Death's Academy (4 page)

“Nebula, I’ve got a live one for ya,” Demien says.

“Oh yeah? He looks positively dangerous,” she scoffs. She lifts up her hand, and I see that each finger has been stuck into a separate Twinkie. She beckons me forward with a golden cake and then sticks the whole thing into her mouth and sucks it off her finger with a slurp.

“Gnam?” she mumbles in between chews.

“What?” I ask, looking from her to Demien.

She then makes a sound that I swear sounds like a charging hippo.

“Gnam! Gnam!” she grunts.

“She wants your name, kid,” Demien interjects.

“Midnight Smith,” I say.

Nebula swallows and smacks her lips a few times. She scribbles on a form she has in front of her. Her eyes flick up at me in recognition and then up at Demien.

“Yes, Obsidian’s son. Be nice,” Demien says.

She sneers and spits on the ground behind the desk. “Age?”

“Twelve,” I answer.

She looks me up and down. “Black hair, blue eyes, freckles.”

Now, I’m not one that spends all day in front of a mirror. But my appearance being described in these simple terms does a bit of a disservice in painting an accurate picture of someone who, in my humble opinion, dare we say, is a devilishly handsome guy.

I wouldn’t say that my hair is just black, but more of a tussled raven ebony. It has a nice natural sheen to it, and, if I condition it, you can practically see your reflection in either part. It hangs just below my collar and has a feathered curl to it. I have had many compliments on its gentle bounce while I am running.

Nebula is right; I do have blue eyes. I can’t really think of a better way to describe them. So we’ll leave it at that. But the freckles thing is way off base. Yes, I do have a smattering of—I’ve heard the term
beauty marks
—across the peaks of both cheeks, but they are faint and almost unrecognizable. To now have stated openly and written in an official document that I have freckles is bordering on defamation, slander, and libel.

“Height?” Nebula asks.

“Uh, five-one, I think,” I say with a shrug.

She gets the rest of my details and then motions with her head toward the back of the room. Demien leads me through another gate, and I almost collide with the largest hoodie I’ve ever seen. Usually we hoodies tend to be on the shorter and slighter side, but he was halo huge, with forearms the size of Christmas hams.

“Hey, Wolf,” Demien says and nods at the Goliath.

Wolf nods back and places his palm on the handle of what looks like a club hanging from his side. Usually I don’t have a hard time calling things for what they are, but this “club” is the size of a tree trunk and has jagged shark teeth embedded into the end of it.

Wolf notices my gaze and a nasty smirk crosses his lips.

“We’ve got ourselves a temp here,” Demien says and motions toward me. “He tried to perform an unauthorized death. Needs a scare, non-permanent, but something he won’t forget.”

“Sure thing, Demien,” a high-pitched voice responds.

I do a double take and look around to see where this helium-induced voice has come from.

“I’ll put him in with Pandora,” the mousy voice screeches.

I whip my head back around and shake it in disbelief. I stare at Wolf’s lips daring him to speak again.

“She should terrify him enough,” Wolf peeps.

I can’t help myself. It starts as a snicker.

“What’s so funny, boy?” Wolf squeaks.

I try, but that takes me over the edge. My snicker leaps to a full laugh, and I can feel the tears start to form in my eyes. I’m terrified of this ogre with a leprechaun’s voice, but it’s too much. The next thing I notice is Wolf’s meaty hand rise above me and come down on the top of my head. All goes black, and in my dreams I am transported to a world of rainbow rivers, purple meadows, and talking gummy bears.

After a few notes, I also learn that I am an exceptional tap dancer as I do a solo routine across a candy corn walkway. Don’t make that face; I’m dreaming. I suppose you’ve never had a dream that was a little on the weird side?

I feel a soft raindrop splash on my forehead. I look up and see puffy-cheeked clouds with tears of joy springing from their eyes. My dancing has touched them so much that they’ve become emotional. Another
teardrop hits my forehead, but with a bit more force this time.

I look up at the clouds and say, “It’s okay, guys. I don’t eat watermelons.” When I said it, it seemed a perfectly normal thing to say to a cloud. It doesn’t help; they continue to weep for joy, and another huge teardrop hits my forehead and knocks me forcefully to the ground.

I blink, and the clouds have disappeared. My head begins to throb. Through a fog I see rusted bars and a grizzly-faced woman leaning over me. Her hair hangs like greasy spaghetti clumps around her face. I assume she has eyes, but they are buried into her skull and hidden by deep shadows. She has a fuller beard than my dad, and a piece of boiled egg hangs tangled in wisps of her mustache. Her back curves like a question mark causing her head to stick out from her body like a turtle’s. A guttural sound escapes her throat, and she purses her thin lips. A chunky loogie drips down. Before I can move, it smacks me directly in the forehead.

“Hey!” I scream and jump to my knees. I’ve moved too fast, and my vision starts to swirl and flip. Everything starts to go dark again, but I grab one of the nearby bars and steady myself. My surroundings start to calm, and gradually the sensation of pitching and reeling as if I am in a sea storm tapers off.

I can hear the loogie-hacking hag chuckling at me between scratchy coughs. I nearly rip my shirtsleeve off to wipe away the pool of phlegm that has collected in my eyebrows.

“That’s disgusting!” I bark.

The hag is still laughing, but then without warning, she is attacked by a series of grating coughs that cause her to double over. She spits onto the floor and grimaces as she caresses her throat.

“You were singing, singing,” she wheezes. “Sounded like a dying animal!”

I look around. The cell is narrow but long, at least twenty feet. It has two sagging bed frames and a solitary chair that leans dangerously to the left. Rusted steel bars make up one of the long walls; the other three are made of ancient stone. Hundreds of etchings have been carved into them, mementos from former visitors.

Another cell lies parallel to mine across a wide walkway. It has identical furnishings, but seems vacant. I turn my attention back to my cell mate. She is still caressing her throat and eyeing me with a decayed smile.

“Gave you a scare, didn’t I!” she shouts.

“You were spitting on me,” I growl.

She folds her arms and cocks her head to one side.

“And that’s the thanks I get!” she says. “Suppertime coming up, coming up, and you were gonna sleep right through it! Where would you be then, I ask you? Sad
and starving, sad and starving! You’d be begging Pandora for a bite! No, no, I would say! Pandora doesn’t share her supper! Not with a starving boy, not with starving rats, not with nobody!”

With that, Pandora drops suddenly into a crouching position and begins caressing the floor like she was petting the back of some long-lost pet.

“Nobody, I say!” she yells, still fixated on the ground.

I try to take a step backward to create some space between me and the craziest old bat I’ve ever seen, but my calf hits the base of one of the beds, and I teeter.

“Nowhere to run! Nowhere to hide!” she screams.

I catch myself before I fall. “Why are you yelling?” I ask. “I’m right here.”

She blinks and sniffs once. She doesn’t answer; instead, she pulls out some strands of hair from her scalp and places them lovingly on the floor.

I navigate myself to the far end of the bed and sit down, keeping one eye on Pandora.

“Meat loaf and corn! Meat loaf and corn!” she yells.

“Ugh. I hate meat loaf,” I say under my breath.

Pandora stops pulling hairs out and glances up at me.

“More for Pandora then, yes?” she asks without screaming at me.

“Yes, you can have all my meat loaf and corn,” I say.

Pandora’s eyes mist over, and her face contorts into a hideous smile. Moving faster than her age should allow, she springs over and grapples me into a fierce bear hug.

“Get off! Get off!” I shout, trying to squirm away. Pandora must do a lot of working out in the Lock’s gym because she’s got the grip of an orangutan. Her arms are just about as hairy as one too.

I can’t break free. I nearly faint from her rancid breath, but just as I think I’m going to give up the ghost, she releases me. She doesn’t go far. She sidles up to me, nearly sitting on my leg.

“Love you! Love you, Meatloaf-and-Corn! So what did Meatloaf-and-Corn do? Whatcha do?” she asks.

“My name is Night.”

“No, nope, nopers, Meatloaf-and-Corn!”

“Whatever,” I say, scooting away from her but nearly slip off the bed. She won’t have it. She bounces over to sit right next to me. I try to get up, but she grabs me by the belt loop and tugs me back onto the bed.

“Talkity-talk now, Meatloaf-and-Corn,” she says.

I try to get up again, but I can tell she’s got a fistful of belt in her hand, and I don’t budge from my spot on the bed.

“I was practicing for my Death’s Academy entrance exam,” I peep.

“Bad Meatloaf, bad Corn. Offed someone illegally, did you, bad boy?” she asks with a grin.

“Not someone. A half-dead chipmunk and he got away.”

She lets out a machine-gun laugh and smacks her knee. A cloud of dust erupts from her pants, and I gag.

“Not very good, are you? Not very good! You’ll never get in, nope, nope, nope!” She laughs. Her
cackle doesn’t last long. She doubles over once again with a vicious series of coughs. I use this distraction to jump away and cradle myself against the far corner.

Her cough eventually subsides, and I brace myself for another encounter with this crazy hag. However, what she does next catches me off guard. Tears spring from her eyes and she smears them away with her dirt-caked serape, or poncho, or whatever that mustard-yellow piece of clothing is that she’s wearing. The cloth is so dirty that it paints mud around her eyes, making them look even more sunken in than before.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that she isn’t pawing all over me, but this whole crying thing is a bit unnerving. A sob erupts from her chest, and she scoots herself on the bed so I can only see her quivering back.

Against my better judgment, I speak. “What’s wrong?”

“No, not going to say,” she says between sniffs. “Okay, I’ll say … I remembered Pandora taught at Death’s Academy, before you, before this,” she croaks and starts to wring her hands together. “Pandora was famous. A great professor, she had many students. More than she can count.” She folds her arms tightly into her chest. “Not anymore.”

I don’t think my eyebrows could get any higher on my forehead. There is no way that this batty creature could have ever taught at Death’s Academy.

“Pandora wasn’t always this way. Pandora wasn’t
confused and silly,” she says and then pushes herself up from the bed. She stands more erectly than before and brushes her hair from her face. Taking measured steps, she reaches the cell bars and grasps them with her hands.

She glances over at me, a bit of light from the flickering torch illuminating her eyes. They are red from crying but seem steady and in control. She looks away and places her forehead on the iron bar.

“What happened?” I ask.

She doesn’t move from the spot, but releases an exhausted sigh.

“Pandora taught a lot of classes—Death Construction, Animal Languages, the Art of Lightning Strikes—but her favorite was History of Death,” she says with a voice that seems to be carried from far away. “She taught about the first Death and the origin of his power, also about the beginning of Death’s civilization. She loved to teach.”

Without meaning to, I can feel myself ungluing from the corner of the cell and taking a step toward her.