Bone Masters

       Lilia and her mother were sitting in a canoe, paddling down a narrow creek that was lined on either side by enormous rock walls towering high up above the sky. Nothing could be seen at the top except for a narrow strip of clear blue sky. Not a single cloud was hanging out up there. Not a single bird flew by. Her mother was giving her a lecture, some life lesson, and as much as she tried to listen her mind would just keep wandering away. 

    "It's okay if boys don't like you, you know?" her mother's voice faded out again as Lilia's focus shifted back to the sky. She was drawn upward for some reason, never looking into the water once. "No one cares if you're popular once you grow up, there's no popularity contests in the real world." Lilia brought her gaze back down to her mother. She was smiling, she looked happy. She looked beautiful in that moment too. Lilia briefly wondered why her mother had decided to wear bright red lipstick on a canoeing trip, but she didn't have long to ruminate on that thought before it was broken once again. Not by the sky this time though. There was a sudden sound of rushing water. They'd been paddling along in their little canoe the whole time this conversation was taking place so of course there could be water heard but this sounded - different. It sounded like the water was moving faster now. 

    Lilia tilted to the side a little to get a better view around her mother. Looking behind her she immediately located the source of the sound. They were coming up on a waterfall! The canoe began to move with the pace of the water and it sped up without them even paddling anymore. She looked to her mother terrified, "Mommy, I think there's a waterfall." Even though she was fourteen, hardly a child anymore, she still used that term of affection. She'd just somehow never grown out of it.

    Her mother just continued to smile and speak out her life lessons. "You know I was married when I was nineteen? You should definitely wait longer, don't get married too young okay?" She was still paddling even though there was no more need to, the current was pulling them along fast enough, yet her arms just kept moving in that forward-backward motion, and her mouth kept smiling and moving as she talked. Lilia could feel her heart thumping hard against her chest as her pulse quickened with every inch they crept closer to the waterfall that was looming just beyond her mother's figure. She ditched the oars and grabbed each side of the canoe in a white knuckled grip and then, for the first time as she contemplated jumping ship, she looked down into the water. It was dark and murky, not clear enough to be able to tell how deep it was. Jumping in would be a huge risk, especially at the speed it was moving them at now.  

They were just mere inches from the edge of the waterfall when her mother said her name, breaking her focus. She'd been too panicked, trying to find a way to escape their fate to have been paying attention to what her mother was saying. She broke her gaze from the water and directed it at her mother's smiling face once more. She'd finally stopped rowing but was still holding an oar over each side of their vessel in each hand. "Lilia, you don't have to worry about me anymore, I'm okay now." She smiled again. A big toothy grin outlined in red, and then the boat tipped over the edge. She watched as her mother fell backward off the cliff. She watched the canoe fall out beneath herself. Then, everything went black.

    Lilia jolted upright as she woke up gasping for air. She didn't remember hitting the bottom, but she must've passed out once she fell out of the canoe. Or so she thought, but as she grabbed at her clothes to inspect them she realized she wasn't even wet. She sat up, looked around, and found she was sitting under a tree near a creek but everything looked very strange. For starters, the tree was dead and black. All of its leaves had fallen off but there were none to be seen anywhere on the ground. It was as if they'd disintegrated or been blown away out of sight somewhere. The land around her was nothing more than desert. Orange dusty land stretched out as far as the eye could see, north, south, east, and west, just desert. The sky was green. A pale mist floated up near the sun, obscuring some sunlight, but it was still extremely bright in this land. The little creek, no more than a few inches wide and only as deep as a fingernail, ran quickly down the center of the landscape; and either way she looked, up or down, the creek extended to both ends of the horizon. She took a full, circular look around. There was nothing else. This was it. One tree. One creek. One desert. 

A shiver ran down her spine. She'd never been here before, she was sure of it, and it looked so weird, it was a bit unsettling. "Where's mommy?" she wondered. "MOMMY?!!" She called out, cupping one hand around her mouth in an attempt to increase the distance of her yell. Nothing but silence. The shout didn't even create an echo. It was like it had just gone up and melded into the air, dissipating into the atmosphere and disappearing forever. She stood for a moment, arms crossing over her chest in a self hugging pose as she contemplated her options. A few scenarios ran through her mind - what if Mommy woke up first and went to find help? What if she didn't end up in the same place? What if she was still in the canoe somewhere? What if. What if. What if..

    She couldn't stand there forever though and she was impatient to find her mother. She looked up the creek, not really knowing if it was up or down, North or South, but she began to follow it anyway. She walked along the creek for miles, it seemed, all the while keeping an eye out for any sign of life. It seemed like there was nothing but desert, she hadn't even seen another tree. "This place is so odd.." she thought. Just then, the mist that was sitting in front of the sun moved and a sun beam glared in her eye for just a moment, until another cloud came behind it and shifted over, taking the previous clouds place in front of the sun. As she had her eyes squinted against the sudden glare attack, she thought she'd seen a silhouette of something up ahead. It appeared to be a house, but could it really be? There had been nothing else so far. There was only one option though, and that was to push on. She walked for another ten minutes or so and the silhouette became a shape that could be seen without a doubt now. There was definitely a house up there. She quickened her step, trying to get there as fast as possible not knowing what was really ahead.

    She had finally come up to the house now and it looked as strange as the rest of the world. It was a two story, clapboard home, with old shutters. Some of the windows didn't have shutters though, and instead were just boarded up with long pieces of plywood where the windows would've been. A little stoop led up to a large wrap-around style porch. There was a chicken coop in the front yard, off to the side. What made it strange though is that the entire house - the clapboards, the shutters, the plywood covering the broken windows and even the chicken coop - were painted pitch black. She stood there taking it all in, afraid now. As she viewed the house she noticed noises. There was finally some sound in this place. Soft clucking sounds were coming from the coop. There was actually chickens. So someone has to be living here! The thought of finally seeing another human being jolted her out of her fear. She ran up to the chicken coop and peered in, but immediately had to draw back as the stench from the coop assaulted her senses. It was a putrid smell, much worse than feces. It smelled like death. 

    She peered in again, this time pinching her nose firmly to keep any bad smells out. There was one chicken inside. It was pressed into one corner of the coop and didn't appear to be very lively, just sitting there listlessly, letting out the occasional cluck. In the other corner were the carcasses of what looked like several chickens, each in a different stage of decomposition. Lilia could make out nothing more than some feathers, bones, a liquified pile of what used to be a chicken and the half rotted carcass of some other chicken. There didn't appear to be any food inside. "What kind of people live here?" she thought to herself. She peered up at the solid wood front door that had been painted black, same as everything else on the lot. She was terrified of this place, and at the thought of what kind of people these could be, the kind who would treat animals this way; but she also realized it might be her only hope. She still needed to find her mother and maybe they'll have a telephone inside.

    Cautiously, slowly, she made her way up the steps to the front door. She knocked softly with a shaky hand, and she waited - and waited, and waited, - she counted to twenty before knocking again, a bit harder this time. Another thirty seconds gone and still no answer. She held her breath and boldly gave the doorknob a twist. It turned! She pushed the door open as wide as it could go. It took a few seconds for her to see through the dust cloud that was illuminated by the green sunlight coming through the open door. Once it settled she could still see little past the front door. There was a hallway immediately in front of her, a set of stairs slightly off to the left. She took one step into the house, just beyond the thresh hold of the door and continued her survey of the area. The inside of this house was just as dilapidated as the outside. The walls had holes, missing paint, places where the wallpaper had been half ripped off and was just hanging off the wall. The carpet was moldy and had big patches missing here and there. The steps were wooden and looked like they'd been built by hand, very rickety and shoddy looking craftsmanship. There were white pieces of something littering the floor and it was hard to see past this little area  even with the sunlight because, same as the outside of the house, the entire inside was painted completely black. She stooped down and lifted her foot to inspect what she'd stepped on.    A chicken bone. The entire floor was covered in pieces of them.

    "Hello?" she had meant to call it out more loudly but the uneasy, unsettling feeling that was borderline fear that she'd grown since stepping into this place had completely dried her up, and it instead came out as little more than a croak. She took a swallow, licked her lips and attempted another try but her voice cracked again. Deciding to follow her feet and not really thinking about where she was going, she began to ascend the stairs. Each step creaked under the weight of her feet. She gripped the banister tightly, half afraid of falling through the floorboards and half in fear of the house itself. At the top there was another hallway moving out to her right. The window to her left was one that had been boarded up but there was some sunlight peeking out through the cracks on the side, as the plywood was just slightly undersized for the window. It wasn't a lot of light but it was just enough for her to make out two doors. One stood just slightly ajar at the end of the hallway and another one, directly in front of her was firmly shut. She decided she'd check the first door since it was already slightly open. She crept to the end of the hall and poked her head in. It was darker in here, no sunlight coming through the window. She pushed the door further back to allow some of the light from the hallway to come in, little as it was. Once her eyes had adjusted for the third or fourth time since entering, she could see there was nothing more than an empty room here, one that mimicked the downstairs area with its ripped walls, lack of color and bone display covering the dirty stained carpet.

    She retreated out of this room and made her way back to the first door. She turned the knob and pushed it open. Similar to the hallway this room had some light that had managed to make its way through the cracked plywood covering on the outside. This room was empty too but just as run down. Directly across from the entrance, on the other side of the room, was a large closet. Two double doors, painted pitch black and closed, just as the door had been.  There were chicken bones in here too but there was something else. Candles were lined up all the way around the room, from corner to corner, stopping at the edges of the closet. They were all white and half burned down. None of them looked completely new. She had taken more than a few steps in when suddenly the door slammed shut behind her. She whipped around and was going to run out but the door wouldn't budge now. She couldn't push it open and the doorknob wouldn't even turn. "oh no" she thought. Then the closet doors began to rattle. She spun back around and pressed her back into the door, attempting to stay as far away from the closet as possible. They slowly slid open revealing a pitch black square that resembled a big mouth that looked ready to eat Lilia up, and then out of the darkness, stepped out two tiny figures.

    Two little girls had stepped out together. They appeared to be twins but where one was light the other was dark. The twin on the left side was wearing a Victorian style child's dress. The dress itself was white as was every detail on it - lace, buttons, stitching - were all white. Her white Mary Jane style shoes and socks matched her outfit, and her white hair hung down covering half her face, revealing only the right eye. The twin on the left was dressed exactly the same but in all black. Her black hair hung loosely down too, covering one side of her face, revealing only the left eye. "We can get your mother back." They spoke together at the same time, as though they were one, and at the exact moment that they had opened their mouths, every single candle sitting against the walls had lit up on their own. The room was now bathed in the orange glow of the candlelight and now Lilia could truly see everything. The twins looked to be little girls, around eight to ten years old and they were extremely pale. The little bit of their faces that she could see poking out were white as paper. She quickly studied the room, eyes darting around in every direction. The ceiling was dusty, the wallpaper was ripped, and in the middle of the floor, on the carpet, was a pentagram. It appeared to have been made with some sort of dark liquid. Maybe more of that black paint?

    "E-e-excuse me?" she stuttered. The whole situation was so jarring she'd barely registered the fact that they had spoken to her. "You want your mother, correct?" they spoke together again. Lilia licked her lips once more, her throat and mouth still felt dry. "Do you know where she's at?" she asked. It came out as barely more than a whisper.

"We will bring her to you, but you need to do something first."

"What's that?" Lilia asked

"Go collect the chicken bones. Bring ten whole chicken bones back to us and we will retrieve your mother for you."

    This confused Lilia. What did chicken bones have to do with finding her mother? "Do you agree?" they asked her. They sounded a bit angry, like they were getting impatient and wanted her to answer quickly now. "Oh-okay." she stammered. "I'll get the bones." The girls smiled at her. Lilia didn't know why but their smiles made her sick. There was nothing cute about these little twins. "We'll be waiting." they murmured as they slid back into the closet. Just as the closet doors closed Lilia heard the bedroom door behind her open with a soft click. She quickly stepped out of the room and shut the door. Now she had a decision to make. To run, or follow this through. She was terrified, but she'd found people. Finally. What was back out there? "Nothing." She thought. Just desert. How long had she walked before finding this place? Miles. Hours. Who knows when she'd run into another person. The twins also claimed they could bring her mother here. She hadn't missed that part. She took a deep shaky breath and then set out on her task. It took a bit longer than she'd expected as most of the pieces littering the floor were just that - bits and pieces and sharp pointy shards of broken chicken bones. After what felt like an hour of searching all throughout the house she'd managed to collect nine whole bones, but as much as she looked and looked she couldn't find anything but those annoying little pieces. She'd searched every room twice and some thrice at this point. She stood there frustrated, feeling defeated when aha! she suddenly remembered the coop. 

    Clutching her pile of bones she exited the house and walked over to the coop. She looked inside. Same scene. One half dead chicken amongst a pile of dead ones. In the corner, sitting in the putrefied pile of chicken guts, she saw a single, whole, bone. She slid the cage-wire door back and slowly reached in. To get to the bone out she would have to reach past the one live chicken. She was afraid it would try to peck at her but it was so listless it just sat there and watched her stick her hand into its home. She snatched the bone up adding it to her pile and shut the chicken's door. Back on the porch, she paused at the front door and looked back over her shoulder at the open desert and sky. "Last chance," she thought, "I could run now... But then I might never find my mother.." With that last decision made, she turned back to the door and crept her way through, back into the house. Up the stairs. Into the twins' room, and - click. The bedroom locked itself behind her again. The closet door opened, the twins stepped out again. "Good job." they spoke together again, same as before, and when they did, the candles became aflame once more.

"Put them on the floor, in the middle." They instructed. Lilia was hesitant to move closer to them but she obeyed and stepped into the circle, dropping the bones in the middle of the makeshift pentagram. When she did so, she'd accidentally stepped on the edge of the pentagram and felt that it was a bit sticky. It was then she realized the circle was made of blood, not paint. Was it chicken's blood or.. The twins spoke just then breaking her concentration. "Step back. We'll bring your mother in now." Lilia pressed herself against the door once more, bracing herself for whatever was about to happen. The twins split apart and walked halfway around the circle, stopped, and faced each other. The twin in black pulled a tiny book out of one of the pockets on the front of her dress. It looked like a mini bible of some kind but it was black. She turned to a page that only she could've picked and she began to read aloud from it, speaking in a very strange language that Lilia was one hundred percent certain she'd never heard before. It sounded ancient, like some long lost language that didn't exist anymore. At the same time, the twin in white had raised her arms up and  began waving them wildly while shaking her hips and moving her body around in some weird, ritualistic kind of dance. She was grunting with each movement and looked intensely focused.

    After a few moments, the pentagram lit up. A circle of bright, whitish bluish light opened up from the center and filled the room. It was so sudden and so bright Lilia was blinded for a moment. Then the chanting and the grunting stopped and she heard the twins giggle. The light dimmed to the level of candlelight but was still blue, and as Lilia regained her eyesight, she saw her mother standing in the middle of the circle. She barely had a moment to feel excited though because almost immediately she saw something wrong. It was her mother, but it was a dead version of her. She looked like a zombie with pale skin that had a slight green tint to it. Her face was sunken and hollow looking. Her mouth drooped down like she couldn't control it. She still had on that damn red lipstick too. A moan escaped, followed by a grunt and her crypt mother took a shambling step forward. Then another.

    Lilia's heart filled with dread and she felt the fear spread all over her body, starting at the top of her head and tingling its way down to the tips of her toes. She spun around on the spot and began frantically pulling at the knob and when that wouldn't budge, she started banging and kicking on the door. She was screaming at the top of her lungs - no words, nothing intelligible - just a guttural cry of fear and of wanting to escape. She slammed that door so hard her fists began to hurt and she was pretty sure they'd already began to bruise. Next they would split and become bloody but she couldn't focus on that right now, because with every bang there was the subtle sound of feet shuffling across carpet just underneath it. As she made her final attempts to reach freedom, the shuffling stopped right behind her and at the same time the stench of death filled her nostrils. Then, she felt a cold clammy hand grip her shoulder, its long sharp fingernails digging into her skin, and pulling her back away from the door, into the closet, where she became forever trapped in darkness.