The Haunting

Necromancy Senses II (Chapter Twenty)

“I hope you’re comfortable, dearie.  I wouldn’t want you to catch a cold!”  She fluttered her fingers towards a big comfy looking chair, and Chloe gratefully sat down.  The plushly cushioned chair was like a balm for her weary muscles.

She looked up at the woman, and was surprised to see that a young child had taken her place.  She ginned happily and skipped away towards the kitchen.  Chloe abruptly stood up, and tried to follow her.

The tiny house had stretched into a giant hallway, and the end of which was to small and far away to see.  The walls were the same, as were the lights, and everything else that had been in the house.

She started to walk forward, and everything around her dropped away till there was nothing but inky blackness surrounding her.

Then, the old woman stepped forward, again, but this time she was a rotted zombie.  A scream tried to claw it’s way out of Chloe’s throat, but she held it down.  The little girl appeared right next to her, and was in the same state as the old lady.  Then, they were seemingly sucked out of her sight, and she was alone.

She felt like she had been floating there for hours, when a voice, shockingly like her own, made itself known.

“Hello, Chloe.  It seems you have learned well.  But I have one more task to ask of you, before I confront you.  Chloe.  Find the piece of gold in this space, and then I will come back for you.  Until then, adieu.”

Then, all the sudden, she was covered with zombies.  They crushed her, and she couldn’t breathe.  She shoved bodies aside, trying to get air.  But she couldn’t, there seemed to be no break, no exit, no space for her to try and breathe.

It was torture, being stuck like that.  Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of gold.  She tried to maneuver herself, trying to find where that flicker, that brief glance, of gold.

She elbowed and jostled her way through the zombies, chasing the gold.  It appeared and disappeared over and over again, and Chloe sagged in near defeat, and then she caught sight of it, tantalizingly close, it shimmered in the air, and vanished just as quickly.  She was just chasing an image.

Her head sagged, and she caught sight of her pendant.  It was almost glowing, and it sent out waves of purple light that pulsed slightly.  She fingered the chain reverently, thinking of her mother.

Sometimes, people make things harder than they really are, had been a favorite quote of hers, and it was true.  Then, her heart skipped a beat.  A piece of gold, she had said.  As in a solid, touchable piece of gold.  Not an image that appeared and disappeared at will.  She looked down again, and saw the chain of her necklace.

The chain was gold.

Chloe grinned in triumph, and when she opened her mouth to declare she had found the answer, all the zombies disappeared.  She was alone in the darkness, again.  No, she corrected.  There is something else here, too.

“You have done well, Chloe.  We knew you would do this well.  But now, I have to test your knowledge.  Listen to this riddle, listen very closely.

“My wing is rotten,

riddled with holes.

My bones are hollow,

devoid of extra space.

My flesh is decayed,

with wriggling maggots.

I see you through one eye,

but not the other.

My dress is ripped,

torn through, too.

One foot is gone,

but the right is still there.

I am dead,

but not, too.

So where am I decaying?”

Chloe thought about it for a second, and she almost said the right side.  After all, that was the only clue she had given her.  But something made he check her tongue, and she held back her answer.

That doesn’t make any sense.  How can only the right portion of her body be rotten? said a voice.

Well, it seems like the only answer to me, Chloe argued.

Think harder.  When have you ever seen a body that was perfectly rotted on only one portion of the body and not the other.

Hmm, Chloe thought.  You do have a point, but what else could the answer be?

The voice sighed.  Think hard.  Really hard.  Where are corpses rotted?

They rot everywhere, of course! She replied indignantly.

Oh.  Right.

“Um, aren’t corpses rotted, well, everywhere?”

“Is that your answer?”

She hesitated for a second, then expelled a breath.  “Yeah, that’s my answer.”

“You have passed.”

Then a figure stepped out from the shadows.  She looked exactly like Chloe, but she was a rotting zombie.  The portion of her mouth that was not rotted turned up into a smile.  “You have done well, Chloe.  I am Necromancy, here to serve you.  As will the others, but first you have to pass their tests.  I will see you after you have passed.”

And as she vanished into wisps of steam, she blew a breath on Chloe, and she was in another field.  Almost identical to the one that had sent her into the forest.

A door shimmered into existence on the other side of the field, and she moaned loudly.

“Not again!” she cried as she made her way towards the next door.