The Land of the Dead: Book Four of the Oz Chronicles

by R. W. Ridley

  I didn’t even say hello. I just started interrogating her. “What did you find out from Bobby?”

  She looked a little offended that I didn’t seem happy to see her. I was. Had I been myself I would have told her how much I missed her, more than she could possibly know. But I was way past being myself.

  “As far as I can tell, there’s some kind of king involved.”

  “What, like the king of England or something?”

  “Not sure what he’s king of, but he’s either the Keeper or Creyshaw for this story.”

  “You don’t know for sure? What have you been doing?” I sounded a lot harsher than I’d intended.

  “Getting straight answers from Bobby isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world, you know? Besides, it doesn’t do you any good to know who this king is because the Flish is already here. He… ate the Creyshaw, remember? It’s too late. Keeper or Creyshaw, king does you no good.”

  “He hasn’t made it all the way through,” I said. “Don’t you see? He’s stuck in this house. Maybe the Creyshaw failed, but that only got him this far. It’s got something to do with that stupid package…”

  “Package?” Lou snapped her fingers. “That’s right.”

  “What?”

  “I asked him about the package and the only answer he would give is some little poem… I thought it was just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.”

  “Nothing is just mumbo-jumbo in this world. What was the poem?”

  She titled her head up and to the right as she tried to remember. I saw her silently mouth a few words. “From,” she started. “From here to the next. From alive…no, wait. From dead to alive. He cannot find… detect. He cannot detect. For the package to arrive.”

  “From here to the next,” I said. “From dead to alive. He cannot detect for the package to arrive.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  I repeated the poem to myself and then out loud a few more times. I got to the word detect. I didn’t know why, but it made me stop. “Detect. Detect. Detect. There’s something about that word.”

  “Well,” Lou said, “it means to find or discover something, so it means we have to find the package.”

  “Maybe,” I said, barely able to pay attention because I was so focused on that one word. Detect… It hit me. “Detective.”

  Lou nodded. “Yeah, they detect. It’s actually in the word.”

  “No, you said a king, but that’s not it. It’s the king. Detective King.”

  “Who’s Detective King?”

  “He’s the cop, back in the Land of the Dead. He’s the one looking for Fish, only he doesn’t know he’s looking for Fish. He cannot detect for the package to arrive. Detective King can’t find the package in order for Fish to arrive.”

  “But Fish is here?”

  “No, he’s here and he’s there. Fish can’t escape the Land of the Dead until he finds his package. He’s nothing without his package. He won’t leave it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You should see him when he doesn’t have that package. He goes nuts without it.”

  Lou shook her head. “It doesn’t fit the rules of the other Storytellers. A Destroyer can come forward when a Storyteller is captured, right?”

  “That’s the way Ajax explained it, but Tarek said there is a way to bind the Flish to the Keeper, to keep him from spreading his infection.”

  “What else did he say?

  I didn’t tell her that he said there was basically no hope, that I should kill her and the others and live my life craving human flesh, so I just told her that he was his regular chatty self and added that he wasn’t a lot of help.

  “How do we bind the Flish to the Keeper?”

  I shrugged. “He didn’t know.”

  She startled me by snapping her fingers. “It’s King. He’s got to be the Keeper.”

  I thought it over. “Maybe.”

  She tapped her finger on her lips. “And the package… maybe we have to get it to King. That’s how we bind Fish to him, right?”

  “We’ll have to figure that out as we go. We’ve got to pick a strategy and go with it. This is the closest thing to a theory we’ve had since we’ve been here. I’ve got to go back to the Land of the Dead and find Detective King…” I stopped when I realized that just finding him wasn’t enough. How was I going to talk to him? As far as I could tell, Fish was the only one who saw me in the Land of the Dead.

  “Finding King’s only part of it. What about the package? How do you get that to him?”

  We had a lot to figure out with only four days left. “Bobby’s got to know more,” I said.

  “I’ll try,” she said, but the look on her face said it all. Bobby had given her all the information he had. “What do we do in the meantime?”

  “I need to find out more about Fish.”

  “Okay, how?”

  “An old friend,” I said.

  ***

  Wes sat at one end of the dining table in the banquet hall, and I sat at the other. It was just enough distance to keep us from smelling each other. I hoped it would keep us from trying to tear each other apart.

  Lou marveled at Wes’s Throwaway sister Lou. She had heard stories about the woman for years, and meeting her or a version of her was weird for Lou.

  “I thought you said I looked like her,” Lou said.

  Wes smiled. “When she was a youngster. This is her three kids later. She… puffed up a bit after that. But that’s how she is in my mind, I guess.”

  “Ask him,” I shouted from the other end of the table.

  Lou lingered on Throwaway Lou’s face just a second longer and then gave her undivided attention to Wes. “We need to know everything you know about Fish.”

  “Fish? The kind with gills and fins?”

  “No,” I moaned. “Albert Fish!”

  He laughed. “Oh. That makes sense. Well, let’s see… you’re asking me to go way back. My uncle was a bit of nut. Into serial killers, believed in Bigfoot, thought Elvis was still alive. Off his rocker, really, but he was fun to be around.”

  I cleared my throat as loudly as I could.

  “I think he’s trying to tell you to speed it up,” Lou said.

  “This is part of my remembering process. I gotta set the mood. Albert Fish, died in the electric chair in… 1936. Convicted of killing six kids, I believe, but claimed there were hundreds. He usually abducted children society tried to hide anyway so he didn’t get caught for years.”

  “Sick,” Lou said.

  “Yeah, he wasn’t exactly the kind of guy you’d ask to babysit your kids. My uncle thought he was the worst serial killer of them all because he was so meek and mild. He looked like someone’s grandfather. They trusted him. The weird part is that Fish claimed that he was the son of God and by eating the kids he was making sure they made it to heaven.”

  “His tools,” I said. Knowing that I would have to shout to communicate with Wes, Lou and I had discussed the questions ahead of time so she could do it for me. The trouble was, she was just letting him babble on about unimportant stuff.

  “Do you know anything about his tools?”

  “His tools?”

  “He always has them with him in the Land of the Dead,” she said. “We thinks it’s a way to beat him.”

  “You do, do you?” Wes asked looking at me. “Well, they were called his tools of terror. He butchered children with them. What else do you need to know?”

  “Do you know what happened to them?” Lou asked.

  “Goodness, no,” Wes said. “Wouldn’t want to know a thing like that.”

  “They’re in this house,” I yelled.

  “You know that for sure?” Wes asked.

  I hesitated. “Pretty sure.”

  “Got any idea where?”

  “The old man is tied to the basement. He can’t leave there for very long. Oz and I think they’re down there.”

  “That’s a big basement. How we going to f
ind them?”

  “Well,” Lou said, “Oz thought we could look in shifts. First I gotta move Gordy out of there. He’s in no shape to help with the search. You take the basement during the night. Start in the bowling alley and search every inch of it. I’ll help. Oz will come in during the day and pick up where you left off. I’ll help him, too.”

  “When you going to sleep?”

  “I’ll sleep when this over.”

  “What about Tyrone?” Wes asked. “He should help.”

  “No,” I barked from the other end of the table. “We need to leave him out of this.”

  “Why?” Wes asked.

  I saw Lou put her hand on top of his. “We just think it would be for the best.”

  “Okay,” he said. “One question. What do we do with the tools if we find them?”

  Lou looked down at me for an answer, but I didn’t offer one. She turned to Wes. “We’re still trying to figure that one out.”

  ***

  The dead boy came for Throwaway June and me late in the evening. I pleaded with him for help. I told him that I thought I knew what I needed to do, but I wanted some answers from him. I wanted to get the package to King, but I didn’t know how. I insisted that he tell me, but he was his usual silent self. He wasn’t offering any help at all. All he did was walk us through another portal to the Land of the Dead.

  It was a bright afternoon. We were in the country somewhere. All that there was before us was a dirt road surrounded by woods on either side.

  Throwaway June, whose hair was clearly darker and shorter now, grabbed my hand. She obviously didn’t like the place. As pleasant as the weather was, there was an overriding feeling that we could discover something horrible and disturbing at any moment.

  We rounded a bend. Tucked away behind a row of plush green trees was a small, two-story house. The paint was faded, and the roof needed patching.

  The dead boy approached and stopped at the edge of the property. Throwaway June and I stood beside him not wanting to get any closer to the house. In the most subtle way, he suggested that we needed to go on without him. He rarely looked you in the eyes, but when he did, it meant a lot. He peered up at me and conveyed his meaning very clearly to me. “Go on without me.”

  I stepped on the bent grass with Throwaway June still holding my hand. We were half way to the house when we heard what sounded like humming. Turning to our left, we saw Grace picking flowers where the woods met the yard. The old man was nowhere to be seen.

  I dragged June over to her and did something that I knew was pointless. I talked to her.

  “Grace, you have to find a way to hear me. You’re in danger. You can’t be here.”

  She gave no indication that she could hear me.

  “Please, Grace, listen. There’s got to be a way you can hear me. This man, Mr. Howard, he’s a bad man. He’s a scary man.”

  Still nothing from her.

  “Grace.”

  I heard a noise from the house and turned quickly on my heels. Throw-way June gripped my hand tightly. I pried her fingers from mine and told her to wait with Grace.

  I was tired of this. I could end this. Why else would I be in the Land of the Dead? I was there to stop him, and nothing was going to prevent me from doing just that.

  I bolted through the door and found the old gray man organizing pots and pans on the kitchen counter. The clanging of metal and iron was almost deafening. He held a frying pan in his hand and seemed to marvel at the weight and size of it.

  “Can’t beat an iron skillet for frying up the fatty meats. The trick is to leave it thick enough to sink your teeth into, but not so thick it leaves the center uncooked. Got to be able to fry it up quick.”

  I approached.

  “I tell you what. The meat I get from these young’uns is better than your fanciest store bought.”

  Close enough to take a swing, I tightened my fists, swung away and passed right through him.

  He laughed. “Good thing you couldn’t hit me because you wouldn’t do nothing but tick me off. As you can guess, I’m not a good person to tick off.”

  “Neither am I,” I said.

  He laughed again. “You’re harmless. Here anyway.”

  “I could say the same about you. You should see how pathetic you are in my world.”

  “I imagine it’s a lot like you are here.”

  I grimaced. I would give anything to pound his brains in.

  “There’s really no reason we can’t be friends. If you would just take a minute to think about this, I’m not the bad guy here. I’m offering these children a chance to go to heaven through me.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “That’s what they always say about men who see things as clearly as I do. We all have a purpose, Oz.”

  I raised an eyebrow. He’d used my name, and I didn’t like it.

  “My purpose is to save the children from an impure life. Their purpose is to make their families realize that they didn’t love enough. They won’t make the same mistake again. All because of me.”

  “You can’t believe all this crap you’re spewing.”

  “As much as you believe you can undo what you did to Stevie Dayton and bring back the world.”

  “How do you know…”

  “The end is the end, Oz. You can’t change that.”

  I had heard enough. I turned to leave. On my way to the door, I saw his package sitting on a well-worn coffee table in the living room. I peered over my shoulder to see if he was watching. Fortunately, he was busy preparing the rest of his ingredients for the stew he planned on eating later that night.

  I walked over to the coffee table and whispered, “Please, let me do this.” I reached down and my hand went through the package and past the coffee table. I grabbed for it a couple more times thinking it was just a matter of concentration. But, each time, my hand passed through the package as if it were nothing more than air. I reached way back and brought my hand forward with as much speed as I could build, thinking now that it was a matter of grabbing it before it had a chance to become formless. My hand passed through, and I stumbled to the left losing my balance in the attempt. I stumbled and fell to the floor with a bang.

  I closed my eyes for just a second to get my bearings. When I reopened them, I was in the Winter Gardens. My trip to the Land of the Dead was over before it started. I shook my head in disgust. I had failed to figure out a way to get the package. It was hopeless. There was no way I could bring it out of the Land of the Dead, and I wasn’t real confident we were going find it in time inside the huge mansion.

  I sat up and pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around my shins. We were done. I glanced up and noticed Throwaway June (who actually wasn’t June at all anymore… her hair was darker and she seemed much smaller) holding a wildflower in her hand. All the plants in the garden were long since dead, so it didn’t seem likely that she had gotten it from there.

  “Where did you get that?”

  The Throwaway’s eyebrows came together in the middle of her forehead and she looked puzzled. “Have I done something wrong?”

  “No, I just want to know where you got the flower.”

  “She gave it to me.”

  “She? Grace?”

  She nodded.

  I felt a smile form on my face.

  DAY 7

  EIGHTEEN

  “We have a way,” I said grabbing Lou by the shoulders. I was so excited I had the urge to pull her close and plant a kiss on her lips. I could barely contain myself.

  A smile crept across her face. “We can get the package?”

  “And get it to King.”

  “How?”

  “It’s the Throwaways. They can communicate with the people in the Land of the Dead, and June brought a flower back with her.” I held it up and showed it to Lou.

  She took it from me. “We have a way.”

  “Now all I have to do is bring a Throwaway with me to the Land of the Dead, find Fish, distract him, and t
he Throwaway can grab the package.”

  “And King, how do we get it to him?”

  “Easy. We find him in the Land of the Dead the next day. The Throwaway just hands it to him.”

  Her eyes moved back and forth as she seemed to be playing out the scenario in her head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It just sounds too simple.”

  “It will work,” I insisted. “I know it.”

  She wanted to believe it as much as I did, so she nodded and allowed an impossible grin to light up her face. It was a beautiful sight. I couldn’t get over how safe and perfect everything felt just being with her, even in this insane version of the world. Lou made everything make sense to me.

  “Why you looking at me all goofy?” she asked.

  I was shocked by her question. I let go of her and backed away. “What? Can’t a guy be happy?”

  “Yeah, but you looked like… you were going to kiss me or something?”

  I furrowed my brow and narrowed my gaze. “Kiss you? C’mon, you’re Lou.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve known you since… well, a long time now. You were a dirty little rug rat when I first met you.”

  “And you were a pinhead jerk. Not much has changed.”

  “Don’t get mad because I don’t want to kiss you.”

  She chuckled. “Relieved is more like it.”

  “Good. Then it’s settled. Neither one of us wants to kiss the other one.”

  She nodded emphatically and crossed her arms.

  “Maybe I’ve thought about it,” I said for reasons that are unclear to me. The words just fell out of my mouth.

  “You have?” She looked intrigued in spite of herself.

  “Sure. You’re pretty.”

  She blushed.

  “And I like things about you.”

  “Like what?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think we have time for this.”

  “We’ve got time,” she said.

  “Well, you smell nice.”

  “I smell nice?”

  “You don’t stink, I mean. Even when you do. You always smell like Lou.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I guess that’s a compliment.”