The twisted dead, p.18
The Twisted Dead, page 18
Just visitors. Not Artec’s people. Not yet. But they’ll find you soon enough unless you leave.
“Okay,” Zoe said, slowly relaxing as the car turned onto the main road. “It’s a cemetery. People visit cemeteries. Makes sense.”
“We need to go,” Keira whispered.
“We’ll leave right now.” Mason already had his keys in hand. “Hop in.”
“Wait, wait for a moment!” Zoe snagged at Keira’s sleeve. “Don’t you want to at least learn a bit about this place? We can’t just ditch it the moment we find it.”
Mason had hesitated at his car’s open door. “We can look the cemetery up online once we get back to Blighty. It might be smart to keep our distance until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Zoe sighed as the energy drained out of her. “I hate it when you’re right.”
“Wait.” Keira couldn’t stop her voice from shaking. And she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the symbol above the gate. Her mind was screaming at her to go, and go quickly, but she knew that she might not get a chance like this again.
I can afford one or two minutes. As long as I’m fast. As long as I’m careful.
Mason leaned on the car, silently waiting.
She ran her tongue over dry lips. “We came here to make sure Evan hadn’t left a ghost behind. And I still want to do that.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Mason searched her face for a second, then nodded. “Okay. But let’s move the car into the parking lot first; we’ll attract less attention that way.”
Keira couldn’t stop herself from being as rigid as a statue as they coasted back onto the driveway. One hand clutched the seat while her other held on to the door handle, as though she might need to bolt out at a second’s notice.
They passed beneath the steel gates. Keira gasped. Even though she was sitting, she felt like she’d missed a step in a stairwell and had plunged into an endless abyss below. Sensations rushed through her in a wave as she scrambled to put up her mental defences against them.
It’s a cemetery. A big one, too, with a lot of recent graves. It’s going to be more active than Blighty’s ever was.
The land’s emotional imprint was one of the worst she’d ever felt, though—worse than Cheltenham Hospital and stronger than the abandoned mill in Blighty. And the latter had almost brought her to her knees. She squeezed her eyes closed as her grip on the door handle tightened.
“Keira?” Mason’s voice sounded like it came from far away.
“I’m fine.” She hoped she wasn’t slurring the words as badly as she thought she was. “Keep driving.”
She felt as though she were tipping over the edge of a roller coaster into a free fall, only the sensation never stopped. Her skin prickled. Her mind felt as though it were being zapped with small electrical charges. She fought to push against the sensations, to numb herself to them, and it helped a little. As the car came to a halt, she opened her eyes and saw they’d stopped in a secluded part of the parking lot.
“Are you sure—” Mason started, but Keira cut across him.
“Yep.” She shoved the car door open. Two minutes. Find the grave. Check it. Get the hell out of here.
Her only prior experience with graveyards came from Blighty’s. It was old and, although it sprawled deep into the forest, limited. Few new lots were added there each year. The passage of time had helped to diffuse its emotions into the atmosphere until Keira barely felt them at all.
This cemetery—Pleasant Grove, Zoe had called it—was recent, and it was being filled fast as it took placements from all of the surrounding towns. She hadn’t been prepared for how strong it would feel. How raw. Her mental defences were being worn down as fast as she could replace them.
“No sign of security cameras,” Zoe said, turning slowly, her keen eyes darting over their surroundings. “No guards that I can see. And there are plenty of other cars in the parking lot. Ours should blend in well.”
Keira had promised herself she would be cautious while she was in Artec’s domain, but she could barely see clearly, let alone think. She was grateful Zoe knew what to look for in her place.
“Hang on.” Zoe popped open the car’s boot and rummaged through her luggage. She brought out a fluffy black scarf and passed it to Keira. “Put this on and wrap it up high. You can use it to hide your face a bit.”
“Thanks.” She coiled it around her neck, bunching it over her chin and up to her nose to conceal them. It wasn’t a perfect disguise, but it was something. “How far to Evan’s grave?”
“It’s close.” Zoe flipped open her phone to check notes she’d written for herself. “In a section to our left. I’ll lead.”
Mason stayed close to Keira as they crossed from the parking lot to one of the paved pathways. She could feel concern radiating from him and was grateful that he didn’t pepper her with questions. She found herself leaning towards him. He was one of the few things near her that felt truly solid and steady.
Bad ground. Bad air. She blinked hard and folded her arms across her chest, fighting back against the emotions that were chipping their way into her mind.
Pleasant Grove wouldn’t feel like an uncomfortable place for visitors, she thought. A lot of care had gone into making it soothing and pleasing, like the name suggested. Trees—still young but beginning to spread—were surrounded by tidy shrub arrangements. Modern signposts stood at intersections. Park benches had been spaced about for visitors to rest at.
Still, there was something uncomfortable and artificial about the place. The graves were all too similar and too clean. They stood in neat rows with the grass surrounding them perfectly trimmed. None of them tilted. None of them were cracked or grew lichen. There were no massive monuments like at Blighty’s cemetery; here, the stones were all the same shape and size, only differentiated by the names and dates carved into them in neat, clear letters.
It left Keira’s skin crawling in a way she didn’t fully understand.
None of the plants felt truly alive either. They were immaculately maintained. The hedges were cut into sharp walls. Shrubs were rounded. None of them had been allowed to spill from the perfect, symmetrical arrangements. The area should have felt lush and green, but instead struck her as harshly artificial.
Other visitors passed them on the footpath. The graveyard was busier than Blighty’s ever had been; none of the graves here were old enough to be truly forgotten. Keira forced herself to lift her eyes to take in the scope of the place. It seemed to stretch on forever, divided into blocks by those angular hedges and signposts. Dizziness crashed over her. She put her head down. Mason found her hand and wrapped his own around it. She squeezed back, immensely grateful.
Zoe turned off the footpath and led them between the rows of identical graves. The lines were straight and predictable; unlike in Bligthy, Keira didn’t have to try hard to avoid walking over any of the dead.
She’d lost all relativity. She didn’t know where in the cemetery they were or how far they’d come. The ocean of harsh green grass and rigid, identical stones seemed to surround them. Her breathing was growing laboured.
“Here,” Zoe said, stopping next to a stone that looked no different from any other. They’d found themselves in a corner of the graveyard; one of the artificially sharp hedges created a wall ahead and to their left. It afforded them some privacy from the rest of the cemetery at least.
Keira blinked. The words carved into the gravestone floated into focus. Evan James Radecki.
“Okay.” She swayed. Mason still held her hand, and she pressed it one final time before letting go and stepping forward.
This was the part she’d been dreading. She would have to dismantle the mental barriers. She would have to open her second sight and, in the process, open herself to the emotions and sensations that came with it.
Do it quickly. If you’re lucky, his ghost won’t be here. You can leave. And never come back.
Her mouth was dry. He heart pounded and filled her ears with a faint whistling. She clenched her hands at her sides and took a final deep, unsteady breath, then pulled on the muscle behind her eyes.
The undead world floated into sight. Keira didn’t have enough breath left to whisper, let alone scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Her blood turned to ice in her veins. She tried to step back but it was like her legs had become roots, grounding her to earth that was thrumming with twisted, broken energy. She couldn’t even blink as her eyes fixed on the spectre ahead of her.
Evan stood on his grave, almost seeming to sprout out of the lush lawn. He looked nothing like the Evan she’d seen at the campus, though. The gentle face and bright eyes were gone. He’d been replaced with something that didn’t even look human.
His form was a mass of writhing smoke. Strands of storm-cloud grey, so dark that it was almost black, flowed like ethereal ribbons twisting over one another to create the impression of a human form.
Keira’s mind had emptied as pure fear sparked through her. She knew what she was facing, and the very name left her cold to the bone.
A shade. Formed from a spirit that has been so twisted by negative emotions that it becomes something else entirely. Something dangerous.
She’d seen a shade before: the spirit from inside the forest, buried in Gerald Barge’s grave. It had been corrupted by an unyielding desire for revenge. It consumed everything in its path, ghosts and the living alike, and as it ate, its strength and sphere of influence grew.
This shade was so close that Keira could have reached forward and brushed her fingertips across the writhing mass. That was too close. Far, far too close. Shades could bite, and their clawlike fingertips could scrape across skin. Any contact led to angry-looking burns that took time to heal. She didn’t take her eyes off it as she reached for Mason and Zoe and pushed them behind her.
It’s not trying to reach me, though. It could, but it’s not.
She could make out the edges of a human form. The head rising above sloped shoulders. Two empty pits where the eyes belonged. They were fixed on her. A dark gash of a mouth opened into a howling scream.
“You’re kinda freaking out right now,” Zoe said from over Keira’s shoulder, her voice tight. “Should I freak out too? Is this a freak-out-worthy situation right now?”
Keira didn’t have enough moisture left in her mouth to answer, even if she’d known what to say.
The empty, pitlike eyes bored into her. The howling mouth gaped, fading in and out of sight as its form swirled. But it didn’t lunge forward.
Almost as though something’s stopping it…
She looked down. Dark chains ran over the shade’s body. They wrapped around its torso, viciously tight, pinning its arms to its chest. More snaked around its legs. Their ends vanished into the soil, blending through the unruffled grass.
“What…” The word tried to choke her. She backed up another step, pushing Zoe and Mason back with her.
The chains seemed to be made of the same substance as the shade itself. They’d blended into its form so well that Keira hadn’t even been able to see them until she looked closely. They shifted as the shade’s form tried to break free, and Keira imagined that, if she’d been able to hear the spectral world, she would have heard rattling like something out of a nightmare.
The shade snarled, its jaws gnashing as it tried to follow her. It was pinned in place, though. Almost as though someone had found a method to contain it there. As though someone had deliberately trapped it in place.
Did I…? Is it possible…?
Evan had died well before Keira lost her memories and arrived in Blighty. Back then, she would have been acting with the full breadth of her knowledge, not the scraps she’d managed to clutch together since. Maybe she’d done this. She could have identified the shade and used something—possibly a rune, like the one used to concentrate energy—to pin it in place.
And she’d done it in this graveyard, owned by the corporation that now hated her.
Hated her for…meddling with its graves?
The theory collapsed at the end. The corporation had sent hunting dogs after her. They’d tried to shoot her. Business owners didn’t do that to someone who had, at most, performed mild vandalism.
Because that was all it would look like to anyone who couldn’t see the spirit world: a rune, perhaps, scribbled on the earth where the chains now vanished.
She crept forward again, leaving Zoe and Mason bewildered behind her. The shade twisted, its mouth gaping, as it fought to escape its binds. They were tight enough that there wasn’t even an inch of give.
Spectral chains, pinning it to its own grave.
In every instance before, Keira had felt some familiarity with her own work. That was how she’d found the threads inside spirit’s chests. How she recognised what a shade was. How she’d known the rune under her bed wasn’t malicious. There was an itch of familiarity there, guiding her hands.
She felt nothing of the sort when she looked at the chains. There was something like a memory there…but not a familiarity. Not a sense of how she could conjure something similar in the future. Instead, the sight of the chains left her with a sense of slick, horrified dread.
Someone had pinned this ghost in place, but it hadn’t been her.
“Keira?” Mason’s kept his voice soft. “Evan… He’s here, isn’t he?”
She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to explain that yes, he was, and it was somehow the least of their problems.
A prickling kind of unease ran across her back. It was a feeling she associated with being watched. Mouth dry, Keira turned.
Mason and Zoe waited just a step behind her. And beyond them, a dark, twisting figure.
Shivers ran through Keira in waves. Another shade stood just inches from Mason’s back. Its open jaws twisted as it tried to reach him.
She grabbed Mason’s and Zoe’s arms and pulled them closer to get them out of reach. The spectre threw its head back in a silent, frustrated howl.
It wasn’t the only set of eyes on them, though. Keira had been facing Evan’s grave, which had been set in a corner, bordered on both sides by the shrub wall. She hadn’t seen the others. But they were there.
Everywhere.
Hundreds of sootlike figures surrounded them. Each was anchored onto its own grave, strapped in place by the ethereal chains. And they seemed to stretch on forever.
“Hey, bestie.” Zoe patted her wrist. “I’m sure whatever you’re going through right now is utterly wild, but you’re pinching really hard.”
Keira glanced down at where she gripped her friends’ wrists. Her knuckles were white. It still took effort to release them. She didn’t like the idea that they were blind to the maze of danger around them. “Don’t move until I say so.”
She didn’t know what would happen to her friends if they accidentally walked into one of the spectres. Could they be bitten? Burned? Drained of their energy? None of the visitors seemed to feel anything, but would Mason and Zoe be more vulnerable after spending so much time around Keira and sharing their energy with her? She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to find out.
I can’t see a single normal ghost. Only shades. What the hell happened to them?
Keira craned to see over the hedges at her side. More sections of the cemetery branched out as far as she could see. All populated by the dark, writhing shapes. As far as she could tell, every single grave was occupied by one of the wraiths.
Shades were supposed to be rare. For the hundreds of spirits she’d encountered in Blighty’s cemetery and mill, she’d only found one of the twisted creatures. They weren’t easy to create. Their unfinished business had to be tied to some powerful negative emotion: fury or a desire for revenge or pure, bleak hatred. And it had to be left to fester for years or even decades, slowly corrupting them from the inside out.
Is there something bad about the land? Something that turns them rotten? No…not even that makes sense. Not all ghosts linger after death. Even if there were something wrong with the earth, there should still be empty graves, spirits who passed over at the point of death.
Her eyes darted from identical headstone to identical headstone. Each one had a matching spectre. Spaced in perfect alignment, the rows of graves created unsettlingly straight lines. She couldn’t find even a single gap among the dark figures, no matter how far her eyes searched.
This wasn’t accidental. Whoever created this graveyard created the shades as well. Deliberately. Methodically. They knew what they were doing. And they understood the consequences.
Keira’s eyes continued to flick from section to section. The cemetery was only recent, but it already held hundreds upon hundreds of graves. Hundreds upon hundreds of shades. All twisting to face her, as though they could sense her presence. Hundreds of gaping mouths screaming wordlessly.
And in amongst them, visitors strolled. Some pushed prams. Some had come alone. Some carried flowers or other small gifts. They smiled softly and talked in hushed tones as they visited their lost loved ones, blind to the voiceless horrors surrounding them.
Keira’s frantic gaze landed on one person that stood out from the others. He wore grey overalls and a matching cap, and carried a bucket with gloves and weeds poking over the top. A groundskeeper. He’d fallen still, his expression cold, as he gazed at Keira. One hand reached into a pocket. He pulled out a walkie-talkie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Keira turned away, her heart hammering an uncomfortable tune against her ribs as she adjusted the scarf to cover more of her face. She could still feel the groundskeeper’s eyes on her back. She imagined him bringing the walkie-talkie to his mouth and speaking in a quiet voice so as not to disturb the other visitors.
“Walk with me,” she whispered to Zoe and Mason. “Don’t get too close to any of the graves.”
