Thornghost (7 page)

P
lease don't come back,
Uncle Anders had said.
Please don't be angry.

Secret eased onto the chapel floor above. She moved so silently, but the boards creaked beneath her paws, loud enough to drown out Niklas's heartbeat. “Cub? What is wrong?”

He had to force the words out of his mouth. “I found my mother. Or not her, but her statue.”

The floor creaked again, and Secret's front paws stepped gingerly down the ladder, letting her dip her head just low enough to look into the crypt. She watched him stand there with the lantern, then said, “I can see how you're her cub.”

“You can?” Niklas had studied every photo of his mother's face, looking for signs of himself, and found none.

“Not when you're the boy of the farm, running around
with your friend. But when you walk the woods alone. When no one is watching.”

“You mean no one except Secret, the stalker lynx,” Niklas said, but the joke didn't sit right. He didn't want to look like this statue, all worried and lost.

The statue dripped with water, which Niklas guessed came from Uncle Anders's bucket. It had washed away the dust, bringing out the colors in her eyes and lips, before gathering in a puddle on the floor. Her eyelashes still carried drops.

“Uncle Anders keeps all my mother's things clean,” Niklas said. “But I don't think he's been doing it here, at least not until tonight. All the other statues are grimy, and there's still dirt in some of the folds of her cloak, see?”

Secret sneezed in the dusty air and pulled back up through the hatch. But she hovered near the entrance. “Then why start now?”

“I don't know.” Niklas bit his lip. “But he plays his violin, which he hasn't touched since she died. He told me he hears things . . . Maybe the magic taint is affecting him, too.”

He couldn't bear to meet the dead eyes of the statue anymore, so he turned and walked around the cellar. In the corner by the ladder, there was a piece of tarp that hadn't been fastened to a bird statue. He pulled it aside and found a casket.

“You've been right all along, Secret,” he snorted. “I
am
stupid.”

He had always assumed the jar of acorns he and Lin had found in the loft must have belonged to Grandma Alma, since it was tucked behind her fishing gear. But the arm that had been carved on the casket lid was definitely Erika's handiwork, and it was definitely a troll. The troll hunt had been her game.

It seemed he and his mother were more alike than even Grandma Alma had guessed.

The troll's claw stuck out between the knuckles, poking up from the lid, and the arm bore another one of the brutal marks, a four-pointed star. There was a finicky latch of moving parts, but the wood had bent and Niklas had to use force to get the lid off. A gust of bitter almonds stung his nose. This casket had not been opened for a long time. He lifted the contents carefully out onto the floor, describing them to Secret. There were carving tools, small pots of paint that had long since dried out, and a metal flask with a label he had seen before.

“Troll's bane.” He unscrewed the flask and tipped it gently. A fine powder poured out. He grimaced. “Or it used to be. It's turned to dust.”

Don't think about turning to dust,
he reminded himself
. Not here.
He screwed the lid back on. “I guess it's better than nothing.”

Next he found a leather-bound notebook. The first page said
Book of Troll Runes.

Niklas leafed through it with shivering fingers. No
wonder he couldn't remember inventing magic for the trolls. He hadn't, and neither had Lin. It was Erika's doing.

“My mother didn't much mind being creepy,” he told Secret. “Listen to this: ‘All troll magic comes from pain. They carve their runes in living things, in skin and bones and teeth.'”

Each page had an illustration of a troll rune with crude lines and sharp angles, and a title. “I found the one from the oak tree rock.” He held a page with a jagged three-line mark to the lantern light. “It means
burn
. And here's the divided rectangle with one black and one blank section.”

“What does that mean?”

“
Break
.” Niklas grimaced. “Or destroy. Let's hope it doesn't work.”

The last page did not describe a rune. It was a brief note, almost like a journal entry. The ink strokes were hard.

I have to stop.

Two horses dead at Sorrowdeep, both slashed and rune-marked. If not for the troll hunt, none of this would have happened.

Every night I hear Sebastifer. Sometimes he barks. Other times he howls. Twice I've heard him whimper like he is giving up.

Anders says it's not real. But the nightmares erase the lines between truth and story, and I can't see them anymore. I only see the troll
witch and the cage and the black water rising up to drown me.

Anders says I shouldn't talk like that. Maybe he's right. But I also think I'm right that my games are dangerous. I'm dangerous. So I'm going to lock this in the box and I'm going to stop.

The Knight of Thorns
The Ghost of Thorns

Erika Summerhill

Niklas closed his eyes. Mr. Molyk had talked about another wave of killings twenty-five years ago. The summer his mother was twelve. Two horses had died at Sorrowdeep that year, and according to this, his mother had been convinced she was to blame. That she was dangerous.

Maybe Niklas was dangerous, too.

“Cub.”

Niklas's hair stood on end. Secret had silently come halfway down the ladder, and from the flat edge in her voice, he knew something was very wrong.

He made himself open his eyes, but he couldn't believe them.

The statue was lowering her arms. A moment ago they had been stretched out in front of her, fingers flexed and crooked. But now they were sinking slowly toward the floor, making a faint scraping noise as they came to rest against her thighs.

Please don't come back.

Niklas's lungs seemed empty of air. “Mom?”

“Careful.” Secret shifted uneasily on the ladder.

But other than the arms, Niklas could see no change. He stepped just within reach of the statue, leaned forward and touched her cheek. It felt hard and unalive. Now he noticed the lines where her arms met her shoulders. They were hinged. The water had probably loosened them. “It's okay,” he said. “She's not alive, she just . . .”

Wait.

On the statue's chest, which had been hidden in the shadows between her arms, something blinked in the lantern light. A medallion. It was carved with the same thorn that had marked the loose flagstone in the nightmare castle, and like the flagstone, it could be twisted. With a click, wood sprang back against his hand to reveal a dog under the lid. Niklas pressed it. To the left and below the medallion a concealed door swung open where the statue's heart should be.

“There is something wedged inside,” he said.

Didn't the Thornghost song say something about a key locked inside a heart?

But it wasn't a key. Instead his fingers found a long, thin object. He eased it out.

A twig.

He held it up to the lantern. The twig was still flexible, or he wouldn't have been able to pry it out, but it seemed
shrunken like cured meat. Three curved thorns stuck out from the black bark. “It's a briar.”

Secret's nose wrinkled. “It smells like old blood.”

“Oh?” Niklas tested the thorn with the tip of his finger. Sharp enough to draw blood without even pushing. “I guess that explains it.”

“Why go through all this trouble to hide a twig?”

“I don't think it was meant to be found. Remember, she wanted everything about her to be forgotten.”

“That's what I mean. Why put it down here?”

“I don't know.” Niklas put the twig in his satchel along with the notebook and the acorn flask. “But she must have hidden the twig extra well for a reason.”

A desperate, high-pitched screech cut the air. It came from the direction of the yard, and for a moment, Niklas thought the border had been breached. He turned to Secret. “Is it the trolls?”

Secret shook her head. “It's the little fat cat. He's in trouble.”

T
obis had scratched his way into the elm tree and clung to a high branch. His entire fur stood on end, but from the hard swishes of his tail, he didn't look too injured.

Niklas and Secret huddled below the barn bridge. While they were in the crypt, night had come to the farm. A fat moon hung between the mountain peaks. “Tobis,” Niklas called softly, but as soon as he spoke, the cat gave a loud, warning yowl.

“He won't come down as long as I'm around,” Secret said. “But I don't think I'm the reason he's up there. Something is going on here. I hear the horse inside the barn, too. She's scared.”

She nodded at the main house. There were no lamps lit, and the front door yawned wide. “Does your uncle usually leave the door open like that?”

“Never,” Niklas said. “It lets in flies.” He looked around,
found a milk churn sitting on the bridge. “I have to make sure he's okay. You keep watch. If you need to warn me, knock down the milk churn.”

• • •

T
he door to the bird room stood ajar, letting out a slim wedge of blue. Niklas walked slowly to the doorway. Moonlight shimmered across the walls. Outside the east window, the tower of his mother's castle poked up like a tusk. “Hello?” Niklas took a step into the room so he could see all the corners. “Is someone here?”

At first he thought there was no reply. But then he heard it, behind the desk. No words, just strange little tinkles. The hairs rose on his arms. He pulled the long-handled spade he used for the bird castle down from the wall and edged around the desk.

He didn't quite know what he had expected to find, but it wasn't this. He lowered the shovel. “What are you doing?”

Uncle Anders didn't answer. He lay on the floor, clutching his violin like a baby, shivering so hard his beard scratched the strings and made them whimper and mewl. Niklas reached for his arm, but his uncle curled together like a wounded animal.

“Uncle Anders? What's wrong?” Niklas patted him on the shoulder. “Please, what's going on?”

Only then did his uncle look up, and his face was pulled into a mask of despair made more terrifying because it
didn't shift. “It wasn't her fault,” he gargled out between stiff lips. “It wasn't any of our faults. We didn't mean for anyone to die.”

“Who do you mean?” Niklas's tongue felt numb. “Are you talking about Sebastifer?”

“The boat was leaky, we knew that. But we had always managed to bail the water out before. We were just so much heavier with the cage.”

“The cage,” Niklas said.

Tears streaked Uncle Anders's cheeks. “I told her it wasn't her fault. Peder did, too. We were just trying to help. But she wouldn't listen!” He grabbed Niklas by the shirtsleeve. “The bad dream is back. I hear her voice in the stream. She's coming back!”

“Who?” Niklas heard his voice crack.
“Who is coming back?”

Uncle Anders didn't look, but he lifted his arm and pointed out the north window, toward the inky mountainside and the white slash of the Oldmeadow path.

Out in the yard sounded the cold metal thunder of a milk churn falling down.

And Niklas knew that she would come.

She stepped through the gate, keeping her face half turned as she floated up the path, hidden behind a curtain of silver curls. At the screaming stone she halted as always. Her white dress hung heavy from her frame. Slowly, surely, she turned, until he could see her face.

Erika.

But not the Erika of his nightmares, not the bone-thin mother. The young Erika of the stubborn mouth and strong hands.

She raised her arm, fingers stretched out down the hill, staring straight toward the bird room window with pond-black eyes. Straight at Niklas, who leaned against the window, breath held and hands shaking. He couldn't look away. She cocked her head, waiting for something. For him?

“What do you want from me?” Niklas's breath made a very small cloud on the pane. It was just a whisper, not even loud enough for Uncle Anders to hear from where he lay curled up on the floor. But Erika still answered.

Her arm swung around like a compass arrow, until it pointed up the mountainside, toward the broken face of Buttertop that hovered above the treeline.

Toward Sorrowdeep.

She held his gaze, still waiting.

“No,” he said.

A spot appeared on Erika's chest where her heart would be. She put her hands over it, but black liquid welled out between her fingers, spilling down her nightgown.

Somewhere in the house sounded a scream and a crash of shattering glass.

On instinct, Niklas's head jerked in the direction of the crash. But in the corner of his eye, he saw Erika change.
He turned back, watching in horror as the darkness in her chest spread. It covered her entire body now, turning it into water that loomed over the trail like a cresting wave. Then she dissolved and splashed to the ground.

The water drained into the moss and trickled down the trail, until the only sign of the nightmare was a spattering across the face of the screaming stone.