AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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.
