The Colour of Your Aura (Enoch O'Connor)

Chapter 11

"Vic, Vic, you need to wake up. We're there," Enoch whispered, shaking my shoulder. I wrapped my hands around his arm and buried my head in his shoulder, blocking out the light as best as I could. "I will tickle you," He chuckled and I shuffled away, falling backwards onto the bed.

"You do that and you're a dead man, Enoch O'Connor," I grumbled, putting my hands over my eyes. I felt the bed dip a bit as Enoch lay down beside me, his hair tickled my cheek. I shuffled away because of our proximity but he only closed the space.

"I leave you alone if you get up," He sang and I groaned, sitting up. I didn't realise how close we were and I ended up head butting him.

"Christ, be careful!" He exclaimed, rubbing the spot on his forehead from when I had hit him.

"Language," I scolded, slapping his arm lightly. He rolled his eyes, grabbed my hand, and pulled me off the bed. I dragged my feet along the ground, letting him pull me to wherever we needed to go.

"Does everyone know what they're doing?" Jake asked and I looked around. Enoch and I had just entered the room and we had no clue what they had just been talking about.

"Um, what?" I asked and he glared at me.

"You help Enoch raised the skeletons," He rolled his eyes and I nodded, excited to test out the extent of my peculiarity.

Once everyone had gone to do their jobs, I followed Enoch into the dining room at the far end of the boat. The sight of the skeletons was just as eerie as they had been when I had first been there. Their gaudy jewellery and flowing hair sent shivers down my spine. I didn't know how bad I would have reacted if they hadn't fully decomposed.

Their bones were clean on skin and tissue, the ivory shining in the dim candle light. I wrinkled my nose and shuffled past one to my right, who's hand was extended as if to ask if I wanted a drink.

"Ok, so how do we do this?" I asked the dead riser, rubbing my hands together.

"You've watched me before. Just copy what I do. Although this may be a little bit harder than it usually is," He said, biting his lip.

"How so?"

"You need to be within the area of my aura at all times, right? That means that if you so much as move away from it, the skeletons will fall back to the ground, inanimate once again," He explained.

"So, basically I need to be stuck to you like glue until this phase of the plan is completed?" I asked and he nodded. "Not really difficult for us, is it?" I joked and he blushed at my reference to the way that we were almost always touching in some way.

"J-just stick hearts in the dead things," He muttered and I nodded, holding back a snicker at his behaviour.

We sat side by side on two wooden chairs, dragging a few skeletons until they were lying down in front of us. Enoch opened a case and I rolled my eyes once I saw jar upon jar of organs in it. I should have known that he wouldn't leave any of his precious babies behind.

He took out a jar with a heart in it and handed it to me, passing me a cloth at the same time so I wouldn't have to directly touch the organ. I wrapped the cloth around my hand and pulled out the heart, the stench of the home-made formaldehyde making me gag.

I placed the heart into the chest of the first skeleton, trying not to look at it. Enoch grabbed my hand and I held mine over the rib cage for a second. The skeleton then snapped up into a sitting position and looked around at its surrounding, before it's lifeless eye sockets rested on me.

"Go stand over there," I whispered to it and it rose stiffly to its feet, clinking over to the far wall.

"One down, nine to go," Enoch replied, a smile lighting up his face. "This is going to get a little bit trickier. Try to stay as close to me as you can so that the skeletons don't drop and we have to start again."