Croak by Gina Damico
24
Lex crashed onto a dusty wooden floor.
She was in a cellar. A dim light bulb hung in the center of the room, scattering shadows across the barren cement walls as it swung back and forth. A window near the ceiling revealed an ominous gray sky. Large raindrops fell to the ground outside.
She tried to get to her feet, but she found she was too weak to stand. Whatever just happened had zapped her energy—and besides, her hands were being tied behind her back. A muffled groan came from the corner. Lex squinted through the darkness and saw a lumpy figure—a man, tied up and gagged. His eyes were terrified.
Lex’s captor tightened a final knot, straightened up, and stood before her. The silvery glint flashed once more.
“Hi, Lex,” Zara said wearily, her face pale.
Lex’s mouth went dry. She tried to focus, but her vision kept blurring. Her hands, scorched from the shock, seared with pain.
“Zara?” she choked out. “What are you doing?”
“It worked,” Zara whispered to herself, looking at her own hands. “Holy shit, it worked.”
“What worked? Why—” She almost couldn’t say it. “Why did you kill my sister?” she cried, groping her bound hands around the floor.
Zara held up Lex’s scythe. “Looking for this?”
Lex sank, defeated. “And all those other people. All those Grims. There must have been—”
“Ninety-six. Well, ninety-seven, including Cordy. Ninety-seven and a half, if you want to count Ayjay.”
Lex was too consumed with rage to respond.
“You wouldn’t believe how easy it was, Lex.” Zara stuffed the scythes into her pocket, leaned against the wall, and sank down to the floor. She looked just as shaken as Lex felt. “Swiping syringes from hospitals and scything off the radar, all alone in the back room of that filthy butcher’s shop. And all I needed were a few stings from our friendly neighborhood jellyfish.”
Lex’s mouth fell open. “The Loophole?”
A small, tired smile found its way onto Zara’s face. “The Loophole.”
“What is it? How did you find one?”
“I have my sources. Hell, I started researching my second week in Croak. Dig long and hard enough, and you can find anything—especially if you know where to look.”
“But—what is it?”
Zara gave her a wary look. “You’re lucky. Under most circumstances, you couldn’t torture that out of me—but it just so happens that I got the very last one.” She smiled again. “A Loophole is a special ether-infused scroll woven from spider silk—just like the Vessels—with pictures that serve as the instructions. You drop it into jellyfish-inhabited water, wait for it to dissolve, and then sweep your arm through the tentacles. The solution becomes inactive after a few minutes, so you have to be fast. But after that, you can scythe to any location on the planet.” She rubbed her arm. “Not that those jellyfish stings aren’t painful. They hurt like a bitch, in fact. And scar like you wouldn’t believe.”
Lex’s memory swam back to that day at the butcher’s, to Zara’s mutilated arms. Her head began to pound.
Zara closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall, but kept talking. “But the key to directed Crashing, is prolonged, heavy concentration. That was the really hard part. With practice—and practice, and practice—I learned how to scythe not only to specific places, but also to specific people. The scum that we’ve been letting go free for too long, the dregs of society who feed off the innocent and leave nothing but pain and misery in their wake.”
Lex glanced warily at the man in the corner. She broke into a sweat. “Who is that?”
Zara ignored her. “Child molesters who were let off the hook, white-collar criminals who stole people’s life savings, drunks who were maybe just one missed stop sign away from killing a mess of people—the world is a better place without them.” She opened her eyes and looked at Lex. “And you know it.”
Lex stared back. “But how did you find them?”
Zara let out a short laugh. “You aren’t the only one with an Internet connection, Lex. Headlines, police blotters, sex offender registries—these lowlifes were practically begging for me to chase them down. And as for Ayjay and the other Grims—well, examples needed to be set. If you’re part of the corrupt system, you’re part of the problem.”
“But what about Cordy? She’s never done anything wrong in her life!”
“I know.” Zara’s face turned remorseful. “I’m really sorry, Lex. You have to believe me. I didn’t want to kill her, but I had no other choice. I needed you.”
Lex furiously tugged at her ropes. “Me? For what?”
Zara stood up and began to slowly circle her captive. “You’re different, Lex. I knew it from the moment we first met, the day you wanted to throttle that woman who had shot her husband. You feel the same way I do, that there’s no earthly reason to turn a blind eye to the rapists and murderers, not when we can do something about it. Remember how excited you got when Uncle Sherlock finally cracked the criminal pattern? You said it yourself: bad people should be punished, no matter what the Terms say. And you know what? You’re absolutely right.”
“But you never even went after the murderers!” Lex protested. “Why bother with petty thieves and drunks when you could be going after the worst of the worst?”
“Exactly!” Zara’s eyes lit up. “That’s the question, isn’t it? What to do with the real monsters? If only there were a way to know for certain that such criminals weren’t let off the hook in the Afterlife, free to romp around in whatever carefree bliss they choose for themselves. If only there were a way to ensure that their souls suffered through absolute hell!”
Lex’s heart bumped along at a nauseating pace. The walls of the room seemed to be closing in. Her hands throbbed.
Zara looked down at her. “You have no idea how special you are, do you?” she asked, a hint of envy creeping into her voice. “Tell me, has your dear uncle ever told you about the only other Grim with an overflow of Killing power so strong that it caused shocks?”
“You mean, besides us?”
“There is no ‘us,’ Lex,” Zara said bitterly. “I’ve never felt a shock in my life.”
“But—your hand—”
Zara held up her blistered finger. “What, this? I stuck it into the deep fryer at the Morgue.”
Lex went cold. She felt as if she had been punched in the stomach.
Zara squatted down and grabbed her chin. “Grotton. Just you and Grotton. He dabbled in the same little Crashing deaths that I’ve been doing, but he abandoned all that once he realized his real talent—the one ability that I’ve coveted for years.”
Lex squeezed her eyes shut. “Damning.”
“You got it. A punishment far worse than death.” She let go of Lex’s chin. Lex opened her eyes and watched as Zara walked over to the restrained man. “You hear that?” she yelled. “Sounds like fun, huh?”
Lex swallowed, choking back the nausea. “You’re lying,” she said, though her gut told her otherwise. “I can’t Damn.”
“You can if you get mad enough. Just take that shock surplus and mix it with a healthy dose of rage,” Zara said from the corner. “How do you think that pizza box caught on fire? And before, when you touched me—look at your hands!”
Lex didn’t need to. She could feel the blisters puckering already. “But you’re not Damned. You’re not even dead!”
“Don’t you get it, Lex?” Zara rushed back and sat in front of her. “Come on, you’ve been such a good little detective up till now. I raided the Amnesia supply, drugged up Ferbus and Elysia, stole Elixir from the Afterlife, injected it into those people— you got all of that! So think. Think hard.”
She poked Lex in the chest. “You’re special. I’m not. But what I lack in born talent I make up for in intelligence. I figured out how to clone your powers for myself. That’s why I had to kill your sister.” She took a syringe out of her hoodie pocket—presumably the one she had used
Lex’s heart sank. It had been a trap. Cordy was dead because of her.
She stared at the syringe, unfeeling. “How did you know that would work?”
“Like I said, I have my sources.”
Silence filled the room. Zara stood up and began pacing. Lex desperately clawed at the ropes binding her hands. They were beginning to slip, but just barely; it was difficult to work around the burns.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Any of this?”
Zara’s eyes darkened. She looked down at Lex from beneath a stiffened brow.
“Do you know where we are?” she said in a disturbingly blank voice. “My stepfather’s basement. This is where he took me after dinner every night. I used to cower in that corner,” she said, pointing at the man, “and this unimaginable bastard would hit me with whatever he deemed necessary for that day’s crimes. Sometimes belts, sometimes his own fists, every so often a broken whiskey bottle. Always had plenty of those on hand.”
Lex looked away. The rain pounded outside.
“The world is revolting,” Zara snarled. “How could it allow things like that to happen to a defenseless little girl?” She was yelling now, angry flecks of spit flying out of her mouth, her hands balled up into fists. “How can so many despicable people be permitted to go on without punishment?” She took a deep breath. “They can’t. They simply can’t.”
Zara stopped in front of her stepfather. She looked at him for a long time. Her breathing grew heavier. He let out another strangled groan and lolled around the ground, feebly attempting to free himself. His expression was one of pure terror.
Lex tried not to watch, but she couldn’t help it.
With an abrupt, unearthly cry, Zara kicked him, hard. A cracking sound came from his ribs. His chilling wails echoed off the basement walls.
Zara stood over him, triumphant, as she extended her finger and touched him on the forehead.
But no flashes of light emerged.
No sound.
And no soul.
Instead, a thick, palpable darkness exploded through the air, shattering the light bulb. It engulfed the room so swiftly that Lex was knocked onto her back and could feel it whooshing across her skin.
After a second or two, light from the window began to creep back in. Lex, stunned, sat up and squinted across the room. A sinister black shadow now surrounded the motionless body. Wisps of darkness seemed to be seeping in from the walls, materializing out of thin air. They swirled over the man in an incomprehensible dance, churning and roiling, until at last the whole mass sank under its own weight and dissolved into his remains.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the man bolted upright, his eyes bulging in pure agony. Some unknown torture took hold as he thrashed about the ground in a series of brutal convulsions, his fingernails leaving scrapes in the floor where he clawed at it. Smoke emerged from his nose, then his mouth, as if a fire had ignited inside his body. Soon, small licks of flame started to burst from his skin one by one, like popcorn. Before long, the entirety of his frame was engulfed, the fiery blaze throwing dramatic shadows onto the wall as inhuman howls of pain escaped his throat.
And then, with a sudden whoosh, the flames went out. The man crumpled into a heap, his body half ash, half melted flesh.
All was still. After a moment Zara rose from where she had been knocked to the floor and spit on her stepfather’s corpse.
“I’ve been waiting to do that for ten years.”
She sat back down against the wall, pulled her knees to her chest, and buried her head in her arms. A density settled over the room, a quiet stillness broken only by pings of rain, distant thunder, and the occasional sob from beneath Zara’s hood.
Lex tore more furiously at the ropes binding her hands, but her fingers were getting too swollen. Her Cuff was emitting a slight hum, its surface vibrating against her skin, but she couldn’t reach it to call for help. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway—no one else could Crash to her location, not even if they knew where she was. Not even she knew where she was.
Zara got up, sniffed hard, and wiped her face with her sleeve. She turned to Lex with an eerily calm expression. “So where should we start?” she rasped, removing both of their scythes from her pocket. “I’m thinking death row. I know they’re condemned anyway, but that can take years. We can help speed the process along.”
“We?”
Zara gave Lex a startled look. “You’re coming with me,” she said, as if this were obvious.
“Why the hell would I want to do that?”
“Because you can!” Zara exploded, her face furious. “This is what you’ve been fighting for ever since you arrived, the ability to punish people who deserve it! What you just saw is nothing—nothing—compared to what that bastard’s soul will be going through for the rest of eternity. So don’t you dare sit there and tell me that you don’t want to do this, that you don’t believe this is the right thing to do. Think of the difference we can make! We have complete power over anyone with a pulse! And I mean real power, not just the puny little witchcraft that comes with being a Grim. You can’t just throw it away!” She blew a sweaty clump of silver hair out of her face. “This is the side you belong on, Lex. And you know it.”
Lex took a breath and held it. For any normal person, the choice would have been a no-brainer. Always choose good over evil. Anyone who’s ever studied history, read a comic book, or seen The Princess Bride would know that. But Lex was not a normal person. And so, despite everything, she hesitated.
She knew that the depraved feelings inside of her would never lie dormant; the steadily intensifying shocks were proof enough of that. There was no way to quash them, no way to drive them from her mind and body, no way to prevent them from rearing their hideous heads and alienating the people she held so dear. It had become clear to her that impulses like that wouldn’t ever go away, and they couldn’t be destroyed. And now that she had touched her own sister’s corpse, she wasn’t even sure that she wanted them to. The world was a hideous place. It deserved the destruction she could create.
And Zara was right: it would be foolish to squander such a valuable gift. If Lex really could stop anyone she wanted to, why not go after the world’s cruelest monsters? She’d be violating the Terms of Execution, and she’d have to abandon Croak forever, but maybe if it were all for the greater good . . .
But everyone back in Croak who had loved her and accepted her for the freak that she was would be devastated. They’d never forgive her; she’d never be able to return. She had made a true home there, somehow managing to cobble together a handful of real relationships that meant more to her than almost anything ever had before. Was all that worth throwing away? And the greater good—Lex didn’t even know what that meant anymore. Was Uncle Mort on the side of good? Or was Zara?
Was anyone?
Lex swallowed. It wasn’t worth it. The noxious, ever-wakeful rage would continue to surface, there was no doubt about that. And maybe one day she would succumb to it, but not yet. Not alongside Zara. If that meant death or Damnation, then so be it. The alternative, the thought of teaming up with the person who had murdered her sister in cold blood—it made Lex feel dirty, infected, diseased.
She could never live with herself.
Lex looked defiantly into Zara’s wild eyes. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“What?” Zara desperately pointed both scythes at her. “But to be born with a talent like yours—you’re only the second person in history!”
“I don’t care.”
“You’d better care.” Zara’s lip curled. “Because you’re either with me or you’re Damned. I can’t let you go. You must know that.”
Lex scanned the stepfather’s body, still smoldering. Where was his soul now? What was happening to it?
For the f
“Go to hell.”
Zara angrily stalked off to the corner, where she stood in silence for a moment before letting out a small laugh. “Do you want to hear something funny, Lex?” She turned around to display a grotesque smile. “I sought out the ability to Damn because my life was a horrific, unbearable mess. My mother walked out on us—just left me alone with that sick pervert when I was nine and never came back. No wonder I turned out the way I have. But you . . .” she said with a glint in her eye, “you can Damn despite the utopian upbringing, despite the loving family. Why, Lex? Where is all of that malevolence coming from?”
Lex stared back blankly, as one does when faced with a question that has no answer.
Zara saw that she had struck a nerve. But Lex remained silent, and before long a flash of rage shot across Zara’s face. “Suit yourself,” she growled, shaking her head as she drew closer, extending her hand. “It’s a shame, though. You could have been really, really good at this.”
Lex cowered into the floor and prepared herself for the pain. But then she thought of Cordy, and how she hadn’t gotten the slightest chance to defend herself. She never even knew what was coming.
And so with one final, desperate tug, Lex jumped to her feet, tossed the unknotted ropes to the ground, and grabbed both scythes out of Zara’s hands.
“Sorry,” Lex said. “But I’m really, really good at escaping, too.”
And with a quick upward swipe of her scythe, Lex jumped into the ether, Zara’s screams of surprise and fury echoing softly in the deafening wind.
25
Lex lay very still on the ground of the Field and looked up at the purpling sky. Cheerful pink clouds drifted lazily past the branches of the Ghost Gum as a warm breeze swept across the plain, carrying with it the tart, earthy scent of grass. She exhaled and watched the dust specks dance through the air, all the while trying desperately not to think about the fact that her best friend in the universe was dead.