Dime Store Magic

Chapter 18

ONCE IN THE HALL, I PRODDED SAVANNAH FORWARD.

"Take the first door you see," I whispered. "Hurry. I'm right behind you."

To the left, an empty corridor snaked off into unknown territory. Sunlight radiated through a door less than twenty feet away to the right-twenty feet of hallway clogged with somber-suited mourners. I turned left. Following my advice, though, Savannah turned right, toward the front door, through the crowd.

"Sav-!" I whispered loudly, but she was out of reach and moving fast.

Taking a deep breath, I lowered my eyes, prayed no one recognized me, and followed her. I'd gone less than five feet when Shaw's voice boomed from behind me.

"Paige Winterbourne, don't you dare-"

I didn't hear the rest. A dozen heads turned toward me and a dozen pairs of eyes met mine. My name hurtled down the hallway on a blast of whispers.

"Winterbourne?"

"Paige Winterbourne?"

"Isn't she-"

"Oh, my God-"

"Is that her?"

My first impulse was to hold my head high and march to the door. As Savannah said, I hadn't done anything wrong. But consideration won out over pride and, in deference to the mourners, I ducked my head, murmured my apologies and hurried after Savannah. The whispers snaked after me, petering out before turning to slander.

"Did she…?"

"I heard…"

"They say…"

I forced more apologies to my lips and pushed through the crowd. Ahead, a huddled quartet swallowed Savannah's thin form and I lifted my head, picking up speed, bobbing on my toes, trying to see her.

The crowd around me rustled, whispers swelling into chatter. A brief commotion erupted ahead to my left, inside two large double doors. I paid no attention as I moved forward, gaze scanning hostile faces, struggling to find Savannah while not making eye contact with the mourners. Someone grabbed my arm. I only half-turned, catching a glimpse of blond hair under a black hat.

"I'm sorry," I murmured, eyes still roving the crowd ahead, searching for Savannah.

Without looking, I brushed the hands from my arm, tugging away. Someone gasped. There! The back of a dark head appeared near the exit. Savannah. I lunged forward, but the hands caught me again, nails digging into my arm.

"I'm sorry," I said again, distractedly. "I really have to-"

I turned to brush my assailant off, then saw her face and stopped cold. Lacey Cary stared down at me with eyes rimmed in red grief and black mascara. Around us, the crowd went silent.

"How dare you?" she hissed. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"

"I'm so, so sorry," I said. "I didn't mean-it was a mistake-I needed my file."

"Your file?" Lacey's face twisted. "You-you interrupted my husband's visitation to come and ask me about your file?"

"No, I was told to pick it-" I stopped, realizing this wasn't the time to correct her. I glanced down the hall for Savannah, but didn't see her. "I'm so sorry. I'll just leave-"

Someone pushed through the crowd behind me. The ripples of movement caught my attention and I saw Shaw move into an open gap a dozen feet down the hall.

As I turned away, Shaw took something from the folds of her dress. A doll. The sight was so unexpected that I paused, just long enough to see her lips move… and to see that the doll wasn't a doll at all.

"A poppet," I whispered. "Oh, God-"

I whirled to run, but not before I saw Leah step up behind Shaw. She lifted a hand and finger-waved at me.

"Savannah!" I shouted, wrenching free from Lacey and throwing myself against the crowd that blocked my path.

Something popped overhead. A small explosion. Then another and another. Glass flew everywhere, tiny razor-sharp shards of glass. Lightbulb glass. Even the sconces on the walls exploded, sinking the hallway into twilight, lit only by the curtained exit at the end. I scrambled for the front door, clawing at everything in my path. An interior door slammed, blocking the way into the front vestibule and plunging the hallway into darkness. Other doors slammed. People screamed.

Someone hit me. No, not just someone, the whole crowd. Everyone around me seemed to fly off their feet, and we shot in a screaming, seething, kicking mass through a doorway. The huge double doors slammed shut behind us, deadening the shouts and cries of those trapped in the hallway.

As I struggled up from the carpet, I looked around. We were in a large room festooned with hanging curtains. Scattered pockets of mourners stared at us. Someone ran to help Lacey to her feet.

"What's going-"

"Has someone called-"

"Goddamn it-"

With the confused shouts, my own senses returned and I leaped to my feet. I heard a small pop. A now-familiar sound. I glanced up to see a chandelier over my head and dove to the ground, covering my head just as the tiny bulbs began to explode.

Only when the shards stopped falling did I peek out, expecting pitch dark. Instead, I found that I could see, a little. Light flickered from one single unbroken chandelier bulb, giving just enough illumination to allow me to make out my surroundings.

Again I sprang to my feet, searching for an exit. People were shouting, screaming, sobbing. They banged at the sealed door and yelled into cell phones. I noticed little of it. My brain was filled with a single refrain. Savannah. I had to find Savannah.

I stood, oddly clearheaded amidst the confusion, and took inventory of my situation. Main door blocked or sealed shut. No windows. No auxiliary doors. The room was roughly twenty feet square, ringed with chairs. Against the far wall was… a coffin.

In that moment, I realized where I was. In the viewing room. Thankfully, as Savannah had guessed, there was no actual viewing. The coffin was closed. Still, my gut twisted at being so close to Cary's body.

I forced myself to be calm. Around me, everyone else seemed to be calming as well, shouts turning to quiet sobbing and whispered reassurances that help was on the way.

I returned to surveying my surroundings. No windows… Through the muffling cushion of whispers and sobs came a low moaning. A moaning and a scratching. I hardly dared pinpoint the source. I didn't need to. I knew without turning, without looking, that the noise came from the far wall. From the coffin.

In my mind, I saw Shaw again, holding the poppet and reciting her incantation. I saw her and I knew what she was: a necromancer.

The scratching changed to a thumping. As the noise grew, the room went silent. Every eye turned to the coffin. A man stepped forward, grasping the edge of it.

"No!" I shouted. I dove forward, throwing myself at him. "Don't-"

He undid the latch just as my body struck his, knocking him sideways. I tried to scramble up, but our legs entwined and I tripped, falling against the casket. As I fought free, the lid creaked open.

I froze, heart hammering, then closed my eyes, squeezed them as tight as I could, as tight as I had when I was four years old and mistook the creaking of the pipes for a monster in my closet. The room went quiet, so quiet I could hear the breathing of those closest to me. I opened one eye and saw… nothing. From my vantage point on the floor, I saw only an open coffin lid.

"Close it," someone whispered. "For God's sake, close it!"

I exhaled in relief. Shaw wasn't a necromancer. Leah had probably simulated the noise in the coffin by moving something within it, hoping to trick a mourner into opening it and displaying Cary's broken remains. Another grotesque prank, designed to slow me down, to stop me from getting to Savannah.

A moan cut short my thoughts. I was still bent over, pushing myself to my feet. Rising, I turned and saw the man who'd hurried over to close the coffin. He stood beside it, hand on the open lid, eyes round. Another moan shuddered through the room and for one moment, one wildly optimistic moment, I persuaded myself that the sound came from the man. Then a battered hand rose above the satin lining of the casket.

No one moved. I am certain that for the next ten seconds, not a heart beat in the entire room. Every gaze was glued to the casket. The hand grasped the side of the coffin, squeezed, then relaxed and inched down, as if stroking the smooth wood. Another moan. A gurgling, wet moan that raised every hair on my body. The tendons in the hand flexed as it grabbed tighter. Then Cary sat up.

In the dimness of that room, there passed a brief second in which Grantham Cary, Jr., looked alive. Alive and whole and well. Maybe it was a trick of the darkness or the deception of a hopeful mind. He sat up and he looked alive. Lacey let out a gasp, not of horror, but of exultation. Behind me, Grantham senior sobbed, a heartbreaking cry of joy, his face fixed in such a look of longing, of hope, that I had to turn away.

Cary lifted himself out of the coffin. How? I don't know. Having seen him after his death, I knew that there shouldn't be an unbroken bone in his body. Yet I understood little of this part of necromancy. I can say only that, as we watched, he struggled from the coffin and stood. Then, as his form caught the light, that blessed illusion of wholeness evaporated.

The morticians had done their work, cleaning away the blood and gore… and it did nothing but unmask the monstrous reality of his injuries. The opposite side of his head was shaved and torn and sewn and crushed, yes, crushed, the eye gone, the cheek sunken and mangled, the nose-no, that's enough.

For a moment, the silence continued as Cary stood there, head swaying on his broken neck, his remaining eye struggling to focus, the wet moan surging from his lips as rhythmic as breathing. As he turned, he saw Lacey. He said her name, a terrible parody of her name, half-spoken, half-groaned.

Cary started toward his wife. He seemed not to walk, but to drag himself, teetering and jolting, pulling himself forward. His one hand reached out toward her. The other jerked, as if he was trying to lift it, but couldn't. It flopped and writhed, the fabric of the sleeve rasping against his side.

"-ac-ee-" he said.

Lacey whimpered. She stepped back. Cary stopped. His head swayed and bobbed, lips contorting into a twisted frown.

"-ac-ee?"

He reached for her. She fainted then, dropping to the ground before anyone could catch her. With her fall, the whole room snapped to life. People ran for the door, pounding and shrieking.

"-ad-" Cary groaned, wobbling as he turned.

His father stopped short. As he stared at his son, his lips moved, but no sound came out. Then his hand went to his chest. Someone pulled him back, shouting for an ambulance. Across the room, a woman began to laugh, a high-pitched laugh that quickly turned to hiccuping sobs. Cary lurched around and stared at the sobbing woman.

"-wha-wha-wha-"

"Peter!" a woman's voice shouted. "Peter, where the fuck are you!"

Everyone who wasn't shocked into immobility turned to see a woman in a green dress emerge from the curtains behind Cary's casket.

"Peter, you fuck! I'm going to kill you!"

The woman strode into the middle of the room, then stopped and surveyed the crowd.

"Who the hell are you people? Where's Peter? I swear to God, I'm going to kill the fucker this time!"

The woman was young, maybe only a few years older than me. A thick layer of makeup barely concealed a blackened eye. She was thin, rail-thin, the kind of thinness that speaks of drugs and neglect. As she cast a scowl across the room, she swept a fringe of dark-rooted blond bangs from her face… and away from a bullet-sized crater in her temple.

"She's-she's-" someone sputtered.

The woman wheeled on the speaker and lunged at him. The man shrieked and stumbled back as she landed on him, nails ripping at his face.

An elderly woman backpedaled into Cary. Seeing what she'd hit, she screamed and turned sharply, tripping over her feet. Falling, she reached out instinctively, grabbing his useless arm. Cary stumbled. As he collapsed, his arm yanked free, the woman still holding his hand, ripping the stitches the morticians had used to reattach the severed limb.

I turned away then, as Cary saw his arm fly from his body, as his garbled screams joined the cacophony. Only half aware of what I was doing, I ran for the curtained wall from which the dead woman had emerged.

I raced through the curtain-hidden door and found myself in a tiny darkened room. An empty casket sat on something that looked like a hospital gurney. Behind the coffin I could make out the shape of a doorway. I thrust the gurney aside, grabbed the door handle, turned it, and pushed, nearly falling through when it actually opened. I stumbled through.