The Land of the Dead: Book Four of the Oz Chronicles (7 page)

The old man turned his attention back to us and flashed a yellow-toothed grin. I scooted up the ladder without any further hesitation. In my haste, I dropped the flashlight and heard it crash to the ground.

“Go, go, go,” I yelled.

Mimic-April clumsily climbed to the top and a split second later I did as well. I could hear the old man clomping up the ladder. He was grunting like a madman. I grabbed Mimic-April’s hand and pulled her toward the entrance to the pool. I decided to go back through the bowling alley and Halloween room. It was familiar and I knew that it would take me to the stairs. I was done with the basement and had no interest in ever seeing it again.

I navigated the dark corridors recklessly. Mimic-April and I crashed into walls and doors. The old man was having a much easier time of it. We heard him huff and puff as he pursued us, but there was no evidence that he was having trouble seeing in the dark like we were.

As we entered the bowling alley, I could swear I felt his cold breath on the back of my neck. I pumped my legs faster and practically dragged Mimic-April to the Halloween room.

As we raced through the room, I noticed an easing of the feeling of dread I’d felt since we first saw the old man. He was no longer chasing us. I could feel it. But, I didn’t slow down and turn to verify my theory. I just ran and ran and ran.

***

We saw Gordy first. He approached wide-eyed when he saw our distressed faces. “You okay?’

I shook my head, struggling not to go into shock.

“What happened?”

I pointed down. “The basement,” I said looking at Mimic-April in the better lighting of the main floor. She was not April. It was easy to see the difference. She was a faded copy of April. The coloring wasn’t quite right. The facial features weren’t quite complete. Mimic was a good imitation of April, but that’s it. That’s when it struck me. “Where’s April?” I asked sounding panicked.

“Dude,” Gordy said, “she’s right there…” He stopped short when he got a better look at Mimic. Stepping back in fear or disgust or both, he said, “What is that?”

“A Throwaway,” I said. “She became April… kind of.”

He clenched his jaw. “How?”

“I don’t know,” I said moving past him. “It’s not important. Help me find April.”

He hesitated, still fixated on Mimic-April. “I… I thought she was with you.”

“We got separated.”

“Separated?” he said.

I rolled my eyes as I grew frustrated having to explain everything to him. “There was… something in the basement. It chased us. We lost Mimic,” I said gesturing to the incomplete version of April. “I went back to get her and sent April and Kimball in the other direction. I thought for sure that there was another set of stairs.”

It was then that I heard the click, click, click of Kimball’s nails on the floor as he sauntered toward us. I looked past him to see if April was following him. She wasn’t. I almost asked Kimball where she was, and then I remembered he was a dog.

“You should see the winter gardens,” I heard Lou say. “They’re so beautiful… and creepy.” She stopped short when she saw my face. “What’s wrong?”

“April’s missing,” I said.

“She’s right there,” she said pointing at Mimic. I could hear her gasp after she took a closer look. “Wha…”

“Long story,” I said. “Actually, I’m not really sure what the story is at all. I am sure that April is missing.”

Lou shrugged. “Well, let’s go find her.”

I turned back toward the stairs. My mouth went dry. A chill raced through my body. “I can’t…” I swallowed. “We can’t go down there.”

“What are you talking about?” Lou asked.

“Yeah, what’s down there?” Gordy asked.

I shook my head.

“April’s down there,” Lou said.

I clenched my fist and thumped my leg trying to pound the courage back into my body. My teeth began to chatter.

“His name is Albert,” Mimic said.

I turned to her astonished. “He talked to you?”

She looked at me dumbfounded. “He’s Albert. He didn’t have to say. He is the Flish.”

“The Flish?” Lou asked no one in particular.

“A scary old man,” I said.

Gordy laughed. “Old man? Dude, we’ve taken on purple dead-eyed freaks, ant men, zombie-things…”

“Takers,” Lou added.

“Right,” Gordy said. “You’re sweating an old man?”

“He just looks like an old man,” I said. “He’s more than that. He’s…”

“Evil,” Mimic said.

Gordy waved his hand to illustrate his disgust. “Just do that thing where you get all strong and stuff. You know, from the marking.”

I shook my head. “I don’t like it when I get that way. It never feels like it will go away. And it only happens when I get mad. Not…” I hesitated.

“Not what?” Gordy asked.

“Scared,” I said just above a whisper.

“I’ll go,” Lou said with a forced smile.

“No,” I snapped. “No one goes. Not alone.”

“Goes where?” Wes asked.

We all turned to see him, Tyrone, Ajax, and Tall Boy coming toward us.

“April’s missing,” Gordy said.

“Who’s…” Wes began to ask looking at Mimic and then stopped. “What the…”

Tall Boy approached Mimic. “Did it hurt?”

Mimic nodded. “A little.”

Wes cleared his throat. “I am all kind of confused. Someone want to explain to me what in tarnation is going on here?”

Gordy groaned. “April’s downstairs somewhere. One of them Throwaways made herself look like April. And there’s an old man in the basement who may or may not be a fish.”

“Flish,” Mimic said. “He is the Flish.”

Tall Boy tensed up.

“That mean something to you?” Wes asked him.

“He is the Gray Man,” Tall Boy answered as if we should all know who is talking about.

“Gray, pink, blue,” Tyrone said pulling a hunting knife from its sheath, “what difference does it make?” He stomped toward the stairwell.

“Wait,” I said.

A roar came from a back room. We all flinched and turned to see Ariabod dragging April’s limp body out of the room.

Tyrone sprinted toward them. “Let her go, you dumb ape.”

Ariabod snarled and refused to let go of April’s arm.

Tyrone stomped his foot. “Haa! Get out of here!”

Lou jogged toward them. “What are you doing? He understands you. You don’t have to act like a lunatic.”

Ariabod smacked the floor with his free hand.

“If he understands me, why doesn’t he let her go?”

She stepped in front of Ariabod. “Because you’re not the boss.” She smiled and calmly said. “You can let go of her.”

He shook his giant head.

“Looks like you’re not the boss either,” Tyrone said. He turned to me. “Well?”

“What?”

“You’re the boss man,” he said. “Start acting like it.”

I raised an eyebrow. I was getting tired of his act. If I hadn’t been so relieved to see April, I would have let him know exactly how I felt. I sighed deeply and said. “Let her go, Ariabod.”

The silverback huffed and gently released April’s arm, letting it flop to the floor. Ariabod eyeballed Tyrone as he moved away, and Tyrone returned the favor. It was clear they didn’t like each other.

Lou bent down and examined her. “She’s alive,” she said.

The rest of us formed a semicircle around them.

Wes peeked over Lou’s shoulder. “Looks white as a ghost.”

Lou felt her forehead. “She’s cold.” She stood and motioned to Wes. “Pick her up.”

Wes did so without asking why.

“C’mon,” Lou said walking quickly to the stairs. “There’s a bedroom on the second floor.”

“Bedroom?” Gordy said sounding incredulous. “What about the Flish? We need to get the hell out of here.”

Lou didn’t slow down. “April’s in no shape to travel. We’ll hide out on the second floor. What are you afraid of? It’s all of us against him.”

Everyone except Gordy and me started following her up the stairs. Gordy looked at me. “It’s not enough, is it?”

I wanted to tell him it was, but he would have known I was lying. Instead, I just ignored his question and started up the stairs.

SEVEN

The fifteen of us fit comfortably in the bedroom that belonged to the original owner of the mansion. The furniture was an intense red and there was gold leafing on the walls. April was lying comfortably on the canopy bed with Kimball beside her. Lou and Mimic attended to her. The rest of the Throwaways assembled in the corner opposite the door to the bedroom. They mumbled to one another. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could tell they were deeply concerned. Wes was laid out on a chaise lounge in the middle of the room. Ajax and Ariabod huddled near him. Tyrone sat in a chair keeping a wary eye on the gorillas.

I stood by the window that looked out over the property and searched through the darkness for any signs of unwelcomed visitors. Gordy startled me when he spoke.

“We need to talk about our friends.”

I pulled my head out from behind the red curtain and followed his gesture to the Throwaways. “What about them?”

He snorted. “One of them morphed into one of us, that’s what about them.”

I looked at Mimic hunched over the bed trying to get as close to April as she could. “Okay, it’s weird,” I said. “But not much isn’t weird in this world.”

“It’s more than weird,” Gordy said struggling to keep his voice down. “It could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” I asked.

“What if they’re like pod people sent here to take our place?”

“Pod people?” I laughed. “Have you met the Throwaways? They’re about as gentle as you can get. Can’t see them taking our place. They barely have their own place.”

“Exactly,” Gordy said excitedly. “They don’t have a place here. They don’t fit in. If they become us, suddenly they fit in.”

I muddled through his logic quickly and then waved him off. “I think you’re reading too much into this…”

“Am I? April goes missing, and Mimic winds up looking like her. In case you haven’t noticed, No-face’s bump is now a nose. I’m pretty sure the one with a messed up half arm now has a messed up two-thirds arm.”

I looked past him and examined the group of Throwaways. No-face’s bump did now appear to have nostrils. I returned my attention to the world outside the window. “We’ll keep our eye on it.”

I could almost hear him grinding his teeth together in frustration at my lack of concern. “You suck as leader.”

I didn’t turn to him immediately. I felt an anger building up inside of me that would have led me down a path I didn’t want to take. The painful ice cold blood of my Délon marking started to course through my veins. I sucked air in and held my breath until I felt the rage start to subside. Still, I didn’t acknowledge him. I waited and waited until the feeling was completely gone. If he had pushed the argument, I probably wouldn’t have been able to control it, but thankfully, he remained silent. Maybe he sensed what was bubbling up inside of me and wisely decided to back down.

I spoke calmly and slowly. “I didn’t ask to be leader, numbnuts. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Since I’ve got no experience with this kind of thing, I’m going with my gut, and my gut tells me that the Throwaways aren’t dangerous. In fact, my gut tells me we could use them.”

He bit his lip and actually thought before he spoke, something he didn’t do a lot of. “How can we use them?”

I shrugged. “I’ll let you know when I know.”

He threw his arms up in disgust. “Fine. But I’m watching them like a hawk, and I’m not going to be nice about it.”

“Your choice,” I said. I was about to look out the window again when I caught a glimpse of Tyrone’s face. He was glaring at Ariabod. He squeezed and released the handle of his knife over and over again. “I think we need to worry about Tyrone more than the Throwaways.”

Gordy looked over his shoulder at Tyrone. “Kid’s messed up. Lou says he was really gaga over Valerie. He ain’t been the same since she got killed.”

“He’s going to wind up doing something stupid,” I said. “Get himself killed and who knows who else.”

“What do you want to do?” Gordy asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing for now, but while you’re keeping an eye on the Throwaways, keep another on him.”

Gordy chuckled. “Safer watching the freaks. I’m pretty sure I can take them. That kid’s had his heart broke and ripped out of his chest. He ain’t got nothing to lose. He’s liable to go nutbag crazy and kill me just for looking at him funny.”

“Then try not to look at him funny,” I said walking away and heading for the bed.

“You’re a real big help,” Gordy said.

“How’s she doing?” I asked Lou as I approached the bed.

“She’s warmed up a little. Her temperature’s almost normal I think. Can’t tell for sure without a thermometer. She’s still a little delirious. Mumbling about the old man and someone named Grace.”

“Grace?” I said looking at Mimic.

“You know the name?” Lou asked.

“The old man said something about Grace.” In my head, I replayed every word he’d said down in the pool. “Jeremiah… Did she say anything about someone named Jeremiah?”

“No,” Lou said.

“Nineteen nine,” Mimic added.

“What?” Lou asked.

I thought for a minute. “Yeah, that’s right. He said something about nineteen nine.”

“Jeremiah nineteen nine,” Mimic said without taking her eyes off April.

“Nineteen nine?” Lou sat on the edge of the bed. “Code?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “Sounded just like rambling to me.”

Lou folded her arms and stared intensely at the canopy on the bed. “Jeremiah, Grace, nineteen nine.”

I sat on the bed next to her. I got a faint whiff of her sweet scent and momentarily lost my place in time. I zeroed in on her neck. I had never noticed how… pretty it was. The thoughts running through my head started to make me feel uneasy. I cleared my throat in an effort to shake them loose and shouted, “He said Jeremiah was his favorite.”

She jumped at the volume of my voice. “Oh… okay…”

“Jeremiah?” Wes barked from his lounge chair. “From the Bible?”

I twisted my head around. His hands were behind his head. He looked far too relaxed for a guy trying to survive the end of the world. “The Bible?”

“Yeah, the Bible. It’s a book. You heard of it?”

I nodded absentmindedly. “Why would you think we were talking about the Bible?”

“It’s the only Jeremiah I know,” he said. “Old testament. A lot of death and destruction, if I remember right.”

Lou and I looked at each other. We both said, “Nineteen nine” at the same time.

“It’s a verse,” she said.

“From the Book of Jeremiah,” I added.

She jumped up and scanned the room. Spotting a dresser nearby, she ran to it as quickly as she could. She frantically started going through the drawers.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking for a Bible. There’s got to be one here…” She giggled as she reached in and pulled out a black leather Bible. “I knew it!” She flipped through the book, stopped, turned a few more pages, and ran her finger up and down a page. “19:9,” she repeated to herself a few times. “Ahhh! Got it!” She read silently. Her eyes narrowed. I could tell she was reading the verse a few times.

“What does it say?” I asked.

She looked up and simply shook her head as if to say she couldn’t bring herself to read it out loud. Before I could stand, Gordy moved in and yanked the Bible from her hand. He sighed and found the verse. He didn’t bother reading silently to himself first. He just blurted out horrible word after horrible word as loudly as he could.

“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. “ He peered up over the leather bound book. “Whoa!”

Every face in the room, even the blank one, froze.

“So, there is a dude in the basement who’s into eating… people?” Gordy asked. “Why exactly did we decide to stay here?”

“Is he Skinner Dead?” Wes asked. The relaxed posture was gone. He was sitting up and rubbing his stubbly chin with his callused fingers.

“No,” I said.

“Was he real… you know, alive?” Lou asked.

“I don’t know…” I stood and stared at the floor as I tried to remember every detail of the old man. “The boy…” I said.

“What boy?” Wes asked.

“The dead boy, the one from before. The one that wanted us to follow him to the Land of the Dead, he and the others were there… in the basement. The old man wasn’t too happy to see him.”

“Others? What others?” Lou asked.

“The other dead.”

Gordy threw up his arms. “Great! We’re in a creepy old mansion with a bunch of dead people in the basement and one scary old dude who wants to eat us. This just gets better and better!”

“Boy,” Wes barked, “you’re ‘bout to get a good dose of my foot up your keister. “ He lifted himself off the chaise lounge and was almost winded by the effort. “What are the chances we just stumbled on the place they wanted us to go?”

“Slim to none,” I said.

“That brochure about this place you found at the convenience store, how’d you come across it?”

I thought about it. “The wind… It just caught my eye.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “That weren’t no wind. Dollars to donuts it was one of your dead friends giving us a nudge in the right direction.”

“Well,” Gordy said. “They got us here, let’s just call them upstairs and get this thing over with.”

“How do you propose we do that?” Wes asked.

Gordy shrugged. “I don’t know, séance maybe?”

Wes hesitated and then smiled. “That just might work.”

April let out a deafening scream. She sat up straight in bed and started bawling. “Mommy,” she cried.

Mimic hastily backed away. She shrieked like an injured animal.

Lou ran to April’s side. She began by encouraging April to lie down and then resorted to physically trying to force her.

“I kissed him on the cheek,” April cried hysterically. “That’s when he decided to eat me.”

While Lou wrestled with her, the rest of us stood frozen in time and listened to her horrific story.

“Mommy let me go to a party with him. I picked wild flowers outside while he sharpened his knives in the kitchen. He called me inside and grabbed me. I told him I would tell mommy that he was a mean man. “

Tyrone held tight onto his knife handle. “Tell her to shut up,” he demanded.

“He choked me. I kicked and screamed and scratched.”

“Shut her up!” Tyrone pleaded this time.

“It took him nine days to eat me.”

Tyrone raised the knife and repeatedly stabbed the vacant side of the bed. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut Up!”

The Throwaways huddled closer and closer together until they were almost one jumbled mass.

April sucked in a long breath of air and then collapsed into a blubbering mess.

I had had enough of Tyrone’s act. Without considering the consequences, I barreled into him and knocked him to the floor. Thankfully, the knife went flying out of his hand. I raised my fist, prepared to pummel him within an inch of his life, when I saw the expression on his face. It was calm. He wasn’t fighting back. He wasn’t screaming or thrashing about. He was waiting for me to hit him. I let him go and stood up.

“What is going on here?” Lou asked sounding as stressed as I felt. She had an arm draped over April’s shoulder.

“This is crazy town,” Gordy added. “The heart of it!”

My hands began to shake. “It’s this room,” I whispered.

“Speak up,” Wes demanded.

“The room feels different,” I said.

Wes looked around and then crossed his arms. “Got colder, that’s for damn sure.”

Tyrone found his knife and picked it up. “He’s here.”

I shook my head. “No. It doesn’t feel like him.” I spun around to face Tyrone and in doing so happened to glance at the dark corner of the room. There, almost blending in with the black shadows stood the little girl from the basement. My heart raced. I tried to tell the others, but I couldn’t speak.

“It took him nine days,” she said. At least I think she did. I saw her lips move, and I heard her voice, but no one else reacted. “Nine days,” she said just before she vanished into the darkness. The coldness was gone.

My legs began to wobble, and I struggled to keep my feet. I bent over and placed my hands on my knees, breathing deeply.

“What’s wrong with you, son?” Wes asked.

“We’ve got nine days.” I straightened up, shivered, and rubbed my hands together.

“For what?” Tyrone asked. He was stoic and detached.

“I’m not sure,” I answered.

“Nine days?” Gordy yelped. “I’m not particularly interested in sticking around here for another nine minutes. I say we get on our giddy up and put some serious miles between us and this freakfest.”

“Can’t,” I said.