Ethan Greywater's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

Sammy still could not see Ethan. He sat in the dirt by the broken headstone, wiping his face. The weight had left his shoulders, but the yard had not changed for the better. The ground near the grave had gone soft and black. Swamp water seeped up through the soil where no swamp should be. Ethan felt the cold spread under his feet. Something old was waking. Silas rose from the muck behind them. Worms curled in his empty sockets. His grin stretched wide. "You freed the boy," he said. "But you woke what the woman left behind. Her curse never died with her. It only slept in the ground." Ethan turned on him. "Then help me end it. You know how. You've known everything since the start." Silas drifted closer. Water ran off his grey ribs. "There is a locket," he said. "Blackened silver. She wore it the night you killed her. Break it, and the curse dies. Leave it, and it takes the boy." He paused. "I can lead you to it." Ethan did not trust the grin. But the black water was climbing toward Sammy's shoes. He had no better choice. "Show me." Silas pointed to the loose soil at the foot of the grave. Ethan knelt and dug with hands that barely gripped. The dirt fought him. At last his fingers closed on cold metal. He pulled the locket free. Scrollwork curled across its tarnished face. He felt the curse pulse inside it, warm and hungry. "Give it to me," Silas said. His voice had changed. Softer. Eager. "A living spirit cannot break it. Only I can." Ethan stopped. He studied the swamp ghost's face. The hunger in it. The reaching hand. "You don't want to break it," Ethan said slowly. "You want to hold it. You've wanted this all along. Every answer you fed me led here." Silas's grin faltered. For one moment the worms went still. "The curse is power," he said. "Why waste it on the dead? Hand it over, and I will let the boy live. That is more than you can offer." There it was. The true face. Ethan closed his fist around the locket. He did not throw it to Silas. He raised it high and brought it down on the stone edge of the grave. The silver cracked. A scream tore out of it, high and wet. The black water shrank back into the ground. Silas lunged, too late, his fingers passing through empty air. "Fool!" he shrieked. "You've spent it on nothing!" The curse was gone. So was Silas's power over them. He sank into the muck, cursing, and did not rise again. Sammy gasped as the cold lifted. Ethan stood over the broken locket, holding the pieces. He had saved his brother. But he understood now that every door he had opened, Silas had opened first. And the way across still lay somewhere Silas had never meant for him to find it.