Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family

Lena heard the voices just as she was locking the back door to the restaurant, and a sickening pit of despair opened up in her stomach as she realized she'd left it too late this time. She should have moved on a week ago, maybe even two... but after Carlos quit, Luis didn't really have anyone to close up for him anymore, and she couldn't leave him to work double shifts. She'd convinced herself that maybe they were gone for good this time, maybe they'd given up or she'd managed to shake them somewhere along that 1,600 mile drive from Chicago to Copper Basin, Nevada... but then she heard the whispers again.

"Tu nobis quasi signum in nocte..." The soft, sibilant chant echoed down the alleyway, creeping into Lena's ears like a spider crawling inside her head, and she instantly ran the opposite direction. It wasn't easy-her long brown legs stumbled and splayed, yearning all on their own to turn back and investigate the sound of the voice behind her. She had to consciously think about moving each one in turn, dragging her body away from the source of the chant like a mother pulling a reluctant toddler out of the toy aisle.

Lena knew even before she reached the mouth of the alley what she would find there, and she steeled herself to listen as she sprinted closer to the street. She tried to tune out the words, "...et respondendum est, vocatio, et aditus..." and just listen to the direction they came from. She couldn't get this wrong, not when they were this close on her heels; if she turned the wrong way and ran straight into one of the Family, there was a good chance she would never get away again.

But the sound echoed strangely through the fog-god, how had Lena missed the fog? Was it there when she took out the trash twenty minutes ago? Was it already gathering in wisps and cloudlets when she arrived at the restaurant for her shift? She knew it didn't matter, not when they were this close and she needed to run run run, but she couldn't stop sifting through her memories to find the warnings she'd missed. She cursed under her breath, gasping out profanities that she didn't have the energy to shout.

When she got out to the street, Lena kept right on running, praying to whatever deities had protected her so far that there wasn't a car coming. She was in luck; Copper Basin wasn't exactly the kind of town that had heavy traffic at night. She sprinted across the street and stumbled along the sidewalk, the voice of the Family following in her ears. "...ut suscipat te, dicimus tibi cum spiritu pietatis..." She told herself not to listen. But she didn't listen to herself.

The fog was getting thicker now, turning the familiar landmarks Lena had spent months getting to know into vague, menacing shapes. The chant came out of the mist from all directions, one voice after another joining in with, "Tu exaudies nos, et morari, ubi vos vires existo instituo." She couldn't tell whether it was just the weird acoustics of the shrouded night playing tricks on her ears, or whether they were circling in on her, closing in from all sides, ready to end their pursuit once and for all.

Lena decided not to wait to find out. At the next storefront, she stopped just long enough to bind up her long, dark, curly hair into a ponytail before pulling her way up and onto the awning that just about every business in Copper Basin used to keep the desert sun at bay. From there, she carefully scooted over to the nearest window sill and pulled herself upright, then reached for the window above it. The whole time, she tried to picture one of the Family climbing after her with their gaunt limbs and heavy velvet robes. It seemed impossible. She hoped it was.

When she reached the roof, Lena took a moment to try to get her bearings. It wasn't easy; the thick fog and the darkness made her feel like she was on an island in the middle of an endless sea of mist and shadows, surrounded on all sides by the whispering chant that made her brain itch and throb with insistent need. "Mox, te currere et non amplius, Mox, nos erit ut unum." The words slipped into her head with an oily familiarity, like the way Mitch Farmer thought he could always put his hand on her shoulder every time he walked into the restaurant. Lena shuddered, trying to shake off the lethargy that gripped her exhausted limbs and concentrate on her whereabouts.

She knew that the patch of mist directly behind her was the street. On the other side of the street was the restaurant. Her car was parked out front of the restaurant. If Lena could go across the roofs to the street on her left, she could maybe get past the Family-her mind went numb with terror for a moment as she pictured a dozen skeletal figures in long purple robes, drawing closer and closer to the building until they surrounded it with their bodies and their insistent droning voices. She forced the mental image away. She could get to her car. She had her keys. She could drive away.

She might be able to send for her stuff this time. If she mailed Luis back his keys and sent him a letter telling him what happened-not the truth, oh god no, never the truth, not in five years of running, but at least a plausible excuse-he might be able to talk to her landlord and use her last paycheck to settle things up and ship her stuff to... Santa Fe? It seemed like a good place to hole up for a couple of weeks. However the Family found her, Lena had never seen them travel faster than a slow walk. She could get ahead of them again.

And again. And again. Before Chicago it was Columbus, and before Columbus it was Baltimore, and before Baltimore it was Charleston. A trail leading back and back and back to a dilapidated and half-forgotten occult library in Savannah, Georgia, where Lena Hermosa was doing research for a debut novel that never happened because of a book that she picked up off the shelf at random. Or maybe it wasn't random. Maybe none of it was by chance. Maybe her whole life had been leading her to that day, that hour, that moment when her fingers brushed against the dry, dusty pages of the Tome of the Skeletal Family and they... noticed.

Lena realized she was woolgathering, her mind drifting back to a safer past to avoid the terrors of the present, but it seemed horrifyingly easy to disassociate from the moment and sink into her memories. She heard the chant, repeating, "Civitatum in obedientam, simul in deditionem," but all it did was remind her of the first time the Family found her, a month after she took the book home and read it in fascinated horror. The whispers were far easier to ignore then, the robed figures only glimpsed singly at a distance in the crowd. She thought that it was her imagination. Too much time spent inside her own head, worldbuilding an urban fantasy about a Latina woman and an immortal cult of gaunt, hungry... vampires? Zombies? Liches?

Five years later, and she still didn't know. And she didn't want to find out tonight. Lena slapped herself hard across the face, snapping herself out of her fugue state, and broke into a dead sprint across the roof. She couldn't see the ledge until it was almost on her, the fog was so thick, but she'd spent five years training her body to move like her life depended on it. She made the jump without hesitation, flinging herself out into space to tumble onto the next building over.

The landing didn't feel good. The building she landed on was a good three feet shorter, and Lena felt something pop in her shoulder when she came down in a graceless heap. She didn't have time to figure out what was wrong, though, not when she could hear the voices behind her murmuring, "Donec nostra familia perfecta est." She forced herself back to her feet, counting on adrenaline to mute the pain, and raced to the edge of the rooftop. She had to be on the hardware store now, which meant the street was just in front of her, and-

She looked down. The mist swirled for a moment, broken by a gust of eldritch wind to reveal a line of robed figures. She could see them looking up at her, their skin tight against their skulls under the hoods, their eyes jet black and faceted like crystals. They smiled, whether because they knew that they were closing in on her or because their lips were stretched too far to make any other expression, and began their chant anew. "To nobis quasi signum in nocte, et respondendum est..."

Shit. Street was out. Lena could already feel the tug of the whispered chant in her head, swirling around inside her mind like the fog filling the air around her. She knew too damn well that if she stayed here too long, listened too closely, then her limbs would twitch and jerk like a puppet on a string with the desire to come closer and attend patiently to their words. Until she was right up against that gray, dusty flesh, nuzzling those dry cheeks and agreeing with every syllable. Until they swept in around her in a circle that grew tighter and tighter, pressing in on all sides. Until she could feel her body desiccating, evaporating in a rush of ecstasy as her skin tightened around her bones...

Lena gulped. She could feel her body swaying, the pull of gravity somehow stronger than it should be at the edge of the roof. She would survive the fall, she knew. She wouldn't survive what came after.

Desperately, she flung herself backward, the smack of the roof against her back snapping her back to reality once more. She stood up and ran for the building on her right, already thinking ahead to her next moves as she leaped again across the narrow space between rooftops. She could outrun them to the far end of the block, get past them and draw them away from her car before circling around and doubling back. Once she had her car, she was home free-she had almost a quarter of a tank of gas, that would get her to Battle Mountain or even Winnemucca, and from there she could drive south for hours without stopping. She'd just-

The Copper Basin Courthouse loomed up out of the fog, a full two stories higher than the buildings around it. Lena was already in mid-air by the time she saw it.

She smacked hard into the wall, grunting with pain at the impact to her injured shoulder. Her head swam, but Lena understood that passing out right now meant death as a best-case scenario. Instead, she reached out with her good hand and grabbed for a window sill, digging in and flailing with her legs to try to find some kind of purchase on the wall. For a brief, giddy moment she thought she had it, but then her hand skidded across the rough wood and her body pushed off the wall and she barely had time to twist herself around to absorb the impact before she slammed to the ground twenty feet below.

Lena felt something give in her ankle-not bad, not permanent, maybe not even requiring a doctor but definitely not something she could walk on. She limped and hobbled her way to the mouth of the alley, hoping against terrified hope that she'd gotten just far enough, that she could move just fast enough, that the pain resonating through her entire body would help her to resist the soft, whispering chant of, "Vocatio, et aditus, ut suscipiat te," that filled the air around her... but no. She could already see the shadows in the mist ahead. Whimpering, Lena turned and stumbled the other way.

She could hear them behind her, their voices rising in triumph as they chanted, "Dicimus tibi cum spiritu pietatis..." Were they getting louder, or were they getting closer? Was Lena slowing down from pain and exhaustion, or were the whispering figures sapping her will that much more with every halting step? Lena smacked her injured shoulder, trying to force herself to concentrate on anything but the Family's endless, droning murmurs, but a wave of sick agony told her that was a terrible idea. Passing out from pain wasn't going to help her do anything.

She made it to the alley behind the courthouse, and almost dropped to her knees in sheer mortal dread at the sight of almost a dozen robed figures slowly marching down the alleyway toward her in either direction. She'd never seen so many Family members, never even knew so many existed, but... but time had only made them stronger and swelled their numbers, and now Lena knew they were coming to claim her for their own. Too late too late too late too late, her thoughts yammered in the back of her head, but Lena had come too far to give up now.

She limped straight ahead, trying to remember what the courthouse backed onto, and where she'd come out when she got onto the street. Did she need to turn right to get back to her car? Or left? Or did it even matter? She just needed to get away. Away from the gaunt, skeletal figures, away from the droning chant of, "Tu exaudies nos," that sapped her strength and emptied her mind and left her crawling along the pavement in a last futile effort to escape. She could figure it out later. She just needed to keep going, just needed to... to...

They were in front of her. Of course they were. Lena crawled to the building next to her, struggling to pull herself up the sheer brick wall, but her body refused to obey her commands and she knew at last that she had nothing more to give. She turned around and looked up at the figures that surrounded her, swinging her fist wildly, determined to fight to the end... but her wrist was caught effortlessly in the cool grip of skeletal fingers. And the voices kept whispering.

"Et morari," they said, their sibilant words insinuating their way into Lena's brain. "Ubi vos vires existo instituo." Her aching limbs went numb, the chant tranquilizing her mind into sleepy stillness as her face went slack and her eyes began to stare blankly into the faceted orbs of the figure that held her. She twitched once, a last gasp of a struggle that had begun half a decade ago, then went motionless.

"Mox, te currere et non amplius," they chanted in unison, their voices united in welcoming devotion. "Mox, nos erit ut unum." Lena heard herself whispering along, and the dawning pleasure made her smile in helpless, mindless joy. Her smile widened, spreading into a rictus grin as her skin began to pull taut. The figures closed in, pressing around her on all sides. She felt warm in their embrace, the velvet somehow enrobing her as if her clothes no longer existed.

Lena couldn't remember why she'd run for so long. She couldn't remember anything anymore. Even her name began to slip away, identity melding into the comfortable familiarity of the crowd around her until she could no longer tell where they ended and she began. The pain and terror she felt simply melted away like flesh, leaving behind only the perfection of skin and bone. They were her only family now. Her only Family. Hers. Just as she belonged to them, they belonged to her. And soon, they would find others.

"Civitatum in obedientiam, simul in deditionem, donec nostra familia perfecta est," she chanted, her voice identical to her siblings. Her hair fluttered gently to the ground, cast off like autumn leaves. She didn't need it anymore. She only needed one thing now, to belong and to be belonged to, and she finally understood that it was hers. Forever. And all she could think to do was share it.

She looked at her siblings. They looked at her. And with a single nod of agreement, they began the walk to Luis' house.

THE END