Beneath the Black Moon (Root Sisters) (18 page)

Stay
calm, stay calm, stay calm
, she urged herself with every
pound of her pulse, but when her numb legs refused to budge and the water
swirled ever higher, there was the strangest moment when she realized that she
might die, and suddenly could not feel her body at all. There was only her mind
racing around and around like a trapped rat.

I
must save myself…

She
grit her teeth and put every ounce of strength into trying to make her legs
move, to lift her feet, to lean forwards or backwards. But while she struggled,
she struggled silently. It was as though if she so much as gasped for breath,
then it would all be real, the cold water and the coming night. The fact that
precious minutes had slipped by and the water was higher, but she was still
standing in that ghastly creek with silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

There
was a wild wind whipping through her hair, and the world seemed to be growing
darker and darker, but perhaps it was her own terror that made everything fade
away, because all she could think was that this was how her mother must have
felt when the carriage house burst into unnatural flames and the devil came to
swallow Solange Johnson whole.

Reason
abandoned her. She splashed and she floundered, she screamed and tugged,
sobbing, at her frozen legs while the water slid up her stomach, sending icy
terror singing through her veins.

"
Help
!"
At first in her horror she could manage scarcely more than a gasp, but when she
drew in a ragged breath and tried again her scream echoed through the forest,
her voice unfamiliar in its panic.

Even
as her cry for help pierced the silence of the forest, there was a movement
under the water. Her heart lurched as something wrapped around each of her
ankles, something that could have been a weed or could have been a hand. Cam
knew what would happen before it did, and tried to scream once more before her
feet were jerked out from under her and she was dragged backwards beneath the
water.

When
the water closed over her chest she could feel the cold as a sharp pain in her
heart. She gasped at the ache and her breath emerged as a stream of bubbles
that shot through the water, up towards the surface, which Cam could barely
make out as a lighter, silvery place above the black water that surrounded her.

It
was hard, so hard not to let any more of her breath escape, and when she tried
to close her lips there was water in her mouth that slid down her throat and
made her chest ache even more. She moved her arms through the water
frantically, but her movements were futile. Somehow, she moved downwards
instead of up, while green, swaying weeds closed over her head. Her hands found
the slimy bottom of the creek, and she was oblivious to the sharp rocks biting
into the flesh of her fingers as she tried to push off of the bottom and force
her way back towards the surface.

 Her
chest was burning for air, for sweet breath, and it felt as though there were a
weight on her, as if her chest would cave in upon itself. She kept her lips
clamped tightly shut, but she was in such agony, and with each movement the
pain grew greater and she grew weaker. Each motion cost her, and every muscle
in her face ached with the effort of keeping her mouth closed when her instinct
urged her to breathe.

She
fell still finally, too weak to do anything but force herself not to open her
mouth. Her vision was all but gone; she had to focus to make out the dark cloud
around her face that had to be her hair, and to feel her body, her numb, broken
body with the corset digging into her cold flesh and her skirt wrapped around
her legs. It didn't feel like her body, it felt like the bloated, lifeless
corpse that it was about to become.

Her
lips twitched, and she felt a bubble of air escape. Dear God, please…

For
a moment, she started to move again, forcing her arms through the water, but
the burst of defiance was soon quelled by the great weight of the water above
her, so much more water than there had ever been in the creek before. The
terror was unbearable, but she could not cry. She wished, as she stared up at
the water above her, that she were brave enough to open her mouth and let the
water slip in and carry her away to her mother, or to whatever else waited.
This agony was futile and unbearable, but still, she feared death too much to
let go of that last breath, to surrender to the inevitable.

Death
would have to pry her last gasp from her, Cam thought, as the green weeds
danced around her head. Another bubble escaped from her lips, and she longed to
be that bubble, soaring through the water toward the surface. She wondered how
soon she would lose consciousness and if swallowing mouthfuls of water would be
more painful than holding her breath was. Who would find her body when—

The
thought was too painful to finish.
Please don't let it be Helen
, she
thought, compelled to protect her little sister even as she drowned. Her eyes were
closing, and she thought that she saw another bubble darting upwards as her eyelids
sealed against her cheeks.

Mama,
I don't want to die.

Then
her lips parted and the water rushed in.

***

Diana
was sitting at her writing desk composing a letter to one of her cousins when
the wind rose, rushing against the house and tossing dust and fallen leaves
against her window. The sound of grit hitting the pane made her look up. Though
the lawn looked much as it ever had, she saw something in the scattered magnolia
petals and the sway of the dogwoods that made her frown, not from annoyance,
but from a strange, creeping fear.

All
seemed well downstairs. She could hear her father and aunt talking, their
voices quiet and their tones composed,  but when she stood up for a better view
of the lawn she caught sight of her father's hound standing beneath the cherry
tree, staring into the forest, ears lifted and nose quivering. As the next gust
of wind came, he barked once, and then did something that Diana had never seen before.
He turned and crawled under the porch, belly to the ground and tail between his
legs.

***

Out
in the kitchen, Caro heard the wind kick up just as she was taking a tray of
biscuits out of the oven. "Listen to those horses," she said to
Daphne. They were going wild out in the paddock, neighing and shaking their
manes as though a storm was coming. She shuddered, then set the tray down and
watched with surprise as goose pimples popped up on her skin. "Now why
would I be getting gooseflesh? It's near to boiling in this kitchen."

"I
have it too," Daphne remarked, and Caro looked up to see the old woman
inspecting the wrinkled skin of her forearm.

"I
guess we're getting as skittish as the horses," Caro said, scraping some
chopped carrots into the bubbling soup which steamed fragrantly away on the
stove.

"Do
you feel that?" Daphne asked, standing suddenly.

There
was a moment of silence, broken only by the breath of the wind and the panic of
the horses.

Caro
opened her mouth to ask what exactly she was supposed to be feeling, and then
she did feel it: a shiver over her skin, a whisper of malevolence.

"Is
that…" Daphne began.

"Conjure,"
Caro said, "got to be." Powerful work, and not good conjure either.

"Where
is it coming from?" Daphne asked, abandoning the charm bag that she had
been sewing and standing at the window. "Out in the forest, I think,"
she answered her own question.

"Well,
at least it's not meant for one of us, then," Caro said, reaching for the
ladle.

"But,
Caro," Daphne said, turning from the window with her eyes wide. "I
don't think Cam's home yet."

***

Helen
was in the drawing room with her father and Aunt Beth, finishing her diary
entry for the day, when she began to feel a little off. Her handwriting had
been shaky for the last paragraph because her fingers were trembling, and for
some reason that she couldn't explain, her heart was racing. At least she
wasn't the only one who was unsettled. There seemed to be a storm coming, and
it had certainly made all of the animals jumpy. Her canary was fluttering
frantically around its cage, and her father's hound had vanished. Helen picked
up her pen and tried to finish her description of the evening sky, but she had
to set it down again almost immediately. She felt wound far too tightly to even
think about writing, and for the first time in years, Helen closed her diary
without finishing her entry. Her father and Aunt Beth seemed perfectly calm as
they discussed cotton prices, but Helen felt so nervous that when there was a
roll of thunder she nearly jumped out of her seat.

A
sound from upstairs followed in the wake of the thunder, and her father and
Aunt both paused as there were quick, heavy footsteps on the stairs. Aunt Beth
frowned deeply as Diana darted through the room and into the foyer, leaving the
house so quickly that she almost caught her black skirt in the front door.

"Where
does she think she's going when there's a storm coming?" Helen's father asked
sourly as there was another boom of thunder.

Helen
walked to the window and watched her sister vanish around the corner of the
house. "I think she's going to the kitchen."

"Oh
dear," Aunt Beth said, "I hope she doesn't start spending all of her
time there now. Having one niece a permanent fixture in the kitchen is enough
for me."

Helen's
father frowned. "Speaking of which, where is Cam?"

The
wind struck the surface of the horribly swollen creek again and again, whipping
it into a frenzy of foam and spray. Far beneath the surface, Cam's battered
body remained undisturbed by the currents and untouched by the wind. On her
still face was a pained expression, an echo of the agony of drowning, and the
golden glow of her skin was being slowly overcome by a pale blue pallor. Her
skirts floated in the water and her hair drifted about her face, but everything
else, her head, her hands, her bare feet, hung lifeless.

Having
served its purpose, the creek began to recede. It was impossible to say where
all of the excess water went, only that within minutes it was gone. But for the
body that floated beneath the surface, the creek looked as harmless as it had
when Cam had stepped into it not ten minutes earlier. The sky changed colors
swiftly as the twilight progressed, but for Cam there was only blackness and
the cold, which had spread within her veins since her heart had slowed.

Suddenly,
out of the cold darkness came hands. Large hands that caught Cam's arms in a
fierce grip and lifted her roughly from the water. Arms that cradled her,
gently at first, then roughly when she remained unresponsive.

“Cam?
Cam?” Brent’s voice was hoarse. He sloshed out of the creek, holding her
tightly against his chest and calling her name. She was limp and cold as ice
against him, almost as frozen as the fear that consumed him. He laid her down
on the riverbank and scraped her hair out of her face, opened her mouth and
pressed down on her stomach, again and again. The movements were mechanical, as
he carried out the process that he had been taught as a child, but he could
feel the futility of it. Cam was whiter than he had ever seen her, as if the
vitality had been sucked out of her, leaving only a shell. He leaned down to
breathe into her mouth and then kept pressing on her abdomen, mechanically,
violently going through the movements even though he could feel her absence. It
was like reaching out to grab someone’s hand and missing. He was touching her
body but he couldn’t feel her.

“Cam?
Cam? Please…” His voice was broken, as shattered as a dropped mirror. He had
missed her by just a few precious minutes, which was practically the length of
time that he’d known her, and yet the thought of losing her was undoubtedly the
most nightmarish fear he had ever faced. Unbearable. Unthinkable.

“Come
back Cam.
Cam
.”

***

Cam

The
word was a whisper in Cam’s mind. The fog was parting and she knew her name,
but not who spoke it.

Cam

The
word was raw with feeling, and Cam could think of only one person.

Mother?

But
no, it wasn’t her mother.

It
couldn’t be, because suddenly Cam knew that she wasn’t dead. Pain hovered on
the edge of her consciousness, waiting for her to wake up so that it could
consume her. She wasn’t yet in the afterlife, and it was one of the living who
called her. Someone who was so connected to her that he could draw her back,
even from the darkest corner of her mind.

Brent

Of
course it was Brent.

She
had cried out for someone to help her, and he had come. Now he called her back
to his side, and Cam could not deny him.

Cam!

He
sounded as if he were in terrible pain, and Cam’s heart wept for him, even as
she tried to beat back the blackness that kept her prisoner.

I’m
coming…