The Vale of Ghosts

Chapter One

Haunted

Ann heard screams through the window, though the shutters had been pulled and latched and a pillow shoved into the space behind it. A tortured scream, the scratchy warbling howl of a monster. She was crouched in the dirt beneath the windowsill, jabbing a crooked stick into the ground between her feet and trying to appear like she wasn’t listening, like she hadn’t a care in the world. A ladybug landed on her knee, and she offered it the end of the stick. It climbed onto the stick, and she held it up into the air until it flew away.

The screaming finally broke, curdled into some dying animal noise and tapered off. Ann straightened up, leaning back until her head brushed the bottom of the sill. She heard hushed voices, but she couldn’t make out the words. Was it over? Was Miral dead now, or had she finally fallen asleep? Ann wanted so badly to know. She was tempted to run into the house, feigning ignorance long enough to burst into the bedroom and get a good look.

“Annella Fenn! What are you doing here?”

A shadow moved in front of her, and she lifted her gaze from the strange tracks she had dug in the dirt. A boy stood on the other side of the narrow road, his hands on his hips. He wore a long, loose tunic of faded green, his belt held in place with a bright silver buckle. A glint of sunlight on a corner of the buckle blinded Ann, so she raised a hand to block it out.

“I’m not doing anything,” she said. “I just found a shady spot to rest for a minute. Do you mind?”

“You’re trying to spy on them,” he replied. “That’s what you’re doing. You are not as sneaky as you think you are.”

The young man, tall and lanky, with a ruddy complexion and fierce green eyes, strode across the street. She lowered her hand and met his gaze. His blond hair hung low, framing the sides of a long face.

“It’s my own house, Dern,” she said. “I can sit outside of my own house. It doesn’t mean I’m spying.”

“But my father told you to go away,” Dern said. “He said it in front of everybody. And here you are squatting right outside the bedroom window and listening.”

Ann stood up, casting the stick aside. A gust of wind caught her loose skirt, and she pressed her hands to her hips to hold it in place. She was all too aware of how shabby her clothes looked next to Dern Thedson, with his silver buckle and fine linen tunic, his black leather boots and the ruby ring on his right hand. In contrast, she wore a simple gray woolen dress, utterly plain except for some crude brocade along the shoulders and sleeves made with blue thread.

“Well, I did go away for a little while,” she said. “But I thought they might be done by now, so I came back. Anyway, the shutters are closed, and I’m minding my own business.”

Dern took another step toward her. Standing close made it easier for him to look down his nose at her. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t want to move away from him. That seemed like giving in, relinquishing ground that she had every right to stand on. She put her hands behind her back, resting her palms against the warm bricks beneath the window.

“Minding your own business right outside the window where your cousin is currently foaming at the mouth with a mind full of ghosts,” Dern said. “Exactly where you know you shouldn’t be. I will certainly inform my father and your father.”

“Leave me alone, Dern. Why do you always bother me?”

“You are nosy,” Dern said. “That’s why. You are nineteen years old, and you act like you’re twelve. Grow up and stop messing around in other people’s business.”

“It’s my cousin. It’s not other people’s business. It’s my business.”

“You’ve got too much free time, that’s your problem,” Dern said, jabbing a finger at her. The finger was close enough to her face that she could have bitten it, snapped it off at the last knuckle joint and spat it back at him. It was a tempting thought. His fingers were soft and pink, the nails clean. He’d never seen a day of hard work in his life.

“Well, I’m going now,” Ann said. “Get out of my way, please.”

When he scowled, his cheeks crinkled up in a strange way, and his eyes seemed to sink deeper into his face. He started to say something else, and the tenseness in his shoulders and arms suggested that he might be about to lunge at her, maybe to take her by the hands and drag her away. But the screaming arose again from inside the house. The sound of Ann’s cousin had changed, her voice descending to some inhuman depth, becoming a monster’s growl. The color drained from Dern’s face, and he backed away, turning aside as if to dodge phantom blows.

“The straps! The straps!” Ann recognized her father’s voice. “Hold onto them!”

Something heavy slammed into the floor with a violent crash. The shutters rattled against the window frame, and Ann stepped away from the wall, covering her head. The throaty growls became terrible, indiscernible words.

“What is happening in there?” Dern said. “Is she attacking them?”

People were shouting in the room, speaking over each other so that none were understood. The pillow that had been tucked behind the shutters had fallen, and Ann saw movement through the slats, as if people were frantically running back and forth. The big bed was centered on the wall opposite the window. Had they tied Miral to the bed? Ann wasn’t sure. But there were footsteps on the wood floor now, many of them, moving with the screams.

“She’s haunted,” Dern said. “They can’t reason with her. She went down into the vale and came back full of ghosts. All they can do is put her down like a wild animal.”

Ann shushed him, and he raised a hand as if he meant to slap her. He stood so close, she smelled him, the too-strong spice of his cologne, the stench of wealth seeping out of his pores. She wasn’t afraid of the raised hand particularly—Dern was mostly empty threats, and she’d never seen him take a swing at anyone—but the smell was unpleasant.

“Miral didn’t do it,” Ann said, easing away. “I don’t believe she went past the relic wall. She is not the type to do that sort of thing.”

“She was seen coming out of the grove in the center of the vale! She was seen!”

And Ann knew this, but still she wanted to defend her cousin. Mostly, she just wanted Dern to be wrong, and she would have disagreed with him at that moment if he’d said the world was round. He spent too much of his life being right and looking smug about it.

Dern started to say something else, but suddenly a great force slammed into the shutters from the inside. They buckled, and the shouts of the men inside blasted out of a gap in the middle.

“Stab her, if you have to,” one of them said. “Stab her before she gets out!”

“Just take hold of the rope,” said another. “Pull her back down! No need to stab anybody!”

The monster howl rose up again as the unseen struggle intensified. Ann’s heart pounded in her chest so hard it made her dizzy. Faintly, she became aware of other people wandering into the street, gazing at the house. Dern took a step back, and for once the smugness left his face. Mouth hanging open, eyes wide, he gave a rare appearance of vulnerability.

“The rope! The rope!” Her father’s voice again, but he had shouted himself hoarse. “She’ll chew through it! Pull it around behind her!”

Something hit the shutters again, and this time the right shutter snapped in half. The bottom piece broke off its hinges and fell to the ground, tumbling across the street until it stopped at Ann’s feet. She looked down at it, but gasps from the gathering crowd, and a loud groan from Dern, made her lift her head.

And there she saw it in the window, the face that had been Miral. Her skin was as pale as parchment, her lips pulled back to an impossible degree, revealing teeth and gums flecked with blood. Her eyes were bloodshot, opened as wide as they would go. The veins on the sides of her face, and one fat and gnarled vein on her forehead, pulsed like restless black worms beneath her skin. A length of rope was wrapped around her neck, but she held the frayed end in her hand, clutching it so tightly, her hand shook, a hand as pale as her face, knuckles scraped raw. For a second, she hung there in the gap, thrashing from side to side. Then she slid back into the room and was gone.

“I told you,” Dern said, breathless. He had backed all the way across the street and pressed himself up against the high stone wall around a neighbor’s garden. “I told you she’s haunted. Did you see it?”

“I don’t know,” Ann said, speaking through numb lips.

“You don’t know? What does that mean? You don’t know if you saw it? It was right there in front of you!”

Another face appeared in the gap, a fat face, sun-darkened and leathery. He had thinning hair, gray as gravel, flinty eyes, and a broad mouth. Currently, his whole head dripped sweat, and he had a scratch across the bridge of his nose. He thrust a meaty hand out of the window, pointing at Ann, at Dern, then swiping his hand to take in the whole crowd.

“Get away from this house,” he said. “Are you all mad? It’s not safe here. If she gets out, she’ll go for the closest one!”

“Yes, Father,” Ann said.

“He can’t talk that way to me,” Dern muttered. “He’s only an advisor. He works for my father, the mayor.”

But even as he said it, he started moving, sliding along the wall in the direction of the nearest cross street. The crowd took the hint and dispersed, ducking into doors and alleyways, backing into alcoves. Only Ann hesitated. She still saw movement through the gap in the shutters. She stooped down and picked up the broken piece but only to buy herself a few more seconds. When she looked again, she saw her father and the mayor wrestling with Miral, trying to get a rope around her body. With unnatural strength, she kept throwing them off and moving toward the window.

“This can’t be happening,” Ann whispered. “Is it for real?”

No one in her lifetime had passed beyond the relic wall. The stories of those who tried to descend into the vale had never seemed entirely believable. That the vale was full of ghosts was taken as fact by every adult in the village, but Ann had always doubted. Wondered, yes, daydreamed about it, certainly, but always doubted.

“Quit standing there like an idiot and move away.” Dern had reached the cross street, and he hesitated just long enough to shout at her again before backing around a corner of the house.

Ann examined the broken piece of the shutter in her hand. Snapped clean in the middle, a twisted bit of the bottom hinge dangling from a small nail. She let it fall to the ground and turned to leave, still reluctant. Her instinct to see, to know, was far stronger than her instinct to protect herself. Here was something that had not happened in her lifetime, and it involved her own family. How could she walk away from it? It was a terrible event, sickening, seeing her cousin wild-eyed and raving, but it was an event that deserved to be witnessed.

Still, the rough voice of her father, the insistent pointing finger, got her moving, one reluctant step at a time, even as the sounds of struggle continued, louder than ever, through the broken window. She made sure to go the opposite direction of Dern and reached the gate into the neighbor’s garden. It was a low gate, unlatched, and she grabbed it, easing it open. Beyond, flowers bloomed in neatly appointed beds, a riot of colors in the heart of spring. It seemed curious and out of place, this lovely little garden across the street from the unfolding terror of a live haunting.

“Can’t hold on. She’s too strong!”

It was the last cry of her father before the shutters exploded outward in a fine spray of splinters. Ann wheeled around, tripped over her own feet and hit the gate. It swung outward, and she dropped onto her rump on the threshold of the garden. Miral had flown through the window and landed on her stomach in the middle of the road. She thrashed there a moment, pounding the dirt with her hands and feet as if throwing a tantrum. Her long dress was tattered and filthy, speckled with blood. One sleeve was missing entirely, and the high collar had been ripped most of the way off so that it flopped about like a long strip of white skin.

She still had the rope wrapped around her neck, the frayed end dangling. Another rope was tied around her waist, and it trailed off across the street and into the open window. As Ann watched, her father and the mayor appeared, both holding onto the rope, pulling at it, sweaty-faced and snarling. The mayor was a pale, fat man, and his face had turned as red as an apple. He had a busted lip, and the blood ran down his chin and dripped onto the frilled collar of his shirt.

“Scraped the skin off my hands,” the mayor said. “I can’t get a grip. Too slick with blood.”

Indeed, Ann saw blood on the rope, smeared from the mayor’s hands a good three feet toward Miral. With a piercing cry, Miral leapt to her feet and swung around. She grabbed the rope trailing off her back and gave it a pull. As she did, muscle bulged under the pale skin of her forearm, impossible muscles like tight coils of wire. Ann’s father let go of the rope and dropped out of sight, but the mayor was pulled through the window. Only his prodigious gut kept him from going all the way. Instead, he got stuck at the halfway point, his hands still holding onto the rope.

As the mayor flailed about in the window, trying to extricate himself, Miral started crawling down the street, dragging the rope along behind her. Ann realized the creature that had been her cousin was coming toward her, and she scurried backward, pushing herself along with the heels of her shoes. But she bumped into the garden gate and could go no farther.

“Stop her,” the mayor shouted. He pressed his hands to the bricks beneath the window and hoisted himself up. “Someone grab the rope and stop her.”

Miral had the eyes of a desperate animal. As she scampered down the street, Ann curled up into a ball, tucked her legs under her, and tried to make herself as small and inconsequential as possible. The pale creature was making a low growling sound, almost purring, her mouth opening and closing rhythmically with each breath.

“Grab the rope! Don’t let her go!”

The mayor’s frantic cries had become mere background noise. Ann raised her hands in front of her face and shut her eyes, expecting some kind of attack as Miral passed by, sharp teeth or ragged claws. It did not come. Instead, she listened to the soft scrap of bare feet and hands on the dirt as Miral crawled past her.

“You there! You!”

Ann peeked between her fingers toward the window. The mayor had flopped back down, unable to hold himself up any longer. He’d left bloody handprints on the bricks. He was looking at Ann and pointing at her.

“Don’t just let her crawl away. Grab the rope and try to slow her down.”

Ann lowered her arms and turned toward Miral. Her cousin was moving like a cat, sinuous, her butt up in the air. The rope around her waist trailed behind her a good five or six feet.

“Grab it, you idiot! Don’t just sit there and stare!”

The comment stung. The mayor was kind to Ann most of the time, but a bit of his son, Dern, came through at times. Others might have ignored it as an offhand comment, a harsh word spoken in desperation, but Ann knew better. It was a glimpse of his true feelings. The mayor, like so many people, thought of Ann as a distracted, unreliable, and overly curious girl. Oh, she knew full well what they said about her behind her back.

It motivated her to act. She would not sit there and fulfill the mayor’s worst expectations. She rose, her back sliding up the gate. Then she ran after Miral, stooped down, and grabbed the end of the rope in both hands.

“Yes, that’s the way,” the mayor shouted. “Hold on tight!”

But before Ann could pull back on the rope, before she put any tension on it at all, Miral rose to her feet and took off running. Ann tried to dig her heels into the hard dirt, tried to lean back and brace herself, but she was promptly yanked off her feet. Though Miral was not much bigger than Ann, and not an inch taller, it was like being dragged by a draft horse. Ann landed on her chest and belly, got dirt in her mouth and eyes, but she managed to maintain her grip on the rope, as she was dragged down the street.

At the corner of her house, the dirt road passed one of the few paved streets in town, and the edge of the cobblestones slammed into Ann’s knuckles. Her hands went numb, and she lost the rope. Miral took a right turn, racing along the front of Ann’s house. Father had come out of the front door and was standing on the porch. As Miral raced past him, Father stooped down and grabbed her shoulder. In one deft motion, without slowing, she reached up with her left hand and raked her fingernails across the back of his hand hard enough to break the skin.

He winced and drew back, and Miral turned another corner, disappearing from sight. Ann heard a last growl and then nothing. She rolled onto her back and sat up, examining her knuckles. She had a shallow scratch all the way across both hands, but it didn’t look bad. She flexed her fingers to make sure nothing was broken.

“She’s gone,” Father said. “All of that effort for nothing.”

Ann stood up, brushing the dust off the front of her dress as best she could. It was a futile effort. The dress was ruined. The collar was torn, and dirt was ground in deep all the way to her knees. She spat a gob of mud out of her mouth and started toward her porch.

“If only you’d held on a second longer, Ann.”

Her father was waiting for her at the bottom of the porch steps. His shirt had come untucked from his trousers, and his beard was in disarray.

“A second longer, and I might have been able to get in front of her,” he said. “She’s gone by now. Another block and she’s past the relic wall and back into the vale. All I needed was one more second. Couldn’t you have given me that?”

Ann didn’t bother to reply. Hadn’t she tried? When Dern and all of the others had run away, hadn’t she at least tried? But no use arguing the point. She stopped in her tracks, unwilling to look at him. She had thought to go inside and wash up, change her dress, and maybe retire to her room. But she didn’t want to walk past him, and she didn’t want to be stuck inside the house with him, not when he needed someone to blame.

Instead, she turned the other way and, without a word, walked away.

Read the rest of the exciting epic story

The Vale of Ghosts

The Archaust Saga: Book One