The Land of the Dead: Book Four of the Oz Chronicles (20 page)

He pointed at June. “She doesn’t.”

“Yes, but she’s a Throwaway…”

“A never-was,” Stevie said.

I stood up. “What are you saying?”

“I told you, I’m saying words.”

I didn’t like the words he was saying. If he was telling me that Lou was a never-was, not real, I didn’t want to hear it. It couldn’t be true. She was real. She had to be.

“You look sad,” Stevie said.

I didn’t say anything.

The ground began to shake.

“They’re coming back,” Stevie said.

“Who?”

The basement floor began to crack. June screamed and ran up the stairs.

“June, stop!” I turned to chase her, but Stevie grabbed my arm.

As if he was trying to force his words into my skull, he spoke slowly and harshly. “It’s never the same if you read it backwards. You see things you didn’t see before.”

He let go of my arm and stumbled backwards, tripping over the debris from the crumbling basement floor. I struggled to keep on my feet, but I crashed down on my elbow and felt a burning, numbing sensation throughout my arm. I gritted my teeth and sucked in a long stream of air. By the time I had worked through the pain and stood up, Stevie was gone. The house continued to shake, and the crack in the floor grew wider.

I made it to the bottom step of the basement stairs when a gigantic, gnarled, clawed hand burst through the concrete. Now I knew who was coming back. Takers. I ran, barely touching the surface of the stairs with my feet. I was in the hallway before my mind caught up. “June!”

A shadow moved to my right. A door was open to one of the rooms. Behind me I heard the tell-tale chatter of the Taker coming from the basement. I quickly approached the open door. June stood in front me, shaking and facing the wall above the dresser.

I entered. “C’mon, June. We’ve got to go.”

She raised her arm and pointed at the wall.

I followed with my eyes. There, hanging on the wall, just as it was the last time I saw it, was the perfectly drawn, framed picture of a Délon. Their source. What they were so desperately looking for. I ran to it and attempted to rip it from the wall, but my hand passed through. I tried again. I tried a third time before it hit me. I was in the Land of the Dead.

“June, you have to grab it.”

She hesitated. I heard the Taker coming up the stairs.

“Hurry,” I barked.

She didn’t hurry. It seemed like she was walking as slowly as she possibly could.

“June, we’ve got to get out of here. I need that picture. Please, hurry.”

The Taker roared. He was at the top of the stairs.

Still June took her time.

I rushed to the door and carefully peeked down the hallway. It was there. It was almost too broad for the hall. It ducked its head so as not to hit the ceiling. Its eyes zeroed in on me. Crouching, it opened its mouth and let out a high-pitched wail. I grabbed the door and hurried to push it shut, but in the blink of an eye the ugly beast was standing in the doorway. I put all my weight into the door and managed to shut it. I turned to see June holding the framed picture of the Délon in her hand.

“Out the window,” I said, fighting hyperventilation.

The Taker pushed on the door, and I comically tried to prevent the monster from opening it. It was like a bug trying to push back the moon. I heard what sounded like a crack of thunder and then felt myself tumbling through the air. A tremendous white light washed out the room.

My head slapped against a hard wooden surface. I heard a roar and looked up bleary-eyed. I felt instantly relieved to see Ajax staring back at me.

DAY 8

NINETEEN

There was no ice, so Lou rubbed the back of my neck trying to work out the throbbing pain in my head. The trip coming back from the Land of the Dead this time around was definitely much worse than the trip there.

“So the trip was a total waste of time?” Lou asked.

I went over the conversation I’d had with Stevie in my head. It was a little hazy due to the crack I took to the skull but, unfortunately, I could recall the gist of it. Lou was a never-was.

“Not totally,” I said. “June brought back something.” I looked around the table and didn’t see June. Pulling away from Lou, I stood up and a wave of panic hit me. “June… where’s June?”

“Right there,” she pointed to a little girl with black hair.

I couldn’t make out her face so I approached her and wasn’t totally surprised to discover she looked remarkably like Grace.

“What did she bring back?” Lou asked.

I examined June’s face for a beat longer and then asked her, “Do you have it?”

She nodded, reached down, and picked up the framed picture.

I took it from her and showed it to Lou. “We’ve got what the Délons have been looking for.”

“The source,” she said just before a smile spread across her face. “We have it. We own them.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I said. “We don’t know how it works.”

“But we know they desperately want it. They’ve lost control of this world without it. They don’t even know what the source is. This is huge.”

“True,” I said. “But that doesn’t really help us. Besides we’ve only got today and tomorrow left on our nine days. Having this will mean nothing if we can’t get the Flish’s package to Detective King…”

“Where is she?” Wes screamed from the other end of the room.

“Who?” I screamed back.

“You know who! What have you done with Lou, my Lou?”

“The Throwaway?” I asked.

“Is that all she was to you? Someone who doesn’t matter? She wasn’t just a Throwaway! She was my sister! What did you do with her?”

“Wes,” Lou said, “Oz didn’t do anything to your sister.”

“Don’t cover for him, Lou. He’s the reason we’re here in the first place.”

“You’re not making any sense,” I said. “Why would I do anything to your Throwaway?”

“Stop calling her that!” He stomped towards us.

The closer he got, the stronger his smell became. It was like bacon sizzling in a frying pan. Mouthwatering. I hadn’t eaten in… too long.

“Don’t come any closer,” I begged.

Either he didn’t hear me or he just didn’t car; he continued coming at us.

“Wes,” Lou said.

Ajax plodded towards him.

“Out of the way, go-rilla,” Wes said.

“Wes, you don’t know what you’re doing!” Lou shouted

I headed for the door and stopped in my tracks when I saw Tyrone staring back at me from the hallway. My stomach twisted. I doubled over from the pain.

“They’re all gone,” Tyrone said.

Wes stopped at the sound of his voice.

I positioned myself behind Lou.

“Gone where?” Lou asked.

“The old man,” Tyrone answered. “Got Valerie last night. Gordy’s Throwaway is gone, too.” He stepped into the room and moved around the table. He held tight to his hunting knife. “Yours is the only one left, far as I can tell.”

Wes wiped the drool from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Got ‘em all but the golden boy’s. Why you suppose that is?” He was clearly sizing the situation up, trying to determine if he was closer to me or Tyrone. I knew that’s what he was thinking because I was thinking the same thing.

“We can’t be in the same room,” I said in a voice I didn’t even recognize. It was low and weak. The hunger was more than I could take.

“We’ve got a plan,” Lou said. “You just have to hold out a little bit longer.”

“Can’t hold out,” Wes said. His head was down, but his eyes were looking straight at us. “I’ve got to eat!”

“We all do,” I snapped. “But we can’t.”

“Can’t ain’t an option,” Tyrone said. “We eat or we die.”

A hideous laughter came from the walls, a hardy cackling. The old man’s voice surrounded us. “And they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege.”

I stepped out from behind Lou. “Can’t is an option, Tyrone. He’s not going to win. This is…” I counted the days in my head. “This is the beginning of day eight. Give me until the end of day nine and this will be over. I promise you.”

“That ain’t a promise you can keep,” Wes said.

“Shut up,” Lou screamed. “We are family. Family believes in each other. Family is there for each other. I’m through with this whole thing. The old man cannot turn us against each other. Wes, back in your little room. Tyrone, second floor, now.”

They looked at Lou perplexed and then started to laugh.

“Upstairs, huh?” Tyrone smiled. He shrugged his shoulders and started to back out of the room, stopping at the doorway. “Just between us, I was getting used to having that Throwaway around. Took my mind off the hunger. It was nice having… her around again.”

“It wasn’t her,” I said.

“The real Valerie will always be with you, Tyrone,” Lou said placing her hand over her heart.

He nodded and disappeared into the hallway.

Wes had started his retreat back to his room. He stopped when he reached the end of the table and turned back to us. “Boy, I don’t feel like much of a man no more. Seems like I’m always letting kids fight my battles for me, and I ain’t doing much in return. You get us out of this one, and I promise you the next one is mine.”

Lou was about to say something, but I grabbed her arm. She was going to tell him that was all right. That he’d done enough. That he was an important part of our group. We wouldn’t be anywhere without him. All that was true, but he wouldn’t have believed any of it, not at that moment.

“Sure thing, Wes,” I said. “Next one’s yours.”

***

Lou, Throwaway Grace (formerly June), and I stood in the deep end of the empty pool. Ajax sat at the top of the ladder keeping a watchful eye over us.

I was panicked. We couldn’t waste another trip to the Land of the Dead. I wanted to talk to the dead boy, but I didn’t know how to get in contact with him, so I just talked to the thin air.

“Listen. You have to take us to the old man, in his time. We can’t afford to go anywhere else. I don’t know how this works, but please, take us to Fish.” I stepped forward and felt a faint coldness on my feet. The thought went in and out of my mind. I had more important things to worry about than my feet being cold. “Hey, little… dead… boy.”

“Little dead boy?” Lou asked with a tone that suggested she was disgusted with me. “You don’t know his name?”

“He doesn’t talk much. I never got his name. And I’m not so sure if you should be talking, by the way. He might not come if he knows you’re here. Your job is to make sure the old man doesn’t get June-Grace or whatever her name is while she and I wait for our ride to the Land of the Dead.” My ankles were cold now. “Is it getting cold in here?”

“Water,” Lou said.

“What?” I said turning to her. I was surprised to see her standing in ten inches of water. I looked down at my feet and was even more surprised to see that I was standing in water, too. “What the…” is all I managed to say before we were instantaneously immersed in water. There wasn’t even time to hold our breath. I wanted to cough but couldn’t. Lou, Grace, and I scrambled up towards the top. I’m not even sure why. We had no way of knowing if there was a top. But still we kicked and pushed our way up.

I got a glimpse of a figure floating a few feet away. The dead boy. It had to be. I peered through the darkness and saw his face. My cousin Anthony. I changed direction and swam towards him. Inches away, I reached out, grabbed his hand, and fought to find the surface of the water. Seconds passed and I finally broke through. I inhaled as much air as I could, coughing violently as I released it. Lou and Grace had also made it to the surface. They were gasping for air. I zipped around to look at my cousin Anthony only to find it wasn’t him at all. It was the dead boy.

“What happened? Where are we?” I heard Lou ask.

I looked around. “The pool, it filled up with water.”

She sloshed around in the water looking in every direction. “Where’s Ajax? And why are the lights suddenly working?”

“The Land of the Dead,” I said.

“What?”

“We’re in the pool in the Land of the Dead.” I turned to the dead boy. “This is when Fish worked here, isn’t it?”

He did what he always did. He didn’t answer.

“I don’t understand,” Lou said. “What am I doing here?”

***

We stood on the side of the pool dripping wet. I had almost forgotten why I hated the water so much, but finding myself underwater for however brief a time it was, reminded me of the horrible sensation of drowning that I had lived through when I was a kid. Now I was convinced that hate wasn’t a strong enough word for how I felt about the water.

“I died when I was a baby,” Lou said.

“What?”

“That has to be it. I died when I was a baby for like a minute or something and the doctors brought me back. That’s how I was able to cross over to the Land of the Dead. I died when I was a baby. My parents just never told me.”

“Must be it,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her what Stevie had told me. She wasn’t what he said she was. She was real. As real as me and Wes and the others. She had to be. She was right. She died when she was a baby. Her parents just never told her because that’s not the kind of thing you tell someone. Why would you? Stevie was wrong.

“Well, I’m here, whatever the reason. What’s the plan?”

“If I’m right, this is the time Fish worked as a painter for the mansion. We need to find the old man.”

“How?” Lou asked.

The dead boy started to walk away.

“We follow him,” I said.

He took us through a maze of hallways and rooms. The house was alive with activity. We didn’t see anyone, but we heard what sounded like an army of people working just ahead of us.

“What do we tell people we’re doing here?” Lou asked.

“They can’t see us,” I said. “We’re like ghosts.”

“We’re the ghosts?”

I laughed. “I know. It sounds weird…”

“Can I help you?” a woman’s voice called out from behind us.

I stiffened. It was impossible. She couldn’t be talking to us. Grace. Of course. She could see Grace.

We slowly turned and saw a woman dressed in a floor-length black dress and a white bonnet. She was looking straight at us.

“Are you talking to us?” I asked just to be sure the rules hadn’t changed and she could see Lou and me.

No reply.

She couldn’t see us.

“Miss,” the woman said. “Can I help you?”

Lou looked bewildered. “I thought they couldn’t see us.”

I was about to say something when the woman spoke first.

“Pardon me?”

Grace, hidden behind Lou, poked her head out.

“Hello, dear one,” the woman said waving at Grace. “She’s a cutie, isn’t she?”

Lou still didn’t respond to the woman.

“Are you two lost? Why are you dressed so oddly?”

“She can see you, Lou.” And I knew why. She really was a Never-was.

“How?”

“Miss?”

“No time to figure that out,” I said. “You better say something to her or she’s going to have you kicked out.”

“What do I say?”

The woman looked around. “Are you talking to me?”

“Me?” Lou asked. “No… yes…”

“Are your parents guests at the house, miss?”

“My parents?”

“Lou,” I said. “Get it together.”

“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled.

“Tell her…” I said, trying to think of a lie to get her out of this situation. I remembered the papers from the closet. “Tell her that Mr. Bashir sent you.”

“Mr. Bashir sent me,” Lou said.

The woman considered this new piece of information and then nodded. “He’s sent you for lunch, hasn’t he?”

“Ahhh…” was all Lou could manage to say.

“The grown-ups and their fancy inedible meals. I don’t blame you. We’ve got the good stuff down here. Ham, cheese, macaroni, bread, and jam. You’re welcome to join us in the staff dining room.”

Lou looked at me for guidance.

“I suppose we should go,” I said.

“Thank you,” Lou said. “We’d like that.”

The woman guided us through the hall, past what looked like a walk-in freezer and then through the kitchen. I entered the dining room ahead of the others. Four male staff members sat at the table enjoying sandwiches and milk. Their hands were speckled with dry white paint. A fifth person stood at the back of the room with his back to us. He was slumped over, picking through a pile of apples in a large bowl. I didn’t need him to turnaround to know it was him. I could tell by the way he moved.