Kelly Creagh - Nevermore

Isobel spat ash from her mouth. She wiped sweat and grit from her eyes and leveled a defiant glare up at him.

“Time and again!” he snarled, livid, yet somehow . . . concerned? “You should have left when I gave you the chance!”

Isobel tightened her hand around a wad of dirt. She unleashed it at him. He hissed, recoiling as the spray caught him in the face.

Somewhere in the distance, a bell tower began to chime the hour. Loud, brazen bongs ricocheted through the cemetery. It was a sound that gripped her, wrung her with its meaning. Midnight. It was midnight.

“Help!” came a raw gurgle from the pine box beneath her.

Isobel whirled. Hands and knees on top of the coffin, she cleared away the top layer of dirt and broken bits of Noc.

“Cheerleader!”

Isobel turned to glare over her shoulder.

Pinfeathers knelt down at the edge of the grave. He stretched one clawed hand out to her. “Take my hand. Leave him!”

Isobel grabbed for the shovel that had fallen in with her and, grasping it, swung it at Pinfeathers. He caught it easily, his forearm stretched firm along the handle.

“Stop fighting me and come!” he growled.

Isobel snarled between gritted teeth. She kept her grip on the shovel, and placing one foot against the wall of the grave, she twisted, pushing off, wrenching the shovel handle like a lever. A sharp crack echoed through the graveyard, followed by a howl. Isobel fell free, landing on her backside atop the coffin while Pinfeathers’s snapped arm toppled limp into her lap.

He recoiled with a long hiss. His frame loosened once more, and he became a mix of wisps and bird. He floated above the grave, a dark mass emitting hoarse croaks and inhuman wails. His wings beat at the air with a broken rhythm, his bird’s body twirling in a spiral, struggling to gain the purchase of flight. His face appeared through the vapor, long enough to roar at her. Then, as violet mist, he swept away, black plumes escaping his wings, flitting down like fallen leaves into the open grave.

In the distance, the deep chimes of the hour continued to ring, and there was no way to know how many remained to be announced. Isobel threw the hollow, broken arm to one side and returned to the coffin, which had grown silent.

“Brad!” she called. She pulled at the wooden lid. It budged only slightly. Isobel whirled, looking for the shovel. She snatched it up and drove the blade against the side of the coffin. The wood cracked, but not enough. She tried again.

“Brad!”

She hacked the blade against the wood again, and this time a portion of one corner splintered off.

Isobel dropped the shovel. She shoved her hands into the hole and pulled upward. The coffin lid came slowly. She conjured all her strength, pulling until at last the lid came free, clattering to the side just as the bell tower’s final chime bonged through the cemetery.

It was twelve midnight exactly.

Inside the coffin, Brad lay silent and shaking, his eyes fixed heavenward. He was dressed in a clean hospital gown, his broken leg bandaged in a thick blue cast. Isobel reached for him, but her hands swept cleanly through, as though he were a hologram.

“Brad!” she shouted.

His shaking intensified.

“Is-Isobel?” he murmured. His eyes stared sightlessly past her, focused on something above her.

She tried grasping for him again, but once more her arms ghosted straight through him.

Something thick, wet, and warm splattered against her arm, stopping her. She looked to see a bright crimson starburst of blood glistening on her forearm. Had she been hurt?

Another splatter came, this one straight into the open palm of her questioning hand.

Isobel looked up. Blood oozed from the statue looming above her.

Great streaks of red coursed the length of its robes, sliding down the folds of its stone gown, pooling in the dirt.

“Isobel!”

Brad flew upward and past her, his limp form yanked from the grave like a rag doll, plucked by an unseen force. He swept up, distorted and stretched, elongating as he was sucked one inch at a time into the visage of the statue. It drew him in, arching the moment it absorbed him completely, Brad’s screams snuffing into silence.

Within the darkened hood, two pinpricks of ruby light sprang to life.

Stone gave way to spilling folds of brilliant crimson. Blood soaking through the stirring fabric of its robes, the figure moved. It turned its head and stepped down from the anchor of its granite base.

Isobel stared in motionless horror as the specter rounded the gaping hole in the earth, its blood-dabbled robes fluttering about its shape as it floated more than walked.

A heavy train of red fabric followed the form. It dragged through the ash, causing a cascade of red-stained grit to spill over her.

Isobel coughed and fell back, sprawling into the now empty coffin. She squinted through a haze of dust, mesmerized as she watched the dripping thing drift around the outer perimeter of the open grave.

“Brad?”

The figure stopped. Its glistening, fiendish gaze fell on her. From within the drape of its sleeve, it raised a hand over the open grave, over her. The blood-drenched, bone-thin fingers curled one at a time into a slow fist. Beneath her, she felt the ground tremble, then shudder. Above, the edges of her enclosure quivered, dirt and rock loosening until, at last, they broke forth in a tidal surge.

Earth poured over her in rushing waves from all sides. It fell against her body in heavy clods, a suffocating weight that fast became crushing.

“No!” she screamed, flailing. She thrashed, battling to loosen herself from the raining soil and ash that threatened to consume her. She fought to stand, causing the dirt to press more tightly around her. It claimed her legs, trapping her. She reached with both arms toward the edge of the grave, toward the open sky, but the earth gushed, building to her waist, to her chest. It piled past her shoulders, her head, and now raced to consume her arms, swallowing the light one fragment at a time. With it went the vision of the trees, the gravestones, the ashen sky, and the scarlet, blood-drenched visage of the Red Death.

The growing silence seared her mind. Isobel arched against the constricting earth, the enclosing darkness. Her dirt prison shifted in answer to her movements, compressing.

Out! She needed to get out!

With her mouth clamped shut, she unleashed a scream from the back of her throat. But who would hear? She couldn’t move her arms. Her legs. Anything. Panicked, she realized she’d been holding her breath. The packed dirt squeezed her chest, crushed her lungs. She couldn’t breathe!

She gasped involuntarily and was rewarded with a mouthful of coarse grime. She swallowed and her body convulsed at the acrid taste. Her lungs burned for air. Her heart knocked hard against her rib cage, begging for release.

If she didn’t get out, she was going to die. She knew it. She was going to die.

Varen. She thought his name over and over in her head. Varen, where are you?

No answer came to her, and gradually she grew still again. Locked in the earth’s suffocating embrace, she listened to the flutter of her heart, the only sound in her ears as, beat by beat, its rhythm began to slow. Its thump reminded her of the sound of a clock, one that was winding down, about to stop forever.

At least she’d gotten to see him, she thought, to tell him how she felt. At least he knew. At least she’d tried. Tears pricked at her eyes. How could she die when she’d promised to come back for him? When he was waiting for her? She squeezed her eyes and felt the tears leave her, stolen by the absorbing dirt that had taken her breath, and with it, her final hope.