The Book of Bad Things (25 page)

“H
AL!
”
P
ING CRIED OUT
. Then, suddenly, she too dropped with a gasp into a void.

Cassidy froze. She could make out a ledge several feet ahead of her, past which a vast nothingness rippled like a dark pool. “What happened?” Joey whispered, frantic. “Where’d they go?”

“I dunno. I dunno. What do we do?” Were her friends hurt? Or worse? And was this her fault? She wanted to close her eyes and disappear. A simple wish. Down here, with the suctioning breeze and the voices and the vibrating air, it almost seemed possible. A dim glow illuminated the dark space beyond the ledge, and Cassidy brought herself back into her body. “Hello?” she whispered. “Is that you, Hal? Ping?”

What if it wasn’t them, but something else that knew how to glow in the darkness? She listened to Joey’s breath behind her. She hoped he still held onto the stick he’d taken from the driveway; she’d lost her own without even realizing it.

She eased toward the light and peeked over the edge. To her relief, she saw Hal and Ping lying at the bottom of a steep slope of even more garbage. They both whimpered in pain.

Ping sat up slowly, glancing up from where she’d fallen. She grabbed the flashlight that Hal had let go of during his tumble and shined it into Cassidy’s eyes. Cassidy waved for her to shine the light away, then slowly climbed down into what appeared to be an enormous room, a spherical cave, the edges of which were almost too far to properly discern. “Come on, Joey,” she said. “They’re okay.”

She began to make her way down the slope, stepping on stuffed animals, a surfboard, an antique writing desk. And bones. More bones. She tried not to think about that as she slid the last few feet to where Hal and Ping had landed. Seconds later, Joey crawled toward them from out of a blanket of darkness.

“Everyone all right?” Hal asked. The group huddled together in a makeshift nest of cardboard boxes, chips of wood, and the remains of some sort of flag.

Ping swung the light around, trying to get a sense of where they were. But the light wasn’t powerful enough to reach the ceiling of this new space. And in front of them was only more junk.

“What now?” Joey asked. “Is this it? The center of the vortex?”

“Looks like it might be,” said Ping. “But where is the … the
beast
?”

“It’s quiet,” said Cassidy, glancing around blindly.

“Too quiet,” said Ping.

“The humming stopped.”

Joey stood, shoving the point of his stick into the rubble at his feet. “Maybe it’s gone?”

The four listened to the new silence for a moment — only for a moment, because seconds later, the silence was broken by a rustling sound that came from all around them.

Ping swung the flashlight ahead to find that the piles of garbage were shifting. Or rather, Cassidy understood, something
underneath
the garbage was moving.

“G
ET BACK!
” Cassidy shouted. “Toward the tunnel!”

Ping illuminated the path up the slope from which they’d come. But the dark patch where they’d emerged was filled with a round, pale face. Owen Chase reached out toward them with two filthy, fat arms, blocking the way. Cassidy didn’t need to see the others behind him to know that they were there. They hadn’t been chasing them in order to catch them. The dead had been pushing the group forward and had now sealed the tunnel shut. The exit was filled with their bodies, their grasping nails, their gnashing teeth.

Hal screamed. Everyone turned to him. Ping’s flashlight showed the loose papers and fabrics near their feet were being dispersed by the large thing that traveled just below the surface of debris. It moved through the garbage in a long line, coiling, swirling, spiraling, and roiling the mess all around them. The group backed into one another, forming a trembling column of flesh in the middle of the sea of waste.

As Cassidy watched the movement at the cavern’s floor, she noticed a length of the creature breach the surface, its body pitch-black and armored with luminescent scales like a giant snake. She remembered what she’d seen at the college library, the thing moving through the next aisle. The beast had sent a vision of itself to her when she’d been alone in the rows of bookshelves, when it had instructed her to
Bring it back!

It. It. She was
it
. The beast imagined her as a mere object, something to own, to keep.

Its resonant voice filled the darkness now. This time, however, it shouted harshly, again and again:
Mine! Mine!!! MINE!!!

Cassidy couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She waited, paralyzed for the beast to fully emerge from below, wrapping its coils around all of them, squeezing. It wanted their lives, or at least their corpses. They were stupid to have come here expecting a chance to survive, to beat this thing. They would die in this fetid pit, and no one would ever know. Not Janet or Benji. Not Rose or Dennis or Deb or Tony. Not Levi Stanton. Not even her mother, Naomi, who might finally care what had happened to her only daughter, if only for curiosity’s sake. None of them would learn the truth.

Vaguely, she thought she heard someone calling her name, and only when Joey elbowed her in the ribs did she understand that he was trying to help her remove her backpack.

Of course! The pendant!
The seal of protection.
She’d forgotten the reason they’d come. Was it possible that the beast had stolen the thought?

She slipped her arms out of the straps. Joey held up the backpack. Cassidy undid the zipper and reached inside, feeling around for her book at the bottom. She pulled it out, opened to the page where the small package had been folded. The plastic baggie fell into her hand. Inside, the pentacle glistened in the ghostly glow of the flashlight. She tucked the notebook under her arm.

Her heart shuddered.

The object, wrapped up in plastic, looked so ordinary against her skin. This tiny thing was going to save them, the town, the world?

“I
DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO
,” Cassidy said.

“I guess we should tell the beast what it means,” said Ping, glancing briefly at the ever-shifting floor. “Then offer it up.”

Tell the beast?
How would that work?
Umm, Mr. Beast. I have something to tell you….
Cassidy blinked, shook the ridiculous image away. Okay, Ping may be right, but would the beast listen?

MINE!!!
Its voice rippled against her brain, filling the cavern … or her head, she couldn’t tell which.

Her hands trembling, Cassidy ripped open the baggie. The tiny links shivered as she lifted the chain from her palm. The star swung from it like a pendulum. Back and forth. Hypnotically. She tore her gaze away and turned toward the ocean of darkness and garbage.

Mine!!!

“Y-yes,” she muttered, trying to find her voice again. She spoke to the air, unsure where to focus. “This is for you.” She held up the chain with one hand.

“Say what it means,” Ping whispered. “What it represents.”

“Th-the star is an … ancient symbol of protection,” Cassidy said, remembering Ping’s own words and the passage from the library book. “This pendant will seal up this space and stop your … curse. It is our gift to you.”

The humming began again, that pleasure sound. Its tiny, pervasive vibration filled her body, every cell. Cassidy gagged.

Miiiiine,
the voice whispered, as if finally satisfied.

Clutching the star pendant in her left hand, Cassidy swung the necklace back over her shoulder, then whipped it forward.

Ping followed it with the flashlight beam as it landed several dozen feet away, disappearing into the piles of trash. The thing beneath the garbage thrashed and swiveled, struggling to find the new gift amongst all of its others. After a few seconds it seemed to settle down next to it, pulling its coils in close, as if quieted after a meal.
Mine
, it whispered again.

Cassidy waited for something profound to happen. A clap of thunder. A flash of light. An earthquake. A booming voice. But nothing came.

In fact the room was as still as they’d first found it.

“I think it worked,” said Joey.

“Let’s get out of here,” Hal said, stepping away from where Cassidy had tossed the star.

But back up the slope, Owen Chase howled at them from the tunnel entry, reaching toward them with his shattered fingernails and bruised skin.

“If the curse is broken,” Ping whispered, “then why is Mr. Chase still awake?”

Owen clutched at the sides of the tunnel, finally pulling himself forward. He tumbled onto the slope, spilling end-over-end toward them. His mother-in-law, Millie, appeared behind him. She too began to struggle out from the tight space.

“That’s the thing,” Cassidy said, her voice flat, her eyes wide. “I don’t think the curse is broken.”

Owen skidded to a stop several feet away, lifting his large round head, staring at them with milky eyes. He opened his lips in an oozing snarl.

“What do you mean?” Joey said, his voice rising, lifting the point of the stick to keep Mr. Chase at bay. The dead man swiped at Joey, lunging toward him. Joey whacked its shoulder. “You gave it that
seal
thing.”

“Yeah, I did,” Cassidy answered, distracted, scrambling away from Owen’s reach. “I guess it didn’t work.”

A
N AVALANCHE OF TRASH
spilled down the slope as Millie tumbled to the bottom. When she settled to a stop, she struggled to stand, to advance on the group. More sounds came from above. Ursula and Aidan were emerging from the tunnel as well. Soon, they too would be crawling down the incline.

Cassidy paid them little mind. She stumbled backward, twisting her ankle on something under her feet. When she’d righted herself, the group followed her, easing quickly away from the dead people.

The plan had failed. Their seal of protection was not going to protect them after all. Cassidy burned. How stupid could they be? The strategy had been flimsy, culled together from bits and pieces of magazine articles and a single article of academic folklore. Why had they thought that some random piece of jewelry would be powerful enough to kill an ageless evil beast, or to destroy what might be a portal to another world, another dimension where things such as ageless evil beasts existed?

Maybe if the pendant had belonged to them. Maybe if it had once protected any of them from danger. But that was the thing about objects — and people, for that matter — it takes time and effort to forge a relationship, to create experiences that become memories, for those memories to sink in, become lessons. To understand the lessons and use them to make choices. It was the choice that saves you. Or destroys you. Of course the pendant wouldn’t work. Their present had only been a piece of junk.

The four dead bodies rose from the makeshift floor, focusing their milky gazes on the four young, living people who cowered away from them.

Even though the beast was distracted, shifting in the garbage behind them seemingly entranced by its gift, Cassidy cringed, not wanting to be so close to it. But she stood her ground. So the pendant wouldn’t neutralize the vortex, but it might buy them some time. “When I say go,” Cassidy whispered to the group, “we run. As fast as we can back up the slope. We’re faster than these freaks.”

“Unless the dog is waiting for us,” said Hal, gazing past the dead toward the dark opening above them. “Up there.”

“And what about the rest of it?” Joey asked. “We’ll never be able to leave this place. The beast is still alive. The vortex, or whatever this place is, remains the same and so does the curse.”

“Joey’s right,” Ping nodded. She wiped at her eyes. “We can’t leave. It’s our … our duty to stay.”

Cassidy turned to find Ursula’s corpse staring at her. The dead woman moved her mouth, making wet, smacking sounds as if she were trying to speak. Cassidy figured she was merely chewing on her tongue. There were no words left in the thing’s empty head. The woman’s lifeless eyes, sunken in her skull, were so different from the shimmering orbs that Cassidy had encountered in her dream and at the library. Ursula’s ghost — her soul, what was left of the real Ursula Chambers — had led her here.
Come in
, she’d said. Why would the spirit have singled out Cassidy, to invite her inside the house when she’d demanded that so many others stay away?

A seal of protection
. To stop the beast, close the vortex.

The star pendant had meant nothing to Cassidy, but she’d been carrying something else that did. An object that, for the past few years, she’d had with her at all times, rarely letting it out of her sight, an object that she’d often placed under her pillow to protect her from panic, from anxiety, from nightmares.

The four dead folk stepped forward, swinging out their arms wildly, forcing the group backward, toward the hidden coils of the beast.

A
true
seal of protection. Cassidy had it tucked under her arm, pressed against her ribcage, next to her heart.
The Book of Bad Things.