I scrape peanut butter out of a jar and rinse it out, wondering if it’ll matter that our sunshine will smell of nuts. Mr. Devall’s neighbor apparently has a few chickens so he has gone to see if he can beg an egg from her. I think he also wanted a reason to get out of the house for a while and I’m not surprised. I’d certainly take the chance to get out of here if I could.
Organza takes the washed and dried peanut butter jar and heads outside. Reece decides to tag along and I warn them not to go past the oak tree. We have enough on our plate without having to drag them away from a bunch of overzealous zombie minors.
Liam, patently glad to have something to do, busies himself with finding the basin, the knife, and the soap. He’s a bit stuck on the red cloth and he comes looking for me to give him a suggestion. “What are we going to use? I found this but it’s not really red. It’s more pinkish than red.” He holds up a dishcloth that looks anything but red to me.
“Does it have to be a square or a rectangle? I could find a red shirt or top and cut a piece out of the back. It’s a pity Mr. Devall isn’t here. His shirt would be perfect.”
“How should I know? I’ve never practiced witchcraft before.” He stares at me, a man so far out of his comfort zone that he may as well be watching on from the moon, and I can’t help but laugh at his expression.
“None of us have. Don’t look so worried. We have to fight back with the same powers that Obidiah uses or we won’t get anywhere. The thing is, we’re using the positive side of the craft whereas he feeds on the negative. Mr. Devall will help. He seems confident that he knows what he’s doing.”
“You think so? He probably won’t even come back. Telling us that he needed to go get a freshly laid egg was just an excuse to get away. We won’t see him again, Ellie.”
Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. I sure hope Liam is wrong.
“What do you think about what he told us? He said Madeleine Farnsworth’s knows how to get rid of the zombies because she’s Bedeliah’s descendant.”
“I don’t think he put it quite that way. He didn’t say she knew the incantation because they’re related.” I walk up the hallway to our bedroom, thinking of where I can find a red cloth, and Liam follows me.
“Yeah, but I think it has something to do with it.” He holds his nose to combat the bathroom smell and watches as I flip through the sparse few clothes in our closet. There really hasn’t been a lot of time for shopping since we arrived in Gypsy Creek.
“Maybe this?” I pull out a red and black band t-shirt of Liam’s, one he bought to support his favorite band. “It’s mostly red.” I bite my lip as I notice that it’s more black than red, but at least it’s better than the pink dishcloth.
“No.” He snatches it out of my hands and holds it possessively against his chest. “You’re not cutting this up.”
“Suit yourself. We all know that everyone needs a band t-shirt when the house is spinning beneath our feet, zombies are tearing up the garden, and the entire family is in mortal danger.” We glare at each other, ferociously holding one another’s gaze, until I have a sudden brilliant flash. “Organza’s rock goddess t-shirt! It’s pure red and it’s about the only garment in the house that is.”
I run into her bedroom and pull open the closet door to yank the t-shirt from the hanger. It’s the only item of clothing she’s bothered to hang up. She’ll hate me for this but she can add it to her long list of Ellie faults. I’ll buy her another one when this is all over. A new bedcover, too. “This is just what we need.”
“I can’t stay in here any longer. That smell is going to make me vomit.” Liam puts his hand over his mouth and hurries back to the living room. I take one last look around Organza’s room, just in case there’s something else I can use instead of her t-shirt. Most of her stuff is in varying shades of pink. The t-shirt will have to be sacrificed and I’ll deal with Organza later.
Liam finds a pair of scissors and we sit on the floor to discuss the best way to go about this. Clearly, we need to cut it from the back as the front has the silver rock goddess logo sprawled across it. I’m just about ready to make the first cut when the front door opens and Mr. Devall steps back inside. He grins at us and holds up an egg between his thumb and forefinger. “One fresh egg and I found some rosemary, too. How did you kids get on?”
“We’ve got everything except the red cloth and we’re making that now.” I poke the tip of my tongue into the corner of my mouth to help me concentrate and I begin to snip.
Soon we have a reasonable-looking square of red cloth, along with everything else we’ve assembled, and we’re ready to begin. I’m suddenly aware of the silence in the house and I quickly look around but I’m not seeing what I’d hoped I’d be seeing.
“Has anyone seen Organza and Reece? Did they come back in? Did you see them when you arrived back at the house, Mr. Devall?” I’m already on my feet and striding towards the door, not liking the pinching, cramping feeling in my belly as cold fingers of fear clutch at the pit of my stomach.
Chapter Forty-Two
I’m about ready to skin my sister and I’m more than prepared to do it with my bare hands. She’s out there at the mailbox again, flirting in her self-aware, precocious 14-year-old manner with Orlando and Officer Leonard, and now she’s pretending she can’t hear me when I call her name.
I walk down off the steps and stand in the middle of the concrete, raising my voice to mid-fishwife level in order to attract Organza’s attention. “Organza dear, it’s time for your nap.”
That gets her. She whirls around, all cross face and potty mouth, and she hurls such a string of abuse at me that I briefly think Obidiah has taken over her body. “Why don’t you just fuck off, Ellie? I’m not a baby. You’re not my motherfucking mother so don’t start acting like you are.”
Orlando and Office Leonard titter nervously. They’re keeping their distance from Organza and I think they’re gradually starting to realize they might be getting a little more bang for their buck if they decide to take on this family.
However, I’m all Organza-ed out for today. Besides, I doubt Obidiah would be willing to risk inhabiting Organza’s head. “You probably should come inside. You might like to see what’s left of your rock princess t-shirt. We had a little…” I make sure I pause for full effect… “accident.”
“Arrrghhhhhhh!” Organza lets out a shriek and kicks at the temporary fence, aiming the point of her shoe at the crosshatched wire and striking it with all of her strength. The fence shudders and heaves before slamming into the next temporary structure and before you know it, we have the domino effect happening – the Gypsy Creek version. Ping, ping, ping. The fences fall down one after the other in a faintly mesmerizing aerobic display. Organza claps her hand over her mouth as Orlando and Officer Leonard stagger and gasp, clutching at one another.
Organza removes her hand from her mouth and laughs nervously. “Ooops. Hey, Ellie. I might come inside after all. I probably could do with a nap.” She waggles her fingers at the unresponsive men and skips up the path toward me.
However, I have other things on my mind. I might have found Organza but where is Reece? I grab hold of Organza as she casually attempts to skip by. “Where’s your brother?”
“Huh? Let go, Ellie. You’re hurting my arm.” She wrenches her arm free and starts with her death stare. I hold my palm up in front of her face in the universal Stop gesture. Something tells me I don’t have the time to bow down to Organza’s dramatics. An impending sense of danger is creeping up my spine and it’s about to plant a flag on the top of my head.
“Ellie, what’s with all the noise?” I hear Liam’s voice behind me and I’m fairly positive Mr. Devall is standing there beside him on the step but I don’t turn around to check.
“Where’s your brother?” I say again. “Where’s Reece? He was with you.”
“The fence is down! Ellie, the entire fence is down!” I’m not going to lie, Liam’s powers of observation at this moment almost leave me swooning.
Organza puts her hands on her hips and sets her feet apart, positioning herself in her fighting stance. “I’m not my brother’s keeper.”
Have you ever have moments in your life where you forget you’re supposed to be an adult and literally regress all the way back to your most infantile preschool persona? That’s me and I’m doing it now. “Your pink bedcover has poopy all over it and your rock princess t-shirt is shredded to pieces.”
“Arrrrgghhhh!” She launches herself at me but I quickly sidestep and swerve away. “Can you take her inside, Liam? I’m going to go look for Reece.”
I can hear Liam arguing with Organza, and Mr. Devall is chiming in for good measure, but I ignore them all. Reece hasn’t appeared, despite all the chaos and noise, and I have to find him. Now. I stride toward the oak tree, not allowing myself to think of the worst thing that I might see as I walk around the corner of the house. Instead, I focus on the idea that Madeleine’s spell is going to work, we’ll banish the zombie kids, Liam and Organza will get over the measles, Obidiah will find some other family to bother, and life will continue as normal. Yeah right, Ellie.
Several little zombie infants are wandering in loose circles at the edge of the yard, aimless and bored. A couple of them are fighting over who will sit on Nostradamus, pushing at each other ineffectively, and from where I’m standing I can see a loose, unattached foot hanging from one of the stirrups. An older boy, maybe closer to Reece’s age, is rhythmically banging his head against the side of the house while another zombie kid watches him with dazed, dead-eyed astonishment. Several of them start to lurch toward me but I can easily step out of their way. After dealing with adult and retired zombies, kid zombies are a cakewalk.
And then I see him. Reece. He’s sitting on the grass with Annabel-Mary or Mary-Annabel and she’s looping a daisy chain around his head with her torn, bloody hands. She’s focusing meticulously hard on her task, partly because she has no brains and partly because one of her eyeballs is hanging out of the socket and lying on her cheek. It would be adorably sweet if it wasn’t so macabre.
“Reece! Could you please come back inside? We’re about to do the incantation and I want us all together for it. Who knows what effect it’s going to have?” I decide not to scold him for playing with the zombie kids. It’s not as if any harm has been done.
Unfortunately, Orlando then bursts around the house, roaring like a bull in heat, with Officer Leonard close behind. Every zombie kid in the yard jerks their head around and even though none of them have working brains I don’t have any trouble pinpointing the single collective thought of the group – fresh meat.
Chapter Forty-Three
Look, I never planned any of this. Of course I don’t want anyone to die, especially not in such a gory, horrible way, even if the person is a real-life, certifiable creep. Although, if we look at it practically and keep the emotion out of it, Orlando is not really dead now that the zombies kids have overcome him and torn his flesh from his bones. He’s now undead.
Officer Leonard, who can move quicker than Orlando, possibly because of his police training, manages to escape but unfit Orlando doesn’t stand a chance. Those zombie kids put on a surprising burst of speed when they see him and he is overwhelmed in seconds. It’s frightening to watch, and I wish I could help even though Orlando was a creep, but I know from experience that it’s hard to win when you’re up against a pack of zombies with bloodlust on their tongues and the fire of madness in their unseeing eyes.
“Quick, Reece, get back into the house.” I glance over my shoulder as Officer Leonard waves a furious, impotent fist in my direction. “Mark my words, you’re all going to hell,” he shouts. He’s racing back to the cruiser now and I know he’s about to radio for help. We don’t have much time. I shove Reece into the house, yelling at the others to start the incantation, and slam the front door behind us. We need a few minutes of peace in order to get this done.
“Is everything all right out there?” Mr. Devall asks mildly and I can see that he doesn’t really want to know the truth. Hey, that’s fine. He’s acted above and beyond the call of duty as it is. The last thing I want to do is give him a blow-by-blow account of the peculiar purple color of fresh entrails and the guttural noise Orlando made as he succumbed to the zombie kid onslaught.
“Everything is just fine. Can we start?” I glare at my sister, who is now sitting on the sofa like the proper little lady she isn’t. “You’d better have that jar of sunshine.”
She doesn’t meet my eye but she points sullenly to the peanut butter jar and I can now see that it’s sitting on the red cloth with the egg, rosemary, soap, basin, and knife.
“There’s a pile of sand outside Reece’s bedroom door,” Liam announces irrelevantly.
“What?” Why would he tell us something like that at a vital moment like this? Reece shoots a furtive look in my direction but I don’t have time for this. I figuratively brush them both off and turn to Mr. Devall. “What do we do next?”
“Form a circle,” he commands, obviously now back in control of the situation. “Sit down and link hands.”
We do as he tells us, although I notice that Organza sits between Mr. Devall and Liam so she doesn’t have to hold hands with me. Mr. Devall gets to work, unwrapping the soap and scraping several curls of it into the bowl with the knife. He seems to know what he’s doing and I’m glad. It’s nice to have someone responsible come in and take charge of our problems.
“Hear that? “There’s something happening out there.” Liam cocks his head, and we all stop to listen to the clamoring squeal of sirens.
“Uh, there was a bit of an issue with Orlando,” I say, signaling with my eyes that we’ll talk about it later.
“Ellie…” He drops my hand and goes to stand up but I grab him and pull him back down. “Wait until the spell is done. It won’t take long.”
“No, it won’t take long,” Mr. Devall agrees as he pulls the leaves off the sprig of rosemary and drops them in the basin on top of the soap curls. Next, he cracks the egg into the bowl and glances at Organza. “Get ready with that sunshine, dear.”
Organza looks pleased to have such a major part to play in this enactment. She lets go of Liam and Reece’s hands and wiggles forward to pick up the peanut butter jar full of sunshine.
Someone outside has picked up a bullhorn and I cringe as the amplified voice echoes around the house. “Come out. Come out now with your hands in the air.”
Liam starts to say something but Mr. Devall holds up his hand to silence him. “We’re nearly done. We need to do exactly what Madeleine told me in order to appease her ancestor and lay the undead children to rest. Organza, you can start sprinkling that sunshine while the rest of you repeat after me, From embers to ashes, from valleys to peaks, may all that’s unholy rise up and speak.”
A piercing squeal rushes up from the floorboards beneath us and for one disconcerting instant, my brain tells me that a cop car has somehow managed to wedge itself under the house. However, when I look up and see the red, hate-filled eyes of Obidiah glaring at me from the corner of the room all thought as to what the cops are up to outside fade away. “Obidiah’s here,” I whisper. “He knows what we’re doing.”
“Hi, Obidiah!” Reece grins cheerfully at his satanic friend. “We’re just playing a game. You should come join us.”
“Quiet!” Mr. Devall shouts. “Concentrate. All of you concentrate. We need to bring Bedeliah forward.”
“Sorry.” Reece ducks his head and joins in with the chant as we allow the magic to begin.
However, it seems that real life magic doesn’t happen with that instantaneous flash, ripple of piano keys, and shower of stars favored by Disney movies. We’re now on our fifth repeat of Madeleine Farnsworth’s chant and we’re still waiting for something to happen. I shoot Liam a doubting side eye as we again launch into Madeleine’s chant. Take Six. I can’t help but notice that even Mr. Devall seems to be tiring of it as he stumbles over the words unholy rise up and
somehow manages to mangle it into unroly hise up.
Suppressing a sigh, I give Liam’s hand a squeeze and add an additional burst of exuberance to my words in an attempt to cover my boredom.
Chapter Forty-Four
At first, I think it’s a curl of smoke snaking up between a gap in the floorboards but as the shape gains in symmetry and substance I realize it’s the faint form of a woman dressed in old-timey clothes. She’s wearing one of those bonnet hats that tie under the chin and make every woman who wears one look like a housemaid, as well as a crisp starched apron over her dress. Her image fills out, becoming stronger, and now I can see the angry red rope marks around her neck. Hangman’s burn.
Mr. Devall clears his throat nervously and indicates that we should continue chanting. Shit-a-roonie, we’re doing our best but it’s difficult when an ancient serial killer who buried scores of innocent bodies in a cornfield is standing next to our new TV-less TV cabinet and gazing solemnly back at us.
“Uh,” says Liam, speaking for all of us, “What is that?”
Mr. Devall sucks in a deep breath through his nostrils and brings an end to the chant with a wave of his hand. He huffs and puffs as he pushes himself to his feet and straightens the hem of his Devall’s Furnishings shirt, where I can see a wedge of his round, pink belly peeking through the gap above the top of his pants. “Good afternoon, Ms. Farnsworth. I’m George Devall and these are my young friends Ellie, Liam, Organza, and Reece.”
Bedeliah gives us a ghost of a smile (see what I did there?) and politely inclines her head. “Charmed, I’m sure.”
Her voice is a surprise. I don’t know what I expected but I certainly didn’t think she’d sound so sweet. Bedeliah Farnsworth sounds a lot like my Grandma, which brings a sudden and unwanted tear to my eye. I irritably brush it away. This is no time for sentimental reminiscing.
The Nothing House Page 14