The Ravenous Dead (Gravekeeper, #2)

by Darcy Coates

Mason pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed in a grimace. “She thinks the government is putting subliminal messaging in contrails. It’s like she took two normal conspiracies and smashed them together into one awful, mutated frankenspiracy.”

The memory of being chased through the woods by the reclusive Crispin heir was still fresh in her mind. “Sorry about what happened. I never wanted to put either of you in danger. I didn’t realise he’d go…feral like that.”

“Can I borrow you for a moment? I’d like to check your arm. Zoe can make the drinks.” “Zoe can make the drinks,” Zoe muttered under her breath. “But will Zoe make the drinks?”

“Don’t take this personally.” Zoe scratched her chin. “But I think your cat might be broken.” Keira gave her pet a tight-lipped smile. “I like to imagine she’s a genius, but just…really good at hiding it.” Faint purrs rumbled from the floppy black feline, and it was impossible to keep the fondness out of her voice.

She found the stone library down the road from the café. Based on the large display windows, Keira guessed it might have been some kind of retail store before being converted. Now, though, the windows showcased an assortment of well-loved, dog-eared books, plus a handful of fresher offerings that she assumed were new releases. Rusty hinges creaked as she pushed on the door. The atmosphere was cool and dusty, and the lighting was muted despite the massive window. The area didn’t seem large, but what space there was had been crammed with ceiling-height bookcases. The shelves were pressed so closely together that they bordered on claustrophobic. Keira liked it. It felt like the kind of place you could lose yourself in for hours.

His jet-black hair, pallid skin, dark eyeliner, and black nail polish contrasted beautifully with his pastel floral apron. The disgusted twist to his lips told Keira he wasn’t there of his own free will. “Hello.” His voice was a resentful monotone. “Welcome to Two Bees, the florist with the happiest flowers, please kill me.”

As she stepped back into the yard, Keira reflexively glanced towards the graves and pulled on her second sight. Transparent shapes moved into focus. The elderly Victorian woman stood in front of her gravestone, one hand pressed to her lips as she stared at the flowers Keira had left.

It was late evening by the time she wiped the bench clean and began moving through the parsonage and turning out lights.

The moon’s light wasn’t strong, but it was enough to see a dozen paces through the fog.

My ghosts are missing. Are they asleep? Do ghosts even need to sleep? Or are they hiding?

The spectre barely resembled a human. Unlike the white-tinted, transparent ghosts from the graveyard, the creature before Keira was a pure sooty black. Its form shifted like ribbons of smoke, billowing and coiling in on itself. Its eyes were dark pits. Its jaw stretched wide, exposing an empty maw that seemed to plunge into eternity.

Keira couldn’t breathe. Malevolent energy poured off the apparition in waves. The sickening, cloistering evil was the same energy that had terrified her the last time she’d stepped into the woods. It hit her with enough force that her heart began skipping beats, filling her ears with a high-pitched whistle. The spirit rose from its grave, the black smoke spilling between the cracks in the stone. Its eyes fixed on Keira as its jaw shifted into something resembling a lipless, grimacing smile. It can’t hurt me. It’s a ghost. It can’t hurt me.

Keira plunged into the forest. She moved recklessly, nearly blind as the last traces of daylight faded.

The trees surrounded her on all sides, their angular branches sinking deeper into a web of uncertain shapes as night spread over Blighty. She would be as good as blind soon.

The trees all looked the same, and as night thickened, it became harder and harder to see.

Keira blinked. The fog parted. She could see a door and a stone wall, and even a square of light coming from a window. Daisy had led her to someone’s home, just not her own. Daisy scrabbled at the door, her nose buried in the corner as her claws scored the wood. Footsteps echoed down a hallway. Then the door opened, and a tall man looked first at Daisy, then at Keira. Mason’s eyebrows rose with shock. “Keira?” Her throat closed. She reached forward, just wanting to be close to him, and Mason met her halfway, his arms surrounding her as he led her into his home.

The space was more eclectic than she’d imagined Mason’s home would be. Bookcases were crammed with dusty, faded titles. Most of the furniture was made from dark, polished wood, though not all of it matched. A massive glass case in the back of the room seemed to hold an animal skeleton.

“You know your life has gone off the rails when you start differentiating between normal ghosts and weird ghosts,” she said to Daisy. The cat finished her meal, took two steps towards the fire, and faceplanted into the rug. Keira sighed. “Even my cat is weird.”

Keira’s sense of revulsion increased the farther they moved into the building. Her shoes seemed too loud on the white tiles. The walls were squeezing and hostile. Worse than the graveyard and worse than the mill, the hospital was stained with decades of suffering. The emotional imprint was a tangible force that hit her like a train and made her want to crumple to the floor. It was all Keira could do to close herself to the sensations and hope her emotional barriers held up to the onslaught. Like a child closing its eyes when faced by a monster, the defence was paltry, but it was all she had.

There’s something here, her subconscious whispered. Worse than the emotions. Worse than the way these walls have been stained by the hospital’s history. There’s something dangerous in this building, and you need to get out before it finds you.

Unlike the more sterile hallways above, the halls in the lowest level were crowded. Spare beds and equipment had been stacked against the wall in lieu of proper storage, old signs tacked onto them, marking them for repair. Sickly lighting cast shadows around their legs, and it was easy for Keira to imagine that the dark shapes were watching her.

suddenly Keira couldn’t breathe. She faced away from the autopsy table as she tried to block it from her mind. She could still feel its presence, though. Cold steel. Hard edges. Scalpels digging into soft flesh. She’d braced herself against the emotions imbued into the building, but for a second her defences faltered and her legs threatened to collapse. She took a breath. Antiseptic burned into her lungs, and she focussed on that instead.

Halls passed in a blur. The watercolour paintings started to blend together. A woman cried inside one of the rooms. Multiple TVs created a droning background noise. They passed a nurse’s station and barely received a glance.

“You’re ready to move on, aren’t you?” Keira dropped her voice to a rapid whisper. “You want to move on.” The nod was shaky but certain. “Okay. Hold still. I’m going to try something.” She reached for the essence she’d felt. She could picture it—a bundle of tiny, glowing threads, knotted together in a tangle. It existed in the centre of Brody’s chest, just to the side of where his heart had once been. The source of his light, keeping him corporeal, holding him together. A distant concept rose from her subconscious: the Greek Fates. The three women who wove, measured, and cut the thread of a human’s life. She hadn’t imagined it would appear so literally, but there it was ahead of her—a thread that, either by design or by chance, had become snagged. She closed her eyes and took the end of the string between her fingers. It was warm, almost unpleasantly hot, and made her skin prickle. She pulled. The knot unravelled. Keira took a quick breath and stepped back. Brody’s eyes fluttered. He looked down at himself, then back up, and a hesitant smile grew over the broken jaw. And then, like a cloud of mist caught in a breeze, he evaporated, shreds of himself disintegrating until there was nothing left.

She twisted herself around to reach the trunk. The tree was growing old and knobbly and was easy to scale. She managed to keep her drop to the grass smooth and silent.

Beware the men with flaky skin. Keira turned and bolted. “Hey! Hey!” Heavy boots beat the pavement as the man raced after her. He swore, then Keira heard him speak in a clipped voice. “It’s Sarah Tomlin. She’s still alive. Outside Cheltenham.”

Her mind was a mess. It kept cycling through the same impossible questions again and again: Is Adage safe? Why did the ghost need me to see the van? How do they know me, and what do they want with me? And, worst of all: Where do I go now?

The van’s driver had been surprised that she was alive. Now that she’d been spotted, the hunt would be renewed.

A slow, smouldering fury burned inside her chest. In the span of an hour, the strangers had stolen her friends, her home, even her freedom to stand in the open without fearing for her life. She’d had cause to dislike people since arriving at Blighty: Dane, firing after her and her friends as they ran from his property. Gavin Kelsey, callous, cruel, and a murderer. But she had never hated anyone or anything as deeply as she hated the unknown men at that moment.

Her mind felt strangely blank. She wondered if this was how she’d been before she’d lost her memories: constantly on the move, ignoring the aches in her feet and the emptiness in her stomach, nothing to look forward to, simply focussed on surviving another day. It certainly felt familiar.

even slim chances could be dangerous.

She pushed through a final curtain of leaves and found herself standing on the edge of the woods and staring down at Blighty. The clouds dampened the sun, and even though it was only midafternoon, many of the houses had their lights on. They twinkled through the rain like beacons. Two days had passed since she’d left. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed Blighty until her throat closed over.

Keira’s heart ached. She assumed she would be back to the life Old Keira had known: running, hiding, barely scraping by. Sleeping in trees. Stealing food. Only this time, she wouldn’t know what she’d done to deserve being hunted. The burning fury in her chest grew hotter.

As she pulled a sweater over her head, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her cheeks had hollowed out again. Dark circles lined her eyes. Her hair, tied back, was tangled and heavy with water. She looked feral. It’s more than looks. I feel feral. Being away from Blighty—away from her friends—had changed something inside of her. She was back to the Keira that had woken up in the forest with no memories: running on instinct, wary of everything and everyone, a wild animal that shied away from help until it was desperate.

Keira started laughing at the absurd Santa and couldn’t stop. It was so Zoe, so Blighty, so much of everything she’d come to love. The old Keira, the Keira that had woken in the forest, no longer existed. She’d grown. The dislodged part of her snapped back into place, and just like that, she felt like she was home again. Even if home meant a suspicious Santa Clause peering up at her from her sweater.

“We’re not going into this blindly, Keira.” He closed his kit. “We’re making a conscious choice to become involved, with or without you. And truth be told, I’d rather face whatever this is with you.” Zoe nodded. “We’re not a force to be taken lightly.” Keira lifted her eyebrows. “If you say so, Banana Girl.” “Okay, you know what? That’s fair. I gave you the weapon; I can’t blame you for using it.”

There were so many things that could have killed me, but I ended up being taken out by the only thing I discounted as not being a serious threat.

I thought I was dead. I felt like I’d been torn open. The shade is a very, very long way from harmless, and I still don’t know what the consequences of coming in contact with it might be.

As the door clicked closed behind her, a high, fractured wail pierced the air. Keira flinched, but the cry had come from much farther into the graveyard. Gerald, calling for whoever was leaving the cabin, begging them to come closer.

“Doing okay, Harry?” “My life contains nothing but a constant yearning for the eternal embrace of death.” He dropped the bouquets into the water buckets and slouched back to the door. “Today especially.” “Okay, cool, good luck with that.” Mason turned back to Keira as the florist’s door slammed, its cheerful flower-themed Open sign swinging wildly. “I’m pretty sure he secretly likes working in the floristry. He gets to rain on people’s parades if he thinks they’re too happy.”

“Sounds like you’ve had a bad morning.” “Oh, nah, pretty mediocre. People are awful. Same as they were yesterday, same as they’ll be tomorrow. I made my peace with that fact many years ago. Adage is going to be mad at me, though.” Zoe’s thin-lipped smile showed no hint of remorse. “He’s already told me I’m not allowed to use him as a threat. But y’know what? I’m not scared of Santa Adage eating my toes, so whatever.”

“Where are we going?” “The one place where you can find immense knowledge and terrible lies in equal measure.” Her grin was wolfish. “The library.”

Well, you’ve been cut off. I have a limited budget, and it can’t stretch to cover both you and the romance book club.” “Damn romance book club,” Zoe grumbled. “Why can’t they just read something sensible once in a while, like The Lizardmen Among Us, instead of spending your money on Poked by the Duke volume eighteen?”

“Fox in the Henhouse: The Life, Death, and Mystery Surrounding Gerald Barge, the Posthumously Convicted Serial Killer: Horror in Blighty, Volume One (of One).”

Then she remembered how she’d felt while hiking over the mountains. Alone and driven by a desperation to do whatever it took to stay alive, she’d become something that was human in name only. Keira grimaced as she forced the quilts back into the wardrobe. Mason and Zoe helped her feel grounded. As guilty as she felt for asking for more of their time, she thought she might need her friends for what she was about to face.

“I should have thought to bring you some spare clothes.” Zoe stretched her feet towards the coals that still smouldered in the fireplace. “I was going to make some T-shirts that said Murder Cabin Team-Building Exercise, but I figured that was getting a bit morbid.”

“Do you want to know why people enjoy exercise? It’s because it’s literally so horrible that your body releases dopamine to help you cope with it. It’s basically the equivalent of getting hooked on painkillers and stabbing yourself once a week to get a new prescription.”

Zoe groaned, one hand holding her side. “If either of you see any mushrooms, let me know, okay? There’s probably a fifty-fifty chance of getting high or dying, and either of those options would save me from walking, so I figure I can’t lose.”

as she pushed away from the tree. “Come on. This murder cabin won’t find itself.”

Her chest ached. Her ears rang. She took a shambling step towards the building, then stopped. She could hear the dead. They didn’t make any kind of earthly noise, but their memories screamed and screamed and screamed.