There stood the ghoul Max had encountered the previous evening. It might have been a gloomy, stormy morning with no soul on the street, but an undead emerging during the daytime, brazen and unafraid of exposure—this was unheard of. The natural instinct for nearly all monsters was to hide from human sight, especially during the daytime. If they had to operate within this period, they would usually do so incognito, disguising themselves so they could fit into human society. The creature now squeezed its face against the bars, black tongue running along its filthy teeth. Max swung his fists at the monster, jabbing at it through the rails, causing it to back away. Its pale white eyes looked up the length of the iron bars. It started to climb.
Max placed his left heel against the crossbar at the top of the iron fence, frantically trying to force his right leg free. He heard the denim ripping as he twisted and turned, only for the stitched hem to resist, holding out against a complete break. The creature crouched on the top of the railings, bones and ribs protruding against its fetid flesh. Max could feel the blood rushing to his head. The undead grave robber was poised, looking down like some ghastly mockery of a mausoleum angel. Its jaws snapped together, and its clawed fingers scratched hungrily at its belly. What if this ghoul is no longer exclusively a carrion feeder? Max wondered fearfully. He stamped at the bar for all he was worth.
The denim tore and the boy fell. Max went into a tumble, head, neck, back, and legs tucking into a ball as he safely halted a few yards from the iron fence. The ghoul screeched angrily, seeing its meal escaping, and leaped from its perch on the railings, flying straight down toward the boy. Max was still in the tuck position on his back, looking up as the monster descended. He took its weight on the soles of his sneakers, the wind forced from his lungs as the creature landed on him. It may have been skin and bone, but from that height it still packed some force. Its hands closed in on Max, reaching for his throat, as that long black tongue flickered at him, almost licking his face. Max pushed back. Hard.
His legs straightened, launching the ghoul skyward. Its trajectory didn’t carry it over the railings, but that hadn’t been Max’s intention. The monster came down with a splintering squelch onto the spiked heads of the rails. Four of them found their way through its torso, one through its skull. It hung there, limbs jangling in the gusting rain like some grotesque Halloween wind chime.
Max staggered to his feet woozily. He looked down at the torn leg of his favorite drainpipe jeans. A wave of nausea washed over him. He grabbed hold of the rails to steady himself and let the heavy rain wash over him. It could have been the adrenaline rush of the fight. It could have been the blood rushing, now that he was the right way up again. It could have been the low blood sugar of an empty stomach.
“And this,” said Max, panting and wagging a cautionary finger at the slain ghoul, “is why you should never, ever skip breakfast.”
NINE
xxx
A WARM WELCOME
There had been no point in heading to homeroom. The best Max could hope for when he finally got to Gallows Hill Middle School was sidestepping the main office altogether. Chaining his bike to a rickety, overflowing drainpipe, a soaking-wet Max had shanked open the boiler room window. With the heavens hammering down around him, he had squeezed through the opening into the basement, followed by a deluge of rainwater.
After draping his damp clothes over an old pommel horse beside the furnace, Max tied his Chucks together by their laces before suspending them from the furance’s grilled door. Then he sat down on an overturned bucket in his underwear and stared into the flames. Once first period ended, he’d get dressed again, head up into the school, and simply blend into the mob. If asked, he’d claim to have been in school all along. The boiler room was the ace up his sleeve, just waiting for the right moment to be played.
The Eightball incident seemed a distant memory now, merely an amusing anecdote after the ghoul attack. What kind of rotten luck was he experiencing today? He looked across the room to where his rain-soaked sneakers hung. It was wishful thinking that they might be dry in the next hour. He picked up his messenger bag and began rummaging inside it. Max bypassed his schoolbooks, instead withdrawing a far more interesting tome.
The Monstrosi Bestiarum was one of the oldest books in the Van Helsing library, a field guide to all things monstrous. The original author was a Teutonic Knight by the name of Buchner, a papal warrior who specialized in the hunting down and butchering of “unholy entities.” A fearsome swordsman, he was also a mean hand with ink and quill, recording the strengths and weaknesses of every monster he encountered. The book had eventually found its way into the Van Helsings’ hands and been passed down from generation to generation. It was a who’s who of monsterkind and the go-to resource whenever Max was in a creature conundrum.
He flicked through the pages to the chapter on ghouls, which outlined five different variations of the beast. It was there in inked script: they were all strictly carrion feeders. Max double-checked the appendix for any recorded attacks upon humans, finding only a single entry from three centuries ago, and in that instance the ghoul had attacked in self-defense. That one had chosen Max for a meal was an aberration for their kind, and a worrying one at that. And the ghoul wasn’t the only creature that had tried to take a bite out of him that morning.
“I wonder,” he muttered, thumbing through the book, the pages illuminated by the fluttering flames of the furnace. “Good-bye G, hello H . . .”
The rain continued to patter on the basement windowpane as it creaked and groaned in its broken bracket, but Max’s attention was focused on the bestiary. Many of the illustrated pages were embellished with a host of horrible stains—blood put in plenty of appearances, as did mysterious blotches of black and green and the odd cloud of dried-up ectoplasmic residue. Max flipped past the hag, the half elf, and the hantu demon, followed by harpies, haunts, and the Headless Horseman. With a grin, Max slapped his hand down, holding the book open.
“Now then, Eightball,” he said, tracing his finger over the entry for hellhound. “Let’s see what got you howling and growling . . .”
But before Max could read about the feeding habits of a Level I juvenile hound, the fire in the furnace spluttered out, plunging the boiler room into darkness. He clapped the bestiary shut instantly. The hairs on his neck rose, his exposed flesh shuddering with goose bumps. It had gotten cold very quickly in the boiler room, unnaturally so. His breath steamed before him. A ghost, perhaps? The only light source came from the busted window at street level overhead.
“Aw, c’mon,” said the monster hunter, standing and searching the shadows for a sign of the intruder. “That’s a rotten trick, putting out the fire. Do you see what I’m wearing?” He edged closer to the furnace, peering past his swinging sneakers through the grille. The oven interior was pitch black, no sign of light or heat. “I’m down to my unmentionables. A guy could catch his death of cold!”
“Not . . . cold . . .” came a quiet voice from within the iron oven.
“Not what now?” asked Max, turning his ear and taking another step closer.
The reply was a whisper.
“Fire.”
It started with the tiniest spark in the deepest recess of the furnace, before bursting into life like a newborn star. Max was already reeling back as an enormous ball of boiling flame erupted from within the huge industrial oven. The grate was blown off its hinges, narrowly missing Max as it rocketed past and embedded itself into the wall below the leaking window. His sneakers, singed and smoking, were still attached, bouncing against the wet brickwork like novelty baubles. Max scrambled clear as the fire spilled out of the fractured furnace, licking the floor all around him. His hair was smoking, as was the Monstrosi Bestiarum. He went straight for the book, smothering it with his chest and protecting it from further damage. Max backed up against the wall, beneath the grille and Chucks, shocked to see a figure taking shape within the inferno.
“You are Mark,” hissed the fire phantasm.
“Nope, I’m Max,” said the boy. “Close, but no cigar—guess you got the wrong furnace. What’s this Mark’s last name? Maybe I can—”
“Silence!” cried the apparition, its grating voice cracking.
“Not a conversationalist, then,” muttered Max, eyes flitting about for a way out of his fix. Once again, his messenger bag was out of reach, on the floor across the basement, smoke curling from the canvas. “Can we start again? Hi, I’m Max. You must be Flaming-Hellspawn-Ghostly-Guy. Pleased to meet ya!”
“You must die, Mark!”
“Max, actually, but whatever,” he said with a shrug. “Seriously, though, what is happening today? Is it open season on me or what?”
“Marked! You are Marked!” cried the flaming phantom, staggering ever closer. Max could smell his hair burning now, the stink assailing his nose and throat. It was now or never. “You must die! The fire take you!”
The fire phantasm drew itself up, raising its flaming fists over its head, the blaze brightening around it. As its limbs flew down, Max leaped up, bounding vertically up the wall, his feet landing on the furnace grille protruding from the crumbling bricks. Fire roared where the specter punched the floor, cracking the flagstone and sending shrapnel flying. The iron grate Max perched on groaned, threatening to tear loose beneath his weight. The monster looked up at the boy, Max’s whole body almost collapsing as the relentless heat rolled up the wall around him.
“Face the fire, Marked One!”
The fire phantasm’s mouth yawned open, belching fire like a Balrog’s kid brother. Max made one more desperate leap—again, straight up. His left forearm swung over the window ledge while his right hand ripped the glass panel off its splintered hinges. Below, the fire built in intensity. Max could feel the flesh on his back and legs searing, the air burning in his lungs.
“You cannot run from the fire!”
“Who’s running?”
Max threw both of his arms out into the street, seizing hold of the swinging drainpipe and yanking with all his might. The curved end grated across the sidewalk as Max twisted it about, suddenly finding the rainwater surging straight at him, hard in the face. With his fingers and toes gripping the brickwork, he danced to one side before the torrent blasted him from the wall. The fire phantasm’s glowing eyes blinked once in surprise as the waterfall crashed down, dousing its flames and consuming it in a giant, hissing roar of rage. With a woeful wail and thrashing of thinning limbs, the specter crumbled to nothing, blasted to oblivion by Max’s improvised hose.
The entire basement was transformed into a steam room as Max slid from the wall and landed in a puddle, the rain still rushing in over his head. Of the fire phantasm there was no sign.
“Marked?” said Max, checking himself up and down for a telltale sign. He was clean, except for a pair of soaking, soot-covered boxer shorts. He hopped through the growing puddles toward the furnace, where his clothes remained draped over the pommel horse. They were scorched dry after the encounter, which was a small blessing considering how thoroughly soaked his sneakers were now. He scooped them up in his arms just as the door to the boiler room swung open with a clang. The school janitor stood to one side as Whedon’s furious face peered into the basement.
“Helsing!” the principal roared. The boy winced and raised his hands.
“I can explain,” Max lied.
TEN
xxx
SHORTCUT
Max slouched in the bike seat, the Chopper’s wheels cutting a wake through stagnant puddles. His spirits were bruised enough, but the rain was now battering them into submission. His previously dried and now soaking-once-again clothes clung to his clammy flesh. As mornings went, he’d had better ones.
Since when did monsters attack him—and in daylight, too? What happened to them skulking in shadows and lurking in abandoned mills, hidden from human sight? It went against all that Jed had taught him, especially the ghoul. They might be undead, but as the mortally challenged went, ghouls were harmless enough . . . ordinarily.
Max checked his wristwatch. It had only just turned ten. Halfway through the morning and he’d already been in two scrapes, three counting Eightball. Principal Whedon had instantly suspended Max after the boiler room fiasco, and no doubt Jed would have received the news by now. How would he react to his ward being sent home in disgrace on his thirteenth birthday? Max shook his head, rain flicking from the tip of his nose. Ordinarily, he could expect the mother of all scoldings from the old man, but the morning’s events had been so extraordinary that there had to be more to it. It wasn’t just bad luck that had resulted in those attacks. What had the fire phantasm said? He was marked? This had the whiff of monstrous mischief to Max, no doubt about it.
He shivered as he cycled, and not just on account of the weather. Max felt as though every pair of eyes was upon him, every passerby a potential threat. Was the mailman across the street simply on his daily rounds or following him? Max pedaled harder. The crossing guard watched him approach, beckoning him toward her junction. Why was she smiling? She may have just been cheery, but Max didn’t wait to find out, giving her a wide berth and riding on. An old lady stared out of a thrift shop window, her wizened features transforming into those of a hag in Max’s mind as he raced by, toward the next intersection.
A mighty roar came out of nowhere, exploding from a side street and nearly bowling Max off his Chopper. He slammed on his brakes as an eighteen-wheeler thundered through, its massive wheels churning up every puddle and sending a wave of filthy water over the hapless boy. Max hunched over his handlebars, clutching his chest, checking that his heart still beat. At this rate a panic attack would kill him before a monster got him.
He turned down the side street and cycled on, crossing over once he caught sight of the woodland. It wasn’t a path he would have taken at night—the old forest was home to vagrants and gangs—but on a wet and miserable day like this it would be the quietest and quickest route home. He hopped the curb and left the sidewalk, dropping onto the trail through Hemlock Woods.
Soon the noise of the street was muffled as boy and bike were swallowed by the foliage. It wasn’t the largest green space in Gallows Hill, but it was probably the wildest. Trails that had once been well kept had been reclaimed by nature, roots and branches making certain paths impassable. Max found himself bunny-hopping each obstacle, ducking beneath each blocking bough, as the Chopper weaved deeper into the woods.
The path wound down through an old gulch toward an ancient-looking bridge, the logs lashed together by rotten rope and rusting nails. It spanned a rocky ravine, a stream surging below, the waters foaming thanks to the downpour. Max stood on his pedals, freewheeling between the rocks as he descended the gulch. The forest flanked the ravine, rain rattling on branches as it fell. The boards clattered as Max rode onto the bridge.
He was halfway across when he pulled hard on the brakes. Dead ahead on the opposite bank, standing in his path, was a coyote. Its gray-brown pelt glistened with raindrops, and it sent them flying with a lively shake. Max half expected the beast to lurch toward him, canines bared and eyes wild. Instead it simply stood appraising him. Right on cue, the sun broke through the rain clouds, throwing its rays onto the animal.
Even the rushing water quieted at that moment, the stream’s spray sparkling like diamonds in the daylight. It was the most perfect, beautiful thing Max had ever witnessed, and it was gone in a heartbeat.
The sun vanished, gloom settling again. The rain fell heavier, and the coyote flinched. Max heard it whimper. He raised a hand, hoping to show he meant it no harm. It backed up, dipping its head and crying louder. Was it afraid of him?
“Hey,” called Max, somewhere between a whisper and a shout, not wanting the beast to bolt. “No need to fear me.”
The coyote’s tail had dropped between its legs now, body language changed entirely. Max could see its coat trembling. Finally, it showed its teeth and let loose a harsh bark before turning and bounding up the trail, back into the darkness of Hemlock Woods. Max sighed, slumping as he gripped his handlebars. A chilling wind raced through the trees, their branches grating like death rattles.
Resigned to the idea that perhaps he wasn’t an animal person after all, Max pushed off once again, but the Chopper remained motionless. Max looked down, searching for the obstruction. Nothing blocked the front wheel. He peered over his shoulder. The larger, rear wheel had somehow snared itself on trailing ivy. A green tendril was bound through the spokes and entwined around the chain cog.
“My day gets better,” he muttered, climbing off the bike and kicking out the stand. He crouched to get a better look, aware that he was still balanced on a rickety, decrepit, rain-slicked bridge that was probably built by the founding fathers. He reached toward the emerald vine and stopped.
Max shivered, the hairs on the back of his hand standing on end. He looked back the way he had come, up the rocky incline toward the forest’s edge. The rain, branches, and shifting shadows obscured his vision, hiding whatever was out there. The only things that caught his eye were the bright green vines that clung to the trees, climbing their trunks. A particularly thick one trailed out of the woods, growing over stone and root toward the stream. Max realized this was the actual vine that had bound itself around his rear wheel. It was almost as if it had slithered out of the forest and secured itself to the bike.
The Thirteenth Curse Page 6