I felt it as we walked past, Rose tugging me roughly forward—the complete and utter darkness and unforgivable cold that stole over your skin, seeping quickly inside. My head bowed down on instinct, my eyes dropping to the floor. Every part of my body began to tremble and screamed not to look directly at them.
One step past their line of guard and my blood froze, blanching the skin of my arms a pale, translucent white and raising the hair all along the surface. Raspy whispers, wet and gravelly, echoed deep inside my mind. The sounds grated in my ear like nails screeching down an old chalkboard.
Their words were unintelligible to me. Ancient sounds in hushed ramblings, like a poorly played symphony of grief. I became breathless, my heart racing and frantic, my lungs contracting in a vice-like squeeze. The guard nearest me chuckled darkly as I stepped over the threshold of the door, his gnarled skeletal hand reaching out to pull at the hem of my shirt filling me with disgust. I jerked away, frantically, gagging back bile.
This brings Ravenswood up to a whole new level of grim.
I crawled at the heavy door until it closed, separating me from thosethings. Rose stood behind me smirking.
“What were those things?” I whispered hoarsely, spinning around to face her.
“A few of King Hemlock’s guards. You’d do best staying far away from them,” she said with an ugly twist to her lips.
“You think?” My words sounded dry and hollow, shaking still from what I had just seen and felt.
I tried to shake off the sensations but walking past them was like I was swimming through a river of mud. I needed boiling water and a scouring brush to rid myself of the stains they left on me.
I lunged forward, putting as much distance as I could between me and the pure evil that stood behind the doors. “Where are you taking me? Where’s my mother?” I demanded, looking past Rose.
We were in the gardens. Overgrown and gray. Bare tree limbs like skeleton fingers stretched high up over our heads, hitting the top of the packed earth that played as Ravenswood’s sky. Thick thistle and thorn, withered flowers trampled and long forgotten, crunched under our shoes. Beyond the remnants of the cracked marble patio rippled with dead grass and upturned roots. On the edge of the estate stood the dark ruins of the city of the dead. Thatched roofs butted against the top of the cavernous canopy of the underground city, blackened with ruins and decay. Wilted ivy and leafless dead vines drooped through broken windows and crumbled walls of dust and rubble. One long, narrow cobblestone street curved and zigzagged through the town, bustling with the soulless spirits that were trapped there.
Shops and houses of all sizes grew out of the ground like rotting vegetation. Darkened windows covered in soot, barrels and books, broken mason jars and other strange things teetered on top of each other in giant piles. Dark woods surrounded the landscape, with twisting gnarled trees and dead branches reaching out for an unseen sun. Fog so thick, everything became monochrome, everything soft shades of gray. And all around us drifted down soft, white, feathery snow that was neither cold nor wet when it landed upon my hand.
Rose led me past the old weathered sign that hung crooked from a post jutting out in the middle of the cobbled pathway. A large bird was carved into it next to the name Ravenswood. We walked through twisting alleyways, dark and dreary, until we came upon a narrow building with a tall yawning window. Through its shattered glass drifted a sheer curtain of torn black lace that rippled all the way down to the ground.
Rose walked up to the front door and rapped her leathery knuckles three times against the wood. When there was no quick response, she turned the knob and threw open the door, waving me in.
Inside was a narrow wood-lined passageway, weathered and warped like it had been submerged under water for far too long. The flooring was nothing more than soft pine planks that sank under my weight, and the only light came from soft white candles that sporadically lined the walls.
“Keep on,” Rose pushed me from behind, “just through there.”
We moved deeper into the building, the air becoming colder and colder. “Here we are, sugar,” she whispered as we came to an odd-shaped doorway.
I leaned my head forward, peeking around the opening. “It’s an empty room,” I whispered back to Rose. It was a small room with half of the ceiling caved in. Vines, sharp and black as night, dropped in through the hole, curling around a pile of splintered wood and debris in the middle of the floor. An antique-looking chair took up the bottom of the mess.
Just as I stepped forward, I heard a soft shuffle of shoes; someone was there in the room that I couldn’t quite see. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I listened to the noises—creaking and scraping—drawn out against the inky darkness of the room.
“Move, you infernal child. This is what you asked for.”
As I took another step, Rose shoved me forward, pushing me roughly to my knees. I was momentarily stunned—until my heart sputtered and fear and adrenaline took hold.
Until I saw her.
My mother.
She sat in the shadows, her body draped over an old-fashioned chaise lounge, arms flung over her head and one bare foot on the floor. She looked dead—grayish skin, sunken eyes, bruised like a rotting apple.
I scrabbled up to my feet, horror pounding at my chest.Was she dead? Was I too late?
I spun around to look to Rose for help. How stupid I was to think she would still be standing there. Growling out a curse, I rushed to my mother’s side and cupped my hands around her glacial fingers. “Mom? Mom?”
Her eyes slid open a slit and a rattling exhale of breath puffed out from between her blue lips in a thin, hazy mist. “Raine,” she whispered, “why didn’t you kneel?”
Chapter 8
The pull under my skin was immediate. As soon as I lay my hands over my mother’s, a whir of something, some sort of vibration, seeped out of me in soft waves, tingling and numbing my fingertips. The sensation rolled through my body, pinpricks of heat in a melodic rhythm, like music pulsing through my veins. I hummed the tune, desperately trying to save it to memory.
My mother didn’t move, beyond offering me a weak smile.How long had she been like this? Did Hemlock do this to her because of me?
