The kids all jostled down the stairs. Millie gripped the iron railing, partly to avoid getting knocked over, but partly to still her nerves, which had been jangling ever since Hubert’s comment. She felt badly for judging the boy on his looks, but it wasn’t just his looks that made her recoil, and her instincts told her that anything he liked, she should be wary of. But that was silly; everyone said this party was a huge honor. Everyone. Her stepfather, her mother, the vice principal, the other kids. It wasn’t possible that everyone could be wrong.
The railing was very cold, and slick from condensation. The air grew colder and damper and the music got louder as they went down, down at least three stories into the earth. She was glad for the cover of her vest. The widely spiraling stairs were at first lit with electric lights, but those changed to guttering, Medieval-looking torches in iron sconces.
“Mind the open flames!” Zatanna called up over the music. “Don’t get burned!”
Just as the music switched to Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like The Wolf,” the stairs opened up into a big natural cave whose walls were strung with white-and-orange string lights. Along the left side was a big buffet line with a half-dozen pizzas from DiLouie’s in white cardboard boxes and few steel banquet serving bins atop flickering Sterno cans. At the end of the long table beyond the food were plastic tubs of different flavors of Cosmic Colas on ice. There wasn’t even any water. Millie was glad she brought her flask.
On the right side of the cave were some big heavy steel barn doors which had either corroded or were painted a rust brown. A bit of water puddled beneath them, and Millie wondered where they led.
The side of the cave directly opposite the stairs held a raised stage with a few big speakers and some sound equipment but no instruments. A DJ in a black turtleneck and jeans and a pair of huge headphones sat at a sound panel with a couple of turntables and reel-to-reel deck beside the stage. He gave her a little wave when he noticed her staring at him, and that made her flush with embarrassment and look away. And when she looked away, she noticed four other men—Chaperones? Security guards?—standing quietly in alcoves carved into the limestone walls. They were also dressed in black, and at first glance she thought they were statues or decorative dummies, but then one scratched his nose.
“Dig in, kids!” Zatanna shouted over the booming music. “Our very special musical guest will be out in a little while!”
The seventh graders swarmed to the food line, chattering and pogoing with excitement as they flopped pizza onto paper plates with greasy fingers. The other kids had gotten increasingly rambunctious as they’d drunk more soda and eaten more sweets, and the louder they all got, the more Millie lost her appetite and wished she could be someplace that wasn’t so noisy. And that frustrated her. She was finally someplace cool with the cool kids; why couldn’t she enjoy it? Why couldn’t she just join in like everybody else?
Was this what getting old was like? To feel isolated in the middle of huge crowd and want to be someplace quiet? To feel oppressed rather than privileged to be in the middle of something everybody said was cool?
The DJ cued up Madonna’s “Holiday” and a bunch of the kids started dancing, Cosmic Cola cans sloshing in their hands.
“You should get some pizza!” Hubert yelled at her elbow.
She turned toward him, startled. His eyes were glassy, and he had an enormous grin on his sweaty, flushed face. He gripped what had to be his third or fourth Cosmic Cola of the evening.
“I will,” she yelled back. “In a minute or two!”
“Okay,” he replied. “I’m not trying to boss you. It’s just you should enjoy yourself! You earned it!”
I should, she thought. I should stop being a stick in the mud and get some pizza, at least.
Just as she made her way to the back of the buffet line, she saw a group of men and women in strange hooded robes come down the stairs in single file. Startled kids stopped dancing and let them pass as they made their way to the stage. When the last hooded figure—the thirteenth—had emerged from the stairway, two of the silent men in black suits pulled an iron gate Millie hadn’t noticed over the entry to the stairs and chained it shut. The girl’s stomach dropped and she lost any and all interest in pizza.
The DJ stopped the music and turned on the stage lights. Zatanna stepped up and approached the microphone.
“And here’s our special musical guests tonight, direct from Innsmouth,” she announced. “The Esoteric Order of Dagon Choir! Let’s all give them a hand!”
Some of the new blood kids started golf-clapping uncertainly, but Hubert and the other old blood kids started cheering and whistling and stomping their feet and chanting like they were at a football game: “FAA-ther DAA-gon! FAA-ther DAA-gon!”
Millie blinked, feeling profoundly confused and unsettled. This didn’t make any sense. Was Father Dagon the lead singer? Or was it the name of a song? What was going on here?
Zatanna hopped offstage. The leader of the group pushed his hood back and stepped regally to the microphone. The old, thin, white-bearded man scanned the crowd of kids. He wore a strange golden crown that was all high, asymmetrical spires in front with some coralline flourishes around the headband. It both looked like something someone found at the bottom of the sea and something she’d expect to see floating in outer space.
“You are the Chosen,” he intoned into the microphone. “You are the Promised. You are the Honored. Tonight you ascend as you descend, and the gift of your lives ensures that Father Dagon smiles kindly upon your families and communities for the next generation. Those of you whose families are outsiders, rejoice! From this night forward, your sacrifice ensures that your bloodlines flow with ours. Your kin will be joined with the host, and you will all be profoundly blessed.”
Millie felt her heart flutter in her chest and she took a step back, bumping into Hubert. The gift of their lives? Sacrifice?
“Father Dagon, take me first!” Hubert screamed behind her.
Millie frantically looked around for some other exit, or a place to hide, but there was none. Just the heavy metal barn doors that led someplace dark and watery, and the chained gate to the stairs.
The man with the crown took a deep breath, as did the twelve choir members behind him, and they began to sing. It was loud, like opera, but there was no melody and the voices of the chorus ground against each other like glass in disharmony. Millie whole body broke out in goosebumps and her heart pounded in her chest and she plugged her fingers in her ears, but there was no getting away from this strange, horrible, atonal music, no way to keep it from pounding into her skull like hurricane waves smashing against the beach, no way to keep from feeling like someone was reaching inside her skull and twisting her brains until up was down and down was up, and it was all so terrible that she just wanted to laugh and laugh and never stop ….
And the other children around her were laughing, laughing ‘til they shrieked, laughing ‘til they vomited up pizza and sweets and Cosmic Cola. The still-sane part of Millie’s mind noticed that Zatanna and the men had gotten out hard-shelled ear muffs like her stepfather wore when he went to the gun range. And they just stood there on the margins, wearing their ear protection, impassively watching and waiting … for what?
Hubert finished puking behind her and gasped, “It’s happening! It’s happening! Praise Father Dagon, I am Becoming!”
She turned. The boy’s whole head was swelling up like a grotesque balloon, his eyes bulging, his mouth widening impossibly. His back and shoulders hunched spasmodically, and she heard the crack of breaking bone. He yawned, making a terrible retching sound, and Millie watched in horror as his crooked white incisors, bicuspids and molars popped bloodily from his jaw, jumping free like popcorn kernels, only to be followed by the sharp grey irregular jags of brand-new teeth erupting through his raw gums, teeth like a shark’s or a barracuda’s. His eyes had bulged so much she was sure they’d pop right
out of his head, the whites turning black, his blue irises turning a mottled golden like a frog’s.
His skin split over his swollen flesh and he started furiously scratching himself with newly-clawed paws, tearing his clothing and pale skin away to reveal mottled, moist scales beneath. He threw the last rags of his captain’s costume aside and crouched naked on muscular frog’s legs, croaking hoarsely at her.
The awful sight of Hubert’s transformation sent adrenaline surging through Millie’s blood, and that broke the spell of the eldritch choir. She stepped away from the hopping abomination that Hubert had become and looked all around her, again seeking escape when she knew there was none. All the other kids were turning into monstrous fish-frogs. Everybody changing into something mythical and terrifying. Everyone but her.
The sane, calm part of her mind made note that while the dark part of her mind had long dreamed of being able to become something feared and respected, something that could send all the kids who’d ever bullied her and all the adults who’d ever belittled her screaming for the safety of locked doors … she most certainly did not want to become one of these god-awful things. They stank. Sweet lord, they stank like fish and vomit and blood. And one look in their bulging eyes and she just knew that they weren’t in control of their own minds. They were slaves to Father Dagon.
If Millie ever became a monster, she wanted it to be on her own terms.
“Children, rejoice!” The leader of the choir shouted over the abominable song. “You are remade in your Father’s image, and now you shall meet him!”
Two of the men from the alcoves pulled open the huge metal barn doors, and suddenly the grotto was filled with the smell of seawater and the sound of crashing surf. Immediately, the gibbering, baying, croaking fish-frogs swarmed toward the water, and Millie was carried along with them. She managed to take a deep breath right before they all plunged into the dark, surging waves.
Immediately, she lost her gorgeous red wig amongst the thrashing, splashing limbs. Millie had never been a fast swimmer, but she had always been a strong one. It was hard to swim in her boots and poofy-sleeved shirt, hard to keep her head above water with the brass sword weighing her down in the croaking throng surging out to sea, but she did it.
The throng thinned, and Millie distantly glimpsed the sweeping spotlight in the lighthouse, which she remembered the bus passing. That way was town, and her parents’ house. Safety.
She started to awkwardly breast-stroke toward the lighthouse, but something grabbed the hem of her blouse. Hubert’s awful croaking face loomed beside hers, his bulging eyes gleaming with mindless hunger.
Millie shrieked and scrabbled her pirate’s cutlass out of its scabbard and jabbed it at him. She felt the blade sink into something soft. Hubert let out an inhuman barking cry and released her. She gave the sword another shove and let it go, too, splashing away as fast as she could.
He didn’t follow.
***
Millie staggered to shore on the rocky beach a few hundred yards north of the mansion. Her arms and legs were numb with cold. She was so exhausted she wanted to lie down and sleep, but she knew she couldn’t. The people from the mansion could find her here, and she wasn’t convinced that some of the fish-frogs wouldn’t track her down. Besides, she’d learned about hypothermia in Girl Scouts, and if she didn’t keep moving she might get so cold she’d die. She sat down on a rock to pour the seawater out of her boots and wring out her socks as best she could. Her feet were wrinkled from her swim, and she had no doubt they’d be covered in the worst blisters she’d ever had by the time she got home.
The compass had stayed in her back pocket, and when she pulled it out, she was surprised to find that it had been waterproofed and still worked fine. She put her damp socks and boots back on and kept going down the beach, hoping that the rocky cliffs would end soon so she could get back onto the highway like her mother had told her.
“Like my mother told me,” she repeated aloud to herself.
The sudden shock of realization made her stop and stand very still, shivering. Her mother had known this was going to happen. Maybe not exactly what had happened, but she knew something bad would happen. Why had she sent her to the party if she knew? Had her own mother betrayed her? Millie felt a new surge of terror and anger. If her mother was in on this, could she still go home?
But no. She shook her head, scolding herself. Her mom loved her. She did. She’d given Millie a real sword! And a flask so she wouldn’t have to drink the hateful Cosmic Cola. She’d given her the tools she needed to escape. Millie couldn’t understand why her mom would send her into the mouth of horror when her entire life she’d kept Millie away from anything and everything that seemed even slightly dangerous. But, she had … and Millie figured her mother had some explaining to do. At least.
Further, even if Millie did want to run away, where could she go? She didn’t know how to contact any of her other relatives, and she didn’t have any money for a bus or even for a pay phone. Millie had seen enough thrillers to suspect a conspiracy, and she didn’t know who could be trusted. If she couldn’t trust her own mom, she certainly couldn’t trust neighbors or teachers she’d only known for a few months, could she? There wasn’t much choice except to go home.
Shivering in the fitful wind, Millie plodded along the dark beach, eyes downcast, until she smelled burning gasoline and glimpsed the flicker of flames in her peripheral vision. She looked up. The Cosmic Cola bus had crashed over the guardrail onto its side and was burning. The whole thing was engulfed. Two firetrucks were vainly trying to put the flames out, and the local news van was filming a reporter a safe distance away.
This was how they were going to explain the kids’ disappearance, she realized. A big tragic bus crash that people would forget in a decade or two. Probably if she looked in the town records, she’d find that some other terrible accident had befallen the kids picked for the big Devil’s Night party thirty years before.
Left with no doubt whatsoever that this was a conspiracy, Millie crept onward, making sure that she wouldn’t be seen as she passed the crash.
***
She finally made it back to her parents’ house in the early grey dawn when the sun was just a rumor below the horizon. Exhaustion had dissolved her rage and terror into a disbelieving numbness. Her mother was sitting on the front steps, dozing against a porch pillar, one of the jack-o-lanterns she’d helped Millie carve sitting in her lap. Its candle had gone out. A wine glass and an empty bottle of merlot lay on the white-washed wooden planks beside her.
Millie shrugged off the blanket she’d pilfered from a beach house clothesline and shook her mother’s shoulder. “Mom.”
Mrs. Gibbs woke with a start, looked around, and then pressed a finger to her lips. Her eyes were very red, as if she’d been crying a long time that night. “We have to be quiet. If anyone knows you’re alive, they’ll come after you again. I won’t be able to do anything. I’m so sorry about all of this, honey.”
“What the hell is going on?” Millie whispered, then flinched, expecting her mother to scold her for using a swear word.
But her mother didn’t even seem to notice. “There’s a cult here, and it’s real, and Steve was a part of it long before I met him. And now we’re all sucked in. I’m so sorry.”
Millie felt her anger rise again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Fresh tears welled in her mother’s eyes. “I couldn’t, honey. If you had known, you would have been so scared, and they’d have known that I told you. We’d both be dead now, and there would be nobody to protect your little brother and sister. I did the best I could think to do.”
Millie wanted to scream at her, so she took care to speak as clearly and quietly as she could. “If you knew, why didn’t you just take us and leave while he was away at work?”
Her mother’s gaze turned distant, and when she spoke, her voice was hollow. “There was
a ritual. I thought Steve and I were just going to lunch … but we weren’t. They forced me. I’m bound here. I will literally die if I try to leave here with you or the twins. Steve had to promise a child to Dagon so he could rise in the ranks of the Order. He promised you. And you’re still promised.”
God. This was even more awful than she had imagined. “What happens now?”
“You have to leave here, tonight, and never come back. If they think you drowned in the ocean, the Order considers the promise fulfilled even though Dagon didn’t get another child. But if they find out you’re alive, they’ll try to get you. And if they can’t get you, they’ll demand that Steve give them a different child. And then he’ll hand over your little brother or little sister.”
Millie felt a shock run from her skull to the soles of her aching feet. “He wouldn’t. He loves them.”
Her mother gave a short, quiet, bitter laugh. She looked terrified. “He would. He’d hand over all of us if they asked him to. And he’d get married and start a new family with another woman he does his Prince Charming act for. He’s not all the man I thought he was. He’s not even the man you think he is, and I know you never liked him much.”
“He’s a monster,” Millie whispered.
Another quiet, bitter laugh. “This whole town is a monster factory, and it has been for a long, long time. But if you leave before they know you’re alive, you and I and the twins stay safe. You can’t call or write after you go; they read our mail, and they’ve tapped our phone. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but it does.”
Millie felt completely lost. “Where do I go?”
“You’re going to live with my cousin Penny in Fensmere, Mississippi. She knows a lot about monsters and cults and she can keep you safe.”
“Cousin Penny?” Millie blinked. “You never mentioned her before, and now I’m supposed to go live with her?”
“It’s not ideal. She’s sort of a hermit. Not many people in the family really know her. I think she works as a private investigator? She tried to warn me about Steve, but I thought she was a lunatic.” Her mother looked sad and deeply embarrassed. “I should have listened; everything she told me turned out to be true. She also told me that if any of my children were in danger, she would help. I called her from a payphone in Surfton the other night, and she said she’d send someone up here to collect you if you lived. And you did.”
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