Where the Dead Talk (29 page)

"The rest of you," Jude said, "get on over here and see if you can’t take out some of them down there, down where he’s headed. Go for their heads – a good shot can slow them down pretty good, and that’s what we need."

The men looking at the shore called out something.

"Morrill, get these cannon barking," Jude said, "straight ahead, where those others are coming on us."

"You’ll eat your sins tonight."

The voice was high and piercing, and came from the darkness.

"The water will soften your cold flesh down below."

Whispers surrounded them.

"Jude?" Morrill said.

"Don’t know."

He strained his eyes, and saw movements beyond the outcropping, shadows in the trees. Some of the men fired off their muskets, some toward the lake, some out into the forest around them.

"Now don’t all start firing without a plan –" Jude began to say.

Captain Adams – just off to his left – suddenly dropped his musket to the ground. He craned his neck and looked above them. Jude followed his gaze. Pale faces with silver eyes looked back at them. They were in the trees, more than a dozen of them, surrounding them. The bodies hung upside down, grotesque bats.

"Your secrets will follow you as the light fades," one of the voices said.

They fell on them, dark bodies dropping from the trees, gray and filthy skin, all cold to the touch. Men cried out in terror. A handful of shots went off, and then there was an awful silence as the men struggled to wrest themselves from the bodies that landed on or next to them. Jude saw Captain Adams have his neck snapped by the body of a young woman, who didn’t even give him time to cry out before clamping her mouth over his and spraying black liquid. A harsh shriek split the air – one of the bodies stood behind one of the cannons, an old man with wild hair and beard, the flesh of his lips torn and hanging loose. He yelled in the terrible language they’d heard at the tavern, before it fell. Others ran over to him.

The dead started turning the cannon.

Jude used the bayonet on the end of his musket to keep back one of the bodies, catching it hard in the throat and using both arms on the gun to slice the neck near to clean through. After a violent struggle, the body fell and lay twitching, struggling to regain its footing. More came at them from the trees.

"Fall back, fall back!" he yelled.

His foot caught on a root and he slid down the incline to the lake, losing his musket in the process. The other men panicked, driven back nearly on top of him. Here and there, a musket shot sounded. Jude struggled to get up. Silver eyes tracked him. Screams came down from the cannons. A hand got him under his arm and yanked him to his feet – it was Morrill.

"What now?" he said.

Jude turned. The lake was at their backs, their feet already wet. A dozen pairs of silver eyes were coming through the darkness of the water toward them, with a deathly cold wind that came from the shadow that towered into the sky. A handful of the militia were down at the water’s edge with him and Morrill, some with guns, some – like Jude now – without. Up the outcropping, the yelling grew more infrequent.

"They’re on one of the cannons," Morrill said.

"Got to get them back, all of them," Jude said. The ground shook again, harder this time, hard enough to rattle the water of the lake itself, sending it up in jumping waves. One of the militia men came running down toward them with no weapon. Jude raised his hand to signal the men – and just then one of the cannon went off with a deep boom that echoed off to the other side of the lake. The man running down the hill landed at Jude’s feet, in two pieces and a shower of blood. Several of the militia men ran off at that. One of them ran in the direction that Major Pomeroy had gone, only to be pulled into the water by two of the corpses.

"This way," Jude yelled.

He traced the shore in the other direction. Hellish voices came down from the cannons. Jude kept calling, making sure that all the militia men who’d gotten down from the onslaught were with him. They waded around the end of the outcropping, pushing through the water with all the speed they could manage. A sickly light began seeping from the darkness at the heart of the lake.

There were sixteen men with him, by Jude’s quick count. All but two still had their muskets. The ground rumbled, a slow and heavy movement that made him think of a heavy wagon train passing by.

"Get everything reloaded," he said, "and we’re taking those cannon back."

The wind kicked up into a billowing force, tearing the words from his lips.

"How we going to fight them if they have cannon?" one of the men shouted.

"We get up there before they can turn them this way," Jude said.

"The hell are they?" another said as he tamped his shot down.

"The end of us all unless we can get them cannon back."

The light from the heart of the lake brightened, as though a rotten, green sun was shining through a thunderhead. The brighter it got, the colder it got, the louder the wind became. Soon as the men were finished reloading, Jude traced out a plan, pointing along the overgrown shore. They were going to wind their way along the rocks and trees, up the steep side of the outcropping, then line up and loose two volleys into them – half the men first, the rest when the bodies would no doubt charge them. Morrill was going to lead the men up, and Jude was going to bring up the rear. Jude gave the order and the men followed Morrill and began snaking through the weeds and rocks, reaching for good hand-holds as they reached the steep incline. The men didn’t speak – most of them didn’t even look over at the lake, a scene grown hellish and worrisome. As the last of the men set off, Jude looked off behind him one last time. Still, none of the bodies had followed them around the outcrop. He turned and hurried after the line of men.

Another cannon shot boomed out across the water. Hope you’re in the clear, Major, he thought. His breeches caught in pricker bushes and he ripped his leg free.

"She tried to end it – but instead she ended herself, and the babe, and William’s wife as well."

The voice was a hiss. Jude stopped in his tracks and turned. There along the muddy edge of the rocks was a shape, big and hunched, eyes shining bright and locked on his own. Jude’s breath caught in his throat.

"And I knew what she was doing, and I let her do it because I knew the child wasn’t mine. And then you let me do what I did. And you let me get away with it."

Jude couldn’t move. Even when the musket shots erupted from up in the trees above, he couldn’t move. The light from the lake brightened, and he saw the weed-and-mud-covered figure of Joseph Chase, clothing stained and torn, flesh gone the color of dried corn husks, grown over in spots with dark mold, mouth stretched tight down on blackened lips over yellow teeth.

"She died covered with pox and bleeding out of her opening, a bleeding that never did let up. Even old Pannalancet couldn't save her, nor her sister – no matter how hard that limp brother of mine apologized to him, nor begged, nor promised to look out for him, to keep the villagers away from him and his lake. That old Indian didn't never forget, even if he said he'd forgiven. William took him for his word. I always thought Pannalancet felt it fair enough to see our women die in agony, as his own did long before. But make no mistake, negro – never once did she call your name – and all she kept saying was what a mistake she made with you. Mistake."

He stood and took a slouching step toward Jude.

"I tried to bring her back – did you know that? Did just what that young Indian told me and dug her up – and she came back, alright. But she weren’t looking for me – she were looking for you, but you’d up an left for a time, wandering and sniveling, I’ll wager. Well, we took care of her."

He waved his arm about.

"And she’s in here, in bits and pieces. A bit here, a piece there. I feel her all around. The one who cut her up – the Indian – he got his, after all. I saw to that."

Joseph leaped and was suddenly right in front of Jude, fetid air coming from his muddy mouth.

"Oh, and I made a mistake – but you knew that, knew it all along. The tavernkeep never did have anything to do with her. Told me so. Swore on the Lord it was so. Cried that it was so, even as I drug him out here and choked the life from him, choked him ‘til his face turned blacker’n yours."

Another volley of gunfire blasted up in the trees. Yells and orders followed.

"But it was you that made fools of the both of us, and kept your secret all these years. We’ve both got a thing or two for you now, yes we do, and we didn’t think we’d get the chance, didn’t think so, but I felt you as soon as you stepped in the woods, felt your secret like it was the north star itself, bright in my new mind."

He came a step closer.

"And he can’t talk, but I’ll wager he feels the same."

From the trees stepped a figure that Jude first mistook for branches. There was precious little flesh left on it, and a tatter of clothing, here and there – but the rest was soil and the white of bone, and the glimmer of quicksilver from the eye sockets. Jude turned and snagged again against thick pricker vines. Joseph Chase reached and grabbed him by the arm, pulled him off balance with a surprising strength.

"She said you cried like a babe for her, and that it disgusted her, didn’t she. Yes, she did. She wanted a man, not a reedy boy-negro."

A shot rang out, just behind him. The head of Joseph Chase exploded in a shatter of moldering flesh and bone, and the hand on Jude’s arm let go as the body tumbled over. Jude yanked his arm free.

"Almost have them, almost got ‘em," Morrill yelled from up the ridge.

Jude turned from the body and scrambled up the incline, not looking back, not looking at the moving bones by the water, not thinking about the words of the dead - the dark reflections of the secrets of the living.

A Hellish Banner

The bloodfire drained away.

One moment the words flowed and vibrated and pulled forth the power that Nashoonon needed – and the next he was punched sideways and down, a minnie ball driven into his thigh. The water and air around him had exploded. And now this woman was on top of him, trying to pull him out of the lake. He had to finish the ceremony before the gate burst altogether, but he couldn’t stand. He couldn’t get his leg to work and the lake and night around him kept wanting to slip away in a wash of white. As he moved in the water, the weight of the woman shifted onto his leg and he cried out. Suddenly, another pair of hands was working to a grip on his right arm, pulling.

The Chase boy.

This was the help he brought? A young woman who seemed to want to do nothing more than pull him from the lake?

"Let’s go," the woman said.

"No," Nashoonon said. He tried to shake them both off, but didn’t have the strength to wrench himself free – and he suddenly knew that he wouldn’t have the strength to stand up if they let go. He looked down and saw the wound on his leg. Blood flowed freely from it, running down his leg into the water of the lake. He could still feel the bloodfire in his hands, but the glow had faded.

What had he done? There was too much chaos – it wasn’t working.

The lake was rumbling, tremors coming in waves from below; the water shook and splashed all around them. He tried to move forward. The hands held him back. Nashoonon turned to the boy.

"Deeper," he said, "I need to be deeper to make this work."

The boy looked hard at his lips and then nodded, started leading him out. The woman was holding him back. The boy leaned around her and shouted. They were arguing. Eyes and shades came towards them, drawn to him and the power. And they were nothing compared to what was coming from the center of the lake. The power was larger than he’d imagined. He felt like he would have had more luck trying to stop a blizzard.

But he was going to try – he was the last. The only one that could try to stop it. The one that should stop it. The responsibility was his. The boy dragged him out until the water rose up over his knees. He began the song again, trying to find his voice, trying to find the power.

"Osh to’onah –" he stumbled, the world going white around the edges of his vision. He took two quick breaths and continued.

"— nawenta o’sris cho’ta’qua."

"Thomas – they’re coming!" the woman yelled. She tried to pull him away again.

"We need to keep –" the boy shouted, only to be drowned out by the deep boom of a cannon that suddenly barked from the shore. The deadly projectile cut out into the darkness. Nashoonon began the chant again.

"Osh to’onah nawenta o’sris cho’ta’qua. Osh to’onah nawenta o’sris cho’ta’qua."

It was there, the connection was there. He leaned heavily on the woman and the boy. They stepped further out. That’s when the voices filled his ears, all around. The voices of the dead.

Screaming.

That hadn’t been half a minute, Pomeroy thought.

The single cannon shot sounded, cutting the air over his head. He raced around the narrow inlet that marked the southern edge of the lake, careless through the branches and bracken, running as fast as his bad leg would allow. Calls filled the night – voices from the bodies in the lake, voices returning their calls from the dark woods, the stony words of the dead.

Bloody coordinating themselves better than we are.

As he pushed from the thicker undergrowth into the more open bit of shoreline, he came to a stop. The glow from the middle of the lake threw its sickly light across the water and ground and trees. The bodies in the lake were closing in on Carolyn – and now the boy, he saw. Another group moved to the shore where the cannons were. But that wasn’t what stopped him. The woods were full of movement, up from the direction they’d come.

"God no," he muttered.

An army of the dead came through the trees. A line of them, four abreast, stretching back into the fractured darkness. Their skin gleamed of raw flesh in spots, blackened and burned crackling in others; all their eyes glimmered. Most had no hair left, nor any clothes. The meaning of it hit him like a blow.