lots of it. Faint, getting louder, but that’s not all. There are clicking noises too. Sounds like Morse code.

  My thumb rolls the lighter. I hold the flame behind us, in front of us, trying to see down the tunnel in each direction. There’s nothing, but the shadows are close. Ava reaches out to take hold of my wrist. She lifts my arm high, pushing the lighter flame toward the ceiling.

  There’s a hole there, right over our heads, about the size of a softball.

  Something glints. Shifting the lighter to the left, I follow the track of a long white bone. It’s human. A femur. Mud obscures most of the pelvis bone, but I trace the spine up to where a skull gapes in a silent scream. My heart beats so fast I feel dizzy as I stare at the skeleton in its mud casket.

  Morse code.

  I jerk the flame back to the ceiling hole. It’s bigger. A lantern teeters at the edge, on the verge of falling down on us.

  14

  the flock hides in hell

  A flame floats in the dark space next to the lantern, entering it. An orange glow lights up the tunnel. It’s bright, blinding, and I shield my face. Out of the corner of my eye I see Poe looking up and squinting, grasping his crucifix.

  The lantern suddenly drops down, splashing in the water at my feet. I stare dumbly at it. Look back up.

  The skeleton is trembling.

  What the hell? An earthquake?

  The pelvic bone, curved and smooth and tangerine in the lantern light, shifts. Mud knocks loose, revealing more bone. Tremors run up the knobby spine. The neck bone twists, slightly. “Poe?” I shrink back—somehow the skeleton is mashing down through the mud.

  It spasms loose from the ceiling.

  Dropping to the floor at Poe’s feet, the skeleton lands, impossibly, in a crouch.

  Click-click-click.

  Morse code, above us.

  Skulls peer down through gaps in the ceiling. They have no eyes, but they swivel their heads to follow Poe’s movement as he stumbles backward into a wall, pulling Ava with him.

  The crouched s
keleton washes his foot in a puddle. It painstakingly removes mud from between small bones, toe by toe by toe. More skeletons drop down, provoking animalistic whines from Poe. One of the dead latches onto my friend’s ankle.

  Poe can only breathe in, not out.

  This can’t be real.

  Utter calm envelops me as I stand so very still, never minding all the movement around me. The calm is effortless. Strangely familiar. A loud crack draws my attention, and I observe what seems to be happening.

  The dead are alive. My friends…

  The wall squirms. Mud stirs at Poe’s back and he leaps forward, directly into the arms of one of the things.

  Heavy chains loop the necks of the dead. Their backs hunch with the weight. Crystal balls dangle like pendants from the chains. The crystals tick, like clocks.

  My scalp tingles. My gaze locks onto the crystals.

  Click-click-click. The dead click their teeth, chattering at us. The Morse code is speech.

  One of them grabs my arm. Its eye sockets are barely visible beneath the packed mud atop its skull. Unlike the others, it’s dressed, its robe wet, dragging. It taps its fingers against its cheek bone. The sound mimics the clicking of teeth. It has none. Its jaw is unhinged, its skull crooked.

  Ava swings at the skeleton nearest her. She screams, and Poe joins her with piercing screams of his own. He tries to run and knocks over the lantern, dimming its glow.

  Skeletons skitter in and out of lantern light. Darting forward, they touch me. They poke. Prod. At last, my peaceful trance breaks, and rage floods me as I recoil from the cold touch of bone on my face. My senses amplify. The cracking of Morse code, the flash of white inside deep shadows, the taste of mud dragged into my mouth by the finger of a thing not dead…

  “What have you done with Leesel?” Ava is shrieking as I use both hands to grasp a spine. I heave the skeleton terrorizing Poe into the pack of skittering others. “Leesel! Give me Leesel!” Ava screams again and again.

  Playtime halts. The lantern is lifted, and they surge toward Ava in fluid, unified movement. One of them cocks its skull to the side and clicks its teeth together, softly, and the others break away.

  There’s a flash of white on both sides of me, and I’m restrained. Shoved into the mud wall, I’m pinned at the throat, forearms, and ankles, immobilized. My fists clench as Ava’s eyes widen in fear. I speak clearly to the skeleton threatening her.

  “Leave her alone or I’ll fucking fracture you.”

  Poe whimpers.

  The skeleton ignores me. Wagging a finger at Ava, it speaks to her in a series of deliberate clicks that somehow congeal the blood in my veins. Leaning close to her, the dead thing twitches its face up and down, like it’s sniffing her. Once bent over, it struggles to straighten again. Its crystal ball pendant is huge, weighing down its chest, filling half its broken rib cage. Images move within the crystal.

  “Let me do this,” Poe says. His eyes are bulging, he sounds asthmatic, but he’s fixated on Ava, not the skeletons. “Remember they were people before they were skeletons. Let me do this.” Quivering, he steps forward and carefully places an arm between Ava and the skeleton. “Beware.” He pretends to strangle his neck with his free hand. “We’re glad to meet you because we’re lost. Help?”

  The skeleton seems to consider the question. It turns to its companions, clicks its teeth, shakes all over. Startled, I realize it’s impersonating Poe. Its friends gape wide their jaws. They bend at the waist, grasping onto one another in silent hilarity.

  It’s not all silent. Harsh, freakish laughter sounds from somewhere down the tunnel.

  Skeletons sink to their knees. Bow their heads.

  A new skeleton strides forward, a giant, so tall that its skull scrapes the ceiling. It clacks and gestures with its hands, forming its fingers into complicated and rapid configurations, like sign language. In unison, like a flock of birds, all the skeletons except the three restraining me retreat into shadows.

  The giant regards us with its empty eye sockets. “Fl-eshed,” it says. The word is barely recognizable, strangely pitched and sounding grated. It reaches up and tenderly strokes a bit of flesh wrapped along its neck bone. “S-ore.”

  “He can talk,” Poe blurts.

  Its body is damaged. Chinked. A frayed rope tied around its pelvic bone carries a small burlap bag. Out of it hangs some sort of metal tool. It’s long, curved at the end, and sharp. The giant sees me looking. It tips back its skull, pulls at its ribcage, and screams. Poe screams with it.

  I know what the giant is.

  A flagellant.

  Its distorted scream ends. It reaches for its burlap bag.

  “No, don’t,” Poe says, stepping forward.

  The flagellant lunges, hits Poe so hard his body immediately slumps to the floor. Stunned, I realize Poe’s not moving. At all.

  Ava cries out when the flagellant turns to her. I can do nothing. Straining against my captors, I can’t even begin to move. They’re freakishly strong. “No, don’t,” I beg as it raises its fist to Ava. It turns to me. There’s a blur, and pain streaks down my neck as my head jerks to the side.

  Timid clicking approaches. Retreats. Approaches again. Bony fingers squeeze my ankles. Pull. I slide along the tunnel floor. Cold mud piles up under my coat. The muscles in my neck give out, and I let my head drag. Sudden clacking reverberates in the tunnels with the conversations of the undead, and as I slide away into a nightmare world my mind plays tricks on me.

  The skeleton is tickling my foot.

  Reflexively, I kick.

  It drops my feet. The sound of ticking moves away in the pitch black. Subdued Morse code echoes.

  Bodies drop beside me, groaning. Ava and Poe. The skeletons step over us, clicking their teeth, and we’re left alone. I find Ava by touch. “Are you hurt?” I ask. “Poe, are you okay?”

  Ava doesn’t speak, but she pulls herself into me. I hold her.

  “They’re tunnelers,” Poe whispers. He hiccups. “They’re going to bury us. Turn us into skeletons. SALVE, Regina, mater misericordiae: vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevae. Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle…”

  Light spills over us. A hobbling skeleton—tunneler—arrives with a lantern. It ignores us, walks past us, and cranks the flame high so we can see.

  “Mother Mary,” Poe whispers.

  15

  crystal ball gazers

  We sit in the middle of a cave. At first I think bricks pepper the walls, but then I see the bricks aren’t bricks, but books. The tunnelers have pushed them into the muck, using the walls themselves as bookshelves. Animal skins cover the ceiling. Lines mark the leather, creating crude sketches, which resemble maps. Titles are burned into the various skins. Exodus. City of Sacristies. Promised Land of Presence Incarnate or Not, Does Not Matter. The drawings on the leather make me think of constellations—circles connected with lines.

  “Maybe they’ve drawn maps of the night sky,” Poe whispers, “to remind them what it’s like above ground.”

  Twenty or thirty tunnelers sit on wooly rugs or prop themselves against curved walls. Some of them are very still, and maybe asleep, or nonliving, but most hold books in their hands, reading without eyes.

  My own gaze is drawn to the crystal balls resting against, or inside, their rib cages. The ticking is steady, sounding like the echo of water droplets falling in a cave.

  Emmy’s crystal ball didn’t tick.

  Poe stares at the nearest tunneler. He gets excited. “I see something inside of that one’s crystal ball! It’s moving. Do you think they could be seers?” His face falls. “Oh, no. I don’t want to scare anybody, but Priest says using devices to see into the future is evil unless you’re a seer chosen by God.”

  Ava’s holding her head. I pull back her fingers, get a look at the bump above her ear. It’s not too bad, and the bleeding is just a scrape.

  She indicates the tunnelers, then ducks her face, barely movi
ng her lips when she speaks. “Will they chase us if we try to leave?”

  The tunnelers snap their heads in our direction, even the ones who appeared to be comatose. They jut their lower jaws like bulldogs, sign with their hands, click their teeth violently. The stooped one moves the lantern closer to us and then backs into the shadows.

  Ava’s eyes meet mine. I take some comfort that she’s no longer hysterical. Instead, the expression on her face is calculating, if still a bit crazy. I think she’s gone into survival mode. I hope so. She squeezes my hand and deliberately settles her head against my shoulder. “Take care of me,” she whispers, and I feel a need to protect her, like always.

  I stroke strands of her tangled hair.

  Poe strokes his crucifix and rocks his body.

  The clocks tick. Time passes. One by one tunnelers shift from shadows into lantern light, closer to us. Their bones creak when they move. Most have white bones, but some are yellowed, or a blackened gray. They don’t speak or gesture, but they watch us. It’s unnerving how absolutely still they are, like predatory crocodiles, but then I suppose it’s because they don’t have to breathe.

  All the ticking is getting on my nerves. Somehow their clocks have synchronized, so it’s like a dripping faucet again, making me crazy. I don’t know why they don’t smash the damn things.

  Like I tried to do with Emmy’s crystal ball.

  And what happened to her? What did I do? And what did she mean, “Blessed are the poor in ghost?”

  Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe God is trying to show me something here in this world with the skeletons and their crystals. The possibility clears my head. Yes. Of course. God wants to help me save Emmy. All of this is no accident. God is with me.

  I realize that many of the tunnelers have dropped their books. Does the synchronized ticking mean they’re sleeping?

  Ava has already started scooting, bit by bit, toward the tunnel entrance. I shake my head at her. “Stop,” I whisper urgently.

  Tunnelers swivel their skulls in our direction. In unison, they wag their fingers at us. Ava scoots back to me.

  Creepy. I’m reminded again of a flock of birds. Or schooling fish. It’s like the skeletons have one mind.