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My gut clenches when I notice the skull threaded through Darius’s left arm. It sways from side-to-side as he climbs.
Halfway up, something tugs hard on the rope.
Marc slides backward a foot, and Darius drops toward the ground.
“The roots are regrowing.” Sharpe rushes to Marc’s side and grabs the rope, hauling on it.
I join him, with Pen right behind, and we work as a team to quickly haul Darius out.
He scrabbles up onto the muddy forest floor, panting hard, and scrambles away from the hole as the ground shakes.
Orianna barks and whines, her tail wagging frantically.
The tremble in the ground worsens, and Marc rips off the rope around his waist. We abandon our gear and run several paces away before turning back to watch as the hole spreads outward.
Dirt fills in all of our hard work, and the earth shifts and churns for several minutes.
When it settles, only a shallow crater remains, with no trace of the horrifying pit of bones below.
three made one
- Pen -
Darius thunksthe skull down on the dining room table.
After escaping the woods, we drove to the cabin to regain our bearings and still haven’t taken the time to dry off from the storm.
Mud soaks my clothes, chilling my skin to the bone, and my wet hair clings to my cheeks.
The others are in the same state, though Marc and Darius appear slightly dryer, and I envy their ready access to their fires.
“Is that from a boogeyman?” Sharpe asks, uncertainty in his voice. “Like with the bear case a while back?”
Flint shakes his head as he runs his hands over the dirty skull. “No, that bound the boogeyman to its corporeal form. These bones are lifeless. Not even a Hunter would touch this.”
“There were hundreds of bones in that cave, demon and human alike.” My gut tightens at the memory. “And something moved beneath them like they were water. Something big.”
“Here’s the map.” Marc returns from the garage and unfolds an old paper map of Clearhelm on the table. “I can’t believe we had one of these.”
He sets a handful of pins on the table, too.
Sharpe grabs a blue marker and leans over the map, drawing a box around several blocks in what used to be a working-class neighborhood. “This is where the Bone Yard is now.”
Darius picks up a purple marker and draws an X over the location of The Cellar. “This is where we entered the tunnels.”
He traces the old roads to the woods and draws another X. “And this is where you found us.”
Flint lets out a whistle. “That’s a long way from where you should have been.”
“And it leaves me questioning how it’s even possible we got there.” I shiver, my wet, muddy clothes making me cold. “There are wards all around the Bone Yard. Nothing should be able to get under those walls and escape.”
“Or get in,” Darius murmurs.
At my confused look, Darius draws a curved line from The Cellar toward the wall, then draws a fork, one leading in the direction of the Bone Yard’s Main Street and the other splitting off toward the wall.
“Either something came from over here in the Bone Yard.” He circles the pen over the main road without marking it. “Or something came into the Bone Yard from outside and split in two directions. The tunnels outside the Bone Yard were much more extensive than the ones within the wall.”
“Like whatever this is, it had a lot longer to dig around before it found the Bone Yard,” Flint says slowly.
