The Reign of the Departed Read online

  Aster took something off of the table and handed it to him. It was a copy of the Sowashee Sentinel. It was folded, and an article was circled in red ink. There was picture of him, his last school picture. The caption of the article read, “Local Boy in Coma.”

  He read the article numbly. It described how his mother had found him, how by the time EMT’s arrived he had stopped breathing, how they had managed to revive him. How the brain damage had been too extensive. That it was unlikely he would ever awaken, and even if he did, he would probably never be normal. It mentioned that students at Sowashee High were being offered counseling to help them cope, and to hopefully head off any more such suicide attempts.

  Like anyone at school was going to have trouble “coping” without him. And he noticed it didn’t say anything about him being suspended.

  He went back and read the whole thing again. An awful sickness started in his belly, panic and terror and grief and everything else jumbling around together.

  “Oh my God,” he sobbed, and understood he was crying. He wiped at his face and found only wood—no tears, of course. But it felt like crying, and it wracked him from head to toe. Aster didn’t say anything, she just let him go. Her expression was unreadable at first, but after a while it became a bit impatient.

  “Okay,” she finally said. “Suck it up. It’s not that bad.”

  “Not that bad? I’m brain-damaged! This—whatever it is—is probably all just what happens when your last few brain cells die. You’re probably not even real. Jeez, like in that stupid movie—”

  “Believe what you want,” Aster said. “Rationalize it any way that works for you. But I’m going to need you to do some things, and so I can’t have you moping on about this forever.”

  “Moping on about . . . Forever? It’s been like five minutes! Are you insane?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know,” Aster replied. “I don’t have much to judge by, frankly. But just—listen. Yes, your body is in a coma, and yes you have brain damage. But you—the you who makes you who you are—your soul, if you wish—that’s right here, right in front of me. I summoned you here.”

  “You did this?”

  “I’ve said it twice now. Why else would you be here?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Errol said. Then it sunk in. “For God’s sake, why?”

  “Don’t be ungrateful,” Aster said. “Would you rather be trapped in a brain-dead body until someone decides to pull the plug? Or would you like to have another shot at life?”

  “In this?” he asked, shaking his hands to indicate his puppet-body. He didn’t want to touch it. “In this—what the hell is this, anyway?”

  “Call it what you want,” she said. “I prefer automaton. Sound’s scientific, although it soooo isn’t. Until a few minutes ago it was a bunch of lifeless junk. Now it’s you, at least for the time being.”

  “Time being?”

  “It might be possible to heal you,” she said. “To bring your real body back to life. If you want. Or I can let you truly die, if you prefer—”

  “Why would I prefer that?” he snapped.

  “Well, you did try to off yourself,” she pointed out.

  “It was an accident,” he said. “I didn’t want to die, I just . . . I mean I didn’t—” he paused and closed his eyes and was surprised how big and thick his lids were. He wondered what they were made of. He hoped to God his head didn’t look like that of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  “Just—what are you saying? About healing me?”

  “Errol,” she said, “if you’re good, maybe one day you can be a real boy.”

  For a moment he didn’t have any response to that.

  “Oh my God, is that a joke?” he finally sputtered. “You think this is funny?”

  “Just trying to lighten things up,” she sighed.

  “Lighten—” he tried to get hold of himself. If he lost it, she would just send him back to nothing—or worse, to whatever that was pretending to be his grandmother.

  “Just for the sake of argument,” he said, “let’s say I believe all of this. You’re some kind of witch and you made—” he waved again at his body “—this, and took my soul out of the hospital. Why? In four years you’ve barely even spoken to me.”

  “Nor you to me,” she said.

  “Okay, whatever. Why?”

  “Ah, now we get down to it,” she said. “I need someone like you, someone caught between, not living and not dead.”

  “Why?”

  He wasn’t sure if she was even planning on answering that, but if she was, she didn’t get the chance. The whole house shuddered—not shook, but shuddered. The walls seemed to ripple like water struck by a stone.

  The lights all went out, and it was as dark as the inside of the water tower at night.

  “Zhedye,” Aster said. “Not now.”

  She grabbed his hand. It felt tiny in his palm, and distant, as if it was muffled in layers of cloth. But he shouldn’t have been able to feel anything.

  “Come on,” she said, pulling him along. He heard a door open, and then they seemed to be in a hall. For a moment it was quiet, but then the house reverberated with a dull booming.

  “The front door!” Aster gasped. “Quick.”

  She led him through a couple of turns, and just as they took the second one the house rattled and Errol heard a massive splintering sound. Moonlight flooded in through what had once been a door but which now lay flat in the foyer. A hulking shadow stood on it; all that he could make out were two faint green orbs, and although they didn’t have pupils, he knew they were eyes. He somehow had a sense of smell—although like his touch it seemed muted. Nevertheless, something stank to high heaven, like a dead animal in a blender with burnt cake.

  “Oh, zhedye,” Aster said, and for the first time she sounded scared. “How did he do that?”

  “How did who do what?” Errol wondered. Then the thing rushed them.

  Errol threw up his hands to protect himself, just as the shadow hit him like a battering ram. It hurt, but at least he didn’t have any wind to knock out. He heard Aster yell something, but he couldn’t understand it.

  All of a sudden, the fear blew out of him like a storm had come through, and for the first time since before he’d found the box of his father’s things, he felt like himself.

  Which was to say as pissed as hell.

  He balled up his fists and hit his attacker as hard as he could. And boy, did that ever feel good. He felt the crunch, like the time he’d broken Colin Fielder’s nose, but more and better. This little body was strong. Then he was just slamming the monster, over and over again until all of a sudden it—well, exploded. Now the smell was staggering. He heard Aster vomit.

  “The door . . .” she managed, between heaves.

  Another monster was already at the door. With a bellow, Errol charged it before it could come after him, striking it low and pushing it up and out. It was lighter than the first, and he forced it back through the opening. In the glow of a three-quarter moon, he saw horns and a long snout with bone showing through. It was four-legged, and ribs stuck through dry, tight skin.

  “Jesus, it’s a cow!” he gasped, heaving it back.

  The first two were just a warm up, because here came the herd—about twenty of them now breaking into a trot, at least those with four legs. Several limped on three, and one was dragging itself with only forelimbs. The whole back half of it was gone. And pushing through all of these was the biggest bull he had ever seen, probably six feet tall at the shoulder. It didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

  Zombie cows. It might have been funny, if it were in a movie he was watching. But in fact it was mind-meltingly horrible. It would have been better if they had been some sort of three-eyed monsters.

  One of these things he could handle. But a whole herd . . . “The door!” Aster repeated. “Pick it up!”

  “It’s broken,” Errol said, unnecessarily.

  “Just hold it closed,” she said.

  He did, bra
cing for the impact of the lead bull. Aster started muttering in a language he didn’t know, and then he saw her hand outlined in blue flame. She touched the door, and he felt it sort of harden in his grip. He stepped back and it stuck in the frame as if held by magnets.

  “That will hold for a while,” Aster said.

  “A while?” he said. “What the hell is going on? I just exploded a zombie cow.”

  “Animals bloat up with gas when they start to decompose,” she offered.

  “That is so not the point.”

  “Stay here,” she said. “We don’t have all night. I’ve got to stop him.”

  “Stop who?”

  “If the door gives, don’t let them in,” she said.

  Then she left.

  The door shook as one of the things outside banged into it. They were making a noise now, a low-pitched buzzing that sounded something like a swarm of bees and nothing at all like cows.

  TWO

  THE ELF-WHISPERER

  Screw this,” Errol muttered, but then the door cracked in the middle. He dithered for a second. If those things got in . . .

  Then what? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything except that none of this was possible. He felt panic returning and he hated it. He loathed fear—it was the most useless emotion imaginable.

  He looked around for something to fight with, but nothing in the hall looked like a better weapon than his ebony-and-ivory fists.

  The door cracked further, and moonlight spilled through. He shoved his palms against it and braced his legs.

  Thoom, thoom, thoom.

  “Aster!” he hollered. “Whatever you’re doing, hurry up!”

  A horn came through the crack, nearly catching him in the face, and the door leaned in on him. He doubled his effort, and suddenly the horn was gone. The pressure let up.

  Finally, he thought.

  Then the door erupted in a thousand pieces, hurling him to the floor and back fifteen feet.

  The bull stamped in the opening. Its huge eye sockets glowed with flickering blue fire as it lowered its head, aiming its huge, curved horns at Errol.

  “Come on, then,” Errol snarled, standing up. He was tired of thinking, of trying to figure things out. Fighting he understood.

  It hit him like a freight train; braced as he was, he didn’t feel like he slowed the bull down at all. The horns missed him, but the head lifted him high and slammed him into the ceiling. He felt something in his body crack. Then he crashed down onto the monster’s back. He grabbed at it and wished he hadn’t, because his fingers tore through the stiff hide and into the putrid flesh beneath. He tried to get a grip on the backbone, but then it tossed him like a bad rodeo clown, and he smacked into a wall. He tried to get up, but one of his legs wouldn’t work. He watched as it backed up and took aim at him again.

  Somewhere something chimed, like a crystal bell, and the bull stopped. It stood for a moment, and then began to back up. It backed out of the hall onto the lawn and began to walk leisurely away. The rest of the dead cows followed it.

  Errol was checking out his leg when Aster returned. One of the wires had snapped, and his thigh had a crack in it.

  “Look,” he told Aster.

  “I can fix that,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Once she had changed out the wire, he could walk, but she wanted to repair the thigh, so she led him toward the back of the house.

  The workshop was a big room with a skylight, but without the sun it was dim, lit only by a few fluorescent lamps. The walls were covered in odd contraptions; some looked like clocks and others like elaborate shadow boxes. One in particular caught his eye, perhaps because it was the largest and because he could see the parts moving behind the glass. In it a golden sun seemed to dance with a silver moon, while a glittering star moved alone, until the Moon moved to dance with it. When this happened, the metal disk of the sun spun to reveal a dark back. Then the moon also turned, to expose a reverse still silvery, but covered in dark blotches, like the real moon.

  Then the whole thing reset and began again. Below the action, the gears driving it were all visible.

  There were also all sorts of puppets, mechanical hands, and two life-sized manikins, built of what looked like found objects and worked wood.

  And there were loads of tools—a big circular saw, lots of hand tools, a lathe and plenty of things he didn’t recognize at all. The room smelled of sawdust and oil.

  “This where you made me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “That calming spell still on me?”

  “No,” she replied, putting a c-clamp on the cracked leg and tightening it down. He felt the pressure.

  “See how calm I am?” he said.

  “You seem very calm. It’s a little worrisome. Reminds me of how you were just before you beat up Roger Bickle. You aren’t planning on beating me up, are you Errol?”

  “That depends,” he lied.

  She held up a bottle. “Wood glue,” she said.

  “You’re going to glue me back together?”

  “Dowel,” she went on, showing him a thin wooden cylinder.

  “So I’m really in a coma.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you really are a witch?”

  “I’m okay with that word,” she said. She held up something gun-shaped.

  “Electric drill,” she said.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Errol yelped, drawing back.

  “Yeah, that’ll hurt,” Aster mused, chewing her lip.

  She smiled. “Svapdi,” she said.

  “Hey—” he began. But then everything went dark again.

  Aster finished her work on the automaton and regarded it for a long moment. She thought about calling Errol back, but he was scared and angry and full of questions, and she didn’t want the distraction. Not now, when she needed to think about what had happened.

  She should be feeling triumphant right now; not only had she successfully summoned Errol’s soul, her automaton also worked admirably well. And yet she somehow felt things hadn’t gone as they should. She supposed she had expected more gratitude from him, some thanks for at least giving him another chance. Instead it felt as if she hadn’t accomplished anything at all.

  But she hadn’t done it to save him, had she? She had done it because she needed him. So she shouldn’t be bothered that he wasn’t all brimming with appreciation.

  Anyway, all of that paled next to the appearance of the dead bull and his herd. She hadn’t even thought it was possible for a summoning to appear outside of the house. What if it was already too late? She had Errol, but not the others.

  She spent the next four hours cleaning up exploded cow, replacing the front door with one of the hall doors, and building stronger wards around the house to deter any future invasions, necro-bovine or otherwise. When she was done she glanced at the clock and saw she only had three hours before school.

  She went to her room, set the clock to let her sleep for two hours, and closed her eyes.

  Aster went over the whole thing again in second period. Mr. Watkins was droning on about ancient Greek poetry, which ordinarily she might pay attention to. He was the most interesting of her teachers, and he always seemed excited about his lectures, despite his audience. She pretended to take notes, but actually she was sketching and scribbling. Something about the lines emerging onto paper helped structure her thoughts, and today she really needed to come up with some answers. After years of nothing happening at all, suddenly it was all too quick.

  “The Elf-Whisperer is in rare form today,” someone hissed. She wasn’t sure who; a girl, but that didn’t narrow things down. But then another girl giggled, and she knew it was Jenna Morgan. Which meant the crack had come from Sara Carver.

  When Aster scribbled, sometimes her lips moved. She couldn’t help it. That had earned her several inventive nicknames— “The Girl Who Talks to Her Pencil” (in fourth grade) “Lip Reader” (fifth grade) “Psycho Scribbler” (sixth) and,
of course, “Elf-Whisperer.” That one had stuck, right through to her senior year.

  She felt her face warm, but she kept her head down and pretended she hadn’t heard. It shouldn’t bother her at all, but it had been Errol who actually coined the “Elf-Whisperer” epithet. She had a tendency to depict dragons and hippogriffs and—well, elves. When they were younger, Errol had often asked her to draw pictures to go with the stories he wrote. They had even done a little comic book together. But now Errol didn’t write stories, and “Elf-Whisperer” still had a little sting in it.

  “Maybe she’s drawing herself a boyfriend,” Sara whispered. “It’s the only way she’ll ever get one.”

  Aster turned so she could just see Sara. Then she winked and blew her a kiss.

  “Oh, gross,” Sara said, a bit too loudly. “You can only dream.”

  “Ms. Carver?” Mr. Watkins said. “Is there something you would like to share?”

  “Not with her, Mr. Watkins,” Sara said.

  That got a pretty good laugh.

  “That will be enough, Ms. Carver,” Mr. Watkins said.

  Mr. Watkins called her over after the bell rang and asked to see her notebook. He thumbed through a few pages.

  “It amazes me that you never take any notes, and yet you ace all of my tests.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept quiet.

  “There’s some interesting stuff here,” he said. “Do you read a lot of mythology?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “I don’t recognize some of these guys,” he said. “Are they from Slavic myth?”

  “They’re mostly made up,” she replied.

  He sighed. “Well, the drawing is really quite accomplished. You’re a talented young woman, Aster. I wish I could convince you to enter some of your work in the art fair this year.”

  She felt a little glow of warmth at that, and knew a smile had crept onto her lips. Mr. Watkins was pretty young, for a teacher, and he was nice-looking in a soft sort of way. And he was smart about the right things.

  “Well, I really just draw in my notebook,” she said. “I don’t know anything about framing, or matting, or any of that.”