‘I can make you an offer.’
The woman, which appeared to be no more than a statue cloaked in a billowing, black gown, said in a voice like thunder rolling over a distant valley.
‘How do you know . . .’
‘That does not matter to you. What does matter to me is how surprised I am that you have already not been claimed. If someone were to have laid a name on you, you would have become part of this world. That will also apply in the land of the flesh. You must acknowledge what they wish to call you.’
Cedric looked into her yellow, canine eyes. They seemed to be the only part of her that appeared alive.
‘Yes. Send me back.’
Silence passed between them. How would she do it? How did you bring someone back to life? Cedric felt certain she wanted something from him.
‘Do you want to know?’
He had been asked. He replied, without a second thought, ‘Just do it.’
She beckoned him forward. As he approached, he felt more uncertain of his decision, and if he had a beating heart, he felt certain it would have been hammering away right now.
He took her hand.
A thousand volts of lightning seemed to rip through his body. For a moment, he was afraid he would become something like her; an unfeeling statue, with silver as his bones and precious metals as his organs. That’s all she was. Only her yellow eyes were alive.
She whipped him around like a doll so he faced the arch. A white curtain billowed outward, but he could see the darkness behind it.
In a voice like a crashing waterfall, she said, ‘I will call on you again.’
She flung him forward into the void.
The buzzing began in his head, and the noise swelled until it sounded like he stood in the midst of a dense cloud of insects that might have been deciding to eat him alive. The prickling all over his skin left him itchy and uncomfortable. Then, the buzzing turned into a deep, dull pain behind his eyes. He thought he heard a heart beating right behind his ear, and every strained pulse felt like a clubbing on the head.
The first breath added the feeling of having a led weight sitting on his chest to the other bodily pains. With each ragged breath, he became aware of his limbs, and soon, he realized his heart might be pounding in his chest instead of in his head. That added assurance didn’t take away from the fact that his heart sounded like he just ran a marathon, and the pain behind his eye lids felt like someone had been using his brain as a Bludger.
He sucked air through his mouth and retched. The vomit slid down his throat, and he began to choke on his own bile. Every other pain fell away as he tried to jerk his body upright, but he only succeeded in turning his head to the side so he could spit out all of the foulness in his mouth. At last, able to breathe unhindered, Cedric realized that all the pain meant one, certain thing.
He was alive.
The deal had been real.
He lay completely still and kept his mouth shut so he wouldn’t breathe in and gag again. He could still taste the refuse that coated his tongue, and everything he smelled reminded him of rotting food. ‘It’s so quiet,’ he thought as he realized he couldn’t hear anything other than his own breathing.
When he forced his eyelids open, the intense light made him immediately close them. With another effort, he squinted through tight lids, but this time, he realized the light was not the glaring sun of noonday, but only the dim light of a fluorescent bulb.
‘Where am I?’ Cedric wondered as he peered up at the bulb, which was set into a dirty, fly filled light fixture. The gray, unpainted concrete ceiling didn’t do much to welcome him back to the world of the living, either. He stared down at his immediate surroundings and found he lay on what once might have been a white pillow that had yellowed with age until it was now the colour of crusted mustard.
‘This is feeling more unwelcoming each moment.’ Ignoring the stiffness in his neck, he turned his head again to stare down at his body.
A thrill went through him despite the drab, wool blanket that covered his body. ‘I’m really alive. How did that even work?’ Cedric wondered as he stared at his rising and falling chest. He turned his cracked, dry lips up into what he thought might pass for a smile.
After the novelty of being alive wore off, Cedric tired to pull himself upright to get a better sense of his surroundings. ‘Why am I so stiff?’ Cedric struggled to lift his upper body. Sweat broke over his brow from the effort, and his heart began to slam into his rib cage as he strained the weak muscles.
He used the black, wire headboard as a prop to sit up. As the stagnant air passed in and out of his mouth, he leaned down and heaved up more putrid, yellow mess all over himself and the grey blanket. After he stopped himself from retching again, he wiped his mouth with the collar of his dressing gown.
‘I need to get cleaned up.’ He wrinkled his nose and rolled up the gray blanket to hide the mess. When he did, he found himself staring down at a pair of thin legs, which were paler than the sheets.
‘A hospital makes some sense,’ Cedric realized as he held out his hands and stared at the yellowed, unclean nails attached to fingers with skin as white as the bones underneath it. He turned his head to look for a nightstand, where he figured there might be some water. He let out a brief, staccato scream that died the moment it left his mouth. Instead of a nightstand, he stared at another bed, exactly like his, where an ashen skined corpse lay. ‘A morgue. Well, if I was dead, then that explains why I can’t move anything.’
Upon another glance, though, Cedric realized the corpse’s chest rose and fell by barely noticeable amounts. ‘Oh. It’s alive,’ Cedric thought, and once again, his gut churned because of something besides the raw smell of his vomit. As he stared at the sunken, waxy face of the figure, he compulsively glanced back down at his own hands.
To his relief, Cedric realized, even though his arms looked impossibly thin and bony, that his skin did not cling like old leather to his bones. ‘I guess I look fairly normal if I’ve been in this . . . this place for a while,’ Cedric thought as he gazed around the room. In the dim light, he couldn’t see far, but he spied at least a dozen other beds. He saw a bed, several paces in front of his own, which he had missed before because it didn’t seem ominous until he realized what it held.
‘If this is in St. Mungo’s, I’ve never heard of this ward,’ Cedric thought as he let his eyes stray over all the beds that lingered in shadows illuminated with dots of murky light. ‘I wonder if someone will come and check on me. Sitting here in my own vomit until God knows when is something I could do without.’
Through the gloom, on the opposite side of the room, Cedric spied a white object. He leaned forward and squinted to bring the speck into view. ‘A toilet! Maybe a sink, too!’ Cedric’s mind jumped with excitement. He bit down against his brittle lip as he steeled himself for the pain that would come when he tried to swing his legs over the bed.
He gritted his teeth together because the actual effort brought into sharp reality what the heaviest, and by far, the weakest muscles in his body were. He took a moment to rest when his feet touched the cold floor, which was painted the colour of pond slime. He tapped his feet against the ground, to convince himself that he could move them, while he thought of the next task.
‘If I push myself up too quickly, I’ll probably fall,’ Cedric thought as he shifted some more weight onto his feet. He felt his knees shake a little under the added pressure, but they didn’t collapse. He braced himself against the bed with his arms as he stood up. ‘There it is,’ Cedric tried to motivate himself as he looked at the chasm between his bed and the next black, skeletal bed frame.
‘One, two, three.’ He flung himself away from his bed. At first, his knees buckled, but he kept his balance and limped over to the next bed. Then, he worked his way around the bed frame and used the mattress to help him walk along the obstacle. When he saw the yellow-skinned body, he almost let go of the mattress, but the shakiness in his legs kept him holding onto the bed. ‘I can’t walk on my own,’ Cedric thought drearily as his stomach knotted. He turned away from the lifeless figure as he worked his way to the end of the bed.
With another shove, Cedric staggered into the space between the two beds. He grasped the next bed frame and leaned against it to give his muscles a break. Inching around the bed frame, he stared into the face of another lifeless body. ‘This one has been here for a while,’ Cedric thought as he wrinkled his nose against the odour coming from the still form.
The mouth fell open, and Cedric snapped his head back to see if the body would speak. Out of the mouth scurried a little brown creature, and before Cedric could move, another two followed it.
Whirling off balance, his wobbly legs collapsed under him. Cedric felt all the air knocked out of his body for a moment as he stared up at the concrete ceiling. He rolled over onto his stomach, even though he was certain there was nothing left to throw up. With a quick glance, he looked up at the bed, and then, ignoring the sour taste, he crawled across the floor.
He kept crawling, fighting the urge to gag. Sweat trickled down his back, face, and chest as he focused on the wall. Mercifully, the wall came closer, and he finally collapsed against the cool, damp concrete to rest. Looking back out at the rows of beds, Cedric thought, ‘I don’t envy whatever happened to these people.’ He glanced at the empty bed in the back corner, and a shiver rippled through his body. ‘What kind of place is this? I thought they kept everyone in St. Mungo’s, and these aren’t Inferri.’
‘Of course, what types of places are suitable to rise from the dead?’ Cedric wondered. ‘If you have to come back in some place like this . . . I can see why you almost wouldn’t want to do it.’ At this thought, Cedric grinned. ‘Yes, because people coming back to life is very common. Being dead must have made me stupid.’
Looking to his right, Cedric spied the sink and toilet and began to scoot towards it. He gritted his teeth as the concrete’s rough edges scratched his back, but he scooted along the wall until he reached the sink. Immediately, he twisted the knob, and he got a stream of clear, but odd smelling water, to pour from the tarnished spout.
He gulped the water, even though it had a bitter, metallic tang to it, and he splashed it over his face. As he pulled his head out from under the faucet to reach for a towel, he looked up at a face he didn’t recognize.
“Bloody hell.”
Cedric gazed into the mirror, which was missing a chunk from one corner, and stared at the strange face that gaped back at him. Now, his stomach churned again, but this time, he knew exactly where the uncomfortable feeling came from. He reached up and ran a shaking hand across the unfamiliar features.
He leaned down and heaved up the water he just drank. After he finished, he rinsed his mouth out again and took another, less frantic drink from the tap before turning it off again. Finally, he forced himself to stare up into the dingy, stained mirror again.
‘Why would I come back in my own body? I died. My body is underground somewhere,’ Cedric told himself, but the rationale didn’t ease the discomfort of knowing he was looking at himself in a stranger’s face.
He ran a hand through the fine, matted hair, which looked like it hadn’t seen a comb or a pair of scissors in years. His fingers traced their way down the long, pale face and touched the sunken cheeks and the thin nose. He fingered the scraggly hair on his face, which annoyed him since he never liked facial hair.
‘That looks disgusting,’ Cedric thought as he touch his thin, cracked lips, which were lined with slits and scabs. He realized one of the scabs cracked open and had begun to bleed. He wiped the blood away from his mouth before turning away from the looking glass.
‘There’s probably no one in this building. I can probably just walk right out of here. No one in this room looks like they’re going to move any time soon.’ He then stopped and stared down at his vomit stained dressing gown. ‘Huh. I might look suspicious in the street, though, and I have no wand, but, if I get out, what’s to stop me from Apparating?’
Cedric pushed himself off the floor and used the wall for support. ‘There has to be a door.’ His eyes panned over the cement walls. With every minute that ticked past, his heart began to beat louder until it seemed to be beating behind his ears.
‘No doors,’ Cedric realized as a chill crawled from his head down the entire length of his spine. ‘If I can’t find a door, I can’t leave.’ He stared out at the rows of beds, which were coffins without the lids; Cedric began to feel his way along the wall. When he reached the first corner, he stuffed his finger into the crevice.
His fingers grazed something in the crack. ‘Right where a doorknob would be.’ Cedric fiddled with the lump hidden in the corner. He moved his hand over it before trying to turn it, but to no avail. Then, he shoved it inward, and it disappeared from his hands. For a moment, he thought he did it wrong, but the clinking inside of the wall told him exactly what happened.
‘A key. The wall is unlocking,’ Cedric realized as the handle popped back out of the wall. When he turned it again, the knob twisted in his hand, and one part of the seemingly solid wall swung open.
At first, the air felt fresh, and the wind cooled off his body. After a moment of standing at the door, the chill breeze lashed against his sparsely covered body. Keeping one hand along the brick wall to guide himself, he manoeuvred away from the door. He stared down at the pavement so he could spot any pieces of glass that would rip his feet apart.
When he reached the street, he stared around at the rows of houses with only space enough for one person to stand between them. He looked up, but the stars hid behind a blanket of clouds, which reflected an orange haze from some factory burning late into the night. ‘Well, no one will be out right now.’
Without the wall to steady him, he found it much more difficult to walk, but his muscles remembered how to behave. While progress was slow, Cedric moved down the street on his own. Besides, he needed both hands to wrap around himself to protect his body from the chill of the early morning hours.
As he staggered down a hill, he stared up at the factory spires, which rose like obelisks over those who lived in their shadows. The giant pillars, erected to the Muggle gods of industry and production, spewed fumes into the night air and tinted the clouds the colour of the fire forever burning in their bellies. Under the shade of one of the huge towers, when the sky began to let go of the inky night and embrace the dull, gray day, Cedric came upon a house with a sign sticking out in front of it that read ‘For Sale.’
By that time, Cedric’s legs and arms were frozen. He stared at the boarded up windows and peeling paint that was the colour of egg rot. ‘There’s no one home in that place.’ Cedric popped open the latch to the rusted fence and walked up to the door. With a snort of frustration, Cedric realized he didn’t have the strength to break open the door, which flaked off its baby blue paint shell to reveal the warped wood underneath.
He turned back to the street and stared around, and then, between that house and its equally ugly neighbour, Cedric saw what he wanted. He reached his arms over the fence and pulled a large piece of metal into his arms. With one quick swipe, he smashed the tarnished knob off the door. Now, the house yielded up its shabby secrets, and as he closed the door behind him, the smell of cigarettes and animal crashed upon Cedric’s senses.
‘Fantastic,’ Cedric thought wryly as he moved into the kitchen. He pulled open the first two cabinets and found nothing, but when he opened the third, he saw some boxes and cans. He pried open one of the boxes and tore at the bag inside, and to his relief, whatever Muggle food inside was edible.
Like with the water, his stomach eventually filled, and he set down the box and stared at his surroundings. ‘Well, I was right, no one’s home, but they might only be gone for a while. The furniture is still here, even though they’re selling this place.’ He ascended the narrow staircase covered in yellow carpet, which had holes worn in the spots where people stepped too many times.
On the second floor landing, Cedric peered in each bedroom door, and to his relief, he found that no one was sleeping in any bed. Cedric walked in and opened the closet in the room with the double bed, and to his delight, he realized he was looking at several sets of men’s clothes. He yanked out a gray pair of pants and a blue, flannel shirt. In the bottom of the closet, he found a pair of scuffed, clunky black boats to complete his ensemble.
After tossing away his dressing gown for the over-sized clothes, Cedric reached in and pulled out a long, brown coat that smelled of mothballs. ‘Somehow, this is not what I imagined.’ Cedric sniffed the coat, but he threw it over his arm and left to find the bathroom, but to his disappoint, there was no razor.
As he passed the mirror, he diverted his gaze after catching a glance of himself. ‘I’m going to have to get used to that if I want to shave,’ Cedric thought as he descended the stairs and went back into the kitchen to grab the food. He flopped down upon the spongy, green couch, where the animal odour seemed to be the strongest, to finish off the contents of the box.
‘Where to now? I really don’t want to stay in this little shack.’ Cedric rubbed his temples. He raked his hands through his matted, tangled hair, which only reminded him how he wished the bathroom upstairs had a decent pair of scissors. ‘What’s the chance that I could find another abandoned house?’ Cedric asked himself. ‘Breaking into someone else’s house seems a little classless,’ he decided and hoped that his situation didn’t mean he had to dip to breaking and entering to sustain himself.
‘I could try my house,’ Cedric realized as his hands dropped into his lap. He gazed unseeingly at the wall before he admitted to that home is exactly where he wanted to go.