Wren Kovar's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

The knock from beneath the boards was still ringing in Wren's ears when she noticed the light. The lantern sat where she had set it, but its gold circle had shrunk. The edge of the glow was sliding back across the floor toward her knees. Toward the dark stripe. If it touched those boards, the thing under them would sink away, and she would have come all this way for nothing. She looked at the lantern. The flame inside was steady. Something outside the flame was eating the light. The blue shape from the hall drifted closer and hovered at her shoulder, thin as breath on a window. "It pulls the light in," the ghost said. Its voice slid under the floor like a draft. "Your lantern is losing. Move it, sewn girl, or lift the boards yourself." Wren looked at the gap between the glow and the dark stripe. Two hand-widths. Less. She could shove the lantern away and buy the thing below its darkness. Or she could keep the lantern close and lose whatever waited under the floor. She chose. She slid the lantern backward down the hall with the flat of her hand. The glow retreated with it. The dark stripe went black again. Cold air rose from the seams between the boards like breath from a mouth. Something pushed up from underneath. A board lifted at one end, then dropped. Another cracked along its length. A nail popped and skipped past her knee. Wren did not move. Her button eyes stared straight down. A hand came through first. It was long and gray and had too many joints. Then a shoulder. Then a face she could not look at all at once — pale, wet, with eyes that had not opened in a long time. It did not climb out. It only rose to the chest and stopped, half in the floor, and looked at her. "You knocked," it said. Its voice was low and slow, like the house settling. "I heard you the first time. I waited to be sure." Wren nodded once. "Then it is done," the thing said. "I am up. I cannot go back down." Behind her, out on the porch, the gravedigger's boots hit the wood and stopped. The raven flew in through the door and landed on the broken board by Wren's knee. It did not caw. It watched the thing in the floor the way it had watched her, tilting its white throat. The ghost thinned against the wall and was gone. The thing in the floor lifted its second hand and set it flat on the boards beside Wren's small shoe. "Take me out of this house, sewn girl," it said. "You brought me up. Now you carry me." Wren stood. Her knee still hurt. She reached down and took its cold hand in hers.