“It’s working!” I exclaimed, rubbing my eyes. Dozens of brightly colored dots flashed across my vision, making it impossible to see. I heard Cassius on the stairs, coming up to see our work. “Watch out for the flash,” I warned. If Silas were here, he would have fallen over laughing at so amateur a mistake.
“Annaleigh?”
I caught the note of concern in Cassius’s voice. Squinting, I could just barely make out his form on the stairs. Stars danced around him.
“Annaleigh, come to me.”
“What? Why?”
He was staring past me, looking at something huddled at my ankles. I turned, and a shriek ripped from my chest, splitting the world in two.
There, on the floor, twisted with rigor mortis and darkened with decay, was Fisher.
My knees hit the wooden planks as I crumpled to the floor. I tried to cover my mouth, but nothing would stop the guttural, choking screams from pouring forth. Fisher’s neck was wrenched horrifically to the side, his joints splayed in unnatural angles. Milk-white eyes stared back at me from sunken sockets. I knew they couldn’t actually see me, but they seemed to plead for release.
“Fisher?” I sobbed, crawling toward the corpse. My trembling hands reached out to somehow help before falling back. There was no helping him. He’d been dead for a long time. The fetid stench of rotting flesh was overpowering, coating my tongue and throat. A wave of sickness climbed up into my mouth, and I turned, spitting it out. “I don’t understand,” I moaned.
Cassius was at my side in an instant, arms around me, pulling me away from the decaying body of my childhood friend.
“I saw him not five hours ago. How is this possible?”
A low chuckle came from the shadows, seemingly from Fisher himself. It grew louder and louder, morphing into a cackle of triumph. Cassius pulled me to my feet and pushed me behind him as he stood guard, and drew a hidden dagger from his boot.
“Who’s there?” he demanded, pointing the blade at the corpse. “Show yourself.”
There was an impossible ripple across Fisher’s chest, and his arm lolled off his body, thudding to the floor with a slap.
“Fisher?” I breathed, daring to hope that somehow he was still alive.
The arm flexed, contorting as his legs struggled to push the lower half of his body from the floor. They couldn’t seem to find purchase and had to push again, testing their strength. His other arm jerked beneath him, so that he looked like a crab flipped on its back and scrambling to right itself. His torso twisted and writhed, muscles and sinews crunching, snapping, and popping into painful angles.
A low, keening wail rolled out of my chest as I cowered behind Cassius, my fingers tight around his sides, anchoring myself to him. He was real. He was here. Everything else seemed like something out of a dark nightmare I’d soon wake from.
Fisher righted himself, standing on legs too far decayed to hold weight. Knees bowed low, his back lurked over, hunched and hulking. He eyed us for a moment with a flat, stony glare, then began to cough.
Thick, viscous phlegm spewed from his mouth, landing on the floor like globs of tar. His body shook from the force, struggling to expel whatever was lodged deep in his throat. When his lips began to peel away, curling back like rolls of coiled tree bark, I pressed my face into Cassius, fighting the urge to throw up. I did not want to see whatever came next.
But I couldn’t mask the gasps and groans as my very dead friend heaved and wrestled against the foreign object. With a wet burst, something awful gave way and fell to the ground. I peeked over Cassius’s shoulder, unable to not look.
Fisher’s body lay split open, pieces and parts flung out in a gruesome explosion. In the center of this absolute horror stood a figure, her back turned to us. Covered in viscera, she rolled her neck from side to side, stretching her muscles, delighting in her sudden freedom after such a tight confinement.
She turned slowly, gazing about her surroundings. When she saw us, her dark mouth flashed into a smile, even as oily tears ran down her face.
Her terrible black eyes met mine. “Dance with me?”
“Kosamaras?” Cassius gasped.
“Hello, nephew,” replied the Weeping Woman, squinting athim.
My mouth fell open with alarm. “You know this…thing?”
“My aunt.” Cassius lowered the dagger, putting things together that I was not privy to. “The balls, the dancing…that was all you?”
The Weeping Woman’s eyes were wild in the pulsing light. “It was, it was. It may be my best work yet. Of course, it’s not quite finished.” She cocked her head to the side, staring around him at me. “I do hope you’ve not grown too attached to this one. She’s next on my list.”
“List?” I repeated. “Cassius, what’s going on?”
Every fiber in my body was screaming at me to leave, to bolt down the stairs and out into the cold, away from this creature, away to safety. But where was safe? Not this island, and certainly not Highmoor. And with the storm’s rapid approach, even the sea would be dangerous. There truly was nowhere for me to go.
