Lia Habel - Dearly, Departed

Dearly, Departed is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Lia Habel

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D EL R EY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52333-4

www.delreybooks.com

Jacket design and illustration: David Stevenson,
based on photographs Michael Frost (woman) and
Jenkins, R./plainpicture/Corbis (cemetery)

v3.1

It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. They all eat one another! he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, They all feed one another, and called it good.

C HARLOTTE P ERKINS G ILMAN ,
The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Not many young girls feel very happy about the past, and the past is very beautiful. Very beautiful.

B ARNABAS C OLLINS
in Dark Shadows, episode 250, Dan Curtis, 1967

PROLOGUE BRAM

I was buried alive.

When the elevator groaned to a stop in the middle of the rocky shaft, I knew I was buried alive. Trapped thousands of feet below the earths surface and hundreds above the bottom of the shaft, dangling in a dimly lit ten- by ten-foot cage over the black bowels of the very mine I had been so bloody relieved to get work in.

I pulled myself to my feet and pushed my best friend, Jack, aside, hitting the button that controlled the elevator. I hit it again and again, wailed my fist on it. Nothing. The glass-paned lantern dangling from the ceiling flickered wildly as the kerosene within dwindled, as if it were attempting to ward off its own death with bursts of exaggerated life.

Dread became a solid, burning thing within me, something twisting my own flesh to its will, speeding my heart and making my skin slick with sweat. Before I knew it was coming up, I doubled over and retched through the grated floor. Jack sat calmly beside me as I heaved, his bloody eye sockets and the gaping wound in his throat mocking me, mocking my attempt to rescue him. He looked like some kind of hellish funhouse clown.

The dam broke and I finally started screaming. At Jack. At God. At everything. There was nothing left to do but scream. I hadnt screamed when the monsters descended on us. I hadnt screamed when I had to run from them, or when I fought them, or when I dragged Jack to the elevator, blood bursting from the hole in his neck. Everything happened so quickly, it seemed like there was no time to scream.

The monsters. Mad, animalistic, discolored, broken and battered from throwing themselves after their prey, each one thrashing like a person trapped beneath a frozen pond might struggle against the ice in desperate search of air all teeth and hunger

I slid down the wall of the elevator and buried my face in my sticky, itching hands. The coppery scent of the blood on them nauseated me, and I leaned back, my screams echoing back to me through the endless mineshaft. The elevator was covered in Jacks blood. I was covered in Jacks blood. I was wearing more of his blood on my ratty waistcoat than remained, still as a stagnant pond, in his own veins. My cheap old pocket watch was caked with it. Even the digital camera still feverishly clutched in his hands was slashed with red. Stupid New Victorian piece of crap. Id always ragged on him for being so attached to that camera. Couldnt even get the pictures off it, not without a computerand no one around here had a computer.

Still, Jack had been so proud of it, of the snapshots he took. And Id dutifully posed every time he ordered me to.

Slowly, trembling, I pried it out of his rubbery fingers.

The lantern dimmed. I tried not to panic. I figured out how to turn the camera on, hoping futilely that the conspiracy theories were truethat the New Victorians could track every bit of tech their people used, every digital letter, practically every thought. Didnt they put chips in their citizens, tagging them like cattle? Maybe, if the smuggler who snuck it through the border hadnt cracked and killed the ability, itd work. Maybe.

If nothing else, I could record a message.

Just as I figured out how to shoot video, the lantern died, plunging me into perfect darkness. I swallowed back a sob and spoke aloud, my throat raw, my voice the voice of a ghost in its tomb.

If this thing is working my name is Bram Griswold. Im sixteen. Its July fourth, 2193. I live at the Griswold Farm, Long Road, West Gould, Plata Ombre, Punk-Controlled Brazil. I worked here to help support my mom and my sisters in the Celestino mine. And these things, thesethese people they were eating eating Jack

That did it. I started crying. I dug my nails into the wounds in my own arms, the places where the monsters had bitten me, seeking desperately to use pain to pin myself to reality, to coax my mind back from the edge.

It didnt work.

I said it.

Im pretty sure Im going to to die here. Emily, Addy Im sorry. Tears ran into my mouth, a strange relief after the taste of vomit. Im so sorry.

I slipped a white hand between the heavy velvet drapes.

Is it here, Nora?

No, I murmured.

The girl standing behind me released a huff of air and tugged impatiently at her cuffs. Youre so lucky to have your own carriage. Public transport wears on my nerves. If its late, you start to suspect that you missed it, and if its early, you have missed it

Then why are you panicking? Youre not taking public transport. Youre coming home with me.

Because weve been here for almost an hour! You know me, I grow anxious whenever I have to wait, whatever Im waiting for. Remember that time our final grades were delayed for a day due to a computer mishap? God, I thought I was going to die.

I lent only half an ear to Pamelas nervous chattering, my gaze drifting back to the yard outside. The wrought-iron gates of St. Cyprians School for Girls were flung wide, and a steady stream of electric carriages poured in through themsleeker and curvier than those of the First Victorians, and designed with room for a driver within. Those belonging to the upper crust of the school were crafted of elegantly molded alloy metal, done up in inky purple or mahogany brown and shining like glass. A few of the richest girls had their own carriages, and these were pearly white, to indicate thelargely imaginedinnocence and purity of their passengers.

The carriage that would come for me would not be white, so I felt compelled to add, And it isnt mine, Pamma. It belongs to my aunt.