The twisted dead, p.24
The Twisted Dead, page 24
“Quick,” Zoe hissed. “He’s coming.”
Keira could barely see. Between the rain, the dark, and the sparks that moved over her vision, the world had transformed into an alien place. But she could see her friends, one on each side of her like guides, and followed them blindly.
The shades twisted and howled. She wasn’t sure if she could still hear their voices or if her ears were full of the echoes of their screams. But she could hear something else: Footsteps behind her. A voice, shouting for her to stop. Her subconscious emerged from the stupor and screamed in the back of her mind: Run. Run. Run!
Her strides lengthened. She barely had any air left in her lungs. Her head pounded. She staggered, first on wet grass and then on wet asphalt, and then, abruptly, they were at the car.
Mason dragged the back door open for her and Keira threw herself inside. Their bags scattered over the floor as she shoved them out of the way. Two more doors slammed as Mason and Zoe leaped into the front seats.
“Stay low,” Zoe whispered. “Stay hidden.”
Keira slid down into the footwell. The car rumbled as Mason pulled out of the parking lot. She felt every bump and jolt as he took the corner too fast.
“Keep down,” Zoe whispered, her voice squeaky with tension. “Keep down…keep down…”
Then Keira felt tingles race across her spine. She gasped as the overwhelming pressure of the cemetery faded.
That was the gates. We’re through. We’re out.
Confirming her suspicion, Zoe turned to look behind them, breathing heavily as she ran a hand over her face. “Okay, that was close.”
“Mm” was all Mason could manage. His knuckles were white as he turned the car onto the main road. He was still driving too fast.
Keira rose up so she could look through the rear window. The gates were fading into the darkness and rain behind them. She could see two men in rainsuits huddled together at the gates, their arms jerking as they argued furiously. They kept glancing towards the road but made no move to leave the cemetery’s entrance.
“I put mud over the numberplates, like you told me to,” Zoe said. Her owlish eyes glimmered in the car’s dull lights. “I don’t think that guy who spotted us actually recognised you, Keira. I think he was, like, an intern or something. He was trying to stop you from digging holes in the lawn.”
Mason took a sharp breath. “Vans ahead. Dip down, Keira.”
She slid back into the footwell. The space was cramped and musty, but she pressed her head against the back of the driver’s seat, trying to be as small as possible.
From her position, she could see a sliver of Zoe’s face. She almost looked calm except for the shimmer of sweat and the dogged, wide-eye stare fixed dead ahead. “Gun it,” she whispered.
“Absolutely not.” Mason’s own voice was hoarse and barely audible, as though he was afraid the people in the vans would hear him. “We’re going to be the most nondescript, law-abiding car possible and hope the vans pass us by without even looking at us.”
Keira pressed her eyes closed. She could hear the engines like the rumble of thunder on the horizon. They were going fast. Racing closer. Right on top of them—
Mason’s car rocked as the vans sped past in the opposite direction. Keira counted three of them. She waited for signs indicating they were slowing or turning, but the motors faded until she couldn’t even hear their echoes.
Mason released a shuddering breath he must have been holding. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re past them.”
“I still say we should have gunned it,” Zoe muttered.
Keira gingerly climbed back into her seat. Every movement jarred her. She felt like she was on the verge of falling apart, like a poorly constructed clay sculpture.
“You all right?” Zoe asked, twisting around in her seat.
“I think so.” Keira examined her hands. They were caked with loamy earth, numb. She tried flexing the fingers and felt pins and needles prickle through them.
Electricity in my bones. In my blood. In my sinew.
Mason glanced at her through the rearview mirror. “Are you sure? You don’t look good. What happened?”
“I figured it out.” She swallowed thickly. “Zoe, remember how your contact—the guy who’s scared of airplanes—thought Artec’s logo had something to do with renewable energy? Well, he was right.”
“Wait, seriously?” Zoe looked incredulous. “How does that even… Oh.”
“They’re harvesting power from the dead,” Keira said, answering Zoe’s horrified glance. “Ghosts draw energy from the aether. Normally they use it themselves—to materialise, to make the air colder—but Artec has found a way to harness it and drain it from them as quickly as they absorb it. That’s why the cemetery is full of shades. They’re more efficient at gathering energy than a regular spirit is.”
“Damn,” Zoe said. “So they’re being paid by grieving families to inter their loved ones, then they’re turning around and using those same loved ones as unwilling labour to produce power that they…what? Sell?”
“I’m assuming so.”
“It turns out the real enemy is capitalism after all,” Zoe muttered. “That is so disgustingly typical.”
“So there’s no supervillain, world-ending scheme behind this.” Mason looked exhausted. “Just greed. Renewable energy is already a valuable industry and will only be worth more as time passes. And Artec’s cemetery must have very few expenses compared to solar panels or hydro. Just the cost of the land and the burials, which is already being paid for by the families.”
“And it’s scalable,” Keira added. “Assuming one cemetery is profitable, ten will be even more so. The only limit on their rate of expansion is how quickly the local population dies.”
For a second, none of them said anything. Keira watched the trees flash past her window as the ache in her chest grew worse and worse.
“There’s nothing we can do legally, is there?” Zoe asked. “I mean, there are rules against tampering with corpses. If we could somehow prove Pleasant Grove was trapping ghosts against their will, we could stop it. But…”
“How can you prove something like that?” Keira finished for her. “The chains around the spirits are spectral. The cables are real, at least; I could touch them and break them, which meant they were made of real rubber and wires. But as far as any regulatory body would be concerned, it’s not illegal to run wire around your cemetery, even if it is unusual. We’re back to that same problem of needing to prove ghosts exist before anything legal could be done.”
“So…what are we going to do?” Zoe asked.
“Right now?” Mason worked his jaw. “I’m getting us back to Blighty. I’ll hide the car in a back shed, just in case. Then we’re going to actually eat a real meal. And shower. And change into clean clothes. And maybe sleep for a few hours. We’ll figure the rest out after.”
Keira flexed her hands again.
Touching the cabling in the cemetery had felt like being struck by lightning. She wouldn’t have been shocked to discover she’d been caked in soot like some cartoon character post-electrocution. Instead, the face that stared back at her in the rearview mirror was pale and had dust and cobwebs tangled in its wet hair. Otherwise, she looked no different to how she had before.
Underneath, though…
Under the skin. In the nerves and tendons and bones.
Her flesh was alive with lightning. It coalesced in her chest, in the space around her lungs, and pulsed into her limbs with every beat of her heart.
It had come very close to killing her, she was aware. A few more seconds would have been enough. She was lucky she’d collapsed backwards and not on top of the cabling.
She was overcharged. Filled to her limit with spectral energy until it threatened to unravel her very DNA. She was fairly sure she could push it out of herself if she tried, press her hands into the earth or let it fill her lungs and then exhale, and gradually release the excess.
Instead, she held on to it, even as it set every bone in her body jangling.
Keira dabbed her tongue over her cracked lips. “I’m all for heading back to Blighty, but we’re not going straight home. Take me to Dane Crispin’s house.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It took slightly over an hour to reach Blighty. Keira sat rigidly straight for the entire drive, her hands clenching and relaxing in her lap. The energy was growing hotter with every second she held it. What had started as lightning in her bones began to coalesce into something more like an inferno infusing every fibre of her body. She felt as though she could have melted the car if she’d released even just a little of it.
Mason kept sending her uncertain glances in the mirror, but Keira stayed quiet and still. The energy didn’t want to be contained. It kept looping through her limbs before coursing back into her chest, looking for a way out.
It was wild and raw. Powerful. Terrifying.
And it was valuable, she knew. Incredibly so.
The clock on the car’s dashboard said it was approaching midnight when the scenery outside the window changed to something familiar. They passed the sign marking the driveway to the church and Keira’s own home. The road looped them through a tunnel of tall, bare-branched trees before letting them into the town’s centre. Mason sent her another quick, searching glance as he neared the roundabout.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Yes.” She didn’t try to hide a wolfish smile. “I’ve got some work to do.”
He nodded once, then turned down the road that led to Dane Crispin’s house.
The mansion’s high fences rose through the fog that permeated Blighty’s roads. Some kind of skittish bird took off from the vines, its wings creating a black silhouette against the starry sky. The energy was fighting harder to escape, and Keira clenched her teeth as she struggled to keep it contained—a breath in, a breath out. Then the car drew to a stop and the engine turned off as Mason parked by the gates.
Keira shoved her way out of the car before the others had even undone their seat belts. They were tired. Probably sore and covered in bruises too. Not to mention still wearing damp clothes.
All of the same could be said for Keira, but she barely felt it under the electric roar travelling through her tendons and bones. She shoved on the gate and tiny sparks escaped her fingers as they pressed against the metal. She swallowed and refocussed.
Hold it. Just a little more.
There were lights on in the foyer of Dane’s house. She was glad he was nocturnal by nature.
Zoe and Mason jogged to catch up with her long strides as she pressed through the overgrown plants to reach the mansion. The doors were closed and the windows too grimy to make out anything beyond, but she thought she heard a whisper of voices coming from inside.
“Hey, Dane!” Keira yelled as she slammed her shoulder into the door, shoving it open. “You better not be busy because this place is overdue for some cleaning.”
Two pale faces turned to stare at her. Dane Crispin and Harry Kennard sat on opposite sides of a small round table. Six candles, all different sizes and shapes, were arranged in a circle between them. Several dozen more candles had been scattered around the foyer—poised precariously on side tables, beneath the portraits lining the walls, and in clusters on the floor. The whole room was cast in a sickly, uneasy glow of flickering lights.
“Hello.” Harry looked entirely nonplussed. He tilted his head a fraction, shifting his black fringe away from his eyes. “We’re conducting a séance. Would you like to join us?”
From the grim exhaustion on Dane’s face and his defeated posture, Keira suspected the séance had been entirely Harry’s idea and that Dane had simply not been willing to turn him away.
“Sure,” Keira said, and cracked her knuckles. Sparks of sharp blue light fizzled around her hands. “But I’ll be doing my own kind of séance tonight. Hold on.”
Opening her second sight no longer felt like pulling on a muscle. It had always been effort before. Now, overcharged as she was, it felt more like releasing her hold on a veil. The mansion’s secret denizens flooded into her vision, clearer and crisper than she’d ever seen them before.
Six of them clustered around Dane, their jaws stretched wide as their needlelike teeth burrowed into his throat and shoulders. Another two hung around Harry, prodding and exploring his skin with long fingers.
She bared her teeth as she charged towards the spirits around Dane. They paid her no attention…until her hands plunged into their chests. She found the bundles of threads inside the nearest two and wrapped her hands around them.
What had hurt her the first time she tried touching the threads was now barely a tickle. The parasitic spirits lifted their heads as they felt her grasp tighten around them. Two sets of nervous eyes turned towards her. One struggled to pull away. The other stretched its jaws wide in a voiceless howl. Keira didn’t let either of them go as she squeezed tighter.
“Good riddance,” she told them, then sent a hissing, crackling burst of electricity into them.
The forms contorted like putty sculptures being crushed. Heads heaved backwards as their chests became concave. Their agony only lasted for a second before their entire forms disintegrated into mist. It pooled around Keira’s arms before fading into the aether.
The other spirits gathered around Dane stared at her with blank, stricken eyes. They turned as they attempted to escape her reach.
“No, you don’t,” Keira said, lunging forward to seize a third spirit. She dispatched it with the same ease as the first two, then turned to examine the room, breathing quickly.
The spirits had tried to fade out of sight. She could still sense them, though, like a distant shimmer against the room’s shadows. Keira narrowed in on one and willed it to stay still as she circled around the discarded furniture to reach it.
The spirit flickered back into sight as soon as Keira touched it. She recognised the woman who had antagonised her so aggressively on her first night there. Her thin lips and pale eyes flickered in and out of sight as she tried to fade again, but Keira pinned her in place as she reached into her chest to take hold of the threads that kept her whole.
She squeezed, forcing pure spectral energy into the threads and crushing them in one motion. The woman contorted as her hands reached towards Keira, attempting to gouge holes across her face. She barely lasted a second before her form vanished into a swirl of fading mist.
“Hello, Dane,” Mason said, calm and polite. “Hi, Harry. How’s your night going?”
“It’s getting more interesting,” Harry said, matter-of-fact.
“Um” was all Dane managed. He’d keeled forward in his chair, one hand pressed to his chest, his eyes wide.
He must be able to feel the connection to the spirits being broken, Keira realised.
She turned to examine the foyer. The spirits had all fled the space. That wouldn’t save them, though. She could still sense their presences like an invisible pull leading her deeper into the house.
“Stay here,” she told Dane. “I’ll be done soon.”
Zoe yawned as she pulled two new chairs up to the table. Mason, hands on his hips as he examined the scene, said, “I’m going to get us something to drink. Dane, did you want tea or coffee?”
“Coffee.” He blinked furiously. “Please.”
Keira grinned as she followed long hallways through the crumbling building. She felt as though she were flying as she took corners in stride and leaped around obstacles. Dark wallpaper and looming portraits passed in a blur. The spirits tried to scatter when they sensed her coming but never made it far. Again and again she plunged her hand into their chests, eradicating them in a heartbeat, sometimes without even slowing her stride.
Some tried to hide. Some raised their arms in an effort to shield themselves. She would have been tempted to feel pity for them if she didn’t know that they had been spending the last decades of their existence leeching from their descendant.
Others tried to fight back and sunk their needlelike teeth into her arms. It ached like pure ice was being poured into her veins, but they never managed to hold on for long before Keira swiped them away into mist.
She cleared one wing of the house, then turned back to retrace her path. Energy still flowed through her, as hot and fiery as an inferno in her chest. She passed through the foyer in search of more spirits and saw her four friends seated around the séance table, lit only by candlelight. Mason was pouring drinks from a delicate china teapot. Zoe lifted her own cup in a cheers as Keira passed by, heading for the massive, carpeted staircase that would carry her into the upper floors.
It was like a sixth sense crawled through her skin, leading her inexorably to each cowering spectre. Two of them had tried to hide in Dane’s bedroom, which was strewn with discarded clothes and loose blankets. Another hid in a secret compartment behind a bookcase. It took Keira a couple of minutes of tugging on the thick novels to find the one that opened the door. Still more attempted to squeeze between walls and under floors, but she was able to pull them to herself like tugging on a gauzy strip of fabric blowing in the wind.
Her seemingly endless energy was starting to wane as she finished in the upper levels and bounded back down to the foyer. Dane and Mason were engaged in quiet conversation. Zoe and Harry had pulled their chairs a little distance away and were embroiled in a slightly more heated discussion of their own. Keira heard the words Mothman and enormous bug zapper float out of the argument, and decided not to ask anything further.
“Hey,” Zoe called as she spotted Keira on the stairs. “Nearly done?”
“Just a few left.” She was breathless and dotted with perspiration but still smiled. The sheer speed at which she’d covered that half of the house had left her euphoric.
“Take a look at this,” Zoe said. She pointed up to the walls of portraits. “Their eyes fade out each time you get one.”
“Huh.” Keira tilted her head. “That’s neat. Creepy but neat.”
Above her, the portraits were changing subtly. The eyes, which had seemed to stare down at the house’s occupants with an unsettling level of perception, were growing cloudy. The irises and pupils bled out until the eyes were a milky, blind white.
