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Authors: Libba Bray,Cassandra Clare,Claudia Gray,Maureen Johnson,Sarah Mlynowski

Vacations From Hell (21 page)

BOOK: Vacations From Hell
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Just then the door to the church banged open. The old-timers blocked the exit with their shovels and lanterns. Mariana’s mother spoke sharply to her daughter, and Mariana answered in English.

“We won’t stop, Baba. This is the future. In the hundred and thirty years since the village stopped the sacrifice, things have only gotten worse. It’s time to start again. Our generation will have everything.”

The tavern keeper grabbed hold of Mariana’s wrist, but she broke his grip easily. “Uncle Sada, you can’t stop us. You should thank us, instead. We are saving the
village,” Mariana insisted.

“You will curse us all,” he answered back in English, surprising me.

The old-timers rushed them then, but there weren’t enough of them, and they weren’t strong enough to stop what was happening. The younger ones held them back easily. “Now we go to the lake,” Mariana said.

The group pushed us through the village, the old-timers following, pleading. We left them standing on the other side of the wall. They looked worried, like parents sending their kids off to prom instead of cold-blooded ritualistic murder.

Dovka pulled us after her into the forest. If we slowed, she gave the rope around our waists a sharp tug, and we’d stumble into one another. Fighting back was out of the question. The night was warm and oppressive. It pushed its hands against our lungs, made us sweat as we trudged through the forest in a clump. Somebody started singing. The Stones. “Sympathy for the Devil.”

“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name…”

There were a few giggles, like this was a fraternity prank, a bunch of kids on their way to outsmart their friends in some goofy one-upmanship. I even tried to tell myself that—anything to rationalize what was happening. But then I’d remember the razor at John’s throat, and the terror would come over me again. The singing got louder, and Vasul shushed them. John’s lifeless body was slung over Vasul’s shoulder. We carried on in silence, the
lanterns lighting the way. The lake with its top hat of fog came into view. Dovka stuffed our pockets and shirts with heavy stones and pushed us into the cold, black water.

“Go out farther,” Mariana called, holding a gun on us. We stumbled backward until only our heads were visible. “That’s good. Now we wait.”

“I’ll n-never sit in the student union studying,” Isabel stammered through tears. “Never go to a frat party or date an Irish boy named Declan.”

“Guys named Declan are all assholes,” I tried to joke, but it came out hollow.

Baz had stopped praying. In the four years we’d been friends, he’d never been so quiet, so still.

Vasul and his friends laid John’s body on the ground.

“Why are we waiting?” one of the guys asked. “Let’s get this done.”

“We’ve made the offering. It’s up to The One to accept it,” Mariana said with finality.

In the distance I could hear the old-timers singing the old songs, skeletal melodies with nothing to disguise the despair. Dirges. My grandmother said that when her father had succumbed to the dysentery in the camp, her mother sang until her voice was ragged. Like that was the only thing left to her.

The night pressed on. The cold water numbed us, and Isabel’s teeth chattered. I tried to move my fingers just to keep the circulation going, anything to keep from
losing feeling or falling asleep and going under. At first, I counted silently, trying to keep my mind from going to dark places, but when I reached two thousand eighty-three, I couldn’t remember what came next, and that scared me so bad I stopped.

After a while Dovka got bored and started a conversation about remixes. Somebody chewed gum, offered the pack to the others. A girl slapped at a bug on her arm, flicked it off. It was all so ordinary. Just a to-do list that included murder. And I wondered what had happened, what flipped that switch in the human brain that allowed people to rationalize atrocities, whether it was racism or terrorism or genocide or drowning people you’d shared wine with, their pockets heavy with stones you picked up yourself and put there.

Under the water I felt Isabel grasping my hand, and I was glad for the feel of it. Seemed the only thing I could be sure of right now. “S-sorry I p-put that Celine Dion ringtone on your phone that time,” she said.

“That was you?”

“Yeah.”

“You suck.”

“Yeah.” She bit off her laugh when it became a cry.

Suddenly Mariana stood at attention, motioned to the others. “It’s happening,”

The fog thickened and there was a strong smell, like sulfur, that made me feel as if I were choking. Bubbles appeared on the surface of the lake, and it was noticeably
warmer. Uncomfortable, like a sauna. The mud beneath our feet seemed to give way a bit. Baz was in only neck deep, but Isabel’s mouth dropped below the waterline, and I wasn’t far behind her. She snapped her head back, trying desperately to keep her nose free, and Baz and I pushed against her as best we could to keep her upright. But it was hard with our hands tied behind our backs. Isabel panicked and nearly brought us down with her thrashing.

“Hold on, Iz,” I said, nudging her up with my shoulder. “Don’t let her fall, Baz.”

In answer he gave her a boost from his side.

The mud gave just a little more, and the water swirled around us. Isabel was crying now and blowing bubbles, coughing out water.

Mariana and the others were like ghosts on the bank silhouetted by ravaged trees. “Necuratul, Necuratul, Necuratul,” they chanted. Something was coming through the forest. I heard cracking sounds and the sulfur smell grew stronger. I could barely breathe.

I yelped as something brushed against me in the black water.

“What was that?” Isabel cried out.

The bump came again, pushing us forward this time. I stumbled and Baz yanked on the rope, keeping the three of us upright. The movement was everywhere at once. The wind picked up.

“Vengeance,” it whispered.

Something bumped me again. Then we saw the heads rising from the deep, dark lake, the dead eyes circled in shadows, the open mouths where maggots and small snakes crawled. They surged past us to the bank, and the fog shifted again. It was hard to see. The forest echoed with screams. Shouts. It wasn’t English, but I didn’t need a translation. It was the language of fear.

“C-come on!” I tugged on the rope that tied me to my friends. Our pockets and shirts were still heavy with stones and our limbs nearly frozen from our time in the water. Every step was tough going. We stumbled out of the lake and fell to the ground. Our bodies were too heavy to get far. I reached my fingers out and into Isabel’s pocket, pushing past the painful burn of the rope as it dug into my wrist. I only managed to pull out two stones. She tried to do the same for me but couldn’t reach. A sharp scream came from somewhere inside the forest, and my breath quickened.

“Go, go, go,” Isabel said, almost like she was willing herself forward.

“St-stand up. Toward trees,” I stammered. I was too cold to say much else.

We struggled to our feet and lurched toward the forest in a sort of step-hop. The fog was heavy. It gave us some cover, but it also hid whatever was happening inside its murky veil, and that thought had me hopping faster, forcing the others to keep up. A few feet in, we came to one of those sharp, dead trees.

“Lean d-down,” I said. I got close enough to use the rough edge of a limb to saw through my ropes around my hands, then I untied my friends.

“Oh God,” Isabel said, her eyes huge.

I followed her sightline, and through the haze I saw Mariana’s horrified face. Behind her the forest was full of the pale, long-dead children of Necuratul, half-eaten by vegetation and looking for justice. They advanced slowly, the bread crumbs falling from their mouths. They fell on Vasul, devouring him until there was nothing left. Then they turned to Dovka. She screamed and struggled as they dragged her into the lake, and she kept screaming until her mouth was filled with water and she disappeared beneath the murky surface. Mariana tried to run. She was stopped by several ghostly boys who held her tight. The hollow-eyed girl who’d led us into the forest that morning put her hands on either side of Mariana’s face. Where her hands touched, Mariana’s skin turned the color of putrefied leaves. She couldn’t even cry out as the rot spread quickly through her body. The dead girl blew gently, and Mariana’s decaying body disintegrated into a pile of wet leaves that were trampled by the feet of the dead.

I could hear screams in the fog and make out the voices of the old-timers. The tavern keeper stood at the edge of the clearing, shouting to the younger kids. They ran to him, and he motioned for us to follow. I reached for Isabel, who grabbed for Baz, and then we were forcing
ourselves to stumble-run, our fear working hard to overcome the heaviness of our soggy clothes and numbed legs. With the screams of the others still echoing around us, we kept our eyes on the hope of his lantern. Pretty soon the lights of the village were close. The wind picked up again and I got that prickly feeling on the back of my neck. The forest glowed with a greenish fog; it thinned, and I saw that the dead were coming after us.

“The soul,” they whispered. “Give us the soul.”

The village was in view. The old woman who guarded the gate was shouting in words we didn’t understand and throwing salt everywhere. The kids ran ahead, and she pushed them inside the gate. I looked back as behind us the tavern keeper cried out. He’d slipped and fallen, and the hollow-eyed ones were almost on him.

“The soul,” he gasped out. “Must burn.”

“Poe!” Isabel shrieked, pulling me along.

We raced inside the gate and the old woman closed it with a bang and sealed it with salt. In the forest the tavern keeper screamed. There was no chance of saving him.

“Holy shit!” Baz shrieked. The three of us were running with the rest of the villagers for the church. “What the hell was he saying, Poe?”

“The soul must burn,” I repeated.

“The hell does that mean?”

“The goat’s head.” Isabel gasped. “The Soul of Necuratul.”

There were more screams. The salt didn’t stop the dead. They’d eaten the bread. They had the power now, and they were coming.

“If we burn it, does this end?” Baz asked.

“Only one way to find out,” I said.

Isabel was the fastest. She bounded up the hill to the ancient church and had the door open in track-star time.

“Come on!” she yelled. I could hear the scuttling of those dead things coming through the village, could hear the screams of the old-timers who tried to fight them off without success. We reached the church and fell in along with some of the children. A few of the old-timers hurried after, but the whispering dark was bearing down on them. One of the old men from the bakery cried out as the dead showed their long, gleaming teeth and picked his bones clean. Two of the children struggled up the hill. Baz and I started for them, but we couldn’t reach them in time. That was when I thought I might lose it completely. We closed the door and sealed ourselves inside the gloomy church. Just us, a handful of kids, and Mariana’s mother against an army of the dead. They banged at the door again and again, and we backed away.

“Cut that shit out right now!” Baz yelled. It would have been funny if we weren’t completely terrified.

Mariana’s mother opened the door of the iconostasis and came back holding the goat’s head, which she handed
to me. As we were yelling at her to burn it, she was trying to tell us something but we didn’t understand. The kids did, though. They ran around checking candles, and I realized we were all on the same page, at least. Mariana’s mother went to help them look, while Baz, Isabel, and I stayed up by the iconostasis. One of the kids let out a shout when he found a lighted candle. The banging got louder, and then there was a terrible crash, and the dead were inside.

The hollow-eyed girl stepped forward. She spoke in both her language and ours. “Give us the Soul. The debt must be canceled.”

Mariana’s mother shook her head at me, her eyes wide.

“If you burn it, we are damned forever,” the dead girl said.

The dead surrounded the living children. Mariana’s mother looked from them to the Soul of Necuratul in my hands. She shook her head again, and the message was clear: don’t give them anything, no matter what. But that meant giving up on the kids. I’d already seen two kids die and I wasn’t watching any more go down.

“Here. You want it, come get it.” I held out the goat’s head.

“Poe. Don’t do it, man,” Baz pleaded. “Don’t give it to the funky dead people.”

“We’re a part of that now,” Isabel cautioned. “Our hair is in those braids.”

“We’re part of this no matter what we do,” I said. “If they can end this, then let them.”

The hollow-eyed girl took the goat’s head in both hands. She had us follow her into the iconostasis, where she placed the head on the altar and spoke over it in hushed tones. Color flooded the faces of the dead, and the shadows under their eyes faded. And then, with small, contented sighs, many of them disappeared into thin wisps of smoke.

Suddenly the girl stopped speaking. She seemed afraid. She backed away just as the altar caught fire, and something rose from the flames. It was a huge man, more beautiful than anybody I’d ever seen, man or woman. He had long black hair, skin like marble, and wings like an angel, but his eyes were murky as the lake where we’d nearly been drowned. His lips stretched into a cruel smile; his teeth were sharp. And when I turned my head just slightly, he seemed to have the head of some beast with enormous curled horns on either side.

“The debt is paid!” the hollow-eyed girl insisted.

“The debt is never paid,” the angel-beast growled in a voice that felt like thousands of flies crawling across my skin. He towered over us. Flames licked at the golden walls. The murals dripped paint, and I could hear screams inside those paintings. The dead who still remained began to melt like wax, puddling on the floor and running through the church. The girl screamed, and that was enough for me.

“Run,” I croaked out. “Go!”

We bolted for the doors and pushed our way out into choking smoke. Every part of Necuratul was burning down. Suddenly the hollow-eyed girl was in front of us. I pulled up short. But she motioned for us to follow, and she led us to the forest. Behind us we could hear the beast shrieking. The fire was at our backs and getting closer, and I was afraid the whole forest would go up, trapping us.

BOOK: Vacations From Hell
6.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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