The Death Seer (Skeleton Key) (9 page)

I waited with fair confidence the better part of the day, but when I noticed the old crones getting fidgety and conferring in whispers with each other in far corners of the house, my faith began to erode. The golden glow deepened throughout the day, gradually darkening to the point that I knew nightfall was near and I knew Kord wasn’t returning.
 

It wasn’t doubt, it was knowledge. I knew something had gone wrong just as surely as I knew the earth orbited the sun…although after the journey I’d been on, perhaps even that knowledge was questionable.
 

I stood, staring out the window next to the door at the darkening sky. “Can I make it to the swamp and back by nightfall?” I asked.

“Not likely. He might still return,” said one of the old crones.

I shook my head. “Something’s wrong.”

They didn’t disagree with me. I turned back to the hearth and gathered my bag. “I’m going after him.”

“Ye’ll not make it,” said one of the women.

“Ye’ll get lost on the edges,” said another.

“The serpent’ll eat ye, sure and certain,” said the third.

I didn’t ask about the serpent. Didn’t want to know. Without Kord I was lost, so there was nothing to do but go after him.

I threw my bag over my shoulder, thanked the women for their hospitality, and left. I followed the dirt trail into the forest until it split, and I actually paused. Hesitated as I remembered his words. Go back to Gus, seek shelter with the kings. This world was Kord’s home for ten years, surely he knew what he was talking about. Then again, he was a man, and men tended to overestimate their own strength. Maybe Kord had gotten himself into a situation he couldn’t handle alone.
 

I closed my eyes for a moment, breathed, and tried to make the right decision.
I’d do just about anything for a kiss from you,
he’d said, and I’d believed him. He’d wanted the promise of that kiss to give him hope, and if he wasn’t back here claiming it, that meant he’d lost all hope somehow.
 

I turned down the left path and into the unknown.
 

The trees grew thick and tall, blocking out nearly all the little light there had been. My eyes would have adjusted had there been enough light. My toe caught on more than one tree root before I finally stopped and knelt on the ground to dig through my bag. Kord had thrown in some supplies, a flashlight among them.

“Momma?” came a soft voice. A child’s voice.

My skin crawled. With the blackness around me I felt anything might be hovering right next to me. I switched the flashlight on and swung it in every direction.
 

“Are you my momma?” The voice came from a different direction. I aimed the light beam into the woods, but there was nothing there.

“Is she here for us?” It was said in a whisper.

“Let’s ask her.” Another whisper.

I spun around, looking everywhere and finding nothing. “Who are you?” I asked, nearly choking on my own words.

“Help us!” a child cried. And then a chorus of similar cries erupted. They were right upon me, they had to be, and yet I couldn’t see anything.
 

“Where are you?” I called. “Where are your families?”

“Be with us, lady! Be with us!”

“Please don’t leave us! Stay with us!”

The sobs wrecked my nerves. Tears poured down my cheeks before I could even realize what was happening. All around me children cried and wept and begged, but I couldn’t see them. I even reached into the darkness blindly and felt for them, but there was nothing there.
 

“This is a trick!” I screamed.

“It’s no trick.” This voice was more mature, though still young. This time when I swung my light around, the beam landed on a young woman in a white shift dress. She wore a mischievous smile and long, stringy hair. Behind her a tail swished from side to side.
 

“Who are you?” I gasped. A voice in my head berated me for not staying with the sisters and waiting for daylight. What on earth would I do if I got lost? What could these creatures do to me?

“I’m no one,” the girl said. “Just no one and nothing. Not important. Undeserving.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked, regaining some of my breath.

The girl shrugged. “Doesn’t mean anything. Who are you?”

“My name’s Brenna. I’m looking for my friend. He came this way earlier this morning.”

“You aren’t dead,” the girl observed, squinting her eyes and taking a step towards me.
 

I stood my ground. “No. And neither is my friend. Have you seen him?”

“We sleep through the day. Ain’t seen no one.”

“We?”

“Me and the children. The hidden ones.”

“Hidden?”

“Yep. Hidden forever. Not ever gonna be loved, them. Sad, really. But they’re used to it, I suppose.”

I told myself they weren’t real. I had to, because for a moment, the weight of what she’d said bore down on me and I thought I might…despair. Children left in the woods destined to be alone and unloved? It couldn’t be real. I needed it not to be real. “Do you intend to stand in my way?” I asked.

The girl’s eyebrows lifted. “Of course not, lady. Why would I do that?”

I situated my bag on my back and aimed my flashlight at the path ahead of me. “I’ve been told there are dangerous things out at night. I thought you might be one of them.”

“I’m no danger. Where do you intend to go?”

I walked past her. Now that I had light, I could pick up my pace. “Suicide swamp.”

The girl fell into step beside me, occasionally having to jog to keep up. “You must be mad. No one goes there. It’s for them living ones who cheated Death. It’s just for them, not for you or anyone else.”

“My friend is there looking for his mother. I have to make sure he’s okay.”

“Do you know ought about the place?”

“Only that it’s a place of despair. Can you tell me how far it is?”

“Far?”

“Yes. Do you know how long it will take me to get there?”

“It will take as long as it takes, I suppose. It ain’t like there’s boundaries. You walk for however long it takes you to start losing hope, and then you’re there.”

I stopped and looked at her. “That doesn’t make any sense. What if I never lose hope?”

“Then you’ll never get to the swamp. It’s just as well. Terrible place, that.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe the insanity of this place. It was ridiculous. Kord showed me a map. There was a path that led directly to the swamp and I was on that path, therefore if I kept walking I would eventually find it. That was logic and logic never failed.
 

My shoes made light dollops of sound on the dirt as I hurried toward the swamp. The forest was utterly silent now that the children’s voices had hushed. I supposed I had my new travel companion to thank for that. She was watching me, I felt her eyes. When I glanced toward her I saw that her head was turned toward me, staring at me straight-on even as she walked. The unnerving behavior frustrated me.
 

“Stop looking at me that way,” I said.

“I’m waiting to see you lose hope.”

“Well, that’s not happening.”

We walked at a fast pace until my muscles were burning, and yet the path remained unchanged. It was as though I was on a treadmill, walking and walking and never getting anywhere. This world was mad. The whole idea of it. Up until then, it had felt like something of a dream or an adventure. I don’t think I truly believed it was happening. But there had been a little boy once, ten years ago, and that little boy was a man, now, and that man needed my help. I would find him, he would find my door, and we would both wake up from this dream together.

But so what if we did? What was I returning to? Hadn’t my world gone just as mad with people not dying, just lying there as living corpses? That would be my fate as well. And Kord’s. We would lie down one day and never get up. And suppose Kord did manage to put things right and everything went back to normal. Death would then ultimately lead here, to this awful place with its torpid red sky and maddening lack of logic. Was this man’s ultimate fate? To wander around a pretend world with no sense of time or purpose…with no passion or energy? A few short years in the living world thinking your life meant something only to land here, a pointless depot for souls?
 

A squelching sound froze my thoughts. I shined my flashlight down at my feet only to find myself ankle-deep in muck. I looked around. The forest was behind me and all around me were black marshes.
 

“You found it!” came a distant voice.
 

I shined my light at the forest and saw the girl hugging a tree. “Told you it was down this path.”

“Good luck, lady! Don’t talk to none of the spirits! And if your friend is in there and his face is under the water, then leave him, for he’s lost for good.”

I waved to her, and she disappeared into the forest. Then I turned and started shouting Kord’s name.

In the blackness, beneath the water, there were hundreds of dimly glowing spots as far as I could see. They were so dim that it took me a few minutes to notice them. I sloshed through the marshy landscape, calling Kord’s name, and carefully stepping around the glowing things. It was nearly an hour into my search that I realized they were people.
 

I shone my flashlight into one of the glowing things and saw a face, ghastly pale and twisted in an expression of agony, veins and tendons protruding from its neck, mouth open in an eternal silent scream. They were all like this. No souls resting in peace, here.
 

“Kord!” I screamed, my heart thundering.

The water was cold and slimy. I felt it all the way to my bones, and it slowly creeped its tendrils of despair up my legs.
 

“Kord, please!”

He’d called this place a dead end. He’d said there was nothing on the other side of it even though it was in the middle of a map and surrounded by drawings of other places. I’d long since lost sight of the forest, having faith that I’d find my friend and he would know the way back. That faith wavered. I was no longer yelling for Kord. I shone the light around, but my eyes weren’t as alert as they had been.

Of course it couldn’t be a dead end. There had to be something on the other side of it. The world wasn’t flat, after all, and even if I could accept that I was in some other world, some other dimension, my mind wouldn’t let go of the belief in a framework predicated on the existence of a spherical mass of rock spinning at the rate of one rotation every ten-four hours and orbiting the sun at the rate of one circuit every three hundred sixty-five days. These were the facts. This swamp could not go on forever.

A renewed burst of energy shot through me at my conviction. I picked up my pace, raised my voice, and scanned the swamp with my flashlight.

But it was short-lived. For the first time, I thought about going back to the forest without him. Maybe in the daylight I could find him more easily. Or maybe he was really gone. Maybe this place had consumed him.
 

No matter what, I’d have to return to the forest. If nothing else, I could sleep there until morning and then use it as a starting point to search in another direction. I’d kept careful track of my direction, basically walking in a straight line. I made a one-eighty turn and started walking back, my heart heavy. My mind tortured me with thoughts that I’d made a mistake, that if I’d just gone a few steps further I’d have found him. Still, I walked and walked.

Too much time passed. I should have been within sight of the forest, but still all around me I saw was swamp and soul-lights. I lifted my flashlight only to find the beam weakened, the battery on the verge of dying. “Kord!” I screamed again.

There was no answer. The cold, clammy feel of the air had seeped into my bones and suddenly all I could think about was a blanket and a warm fire and Kord’s body curled against mine, just like last night. As I thought of it, a slow acceptance settled into me like frost on the grass—I might never have that again. I may have made the last and worst decision of my life.

“Kord!” I screamed, frantic this time, no longer hoping to save him, but rather hoping he would save me. “Kord, I’m lost!”

My voice didn’t even echo. It simply vanished into the air in front of my lips, dying long before anyone would ever hear it. This swamp was cold. It stank. My legs and back and hips and head…everything ached. My teeth chattered relentlessly. My body convulsed with shivers. Tears poured down my face and even they were cold. “Kord,” I squeaked, and fell to my knees.
 

I thought of my brother and Annie and the whole world gone wrong, of Kord and his journey and what my coming here had done to him. I thought of myself and all the dreams I didn’t even know I had suddenly dying off right here in this horrid place. I sat back on my heels, waist deep in water, and wept.

Somehow, the swamp was rising. Or I was sinking. I felt it creeping up my body. I must have fallen forward on my hands, because I was staring straight down at the water and into my own reflection, a version of me I didn’t even recognize. It was the final straw. If I looked like that wasted away, hopeless thing in the reflection, I was done for. The tip of my nose touched the water and it felt right that I should go down into it.