Revenant (9 page)

Miners died down here?
That’s when I realized for the
first time since coming
here
that I
hadn’t heard any voices calling to me, or felt
any
ghostly presence. If tons of rock had buried the miners,
wouldn’t some of their spirits be roaming around, full of unrest? And if the
town was
old and abandoned,
shouldn’t
there be ghosts milling around the buildings? “Why haven’t I seen, heard, or
felt any ghosts?”

“Because
there are no spirits left down here in the mines. That’s why we have to go out
to the battlefield,” Gage said.

I
jumped a bit at his answer, and realized I had been so caught up in my thoughts
that I had voiced some of them aloud.

Before
I could ask any of the
half
-dozen
questions now whizzing around in my head, he continued. “The demon eats souls.
Didn’t you know?”

A
gruesome puzzle clicked into place in my head.
It eats souls. There are no souls down here…
I didn’t know anything
about demons, and yet, with all my ignorance, I had somehow released one into
the world.

“Last
time it was here, it had quite a feast.” Gage made a grab for my arm and I
dodged him. He didn’t seem angry. Instead he gave a chuckle. “Touchy.” He
started walking and waved his hand for me to follow. “
Come along
, this way. I want to show you the solution I came up
with in regards to the zombies. It’s by no means a permanent fix, but it might
do until we find one. I want to show you the progress we’ve made. I think you
will be pleased.”

He
led the way, and I followed. I had to keep going along with all his games.

Do what the crazies want,
Dean had
said,
and he was right. As long as Gage was
threatening the people I cared about, what else could I do but play along?

We weaved through the
tunnels until Gage finally stopped in front of a wooden door. He walked into
the room, but I stopped just within the entrance.
This was
not a natural cavern like the one where the party was
being held. It was a man-made space
cut out
from the rock. The room was medium-sized with low hanging ceilings. The walls
of the room were smooth and painted red, but the ceiling was uneven, and I
could make out the jagged edges of rocks along it.

Candlelight filled the room, throwing shadows
against the rocky surfaces, and it made the place seem smaller than it was. For
a moment, I felt claustrophobic. I looked up at the tons of rock just above my
head and wondered what it would take to make it collapse. An earthquake, or
just a tremor? For the first time, being underground began to feel dangerous. I
thought back to the miners who’d been buried in the side tunnels not far off
down the passage. How had they died? Quickly under the weight of the falling
rock? Or did they slowly suffocate as pockets of air dried up in their isolated
tunnels?

Gage called out to me and I forced myself to
walk into the room. Bodies lay on organized rows of metal tables and a few girls
milled around them. I looked at the bodies and counted at least a dozen. Men,
women, and children…
They look as though
they’re just sleeping.

I watched as a girl my age dressed all in
black raised
a knife
and brought it down
hard, slicing open the man laying before her. The cut to his midsection was
swift and deep. She reached into the incision and pulled out his kidney.

A girl
to my right was taking a long
rod
and
shoving it up the nose of another body. When she pulled the rod
back out
, a mass of jelly-like tissue slid with
it. The rod had a sharp, curved point on one end that skewered a large section
of tissue. I realized in
horror
that I
was looking at someone’s brain.
She just
pulled someone’s brain out through their nose.
I gagged.

Some of the girls clad in black were holding
books over the bodies and reciting words. My mind flashed back to Weatherton’s
ceremonial room at the asylum. I scanned the walls and floors for symbols.
There
were
none.

Zombies moved between the workers, carrying
new bodies in and placing them on vacant slabs.
One—a
tall, skinny undead—turned and caught sight of me after it dropped its
gruesome bundle. It began to shuffle toward me, its mouth moving as if trying
to talk.
One of the workers stepped forward to stand in front of it,
gesturing
emphatically
toward the exit. The
zombie turned and walked jerkily away, but its eyes never left me.

“The process of mummification is quite
fascinating.” Gage surveyed the room like a proud parent. “It won’t solve our
problem entirely, but it will help preserve the bodies.”

That’s when I realized what was missing—the
smell of rotting flesh. These weren’t the dead from the field that I had been
handling every night. Fresh bodies mean…

Gage
killed again.

He walked over to
a body.
“Once we remove all of the major organs—
with the exception of
the heart—we place
them in these containers.” He pointed to four clay jars sitting in a row at the
corpse’s head. Looking around, I saw that the same four jars sat at the head of
every body.

I found myself moving toward the closest
table. My hand reached out and touched one of the jars. The tops weren’t smooth
lids—they
were molded
into animal
shapes. One lid
was shaped
like a human head.
Another had the face of a dog. There was one that resembled a bird and another
shaped like the head of a baboon.

“The Egyptians called them canopic jars,
named after the four sons of Horus.” Gage pointed to each one. “
Imsety
holds the
liver,
Hapy
has the
lungs,
Duamutef
holds the stomach,
and this last one…” He paused for a long moment and looked at
the girl
working on the table next to him, then
held up his hand. “Don’t tell me. Let me see if I can remember.” We both
watched him for a moment before a smile lit his face. “Ah, it’s
Qebehsenuef
. The
god
Qebehsenuef
holds the
intestines.” He looked immensely pleased with himself. “I’ve learned quite a
lot about mummification. One Egyptian
god
holds each of the spare parts.” He picked up a jar and studied it. “The
Egyptians buried these canopic jars with their dead. I thought any container
would do, but the preservation spell we’re adding to the process won’t work
without the jars. It’s as if the organs still serve some function, even though
they
are no longer attached
. Fascinating,
isn’t it?” He put down the jar and looked around the room.

One of the zombies was stacking bolts of large,
white material in the corner. It was one of the
better-preserved
specimens, and only a few drops of fluid
oozed
from
its rotting flesh to drip onto the fabric. I wondered who was putting the
spells on them to contain what must be an overwhelming stink. The solution was
obviously not working very well, as it did nothing to stop the rot. I could
feel the tattered remains of healing spells clinging to the walking corpse. My
mother the healer could’ve told them their attempts to heal the bodies were useless.
Some things can’t be healed, or no one would die at all. It was the natural
order of things—ashes to ashes and all that. I was thankful that the
spells helped the smell, though. Whoever cast them must be one powerful mage.
There were six zombies moving in
and out of the room, and instead of rotten flesh I smelled copper and iron. I
realized I was smelling the blood and
viscera
of the fresh kills lining the tables.

Gage followed my gaze and gestured toward the
pile. “Rolls of linen for wrapping. We are waiting on a shipment of natron. You
can’t start wrapping the bodies until you’ve poured it
on
and let the bodies cure. Natron is like
salt
—it will suck all the moisture out.” He gave a frown. “That’s
the part that’s going to slow us down. It takes forty days before the bodies
are dry enough to
be stuffed
.”

“Stuffed?” I asked in a sickened voice.

He pointed to a section of the room where
shelves full of plants and glass jars lined the walls. “Stuffed with spices,
salt,
and herbs. But the majority of the
stuffing they used in the past, traditionally, was sawdust. However, I was
thinking—why not straw or cotton?” He leaned over one of the bodies,
studying it. “We honestly don’t have to stuff them at all, but I think it will
give them a more realistic look. A full-bodied mummy has a more spooky effect,
don’t you think?”

When I didn’t answer, he looked up at me and
continued. “This is only a temporary fix until we can find a proper spell to
keep them from rotting. A spell that can completely mummify them without all
the work.” He looked over the half-dozen girls, all dressed in black, who
worked at tables spread across the room.
“We
must find a spell soon because this process is so time consuming.
You
would not
believe
the man-hours
involved. That’s why I pushed the timetable back six months. It gives us time
to experiment.”

He gave me a hard stare. “There are a lot of
questions that need to
be answered
. Will
you be able to raise the dead after they’ve been laying around for weeks? Once
raised, will they still be bound to you? How strong will the
bond
be?” He looked out at the bodies spread
throughout the room. “So many questions to be answered. The whole operation is
trial and error. It’s the only solution I could come up with on the fly.
Clever, don’t you think?”

He
is insane. Completely whacked out of his mind
.

He gave me a wide smile. “I can’t wait to see
how the first batch turns out. I have an expert on mummification coming in next
week, but the thought of getting started excited me so much I thought—why
not do a test run?”

“You killed more people.” It was a statement,
not a question.

“You’re much more squeamish than I thought
you’d be. For a girl who raised a demon and successfully avenged her family’s
death by murdering the men responsible, I would think that you of all people
would understand. You’re one of us now.”

I flinched as if he’d struck me. “I’m
not
like you.”

He reached out for me. “But you are. I can
feel the darkness inside you.”

I moved away from him. “I’ll never be like
you!”

“Why not just accept that you are a part of
this?” He swung his arm out and encompassed the room. “This is a glorious life
we lead.”

“I will never be like
you.
” I said it this time as though making a vow. And I was.

Gage gave me a knowing look. “You’re
overwrought. I’ll bring you back here when we’re ready to move on to stage two.
I can’t wait for the final stage, when we set them out into the wild. Imagine
the fun.”

I had thought the darkness had consumed me,
drowned me, but it hadn’t. As I watched Gage surveying his surroundings with
such glee, with such evil shining through his eyes, I realized that I would
never
be like him.

I’d been a healer once. I’d been a creature
of the light. And maybe, just maybe, like my mother said in my dream, there was
a small flame of light still burning somewhere inside me.

If only I could find it.

* * *

Sonja hadn’t lied—the
place was spotless. I studied the house Dean, Wendy, and I now occupied. There
was not a cobweb in sight, and the chandelier was sparkling in the candlelight.

My head was pounding. I raised a trembling
hand to my temple. The evening’s events had stretched my nerves thin. I’d been
constantly on guard while in Gage’s company. Now that I was alone, I
sunk down
onto the piano bench. I wondered if I’d
ever be able to find the energy to get up again.

Gage had a room full of dead bodies that he
was going to stuff and make into mummies. I’d hoped the rotting bodies would make
him give up his zombie army, but instead he’d come up with a new plan.
What if it works and he can keep the bodies
from decomposing? How can I stop him?

Wendy walked into the room. It was just the
two of us for now. Luke was nowhere in sight. They must be keeping him away
from me. She sat down in
a nearby
chair
and took off her shoes. A sigh came from her mouth. “We survived the night.”

I nodded my head and tried not to think about
the mummy room. The last thing I needed was Wendy reading my mind. I didn’t
think I could deal with talking about it all right now, not until I could come
up with some way of stopping Gage and his gruesome operation. I focused on the
pressing needs of my body to distract myself. I was hungry.

My stomach gave a loud rumble.

Wendy
actually
smiled. “I can’t believe you’re still hungry.”

I was starved. I had eaten, but not enough. Hunger
had gnawed at me for days. I wondered if I would ever be able to forget the
loneliness, the despair I’d felt when I’d first
been
brought
here and imprisoned. I forced myself to push the image of the
cave that had been my cell out of my mind.
I’m
here now with Wendy
. We were clean, fed, and there was hope that we could
make it out of here. My stomach growled again. “You think Sonja kept her word
and stocked the kitchen?” I asked, kicking off my heels. It felt good to be out
of the tight shoes. I wiggled my bare feet against the wooden floor. When Sonja
said she would get the place cleaned, she didn’t fool around—even the
wooden floors
were polished
.

Wendy gave me a ghost of a smile. “I don’t
think she had a choice.”

I pushed myself off the bench and made my way
into the kitchen, Wendy following close behind. I opened a nearby cupboard and
saw a row of tins. Grabbing one, I opened it. Inside was a stack of crackers.

“The
tins
protect against mice,” Wendy said, opening another one. It housed some pieces
of hard salami.

“Mice?” I looked around and fished a cracker
out of the tin. I was not fond of rodents. Imagining them hiding in the dark
corners of the kitchen made me shudder.

Wendy looked off into the distance. “Caleb
and Jacob are in a place close by.”

I lowered the cracker from my lips. At the
mention of Caleb’s name, I lost my appetite. “To guard us?”

She shook her head. “Jacob doesn’t like being
underground all the time.”

I wondered if this was something she lifted
from Jacob’s thoughts.

“I didn’t. He told me,” she said, reading my
mind.

“You talk to him?” I asked, surprised.

“Jacob is not like his brother.”