My Friends Are Dead People (10 page)

“
We need a ride to the
North,” Jacoby said to the welgo, which looked like a large thin
jaguar, with red tear streaks.

The welgo effortlessly lifted itself out of
the weeds and arched its body in a long drawn out stretch. It could
have been a black cheetah too, but much bigger with short silky
fur. As the welgo stretched a second time sharp claws protruded out
of its paws then receded back in. It took two smooth steps forward
and lowered itself to the ground before Jacoby, scooping him up
onto its back.

“
Choose one,” said Jacoby,
sitting comfortably on top. The welgo's skin molded around his
legs, securing him to its body. “We have to move a little faster
than you two are going.”

I stayed where I was. Meanwhile, a welgo
sank under Dorian and lifted him up. Another offered its back to
Katie. She was slow to climb on and automatically gripped its thin
neck the second she was lifted up. The welgo's skin instantly began
to mold around her hands.

“
Jesse, let’s move along,”
said Jacoby.

“
Uhhh . . .” I stalled,
spotting one resting in the corner. “How about that
one?”

“
You’re going to have to
call her over.”

“
It’s a she?”

“
The only female welgo,
and the only stubborn one. But she’s fine.”

I walked over to the last male who looked a
little bit friendlier. But the female was already approaching
me.

“
I’m not picking you,” I
told her.

Her round soulful eyes
gleamed at me. She didn’t seem
that
scary up close. She lowered her body to the
ground. Great. I grabbed her neck and climbed on. Her skin wrapped
around my hands and legs just like it did for everyone else. Her
skin was really warm. It felt like there was a layer of blankets
wrapped around my limbs.

“
It’s warm, no?” said
Katie atop her welgo, looking perfectly at ease.

I nodded.

“
I don’t hear them
breathing,” Katie told Jacoby.

“
No one does. They don’t
make a sound.”

“
That’s impossible,” I
stated.

“
They’re the most silent
halloweens. You’ll never hear a single sound from them.”

Katie put her ear on her welgo’s neck and
smiled.

“
Like Ray said, take deep
breaths and you’ll be fine,” he instructed at the gate. “They won’t
be going too fast.”

My welgo nudged a rock, and it fell onto its
side, making a thump sound.

“
She’s the only one who
ever makes any noise,” admitted Jacoby.

With those words, Jacoby and his welgo were
on the move. The rest of the welgos followed, but my welgo just
stood there, scratching the top of her head against the dirt.

“
Uhmm . . .” I said
carefully. She brought her head up. “We have to go."

She understood and slipped out of the gate
and joined the others in the front of the house. Jacoby turned to
my welgo.

“
One-twenty north, thirty
miles inland. You know the rest.”

Katie folded her witch hat and tucked it
into her robe along with her red hair band. I had a feeling we were
going to arrive very soon. I grasped onto my welgo’s hide. I heard
Katie gasp as her welgo shot off down the street like a rubber
band, gone from sight within seconds.

I clung desperately onto my welgo's neck and
took a deep breath, but before I could breathe out, we disappeared
into the night, making the rest of the world seem like it was at a
standstill. I had never experienced such speed in my life. I
clasped my arms firmly around her neck, and her skin completely
molded around my forearms. Within a few seconds, she was running on
the freeway, which looked like blurry trails of lights.

“
G-go
f-faster!
” was all I could get out,
fighting the prickly wind.

She jolted forward, going even faster,
shifting gracefully in and out of lanes and occasionally dodging
headlights flashing by. She made a few more swift turns before
slowing. For the first time I could focus on things we were
passing. Katie was right next to us, smiling away. She didn't
notice us though.

“
F-faster
,” I commanded in a wavering
voice, drawing one good breath before my welgo launched herself
forward, leaving Katie and her welgo far behind in a stream of
colors.

“
S-slow
down!
” I gasped right away, feeling sick.
“
S-slow down!
”

A few jolting turns and a huge sinking drop
later I regained my vision. We were off the freeway, trotting down
an empty street until she came to a sudden stop. Her skin relaxed
around my arms and legs, and I slid off.

“
T-thank you, Silky,” I
muttered breathlessly, giving her a name. I felt a little dizzy and
my legs felt like they were still moving. “You want to go back and
do it–”

I tipped over and fell. Jacoby, Katie, and
Dorian easily dismounted their welgos, and the graceful creatures
made it off into the light fog.

“
What are those?” I said
in awe as I stared after them.

“
Jesse, I already told
you,” said Jacoby.

“
I know they’re welgos,
but . . .” I had a hard time picking myself up from the ground. “.
. . how fast do they go?”

“
You remember what Ray was
saying in the hall? Faster than that.”

Jacoby guided us up a winding sidewalk and
stopped inside an ornate alley, crafted with stone mosaics walls
and wooden pillars.

“
We must hurry to the
other side of town. You two understand?"

We nodded. Jacoby stopped again at the end
of the alley, hearing heavy treads. A fifteen-foot mummy was
clomping down the street. He stopped right in front of us, sensing
our presence, but instead of turning our way, he peered into the
dirty display window of a candy shop on the other side. Agitated by
something, he pulled back just as a little blue monster walked
under his legs, heading to the shop. The mummy picked up the tiny
thing and brought it up to his cloth-swaddled face.

“
I need ten Brainaches,”
the mummy growled, “two Scream Bits, thirty Vines – peppermint,
chocolate, and strawberry – and anything equivalent to Sour Teeth
in five minutes. I will be waiting in Section Witch 4C. Are you
going to get that for me?”

The mummy brought the teeny monster closer
to its face and gave it a long hard stare. “I am hungry, little
hallow.”

He dropped the scared monster and trudged by
us, nearly bumping into Jacoby.

“
Watch yourselves!” he
snapped, not recognizing who it was. As soon as he did, he dropped
his head and dove into a big door that had just appeared in the
middle of the street.

“
Alright, let’s get
moving,” announced Jacoby, looking both ways before
crossing.

Katie and I stayed close to Jacoby, with
Dorian trailing behind us. We hurried between two homes and out
into an old town teeming with hundreds of creatures: flying,
disappearing, conjuring spells, and mingling ominously, all in the
open.

“
Seventy thousand
halloweens are said to be here today,” Jacoby mentioned, heading
down a Halloween-decorated sidewalk, “close to a fourth of the
population. Don’t wander off, or you won’t be found
again.”

On the other side of the street, a scruffy
witch stood in the gutter, watching us while she was sweeping a
mangled rat into a shoe box. Her red and black eyes glowed
ominously as she narrowed them suspiciously at Katie. I couldn’t
help but wonder if the witch knew Katie was a human? Of course she
did: she was a witch. They would know their own kind.

Katie stuck her tongue out at the glowering
witch, who tilted her head awkwardly at Katie. Behind the witch was
a rundown shoe shop, with writing scratched into the display
window:

DEADLY BOILS
&

bewitched
witches

“
Are witches evil?” asked
Katie as the old woman magically opened the door.

“
A few are,” answered
Jacoby. “But you’ll be fine. Murlie won’t bother you. She’s too
busy gathering animals for surgical potions.”

We passed by one scary sight after another.
The most disturbing thing I saw was nestled deep in the shadows of
a deserted alley. A young girl was sobbing mutely inside an
invisible box thrashing her hands around the bottom. She was
desperately trying to get out.

“
Jacoby, what’s happening
to that girl?” I asked.

“
I’m not exactly sure,” he
said, coming over. “No one can figure it out. The only one who
could is the hanalin ghoul who summoned the curse twenty years ago.
He was killed the second he banished her so we will never know how
to undo it. A ghoul is an omnipotent halloween.”

“
But it was killed,” I
pointed out. “Who could have killed him if it was infinite in
power?”

“
Most likely, it was
Jack.”

“
Oh.”

“
Where did the ghoul
banish her to?” said Katie.

“
To some world that is as
big as that box,” explained Jacoby.

“
But can’t you ask another
ghoul?” I asked. “Maybe they can undo it.”

“
It’s been tried. No one
can get her out. Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. She’s already
dead. The curse killed her immediately. Until her soul discovers
that she’s dead, she will remain in that box.”

We all stood there in the alley, staring in
dismay at the weeping girl.

“
Dorian!” shrieked a voice
in the crowd, startling me. “
Dorian
!”

“
Come on, you two, let’s
move along,” said Jacoby.

We quickly walked down the middle of the
street, as a dark-robed vampire stepped out of the crowd of
samhains who were all bowing their heads.

“
You don’t belong here!”
he said as blood trickled out of his eyes and mouth. “No one wants
you here!”

Jacoby and Dorian didn’t say anything in
return and quickly turned the corner into the next street of shops.
All the storefronts were dark and quiet, except for one, which lit
up the street with an array of fluorescent colors and had distant
sounds of an owl hooting and a crow cawing. A sign above the door
was swaying and rattling in the wind, even though the air was
perfectly still everywhere else along the street. It read:

Dress To Scare

candy~costumes~jinx
boxes

Jacoby led us right to it. The doors moaned
open and acknowledged everyone of us by name. The entrance hall was
packed from floor to ceiling with fluttering costumes, dancing
boots, bowing hats, flying capes and broomsticks, boiling potions,
self-reading books, glowing jack-o’-lanterns, and eye-turning
masks. It was the coolest thing ever.

The main room was even more fascinating,
with two massive colonnades of shelves stretching all the way to
the back, packed with scary decorations and more costumes. Every
part of the store had a different theme. The center aisle was
dressed up like a haunted graveyard and played the sound of a
gravedigger burying a woman alive.

Lin came out from the back, dressed as a
black jacket and jeans, with a white Mohawk.

“
Hey, what’s up, dude?”
welcomed Lin. “You come to buy some stuff?”

“
Lin, can you give Jesse a
quick touch up?” asked Jacoby. "We need to hide his human look
more."

“
The dead boy? He’s
good.”

“
You owe me,
Lin.”

“
Alright, whatever,
man.”

Lin pulled out a dull knife and wielded it
in the air, flicking it once in a while at random spots on my arms,
finishing within a couple of seconds.

“
You are done,” smiled
Lin, pleased with his work.

My skin had been melted, blackened, and some
parts on my arms were melted to the bone. My left wrist actually
had a hole in it; the same type of hole that I had seen in the
pictures at Ray's house.

"This is so cool," I said quietly to
myself.

Katie didn't think so. She turned my wrist
around to look at the hole. She looked sad by it.

A sudden crashing noise made us all turn to
the entryway. A menala had just stumbled in on his hands and knees,
mouthing a cry for help. Jacoby was already at the front door,
shielding the menala from a cloud of red smoke filtering in through
the cracks. He instantly put it out by inhaling it in one labored
suck. Something seemed terribly wrong.

“
J-Jacoby?” cried the
menala quietly.

Jacoby turned around, just
in time to grasp a key that sprang on its own from the potion
shelf. He then said in a stern voice, “
Kala, be quiet!”

He inserted the key inside the keyhole, and
the door fused with the wall and froze over into a wall of ice. He
then joined Dorian by the front window, which had also become
completely iced over, waiting for whatever sinister force was in
the street.

“
Kala, I’m sorry,” Jacoby
said after a minute, studying the darkness outside through a
thawed-out spot in the window. “It was necessary to prevent a
fight.”

“
What were those things?”
said Katie.

“
Tortics. Kala, get
up.”