Rabbit Hole by Tyrel Pinnegar
Paranormal Horror - 14,800 Words
This is the story of a lonely girl with an affinity for the macabre. Although she had never been the type to believe in ghosts, she couldn’t help but indulge fantasies of romance beyond the veil. However, when a cocksure spirit with a dangerous infatuation drags her deep into a private purgatory of blood and decay, what was once an innocent fantasy quickly becomes a precarious negotiation that could cost the girl her life.
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Chapter 1
This story begins in a cemetery. A proper cemetery.
Nowadays, proper cemeteries are vanishingly rare. A proper cemetery is old enough to have been forgotten. At least, to a degree.
The last time you visited a cemetery, it was likely to pay respects to the recently deceased. Someone whose memory is still fresh enough to spark pain. You may have noticed, while you were there, that the cemetery was not entirely dissimilar from a suburban backyard. A neatly manicured, monocultured lawn, devoid of any weeds, or insects, or interest. Sterile, wasted space.
The only thing that set it apart were the grave markers. Little, x by x inch polished granite slabs that lie flush with the ground, and weigh so little you could pick them up and carry them away, if you were so inclined. Each one computer-engraved with a stock image chosen from a catalog. Some may have even been engraved with a customer-supplied digital photograph, as if they were some sort of mall kiosk knick-knack.
There’s a reason these grave markers lie flush with the ground. It’s so the groundskeeper can run a lawnmower over them. A matter of convenience. It’s easier, and therefore cheaper, to trim the grass when the stones that mark the graves are easy to ignore. Isn’t it something, that the lawn seems to take precedence over the dead?
Cemeteries like these serve their purpose I suppose, in a dull, soulless sort of way. But they hardly instill reverence.
This cemetery instilled reverence. It was overgrown. Unkempt. The tall, dried autumn grasses had gone to seed, forming not a lawn, but a meadow. The fallen leaves that littered the earth had already decayed down to the veins, reclaimed by detritivores and fungal mycelium, leaving the old, gnarled oaks that had shed them as skeletal silhouettes against an overcast sky.
None of this is what makes a cemetery a cemetery, of course. Only graves can do that, and this cemetery had no shortage.
This cemetery contained hundreds of graves, some older than the oaks themselves. A person could have spent a lifetime studying the lives of the people buried in that soil, and still barely have scratched the surface.
And save for a few that had crumbled to nothing over the centuries, each of these graves had a marker. Some were towering mausoleums, elaborate sculptural monuments to a life of privilege and means. Others were simple headstones, heartfelt labors of love, chiseled from whatever stone could be found.
Neither the rich nor the poor are immune to the rasp of time, however. Many of the older markers had been rendered nigh unreadable by lichens and erosion. Identities wiped away, leaving only death’s heads and other memento mori.
One of the deceased had chosen a more practical memorial. A dark, heavy, granite bench. Perhaps they themselves had once found comfort in visiting the cemetery, and wanted to make it easier for those that came after.
It was clear that their gesture did not go unappreciated, as there was someone sitting on the granite bench. A girl, with dusty, cornflower-blue hair, loosely braided into twin pigtails with white twine, and a short, feather-duster of a ponytail in the back.
She wore a thick, pale, turtleneck sweater just a few shades lighter than the color of her hair, and a pair of oversized, circular, white-rimmed glasses. The lenses were fake, for if they’d been prescription, they’d have been far too heavy to remain on her face. Secretly, her amber eyes functioned perfectly well.
And although the cemetery was old, this girl was not. Her birth date was decades more recent than any death date on the gravestones that surrounded her. She was not exceedingly young either, however. She was an adult by most definitions, though she rarely felt that way.
This girl was not there to pay her respects, but to surround herself with death. She had an affinity for the macabre. It might not have been immediately obvious from her appearance, but a peek inside her sketchbook would have left no doubt.
It was brimming with the Gothic. The romantic. Ghosts and phantoms, spirits and specters. Skeletons and apparitions. Wilted roses and tender, affectionate embraces. Why she drew such things was a mystery, for she was not the type to share her work with others. Her sketchbook was a place of privacy. A refuge for feelings and thoughts that would have otherwise been bottled up.
And yet, despite her efforts to keep her drawings hidden away, someone was admiring them now. Even as she sketched.
A presence.
Invisible.
Immaterial.
The girl shivered. There had been no wind, but the air around her suddenly felt cold. She shut her sketchbook and held it close to her chest.
If she had turned around in that moment, she might have seen something resembling a pair of eyes. Concave hemispheres, as if someone had dissected the tapeta lucida from behind an animal’s retinas and rendered them intangible. Each one, a reflection without a surface.
But she didn’t turn around, and they vanished as quietly as they had arrived.
The girl had just begun to reopen her sketchbook, when she felt a chill brush her cheek. Not a breeze, but a gentle caress. She let out a small yelp and staggered to her feet, glancing about nervously.
Her breathing became tense. She wasn’t the type to feel uneasy in an empty cemetery, but somehow this cemetery didn’t feel so empty anymore. Eventually, she turned to leave.
It was then that something seemed to tickle her earrings. The feeling of surgical steel against cartilage sent a violent shiver up her spine. She ran.
The girl scrambled her way down an old footpath, clutching her sketchbook tightly. She felt that if she could only reach the entrance gate, she’d be safe.
All of a sudden, she felt something shove her sternum with startling force. She staggered backward and began to lose her balance, only to be caught by unseen hands and tipped back upright. She stumbled forward, then swiveled around in a panic.
Silence.
The girl took a moment to catch her breath.
Then, she felt a sudden, sharp jab at her side. Then another, and another. An incessant jabbing, at her kidneys, her rib cage, her spine. She recoiled, repeatedly and involuntarily. The jabbing became shoving, and the shoving became herding. She shut her eyes tightly and waited for the ordeal to be over.
And then… it was. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes.
UNKNOWN SKELETON 9-24-62
Those were the words on the headstone the girl found herself standing before, deeply engraved in crystal white granite.
It was a very plain stone. A simple, upright, rectangular slab, slightly wider than it was tall. No grass grew nearby. The ground was bare save for a few stunted weeds, as if the earth surrounding the stone had been salted.
The burial vault had collapsed long ago, leaving a hole in the ground near the base of the stone. The hole was dark, and deep, and just narrow enough to dissuade exploration.
The girl simply stared at the stone a moment, chest heaving.
A sound from behind. Like the snapping of fingers, echoing in a way her surroundings shouldn’t have allowed. She swiveled around and stared into the distance. Listening.
Behind her, something emerged from inside the collapsed burial vault. A snare on a swivel, fashioned from thin, braided steel cable. It flared open slowly, without even the faintest sound, and came to a rest on the ground.
The girl’s heart was racing. She could feel it in her chest. Hear it in her ears. She stood her ground.
But nothing came.
Her heartbeat began to slow. Her breathing, began to calm. Her muscles, loosened. Her jaw, unclenched. And for just a moment, she let herself relax.
Something blew a sudden puff of icy air into her face. She took a step backward.
Deep down in the darkness, bones assembled. The snare zipped tight around the girl’s ankle. With a sharp yank, she was flat on the ground. And with a steady pull, she was
dragged
down
the
hole.
Chapter 2
Hello rabbit.
Those were the first words the girl heard. They were spoken in a raspy, feminine voice that seemed as if it were both breathed into the crook of her neck, and reverberated inside her skull. It was dark, and she couldn’t see their speaker.
The girl uttered a pitiful whimper in response, but there were a set of cold, arachnodactyl fingers wrapped around her face, clasping her jaw shut.
Sh-sh-shhh… Don’t speak.
A moment passed as the presence verified she’d been heard. She had been. She unclasped her fingers from the girl’s face, affectionately stroked one of her cornflower blue braids, then retreated into the darkness.
One by one, crudely formed candles began to light. But they didn’t burn with fire. They burned with something unfamiliar, something that seemed to suck color out of existence.
As each candle was lit, it faintly illuminated a skeletal hand, which then retracted back into the shadows. As if it were setting the candles alight by pinching their wicks.
Eventually, the candle lighting ceased. The girl could just barely make out a figure looming above her. A skeletal silhouette, nearly indiscernible in the dim, unearthly light. She strained her eyes, trying desperately to decipher what she was looking at.
Then, the figure ignited. Forcefully, like an antique propane stove burner, lit a few seconds too late.
And there she was… An uncanny, luminous silhouette in a well-worn sheepskin aviator jacket. The girl simply stared at her a moment, dumbfounded.
The spirit looked as if she had been diaphonized, and immersed in glycerin. A semi-corporeal matrix of decellularized tissue, lit from inside by luminous teal bones.
She moved as if she were immersed in glycerin as well. An inquisitive cock of her head sent her ethereal white hair drifting, like eelgrass.
The girl averted her eyes, trying desperately to wish herself awake. But the spirit placed a finger beneath the girl’s chin, and raised her eyeline to meet her own.
In this state of coerced eye contact, the girl finally peered deeply into the eyes that had stalked her in the graveyard. Concave, hemispherical eyes, mottled with iridescent teals, blues, and golds.
The spirit grinned impishly. Her skull was kinetic. Each bone moved freely, independent of the others. It looked as if the bones of a human skull had been teased apart at the seams, and their edges whittled smooth. Scraps of bone carved into an intricate, emotive mechanism. It was almost piscine, like the skull of some ancient Devonian fish.
The spirit took hold of the girl by the jaw, rotating her head from side to side. Studying her. Finally, she released her grip, affectionately tapping the girl on the nose with a finger.
The spirit laughed. It was a harsh, gravelly laugh, and it rattled the girl’s teeth in their sockets.
The spirit’s cavernous maw contained no teeth. Instead, her jaws formed a bony, jagged, shearing edge. Scissor-like, as if she’d been mindlessly grinding maxilla against mandible for ages.
Her laughing ceased. She stared at the girl expectantly. Almost playfully. The girl remained silent.
You’re a quiet one, aren’t you rabbit?
The girl reminded the spirit that she had told her not to speak. Her words were whispered, and just barely escaped her lips.
A pharyngeal snicker pushed the spirit’s ethereal white tongue from her throat. She pinched it betwixt the cusps of her bladed jaws, but it did little to conceal her amusement.
The girl surveyed her surroundings. She was in a burrow. A spacious burrow, but a burrow nonetheless. Fine, pale roots hung from the ceiling, and the walls were a rich, loamy soil.
The floor of the chamber was a deep, humid layer of finely shredded wood. Tweezed apart fragment by fragment, like a bored parakeet shreds paper. The girl briefly wondered where it had all come from, but her curiosity was quelled by the sight of rusty coffin nails blended into the mulch.
There were holes in the walls of the burrow, just a few inches across. Too narrow for a person to pass through, but wide enough for a human skeleton, if it were done bone by bone. Where they led, she had no way of knowing.
Over her shoulder, the girl spotted a larger tunnel. This one was wide enough for a person to wriggle through, with difficulty. But no wider than that. The girl feared how far it might extend before it reached the surface.
Not that it mattered. It was the only way out of the burrow. The girl side-eyed the spirit surreptitiously. The spirit was distracted by the girl’s sketchbook, admiring her work with a delighted grin. Relishing the eerie, Gothic romance of it all. She licked a finger and turned the page.
This was the girl’s chance. She bolted for the tunnel, and began to scramble inside.
Ah-ah-ah…
She felt the spirit grab hold of her ankles with long, icy fingers, and yank her violently back into the burrow. She gripped the girl tightly by the shoulders, and rolled her onto her back.
What are you running from, rabbit?
The girl shouted at the spirit, demanding that she stop calling her rabbit.
The spirit was taken aback, but only for a moment. She let out a short, harsh laugh. She seemed almost thrilled by the girl’s newfound pluckiness.
Why? I caught you in a snare, didn’t I? You live in a hole.
The girl exclaimed crossly that no, she did not, in fact, live in a hole.
The spirit glanced about the burrow, rather facetiously. She grinned widely and looked the girl directly in the eyes.
You’re sure about that, are you?
The girl gave the spirit an uneasy look.
The spirit extended an arachnodactyl hand. After considerable hesitation, the girl reached out and grasped it. The spirit’s touch was intensely cold against her bare skin.
The spirit hoisted the girl upright, and she found herself seated quietly on the soft, wooden mulch.
The girl rested her head in her hands. She was still very much struggling to process her situation. She raised her head meekly, and asked the spirit, rather bluntly, what she was.
A disquieted expression flitted across the spirit’s face, so subtly as to be nearly imperceptible. She was quick to recover however, flashing a fabricated grin.
That’s a good question, rabbit. If I ever find out, you’ll be the first to know.
The girl then inquired, her tone exceedingly wary, about just what it was the spirit wanted. The spirit’s playful demeanor returned.
I want for naught, rabbit. I have everything I need.
The girl then requested, if the spirit did indeed have everything she needed, that she let her go. She struggled to mask the growing indignation in her voice.
Oh, I can’t do that, rabbit.
The girl stared crossly at the spirit, awaiting an explanation.
If I did that, I’d want for something again.
There was an extended silence. The girl wasn’t quite sure what was supposed to happen next.
So she asked.
The spirit cocked her head just a little further than one might expect possible, and smiled at the girl. Almost sweetly. But she did not speak.
The girl scoffed. Averted her eyes. She didn’t want to give this ghoul the satisfaction.
But the spirit was patient, and eventually, the girl’s eyes wandered back. She found herself staring intently at the spirit’s heart. It was visible through her unzipped aviator jacket, nestled snugly within her rib cage. It beat softly between a pair of nearly imperceptible lungs, visible only by the cartilaginous rings scaffolding their various passageways. Inhaling and exhaling with a surprising tranquility.
The spirit’s heartbeat seemed to have an almost sedative effect on the girl. Her mood became still, and serene.
Would you like to touch it?
The girl looked to the spirit, and to her own surprise, she nodded… she did want to touch it.
The spirit descended from her mid-air perch, and delicately grasped the girl by the wrist. The girl inhaled sharply. She knew the spirit’s touch would be cold, but somehow it still caught her off guard.
The spirit looked the girl in the eye, as if awaiting some sort of signal. The girl’s silence seemed to suffice. The spirit plunged the girl’s hand deep into her abdomen.
The girl gasped, and by reflex, attempted to withdraw her hand. But the spirit was strong, and held steady.
A moment passed, and the girl began to recover from her initial shock. She flexed her fingers experimentally. The spirit’s entrails were so faint as to be nearly invisible, but they could be felt. They were cold, and fluttered with a rhythmic peristalsis.
The girl could feel them intersecting her flesh. Seeping between her cells like syrup through a sieve. To feel something so visually insubstantial provide such tactile resistance was an uncanny sensation.
The spirit slid a hand along the girl’s arm, and braced her elbow with the other, guiding the girl’s hand up and into her rib cage. The girl resisted ever so slightly, but the spirit resisted in return, slowly pulling the girl’s arm deeper into her chest.
Her fingertips intersected the spirit’s lungs, and she could feel a freezing wind within. She could feel the spirit’s heartbeat, sending ripples through the tissues surrounding it. Her breathing began to quicken.
The spirit’s breathing ceased entirely. There was no more freezing wind. Just stillness. Silence.
The girl could see her own curled fingers, just millimeters from the spirit’s softly beating heart.
She extended her fingertips, and the two intersected.
Immediately, the girl felt the warmth vacate her body. It began with the surface of her skin, and crept steadily toward her core. A coldness she never would have thought possible in a body with a pulse. She began to struggle.
The spirit released her grip, and the girl tumbled backward onto the damp mulch, shivering violently. The spirit watched with interest.
Oh rabbit… are you getting cold?
She asked this with an inquisitiveness, as if it were a novel concept to her. She received no immediate response.
The spirit removed her sheepskin aviator jacket, and hung it gingerly over the girl’s shoulders. The girl held the jacket tight to her skin, but it did not warm her. In fact, it only seemed to make her colder.
A few minutes passed. Eventually, the girl had recovered enough to speak. Through chattering teeth, she asked the spirit where the jacket had come from.
I stole it.
The girl quietly examined the worn leather, and aged wool. The jacket appeared well-cared-for, but it was obviously very old.
The girl noticed that her thinking seemed slower than it had before… Sluggish. Strenuous. But eventually, a second question began to percolate through her mind. She asked the spirit who the jacket had been stolen from.
A pilot. Don’t worry… they weren’t using it anymore.
The girl decided not to question any further. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what the spirit had meant by that.
Again, a few minutes passed. The girl found herself focused on the flickering of the candles that lit the burrow, wondering if they might provide some modicum of warmth.
She attempted to reach for the candle nearest to her, only to find her muscles had stiffened. It felt as if her body had become waxy. Every movement, met with a distressing resistance. Yet somehow, she managed to grasp the candle, and bring it close.
But the candle provided no warmth. Passing her fingertips through the uncanny flame felt no different than passing them through thin air. Even touching the burning wick itself provided no sensation.
It took a disquieting amount of effort, but the girl finally managed to form a coherent question in her mind. She asked the spirit where the candles had come from.
I made them.
The girl pondered this a moment, before realizing that the spirit’s answer clarified very little. From what did she make them?
There’s plenty of wax to be found in a graveyard, rabbit.
It was only after the spirit spoke that the girl realized she must have wondered her question aloud. However, she was no longer cognizant enough to decipher what the spirit had meant.
She awoke suddenly. She had only slipped into unconsciousness for a moment, but to regain consciousness without any memory of losing it was jarring. She shook her head.
The girl felt something sickly and wet soaking into her clothing. An opaque, crimson liquid was seeping from the walls of the burrow, and pooling in the mulch beneath her.
Repulsed, she attempted to stagger to her feet, only to find her previously waxy muscles were now rigid, and immovable. She began to panic.
Something the matter, rabbit?
The girl told the spirit that she was stuck. That she couldn’t move. There was a genuine, unmistakable fear in her voice.
The crimson liquid continued to pool beneath her, like an incoming tide on an exceptionally shallow beach.
She pleaded for help. The spirit sank slowly to the floor, and knelt in the pooling liquid. She began to run her fingers through the girl’s cornflower-blue hair.
The girl’s ribs began to seize. It was becoming difficult to breathe. She tried to express this, but her breath was restricted enough that she struggled to form the necessary words.
Nevertheless, the spirit understood. She lovingly brushed the girl’s cheek, staring deeply into her eyes.
Oh rabbit… don’t worry your pretty little lungs about it.
The rising liquid met the girl’s lips, and began to flow down her throat. The spirit embraced the girl tenderly.
You’ll never have to breathe again.
Chapter 3
A thought entered the girl’s mind. A casual inkling that perhaps this was death.
She felt weightless. Adrift in a vast abyss. The barrier between her body and the fluid that surrounded her felt vague. She wondered if perhaps she was dissolving into it… unspooling, like gossamer threads. She couldn’t deduce the position of her limbs, or the temperature of her skin. Or whether her eyes were open or closed. There was no light. No sound. To someone who had always found the world a little too bright, and a little too loud, it was a welcome relief.
With nothing to upset her senses, the girl quietly became aware of her own heartbeat. She could feel it pulsing gently through her veins. Hear it flowing through her ears. If this was death, she thought, perhaps she didn’t mind it so much.
Her lips parted slightly. Fluid seeped between them, caressing the tip of her tongue. It tasted metallic… like a nosebleed.
The taste of blood sent the girl into a panic, fracturing any sense of tranquility as if it were glass. Once again, she felt cold, intact, and desperate to breathe.
She struggled to wake her sleeping limbs. Flexing the pins and needles from her ragged nerves, she swam weakly in a direction she desperately hoped was upward.
Thin air. A gasp for breath. Coughing violently, the girl clambered onto the surface of a vast, crimson lake. Somehow, the lake’s surface bore her weight. As if, despite everything, the lake was only millimeters deep.
The girl simply lay there, in a film of blood, trying desperately to catch her breath.
Shivering and terrified, the girl rose to her feet. Her clothing was saturated with blood, and weighed heavy on her shoulders. She stumbled slightly. Whatever lay beneath the lake’s surface felt almost spongy beneath her feet, like the saturated soil of a peat bog. Eventually, she found her footing.
She surveyed her surroundings. The air was as still as the surface of the lake itself. The vast blood flat might have appeared mirror-like, if there had been a sky to reflect. But there was no sky. There was nothing but a deep, dark, velvet void.
Staring into the distance, she tried to locate the edge of the lake. On the horizon, she saw what appeared to be dead trees. Branchless. Pale. Needle-like. Pointing steadfastly toward that abyssal nothing of a sky. Reflected in the glassy surface of the lake itself, like a grove of cedars, flooded a century ago.
That’s what they looked like to her, at least. They seemed so far away, it was difficult to tell.
She focused carefully.
A pair of arachnodactyl hands clasped the girl’s shoulders from behind, and a facetious whisper in her ear sent a shiver inching up her spine.
You’ve soiled my jacket, rabbit.
With a single swift movement, the spirit yanked her sheepskin aviator jacket from the girl’s shoulders. She slipped her own arms through the sleeves, and shook off the excess blood, like a starling in a birdbath.
Droplets of blood spattered the girl’s face. She felt her hairs bristle, and her temper flare. She snapped. She screamed at the spirit, demanding that she let her go.
For a fleeting moment, the spirit appeared almost startled. A careful observer might even have glimpsed something resembling a second thought flicker across her face. However, it was quickly brushed aside by a cocksure smile.
The spirit circled the girl, so swiftly and smoothly that by the time the girl had noticed, the spirit was already behind her.
The spirit hooked an arm around the girl’s neck. The girl tried to protest, but was silenced by the spirit pressing an icy finger to her lips.
Hush now, rabbit… You’re safe with me.
In another context, from another individual, this sentiment might have brought comfort. It was spoken in a calming tone, after all, and with a loving inflection. But this was a very specific individual, in a very particular context, and the girl didn’t find it reassuring at all.
The spirit nestled her chin in the crook of the girl’s neck, nuzzling her blood-stained cheek with an unnerving affection. The girl inhaled sharply. Exhaled with a shudder. The sensation was deeply uncomfortable.
The girl attempted to wriggle free, but the spirit’s vise-like grip only tightened. She felt the spirit’s thigh creeping up her own. She saw an opportunity, and struck.
She reached for the spirit’s femur, plunging her fingers through ghostly layers of muscle and sinew. She gripped the bone tightly in her fist, and attempted to wrench it from its socket.
Startled, the spirit instinctively released her grip. She panicked, and began batting at the girl’s cranium with open palms. The girl, in turn, twisted the spirit’s hip ever more forcefully.
She could feel the joint failing. Gripping the bone tight with both hands, she gave it one final twist.
The bone popped from its socket with such force that the girl lost her balance, falling backwards into the shallow lake and landing on her coccyx.
She winced in anticipation of pain, but the marshy substrate managed to soften the blow. She gave her head a shake, and stared at the bone in her hands.
It was no longer luminous. Outside the confines of the spirit’s ghostly flesh, it resembled any other stray bone. Dull, and dusty, and stained with tannins.
Yet, something felt off. It was weighted oddly… heavier toward the hip than toward the knee. A closer look revealed a tarnished stainless steel hip replacement, cemented tightly to the bone itself.
Give that back! It’s mine!
The spirit’s voice was shrill, and furious. The femur obviously wasn’t hers. It was stolen, and the girl said as much.
Of course I stole it, that means it’s mine!
The girl stumbled to her feet. It was clear from her stance that she had become fed up with the spirit’s games.
She glimpsed a flicker of hesitation in the spirit’s eyes. A fleeting moment of uncertainty, interrupted by a hollow bark of aggression.
I said give it BACK!
Her words were hissed, as if they had been puffed through the throat of a brooding mute swan. Yet the girl stood her ground.
The spirit stared daggers into the girl’s eyes, then glanced briefly at the femur. The girl took notice, tightening her grip on the bone defensively.
The spirit shivered with frustration. She shrieked like a jealous gull, and lunged at the girl.
The girl swung the femur with all her might, wielding the steel implant as a blunt weapon. The spirit dodged the attack, and lunged a second time.
Again, the girl swung her improvised war club. The spirit heard it whistle past her skull, at a proximity she immediately deemed too close for comfort.
The spirit quickly backed off, and held out an open palm, signaling the girl to stand down.
She did, a little.
The spirit began to approach the girl, palm still outstretched. The girl abruptly dropped to one knee, and braced the femur over the other, threatening to snap it in half if the spirit came any closer.
The spirit drew back apprehensively. It was clear she took the girl’s threat seriously.
A moment passed, and a thought crystallized in the spirit’s skull. Its conception was apparent on her face, if only for a split second. She breathed what appeared to be a sigh of relief, then locked eyes with the girl.
Alright rabbit…
She smiled, casually brushing back her ethereal white hair. The girl stared warily, ready to act on her promise.
I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot… let’s take a few steps back.
The spirit began circling the girl, slowly. Deliberately. The girl instinctively rose to her feet and took a step back, unsure what the spirit was playing at.
Not literal steps, rabbit.
The girl scoffed. She knew perfectly well what the spirit had meant, and she knew the spirit knew it as well.
Figurative steps. Let’s figure out where this all went… sour.
A whiff of something rancid prickled at the girl’s olfactory nerves. An oily, iridescent film had begun to form on the lake’s surface. The spirit snapped her fingers, recapturing the girl’s attention.
You do like it here, don’t you?
She could feel the spirit edging imperceptibly closer with each circle she made. A gradual, encroaching spiral.
Of course you do… it’s quiet. Peaceful. Just like that graveyard you spent so much time in, right?
A low-pitched burbling. The girl turned to identify its source, but by the time she saw it, all that was left was a ring of concentric ripples in the lake’s surface, dispersing into nothing.
Right. So what is it that’s upsetting you, rabbit?
Another burbling sound. And another. The girl saw them this time, from the corner of her eye. A pair of large bubbles, rising from the surface and bursting, as if from a volcanic mudpot. It dawned on the girl how thick and dark the blood had become. It was… coagulating.
Spit it out, rabbit. Nothing I’ve done, surely?
The bubbling gradually became more persistent, overlapping frequently enough that the girl quickly lost count. She began to choke, and sputter. The gas rising from the lake smelled of decay. Of putrescine and cadaverine. An anaerobic slurry, breathing rancid puffs of hydrogen sulfide.
Speak up rabbit, I can’t hear you!
The surface of the lake had begun to form a froth. A putrescent scarlet seafoam that shuddered and trembled with each bursting bubble. A feeling was welling up in the girl’s abdomen. An unbearable nausea unlike anything she had ever experienced.
Use your words, rabbit! Enunciate!
The poor girl was retching. Her abdominal muscles contracted rhythmically. Violently. Forcing the feeling up into her chest, into her throat, into the very sinuses of her skull.
The spirit was close now. Close enough that she was practically whispering in the girl’s ear.
Thaaat’s it rabbit… let it out.
The girl doubled over. Vomited. The spirit delicately plucked the femur from the girl’s fingertips as she fell to her knees.
Oh rabbit… It’s the smell, isn’t it?
She popped the femur back into its socket.
Don’t worry. It’ll pass.
The girl simply knelt there. Breathing labored. Staring at the mess. Gradually, the bubbling began to subside, and the sickly stench no longer seemed quite so unbearable. Now that her gut was empty, the endorphins began flowing through her bloodstream, gently quelling her nausea.
Instead, her nausea had been replaced by a burdensome pressure in her ears. The atmosphere felt constricted, as if it were held taut inside a latex balloon. She swallowed, attempting to equalize the pressure inside and outside her skull, but it didn’t seem to work.
The girl felt ten slender fingers slide beneath her arms, along her rib cage, and begin to lift her to her feet.
Alright rabbit. Up up up.
There was effort in the spirit’s voice, as she hoisted the girl’s dead weight. The girl groaned softly. Her abdominal muscles still ached from the strain of retching.
The girl teetered slightly, then stumbled. The spirit gently corrected her balance. She patted the girl affectionately on the head. Began stroking her hair. Comforting her.
The girl lashed out, pushing the spirit away. Warning the spirit not to touch her. To never touch her.
The spirit winced. Noticeably, as if the girl’s words had inflicted a sharp and sudden pain. An ice pick to her chest. For a fleeting moment, there was hurt in the spirit’s uncanny, iridescent eyes.
Her diaphanous muscles tensed. Her arachnodactyl fingers balled into fists. A quivering, guttural growl of frustration forced itself up through her trachea, and she turned her back to the girl.
There was a long, inelegant silence. The girl began massaging her forehead and temples with her fingertips. Her patience was wearing thin, and the pressure in her ears was becoming uncomfortable.
She was interrupted, however. By a sound. A deep, omnipresent hissing, almost too low-frequency to hear. It began quietly, then slowly grew louder, eventually becoming a fleshy, infrasonic sputtering that rattled her core. Both the girl and the spirit alike surveyed the sky apprehensively.
A deafening eruption. A sudden decompression. A violent, stinking windstorm, and a sharp ringing in the girl’s ears. Where once her eardrums had been pressed uncomfortably into her skull, she now felt them bulging outward.
The wind roared like whitewater, and the girl struggled to remain upright on the soft, slippery muck beneath her feet. She leaned into the gale, desperate not to lose her footing.
The spirit watched calmly as the girl struggled. She seemed almost unaffected by the storm, save for her fluttering, ethereal white hair. She nearly found herself reaching out to help the girl. To break her inevitable fall.
But instead, she paused. Let her arm fall to her side. The wind faltered, and the spirit watched as the girl fell face-first into sludgy, clotted blood.
Chapter 4
The velvet black sky had collapsed, crumbling like gold leaf, raining down like ash, and dissolving like candy floss.
In its place was an overcast sky. A featureless, unbroken sheet of mist, diffusing a cold, sterile light.
The girl sat cross-legged in a thick, liver-colored mud of congealed blood. She watched absentmindedly as little somethings scuttled about on its surface. She couldn’t quite call them flies. They moved too erratically to identify, and only seemed to sit still in her peripheral vision. A glance, and they would take to the air, leaving behind tiny clusters of carefully deposited eggs.
At least, she assumed they were eggs. To her, they resembled miniature tapioca pearls, only a millimeter or two across.
Suddenly, the girl piped up. She asked, rather casually, what it would take to convince the spirit to let her go.
The girl looked skyward. Roughly fifteen feet up, directly above her, the spirit hung motionlessly in the air. Balled up. Back to the ground. Hiding ineffectually behind the thick leather of her sheepskin jacket. She spoke drearily into her folded arms.
There’s nothing you can do to convince me, rabbit.
Her voice was coarse, dry, and disillusioned. A prickly static in the girl’s ears.
The girl thought on this a moment, before abruptly proposing a bargain of some sort… a trade, perhaps?
You have nothing to trade, rabbit.
Not on her, the girl admitted. But if the spirit were to let her go, she could retrieve something. Anything the spirit wanted.
The spirit sighed softly. Too softly for the girl to hear. The girl waited patiently for an answer, but she did not receive one.
How about a favor then? A task to carry out? Surely there was something the girl could do in exchange for her freedom?
The spirit balled up tighter, burying her face in her knees. She hung silently in the air, save for the gentle creaking of leather against leather.
Again, the girl prodded. What was it going to take? She was willing to make a deal with the devil.
The spirit uncurled, slowly. She swiveled around. Body first, with her head lagging behind. She squinted at the girl.
I’m not a devil, rabbit!
The spirit’s voice was saturated with incredulity.
I’m not a demon!
I’m not a fiend, or a monster!
I’m not trying to hurt you!
I’m not trying to make you unhappy!
The spirit lurched forward with each statement. She reached out toward the girl with one hand, resisting the urge to touch. Her fingertips hovered mere inches from the girl’s cheek. Her hand trembled with frustration, then snapped into a fist.
Wh…
The spirit inhaled softly, her jaw trembling. She tilted her head in genuine, wounded confusion.
Why do you hate me so much?
Now, this was a question that caught the girl off guard. This spirit really had no idea. She was naive. Completely naive. Naive to the way people work. How they think. How they feel. Naive to pain. To empathy. To human suffering.
This spirit had never conceived of a point of view that ran contrary to her own. Never had any inkling of the existence of an outside perspective. And now that she was face to face with a girl who embodied this concept fully, her worldview and confidence were beginning to corrode.
The girl simply stared at the spirit. In disbelief. In pity. All she could think to do was ask her: What did you expect?
The spirit’s breathing began to hasten, and shallow. Huffing quietly through her open mouth like a dying animal. She averted her eyes. Not in shame, but simply to allow herself time to think. She raked her fingers awkwardly through her drifting, ethereal white hair. Swallowed an uncomfortable lump in her throat.
The spirit began wagging her index finger, as if she were trying to summon a thought from deep in the folds of her brain.
You and I, w-we were supposed to…
She retracted her finger. Bit her lip betwixt her bladed jaws.
We were going to be happy together. I th-th-thought…
The girl squinted narrowly, watching in silence as the spirit, for the first time, struggled to find words.
I-I thought you would fall in love?
This was not worded as a question, but it was certainly spoken as one. It was less of a question for the girl, and more of a question the spirit was asking herself.
The girl answered it nonetheless, with a question of her own. A question that caused the spirit’s diaphanous muscles to tense, and her heart to visibly palpitate: With you?
The spirit appeared reluctant to look the girl in the eye, but the penetrating silence slowly forced her hand.
The girl shook her head in disbelief, uttering a question so blunt and direct as to fracture bone: How could you possibly have thought that?
The spirit remained quiet for a moment. Her thoughts seemed distant, and her psyche fragile. She chattered her mandible rapidly, a strange tic that caught the girl off guard.
She was thinking.
Eventually, the spirit drifted a ways away. She rolled up the sleeve of her sheepskin aviator jacket, reached deep into the congealed blood, retrieved the girl’s sketchbook from the muck with an unpleasant suction noise… and rose silently into the air.
The girl returned to her pondering. The little tapioca pearls peppered the ground now, like tiny hailstones after a brief and gentle storm.
A closer look revealed something moving inside. Nearly imperceptible threads, wriggling about wildly like little stop-motion dancers. The girl watched them intently, for there was little else to do.
Over time, she began to grow almost attached to them. She watched as they turned from a pale, translucent white to a deep, oxygenated crimson, and grew from the width of a silken thread to that of a horsehair plucked from a violin bow. She watched as they grew increasingly snug in their little gelatinous wombs, and wondered what they must be thinking. Or if they thought of anything at all.
One of the pearls burst, splitting along an invisible seam like a wine grape squeezed between two fingertips. Its occupant wriggled free of the deflated pearl, and out onto the vast expanse of gelatinized blood.
Why do you draw these, rabbit?
The girl was yanked suddenly from her thoughts. She apologized. She hadn’t quite heard what the spirit had said.
Why do you draw these?
Again, she asked the spirit to clarify.
The spirit turned a page of the girl’s sketchbook. The pages were delicate, and saturated with blood. Yet the graphite drawings were still clearly visible, and the spirit’s fingers were nimble enough not to tear them.
These… romances.
The spirit’s voice was wistful. She caressed the cheek of one of the figures on the page. It was a girl, not entirely unlike the one who drew it, in a passionate embrace with a spirit, not entirely unlike herself.
The girl briefly pondered why she drew such things, but she quickly brushed those thoughts aside, convincing herself that she didn’t know. In the silence that ensued, she became vaguely aware that she may have whispered her thoughts aloud.
She shook her head dismissively, assuring the spirit that they were just drawings. That they didn’t mean anything.
The spirit tore the page from the sketchbook, wadding it up like a wet paper towel. She squeezed the excess blood from the page, and tossed it into the girl’s lap.
Look again.
The girl uncrumpled the drawing. Stared at it. Reminisced on the feelings that had spurred its creation. If she were being honest with herself, this drawing had come from a place of longing. Of loneliness.
There are a hundred drawings just like that one in this book of yours, rabbit.
The spirit snapped the book shut with a wet slap, brandishing it in one hand as if to draw attention to it.
You spent time making these.
The girl asked the spirit what her point was, in a tone both sheepish and standoffish. She knew as soon as the words left her mouth that she had failed to mask her embarrassment.
My point is, rabbit, that you’re a liar.
The spirit tossed the book in the girl’s direction, and it landed in the sludge with a sickening splat.
You say these drawings mean nothing. It’s not true.
The girl gathered her sketchbook and held it protectively to her chest. She stared at the spirit, brow furrowed.
They must mean something!
The spirit’s tone was accusatory, that was undeniable. But it betrayed a desperation. The staredown that ensued made it clear that behind the posturing, and the arguing… the spirit was pleading with the girl.
But the girl refused to back down. Her eyes were intense, and their contact, unbroken. How long this lasted, neither could say. But it felt an eternity. The spirit began to squirm.
She shuddered violently, as if she were struggling to tamp down an outburst that was welling up inside her. But instead, she swiveled around, and went silent.
The girl rested her palms on the ground behind her. It was more worms than blood at this point. The tapioca pearl eggs had long since hatched, and their occupants grown, consuming and replacing their curdled blood substrate. All that was left were tangled clots the color of red wine, undulating gently, and contracting suddenly when disturbed.
The girl wondered where the time had gone, and why the sensation of sitting cross-legged in writhing worms didn’t seem to bother her as much as she thought it should.
She closed her eyes, and exhaled.
Do you know why I chose you, rabbit?
The girl inhaled sharply. The spirit’s voice had come from directly over her shoulder, and it startled her.
I’ve watched people wander that graveyard for decades. They’d come with expensive cameras. They’d come with rolls of paper, and colored wax. Occasionally, they’d come with flowers, if they were very old. But not you, rabbit… You came because you were lonely.
The girl began to fidget uncomfortably. She assured the spirit that was not the case. Why would she go to a place so empty if she were lonely?
You’re lying again, rabbit. I know what loneliness looks like.
The girl sighed softly, her lip quivering.
You sat on the same bench, time and time again. Drawing ghosts, and spirits. Each day I’d watch you draw another. Another daydream. Another intimate fantasy.
The girl’s cheeks flushed red with blood, and she turned her face away from the spirit’s voice. The spirit sidled closer. Close enough that the girl could feel her cold breath in the crook of her neck.
When you came to that graveyard each day, you were hoping, secretly, that a phantom would sweep you off your feet… weren’t you, rabbit?
The girl cringed in embarrassment. As silly as it sounded when spoken aloud, the spirit was correct. She had hoped for that. Precisely that, in fact. Of course, she never believed that such a thing might actually happen.
There was a long, lingering silence. The spirit swiveled around, turning her back to the girl’s.
Anyway, rabbit. That’s why I chose you.
The girl muttered under her breath. You can’t just choose someone. They have to choose you back. A nearly imperceptible grimace flitted across the spirit’s face.
So I’ve learned.
And with that, the spirit kicked off the ground, ascending quietly back into the sky.
Had she? The girl wondered this question aloud. The spirit drifted to a halt, and hung in the air. She swiveled around, and gave the girl a quizzical look.
The girl repeated herself: Had the spirit learned?
Are you deaf, rabbit? I’m not going to say it again.
The girl insisted that if that were true, and the spirit really had learned from her mistakes, then she should just let her go! Find someone else, who actually wants all of this!
The spirit began to sink lazily back to the ground, headfirst, like a salted baitfish through glycerin.
In the distance, there was a deep groaning sound, followed by a cracking, and a splintering. The pale, branchless, needle-like trees on the horizon had begun creaking, and toppling, their trunks the last thing to be consumed by the matted expanse of worms.
The spirit snapped her fingers, so as to attract the girl’s attention without touching.
Their eyes met, and with that, the two were face to face. The girl, right side up, and the spirit, hanging upside down, as if from an invisible thread.
The spirit’s expression was almost tender.
I can’t let you go, rabbit. You’ve been without oxygen for several hours. You don’t have an intact enough brain to go back.
The girl was struggling to understand. The spirit could see it in her eyes. She put it more bluntly.
You’ve begun to decay, rabbit.
The gravity of the situation finally began to dawn on the girl. What had once been an idle thought was now cementing itself in her mind as an irrevocable truth. This really was death.
She began to breathe heavily. Her larynx began to ache. No. The girl repeated herself. No no no no no. This couldn’t be happening. She stumbled to her feet. Began pacing.
Listen, the girl said. Listen. She told the spirit she didn’t need a body. Just let her go. She could live with being a ghost.
The spirit shook her head dismissively.
There’s no such thing as ghosts, rabbit… once a soul dissipates, it’s gone.
The girl couldn’t believe what she was hearing. What was the spirit, if not a ghost?
I’m just me, rabbit.
No. No no no no. She pleaded with the spirit. There must be something she could do to fix this! There had to be some way to undo what she had done! Please!
Listen, rabbit. The hocus-pocus it would take to unrot that brain of yours would literally kill me.
In the distance, another tree began to creak, and fall.
Your program is running on my hardware, rabbit.
The spirit tapped her temple knowingly.
So get used to it.
Chapter 5
A cocoon bounced off the girl’s forehead, and tumbled to the ground, disappearing amongst an endless expanse of others exactly like it.
The blood had long run dry, and the worms had coiled tightly, pupating inside a thick, leathery shell of dried mucus. If the girl had been bothered to look around, she might have compared them to beans in an endless silo.
Here and there, one would split at the tip, with a nearly imperceptible click, and a pale, pulsating ptilinum would peek through the crack.
A second cocoon hit the girl’s face, this time bouncing off her cheek. She flinched, causing the dried blood on her skin to flake off, and drift to the ground, like dandruff.
The air smelled of mold. Of mildew. Of dust and must. It bit sharply at the girl’s nose, but she didn’t seem to care.
A third cocoon, and a fourth.
Cat got your tongue, rabbit?
The spirit hung miserably in the air, flicking cocoons in the girl’s direction.
The girl didn’t respond.
You’re stuck here forever, rabbit. The least you could do is try to hold a conversation.
The cocoons continued to split at the tip with a click, creating a quiet cacophony not unlike the desynchronous ticking of a clockmaker’s workshop. The early risers had already wriggled free of their leathery shells. They were soft, and pale, and their legs flailed wildly as they struggled to find their footing.
The spirit twirled a cocoon in her fingertips while she waited, visually tracing the spiraling imprint left behind by the liquefying worm inside.
She touched the cocoon to the tip of a bony, tooth-like cusp, and applied pressure, impaling it. She sneered distastefully, tonguing it back off the cusp, and spat it at the girl.
The cocoon landed in the girl’s hair, and stuck there. She shuddered involuntarily.
A handful of the pale, scrambling dipterids that peppered the ground around her had begun to harden. To blacken. To pump their crumpled wings full of hemolymph, and air them out to dry.
The spirit watched the girl, waiting for her presence to be acknowledged. But the acknowledgment never came.
The spirit cast her remaining fistful of cocoons at the girl.
Why won’t you speak to me, rabbit?!
The cocoons bounced off the girl’s skin, and rattled as they hit the ground.
You couldn’t keep your mouth shut before!
The girl’s lip quivered. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes, and she was trying desperately to prevent their escape.
I’ve been alone in that hole for sixty years, rabbit! Do you have even the slightest idea what that feels like?! Any idea at all?!
The girl’s breathing became unsteady, and agitated. Yet somehow, she found herself unable to muster the energy to move. To speak. To do anything at all.
The spirit kicked a filthy clod of cocoons at the girl. The handful of flies that were capable of flight took to the air with a pitiful buzzing, settling back to the ground only a few feet away.
Look at you! You can’t even bring yourself to look at me! Am I that repulsive to you, rabbit?! Is the prospect of my company so distasteful to you that you’d rather just wither away?!
The girl was crying now. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. The spirit’s screaming had triggered a paralytic panic attack, and the spirit knew it. Yet somehow, the girl’s upset only seemed to provoke the spirit further.
So she continued. She continued until her voice was hoarse, and the ground had turned to a thick carpet of flies. Crawling on the girl’s skin. Buzzing in her ears. Swarming her nostrils to the point where she could barely breathe.
You can hate me all you want, rabbit! It won’t make a difference! Nothing you do will make a difference!
The spirit’s voice was strained, and her chest tight. And although there were no tears in her eyes, she breathed as if she were sobbing.
You’re never leaving me, understand?!
You’re MINE, rabbit!
The spirit quivered with rage. With frustration. She clenched her fists, and screamed at the girl. It was a primal, guttural scream, that caused vast clouds of flies to take to the air in wild murmurations. A droning, thickening darkness that blackened the sky.
It was in this fleeting moment, after the suffocating carpet had lifted, but before the flies had choked out the last glint of light, that their eyes met. Only then did the spirit finally grasp the depth of the girl’s pain. The weight of her suffering.
And then, everything went black.
Chapter 6
I’m sorry.
That’s what the spirit would have said to the girl, if the lump in her throat hadn’t plugged her larynx like a cork.
The swarming flies had long since dispersed, leaving the two of them sitting silently in an endless expanse of bone, as flat and smooth as a pebbled beach tumbled by the tides.
The girl ran her fingertips along the exposed blade of a pelvis, discolored and stained by blood reduced to soil. It had been halfway buried beneath carpals, and tarsals. Maxillae, and mandibles. Scattered teeth and disarticulated fragments of skull. She wondered if perhaps these were her own bones, repeated to infinity.
To the spirit, the girl seemed strangely at peace. A state of mind that the spirit envied, for her head was absolutely swimming. She felt guilt scratching and scraping at the folds of her brain, and regret prickling at its stem. A frightening and unfamiliar sinking feeling in her chest. A deepening awareness of the unforgivability of what she had done.
Again, the spirit tried to force an apology through her aching trachea, but her tongue stoppered her throat, and all that escaped was a pathetic croak.
The girl looked at the spirit a moment, and sighed softly. It was a sigh of quiet acceptance. It seemed foolish now, that she ever expected anything more from this spirit.
In time, the sun began to peer over the horizon, turning the sky from a paper white to a gentle sky blue.
In the warmth of the sunlight, the bones began to whiten imperceptibly. In time, they became old, and dry. Cracked, and weathered. Chalky, and pale.
And all the while, not a single word was spoken.
From between the sun-bleached bones, tender blades of grass began to emerge, reaching desperately toward the sunlight, and rooting themselves deeply into the soil beneath.
The spirit snuck a furtive glance at the girl, her head bowed meekly. The girl was simply sitting there, watching the grass grow.
It was no wonder the girl hated her. After what she had done, she deserved her hate. She had taken the girl’s freedom. Her life. Without hesitation, or thought. There was no redemption for her.
She was selfish. Ghastly. Loathsome and cruel. The fact that she had ever thought highly of herself now filled her with a stomach-churning embarrassment.
She was unworthy of the girl’s love. Of anyone’s love. She was an unsightly stain on creation, and the world would have been a better place had she not been a part of it.
Eventually, the endless expanse of bone became a verdant meadow that rippled in the breeze like ocean waves, though the spirit failed to notice. She simply picked at the grass, unconsciously. Compulsively.
And thought.
Chapter 7
The girl was not breathing.
Her heart no longer beat. Her skin was cool, and pale. Her muscles, rigid. Her amber eyes had sunken in their sockets, and her corneas had become clouded, and tacky. Like those of a discarded fish head left too long in the open air.
This was the body of a person who was unmistakably, unequivocally dead.
The spirit’s sheepskin aviator jacket was still draped over the girl’s shoulders. Her handmade adipocere candles had long burned down to stumps and snuffed themselves out. All that was left to light her burrow were her own luminescent bones.
And although her bones still radiated a diffuse teal light, it was no longer as vivid as it was before. No longer as intense. It was a dim, sickly light.
One of the spirit’s ribs fell from its cage, landing softly on the mulched coffin wood beneath them.
The spirit shivered and twitched. The nictitating membranes that had shuttered her sleeping eyes trembled momentarily. She was deep in the dream. A dream that had long since ceased to be pleasant.
The spirit, in her unconsciousness, only seemed to squeeze the girl tighter, nuzzling her face deeper into the crook of her neck. As if, for the first time, it was the spirit who was succumbing to the cold.
A second rib fell to the ground. The girl’s index finger twitched, nearly imperceptibly.
Chapter 8
The girl inhaled, sharply and suddenly. As if the tip of an icicle had been run up her bare spine. She turned to the spirit, dumbfounded.
“What did you just do?”
The spirit refused to acknowledge the girl’s question. She simply sat there, and continued to pick at the grass. The sun had slowed to a halt in the sky. Its stillness was too subtle for the girl to perceive, but the spirit knew.
“You’ve changed something. What’s going on?”
The spirit assured the girl that she had changed nothing. That she was being paranoid. The sun began to reverse direction. Again, too slowly for the girl to perceive.
The girl watched the spirit closely. She was up to something, and the girl was determined to find out what it was.
The grass began to retract. The girl could sense that something was off, but she struggled to pinpoint exactly what it was. The girl’s frustration grew, and she needled the spirit further.
“What are you playing at? Tell me. Now.”
The spirit snapped at her. She was up to nothing, and the girl should drop it, rabbit.
What seemed like hours passed, without a word spoken. In time, the girl’s suspicions became obvious. The grass was several inches shorter than it had been before. And not only that, it was speeding up.
But the girl said nothing. She simply watched. She watched the spirit, sulking in her little divot in the grass. She watched the sun as it inched back toward the horizon. And she watched the grasses retreat back into their seeds, and ungerminate.
The bones around them began to darken.
“Tell me what’s happening. Please.”
The spirit averted her eyes.
“I deserve to know.”
The spirit asserted that it was rude to look a gift horse in the mouth, rabbit. The girl briefly pondered the spirit’s slight misunderstanding of this phrase, but it was clear the spirit was offering something she considered a gift.
The girl backed off.
The gentle blue sky above them was long gone now, having faded to a stark paper white. The spirit coughed an ectoplasmic mucus from her lungs, and swallowed it back down her translucent esophagus.
“Okay, no. That’s enough. Explain yourself.”
The spirit struggled to suppress her hacking and sputtering. The girl rose to her feet and approached the spirit. She knelt down and began tapping the spirit’s skull repeatedly, forcing her to pay attention.
The spirit screamed at the girl. She screamed that she was trying to undo her mistake, rabbit! That she should be left alone to concentrate!
A string of mucus was hanging from her mouth. She wiped it from her chin and rose into the air, embarrassed. But it wasn’t long before she fell back to the ground with a bony clatter.
She coughed up a thick wad of mucus onto the ground. The girl approached her from behind, and placed a warm palm on the spirit’s shoulder, gently brushing her hair aside.
“How can you possibly undo your mistake? You told me that if you tried to unrot my brain, you would die…”
The spirit looked the girl in the eye, her jaw quivering. She looked as if she were about to cry.
Chapter 9
The air was black, and thick with flies. A ceaseless, thunderous buzzing battered the girl’s eardrums. There was nothing she could do, except wait for it to pass.
Eventually, the clouds of flies began to thin. Enough, at least, for the girl to stand, and attempt to find her bearings. The swarm was still thick enough to stifle her breathing, and her vision was impaired by the flies that fought incessantly to drink from the corners of her eyes. But the girl remained undeterred, swatting them away as best she could manage.
It took time, but the girl eventually found the spirit, sitting silently on a bed of empty, leathery cocoons. She was carpeted with flies. They drank freely from her open eyes. Lapped the phlegm from her mouth, and throat. The girl could see them, scuttling about deep inside the spirit’s trachea. An intrepid few had even wandered into her lungs themselves.
The spirit’s eyes shifted subtly in their sockets, as she sat, and thought. The end of her life was fast approaching, and she was taking the time to process that thought. She could, of course, have turned back at any time. And yet, for reasons she was still struggling to comprehend, she didn’t.
Was this really what she wanted?
“Is this really what you want?”
The girl’s voice snapped the spirit gently from her stupor. She was suddenly acutely aware of the insects in her chest, and began coughing violently, spewing clouds of flies into the air, followed by another thick, gelatinous wad of mucus.
She attempted to wipe the mucus from her chin using the sleeve of her jacket, with little success.
“You don’t have to go through with this, you know.”
The spirit insisted that yes, rabbit, she did have to go through with this. There was an audible irritation in her voice. A deliberate and precise articulation clearly intended to dissuade the girl from questioning her further.
The flies in the air around them began to fall to the ground, one by one, as their wings softened, and their bodies paled.
“You don’t. Not for me. I can stay here, if I need to. I’ll find a way to manage. Neither of us has to die.”
The spirit reminded the girl that she was already long dead, and rotting in a hole. She had killed her herself, rabbit.
The girl gave the spirit a withering look. That was not what she had meant, and the spirit knew it.
The spirit grinned smugly at the girl. It was a grin meant to taunt. To antagonize. But it was clear that it was masking an intense frustration.
The fact that the girl was willing to throw away her life for her sake was infuriating to the spirit. Somewhere along the line, this girl had got it in her head that her life, and that of the spirit’s, were of equal worth.
She was wrong.
The girl had a full life ahead of her, and she deserved every minute of it. She deserved the love, the hate, the pleasure and the pain. Everything that life had to offer, was hers to experience.
The spirit, though? There was nothing left for her in this world. The time she had spent with the girl had made that fact crystal clear. She had nothing, and deserved nothing.
The flies were dropping, as the colloquialism goes, like flies. Feverishly squeezing their soft, pale bodies back into their cocoons, which snapped shut around them as if they had never split in the first place.
The girl sat among the clicking cocoons, thinking quietly to herself. A very particular thought crossed her mind, and she looked to the spirit.
“You’re the only one, aren’t you?”
The spirit’s neck turned as if on a swivel, and she glared cautiously at the girl.
“You’re the only one of your kind.”
The spirit retorted, rather curtly, that perhaps that was for the best, rabbit. The girl insisted otherwise.
“No. I can’t sit back and let the last of anything die. I refuse to have that on my conscience.”
The girl approached the spirit, and placed a palm on her shoulder. The spirit recoiled from her touch.
“You’re a tiger. A predator. Even if someone dies, you don’t kill the last tiger for doing what comes naturally.”
The spirit became even angrier. A tiger? She wasn’t a tiger, rabbit! She was lonely, and selfish, and stupid! What she is doesn’t excuse what she’s done!
She clutched a fistful of cocoons so tightly they burst, and threw them in the girl’s face. She began to rise into the air, screaming every vicious insult she could muster. The girl was an idiot! An imbecile! A simpleton and a fool!
The girl scrambled backward, before clambering to her feet and retreating into the distance. She heard the spirit hacking, and choking, and the rattling of cocoons as she fell back to the ground.
By the time the girl turned around, the spirit was doubled over on the ground, wheezing, and gasping for air.
The girl simply stood there, watching the spirit struggle.
Eventually she took a seat.
Perhaps she should let the spirit die. As far as the girl could tell, it might be her only chance to do so.
The spirit had told the girl that she had been alone in her burrow for sixty years. So she was at least that old. Probably much older. She wondered if perhaps, once a person reaches that age, it feels like enough?
The spirit had also told the girl that she would be, quote: stuck here forever, rabbit. To the girl, forever seemed like a very long time to live. Too long, to be honest. For a person or a spirit.
Maybe this was for the best.
The last fly clicked back into its cocoon, and the world went utterly still, and utterly silent. The only remaining stimulus of note was the musty, fungal smell left in the wake of decay.
So the girl sat.
And waited.
Chapter 10
The girl stared absentmindedly at the skyline, where wine-red worms touched paper-white sky. She watched as the branchless trunk of an ancient cedar rose from the lake. It rose slowly, like a buoy lifted by an incoming tide.
With time, the tree stood upright, and reattached itself to its stump with an unsplintering, an uncreaking, and an uncracking.
The girl had never heard anything uncrack before, but now that she had, she knew immediately that it wasn’t a sound she’d be able to describe to anyone.
Not that any of this was something she was planning to talk about, once this ordeal was over. She’d witnessed an impossible event, and she knew better than to relay the impossible.
All she would be able to do is forget this ever happened. A task easier said than done, of course, but at the very least, the notion was comforting.
A second tree unsplintered. Uncreaked, and uncracked.
The spirit’s sickness was worsening. Her once drifting, ethereal hair was now knotted and tangled, clinging to her semi-corporeal skin like wet gauze, and her shimmering, concave retinas had become clouded with a sickly bacterial film.
The spirit’s body was not the only thing that had fallen ill. Her mind was sick as well. Sick with doubt. Sick with guilt. Sick with fear. The finality of death, once unfamiliar, was beginning to dawn on her, and she was scared.
In the distance, the trees continued to unsplinter, and uncreak, and uncrack. One by one, like the ticking of a clock.
There was a numbness in the spirit’s fingertips. She could feel her heart fluttering, a tightness in her throat, and an aching in her chest, caused not by the flies that had wandered too deeply into her lungs and passed away, but by a stagnant and suffocating dread.
A tree cracked, and creaked. Splintered and fell. The girl snapped to attention. These were sounds she recognized. But despite their familiarity, she was not happy to hear them. The trees were supposed to be uncracking. Uncreaking. This break in the pattern was, frankly, alarming.
She swiveled to face the spirit.
“What are you doing?”
The spirit didn’t answer. Instead, her breathing became rapid, and shallow. Like a mouse with its pelvis caught in a rat trap.
“Don’t play coy. Tell me what’s going on. Now.”
The spirit began to shake her head. Whisper nonsense into her own ears. Anything to drown out the sharpness in the girl’s voice.
The girl rose impatiently to her feet.
“You promised you’d put me back in my own head! What’s with the backpedaling? Are you toying with me?!”
The girl could hear the spirit’s pitiful whimpering. The way she chattered her jaw, like some sort of idiot toucan.
“You’ve decided to keep me prisoner after all? Is that it? You’ve decided to make me your little pet?!”
The girl cocked a middle finger against a stiffened thumb and struck the spirit between her sickly, half-blind eyes with an audible thwack.
“Hey! Answer me, dipsh—!”
The spirit shrieked at the girl. She’s scared, rabbit!
The girl’s aggression withered in an instant.
“What?”
She’s frightened, rabbit! She’s afraid to die!
The spirit’s words hit like a battering ram to the chest. The girl felt a hot wave of guilt wash over her. A surge of embarrassment and shame so searing that she feared the blood flushing her cheeks might cauterize her veins.
The girl began to tremble. Her fists balled, and her lips pursed tight as a thumbscrew. She felt her eyes welling, and her neck bristling, as her emotions wrestled violently with one another.
She growled in frustration. Swiveled around and stormed off. But of course, there was nowhere to hide. She kicked at the sludge beneath her feet, swore fiercely, and fell to her knees.
She braced an elbow against a knee. Her forehead against a thumb and forefinger. She could smell the coppery stink on her skin, and feel the worms dissolving back into coagulated blood and seeping through her knitted leggings.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of her turtleneck sweater. In the distance, she heard another tree creak, and splinter, and fall.
The spirit was panicking inside. Her eyes darted about as she struggled to think, and she didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. They floundered aimlessly, seeking to grasp at something that simply wasn’t there. Eventually they stumbled upon her mouth, and her breath hissed between her quivering fingers.
Another tree began to creak. The spirit reached out toward it. As if her subconscious mind thought she might be able to tip it back upright, if only she could reach it.
It crashed into the lake.
As the approaching ripples lapped at her shins, the spirit began sobbing. Apologizing tearfully. Profusely. She was so sorry. She was trying, rabbit. She swore she was trying.
The girl buried her face in her knees. Pressed her wrists to her ears. Anything to muffle the spirit’s mournful cries. She was trying, rabbit. She was trying…
“I KNOW you’re trying! I’M SORRY!”
The spirit went quiet, her breath trembling. The girl swiveled to face her, tears streaming down her cheeks. She stared into the spirit’s clouded, sickly eyes.
“I’m sorry…”
The spirit’s jaw began to quiver. She wrapped her spindly fingers around her face, and began to cry.
The girl rose to her feet. She approached the spirit. Took a seat alongside her. And in an act that surprised even herself, she placed her head gently on the spirit’s shoulder.
In time, the coagulated blood began to thin, like oil paint in turpentine. Gradually settling back into a shimmering, mirror-like surface. In the distance, the trunk of an ancient cedar rose from the lake. Stood upright. Unsplintered. Uncreaked. And uncracked.
Chapter 11
The girl sat silently. She stared uneasily at the spirit, lying lifeless in a pool of blood. Her bones no longer luminesced with a diffuse teal light. Her lungs no longer drew breath. Her heart no longer beat.
The spirit was gone.
The girl couldn’t shake the sinking feeling in her gut. The spirit had done this for her. She didn’t like that thought. That the stinking carcass before her was an act of love. She still wasn’t entirely sure she was worth it.
But what was done was done. There was no turning back now. However, as the girl continued to stare, she began to doubt whether there was still a moving forward.
Surely, something was supposed to have happened by now?
The spirit’s mouth hung open like that of a spent salmon, washed up dead on the riverbank after a spawn. Her once ethereal flesh was now sickeningly tangible, and her matted hair clung to it like withered algae to a seaside stone.
The girl could barely bring herself to look the spirit in the eye, although there were no longer eyes to look into. The rot had long since taken them, and where once there had been shimmering teals and golds, there were simply empty pits lined with decaying silverskin.
The girl began to fear that the spirit had not completed the task she had set out to do. Was it possible that the spirit had fallen short of her goal? That her sacrifice had been wasted?
The girl was struggling to shake the awful notion that she might be stuck in this place forever. That at this very moment, her brain was being reclaimed by decay. Its circuitry undone, for a second and final time.
The girl continued to stare at the spirit’s body. Its empty eyes. Its slackened jaw. Her lip began to tremble. Despite her better judgment, the girl was mourning the spirit.
The spirit had truly loved the girl, in her own terrible, misguided way. The proof was lying right in front of her, in an endless pool of blood. And even if that love had remained forever unreciprocated, the girl would have preferred to spend an eternity with someone who loved her, than an eternity alone.
The girl reached out to touch the spirit, but hesitated, just for a moment. Despite her fascinations, she had never encountered death so directly before. At least, not that of a person. She worried that her instinct to touch might not be appropriate.
Yet she did it regardless, touching her fingertips to the crook of the spirit’s neck.
The spirit’s corpse convulsed, like the salted flank of a freshly butchered cod. She gasped for air, but drew no breath.
The girl drew back, startled. She gawked at the spirit, lying limp in blood. As if she were a fish in the bottom of an aluminum boat, trying in vain to flush its gills with water.
The girl watched the spirit struggle soundlessly. Too weary to move. Too ragged to breathe. This was a being teetering between life and death.
The girl approached the spirit cautiously. It was clear to her that the spirit was unaware of her drawing near. How could she have been, with her eyes claimed by decay? For all the spirit knew, she was alone in this place. And despite her vacuous, dead-eyed stare, the girl could tell the spirit was frightened.
“Can you hear me?”
She spoke softly, and calmly.
“Hey, hey. Listen to my voice.”
The spirit twitched in response.
“How are you feeling?”
The spirit flexed her jaw as if she were attempting to form words, but to no avail. Her larynx had long since been reduced to tatters.
The girl couldn’t bear to see the spirit lying in blood.
“I’m going to touch you. Is that okay?”
The spirit’s rib cage expanded breathlessly. The girl reached out and gingerly touched her shoulder. Her mandible chattered.
“You okay?”
The spirit acknowledged the girl’s question with a barely perceptible nod.
The girl took hold of the spirit by the shoulders, and hoisted her upright. The spirit’s entrails spilled from her abdomen, followed by kidneys, liver, heart, and lungs.
Somehow, this didn’t seem to faze the girl. She took a seat across from the spirit, knee to knee, and touched the spirit’s forehead to her own.
The spirit began to shiver.
“Hey, hey. Listen to me. I’m here.”
The girl spoke softly, as if to a frightened child.
“It’s okay. You’re okay.”
A fragile silence.
“Oh hey, I just realized. I don’t think we were ever properly introduced.”
The spirit’s face twitched erratically. She seemed confused.
“My name’s Wren. Wren Barrows.”
The spirit’s twitching ceased.
“What’s yours?”
The spirit yawned widely, her jaw distending as if she were a sculpin on a fishhook. The girl coaxed it shut with a gentle finger to the spirit’s chin.
“I’m guessing no one ever gave you one, am I right?”
The spirit’s head quivered back and forth, ever so slightly.
“Would you like me to give you one?”
The spirit’s rib cage expanded, despite there being no lungs with which to inhale. The girl closed her eyes, and took a thoughtful breath.
A moment passed before she opened them again.
“How about Adrienne?”
Something stirred within the spirit. The girl could feel it.
“Adrienne Thistle. How does that sound?”
The spirit smiled weakly. One half of her mandible sloughed off and fell to the ground with a wet clap.
“I think Thistle’s a good name. You want to know why?”
The spirit awaited the girl’s answer with bated breath.
“Because you’re a pain in the ass.”
The spirit’s rib cage began to spasm rhythmically. She was laughing. The girl couldn’t help but crack a cheeky smile.
It wasn’t long before the spirit’s laughter deteriorated into heartbroken sobbing. The girl was swift to comfort the spirit. She placed a hand atop the spirit’s head, softly stroking her tangled, withered hair. The spirit tightened her grip on the girl.
The girl quietly returned the gesture.
Eventually, the spirit loosened her grip, and her arms fell weakly to her sides.
The girl let go of the spirit, hesitantly. Poised to catch her should she happen to fall. But the spirit did not fall. She simply sat there, quietly breathing nothing.
The girl stared at the spirit, with an expression of genuine concern. She had a thought, and nearly spoke it aloud… but fell silent when the spirit rolled up a sleeve and plunged her open hand deep into the marshy substrate beneath the lake.
She began pulling. Struggling to uproot whatever it was she had wrapped her spindly fingers around. When her progress slowed, she began to tug, repeatedly. Again and again, until her tugging became yanking, and her yanking became wrenching, and the girl began to fear that the spirit might literally tear herself apart.
The girl reached out as if to stop the spirit. To plead with her to take it easy. But the moment she did, her sketchbook came unbuckled from the muck and the spirit collapsed to the ground.
The girl stared a moment at the sketchbook in the spirit’s hand. And then, at the spirit herself. She was breathing heavily, although at this point it was more out of instinct than function. The girl found herself at a loss. She didn’t know what to say, or how to proceed.
The spirit began to lift herself from the blood, her hair hanging like a starched curtain around her decaying face. The strain she was exerting upon her increasingly fragile body was, to the girl, distressingly clear.
Again, she found herself reaching out to help the spirit. To keep her tendons from snapping, and her joints from dislocating. But there was a hesitation in her movements, as if she feared her fingers might cleave the spirit’s flesh like wet clay.
By the time the girl had composed her thoughts, the spirit was already sitting upright. The girl retracted her arm sheepishly, and felt a twinge of guilt nip the nerves along her spine.
The spirit placed the sketchbook in the girl’s hands. Her struggle was so pronounced that, to the girl, the book appeared unthinkably heavy. But of course, once it was in her hands, it was revealed to be no heavier than one might expect.
The girl stared at the book. The binding was tattered and frayed, as if it had been exposed to the elements for years, and its blood-saturated pages had become so delicate that they would have torn each other apart had she opened it.
The girl held the book tight to her chest. There was a profound sadness in her eyes, as she watched the spirit’s tactile fingertips probe the lake’s surface, searching blindly for any sign of the girl’s presence.
The girl took the spirit by the hand. First her left hand, and then her right. She held them tight. The spirit chattered what little was left of her jaw.
The spirit traced her fingers along the girl’s arms, and placed a hand upon each of her shoulders. With a remarkable tenderness, the spirit leaned in close, and touched the girl’s forehead to her own.
The girl peered sadly into the spirit’s hollow, empty eyes. Her breath quivered softly. She touched her fingertips to her lips. She nearly touched them to the spirit’s as well… but she stopped short, and her fingers curled.
The spirit arched her back. Braced her shoulders. And without warning, plunged the girl deep beneath the blood.
Chapter 12
The girl awoke.
She tried to draw breath, but her ribs were locked. An attempt to flex her fingers revealed they were rigid, and unfeeling. When she went to open her eyes, they steadfastly refused. And where she expected to feel the anxious beating of her heart, she instead felt nothing.
Although the girl’s mind was beginning to stir, her body was still cold, stiff, and dead.
With each thought that passed through the girls head, a modicum of oxygen was burned, and her brain sunk deeper into a desperate suffocation. An unbearable hypoxia, accompanied by an intense and overwhelming urge to breathe.
Finally, the girl’s lungs began to expand, drawing a sickly, rattling breath. And with that breath came a thump, thump, thump in her chest, as thick and stagnant blood began to pulse through her veins.
The girl opened her eyes, but saw nothing. Either she was shrouded in a near complete darkness, or her retinas had yet to regain their function. Although the girl could not have known it, both of these conclusions were true.
Slowly, the feeling began to return to her fingertips. At first, all she could feel were pins and needles. Prickles and stings. To most, an unpleasant sensation, but to the girl, a welcome relief.
With a repeated and conscious effort, the girl began to flex her slumbering fingers. Through the numbness, she could feel the zipper of the sheepskin jacket that hung over her shoulders. It was a jacket she had forgotten was there. The moment of her death felt so distant now, it had slipped her mind.
The girl extended a stiff, waxen arm to the ground. She felt damp mulch. Rusty nails. And loose bones.
Finally, an unobstructed breath. A gasp, spurred by a sharp and sudden realization: These were the spirit’s bones. She attempted to retract her hand, but was met with a distressing resistance.
With time, the girl’s body began to warm. Warmth was an almost unfamiliar sensation, at this point. It massaged her stiffened muscles, loosening them gradually. Dissolving their tension, until they could no longer support the girl’s frame, and she collapsed to the ground.
And there she remained, for quite some time. Not because she was incapable of rising. She was, within minutes. But simply to rest. To recover.
With newfound warmth, came the sensation of cold. The girl slipped her arms through the sleeves of the spirit’s jacket, and bundled herself tightly within its old and yellowed fleece.
What felt like an hour passed.
The girl extended a hand, and began a cautious and tactile exploration of her surroundings. Immediately, she felt something familiar. Her sketchbook. She picked it up and held it close. It wasn’t weathered, or soaked with blood. As far as her fingertips could surmise, it was just as she remembered it.
The girl explored further. She felt waxen stumps, and burnt-out wicks. Fist-width tunnels dug from loamy soil. Thin, delicate roots that hung from the ceiling. And eventually, the burrow’s entrance.
She ran her hands along its perimeter, measuring it carefully. To her, it seemed frightfully narrow. A nervousness tickled the back of her neck. But of course, she had no choice in the matter.
The girl took one last look over her shoulder. It was not an act of logic, but of instinct. In the darkness of the burrow, there was nothing to see.
But the girl did see something. An atlas, glowing with a faint teal light. A glow so faint that in the light of day, it would have been imperceptible.
The girl paused, and stared silently at the bone. A dull, dusty little vertebra that had once cradled the spirit’s skull. Her eyes shifted subtly. To the floor. To the tunnel. Then back to the bone. A moment passed.
Quietly, the girl plucked the atlas from between axis and occipital, and slipped it into her pocket.
Chapter 13
The girl emerged from the hole on a bright autumn morning. The sky was a pale and delicate blue, and the breeze carried with it an invigorating chill. The cemetery was empty, as it nearly always was. She was thankful for that.
The girl took a moment to assess herself. She seemed healthy. Intact. Perhaps a little tired. She had a sketchbook in her hand. A jacket on her back. A bone in her pocket. She felt as if perhaps she were a different person than she had been before, but there’d be time to evaluate those feelings later.
She felt a little jolt upon hearing the sound of an SUV arriving in the parking lot over the hill, and of indistinct conversation as its doors slammed shut. After taking a moment to compose herself, she shuffled off toward the bike rack near the cemetery’s entrance.
The girl fiddled with the dials on her bike lock, and entered a four-digit code: The date she had buried a pet mouse she’d had as a child. She hopped atop her bike, and rode home.
The girl had been missing for nearly seventy-two hours. It wasn’t long enough for someone to have filed a missing person report. After all, the girl was an adult, though she rarely felt that way. But it was long enough for loved ones to worry, and despite the girl’s loneliness, she did have a handful of loved ones.
She made excuses. Told them that it was no big deal. That the jacket on her back had been found in a ditch, and justified its retrieval with a price check online. Indeed, the price of such a jacket was considerable.
In the days, and months, and years that followed, the girl often left peculiar happenings in her wake. By the time they were noticed, the girl always had an explanation at the ready. Never a truthful one, but always a plausible one. Either that, or she had already slipped away, unseen.
No one ever discovered the atlas the girl carried in her pocket, despite it being on her person at all times. Occasionally, she would wonder if she might be able to pass it off as the bone of an animal, should it come to that. But the girl was clever enough that it never did.
Whatever it was the girl was hiding, it remained a secret to anyone but herself. She had decided long ago that no one would ever know. That no one needed to know. And indeed, no one ever did. Not family. Not friends. Not you, or I.
And in the end, the girl was content with that. Her choices were her own. Perhaps she had made the right choice. Perhaps she should have known better. But one thing can be said for certain:
She was never lonely.
