Vivian Divine Is Dead (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

I
F
I
SAID
I’
D SEEN
the undead before now, I lied. The undead were always dressed in tacky clothes and dripping with fake blood. Their hands were shriveled into claws, and their masks molded into deadly screams. But even the best of Hollywood’s undead couldn’t have prepared me for this.

“Vivian,” Scars growls, his gravelly voice rolling through me, pressing my feet into the ground. His green uniform is burned and torn, and some of the flesh has peeled off his face, leaving patches of raw red skin through his squirming snake tattoos.
He must have gotten out before the engine exploded.
I remember scrambling up the scalding rocks, my knees bleeding.
I outran him, but he didn’t die.

Scars glares at Nick with disgust, but when he shifts his gaze to me, he half smiles, which makes him even uglier than before. Scars pulls a gun out of his pocket, and I back away until my calves press into the bench behind me, desperately trying to think of an escape plan.
We can either jump into the water and swim until he shoots us in the back—or wait for him to shoot us here. Neither option is good.

“Leave her alone,” Nick says, stepping in front of me. He’s at least six feet tall, but he still barely reaches Scars’s shoulders.

Despite Scars’s monstrous size, he’s lightning fast. He shoves Nick into me, and I topple over the bench and slide to the ground. Scars reaches down and grabs me by the throat.

“Get away from her!” Nick lunges at him, but Scars’s mouth just twists into a horrible, toothless grin. Then he cracks the side of Nick’s head with his gun handle. Nick collapses, his body crumpling against the bench beside me.

“
Vamos
,” Scars says, pulling me so close I can smell the rancid scent of his burned skin. He shoves his gun into my side, and then he kicks Nick’s limp body under the bench. “
Estúpido
Nicolas,” he says.

I’m so shocked I barely notice Scars twisting my hands behind my back and maneuvering me across the dock. I hardly feel the gun poking into my spine, or the numbness flowing up my arms as he squeezes the circulation out of them. My mind is turning the same question over and over:
How did Scars know Nick’s name?

Before we join the end of the line of chanting women winding up the cemetery stairs, Scars pulls a skeleton mask out of his pocket and straps it on, hiding his horrifying face. I glance back, hoping Nick will chase after us, but I can barely see the tips of his shoes sticking out from beneath the wooden bench.

“Somebody help me,” I whisper, but we’re trailing far behind the women, and my words get lost in the hundreds of chanting voices above me.

On the long hike up the stairs, I can’t stop thinking about Nick.
How did Scars know Nick’s name? Did I yell it when he forced me into his car?

From the top of the stairs, the cemetery gates are a short distance away. Lingering around the gates are ancient women with buckets of marigolds, little girls balancing stacks of spindly white candles, and a group of muscular men in white cotton, their braids dangling down to their knees.

“Where are you, Isabel?” I whisper. She was supposed to meet me at the entrance.
Did something happen to her?
The sting of salty tears burns in my eyes.
He’s going to kill me in the cemetery and throw me in an open grave.

But when we reach the cemetery gates, Scars makes an abrupt right, away from the graveyard. His hand tightens on my arm, and then he’s marching me along the edge of the metal cemetery fence. Through the bars, I can see women in white dresses, their heads wrapped in gauzy shawls, wandering between the tombstones. I squint in the dim light, looking for Isabel, but I can’t tell the features of anyone’s faces in the hazy, incense-filled air. Orange flower petals line the outside of the fence in a wavy path, and I step on them as Scars yanks me along beside him. On the other side of the cemetery, where the fence ends, a white two-story house faces the graveyard. Behind the house, smaller white houses pile on top of each other down the hill, all the way to the lake.

I glance behind me, where the last of the women are pushing into the cemetery, and two of the men with long braids are now starting to close the gates.
I have to get away from Scars. But how?
I can’t fight him; he’s too strong. And I can’t scream, or he might shoot me.
I feel his hand tighten around my wrist.
You are stronger than you know
, I remember my mom telling me the day before she disappeared, when I was filming the fight scene for
Zombie Killer
. In that scene, when the zombies had me almost beaten, the Zombie Killer realized that sometimes
not
fighting is as powerful as fighting.
You are stronger than you know.

I suddenly remember to relax all of the muscles in my body and drop limply to the ground. Scars’s hand comes off my arm, and before he can grab it again, I jump up and sprint for the entrance. Scars bolts after me, but when I glance back, one of the long-braided men puts his hand against Scars’s chest, stopping him in place.

“
No puede entrar
,” I hear the man say.

Why did they stop Scars? Is evil not allowed in the graveyard?
I dash through the gates, ducking into the procession of chanting women.
I don’t really care why, as long as they keep him away from me.
Then the flower sellers follow me into the cemetery and, from the inside, lock the gates behind them.
Are they locking him out or locking me in?

Behind me, Scars is yelling something in Spanish. When I glance back, the men are shoving Scars away from the gates, and he’s lashing out like a dying fish. The old women surround me then, chanting softly, and I’m swept away with them into the glowing graveyard.

The cemetery is hazy with thick clouds of incense and fog rising from the lake. As I move deeper into the ghostly fog, relief flows over me, making me nearly limp.
I’m safe.
I’m instantly ashamed by my relief.
What about Nick? Is he okay?

I want to turn around and go find him, but the crowd is too strong. I finally allow myself to be carried along, watching tombstones appear in the fog like apparitions and drop into nothing behind me. I’m dizzy with the smell of burning incense, rising in great gray puffs from every grave.
I need to find Isabel. She’ll help me get to Nick.

I weave through the candlelight, looking for Isabel and trying not to step on someone’s grave. I’m suddenly grateful for my disguise: with my short black hair and white cotton dress, no one notices me. Only a few women glance up at me from the edge of the tombstones and smile; others ignore me, their eyes hazy as if they’re looking into another world.

Finally, I see Isabel leaning back against a tombstone, one of her black braids draping over a small altar layered with apples and skull-shaped loaves of bread. Mounds of orange petals are piled up around her knees, like drifts of orange snow.

“Isabel?”

Isabel jumps up, a blizzard of flower petals cascading from her hands, and pulls me into a hug. “
Mi hija
, I was so worried. I waited at the entrance, but you never showed up. Then I came inside, thinking you would be in here, but I couldn’t find you.” I’m touched by how upset Isabel sounds. “Where were you?”

How do I even start to answer that question?
I was skinny-dipping in the lake after falling in love for the first time? Or I was being chased by a murderer I thought was dead? Or how about the worst one: I’m heartbroken because the murderer knew Nick’s name, so the boy I fell in love with may be one of the men who is trying to kill me?

“Did that boy hurt you?” Isabel asks.

“No,” I say, choking up. “But I’m not sure I can trust him anymore.”

“Why not?”

“The guy who forced me into his car is here,” I say, my throat closing up so tightly I can barely breathe. “And he knew Nick, Isabel. He knew his
name
.”

“So? Everyone knows everyone around here,” Isabel says. “If you’re not a cousin, you’re a friend of a friend, or a friend of an enemy. Everyone knows each others’ names.”

“Even strangers?”

“
Sí
,” Isabel says. “Even if you don’t know someone personally, you’ve seen them, or know of them.”

So that’s how Scars knew Nick’s name, the same way that Nick had heard of him
.
A cool feeling of relief fills my body.
How could I have ever doubted Nick? He risked his life for me—twice!

As my throat loosens, allowing me to breathe again, I notice that the lines in Isabel’s face are still tight with worry. “The man who forced you into his car,” Isabel asks, “does he know where you are?”

I nod. “But those men wouldn’t let him past the gates.”

“On the Day of the Dead, no men are allowed into the cemetery until morning,” Isabel explains. “Local tradition. The gates are locked, so no one goes in or out till sunrise. You’ll be safe here tonight,” she adds.

“But what about my friend?”
How could I leave him behind? He’s probably injured, or worse.
“He’s still at the dock. And he’s hurt.”

Isabel puts her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. If he’s at the dock, somebody will find him.
No te preocupes
.”

Nick’s really tough, but he might be unconscious, bleeding to death all alone out there.
“But I got him into this! I can’t just do nothing.”

“Your friend will be okay. Trust me,” she coaxes, sitting back down beside the altar. “Besides, if that man knows where you are, you’re the one in danger, not your friend.” Isabel picks up a handful of orange petals and drops them onto the grave, filling in spots that are brown with dirt. “Now sit, and help me with the
cempasúchil
.”

Forcing myself not to imagine what’s left of the body six feet below me, I perch lightly at the end of the grave
. She’s right. Scars isn’t after Nick, just me. He only hit Nick because he stood up for me. Maybe right now, the farther I am from him the better.
I grab a handful of orange petals and drop them gingerly, trying not to touch the dirt mound.

“She’s not going to bite,” Isabel says.

“Who?”

She points to an old black-and-white photo of a little girl on the altar. “My sister Aurora, Paloma’s mom. She died two years ago, crossing to
el norte
.”

“So you buried her here?”

Isabel shakes her head. “They never found her body, but a lot of people drown, get covered by sand, even eaten by animals. So last year, I had a ceremony for her here, in secret. Even Marcos never knew.”

The petals drop out of my hand and flutter down into the orange abyss. “Why would Marcos need to know?”

Isabel pulls a pack of matches out of her bag, lights one of the long white candles, and shoves it in the dirt at the edge of the grave. “Marcos owns the cemetery now,” she says. “And everyone who is buried in it.” Isabel pushes another candle into the dirt. She hands me the matches, and I light it, impatient to understand why I’m holding a handful of puzzle pieces that don’t seem to make a puzzle. “See those stickers?” Isabel asks.

I look over at the nearest grave. There is a red-and-white sticker on the tombstone that says
NICHO CADUCADO
.

“Before Marcos bought the cemetery, those were the graves that were going to be dug up for not paying their leases,” Isabel continues.

“Leases?”

“We can’t buy gravesites here, so when someone dies, we rent one,” Isabel says. “It’s a small island, and there’s only so many spaces. So every five years or so, we have to buy a new lease. When we can’t afford it . . .” She makes a thumbs-up symbol and pops it into the air. “That’s why the people love Marcos here,” Isabel says, lighting another candle around the grave. “When Marcos got out of prison six months ago, he bought the cemetery, and now no one has to buy leases, and everyone’s relatives get to stay in the ground.”

“Why would he do that?”

Isabel lights the last candle, and there are now at least fifty white candles around Aurora’s grave, each an inch apart in a long, glowing rectangle. “When he was in prison, they dug up his mother for not paying the lease,” Isabel says. “He was so angry he bought the whole cemetery.”

“So he’s kind of a hero?”

“Kind of.” Isabel bites her bottom lip nervously. “And kind of not.”

POP! POP! POP!

I throw myself to the ground, cradling my head with my hands. My body spasms with fear, and I press myself harder into the dirt.

“Are you afraid of fireworks?” Isabel asks.

I timidly raise my head. Colors explode in bright handprints of light across the sky, crackling and sizzling as they cascade to the ground. I breathe in the smell of the loamy earth beneath me. Nobody’s shooting at me; they’re just fireworks.

Remember fun? Fourth of July? Those kinds of fireworks.
I slowly uncurl myself from my spot on the ground and sit beside Isabel, my back resting uncomfortably against the side of Aurora’s tombstone.