Silence: Book One of The Queen of the Dead Read online

  “Emma?”

  Emma took another step back. “Eric, tell her to stop.” She tried to keep her voice even. She tried to keep it polite. It was hard. If the stranger’s slightly open, sunken mouth had uttered words, she would have been less terrifying. But, in silence, the old woman teetered across graves as if she’d just risen from one and counted it as nothing.

  Emma backed up. The old woman kept coming. Everything moved slowly, everything—except for Emma’s breathing—was quiet. The quiet of a graveyard. Emma tried to speak, tried to ask the old woman what she wanted, but her throat was too dry, and all that came out was an alto squeak. She took another step and ran into a headstone; she felt the back of it, cold, against her thighs. Standing against a short, narrow wall, Emma threw her hands out in front of her.

  The old woman pressed the lantern into those hands. Emma felt the sides of it collapse slightly as her hands gripped them, changing the shape of the brushstrokes and squiggles. It was cold against her palms. Cold like ice, cold like winter days when you inhaled and the air froze your nostrils.

  She cried out in shock and opened her hands, but the lantern clung to her palms, and no amount of shaking would free them. She tried hard, but she couldn’t watch what she was doing because old, wrinkled claws shot out like cobras, sudden, skeletal, and gripped Emma’s cheeks and jaw, the way Emma’s hands now gripped the lantern.

  Emma felt her face being pulled down, down toward the old woman’s, and she tried to pull back, tried to straighten her neck. But she couldn’t. All the old stories she’d heard in camp, or in her father’s lap, came to her then, and even though this woman clearly had no teeth, Emma thought of vampires.

  But it wasn’t Emma’s neck that the old woman wanted. She pulled Emma’s whole face toward her, and then Emma felt—and smelled—unpleasant, endless breath, dry as dust but somehow rank as dead and rotting flesh, as the old woman opened her mouth. Emma shut her eyes as the face, its nested lines of wrinkles so like a fractal, drew closer and closer.

  She felt lips, what might have been lips, press themselves against the thin membranes of her eyelids, and she whimpered. It wasn’t the sound she wanted to make; it was just the only sound she could. And then even that was gone as those same lips, with that same breath, pressed firmly and completely against Emma’s mouth.

  Like a night kiss.

  She tried to open her eyes, but the night was all black, and there was no moon, and it was so damn cold. And as she felt that cold overwhelm her, she thought it unfair that this would be her last kiss, this unwanted horror; that the memory of Nathan’s hands and Nathan’s lips were not the ones she would carry to the grave.

  THE ROTTWEILER WAS WHINING in panic and confusion. His big, messy tongue was running all over Emma’s face as if it could, by sheer force, pull her to her feet. Eric watched him in silence for a long minute before turning to his left. There, sprigs of lilac moved against the breeze.

  He had been waiting in the graveyard since sunset. He’d waited in graveyards before, and often in much worse weather; at least tonight there was no driving rain, no blizzard, and no spring thaw to turn the ground to mud.

  But he would have preferred them to this.

  He felt the darkness watching. He knew what lived inside of it.

  “It can’t be her,” he said.

  She saw me.

  “It’s a graveyard. People see things in a graveyard.” He said it without conviction.

  I could touch her.

  He had no answer for that. His fingers found the side of Emma’s neck, got wet as dog-tongue traveled across them, and stayed put until he felt a pulse. Alive.

  “It can’t be her,” he said again, voice flat. “I’ve been doing this for years. I know what I’m looking for.”

  Silence. He glanced at his left pocket, half-expecting the phone to ring. If the rottweiler couldn’t wake her, nothing would, at this point. She was beyond pain, beyond fear. If he was going to do anything—anything at all—this was the time; it was almost a gift.

  But it was a barbed, ugly gift. Funny, how seldom he thought that.

  “No,” he said, although there was no spoken question. “I won’t do it. Not now. It’s got to be a mistake.” He glanced up at the moon’s position in the sky. Grimacing, he began to rifle through her pockets. “We can wait it out until dawn.”

  But the dog was whining, and Emma wasn’t standing up. He flipped her cell open and glanced at the moon again. He knew he should leave things be; he couldn’t afford to leave the graveyard. Not tonight. Not the night after.

  But he had no idea how hard she’d hit the tombstone when she’d toppled, and had no idea whether or not she’d wake without intervention.

  Emma opened her eyes, blinked, shook her head, and opened them again. They still felt closed, but she could see; she just couldn’t see well. On the other hand, she didn’t need to see well to notice that her mother was sitting beside her, a wet towel in her hands.

  “Em?”

  She had to blink again, because the light was harsh and bright in the room. Even harsh and brightly lit, Emma recognized the room: it was hers. She was under her duvet, with its faded flannel covers, and Petal was lying across her feet, his head on his paws. That dog could sleep through anything.

  “Mom?”

  “Open your eyes and let me look at them.” Her mother picked up, of all things, a flashlight. The on switch appeared to do nothing. Her mother frowned, shook the flashlight up and down, and tried again.

  Emma reached out and touched her mother’s arm. “I’m fine, Mom.” The words came naturally to her, even if they weren’t accurate, she’d used them so often.

  “You have a goose egg the size of my fist on the back of your head,” her mother replied, shaking the flashlight again.

  Emma began a silent count to ten; she reached eight before her mother stood. “I’m just going to get batteries,” she told her daughter. She set the towel—which was wet—on the duvet and headed for the door.

  Mercy Hall was not, in her daughter’s opinion, a very organized person. It would take her mother at least ten minutes to find batteries—if there were any in the house. Batteries, like most hardware, had been her father’s job.

  If her mother were truly panicky, the kitchen—where all the odds and ends a house mystically acquired had been stowed—would be a first-class disaster. It wouldn’t be dirty, because Mercy disliked dirt, but it would be messy, which Mercy barely seemed to notice. Emma looked at her clock. At six minutes she sat up, and at six minutes and ten seconds, she lay back, more heavily. Petal shifted. And snored.

  She was still dressed, although her jacket hung off the back of her computer chair. Her fingers, hesitantly probing the back of her head, told her that her mother was, in fact, right. Huge bump. It didn’t hurt much. But her eyes ached, and her lips felt swollen.

  She gagged and sat bolt upright, and this time Petal woke. “Petal,” she whispered, as the rottweiler walked across the duvet. His paws slid off her legs and her stomach, and she shoved him, mostly gently, to one side. He rewarded her by licking her face, and she buried that face in his neck, only partly to avoid his breath.

  It was fifteen minutes before her mother came back, looking harassed.

  “No batteries?”

  “Not a damn one.”

  “I’ll stop by the hardware store after school.”

  “I’m not sure you’re going to school. No, don’t argue with me.” She came and sat down on the chair. “Em—”

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “What happened?”

  Her mother didn’t ask her what she’d been doing in the cemetery. She never did. She didn’t like the fact that Emma went there, but she knew why. Emma wanted to keep it that way.

  “Allison phoned, I dropped Petal’s leash, and he ran off.” Petal perked up at the sound of his name, which made Emma feel slightly guilty. Which was stupid because it was mostly the truth.

  “And you ran after him? In the dark?”r />
  “I wasn’t carrying scissors.”

  “Emma, this is not funny. If your friend hadn’t been with you, you could have been there all night!”

  “Friend?”

  “Eric.”

  “What, he brought me home?”

  “No, he was smart. He called me from your phone. I brought you home.” She hesitated and then added, “He helped me carry you to the car, and he helped me carry you to your room.”

  “He’s still here?”

  “He said he was late and his mother would worry.”

  “What, at 9:30 at night?”

  “10:30, and it’s a school night.” But her mother seemed to relax; she slumped into the chair. “You sound all right.”

  “I told you—”

  “You’re fine, I know.” Her mother’s expression was odd; she looked slightly past her daughter’s shoulder, out the window. “You’re always fine.”

  “Mom—”

  Her mother smiled that bright, fake smile that Emma so disliked. “I’ll help you get changed. Sleep. If you’re feeling ‘fine’ in the morning, you can go to school.”

  “If I’m not?”

  “I’ll call in sick.”

  There was no way that Emma was not going to school. “Deal,” she said.

  The only thing in the room that shed light was the computer screen; the only words were voiceless, silent, appearing, letter by letter, as Emma’s fingers tapped the keyboard.

  Dear Dad,

  It’s been a while. School started last month, and it did not miraculously become interesting over the summer. Mr. Marshall, on the other hand, still has a sense of humor, which is good, because he now has me.

  Marti moved when her dad got a job transfer. Sophie moved when her parents got divorced (why she couldn’t just live with her dad, I do not know; she asked). Allison and I are still here, holding it down, because Allison’s parents are still married. Takes all kinds.

  Michael is doing better this year. He had a bit of a rough time because he’s always so blunt when anyone asks him anything, and he doesn’t remember to be polite until someone is threatening to break his nose. Oh, and Petal’s going deaf, I swear.

  I wish you were here. I must have tripped in the cemetery; Mom’s freaking because she thinks I have a concussion. I think. I had the world’s worst dream before I woke up, and I’d be sleeping now, but, frankly, if it’s a choice between sleep and that dream? I’m never sleeping again.

  And we have no batteries.

  She stopped typing for a moment. Petal snored. He had sprawled across the entire bed the minute Emma had slid out of it, but he always did. Every night was a battle for bed space because technically Petal wasn’t allowed to sleep in her bed. He’d start out at the foot of the bed. And then he’d roll over, and then he’d kind of flatten out. Half of the time, Emma would end up sleeping on her side on six inches of bed with her butt hanging just off to one side of the mattress.

  She rolled her eyes, winced, and went back to the keyboard.

  But I’m fine, Mom’s fine. She doesn’t say it, but I think she misses you.

  I’ll write something more exciting later—maybe about drugs, sex, and petty felonies. I don’t want to bore you.

  — Em

  She hit the send button. After a few minutes, she stood and made her way back to the bed, nearly tripping over the cord of the desk lamp that was probably going to be hulking on the footboard of her bed for the next six weeks. Her mother didn’t really use it; she did most of her work on a small corner of the dining room table.

  She hadn’t lied, though; she really, really did not want to sleep.

  In the morning, she was fine. She was fine at breakfast. She was fine watering and feeding her dog. She was fine clearing the table and loading the dishwasher. She was even fine pointing out that the dishwasher was still leaking, and the ivory and green linoleum beneath it was stained yellow and brown.

  Mercy Hall looked less than fine, but Emma’s mother had never, ever been a morning person. She looked at her daughter with a vaguely suspicious air, but she said nothing out of the ordinary. She watched her daughter eat, criticized her lack of appetite—but she always did that—and asked her if it was entirely necessary to leave the house with her midriff showing.

  Since it wasn’t cold, and since Emma was in fact wearing a blazer, sleeves rolled up to her elbow, Emma ignored this, filing it under “old.”

  But she hugged her mother tightly as they both stood up from the table, and she whispered a brief thanks to take the edge off her mother’s mood. She put her laptop into her school bag, made sure she had her phone in her jacket pocket, and looked at the clock.

  At 8:10, at precisely 8:10, the doorbell rang.

  “That’ll be Michael,” her mother said.

  You could set clocks by Michael. In the Hall household, they did; if Michael rang the doorbell and the clock didn’t say 8:10, someone changed it quickly, and only partly because Michael always looked at clocks and began his quiet fidget if they didn’t show the time he expected them to show.

  Emma opened the door, and Petal pushed his way past her, nudging Michael’s hand. Michael’s hand, of course, held a Milk-Bone. No wonder they had the world’s fattest dog. He fed Petal, and Petal sat, slobbering and chewing, just to one side of the doorframe. “Be right there,” Emma told Michael. “Petal, don’t slobber.”

  Michael looked at Emma. He had that look on his face. “What?” she asked him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Is it Friday?”

  “No. It’s Wednesday.”

  He seemed to relax, but he still looked hesitant. Michael and hesitant in combination was not a good thing. “Why are you asking?”

  “Your eyelids,” he replied promptly.

  She lifted a hand to her eyelids. “What about them?”

  “You’re wearing eye shadow.”

  She started to tell him that she was wearing no such thing but stopped the words before they fell out of her mouth. Michael was many things—most of them strange—but he was almost never wrong. “Give me a sec.”

  She stepped back into the house and walked over to the hall mirror.

  In the morning light her reflection looked back at her, and she automatically reached up to rearrange her hair. But she stopped and looked at her eyes instead. At her eyelids. Michael was right— they were blue, the blue that looks almost like bruising. Her lips were…dark. Reaching up with her thumb, she tried to smear whatever it was on her eyes.

  Nothing happened.

  She grimaced. Okay, it looked like she was wearing makeup. It did not, however, look like bad makeup, and she didn’t have time to deal with it now; Michael had a mortal terror of being late. She picked up her backpack again and headed out the door.

  They picked up Allison on the way to Emery. Allison was waiting because Allison, like Emma, had known Michael for almost all of her school life. Ally could be late for almost anything else, but she was out the door and on time in the morning. Mrs. Simner stood in the doorway and beamed at the sight of Michael. Most parents found him off-putting, or worrying. Mrs. Simner never had, and Emma loved her for it.

  There was something about Mrs. Simner that screamed mother. It was a primal scream. She was short, sort of dumpy, often seen in polyester, and she always thought that anyone who walked anywhere near her house must be, you know, starving to death. She could listen sympathetically for hours on end, and she could also offer advice for hours on end—but somehow she knew when to listen and when to talk.

  She never tried to be your friend. She never tried to be one of the guys. But in her own way, she was, and it was to the Simner house that Emma had gone in the months following Nathan’s death.

  Allison was sort of like her mother. Except for the polyester and Allison’s glasses. When you were with Allison, you were, in some way, in the Simner household. It wasn’t the only reason they were friends, but it helped. She carried the same blue pack that Emma did, with a slightly different model of laptop
(for which official permission had been required). They fell into step behind Michael, who often forgot that he was tall enough to outpace them.

  “Did you get a chance to read Amy’s e-mail?”

  Damn. Emma grimaced. “Guilty,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back last night—I kind of fell asleep.”

  “I guessed. She’s having a party next Friday.”

  “Why?”

  “I think her parents are going out of town.”

  “The last time she tried that—”

  “To New York City. Without her.”

  “Oh. Well, that would do it.” Amy was famed for her love of shopping. She was in particular famed for her love of shopping in NYC, because almost everything she was willing to admit she owned—where admit meant something only a little less overt than a P.A. announcement between every class—came from NYC. “How big a party?”

  “She invited me,” Allison replied.

  Emma glanced at Allison’s profile. She thought about saying a bunch of pleasant and pointless things but settled for, “It’s not the only time she’s invited you.”

  “No. She invited me to the last big party as well.” Allison shrugged. “I don’t mind, Em.”

  Emma shrugged, because sometimes Emma minded. And she knew she shouldn’t. Allison and Amy had nothing in common except a vowel and a gender; Amy was the golden girl: the star athlete, the student council representative, and the second highest overall GPA in the grade. She was also stunningly beautiful, and if she knew it, the knowledge could be overlooked. When people are tripping over their own feet at the sight of you, you can only not notice it by being disingenuous.

  Amy also never suffered from false modesty. In Amy’s case, any modesty was going to be false. “Are you going to go?”