Dust to Dust (20 page)

“We have to get to the church right away,” Scott said.

Rainier didn't question him, only went back for his jacket. “Let's go.”

By night, the stone trail that led from the road and turned into nothing but a path near the church was dark, and only the nearly full moon above them kept them from losing their way. Scott took the car as far as he could, then parked. They leaped out in unison, but when Melanie started to run ahead, Scott called her back.

“Melanie, wait. We need weapons. Damn it, one of us should have been a cop. We could use a gun.”

“Against the dead?” Melanie asked. She stared at him for a moment, then headed for the trees. Scott and Rainier looked at one another, then followed. They found branches that could be used as spikes or bats, and then hurried onward.

They quickly reached the copse in front of the church, whose stone walls and pillars were pure white beneath the glow of the moon. Sister Maria Elizabeta was standing in the center of the copse. She had taken one of the old wooden crosses that had been hanging on a wall near the altar and was swinging it around, chanting in the moonlight.

So far, her cross and her prayers had protected her. She was keeping the army at bay.

A bizarre army, an impossible one. An army that gleamed in the moonlight, just like the church itself. The soldiers she fought were skeletal remains and little more, bones shrouded in decaying cloth, some with scraps of desiccated flesh still clinging to their bones. They had encircled the sister, many missing an arm, a jaw, fingers, hands.

Scott stopped momentarily, staring. The skeletons had no eyes, but their empty sockets were staring at the elderly nun. They had no muscles or ligaments, but somehow their bones had joined together and were keeping them moving. And no matter how hard she fought, they were closing in on Sister Maria Elizabeta. She swung the cross continuously, catching any skeleton that came too close and sometimes disarticulating it, but at other times only forcing it back.

“They're like zombies,” Melanie said. “We just need to smash them hard to make them fall apart.”

And then she was rushing in to join the macabre dance of death. Scott flew after her, swinging his branch with a vengeance. Rainier was close behind.

Scott caught the first
thing
that came at him across the rib cage. To his horror, his massive swing just forced the skeleton back around at him. He slammed harder, and that time hit the skull full force. It went flying to land in the dirt, and as it did, the thing's remaining bones clattered to the ground. He heard a cry and saw Melanie fighting a skeleton still wearing the shreds of its burial shroud and still bearing the ancient shield and sword with which it had been buried. Bone fingers wielded the sword, slashing the air as it tried to get to
her. She ducked each slash with limber agility, swiping at its feet. Scott rushed forward, swinging at the still-helmeted skull. Again the head flew, hitting more of the creatures that were pouring through the doors of the church. They seemed startled and wavered momentarily, then came on again.

“Take its sword and aim for the skulls!” Scott called to her.

She nodded, ducked down to get the sword, then rolled, barely missing a swipe from another skeleton.

Rainier was battling two of the clicking, armor-clad skeletons, ducking each sword stroke that was aimed at him and coming closer to the legs each time. He tackled one, and they went down together. He rose with the sword already swinging, slashing at the legs and feet of the second and several others near him, toppling several. Then he stepped into the crowd, aiming at skull after skull as the bones thrashed and clicked beneath him.

Scott stepped forward and claimed one loser's sword as his own.

“Scott!”

Melanie's cry warned him to turn and duck as a skeleton armed with an ancient water vessel tried to crack his head open. He rose in a swirl of motion, his sword swinging. As he moved, he saw that the circle around Sister Maria Elizabeta was closing in on her. He burst through the army of bones and positioned himself directly in front of her, forcing her back into the shelter of an ancient tree trunk. She sank down to the ground, moaning. He had no choice but to ignore her and give
his full concentration to the task at hand, spinning as she had done, aware that he had to take them down one by one, yet prevent the others from coming any closer. He cut one clean in half, but the pelvis stood wavering on spindly legs, while the arms tried to drag what was left of the torso forward, the few remaining teeth, gnashing.

He slammed a foot down on the skull while aiming at the next thing headed his way. He sensed someone near him and realized that Melanie had made it into the inner circle. And next to her, protecting the nun, was Rainier. They were surrounded, but they didn't stop, growing more proficient the more they swung their swords.

Scott slammed his own blade hard against another skull, which exploded in a rush of powder, but against that pale dust, he thought he could see something black and viscous, as well. It seemed caught in the moonlight for a moment, before it sprinkled down to become one with the ground again.

Behind him, Sister Maria Elizabeta was praying again. She was on her knees, her voice slowly beginning to go hoarse. She must have been praying for hours, he thought.

The army kept coming. No matter how many the three of them destroyed, still they came.

Then, suddenly, the sister cried out loudly and the army halted. One by one, as if they had been nothing but wind-up toys that had now run down, they went still.

Then, with a tremendous roar, they fell. Dust to dust. Only scattered antique weapons and a few disjoined
pieces of bone remained to testify that they had ever been there, a skull, a pelvis, an arm, a disarticulated hand.

Scott stood still, gasping for breath. He looked up and saw that though the moon was still glowing in the sky, the pink tinge of dawn had arrived. The sun was showing in the east, just creeping above the horizon.

His lungs hurt, his muscles hurt, but more than that, his
heart
hurt. Turning at last, he saw that Melanie and Rainier didn't look that much worse for wear, certainly nothing like he felt. Melanie was hunkered down next to Sister Maria Elizabeta, and Rainier was kneeling at her back, ready to support her.

Scott remained where he was, wary, his sword still clutched in his hand. His fingers were filled with tension; he had to release his grip slowly. He looked at the sword. Like everything else around them, it was covered in bone dust. It was old and bent. But as battered as it was, it had withstood the battle.

The Romans had forged steel that would outlast the ages.

What had been a patch of grass and flowers in front of the church now looked like the garden of a haunted house, planted with bones instead of blossoms.

“Scott!” Melanie called. “She can't breathe!”

He turned around at last, and hunkered down with Rainier and Melanie.

“We've got to get her to a hospital,” he said.

The old woman shook her head emphatically.

“Help me back into the church,” she pleaded, trying to sit and leaning heavily on Scott. He helped her up, but when she started to fall, he swept her into his arms.
She was so tiny, so light inside the voluminous habit, he marveled.

“We've got to get you to a hospital,” he insisted again.

“No, no, please. Just take me into the church. I can't leave now. My time is coming, but I must be in the church when it does. Melanie,
cara bella,
follow that path…. It will take you to the convent. Get Sister Ana. She will come. She will know what to do.”

“I agree with Scott,” Rainier said. “A hospital would be the best thing.”

“No!”

The sister was so emphatic that Scott was afraid they would do her further damage by trying to force her against her will.

He looked at Melanie. “I'll carry her into the church. Do as she says, as quickly as possible.”

Melanie nodded, looking stricken. She didn't waste time. She turned and ran. Rainier walked ahead of Scott, kicking skulls and the fragile scraps of decaying shrouds out of the way. Inside the church, Scott set the sister down on a pew near the altar. The secret door to the crypts lay open, and it looked as though the earth itself had exploded past it.

The sister motioned toward the trapdoor, and Rainier hurried over to close it.

“I thought I was still strong enough,” the old nun murmured. “But I was wrong. I could not stop myself. He…called to me, and I opened the door…. I let them out.”

Scott stripped off his jacket and made a pillow of it
to set beneath her head. She clutched his hand. “Stay with me. Please.”

“I'm here,” he assured her. “I'm here.”

 

Even in the strengthening light of day, the odd and overgrown path that led from the church to the convent seemed dark to Melanie. Not that darkness actually bothered her, only the shift and flow of the shadows. She was on edge, thinking that any second another skeleton would jump out at her, and she regretted not bringing a sword. She wasn't sure why the light had caused the creatures to crumble, or maybe it had been Sister Maria Elizabeta's invocations.

She was hurrying so quickly that she tripped over a root and fell facedown. Swearing softly, she started to push herself up, then froze instead.

She had fallen on top of a collapsed skeleton, her own face mere inches from its bone-white skull. As she stared at it, she thought she saw something dark lurking deep in the eye sockets.

She heard a strange rattling sound coming from the skull. It grew and became a laugh like the sound of dry leaves rustling. “As I am now, so shall you be,” the skull said, though she was certain the jaw had never moved.

Just as she rolled away, rising to her feet in the same motion, with a strange swoosh the skeleton's bones seemed to knit together and it began to stand. Once it had been clad in a grand robe, and the putrid remnants of that robe still clung to its bones as it towered over her.

“You!” A bony finger slowly stretched toward her. The laughter came again, hoarse and cruel. “You think that you can save anyone? Such a fool you are. Darkness still lurks in your heart. You were born of evil blood, and you are not fit for any decent man. How could you keep such a thing as love growing? Love is like a flower, and flowers are nurtured by the sun and the light. And you are evil. You are darkness.”

She stared at it, thinking how impossible this was. This skeleton
knew
her.

“Murderess! Foul creature!” it cried, and then the skull let out a mournful wail, as if it were crying.

She blinked, but it was true. Tears of blood were forming in the eye sockets and running down those hollow cheeks.

“How many have you killed? Do you cry at night? You know how to ease that pain, how to remove the knife that twists in your heart at all times. You have no life, no life, no life….”

“I have a life!” she cried, aware of a sudden twisting pain within her, as if her own body were attacking her.

“You think you kill only when you must, but you are wrong, and you should do the world a favor and die. Let it happen. Let your soul float down to the fires of the damned, and there you will find release.”

Shaking, clacking, laughing hoarsely again, the thing took a step closer.

“You can't love, and you can't
be
loved. You are despised. You are like a snake in the grass, a rodent, a roach. You are vile. You are loathsome.”

The skeleton jerked suddenly, and straightened its
aim at her with its extended arm. “You think there's a God who will hear you? You, you, you, you, you…?”

She felt faint, dizzy, terrified, and yet almost ready to welcome whatever punishment or execution the skeleton offered. She felt as if she'd been drugged, hypnotized, and that she couldn't prevent the evil in her from taking over, from giving in.

“You are a killer who deserves to die. And why not take the wretched man with you? It would be so easy. Take up your sword and kill, and when the blood sluices over you, you will feel again. Slice his flesh, let his blood fill you. Or die now, by your own hand, like the coward you are. I know what you are, and soon others will, too. And then you will be despised, hated, loathed, as the evil toxin that you are. I know, I know, I know….”

It knew her fears. It recognized the pain that filled her. She could feel the anger and the hatred—the self-hatred—creeping into her as if it were part of the air she breathed, air that carried with it the fresh scent of blood, the scent of…

She curled her fingers around the rosary she still wore around her neck.

“I'm
good,
” she managed to whisper. “You're wrong. I know that—my soul is clean.”

The cackling stopped. The skeleton missed a beat. Then it seemed to gather its thoughts and spoke again.

“In your dreams. Who will ever believe that you—you!—are in any way a being that is good?”

It was speaking, but its voice was weaker. She had to pull herself back together, had to fight this thing.