the bodies,” Vambéry says. He has the door cracked and is looking out at the village green.
Matilda takes her gaze off the man at the window for a second and turns towards the front of the small residence. Vambéry opens the door just enough for her to see.
Two of the men are dragging the bodies around the coach and lining them up in a straight row in front of the house. They pick up the severed heads and place them atop the matching bodies. They leave the wooden spikes impaled in their violated chests. Matilda would have expected a lot of blood, but there is surprisingly little, nothing but the stains upon their shirts, and the rain is making quick work of that. What had been a deep crimson before was now diluted to pink. It drips to the ground where the thirsty soil soaks it up.
Four other men emerge from the woods and join these first two, the six now surrounding the black coach and its team of horses. Another man nonchalantly walks over to their wagon and unhitches all six of their steeds, leading them towards the trees.
Seventeen men now in total.
Matilda turns back to the first one. He continues to watch her with a blank stare, icy rain dripping down his face.
BRAM
THIRTY MINUTES UNTIL NIGHTFALL
The heavy lid of the tomb slides away and falls to the side, Emily’s cries now pouring out—penetrating, haunting. She is buried beneath a thin layer of soil, and Thornley works to brush it away from her face.
“Cuts like blades and needles all over my body!” she wails. “Needles and blades and pins slicing into me, peeling away my skin!”
“I see nothing!” Thornley says frantically. “What is it?”
He has her face uncovered—Bram has never seen her with so little color to her complexion. Her eyes snap open, and Bram expects them to be red, but instead they are muted green. They flit back and forth, taking in the three of them hovering over her. A large roach scurries across her face and disappears inside her filthy blue gown; she pays it no mind.
“Emily, tell me, what did he do?” Thornley says. “What has he done to you?”
Dirt has gotten into her mouth, its grime now running down her lips and chin, mixed with red saliva, dripping down her—
“My God, there is a body under her,” Bram breathes.
“It feels like he is sticking pins and needles into my skin, under my nails, in my eyes—pins and needles everywhere!”
Bram looks past his sister-in-law to the bones beneath her, ancient bones, the original occupant of this tomb. But there is something else beneath the sorrowful remains, glistening.
Thornley reaches inside the coffin and cradles Emily in his arms, lifting her out as she shrieks, “Pins and needles everywhere!” her arms are limp at her sides, covered with burns and welts.
“What has he done to you, my love?” Thornley pulls her close, embraces her, muffling her cries in his chest.
“There is more in there besides bones,” Ellen says, “beneath the dirt.” She has noticed it, too, the shimmering.
Bram leans in closer. The skeleton is wrapped in tattered cloth, no doubt the remains of clothing long since rotted away. He reaches in and carefully moves the bones aside, his eyes locking on the shiny metal. His fingers brush over it, wiping away the black soil—a cross, a small silver cross of the type typically worn around the neck.
Ellen draws in a deep breath and turns away.
Bram digs deeper into the dirt and finds more crosses. His fingers come up with a dozen chains. “The coffin is filled with them.”
Emily screams, her cries so loud they echo off the trees, throughout the valley. They are answered by the howl of a wolf from somewhere distant in the forest. The burns on her arms—they are from the crosses, where they had come in contact with her flesh.
“Pins and needles! Pins and needles!” Emily shouts.
Thornley runs his hand through her hair, trying to soothe her, trying to hush her.
“Pins and needles, under my skin!”
“Emily, please stop—”