Geek Fantasy Novel (25 page)

“Hi, Annabel,” Beatrice said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”

“Oh, I know!” Annabel said gaily. “I was what, six? I grew up
so much
between then and dying.”

“You’ve been on my mind so much. I wish I could have seen you, but Father …”

“Yes, yes, yes, your dad wouldn’t let you see us. Well, it’s my fault for having the first wife for my mum!” Annabel broke out into laughter, in which she was soon joined by her mother. Their eyes gleamed.

Ralph’s throat was dry. This was all too weird.

Beatrice spoke slowly: “I feel like in some ways you never left us. Either of you. Gert won’t let him talk about it, but I feel like you’re always on Father’s mind.”

“Why, Beatrice!” Annabelle said. “You’ve only just met up with us, after years apart. Last time you saw me, I was in a coffin! Do you have to be so serious? Let’s have some
fun
.”

“Some fun?” Beatrice asked solemnly.

“Ralph,” Annabelle said, resolutely chipper. “Tell us about yourself.”

Seeing Beatrice’s sad bewilderment, Ralph did his best to steer the conversation into safer territory while she sorted through her feelings. He told them about his high school, his favorite teachers, then barreled into the children’s three wishes, how it felt being the last survivor of the Snow Queen’s Flood, the stench of baleen.

“So you’re not even supposed to be here!” interrupted Annabel, taking Ralph’s arm in her palm. “No wonder you’re still bright!”

“But you’re colorless,” Annabelle said to Beatrice. “Does that mean you’ve died, my child? Have you come to stay with us?”

Beatrice nodded.

“Why did you choose to come to Purgatory forever?” Ralph asked Beatrice.

“I was tired of stuff. Lots of stuff. Like being so overlooked.”

“Beatrice,” Annabelle said. “You have a beautiful soul.”

Beatrice wrinkled her nose. “I’m shy, Mum, that’s what you mean, I’m shy.”

“What’s that saying, ‘silence is the greatest wisdom'?”

“That was totally Gandhi,” Annabel offered.

“Mum,” said Beatrice. “Poetlike and beautiful is admired, poetlike and plain is ignored. No one gives a lick for what I think. I wish … I used to wish all the time that I could escape Gert and Dad and run to your flat, to live with you and Annabel. But I didn’t know where you lived. And when I finally got Dad to tell me, you were already dead, both of you.”

“Oh my God,” Annabel said, a hand over her mouth. “So you bumped yourself off? You really
are
intense!
We’re
not even that serious, and we’re
ghosts.”

“Come here,” Annabelle said. Before she had even drawn Beatrice to her bosom, they both had begun to sob.

Annabel rolled her eyes and turned flirtatiously to Ralph. “They’re going to be wallowing for a while. Do you want me to give you a tour? There’s some really fun stuff around here.”

“No thanks,” Ralph said. “I’d rather stick around Beatrice, if that’s okay.”

“Sure, whatever,” Annabel said.

Ralph positioned himself at one end of the stone galleon, as far as he could get from any of the invisible servants. He watched Beatrice murmur to her mother, her mother rock her in return. Annabel hovered nearby, biting her nails and pretending not to watch.

Beatrice had chosen to come to the Underworld; Ralph knew it wasn’t really his place to talk her into finding a way to leave. And even if he did try, how could he undo her
death
? At the same time, he was certain no good could come of Beatrice fixating on the loss of her mother and sister. She could spend an eternity down here, first crying over her Annabel and Annabelle, later coming to mourn Cecil and Daphne and everything she had lost in her old life.

“How did you wind up here?” Ralph asked Annabel.

“Me? Oh, it’s silly, really. Misadministered tetanus shot.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope, it’s true!”

“And your mom?”

“She was in a coma. And she got in that coma the same way Beatrice got here. She chose to.”

“Oh,” Ralph said. He rested his head in his hands.

Then something occurred to him. He darted to his feet and pulled out his cell phone.

“Oh my God,” Annabel said. “Phones have gotten so
cool.
Can I see?”

He flipped it open and checked the time. 11:30 — only half an hour until Beatrice permanently slipped over to the undead.

He jostled Beatrice, who was murmuring lost words into her mother’s ear. “Beatrice,” he said. “You only have half an hour left.”

She peered at him blearily. “So? This is where I want to be.”

“I’m sorry,” Annabelle said to Ralph, “but this really doesn’t involve you. My daughter is staying here, with me.”

Ralph felt a tug on his arm and saw Annabel beside him, fluttering her long lashes. “You could join us,” she said. “It’s simple enough to do.”

Yikes.

“How do you know there’s only half an hour left?” Annabelle asked.

“It’s nearly midnight,” Beatrice said dreamily to her mother.

“Nearly midnight!” exclaimed Annabelle. “The boundary race is at midnight!”

“So?” Beatrice asked.

“I am the queen, so I am the undead rider,” said the ghostly Annabelle.

“I’ll come with you,” Beatrice said.

“As you wish, my love. You” — she pointed to Ralph — “have no choice but to follow. Unless you want to stay here with the phantoms.”

Annabel sealed the door to the stone galleon. “To the surface!” she cried. Ralph watched the candles rearrange themselves as the invisible servants took their positions around the ship. The vessel began to ascend through the solid rock.

It is difficult to gauge one’s progress in a ship that has neither deck nor portals. Ralph presumed they were heading upward only because the ship pitched back, strongly enough to knock him to the floor. The rock walls of the vessel moved and slid, accelerating until they became a flowing mass of stone streaming around the open space. A slight breeze sifted the close air of the hold, and as the ship jerked and tossed through various densities of rock, its four occupants made good use of the cushion pile in its center.

Eventually the stone began to lighten in color. Ralph was able to see, in the wall’s cross-section, roots and small creatures that had made their homes in the soil. At one point a disoriented undead mole dropped into the hold and was promptly hurled back out by one of the invisible servants. As the gravel turned to silt, and the silt to sandy soil, the ship came to the surface outside the Soon-to-be-Dead city. As it had only been a void in the rock, once it arrived in the open air there was nothing left of the stone galleon but a pile of cushions in the middle of the ashen grass.

Annabelle rose to her feet and snapped imperiously. Suddenly she was clad in a jet-black gown, a crown nestled in her large hair, a regal version of her previous self. “Horse!” she commanded.

An undead engineer emerged from within the walls of the Soon-to-be-Dead city, coaxing a horse skeleton clad in battle armor. “The metal plates will slow it down,” Annabelle said. “Remove them.”

The engineer — a tall and awkwardly-composed skeleton who wore a monocle over one eye socket — pressed his finger bones to his skull in dismay. The armor had taken weeks to prepare: It was filigreed and etched with meticulously rendered scenes culled from undead cultural history. But at Annabelle’s command the invisible servants set to work removing the metal-work masterpieces from the horse. It whinnied, a hollow wheeze.

Annabelle threw herself over its back.

“Mother,” Beatrice said. “Could you call me a horse, too, so I can ride behind you?”

Annabelle nodded. She snapped her fingers and the engineer called forward another ornamented undead horse. Beatrice mounted it and looked at Ralph. “Coming?”

Ralph got on behind her.

“Annabel?” Beatrice asked.

Annabel shook her head, bit her lip, and gave a perky wave good-bye.

“The time!” Annabelle demanded. “The boundary race must commence at precisely twelve!”

Ralph pulled out his phone and checked. “11:59, no … midnight!”

Annabelle cried out, and the horses sped off toward the land of the Recently-Living.

Training undead horses is immensely difficult. When irritated they tend to maul their grooms, for one thing. But that’s not even the worst of it.

The cornerstone of breaking in a living horse is food — sugar cubes,
carrots, the like — and undead horses simply can’t eat. It’s comical when they try, as the food promptly slips between their ribs and lands on the ground. So the task of the Soon-to-be-Dead trainers — engineering a horse faster than any the Recently-Living could produce — was tricky. For one thing, skeletal horses tend to shed chunks of flesh when they gallop. Even cantering results in a catastrophic loss of cartilage. At about thirty miles per hour, skeletal horses’ skulls lob off, ending the whole process right there. More zombielike horses don’t fare much better. Despite its many striking qualities, rotting flesh is not aerodynamic. And as for their gait — a shuffling gallop is pleasing to neither rider nor spectator.

For these reasons and more, the undead engineers developed an almost-cyborg horse, an alloy of titanium and bone that galloped but lacked such horsely amenities as a tail and personality. The Soon-to-be-Dead creation was also, Ralph quickly noticed, severely lacking in comforts. The slap of his butt on its alloy rump was more rodeo than derby.

Annabelle’s horse shot off as befitted a titanium-bone bullet, but Ralph and Beatrice’s horse, weighed down in battle armor and carrying two passengers, struck off at half-pace. They easily tracked the scrambled evidence of Annabelle’s passing — torn branches, ripped thickets — as they cantered through the underworld. Shadows ceased their bustling to watch them as they proceeded to the middle territory.

As they traveled, Ralph watched Beatrice closely, to see if anything changed when she became fully undead. But, so far at least, she seemed the same.

When they reached the clearing, they found no one there. “Look,” Beatrice said, pointing at the far side. Ralph followed her finger and saw more sundered evidence of Annabelle’s passage.

“Wow,” he said, “she’s rocking it. Shout-out to the undead.”

They trotted by the rotten table and followed Annabelle’s course. Even the most muddled tracker could follow the ice crystals the undead horse drooled in a steaming path through the underbrush. Once they had returned to the more colorful grays, it wasn’t long before they reached the fortifications of the Recently-Living city.

Annabelle had dismounted from her horse and was standing breathless next to the slate wall, both hands touching the surface, as if it were home base in a high-stakes game of tag.

“What happened? Where’s the other rider?” Ralph asked her, shuddering. Annabelle was far more ghostly now, a luminous horror in the true midnight of the Recently-Living land.

“He did not ride in time!” Annabelle cried out. Or, more accurately, wailed out, as proper ghosts do. “Lord Gid has failed! Let this be my final revenge.” She raised her voice even higher. “Let it be known that all open land is now in the hands of the Soon-to-be-Dead! Stay in your pathetic city, Recently-Living; you will never again roam freely.”

Somewhere from within the city: “What was that?”

From farther: “Dunno. Some ghost, I think.”

“What’s she ruckusing about?”

“… think they’ve conquered all the land, or somesuch.”

“Whatever.”

Annabelle let out a bloodcurdling banshee scream.

To which, from a long distance, came a responding shout that was unmistakably Gideon’s.

Annabelle, who had been too occupied with her own screeching to hear properly, whirled around. “What was that?”

“It was Father,” Beatrice said softly.

“Giddy? What did he say?”

“I don’t know. He yelled. He didn’t say anything.”

“It was a shout. A victory shout, from the sounds of it,” Ralph offered cautiously. “What is your
dad
doing here?”

Beatrice shrugged.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Annabelle said. “I won. What in the world would he have to be bloody victorious about?”

“Might there be more than one way to get to the Soon-to-be-Dead city?” Ralph suggested.

And it was true. After leaving the city of the Recently-Living, Gideon had passed along a forest lane, then a rocky mountain path, then a gravel perimeter to a skating lake, then a crystal canyon bridge, then
under
the rope bridge in a wood canopy, then through an underground tunnel. They had missed each other entirely.

“This is simply ridiculous. I’ve won,” said Annabelle.

“But you can see that maybe Father could make the argument that
he’s
won,” Beatrice said politely.

Annabelle snarled at Beatrice and made as if to zap her, which was an extraordinarily alarming sight for a serious-minded girl who may or may not be fully undead and who was just reintroduced to her dead mother. She burst out in tears.

“Oh, I wasn’t really going to strike you,” Annabelle said crossly. “This is so frustrating, that’s all. I’m beside myself.” She seemed to calm down, then suddenly turned extraordinarily bright and screeched at such decibels that she knocked over Ralph, the crying Beatrice, and a nest of dead magpies, who rose squawking into the air. “Where are you, Gideon?” Annabelle called.

Gideon yelled something back from far away but, since he didn’t share Annabelle’s supernatural screeching abilities, whatever he said was
unintelligible. Annabelle, Beatrice, and Ralph stared at each other, waiting for one of them to translate. When none of them did, Ralph spoke: “Do you think your dad still has his phone?”

Beatrice shrugged. Ralph pulled out his own phone and waited while it dialed — he was low on battery, and hadn’t brought his charger. Even in Purgatory, Gideon must have screened his call, because he went to voicemail. Ralph left a message.

Gideon soon called back. “Ralph? What a surprise!”

Ralph put a hand over his free ear and smiled awkwardly into the phone. “Yes, well, I’m here with your first wife, and your daughter … well, their dead incarnations, anyway, and we were supposed to meet up with you and determine the boundaries between the Recently-Living and the Soon-to-be-Dead cities. But I guess we missed you.”