Three

The darkness ate through the looming hallway inspiring long leering shadows from the candles on the walls. Sheens of fluorescent candle fires burned holes in the blackness, as they revealed a thin gilded rug that stretched out like an everlasting tongue. The more Amelia crept further with Annika, the more she began to feel that that place belonged to a man who preferred to spend his time alone. The midnight walls were adorned with portraits that revealed a fat man with a blonde handlebar mustache dressed in a black and yellow striped suit. He was the exact haughty model that Amelia had witnessed from outside, only he wasn't carrying a bag of gold and was instead posing ostentatiously in an office room. None of the portraits depicted him having a family, a child, or even a partner by his side. The pictures screamed something more apparent to Amelia than anyone else; loneliness.

Among the shadowy intervals were mahogany pedestals that showcased tiny golden trophies of a tiny fat man. They carried a variety of poses such as laughing, hugging, crossing arms, dancing, and cheering. Treading past the pageant of trophies and galore of portraits, they turned a left and entered a wide dim room. The room was colored in black and gold, and ornamented with candles, bookshelves, an unlit chandelier that swept threateningly above them, and a golden carpet that boasted a floral design threaded around by creeping thorns. A presidential desk was rooted in the center of the room flanked by pale buttery drapes that covered the two windows. Amelia blinked. It felt as if she had just entered the secretary's room.

"Well, I declare!" the bureaucratic man stood with vigorous poise. He was standing behind the desk, his pork belly did the favor of ejecting his chair for him."There she goes! Mind y'all sit a spell?"

Annika and Amelia sunk down in front of the two black chairs facing the desk. Amelia birthed the strange sensation that she was being interrogated and tried to maintain a level of order.

"Garn! It's nice to see yer all nice and straight, pixie, yer look just like yer mother. Don't she, Annika? Garn that, she never mentioned ya much." The porky man stared greedily. "How do you do, Amelia Bergstrum?"

The man who Amelia could only assume was Vog had a deep southern drawl, and up close, concomitant with the dim room, she noticed that his blonde mustache seemed to emit a soft glow. He had a mischievous colonial sort of look added to the bald patch on his head that reflected the chandelier and a golden ring that he wore around his finger to compliment his black and gold suit. Amelia frowned. She was liking the man's gaudy nature less and less.

"Ok," said Amelia nervously.

"Ok!" His arms widened welcomely. He grabbed a golden flask that was sitting idly on his desk and stole several gulps. "Yesuh! Ok with you is ok with me! Truly, we must never forget our pieties and unbounded virtues in the face of death."

"Amelia," said Annika in a tone of misery, "meet Midas Vog, community leader to the lost and damned of Renningron Court and ex-mayor of Naaman. He's agreed to allow you to stay here until your zombie hunter training is complete."

"Amelia Bergstrom…" Vog teased the name with his tongue as if tasting a new sort of wine. "Yes…daughter of Astrid? Hmm, well I declare! That's a name Paradise will come to know one day, yesuh! We were just talkin' 'bout yer maam. I heard she…erm…passed on." The greedy eyes of the rotund mayor became forlorn. "She was a kind soul. Quite the cordial figure if I evuh met one, yesuh."

"You knew Mamma?" Amelia asked.

"Garn! I spent so much time with her as a kid it felt as if I'd practically raised her. In the days before Black Night, she was a quiet woman who liked to ask questions. Yesuh, quiet, but popular. We used to hang around a lot—went to the same schools if ya can believe it. I was around two cycles her senior and she would always come up up to me to ask for advice or for some extra homework help. Surprisingly enough I was her prom date—her friends gave me sass 'bout it but it ain't nevuh seemed to bother her—"

Amelia's face shadowed in curiosity. Prom? What was this prom? Whatever it was, it sounded warm, pleasant, and fun.

"Yesuh, it was fun times. But ya know, I was a dealer in high school, I sold a lot of questionable things to make a quick buck. Panties, lingerie, butt plugs, porn mags, DVDs, tickets to private shows, yer know the type. I never had it easy growin up, my mother was a drunk and my father was a bleatin abuser. I had to rely on money to get me outta that dark hole. Money ain't evuh lied to me. It's got me to where I am now, yesuh, and indeed I couldn't ask for more." There was a sinking pause, as deep as the cold abyss. Vog cleared his throat, his eyes firm. "But yer maam never liked my dealing ways. She was a very moralistic kinda woman, yer see, a woman tucked right under the Lord's wings. Safe to say we grew apart in our later cycles. She married yer father and I went on to become the mayor. She never left my mind, no suh, y'all never—you alright, my pixie?"

Amelia sniffed, hands trembling, tears pounding the carpet. Despite the reservations she had about Mamma for locking her in the house and never allowing her to go outside like a normal child, she never truly hated her. She was beginning to regret arguing with her and invoking those vile thoughts about her in her head. There was a deep scratch in her heart. Did she miss her already?

Annika blinked like a stony-faced crow.

"Was she happy?" Amelia managed to choke out. She hated how pathetic she looked compared to Annika. So solemn, so composed. But Amelia didn't care. She had to know. Or the question would sting like the scorpions she had seen at the mansion. "Mamma? Was she happy?"

"Of course she was, youngun. She was the happiest woman I met, yesuh." Vog's black eyes gleamed but Amelia somehow felt betrayed, as if he were gleaning the truth away from her. Could she really have been happy? Especially after Black Night? Especially after their father had been bitten? The questions lingered but Amelia accepted she'd never get an honest answer.

Vog cleared his grainy throat and stalked in Annika's direction. He poked his head on the side of her shoulders, smelling her hair, stroking it, and with those lascivious beetle eyes he uttered, "Yer maam was well adept at marshaling chaos among us when the Brains ensued. With her gone…well…let's just say we've been experiencing some very onerous setbacks. We've been dealing with disappearances from our very own zombie hunters, more and more as of recent past—more than our neighboring strangers at Sommerset Hills and Whitley Court—"

"There are other neighborhoods?" Amelia interjected. It always occurred to her that civilization stopped and ended at Rennington Court. Could it really be that vestiges of life still thrived outside of this neighborhood?

"Yessuh, there are a handful of thriving communities out there in Paradise. I wouldn't spend my days tryna look for em, they prefer to be hidden 'nless they desire to be known." His mustache widened as he turned back to Annika. "Our people are wiltin' away like flowers and we can't seem to trace the root of the cause. If I see 'nother one them dead faces crop up, well...I don't think this old fat heart could take it. I need you, Annika…"

"Well," Annika said uncertainly. "I appreciate your confidence Vog, I'll see what I can do."

"I'm just asking you to poke around, that's all." Vog returned to his chair and dropped a bag filled with golden pellets. "Yer won't be tackling this alone, I've put the Collectors on the case. I believe you liaised with Goulds on this matter?"

Annika held the bag with scrutiny as if there was a bomb implanted in it. "No."

Vog's handlebar mustache twitched. "There's a meager five thousand slugs in there if it twitches your eye. Call it a little treat for your helping hand." He rotated his chair and then raised his hand as if to dismiss them. "It was nice chit-chatin' with y'all. Until then, my younguns..."

The aspen leaves stirred in the wind as they made their way outside the cobblestone streets. The leaves were beginning to crunch on their feet and the growling wind grew a cold steady weight, but it was sunny enough to warm up the neighborhood. Ants of civilians and zombie hunters treaded past them as the two sisters sloped down the block.

"The man is a horny lunatic," Amelia said fiercely as a tented carriage trundled past her. There was a flock of kids throwing echoes of laughs up ahead but Amelia took no notice of them. "Why was he touching your hair like that?"

Annika trilled with laughter. "That man is our leader, so watch your tone young kvinna."

"I don't care. It was…"Amelia shuddered sassily, "weird. He should form a club with Hobbes."

"Well at least we know you're allowed to stay here and that there've been disappearances—although Goulds could've had the courtesy to have just told me—den idioten. It's a bit impromptu, this mission. Don't you think, little sis?"

Amelia stared thoughtfully at the bag of gold in her hands. "What's that exactly?"

Annika jingled the bag teasingly. "They're called slugs, little pellets of gold that we use to exchange for products here in Paradise. This has been our form of currency since the US market crashed and the dollar died."

"Oj," said Amelia. The crunching of the leaves was issuing a nice hollow hiss. The echoes of laughs jittered fluently in the wind. "Where are we going now?"

"We've got to check in with the Collectors and see if they got any tidbits to tell us about the disappearances. I've got to glean in as much information before I dive head on this bloody pool."

"What are Collectors?"

"They're zombie hunters who collect the dead bodies of other zombie hunters or civilians, in or out of Rennington Court."

"What do they do once they've got them?"

"They either burn them or analyze them, based on their instruction. It can be depressing but some see it as a liberating pursuit."

"Annika?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you think the thing that's causing the disappearances lives here?" the soft voice muttered.

The steely gray eyes blinked. "Probably, but most unlikely. The security here is in tip-top shape. I've never really seen anyone infiltrate this place in my days of living here with Mamma. Unless you count the Brains of course, but they're always slipping in here."

They arrived at the door of a large Victorian-styled building. It had high pointed roofs, a gothic frame, and foggy mullioned windows that concealed the shadows that dwelled in there. The architecture looked like it was wide and large enough to carry three floors and there were several kids that filed in and out of the arched doors. There was certainly a dark and hissing quality to the mulberry building and there seemed to be a history etched deep within it that Amelia wanted to know more about.

"Welcome to Rennington Hall," Annika said promptly. "This is where the zombie hunters usually sleep and dine at. Through these doors, you'll find a nice library as well. Mind you this building is a bit antiquated—and well…"

"Creepy?" Amelia gaped. She could already see a family of cobwebs had long formed on the entrance stairs and windows.

"You could put it like that…just don't expect any favors."

Despite the dark presence of that building Amelia couldn't help but feel exalted. This seemed like the type of place that she could explore for hours and not get bored. "Are there Brains in there?"

"Hmm, I don't think so. But there are some rooms in there that have never been checked so I'd watch out for those. C'mon."

They went past the arched doors, past the eldritch shadows of the towering bookshelves, until they reached the very back of the library and discovered two spiral stairs that descended to the bottom floor. They arrived in a dim looming hallway, reminiscent of the one they saw at Vog's mansion. But this room was a bit more sinister as they had the extra flavor of hanging dead animal heads and zombie heads as decoration for their walls. The blood dripped seamlessly and hissed as it fell to the floor. They entered a muted chamber at the very end of the hallway and were met with a foul acrid smell of vinegar and manure. Amelia, teary-eyed, had almost regretted following Annika. The smell added to the strange symbols on the walls such as the upside-down cross, the Eye of Horus, and of course, the pentagram symbol. Misty crystal balls rested on all four corners of the room and standing in the center of this whispered sanctified place was a pale naked corpus lying on a long black bed. Surrounding the body was a congregation of three dark-cloaked figures. Amelia covered her mouth, releasing a mouse-like whimper. Dangling on the ceiling was a colony of lynched Brains, swaying, frolicking in their black death as their shining eyes gaped at the young girl.

The trifecta awakened, alerted by the mousy sound.

"You arrived," Goulds crooned, taking note of the two girls. "I was beginning to think I frightened you off on your first day."

"You're taking way too much credit," Annika said snappishly. "You're many things Brentlowe, but you're not frightening."

The dagger gleamed before Amelia could even see it and a swift dance of movement pursued. The dagger was now licking Annika's neck. "Care to divulge on that list, blondie?"

"Quit playing around!" Annika pushed herself away from Goulds's embrace. "Care to introduce us to your friends?"

The other two figures in the black travel cloaks didn't seem too enlivened to see them. Especially the second one, who had a much more paler and gloomier semblance than his counterparts. He had a tall stocky build and waxy pale skin as if he had never been outside and spent most of his days being stuck in enclosed sweaty places. His hair was short and cropped up but oily, and he had two dotted earrings. But the strangest thing about his appearance was the tattooed snake that was drawn up from his chest all the way to his jaws. If it was real it would've slithered right into his mouth.

The first figure looked rather powdery and just as colorless as the second, but there was a sagacious brightness to him that made him seem somewhat trustworthy. He had a cascade of white hair underneath the hood, minty blue eyes, a red nose as if he'd been sneezing all day, and white lips to add to his pallor. Amelia was faintly reminded of a seer.

"Not much to see, really," Goulds said lazily. "The sulky one is Blaire Thornebush and the pasty white-haired one is Phineas Cage."

Phineas nodded absently, his focus returning to the dead body. Blaire stood still and dour-faced.

"We should probably return to the autopsy," Blaire said stiffly. "I've got three unwritten scrolls I've yet to fill in."

"What have you guys found?" Annika asked.

Goulds showed them the waxed body and presented the wounds that were carved on the stomach, the vagina, and the neck. He began to explain their theory to them.

"It couldn't have been a Brain. The wounds are way too elaborate and look—"

"No bite marks," Annika ushered in. "Those are stab marks. But I don't get it, why would they do something like this?"

"That's the doozy—"

"She's quite the champion, eh Goulds?" Blaire said silkily.

Goulds gave him a look and continued. "—but whoever it is they're really flourishing at this scene and they haven't been managed to be caught once. We've tried looking for him or her but they just won't bite. And take a gander at what they left on the stomach…"

Amelia had long taken the first peek and her stomach didn't seem to be agreeing with her. It was that same pentagram mark, the one she had seen in her dreams. From the bemired zombies that were calling out to her…beckoning her. Amelia shuddered. Should she even dare tell Annika what she had seen? Would she see her as overemotional? No, it would be too embarrassing.

"He told me that there were disappearances. From one of our own guys. But he didn't exactly let me in on who it was or what caused it," said Annika, soaking in Goulds's face entreatingly. "But that mark, that's—that's—"

"Helvete's Mark," Goulds whispered hoarsely.

"So whoever it was has to be in league with that mark?" The room swelled with a crepitant pause. "Right?"

Goulds's boyish face fell. "That's the thing, Annika. There are no "rights" in these searches. Just could be's."

"Where did you guys find this corpse?"

"By the supermarket near Fentrear's Bridge," said Phineas promptly. His voice was high and effeminate. He had waded to one of the crystal balls and his hands were hovering over them tenderly. "Very dodgy area."

"Look, we need you to help us collect the rest of the bodies. They could be anywhere in Naaman."

Blaire was wound up. "Erm what are you doing? These searches are privatized for Collectors only. She'll be jeopardizing our duty."

"Oh loosen the fuck up," Goulds said savagely. "She's part of the mission, genius. She's been approved by Vog, I hardly—"

"But Blaire is right, I'm not a Collector, how could I just drop everything and go with you guys on this wild goose chase." Annika turned a slight shade of pink.

"We're not going on any hunt, we're just collecting bodies," said Goulds amicably. "And besides, it's not the searching that we need you for. It's the Brains. We could use a bit of protection when our backs are turned. It's not exactly a fiesta out there."

Annika blinked, unsure of where to take her next words. Amelia got the faint impression that it wasn't only for protection that Goulds wanted Annika for.

"So what do you say?"

*******************************************************

The two girls strolled three blocks down the windy autumnal streets of Rennington Court, pursuing their next destination. Rennington Hall had already seemed like it was miles away.

Annika fished out the bag of slugs from her crossbody bag. "We need to get you a new fit and weapons, Amelia. You don't exactly look battle-tested to be a zombie hunter."

Amelia looked down at her tattered white blouse, ripped jeans, and grimy sneakers and frowned despondently. "Do I have to wear a shawl?"

"Yes. It's either that or a scarf. They protect your neck and upper body from being bit or scratched. You guys don't get the travel cloaks until you're nineteen."

"How come you don't have a travel cloak then?" Amelia retorted.

"Because I chose to. Now don't give me cheek. I may not be Mamma but I can still stab you with this sword." The girls exchanged sororal grins and burst into cherry laughter.

They arrived at a crouched pub-styled building with a glossy rectangular display window. Behind it were amulets, talismans, aroma leaves, crystal balls, and of course, a multifarious pageant of shawls and travel cloaks of different hues. They entered through the glassy doors and were suddenly greeted by a pink-haired woman with a magenta mantle robe.

She swept up to them rather eagerly. "Ahh, quite the sublunary sight. Very earthly indeed. Do you wish to make a purchase? Interested in garments, good charm, sexual charm, good luck, protection, what is it that you seek?" The woman smelled of an erotic otherworldly perfume and there was a demonic glint in her green herbal eyes. "My name is Lady Rosier, command me and I will oblige you in taste and fashion. What is your vogue, my dear sisters?"

Annika told Lady Rosier they were looking for a shawl and boots for Amelia and they paid her one hundred and fifty slugs, which Lady Rosier happily weighed on a scale with punctilious care. Amelia ended up picking a gray shawl and a pair of russet boots. She was about to touch the talismans but Annika slapped it out of her hands.

Next, they arrived at a store that was a bit darker and untidier than the last. The walls were made of stone pebbles and vines crept up hungrily against every crevice. They entered to find a bald man with piercings on his ears, nose, eyelids, and lips. He had a rather surly attitude but he introduced himself as Belphe and he fostered the same demonic glint in his eyes as Lady Rosier. With the kindly payment of two hundred slugs, he ended up finding a sword, a dagger, and a revolver for Amelia in a matter of seconds.

As they resumed their stroll down the road, Amelia's stomach released a crepitant growl.

"You hungry?"

"A little," admitted Amelia. The last thing she had eaten was the Javelinas Mamma had hunted. They seemed so old, wizened, and tasteless now.

A tented carriage whinnied by them. Annika bargained with the driver, Vintilus, and ended up paying him fifty slugs for a bag full of slabs of cooked Javelina meat, grazed eyeballs, and seared zombie hands.

Annika munched on the hand. There was a grimacing rattling sound and blood oozed out of it.

She handed it to Amelia but Amelia shook her head. "Det är vidrigt! I'd rather eat Surströmming!"

Amelia ate the cooked javelina meat as they chose somewhere to sit. The sun had already risen high into the Arizona sky and poured its pale orange light onto the neighborhood. The jittering echoing laughs were making a return.

"Look," said Annika softly as the light entered her eyes. She spat out a fingernail. "I'm going to be gone for a while to look for the bodies with the Collectors. I know you don't agree with it, but I need you to stay here until I return."

Amelia frowned. It was difficult letting go of her big sister. She was the only family she had. "When will you be back?"

"I'm not sure…hopefully soon."

But soon was never soon enough. Not in a city like Paradise. Not when everything you relied on could be gone in the crippling blink of an eye.

Amelia nodded like a surrendering puppy. There was a strong interval of silence before Amelia spoke. "Annika?"

"Ja?"

"What's a prom?" Her gray eyes wandered curiously.

"It's a dance."

"Will we ever have it? A prom?"

Annika looked at her sister studiously. There was a smear of jealous sadness in the elder sister's eyes as well. "No," Annika said sincerely. "Let's not try to mix the old world with the new world, little sis. Proms were a thing of the past. And honestly, it doesn't even sound that great, a night where a bunch of awkward kids are crammed into a room and forced to dance. Grow up."

"Annika?"

"Ja?''

"Will you ever tell me what happened on Black Night?"

Annika's usual stony gaze opened up. "No, I can't. I don't know any more than you do."

"Annika?" Amelia started again.

"Ja?"

"Promise me one thing…"

"Hmm?"

The pale saffron light crept up into Amelia's watery gray eyes. "Promise me you'll never change."

Annika's lips twitched as she embraced her little sister. "I should never have to promise something like that. You know that."