Thomas creeper and the p.., p.24
Thomas Creeper and the Purple Corpse, page 24
“Y-y-you’re not her,” Thomas chattered. “You’re not Lorelei. You’re too young.”
“Aren’t you a sharp little tack,” the woman whispered back. “No, no I’m not. But she’s here with us, Thomas.”
Dragging a nail across the table butting against Thomas’s chair, the woman moved away. Thomas jerked his head as far back around as his neck would allow. He could see masks, masks all piled around the table—glimmering bronze and silver ones and ones with strange eyeholes and spiked studs like the masks worn by gladiators Thomas had seen in movies. And there were wigs—wigs and skin-colored molds hanging from metal hooks that stretched them so they almost look like real faces. Thomas looked past the masks and the disguises to the shadow of a slumped figure, seated at the table.
“Mother, we have a guest.”
What was left on the other side of the table was nothing but a skeleton. The skull was bowed forward as if staring down into the plate of ashes in front of it. A few clumps of blonde hair hung from the scalp. Resting on a table behind the skeleton was a giant mirror with an intricate golden frame festooned with cobwebs. There were words streaked in dust across the mirror’s glass. Thomas tried to read them, but the candle jerked away, lowering down instead to light the skeleton’s vacant eye sockets.
“She told me where to find her, her final resting place. But it isn’t in this world. She lives on in the kingdom of souls where I will send you tonight, Thomas, where you and the others will await me as subjects in the afterlife. They all thought she’d died in that hellhole where J.W. sent her after she struck that cop outside the courthouse. Of course, J.W. had the trial rigged. Paid off all the judges, you see. No, my mother was a fighter.”
“Your mother,” Thomas mouthed numbly.
“The day her heart finally gave out she willed me her strength, her strength to survive against all odds. She came to me in a dream. She showed me the way. Together we set fire to that joke of a treatment center they tried to seal me in like a bug in a jar. Old buildings burn funny, Thomas. I didn’t see the beam come down. And then I awoke in the flames, flames rising . . . rising all around me . . .”
The woman reached up and stroked her scarred face.
“And do you know who I saw, Thomas? My mother. Beckoning me through the flames. She named me, the name they never told me all those lonely years going from house to house, from one self-righteous family to the next. If you did your work properly you would have figured it out. It was all there. In J.W.’s papers. That’s how Lorelei found out where they hid me so I wouldn’t be a threat to the Sneeds. She made one last trip to Ivymount. She must have known she was dying. She mailed the book to me, the one she stole from her old library the night she broke in. She put a note inside the book. She told me my true name. Her daughter. Her vengeance on earth.”
The woman closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath.
“Aurelia! The Golden One! Her name for me, her redeemer. I found her resting place and recovered her bones. I vowed to help her, help her in a way the Sneeds never could. I vowed to raise her to the heights she deserved, in my kingdom beyond this world.”
A muffled groan sounded from the chasm below.
Aurelia leaned over the side. Gnashing her rotten teeth, she screamed down into the hole, flecks of saliva flying from her lips.
“I’M TALKING NOW! YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HER! WITH A SINGLE PHONE CALL, WITH A SINGLE WAVE OF YOUR BENEVOLENT HAND YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HER! BUT NO! YOU AND YOUR BROTHER, THAT STERILE SLUG, HASTINGS, HE COULDN’T ACCEPT THAT LORELEI AND CASPAR WERE NOT HIS REAL CHILDREN, THAT HE’D BEEN MADE A FOOL! AND YOU LOCKED HER AWAY! LIKE SOME LAB RAT TO HIDE THE FAMILY’S SHAME!”
“That’s why you wanted us up there,” Thomas whispered after the echoes of the screams died away. “In the attic. That’s what you wanted us to see.”
“Yes,” said Aurelia. “I wanted you all to see.”
Aurelia’s shoulders quivered. The muscles in her face spasmed and contorted. Stretching her neck and making a clicking sound with her tongue, she relaxed. The cracked-tooth smile returned. Swooping back to the mirror, she set the candle down and dug through an open drawer. The candle was closer now. In its light Thomas could read writing on the mirror.
CALL THE BOY’S HOUSE TODAY, MY DARLING
5 SHARP
THESE ARE YOUR WORDS
There were several other lines, but they disappeared outside the candle’s radius. Thomas’s mind reeled. The call to the funeral home came around five o’clock. Just like Cyril said it would.
Aurelia spun back. The letters on the mirror fell back into shadow. She set the candle down on the table and bowed her forehead. Her voice was a venomous hiss.
“Damnatio memoriae. That is what the Sneeds have done to us. They’ve blotted out any trace my mother and I ever existed. But I am my mother’s vengeance and redeemer. I will take away everything the Sneeds have ever loved. And then I will burn Ivymount until it flakes away in the wind. For you see, Thomas, it’s not only men who must struggle to preserve the dignitas of their family. I learned that from my mother’s book. Lorelei was a master historian. She knew that for every Caesar there is a Pompeia, a cast-off wife, struggling to kill suspicion . . . before it kills her!”
Aurelia reached over and slid a newspaper in front of Thomas’s seat. It was the article from The Morning Mooring, the one showing Thomas and Jeni dragging the skeletons across Town Beach.
“Thanks to you and your special goggles, I can see her again before I leave this earth. What mysteries you have enfolded at such a tender age. Pity the road has led you here.”
Aurelia tapped a jagged fingernail at the spot on the photograph where the Ocu-Occus hung from Thomas’s belt, the magic goggles given to him by Mulvaney’s Raiders that allowed the wearer to observe the spirit world.
“Lorelei told me she would bring them to me. And she did. She placed them in our little Floating Room, the gateway to the kingdom of souls.”
Though every nerve in Thomas’s body felt paralyzed by fear, his mind radiated with a Fixer’s drive for truth. The phone call by Marjorie Fipps. The writing on the mirror. It was so obvious, but only to him. Cyril had stolen the goggles from his closet. The visit to the funeral home was one big setup.
“That’s not your mother talking to you!” cried Thomas. “He’s using you, don’t you see? It’s Cyril! He’s—”
“SILENCE!”
The backhand cut across Thomas’s jaw. Pain bloomed across his cheek like a hot iron pressed against his skin. Spasming and stretching her neck, Aurelia made the strange clicking sound again with her tongue. She drew the purple shroud tight around her shoulders. When the clicking stopped, she whispered into Thomas’s ear:
“You don’t get to alter destiny, Thomas Creeper. You had your chance, and you squandered it.”
“I-I’m telling you the truth! He’s setting you up!”
A drawer jerked open. Thomas heard the fiddle and scrape of metal pieces.
“Enough! I’m going to show you my Floating Room now. You’ll appreciate all the faces there. They gather when they’re summoned.”
There were a few quick slashes on the straps binding Thomas the chair, though the straps around his hands remained unsevered.
“Get up.”
As Thomas staggered to his feet, Aurelia gave a prick of the dagger. Thomas cried out.
“Have no illusions. There is nowhere to go. We are quite far from the shore.” Aurelia held the knife blade flat against her nose. Her shoulders quivered. A throaty laughter rumbled up, echoing through the damp chamber. “Yes, quite far from the shore in so many ways.” She made another click with her tongue. The demented smile vanished. “You’ll drown if you try to run. And that’s not fair, my friend. You deserve a glimpse of the end . . . and the beginning! I want to hold your hand right up to that glorious moment. Would you let me do that, Thomas? Would you let me close your eyes as you cross over?”
Aurelia pursed her scarred mouth and raked her hand through Thomas’s hair. Thomas’s body trembled; the nails dug into his scalp. Aurelia jerked his head up. She was so close now he could smell the salt and sweat on her. Tears stung his eyes. He watched Aurelia’s rotten teeth and wavy scars blur in and out.
“That body, the one you found on the beach? It’s a shell, don’t you see? I ennoble them, Thomas. I give them dignitas and peace from a life of endless servitude. I paint their bodies in the everlasting garments of kings and queens and I send them to paradise.”
“You murder them!”
“What? You!” Aurelia’s whole body shook. “You still cling to that false reality? Of all people, I thought you would understand what’s going on behind this masquerade of life and death. Ah!” Aurelia raised the knife. “Maybe it’s because I’ve taken away your magic goggles. You’ve lost sight of all the shared passageways, all the overlapping streams. Come. Let me open your eyes.”
A cold, surprisingly strong hand jerked Thomas forward. He could feel the jab once more of the rusted blade against his ribs.
“You saw them in their transitional shells. Glorified by my hand, yes, but shells nonetheless. Let me show you them . . . in ascension!”
Aurelia pushed Thomas deeper into the darkness. Images flooded through his brain like a film reeling too fast. Jeni. Marylène. His parents. He’d stared into the eyes of death a hundred times before, but never his own, never like this in the echoing dark with a moth-eaten shroud fluttering against the back of his ankles.
“It’s a little further,” Aurelia whispered into his ear, pushing him forward. “I’m glad it’s you. Really, I am. You alone will appreciate this fork in the story you thought you were following. I’ll see you blotted out like spilled ink before the writing of a beautiful new chapter. And then I’ll watch you float, Thomas.
“Oh, how you’ll float along with them!”
. . .
The emergency skiff raced over the white-capped sea. Bunny cranked the craft’s horsepower to the max while Arnold sat next to him. Arnold cradled the phone under his nose, following the steady pings, calling out directions to Bunny whenever the skiff veered off course. Of the three Crotch Cannoneers, it was Flip Carson who held the most important job: he had to keep the payload of last summer’s purchases from Captain Sparky’s safe and dry from the sea-spray flying at them from every angle.
Any indication of land had long disappeared. They were out in open water now, at the mercy of Mad Marge’s game of fog and shadow. They almost didn’t see the large fishing troller appear out of the mist until it was too late.
Bunny cut the gas, jerking the skiff parallel to the other boat before it rammed right into the letters S. S. Alderfer. Though thrown from his seat to floor of the skiff, ever true to his task, Flip cradled the payload between his arms and legs, not letting a single drop of salt water touch the bag stuffed with the collective potency of military-grade dynamite.
The only casualty was the phone.
The moment Bunny spun the skiff to avoid ramming the other boat the phone jerked out of Arnold’s hand. Their one link to Thomas’s location somersaulted through air for a second before disappearing down into the black water.
“NOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Gripping the side of the skiff and gnashing his teeth, Arnold felt like exploding right through his clothes, like Bruce Banner morphing into the Hulk. Gazing up at the starboard deck on the fishing ship, he locked eyes with an old man wearing a pair of boxy, tinted glasses. A black rat was perched on the old man’s shoulder, and on either side of him were two other figures—a giant woman with a sour-looking face and a pretty girl in a sweatshirt with elf-like ears.
“Ahoy there!” the old man called down.
“Ahoy yourself! Do you know what you made me do, bro? We were tracking our friend Thomas and—”
“Then we have the same goal!” the old man called back, cutting Arnold off. “The only point on this bearing from shore is a place called the Anchorage, a retired weather station and old fishing lodge. Marylène . . .” There was a hushed conversation between the old man and the girl with elf-like ears. The old man nodded. “We’ll tow you behind us. It’s a blessing in disguise. The captain says the sea wall around the Anchorage has collapsed in places making landing a bit tricky with this big girl. We’ll need your ship. Your timing is impeccable!”
“Impec . . . what?” Arnold stammered. “Listen . . . we . . .” He was furious. They weren’t being hijacked by some old fruitcake with a rodent on his shoulder. “How do we know you don’t have Thomas hostage in there?”
“Yeah,” said Bunny, raising a freckled fist. “How do we know you’re not like double-crossing us, bro-migo?”
“Enough!” cried Marylène. “You are all idiots! Thomas is my friend as well. Now shut your faces and take this rope I am throwing at your hands.”
“Whoa,” Bunny whispered, elbowing Arnold. “She’s dope.”
A large knotty rope was thrown over the side of the S.S. Alderfer. Still suspecting foul-play—after all, Jacob Crowley of the Sieve had pretended to be their friend—Arnold took the rope and he and Bunny secured it around a cleat on the skiff’s bow.
“Hold on!” Marylène shouted.
There was a sputter of black exhaust. The troller took off, dragging the skiff and its three Crotch Cannoneers along with it.
“Yo, Flip,” Arnold called over his shoulder as they bounced over the white-caps. “Pass me a Royal Rocket.”
Arnold’s eyes narrowed.
“Just in case.”
. . .
Thomas crept across the slippery flood wall that circled the abandoned lighthouse and weather station. To the right of the lighthouse, what Thomas took to be their destination, stood the ruins of an old stone building, no more than a pile of moss-strewn blocks with half its roof exposed to the elements.
The wind howled in Thomas’s ears, throwing him off balance. Unable to use his hands to steady himself, he had to lower his body to find his center of gravity so he didn’t tumble over the edge. He paused and looked back over his shoulder. Aurelia leered at him, her face spasming in and out, her purple shroud billowing around her golden breastplate. She jabbed the knife at him, forcing him forward. He made the mistake of looking down: thirty feet of cliff face falling away to nothing, nothing but waves crashing against barnacled rocks.
“I HAVE TO STOP!” Thomas screamed over the shriek of the wind. “I’M GOING TO FALL!”
Aurelia made a few more jabs with the knife. “NO! IT DOESN’T END HERE! MOVE!”
Thomas made a few uncertain steps forward. A gust of wind smacked into him. He crumpled to one knee and threw his bound hands around a broken segment of sea wall. Salt-spray and tears stung his eyes. He forced himself back up. Clenching his teeth, he staggered forward into the shadow of the ruins. Panting with his back against a wall trickling with rain, he tried to catch his breath. Aurelia snagged him by the elbow and pushed him farther into the darkness.
Thomas hunched through the passageway until it widened to a central chamber. As his eyes adjusted, Thomas could see a large stone slab in the center of the room, rising like a makeshift altar. Above the altar, where a ceiling should have been, there was nothing but a gaping hole through which the darkness gave way to the lighter gray of the sky. Puddles lay all around, and a few gaping holes shone through the walls as if someone had gone crazy with a wrecking ball. Through one of the holes Thomas could see the horizon in the distance, and beneath it, the darker ink-wash of the ocean.
“Stay here,” said Aurelia. “Don’t even think about moving.”
Keeping the knife trained on Thomas, Aurelia struck a match against her breastplate. As the match flared to life, she walked over to the altar and lit three candles bobbing inside three waterlogged glass hurricanes. In the glow cast by the candles Thomas caught a flash of green ectoplasmic glass. The Ocu-Occu Goggles! The enchanted goggles sat on the edge of the altar. Setting down the knife, Aurelia snatched the Ocu-Occus from the altar and fit the straps over her ears. She raised her arms high above her head. The purple shroud fluttered all around her as her voice pierced the wind:
“COME OUT, MOTHER! YOUR GOLDEN CHILD IS HERE!”
Seeping out from the damp rock walls, the faces came.
Thomas watched them—spectral forms, oozing out from the weathered stone as easily as water through a sponge. Other, less definite beings appeared too; these were more weepy and fluid, with only the faintest indication of heads and bodies. Two ghosts with definite features hovered above the altar—a woman with braided blonde hair and a man in a three-piece suit who looked like a thinner, much younger version of J.W. Sneed. Thomas watched Aurelia reach up and grasp the hand of the hovering ghost-woman. His eyes flitted back to the altar. The knife was close, only a few steps away . . .
Before Thomas lunged for the blade, he spied a few familiar glowing faces who appeared in the shadows: a headless ghost in a pinstripe suit, standing next to a pale woman with a unicorn head bursting out of her dress; and, next to her, another ghost in a cocktail suit and porkpie hat, smiling and holding a gleaming cornet. Thomas wasn’t the only one to notice the arrival of the others.
“What are you doing here?” Aurelia screeched, backing up, knocking into one of the hurricanes and sending it crashing to the ground.
“You were right, Thomas,” said Trixie. “He’s no Fixer. We followed him here. Look out, Thomas! He’s over there behind that wall!”
Thomas wheeled around. He scoured the darkness. The ghosts hovering around the room stopped moving. They were all pointing—pointing at a shadow, leaning against the far corner where the candlelight couldn’t reach. Over the hiss of the wind coming through the holes in the ruins, Thomas heard it:
