Strange Aeons [Book 1]

18. Danse Macabre [part II]

A young man with 1800s clothing and an appropriated hairstyle was walking light as a feather towards them, pointing right at them. «You are the parents of the girl of the crazy man!»

«What?» ghosts and living were equally perplexed.

«Yes! Your daughter is the reason our bodies aren't here! That man wanted her and took all of us!» he spoke with a slight French accent and was moving his reproaching finger in the air like a sword.

«Say what again?» this time Banshee faced the man with her arms crossed over her chest and a menacing posture. The man shuddered and took it down a peg, but not too much.

«The month after their daughter was buried here, the black-hooded man came! He dug her up, rustled into her coffin and then did something... something like you did! Singing! And then she was up!»

«Staccato summoned her spirit?» Chico tried to stand. «He can summon as well?»

«No! No spirit! He raised her body, as an undead, and then... ah, it was so terrible!»

«Speak. At this point, we prefer to know what happened to our dear daughter.» Martha said softly. The man looked at them, looked at the Pollos, and poised as if he was on a theatre stage.

«The black-hooded man started to sing again. It was a hunting, rhythmical tune, but still in the range of the classics. His voice was a hypnotic cascade of silver and fear. And the poor girl's corpse, animated but without the slightest trace of free will... danced. Danced clumsily and awkwardly on the tombs, the silence of the night broken only by that mesmerizing voice.»

Other ghosts had joined the improvised audience of the man's narration. He was very good. He sent shivers going down everyone's spine. Even to those who didn't have one anymore.

«But... why...?» Banshee could only ask.

«Nobody knows. He just made her dance and dance, and bow and dance, and his voice was filled with mirth and laugh at the sight of what he had concocted. And then, he launched in a crescendo, with such pitch-perfect the sky itself looked hurt by the marvel of his voice. And when he reached the highest note, and the corpse his most inelegant grand-jeté... we all raised.»

«All?» urged Chico, half fascinated half disgusted by the narration.

«That's why no bones of us rest here. The black-hooded man raised all our corpses, animating them and taking them out of their tombs, marching us away!»

He ended with a dramatic note and was quite satisfied with the result.

The image summoned by the ghost had closed their stomach and widened their eyes. Staccato robbed them of their last earthly remains and disappeared laughing in the night, after forcing a poor girl to dance for him the most macabre of dances.

«My God... he's barking mad!» commented Banshee. «He's absolutely...»

«And that's not all!» the man didn't want his first audience in centuries to lose interest so early. «He didn't take the-»

They felt the air tremble. It was the strangest sensation. Like they had been put in a Jell-O jar and then thrown down a hill. The three put their hands to their ears and closed their eyes, dizziness hitting them even worse than it had hit Chico before. They felt a dull sound, like a muffled shockwave. And everything went calm again.

When they opened their eyes, there were no more ghosts around. The Undertide had re-assessed herself, sending back the anomalies where they belonged.

«Woah. A botch that resolved itself? Sometimes we are lucky!» Chico exclaimed, even if he had never felt more spent, and his face continued to feel strangely cold on his cheeks as if they were still wet. He tried to dry them with his hand. He nearly screamed.