Beautiful City of the Dead (14 page)

Tannis was sort of crying. And I was heading there fast. It was like Relly was already dead. Here we were, the two people who loved him the most, sharing a last moment before we said goodbye to him.

"The first time," Tannis said, sniffing, "the first time Relly felt the power, we'd been up to Seabreeze. He went on all the rides. He loved going there. Round and round. Up and down. He'd just come off the Jackrabbit and he was so excited. He wanted to get right back on. He was so happy. Then he felt the power. And we looked and there was light flickering around his hand. He got scared. So did I. Terrified, actually. And then the flame came. Just his hand, that day. Just a ball of fire at the end of his arm."

She pointed to a picture of Relly at the amusement park. He was maybe eight or nine. Long black hair, big inky eyes. I couldn't tell what he was feeling. Maybe joy, maybe fear. Something too strong to control.

"The power came and the flames were there in his hand." Tannis wiped her nose again. "We never went back to Seabreeze. He loved that place. But after that, he said he never wanted to go back."

She was about to close the picture album, but I held back her hand. "What's this one?" I asked.

"That's up at Durand." The picture showed a strip of sandy beach, people in the water, boats way off.

I felt all weak suddenly, quaking like I was a brass gong and Butt had just given me a good whack. No shimmering sound was coming from my body. Still, from head to toe and hand to hand, a steady shiver was passing through me.

There was Relly at the beach. And behind, there was me, Zee, up to my knees in the waves. He was facing the camera. Not smiling. He never smiled in these pictures. And I was just behind, facing out toward the huge blue horizon. The picture showed him full face. I was in profile.

There it was, proof. We might not have known each other before. But our paths had crossed years ago. We'd been to the beach on the same day. I knew exactly how old I was in that picture because I could remember the Black Sabbath T-shirt I was wearing. Somebody stole it in gym class that year. It was my favorite and it got robbed from my locker in seventh grade.

"That's me," I said.

"What?"

"There. In the picture. Look." I pointed to myself, a skinny pale girl in a purple and black T-shirt.

"My God," Tannis murmured.

It was just coincidence, right? OK, so once a few years ago, Relly and me had been on the same strip of Durand beach. What was the big deal? We lived in the same city. Why wouldn't we go to the same park on the same summer day?

The picture showed me looking out at the vastness of the water. I didn't remember that trip to the beach. I guess my dad had taken me on a hot August afternoon. But it was totally gone from my mind. All that remained was my memory of that T-shirt.

I looked very sad in the picture, like I'd lost my best friend. Only my best friend was standing right there close enough to touch. I didn't know it, of course. I didn't notice the scrawny kid with the big dark eyes. We were a couple feet apart and didn't have a clue that in a few years we'd meet again. That Scorpio Bone would happen. That we'd be part of the four and no more. That Knacke and the others would tear us apart.

It was the saddest thing I ever saw, that picture. There I was, looking so miserable, so alone. And there was my best-friend-to-be, just a few feet away. I could've just turned and seen him and gotten talking. He could've turned and seen my T-shirt and asked me about music. But no, that didn't happen, and so I had to wait years before we'd meet again.

A couple of weeks together. And then separate again. The best couple weeks of my life.

I took a last look around the practice space. I figured I'd never see it again. Butt's drum set, Jerod's mike stand, Relly's Strat, beautiful as fire. My Ibanez was at home.

"You can save his life, Zee."

I kicked a pop can into the shadows.

"Give Knacke what he wants. Please. Save him."

"First tell me what happened to your sister."

Tannis took a deep breath. "She died seven years ago. Knacke's been waiting, searching, ever since. He's getting desperate. If he doesn't complete the tetrad soon, he'll die. All of them will die."

"What about Lissa?"

"She joined Knacke when she was about your age. The rest of her life she was part of that four."

"I don't get it. In the pictures, she's beautiful. Not a poxy old hag. She looks like a good person. Not a—"

"She was good! Maybe too good."

"What does that mean?"

"She was an actress. She went to New York for a little while and got in some plays. Off Broadway. Those are the ones that hardly pay a nickel. She was the hopeless romantic. Ophelia was her best part, the girl who loved Hamlet.

"But she came back here. She rejoined Knacke and for the rest of her life she was his watergod. When it finally got too much, she took her own life." Tannis's voice got weaker, quieter. "Into the river."

"Niagara Falls? Like in the picture?"

"No. Right here. On the Broad Street bridge. She climbed up the rail and went over. She couldn't stand being with him anymore. So she went back. To her element. Just as she said she would. In a minute or two she was dragged by the current to the upper falls. A hundred feet straight down. They never found her body."

"And you want me to—"

"You can save his life."

"I know. I know. But what about
my
life? Am I going to end up the same as your sister? Why did she do it? I mean, why kill herself after being part of Knacke's four for so long?"

"Because of Relly. It was right after the time at Seabreeze. When the power came down on him. Lissa suspected he had the power all along. But then it happened and it was too much for her. Being part of Knacke's four was bad enough. But to know that it was in the family. That was too much."

Tannis grabbed my hands. "It started when we were your age, Zee. He claimed her—that's how he put it. He claimed her when she was a teenager. And for ten years she was a part of it. Totally lost. I mean, we kept in touch, but she was lost to me as a sister.

"There's more, a lot more to Knacke than you've seen, Zee. And Lissa got pulled all the way into it. But when the power
came down on Relly, then something changed. Maybe she felt guilty and that's what finally got her. I still don't understand it completely. Maybe it was shame. Or fear that it would go on forever. But when it was clear that the power had been passed to the next generation, Lissa couldn't take it anymore.

"Ever since she was your age, she was way too deep into the Ophelia thing. And you know what happens to her, right? Crazy, then suicide. Lissa always said that's how it would end. 'Baptism' is what she called it. Baptized into death. 'The most beautiful way to die.' That's what she always said."

The words were coming out of Tannis in a flood, fast and powerful.

"So she went to the bridge."

I jerked my hands free. "All right! All right. Enough."

Without really thinking, I grabbed up some of Butt's broken sticks, and the pages where Relly had scrawled some lyrics for songs we never finished.

I went downstairs to the kitchen and found the phone book. "Festus B. Knacke," I read aloud.

It took me three tries to get the number right. My fingers were shaking, I guess. My eyes were out of focus. Maybe it was tears.

"Hello?"

"It's me, Zee. I made up my mind. You'll set Relly free if I join you, right? No tricks. He's free and he's safe. Right? It's just me you want."

"Of course. I am a man of my word. You know that, Zee."

"OK. Then I agree to join. You set Relly free and I'll make your four."

I
SAID IT STARTS WITH FIRE
. And fire led me to the end, too.

I made a little goodbye backyard blaze. Scraps of paper, splintered drumsticks, fliers for some upcoming shows. I cleared a space in my dad's barbeque and set it all burning.

By the time I'd gotten home that terrible day it was near dusk. There was serious weather coming in, the first real storm of the year.

I'm used to snow, but this felt different. The cold was colder. The wind was meaner. And the skies, when the clouds swirled off, had this weird red glow. A wild sunset, with big churning masses of purple and scarlet streaks like bloody sword blades.

First I got the crumpled pages of Relly's lyrics burning. Then I added some dead leaves and the Scorpio Bone fliers. As the paper caught fire, the pictures on the fliers twisted like overcooked bacon. I put on Butt's broken
drumsticks, some leftover charcoal, and then a piece of wood that had blown off our sugar maple.

The wind pushed at the fire, threatened to snuff it right out. But the little red and orange flickers grew. And soon the wind kind of joined the blaze rather than fighting it and breathed in life. I collected more sticks and some scrap wood out of the garage.

Soon enough I had a real wind-whipped bonfire.

The last thing I added was my notebook. Inside were my favorite poems from Mount Hope, and drawings and scribbles. There even was one page stained purple and wrinkly where Relly had spilled some of his Panther Blood.

This was hard. Maybe even harder than calling Knacke that last time. Even if Scorpio Bone never played again, the notebook would be proof that we were real once upon a time. We never recorded even one song. And I guess soon enough all the kids who'd seen our shows would forget. Other bands would come along. Still, the notebook would tell me that I hadn't made the whole thing up.

I paged through it one last time and came to a poem that we'd never worked into a song.

Death, like a flooding midnight stream,
sweeps us away, our life's a dream.
an empty tale, a morning flower,
cut down and withered in an hour.

Yeah, I could go back to Mount Hope and find all the graves again. Only it wouldn't be the same without Relly. We collected these olden-day words together. They weren't just mine. They were ours.

I held the notebook to my chest one last time, trying to squeeze the words into myself. Then I said goodbye and laid it on the fire.

The flames rose and ate the notebook. The wind swirled around, making a whirlpool. Heat, intense heat. Then the notebook was gone and cold returned. I was crying. I only noticed because the tears were freezing to my face.

When only ash was left, I went inside the house.

There was a message on the machine. While I was at the fire, Knacke had called. The little crimson dot pulsed like a bug full of blood. On, off, on, off.

I hit the play button.

"Come tonight," Knacke said. "You know where I live. And Relly will be set free."

OK, so I was going to Knacke's house that night. But what then? Would we all vanish in a puff of magic smoke, now that the tetrad was together again? Fly off to some other world where we'd rule as gods? Or would it be back to school again? A secret life there. Homework
and assemblies one day. Hanging around with horrible old men the next.

I didn't now. And I guess I didn't really care. I was going to save Relly. That's all that mattered.

I
T SEEMED LIKE GODS SHOULD
travel in style. A chariot, a glowing golden barge, maybe a flying carpet. Knacke should at least have sent a limo.

I went by bus. It was slow and I had to transfer downtown for the line that went out to the airport. I sat way in the back. Most of the trip I had my face pressed to the frosty window. Snow was coming in, wild gusts like flights of ghostly birds.

The lights of traffic, of the stores and houses we passed, seemed cold, like the rays of the moon, which give no heat.

We crossed the Broad Street bridge and I got a glimpse of the river, way below us. A stream of shiny blackness flowing due north.
Right here,
I thought.
This is the spot where Lissa had taken her life.
An old bum waved as we went past. I thought it was Scratch at first, standing guard. Only, he had to be at Knacke's place already.

My stop was the second from the end. Two old ladies were at the front of the bus. They were going to the airport, but not to travel. I figured they worked there as cleaners on the night shift.

The doors wheezed open and I climbed down. Going from the baked heat of the bus to the windy winter air, I felt a shock. All the way across the city, I'd been drifting in and out of a daze. Now I was wide awake, tongues of fear licking at my heart.

Everything except Knacke's house was closed up and dark. At his place, the windows were all bright and cheery, like this was Christmas Eve and he was expecting family any minute.

My finger stopped about an inch from the doorbell. I took a few deep breaths, getting myself ready for the fire dogs, for Knacke's bogus welcome. I closed my eyes and thought of Relly. I figured when this was all over, he'd understand why I came there. And maybe he'd want to thank me somehow.

Expecting an explosion of yapping and growling, I pressed the doorbell. Nothing happened. I did it again, leaning in close to listen. No cheesy chimes, no crazy barking.

Just for a minute, I thought I had the address mixed up.
Great, I come to the rescue and can't find the right house.

I rapped my knuckles on the storm door.

A jet came pounding down out of the sky. The lights raked across Knacke's front yard. In the brilliant flash I saw a smoking black lump. Then the darkness rushed back.

Was it for real? Was it human? Now the fear was like a savage mouth that had swallowed my heart whole.

I went toward the burned heap in the lawn. I smelled something that made my stomach lurch upward. I managed to keep from throwing up, but just barely.

It was a dog in the front yard. And it had been burned like a huge overdone roast beef.

Suddenly, a car came ripping down the road. The headlights swept the yard and caught me like I was a prisoner trapped while making a jailbreak.

"Let's go!" a voice boomed. "Now! Get in the car." It was Frankengoon, loud as a police bullhorn. "Move!"