Page 32 of The Lies We Steal

The skull logo is transparent on my face, giving me a masked effect. The white skull covering my cheek bones and eyes. I tilt my head to the right and to the left, the skull seeming to move with me. A cruel representation of what I am on the inside.

Dead. Hollow. Empty. Merciless.

Except I don’t need a mask to be any of those things. I just am.

Briar Lowell may think she isn’t afraid of me because I haven’t given her anything to be scared of.

Not yet anyway.

Briar

“How did you find this place?” I whisper naively, shaking my head at my ignorance.

I mean it’s not like the dead can hear me, not that I’m aware of anyway.

When Lyra asked if I wanted to see something cool, I thought she meant a secret passageway in the university halls. Which wouldn’t surprise me, I’m actually determined to find one. This place is too ancient not to have one.

I was not foreseeing hiking at least two miles into the woods behind the Rothchild buildings. We’d walked behind the buildings, sinking into the imminent trees that swayed and keened.

The fog was right above our heads, settling lower and lower as the sun had begun to set. Melting into an obscure sunset of dusky purples and bitter oranges. We were walking near the coast, I could hear the crashing of waves against rocks nearby and smell the saltiness that coated the air. It was so powerful, I could almost smell it above the rich scent of wet earth and sharp pine.

It wasn’t until I saw the tombstones sprouting from the mossy ground did I really start to worry. There were ten, maybe twelve graves marked with chipped and damaged markers, that were so covered in foliage and dirt you could barely make them out.

But that wasn’t even the most unsettling part.

“My favorite part about Oregon is the bug population. When I was young, my mom would let me play in her garden and it never failed that I would return with a ladybug or some type of insect. So, when I was out looking for Scolopocryptops sexspinosus in the summer before school started.”

Even though it was somewhat unusual, I found it so fascinating how much she knew about bugs. Lyra was so intelligent that it sometimes made me jealous. The way her brain absorbed facts and spit them out from memory. It was remarkably impressive, yet she was so unaware of it that she didn’t come off as a know it all. Just a girl who enjoyed talking about creepy crawly things.

I furrow my eyebrows, following her through the spongy marsh, “English, please.”

She giggles, “Bark Centipedes. I needed one to finish my centipede specimen box and they are usually found in or around rotting wood. There had been a huge thunderstorm, so I went looking for fallen trees and I discovered this place.” She holds the straps of her book bag staring up at the towering building in front of us.

It was gray, gloomy, and looked like it might try to swallow me up if I wasn’t careful. The thin alloy gate that acted as a door hung sideways off the hinges, and I saw a path of spiders slither along the top and it made my spine do a very odd shivering motion.

“Is it a church or…?” I asked, gazing up at it with her, a look of uncertainty on my face the complete opposite for her. She was beaming, exhilarated as she tugged on the metal gate, prying it open with impatient fingers.

“It’s a mausoleum.”

Oh, fuck that. Absolutely fucking not.

I could see nothing but pitch-black darkness inside, it didn’t even look large enough to hold bodies, let alone a bunch of them. The structure couldn’t have been any bigger than a small shed or work building.

Lyra shifts to me, waving her flashlight teasingly, “Come on, don’t be a wuss. It’s cool inside.”

Then she’s off disappearing inside the dark, with a tiny glow to guide her way. My feet stay grounded outside. My brain trying to assure me that this was a disastrous idea, but my curiosity was greedy.

I looked up at the ominous clouds, the sky melting to black and I started to feel a few chilly raindrops on my skin.

“I’m going to regret this,” I mutter to myself, tossing my hood up onto my head and following after my strange friend in search of whatever it was we were coming here for.

I pull my own flashlight out, brightening a set of concrete steps that went narrowly down. I took a breath, my first step was taken cautiously trying to make sure I didn’t fall.

Midway through, my Converse caught something, making me jerk forward. I hastily grabbed at the wall beside me, wincing as my hand encountered the damp surface. Steadying myself for a moment and wiping my hand on my jeans, I continued down the steps until I reached the bottom.

Lyra had already begun turning on oil lamps, I’m assuming she’d left them here from her earlier visits, illuminating the room in a dim, warm glow. The smell was awful. It was moldy, dank, and rotting wood clung to the air like death.

The ceiling was much taller than I expected, the walls on either side of me layered with crypts, some of which were smashed open and I was not about to check if the body was still in there. An unnecessarily large cross laid against the wall in front of me and in the center was a rectangular fashioned, granite table where Lyra laid all of her things down on.

---