Stephen Irwin: The Dead Path

“Well.”

She tucked the knife into her belt. Humming to herself, she approached the short stick ladder that rose to the sphere behind the ghostly children. Within, Nicholas saw Esther Garvie’s neck jerk long and her hair stand up on end, lifted by an invisible, clenching fist. He knew that fist had been Quill’s. The ghost girl tried to twist her head from side to side, desperate to avoid the killing blade. Suddenly, Esther’s skin grew silvery and pale, as if a spectral spotlight were turned on it, and the skin of her neck opened up, revealing darker, wet flesh in the deep cut. Her small body arched, then slowly slackened. She jerked once, twice… and she vanished. Quill climbed onto the highest rung and unlatched a hatch made of the same grisly bone and twisted wood, and swung it wide before scuttling down to the ground.

Nicholas saw her now for what she was. A spider. A spider herself: bloated and old and thirsty, weaving dark deadly work in her ancient web of dark trees.

“Mr. Close,” whispered Hannah.

Nicholas forced himself to look at her.

Her eyes were wet and desperate, and her lips trembled. “Please, Mr. Close. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but please help me?”

“Help me, help me,” mocked Quill, brightly.

Nicholas felt a flare of hatred rise in his throat, and rolled his eyes-the only part of him he could command-to glare at the evil old woman.

Quill’s eyes were on the sky, on the shifting clouds. Satisfied, she looked down at Nicholas. “You heard her, pretty man. Help her.” A worm rotten grin split her wrinkled face. “ Put her in. ”

No! thought Nicholas. No! he yelled at his arms, his hands, his legs. No!

But his body obeyed her. One hand lifted the knife to his mouth, his teeth clenched around the cold blade, and he strode, easily and without hurry, to Hannah.

Hannah shook her head. And new, huge tears rolled down her face. She began to sob. “Mr. Close, please… d-don’t do this…”

And as he lifted her, he felt warm tears roll down his own face.

He carried her easily up the creaking ladder. So light, he thought. So small.

“Please, Nicholas, d-don’t listen to her!” sobbed Hannah. “You don’t have to l-listen to her!” She wriggled and kicked, but it was futile. His grip was strong. She began bawling.

Strung dead children squirmed in desperate terror beneath him. God, no, he thought. Don’t make me put her in there… but he slid her easily into the hatch, in among the ghosts of the stunned, wailing, weeping, lost children. As he dropped her in the bottom of the dry killing cage, his dumb arms tingled.

Cold. This is how cold death feels.

Hannah curled into a ball at the bottom of the cage, trying to shrink away from him.

“No, no. Don’t drop her,” commanded Quill. “Lift her.”

His hands rearched down willingly and lifted Hannah into a slump against the side of the cage-she sobbed, trembling with terror, trying to pull away. His dispassionate fingers twined her dark hair.

“N-Nicholas…” she stammered. Despair filled him like cold lake water.

As Hannah’s tiny shoulders shook, the faces of the ghost children interwove and became as hard to discern as ripples in a stream’s crosscurrent. As Nicholas straightened Hannah, a slightly older version of Hannah glowed among the fog of ghost children. It was Miriam’s face that was yanked, unwilling and blind with horror, up to face the night sky. Miriam’s spectral skin glistered bright pearl and her dark hair was streaked with mercury as invisible fingers hauled it up.

And Nicholas realized what this ghostly light was: the echo of moonlight from several nights ago.

Suddenly, Miriam’s eyes threw wide and Nicholas saw the edge of her throat split open in a new, deep wound, severed by a keen, invisible blade. Her tiny body strained in a last animal panic; her muscles wrenched tight, then she swooned. The hair fell down like a final curtain. Her body sagged, then winked out, leaving the ghosts of two boys struggling in front of him-Dylan Thomas, Tristram Boye.

Oh, God! thought Nicholas. Let me die. Let me die now rather than do this to Hannah.

“Nearly,” said Quill, her voice tight with excitement. She stood just in sight, a poisonous presence in the corner of his eye. She was watching the sky, rocking from foot to foot beside him. “Wait.”

For the moon, realized Nicholas. The moon comes out just before she cuts their throats.

He needed to do something. He needed to break the spell before the moon winked out from behind the clouds, because the moment its chromium light fell on Hannah… he would cut her narrow throat.

He rolled his eyes upward, but could not see the moon. Move! he commanded his head. Back!

But his muscles refused him.

“Up,” whispered Quill, crag face tilted up to the clearing sky. “Up and ready.”

“Nicholas, n-no!” sobbed Hannah. “Please d-don’t h-hurt me…”

His left hand gently tightened on the soft rope of Hannah’s hair. He pulled her up, up into the twin swirls of the two ghost boys.

The hair of one of the boys grew bright. Dylan Thomas’s. His scalp and skin glowed silver as the forgotten light of a ghost moon fell on him. A moment later, his short hair twisted cruelly upward, yanking his head high and his neck straight. Then the skin of his neck slid apart in a neat cut, deep, exposing arteries and tendons.

Only Hannah and Tristram were left.

“Knife…” breathed Quill.

Nicholas’s traitorous right hand reached up and pulled it from between his teeth… and lowered it down in front of Hannah’s face.

“ Nicholas! ” screamed Hannah.

“Ready!” hissed Quill.

He lifted Hannah higher; her throat was a white curve. She was trembling.

He could feel the moon’s cold glare on his neck, ready to open like a great and hungry eye.

“Ready,” hushed Quill.

His fingers lazily gripped the knife a little tighter and touched its razor blade to Hannah’s throat.

“Oh please… I w-want my Mummy…” she whispered, a sob.

And through her, around her, he could see Tristram was turning. His lips moved, grim, cursing his murderer. Shaking with fear, but not crying. Fighting to the end. Oh Tris… Tristram’s skin grew bright as moonlight touched it.

No! thought Nicholas. I can’t watch my best friend die!

And Nicholas closed his eyes.

The ladder underfoot creaked. Just a peep. His weight had shifted, just a fraction.

“What?” said Quill, as if she’d sensed the spell shudder. The treetops in the distance turned mirror silver. The clouds were breaking. Soon-twenty seconds, fifteen-it would be here.

Nicholas’s heart skipped faster, shaking off its metronome beat. I did it, he thought. I closed my eyes!

Tristram was gone. Only Hannah remained in the cage.

The mercury tide of bright moonlight was racing across the treetops, closer and closer as the clouds overhead skidded away. Closer, closer…

“And,” hissed Quill.

“No!” begged Hannah.

“Here!”

The moonlight kissed his skin. His heart thudded hard as a storm, the blood crushed inside him like a swollen dam, ready to burst. His mind became a sharpening funnel, focusing every ounce of strength, every joule of hot hatred, every hurt he wanted to bring down on Quill into his shoulder.

“Now!” crowed Quill. “Cut, my pretty man!”

“ Up! ” he yelled. And he let the dam inside him break.

The little knife sliced…

Air.

It wasn’t dramatic, just a tiny twist of the shoulder. But the blade missed skin by millimeters.

“What?” hissed Quill. She was marble in the moonlight, a white thing. A wrinkled maggot. “Cut the whelp!”

He opened his left hand. Hannah’s hair fell about her face, and she slumped in a faint to the bottom of the bone and twisted-branch sphere. The cage rocked back a fraction.