Grim anthology

Liv took a step back. “What do you mean? I thought your dad was loaded.”

Harley gave a choked laugh. “That’s what everybody thinks, but no. My dad was the janitor here. While he worked here, we got to come here for free, but after he died last year, that was it. We were going to be kicked out. But where would we go? To live with my deadbeat mom in the city? She has no money, and she spends what she gets on drugs. The only way I could keep Casey here—to keep her safe—was to make a deal with that guy. But now you’ve messed it all up. He said they wouldn’t take Casey. He said—” She broke off and looked at Liv furiously. “And now she’s gone, and I can’t find her. He’ll never make a deal with me again.”

Liv’s stomach fell. Had she made a mistake? “She might come back—Madam Sofia said—”

“Nobody comes back once they take them,” Harley interrupted. She looked utterly defeated.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Liv whispered.

Harley wouldn’t look at her, and after the silence between them became too awful to bear, Liv snatched up her shirt and left. She couldn’t stop shaking, even after she climbed into Casey’s bed and buried her head beneath the covers.

* * *

Things began to change immediately. Harley was reprimanded by the headmistress for wearing boots to class. The paperwork that Harley said she had filed to move Liv from Sheffield to Castle turned out to be forged, and Liv had to move back to Sheffield. The other girls in Castle Hall began to be called in to teacher meetings to discuss their many absences.

Halloween came and went in a gust of wind and rain, stripping the last remaining leaves off the trees. Every time Liv walked by the oak tree where she had made her promises to Harley, she felt someone watching her, but it was only the blackbird that seemed to have made its home there. Once she thought she saw a tall, thin man in the shadows of the tree, but as soon as she noticed him the air itself seemed to shift, as if someone were pulling a shade closed.

Harley’s friends began to drift apart, too, turning inward and barely eating at meals. Rumors went around that they had been doing some serious drugs, and now their supply had been cut off and they were going through withdrawal. And everyone whispered the shocking news about Harley: that her father wasn’t some fabulously rich guy; that he had been the school janitor; that she might have to leave at the end of the semester because she had no money for tuition.

Liv felt bruised inside, as if she had lost something, not saved the lives of the other girls. For weeks, she went through the motions of school and homework in a daze, half awake, half still caught in that world she had visited three times. At night she dreamed of the glittering gold trees, the throbbing music and Harley.

All through November, Harley faded. She had been vivid before, unbreakable, and now she was more ghostly every day. Her skin, her eyes, her hair—pale, dull, limp. Liv realized that she might have broken the curse, but she had also broken Harley.

The day that Harley didn’t show up for breakfast, none of the students noticed at first. It wasn’t until lunch, when Liv heard others whispering about how nobody had seen Harley since the night before, that Liv began to wonder if something had happened. She walked across the quad toward Castle Hall, her feet crunching over the blades of browned grass. She passed the oak tree and saw that the blackbird was gone.

Inside Castle, the dorm was quiet and empty. Everyone was supposed to be in class, and Liv knew she would be reprimanded for skipping, but she was drawn up the stairs to Harley’s room just as she had been drawn to Harley from the beginning. Harley’s door was closed, and when Liv knocked, there was no answer. She put her hand on the doorknob, and it turned easily.

There was a creak behind her.

Liv spun around, an excuse on her lips, but the sight of the girl across the hall stopped her. She looked like Harley, but younger. Her face was gaunt, as if she had been living on nothing but air for much too long, and her eyes were too bright. “Who are you?” Liv asked, afraid that she already knew.

“I’m Casey,” Harley’s sister said. Her voice sounded just like Harley’s.

Liv’s skin crawled. “Where’s Harley?”

“She traded herself for me,” Casey said. There was a haunted flatness to her speech, as if she were a doll that had just come awkwardly to life.

Everything inside Liv went cold. She opened Harley’s door and barged into her room. It was empty. The bed was rumpled, and a pile of dirty clothes lay on the floor by the dresser. Liv ran to the bed and pushed it, but it wouldn’t move. She knelt down to look beneath it, and all she saw was dust.

Casey came into Harley’s room and went to the dresser, where she began to look through the drawers. She pulled out her sister’s shirts one by one, holding them up and then tossing them onto the laundry pile.

“What are you doing?” Liv asked.

“Looking for something to wear,” Casey replied in her odd, emotionless voice. “Harley always has the best stuff.”

Liv stared at her in shock. She had wanted Casey to come back, but she hadn’t expected she would be like this. Casey might be standing in her sister’s room, but she wasn’t all there.

Casey found a shirt she liked and laid it on top of the dresser, then took off the one she was wearing. The bones of her spine jutted out like teeth beneath her skin. In the mirror, Liv glimpsed a tattoo of a blackbird on Casey’s chest before she pulled on her sister’s shirt. She turned to face Liv, crossing her arms, and Liv noticed the ring Casey was wearing. It was a black stone set in a gold band.

“My sister told me about you,” Casey said.

Liv swallowed the rising panic inside her and met Casey’s feverish gaze. “Where is she?” Liv demanded.

“Someplace a lot more fun than this.” A cold grin crossed Casey’s face, and for one second she came alive—potent, forceful, just like Harley. An instant later she shriveled, once again more specter than girl. “We’re going there tonight,” Casey said to Liv. “You wanna come? Harley might be there.”

* * * * *

THE RAVEN PRINCESS

by Jon Skovron

The princess wouldn’t stop crying. The queen had fed her and changed her diaper. She didn’t know what else to do.

“I can host a banquet for a hundred lords and ladies. But what do I know about babies?” The nanny had asked for the day off and now the queen regretted letting her have it.

The princess stood at the edge of the crib, howling at the top of her lungs. Tears and snot ran down her plump face as she reached out with wet slobbery fingers.

“What do you want?!” The queen gripped the edge of the crib hard. She wanted to shake the ungrateful little creature until she stopped.

No, she would never do that. But she felt trapped by the tiny, impossible thing who shrieked mindlessly at her. She moved to the other side of the room, turned her back on the princess and took a slow breath.

The coarse call of birds cut through the princess’s cries. The queen looked out the window and spied a flock of ravens. She had always found the raven’s caw grating and distasteful, but right now, it seemed preferable to the endless wail of the little brat. As she watched them wheel slowly up into the sky, she said out loud:

“I wish you would just fly away with those ravens.”

The crying stopped and silence fell suddenly in the room. The queen turned around, half expecting to find the child passed out from exhaustion. But the princess stood in her crib, her eyes wide. Her little bow mouth was quirked in the corners, as if she had just taken a bite of something and its flavor surprised her. She sat down hard and let out a cough that sounded strangely like the caw of a raven.

“My darling.” Fear crept into the queen’s chest. “What’s wrong?”

The princess looked up and her bright blue eyes slowly filled with blackness until even the whites were gone.

“Oh, God,” whimpered the queen.

Thick black hairs began to sprout on the princess’s arms, legs and face. No, not hairs. Feathers.

“Please,” whispered the queen. “I didn’t mean...”

The princess opened her mouth wide and made a gagging sound until a black, curved beak emerged and her lips peeled back into nothing. Her legs grew thinner, then, with a loud crack, suddenly bent in the wrong direction, as her feet curled in like claws. Her body shrank into her white dress until the queen could no longer see her.

“My darling?”

A raven’s head poked out from the dress. The bird shook herself as she untangled her wings from the dress. She hopped up onto the edge of the crib, black claws digging into the wood. She regarded the queen for a moment, her head cocked to one side. Then she let out a harsh caw and flew past the queen and out the open window.

The queen never spoke of what happened that day. It was thought that the princess had been abducted by mercenaries or brigands. The king searched everywhere, but didn’t find her. As the years went on, the queen’s secret shame aged her into a crone before her time. Finally one night she could no longer bear it, and left the castle without a word. The king did not search for her.

* * *

The young man was not a good hunter. He had some skill with a bow when the target was a bull’s-eye, but he simply could not bring himself to shoot a living thing. His parents had sent him away in disgust, and none of the village girls showed any interest in him. So he lived alone in a small cottage in the forest, where he ate berries and the vegetables he grew in his small garden.