Chapter 5
Viria was not sure if it was a good idea to follow him underground. It was damp and smelled of sweet earth, but the occasional unexpected slime that slithered onto her legs and fingers irked her. She did not mind the worms and critters, but she had a tolerance at times, and today was not one of those days. They were travelling through make shift tunnels. The ground broke away at the ghoul’s will and led deeper and deeper into the Earth. He could see in the dark well, Viria supposed, and she chanted lightly to conjure a ball of light to allow for some vision.
“How do you see in the dark?” she asked.
“We don’t.”
“Touch?”
“Nope.”
“Echo?”
“Nah.”
“Dark energy?”
“Well, yes, mostly,” he admitted. “That’s what is used to resurrect us as ghouls. Dark energy is everywhere and we feed off of it to sustain ourselves. It’s renewable and occurs in a never ending cycle of life so we’re practically immortal unless someone performs the ritual of death which would block our bodies’ consumption of it.”
“But you are dead, though.”
“The undead would be a more correct term,” he explained.
“So, you guys are chosen to be resurrected, right?” Viria went on. “No mating or reproducing or whatever.”
“Dead bodies cannot reproduce.” He chuckled. “Also, wouldn’t us mating be necrophilia?”
“Well, you’re conscious and can consent,” Viria said thoughtfully. “Necrophilia is because the dead cannot consent. You’re undead, though.”
“Well, it whatever it may be, it doesn’t happen,” he said. “Ghouls feel no sexual urges.”
“I’m sure you feel basic emotions, though.”
“Not really, at least not all of us,” he explained. “Ghouls lose more and more of their feelings, physical and emotional, as time passes on. It takes about two years on average to do so. I’ve been a ghoul for a year now so I do feel a little if lucky.”
“Aren’t you scared of losing them completely?”
He chuckled. “I just lost fear a few days ago. It was the weakest of feelings.”
“I take it humor is your strongest?”
“After pain, yes.”
“Damn.”
“Sad, no? Good thing I lost sadness, too,” he said. “We’re here.”
Mitch reached for the surface above his head and pushed. Something shifted and a ray of light broke through what looked like a slab of cut stone. It must be a grave, definitely.
He grunted and pushed again, throwing the slab away. Light spilled into the void and almost blinded Viria since she was in the dark for so long. She was impressed. That was a lot of strength for someone who was undead.
“Are ghouls usually as strong?” she continued asking.
“Stronger, really,” he said. “The human body has immeasurable strength we are held back from using because of our brains. You could bite your finger off like a carrot if you wanted to, but don’t because your subconscious won’t let you. In ghouls, we don’t really have that working for us anymore. See?”
He bit off a chunk of his flesh from his hand and winced, dropping the skin and flimsy meat from his hand. “Oh, hey, I’m losing pain, too. Doesn’t hurt as much.”
Viria stared in awe. “That was wicked!”
“I suppose self-harm doesn’t rank high in morality, no,” he said and Viria laughed, despite the fact she had been one of those to do it at some point in her life. He grinned with the half of a mouth he had and reached up toward the opening, pulling himself over the edge. Viria crawled under the light and stood up, hopping over easily.
The cemetery as well kept. Grassy, well cut headstones, and sunny. It didn’t look depressing. But then again, death was never a depressing concept to her. It wasn’t something she feared, but was ready to accept peacefully. But she couldn’t until she completed her mission. Her time would come, and hopefully after this whole ordeal. She wouldn’t have much to live for after it.
The only thing that made things look weird were the corpses sitting up in their coffins, or moving about.
“What happens if someone comes around to visit?” Viria asked as she dusted off her clothes.
He pointed to the iron gates chained together. “This one is abandoned, but if someone does dare to drop by, we have fun with them. It’s mostly teenagers like me.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen and a half, if you count it even after death. I died a little before my seventeenth birthday,” he confessed as they started walking. “Drunk driving. Ran into a tree pretty hard.”
“So you still remember…” she trailed off.
“Most of us do.” He nodded. “I’ve forgotten a lot, though. All I remember is how I died and the first memory my brain stored when I was about two or something. Also, my girlfriend. The rest is a blurry mess that gives me a headache.”
It somewhat pained Viria to know he had parents and a girlfriend when he’d died. She couldn’t imagine the pain of losing someone dear to them at such a young age.
“Did you ever think of going back?” she asked carefully as they climbed uphill. The other ghouls around watched her, turning their heads faster than she had expected. She expected them to be slow and sluggish like in the movies people watched, but it seemed ghouls were more physically efficient than the living.
“We’re allowed to see them, but communication with the living humans is strictly prohibited and comes with grave punishments. It’s better to keep them at a distance and not risk exposing them to the other shot at life some of us have and take advantage of it. Humans are awful creatures. It seems like what we ghouls fear the most is happening.”
“Could you tell me what exactly had happened?”
“I wasn’t there to see it,” he said, “nor can I really explain it all. The Heads’ Circle will tell you everything.”
Viria figured it was another name for their High Council.
“Well, that’s good and all, but could I have books on you guys maybe? To read on?”
“The Head’s Circle will decide if you’re worthy of being handed over information about our kind.” He smirked. “We have a few alliances here and there with the witches, but it’s not like we trust them.”
“Fair enough.” She shrugged. They approached the top. What seemed like a run-down temple peered down at them, threatening to topple over their heads and crush them. A cross protruded from the top, cracked and dusty, ready to crumble under a feather’s touch. The structure looked precarious after years of being unkempt, and the area around them seemed as dead as it could compared to the rest of the place.
“How come the rest of the cemetery’s all nice and green,” Viria started, “but the temple so worn down?”
“I asked them the same thing when I first came here,” Mitch recalled thoughtfully. “Something about how they need to maintain dark energy through the place to be in power. Here’s the thing about the Heads. Wherever they step, things die. As soon as they step away, life comes back there. They carry the dark energy around them everywhere, I suppose.”
“I used to assume ghouls lived off of life forces of the living things around them.”
“Nope, we have our own energy,” he said. “No supernatural being is dependent over another’s source of energy to live. Or it’d be chaos, wouldn’t it?”
“Point,” she murmured and stole a look at him, but pulled herself together immediately.
Just because he knows a lot about his kind doesn’t mean he’s intelligent, she reminded herself. It was a flaw, she was attracted to intelligence. It didn’t who it was, she just liked it when someone could mentally vibe with her and discuss whatever. To learn from and teach to. She never found anyone who could fit her criteria of it.
Also, he’s an undead, she thought, They don’t get into such relationships. And I have a mission to complete.
Viria wasn’t afraid to admit to herself that she wished for a partner. Ever since she walked away from Tyler, she felt as if she’d never be whole again. She left with him a part of her she’d never shown anyone before. Not even Ivanna. All this she had done so recklessly, yet with calculation, was to distract herself from the pain. Being abandoned was one thing, and something she was used to. But abandoning someone else was new. She’d never left anyone, especially when they had wanted her so much, and she had wanted them just as much as well.
The pain was indescribable, but it had led to an uncomfortable kind of numbness that even crying couldn’t get rid of. She’d cried a lot, and the numbness that came with it was soothing. This numb was different.
She was snapped out of her reverie once the steps to the temple came into view. She climbed on after Mitch, whose ankles wobbled dangerously as he did so. He seemed to hold his composure well despite it, and Viria grew even more curious about ghouls’ anatomy and ways. There was so much she wanted to know. Knowledge to Viria was water to a thirsty dog, air to a drowning man, and food to a starving.
Curiosity was a bitch to her and always left her restless.
The temple door stood before them, charred and peeling wood, rusted iron framing falling and hanging in pieces. Spider webs ran across the ceiling and hung low over their heads. A raven had made a nest somewhere in the corners of beams and pillars that held up the structure barely stable.
Mitch knocked on the door. The raven fluttered in its nest and took off, disappearing around the corner. A few seconds later, the doors slid open, groaning from the strain on its old rusted hinges, screeching against the marble floor inside and leaving behind white scratches deeper than before. Viria bore the sound pierce into her ear drums and send a needle of pain to her brain. It was that awful.
There was nothing but darkness inside. Pitch black. Viria wasn’t afraid to go in, but her experiences had made her wary of an ambush and she did not want to be stupid and go in unprepared. Mitch walked in without a care, though, so she assumed it safe to follow him in.
She should not have assumed.
Her breath was stolen from her lungs, disappearing into nothingness along with the air around her. She choked as her chest burned from the absence of oxygen, her body crumpling into itself to take up the space of the void that had opened up within her. It burned, the pain spreading out everywhere until her eyes rolled into the back of her skull.
And she blacked out.