The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

ENDOSKELETAL ^{SARAH READ}

The figures are drawn in yellow ochre, their limbs overlong, their faces drawn as skulls—white with crushed calcite, eyes carbon black with a spark of red ochre inside. Each figure holds an orb-like jar beneath its chin. Umber shadows trail behind them as they march the length of the chamber, deep into the small spaces at the back of the cave, where there is the monster. A mass all in soot bone black, large as the cave wall, covered in a hundred lidless eyes. The eyes are not drawn, but etched into the stone itself.

Ashley looked from the cave wall back to her sketch and smoothed her thumb over a figure’s shadow, blending her pencil lines. Henri’s camera flashed, blinding her. When her eyes adjusted, pupils wavering into equilibrium, her LED lantern seemed dimmer than before, the figures drawn on the cave walls harder to make out.

“Can you wait a minute, please?” She didn’t temper the edge in her voice. She’d asked him this a hundred times already—at the office as she checked her daypack, along the Alpine trail as he led the way at a pace she could not possibly match. You must get used to the altitude if you want to study here, he’d said as she caught up, panting, the thin air heavy in her lungs. You’re not ready to study here, is what she heard. What he probably wanted her to hear.

“I am studying here,” she’d puffed between shallow gasps. “And you can’t outrun altitude sickness. Don’t they teach that to guides here?” She’d planted herself on a rock and made him wait.

His camera flashed again. “We don’t have time.” Another photo. “We’ve waited half the day away. Your drawings are too slow. We don’t do it that way anymore.”

Ashley shifted; the cold of the cave floor had crept through the sweater she’d folded into a cushion. She counted to ten, her eyes squeezed shut against the flashes. “I’m not just sketching to record them, Henri. I’m learning them—studying them.”

“You can do that in the lab, unless you want to hike back in the dark. You’re wasting time. We don’t even know if you’ll be allowed to study these.”

She stood then, clutching her pencils in her fist. “What do you mean?”

“You came to study bears? These aren’t bears. There are bears in the other chamber you can study—we have enough of those to share. But this is special. This is weird. They will want a Swiss archaeologist for this.”

Ashley hadn’t considered that. When she’d proposed the expedition to explore the new chambers exposed by the receding glacier, she’d counted on finding either cave bears or nothing. Instead she’d found a national treasure. The specters from the camera flash danced in her eyes as she added notes to her handwritten report. He hadn’t convinced her to hurry. Now her notebook was more important than ever—it might be the only proof she’d have of the discovery, if the site was seized.

The cave painting showed at least twenty figures confronting the shadow covered with eyes. The skull-faced figures threw bones at the shadow, though it wasn’t clear if they were fighting it or feeding it. Ashley paced the length of the chamber, back toward where she had to bow her six-foot-seven frame to fit beneath the mineral-slick stone. The eyes of the monster seemed to follow her, their charcoal-darkened shadows shifting in the weak light. It made the hair on her arms rise, made it difficult to look away from the creature—as if it would move closer when her back turned.

A dozen skeletal remains filled shallow alcoves that lined the walls beneath the drawings. Beyond the alcoves, two narrow openings split the back of the cave. One led to nothing but a cavernous sinkhole. The other led to the much-trafficked cave chamber containing the remains of several cave bears. No one had known that the loose rubble wall of the cave bear room had concealed the entrance to another chamber. No one had wanted to disturb the stones and risk a cave-in. But with temperatures rising, the ice on the opposite slope had melted away, and the true entrance to the cave had opened its dark eye over the valley below.

She looked back to her sketch and darkened the space inside of an eye socket, layering the charcoal until there was no hint of cream paper beneath. She leaned farther over the skeletal remains in an alcove. The bones of the legs and arms were broken, but Ashley could tell from the growth plates that he died young. The bones are in bad condition—fragmented and overgrown with mineral deposits that will be difficult or impossible to remove without destroying the specimen…

The skulls, though, were all complete. Each one with its jaw pried apart and a jar shoved between its teeth. The jars are clay or stone, perhaps dug from the cave walls? Smooth and yellowed. They’re undecorated, sealed with fine leather. They are some form of canopic jar perhaps, or an offering to the dead or the afterlife? She reached out a finger to touch the fragile leather, then pulled back. The leather remains intact despite no apparent organic matter left on the bodies themselves. It will need to be tested for ancient preservation techniques.

There wasn’t much known about Paleolithic funerary rites. Because sites like this were never found.

Most of the jars lay in shards—the pieces tumbled toward the back of the skeleton’s throats, the jaws left gaping—only fine dust remained of their contents. But there were five jars whole and tempting. Her hands kept returning to the space above the skull, hovering, as if to stroke its brow. She had never before been tempted to touch a specimen, to violate every rule that she herself had repeated incessantly to students and assistants at her sites.

“We’re taking one back with us,” Ashley said, tucking her book into her pack.

The camera flash paused and Ashley felt Henri’s eyes scolding her through the darkness. There was something in the way he looked at her that made her skin prickle.

“I don’t think we should,” he said.

Ashley pulled another kit from her pack—a small plastic crate filled with chunks of polyethylene foam, and rolls of gauze and tape. She began assembling a nest that would protect the specimen as they hiked back to the research center.

“Dr. Knochdieb won’t like it. You’ll lose your post for sure if you disturb this site.”

“Isn’t that what you all want, anyway?” She was done with their bureaucracy—she’d come here to work. And the thought of leaving without something more to study—without some way to begin answering the thousand questions storming in her brain—was torture.

Henri’s scoff echoed off the walls, the drawings, the bones. “It’ll be dark before we get back as it is. It’ll be dark before we leave if we wait much longer. I can hike that trail in the dark, but you’re going to get hurt if you try.” He mumbled to himself in German as he changed the camera’s memory card. It sounded like a prayer. His hair was the brightest thing in the cave—the sort of blond Californians paid good money for. Perhaps he’d be her beacon in the dark. She imagined she’d disappear in the dark entirely, invisible against the sky, though Henri had earlier said that her height made her impossible to lose. She felt the telltale ache in her shoulders as she’d unconsciously slouched ever since.

He was right, though, about all of it. She could picture the red-faced spluttering of the department head when he learned she had touched an unknown burial site. It would be several shades darker than when he learned she’d be studying there to begin with. The program hadn’t accepted any foreign students since the dawn of digital record keeping. They weren’t keen to break the record. And, of course, they hadn’t known what she would find in the cave. Henri, in particular, was upset to lose what would have been his project—what now would be, at best, a third-author credit, behind her, if she stayed—and her behind the soon-to-be-furious Dr. Knochdieb.

But he’d be mad tomorrow. Tonight was her chance to learn what she could and put together a proposal to convince them to give her the project—this project, instead of the bears—or at least allow her to stay involved. An underling, even. She’d bring them coffee, up the mountain, if she could work on-site. Anything to stay with the bones.

Now gloved, she did risk a touch. Just a fingertip, above the teeth, where the lips would have been stretched back around the bulbous jar.

She draped sheets of gauze over the skull as carefully as if wrapping a newborn. Its face—its gaping jaw and strange jar—vanished behind the layers of soft white. She set the bundle in a ring of foam inside the crate and layered more around it. She scoured the alcove for any small pieces or artifacts she may have missed. Nothing. Not even a bead. All they have is their jars.

The camera flash had returned, throwing her shadow in front of her, up the cave wall and across the skeletal drawings, as if she were another soot monster swallowing the stick-like figures whole.

But Henri wasn’t documenting the remains anymore. He was documenting her. Just as he’d probably been told to do from the beginning. More of a spy than a guide and assistant. But he didn’t have the authority to stop her. And even if he went straight to Dr. Knochdieb, she’d have a few hours to study her sample and make her case. There was little hope either way. But at least she could learn something about the bones.

Ashley’s body ached as they reached the foot of the mountain. Every knuckle was skinned and bleeding, the tendons in her wrists and ankles throbbing from every twist and fall. But the specimen was safe, its crate wrapped in her blanket in the padded compartment of her pack. She’d been careful to pitch her weight forward when she fell. Her palms, elbow, even her face took the brunt of her falls. After the first few, Henri had stopped helping her up, leaving her to the natural consequences of her decision to keep them in the mountains past dark. The mountain dark of the Alps was as black as the inside of its caves, and her dimming lantern hadn’t shown every peril on the path. She’d embarrassed herself. But she tried to focus on her project—the specimen in her pack—her future.

She nearly wept at the sight of the single lamp post that illuminated the door to their isolated research center. It was tucked in a folded valley between steep hills, along the path of an old glacier flow. The scars of its ancient passage could still be seen from the hills above. At least, in the light they could.

She wanted the close space of her drafty clapboard dorm. The antique, Alpine barn conversion had been anything but welcoming, but she’d make a home of anywhere with Tylenol and a hot bath. And a private lab.

Henri flashed his keycard at the sensor and held the door for her as she limped across the threshold. “Do you need first aid? There is ice in the kitchen.”

“No, thanks.” His offer seemed sincere, though she thought he might be mocking her. His accent made it difficult to discern. “I’m going to drop this off at the lab,” she said, holding her pack in front of her like a baby. “We’ll need to meet with Dr. Knochdieb in the morning.”

“I think he’ll come in early for this. I’m going to call him now.”

“There’s no need to wake him. The bodies have been there for thousands of years; they aren’t going anywhere.”

“They aren’t. I suggest you start packing, Miss Alesso. I’m sorry.”

Ashley watched him strut down the hall toward the dorms. His machismo didn’t hide his own limp as well as he doubtless hoped it would. She felt a mixture of shame and wicked glee. She’d forced him to risk his neck on that trail. Her hopes of winning the friendship of her young assistant were in ashes, but at least she could count on him habitually underestimating her.

The halls were dark, empty. The few other researchers and students who shared the facility had long since gone to bed. The lab was hers for as long as it took the director to climb down from his fancy chalet.

The browned bones of the face appeared through the gauze as if surfacing through a sheet of melting snow. She leaned over it as she worked, the muscles in her back and neck knotted and angry. The soft brush feathered over the skull, sweeping away the dirt and fine white threads into the nest of packing gauze.

She studied the protrusions that lined the brow. Under the bright lights of the lab, she saw that they were a part of the bone itself—not cave deposits or applied funerary decorations, but some sort of cancer or deformity. Her heart pinched for the people of the cave. The spurs must have hurt.

She ran a gloved fingertip around the perimeter of an eye socket. They were like toothy hills crowned with needles that snagged at the latex of her glove as she pulled back.

Her fingertip trailed to the jaw and the jar wedged inside the mouth. She could see, then, that it was stone—carved from a solid piece. The walls eggshell-thin. Ashley brushed away all traces of debris and slid her fingers past the long teeth, deep into the mouth, and cupped the bottom of the jar with her fingertips. She lifted gently and felt it give, the stone scraping against the ancient teeth like squeaking chalk. An uncomfortable shudder moved down her body. The jar worked free, intact, and she set it on a pillow of foam on a tray. The skull, its mouth unnaturally stretched, appeared as if it screamed, or laughed. Its empty eyes seemed accusatory in their darkness. She covered the face with a fold of gauze. The empty eyes reminded her of the eyes on the cave monster.

The walls of the jar were thin enough that she could see the glow of light behind it, and the silhouette of a lumpy shadow inside. She photographed every angle, every detail, and made sure the pictures were uploaded and saved before grabbing her scalpel and tweezers. She both hated and wanted this part. Her pulse grew distracting, a pounding in her sore joints, and it would continue to rise until the beautiful thing in front of her was destroyed. And destroying the sample would destroy her career, or make it. Her hair stuck to her sweaty brow.

She cut away the cord that secured the flap over the opening and gathered the flakes of leather as they fell, dropping them into a jar of her own—bright glass, sterile, but otherwise little had changed in twenty-five thousand years.

The leather scrap was thin and fine like the tender skin of a rodent. It had dried to something almost like vellum. It shouldn’t exist at all.

Once the seal was pulled away, odor overwhelmed her. Sweet and rancid like cherries and old cheese. She clutched her wrist to her nose until the wave passed. She hadn’t dealt with fresh remains in years. This specimen shouldn’t be fresh. Shining more light inside revealed dark clumps clinging to the illuminated walls. She dipped her scalpel inside and scooped out a trace of the substance, sending a fresh wave of odor down her throat. It stuck to the blade as she tapped it onto a glass slide. It was crumbly and clumpy like wet, purple sand. She took more photographs, brightened them, and saw purple, red, gold, brown. Perhaps a desiccated organ. Or maybe the tongue, considering the placement of the jar.

Magnified under the microscope, it was a brilliant lattice of blood cells— platelets, red and white cells, stem cells, and fatty deposits. Myelorytes. Fragments of vessel. Bone marrow.

Ashley turned back to the crate with the skull and peeled back the gauze. She ran her fingers over the blossoms of bone again, ignoring the sharp snags, searching for a perforation in the bone. Then she remembered the arms and legs, each broken on every body. Not from the brittleness of millennia, perhaps, but as part of this strange funerary ritual. She wanted to get the rest of the bones—make a full layout of the body and examine the breaks. Look for manmade trauma. But she needed to finish her work with the jar. She grabbed the jar and held it directly above the light, peering into its mouth, trying to gauge the quantity of marrow collected, presumably from the man whose mouth it had filled. Though it was astoundingly preserved under its ancient seal, some evaporation had to have occurred. A slow concentration. She couldn’t tell how much marrow was there, but she didn’t want to disturb the whole sample.

There needed to be something left intact for her report—and some evidence that she’d be dedicated to the proper handling of these artifacts, despite her hasty removal of the sample.

She was beginning to like the smell. She breathed it in and felt certain, then, that the gaping skull smiled.

The tightness in her neck made it difficult to lift the crate onto the high shelf in the storage fridge. Her hands shook and fresh blood had slicked the inside of her gloves. She felt the altitude again like a punch in the gut.

The ache in her body had deepened by morning, but she couldn’t stop pacing. She limped from one end of the conference room to the other, her eyes sweeping over the board that she’d papered with her sketches. She paused, pulled a pencil from her hair, and fixed a sketch. Deepened a shadow. Added texture to the rough fracture of the bones.

She ran her fingers through her hair and pulled another sliver of shale from the dark curls. She hadn’t managed a bath, yet. With any luck, she’d be coated in dirt again by the afternoon, anyway.

The meeting wouldn’t start for an hour, but she needed time to prepare. They’d be looking for the first excuse to kick her out, contract be damned. But she wouldn’t let it go without a fight. This was the find of a lifetime, and it was her discovery. She wasn’t likely to ever see anything like this again—but if she got her name on this study, it could change the trajectory of her whole career.

Her knees gave and pain shot up her legs. Her body contorted on the floor, folding over as the cramps arced across her body. Pain twisted through her hips and up her back before it faded, leaving her sweating and panting on the floor.

She had been distracted and preoccupied on the way down the mountain. She must have pulled a tendon. Pinched a nerve. Her breath evened, and she pulled herself up into one of the rolling desk chairs. Black spots receded from her vision. She poured herself a drink of water from the pitcher on the table, spilling as she did, her hands unsteady—her fingers weak and trembling. She choked on the water, coughing splashes down her front.

Dr. Knochdieb burst into the room, Henri behind him.

She wiped her dripping chin on her sleeve.

Dr. Knochdieb stormed past her to the board covered with her sketches and photographs. His tie was slightly off-center. He must have rushed.

“Quite the find,” he said, pausing to look at the sketch of the shadow monster. “We were of course aware of Stone Age human settlements near the lake, but we hadn’t yet found any in the high hills. Not in any of the dozens of caves. So tell me, scholar, why they are there?” He pulled her sketch of the cave paintings from the board and sat in the chair to her right. From this angle, she could see that he had also failed to press down his silver cowlick. The spike of hair at his crown was usually plastered with gel—a feature Henri had nicknamed The Oberaletsch Glacier.

Ashley’s voice caught deep in her chest. She’d had a speech prepared, but it didn’t account for this sort of question. She’d been expecting more “who do you think you are,” not “what do you think.” Hope made it hard to think at all.

“Well, the bones show significant funerary preparations. They’re laid out, and the stone jars are inserted into the mouths. The jars contain bone marrow, which I suspect came from the arms and legs, which have all been broken—”

“How do you know that?” Dr. Knochdieb and Henri both turned to her at that, their faces masked with twin looks of alarm.

Ashley felt the cold water creeping back up her throat. “I examined the specimen last night. I wanted to provide a full rep—”

“You tampered with it?”

Here was the tirade she’d been expecting. His eyes roved over her in a way that made her feel inside-out. As though she was raw to his judgment.

“I felt it was my responsibility to report my findings in full. To provide enough information to justify a continued excavation and protection of the site.” Her jaw stiffened as she spoke, so that her last words hissed past her teeth, sounding more impertinent than she meant them.

“Of course it will be excavated. And protected. But it’s not your job to tell us that.” Dr. Knochdieb’s hands shook with indignation. The color of his face rose to match his tie.

“I meant to justify my continued excavation. Just… please. Please, let me work on this with you.” This wasn’t her script—she hadn’t intended to beg. But her head was spinning. She couldn’t remember what she was supposed to say—her jaw felt sealed against her words. Something about her past experience under her mentor in Peru. Something about global cooperation. She could only think of the bones—of getting back to them. Remind them why you’re here—why they said yes.

The black spots were returning to her vision. She held herself firm in her seat, upright, eyes closed.

She caught the word “dismissed,” then stumbled out of her chair, sending it rolling into the board, knocking sketches into the air. She ran from the room as Dr. Knochdieb scolded her rude departure.

Her legs buckled awkwardly as she raced down the hall to her office. She slammed the door shut behind her and sank to the cold floorboards.

Her fingers ached as though they’d been jammed. It reminded her of her adolescent growing pains—of soaking, curled, in hot baths and the aftertaste of Advil bitter on her tongue, her mother’s long fingers pulling through her wet, curly hair, reassuring her that the boys would catch up to her height, that she wasn’t a “freak.” She felt the familiar itch of the stretch marks that lashed across her back and around her thighs—a crossed dark lattice. She remembered the eyes on her, everywhere she went—the staring, their gazes tickling up her neck. She remembered waking at slumber parties to find games of tic-tac-toe played in the crosshatch of her scars. Every dry itch of that pull of skin brought fresh humiliation. And now she felt it on her hands, her face, and neck. It felt as though her flesh was a shrinking glove, curling her fingers to her palms and holding them there.

Panting, she held her hands up to the light. Her knuckles twisted as the skin pulled tighter. The grooves of her knuckles split, the fissures like small gaping mouths from which erupted bone upon bone. She shrieked at the sting of it and tried to close the split flesh by straightening her fingers, felt the pressure grow, pulsing under her nails—saw the white of bone pale like blisters at the tips of her fingers. She stretched her fingers further and the skin burst, springing back along the protruding shafts of bone, curling back like a blooming flower. Her fingernails scattered around her. Each breath, deep and ragged, felt as though it contained less air than the one before.

There’s something in those jars. Something wrong. She remembered the prick of the bone spurs, the blood in her gloves. Careless.

She struggled, shaking, to her feet. Blood dripped from her twisting fingers to the dingy floor. She reached long, tender, bone-tipped fingers into her pocket, moaning as the rough fabric scraped against the exposed nerves, and pulled her lab keycard out. This hurts, hurts, this hurts… but not as much as it should. Half her brain was a hum of panic, while half observed, fighting the adrenaline for scraps of logic.

The hallway was empty. It was still early—no one was in their offices yet. She limped around the door and down the hall, catching herself against the wall as she stumbled, crying out when her bones clacked against the plaster. What is happening to me? The metatarsals of her feet strained against the leather of her shoes.

She fumbled with the keycard at the lab door, dropping it, scraping it from the tiles with her bone-tips. The bones; I need the bones; I need the marrow. She brought the card to her mouth and used her lips to hold it to the sensor. The light flashed red. The door handle stuck, unmoving.

They’ve changed the locks. Dread washed over her, almost enough to erase the pain in her hands, her face, her feet and knees. There was only one other place she could study the jars. Only one place that might have an answer about what was happening to her.

The thought of the cave was like an endorphin balm. She needed the cave.

Her knees left damp patches of blood along the trail behind her. She held her lantern clenched in her teeth. Her long fingers slid through spaces between the rocks, gripping them, hauling herself more easily than she had the day before—all her weight pivoting on the levers of her long bones. The pull of the cave was so strong it felt as though it lifted her up the mountain. When she reached the top of the rise where the cave gaped open, her bones had grown so tall that she had to fold herself unnaturally to enter. She rolled inside and lay on the floor, shaking violently, shrieking as more bones popped out of her jaw and hips, spraying blood across the ancient amber bones and ochre drawings. I’m contaminating the samples. She nearly laughed at her impulse to preserve the cave art. Die somewhere else. You’re making a mess.

Her hands, feet, face continued to erupt—her legs and arms extending until they were difficult to place. She tried to stand and fell over her own long legs, as she had when she was fifteen, trying to dance.

She felt eyes on her, then—angry and hungry—and turned toward the cave entrance, expecting to see Henri, maybe even Dr. Knochdieb. The opening was hidden in shadow, as if night had fallen as she lay on the floor. Shingles of bone growing from her face obstructed her view. But still she felt watched. Then the darkness moved toward her. She scrambled back, long limbs flailing against the rock and pushing her farther away from her lantern. As she squirmed toward the back of the cave, the neon white light disappeared, as if draped in cloth.

She skittered deeper into the cave, tapping with her long bones to find her way. She passed an alcove, and remembered the painted figures marching on the monster. She grabbed for the bones on the shelf and hurled them into the shadow. The pressure abated—drawing back, a flinch—a blink. The pile dwindled till she came to the skull, and remembered the jar. The sacred marrow. She reached into its mouth, to the intact orb of stone, and slipped it free—clutched it to her chest as she threw the skull, the final bone, into the shadow. It fell back, just enough to free the glow of her lantern. She crawled toward the openings at the back of the cave. She remembered the chamber maps, vaguely—what Henri had let her see of them. One chamber led to the bear cave and exited onto the southern slope above town. The other led to a chasm. She couldn’t remember which was which. I can’t think; why can’t I think anymore. It was as if the bones pulled the thoughts from her head.

She slid her long legs into the hole just as darkness drowned the lantern again, and the shadow moved toward her, all thousand eyes fixed on her bone helmet as she dropped from the chamber into the narrow passage beyond.

She slid, fell, branching fingers clutching at empty air, then landed on a haystack of bones in a frenzy of fracture and splintering. Dry, ancient bones shattered against her armor. Three of her long fingers snapped. The stone jar had crushed against her chest, the sticky paste inside smearing her with its scent. She coughed a scream.

The eyes were all around her, stripping her, driving through her armor, under her skin. The old dry bones did nothing to slow it. These weren’t ritual bones. They weren’t marrow bones—these bones had already been drunk dry. She found the warm twigs of her broken fingers, phalanges five inches long—she could smell the meat in them, rich and fatty. Life itself, reborn over and over, the factory of longevity. She slid the bones through the small holes in her skull mask and wrapped her lips around the jagged edges, felt the needle-like texture of their surface prick at her lips. She sucked at the marrow. It slid over her tongue, thick and creamy. Her pain faded. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness on all sides. She threw her empty bones at the shadow and it fell back, giving her room to see and breathe.

The sinkhole was a trash heap of abandoned remains. Eyes were etched deep into the walls as far up as she could see, as though the monster slept here under its own watch. Above her, the shadow swirled like a cloud of bats, all pupil, wide and dark. She slid her long fingers into the carved grooves and began to climb. Her overlong arms and legs quivered under the stone weight of her growing bone armor. They gave, and she plummeted back to the bottom, snapping more protrusions.

She sucked more marrow from her freshly broken digits, and her strength increased—the pain faded further. The fragments continued to drive back the shadow. The marrow from the jar smeared across her chest made her itch again, and she felt more stretching, more calcium armor growing with a deep bass rumble deep in her core. She began to climb again. When she weakened, her body growing too heavy even for her strengthened hands, she put a finger in her mouth and bit down, breaking it off with her teeth and sucking at it, drawing more strength, more ammunition against the monster. When her fingers were stumps just long enough to press into the grooves of the stone, she broke away pieces from her face—thick wings of bone from her eyes and jaw, ’til her head was free again but for the jagged edges of broken bone at the tattered eruption points. Her face a mask of ivory needles.

She reached the top and slithered back through the opening into the catacomb chamber. Her lantern was there, the monster no longer between her and the exit. The exposed nerves in her body sang with pain again in the open air of the chamber.

The beast emerged from a crack in the rocks. Its gaze buckled her knees and dropped her to the cave floor as she turned to face it. It bubbled up through the narrow vent, its vision multiplying as it filled the cavern.

Ashley’s bones bled from fragile, ragged fractures. There was nothing left to throw. Her bones weren’t growing fast enough.

She edged to the cave wall and reached into an alcove, running her fingers over the ritual skeletons till she felt the familiar curve of a skull, a jar. She pried it out of the jaw and brought it to her mouth. The neck of the jar shattered between her teeth and she drove her tongue into the opening, lapping at the gritty paste inside. Her body quaked. She screamed as bones burst from her, jutting from her hands, feet, and face. The shadow lurched, and she pitched an alcove bone at the monster. It hesitated, rushed forward.

Ashley scrambled back. She reached into the next alcove and claimed another jar, sucked its contents down, and grew again. Sheets of bone from her eye sockets crept into her periphery, growing across her face. She raked long fingers toward the shadow, swiping at it. She felt it blink—a momentary release from its boring gaze.

She danced on long toes across the narrow chamber to the other alcoves, and the last jar. More marrow, more bone, less darkness. Her ribs crisscrossed in front of her, a shield over her soft, bleeding center. She charged the monster. She glared into its gaze, eye to eye to eye, until it sank back through the crevasse, back to the eye-walled pit, its vision winking out, leaving her in only natural darkness. She drove her ossified fist into the stone above the fissure, pounding it into grit, her hardened hands like hammers glancing off the slick stone till it crumbled. The opening gave and the ceiling fell, thundering, sealing the side chamber shut—like the jars, like the bone closing over Ashley’s face.

Her rapid breath flowed back at her in the confines of her outer skull. Her vision narrowed to the width of a single finger. She reached through the small hole and tried to pull at the bone, to break herself free. The skull mask clamped shut on her fingertip, growing over it, trapping it, shutting out all but a little light. She screamed inside her skull and the sound bounced around her ears. The expanding lattice of her ribcage lifted her off the floor.

Her breathing slowed. Cradled in her bones, with her own soft breath against her face, her panic settled into calm. It was quiet inside her bones, and no one could see her. Not the monster with his thousand eyes or Henri through his camera lens, or the thousands who had stared over the years at her height, her scars. She was hidden. Shielded by armor of her own making.

They’d find her, though, she knew. Later. Long after her life was gone. She’d be a curiosity—a national treasure: the woman inside of a bone cave inside of a cave of bones. A freak. They’d take her bones away and seal them in jars. Study them. But the monster was gone. And so was the sacred marrow. Except for the sample in the lab. The open jar with its rich odor, its inescapable pull toward the cave. Perhaps, exposed, it would fall to dust. Perhaps, exposed, those who laid eyes on it would become monsters. Maybe covered with bone, maybe covered with eyes.

The last seams of her skull plates squeezed tight—only slivers of light slipping through and dancing across the inside of her skull like figures on a cave wall. All she could see was her own darkness, her own shadow, and the only eyes were hers. Nothing and no one looked back.