TELL ME THE TRUTH

Chapter Seventeen

Jeanne Saunier 

2013

Skeletons littered the chamber. Trudy's lantern speckled them with warm light, but it didn't alleviate the horror at what I was seeing. Old muskets lay on the stone floor beside almost every skeleton, and there were bits of torn and decayed fabrics that must've been blankets and pillows at one time. A glass lantern sat on a rickety old table in the corner; torches circled the walls, and as Trudy used her lantern to ignite them, the room was lit up in flickering firelight.

They were soldiers, each set of bones still clad in gray uniforms that were like nothing I had ever seen before. Many of the details had faded away with time, but the gray uniforms with the brass buttons were never worn by any American military, disproving my theory that my bunker was a holdover from the civil war.

Officially, it had never existed, and now I knew why.

"They've been dead for decades," Trudy commented, moving to stand beside me.

"Longer."  That hoarse whisper was familiar, and a quick glance at Trudy told me that she hadn't heard it. I let out my breath, listening closely for another whisper from beyond the grave. "Focus on your magic, beloved," Mama breathed, her voice becoming stronger and more real with every word. "Feel the dead. Feel how long they've been here."

I could feel my mother in the room with me. The smell of raspberries and decay floated through the air. The sound of her laugh, like tinkling bells, echoed around me. She was here, and she was trying to teach me something.

"I'm listening," I let out, closing my eyes and searching for that spark of magic inside of me.

"Search for the dead until you feel them the same as you feel the living."

I took a deep breath and turned my focus onto the room around me. The smell of dirt from the earthen hallway outside of the chamber. The smell that my mother's presence brought with her. The brush of fabric as Trudy shifted in place. Everything filtered through my awareness, and I opened myself up to all of it.

Trudy's heartbeat echoed in my mind. It was slow and almost weak, and I wondered if it was because she was a creature who survived on the blood of others. Ryan hadn't come with us down into the tunnels, but I could still hear his heart beating from up in the bunker. Alieza's was little more than a hint, just barely loud enough that I knew she was still in the bunker.

I narrowed my focus. Ryan and Alieza's heart beats faded away, and the only thing I could feel was Trudy. She was still in the room, and I could feel that she was a little nervous about what I was doing. I certainly didn't blame her for that, though; I was nervous, too.

"Focus, Jeanne Eva," my mother told me as her presence flared to life in the chamber. "Look for what you cannot see."

I slowed my breathing even more, thinking back to the vision her journal had brought on. In the vision, I had used my magic to examine the athenaeum. I could do that again; I just had to figure out how. My head drooped as I searched for a way to open myself up to the room.

I found a door buried in my subconscious. It appeared during my search, and I instinctively knew that I needed to open it. I flung the metaphorical door open, and I could suddenly feel everything in the chamber, both alive and dead.

A cold, dark energy filled the chamber, connected to me by the same glowing threads that connected me to the lanterns and torches. It reminded me vaguely of Trudy and Ryan's heartbeats, but this was much, much older, with a smell of wet soil and old bones. The slightest hint of decay wafted through the room. I felt the years those bodies held as clearly as I felt the steady thump of Ryan's heart.