What were the ingredients of a well-founded curse? Mix one part Death’s apprentice with twenty years of war and the unexpected death of a beloved grandmother, and then sprinkle the concoction with the serial murder of children by a man who came to be known as the Harvestman.
Then, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve got yourself a curse.
28
21/50: ABANDONED BUILDINGS
IN LATE January, Eugene, Heph, and Esther met Jonah in the late afternoon outside Peachwood General Hospital. Abandoned in the mid-’90s when the new public hospital opened across town, Peachwood was purchased shortly thereafter by a developer, who wanted to renovate the entire complex and sell old wards as apartments to rich people for millions of dollars. The public laughed—who’d want to live in a building where thousands of people had died?—and the developer went out of business and hanged himself in the remains of the psychiatric ward. Three weeks passed before anyone found him; by then, wild dogs had eaten his feet.
More than twenty years after the property had been abandoned, Peachwood was being digested by nature. Greenery swelled at its base, sucking the dead hospital slowly back into the earth, suffocating it from the bottom up. Peachwood was gutted for parts like an old car long ago: window frames, air-conditioning systems, hospital beds . . . everything of value had been stripped and plucked and stolen, leaving only a shell to rot in the elements. The building sat on an open plain now, the parking lot that once surrounded it cracked and blistered by weeds.
Jonah picked the lock on the chain-link fence that cordoned off the property. Again, no one saw how he did this—he simply cupped the padlock in his hands and it seemed to fall open for him with a sigh, as if it had been waiting knowingly for his touch, as if it shuddered with delight at the feel of him after all this time. Esther was always surprised by how easy Jonah was able to open locked things; she had a feeling he had the same knack with locked people.
They walked across the lot toward the white building, Hephzibah running ahead of them, her hair trailing behind her like smoke. She looked like she was going home. A patchwork of gray frost was scattered on the ground amid the winter-bleached grass, and their breath bloomed out in front of them, but Esther was too hyped to feel the cold. Fear 21/50 was abandoned buildings, and Jonah had brought them to the most haunted place in the whole town, a place where even teen vandals feared to tread after two of them vanished from the ruins just before she and Eugene were born. The cops found the kids’ spray cans and their backpacks and their half-eaten school lunches scattered around a ward, but they never found the boys. More children snatched up by the Harvestman, the rumors said, though the police could never confirm it.
Esther zipped up the jacket of her Amelia Earhart costume. Dressing as the most famous disappeared woman of all time suddenly seemed like a bad idea.
Eugene made it all the way to the broken basement window before his legs stopped working and he shook his head vigorously from side to side.
“I can’t,” he said breathlessly. “Too dark.”
“I got you, man,” Jonah said to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. Eugene, like the lock, seemed to soften at Jonah’s touch. “I’ve spent all afternoon setting up something just for you.”
“You came here by yourself?”
“Only got harassed by poltergeists, like, twice. Piece of cake.”
“Okay,” said Eugene. He drew three more quick, deep breaths, then looked at Esther. “Okay.”
They climbed into the basement one by one, Hephzibah first because she was the bravest, the wildest, the strangest. Jonah next, and then Esther, and then—when all were holding the lit oil torches Jonah had prepared earlier—Eugene slid into the dark too, flashlight in one hand, his back pressed to the brick wall as his eyes adjusted to the change in light.
“All right, man?” said Jonah, handing him a fourth torch, the light from the flame making Eugene look waxen.
Even Hephzibah stayed close as they made their way deeper into the basement of the hospital. The walls spoke as old walls often do, sighing as they passed. Wind sang through windows with no glass, and the concrete shifted and moaned. Water dripped from pipes long gutted by rust. An orchestra. The building was alive and knew they were there, feeling the intruders like a splinter in its flesh.
Jonah led them to the psych ward, where the developer had been found swinging. It was even better lit than the Solar house. A generator hummed in some far-off hallway, breathing life into a hundred yellow bulbs laid out in a grid on the floor.
Eugene grinned. “Never should’ve doubted you.”
“Yeah, this is only half of what I set up.” Jonah knelt in a corner and produced three sleeping masks, the kind worn on airplanes. “You’re gonna wait here and wear these while I turn the lights off.”
“You can’t joke about that shit, man.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Like hell you aren’t.”
Jonah took Eugene’s face in his hands. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said. Eugene grabbed Jonah by the wrists but didn’t try to push him away. “Do you trust me?” Eugene thought for a moment, then looked to Esther, who nodded.
Eugene swallowed hard. “If she trusts you, I trust you.”
“Then trust me,” Jonah said as he lowered the blindfold over Eugene’s eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to either of you.” Eugene’s shallow breathing was all Esther could hear as she too lowered her blindfold. “I’ll just be a minute,” Jonah said as he squeezed her hand. “Leave your masks on.”
Eugene held onto his twin like she was a buoy in the middle of a stormy sea. There was no one he wanted more when he was afraid than her, and she felt the same way. Whenever she’d been scared as a child, she had always run to Eugene, not her parents. There was some kind of magic in his skin; whenever she pressed her palms to his back or his arms or slipped her hand into his, everything bad went away. Maybe it was all the light he soaked up at nighttime that made him so enchanted.
The sound of the humming lights went dead and Esther could almost feel the darkness crash into her. Eugene gasped. Actually gasped. His fingers tightened around hers and she thought at any moment that he would scream and be attacked and dragged away from her, but he wasn’t.
Then came the sound of footsteps as Jonah returned. “Blindfolds off,” he said breathlessly.
They took their blindfolds off.
The lights were out and it was dimmer than before but it wasn’t dark. Not by a long shot. Eugene was silent, his mouth open as he turned in a slow circle to take in the ceiling, the walls, the floor. A dozen black lights had been set up along the bases of the walls, and beneath their neon glow, every surface of the ward was ablaze. UV paint in purple and pink and green and red and orange had been splashed everywhere, a galaxy of bright stars to illuminate the dark. Planets and stars and spaceships and nebulas and ethereal creatures floated in the abyss.
Jonah had painted the universe.
“I brought this too, if you want to try it,” he said, throwing Eugene a tube of paint. Eugene caught it and looked at the tube, confused. “UV body paint,” Jonah explained. “Light on your very skin. You’ll be able to move through the dark without a flashlight or fire or anything.”
Even though it was freezing, Eugene stripped down to his boxers and they all painted him in an elaborate geometric design so that every inch of his exposed skin was set alight. He looked like a wild neon demon from another dimension. Esther painted a bright heart of red and white on the center of his chest, a shield against fear and the demons the curse sent to kill him, demons that lived inside his head.
“Do you think this is going to work?” he said quietly as he stood at the edge of the doorway that led into the darkness.
“I’m sure of it,” Esther said. She squeezed his painted hand.
Jonah had set up black lights in the halls surrounding the glowing galaxy room so that Eugene coul
d, for the first time in living memory, move unencumbered through blackness. He put his painted fingertips against the barrier that had held him back for six years and let his hand sink into the terrible dark, baiting the monsters to see if they would dare take a bite.
They didn’t.
Esther was glad for the semidarkness; it almost hid her tears as she watched her brother step out into the unlit hall, like an explorer discovering the depths of the ocean in the very first atmospheric diving suit. The black lights set his skin ablaze. Eugene screamed, not in pain, but in delight. He whooped and ran and leaped and laughed, awed by such unimaginable freedom. Whether he saw the monsters he claimed to be able to see in the shadows, Esther wasn’t sure, but if he did, that night he paid them no mind.
Thank you, she mouthed to Jonah. He nodded, smiling casually, like he hadn’t just done the most extraordinary thing in the world.
And then she did what she hadn’t had the courage to do until that moment—she took a step toward Jonah, put her hands on his chest, and kissed him. His skin warm beneath her fingers, she pulled him close and tasted the glow paint on his lips and kissed him with everything she had in the bright glowing light of the universe.
29
THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
WHEN ROSEMARY called her later that night, Esther wondered for half a heartbeat if her mother was at home and wondering where her children were.
“I just got off the phone with Lilac Hill,” she said. “Reg has gone downhill very fast. The nurses think it’s time to stop food and water, like he asked for.”
“How long does he have after that?” Esther asked.
“Not long,” said Rosemary. “Not long now.”
30
24/50: BURIED ALIVE
IN THE week leading up to 24/50, the quest to find Death was forgotten in favor of spending time with Reginald Solar at Lilac Hill. Every Sunday Esther and Jonah had gone out and faced a new fear, but each week they’d become less and less scared because cliffs and geese and graveyards didn’t seem so terrifying when the people you loved started disintegrating around you.
It was also during the week before 24/50 that Peter Solar had another stroke. Again, he told no one, terrified that he would be forced to leave the basement. Jonah found him on the toilet, unable to move, two days after the fact. It was the most horrific and heartbreaking thing Esther had ever seen. Peter cried as Jonah cleaned him, pulled his pants up, helped him stand. Peter tried not to let her see him like that, but she did. Esther saw it all and it killed her.
Perhaps the worst, though, was Jonah, who by then frequently arrived at her house with fresh bruises. Sometimes she noticed them right away, and sometimes she didn’t realize he was hurting until she touched his arm or chest or back and he winced in pain. When this happened, she fantasized about killing his father for him; in her imagination he was less a man, more a large mass of shadow, the evil villain from a cartoon.
“I’m not sure I need to be buried alive,” she said to Jonah, Hephzibah, and her brother on the Sunday morning of 24/50. “I already feel like I’m drowning.”
Esther expected Jonah to protest—they hadn’t missed a single fear yet—but he didn’t. Actually, he nodded. “Do you wanna, I don’t know, do something normal teenagers do? See a movie or something?”
So that was what they did. People stared more than usual. People leaned into each other and whispered and pointed their fingers at them, which Esther thought was very rude until she realized they weren’t staring or pointing at Eugene or Jonah or Hephzibah. They were fixated on her.
“Why is everyone looking at me?” Esther whispered to Jonah.
“Maybe because you’re dressed as Mia Wallace,” he said as he looked around, but he didn’t seem able to feel all the eyes that were pointed their way.
After the movie, Eugene drove Heph home, and Esther and Jonah walked back alone.
“Do you think Death is afraid of anything?” he asked her.
Esther already knew that Death feared exactly two things, because her grandfather had told her. In the Mediterranean Sea and waters of Japan, there was a species of small, biologically immortal jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii that grew old and then young again, like a yo-yoing Benjamin Button. It was where Death, she liked to imagine, went on vacation whenever he had a quiet moment to spare, when there were no wars or famines or teenagers being purposefully reckless in order to attract his attention. Esther liked to imagine the Reaper floating on his back over a school of bodies that looked like bubbles of saltwater taffy. She liked to imagine that it was Death’s favorite pastime, swimming among the bright, beautiful things he wasn’t required or allowed to pluck from this earth.
At the same time, Esther knew that Death feared these creatures that he couldn’t touch. They drifted under the sun for time immeasurable, unaware of gods or men or monsters or, indeed, Death. They were the only thing on this planet capable of making Death feel small and insecure, except for his second great love and fear: orchids.
Death kept every gift that life sent his way, but he couldn’t touch this one.
“Death is afraid of orchids,” she said to Jonah. He nodded like he understood what this meant, but didn’t say anything. It was strange, seeing Jonah Smallwood so sad and so quiet. Like the light had gone out of him. Before he left, he kissed her on the forehead and she held him tight around the waist.
After that, she didn’t see or hear from him for a week.
31
THE DEATH DOOR
ESTHER:
Are you coming over this afternoon?
Fleayoncé missed you yesterday.
Okay, I missed you too.
Are you ignoring me because my line dancing skills intimidated you?
Are you dead? If you don’t message me back I’m going to assume you’re dead and call the cops.
Jesus, Jonah. Please. Please let me know you’re okay.
Esther had sent him a message every day for the whole week; he’d seen them but hadn’t replied. On Sunday, when he didn’t show up at her house at their usual meeting time, she knew she had only two choices: call the police or check on Jonah herself. Both were unappealing. If she called the cops, Remy might be taken from him, and he’d never forgive her for that. If she went over there herself and Jonah was dead in a pool of his own blood, his skull caved in . . .
Don’t. Don’t even think like that.
Esther went to his place dressed as Matilda Wormwood. One needed to feel formidable on days like this.
From the outside, his house looked peaceful, but in the sad way that corpses looked peaceful after they’d been embalmed and made up for an open casket. Esther pushed the side gate open; there was noise coming from inside the house. Someone was yelling. Something thudded against the wall.
Around the back, the porch door was swung wide. Most of the drywall had been ripped down, and someone had taken to the mural on the ceiling with some kind of blunt object. Remy was huddled in a corner, crying.
“Where’s Jonah?” Esther asked her, panicked. “Where is he?”
Remy pointed, without speaking, into the house.
Esther pushed open the door of Death. Beyond it was a dimly lit hallway. She moved down it slowly, each of her footfalls measured. More noise. Grunting. A yelp of pain. For perhaps the first time in her life she had a fight instead of a flight response, and her adrenaline sent her careening in the direction of her fear.
In the living room, Holland Smallwood, Jonah’s father, had his son by the neck, pushed up against a wall. “Do I look fucking crazy to you?” he screamed. “Is this what a crazy person looks like, huh? Look at me! Is this what a crazy person looks like?”
Jonah, who was always so tall and bright, like a hero out of a comic book, was crying. Next to his dad he was a little kid. He closed his eyes and shook and didn’t do anything to defend himself ex
cept hold up his hands weakly.
“Please,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”
Holland slammed him into the wall again.
“Stop!” Esther yelled, and then she was among it, part of it, scrabbling to get him off Jonah. Something solid connected with her cheekbone. An elbow? A fist? She didn’t realize she’d fallen until she was on the ground, the horizon vertical in her view. The world kept slipping sideways, an old projector stuck between frames.
“Get the fuck out of my house!” Holland screamed at her. She curled into a ball and covered her head with her arms. She thought he was going to kick her, but no blows came.
Jonah’s lip was split. There were dots of blood everywhere. Blood and spit and glass and pieces of a broken chair. Jonah just stared at Esther, heaving breaths.
It was the little girl who came to her rescue. Remy, dragging her up, pushing her out, whispering, “Go, go, go, go, go” as she guided Esther to the front door. She followed Esther out onto the porch and then retreated inside. Like the immune system expelling a pathogen.
Esther could hear heavy footsteps going up the stairs. She pressed the heel of her palm to the hot, throbbing lump on her cheek where some part of Holland had struck her.
Jonah came out a minute later. His lip was already swollen. Esther used her sleeve to clean away some of the blood, and then she just squeezed him. Wrapped her arms around his torso, his arms still pinned to his side, and squeezed him and squeezed him, like maybe if she applied enough pressure she could turn him into a diamond.
Jonah seemed empty. He didn’t react to her touch. “I can’t do this anymore, Esther,” he said eventually. “I can’t be brave for the both of us.” Then he broke down and collapsed into her, heaving sobs that shook his whole body. Tears rolled down Esther’s cheeks as she stroked the back of his neck and whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” because what else was there to say? What else was there to do? They were teenagers, and they were powerless, and until they were adults they had no choice but to let their destinies be bent and swayed by outside forces.
A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares Page 20