Around the cottonwood grove, second row, third column. Robin dumped out her pack. Thanatos tumbled out like a Pelican with both wings broken, followed by her lunch, six white candles, and a silver necklace. Robin propped Thanatos against a nearby tombstone, holding it open by bending its spine several times on the correct page. The candles marked the ends of a six-pointed star surrounding Gordon’s grave. Sprinkled sage in each flame and the silver about her neck kept opportunistic ghosts away. Robin left her shoes and socks around her neck while she prostrated herself over the grave. Upward facing, her hands folded over her chest like as were dead herself, she lay there a few moments, running the words through her head to be sure she had it correct. Then she spoke.
She expected it to take several tries, like it did last week. Her eyes were shut as she whispered. A frigid breeze swept over her, brushing leaves into her hair and over her face. It must have been very cold, because slowly Robin lost feeling in her toes. However, it couldn’t have been so cold as to render all her limbs also numb, but slowly, like yoke oozing from a broken egg, an absolute dead feeling crept up from her toes, over her shins, up her thighs… It was a horrible feeling. Robin waited in silent submission for the feeling to overcome her. She didn’t think of moving or breaking the spell. She felt as though she could do nothing but wait for the coldness to envelop her as an empty beach patiently waits for the moon to wash the tide over it. In minutes, she felt nothing. How long had it been? A strange dread, quite different from her confused fear of the numbness, crept in and Robin knew the spirit boy must have arrived.
She opened her eyes, fully expecting to see him standing over her, him and his dreadful horse staring at her like they were seeing, not looking. He wasn’t there. In fact, nothing was there. Where were the cottonwood trees? Where was the sun and clouds? In their place was a deep red haze covering the sky.
Robin sat up. She saw, but didn’t understanding. There weren’t leaves in her hair, but a powdery gray dust. It was all over her back, too. Robin stood up and tried to dust it off as she looked around her. There was nothing: hills only, and shadowy mountains in the distance. There were no trees, no grass. The cemetery was gone—all the headstones, the iron fence, the entire town was gone. There was no wind, sun, or shadow—no light source at all. However, everything was visible in a brownish-gray, lifeless sort of way.
Robin dug her bare toes in the gray dust that was everywhere—was everything. She was still on the hill where the grave had been. She noticed the memorized small slopes of the cemetery and recognized the peaks of the Sierra Mountains. Then it dawned on her: she had left without leaving at all.
Thanatos’s spell was for visiting the dead on the Other Side. Was she there, the Other Side? If that were the case, where were they, all the dead? There wasn’t a soul in sight, least of all her brother or the spirit boy. In fact, never before had Robin felt so totally, incurably alone. Her chest began to ache with a sob she couldn’t get out. But that wasn’t the worst.
There was an oppressive hush. Robin had never been in total silence before. The perfect lack of sound actually made her ears ache and stung her eyes. She cupped her hands to her ears to block out the silence. With stifled horror, she realized she couldn’t hear her own heartbeat. Madly, she rustled her hair into her ears to fill the absence, but it was like curing world hunger with a pea. Tears began to form in her eyes, either from pain or fear. Then a sound, the very manna from heaven, made her laugh with relief and turn around.
In this barren landscape, under the line of dim mountains, Robin could just barely, squinting her eyes and straining her ears, make out that something was coming towards her.
They were about ten in number, give or take a few. They were running in long strides, their forelegs grabbing at the gray dust and their hind legs lurching their great bodies forward. Their heaving chests were like wine caskets underneath nearly white fur. Everything else about them varied. Some had long, trailing ears, while others had tiny points on their heads, like horns. A few were as tall as horses, long and willowy like cheetahs. Fewer still were short and long, dashing like weasels between the legs of the others. Most, however, were at least as tall as Robin, built like small cars, and nearly crushing the smaller ones under their great spatula-like paws.
They had teeth. She couldn’t see the dagger-like fangs at this distance, but she didn’t need to; she just knew they were there. Robin might have imagined the blood-red tongues streaming out between panting jaws like victory banners—they definitely seemed the kind of creatures that lolled out their tongues.
Robin stood dumbfounded, relieved and confused at this strange sight that was, she just noticed, barreling straight toward her. Then one of the beasts, still sprinting with its ears flapping, raised its monstrous head and roared.
It sounded jubilant, ecstatic, and impatient. Several other monsters in the throng answered. Their voices varied from sharp barks to slow howls, but all carried the same savage, merry tone. Robin, too afraid to be relieved, heard her heart pounding against its cage. After the first roar, she turned tail and ran.
Her sneakers bounced against her heaving chest and her bare heels warred for speed in the dust that absorbed her every step. It was like running the Indiana 500 in the Sahara desert. Behind her the rolling thunder of dozens of paws pounding the dust increased as they neared. She heard the beasts’ panting behind her. She felt their steaming breath on her hair. She saw them, on either side, coming around in a circle. At that moment, she considered the fate of a wounded elk. She tripped.
Before she could even think about pulling herself out of the deep dust, great maws from behind clamped entirely around her middle and snatched her from the ground. A beast held her nine feet aloft. This monster was far taller and thinner than its companions and kept Robin well out of reach of the snapping jaws and plaintive barks below her. Her captor reveled in the attention and paraded her around, bounding back and forth as the others tried in vain to claim her for themselves.
The pain was intense. The brute wasn’t really biting hard, but his constant bounding jostled Robin in his teeth. Each tooth burned her stomach. Oddly, she thought of the first time she used the iron and dropped it on her foot…
It was only for a few moments, as Robin—never crying out—grunted painfully. Then, as suddenly as she was snatched, Robin was dropped back into the dust, which clung to her slobbery clothes. She wrapped her arms around her stomach because she was certain she must be bleeding. To her surprise, none of the other beasts jumped at her, but backed away slowly, ears down and tails between their legs. They were retreating from the brilliantly white horse that dolefully plodded his way toward Robin. A cloaked figure dismounted.
“Come along,” said a bored voice, “it had to happen sometime. Could be worse.”
The figure neared Robin with a barefooted, businesslike step. Robin looked up and met the spirit boy square in the eye. He recognized her instantly. He tripped over his long, evil stick in surprise. Robin forgot her pain and stood up, although she kept her arms pressed tightly to her middle. She tried to not meet his eye again; his cool, heavy-lidded stare made her want to punch him. From where she glared just above his shoulder, she could tell the spirit boy recovered and leaned nonchalantly on his stick thing. There was a moment of awkward silence, where she glared above his left ear and he raised an eyebrow. The pack of monstrosities circled about them anxiously.
“You’re not dead,” said the spirit boy, repeating the accusation from their first meeting. She heard the smirk in his voice and pursed her lips.
“Why are you here?” she asked his feet.
“No,” he rounded on her in a demanding, but good-natured voice, “Why are you here?”
Robin shifted on her feet and coldly answered through clenched teeth, “None of your business.”
“Believe me,” he chuckled sarcastically, “it is.”
Robin refused to grace him with a reply, so he skulked back to his horse and mounted. Guiding it towards Robin, he stuck his hand out to help her up. Robin kept her arms tightly about her middle and scowled the other way. Lost as she was, without the slightest idea of how to get back home, the last thing she wanted was a ride, a favor from him. With a click of his tongue, the spirit boy leaned over, holding his stick-weapon with one hand, Robin felt his free arm snake around her waist. She cried out, partially in pain, but mostly in outrage. She attempted to escape by buckling her knees and being as dead a weight as possible, but his strength was surprising in one so skinny. Helpless, she was pulled side-saddle in front of the boy.
She had been abducted, plain as day, but she was hardly afraid. She was just angry. It made Robin sick to have his arms around her as he steered his hateful steed. She considered screaming bloody murder and really making a fuss—in which her teeth would play a primary role—but it would only hurt her sore stomach more and there was no one to come to her aid in this wasteland. Anyway, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
They rode at an agonizingly slow trot. Her stomach complained, but Robin didn’t. She always thought of kidnappers as stealing their victims away at night in great haste, but the spirit boy hardly seemed in any hurry. On either side of them padded the white monsters, tongues streaming out of their panting smiles. The tallest one, which had snatched her up and shown off her like a hunting trophy, jogged abreast them and attempted to lick Robin’s dangling feet. With a sneer, she pulled her knees to her chin. Undeterred, it drew jogged closer to the horse to pursue her bare toes. It gave her a playful snapped. Remembering her burnt stomach, Robin cried out. From the corner of his eye, the spirit boy gave the beast a cold look. Whining apologetically, it gradually fell back and disappeared amongst the pack. It occurred to Robin he must be the master of the animals.
“Are these dogs?” Robin asked in disgust and disbelief. The spirit boy did not answer. Their progress came to an abrupt halt. Robin looked to see why, and discovered that they all—dog monstrosities, horse, and spirit boy—were pricking their ears, silently listening and watching something to their left.
This was the convenient direction Robin’s back was facing. She tried to twist around and find out what was so captivating. It turned out to be unnecessary, because the horse, without prompting, changed direction and started leftward at a gallop. She could be wrong, but Robin thought she heard the spirit boy let out a tired sigh.
The herd of monsters kept the pace of the horse, just holding back. Curious, Robin chanced a glance at her captor. His face remained stoic. She wondered if they fled something, if this boy finally decided to secret her off somewhere. By the slobbering, hungry smiles of the dogs, Robin doubted it.
While the rest of the company focused acutely on their prey, Robin had great difficulty keeping her balance on the sprinting horse. She would have had a better time of it if she were facing forwards and if the Spirit boys hadn’t then decided to raise his right arm from around her. Robin, her stomach smarting anew, desperately clung to the saddle horn. Midst her plight, she wanted to give the spirit boy a mean look and make him feel guilty, but instead she saw his right hand give a signal.
In an erupting of roars and howls, the pack of monsters surged ahead of them, outdistancing the galloping horse in seconds. They shrunk into the distance and soon all Robin could hear was the labored huffing of the white horse.
They rode together in silence. Eventually, the boy noticed her increasing discomfort: her left leg had fallen asleep long ago and her stomach throbbed with every stride of the horse. He helped her rotate to face forward.
“There,” was all he said. Robin would have liked to pummel him with questions, as much to annoy him as for curiosity, but she was too mesmerized by the landscape.
Itself, it was completely unremarkable—nothing but dull, gray dust everywhere—it streamed by at such speed, it made her stare. It was obvious she was riding no ordinary horse. The hills blurred together. The mountains zipped past in quick succession, far off into the distance as they were. Then they, too, smeared together. Suddenly remembering she had a slight tendency to motion sickness, Robin decided to focus on the one stationary object.
She twisted her neck around to look at him (when one is riding a horse in the realm of death, social politeness becomes frivolous. Either he didn’t notice or he didn’t care). For a spirit, he looked awfully fleshy. Skinny, yes, but tangible. Maybe all ghosts were solid here. Speaking of which, where was everybody?
Robin nearly broke her vow of silence and asked the spirit boy why he was the only person Robin could see, when she heard the now-familiar baying of the monster dogs. When they can into view, she could see them circled around a helpless victim. Robin heard pathetic moans under the joyous howls of the beasts. Then the horse stopped, going from impossible speeds to a stillness unnatural for an animal. Robin, meanwhile, flew off head first. She did a pretty little somersault and landed her rear in the dust. Behind her, the spirit boy coolly dismounted. As he passed her where she sat on the ground, Robin saw an expression on his face that was at once stoic, bored, and stern. The pack, of which Robin figured he was the master, parted at his approach. Robin thought she saw a few tremble.
“Fleeing is futile,” he said with all the emotion of Robin’s sneaker—a sneaker that was never disobeyed. He mostly blocked Robin’s view of the person to whom he was speaking, but she saw enough to know it was a small, slightly overweight man.
“No! I wasn’t running,” the man said. He had a strange accent. “I was looking.”
“For what?” the spirit boy sighed. Robin could tell he didn’t really listen to the answer. His knife-stick level in both hands. There wasn’t any bright light for the metal blade to catch, but it caught it. The little man also noticed, because he talked a lot faster.
“What about the tunnel? They said there was a tunnel and if you go up, that means… I was trying to go up, you see.”
“Of course,” the boy said. The weapon slowly raised at an angle. Like a doctor giving a small child a shot, he added, “Now hold still. This won’t hurt a—bit. Drat. Fetch!”
At “hurt,” the little man darted under the legs of the nearest beast and fled towards the nearby mountains. The part of Robin’s brain that wasn’t afraid for the man’s life considered him to be making great time. He would have gotten farther, of course, if he didn’t run with his arms flailing above his head like he was trying to swat invisible mosquitoes. It didn’t matter anyway. The dogs “fetched” him in a matter of moments.
Robin didn’t want to know what happened next, yet she found herself following the spirit boy—who was a lot more than a mere spirit, she’d figured out by now—to where the monster dogs held him incapacitated in the dust. One dogs held his feet in his jaws, another had his hands. Between them, the little man was stretched like a prisoner on the rack. With patient step, the more-than-spirit boy approached the man, Robin at his heels. The boy stopped and Robin peered from behind his shoulder. Slowly, the blade of the stick rose above his head. It fell—
“No!” the man cried, his pudgy round face contorted in desperation. He yanked at his hands and feet, all in vain. “Stop! Don’t take me, don’t—”
--above his head. Robin watched something white and sort of sweet-looking float from the crown of the easy-breathing man into the sleeve of the far-more-than-spirit boy. The man relaxed and the beasts released their grip. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He drew himself from the dirt fixed the boy with a look.
“You could have said.”
“It is time,” said the boy.
“If I’d known you were just going to—”
With the little man still protesting at his back, the boy returned to his horse. Wordless, he offered his hand. Planting her feet in front of the horse and shaking her head, Robin prepared to resist. She was rather surprised when the hand was taken by the little man, who awkwardly clambered behind the boy. To her embarrassment, both saw her defiant actions and gave her strange looks. The boy smirked with a straight face and the little man raised his eyebrows. Robin shuffled her feet in the dust.
Facing his beasts, the boy pointed at her and commanded, “Home!”
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