“There’s gratitude,” he muttered, the shadows overtaking his form once again as she receded. “Ah,” he said, and began to sing softly to himself in a lilting tune.
“Can it have been the woodlandish ghouls—
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—
To bar up your way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds—
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds—?”
Isobel turned and ran for the iron door. Behind her, he laughed, the lyrics of his dreadful song rising in volume.
“Well you know, now, this dim lake of Auber—
This misty mid region of Weir!”
She grasped the side of the iron and tugged inward. With a screech for each pull, the door gave inch by inch until it yielded a space big enough to slide through. She eased out, a panel of lace ripping free from the skirt of her dress.
“Well you know, now this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir!”
Isobel pushed the door shut behind her, blocking out his voice with one last shriek of iron and rust.
Outside, gray ash coated the ground of a silent cemetery. Flecks of white sifted from the purple sky, falling through the arid atmosphere to gather like snow atop the countless crooked tombstones that pockmarked the grounds in crowded patches. They leaned into and away from one another like scattered, broken teeth. Stone angels and grim, robed figures wept and grieved at the sides of aboveground tombs, while in between it all stood several of the same thin black trees as from the woodlands. Beyond the cemetery, the jagged edge of a cliff split the sky from the ground, stretching in a serrated rift spread as far as she could see.
Behind her, attached to the crypt, loomed the cathedral-like castle, the abbey from Poe’s story within which raged the masquerade. Its spires pointed toward the ashen sky, jagged and wicked, like the spine of a slumbering dragon.
The view was all stillness and quiet, like some creepy charcoal etching brought to life.
Until the sound of loud knocking shattered the sanctuary quiet.
Isobel kept close to the side of the crypt, pressing one hand to the cold marble wall as she moved away from the stained-glass door. Soon the Nocs drifted into view. She counted six of them altogether as they exited from the iron doors of another vault.
They bore aloft on their shoulders what she recognized at once as a long wooden coffin. Her heart jarred at the sight of it, fear tightening her chest.
A shout arose from within, followed by the clatter of more knocking.
On top of the coffin, like a king, perched a great black bird. In between dry croaks, it pecked at the lid, as though in answer to the knocks coming from within.
Pinfeathers. He made seven.
Another anguished cry for help came from inside the oblong box, and now she was certain. It was Brad inside that coffin. But how had they brought him here?
Isobel remembered how, on the playing field, Brad’s eyes had turned black. Just like Varen’s, they’d lost the vibrancy of color within the beat of an instant. But when Brad’s eyes had changed, his body had remained on the field, unconscious. How, then, had he been transported here?
Isobel slipped away from the crypt. She followed them, venturing through the tangle of trees, ducking behind monuments and tombstones. She stopped at the side of a tall winged seraph weeping into her stone hands, and watched them from a distance.
Like bizarre pallbearers, they carried the coffin along toward a misty clearing encircled by more black trees.
Nearby, a mound of dirt awaited, pricked by the spade ends of several shovels. Their handles, like needles in a pincushion, stood erect from the pile, ready to be put to task.
In front of the mound, as a marker, loomed a tall, shrouded statue. A long hooded robe concealed the form’s entire head and swathed its arms, which were held open over the gaping maw of the black grave.
Isobel squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. But she didn’t wake up. The scene remained. The screaming remained. It was all the same, only now the Nocs lowered the coffin from their shoulders.
“Let me out!” Brad shouted.
The Nocs laughed and together heaved the coffin into the hole. Pinfeathers squawked and fluttered up from the lid while the box landed with a crackling thud. A rush of ash burst forth from the grave. Brad howled.
Isobel drew in a sharp breath, her heart pounding so hard that it started a ringing in her ears. She gripped the base of the stone angel that hid her as if, somehow, it could give her strength.
This was insane. They were going to bury him alive, and she couldn’t do anything about it. Why had she followed them out here? What did she think she could do to stop them? What could she do to stop any of this? It was just her. And the Nocs.