Beautiful City of the Dead (8 page)

"Give it back, please?" The worst thing was me having to beg to get back the notebook. "There's nothing bad there. It's beautiful, not wrong."

He glared down at me. "Do you know what happens to young people who get deeply involved in the occult?"

"It's not occult!" I whispered. "It's just words on gravestones."

"Mr. Knacke is convinced that a secret occult conclave has worked its way into the student body here. He, and I, are determined that this school will not be a breeding ground for evil." He said
evil
like it was poison he had to get out of his mouth.

"You've been warned, Zee. We will not tolerate occult practices here. We will do all we must to protect the student body. You can go now."

"I want my notebook back," I said as I got up.

"Out of the question."

"It's mine! I didn't do anything wrong. Give it back!"

"I am keeping this in a safe place. If the time comes that I must use it as evidence against you, Zee, I certainly will. Consider yourself lucky that I have not already contacted the police in this matter."

He loomed toward me, like a dragon rising up from its lair. No flames spewed from his mouth, but I wouldn't have been surprised if they had.

"I
JUST WANT PEOPLE
to leave me alone," I said. "That's all. I'm not fighting anyone. Anyway, they already won. There's no point fighting."

"So you're quitting before you even start?" Relly said.

"I don't want to be a god." This sounded stupid, but it was true. "I don't want to be in your secret war and fight against Knacke and Scratch."

"All right," Relly said. "What do you want?" We were in the kitchen. His mom was mixing up herbs to make one of her stinky teas. She kept looking over at me, then back to the leaves and roots and berries she was crushing up.

"I want to be in the band. And play out. And maybe do some recording."

"That's it? If you could have anything in the whole world, that's the best you can come up with?"

Tannis stared at me, like she was afraid of what I'd say.
Or maybe she was holding her words inside until the right moment to speak.

"I don't know," I whispered. "What difference does it make? I can't have what I want."

"Who says?"

If I was completely honest, I would have told him, "I want you. You're the one I've been waiting for."

But I couldn't say that with his mom in the room with us. And maybe I couldn't say it even if we were totally alone. I wasn't afraid he'd laugh or make a disgusted face. No, much worse would be a shrug and him saying, "Yeah, sure, whatever."

"OK, maybe you're right and it doesn't matter what you want," Relly told me after a while. "Then the only thing that counts is what you are." He took my hands and held them, which he'd never done before. It felt wonderful and scary, perfectly natural and totally wrong. "You're a god, Zee, like me. Like Butt and Jerod. And gods have got to—"

"Butt and Jerod? They burst into flame, too?"

"No, that's just me. They're made of different stuff. Butt is earth. And Jerod is air. I'm fire, which you already know."

"And that makes me—"

Tannis cut in. "Water." Her voice was loud and edgy. "Your element is water, Zee." She was holding a glass mixing bowl. The stuff inside sloshed back and forth like liquid silver. She came toward me and for a second, I thought she was going to pour it over my head. Instead, she set it carefully on the table. "Look," she said. And there was a reflection of my face on the surface. It flickered and shook. But still I saw myself.

"You're water," Relly said. "And that makes Scorpio Bone complete. Earth, air, water, and fire. The four elements."

"So Knacke is right? You're into—"

"Knacke is a stenching old scumpack and everything he touches turns rotten."

He continued to hold my hands in his. And they were strong, real strong. "You know what the word
occult
really means, Zee?" Of course I didn't. "All it means is 'secret' or 'hidden.' It doesn't have a thing to do with good or bad. Just secret."

"And Scorpio Bone is the—"

"Four and no more. It takes four to win the war." Relly was looking at me eye to eye and it was the total opposite of when Frankengoon had stared me down. Both times, somebody was peering deep into me. But with Relly it felt good, like he knew me, maybe even knew me better than I knew myself. And I was not just OK, but great, the one and only. There was something about me that was precious and powerful. And Relly needed it. He needed me.

"There's four of us, two pairs. Butt is earth. You know:
all his stupid toilet jokes. He's the god of dirt. And Jerod's his opposite, the god of the air. Singers are all wind, right? Blowing hard, but kind of empty. Jerod and Butt are one pair. The lowly dirt and the heavenly air."

"And we're the other pair?"

He nodded. "Fire and water. You need me to bring you to a boil. And I need you to put out the flames. But you're not just plain water. You're ice and you're snow. You're steam and clouds and fog."

"And fever," Tannis said. "Fever is body heat cooking the body's water. Fire and water together in the flesh." Saying this, she went back to the stove.

"This is all so insane. I just want to—"

"Don't say it unless you really and truly know what you want. Because you might just get it."

"All right. So what do
you
want?" I asked him.

His mom turned to watch Relly. He didn't see the look on her face. But I did. And it was scarier than anything Frankengoon or even Knacke had done. It was like the answer to my question was life or death to her. The wrong response and everything would be ruined.

"I want the band to be a success. I want to play out a lot, too, and record. And I want people to see how great we are."

"But that's not all?"

"I guess I want the real thing," he said after a long
stretch of quiet. "I mean, if it's fake or bogus I hate it. If it's all lies, then I want nothing to do with it. TV and textbooks and what kids talk about at school. That's all a lie. You know what I mean?"

He could see I didn't understand.

"Like you look at me and I'm just this kid. But I'm also the god of fire. And you're just a kid too, a girl with an Ibanez bass who doesn't say hardly anything at school. And you're the ocean too, and rain, and blizzards."

Part of me was saying,
Right, sure, I'm Neptuna, goddess of the seas,
and thinking about how crazy it all sounded. I should go home and never come back. Next thing I knew, he'd be talking about human sacrifice or having aliens over for supper.

But another part was listening real hard and kind of nodding. It was like I knew it all already, only I needed somebody to bring the truth back to mind.

"You really believe this, don't you? The god part. Earth, wind, fire, and water. The whole bit. You believe it?"

"One hundred percent." He didn't pause for even a second to answer that one.

His mom turned away, back to messing around with her wet leaves and lumps of little black berries.

I let out all the air I'd been holding in my chest. I closed my eyes and relaxed. "All right, then," I said. "Then I believe it, too."

T
HAT NIGHT, SCRATCH ATTACKED. I
don't mean he kicked the front door down and burst in swinging. Or came crawling out of the phone like a snaky ghost. No, it wasn't broken windows or bloody threats. All the same, it was an attack. And it made me even more a believer in what Relly had said that day.

As usual, the house was empty when I got home. My dad was out, at work, I guess. And I had no idea when he'd be back. I nuked some four-cheese lasagna and ate it standing at the kitchen sink. It was good, real good. My dad's cooking was always the best. And he always made sure there was something excellent waiting for me in the fridge.

I could see a faint reflection of my face in the kitchen window. Only, for a minute it didn't really look like me. I stopped eating, put my plate in the sink, and stared. Who was it, if not me? Was I getting so crazy that I didn't even
know my own face? Slowly, the little jab of panic faded. Yeah, that was me, I told myself, not some stalker peering in.

After checking a third time to make sure all the doors were locked, I went upstairs.

I kept hearing weird noises. Usually the scratching of tree limbs on the windows didn't bug me at all. Usually I was fine with the house creaking softly, like the distant noise of my dad's bedsprings as he settled in for sleep. Most times, the hum of the furnace was a comfort when I was alone.

That night, however, everything seemed wrong.

There was still mist on the bathroom mirror, though nobody had used the tub all day. The numbers on my alarm clock were flashing, like when the power has gone off. Only, they weren't pulsing in a regular beat. They flashed quickly, then were steady, then throbbed and faded and came back twice as bright.

The worst thing, though, was when I opened my bass case and took out my Ibanez. I wrapped my fingers around the neck and knew somebody had been playing it, somebody with grimy hands.

Now, I'm very careful about wiping it down after I play. I have special rags to rub the strings and I make sure the neck is dry before I put the bass away.

So the feel of the neck, kind of cold and sticky, scared me as much as it grossed me out. Somebody had been looking through my stuff, messing around with it, leaving a
faint trail of black fingerprints. And that somebody, I knew, was Scratch.

I guess I could've run. But I didn't know where my dad was at that hour. And I didn't think Relly's mom would be too thrilled to find me back there, banging on her door. I thought about Butt. I knew he'd be fine with me showing up at his place. Only I'd never been there and didn't know if I could find it at night.

Call the police? Right, they'd love to hear some kid blabbering about steam on the bathroom mirror and ick on her bass.

So what I did surprised even me. I called information and asked for the number of Festus B. Knacke.

"Yes? Hello?" He sounded different than at school, older, a lot older. I wondered if he dyed his hair, wore dentures, maybe even some kind of corset to school to pull in his gut and make him stand up straighter. "What is it?"

I was quiet for a minute. A couple times, back in middle school, I'd done some phone pranks. This was different. I wasn't silent to bug Knacke. No, I was afraid, and I was full of doubt.

"Is anyone there?" he asked. "Hello?"

"Uh, yeah, this is Zee. You know, from sixth-period bio."

"Yes?"

"I, uh, I'm calling to tell you—"

He was listening, close. He waited.

"Scratch was here, in my house. I don't know how he got in. But he was here."

No response.

"Well, I'm just calling to say that we've got you figured out. Me and Relly. We know all about you. Frankengoon had me dragged down to the office today and he showed me the notebook you stole. It's mine and you've got no right taking it. I want it back."

"What you want and what you can have are two different—"

"You can't just steal my stuff! It's private. It's got nothing to do with school. I wasn't causing any trouble. It's mine and you've got to give it back."

"I think it would be best if we continued this discussion tomorrow. Speaking face to face is always better, don't you agree?" Now his voice was oily as a talk show host's. He was back in charge. I yelled and made demands. He was smooth and in control now. "We'll discuss this at school. I'll make sure that Mr. Franken can join us."

"I don't want—"

"Goodnight, Zee," he said, and hung up.

OK,
SO
I'
M A GOD
and I can't even get my notebook back from an old man with bad breath.

Relly had said I was water—rushing streams, snow, ice, and fog. So then why couldn't I just pound Knacke with a blizzard? I even tried it, sort of. I went to the window and reached out my hands and made some magic gestures like I'd seen in the movies. I pictured a huge black cloud swirling down from the night sky and blasting Knacke to his knees.

Of course, nothing happened. He was probably asleep and snoring like a great nasty bug. Buzz, gasp, buzz.

I ran the faucet in the bathroom. I concentrated and tried to make the water rise up and do my will. It just flowed out in a steady stream and went down the drain.

Then I went downstairs and turned on the teakettle. When the water was boiling, I looked closely at the jet of steam. It whistled like it always did. I put my hand into the steam for just a second. And it hurt, like I knew it would.

Right, I'm a god. I have secret powers. I looked at the dishes in the sink. Maybe that was it. Maybe I was Super Dishwasher Girl.

I didn't bother trying my amazing powers on the lasagna pan.

S
CHOOL WAS
OK
THE
next day. Classes went by in a boring blur. Lunch was fairly disgusting, as it always was. And my favorite drummer made his usual butt jokes. He seemed to think that a "feces statement" was a lot better to include in his essay than a "thesis statement."

"Get it? Get it? Feces statement!"

"Right, I got it."

Happy now, he wiggled a couple of strands of spaghetti over his gaping mouth and made monster noises.

Then there was bio. I thought about skipping. I was ready to do it. But Relly was hanging around by my locker before class and said I had to be there.

"Why? So Knacke can wave my notebook around and tell everyone I'm a cult leader? Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe he'll want to burn me at the stake like a Salem witch. I can hardly wait."

"The witches there weren't burned. They were all hanged."

"Enough, all right? I was just making a joke. I don't care about the Salem witch trials."

"Well, you'd better be in class."

So I went.

Knacke was all excited about his new fungus. He'd brought in a big hunk of rotten wood and as soon as we all settled down, he turned out the lights. He'd already drawn the blinds and taped heavy paper over the windows. As our eyes got used to the darkness, we all saw what he was so thrilled about.