by Libba Bray
“‘Sadly, this may be the last year for the festival—and Necuratul itself—as there are plans to relocate the town and build a power plant in its location.’”
“Wow. There’s a happy travelogue,” Baz cracked. “Come to our town! Drink our wine! Ogle our women! Feast on our feast days! And all it will cost you is…your soul!”
“They’ve got great wine and a hellacious party? I’m there,” John said. He still had his expensive sunglasses perched on his head. His nose was sunburned.
Baz drained his stein and wiped his mouth on his arm. “I’m in.”
“Me too. Poe?” Isabel held out her hand to me and grinned. It was always hard to resist Izzie when she was being adventurous. We’d been best friends since seventh grade when she’d immigrated from Haiti and I’d arrived from the big city, and we’d held on to each other like buoys lost on a dark, uncertain sea. I laced my fingers through hers.
“Town of the Damned it is,” I said, and we all shook on it.
The next morning we left the hostel before dawn and caught a train headed east from Munich. The train chugged around mountains with steep drop-offs that made the still-hungover John and Baz sick to their stomachs. After a few more twists and turns we disappeared into a deep, dark forest—a towering guard of ancient power.
“I wouldn’t last a day in there,” I muttered.
“Dude, no one would,” John said. He pulled his hat over his face to block the light and went to sleep against Isabel’s shoulder.
At Budapest there was an influx of travelers, and our cozy cabin was invaded by an old lady with a smell like garlic and an accent dense as brown bread. “I am sitting here, yes? You will make room.”
Isabel and John were still asleep on the bench opposite us, so Baz and I scooted over, and the old lady sat down and spread out next to us. “Where are you going? No, wait! Don’t tell me. I guess. You’re going to—”
“Necuratul. Town of the Damned,” Baz interrupted. He wiggled his eyebrows for effect.
The lady grunted. “I said I would guess. I am a fortune-teller. When stupid American boys don’t beat me to the fist.”
“You mean ‘to the punch’?” Baz asked.
“Whatever. You are?”
We introduced ourselves and she nodded like she had mulled it over and decided it was okay for us to have our particular names. “You may call me Mrs. Smith.”
Somehow Mrs. Smith didn’t seem like the name of an Eastern European fortune-teller who smelled of garlic and got on at Budapest. I guess our faces gave it away, because she gave us a little shrug. “It was easy to paint on my truck. Besides, everybody knows someone named Smith. Come. I will tell your fortunes.”
“We don’t have any money,” I said quickly.
“Who said anything about money?” Mrs. Smith snapped. “I forgot my book and I’m bored. Don’t be such an asshole.”
“Isn’t this what happens in the movies a lot? There’s some old dude or woman who tells your fortune and is all, ‘Oh, you’re gonna die or make a boatload of money or meet a girl. Now give me all your cash’?” Baz yammered.
Mrs. Smith bristled. “I can tell your fortune right now without even consulting your palm.”
“You can?”
“Yes. You are an idiot. You will always be an idiot.”
Baz’s smirk disappeared. “’kay. In the movies it’s usually more complicated. And less abusive.”
Mrs. Smith was staring at my face, and I automatically felt my armor coming on. Like it was the first day of seventh grade all over again: Yo, slant eyes. Gook. Sushi roll. Hey, you’re Asian—can you help me with my math homework?
“Something wrong?” I said with a lot of edge.
“You have one blue eye and one brown,” she said.
I folded my arms over my chest like I was daring her to get into it. “Yeah. Genetic fluke. My dad’s Japanese. My mom’s American.”
“And totally hot,” Baz interrupted. “I mean your mom, not your dad. I mean your dad’s a good-looking dude and all, but your mom—”
“Baz. Stop.”
“’kay.”
“There is a legend about the man with eyes that see the earth and the sky. One brown, one blue,” Mrs. Smith said. Her voice had changed, gotten softer, a little wary.
“What legend is that?”
“He is cursed to walk in two worlds, the living and the dead. May I?” She took my hand and stared at it a long time, frowning. “It is as I thought. You move hand-in-hand with the unseen forces, the dark spirits, the unquiet and vengeful. It is your fate to bump asses with evil, Poe Yamamoto, and very soon you will be tested.”
“Dude,” Baz whispered in my ear, his white-boy dreads tickling the side of my face. “Did the creepy old lady just say ‘bump asses with evil’?”
She slapped his arm. “I am not deaf, you know.”
“Ow! Was that necessary?”
“You were being fresh,” Mrs. Smith said emphatically.
Baz shut up then. Anybody who could shut Baz up was a force to be reckoned with, as far as I was concerned.
“Beware the easy answer, Poe Yamamoto. Look beyond the surface to what lies underneath. There is always more. Another explanation. A deeper, more frightening truth. But without truth there is no resolution. And without that the dead do not rest.”
“Okaaaay. Anything else I should know?” I asked.
“Yes. Don’t eat the pastry in the café car. That’s not fortune-telling. That’s experience—it’s always three days past stale and hard as brick.” She handed me her card. It read: MRS. SMITH. FORTUNE-TELLER. There was a phone number in raised print. “In case.”
“In case what?”
“You make it back.” She gathered her things and shoved them into her handbag. “Okay. Now I move to another cabin. To be honest, you give me the willies. Good luck, Poe Yamamoto.”
The door closed with a bang behind Mrs. Smith. Isabel woke up and stretched. She looked pretty all sleepy, the sunlight dappled across her ebony cheekbones. “What did I miss?”
“Forest. Mountains. More forest. Oh, and some bizarro fortune-teller lady just told Poe he’s got a destiny with evil.”
Isabel blew into her hand, made a face. “Yeah, well, I think it may be my breath. I’m going to the café car for gum.”
It was well after dinnertime the next day when we reached the station closest to Necuratul, and everyone was suffering from tight muscles and hungry bellies. We showed the station agent our guidebook, and he pointed us toward a driver in a festive hat with a feather stuck into the band. He was sitting beside a horse-drawn wagon and eating a sandwich. Isabel pointed to the word Necuratul in the book, and the guy stopped chewing and gave us all funny looks.
“You should go to Bucharest or Prague. Very beautiful,” he said.
“We really want to see the festival,” Isabel said. She smiled her I-will-make-you-like-me smile, but it didn’t work on this guy. He didn’t crack so much as a grimace.
The driver picked at his sandwich. “They say they used to worship the devil. Some say they still do.”
Baz made a vampire face, hooking his teeth over his bottom lip and opening his eyes wide. Isabel slapped his arm.
“Next year,” the man continued, “they will build a power plant on the mountain. Good-bye, Necuratul. That is progress, they say. Anyhow. You have money?”
“A lot of money,” Baz said at the same time John said, “Not much.”
“Young people,” the driver grumbled as he wiped his hands. “I will take you. But first I will tell you: do not go into the forest. Stay inside the stones and do not cross them or you will be sorry.”
“Why will we be sorry?” Isabel asked.
“Restless spirits, waiting to be set free. Stay out of the forest,” he warned, and offered the rest of his sandwich to his horse.
“That was a nice touch of creepitude,” John said as we climbed into the back. “You think they pay him extra to add that little bit, like when you take the Jack t
he Ripper walking tour in London and they keep warning you about how he was never found and then some cheesy actor in a black cloak walks past really fast?”
“Maybe,” I said, but the driver didn’t seem like he was playing around. That’s when I noticed the low stone wall bordering the forest on either side of the skinny dirt road. Streaks of white powder ran alongside it. Behind us I couldn’t even see the train station anymore, only thick brush and fog. And for one second I could’ve sworn I saw a girl hiding behind a tree, watching.
“Hey, did you see—” I pointed but there was nothing there.
“Jack the Ripper was never found!” Baz said. He fell on me like Bela Lugosi, and I had to kick him to make him stop.
Fifteen miles over a bridge and up a mountain in the back of a horse-drawn wagon made my butt feel like it was made of beef jerky and pain. Finally, the forest thinned out a bit. I could see sunbaked red roofs and thin ribbons of smoke spiraling from crooked chimneys. A stone perimeter like the ones we’d seen on our way blocked off the village from the forest. The same white powder was there. The driver stopped short of the stones, keeping his horse well away from them. The fee was paid. John wasn’t happy about having to part with more of his grandparents’ money.
“You know, this wasn’t even my idea,” he grumbled.
“Quit yer bitchin’,” Baz said. “What else are you gonna spend it on?”
“Porn,” Isabel said with a snort. “I hear after one hundred site memberships, you get one free.”
Baz staggered back, his hand over his heart. “Oh! You’ve been owned by the ’bel, Johnster!”
“Shut up,” John said, and swatted Baz’s arm harder than he needed to.
To our right stood a tall pole with a bell and a rope. The driver clanged it, and a few minutes later an old woman in a long pale skirt, long-sleeved brown shirt, and her hair buried under a kerchief came bustling out. She and the driver exchanged a few words, some of them pretty heated. She took a good long look at us: four dirty teenagers who smelled like old sweat and the inside of a train car. When she got to Isabel, she seemed to bristle.
Isabel crossed her arms over her cut-up Ramones T. “Great,” she muttered. “Racists. My favorite.”
The woman reached into her apron and threw a handful of white powder at us.
Isabel flinched and balled her fingers into fists. “What the hell?”
“Salt,” John said, holding her back. Some had gotten in his mouth. “It’s salt.”
The old woman threw another handful of salt behind us. “Protection,” she said. It was one of two English words she knew, we discovered later. The other was “devil.”
She tore off a piece of bread and held it out like she was trying to lure an animal. I guessed we were supposed to take it from her, but when I tried, she stepped away, still holding the bread with a wary expression. The wind picked up with sudden force, pushing us back a little. It whistled through the trees like prayers for the dead. The woman looked worried. I stepped over the stones; the others followed. The wind died down, and the forest was quiet. The old woman dropped the bread back into her apron pocket and wiped her hands on her skirt with a look that said she’d like to wipe us away as easily. Then she turned and stalked away.
“That was weird,” Isabel said.
“Yeah. And what was with the bread?” Baz asked.
“Bread is for the living,” a voice answered. We turned to see a girl about our age, maybe a little older, sweeping the street. She had dark eyes and long, wheat-colored hair and wore jeans and a Flaming Lips T-shirt. A woman about my mom’s age was also sweeping. She wore the same drab, peasant-like clothing as the woman who’d thrown the salt at us. She didn’t look up.
“So what? The dead are low-carbing it?” I asked, smiling.
Thankfully, the girl returned my smile. “The dead don’t eat. If they did, we’d be even poorer.”
“She’s hot,” Baz whispered. “I could totally see her doing a spread in a Hot Girls of Necuratul calendar, maybe with a Vlad the Impaler bikini—oof!”
Isabel had elbowed Baz sharply in the stomach.
“Harsh, Iz.” He coughed.
“Evolve, Baz,” she spat back.
“You speak English,” John said to the girl, stating the obvious.
“Yes. I go to university. I’m home for the summer. For the festival. By tonight the tavern will be full of drunkards.”
John smiled. “Works for me.”
“What is the language anyway?” Baz asked, trying to come off as worldly. “Sounds a little Romanian? Hungarian?”
“It’s Necuratuli. It’s traditional to the village. Don’t bother trying to find a translation. It’s too obscure. I’m Mariana, by the way.” She stuck out her hand and I shook it, which made the older woman shake her head and mutter under her breath. She spat three times. Mariana rolled her eyes. “My mother. She doesn’t believe in anything new and sinful like women shaking hands with men.” Mariana answered her mother in Necuratuli, and the older woman gave us another suspicious glare before marching off.
“Don’t mind her. She gets nervous about outsiders and new things. So. You are here for the festival?”
“Yeah. We read about it in here.” I held up our book. “You know, the whole goat’s head, sacrificing lambs, possible pact with the Big D thing.”
Mariana laughed. “This is how we get our tourists. Florence has the David; we have Satan. I’m sorry to disappoint you—mostly there are sheep and superstitions. But the wine is fantastic and the festival is a lot of fun. Here. Leave your bags. They’ll be safe. That’s one of the great things about this town—everything’s safe; you never have to worry. Can you imagine doing that in London or New York or Moscow?”
“I got my bike stolen once, and it was locked up,” Baz said. He gave her his pretend shy face, and Izzie rolled her eyes. “I really missed the bell the most.”
Mariana was a good sport and laughed at his lame, player joke. “So sorry about that. Maybe a little tour of Necuratul will cheer you up. Come on. I’ll show you around.”
“What’s with the stones and salt?” I asked, dropping my pack.
“An old folk custom. Supposed to keep evil spirits out. Nothing undead can cross the threshold. And nothing undead can eat. That’s why she offered you the bread while you were still on the other side—to prove you were among the living. If you’d tried to grab the bread while crossing the threshold, you would have been burned to ash.”
Baz whistled. “Yowza.”
“You get a lot of undead coming in, snapping pictures, asking for I Partied with the Goat’s Head T-shirts?” I asked.
Mariana nodded gravely and sighed. “Why do you think they call them unquiet spirits? They trash the rooms at the inn and they don’t tip. Anyway, you’re not supposed to go into the forest. And you’re especially not supposed to take bread into the forest. It’s like feeding the undead, giving them power.”
“Superstitions, man. Culture of fear. Totally bassackward, right?” John smirked.
“Every place has its traditions,” Mariana said a little coldly.
Baz leaned in close to his cousin. “Way to endear yourself to the locals, my friend.” To Mariana he said, “I love hearing about customs!” He fell in next to Mariana as she led us through the heart of Necuratul.
The guidebook hadn’t lied: the town was storybook charming—in a “we fear for our lives” sort of way. Each house was circled with salt. Braids of garlic hung from the windows and were nailed over the doors. Behind the village was a cleared area of rolling farmland populated by sheep. It was peaceful. Postcard pretty. Then I noticed the scarecrows with the big evil-eye symbols painted over their foreheads. Nobody wants that in the family photo album. But the masterpiece of the whole place was the enormous Gothic church that sat at the top of a hill at the very edge of the town, practically up against the first line of trees. I counted thirteen twisty spires. The entrance was guarded by big wooden doors with faces carved into them. Up close the
faces were gruesome. Screaming mouths. Eyes opened wide in terror. People begging—for what, I couldn’t say and didn’t want to know.
“Wow. Charming,” I said.
“I know. Fear is no way to live.” Mariana pushed open the doors and we went inside.
“Whoa,” Baz gasped.
From the outside there was no way to tell how freaking beautiful it was inside. The walls—every single bit of them—shimmered with colorful, gold-leaf murals. They’d been pretty amazingly preserved.
“This was all done in the Middle Ages,” Mariana said. “It is a history of the town.”
On the left the panels were like something out of a horror movie. Freaky images of dying crops. Diseased, half-skeletal people covered in sores. Children crying. Dogs attacking each other over a scrap of meat. Dead bodies laid out on carts and set on fire, women weeping nearby. On the right the murals showed a happier story than on the left. Farmers working in their fields. Women baking bread. The crops thriving. Animals grazing peacefully. It looked pretty much like the village we’d just toured, except for one weird thing you had to sort of squint to see. In all the pictures on the right there were shadowy images of children and teenagers in the forest, watching.
“Even the ceiling’s painted,” John said, craning his neck.
Overhead was just one image. It showed a lake surrounded by forest. The villagers stood in one clump beside it. The children stood in the lake up to their waists. Their hands were tied together with rope. A priest in a red, hooded robe held aloft a goat’s head that seemed to have braids coming down from its horns. It was creepy but also kind of funny. Heidi the Goat’s Head of Satan. Actually, I’d seen girls in the clubs sporting a look pretty similar to that. A thick mist was coming over the trees, and the children had their faces craned toward it while the adults kept their eyes on the goat’s head. The water around the children bubbled and swirled.
“That’s a happy picture,” I cracked.
Mariana shivered. “So bizarre, isn’t it?” She laughed. “You didn’t have to grow up staring at that thing. Believe me, it kept us all in line.”