The missing

Amedi. Justine. Rylie. Beau. Millie.

Making a painting that followed a viewer with its eyes was a simple task, if you had a modicum of skill and some paint. Or charcoal, chalk, anything that could colour a paper or a canvas. It was just pigment and the human brain confusing itself with a trick of perspective, lies the eyes told the mind and the gullible neurons believed. Make the eyes face forwards, give it a bit of three-dimensionality and bam. Creepy eyes that, no matter where you went, seemed to be watching you intently.

It didn’t seem fair to Millie that skulls could do the same thing.

The old chapel was thick with dust, each footstep raising little puffs that sparked and sputtered in the torchlight. From above, she could hear the night service going on, the Speakers calling to the warm night air with low voices that echoed through cracks and vibrated in her bones. And all around her, silent skulls observed her progress.

The forest was never this silent; for all that the humidity pressed against you, the noise seemed to provide a buffer, wicking away the oppressiveness with its quit, whispering melody. Birds in the daytime, the buzz of cicadas and the rustling leaves. Moonlight brought a slight reprieve, but then you could hear, just under the sound of your own heartbeat and the wash of your breath, living things moving in the darkness. But down the stone steps, beneath the rosewood floors, there were only dead things. And Millie.

Her torch was burning lower as the night passed, its flickering light casting dull orange shadows on the walls to caper ahead of her and loom behind. The eyeless ones watched her pass, empty sockets absorbing the light as if they were still alive and could process the photons into images, to see who was there, why she was walking the shadowed corridors at this late hour.

What do you think is down there? They’d say if they still had tongues, their yellowed teeth clacking in the darkness.

Millie wouldn’t have deigned to answer them, if they could have spoken, and she suspected that they’d have taken that as a satisfactory answer. After all, she wasn’t a Caller, wasn’t allowed a voice.

Wasn’t allowed to be down here, either, but who was going to tell on her? The watchful skulls?

Millie pressed on as the floor grew damp beneath her feet. Moss slicked the stone, made the path treacherous and uncertain. Quiet chased her down the broad, flat stairs, snapping at her heels as she went deeper; the voices from the chapel faded away or stopped altogether. Down in the shifting darkness, Millie couldn’t tell which it was.

Water dripped from up ahead. The sound carried with it the smell of rotted blood, a musty, cloying smell that was as familiar as the phases of the moon. What it wasn’t was comforting – a noise in the darkness, a steady drip that murmured quietly, beckoning her forwards with promise. What the Callers spoke to, the forest whispered that it lived beneath the stones of the chapel. And Amedi had gone missing, looking for it.

Then Justine.

Rylie.

Beau.

There was a pool, glistening in the darkness. It reflected the light flatly, a dull mirror tarnished by the shadows.

The orange glow of the torch flickered and spat. Light rippled out, borne on viscous waves that spread out from Millie’s steps. Lake water seeped into her trousers, clung to her skin. It was warm. It came up to her knees, stained her skin.

Millie could here voice again. No longer from above, no longer squeezing through the stones. They crept up from below, whispered to her.

It was up to her waist, thick and reeking.

People were speaking, just below the surface. The glow of her light on the surface grew larger, spreading out as it dipped closer and closer. Millie strained to hear what they were saying. She could nearly make out the words.

She just needed to be closer.

The torch guttered out, sinking beneath the surface.

The Missing grew in number.