Abarat: Absolute Midnight Read online

  It instantly zigzagged beneath the crab, and drove its lightning-wreathed length at the crab’s belly with such force that the unthinkable happened. The crab—which had ruled the shore for a decade, slaughtering indiscriminately, even when there were rich pickings among the dead—was thrown over onto its back. Its barbed legs struck out wildly in an attempt to right itself, but could only pedal the air, which was suddenly thick with flies. For the first time in its life the crab made a thin whine of complaint, tinged with fear.

  It had reason. It had only been on its back for a few seconds when its enemies slid up over the rim of its shell and onto its underside. There they rose and fell, rose and fell, their motion perfectly matched, until some invisible signal turned their dance into death. Together they drove their lightning-bathed heads into the crab’s segmented belly.

  The crab’s whine became a shriek. Not of pain—the crab knew little of that—but of profound terror. This was its nightmare, its only nightmare: to be lying helplessly on its back while something that it had intended to make a meal of, devoured it.

  But it was not a crabmeat dinner the bright thread sought. It was the fear itself, which it fed on, fattening on its cream, rich and thick then bearing its bounty, returning to the body from which it had come.

  In the brief time that had passed since the waters of the Izabella had relinquished the corpse, rain clouds had blown in from the northeast. They were the first sign of a storm that had formed in the wildly unstable air above the edge of reality itself, where the sea dropped away into oblivion. Within two or three minutes the rain shower had become a deluge, which drove all but those few caught in the life-and-death struggle on the shore back into their hiding holes beneath the stones.

  The crab, of course, had no hope of retreat. Exhausted by its panic it lay inert as the rain roared down on it. The storm hadn’t slowed the threads that were feeding on its terror. The bright threads came and went, harvesting the fear that suffused every part of the animal’s anatomy. They didn’t need the nourishment for themselves. It was their deceased creator, whose body they had never deserted, that they sought to reclaim with these gleanings of fear.

  Had they been rational creatures with an understanding of death’s implacable hold, they would never have attempted to resurrect their host. He was dead, beaten and broken by the waters of the Izabella as they returned from the Hereafter. They had borne a chaotic freight of detritus from the streets of Chickentown. Storefronts, lampposts, cars, parts of cars, people in cars (some alive), roofs, doors, windows all stripped from houses, and innumerable remnants of the lives lived inside those houses: chairs, fridges, magazines, rugs, people, toys, clothes, and on and on; junk and life all thrown together in a soup of things lost forever. The threads’ host had been dashed against so many sharp, heavy, twisted pieces of trash that he might have died half a hundred deaths if he’d had them to die.

  But finally a calmer current—the one that delivered his body to the Shore of the Departed—had claimed him. And now, in contradiction to the Shore’s very name, and in defiance of all the laws pertaining to the dissolution of the flesh, the devoted labor of the threads, carrying the food that the crab’s terror provided back to their maker’s corpse over and over, bore fruit.

  The dead man moved. The crab did not see the miracle its nightmares had made possible. At some point in the coming and going of its fears’ devourers, the crab let go of life. The sluggish motion of its legs ceased entirely, and its whine sank away into silence.

  The albino didn’t see the corpse it had almost dined upon twitch on its bed of black stones, nor its eyelids flicker open as the rain danced down on its all but fleshless face. As one life ended another began.

  Nor was it for the first time. Christopher Carrion had drawn his first breath many, many years before, as a baby prematurely born. Now he took that breath again: a second first. This time, however, it was not a frail inhalation. This time, though the rain was still beating a tattoo on the stones as loudly as ever, the sound of the dead man drawing breath reverberated all along the shore, its resonance causing the stones beneath the stones, and those layered still deeper, to rattle against one another, the sum of their percussions so loud that the din of the deluge seemed inconsequential.

  And as if driven off by that greater thundering, the storm clouds rolled inland, to pour their waters upon a place they had some hope of cleansing: someplace where the laws of life (and death) still held sway. The shore lay silent, except for the breathing of the dead man, and the sound of the Izabella as it threw its waves upon the stones.

  The drumming of the stones finally ceased, its task complete. Carrion lived. His body was no longer the wretched, colorless thing it had been. Myriad forms of light were spilling into the air around it, memories of a life he almost lost. They seethed around him blazing with a living light this shore had not witnessed in many an age. In the flux of memories, Carrion began to whisper ancient incantations, designed to heal his broken body. In the time it took for the tide to turn, retreat, and turn again to once more climb the shore, the healing was complete. Healthy tissue spread over his wounds, sealing them and causing the rotted flesh to fall in strands and scraps onto the hard bed where he still lay.

  The smaller crabs, the tiny, green sea lizards that had taken refuge beneath the stones, and the mekaks that had seen several of their kind killed by the Albino, returned now to the proximity of the man so as to feed on the putrid meat that the healed body had sloughed off. They had no fear of this man or his bright agents. He didn’t even see them as they scuttled over the stones around him, cleansing the shores of every last scrap of the death he had taken off in order to dress in life again.

  After a time, he got to his feet. His memories still played in the darkness around him, their meaning—having been put to the purpose of Carrion’s rebirth—eaten away, leaving the darkness surrounding him swarming with the remnants of a life he’d lived once, died too. It was well lost. He would not make the same mistakes again.

  The screech of metal on stone stirred him from his ruminations. He looked toward the water, and found there the source of the raw sound. The incoming tide had brought another souvenir of Chickentown to the Shore of the Departed. An entire truck, missing three of its wheels but still containing the slumped body of its driver, securely held in his seat by his seat belt, was being delivered to the shore.

  Carrion’s face had betrayed no trace of feeling until now, when the subtlest of smiles appeared on a mouth still marked, even after his revival with the scars of his grandmother’s handiwork: the lines where she’d sewn his lips together for speaking the word love. He raised his hand to his mouth and ran his fingers over the scars. The smile died, not because Mater Motley had done him harm, but because she’d been right. Love was sickness. Love was self-slaughter. Love was poison and pain and humiliation.

  He was reborn to be love’s enemy. To destroy it, utterly.

  The thought gave him strength. He felt the power in his body surge, and with it a sudden desire to celebrate his return into the living, tender, fearful world.

  He lifted his arm and pointed at the truck that was still in the water, the surf surging around it.

  “Rise,” he told it.

  The vehicle obeyed instantly, lurching violently as the water poured out of its engine. The driver lolled around like a drunkard at the wheel, as the truck continued its ungainly ascent. At Carrion’s feet the loyal nightmares, which had masterminded his return to life, fawned and cavorted as they watched their naked lord at play.

  Carrion dropped his right hand to his waist, palm out, and the nightmares sprang to meet his fingers, coiling themselves up and around his wrist and arm so as to reach the precious place where they had been made: his head. Once they had swum in a collar filled with a soup of sibling terrors, which he had drunk and breathed. They would again, soon. But for now they made two blazing rings around his neck, and were in their heaven.

  Carrion watched the truck ascend for a little
while longer, and then uttered a syllable ordering its immolation. It instantly blew apart: a fireball of yellow-and-orange flame from which the burning fragments fell like tiny comets, meeting their reflections and extinction, in the sea. Carrion turned his gaunt, tragic face heavenward to watch the spectacle, and a single bark of laughter escaped his lips.

  “Ha!”

  Then, after a moment:

  “What’s a resurrection without fireworks?”

  Chapter 24

  At the Preacher’s House

  MALINGO ROWED THE LITTLE boat in the direction of Ninnyhammer. It wasn’t an Hour with the happiest of memories for either of them, given that Malingo had been Kaspar Wolfswinkel’s slave there for many years and Candy was very nearly murdered by the wizard in the process of escaping. But dark as their associations with Ninnyhammer were, the island was still the closest place to find a ferry that would take them to the massive harbor in Tazmagor on the Hour of Qualm Hah, which would ultimately lead them to the Nonce, and therefore to Finnegan Hob.

  When they had reached Ninnyhammer, they decided upon a ferry called The Sloppy. And once they had bought their tickets, waited in line to board, and finally found chairs on the upper deck of the small steamer, the stresses of recent events took their toll, and Candy very soon began to doze.

  “If I sleep . . .” Candy said, already halfway there, “I might go dream walking.”

  “You mean sleepwalking?”

  “No. This is that thing I told you about.”

  “Ah. I remember. The Hereafter. Are you sure you’re safe there?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Malingo smiled. “Good.”

  The ferry’s captain blew three blasts on the horn, sending plumes of white steam into the night sky. That was the last thing Candy knew of their departure. As the third plume floated to darkness, so did Candy. A blanket of sleep came down, and the ship, the sea, and stars all went away.

  She didn’t rest in a dreamless state for long. By the time The Sloppy was out of Ninnyhammer’s harbor, Candy’s dreaming soul had gone home to 34 Followell Street.

  She woke in the kitchen. It was daytime in the Hereafter. She glanced up at the clock above the fridge: a little after three. She went to the sink and looked out into the garden, hoping that her mother would be out there, sleeping in the rusted chair, her back turned to the house. Chance—or something like it—had arranged things perfectly. Her mom was indeed sitting in the old garden chair just as Candy had pictured her, asleep, which meant that this was indeed one of those precious times when they could talk together, dreamer to dreamer.

  The first and only time they’d met this way before, Candy had left the encounter with a new determination to understand the mystery that had brought her into the Abarat in the first place, an impetus that had led, finally, to her separation from Princess Boa. Now she wanted to tell her mom all that had happened on Laguna Munn’s rock. Knowing that this dreamtime was unpredictable, and that they might be interrupted at any moment, she went straight outside.

  She found her mother in exactly the same place she’d been when they’d met before, staring up at the sky. Melissa Quackenbush didn’t need to look around to know that Candy was with her.

  “Hello, stranger,” she said.

  “Hi, Mom. I missed you. I hope you’re not angry with me.”

  “Why would I be angry?”

  “Because I haven’t been home to see you since the battle.”

  “No, honey, I’m not angry,” Melissa said, turning around now, and smiling at Candy. A true smile, full of love. “You’ve got a new life in the Abarat. And that day when the water came through—”

  “The Sea of Izabella.”

  “Yes, well, if what I saw that day is anything to go by, you’ve got your hands full. So no, I’m not angry. I worry about you. But things happen for a reason. I’ve always believed that. We don’t always know the reason. We just have to get on with things.”

  “Everything’s going to be fine, Mom.”

  “I know. I trust you. But”—she stopped and stared at Candy hard, her head turned slightly—“you’re different somehow.”

  “Yes I am.”

  There was a long moment of silence between them. Finally Melissa said, “So tell me everything.”

  “It’s not very easy to explain.”

  “What’s so hard about it?” Melissa replied with a little shrug. “You got rid of her.”

  Candy laughed out loud, in part at her mother’s plain way of saying something that had seemed so difficult to put into words, and in part out of surprise that she knew.

  “Who told you?” Candy said.

  “About the Princess? Diamanda told me. The one with the long, white hair. The oldest of the women of the Fantomaya.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Not much really. Not about the Princess herself. But that you wouldn’t need to know anything.”

  “She’s gone now. It was hard. Somebody died because of it. But I had to have her out. She’s bad, Mom. And I never knew. I never realized she was there inside me. And now she’s gone—and what she did when I let her go—” She shook her head, knowing she’d never find the words. “Seeing her clearly. This . . . monster who’d been inside me all that time.” She took a deep breath. “Did you ever see that in me? Any sign?”

  “Of what? Of something bad in you?”

  “Evil?”

  “Lord, Candy, no. Never. Of course you had your little secrets. And you were always quiet. There was something special about you. I think even your dad felt that. But evil? No.”

  “Good. I was afraid . . . you know how you hear about how people repress things? Bad things? So bad they can’t admit that they did them so they forget them?”

  “Well, I wasn’t with you every minute of every day for all those years, but if you’d really done something bad—”

  “Evil.”

  “—I think I would have at least had some clue.”

  “But nothing?”

  “Not a thing. If this Princess is as bad as you say she is, I think I would have known if she’d shown herself.”

  “But she did, Mom.”

  “When?”

  “All the time. She was part of who I was. Otherwise how would you have known that something was different? You felt it as soon as you saw me, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” She studied her daughter again, with eyes full of love as before, but tinged with a hint of fear. “But now you and she are separated. You’ll stay out of her way, I hope.”

  “As long as she leaves me and my friends alone, I hope I never lay eyes on her again.”

  “Good. Nobody needs bad people in their lives.”

  “Mom, you don’t need to worry. Because when I’ve seen all my friends and I’m sure they’re okay, I’m coming home.”

  “Home here?”

  “Yes.”

  “To stay?”

  “Yes, to stay. Why do you sound surprised? This is my real home. With you and Dad and Ricky and Don . . .” Now it was Candy who did the face watching. “You don’t seem very happy about it,” she said.

  “No. Of course I’m happy. To have you back home would be wonderful. But . . . things aren’t the way they were before the flood. A lot of people blame you. If you came back, they’d arrest you and interrogate you until they could find something to accuse you of. You opened their eyes to another world, darling. They’ll never forgive you for that. I know they won’t. There are a lot of cruel people in this town. There always were. But now there are a lot more.”

  “I never thought about that,” Candy said. Her mother’s response had blindsided her. She’d always assumed there’d be a way. “People can forgive, right?”

  “I’m afraid this is only the beginning, Candy. Something really terrible’s going to have to happen before ordinary folks come to their senses.”

  “Where’s Dad?” Candy said, changing the subject.

  “Well . . .” Melissa took a deep breath. “He�
��s at church.”

  “He’s what?”

  “At church. He’s preaching, believe it or not. He does it every day now.”

  Candy wanted to laugh; of all the strange things she’d heard recently, the idea of her father heading to church to deliver a sermon was by far the strangest.

  “I know how ludicrous it all sounds,” Melissa said. “Believe it or not, Ricky goes too. He has a lot more respect for your father these days.”

  “What about Don?”

  “He doesn’t have any interest in any of this. He stays in his room a lot these days.”

  “This is too weird. Where does Dad preach?”

  “He calls it The Church of . . . wait, let me get this right . . . The Church of . . . The Children of Eden. It’s on Treadskin Street, where the old Baptist Church used to be. They painted it green. It’s a really ugly green. But he’s really changed his ways, Candy. And people like what he has to say. Look. On the windows.”

  Melissa pointed. There was a poster taped to the dining room window. And two more of the same design upstairs. Candy took a couple of steps back toward the house, so as to read what they said.

  COME IN!

  NO CONFESSIONS!

  NO CONTRIBUTIONS!

  ENTER AND YOU SHALL BE SAVED!

  Candy was suspicious.

  “He used to watch those TV evangelists just to laugh at them! And now he’s a believer?”

  “Well, he isn’t drinking as much, which is a blessing. So maybe it’s doing him some good.” Suddenly, Melissa halted and the look of concern she already had on her face deepened. “You have to go now,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I heard the front door. Your father’s back.”

  “He can’t see me, Mom. I’m here in your dream.”