by Tony Ortiz
Jacoby crouched and looked up at Dorian. “It’s over!” he shouted over the rumbling and the deafening screeching of the frenzied bats. “We have to leave, now!”
Dorian’s body tipped back down and he landed on his feet. The stench became deadly. The vibration became so powerful that the bats started dropping from the ceiling.
“Get over here!” Jacoby commanded urgently.
We hurried over at once and grabbed each other’s hands. I was thrown by another strong jolt. Meesi closed her eyes, scared for her life.
“Dorian!” shouted Jacoby.
All four walls began to bulge inward and as soon as they reached their limits, they were ripped away.
“Dorian!” This time his shout was different; there was frenzy in his voice. “We have human kids here! They don’t need to die!”
The stench had completely saturated the air, and all the bats had fallen to their death.
Dorian came out of his trance and took Meesi’s hand. As far as we could see in relative darkness, all the walls and tunnels had been removed. Not one wall remained. Jacoby summoned a bit of light, and we huddled together within the dimly glowing sphere, but beyond our circle everything was pitch black.
Katie and I shut our eyes at the same time, hating the sight of the ripped-open cave.
“Get me out,” cried Meesi, her hand trembling in mine. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”
Why weren’t we psyclining away? I continued to wait, trying to control my fear, but we weren’t going anywhere.
As soon as Jacoby released me, I opened my eyes. We were still in the open space enclosed in the lonely ball of light. All of us stared at Jacoby, too scared to look around into the darkness. I couldn’t stop imagining the halloween lurking closer to us. This single notion would easily eclipse all other scary moments in my life.
“He’s not letting us leave,” said Jacoby.
Meesi pointed a shaking finger at Lorseria, who was lying on the ground, but nothing happened. She moaned anxiously as she shakily clenched her fist.
“We-we don’t have ma-magic?” she said with enlarged eyes. “I can’t use my magic! It took my . . . it took my . . .”
Dark silence fell upon us. Neither Katie, nor I had taken our eyes off Jacoby, looking for some sign of hope. But he was as scared and desperate as we were. Something was here with us. I had never before experienced this eerie ominous feeling. It felt like we were in the presence of the Devil.
The silence was torn apart by a piercing cry, stunning even Jacoby and Dorian. Meesi fell to the floor, battling at the empty air. Then, her arms were lifted uncontrollably and, with a deadly jerk, she was yanked up in the air. Something caught her by the stomach and carried her away. After a couple of feet, she was sucked out of the room.
My heart struck wildly. The unsettling, ghostly presence was creeping back toward us. I turned to Jacoby, who looked lost as he stood there, waiting for his fate. But Dorian’s turn came next. He gasped as his neck was cracked sideways by an invisible hand, and he, too, vanished.
Then Katie gave a short mournful whimper and disappeared. There was nothing anyone could do. We were all going to be taken. Next, Jacoby was being pulled away from me. I held onto his hand as long as I could, but soon he let go and was gone.
“You can’t take them from–” I was jerked and wrenched to a near blackout. “Help,” was all that came out of my wide-open twisted mouth, which came back to me as a ghostly echo moments later in the cavern I had met Meesi in.
“You can’t take my friends,” I managed in a growl. My cheeks were flooded with tears.
I plucked up all of my remaining strength, scrambled up, and started to run. I was never going to stop.
“Katie?” I yelled. My throat was hoarse and dry. “Jacoby? Dorian? Meesi?”
My words echoed down the abandoned tunnels.
“Jesse!” returned a familiar voice, and I tumbled over a rock.
Katie came stumbling toward me, looking a mess. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face was streaked with wet dirt. She helped me up, and we continued on together, going down one crumbled passage after another. Neither of us spoke or even looked at each other. We just kept on moving our feet forward, no matter how slow and painful our progress was. We knew we had to keep going.
After a sharp turn up a dark tunnel, Katie was picked up and shoved into a wall by a bleeding tortic. She ducked under a striking claw and scuffled away.
I grabbed a jagged rock and thrust it into the tortic. He moaned and grasped me by the jacket. Exhausted, he threw me weakly, and I slipped right out of the jacket. He dropped the jacket and hobbled back over to Katie.
“Give me my jacket!” I screamed furiously.
The tortic turned around, then picked up the jacket and tore it almost completely in two.
“No,” I yelped. “You big-eared freak!”
The tortic turned back to Katie.
“This is my mother’s, you dead halloween!”
I got up, snatched the biggest rock I could find, and swung at the tortic. He anticipated it and kicked me.
“Jesse,” gasped Katie’s voice.
I drew my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. We had failed. We weren’t meant to survive. “I’m sorry, Oz,” I muttered to myself. “I destroyed the only thing that was important to you. I tried to bring it back to you. I tried. I’m so sorry–”
“Jesse, please help–” Katie’s cry was suddenly choked to a gurgle. The monster was jostling her by the throat against a rocky wall. “Die!” she bellowed, spitting right in his face.
Aggravated, the tortic spat back at her. She gasped and kicked chaotically, most just kicking the air.
We weren’t meant to survive. . . .
“Jesse,” I heard Katie mutter. “I can’t . . . I can’t breathe . . . Jess–”
“Please don’t hate me, Oz,” I whimpered. “I know you hated me when I lost it, but . . . but . . . you were only worried about me being . . .” Something rebelled in me. No! . . . You let Katie go.
I held my knees tighter and started rocking back and forth, trying to clear my mind. The first thing I thought about was Duma. And right away it felt like he was here beside me, with his feline poise and mischievous cheer coursing through me. My laser-sharp mind sped through the events of the past day, searching coolly and methodically for a clue, a memory, a notion – anything that would help me rescue Katie.
- A short dark boy wearing striped overalls was staring at us from the street. – No, not good.
- “Come this way, you two,” said Jacoby. “Much work to be done.” – No, nothing there.
- “What is a menala?” I heard myself say.
“Not so loud,” rang Jacoby’s voice. “There are only three menalas living today. – No.
- “He’s the reason for the pumpkins,” said Katie. “He’s the most feared creature in Halloween – Wait. Is this it? Think, think, think!
- I heard Katie’s voice again: “Because all he has is a lantern, with a burning coal from the underworld given to him by Satan. It lights his way through his darkness. A lit turnip is a symbol of immortality. Irish children, long ago, would sometimes see the glow moving across the hills. They would light up carved turnips every Halloween to ward him off. And so Jack–”
- “What are tortics?”
“The only halloweens who have the guts to kill humans,” said Jacoby.
“But they don’t get caught? What about that bat . . .”
“Soundrec? Not even four weegals could stop a young tortic.” – Not good!
- Kala took four quick breaths, held it, and then opened his mouth, letting out a puff of hot air. The tortic’s face withered. – No use. I can’t conjure a smell!
- Cicil flinched, frightened, as she heard our shoes splashing across the puddles. She shuffled over skittishly, nearly tripping on her long pants. – No, she was just scared of Jack!
- Katie and I eagerly watched Lin’s stinky ball come to a st
op exactly under the blackian vampire and emit a trail of bubbly vapor, which coiled up her stockings. Her face shriveled, and she shot out of her seat, shrieking, “Jack is–” – No smell!
- The tortic was absorbed in something very frightening. He apprehensively sniffed the air. – No.
- “So, he only killed Kala? Not the tortics? Why didn’t–”
“He did,” said Jacoby. “Five were killed.” – There’s something here. I know it.
- “He’s coming,” said a tortic. “He killed all the yslas.”
- The foulest smell imaginable entered the stadium. A witch’s scream set off a chaotic stampede.
- “I don’t want to die!” cried Meesi. “I don’t want to die!” – I found it!
- “Jack is here. We have to get out of here before he kills us all–” Cosqué’s face twisted. He braced himself against an intense pain. “Jack is here!”
Meesi grimaced at the name. – That’s it!
- I heard Katie’s words again: “He’s the most feared creature in Halloween.”
“JACK!” I screamed down the dark tunnel, seeing Katie coughing and turning red. “I see Jack! No, don’t hurt me, Jack! Please–”
I stopped. The tortic had flipped around, letting go of Katie right away. Even though he only saw me, he ducked his head and fled.
Katie gave me a trembling smile as she regained her breathing, and we started back up again, traveling down the same path the tortic had just taken, the path that led to the center of the mountain, where I knew Jack was.
Katie handed me the ripped jacket, and I took it, a little surprised. The jacket was hardly wearable, but I put it on anyway. I wanted to apologize to her for not helping her sooner, but it wasn’t important. We had to find everyone else and get them out of here.
Katie and I had no strength left to run or jog. She rubbed her wet eyes as we dragged our feet down a rocky path, looking with dread down the tunnel that seemed to never end and jumping violently at every faraway sound.
I glanced at Katie’s watch.
11:55
“Please don’t hurt her,” I prayed quietly to myself inside a dark cave. “She never harmed anyone–” We hit the ground as a huge crack split the cave in two.
“Jesse,” said Katie softly, shielding her mouth and nose.
I smelled it, too. There was a new putrid smell mixed with the one from before. It was hard to know where it was coming from. The place was dark and foggy.
Katie fell.
“Are you okay?” I asked, helping her up.
“Something tripped me,” she said quietly.
We looked through the fog together and saw a mangled corpse. The yslas’s arm was twisted out of place and had a hole in it.
Katie shrieked, turning away. “Mí mamá . . . Mí mamá had the same hole. Jack killed mí mamá–” She saw another corpse with the same hole. As the fog began to clear up, we saw more. We were standing in the middle of a sea of glowing yslas corpses. Nearly all of them were grotesquely mutilated, with cracked skulls, crushed bones, torn-off mandibles, distorted body parts, and scorched skin.
Katie gasped as we stepped over another corpse. “Oh, no.”
“What?” I muttered, turning around and following her stare up through the fog. Meesi’s body was hanging in midair, bent backward in an unnatural way.
“N-not true,” I stuttered. “Not again.”
I couldn’t look. An image of Kala flashed before my eyes. I slowly knelt down, feeling sick. Why did everyone have to be killed? Why these horrible deaths?
“I shouldn’t have followed the writing,” I uttered. “It’s my fault. Katie, it’s all my fault. I wanted to come out on Halloween.”
Katie stumbled upon another tortured corpse. It was the tortic we had fought in the tunnel. Its twisted body led to three more dead tortics. All of them were wedged between two boulders, and each one had the distinct hole through their bodies.
The stench suddenly intensified to the point where breathing became near impossible. Katie fell backwards with a raspy shriek and frantically scuttled back to me. Her eyes were desperately fixed on something in front of us. She wasn’t looking at the tortics, Meesi, or any of the yslas, she was looking at something else.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
PAST TWELVE O’CLOCK
Katie bumped into the crimson bones of an yslas, still emitting yellowish fumes. I stood behind her, shaking uncontrollably. I didn’t know if it was because I was scared or because of the bone-chilling fog flowing through the vast darkness of the cave. But there was one dark spot out of reach of the yslas’ glow, which filled me with paralyzing terror. The fog didn’t dare enter it. In that dark spot, someone or something was breathing heavily.
Katie sat up against my leg as her watch snapped off her wrist and floated toward the dark spot.
11:59 PM
Wishing so much for one more tick, I started counting my breaths, but it just wouldn’t come. Katie pressed up against my leg as the inhuman breathing stopped and the watch hit the floor. . . . Was Halloween over? All I had to do was look down at the watch. Instead, I peered back into the darkness, thinking I had glimpsed green skin and a dot of green light…
And then a haunted hollow voice, unlike anything I had ever heard before, spoke from the darkness.
“W-h-o a-r-e y-o-u?”
I sprang back and tripped over an yslas corpse. Katie crawled back to me on her hands and knees. Our breath quickened in unison as we sat side by side, watching all the fog come together and swirl around us.
As the watch finally ticked, there was a great change in the atmosphere.
12:00 AM
All of the dead yslas and tortics disappeared. Meesi’s body was gone as well. But we were still there.
The watch ticked.
A light came on behind us, brightening everything around us, and footsteps echoed on the cracked surface. I couldn’t tell who it was until they were standing right in front of us.
“Jacoby, Meesi is dead,” I muttered as he examined my cuts and bruises. “I want to go home.”
Katie crawled over to her watch and grabbed it. Jacoby and Dorian helped us up, and we closed our eyes. I felt my lips go numb and my face go stiff from the cold, the crisp freshness that I had been desperately yearning for. We were back in Ray’s backyard. The tall grass was still flattened where the welgos had rested, but the welgos themselves were not there.
Dorian had just taken his hand off of Katie’s head. The bloody cuts on her ankles and arms were gone. Her skin was back to being flawless, although her old bruises and scars were still there and she was still filthy. It was the same for me.
“Give me a second,” Jacoby told us.
Ray sat on his back porch, occupying himself with a handful of soil. He got up when he saw Jacoby and walked past him.
“Jesse, Katie, are you okay?” said Ray.
None of us replied.
“I wanted to thank you before you leave. Without you guys, Jacoby and Dorian would be dead.”
I didn’t believe that at all. And how would he know anyway? Katie seemed equally skeptical.
“No?” Ray continued. “Jesse, I know you kept Meesi safe and away from Jack long enough that he couldn’t strike you all. And you, Katie, if you hadn’t figured that Jesse would follow the writing on the wall, I say, he wouldn’t be standing beside you. And how you dragged Jacoby to a safe burrow after he ran into the krianfey curse was incredible. See, you saved each other! You mustn’t be so sorrowful, when you’ve done such great things – such great things you will never know how great they really were.”
“He gets his information from a device called the Tolihap,” Jacoby explained to us.
“It gives me the newly received reports from the last Halloween, written seconds after midnight. So?”
Katie and I worked up faint smiles.
“There we go. I want you to visit me tomorrow. If not, at least make sure you come by before I get too old. Yes, Ray?”
“Ye
s, Ray,” Katie and I repeated.
“And, Jacoby and Dorian . . . you know all the things you’ve done.”
“Katie, Jesse,” called Jacoby, extending a hand.
I grabbed his hand, and Katie took Dorian’s.
“Wait, one question, Dorian,” said Ray quickly. “Did you see him? … Jacoby? I know you did. Is he tall or short? Just one detail, that’s all I ask.”
I closed my eyes.
“Okay, fine, but I’m going to keep asking. Oh, my, what did I just step in? . . . Darn it, Silky!”
Katie and I were smiling back at the cemetery. The graves we had dug earlier were all covered now. It felt good to be back and smell the fresh cold air. There was a nice breeze blowing the leaves across the graves. Two white tombstones that I hadn’t noticed before sat at the head of the graves Dorian had dug. The stones looked like they had always been there.
Kala Kel
Died 2001
One of the few to take on a tortic
I glanced over to the other stone.
Meesi Kel
Died 2001
Took others’ minds off their hardships
I liked the two engravings, but I was confused.
“How did I know?” said Jacoby. “I didn’t. We don’t know who we dig the graves for until they’ve passed away.”
I believed Jacoby. I read both inscriptions twice, imprinting them into my brain. But I felt like someone was missing.
“Is there something else, Jesse?” asked Jacoby.
“Yes.” I remembered who it was. “What about the werewolf, Charles? He died. Does he have a grave?”
“He does.” Jacoby took us for a short walk to the far end of the graveyard. “He was supposed to be transferred to Mollo’s grave site in Ireland–”
“But?”
“But I thought he would want to be here. It is his hometown after all.” He stopped at the foot of a large mound, twice as big as Meesi’s and Kala’s. The stone, however, wasn’t as big or extravagant as theirs. It was kind of humble.