What Moves the Dead (39)

“She killed herself?”

“She didn’t understand.” Madeline started to stand. One hand snaked out to grab the bedpost, almost as if it were disconnected from the rest of her. “She didn’t understand what va was trying to do, and then her fool brother took her body away and burned it, can you imagine? So she couldn’t even come back!”

Fire stops it, then, I thought, and a wave of unutterable relief passed over me. If it got into me, as long as Angus burned my body, it would be all right. The dead may walk, but I will not walk among them.

“But you understand, Easton. You can take over teaching the tarn. Va can’t keep my body going much longer, I’m afraid. I’m starting to fray at the edges. Some things break down after a while.” She smiled ruefully again and took a step forward.

She moved like the hares and finally I understood.

Maddy’s control of her body stopped at the neck. Below the break, the tarn was controlling her body like a puppet.

I stood frozen for far too long, watching her approach. “Madeline,” I said carefully, “this thing … whatever it is … it’s what was killing you. Devouring you alive.” I would not call the fungus va. Never that. It was a horror and it had eaten my friend.

“I know, I know,” said Madeline. She dismissed this with a roll of her eyes. “Of course va did. Va doesn’t mean to. Va slowed the process as much as va could, but va couldn’t help but feed a little. Of course I died eventually.”

Denton and I looked at each other over her head. I hope my face was expressionless. His was not.

“You know that you are dead,” I said.

Madeline’s smile was beatific. “Easton,” she said, as kindly as if I were a child, “I’ve been dead for at least a month.”

The tarn stretched out one of her hands and I recoiled. There were puffs of hyphae like cotton wool growing from under her fingernails, shockingly white against the bruise-black skin. Her touch had alarmed me days ago. Knowing what I knew now … Christ’s blood. At least fire works. If I can get the lamp oil on her … no, this can’t be nearly enough. It took so much to burn the hare. Oh God, why are bodies so wet?

Denton was half leading, half carrying Roderick back around the bed. I eased myself a little to one side, trying to place myself between Madeline and the other two. “How is that possible? You were breathing. You had a heartbeat.”

“The tarn kept my heart beating as long as va could. My body knew what to do, va just had to give it the orders. But after Roderick broke my neck, the orders didn’t travel anymore.” She pushed her head upright again. “It doesn’t matter. What was I, when I was alive? I was no use to anyone, least of all myself. I was a pretty doll for my mother to dress up and for men to look at, and then she died and eventually I came here, where there were no men to look at me. And at last, I found a purpose.” She smiled up at me. There were white threads at the corners of her mouth and when she spoke, I could see flashes of her tongue, coated in pale wool. I took another step back.

Evil, Roderick had said. But it wasn’t evil that I was seeing here, it was alien, a monstrous alienness so far removed from what I understood that every fiber of my being screamed to reject it, to run, to get it away.…

“Dear Alex,” she said, a line forming between her eyebrows. “You understand, don’t you? You have to understand. You have to help me save van.”

“Maddy, I…”

“You have to.”

“I could never help anything that killed you.” Which sounded better than the real truth, which was that I wanted to shoot the thing she had become and then burn the body and sow the fields with salt.

“You’re helping Roderick.”

Shame blossomed in my gut. She wasn’t wrong.

“The tarn hasn’t hurt anyone,” she said. “Not deliberately. Va doesn’t feel pain, so how could va understand? Now va knows better.” Another step forward. “It won’t hurt now. And if I hadn’t been so weak, the little bit va has to take to feed wouldn’t have mattered.”

Denton had Roderick almost to the door now.

“Maddy, are you asking me to let that thing infect me?”

“Not infect.” She looked offended at the word. “Just give van a home. Va’s like a child, va needs someone to care for van, and I know you’ll protect van and stand up for van, like you always did for me.”

She walked forward and I backpedaled. I had a gun and fire and I was probably close to a hundred pounds heavier and still I retreated.

“Alex…”

Denton reached out and grabbed the back of my jacket. He hauled and I scrambled backward and the last I saw of Madeline was the door slamming in her face.



* * *



There were no locks on the outside. I leaned my weight against the door. “Get something to block it,” I said to Denton. Roderick was propped up against the wall, like a drunk holding up the bar. The doctor bolted down the hallway.

“Alex?” Maddy knocked on the door.

“That’s the sound,” mumbled Roderick. “That’s the sound. She’s still moving. I can hear it from the crypt. Can’t you hear it?”

“I hear it,” I assured him.

“Alex. Let me out. You have to help me.”