My Friends Are Dead People (25 page)

“
Me too.”

She smiled. “I have loads of songs in
Hungarian. I have . . .” The dot of light by her ear made a squeaky
sound like a rewinding reel, “. . . two-hundred.”

Meesi became real still.

“
What?” I said.

“
I hear camera flashes
sometimes. They go off up in the corner – oh, there’s
one!”

I looked up, but saw nothing. Was she nuts?
. . . “I must have missed it.” My eyes fell onto a wall that was
scribbled with the mysterious phrase. “What does that mean?”

“
It . . .” she gasped,
embarrassed. Her ears flattened again, and she bowed her head. I
spotted another one on a nearby boulder.

“
Did you write it?” I
asked.

“
These are the quotes
bestowed on me by the wiskchickian witches. My foster care said it
to me when I was still human. I . . .”

“
We don’t have to talk
about it.” I saw that she didn’t feel comfortable. “We have to
find–” I began.

“
Dorian is here?” she
finally got out.

“
Yes, and Jacoby. Meesi .
. .”

She was looking me straight in the eyes.

“
I have to get you out of
here. We have to find them.”

“
Okay,” she said
meekly.

I looked around the big boulders. There was
no way out but the way I came in.

“
Can you psyclin us out of
here?”

“
No.”

“
Then we’re going to have
to scream for them. Alright?”

“
Alright.” She waited for
me to give the cue.

“
Okay. . . .
Ja-co-by!
” I shouted up
at the waterfall.

“
Jacoby!
” she echoed and turned to me
for my approval.

“
That was good. Let’s just
keep shouting.
Jacoby! Dorian! We’re down
here!
”

“
Jacoby! Dorian! We’re
down here!
” She took out a red marker and
drew a heart on her wrist, which had one already. She smiled and
went back to screaming their names.

“
Meesi, how did you get in
here?” I gasped, out of breath from all the screaming.

“
The tunnels. . . . Hey,
Jesse, have you ever had mud for supper?” She gave me a horrific
grin of chocolate-covered teeth. “It’s pretty good.”

My hearty laugh broadened her smile.

“
I did this once at Candy
Island. The waitress thought I was loony as a goon. I showed her my
muddy shoes, which is why it worked. She really thought I was a
weirdo. Chunky Chocolate or Almond Bundles work the
best.”

“
What are you
using?”

“
Almond Bundles. The
almonds look like little rocks. See?”

I nodded. “Why don’t we take the tunnel.
Because I don’t think this is working and I don’t think it’s safe
to keep screaming.”

“
Why?”

“
Because someone else
might hear us. So where’s the tunnel?”

She was hesitant to answer.

“
It’s behind one of the
rocks. I forget which one.”

“
We’re going to have to
get out of here. This is the worst place to be. We’re trapped in
here. Meesi . . .” I sighed, knowing I had to tell her eventually.
“. . . Jack killed Kala. He’s after the menalas. That’s why we came
looking for you. Jacoby wants to hide you and Dorian.”

“
He wants to kill
Dorian?”

“
He wants to kill all the
menalas,” I hastened to tell her. “And the tortics will probably be
here. Meesi, don’t be scared, Jacoby and Dorian will . .
.”

I couldn’t go on, having felt what she did.
A light breeze had crept inside. Meesi watched as her hair blew
toward the basin. There was something eerie about it. As it
strengthened the water was pushed to the wall.

“
It’s pulling us,” I
muttered, sliding down the basin. “What’s happening–”

The blistering wind shifted, and the water
began to spike upward toward the crevice, as though a huge vacuum
was above us.

“
Meesi!
” I shouted over the wind.

Meesi seemed lost in some sad memory. My
stomach hollowed out. I must have weighed an ounce. And then, we
were lifted off the ground and carried up to the crevice.

“
I don’t want him to kill
me,” cried Meesi.

As something hit my foot, I threw my arms
around some kind of root. Meesi was right next to me, holding fast
to the same root. Both of our feet pointed directly in the air,
blowing like flags in the wind.

“
I can’t hold on any
longer!” wailed Meesi.

The wind became even stronger, and Meesi
winced as she was pulled off. She clasped her wrist with the two
hearts drawn on it as she was sucked out. It wasn’t long before the
demonic tug yanked me off. I was going to die. Then, something
snatched my leg and pulled me into a tunnel in the wall. Meesi
stared at me intense and bug-eyed. The wind wasn’t as strong here,
and it was a lot quieter. We crawled down the sloping tunnel, with
me leading the way. I could smell the fresh air and the cold rain.
We were going to make it out of the mountain after all.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

JESSE IS LEFT
BEHIND

Meesi and I fell through a tiny hole in the
tunnel floor, landing in a rugged room with crusted old lamps,
three doorways, and dented walls like something big and bulky had
been thrown against them. Now what? And where were Katie, Dorian,
and Jacoby? Could they have left us and gone to Greenland? It was
way past the agreed-upon ten minutes.

“
So there’s no way for you
to transport us out of here?” I asked Meesi, who was standing stiff
next to me.

She shook her head.

“
Alright, this is what I’m
thinking,” I started. “Jacoby told Dorian and me we only had ten
minutes to look for you. If we couldn’t find you, we were going to
meet up in Greenland.”

“
But you found me,” she
said quietly.

“
Yeah, and before the ten
minutes were up.”

“
Let’s go to
Greenland.”

“
But we can’t get there
unless we have someone who can psyclin. So I think we should look
for them. What do you think?”

“
Let’s look for them,” she
replied, child-like, already getting a quick start and bumping into
me, thinking I had taken off. “Sorry.”

“
It’s okay. Do you know
what side of the mountain has the entrance? That’s where Dorian and
I entered.”

“
The left?”

“
I mean . . .” I sighed. I
was never good with directions. I could think of only one solution.
“To the right of the town’s road.”

“
Nail’s town?”

“
Yeah, Nail and
Nick.”

“
You know them? Are they
home now? I couldn’t find them earlier–”

“
Meesi, we’re not going to
take that tunnel. That’s a waste of time. Dorian . . .”

Meesi wasn’t paying attention, already
charging down the left path. “I think it’s this one,” she said.

“
Dorian won’t be there
now,” I explained, catching up with her, surprised she hadn’t
waited for me. “Meesi?”

“
We should try to see if
they are,” she said. “The others lead to the west and east sides.
It’s scary in those.”

The tunnel was damp and slippery with fungi
that grew over the wet rocks. Something was happening on the other
side of the left wall: it was constantly shaking and shedding small
rocky debris. Meesi and I kept to the right, although it wasn’t any
better with strange moans shaking the wall.

Meesi stopped in front of a wall of
darkness. “Before we’re outside, we’ve got to cross the open
cave.”

“
What’s in the open cave?”
I said, not liking how she said it. “Is it dangerous?”

Meesi must have had second thoughts because
she was striding back out. I jogged after her.

“
What’s this open cave?” I
pressed, following her closely.

“
The open room is the
center that opens to all the exits, but I forgot there’s
no–”

BOOM!

The strong jolt caused Meesi to lose her
balance. I helped her up, and she pushed me aside the second she
was up just as a huge rock crashed where I had stood a moment
earlier.

“
Meesi, we need to start
looking.”

“
I changed my mind. Let’s
choose another one.”

“
How about the one on the
right?”

She nodded, and we ran through the tunnel,
coming out shortly into a room with a rugged path circling up and
around a cracked hundred-foot-tall boulder, slashed across with
giant claw marks.

Meesi crouched halfway up it, tired. After a
minute, we started back up again. Meesi hurried slightly ahead of
me and disappeared into a vibrating tunnel at the top. I was
exhausted. I took a deep breath then jogged after her.

“
Meesi, you know where
you’re going?” I panted inside.

She was way ahead of me, gaping at the wall
that was falling apart. I lowered my head and ran through the
downpour of rocks.

“
You see something?” I
shouted.

Her eyes got bigger, and she suddenly fell
to the floor and threw her hands over her head. Instinctively, I
dropped and ducked my head between my legs to protect my face.

“
Meesi?” I whispered.
“What’s going on?”

I peered through my hands as the whole
structure of the tunnel – top and bottom – shook violently. There
was another deep tremor. Then another. The impacts kept on coming,
quaking the wall violently, as if something was trying to get
through.

Meesi jerked me to my feet, and we ran out
of there as one powerful blow split the tunnel in two.

Meesi came to another unexpected halt before
another fork. The left tunnel was dark, while the right was slowly
being filled up with dust and falling debris.

“
Wait,” she ordered,
hearing a distant growl in the dark tunnel.

Neither of us dared to go in and ran through
the one cramped with falling rocks instead. Thin beams of light
coming down through holes in the ceiling flickered in and out as
dark shapes passed by above our heads.

Meesi froze in fear. Footsteps had entered
our tunnel.

“
Run!” I
yelled.

Within minutes, we were in a room with two
more pathways.

“
This door!” she said,
dashing to the far right.

And so we sprinted down another tunnel. This
one had no falling rocks and no creatures moving overhead, but the
ceiling was sagging downwards, forcing us to hunch over and even
crawl in spots.

Meesi ran her fingertips along the walls as
she stood back up and then made a little sad moan.

“
Where does this lead?” I
said.

“
I . . .”

The pathway ended, and we were at another
fork. This was getting maddening.

“
Which one?” asked
Meesi.

“
You don’t know where
these go?”

“
I don’t remember any
more.”

I couldn’t believe this.

The footsteps were getting closer.

“
Left – no,
right!”

We sprinted down the right path. I was
starting to think it was going to be impossible to get out. The
mountain was just too big. Of course our path split yet again.
Meesi ran into the one to the right without stopping to think.

“
You remember now?” I
asked with a glimmer of hope.

“
I’m just guessing,” she
responded a minute later. “If we keep going right, we’ll eventually
get out of here.”

“
Or we’ll go right back to
where we started.”

“
No. Well, I don’t know.
Let’s just keep going right.”

I didn’t argue. After all, she knew this
place better than I did.

Meesi tripped as dark shadows climbed the
walls behind us. Whatever was following us was catching up. Another
crash hit the wall directly west of us, sending out shock waves.
Then another. It wasn’t stopping.

“
We’re dead,” muttered
Meesi, walking slowly through the tunnel as the crashes continued.
“
We’re dead
” a
distant echo called back.

“
It’s going to be okay,” I
tried comforting her, just then seeing that a landslide of rubble
had blocked our way. “Now what–” I froze at the sound of a sharp
scream. “Is that Katie?” I murmured to myself, trying to identify
it.

“
No,” Meesi assured me,
staring at the wall. “That was an yslas being killed. Why are they
here?”

“
How do you know it was an
yslas?”

“
I saw it. I can see
through surfaces.” Meesi sat down miserably and bowed her head.
“What is everyone doing here?”

“
Meesi, we have to keep
going!” I said. “We can’t give up!”

“
There’s nothing we can
do.”

“
There has to be! Kala
didn’t give up! Meesi! We have to try and get out of here!
Get up!
”

I picked up a rock from the rubble and
tossed it aside. Meesi came over and helped. She closed her hands
into a fist, and a large rock shattered. Each time she clenched
another one shattered.