Ignoring the rumbling of her stomach, she pulled her pipes from her bag and set them immediately to her lips. She didn’t want to look at these people, didn’t want to be able to picture their faces later. With the barest exhalation, a series of low, haunting notes floated out across the square. Immediately, the gentle murmur of the audience died away, and an eerie silence fell over the space, broken only by Erren’s lilting notes. Now, the music was building, growing more complex – a strange filigree of sounds, more than could have been produced by the breath of a single woman, perhaps – and the hush seemed to be breeding shadows. Despite the warm light of the early evening sky, pools of darkness were building at the feet of her audience, seeping out of the ground like oil. As yet, the people hadn’t noticed; they were too busy watching her. Their faces were still, faintly bemused, as if they didn’t understand what they were hearing.
Erren’s fingers flew over the tiny holes in the pipes, teasing out new sounds, darker ones. At the back of the crowd, a baby began to cry.
“What is happening?” someone said, but their voice was thick, slurred almost, as if they had just woken from a deep sleep. The shadows around the audience’s feet had bled together into one thing, becoming a kind of wide, dark stage between Erren and them. It was another thing Erren did not like to look at – that darkness was too flat, too unnatural under the good, sun-touched sky.
It was at that moment the first of the figures appeared. A bulge formed in the flat black stage, a crown pushing through to reveal a small, neat head. The girl had long, reddish hair, and she lifted her face up to the sky as if she had missed it, her thin lips parting to reveal small, yellowish teeth. Her skin was grey, and her eyes were empty sockets.
“What— What is…” The voice from the audience rose for a moment, struggling against the silence that had fallen over them, then fell silent again. The girl rose fully from the darkness and started to dance, twirling her arms around to the music, spinning on the spot. She danced as a child danced, and Erren guessed that she had likely been around nine years old, when she lived. Her dress was a drab brown thing but her feet were quick, and Erren thought it was possible she was even enjoying herself – she liked to tell herself that, when the nights were especially dark.
“Lizbet?” A woman with strawberry-blonde hair pushed abruptly to the front of the crowd, half-falling to her knees. “Gods help me. Lizbet?”
The music played on and another figure was rising from the black. This one came faster, as if he couldn’t wait to be free of the shadows; it was an old man, so painfully skinny that even Erren was shocked, despite everything she’d seen. Bones poked at skin that was a darker grey than the girl’s, and his knees looked swollen and strange, too large for the sticks they were supporting. Just like the girl, he had dark holes where his eyes should be. Despite all that he danced, his elbows thrust out and his chin held up. Meanwhile, the woman at the edge of the audience had shuffled forward, her arms stretched out towards the dancing girl, not quite daring to touch the black stage that lay between them.
“Lizbet, my sweet? What… What’s happening? Have you come back to us?”
The girl stopped dancing so abruptly it was as though she’d been struck. Her arms fell down to her sides, and she turned to the crowd, looking at them for the first time – or at least, her face was turned to them; she had no eyes to look at anyone. Erren’s fingers kept moving over the pipes, and the music kept coming. There was no stopping now.
“Mother.” Her voice was thin and reedy, a voice heard on the wind, half-imagined. “Did I like to climb?”
The woman lowered her arms. Behind the girl, the dead old man was still turning a jig, his long teeth bared at the sky.
“I… No, sweetheart. You liked to sit with your dolls, to talk to them. You didn’t like to get your dress dirty.” The woman’s voice broke, and Erren saw that there were tears pouring down her cheeks. “You were a sweet girl, my little flower girl.”
“Then why was I on that wall, Mother? Why was I up there at all?” She turned her head slightly, as if to address the slim, blond-haired figure standing next to her mother. The boy was rigidly still, all colour having drained from his face. “Perhaps you should ask Willem.”
The woman’s face seemed to collapse, and she turned to the boy next to her, but the girl was off dancing again, her slim grey arms turning and turning. By this time other figures were rising up through the dark, their eyeless faces tilted upwards to greet the evening sky, and the crowd were beginning to cry out, a desperate moaning noise, like children caught in a nightmare. One large man with broad shoulders and an unshaven face pushed his way angrily to the front.
“What’s going on here?” bellowed the man, pointing a meaty finger in Erren’s direction. “What are you bloody playing at with this… this abomination?”
Erren kept her head down and continued to play. The skinny old man, though, the one who had followed Lizbet out of the dark, turned to the large man.
“Abomination? A big word from you, Samuel, a very big word.”
The man – Samuel, Erren assumed – curled his hands into fists, his face turning brick red.
“Shut up! You’re not supposed—”
“My lad there, my Samuel,” the skinny dead man raised his hands, fingers splayed, as if addressing the whole audience. “When I got ill, too ill to walk, to feed myself, he locked me in his backroom and let me starve. Left me to piss and shit myself, yes he did, until I died, starving and covered in filth.” His grey lips peeled back in what Erren supposed might have been a smile. “Good, brave Samuel. All you kind neighbours who brought round stew and potatoes and bread for me? He ate it all himself. Yes he did. And when my cries became too bothersome, he tore up strips of cloth and stuffed them in his ears. I ask you, good people, who is the real abomination here?”
A muttering of anger from the crowd.
There were more. More dead men and women and children rose, and with each of them, a handful of painful secrets, devastating truths. The audience – their families, their friends – were unable to leave, rooted to the spot until each of the dead had been granted their say. Erren played all through the long night, her fingers and chest aching and her limbs cold, until eventually the dark stage gave up its last ghost, and as one they all began to fade with the rising sun. It wasn’t over for the living though; already, fights had broken out, punctuated with screaming arguments and tearful confessions, and revenge had been sworn half-a-dozen times already.
When it was done, Erren stood up, wincing at the flood of tingling in her numb feet and legs, and shoved the pipes back into her pack. It was time to move on.
* * *
It was days until the next settlement, and finally she came to a clearing in a forest where she felt she could stop. Shaking with fatigue, Erren built a fire with the first twigs that came to hand, and soon she had a smoky flame going – enough to heat up some water, drink a small cup of something hot. In her pack were a few strips of dried meat, and she dunked these in the water until they were soft enough to chew. She sat mindlessly, staring at nothing. After a while, the shady clearing grew lighter. Soft yellow motes of light floated down from the treetops, and a warmth began to crawl across the mulchy ground. Erren squeezed her eyes shut briefly.