My So-Called Death

by Stacey Jay

  "Oh god. The brains?"

  "I'm guessing. And I think she saw me following her. Or felt me or something. So I didn't want you coming with me tonight." He cleared his throat. "I thought the... thing in the cafeteria would keep you away from me."

  "You could have just asked." I stepped to the side as Gavin patted the wall down, supposedly looking for some sign of where the door had gone.

  "You wouldn't have listened."

  "No, I wouldn't have." I was surprised that he knew me so well after only a few days. "But at least I would have been spared embarrassment on a tragic scale. That was... awful."

  "I'm sorry," he said, sounding truly remorseful. "But I was trying to make sure no one thought you were helping me investigate." He turned his attention away from the door and stepped a little closer to me, treating me to a whiff of the yummy, soapy boy smell that was Gavin. "Otherwise I wouldn't have... you know? I was just trying to make sure everyone thought we were broken up so they wouldn't think--"

  "Broken up?" I was pretty sure my eyebrows shot up to touch my scalp. "I didn't know we were... I mean... I never... yeah..."

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  Gavin actually blushed. Blushed! Red enough so that I could see it even in the near darkness. "Well, there were rumors. I didn't start them or anything, but... yeah... I mean... it's cool."

  It's cool. Did that mean he thought that him and me, together, could be cool? OMG. I could be seconds away from having a boyfriend, a real boyfriend! Gavin didn't just like me, he liked me. But if he had been faking his hatred...

  "So you weren't under a voodoo hex that made you hate me?" Geez, did all my theories have to be blown to heck mere minutes after I had conceived them? And more importantly, was Gavin going to say anything else about these dating rumors and their coolness?

  "Um... not that I know of."

  "Ugh, that sucks."

  "I can try to hex myself if you want."

  "No, it's not--it's just that--" Blerck! This was not coming out the way I wanted it to at all. Why was I suddenly so socially dysfunctional? This never would have happened in my old life.

  "You know what? We don't have time to talk about it right now." He seemed irritated again as he turned back to the wall. Great. Now we were probably on the verge of breaking up before I even had the chance to figure out if Gavin wanted to be together. "We have to get in that door."

  "You're right." And he was. We had to stay focused, or brains and lives were going to be lost. There would be

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  time to angst out about us (OMG, please let there still be an us!) later. "Whether it's Samedi or Clarice and Darby, I don't think Trish and the others have much time. Something's going down tonight. I can just feel it."

  "I know, I--" He broke off with an excited smile. If I didn't know better I'd think a part of him was enjoying this. But then, I guess a part of me was too. We totally shared the crime fighter gene and would probably grow up and work in Special Ops together or something even cooler. "I think I found it."

  Keeping one hand on a spot on the wall, he pulled a tangled root out of his robe pocket with the other. He chanted a few words I thought were in French--"remoulade" might have been in there somewhere--and then traced the root along the plaster in the shape of the door. Seconds later, the wall began to glow a faint blue and the snake door appeared, looking as ominous and foreboding as it had the first time. "You ready?" he asked, his hand shaking a little as he grabbed the handle.

  "Ready," I nodded, though I really wished I'd made time to find that hammer. I would have felt a lot better following Gavin through a spooky door and down an even spookier set of damp, moldy stairs if I'd had a nice, heavy hammer in hand.

  Or a gun would have been good. I'd never even seen a gun before in real life, since my parents were very anti-firearm, but how hard could shooting a gun be? I think I could figure out how to turn off the safety and blast a

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  hole in someone who was trying to steal my brain. I'm not a violent person, but given the choice between them and me, I'm picking me. Especially if they are a brain snatcher and I am not.

  "Hold on to me," Gavin whispered over his shoulder. I gladly obliged, grabbing a handful of the back of his uniform.

  It was getting really dark as we descended the stairs, making me wish I had one of those big industrial flashlights. Not only would it be good for seeing, but those things are really heavy. Almost as good as a hammer, really. Not as good as a gun, but--

  "Karen? Did you hear me?"

  "No, sorry," I said, struggling to focus. Thinking about weapons wasn't going to make one magically appear. My best weapon right now was paying attention and being ready to run if I had to.

  "I thought I heard something," he whispered as I tottered off the final step behind him, just barely keeping my balance in the utter blackness. Geez! How did Darby and Clarice get so far ahead of us so fast? Clarice was clearly part serpent and could see in the dark, but Darby must have had problems. "But I can't tell where it's coming from. I think we can go either right or left. There's a wall directly in front."

  I felt him groping around in the darkness and tightened my grip on his robe. I didn't want to get separated down here. Gavin was right, the sound was all wonky and

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  seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. It was hard to pinpoint the direction of his voice and he was standing right in front of me. If I lost contact, I might never find him again.

  "I think right," I finally whispered, knowing my heart would be pounding a million miles a minute if it could still beat.

  It was awful down here. The evil vibe actually wasn't quite as bad as it had been in the library, but everything still felt... wrong. It reminded me of the Alice and Wonderland cartoon where she falls through the rabbit hole and lands upside down. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the lights were to suddenly flare on and Gavin and I found ourselves standing on the ceiling.

  "I think I see a light." I squinted until my eyes hurt, trying to pinpoint the source.

  "Yeah... sort of red."

  "And scary." I stepped closer and grabbed another handful of robe with my other fist as Gavin turned and began shuffling toward the light. I felt sort of like a baby monkey clinging to its mother's fur, which was probably not cool. But then, being cooler than a monkey was the least of my worries right now.

  The smell was back, slinking down the dark tunnel ahead of us, pungent and rotten, a school bully that grabbed hold of your face and stuck it deep in his nasty armpit. I thought I heard Gavin gag a little, which made me want to gag too, but I shoved the urge away. Bent

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  double, yacking your guts out, was not a good position to be found in if you happened to attract the attention of a brain harvester.

  And we were totally going to attract attention. Surely these other people had some sort of magic or something that helped them see down here in the pit--and surely they would notice us coming. Then they'd leap out from the blackness and hack our skulls open with a garden trowel or a kitchen knife or something blunter that would hurt even more!

  Stop it! Think positively! Positive winner thoughts.

  The inner voice was right. First law of cheering: you have to stay cheer-full, filled with positive energy. It is a scientifically proven fact that negative vibes from the sidelines can alter the course of an entire game and prevent any hopes of a comeback on the part of the home team.

  I never would have dared to think loser thoughts while in my official PHS Peachpit Pride cheer uniform. I wasn't going to start thinking loser thoughts now, either, even if the scene coming into view was the definition of disturbing.

  Not more than thirty feet away, figures in black hooded robes stood in a circle around a small stone altar that was surrounded by writhing black snakes with glowing red eyes. There were at least a hundred snakes churning around the stone, hissing when they drew too close to the unnaturally bright red fire that burned there. The fire was the color of melted cherry jawbreakers
and red neon mixed together and was fueled by nothing other than... brains. Real, live... er, dead, brains.

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  I slammed a hand over my mouth to stifle the horror-movie-heroine shriek trying to escape my lips and fought the urge to run. This was way more alarming than anything I'd imagined.

  Snakes are not my favorite critters, not by a long shot, and the brains seemed... alive. All three pulsed and throbbed upon the altar, like they were still capable of thought and ached to be back in the skulls where they belonged. Their slick gray surfaces squirmed as the fire grew higher and higher, and I knew they would totally have been screaming for mercy if they'd had mouths to scream with.

  It was an awful thing to see, and--if my guess was right--it was also the source of the horrible smell. Though now that we were closer, the smell had changed a bit. It was more of a rancid-barbeque-pit kind of stink rather than the sickeningly sweet rot of a few moments before.

  No, wait--the rotted smell was still there, but it had shifted somehow. Now it seemed to be coming from behind us. Maybe we'd passed a dead animal or something in the tunnel and just hadn't realized it. (Ew! Tunnel kill, very, very gross.)

  But then again, a dead animal wouldn't slowly be drawing closer, giving the barbeque-from-hell smell a run for its money. And a dead animal wouldn't have a slightly familiar, human scent, something I couldn't quite put my finger on but that reminded me of something... of some-owe. God, what was that? That faint spicy smell that made my flesh crawl and the place between my shoulders scream for me to hit the deck?

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  I had to ask Gavin if he smelled it too, even if it meant risking being overheard.

  I tugged softly on his robe. "Gavin, do you--"

  "Grab them! Don't let them leave the circle!"

  Oh crap! We'd been discovered! Principal Samedi had never sounded so scary. I was guessing the echo had something to do with it, but still--whoa, had she ever been holding back on Gavin and me in her office. If we'd known how spooky that voice could get, we never would have dared follow her through the hallways, let alone down into her secret sacrificial lair.

  Her shout was terrifying enough to bring my urge to pee surging back with a vengeance, but I ignored it. There was no time to stress about small bladders and bathroom breaks. Gavin and I had to get the heck out of there. We had to run for it and hope we could reach the human world before Samedi caught up with us. DEAD was on the outskirts of Atlanta, in a mostly industrial district, but there had to be humans around somewhere. And surely Principal Samedi wouldn't dare harvest our brains with normal people around to observe.

  But if she was psycho enough to cut out brains in the first place, who knew what she would do? And with magic like hers, she could probably work a spell to make sure a normal human never remembered they'd encountered two teenagers on the run from a murderer.

  Or maybe she'd just kill them and us and be done with it.

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  I yanked harder on Gavin's robe. "Come on! We have to--"

  Gavins hand came down over my eyes, then slid down my nose to cover my mouth. "Shh!" He pulled me with him as he smashed flat against the wall. We'd just disappeared into the shadows when Darby and Clarice raced by, breathing heavily enough that I could smell the telltale stank of Clarice's breath.

  Seconds later, three of the hooded figures, carrying torches, raced after the girls, pursuing them down the tunnel. I felt Gavin relax against me as they disappeared into the darkness, and experienced a similar moment of relief. We hadn't been spotted after all. It was Darby and Clarice who were going to have their entrails ripped out for daring to interrupt Samedi's brain spell.

  Said relief lasted all of thirty seconds before a clawlike hand clamped down on my shoulder, and Gavin and I both screamed. Our heads snapped up in tandem, so I knew he was seeing exactly what I was seeing--Principal Samedi, hanging from the ceiling like some sort of bat, her spiky black hair forming horns that framed her psychotically pissed-off face.

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  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I did what none of you had the guts to do, losers. You're just a bunch of sheep! A bunch of sheep! Fight the power. Fight the freaking power!

  --Allan Yarborough, upon the occasion of his suspension from DEAD High

  The boy just disappeared off the face of the earth. We searched for him ourselves and alerted the national Patrollers, but he was never found. We can only assume he met with some sort of unfortunate accident.

  --Principal Samedi, upon the occasion of her questioning by the school board on the mysterious disappearance of Allan Yarborough

  Monkey brains. It had been monkey brains on the altar.

  Actually, baboon brains, which were extremely difficult to acquire and illegal in several states, but Samedi swore they'd been taken from baboons who had died of natural causes. They'd been purchased from a wildlife refuge instead of the more affordable poacher channels and had cost the school nearly three thousand dollars apiece.

  That was nine thousand dollars down the drain because Clarice and Darby had violated the circle Principal Samedi

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  and her coven members had cast. (Gavin and I would have done the same thing if we'd walked further down the hall, so we were in just as deep doo as my roommate and her partner in crime.)

  "But you've cost us more than money tonight," Principal Samedi said, her voice thick with disappointment. She leaned over her desk, glaring first into my eyes, then into Gavins. I swear I could feel my corneas starting to smolder.

  Gavin and I both sank a little deeper in our chairs. Clarice and Darby had already taken their medicine and been escorted out of the office a few minutes ago. I'd been glad they were yelled at first, but now I'd changed my mind. I wished more than anything that this was over.

  Samedi wasn't about to let up. "You've cost us our best chance at finding the harvested brains of your three classmates before it's too late to reunite them with their bodies." Her hands were still claw-shaped and made scary scratching sounds on her desk as she drummed her nails.

  She hadn't given any explanation as to how she was able to hang from the ceiling, and Gavin and I hadn't asked. I didn't know about him, but I was now properly afraid of my new principal and didn't want to do anything else to hack her off.

  "We were just trying to help." Gavin was actually looking her in the eye as he spoke, proving he had way more guts than I'd ever have. "We saw Darby and Clarice going through the door in the library and--"

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  "Darby and Clarice are not now and have never been your responsibility. You are a student here at DEAD, Mr. McDougal. You are not in a position of power and--"

  "And I don't want to be." Gavin's voice rose. What was he doing? Didn't he realize we were in deep trouble already? "Don't you think I'd rather let the alleged adults around here handle this? Don't you think I want to believe you've got the safety of the school under control? Well, I would, but you don't."

  "That's enough, Gavin." Principal Samedi snapped the words with her usual toughness, but it was too late. I'd seen the crack in her confidence, and Gavin had obviously seen it too, because he didn't hesitate for a second before driving his argument home.

  "You don't, or Darby and Clarice would never have been able to follow you. They never would have been able to get Trish's necklace or even think they could get away with tracking down--"

  "I said, that's enough. You don't--"

  "No, it's not enough." I winced as he jumped to his feet. Gah! This was going to end badly. Why couldn't he just quit while he was ahead? "What about the hex Clarice put on Karen?"

  In other news, Clarice had confessed to hexing me. Samedi and her coven had searched our room and found a bunch of my stuff mixed in with her chicken bone collection. It was a particularly nasty personal hex spell that would have been even more damaging if she'd been able to get her hands on human bones. No word yet as to why

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  she'd decided to make me her victim, but apparently that's what sh
e'd been up to while she was hiding under her blanket with my Hello Kitty flashlight.

  I was so going to insist on a new roommate, no excuses accepted... if Clarice and I weren't both expelled.

  "Clarice will be dealt with," Principal Samedi said in her soft, scary voice. She was doing her best to get this situation under control, but I could tell she kind of wanted to leap across the desk and strangle Gavin.

  "Yeah, now she will be, but what about before? Didn't you even notice that the entire school was treating the new girl like shit for no reason?"

  OMG, Gavin had just cussed. In front of the principal. This was going past "has guts" into "has a death wish" territory. The woman was part vampire bat or something, for god's sake. What did he think he was doing?

  "And if I hadn't already done something to protect myself from the rogue magic at this school, I would have been affected too." Gavin pulled his gris-gris bag out from under his robe. It contained a bunch of herbs and stuff and served as a talisman to ward off evil. Gavin had promised to make me one as soon as we were released from custody. "I shouldn't have to work protection spells to keep myself safe from black magic."

  Samedi sighed and dropped her eyes to her hands-- which were looking a little less clawlike. Thank god. The whole channeling-a-batlike-creature thing was very whiggy.

  "No, you shouldn't have to. And I'm sorry."

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  Holy. Crackers. And. Cheese. She'd just apologized. I couldn't believe it, but it looked like Gavin had won this argument.

  "There have been...challenges for the administration," Samedi added slowly. "And for me in particular."

  "What kind of challenges?" Gavin asked, easing back into his chair.