Five Stories for the Dark Months Read Online Free PDF Page A

eat you from the inside out.”
    Arica shivered. “May I never meet
one.” She looked down at the coat in her hands, and seemed to
hesitate a moment. Then she shrugged. “Well, I guess I’ll take my
chances. Odds are I’m not going to live long enough for anything to
haunt me, anyway.” She said this almost cheerfully, as if it were a
fact she’d had ample time to get used to. “Anyway, I swear I’ve
never seen a ghost before. Maybe that witch’s spell only works on
you Southerners.” With that, she shook out the coat—ignoring the
bloodstains—and pulled it on over her own. “There’s one for you,
too,” she said, nodding towards the other corpse.
    Jenna turned. She saw now that
there was a neat round hole near the center of the dead woman’s
forehead. A pool of scarlet blood had spread out behind the
corpse’s head, like a flat, ragged pillow. Some of it had spread
beneath the body and was soaking through the good, thick wool of
the coat. “Thanks,” said Jenna, shuddering, “but I have my
own.”
    “As good as that one?” Arica
said.
    “Of course not.” Jenna’s coat was
an old, worn hand-me-down—Pauli had given it to her when he’d
gotten his promotion and a new uniform. The country could barely
keep its regular soldiers supplied, let alone the road-watchers who
acted as secondary defenses. “It doesn’t matter, though. We don’t
take from the dead.”
    “The
dead ,” said Arica, “would have shot you,
may I remind you, if I hadn’t shot them first. Keep that in
mind—and make up your mind quickly, because we need to get
going.”
    Jenna started.
“Going? We? Where?”
    “Greenwater! The capital! I told
you already. You’ve got to come, too, of course.”
    “But why?” Jenna’s head was
spinning.
    “Once these two don’t report back,
somebody’s going to come see what happened to them—and they’re not
going to like what they find. We’ve already stayed too long, so put
on that damn coat—or don’t, I don’t care—and let’s get
going.”
    There seemed to be
no time to argue. Jenna decided, given the events of the last few
minutes, that she’d be best off trusting the stranger for the
moment.“All right,” she said, “but we’d better go straight to
Goldenfield instead. It’s only half as far as the capital, and the
phone lines might still be up.” And if
they’re not , she thought grimly, at least I’ll be among friends when the soldiers
get there.
    The dead woman’s coat really was a
good one: lined with squirrel fur, and clearly almost new. And it
was very, very cold outside.
    Nervous and ashamed, Jenna began to
strip the coat from the body. The corpse seemed almost boneless, as
if death had robbed it of all its solid parts. She fumbled with the
buttons, and almost dropped the body several times, but at last she
managed to retrieve the garment. She couldn’t quite stand to put it
right next to her skin, so she put her own coat on first and draped
the stolen one over it.
    There was no time to pack. She
looked around the room, already mourning her possessions: her
hard-won books, her clothes, her letters. She wasn’t very much
attached to the cabin itself, but she still felt guilty leaving it
here to be ransacked by enemies. She prayed that some of her things
would survive long enough for her to come back and get
them.
    There was no point in thinking
about it now. Jenna damped the woodstove and buried the coals,
hoping they’d go out without a problem. She took half a loaf of
bread and a packet of dried fish from the cupboards, and filled two
canteens with water. At the last minute she remembered to bring the
matchbox. She hoped they wouldn’t have to stop long enough to light
a fire, but it was best to be safe.
    She divided the provisions in half
and gave one share to Arica, then looked around one last time. Her
eye fell on the little straw star that still lay on the table. She
picked it up, and her mother’s letter, too—if she couldn’t