The Queen of Sinister by Mark Chadbourn Read Free Book Online Page A

feel.
Outside, she slipped and dropped him on the wet lawn. After all her struggling, it was the last straw. She knelt down and sobbed as if it were the end of the world. But once those tears had gone, she began again, struggling to get him up, slipping and sliding in the mud of the churned-up turf, falling again, twisting her ankle. At one point his cheek rested gently against hers, and the rain running down his face made it feel as if he was crying, too.
Her mind began to fracture into unconnected fragments of thoughts, so that it seemed as if time was no longer running correctly. She was on the grass with him, staring up at the clouds. She was at the end of the lawn with Grant hanging from her back. She was standing at the edge of the grave. She was looking down at Grant's jumbled body at the bottom of the hole, thinking, 'Why doesn't he get up? I'll never get the clay out of that shirt.'
And then she went back for Liam, and he was easier to carry. But at the grave, she couldn't bear to drop him in. She hugged him to her breast, kissing him repeatedly, and she would have stayed there for ever if the universe hadn't told her what needed to be done.
The edge of the grave crumbled and they tumbled into the hole together, crashing into the pool of muddy water at the bottom with a great splash that filled her mouth and nostrils. The clay covered her from head to foot so that she resembled some wild prehistoric woman. And still she held Liam, his body so small, his clothes soaked, and she prayed that she would feel some warmth, that the world would turn back, that everything would fall apart and drift away.
She stayed there, while water puddled in the bottom and slowly worked its way up her legs, as the barely light day faded and darkness crept in from the east. Her thoughts continued to shred. Nothing was worse than what she had endured. The rest of the human race could all die, scythed down by the plague; she didn't care. Nothing was important any more. It should all come to a stop.
Fragments...
At some point, when the night was riven by lightning, she crawled out and found the spade. Every time she thought she'd endured the worst, something even more terrible would rise up. Seeing the first shovelful fall on them broke her into even smaller pieces. It was her husband and son and she was sealing them beneath the earth. The soil landed with a hollow thud on an unmoving chest. She waited for a complaint - 'Mummy, what are you doing?’ - but none came.
Lying on the wet, packed mud, the rain splattering over her, taking everything away.
Another crack of lightning, dragging her from the nothing. A strange sensation: weight on her chest. Opening her eyes so that the rain sloughed off from where it had settled in the hollows. A large hooded crow, oddly familiar, sat on her breastbone, its beady black eyes glimmering only inches from her face. Talons dug into her skin. The blue- black beak was long and cruel. Did it think she was dead? Was it searching for carrion? It only had to lean forward to peck out her eyes.
But instead of attacking, it only watched. Was she dreaming?
It shuffled back and pecked her chest, not so hard that it hurt, or perhaps she was just too numb to feel. Only it didn't stop; the pecks continued rhythmically, as if it were trying to crack her open. It was so large, that the weight of it was making it difficult for her to breathe. She should wave it away, only there was no point.
She closed her eyes, drifting into the rainfall once again.
Mary had a bad feeling. For three days, the cards had hinted at something dark: an ending, or a new beginning - both the same as far as the universe was concerned. She wished she could get whatever powers she was tapping into to see things from the low-down human perspective once or twice: they might look the same, but they certainly didn't feel the same.
She'd tried scrying, but had found it difficult to reach the trance state, and for some reason her thoughts kept coming back