Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (16 page)

All Marlo knew was that her own personal interest rate couldn’t possibly fall any lower. Next to the question, she wrote the name of the new teacher’s aide:

She started playing around with the letters, like they were the word puzzles her mother did on Sunday mornings.

I wonder if she still does those dumb puzzles?
Marlo thought, still scribbling on her paper.

When you think of all the stuff Mom could have been doing, solving really important puzzles, like how she got stuck living in Kansas raising two creepy kids …

Marlo’s pencil fell from her hand and rolled gently off her desk and onto the floor. She looked up at the new teacher’s aide. “Amandi” looked up from her reading. She grinned—a smile that, in its feigned warmth, became so cold it made Marlo shiver—then gave a dainty wave.

25 · CROSSiNG JORDAN

ACROSS THE STREET
from the Barry M. Deepe Funeral Parlor, Milton fidgeted. His hands, balled into fists, burrowed deep inside the pockets of his navy blue Wind-breaker.

Why am I doing this?
he wondered anxiously.
This doesn’t feel right at all. But I’ve got to get that stupid package
.

“Milton!” Necia called from across the street.

Milton could feel Lucky rustling around nervously in his new backpack. It typically took Lucky weeks to break in a new backpack, achieving that perfect ferrety musk-to-hairball ratio, but this bout of agitation was unusual even for his normally high-strung pet.

“What is it?” Milton asked, peering inside. Lucky wriggled out of the bag.

“Lucky!” Milton shouted as his ferret scurried behind a nearby tree. “I don’t have time for this.”

He knelt down to his apprehensive pet.

“What gives?”

Lucky hissed and spun in place several times before lying down in a tight, unyielding coil.

“Milton!” Necia yelled. “C’mon! They’re waiting for us!”

Lucky’s nostrils flared in rapid pulses, tasting the air wafting from the funeral home and not liking its flavor.

“So I take it you’re staying,” Milton said to Lucky, who—in polecat protest—had succeeded in becoming a dense, immovable object.

Milton sighed, took off his jacket, and laid it over Lucky.

“I’ll be back in a flash,” he murmured comfortingly. “Promise.”

Milton rose, took a deep breath of crisp evening air, and crossed Jordan Avenue to the other side.

Necia grabbed Milton tightly by the hand, smiling fervently into his face. “I knew you’d come.” She grinned triumphantly. “It’s destiny.”

“It’s blackmail,” Milton snapped back. “So, I’m here. Can I have my package now?”

Necia smelled of bleach, lemons, and hospital astringent. She jutted out her sharp chin. Her smile became faraway and cold.

“No, silly,” she said with a dismissive shake of her head. “You don’t get it back
that
easy.”

She tugged him toward an alley on the side of the
funeral parlor. Beyond an overflowing Dumpster was a purple door with gold lettering: KOOKs
DOWN BELOW
.

“You’ve got to come down for a visit first,” she squeaked. “We’re dying to lead them … I mean,
they’re dying to meet you!”

Milton cocked his eyebrow at the sign. “KOOKs?” he asked.

“The Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship,” Necia replied while yanking him through the door. “The subordinate chapter of the lower Midwest sect.”

“How fitting,” Milton commented dryly as they descended a dark, narrow staircase. Each tread of his sneakers and Necia’s hard leather hospital shoes caused the wooden steps to groan in complaint.

A man wearing a blue robe and a stern expression guarded another door. The gold star on his lapel featured a pair of crossed swords. The man’s most prominent fashion accessory, however, was his bloodstained butcher’s apron.

“Greetings, Junior Knight Necia,” the man said.

Milton’s eyes widened, fixated on the man’s grisly smock. Necia let go of Milton’s hand and stared at the brown-red splotches.

“Did I miss something?” she said weakly. “I thought I was supposed to bring the sacri—” Necia looked over at Milton with discretion. “The guest,” she concluded.

The man looked down at his apron. “Oh, this?” he said, stretching the blood-blotched fabric. “We just got
a shipment of Rhode Island Reds at work. Good, meaty birds. I had to hurry, chop-chop, to get here on time.”

Necia smiled and clasped the guard’s hands.

“Greetings, Sentinel Shane,” she replied as the two raised their arms together, like a bridge.

Together, they chanted,
“Life is but a passage, a bridge forged of breath …”
They bowed their heads and released one another’s grasp.
“… but it was made to pass through us; each span shall fall in death.”

Their arms hung limp at their sides. Milton felt that he should have chosen this moment to flee, but he was entranced by this creepy rendition of “London Bridge Is Falling Down.”

“They are waiting for you,” Sentinel Shane said. He stepped aside and opened the door for the two children. The harsh, reflected echoes of amateur singing stumbled out of the basement, as if each note were desperately rushing away from the others.

“Though darkness be over me, my rest a stone, in my dreams I’ll be, nearer, my lord, to thee,”
the Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship warbled as one.
“I run across the overpass that cleaves the sky, suspended by sacrifice, all to be, nearer, my lord, to thee, nearer to …”

The congregation’s song screeched to a halt as all twenty-six eyes were trained on the two children who crept into the basement.

The church smelled of warm candle wax, pungent incense, and years of accumulated dust and mold. It
also reeked of vinegar and sweat, like someone had been cooking up a batch of fish and chips in an old sneaker.

“Welcome, Junior Knight Necia,” a sharp-featured man said, standing stiffly at the altar and extending the billowing arms of his robe outward in greeting. “And welcome, Milton, to our hallowed temple.”

A whisper spread across the congregation, traded in hushes and gasps. The word whispered was “bridge.”

“Who … who are—” Milton stammered. He stopped suddenly. “How do you know my name?”

The man at the altar smirked. “I am the Guiding Knight,” he answered, straightening his purple velvet scarf affectedly. “And all of us here know the name of he who will hasten the Last Days and lead us over his back to our rightful place.”

“So may it ever be,” murmured the small congregation of hooded acolytes crowding the basement church.

Milton furrowed his brow and looked from knight to knight in hopes of catching the faintest glimmer of sanity.

26 · SACRiFiCES MUST
BE MADE

“YOUR CHURCH, YOUR
religion … what does it mean?” Milton spluttered. “Why am I here?” He looked over at Necia, who grinned like a fisherman holding her day’s prize catch.
“For real.”

The Guiding Knight stepped off the dais. The congregation parted as he floated across the scuffed wooden floor to Milton.

“Life is a labyrinth through which we would wander blindly were it not for an all-powerful hand that guides us on our way” the Guiding Knight explained, offering words unencumbered by practical meaning. “This hand belongs to a supreme being that makes and manages the Omniverse, where everything is possible—for the 14,217 people who believe in it, that is. The Knights of
the Omniversalist Order Kinship is founded on the belief in the existence of the everlasting everyplace and that life is but the appetizer for the sumptuous feast that is death. For death is an all-you-can-eat buffet of interminable joy for the righteous, a place where all answers lay …”

“Lie,”
corrected Milton. “And believe me, the only thing death holds is more questions. Plus, there’s no feast, unless you like undercooked liver and overcooked brussels sprouts.”

The blue sea of robes rustled nervously, as if an ill, foreboding wind had whispered across it.

“Well,” the Guiding Knight said flatly, “it doesn’t matter so much whether you believe in us but whether we believe in
you
. And we do. Because you’re the Bridge to the other side. And you’re going to help prepare our paradise, turn down the sheets of the Omniverse that awaits, uncork the champagne, and put metaphoric mints on the pillows.”

Milton stared at the congregation, aghast. “You’re all a bunch of kooks,” he murmured.

“Exactly,” the Guiding Knight replied.

Milton backed into a tall, dark knight, standing just behind him.

“Don’t try it, dude,” the knight said, placing his bronzed hands on Milton’s shoulders. “You’re, like, our ticket out of this gnarly dump and to the totally bodacious place beyond.”

The Guiding Knight nodded his head toward the dais. “Warder Chango,” he ordered. “Take the Bridge to the altar.”

Necia followed closely, nervous and excited. It was then that Milton saw the marble altar. It was like a Stone Age twin bed, with a pillow at either end, one in the upper left-hand corner, and the other at the lower right-hand corner. Next to the altar was a nightstand supporting two obsidian knives. Milton had a feeling that this bed’s purpose wasn’t for spontaneous catnaps.

The Guiding Knight joined him at the dais.

“You have entered our portals, therefore submitting to your destiny,” the man said as he rolled up his robe’s billowy blue sleeves. “Trust your guide and she will lead you safely through.”

Necia joined Milton’s side. “It’s okay, Milton,” she said, interlacing her bony fingers with his. “We’ll travel to death together, hand in hand, and prepare the Omni-verse for the End of the Last Days and the Beginning of the Next Time.”

Milton shot her a filthy sideways glance and tore loose from her grip.
“Trust your guide,”
he spat. “Like how I trusted you when you were all fake-nice and blackmailed me here, knowing it was a one-way trip.”

Necia turned to Milton, quivering with crazed conviction.

“But you’re the Bridge!” she yelped. “The One! Our Savior!”

Milton shook his head with disgust. “I’m not a bridge, a savior, or the one,” he said, his eyes bugging out behind his thick glasses. “I’m just a socially awkward eleven-year-old who died, spent some time in the underworld, and came back by harnessing lost souls in a big balloon made of shirts and pants. You’re just a bunch of losers who can’t cut it in this world, so you think you’re going to be all that and a bag of chips in the next. Believe me, I’ve seen death, and it sucks.
Big-time
. And you’ll
still
be losers.”

There was a profound, awkward silence, like when someone farts in an elevator.

“Junior Knight Necia,” the Guiding Knight uttered. “Do you merit the honor we confer, and are you worthy of the trust with which we are about to invest you?”

Necia crouched and bowed before him, her forehead nearly touching her pointy white-stockinged knee. “Yes, Guiding Knight,” she murmured. “I will do all within my power to add to our order.”

The Guiding Knight turned and grasped the knives, hefting them in his hands to gauge their weight. He cleared his throat. “O, may the Golden Bridge thus be lengthened, becoming the brighter for these two spans, and be strengthened for the great work we strive to do,” he declared as he lifted the two knives into the air above his blue silk hood.

He nodded to Necia, who rose, took off her long wool coat, and straightened her candy-striper jumper.

“Junior Knight Necia,” he said, “as the scriptures state, you and the Bridge shall cross together, he offering the means for you to travel back and forth, to alert us that paradise awaits.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Milton protested, as Warder Chango’s strong hands pressed down onto his trembling shoulders. “Death is serious. It’s not an amusement park where you get your hand stamped and come back whenever you want. I was a mistake…”

“Nothing is a mistake,” the Guiding Knight replied with flecks of foam on his tight, quivering lips. “Everything happens as it should. Warder, the time is nigh.”

Warder Chango looked at the clock on the wall. “Actually it’s only a quarter till.”

The Guiding Knight sighed with the supreme frustration that only the leader of a death cult can fully know. “Warder Chango …
dude …
what I meant was …”

Just behind the Guiding Knight, Milton saw the gift that he had come here to get in the first place, on a table draped with velvet and sitting between two long purple candles. Without thinking, Milton stamped the foot of the warder behind him with all his might.

“Oww!!” Warder Chango yelled. “I’m
totally
gonna lose that nail again!”

Milton rushed to the table, grabbed his gift, knocked over the candles, and leapt off the dais. He
charged through the robed congregation—who were paralyzed like tranquilized sheep—and to the basement door.

“Milton!” screamed Necia, seated on the altar. “Stop it! You’re ruining everything!”

Just as Milton’s hand touched the doorknob, the door flung open. On the other side stood Sentinel Shane, all six feet six of him, glowering down at Milton.

Milton staggered backward. The room spun into streaking snapshots. Stunned, lost faces. Glittering gold badges. Purple velvet sashes. And the smell of incense and burning velvet.

“Fire!” screamed a woman waggling her finger at the burning velvet table.

The congregation churned in confusion. The Guiding Knight stepped to the edge of the dais, extended his arms, palms outstretched, and addressed his panicked flock.

“In the world where death comes not, may we realize the happiness of serving thee forever,” he bellowed. “Now someone grab that miserable little boy so I can lie him out and slice him open!!”

Lay
Milton thought as he searched the hot, cramped basement for a way out.

“So may it ever be,”
chanted the congregation as they circled Milton. Then, to the left of the dais, Milton saw a door, slightly ajar. He dashed toward it. Someone
grabbed his backpack, stopping him cold, his sneakers squeaking on the floor.

A small Filipino knight held tight. “Be a good boy and sacrifice yourself!” the man scolded.

“Don’t let him go, Chaplain Charlie!” a willowy woman screeched.

Milton tried to jab him with his elbows, but the chaplain held him at arm’s length.
Lucky for Lucky
, Milton thought,
he had the good sense to stay put. I should have listened to him
.

Tucking the gift under his arm, Milton wormed himself free of his backpacks straps.

Chaplain Charlie flew back onto the ground, clutching the backpack that, a half-second before, had been worn by the boy known to him as the Bridge, the supposed key to the man’s everlasting soul.