Sue vox's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

The open jar shone on the floor. Sue could not seal it. She had scraped the last wax days ago. Theo knelt beside her, his sandwich board creaking. "A door stays a door until you shut it," he said. "We need more wax. Now." Sue thought of the one place that might still hold some. A frozen motel down the road, closed for years. She had bought her first batch of black wax there, from a chandler who once rented a room. Boxes might remain. "Watch the specimen," she told Theo. She wrapped it in canvas and set it in his arms. Then she looked at the open jar. "And don't look into that." Sue drove through the dark to the motel. Ice sealed every window. Snow buried the sign. She forced a door and swept her lamp across a room full of dust and old furniture. Mirrors hung on the walls, cold and bright. She kept her eyes low. In a back closet she found three crates stamped with the chandler's mark. She pried one open. Black wax bricks, hard as stone. Something tapped behind her. Sue turned. A skeleton stood in the doorway, bones white in her lamplight, held together by nothing she could see. It took one step, then another, joints clicking. Its skull swung toward the nearest mirror. The shadow rode it. It wanted the glass at her back. Sue grabbed a wax brick and hurled it at the mirror. The glass burst. The skeleton stuttered mid-stride, its stolen doorway gone. She smashed the second mirror, then the third. Each break stole a route from the thing inside the bones. The skeleton froze, one foot raised. Then it dropped, clattering into a heap on the floor. The shadow had nowhere left to go. Sue loaded the crates into her arms and ran. Her heart slammed. She did not stop until the motel shrank behind her. Back at the workshop, Theo waited with the specimen. The zombie dog lay by the wall, still and dull-eyed. The jar shone where she had left it. Sue set a wax brick on the stove and melted it fast. She poured the black wax over the open jar and sealed the shine. The doorway closed. She sealed the empty windows too, one by one, until no glass caught the light. "It's shut," Theo said. He sank onto a stool. Sue held the specimen and checked its eyes. The wax on the left eye had cracked wider. A thread of shadow pressed against the glass from inside. Her fresh wax could seal a jar. It could not mend a crack this deep. The trapped shadow was working loose. "I have wax again," she said. "But the trap is failing." She set the specimen on the bench and reached for her tools. Eleven years, and the eyes still were not right.