Beautiful City of the Dead

by Leander Watts

  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.

  Sixteen

  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.

  Seventeen

  SCHOOL 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.

  A faint greenish glow was coming from the fungus. Knacke didn't talk for a while. He let us stare at the broken tree stump. Some kids were impressed. Some asked questions but he hushed them. Some wanted to come up to the front and look closer. This he was OK with.

  So row by row went and got up close and personal with a hunk of glowing rotten wood.

  When it was my turn, I kind of hung back. "Come on, come on, Zee," Knacke said, smiling. "This is a wonderful chance to—"

  Blah blah blah. I wasn't listening. I was looking over at the Smoking Man, who sat in the corner. His face was greenish now, like he was sick from all that nicotine and tar.

  I guess Knacke explained about how the fungus created its own light. And he told us about some fish and slime molds that did it too. I wasn't paying attention. Any minute, I kept thinking, he's going to go off on me, yelling about my notebook and the so-called occult crowd I was hanging around with.

  Only that day it never came. He was so caught up in his glowing clump of wood that I guess he forgot about me and the phone call.

  He opened the door and the light from the hallway flooded in. Squinting against it, I followed the rest of the kids out. No sneers, no nasty comments, no threats from Knacke.

  And that made it worse. Passing by Knacke, I was sure this was just the calm before the thunderstorm, the smooth seas before the tidal wave hits and tears the boat to shreds.

  Eighteen

  "I'M GOING, WITH OR without you," I told Relly.

  "It's breaking and entering," he said. "It's against the law, you know. If you get caught—"

  "I'm getting into school tonight and I'm getting my notebook back. Are you in or out?"

  He didn't hesitate. "I'm in. But we got to make it perfect. We can't screw up, all right?"

  All through practice that night, I kept looking at Jerod and wondering what it meant that he was the god of air. Yeah, he was the singer. Only, there had to be more to it. For all his big talk and stuck-up ways, he really was a lightweight, wispy as the wind. Way more than the rest of us, Jerod acted most like a god should. Full of himself, proud and self-assured. And he looked like one too. But when it came down to it, he was just too into himself for this kind of thing. Making the band a success—definitely. Helping Zee out—forget it.

  So I didn't want him along when we broke into school.

  And I watched Butt too, while we ran through our set list.

  When he was bored, Butt would squeeze his hand under his armpit to make blapping noises or try to crush a Jolt can against his forehead. He was like a big toddler kid. Six feet tall and still he acted like a two year old sometimes. I think he went right from his baby rattle to a drum set. He wasn't stupid. That's not what I mean. He was simple. Which is different than being a feeb. He liked a couple of things and that was all he needed.

  Big-metal noise. Butt jokes. Working on his van. Pizza and wings. Girls, but only to look at, not to talk to. He wasn't quite ready for that.

  I liked Butt, and I trusted him. When we needed muscles, raw pigheaded power, he was the one.

  Tonight, however, I figured we needed stealth and cool wits. So it was just me and Relly who went off after practice to reclaim my notebook.

  I'd already taken care of getting past the alarm system. I managed to get some detention in English, and I knew I could unlatch one of the windows when Mrs. Pelkey wasn't looking. So unless the janitor checked every sensor in the building, we had an easy entry.

  So far so good. We put some cement blocks by the window, climbed up, and were through. No sirens, no flashing lights.

  It was very weird to be there so late. Everything was familiar and foreign at the same time. Yeah, those were desks, only they looked like the shadowy wreckage of a lost jungle city. Over there was the b
lackboard, still with names and dates in Mrs. Pelkey's scrawl. Now, however, the writing was pure gibberish, forgotten tomb paintings.

  We tiptoed through the classroom and into the hallway. Way at the end, a red exit light was throbbing. The rows of steel lockers and the shiny, bare floor made it seem like we'd broken into an ancient underground chamber. OK, I told myself, you're a god and maybe this is your temple.

  "Which way?" Relly whispered.

  I pointed and we went toward Frankengoon's office.

  The darkness was strange, but much stranger was the silence there. I say "silence," because I don't have any other word for it. It seemed to breathe, to pulse slowly in and out as though the whole building was alive.

  We got to the main office and found that the door was locked.

  "OK, now what?" Relly asked. I was in charge. Success or failure, it was all up to me.

  "Here goes nothing." I took a set of keys out of my pocket. I'd paid fifty dollars for them, to a kid named Marky Blood. For a price, he could provide just about anything. Mostly that meant pot and vodka and Trojans. But he dealt in other things too.

  "Well, let's see if Marky's made a fool of me," I said.

  The key slid in smoothly, like a hot knife into butter. It turned just as smoothly and the door came open without a sound.

  "All right," I said. "We're in."

  We went straight through the main office and into Frankengoon's inner chamber. I'd seen him take my notebook from his desk. However, searching every drawer, I came up with nothing. Something like panic, but softer, more blurred and oozy, was pouring into my body. "He was standing right here with it."

  "We can't search the whole school," Relly said.

  I gave a quick scan to the bookshelves and the cabinet full of old football trophies. "I can't believe it. We came all this way—"

  And then we heard the footsteps.

  I just about threw up right there, the fear was so strong. And seeing the look on Relly's face didn't help. The sound was slow and shuffling, like an old man. "Maybe it's a night watchman," I whispered. "We can hide here and wait till he's gone."

  Then I saw my notebook. Frankengoon had wrapped it in a half dozen plastic bags, like it was infected with the most deadly virus in the world. There the notebook was, square on top of his desk. In the weird light, all bound up in plastic, it looked like a slab of rock flaked off a meteor.

  I grabbed it, clutched it to my chest. Relly took me by the arm and hissed, "Let's go."

  We made it to the corridor. But then we saw him: Smoking Man come to life.

  He had his cowboy hat on, and three cigarettes hung from his mouth, burning. He had one in each hand too. And as he shuffled toward us the smoke curled and churned around him.

  I just about lost it. I mean, the surge of panic came up strong and just about washed away every thought in my head. I clung to my notebook and stared.

  He was a dummy, just plastic. And yet he was alive. The little pump that made his fake lungs work was wheezing in and out. His feet didn't leave the floor, but dragged along the shiny tiles. He looked at us, and beneath the brim of his cowboy hat two red coals burned where his eyes should have been.

  With one great rattling intake, he sucked smoke into himself. And with one hollow groan he jetted the filthy cloud at me.

  "Give," he said, reaching for the notebook.

  I shook my head, as if arguing with a zombie cowboy made any sense.

  "Give," he repeated. It was Scratch's voice, low and gritty.

  Holding the notebook hard against my chest was exactly the right thing to do. It kept me from losing my supper. It seemed to hold me up straight. And the words, the inscriptions from the graveyard, somehow passed through the plastic and into my body.

  A law eternal does decree

  that all things born should mortal be.

  Smoking Man had us trapped. We had to get past him to escape. And his stinking cloud made a kind of barrier too.

  I was pretty useless now. I mean, I wasn't screaming in hysterics. But I was paralyzed, staring at Smoking Man's plastic corpse face.

  It was Relly who got us out of there.

  He was fire. And he was strong when it counted. Relly came across as kind of flimsy and frail. But when he had to, onstage in front of a thousand kids or now up against Smoking Man, he didn't back down.

  He was a god of fire, and figured that was exactly what it would take to defeat Smoking Man. So he lunged at him, threw himself at the shuffling cowboy. And his hands caught fire, I'm sure of it, as soon as he grappled with Smoking Man. They kind of wrestled there in slow motion, bitter billows swirling around them. Relly cursed as he fought with burning hands. Smoking Man groaned. I clutched my notebook and thought of rain.

  This might seem strange. But that's what filled my head as I watched Smoking Man pushing Relly to the floor. My friend, my only real friend, was being strangled by a filthy plastic dummy and I thought of rain.

  Relly's fires were snuffed out. His voice, too. Smoking Man had him by the neck, squeezing.

  And then the sprinkler right over them burst and poured down a steady stream.

  I watched the water fall, a silvery jet from above. I focused everything on that wet, saving blast. The fire sprinklers are supposed to come on in zones. A whole wing or hallway is supposed to get drenched if any of them come on. That night it was just one, right above Relly and our enemy.

  In a minute it was over. Smoking Man lay broken and lifeless, black mud running out of his mouth. Relly pulled out from under him and grabbed my hand. "Let's go, let's go!" he hissed.

  And we went, out the open window and across the wet grass of the soccer field.

  Nineteen

  THE NEXT NIGHT, we were eating pizza, the four of us around Relly's kitchen table. Real greasy and gooey and still bubbling hot. And as usual, I bit into a slice without waiting and burned a blister on the roof of my mouth. But I guess I didn't care that night because I kept on eating and burning myself, shoveling the pizza in.

  We had a couple of quarts of Relly's Panther Blood that he got from the old Italian market. You know, a place with bulging yellow cheeses hanging down and Frank Sinatra crooning in the background and guys with big hairy arms cutting meat in back. They had drinks from Italy too, and this stuff was Relly's fave. It had some fancy Italian name nobody could pronounce. So we went with what Relly called it: Panther Blood.

  It tasted kind of like Pepsi. Only there was something bitter mixed in too, like orange rind and cinnamon and cloves. At first I hated the stuff. It was purplish brown and had a little fizz to it. I'd sniffed it and put it aside. "Go on. It won't hurt you," Relly'd said. "Matter of fact, it's better than Mountain Dew and Jolt mixed together. Puts a shine on everything."

  Relly was all cranked up, excited about defeating Smoking Man and about our next gig too, opening up for Kruel and Unusual at the Bug Jar. "It's all coming together," he said. "We're strong and we're getting stronger all the time."

  He had another slug of the Panther Blood. "Putting together a band is alchemy," he went on. "Like making a secret formula. You got to have all the right elements and you mix them together under exactly the right conditions."

  Jerod just wanted to hear about the gig. Money, we were going to get paid real money to play. And we'd be on the bill with a real band from out of town. Kruel and Unusual even had a CD that got some college radio play. We were heading for the Big Time, and heading there fast.

  Twenty

  THE GOOD LUCK JUST kept coming. Knacke was out sick again, and the sub didn't make us do any work. Smoking Man didn't reappear in the classroom. Nobody got dragged down to the office and grilled about the wreckage we'd left in the hall. I guess the janitor had found the burned-up dummy the next day and tossed him in the dumpster.

  And almost as good, both Jerod and Butt got their own wheels that week.

  Jerod had been driving his dad's BMW. But for his birthday he got his own car, a brand-new Acura.

  Butt took the driver
's test again and finally passed. So now he could actually drive the beat-up van he'd been working on since he was twelve. It was a heap, held together with bungee cords and duct tape. Still, it ran. And he was happy to give me and Relly rides in the Buttmobile whenever he could.

  I even felt healthy, for the first time that school year. A whole week with no runny nose. No more fevers. No more heavy pressure in my chest, like someone was standing on me and squeezing out all my breath.

  And with the notebook back, it was like I'd reclaimed some part of myself. There were my first versions of the Scorpio Bone logo. There was the page where I'd written Relly's name about a hundred times. I wasn't even embarrassed now to see it. Most important, there were all the lyrics for our songs. Some were mine, and some were copied straight from stones in Mount Hope.

  It bothered me a little, to think that Knacke and Frankengoon had been poking around in the notebook. Still, I had it back. It was all there, unharmed.

  I sat with Relly in his attic, reading through the poetry, enjoying again the creaky rhymes and strange images. Who were these people, I wondered, who had such words of doom carved above their heads? I mean, I had names and dates for them, but still they seemed as alien as if they'd come from another planet.

  Though worms my poor body

  may claim as their prey,

  'Twill outshine when rising

  the sun at midday.

  Again and again the poems talked about "rising." At the end of the world, I guessed, these people thought they'd come up from the ground. But not as crumbling, poxy old bones. No, I pictured them as pure light, beautiful, shining, happy. It wasn't all doom and gloom. No, there was real hope there on some of the stones. Hope and a weird kind of joy.

  "Hey, what do you think about this one?" I asked Relly.

  Be wise ye living while you may

  Prepare against the coming day

  When you as low as I must lay

  Your souls from hence be called away.

  We'd been back to Mount Hope and collected more inscriptions. I had this idea that some day we'd cut an entire CD with songs based on the gravestone writings.