The Land of the Dead: Book Four of the Oz Chronicles (11 page)

“I do.” The newsstand operator bent down and picked up the package. “Is this for the party?”

“No,” the old man said.

“The girl, then?”

The old man shook his head.

“It’s a secret, is it?”

The old gray man stiffened. He scowled and shot darts with his eyes at the newsstand worker. “These are my tools of the trade. I’d be lost without them.” He shoved the package under his arm and took Grace’s hand.

The newsstand operator felt the same fear I’d felt in the basement of the Biltmore. I could see it in his face. He knew just as I did that Grace was being led to her death, and he knew that death would be more horrific than anyone could ever imagine. He felt it in his bones.

I stood inches from the newsstand operator’s face and shouted, “Stop them!” If I could just shout loud enough, he could hear me. I knew it. “You know what’s going to happen to her! Stop them! Please!”

He followed the old gray man and Grace in a desperate stare until they disappeared around the corner. He sighed, pulled his stool closer, and sat down. He ran a shaky hand through his sweat-drenched hair and then examined both hands. In a low whisper he said, “The devil’s tools.”

DAY 2

TWELVE

I woke up to a voice whispering “devil’s tools” in my ear. I lay at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the fourth floor. I didn’t remember descending them. I slowly became aware of a series of dull pains shooting through my back to my knees and then to my head. I was hurting and if I had to guess why, I’d say I fell down the stairs.

I sat up gingerly. I tested the areas that hurt the most for broken bones. As far as I could tell, everything was intact. Rubbing the back of my head, I found a good sized lump that was tender to the touch, but it was nothing I couldn’t deal with on my own.

What had happened to me? I had been at the top of the stairs… the girl in black grabbed my hand… the ground fell away. Had I just fallen down the stairs? Knocked myself out and had some weird hallucination while I was unconscious? Is that all it was?

No, I was there. I had gone to the Land of the Dead. I was sure of it. I had seen the Flish, the Budds… Grace. I don’t know what I was supposed to do with the information, but I had no doubt that I was actually there.

I heard a crackle, pop, and then a hiss. I recognized it immediately. Someone was calling me on my two-way. The problem was .. where was my two-way? I scanned my surroundings and had difficulty focusing in the dark. I crawled around the immediate area on my hands and knees and listened carefully. “Oz?” a voice said through a wave of static. I placed my hand in front of me and felt the nylon fabric of the backpack. Frantically and clumsily, I opened the pack and pulled out the two-way.

“Go for Oz,” I sighed.

“I think… Ty… April.” I didn’t recognize the voice. The static was heavy. I couldn’t make out every word.

“Say again.”

“Tyrone… insane… April… eat her.” I heard a scream through the crackling.

“Who is this? Where are you?”

The voice came again. It was Lou. She talked slowly and deliberately this time. “I heard… Tyrone… on the radio. It sounds like… he has April. He’s going to… eat her… winter garden.”

“Winter garden?” I couldn’t think straight. What winter garden? Then it hit me. The main floor, it was a glassed indoor garden. “I’ll go. Just stay clear.”

I heard another scream through the radio followed by a roar from Ajax. “Stop…” was the last thing I heard.

I stood, shook off the stiffness from the pain, and prepared to make my way down to Lou as quickly as possible. A small figure darted out of a nearby corner and wobbled toward me. It was a boy, a small smiling boy. A large, white furry mass followed closely behind him. Tarek. That meant the boy must have been…Nate. My Storyteller. He was walking. He could barely keep his head up by himself when I’d last seen him. He had grown so much and so fast. I was elated. Not because I hadn’t seen him in such a long time. I was elated because I was hungry, and this small boy would hit the spot. I took a step toward him and was quickly knocked on my backside by Tarek, the Keeper who had helped me defeat the Takers.

“Back, boy,” he groaned. His voice rumbled like a high powered race car. “You stink of the Flish.”

My gut twisted and I doubled over from a jolt of hunger pains. “Why are you here? Why did you bring him here?”

“He goes where I go,” Tarek said. “I came here to tell you it’s not safe for you here.”

“You think?” I said sarcastically. “Thanks for the tip.”

He ignored my tone. “You think this is something you can beat. You can’t. The Flish isn’t like the other Destroyers.”

I tried to inch my way toward Nate without Tarek noticing. I thought if I moved ever so slightly every few seconds the big beast wouldn’t see until I was close enough to pounce and get one small bite of the sweet, sweet Storyteller meat. “What makes him different?”

“The other Destroyers, they are impossible yet they exist. They shouldn’t be, but they are. That is their weakness. They are cruel because they were imagined that way. That is their limitation. The Flish is cruel because he was born that way. He was meant to be. He once served a purpose, a horrific and terrifying purpose, but a purpose nonetheless. He has no limitations.” Tarek scooped the youngster up in his enormous hands and shielded him from me. “You have to leave, Oz Griffin.”

“I can’t,” I said feeling greatly disappointed that Nate was impossible to get to.

“Why?”

I thought about the question. The truth was, I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t leave. I had thought it was because I had to find the Land of the Dead, but I was pretty sure I had just been there. The smart thing to do would be to call the others on the two-way and leave… I looked at the radio. “Lou. She’s in trouble.”

Tarek grumbled. “Why was I stuck with such a stubborn and stupid warrior? She will be in greater trouble if you get close enough to smell her. You’re infected by the Flish.”

“I won’t hurt her. I can’t hurt her. She’s my…” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence so I left it undone.

“She’s nothing but a meal to you now.”

“Shut up!” I barked. “Don’t say that!”

“The Flish gets in. That’s what he does.”

I bent over, placed my hands on my knees, and breathed deeply. It was getting harder and harder to hold back from making an attempt to get at Nate. I could hear him giggling. It was driving me mad. “Help me beat him.”

“I cannot.”

“Don’t give me that ‘this is not my fight’ crap…”

“That’s not it,” he interrupted. “I don’t know how to beat him. He is the end, Oz Griffin.”

“What about the warrior… Creyshaw for this story?”

“Dead. Consumed by the Flish…”

“Consumed?” I said. “His Storyteller then…”

“Held by the Délons, but not for long. The Flish will find him and consume him as well. When he does, every human, every Destroyer, every warrior, every Storyteller… even the Keepers will be infected by the Flish.”

“How? He’s stuck in this house as far as I can tell.”

“For now, but he will chip away at your resolve day after day until the weakest of you will succumb to the urges of the infection and eat the others. Then the Flish will no longer be bound to this house.”

I rubbed my rumbling stomach. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Leave. Now.”

“If we leave now the infection will go away?”

He paused. “No.”

“No? So, I’ll always feel this…” I got another glimpse of Nate. “Hunger?”

Tarek couldn’t bring himself to look me in my eyes. “You will.”

“And the others?”

“None of you can purge yourself of the need to feed. The only way is to survive the nine days, and there is no way to survive the nine days. Not even you, Oz Griffin.

“But,” he said, “you can’t spread the infection if you leave now. It is only spread by the Flish through his surviving host.”

I was confused. “How do you expect us to work together out there if we’re always trying to eat each other?”

He looked away without answering.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you saying we have to split up? Forever?”

“That is not what I’m saying.”

I felt momentarily relieved.

“The others cannot be allowed to leave,” he said.

I processed his statement in my head. “But you just said the longer they stay…” I practically swallowed my tongue when I realized what he wanted me to do. “No. I won’t. I can’t. They are my family.”

“You don’t have a choice. They cannot be allowed to leave.”

“But I can?”

“Apparently your work is not yet done. You have more to do.”

“Forget it,” I said angrily “It’s not an option. There has to be another way.”

He looked away again, and I thought I detected something in his face.

“What?”

He didn’t answer.

“If you know something… anything… another way…”

“I don’t know enough,” he yelled.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I know only enough to give you hope and hope is your enemy. Hope will make you do foolish things. Hope will be your undoing.”

“Tell me what you know!”

He growled, and it rattled my bones.

I shook it off and said, “You’re wrong, Tarek. It’s not my undoing. It’s what keeps me going. I am nothing without it, so you might as well tell me what you know.”

He mumbled something about useless humans and then said, “If you can bind him to this story’s Keeper, he will be powerless, and it is said that the infection will disappear. That’s all I know.”

“Who’s the Keeper?”

“As I said, that is all I know.”

I nodded. “How do I bind him to his keeper?”

He groaned. “As I said…”

I stopped. “That is all you know. It’s something. I can use it.”

Tarek slipped back into the darkness. “You will use it to your detriment,” he said. “Good-bye, Oz Griffin.”

THIRTEEN

Staring Tyrone in the face, I suddenly didn’t object to killing him and the others as much as I did before. Cutting him up, and making a stew out of him actually seemed like the best idea I had ever had.

Tyrone was thinking the same thing about me. That’s how this infection worked. People eat delicious people. It doesn’t matter if you’re friends, or fighting a war together, or if it’s some kid you saved from a Taker, and he did the same for you. You just wanted to eat him… needed to eat him.

Lou was safe. Or at least I thought she was. I didn’t see her, but Ajax had positioned himself between Tyrone and the back area of the Winter Gardens. He was clearly protecting something. I suspected he was protecting Lou from Tyrone and the other way around, too.

“Come to save your girlfriend, Oz?” Tyrone’s voice was hurried and desperate.

“Came to save you,” I said. “And she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Whatever,” he answered. “She’s breakfast as far I’m concerned. I’ll have April for lunch, and if you don’t get out of here, I’ll have you for dinner.”

I looked up at the towering glass dome ceiling. The dim morning light hovered overhead. I had not realized a whole night had passed. That meant we had eight more days.

I heard a whimpering over my left shoulder and slowly turned toward it. Through the dying branches of a potted tree, I saw a set of eyes looking back at me. Blonde hair fell across a sweat drenched forehead. I stepped closer to get a better look. It was… “Valerie?”

Tyrone groaned. “A cheap knock off.”

A Throwaway version of her, of course. I strained to get a good look at her through the dead branches. It had been so long since I had seen Valerie. This version of her was so much taller than what I remembered. She was made as Tyrone imagined her. I felt a sadness for him that I hadn’t allowed myself to feel until now. He loved her. They seemed too young to even know what love was, but looking at the Throwaway version of Valerie, it was obvious that she was pieced together by blissfully happy memories. In the middle of the destruction that was our lives, Tyrone found and fell in love with the girl of his dreams. It seemed absurdly impossible.

I heard the shuffling of feet following the rapid patter of shoes on the hard floor. Something or someone struck me from behind and shoved me to the floor before I could react. Whoever or whatever it was snarled like an animal. I felt the feathery touch of hair float across the back of my neck.

I jerked hard enough to knock the attacker off my back, and wasn’t totally surprised to see that it was April who crashed to the floor. I jumped up and prepared for another attack. It didn’t come. She snapped and growled like she was possessed, and she was. We all were.

“This is crazy,” I said desperately trying to control my breathing. “We can’t do this to each other.”

Lou’s voice came out of the darkness. “And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them.”

Throwaway Valerie stepped out of her hiding place. “I want to leave this house.”

“We can’t,” I said.

“Why?” Tyrone asked. To his credit, he was showing as much restraint as I was. He wanted to attack me, but he was using every bit of his willpower to stay put.

“I wish I could answer that,” I said. “But we were brought here for a reason. I can’t leave until I figure out what that reason is.”

“You can’t,” April said sounding as if she might hyperventilate. “But we can.”

“We need each other,” Lou said.

“She’s right,” I said

“We’re going to kill each other,” April barked.

I shook my head. “Beyond this place.” I pointed toward the front door. “Out there. We fight together. We can’t let this place drive us apart.”

“That would sound a lot better if I could stop picturing myself stringing you up by your feet and gutting you like a deer,” Tyrone said. “No offense.”

“None taken,” I said. “I feel the same way…” I stopped mid-sentence when I saw myself approaching from the back of the gardens. “What the…?”

Lou stepped out from behind… me or a version of me. “We have to make a pact.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Tyrone giggled. “Looks like your girlfriend replaced you.”

I looked closer. He was right. Lou’s Throwaway had become me, a slightly distorted version of me, but it was still a passable rendition of me.

“I didn’t do it,” Lou insisted. “It just happened.”

“That’s the way it works,” Tyrone said. “They become what you want. Pretty clear what you want.”

Lou gave him a vicious glare. “What I want is for you to shut the hell up…”

“You said something about a pact,” I said trying to avoid an attack by… anyone in the room on anyone else in the room.

She hesitated and then addressed the bigger issue at hand. “The dead brought us here for a reason. I agree with you. There’s something here that will help us get home.”

“So,” April said.

“So we can’t leave until we find it.”

“But your boyfriend says we got nine days,” Tyrone said.

“I didn’t say it,” I corrected. “Grace did. The girl. The ghost… and stop calling me her boyfriend.”

Lou looked hurt by my last statement. She shook it off and carried on. “Then we have nine days…”

“Eight now,” I said.

“Eight days,” she said. “We have to agree not to…” She should have ended the sentence with ‘eat each other,’ but she didn’t. She searched desperately for an ending that wasn’t so gruesome. “… stay out of each other’s way.”

I chuckled absentmindedly. “That’s easier said than done.”

“Yeah,” April piped in. “It’s taking everything I have to not jump on Oz right now and rip open his throat.” She licked her lips.

“Do you want to go home?” Lou asked.

We all waited for the others to reply. Finally, we just tentatively nodded our heads in unison.

“Then we have got to make this pact. We get away from each other… far away, and we look for whatever it is the dead brought us here to find.”

“If we don’t know what is we’re looking for, how will we know when we find it?” April asked.

“You’ll know,” I said. “Pretty sure of that.”

“If one of us breaks the pact?” Tyrone asked.

“One of us won’t,” Lou said. “We can’t.”

“But if we do?” he asked.

“Stop asking…” Lou started but I cut her off.

“He’s right. There have to be consequences for breaking the pact.”

“Not making it back home isn’t good enough?” she asked.

We didn’t answer.

She threw up her hands. “Fine.” She turned to Ajax whose hackles were up, but otherwise managed to keep a fairly cool demeanor. She went through a series of signs, and he shook his hea side to side. She signed again. He shook his head more emphatically. A grunt came from behind April, and Ariabod knuckle-walked forward with Throwaway June tagging closely behind. Ariabod signed to Lou. She signed back and then let out a sigh of relief. Clearly he agreed to do what Ajax had refused to do.

“What?” Tyrone asked.

“He’s your consequence,” Lou said.

“Meaning?” April asked.

“Meaning Ariabod has agreed to kill the first one of us to break the pact.” The look of relief vanished from her face as the words left her mouth. It was as if it had just dawned on her what the gorilla had agreed to do.

“The first one of us? What happens after that?”

She slowly shook her head. “Does it matter?”

Tyrone shrugged. “I guess not.”

“What about Wes and Gordy?” I asked. “They have to agree to the pact, too.”

She nodded and held up her two-way. “I’ll take care of Wes. You can convince Gordy.”

“We’re assuming the fat man hasn’t already eaten Gordy,” April said.

We all looked at her not because what she said was outrageous, but because it was a possibility none of us had thought of.

“There’s something else,” I added. “Archie and Bobby, they’re here.”

“What?” April said excitedly.

I had been so racked by hunger and guilt for wanting to eat my friends that I had almost forgotten no one else knew they were here. The others almost looked genuinely relieved to learn that they were safe, at least from the Délons and the other Destroyers outside the house.

“They showed up last night,” I said. “They’re all right.”

“I want to see them,” April said.

“Not a good idea. You should wait until we make it out of this place.”

She snickered. “I doubt I’ll make it out of this place.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” I said.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“If you don’t think you’re going to make it out of here,” I said, “that means you have no incentive to keep the pact. If you’re not planning on keeping the pact, I’m going to suggest we let Ariabod kill you now to save us from going through a lot of drama.”

“What… no, I didn’t mean…” She stomped her foot. “I’m tired, and I’m hungry, and you all smell… you know… edible. I just want to see Archie and Bobby. They’re kind of like my family”

I felt bad for being so harsh with her. “I get that, but trust me, you don’t want to see them like this. If you think we smell edible, wait until you get a whiff of a Storyteller.”

She licked their lips.

“So what’s the plan?” Tyrone asked.

“We split up again,” I said “We check in with one another every hour on our radios. That way we’ll know we’re all alive and we’ll be able to keep tabs on everyone’s locations so we don’t run into each other.”

“Remember,” Lou said, “we were brought here for a reason. Keep an eye out for anything that might help us figure out what that reason is. The quicker we know, the quicker we can get out of here and back home.”

We all agreed and stood in uncomfortable silence before finding the strength and courage to walk away.

***

I stopped in the master bedroom on the second floor before going back up to the fourth floor. I felt like my best bet was to write a brief note explaining the pact to Archie. That way, I wouldn’t have to get involved in any long conversations that would test my need to feed.

I rifled through the drawers of the dresser and didn’t find anything to write with or on. I looked in every nook and cranny and directed Kimball to sniff around. I was fairly certain he didn’t understand me, but you never knew in this backwards universe. Maybe Kimball did understand English. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he just started talking one day.

I found a closet in the back of the room. I hesitated before opening it. There was a very real possibility that I would be extremely sorry that I opened the door to the closet. As I said, you just didn’t know what you were going to find in this universe. I held my breath, opened the door, and quickly stepped back in a crouching position. Nothing. I breathed out and slowly poked my head past the doorway. It was a big closet. Not as big as some of those fancy walk-in closets I used to see on T V, but it was big enough for a safe and three filing cabinets.

I whistled for Kimball, and he came running over. “Stay here. Watch the door.”

He tilted his head and then panted, revealing a soothing canine smile. I patted him on the head and stepped into the closet. I opened the top drawer of the first filing cabinet and found nothing but files, mostly maintenance records. I opened the second drawer and found files filled with photos. I started looking through them. I’m not exactly sure why, but I felt the need. If I had been paying attention, I would have noticed the light slowly getting dimmer in the closet, but for some reason I was fixated on the pictures. Most of the pictures were just photos of the grounds at the mansion.

I turned to the door. “Kimball…” I heard a bark just before the door slammed shut.

I felt the breath of a disembodied child on my earlobe as it said, “The boogeyman got him.”

A brilliant flash of light momentarily blinded me. It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust and refocus. As things cleared, it became apparent to me that I was no longer in the closet. I was in a poorly lit hallway.

The short red and brown carpet was marked by the impressions of little footprints. I heard the sound of children laughing close by. I followed the prints down the hallway with my eyes until they rounded the corner. I had no interest in following them because I was back in the Land of the Dead, and that could mean only one thing. I was here to witness something I had no power to stop.

The dead boy stepped out of a darkened doorway just beyond the entrance of the adjoining hallway. He looked at me and then turned his attention in the direction of the laughter. My own voice sounded off in my head,
Eight Days.

I slowly began to walk towards him. Just as I was about to reach the corner, I heard rushed footsteps behind me. Before I could turn to investigate, a boy of about twelve passed through me. I gasped. My stomach dropped as if I was on a rollercoaster plunging down the first big hill on the track.