Текст книги "Anna Dressed in Blood"

Автор книги: Kendare Blake

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“We are leaving,” she says without missing a beat in her ransacking of my room. “If I have to knock you unconscious and drag you from this house, we are leaving.”

“Mom, settle down.”

“Do not tell me to settle down.” The words are delivered in a controlled yell, a yell straight from the pit of her tensed stomach. She stops and stands still with her hands in my half-emptied drawers. “That thing killed my husband.”

“Mom.”

“It’s not going to get you, too.” Hands and socks and boxer shorts start flying again. I wish she hadn’t started with my underwear drawer.

“I have to stop it.”

“Let someone else do it,” she snaps. “I should have told you this before; I should have told you that this wasn’t your duty or your birthright or anything like that after your father died. Other people can do this.”

“Not that many other people,” I say. This is making me mad. I know she isn’t trying to, but I feel like she’s dishonoring my dad. “And not this time.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I choose to,” I say. I’ve lost the battle to keep my voice down. “If we go, it follows. And if I don’t kill it, it eats people. Don’t you get it?” Finally, I tell her what I’ve always kept secret. “This is what I’ve waited for. What I’ve trained for. I’ve been researching this ghost since I found the voodoo cross in Baton Rouge.”

My mom slams my drawers shut. Her cheeks are red and she’s got wet, shiny eyes. She looks about ready to throttle me.

“That thing killed him,” she says. “It can kill you too.”

“Thanks.” I throw up my hands. “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

“Cas—”

“Wait. Shut up.” I don’t often tell my mother to shut up. In fact, I don’t know if I ever have. But she needs to. Because something in my room doesn’t make sense. There’s something here that shouldn’t be here. She follows my gaze and I want to see her react, because I don’t want to be the only one seeing this.

My bed is just how I left it. The blankets are rumpled and half pulled down. The pillow has an imprint from my head.

And poking out from underneath is the carved handle of my father’s athame.

It shouldn’t be. It can’t be. That thing is supposed to be miles away, hidden in Will Rosenberg’s closet or in the hands of the ghost that murdered him. But I walk over to the bed and reach down, and the familiar wood is smooth against my palm. Connect the dots.

“Mom,” I whisper, staring down at the knife. “We have to get out of here.”

She just blinks at me, standing stock still, and in the quiet of the house there is an uneven creaking I don’t recognize.

“Cas,” my mom breathes. “The attic door.”

The attic door. The sound and the phrase make something in the back of my head start to itch. It’s something my mother said about raccoons, something about the way Tybalt climbed on me the day we moved in.

The quiet is sick: it magnifies every noise, so when I hear a distinct scraping, I know that what I’m hearing is the pull-down ladder being slid toward the floor in the hallway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I’d like to leave now. I’d very much like to leave now. The hairs are up on the back of my neck and my teeth would chatter if I wasn’t clenching so hard. Given the choice between fight or flight, I would choose to dive out the window, knife in my hand or not. Instead I turn and pivot closer to my mom, putting me in between her and the open door.

Footfalls hit the ladder, and my heart has never pounded so hard. My nostrils catch the scent of sweet smoke. Stand my ground, is what I think. After this is over, I might puke. Assuming, of course, that I’m still living.

The rhythm of the footsteps, the sound of whatever is coming down the ladder is driving both me and my mom steadily toward peeing our pants. We can’t be caught in this bedroom. How I wish that weren’t true, but it is. I have to make it out into the hallway and try to get us to the stairs before whatever it is blocks our escape. I grab her hand. She shakes her head violently, but I pull her along, inching toward the door, the athame held out in front of us like a torch.

Anna. Anna, come charging in, Anna, come save the day … but that’s stupid. Anna is marooned on the damn front porch, and how would that be, if I died in here, ripped to bits and chewed on like a rubber pork chop, with her standing powerless outside.

Okay. Two more deep breaths and we go into the hall. Maybe three.

When I move I’ve got a clear view of the attic ladder, and also of the thing descending it. I don’t want to be seeing this. All that training and all those ghosts; all that gut instinct and ability goes right out the window. I’m looking at my father’s killer. I should be enraged. I should be stalking him. Instead I’m terrified.

His back is to me, and the ladder is far enough east of the stairs that we should be able to get there before he does, as long as we keep moving. And as long as he doesn’t turn around and charge. Why do I think these thoughts? Besides, he doesn’t seem inclined to. As we slide silently toward the staircase, he has reached the floor, and he actually pauses to put the ladder back up with a rickety shove.

At the top of the stairs, I stop, angling my mom to go down first. The figure in the hallway doesn’t seem to have noticed us. He just keeps swaying back and forth with his back to me, like he’s listening to some dead music.

He’s wearing a dark, fitted jacket, sort of like a long suit jacket. It could be dusty black or even dark green, I can’t tell. On the top of his head is a nest of dreadlocks, twisted and matted, some half-rotted and falling off. I can’t see his face, but the skin of his hands is gray and cracked. Between his fingers he’s twisting what looks like a long black snake.

I give my mom a gentle push to get her farther down the stairs. If she can get outside to Anna, she’ll be safe. I’m getting a little tinge of bravery, just a wafting of the old Cas coming back.

Then I realize I’m full of shit when he turns and looks right at me.

I should rephrase that. I can’t honestly say that he’s looking right at me. Because one can never be sure that something is looking right at them if that something’s eyes have been sewn shut.

And they are sewn shut. No mistaking. There are big, crisscrossed stitches of black string over his eyelids. Just the same, there is also no mistaking that he can see me. My mom speaks for both of us when she lets out a yelpy little “Oh.”

“You’re welcome,” he says in that voice of his, the voice of my nightmares, like chewing on rusted nails.

“I have nothing to thank you for,” I spit, and he cocks his head. Don’t ask me how I know, but I know he’s staring at my knife. He walks toward us, unafraid.

“Perhaps I should thank you, then,” he says, and the accent shows. The “thank” is “tank.” The “then” is “den.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask. “How did you get here? How did you get past the door?”

“I’ve been here the whole time,” he says. He’s got bright white teeth. His mouth is no bigger than any man’s. How does he leave such gigantic marks?

He’s smiling now, his chin tilted upward. He’s got an ungainly way of moving, like lots of ghosts do. Like their limbs are stiffening, or like their ligaments are rotting away. It isn’t until they move to strike that you see them for real. I won’t be fooled.

“That’s impossible,” I say. “The spell would’ve kept you out.” And there’s no way that I’ve been sleeping in the same house with my father’s killer this whole time. That he’s been one floor above me, watching and listening.

“Spells to keep the dead out are worthless if the dead are already in,” he says. “I come and go as I please. I fetch things back that foolish boys lose. And since then I’ve been in the attic, eating cats.”

I’ve been in the attic, eating cats. I look closer at the black snake he’s been weaving through his fingers. It’s Tybalt’s tail.

“You fuck—you ate my cat!” I yell, and thank you, Tybalt, for one last favor, this pissed-off rush of adrenaline. The quiet is suddenly filled with the sound of knocking. Anna heard me yell and is banging on the door, asking if I’m all right. The ghost’s head snaps around like a snake, an unnatural, disturbing movement.

My mom doesn’t know what’s going on. She didn’t know Anna was outside, so she starts clinging to me, unsure of what to be more afraid of.

“Cas, what is that?” she asks. “How are we going to get out?”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” I say. “Don’t be scared.”

“The girl we wait for is right outside,” he says, and shuffles forward. My mom and I drop down a step.

I put my hand out across the railing. The athame flashes and I bring it back to eye level. “You stay away from her.”

“She’s what we came for.” He makes a soft, hollow rustling when he moves, like his body is an illusion and he’s nothing more than empty clothes.

“We didn’t come for anything,” I spit. “I came to kill a ghost. And I’m going to get my chance.” I lunge forward, feeling my blade part the air, the silver tip just grazing his front buttons.

“Cas, don’t!” my mom shouts, trying to drag me back by one arm. She needs to knock it off. What does she think I’ve been doing all this time? Setting elaborate traps using springs, plywood, and a mouse on a wheel? This is hand-to-hand. This is what I know.

Meanwhile, Anna is pounding harder on the door. It must be giving her a migraine to be so close.

“It’s what you’re here for, boy,” he hisses, and takes a swing at me. It seems halfhearted; it misses by a mile. I don’t think he missed because of the whole stitched-over-eye thing. He’s just playing with me. Another clue is the fact that he’s laughing.

“I wonder how you’ll go,” I say. “I wonder if you’ll shrivel up, or if you’ll melt.”

“I won’t do either of those things,” he says, still smiling.

“And what if I cut off your arm?” I ask as I leap up the stairs, my knife retracted and then slicing out in a sharp arc.

“It will kill you on its own!”

He strikes me in the chest, and my mom and I fall head over ass down the steps. It hurts. A lot. But at least he’s not laughing anymore. Actually, I think I finally succeeded in pissing him off. I gather my mom up.

“Are you okay? Is anything broken?” I ask. She shakes her head. “Get to the door.” As she scrambles away, I stand up. He’s walking down the steps without any sign of that old ghostly stiffness. He’s as limber as any living, young man.

“You might just vaporize, you know,” I say, because I’ve never been able to keep my damned mouth shut. “But personally, I hope you explode.”

He takes a deep breath. And then another. And then another, and he’s not letting them back out. His chest is filling up like a balloon, stretching his ribcage. I can hear the sinews in there, ready to snap. Then, before I know what’s happening, his arms are thrust out toward me and he’s right in my face. It happened so fast I could barely see it. My knife hand is pinned against the wall and he’s got me by the collar. I’m hitting him in the neck and shoulder with my other hand, but it’s like a kitten swatting yarn.

He lets go of that breath, rolling out through his lips in thick, sweet smoke, passing over my eyes and into my nostrils, so strong and cloying that my knees buckle.

From somewhere behind me, I feel my mom’s hands. She’s screeching my name and pulling me away.

“You’ll give her to me, my son, or you’ll die.” And he lets me drop, back into my mother’s arms. “Your body’s filth will rot you. Your mind will drain out your ears.”

I can’t move. I can’t talk. I can breathe, but not much else, and I feel far away. Numb. Sort of confused. I can feel my mom yelp and lean over me as Anna finally blows the door off its hinges.

“Why don’t you take me yourself?” I hear her ask. Anna, my strong, terrifying Anna. I want to tell her to watch out, that this thing has tricks up its rotting sleeves. But I can’t. So my mother and I huddle in between this hissing match of the strongest spirits we’ve ever seen.

“Cross the threshold, beauty girl,” he says.

“You cross mine,” she says back. She’s straining against the barrier spell; her head must feel almost as tight as mine. A thin rivulet of black blood dribbles from her nose and over her lips. “Take the knife and come, coward,” Anna shouts. “Come out and let me off this leash!”

He’s seething. His eyes are on her and his teeth grind. “Your blood on my blade, or the boy will join us by morning.”

I try to tighten my grip on the knife. Only I can’t feel my hand. Anna is shouting something else, but I don’t know what it is. My ears feel stuffed with cotton. I can’t hear anymore.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The sensation is something like staying underwater for too long. I’ve foolishly used up all my oxygen, and even though I know the surface is just a few kicks away, I can barely get there through the suffocating panic. But my eyes open on a blurry world, and I take that first breath. I don’t know if I’m gasping. It feels like I am.

The face I see upon waking is Morfran’s, and it’s far too close. I instinctively try to sink farther into whatever it is that I’m lying on in order to keep that mossy beard at a safer distance. His mouth is moving but no sound is coming out. It’s completely silent, not even a buzz or a ringing. My ears haven’t come back online yet.

Morfran has stepped back, thank god, and is talking to my mom. Then suddenly there’s Anna, floating into view, settling down beside me on the floor. I try to turn my head to follow. She sweeps her fingers along my forehead but doesn’t say anything. There’s relief tugging at the edges of her lips.

My hearing comes back strangely. At first I can hear muffled noises, and then when they finally become clear, they don’t make sense. I think my brain figured it had been torn apart, and now it’s putting out its feelers slowly, grasping at nerve endings and shouting across synapse gaps, glad to find everything still there.

“What’s going on?” I ask, my brain-tentacle having finally located my tongue.

“Jesus, man, I thought you were toast,” Thomas exclaims, appearing at the side of what I can see now is the same antique sofa that they put me on when I got knocked out that first night at Anna’s. I’m in Morfran’s shop.

“When they brought you in…” Thomas says. He doesn’t finish, but I know what he means. I put my hand on his shoulder and give it a shake.

“I’m fine,” I say, and sit up a little with only a minimal struggle. “I’ve been in worse scrapes.”

Standing on the other side of his room with his back to all of us, acting like he’s got a lot more interesting things to be doing, Morfran gives a snort.

“Not likely.” He turns around. His wire specs have slid most of the way down his nose. “And you’re not out of this ‘scrape’ yet. You been Obeahed.”

Thomas, Carmel, and I all do that thing you do when someone is speaking another language: we look around at each other and then say, “Huh?”

“Obeahed, boy,” Morfran snaps. “West Indian voodoo magic. You’re just lucky that I spent six years on Anguilla, with Julian Baptiste. Now that was a real Obeahman.”

I stretch my limbs and sit up straighter. Except for a little tenderness in my back and side, plus the swimmy head stuff, I feel fine.

“I’ve been Obeahed by an Obeahman? Is this like how the Smurfs say they smurfing smurfed all the time?”

“Don’t joke, Cassio.”

It’s my mother. She looks awful. She’s been crying. I hate that.

“I still don’t know how he got into the house,” she says. “We were always so careful. And the barrier spell was working. It worked on Anna.”

“It was a great spell, Mrs. Lowood,” Anna responds gently. “I could never have crossed that threshold. No matter how much I would have liked to.” When she says this last part, her irises get three shades darker.

“What happened? What happened after I blacked out, or whatever?” I’m interested now. The relief of not being dead has worn off.

“I told him to come out and face me. He didn’t accept. He just smiled this terrible smile. Then he was gone. There was nothing but smoke.” Anna turns to Morfran. “What is he?”

“He was an Obeahman. What he is now, I don’t know. Any limitations he had left with his body. Now he’s only force.”

“What exactly is Obeah?” Carmel asks. “Am I the only one who doesn’t know?”

“It’s just another word for voodoo,” I say, and Morfran slams his fist into the wood corner of the counter.

“If you think that then you’re as good as dead.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. I haul myself to my feet, unsteadily, and Anna takes my hand. This isn’t a conversation to have lying down.

“Obeah is voodoo,” he explains. “But voodoo is not Obeah. Voodoo is nothing more than Afro-Caribbean witchcraft. It follows the same rules as the magic we all practice. Obeah has no rules. Voodoo channels power. Obeah is power. An Obeahman doesn’t channel shit, he takes it into himself. He becomes the power source.”

“But the cross—I found a black cross, like yours for Papa Legba.”

Morfran waves his hand. “He probably started out as voodoo. He’s something much, much more now. You’ve gotten us into a world of shit.”

“What do you mean I’ve gotten us?” I ask. “It’s not like I called him. ‘Hey, guy who killed my dad, come terrorize me and my friends!’”

“You brought him here,” Morfran growls. “He’s been with you the whole time.” He glares at the athame in my hand. “Hitching a ride on that damn knife.”

No. No. That can’t be what’s happened. I know what he’s saying now, and it can’t be true. The athame feels heavy—heavier than before. The glint of its blade in the corner of my eye looks secretive and traitorous. He’s saying that this Obeahman and my athame are linked.

My brain fights it even though I know he’s right. Why else would he bring the knife back to me? Why else would Anna smell smoke when it cut her? It was tied to something else, she said. Something dark. I’d thought it was just the knife’s inherent power.

“He killed my father,” I hear myself say.

“Of course he did,” Morfran spits. “How do you think he became connected to the knife in the first place?”

I don’t say anything. Morfran is giving me the piece it together, genius look. We’ve all gotten it at one time or another. But I just got un-mojo-ed five minutes ago, so cut me some slack.

“It’s because of your father,” my mom whispers. And then, more to the point, “Because he ate your father.”

“The flesh,” Thomas says, and his eyes light up. He looks to Morfran for approval, and continues. “He’s an eater of flesh. Flesh is power. Essence. When he ate your father, he took your dad’s power into himself.” He looks down at my athame like he’s never seen it before. “The thing you called your blood tie, Cas. Now he has a link to it. It’s been feeding him.”

“No,” I say weakly. Thomas gives me this helpless apologetic expression, trying to tell me that I wasn’t doing it on purpose.

“Wait,” Carmel interrupts. “You’re telling me that this thing has pieces of Will and Chase? Like it carries around part of them?” She looks horrified.

I look down at the athame. I’ve used it to send away dozens of ghosts. I know that Morfran and Thomas are right. So just where the hell have I been sending them to? I don’t want to think of this. The faces of the ghosts I’ve killed flash behind my closed lids. I see their expressions, confused and angry, filled with pain. I see the frightened eyes of the hitchhiker, trying to make it home to his girl. I can’t say that I thought I was putting them to rest. I hoped so, but I didn’t know. But I sure as hell didn’t want to be doing this.

“It’s impossible,” I say finally. “The knife can’t be tied to the dead. It’s supposed to kill them, not feed them.”

“That’s not the Holy Grail in your hand, kid,” says Morfran. “That knife was forged long ago with powers best long forgotten. Just because you use it for good now doesn’t mean that’s what it was made for. It doesn’t mean that’s all that it’s capable of. Whatever it was when your dad wielded it, it isn’t now. Every ghost you’ve slain has made this ghost stronger. He’s a flesh-eater. An Obeahman. He’s a collector of power.”

The accusations make me want to be a kid again. Why isn’t my mommy calling them big fat liars? The seriously, completely wrong pants-on-fire kind? But my mother is standing silent, listening to all of this, and not disagreeing.

“You’re saying he’s been with me the whole time.” I feel sick.

“I’m saying that the athame is just like the stuff we take into this shop. He’s been with it.” Morfran looks somberly at Anna. “And now he wants her.”

“Why doesn’t he do it himself?” I ask wearily. “He’s an eater of flesh, right? Why does he need my help?”

“Because I’m not flesh,” Anna says. “If I were I’d be rotten.”

“Bluntly put,” Carmel observes. “But she’s right. If ghosts were actually flesh they’d be more like zombies, wouldn’t they?”

I start to waver by Anna’s side. The room is spinning slightly, and I feel her arm come around my waist.

“What does any of this matter, right now?” Anna asks. “There’s something to be done. Can’t this discussion wait?”

She says that for my benefit. There’s an edge of protection in her voice. I look at her gratefully, standing by my side in her hopeful white dress. She’s pale and slender, but no one could mistake her for weak. To this Obeahman, she must look like the feast of the century. He wants her to be his big retirement score.

“I’m going to kill him,” I say.

“You’re going to have to,” Morfran says. “If you want to stay alive yourself.”

That doesn’t sound good. “What are you talking about?”

“Obeah is not my specialty. It’d take more than six years to do that, Julian Baptiste or no. But even if I was, I can’t take that hex off of you. I can only counter it, and buy you time. But not much. You’ll be dead by dawn, unless you do what he wants. Or unless you kill him.”

Beside me, Anna tenses, and my mom puts her hand to her mouth and starts to cry.

Dead by dawn. Okay, then. I don’t feel anything, not yet, except for a low, weary hum all through my body.

“What’s going to happen to me, exactly?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Morfran replies. “It could look like natural, human death, or it could take the form of poisoning. Either way I think you can expect some of your organs to start shutting down in the next few hours. Unless we kill him, or you kill her.” He nods at Anna and she squeezes my hand.

“Don’t even think about it,” I say to her. “I’m not going to do what he wants. And this suicidal ghost schtick is wearing a little thin.”

She lifts her chin. “I wasn’t going to suggest that,” she says. “If you killed me, it would only make him stronger, and then he would come back and kill you anyway.”

“So what do we do?” Thomas asks.

I don’t particularly like being a leader. I don’t have much practice at it, and I’m much more comfortable risking just my own skin. But this is it. There’s no time for excuses or second-guessing. In the thousand ways I pictured this going down, I could never have imagined it like this. Still, it’s nice that I’m not fighting alone.

I look at Anna.

“We fight on our own turf,” I say. “And we pull a rope-a-dope.”