When the little girl died her spirit was trapped in the house. She would relive the afternoon of her death over and over. When I tried to take her the first time, my hands passed right through her. She died from electrocution. Her attacker was interrupted before hurting her, but in the scramble, he pushed her into wires that had been damaged by his forced entry. She made contact with the wires and the radiator pipes. Her head…
I’ll never forget her scream.
The second time I interrupted the replay of events. When he made the fake delivery to see if adults were home, I answered the door. He panicked and ran away instead of chit-chatting with the girl. By the time I ran back to her room, her spirit was already going through the death throes again.
I pulled her off the radiator and covered her with my arms and wings until she realized she wasn’t in pain anymore and stopped crying. She looked up at me and asked for her mommy. Her face…
Around us, the scene continued without us. Her parents had come home. The mother had come in to find her daughter being assaulted. The attacker had pushed her aside to run out only to find the father with a gun. He ran to climb out the bedroom window but didn’t see the girl was hiding behind the bed or the stripped wires to the lamp dangling over the dresser. He pushed her face first into the wires and the radiator.
I hid the spirit’s face. She didn’t need to see this, nor see the anguish of her parents. I opened the shadows under us and we dropped between worlds to the Boneyard.
As we descended, she said she was sleepy. I told her to go to sleep, that I had a place where she could sleep in peace, and that there won’t be anyone to hurt her. She asked for her mother again. “In time.”, was my answer.
A shallow pyre was waiting for her. Her spirit became nearly dry bones in my arms. Her skull was damaged by the electrocution. As I arranged the pyre over her, three skulls tumbled down to rest against hers. Even without flesh, I recognized them. Her mother, her father, and her older brother. They would not move on without her. I found the rest of the family’s bones and arranged them together in a intimately familial way. I covered the pyre with more bones and called the fires to begin.
A Boneburner stopped me as I wandered away in a daze. “Screecher, eh?” I looked at him in question. He reached up and wiped blood off my face. My temple was cut and bleeding. “Screechers can burst your veins by sound alone. When you picked up the spirit was it screaming? Some deaths keep killing long after the body is gone. You’re not the first to be sent to that girl. Just the first to get past the screaming. Thought you might like to know what happened to her attacker.”
He took me by the arm and led me to a pile overlooking the Bone Temple. Using compacted ash to staunch the wound, he told me what happened after her death. He had somehow stabbed himself in the stomach with the knife he meant to use on the girl. He didn’t notice in his successful scramble to escape. The dirty knife added contaminants to the punctured intestine and by the time the wound was discovered, it was too late to save him. He died a painful and lingering death as his body was eaten from the inside out by unchecked bacterial infections.
“He had help.”
“He might have. Or his luck was just that shitty.”
It took me a while to get the pun. When I did, he laughed while I rolled my eyes. Looking over at the Bone Temple, I noted several individuals were slowly walking around the grand edifice. “Hey.”
“You didn’t know? It started about a month ago.”
“Novice acolytes?”
“No. These are Elder Boneburners. Long dead but still serving the Ravens. They didn’t move on. I think one predates the temple.”
I thought of Ravenwoman. “What’s up?”
“The lease, I think.” He laughed again. “Time is almost up. For the temple, those in the temple, and those trapped in the temple.” As he spoke his voice grew quiet and severe.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. “When it starts, get me. I don’t want to miss this. I want to help burn that bitch down.”
“We all do. All of us that rejected them. All of us that hear the crying of the trapped. We all do.”
I thanked him for the first aid and sitting with me until my head cleared. We fist-bump in mutual appreciation. I turn and leave the Boneyard, and the silent growing vigil.
Soon.