Kendall gets back to her feet and staggers through the woods. “Nico!” she shouts. “Nico, where are you?”
She starts to run again, but soon running becomes impossible, so she presses on slowly, awkwardly, painfully, through brush and forest so thick that she nearly has to climb trees and swing from vines to get through. “Nico!” she screams. The voice in her head grows stronger. Find me before he kills me! Thirtyfive, one hundred!
Her legs and arms sting from scratches. She stumbles and catches herself, weak from not eating, strong from the voices that possess her. When she can go no farther, she pulls the clippers from the bag and starts tearing at ivy and branches, clipping and pulling them out of her way. She finds a spot that gives way. Squeezes and chops and pushes and clamps the clippers together until they clang against something metal. “Nico!” she screams. “Nico!”
The heat, the life. Thirty-five, one hundred. Your heartbeat pounds in Our ears. “Come now!” We cry out, a piece of Us within you now. This victim, the most troublesome. Here. Now. Ready to redeem, release another lost soul. Thirty-five?
No.
ONE HUNDRED.
She stumbles as she tries to slide through the slit she made in the ivy and vines between rusted iron rungs. She makes it through, finally, and scrambles to her feet, looking around in the eerie night glow.
There are fewer trees here. Smaller ones. And it’s not quite so overgrown. With the light of a halfmoon, Kendall makes out a large crumbling building away to her left, and a small broken-down shack nearer to her. She pulls out her flashlight and shines it around. She’s in a sort of courtyard, but it’s completely sealed off, even from the buildings, by an iron fence. Fog pockets rest in the valleys just beyond the yard. A bird squawks and settles. She hears the creaking of the trees, the rustling of other animals.
To the right, two dozen white markers stand in the ground. Kendall staggers, feeling herself being pulled toward them by the power of the voice inside her. She resists at first, confused, but then her body jerks into obedience. Her legs are heavy. She drags herself drunkenly across the dirt and brush.
The voice commands her. “Start digging,” she whispers, startled, echoing it. “Start digging? Where?
Where?” She pulls the shovel from her bag, and it leads her to the middle of the courtyard, where the crosses stand. “Nico!” she screams. “Where are you?” She has lost all control of her body. She pushes twigs and leaves aside with her boots, clearing a space.
Then she lifts the shovel and slams the point of it into the dirt in front of one of the markers. Her cold hands ache from the impact ricocheting off her bones, it seems, but she lifts and slams again, breaking the ground, beginning to dig, unable to stop herself. She piles the dirt carefully next to the hole and strikes again.
After a few minutes her punctured arm really hurts. Her hands shake. “Nico!” she calls out again. Her voice rings out, unanswered. She starts crying now, and screams louder for him, over and over as she piles the dirt high. Her back aches. She shivers, teeth rattling, and plunges the shovel into the hard dirt again. Again. Again.
When she hits bone, scooping a piece out with her shovel, she knows she has dug far enough. She knows now what she has to do, what the voice is forcing her to do in order to save Nico. She falls to her knees, hoarse but still screaming out his name. “I’m here to save you!” she cries. “Nico, help me!”
She sits down in the shallow grave she just dug. Reaches for the piles of dirt, drawing her arms around them and pulling them over her. Covering her feet and legs.
She watches herself in horror. Part of her can’t believe she’s doing it, and part of her can’t get it done fast enough.
She is burying herself alive.
And she can’t stop.
Slowly and methodically, simultaneously horrified and glorified by the process, she covers her body with dirt. She begins to chant. “Help me. Save my soul. Help me. Save my soul.” Her chants turn to cries as she covers her thighs, her midsection. The dirt insulates her, warms her. Calms her shaking, but not her cries. She lies back and covers her chest. Her neck. She screams for Nico. Screams until her voice becomes muffled by the layer of dirt she pushes over her own face. All that remains aboveground is her hand.
And then — as the half-moon dips behind the broken-down building — all, everyone, everything is quiet once again in the graveyard of the Cryer’s Reform School for Delinquent Boys.
A trapped soul waits for redemption.
It waits. And waits.
For her to take her last breath.
It is still dark when the dirt stirs.
Kendall, struggling for air, feels something edging at her mind. She knows something feels terribly wrong about all of this. She knows from the voices that she must go through all of this to save Nico, but where is he? And how could this possibly help him? Her OCD brain churns, and the single thought slips in. This is wrong. This is wrong. She starts to count now. Counts the heartbeats, counts the pebbles in her mouth, counts the minutes as they pass. Some of the fog in her head clears. Enough. Just enough.
Enough to struggle.
The grasp, the hold of the voice weakens. Just enough. And with Kendall’s one remaining free arm, she pushes the layer of dirt from her face, spits out the gravel from her mouth, and gives one last rasping cry before she passes out. “Jacian.”
The voice in her head — not Nico’s, never Nico’s — cries out as if in pain.
In the morning it rains.
The water washes dirt from her eyes.
The voice remains, crying out to her, but she knows now that it’s not Nico. She fights the voice with her own weapon, her own tool. The whirring thoughts are welcomed. She holds the power.
She can’t move at first. The rain makes the grave cover like a straitjacket, like wide belts holding her in.
She can only turn her head. Cough the dirt out.
In the rainy morning light she sees more clearly now. Thinks more clearly. The markers, white crosses.
The bones her boots are touching are old. This place, so forlorn. Abandoned. Stuck in a different time.
The only sound is rain on leaves, rain on dirt, rain on skin.
All the events of the previous day start coming back to her as she surfaces and takes back control of her senses. Clears the fuzz in her brain. “Oh my God!” she cries out. “What is happening?” She panics and begins to struggle. The horror of what nearly happened, the claustrophobia, being submerged in wet dirt, gives her the superhuman strength she needs to push out from under it. She grips the side of the grave and pulls, heaves herself to her stomach, coughing.
Her throat hurts and she’s freezing, filthy, covered in scratches and bruises. She lifts her head and looks around the overgrown yard, seeing all the crosses now.
Twenty-four of them.
Lined up in four equal quadrants.
With aisles between each section.
In the two spots next to Kendall, the dirt is somewhat fresher. Raised up. She looks closer and sees a decomposing hand sticking out from one and bones from the other. She crawls to the one closest and starts digging.
Long brown hair comes away in her hand — it’s not Nico. Could it be Tiffany?
Kendall becomes increasingly aware of the stench in the graveyard.
She dry heaves off to the side, and crawls over to the other grave. Looks at the decomposing hand, wipes her eyes and looks again. The tissue wavers before her eyes. And then she sees why.
Maggots.
She turns, gagging from the sight and smell, gagging again from all the dirt drying out her throat.
She begins digging with what little strength she has left, her fingers bleeding. “Please no, please no, please
