AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But there is no sound.
I sigh, putting my head in my hands. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting on my boat, waiting at the dock, but it feels like forever. Time has been acting funny today, no matter how you look at it. Is this even still the same day? Or is it the next day? I seem to recall night falling, but it felt like it was only for a second.
At least the weather has calmed down. It’s back to being still and gray, much like it usually is with my father. Perhaps the Magician was right, and my father did leave the match in one piece. He’s probably back at Shadow’s End right now, and, if it’s the next morning, relaxing in bed with Hanna and a coffee.
But even though the weather is no longer as deathly cold and stormy, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that something is wrong. It didn’t help that the Magician’s words were so unsettling and cryptic.
It also doesn’t help that the bell hasn’t rung once since I’ve returned to the boat. The last dead to enter Tuonela was Ethel, the senior serial killer, and there hasn’t been anyonesince. Sometimes, we don’t even hear the bell ring—not every newly dead knows they’re supposed to ring it—but even so, we instinctively know when the newest members of Club Dead are waiting for us.
And yet, for all the time that has passed, there hasn’t been anyone.
It’s beyond unusual. It’s actually a little disturbing.
Where are the dead?
I should probably head down the river anyway, I think. Go past the forest and maybe say hello to the Forest Gods. Drop by my Aunt Vellamo in the Great Inland Sea. Perhaps go for a swim and give my mermaid friend Bell a visit. Or just make my way to Death’s Landing, because, eventually ,someone has to die. It’s just the way the world works.
I sigh again and look around. No point sticking around here. I guess part of me wants to go back to the Magician and talk to him some more, but he’s got his job to do, and I’ve got mine.
Still, he can’t do his job unless I bring him the dead.
I adjust the mask on my head and think about leaving the boat. But if I see the Magician now and the bell does ring, I’ll just be further away. I’ll have another talk with him when I drop the next person off.
I pick up an oar and push the boat off the dock, standing at the bow as it starts moving swiftly down the river, the cool misty breeze in my hair. I close my eyes and breathe in deep through my nose, the smell of the water usually invigorating.
Instead, I cough, my eyes suddenly burning as I smell a putrid, decaying stench. I know this the Land of the Dead and all, but for the most part, it doesn’t smell like it. This is something rotten and sulfurous.
And wrong.
For a moment, I’m reminded of my mother.
I quickly twist around, expecting to see her somewhere, the glint of her horns, the cloak of her wings.
But I don’t see her.
I see something else instead.
On the riverbank in front of me, the earth starts to move and crumble down into the water. It looks like something is trying to push itself up through the dirt. A giant earthworm, perhaps?
Yet as I stare at it in trepidation, my heart beating faster, I get the feeling that it’s not something so harmless, and I start to steer the boat over to the opposite side of the river.
Just as something pushes out of the ground.
Horns.
A head.
Not just any head, though.
It’s a deer skull, very similar to the one I have pushed up on my forehead.
Except the head coming out of the ground has to be the size of my entire body, the horns adding extra height, and as the dirt falls away, the horns suddenly catch fire. A flaming skull.
“What in the realm?” I breathe, watching in horror and confusion as the rest of the creature emerges.
It’s not a deer at all. It’s like a giant elk-human hybrid, a twenty-foot-tall creature of bones and sinew, finding its footing on top of the river bank. It looks impossibly strong and menacing, radiating energy not from this world or from any world I’ve known.
Eldritch horror. I’ve heard that phrase a few times, particularly when it comes to books, but I’ve never really understood what it meant.
