“Price?” the Haruspex said. Lori heard the smile in its voice again. “What makes you think there’s a price?”

“Because there’s always one on the Nightway,” Edgar said.

Lori looked at the man’s prosthetic legs and thought of the price he’d had to pay for the beetles’ help in escaping the Vermilion Tower.

“Of course, you are correct,” the Haruspex admitted. “The price for knowledge gained here is a simple one. You must help me tend to the Garden.”

“What sort of ‘help’ would I have to do?” Lori asked.

“That will be revealed when all your questions have been answered,” the Haruspex said.

“That’s bullshit,” Edgar said. He turned to Lori. “You know that, right?”

“Maybe,” she said. “But what choice do I have? I need to know.”

“No, you don’t. You can come with me. You can run.”

It was a tempting offer. She had no way of knowing what would happen to her inside the Garden, or even if she’d survive the ordeal. And she had no idea what sort of price she’d have to pay for the knowledge she sought. Knowledge that she needed, even if she didn’t want it.

She thought of Aashrita’s headstone, rain running down its face, over her name and her birth and death dates.

“I have to,” she said.

Edgar looked at her for a long moment before nodding.

“Then it is settled,” the Haruspex said. “I have already prepared the auguries for you. All part of the service.”

Lori had thought both of the Haruspex’s hands had been empty, but now she saw the being clutched a long, wicked-looking knife in its right hand, the blade covered with old, dried blood, as if it had never been cleaned. Had the blade been there before? Had it just appeared? Really, what did it matter? It was there now.

She held the blanket tight around her as she began walking between the rows of crosses. The cloth did little to keep her warm, but she didn’t know if that was due to the temperature here or if it was caused by her fear. Either way, she wished she had a sweater. A warm jacket would be nice, too. Most of all, she wished she had some fucking shoes. The ground here was gritty and sandy, as she’d experienced elsewhere in this realm, and it hurt to walk on with bare feet. But that wasn’t the main reason she wanted shoes. It was so the flesh of her feet wouldn’t come into contact with any of the blood that had been spilled here, of which there was a copious amount. It made the sand clump together in a manner that reminded Lori of what litter did when cats peed in their box. The thought was so ridiculous she almost laughed, but she stopped herself. She feared if she started laughing now, she would never be able to quit.

The blood-stink was worse this close to the bodies. No, not bodies. People. They weren’t dead yet, although they probably wished they were. She knew she would if she were in their place. There were other odors here, too. A smell like raw chicken, which she assumed came from the victims’ exposed organs. The musky scent of shit and the ammonia smell of piss, both the result of crucified bodies expelling whatever waste remained within them. Another reason to wish she had shoes. The Garden wasn’t silent. People moaned and whispered, drew in slow, painful breaths, mumbled prayers to whatever gods might exist to put them out of their misery. But if there were any such gods, it seemed they weren’t listening.

The crosses were arranged in neat rows regularly spaced from one another. It felt like she was walking through some nightmarish version of a cornfield, except the stalks held more than just ears – they had entire bodies on them. She felt laughter threatening again, and this time she bit her lip hard, hoping the pain would help her hold it back. She tasted blood, and she thought once more about that time she was a child and had bit her tongue.

“That was really gross.”

The voice was so soft, Lori almost didn’t hear it. She stopped and turned in the direction she thought the voice had originated from. A girl’s voice, she thought.

There, two crosses to her right, hung a brown-skinned girl, nine, maybe ten years old. Like all the others in the Garden, she was bound to her cross with barbed wire, and her flat tummy had been sliced open, her innards splayed onto the ground at her feet. Flies crawled over her organs, infested her open body cavity, buzzed around her head, landed on her face, scuttled across the soft flesh there…. Despite her condition, the girl’s eyes were wide open and alert, and she watched Lori with intense interest.

Lori experienced no shock of recognition upon seeing the girl, but she did feel a sort of tickle at the back of her mind, along with a tightening in her gut.

You don’t want to do this, she thought. It was true. She didn’t. But she walked over to the girl and stood before her anyway.

“Do you know me?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” the girl said. Her voice was weak, but this close Lori could hear her well enough. The girl leaned her head to the right, then the left. Lori had the sense she was trying to draw her attention to something, but she didn’t—

Her gaze focused on the girl’s inner forearms, first right, then left. They were sliced open from wrist to elbow, the cuts deep. Unlike her abdominal wound, which bled freely, the blood around these cuts was old and crusted.

Lori’s head swam and her vision blurred. She took several steps back from the girl, her movements awkward, clumsy. She felt numb, disconnected from her body, and she thought she was going to faint. She fought to hold on to consciousness, and while for several seconds the outcome was in doubt, she managed to remain aware and on her feet. When her vision cleared, she saw the girl was now a young woman, probably in her late teens. Lori recognized this version of her, just as she’d recognized the previous one, but this time she was able to give her a name.

“Aashrita,” she said.

The young woman gave her a weak smile. “Yes,” she breathed.

Was this the real Aashrita, somehow brought back from the dead, or was it something that only looked like her? Lori hoped the latter but feared the former was the truth. She felt memories beginning to crowd at the threshold of her mind, screaming to be allowed in. This was why she had come here, why she’d gone to Aashrita’s grave in the first place – to get answers. All she had to do was allow the memories to come. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t a matter of choice, a mere exercise of willpower. She simply could not allow the memories in, knew if she did, they would destroy her. The mental struggle was too much, and pain erupted in her skull as a migraine flared to sudden life. It hurt so much that tears streamed from her eyes, and her vision narrowed to pinpoints. She had to get out of here – now.

She turned to flee, the blanket falling away from her naked body as she did. But she only managed a few hobbling steps on her bad knee before something flew over her head, came down around her bare waist, and started pulling her backward. She fought it, gritted her teeth, put all of her strength into moving forward. She reached down to take hold of whatever it was that had wrapped around her and felt something soft, spongy, and wet. She looked down in revulsion and saw that her hands were slick with blood. A cord of some kind pressed tight against her flesh, bumpy and pinkish-pale. It was a length of intestine, she realized. Aashrita’s.

Lori continued to move forward. Another loop of intestine wrapped around her left wrist, and yet another encircled her right. Still she fought, although her movements were almost completely restricted now. The intestines were slick, though, so if she could manage to wriggle free….

A last loop came down over her head and pulled tight around her throat, immediately cutting off her air. She tried to reach for the portion of intestine choking her, hoping to loosen it so she could draw in a breath. But her arms were held away from her body, and regardless of how hard she struggled, she couldn’t budge them. She was restrained in four places now – waist, wrists, and neck – and the intestine, flexing like a giant constrictor, lifted her off her feet.

When she’d been a kid, she’d read somewhere that together the human large and small intestines measured around twenty-five feet. That had sounded so long, and she’d found it hard to believe that all of it could fit inside a person. She had no trouble believing it now, though.

Aashrita’s intestines raised her several feet higher, turned her around to face the young woman and brought her closer until their noses practically touched. Flies now buzzed around both their heads.

Aashrita’s eyes bored into hers, shining with eager anticipation. “I’d like to say I don’t want to do this to you.” Aashrita’s weak voice was stronger now. “But that would be a lie.”

The coil of intestine wrapped around Lori’s neck began to squeeze tighter. Her lungs blazed with fire and her head pounded so violently she thought it was going to explode. Darkness crept into her vision, and she realized she was going to die – strangled by the internal organ of a girl she’d worked so hard and so long to forget. She was surprised by how little this distressed her.

I deserve it, she thought.

She fell into blackness, and there, in the great nothing, her memories broke free at last.

* * *

Lori sat on her parents’ front porch, right leg resting on a pillow her mother had brought out and put on a stool for her. A pair of metal crutches lay on the porch next to the chair. It was late afternoon in September, but the day was summer-warm, and she wore a T-shirt and shorts. No shoes. Despite the temperature, she had a fuzzy blanket draped across her legs. She didn’t want to look at the angry red incision on her knee, didn’t want to gaze upon the swollen, puffy flesh there. The knee throbbed with pain, but she’d discovered it was worse – or at least felt worse – when she could see the incision site, so she kept it covered whenever she could. It helped. Her pain meds helped more, and while she would’ve loved to take some now, her next dose wasn’t due for two more hours. She’d just have to tough it out until then.

Even though her meds had nearly worn off, she still felt spacy, and she sat looking out at the street, headphones in, listening to an Alicia Keys song on her MP3 player, and not thinking about much of anything.

After the accident during soccer practice, she’d needed to have a knee replacement, and now she had to wear a CPM – Continuous Passive Motion – machine to slowly move and strengthen her leg several hours a day, as well as doing physical therapy. At first, both had hurt like hell, even with pain meds, but the pain had continued to decrease as the days went by. At this point in her recovery, she didn’t use the CPM much, and she could get around without her crutches, unless she was tired or her knee started hurting too bad. She’d originally come outside so she could walk up and down the street and exercise her knee, as her physical therapist had told her to do. But once she’d gotten outside and felt the warm air, she’d said to hell with it and sat down on the porch and put her leg up. She was finding it increasingly difficult to stay motivated when it came to her rehab. Sure, she wanted to get back to the point where she could get around normally all on her own. But no matter how hard she worked, she wouldn’t be able to play soccer again, so really, what good were the painful exercises her PT wanted her to do? No matter how religiously she did them, she’d never be able to get back her full strength and speed. And if she tried to play, she’d risk screwing up her knee replacement, and she did not want to go through another operation and long recovery period.

So basically, her life sucked.

She’d sit out here for a half hour or so, and then go back inside. With any luck, her mother wouldn’t realize she hadn’t actually gone anywhere. Lori promised herself she’d go walking tomorrow, but she knew she didn’t mean it.

So she was in a dark frame of mind when she saw Aashrita coming down the sidewalk. Aashrita lived a couple blocks from Lori’s house, and while Lori only had one sibling – Reeny – Aashrita had four brothers and sisters, two of each, all older than her. She needed to escape the chaos in her house on a regular basis, and when she did, she’d walk over to Lori’s place and the two of them would hang out. It had been that way for the better part of a decade now, but Lori hadn’t seen Aashrita since the accident during soccer practice. Aashrita hadn’t visited her in the hospital, nor had she been over to the house since then. She had sent a get-well card, however, a small one that had come in a blue envelope. When Lori had opened it, it had begun playing music – soft and slow – in electronic tones, and it had contained a single printed word: Sorry, below which Aashrita had signed her name. Lori hadn’t replied. No calls, no texts, no emails. She’d been so damn angry at Aashrita that she hadn’t wanted to talk to her, see her, or even think about her.

So Lori was not pleased when Aashrita reached her parents’ front walkway, turned, and started walking toward the porch. Toward her.

If she’d had full mobility back, she would’ve gotten up from the chair, quickly gone inside, and shut the door before Aashrita could reach the porch. But she didn’t want Aashrita to see her awkward movements as she reached for the crutches and tried to get to her feet, so she remained seated.

Lori tried to read Aashrita’s face as she approached. She saw several different emotions there – fear, hope, anticipation, guilt, shame, defensiveness – all swirling together in an uneasy mix. Like Lori, Aashrita was also dressed in T-shirt and shorts, only her shirt was the one given out by the Oakmont Recreational Soccer League. Had she worn the fucking shirt on purpose, intending to mock her, or had she simply been unaware of the ramifications of wearing it to visit the girl whose knee she’d fucked up so badly it’d had to be replaced? Either way, it was a pretty shitty thing to do.

Aashrita came halfway up the porch steps and stopped, as if reluctant to come any closer. Maybe she felt she needed permission to step all the way onto the porch. Maybe she wanted to keep her distance to avoid getting an up-close look at the damage she’d caused to Lori’s body.