Do what needs doing, boy.
You’ll know what that is, when the time comes.
I lifted the crossbar. The widow didn’t see what I was doing until she heard the latch click.
“No!” she cried, but I opened the door.
The hall was empty. Thunder grumbled. I stepped outside, turned.
“Lock it again,” I said. “Lock it. And cover your ears.”
“You can’t go out there!” she screamed. “You can’t!”
“I’m not,” I said. I hesitated. Words were getting hard to form.
“It isn’t vengeance,” I said. “It never was.” I licked my lips, panted a bit, forced it out. “The kids know about the will. Know you’ve got to have an accident before you make it legal.”
Jefrey moaned, pawed at the air.
“He only came back on the nights the kids had plans for you,” I said. “He came back to save you. Came back to rouse the house. It isn’t vengeance he’s after, Lady. And it isn’t you.”
She wept. If she heard, I couldn’t tell.
I reached, and pulled, and shut the door.
I turned. Petey took his place at my feet. The hall tilted and pitched and I had to put my hand on the wall just to stay upright. If Elizabet and her brothers and their friends showed up while I was in that hall, I’d be joining the phantoms. The line of mourners still walked, but I pushed past them and stumbled back the other way.
Toward the doors. Toward the big dark double doors. I reached the ballroom, slipped on my own blood where it smeared the tiles, crawled until I reached the stairs. Then Petey nipped at my butt, and I stumbled to my feet and followed the lightning-flashes to the door.
I hid once, when the Merlat children came racing down the stairs, spilled onto the tile floor and went scampering off down the hall. I counted five—three Merlats and two angry henchmen, probably brothers to the man I’d just killed.
I held my breath and prayed none of them had the sense to look down and realize what those smears on the floors meant. But they raced away, toward the pantry, not the widow’s safe-room. Fetching more tools, I decided. Chisels and hammers this time.
I crawled toward the doors. Voices rose up around me. Petey clawed at the latch and whined and urged me on with yips and barks.
I reached the door, rose up, took the latch, got blood all over it. The dark spots before my eyes swelled and spun.
“I loved you,” cried the widow, and somehow I heard.
“She did, you know,” I said. And then I pulled myself up, turned the latch and opened the right-hand door.
The storm spilled inside, rain pouring, wind whipping, cold blast rushing. It blew the door back wide, caught the left-hand door, flung it open too, knocked me back and down on my knees.
I let the cold rain spray my face. The voices and the shadows grew dim, Petey whined and I opened my eyes.
At first, I saw only darkness. But then lightning flashed, Petey growled and there, on the lawn, was Ebed Merlat.
Ten long strides away, grave clothes wet and whipping, face pale, eyes rotted away, mouth wide open in a frozen lipless scream.
He walked for the open doors. Each time his grave-boot fell, thunder wracked the tortured sky. He lifted his stiff yellow hands and the wind howled and roared anew—and in the thunder, I was sure I heard the beginnings of a long, loud scream.
“All them years in the ground, boy,” said the voices. “Savin’ up a scream.”
He turned his eyeless face upon me, and I am not ashamed to say I rose and ran stumbling away.
Petey herded me with nips and yelps toward the safe-room hall. Rain and wind blew in behind me. That, and that awful thunder that meant Eded Merlat was one step closer to coming home at last.
I bounced off the walls and left blood on every surface, but somehow I made it back to the door. I collapsed in front of it, heard the widow weeping and sobbing behind the iron.
“It’s nearly over,” I said. “Not much longer.”
I don’t know if she heard me. But she heard, as did I, the sound of heavy footsteps treading slowly down the hall.
I tried to rise but couldn’t, and failed to crawl as well. The footsteps sounded louder, sounded nearer, no more accompanied by thunder, but with the loud crunch of grave-dirt upon the polished tiles.
The voices about me rose up, then fell to whispers. Petey stood stiff beside me, wolf growling warning, dead man or no.
A shadow fell over me, and the air—the air grew as cold as the heart of winter, or the bottom of a grave. I closed my eyes and jammed my hands, even my numb left hand, over my ears. I felt the iron door buckle where the dead man laid his hand upon it, but I heard no scream.
Mama’s hex let me hear something else, though. Ebed Merlat stood above me, an iron door and a grave between him and his widow, but I was able to hear some of what passed between them.
“I could not,” she said. “Forgive me, I could not.”
“I know,” spoke the voice I’d heard earlier in the thunder. “It is I who must be forgiven, for asking such a thing.”
“I loved you,” said the widow, and she sobbed and beat the door. “I always loved you.”
“And I loved you,” said the voice. “Forgive me.”
The widow cried. And then the door latch squeaked as it began to turn, as she opened the door to let him in.
“No,” he said. He must have laid hold of the latch, because it groaned and broke. “Goodbye,” he said. And though the widow pushed against the door, it held fast and shut. “I will always love you.”
As he spoke, I felt him turn away. Caught the edge of a sorrow so deep and so vast, it had bridged the gap between life and death. Then he stepped away, and the sorrow turned to rage. And as he walked down the hall his footfalls turned again to peals of thunder.
Voices sounded, upon the stairs. The heirs had found the open doors. Did they hear the footfalls, too?
“Daddy’s home,” I croaked. Petey licked my face. I heard screams down the hall, and felt the thunder swell, and then, though my hands were jammed tight against my ears, I heard Ebed Merlat scream.
All that time in the ground, Mama had said. All that time watching his wife torture herself because she couldn’t kill the man she loved. Watching his sons and his daughter creep and plot and sharpen their blades against this night.
He opened that dead mouth wide, and he screamed, and soon I did too, just to keep the awful wracking sound of it out of my dreams forever. I screamed and I screamed until my voice was gone and the last candle-flame guttered out and then, without warning, so did I.
Chapter Six
Noon found me standing at the Sarge’s grave. Sunlight shone and set the birds to singing, and it felt good on my face and arms.
I leaned with my back on a tall, sad marble angel and kept my eyes on the widow’s urn atop the Sarge’s stone. Orthodox tradition demanded that the Sarge’s widow pass each day for thirty days after the funeral. The Sarge’s friends and family were to keep the urn filled.
It had been empty when I came. I’d picked it up, poured out rainwater and filled it to the brim with the Lady Merlat’s gold.
And after, I stood and I watched. There were those who would rob widows urns, snatching coppers from the elderly, adding insult to grief and loss.
They would do no robbery today.
Twice a priest had passed, dipped his mask. I’d glared, and he’d gone away.
Wise man. I closed my eyes for a moment, let the sun warm my bones and ease my aches.
All about Rannit, hammers rose and fell. Lord Merlat’s storm had left shingles strewn on every street, had torn trees whole from the ground, had sent four barges wallowing up over the docks and onto the muddy banks of the Brown River. This time, for a change, the wealthy had suffered the most—the Hill and Heights had seen the brunt of the storm.
I snorted, opened my eyes. They just thought they’d seen the brunt. But they hadn’t been in House Merlat.
I shook my head, rubbed my left arm, winced when I recalled the widow reaching up and snatching a bloody crossbow bolt from my flesh. I was lucky the wound hadn’t gone septic.
We were all lucky Lord Merlat hadn’t been after the widow.
I’d awakened just after dawn, my head still spinning, weak as a kitten. The House had smelled of fresh air and rain, and bright sunlight shone, further down the hall. A pair of squirrels scampered and fussed in the ballroom. Outside, birds sang.
I’d risen, banged on the safe-room door, been glad to hear Jefrey bellow in reply. It had taken me nearly an hour, one-armed, to wrench the bent door-latch open to let the widow and Jefrey free.
The widow found a chair and sat, shaking and pale and wordless. Jefrey and I left her, crept upstairs. I told him what I’d seen, though not what I’d heard. I don’t think he believed a word of it until he saw the second floor.
Doors smashed, burst into splinters, some of them charred and crumbling, as though struck with a fist formed of lightning. Holes in the walls. Burnt spots on the floor. A long double-edged knife, half the blade melted in a puddle of bright steel just beyond a broken door.
But no bodies. Doors smashed, one after another, as though someone—three murderous children and their two surviving hirelings, for instance—ran from room to room, shutting and barricading each door behind them, watching as each door was shattered and broken. Running and hiding, until at last they passed into a room with no way out, with Ebed Merlat’s thunderous footfalls drawing nearer with each moment.
That last door, too, was shattered. A final shattered door, another empty room. We never found the Merlat children. Never found the men they’d hired. Even the man I’d stabbed in the ballroom was gone.
I never told the widow, but I think that their father gathered his children up and took them with him. I think that if we were to open Ebed Merlat’s grave we would find them all there, broken and bloated in his relentless embrace.
Despite the sun beaming down on me, I pulled my arms across my chest and shivered.
The widow had insisted on calling the Watch. We told everything. But since there were no bodies, we might as well have been putting on a clown-and-king puppet show. In the end, the Watchmen shrugged and scratched their heads and went away.
Jefrey and I decided the Merlat children’s special helpers snuck in somehow with the grocery wagon. The delivery kid went missing the next day, right after someone saw him buying a horse. I wish him luck, down south. He’ll need it.
I stomped my feet, pulled away from my angel, stretched my arms out and winced, but stretched them out anyway. Only an idiot stands in the sun and muses on the dark.
So I looked up. The sky blazed the dark, well-scrubbed blue that you see only after truly vicious storms. The close-cropped grass atop the rolling hills was thick and green, the air smelled cool and clean, and all around oak leaves whispered peacefully in a gentle breeze. “Peace,” said all the gravewards, in the tall plain script of the Church.
“I hope so,” I said aloud to the stones. “I hope so.”
I heard rapid footsteps behind me but did not turn.
“There you are, boy,” said Mama.
I feigned deafness. I wasn’t quite ready to forgive Mama her stunt with the hex, though my curiosity about where she got such a charm was beginning to wear down my need for silence.
Mama came, huffing and puffing, to stand beside me. “Thought you’d be here,” she said, rummaging in the huge, ancient canvas bag that hung at her knees. “Lady Merlat and Master Jefrey came by lookin’ for you.”
I stared ahead.
“The widow was wearin’ a grey dress,” said Mama. “Smilin’, too. Said she wants you to come around for supper, some evening. Jefrey wants to ask you something about a dog.”
I picked out a graveward and decided to count the carved angels that flew about its shaft.
Mama guffawed.
“Thought you might be hungry, waitin’ for your Sergeant’s widow,” she said slyly. “Ham and cheese, ain’t that what you like?” Wax paper rustled. “Lowridge cheese and Pinford ham?”
The smell rose up, and my traitor stomach grumbled in reply.
I made her wait a handful of seconds. Then I reached down and took the sandwich, broke it in two, handed half to Mama.
“Thanks, Mama,” I said. Pride has its place, but so do Eddie’s sandwiches. Mama cackled victoriously.
“You’re welcome,” she replied. She wrapped her half, shoved it back in her bag. I bit and chewed. Mama was silent while I ate.
“You ain’t hearin’ his scream still, are you?” she said when I was done.
“Just in dreams,” I replied. “Not often, anymore.”
“That’s good,” said Mama. “Real good.” She looked out across the long, silent ranks of stones and shook her head. “I reckon you might be thinkin’ it ain’t fair,” she said, still not looking at me. “Poor men stay dead. But you just seen a rich man walk.”
I nodded. I had indeed.
“I saw his face, Mama,” I said. The sun didn’t seem so warm, while I remembered. “It wasn’t his money that brought him back.”
Mama nodded. “Guilt,” she said. “Guilt and rage. He found no peace, did Ebed Merlat. Like as not he never will.”