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“I feel something terrible,terriblehere. Awful things have taken place in this room, horrors beyond human imagining.”
Her voice was rising as she spoke to a shrill, frightening whisper.
“Mia, stop,” Saber said, forcing her own voice to be steady. “You’re making everyone more scared.”
“Weshouldbe,” she moaned. “We should beterrified. Unnatural things,unnatural thingshave transpired here!”
“I’m going to open it,” Doug said, and went to the fastener.
The trunk wasn’t locked, and a simple press of the latch allowed it to snap open.
Doug took a deep breath, kneeling beside the steamer trunk, closing his eyes.
“Well, Saber,” he said, and though his voice was steady she knew he must be scared too, “let’s find out exactly what you’ve gotten me into.”
He clicked the latch and flung open the trunk. The thing inside, it was athing, was so familiar to Saber, but her brain couldn’t place it, couldn’t process it.
Whatwasit?
She stared, her heart clattering, her body feeling like it might lift off the ground from pure terrified energy. Later, she would realize she had been in shock.
And all she could hear, past the whooshing noise in her ears, was the sound of Lozen screaming.
19
Elijah came clattering down the stairs, and it was the first moment that broke up the horrible, stunned confusion. Saber stood, mouth agape, as she looked down into the open box. She no longer smelled the rotting corpses or felt the chilly moistness of the basement. She was completely engrossed in trying to understand what she was looking at.
Laying in the steamer trunk, somewhat crumpled because it wasn’t quite long enough, was the horribly changed body of Laurel Jennings. She wore a white dress that looked shapeless and old-fashioned, dirty and stained with blood, and her skin was white,luminouslywhite, with veins that looked like black threads intricately drawn beneath. Her face was life-like, even pretty, but her lips were smeared and flecked with dried, brown blood that gave her a ghoulish liveliness. Her auburn hair was dull and unwashed, tangled into two long, messy braids, which added to her strange, old-fashioned look. Saber recoiled in horror at her fingernails, longer than they should be, yellowed and dirt-stained.
“Theyburiedher,” Lozen said, gasping for breath. “They buried her, they buried her.”
“Oh my god,” Elijah said, looking down at her, his usually toneless voice rising with alarm. “Oh mygod, it’s her. Icut her open.”
Mia took a step toward her and looked down. She had somehow calmed, while everyone else seemed to be spiraling.
“So young,” she said with unmistakable sympathy.
Doug looked down at her too, his face a mask. Whatever he was thinking, Saber couldn’t tell, but he looked different than she had ever seen him.
“I’m looking right at her,” he said, and there was a sad, fatherly ache in his voice. “Still, somehow, I don’t want to believe it.”
“There’s nothing else left to believe,” Elijah said, with surprising strength. “Unless she’s justdeadand they’re keeping her here, but I’ve never seen a preserved body look so—”
“Alive,” Saber finished. “She looks like she could just—”
And then Doug shined a light on her face and her eyes snapped open, the milky, pale pupils darting around wildly.
Elijah stumbled back, as though a deep-seated fear was being realized, a cadaver coming to life.
Laurel opened her mouth and flashed a pair of small, underdeveloped fangs. Her gums were bloody, like the fangs had broken through them, giving her mouth a primordial, sharklike, repulsive look.
Saber was terrified, but she was fascinated too, and stepped forward.
“Laurel,” she said. “Laurel, can you hear me?”
The girl in the trunk made a high-pitched squealing shriek.
“She is not Laurel anymore,” Mia said. “She is not human. And if she fully wakes, she may be much stronger than any one of us.”
