Page 38 of The Dead of Summer

Whatever air I have in my body, I scream it right out.

It’s not an it , but a them. People—a dozen or more—fused in a kaleidoscope of limbs mashed together yet moving as one.

The coral fusing them together is like a horrific, living exoskeleton, joining crab-like legs upward into a crest of horns, crowning a face of many faces.

All the eyes are open, all the eyes are weeping.

And flashing among its gathered scalps is a small city of plastic tiaras.

In fact, a few tattered sashes trail from the creature’s scrambled anatomy.

It’s them. The bachelorette party, the very one that shoved aside Gracie on the ferry, plus a few extra birthday girls and unfortunate alpha bros. I can’t stop myself from finding a head of greasy red hair among the many, and there she is, twisted into the creature’s hind leg.

Poor Dakota.

We scream. The radio screams. The creature—my mind automatically labels it Bridezilla —screams back.

“GONNA GET MARRIED!”

“Drive!” Elisa shouts. Bash cranks the wheel right as the bridezilla lumbers forward. It clips our back bumper, fully lifting the jeep off the pavement, but we have just enough momentum to carry us forward. We screech past a row of parked cars and twist from the lot on a trail of sparks.

“Go! Go!” Elisa is crying out.

“Where! Tell me where!” Bash screams back.

The fog hurtles over the jeep, pulsing now with bioluminescence as the reef awakens around us. Another hit lands on the back of the car and it’s like being struck with a meteor. The rear window explodes, shooting glass into the back of my head, and I feel my eyes begin to itch.

“Go!” I scream, but the jeep is struck again, from Elisa’s side.

Then another hit, then another. Bash flops forward, arms over his head.

I drag myself between the seats to steady the wheel, yanking us away from the onslaught.

A break in the fog ahead opens like a corridor, and I see a white radiance, and I scream for Bash to floor it , and he does.

We punch out of the fog.

Into a blazing light.

Into a stunned stillness.

Into a low, concrete wall.

The world swings around us, the jeep bouncing sideways like a hockey puck.

We spin but don’t tip. Air rips around my face, suddenly fragrant like soil and fresh rain.

I hold on to Elisa in the back seat for dear life until, finally, our crash ends in a symphony of snaps.

When I dare to open my eyes, I’m looking at the full blue blossom of a hydrangea in my lap.

The air here is clear. All the singing has ceased, replaced by an unnatural silence and the click click click of a blinker.

I sit up. We’ve crashed into someone’s garden.

The flowers are everywhere, invading from the smashed-in windshield.

In the sudden brightness, droplets of blood shine across the petals.

I forget all about the bridezilla at our heels.

“Elisa? Bash?”

Elisa’s hand thrusts up from the blossoms—she hasn’t let go of the metal tumbler once.

“I’m—I’m okay …” she stutters. Her door is buckled in, so we wrench mine open and climb out of the car.

We find Bash deep in the floral wreckage of the front seat, but by some miracle the profuse blood is only from his nose.

He winces as we get his seat belt off him and help him out.

“That could have been way worse,” he groans.

“Oh, I think the horrors have been sufficient, actually,” says Elisa.

“Seconded.”

It’s clear which direction we hurtled in from.

A scar cuts through several lawns, vanishing in a bank of fog.

At first I can’t make sense of how we somehow rocketed out of the nighttime and crashed into the day, but, looking up, I see the sky is still black with clouds.

I realize the light around us emanates from coral that has spread over the houses like a skin of snow.

It gives off a pale, comforting light, but no fog.

Bash spits a mouthful of blood. “Was that what chased you in the marsh?”

“Yeah, and it’s still there.” Elisa points at the direction we came from.

The bridezilla hides within the fog, its immense form sending out ripples as it paces an unseen border at the edge of the pale coral.

It cries out. My mind twists between disgust and sympathy.

Those were people once. Maybe they’re people still, even now.

But the way the thing moved—unified by a predatory intelligence—it would be wrong to think of the unholy unity as human.

“Why isn’t it attacking?” I wonder aloud. Even from afar, we can hear the incessant babbling of the creature’s many mouths. I note that their singsong voices have shifted into an unsure minor key. Then, as though dejected, the voices diminish to grumbles and moans, and the bridezilla lumbers away.

“It’s scared?” I guess.

Bash gives a boastful laugh. “Of the Suds?”

I shake my head. “No. This place. Look, the coral is different here. It’s …

” I trail off, slowly seeing for the first time where we actually are.

I know these houses, even buried like this, and I know the slant of the road from spending many summer afternoons on my knees drawing in chalk, and I even know these hydrangea bushes.

I turn, and though every single thing about this world has fallen apart, one thing still stands: Singing House.

The bed-and-breakfast has changed in obvious ways—the grand wraparound porch is frilled with fungal bells, and the sea-glass windows bubble out of their frames with clustered replications.

The soft pink Victorian facade squirms with rosy rashes that reach outward, like too many hands with too many fingers, and the roof’s jagged lines have softened, filling in with shag the color of thirsty moss.

All of it shivers and surges, causing the shape of the house to drift in and out of focus like a long-ago memory on the verge of amnesia.

But it’s not all unfamiliar. Unlike the last time I stood here, absorbing a lonesome silence, the salty breeze carries music to my ears.

Not the tremulous song of weepers, but real music. Music from a human’s hand.

Piano music.

“Ollie. Ollie! Don’t!”

I yank out of Elisa’s grip. I’m running before I can stop myself. Questions crowd my thoughts, but none louder than: Why is the coral here turning white?

I rush up the steps. The railing crumbles beneath my hand. The doors are skeletons of white lace on rotted hinges, and they turn to dust when I push them open.

Why is the coral white? Why is it all dying?

The music is getting louder. So is the answer drowning out my hope that Gracie is here and that she is okay.

I rush into the parlor, where the white light is brightest.

Like a ghost, a woman is there, sitting at her piano.

She turns toward me.

Gracie is real, but she is not okay.