Death's Academy (14 page)

She swings her other leg over the windowsill and begins to climb down the trellis.

“Mal, I held him,” I say.

She stops and looks back at me, her eyes just peeking over the edge.

“I held Roger in my arms right before he died. They killed him, and they took him. I wouldn’t make that up.”

She waits for what seems like several minutes, her eyes studying mine.

“I’ll go down there until midnight. That’s it,” she says and dips out of sight.

I rush over to the window and see her drop the final few feet to the ground.

“Mal.”

She looks back up at me.

“Will you come back here after you leave the park? I want to make sure you’re okay,” I say.

She sighs. “Will you be awake?”

“I will. I promise.”

She gives me a curt nod and turns to leave.

“Hold on a second,” I say, reaching into my pocket. I tug my house key out and toss it to her. “Just come in.”

She catches the key, tucks it into her back pocket, and runs off.

I watch as she disappears around the corner. I glance up and down the street of my neighborhood. One of my shorty neighbors is mowing his lawn. A few houses down, a young boy teeters back and forth on his training wheels as he pedals his bike down the sidewalk. Seeing my neighborhood like this almost makes it feel impossible to believe what I saw at Larkspur Park. But I know what I saw, and I know they are coming … soon.

“It’s got to be later than that!”

I’ve been flipping back and forth between the shorty channels and the Hoodie Network all day. I don’t know what has been the low point today, watching reruns of “Pimp My Crypt” or actually sitting through three episodes of “Death Comes Gently,” a soap opera designed for people just like my mom.

I flip the channel to a shorty station, and a football game pops on. I yawn again. What a joke. Those shorties think they’re so tough wearing their cute little helmets and pads. If any of those guys got onto
the field during a professional skull ball game, they would soil their skintight pants and run home to their mamas.

I flip the channel back to the Hoodie Network and static fills the screen. I flip to another channel on the network, but it’s the same story.

“You gotta be kidding me,” I say and pull myself from the couch. I walk over to the TV and give it a couple of shakes, but nothing.

“Figures.”

My dad probably forgot to pay the bill, and we got shut off. I jab the remote at the TV a couple more times, but all I get are the shorty stations coming through. Boring!

My stomach grumbles. I’m hungry. I make my way into the kitchen and throw open the refrigerator door. There’s a ton of food, but nothing looks good.

“I wonder what kind of gross dinners my mom freeze-dried,” I say, walking into the pantry. There are twenty plastic bags lying across one of the shelves. Each one of them is labeled with “lunch” or “dinner” and a day. I grab one of them to examine the contents when I notice an envelope flutter to the ground.

I swipe it off the floor and see my name scratched across the front in my dad’s handwriting. It suddenly dawns on me that this is what he had been talking about earlier. This is what he left me!

My heart starts to thunder in my chest. I rip the envelope open and slide the paper out. It’s folded into thirds. I glide my fingers across it, almost afraid of what’s inside. I bet it’s the explanation of the
Queen
Suzanne
incident. I bet it’s the in-depth account of how it wasn’t really his fault. Maybe it’s even a quest. Maybe my dad needs me to solve the mystery of what really happened on the
Queen Suzanne
, and it’s up to me to find the proof that it wasn’t his fault.

I gently open the letter and peer at the handwritten words.

I read the letter in silence two or three more times to make sure my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me. Have you ever let go of a balloon before you tie its end and it sputters and figure-eights through the air before flopping pitifully onto the ground? That’s what just happened to my hopes. Instead of letting me in on the great secret or prodding me to help him clear our family name, he writes that sappy love stuff. He even ends it with that silly saying that is supposed to be over the entrance into Death’s Academy. I crumple up the letter and toss it at the kitchen trash can. It hits the rim
and ricochets off, landing in the middle of the floor. I shrug, grab a dark chocolate bar, and head back for the front room.

I flop back down onto the couch and click the TV off. I swipe a copy of my dad’s magazine
Outdoor Hoodie
and start flipping through the pages. I yawn a third time, and before long the words on the page start to wave in and out of focus. I lay the magazine on my chest.

“I’ll just close my eyes for a second.”

I can see Roger at the end of a long corridor. A heavy iron door with rusted bolts is creeping shut between us. I race forward, calling to him. I’m running as fast as I can, but I can’t seem to get any closer. The door scrapes shut with a
clunk
and everything goes black. I stop running and reach out my hands for the walls of the corridor. I feel their cool surface against my fingertips and move forward, letting them guide me.

Clop! Clop!
I can hear the sound of hooves against concrete scuttling behind me. I glance over my shoulder and two gleaming eyes peer back at me. I scream.

My eyes flicker open, and I catch my breath. I feel my couch’s familiar fabric against my face. I push myself up and blink, trying to acclimatize my eyes to the light. I jerk my head around looking for the clock.

“What time is it?”

Across the room, the clock glows 2:38 a.m. I jump from the couch and scurry toward the clock to make sure. I wasn’t mistaken. It says 2:38 a.m.

I look around wildly, half expecting to see Mal
somewhere in the front room, but I’m alone. I run over to the window and throw it open. I look one way and then another down the street, but everything is dead silent. I’m about to close the window when I notice a faint discoloration in the night sky above my neighbor’s tree. There is a distant plume of smoke rising to the heavens, coming from downtown.

“Wow, that’s got to be a big fire,” I say.

My stomach lurches. The Lock is downtown.

I sprint back to the couch and grab the remote control and flip the TV onto the Hoodie Network. A pulse screeches from the TV and words flash across the screen. “Emergency Hoodie Network: This is not a test.” I switch the channel and it’s the same ear-piercing pulse and the same message.

“They’re here! Mal!”

I race for the front door and just barely catch myself before I cross the threshold. The moderator is still on my ankle. I was mere inches from becoming a statue. I scream out in frustration and slam the front door.

Something must have happened to Mal. She would have sounded the alarm and then come here, I know it. I reach down at the moderator and tug on it with all my might, but it doesn’t budge.

“Maybe I can cut it off,” I say and rush to the kitchen. I throw open the drawers until I find the biggest kitchen knife I can. I carefully begin slicing at the moderator, but instead of cutting through it, the knife’s edge actually starts to peel away like an orange’s skin coiling into a corkscrew with each slice.

“What is this thing made of?” I grab another knife
and try with that one, but I get the same result. I throw it down in disgust. It bounces off the floor and lands next to my dad’s worthless letter. I sneer.

“Yeah, Dad, that really helped! Like usual, you’re an absolute waste of space!” I kick the crumpled up letter against the kitchen wall. “Guess what, Dad? Things are pretty bleak! But,
oh,
don’t you worry. I won’t forget, ‘Death is a beginning, not an ending!’ ” I say with as much sarcasm as I can muster.

Suddenly, there’s a jolt on my ankle and I hear a metal clank onto the kitchen floor. I look down at my ankle. The moderator has fallen off and is lying next to my foot, the red light no longer blinking.

I stare at it for several seconds in disbelief.

“Death is a beginning, not an ending,” I whisper. “That was the release code … Mal!”

I reach Mal’s house and pound on her front door for good measure, but I’m not surprised that it remains dark. Her parents are at the Reapless and Mal is a hostage or …

I yank open the shed and pull out the Hound-ariot. I point the tip of the arrowhead-shaped board toward the front of the house and thrust the iron handle into
place. I pry the hellhound whistle from the handle and give it two quick blows. No audible sound comes from the whistle, but it only takes a few moments to realize it has worked. The same wiener dog and poodle that came last time arrive at my feet.

I tug the hoops off the Hound-ariot’s handle. The thin steel chain extends from the handle to the hoops. I lasso the hoops around their necks. I jump onto the board. I’ve wanted to ride this thing since Mal zipped around the house on it. I wish I was riding it under different circumstances, but I’m still a bit stoked.

I grip the handle and say, “Larkspur Park!”

The poodle sneezes twice and the wiener dog flops onto his back haunches.

“Larkspur Park!” I yell with more force. The wiener dog yawns and scratches his ear.

“Come on! What’s going on?”

The poodle glances back at me and gives me a “you can’t be that dumb” look. I know those looks; I get them all the time from Mal. I smack the side of my head in frustration.

“The whistle, doofus.”

I lift the whistle close to my lips and with a commanding and regal voice, I say, “Larkspur Park.” I blow the whistle, and the wiener dog springs from his backside, and the two hounds take off.

The Hound-ariot leaps forward. I nearly tumble backward off the red platform but am able to grasp the handle at the last second. We blister around the edge of Mal’s yard and are out into the street. I can’t believe how fast we are going. My eyes start watering from the rushing air.

Thankfully, it’s the middle of the night. If any of you shorties were to see me, I’m sure I would be quite a sight to see. To your eyes it would look like I was being dragged on a scooter behind a fat wiener dog with its tongue hanging out of its mouth and a nimble poodle with cotton ball puffs for fur.

It only takes about ten minutes before we reach Larkspur Park. The towering trees and long shadows send shivers down my spine.

“Stop!” I command, blowing the whistle.

The Hound-ariot stops instantly. I curse as I fly horizontally over the top of the two hounds. As the ground quickly approaches, I realize I should have said “slow down” first. I crash headfirst and slide for much longer than I would like to. The whistle tumbles from my hand.

I peel myself off the road and give the two hounds a dirty look. I swear the poodle is chuckling at me. I dust my clothes off and pick up the whistle. Just ahead of me, tree trunks are splintered and bent like a herd of elephants have crashed through them. Deep tracks cut through the muddy earth, and many of the red brick pathways are cracked or shattered.

“Unicorns,” I whisper.