Beautiful City of the Dead

by Leander Watts

  "And?"

  "They live forever."

  He nodded. "That's what Knacke wants. He's old, Zee. Way older than he looks. He's sick. And he's going to die soon if he doesn't get what he needs."

  It was already way too much. Every answer he gave stirred up another dozen questions. My brain was already in overload mode. Words came out of Relly's mouth. And I guess I understood them. But it was too much. I started to shut down.

  Soon enough he saw what was going on. "We should get on back," he said. "Are you cold?"

  I nodded. He put his arm around me. It didn't drive off the cold. But the numb, faraway feeling wasn't so bad anymore.

  Twelve

  WE DID A NEW TUNE, with words from my notebook and music by Relly.

  It was weirdly wild, full of sudden starts and stops, like a crash-test joy ride. I finally got the riff under my fingers and could whip it off just as fast as Relly. Of course, on the bass it was way heavier, like somebody tap-dancing with cement blocks strapped onto their feet.

  "OK. I think we've got it down," Relly said after we'd run it a few times.

  Jerod read over the lead sheet again, trying to figure out the words. "What does hellebore mean?"

  "Ask Zee," Relly said.

  "You wrote this?" He looked at me. I mean he really looked, eye to eye, for the first time.

  "Yeah. Me and Relly together."

  "So what does it mean?"

  I felt like a slug, and Jerod was the guy with the salt. In two seconds he'd pour the salt over me and I'd melt down to a nasty little puddle of goo.

  "Well?"

  "Hellebore is a poison plant. But in the olden days they used it to cure people who were crazy."

  "It's a poison and it's a cure?"

  "I don't know if it really works. Anyway, it sounded good and it fits in the song. And it rhymes with 'farthest shore.'"

  "Yeah. I guess." It seemed like he really wanted to understand. My words and me too. He looked me over, from head to toe, like he'd never even noticed I was a girl before.

  "It's no big deal," I said, getting more embarrassed by the minute. "If you don't like it, we'll change the words."

  "No, no. It's OK. I don't care." Maybe he had really wanted to make sense of the song. But now it was too much work for him. So, with a shrug, he went back to being Cool Sneering Guy again.

  He went to a way-better school than the rest of us, out in Pittsford with the other rich kids. He drove his dad's BMW. His dad was a big-deal lawyer and his mom wasn't a drunk like Butt's or gone off with a new husband and new family, like mine. He was headed to Cornell, like his father and his grandfather. Straight Ivy League. Upper crust. He let us know that whenever he could.

  Relly had gone through three other singers before he found Jerod. He was just what the band needed. Relly had that wispy, warlocky look. Butt was like a caveman. And I was me, invisible, behind and way down below. We needed somebody who looked great and loved to show off what he had.

  So we put up with his whining and his rich-kid snottiness. And he put up with Relly's weirdness most of the time.

  We did my new song, "The Rising Sigh," which was a phrase I got off a tombstone. Above the beautiful, terrible noise, Jerod poured out my words. I especially liked it when he closed his eyes and reached real high, like his brain was about to explode. I watched him from the side: his sleek shoulders, his gorgeous hair, the power in his arms as he clung to the mike stand, wailing.

  Thirteen

  I WAS SORT OF SLEEPING in English class, when there came a knocking on the door. I think we were supposed to be doing something with adverbs. Only, my worksheet was still untouched. I was floating in and out of dreamland, I guess, thinking about Mount Hope and Relly and the way his voice got real quiet and serious when he said, "Someday we'll be huge."

  "Zee?" Mrs. Pelkey said. "Zee, you're wanted at the office by Mr. Franken."

  I headed down to Frankengoon Central. I didn't even see who brought the note. Whoever it was had vanished by the time I got my stuff together. The halls were empty. It's always weird walking through a building that you know is full of people, but you can't see any of them. Voices behind closed doors, the whack-whack-whack of balls as I went by the gym, a nasty burning smell leaking out of Knacke's classroom.

  I went to the main office. "Somebody said Mr. Franken wanted to see me." The lady behind the desk looked over her glasses, scowling like I was a wriggling little bug. Her lipstick was bright red and kind of smeared. There was a bluish wart on the side of her nose. She didn't even speak, just pointed with her well-chewed pencil to the open door.

  So I went in and Frankengoon told me to have a seat. He was a huge man, way over six foot tall. He stooped a little, like it was hard to keep all that chest and shoulders and bulging head upright.

  "You're not doing well in your academics, Zee. You know that, correct?" His voice sounded like it came from a deep black hole in the ground. "Your grades have been slipping steadily this year. And now I have heard some very disturbing reports from Mr. Knacke."

  There was no point in me denying it. Whatever he said, whatever lies Knacke made up, Frankengoon would believe them. Did he claim I was selling drugs in class? Making out with some guy in the back of the library? Coming to school with Cream Ale on my breath?

  No, those were too normal. Knacke would accuse me of something totally bizarro.

  "I have a report from Mr. Knacke, and I have physical evidence, that you have been engaged in—" He was struggling to find the right words. "You have been taking part in certain rituals, certain occult practices, which we cannot allow to continue on school property. Indeed, if Mr. Knacke is correct, you may be breaking the law too." He leaned in close and it was like a massive stone monument was bending down toward me. "I can't emphasize this enough, Zee. You are going down a path which will only lead to great suffering, to disaster." His huge breath wheezed in and out.

  I had no idea what he was talking about. "Evidence?" I asked. It was all so stupid, so wrong.

  "Yes, evidence." He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a clear plastic bag. Inside was a notebook. Yeah, it was mine. And yeah, I thought I'd lost it the day before. Now I knew where it had gone.

  "This is yours, correct?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Mr. Knacke found this in class recently and he thought it important that I know about its existence."

  Carefully, he opened the bag and slid the notebook out. "The words you've written here, Zee, are very disturbing. If I didn't know better, I would say they are the product of a diseased mind."

  I grabbed for it, trying to get it away from him. But he just stood up, and the notebook was way out of reach.

  "What you've written here, and drawn here, is very troubling."

  "They're just lyrics to songs. That's all." And some sketches I made. Relly's hands on the Strat's neck. They were small, and yet they were strong too. Totally sure of what they were doing, his fingers reached to make a chord that had no name.

  Frankengoon just stared at me with those huge yellowy eyes.

  "I'm in a band, OK?" I said. "There's no law against that. Those are just lyrics to songs me and Relly wrote. It's no big deal."

  "No big deal?" He was almost yelling now. "These words are very disturbing, Zee. Vile, occult ravings. You're allowing your mind to travel a truly dangerous path."

  He thumbed through the book, and I had the same sick feeling as if he was peeking at me through the bathroom window. "Give it back!" I pleaded.

  He shook his head. "What does this mean? 'Beautiful City of the Dead.'"

  "It's just a song. That's what they used to call Mount Hope in the olden days."

  He turned a few pages. "And this?" His voice was shaking, like he was about to explode.

  "We see our friends are round us falling.

  We see them buried deep in dust.

  In solemn silence yet they're calling.

  Prepare for death, for die you must."

  "It's the poem off a gravestone. I didn't ev
en make it up." I could feel the tears coming. These were precious words, private words, and he was sneering at them out loud like they were dirty sayings scrawled on a desktop.

  Somebody had carved these words on the stones and it was like a voice from two hundred years back talking directly to me.

  "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.

  Fourteen

  "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."

  Fifteen

  THAT 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 fri
dge.

  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.