Darkness Demands Part 18

Above her darkness swirled in twisting vortices. Whirlpools of shadows veined with purple. They reached out to her, enveloping her. And even those shadows possessed wide, staring eyes that bore into her as she walked by.

Then Elizabeth giggled.

"What's so funny?" Whiteface asked.

"I know what this is now."

"What is it?"

"It's a dream," Elizabeth told her. "I'm dreaming."

A slit appeared in the skin beneath the twin holes in the girl's face. "You're dreaming?" The slit became a smile. "Yes. That's exactly what it is, Elizabeth. You're lying in bed at home with your bear in the red jacket and you're dreaming your head off."

Elizabeth saw the smile was only as real as the eyes. And the eyes were only holes in a hard, white face.

"Come on, slow coach," sang the girl. "Come and see where I live."

"You live in dream land." Elizabeth allowed the girl to take her hand. It squeezed tight as a metal band around hers. "You live in dreamland and use dream telephones and sit on dream chairs."

"Of course we do, and I'll show youa but hurry!"

This was a dream, Elizabeth told herself. She couldn't be harmed. They walked quickly through the darkness, sometimes half running as if late for a bus. Whiteface urged her on.

The main road that skirted the village was a silent, dead river of tar this time of night. No traffic ran now. But would it in a dream anyway? Any second whales might break through the blacktop to blow vapor into the air.

This was a dream, she insisted. Anything could happen. Anythinga The girl moved faster, pulling Elizabeth along. The hand around hers shrunk into a tight iron ring. Whiteface looked eagerly forward, the eyes fathomless pits.

The Necropolis, we're going to the Necropolisa Elizabeth looked up at the hill swathed in dark, lumbering trees. Now they moved faster, Whiteface even more eager.

"Nearly there, Elizabeth. We're nearly there!"

An iron fence loomed. Whiteface rushed toward the gap in the palings. Beyond, there were the graves, bursting like scabs from the gra.s.s. A stone Christ with no face towered over the nettles, His hands reaching out at Elizabeth, fingers hooked into lethal claws.

Suddenly Elizabeth was appalled. "This is a dreama this is a dream!" Only now a clear note of uncertainty sounded in her voice.

"Of course it's a dream, Elizabeth. Come with me. Hold my hand. I'll stop you from being frightened."

"Where are we going?"

"To where I live."

"I-I've seen enough. I want to goa h-home." Her eyes streamed, as a dark and terrible fear squirmed into her stomach and forced its scaly pa.s.sage up through her throat. "I want to go h-h-home!"

"But it's only a dream, Elizabeth." The black slit in the girl's face widened, aping a smile. But there were no lips. No tongue behind it. Only darkness that echoed the darkness where the eyes should be.

"Come and get some chocolate with me, Elizabeth. I know where there's plenty. People came and left it at little Jess Bowen's grave."

They were running through the cemetery by now. Elizabeth didn't have the strength to resist. The iron grip on her hand, so bone achingly tight, did not slip; she was dragged between the ma.s.sed ranks of tombstones.

"We'll get you a lovely big piece of chocolate, Elizabeth." Then Whiteface added in a voice that sounded closer to thunder on a winter's night, "Yum. Yum."

Gravestones loomed out at her; great, dark guardians of the underworld. Sometimes stones loomed close to her face. In a daze she found herself reading s.n.a.t.c.hes of verse: Weep not for me parents dear Weep not for me in vain I am not dead but sleepeth herea Breathless, with a st.i.tch digging deep into her side, she moved between evil-looking stone buildings with iron doors from where wordless mumbling pleaded for release. She shook her head trying not to hear; they grew louder and she shut her eyes. No, no, no noa No!

When she opened her eyes, she found herself standing by a grave with a statue of a weeping boy. Her breath came in ragged sobs.

The white-faced girl bent down to pick up one of the chocolate bars that lay there. She didn't seem to hold it in her handsa instead, she gripped it between two strangely bunched fists. "Here's a beautiful bar of chocolate, Elizabeth. Here. Hold it tight."

"I-I want to go home."

"But you are home, Elizabeth, dear."

"I'm dreaminga I'm dreaminga"

"If you wish."

"Please, I want to wake up."

"No! You're coming with me." The hand gripped Elizabeth's wrist. A grip so crus.h.i.+ng that Elizabeth cried out. Then she was being dragged forward. She lost her balance. The stone slab of Jess Bowen's grave rushed up at her. She flinched, expecting a blow against her face.

But there was no blow. Even though she fell onto the slab she did not strike it. In fact, she did not stop-she fell right through.

And still the hand pulled her cruelly down. Now she fell through the earth as if she'd fallen into a lake. Its surface crust rose above her head. Everywhere the roots of trees snaked through the soil like arteries through flesh. Meanwhile, the soil formed a pale brown mist all around her. She was floating through it, being dragged by the white-faced girl.

They were divers swimming through a subterranean ocean. While at either side of them, hanging like some grim-looking fruit in Jell-O, were narrow boxes.

Some were intact. Some were so rotted they collapsed under the weight of dirt bearing down from above. From one, a skeleton hand had forced its way through a gap between lid and coffin. He'd been buried alive a hundred years ago to scream and claw at his tiny wooden prison before he choked on his own poison air. Now, eyeless bone stared from the crevice as she pa.s.sed by.

Then came multiple family burials; coffin stood on coffin until they formed weird underground totems that towered gloomily in brown mist.

"Welcome to my home, Elizabeth."

"Let me go!"

At the sound of her cry, bones in their coffins stirred restlessly. From infant burials came the wail of babies, left neglected in the cold and dark for all these years. Hungry, pitiful cries sent cataracts of ice water flooding her veins.

Suddenly a thunderous pounding came from a coffin bound in chains.

"OUT! LET ME OUT!".

Elizabeth's heart rolled in horror. From everywhere came the sound of bone pounding on wood, as skeleton fists fought their way out.

"Please! I want to go home!"

"Calm down, Elizabeth." Words oozed from the slit in the white face. "You'll drop the chocolate."

"I don't want the chocolate. I want to go home!"

"Elizabeth, stay near to me. It's not safe to go too close to them. They get angrya Elizabeth, keep away from them!"

Elizabeth managed to slip from the girl's crus.h.i.+ng grip. She swam through the brown, swirling mist, trying to escape. And as she struggled back toward the crust of the surface that sprouted a fuzz of gra.s.s and nettle roots she blundered against a great block of a coffin that rested like a fallen monolith on the shattered bones of pauper burials.

With a roar the lid opened, the sound cras.h.i.+ng against her head. Two pus-wet eyes glared into hers from the darkness within the tomb. Then arms swam at her from the gloom, fingers clenching like the mouths of serpents eager to bite the life out of her.

Screaming, she tried to pull away.

It did no good. Hands gripped her by the shoulders.

The white-faced girl sounded far away now. "I warned youa I told you not to get too close!"

Elizabeth screamed again. The grip on her shoulders was agonizing. She felt herself being drawn toward the rupture in the coffin. Inside was an abyss as dark as the far side of the moon. Still she struggled, pleading for help. But there was no help to be had. She looked down to see a forehead of broad bones that had all the hard white gleam of dinner plates. Now the blazing eyes had become part of a face.

Or what pa.s.sed for a face after years undergrounda Teeth swathed in sick looking moss. A mouth running with worms slowly opening. Within that a black tongue, rotted and slippery as leech flesh.

She wanted to close her eyesa she wanted to die right thena die and see nothing morea but her eyes had locked widea they fixed onto the eyes in front of hers that blazed with a cold and dreadful triumph. She could no longer scream. But she would feel everything that happened next.

Cold hands drew her into the coffin. It engulfed her like a cave. And at last she was alone with its occupant.

6.

"Christ, Elizabeth. What're you making that noise for?"

She squinted up against the light. Paul stood looking down at her. He shook his head. "I can even hear you in my bedroom."

She sat up with a stuttering kind of cry. Her heart thudded.

"Elizabeth? Are you all right? Do you feel sick?"

Now her brother's face changed from irritation at being wakened, at what to him must have been an unG.o.dly hour, to one of concern.

She was shaking. When she did try to speak her throat felt as if it had wound itself up into knots.

"Hey, Lizzie." Her brother's voice was gentle. "Take it easy." He rubbed her back through her pajamas. "You've had a bad dream, haven't you?"

The words still refused to pa.s.s through her throat. All she managed was a nod.

"I'll get you a drink of water," he told her, smiling. "You lay back and relax. Big bro's taking care of business now."

She managed a smile in return. What's more, the knots were leaving her throat.

His smile broadened. "And don't worry about bad dreams. They can't hurt you-remember that."

Paul had started to walk away when he noticed something by the bed. He picked it up. "Hey, Liz, you don't want to go leaving this on the floor, otherwise Sam'll end up having it." He held up a dark slab and whistled. "Now that's a formidable looking bar of chocolate, Elizabeth. Where did you get it from?"

CHAPTER 13.

1.

"I need green."

"Uha"

"I want to finish a picture for Sam's birthday card and I haven't got a green for the gra.s.s. Paul?"

"Hmm?"

"Wake up. I want a green. Can I get one?"

"Uha what ever."

Paul lay with the sheet over his head. He'd returned to bed after being wakened early by his sister's cry. Luckily he'd gone straight back to sleep and had dreamt about Mirandaa Jesus H., would he ever be able to get the girl out of his head? It was as if her face had been tattooed in fire across his brain. All he could do was think about her. Now she'd be in the car with her family. Heading south for London. She'd have risen early to showera oh, Christa Elizabeth, get out of my bedrooma I want to imagine Miranda Bloom working away at that smooth skin with the soapa "Which compartment are your pens in?"

"I don't know, Elizabeth," he murmured, not wanting to be fully awake. "Just look. You'll find them."

"Have you got a green one?"

"Yes."

"I can't find thema are you sure they're in here? What's this, then? Bubble gum?"

"G.o.d knows, Elizabetha it's earlya I wanna sleep."

"I've not seen any gum like this before."

Find the pen and go. Miranda's in the showera it's just getting interesting.

"Can I have a piece?"

"Piece of what?"

"Gum."

"I haven't got any."