“Go ahead, boy. Stick yer head in the grime.”
Eadwin looked at Brother Consul with a thousand pounds of fear in his eyes. His face paled to the color of old candle wax.
“It won’t bite,” the eldest monk encouraged. Over-sized robes draped his body, regal in shape but not color. They tied at the waist with old bailing twine. “Do it. It’s time.”
“But—”
“Please. Ya need to see this place as I see it. As we all do.”
He spoke with command, not the magic kind but earned respect. His voice held a kindness betrayed by the sour, worn-away gravel from decades of chronic cough. Eventually they’d all sound like him: bone weary, throat sore, and bored with life at the Monastery. Like him, their hair would fall out; like him, their limbs would grow thin and weak despite the daily labors of keeping the catacombs in operation.
Like him, they would all die.
Brother Consul’s bloated lips cracked into a half smile that promised nothing bad would truly happen. The grime was just another bit of boredom, in the end. A zombie routine. Like scrubbing the floors or keeping the furnaces fed.
“Okay,” Eadwin said. He coughed. Something tickled the back of his throat, but that was routine now, too. He looked into the grime.
It stilled as a pool of opaque grease. Magic swirled underneath, deep below the ground where the furnaces burned, but on top, the contents in the stone cauldron did not move. The grime was as smooth as fresh glass. It was hard to tell if it was brown, green, grey, or black. It smelled like stale dirt. Runes rimmed the cauldron, etched with a sloppy hand and filled with the tired glow of magic at its final fade.
“What … what should I say? What should I do?”
Brother Consul waved a cold hand. “We stopped with the rituals when the moon stopped moving.”
“I feel like I should say something.”
“Then say something.”
Eadwin looked the elder monk in the face. His living eyes locked with dead ones. A thousand pounds of fear passed through him. “I want,” he whispered. “I want to go back. To normal.”
Brother Consul leaned in close. His grin hardened into sorrow. “No, boy. No you don’t.”
The air in the large room hung about like a stale, mildewed curtain. Empty pews watched, each as stuck to the ground as the moon to the sky. Long ago, the Monastery had thrived, a home the size of a village, but now only four people kept it running. Three of them were zombies. One would become a zombie. Already Eadwin barely needed to eat. Soon, he wouldn’t need to breathe.
“What … what … should I do once I’m on the other side?”
Brother Consul nodded. His jaw clicked. He coughed, even though his lungs did not work. “Don’t look up.”
With his last truly human sigh, Eadwin stuck his head in the grime. The world went black.
*
Eadwin’s inner ear did a somersault, and his stomach flipped a circle to match. The cold, chill of death coiled around his face. It seeped into his ears, his noise, his mouth, killing his senses and giving him a drunken sway. He blinked; he coughed. Everything hazed with grime, like looking through a window so dirty it would be easier to break it than clean. Panic tried to strike him, sink its fangs into his soul, but the grime kept it at bay. Or maybe that was undeath. His heart slowed. His fingers grasped at the cauldron so hard they split open.
The Monastery was no longer empty.
Eadwin stood on shaky legs. He looked around the wide room, with its pews and aisles, and saw them—the ghosts. They cowered with fake form, their limbs thin and misshapen, the color of old yogurt. Their faces cried long, silent prayers. Many swayed from side to side, but none moved.
A hand gripped Eadwin’s shoulder. The touch was familiar, a dead friend’s comfort. Eadwin tried to find Brother Consul, to hold him and feel safe, but the grime did not care for balance or for living blood. Eadwin stumbled. He put one foot in front of the other. Momentum carried him into the ghosts.
The dead followed him with their misshapen, yogurt eyes. Little blue pinpricks glowed within their sockets. Eadwin fell, and they reached for him, strained against their bonds. They cried, and they begged, and he saw: Each ghost was chained to the floor. Ropes of flesh coiled around their ankles, locked in place with screws made of bone. One ghost shook his leg, and though Eadwin could not hear the chain rattle, he knew that it did. Dirt leaked from the links.
“Help us,” the ghosts prayed with silent screams. “Free us.”
“How?” Eadwin tried to shout in turn, but all his lungs could do was cough. Grime stained his teeth. He tasted blood.
A ghost leaned in, its hands outstretched. Eadwin reached for it. He needed help. The ghost’s fingernails were made of ooze.
“No!” a voice ordered from miles away.
Eadwin jerked back, but not before the ghost touched him. A burning pain erupted from the tips of his fingers, like he had stuck his hand the furnace. He tried to scream. He coughed up grime. He felt a hand on his shoulder, but this time it did not grip with kindness.
“Follow the dragons,” the ghost wailed. Its face almost looked alive. There was panic in it, and underneath that, a desperate hope. “Go! Go and see!”
Running, stumbling, Eadwin shouldered his way through the Monastery. He couldn’t see well, but his body knew the church. He had lived here for over a decade. Footsteps followed close behind. Shouts of, “Stop!” came with them.
The courtyard swarmed with prisoner spirits, hundreds—thousands—of ghosts stood chained to the floor with flesh and bone. As one they turned to look. Eadwin screamed. As one, they all pointed up, towards the sky. The grime distorted his vision, made everything swim with dirt, but Eadwin’s soul understood even if his eyes did not: The dead stayed stuck. There was no afterlife, no god to hear their prayers. Only chains. Only forever.
“Help!” Eadwin called.
Then he looked up.
Eadwin expected to see the sky, the moon in its place, the stars dull with sleep. Instead he found dirt. He was buried alive, trapped in a giant grave of tattered wood and black embers. The furnaces smelled like dirt. The ash smelled like dirt. Brother Consul smelled like dirt. Everything was dirt. Everything was—
The underground sky shifted. Eadwin coughed. Little bits of sand fell into his face as he watched his graveyard prison pulse, as if something big swam underneath. The ghosts prayed. A few covered their heads; their chains kept them from hiding. Eadwin waited. Someone grabbed him by the back of the head with rage strength. Brother Consul forced Eadwin to his knees. He tried to bend him down, to make him look at the ground, to make him close his eyes, but the dirt moved. Something lived inside. Eadwin needed to see it. The ghosts needed him to see it.
Dirt showered the ground. A head burst through. It was thick and pink, coiled ropes of scales and horns with a gaping circle of tentacle teeth. It wriggled down, as wide as a horse and ten times as long. It was a worm, the king of dirt and carrion, and from its back sprouted two, leather dragon wings.
It did not roar, but it did see.
*
The heat of the furnaces did not bother the zombies, but it did give them a more deathly aroma. Their dirt smell turned damp, the air thick. Eadwin coughed. Sweat streamed down his face as little rivers, tinged with grey like the water in the wells outside. Brother Alfric worked beside him, his dead hands diligent, his skin peeling like cracked paint from a wall. He tried to whistle as he worked, but his lungs were only capable of coughing, and his lips were too dry. Instead he made a series of strained, wind noises that almost carried a melody.
“There, there, ol’ lad,” he said after one chorus. “It’ll be okay. First time in the grime is always a bit of a shock.”
“Yeah,” Eadwin mumbled.
“The ghosts can’t hurt you.”
Brother Alfric had entered undeath short and round. Being a zombie kept him short, but without food or water, the roundness became slop. He carried his loose skin like a blanket. When he worked, he would drape it over his legs to help catch anything he might drop. Brother Alfric had clumsy hands.
Eadwin slit an envelope open. Without thinking, he threw the letter into the furnace. Its envelope evaporated into a little pile of ash. Another envelope appeared in its stead, and he repeated the process. The furnaces had to burn, and the letters were never ending.
“I looked up,” Eadwin said.
“Oh.” Brother Alfric dropped his letter opener. It landed blade first on his loose skin and parted it easier than the paper. “Oh. Well, you shouldn’t have done that.”
“No. Brother Consul was furious. Terrified, but furious.”
“Yes. But that’s his job. He runs the Monastery.” The wrinkled zombie pulled the knife from his skin and smiled. “He’ll forgive you, lad. That’s his job, too.”
“It’s dirt.” Eadwin hissed. “The sky!”
Brother Alfric shrugged. “It’s all dirt. That can’t hurt you, either, you know. Dirt.”
“But—”
“Did you pray?”
Eadwin nodded. “Yes. But there’s no moon, Alfric. Not in the grime. Only ghosts and dirt and—”
Brother Alfric chuckled. He leaned in close, and cupped a dead hand around Eadwin’s ear. “Can you keep a secret, lad?”
Eadwin nodded.
“We don’t pray to the moon anymore. Not since it got stuck.” Brother Alfric’s voice was like the wind, cold and empty. It tickled Eadwin’s face. “No, we pray to us, because only we can hear. But that’s enough. Did you feel better?”
“I think so.”
“Self control and self promises. That’s what it’s all about, lad. That and feeding these furnaces.”
Eadwin split another envelope. It evaporated; he tossed the letter into the fire. Another appeared. This was his duty for the day, and his penance for looking up. For seeing a secret he wasn’t ready to handle. The worms killed humans. The ghosts lied to humans. He wasn’t far enough into undeath to face either.
“Ya can’t trust a ghost,” Brother Consul had scolded. “You can pity them, for we must, but ya can’t trust them. They’ll kill you if they touch you.”
So Eadwin worked the furnaces all day, sweating grey water and burning little squares of paper until cuts covered his hands. The letters were an infinite source of fuel, and as long as the furnaces kept running, then everything would be okay. The Monastery still functioned. The worms stayed away. The The grime remained placid in its stone cauldron.
Eadwin grabbed another letter out of thin air. He cut open the envelope. He readied to throw the paper, but a pinprick of color caught his eye, a dark squiggle. The letters never had any writing on them. Thousands appeared every day by magic, addressed to the monks of the Monastery in various scrawls and foreign characters, but they were always blank. Empty.
“What?”
Eadwin looked around. Brother Alfric had waddled off a few hours ago, eager for his next round of chores, and the other monks were performing their duties. Chores ran nonstop at the Monastery. There were only four people left to take care of it, not even half a dozen to do a village’s worth of work each day. Feed the animals, tend the garden with its sick, little potatoes, clean. It was all dirt, after all. That meant lots of cleaning. Once Eadwin became a full zombie, he could work nonstop and not have to eat. It would help, but only a little. They still needed to keep food and water on hand in case someone else wandered out of the mist.
Feeling like he was breaking another rule, Eadwin folded the letter open. He expected blank parchment, or maybe a stain, but found thin, black text. It read, “Help me!”
“Help me,” Eadwin whispered.
The letter disappeared in a flash of blue magic. Another appeared. Eadwin slit it open and read that one, too, “Save me!”
“This can’t be,” he said, as the letter popped with little blue sparks.
Eadwin tore open more letters, not even bothering with his knife. Each contained a message for him: Help me. Save me. Please watch over my wife. God, protect my children. For my loving father. Help me. Save me. My flesh hurts me. Please. Please. Please. Please!
Something crashed up above, where the grime lay. Eadwin barely heard it. He found another letter. He opened it.
“Find me,” it read. “Stick your head in the grime, and find me. There’s still time.”
“What?”
But the letter disappeared before it could answer any other questions. Eadwin looked up. Brother Consul stood in the doorway, arms crossed under his thick monk robes, lips cracked. He’d been a zombie since the first day Eadwin showed up, but not the scary kind that wandered the outside world. He didn’t eat brains or rip flesh from bone with his bare hands. He smiled; he prayed. Sometimes he sang. He showed Eadwin how to clean their holy relics without scratching them, how to sew rips in clothing, how to open a letter and burn it to ash. Now though, he looked scary. His eyes were as dead as the ghosts in the grime, his teeth sharp. He glowered, and Eadwin shrank in his chair.
“Didn’t know you could read,” Brother Consul said.
Eadwin shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Oh?”
“We never owned books, when I was young. When I had a family.” Eadwin choked on the word. A decade had passed since then, but not a day had changed. The moon never moved. The trees had stopped growing. Ever since he was born, there had been more ash in the air than actual weather. “All we had was our farm.”
Brother Consul nodded. Kindness returned to him. “You’re a good farmer, boy. Never had potatoes so big until you showed up.”
“I—”
“Our horse has never been happier, either.” Brother Consul sat next to Eadwin and grabbed a letter from thin air. He tore it open with a loud rip. “Here. What’s it say?”
Eadwin took the paper with a shaking hand. His fingers were dry and bloody. It said, “Come quick, and bring a knife,” but Eadwin didn’t like how Brother Consul was watching him. He swallowed. Sweat dripped down his face. His armpits were soaked with it.
“It says, ‘Help me, please.’” Eadwin lied. “They all say something similar. The letters want help.”
Brother Consul tapped the paper once, and it burst into a little blue light. “Not the letters, boy. Ghosts.”
Another letter appeared. Eadwin opened it, but stopped before he could see the writing. He handed it to Brother Consul, who tossed it into the flames.
“We aren’t gods, Eadwin. We have no business reading other people’s prayers. Those are between the ghosts and the moon.” Brother Consul shrugged. “Or us and ourselves.”
More letters appeared. Eadwin watched them like he would a snake. Under the table, he worked his letter opener into the folds of his robes. He didn’t want to be a zombie. He wanted to go back to normal.
He was no longer afraid.
“Can’t we help them? The ghosts?”
“No.” Brother Consul stooped his dead shoulders. He smelled like dirt. His face crusted with flaking skin. “We aren’t gods, Eadwin. All we can do is garden. Garden, and not look up.”
Despite himself, Eadwin looked up.
*
With a tense hand, Brother Consul led Eadwin upstairs. It was time for supper. Because even though Eadwin believed he should fast as penance, the elder monk would not hear it. “Strength, boy,” he said in his dead voice. “You need it more than ever, now that you’ve had a look in the grime. Strength, and rest.” They wandered the empty halls to the kitchen. Most of the sconces on the walls were empty of all but dust. A few held candles, but they weren’t lit. Only Eadwin needed to eat. Sometimes Sister Burgwynn made herself food out of habit, but until he became a full-fledged zombie, the kitchens belonged to Eadwin.
“I will pray before I eat,” the young monk said.
“Good.”
“For guidance.”
“Oh?” Brother Consul didn’t have any eyebrows, but the skin above his eye lifted all the same. “Guidance for what, boy?”
Eadwin felt the letter opener in his palm. The blade wasn’t very sharp—he could squeeze it and not cut himself—but it parted zombie flesh with ease. Could it cut through chains, too?
“I’m not sure.” Eadwin shrugged, swallowed. Thoughts of life danced through his head. “What fell while I was feeding the furnaces?”
“Hmm?”
Eadwin looked up again, though they were no longer below the grime. The kitchens were in the back of the Monastery, out of the way so food could be delivered without bothering anyone. There were shelves and ovens and long, stone tables for cutting meat and vegetables, though Eadwin only ever used the corner of one. The rest was for the dirt.
“I heard something crash, earlier. I thought maybe Brother Alfric fell.”
“Alfric does do that a lot, don’t he?”
“Yeah.”
Brother Consul gave Eadwin a pat on the shoulder. He spoke in a commanding tone, but without magic. “Eat, and rest, boy. Undeath will be upon you soon.”
“Yes.”
“Our chores await.”
Brother Consul left along another path, his footsteps making little slip, slip noises as dead flesh left footprints in old dirt. Eadwin waited until he was out of sight and sound, and then turned for the church. His knuckles whitened around the knife hidden in the sleeves of his robe.
He needed to stick his head back in the grime.
He needed to free the ghosts.
He needed to stop the worm.
*
The church was dead empty but not empty of the dead. Eadwin could feel them all around, standing in their spots, leaking with yogurt-flesh and silent prayers. His eyes wandered the aisles. Something was different. He didn’t know what, only that things had changed. Instinct made him look up. He flinched, because there was a crack in the ceiling, as if something had fallen on it. But the only thing above the church was the moon.
“I think the moon will hear my prayers now,” Eadwin whispered.
A little bit of wind blew through the aisles, not strong enough to do anything but let Eadwin know it was there. It smelled like death, but underneath the death, it smelled green. The grime rested in its stone cauldron. Eadwin ran to it. Today, his chores meant something. Today, the stagnant could move.
Without a prayer or a magic word, Eadwin stuck his head in the grime. Like before, he spun a nauseous circle. The ground became ceiling; the ceiling became a dirt sky. Grease clouded his vision in cold streaks. He looked out at the church, at the cluttered ghosts, and they looked back with prayers on their misshapen lips. Each would become paper. Each paper would become flame.
Eadwin swayed forward. There were less ghosts than before. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, only that they seemed a little further apart. There was more room to walk. They reached for him, prayed for him, begged for him.
“Help us,” they wailed. “Save us!”
Eadwin didn’t know where to begin. He flashed his letter opener and almost dropped it. In the living world, it was a dull knife made for tearing paper, but in the grime, it was heavy and long, a proper sword. Both its edges gleamed with oily sharpness.
One ghost made a living motion with his arms, a “come here, quickly!” that Eadwin recognized. He ran as fast as the grime allowed.
“You must dig!” the ghost wailed. It pointed up. Eadwin followed.
Something had fallen on the church when he was feeding the furnaces, big enough to shake the building. In the living world, it had left a simple crack in the roof, but in the grime, it had struck a savage blow. There was now a hole in the ceiling. From the hole, leaked bodies. They hung in place, a pile of twisted corpses stuck like a stalactite to the dirt sky.
“You must free us,” the ghost said, “and then you must dig!”
“What? But the worms—”
“Follow the dragons!” The ghost grabbed Eadwin by the shoulders. Its yogurt-hands burned. Eadwin screamed. “That is my prayer. Bleed. Then hurry!”
The ghost disappeared in a flash of blue smoke. Another body oozed from the ceiling. Eadwin looked around, his heart barely beating, his eyes barely seeing. He waved his sword, stumbling more than walking, as he found the nearest ghost. He tried to get on his knees and fell. Somewhere outside the grime, his body hurt.
“Help us!” the ghosts all screamed.
“I will!”
Eadwin swung his sword at a chain. He expected it to part, to slice in two or burst with magic, but his sword hit flesh and bounced. The ghost reached for him. Eadwin cringed away.
“Help me!” the ghost begged.
“I’m trying!”
The grime did not care for quick movements. Each sword swing felt like it took minutes, and each clang burned through Eadwin’s wrists, arms, and shoulders. The ghosts touched him, their desperation burning with literal pain. Eadwin cried. His tears clogged with grime. He pounded his fist against the ground so hard he heard bone snap. Blood spilled on the floor. The ghosts wailed, and when Eadwin tried another swing, his sword worked. The chain parted, and the ghost disappeared. Its body appeared in the ceiling.
“Bleed, then hurry,” Eadwin said. His speech slurred as if he were drunk. Each word tasted of grime.
Eadwin went from ghost to ghost, hacking at the chains around their ankles. The stalactite of bodies thickened, grew stronger. It reminded Eadwin of a potato root. Arms and legs spidered in all directions, but the trunk, the tube of bodies, went straight for the grime. Whatever the this plant was, it was thirsty. For the first time in Monastery’s history, the grime bubbled.
Something shifted in the dirt. Eadwin looked up. There were dragons swimming above him.
“What are you doing, lad?” a voice called. It was distant, more echo than question. Eadwin flailed.
“Stop,” he shouted. He swung his sword in random directions. In the real world, it was just a dull knife. He wasn’t sure he could even cut himself with it.
Brother Alfric stopped.
“Now, now,” the zombie said. He broke into a coughing fit, and his body shook with the effort, though Eadwin could not see it. There was too much grime in the way. “Let’s just calm down, lad. Calm down and go back to our chores.”
“I have to help them!” Eadwin could barely hear his own voice. “The ghosts need my help.”
Alfric approached with quiet steps. His jowly flesh dangled from his body. It was filled with cuts and tears from his time spent in the furnaces. “Shouldn’t talk to ghosts,” he said. “Their words are for the moon, not us. We aren’t gods.”
“I can help them.”
“No you can’t.”
“Yes I can! We all can! It’s—”
Someone coughed behind Eadwin’s shoulder. He screamed, stumbled—swung. His letter opener gored Brother Alfric’s chest, and in the grime, his sword struck soul. Blue magic flashed so bright it reminded Eadwin of stories of the sun. Once upon a time, there had been one of those, an orb of light in the sky. It let things grow. It kept the zombies at bay. Maybe it even let prayers reach the moon.
“I’m sorry!” Eadwin cried as Brother Alfric sighed into death. His soul vanished, and his body appeared on the stalactite. “I didn’t mean to!”
“Help us!” another ghost cried. “Save us.”
Eadwin freed it from its chains. The nose of a worm burrowed through the dirt ceiling. Its tentacle mouth sniffed the air.
Just as Eadwin was saving another two ghosts, he heard a magic command. The word “Stop” struck his spine. His sword fell from his hands.
“No!”
Eadwin fell to the ground, searching. Grime covered his vision. His bloody hands left stains on the floor.
“Boy!” a voice roared. “Boy what have you done?”
A dead fist struck Eadwin in the face. It blackened his left eye and smeared the grime from it all in one go. His stomach doubled over as his inner ear tried to process being both in the grime and outside it. He coughed. His tongue tasted like stomach acid.
“Please,” Eadwin tried. His right hand was broken in two parts and bleeding from more cuts than he could count. Outside the grime, it hurt. Inside the grime, he didn’t care. “We can help them.”
Brother Consul gripped Eadwin with zombie hands. His claws burrowed into Eadwin’s skin, drawing blood and pain. With half his face hazed with grime, the monk looked like any other zombie that roamed the earth: dead, bloated, leaking fluids and bad smells. His breath smelled like ash, and his teeth sharpened into that of a wolf’s.
“Yer not a god, boy. You can’t help the dead.”
“But—”
Brother Consul shook Eadwin until blood leaked from his wounds. The zombie brought his face in close. His eyes were terrified, furious, and dead, all in one go.
“We’re all that’s left, keeping the world alive, boy. It should have died long ago. Do you want to die? Do you?”
Eadwin screamed. He heard more footsteps, though he couldn’t see them. The rest of the zombies had come. The ghosts cried for help.
“You’ll doom all the people in the mist, those still alive, and those not.”
“But we’re already doomed.”
“Not if the furnaces keep burning!”
A new voice coughed. Eadwin felt a hand on his shoulder, and then he saw the tip of a blade. Sister Burgwynn had his letter opener. She brought it to his throat.
“He’ll pray for us, if we let him,” she said. Everything about her was thick, hard, and acidic. “We can burn him forever.”
Eadwin looked up. Brother Consul slapped him with his claws, raking bloody lines in Eadwin’s face.
“Do not look up! They’ll see you!” The elder zombie coughed. “Quick. Grab a rag and wipe the rest off him, before the worms come.”
“We can help,” Eadwin whispered. Out of the corner of his grime eye, he saw something move. Something big, something with scales and dragon wings.
“You are not a god!”
“I don’t need to be a god to help,” Eadwin screamed. “What good is this church if—”
Sister Burgwynn cut him off with a scream. “Brother!” she roared, “Brother the grime is bubbling!”
“What?” The claws holding Eadwin up let go, and he fell to the ground.
With his good eye, Eadwin watched both zombies shuffle to the grime as fast as their dead legs allowed. They bent over the bowl. Brother Consul put his hands on the cauldron to brace himself, readied his head, and then crumpled to death. There was a glittering, silver rock in his skull. Sister Burgwynn had just enough time to look up, at a hole in the ceiling, before she, too, was struck. Eadwin followed her gaze and saw the moon overhead, stuck in place, and maybe just a little smaller. Explosions thundered in the distance. Big things landed with even bigger thuds.
With his grime eye, watched the dragon ooze in front of him. It was huge, the king of carrion. It arched up, rearing like a snake ready to bite with poison. Eadwin coughed. The worm struck. Brother Consul exploded into blue parts so small they didn’t even collect on the stalactite. It then swallowed Sister Burgwynn whole. She appeared next to Brother Alfric, and her foot dipped into the bubbling cauldron.
A thousand panes of glass cracked as every window in the Monastery shattered. Flesh chains burned with blue flame. The worm coiled towards the mountain of bodies, and as it slithered up, the bodies hardened into a stone road. Runes appeared in the stone, glowing faintly with magic at its final fade. The ghosts formed a line.
Eadwin struggled into a sitting position. The grime was mostly off him now, and he hurt worse than death. The worm dug its way into the dirt ceiling. The ghosts marched after it, following the dragon up, up, into the dead plane beyond. Each ghost looked to Eadwin before they began their march and thanked him. Their yogurt mouths smiled. Their voices no longer screamed.
The moon answered their prayers.
Nonsense 