“I order you to leave me alone.” She’s not fooling anyone with her shaky voice, least of all the dead dude standing beside Rainier.
The ghost’s split lips lift into a terrifying smile.You order me,chaton? You cut my life short. I intend to return the favor.
He moves, the outline of his body curling and disassembling like smoke before repairing and tightening. Suddenly, he’s on her again, one palm clamped over her mouth and nose; the other wrapped around the back of her skull.
She wriggles about, trapped in his hold, struggling to breathe. I will my feet to stay planted, because every single cell in my body wants to help. She’s suffocating, damn it.
Finally, she wriggles enough that they both tumble into the shallow grave and crunch onto his bones. She rolls until she straddles him and his back is to the skeleton. His hands fall away from her body and his eyes pop outward as thoughhejust saw a ghost.
Ha.I fight off my smile because now’s not the moment. However spooked the ghost looks.Shit.I’m smiling. I rub my mouth until I realize I’m still wearing gloves that came in contact with bones. That quiets my mirth.
“Bind him!” Adrien shouts.
Gaëlle’s crying. Her fingers slip repeatedly as she kneels and attempts to knot the rope around the sack of his remains and his rigidified spectral form. “I can’t!”
“You can!” Rainier barks.
Just as she manages to loop the cord, the ghost vanishes.
Shit!I’m really not smiling anymore. Did someone lob the tea strainer on him again?
The cloth catches fire, and Gaëlle jolts back, burrowing in the corner of the grave, slapping her thighs which smoke with flames. In seconds, the flimsy burial fabric smolders out of existence, leaving behind the skeleton. The clingy bits of desiccated skin begin to weave together, and muscles reappear, rounding the corpse out until it resembles the man she buried.
She claps her palm in front of her mouth and turns green as a seasick sailor. I’m expecting her to hurl all over her deceased hubby, but instead she screams. Could be because said-deceased-hubby bucks and wiggles like a worm.
“Putain de bordel de merde,” I mutter, backing up a little, at the same time as Adrien yells, “He’s in the bones!”
As though to demonstrate the professor is forever right, the corpse’s jaw widens and lets out a blood-curdling screech,Murderer!
Gaëlle tries to scramble up the walls of the hole but keeps skidding on mushy snow and softened soil.
“You must finish this, Gaëlle,” Rainier says. “Finish him, or he’ll forever haunt you.”
And incidentally, I’ll croak.
Gaëlle swallows, tears and snot running down her face.
Cadence crouches at the edge of the hole and takes Gaëlle’s hand. “I believe in you. We all believe in you.”
Gaëlle inhales a rickety breath, then wipes her face with the ends of her scarf and turns around, her hand slipping out of Cadence’s mittened one.
Murderer!the corpse says again.
“Quiet!” Gaëlle screams.
You killed me in cold blood.The jaw flaps open and shut, clicking with each word.
Eyes still glistening, she croaks, “I said,tais-toi!”
You’re going to hell for your crime,chaton.
“Stop talking, and don’t call mechaton! You lost that right the day you tried to murder our children.” Gaëlle unwinds the long scarf from her neck and launches herself on the writhing corpse. “You’re not real, so shut up. Just shut up!” She starts stuffing the yellow material into his mouth.All of it.
Mmmmfff.
“You’re . . . not . . . real,” she says between labored breaths. She shoves the last of her scarf between his broken teeth and releases one long, shrill cry that’s so full of pain and horror and regret that it makes my gut clench.
The corpse stops moving.
