My Friends Are Dead People (19 page)

“
Jesse, Katie!” called
Jacoby.

Katie and I stopped.

“
Jacoby, you came here for
answers,” said Lorseria. “So ask your questions.”

Jacoby pondered for a second. “Was Jack
present at the games?”

We all stared eagerly at Lorseria. “I think
you can answer that yourself, Jacoby.”

I wondered if Jacoby had known all along if
that smell was Jack’s or not.

“
The smell,” I said
quietly to myself.

“
Yes, the smell. It makes
you wonder why we left. And what it was that we actually
saw
. Yes, the smell was
Jack’s. But he wasn’t at the festival. He was miles from it. I
think he was waiting for something to happen.”

“
Why did you try to kill
Kala?” snapped Katie.

“
I told you I wasn’t the
one competing. You need to keep your hatred in check.”

“
But you – he broke the
rules.”

“
It’s part of the
game–”

“
No!
He broke the rules! You don’t treat others like that, you
dead creep!
”

“
If you make us angry,
that’s what happens. I’m sorry about your friend, but it deserved
what it–”

“
You will
pay!
” I shouted.

“
I told you to keep
quiet,” said Lorseria, now annoyed.

“
What about Soundrec?”
said Katie.

“
Night Watchers have the
highest death toll. But I was not the one who cursed
him.”

I stood there, with my fists curled, fully
sharing Katie’s fury. Even Jacoby was looking angry.

“
Did you summon the
Bellnicsi?” asked Jacoby.

“
Beware! You can’t come
into my home and accuse me, Jacoby.”

“
Did you kill Dili?”
muttered Katie.

“
I’m through with the
questions. None of you have the power or the right to attack and
condemn me. We are not equals.”

“
Yes - we -
are!
” bellowed Katie, sounding very
frightening. “
You have no idea where we
come from!
”

“
Is that so? Do you think
you could prove your worth to me?” suggested Lorseria, looking
intrigued.

“
Yes!
” Katie roared.

Lorseria studied her face, as if looking for
any doubt. She glared back.

“
Good,” he said with a
grin, standing up. “Below is the–”

“
No,” said Jacoby
promptly. “She’s not fully-grown.”

“
Then Jesse can go with
her.”

“
Jesse is the same age as
she is.”

“
Jacoby, you said she
entered in nineteen-fifty-five. That makes her plenty wise and
fully-grown. I suspect you’ve been lying to me. She told me she has
the right to be considered a powerful samhain, so I’m going to see
if that’s the case. I’ll even let the little melflin
go.”

“
They’re all still too
young for that,” argued Jacoby.

“
I was wrong,” said Katie.
“I don’t have the right to treat you like I did. We’re not
equals.”

“
It’s too late, Katie,
it’s final,” said Lorseria flatly, stepping on a square
platform.

Jacoby and Lin stepped onto it with him.

“
Jesse, Katie, come on,”
said Jacoby softly.

Katie and I walked up hesitantly.

“
I’ll come along,” said
Jacoby.

“
These three only is my
final decision,” ended Lorseria.

The platform jolted and went down like an
elevator. I tried my best to take cover behind Jacoby. Lorseria’s
creepy black eyes were looking down on me.

“
The mystical dungeon will
test your magical abilities and wit,” he explained. “Think of it as
a fun game like the Jack O’Games. I might not have to kill you
myself.” Lorseria flashed us an infernal smile as we were lowered
further down. “And if you survive, you’ll have my permission to ask
all the questions you want. I will tell you everything you want to
know. I will even reveal to you what had happened outside of the
festival.”

The platform hit the bottom of a red cave,
cramped with red and black boulders. The rest of tortics were
waiting just outside the platform.

“
Are you contemplating a
standoff, Jacoby?” said Lorseria, seeing that Jacoby was deep in
thought. “Red granite,” he reminded. “Don’t try.”

I wondered if Jacoby was indeed thinking
about taking on the ten tortics. He had Lin, too, but I didn’t
consider him much help. Katie could probably put up a decent fight
though.

“
It’s your decision,
Jacoby,” said Lorseria patiently.

Jacoby didn’t speak.

“
Then . . . they enter the
dungeon.”

Lorseria trudged over to a tiny hatch in the
wall, twisted his fingers, and the hatch creaked open.

“
You can’t psyclin out.
Nor can anyone psyclin in.”

All of us were waiting for Jacoby to do
something. But he was just standing there perfectly still.

“
Jacoby, don’t you have
faith in them?” said Lorseria, stepping away from the hole. “They
must be like your own children to you. Especially Jesse, who you
said has been with you for days.”

All the tortics surrounded Jacoby. He was
beginning to breathe in and out in slow repetitions. His arms began
to twitch.

“
Jacoby,” Lorseria said
menacingly, stepping forward, “you are merely an insignificant
spectacalon.”

Jacoby squatted down in deep meditation as a
cloud of black air shot out of his mouth.

“
We will kill you!”
continued Lorseria, undoing his ear bands.

Katie came closer to me. “We gotta enter or
they’ll kill him.”

“
No, he’s going to save
us,” I said quietly. “He won’t abandon us.”

“
Jesse, come
on!”

Katie forced me into a scorching hot tube
and climbed in after me. I turned back and saw Jacoby helping Lin
inside while resting his hand on top of Lin’s head. The last thing
I saw and heard was the hatch creaking to a close and Lorseria’s
raspy cold voice.

“
Good luck, my
samhain
friends.”

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

The MYSTICAL
DUNGEON

One by one, Katie, Lin, and I climbed out of
the tube onto a red granite platform, hundreds of feet above a pit
of spewing lava. Violent fiery swirls spun, popped, and jetted up
towards us. A rickety bridge reached across the pit to another
platform. The ceiling was covered with charred roots and burn
marks. We were going to die.

“
Jesse,” interrupted
Katie, pulling me back from the ledge. “Look.”

Lin was leading a class of middle school
students to the bridge. A few more students magically appeared.

“
Can anyone tell me what
lava is?” said Lin in a mature voice. “Come on. I’m grading you on
your participation. Anyone?”

“
Hot rocks?” guessed
Katie.

Lin looked all the way back at us. “How
about you, Jesse? You look like a future scientist.”

“
Liquefied
rock?”

“
Good job, Jesse. You’ve
been reading your textbook. Two stars will be awarded to you when
we get back.”

The class flocked around Lin at the
ledge.

“
I want every one of you
to create your own flashcards on what you see here and what you
learned yesterday.”

A student in the back of the group raised
his hand. “Like what?”

“
Like lava flow, red
rocks, black rocks, burst patterns, types of lava domes. There are
no restrictions. Be sure to write down your name and room number on
your index box and title it ‘The Magma Chamber Field
Trip’.”

The class quickly scribbled it down on their
clipboards as they followed Lin across the bridge and listened to
him talk about hot vapor, deadly gases, and a clan of sarscas on
the other side, who glowered back at us. However, these hairy
bear-like samhains posed no threat. Lin just shooed them away
whenever they would creep up too close. The next chamber was even
bigger than the last, with a lot more bridges and a lot more
heat.

“
You serious?” gasped
Katie, overwhelmed. A mentally slow boy repeated what she said.
“What’s in the next room – a zillion volcanoes?!”

Katie glared at him.

“
We should go back,” I
suggested. “Maybe Lorseria forgot to lock the hatch.”

“
Jesse, he’s changing
again,” Katie elbowed me.

The students were gone, and Lin was flapping
his arms up and down.

“
But he just changed,” I
said. “Is this going to happen every minute?”

“
He thinks he’s a bird
now,” giggled Katie.

“
This doesn’t look
good.”

Lin stopped flapping his arms. “Hello there,
young ones!” he said enthusiastically. “Welcome!”

Katie turned to me and smiled.

“
Welcome to the Zoo!” he
announced, presenting the cave to us with a sweeping
gesture.

“
The zoo?” I said to
Katie.

“
Let’s hear what he has to
say.”

“
My name is Leonard
Gibbly, and I will be your tour guide today. By the time we get
back, you will have walked through the plains of South Africa, swam
with Alaskan polar bears, traveled through one of South America’s
greatest tropical rainforests, and dived to the utmost depths of
the ocean. All I need is your eyes and ears. You can keep the
rest.”

“
Lin, we’re not at a zoo,”
smiled Katie.

“
You have to change back
to your normal self,” I added.

“
Children, children, we
don’t want to disturb the animals–”

“
There are no
animals!”

“
Clearly, you’ve never
been to a zoo. Take a look around.”

We watched a molten rock explode and a spurt
of lava ooze over a fallen bridge. Nothing about the place
resembled an animal habitat.

“
All cameras need to be
fastened securely,” Lin continued as he guided us across the first
bridge. “Food and beverages will not be permitted. Okay, let’s
start! Please follow me and keep close enough to count the hairs on
my neck. Here, in captivity, we have a wide variety of African and
Asian elephants – oh, and a new born baby elephant who eats twelve
thousand pounds of elephant food a week. It’s going to die very
soon. . . .”

“
What’s the point of all
this?” I asked Katie.

“
Hey, we’re getting a free
tour,” laughed Katie. “Wait, let me try something . . .” She went
up to Lin and nudged him in the back of the head; but nothing
happened. “Crapper!”

“
Please don’t touch me.
This is not a petting zoo. To our left is a . . . rock,” explained
Lin. “Rocks give great shelter and shade to the elephants living in
warmer climates. And the . . . lava is . . . – elephants would not
do well near. As you can see for some reason I look lost. That’s
because I think the tour has been changed without my approval. Oh,
look up there! A zebra without stripes.”

“
Lin, that’s not a zebra,”
I prompted. “Lin, stop!”

Katie and I both watched Lin run into the
back of a ten-foot-tall mummy.

“
Hello, there,” said Lin,
who had to crane his head all the way back to look up at the
monster. “Nice costume. Make sure you don’t go near the tigers.
It’ll sure cause–”

Before he could finish, Lin was flung into
the wall.

“
And over there on the
grassy plain,” he mumbled, sprawled out on the ground, “are . . .
sea turtles and dolphins. Their pectoral fins help . . . it move
through the lava. . . Oh, I feel dizzy. Let’s reschedule our
tour.”

His ears flicked. He looked panicked.

“
Mom! Bumble bees are
coming! Mom! They’re coming for me!
”

The giant cloth hands snatched Katie right
off the bridge and held her over the side.

“
Leave her alone!” I
screamed, clutching a torch I had just taken from the wall. “I’ll
burn you!”

Katie kicked the mummy in the head, and I
threw the torch at him. He easily put out the flames by summoning a
rain cloud, but at that moment Katie clocked him in the head with a
rock. The halloween lost his balance and went tumbling over the
edge.

“
That’s right!” Katie
cried out scornfully after the falling mummy.

I ran over to the edge and watched the mummy
plunge into the lava below.

“
Hey, the tour’s not over
yet,” said Lin, getting up to his feet. “We haven’t gotten to the
animals yet–”

“
Lin, there are no
animals!” I snapped. “This is not a zoo!”

“
I know. This is a wild
animal park. We don’t call it a zoo anymore.”

“
He’s a psycho,” concluded
Katie, coming up beside me.

“
What should we do? It
looks like only Jacoby knows how to snap him out of it.”

“
Quiet, tourists,” Lin
whispered, peeking into a light-flickering tunnel, “we are nearing
the tigers.”

Katie and I followed him, reluctantly going
along with the charade.