“What are you saying, Bizzy?”
“You best be gettin’ goin’ after Drake.”
“I’m NOT leaving you—not with your name on my hand and that banshee here,” I said.
Bizzy grabbed my hands.
“If you care about me even a little, Elizabeth Mildred Mortimer, you will go save that boy!” Bizzy said, commanding me over the eerie chants of the banshee.
“You have a date, a date with fate. We shall not be late,” the girl singsonged cheerfully, swaying back and forth.
“No! I can’t leave you here to fend off whatever’s coming by yourself!”
“You don’t understand,” Bizzy said. “This is the way it must be, Lizzy! The last death-specter I ever had in the ocean—it was about me. My own name didn’t appear on my hand because it was my last one, just like what happened to my mama. Morgan le Faye had the courtesy to give me ample warnin’ that I was goin’ to be leavin’ this world helpin’ you. It’s my time. Please … it’s the only way.”
“But … I … can’t …,” I protested as tears spilled onto my cheeks.
“You mustn’t think of me. Think of the countless others dependin’ on you. We’ll see each other again. It may not be soon, but it’ll have to be soon enough …”
Bizzy rolled forward and shoved me backward. She nudged me again, closing her brimming eyes.
“I love ya to pieces and back again,” Bizzy whispered, giving me one last push away from her. “May fate be with you. And if it ain’t, make it so.”
She spoke them as if they were last words.
Seconds later, I was running downhill, stumbling and sobbing as I made my way toward unconscious Drake and the cannery. I didn’t look back at my grandmother. I knew that if I saw her on the top of the hill, left to face her fate alone, I wouldn’t have the strength to stop myself from going back to save her.
The Climax
You call the climax of a novel the “turning point,” Mrs. Tweedy, but I still think that’s not very easy to identify. For me, the only way you really know you’ve gotten to the climax is when you’ve got a thin stack of pages left and you’re at a part where you can’t stop reading because you need to find out what happens. I don’t have much left to write, so I should probably get to it.
Halfway down the hill, on my way to Drake, I fell hard, hitting the ground with a thump. I moaned as I tumbled the rest of the way to the bottom. Thinking I tripped on a tree root, I tried to get to my feet. I had to get to Drake or all of it would be for nothing.
Soon, I felt myself being lifted up off the ground. My vision blurred as my body screamed out in pain. I bounced up and down, traveling faster than if I’d been on my bike going downhill. Things came into focus for me once again and I realized that someone—or something—was carrying me back up the hill and toward Cedar Tree Park. Toward Bizzy.
I was wrapped up tightly in some kind of black silky material and was being held so firmly, I couldn’t even move my head to look up to see who or what was carrying me. When we reached the top of the hill, the mysterious presence threw me to the ground once more.
Dazed, I got up, trying to process what was happening. My shins burned from the impact.
First I saw Bizzy, her back to me as she sat in her chair, facing Deadman’s Drop.
Bizzy’s head leaned to the side as if she were asleep.
“I cannot imagine why you would want to leave before the main event,” said a commanding voice from behind me. I whipped around.
There stood Vivienne le Mort, in her black robe, against the red-yellow light of sunrise, a few feet from me.
Vivienne le Mort pointed one of her long, spindly fingers at me. “You see,” she said, “I have been waiting a long time for this day to arrive. But it wasn’t until I saw you with the boy that day in the field that I realized you and your brainless little grandmother had set out to save him. That it was you Morgan was communicating with. I’ve been watching you very closely since then, carefully planning how best to stop you. You nearly spoiled it all by running off like you did!” Vivienne le Mort’s shrill voice grew louder in a dreadful crescendo. I thought about Drake, who could wake up at any moment, pull out his lighter, and ignite it. Vivienne le Mort stalked up the hill and grabbed Bizzy’s wheelchair, pushing her closer to the edge of Deadman’s Drop.
“What have you done to Bizzy? What do you want with her!”
“Your grandmother is only temporarily incapacitated. I have done so to ensure that the banshee,” Vivienne le Mort said, “retrieves what she came for.”
The banshee stood silently a few feet to the side of us, blinking her black eyes.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“All you have to do is look down at your palm, and you should be able to figure that out yourself. I believe my dear sister has tried to send you one of her pathetic warnings about your grandmother. Hasn’t she?” Vivienne le Mort asked in her most patronizing tone. “The banshee has come for your grandmother.” She smiled devilishly, revealing all her yellow teeth.
I charged full speed toward Vivienne le Mort and Bizzy, near the cliff’s edge.
“I would not travel one more step in this direction unless you want to see your grandmother plunge to her death immediately!” Vivienne snapped
I skidded to a stop.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“I am not doing anything,” Vivienne le Mort said, seemingly amused by my question. Her red eyes sent electric shivers down my spine. “That is what you descendants of Morgan le Faye fail to understand! To think that, all this time, right under my nose, you have spent your lives fighting against that which you cannot possibly hope to defeat … fate!”
“I will do whatever you want if you let Bizzy go,” I pleaded.
“You are even weaker than I imagined!” Vivienne le Mort squawked. “I know you are aware of the prophecy concerning the boy, and yet you stand here, distressed about saving a decrepit old woman who has reached the end of her thread. Not that I am surprised to find a mortal who cannot see beyond her own selfish interest!” Vivienne le Mort looked at me with the purest form of disgust.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said.
“There is no point delaying the inevitable,” Vivienne said, moving one of her long fingers to her dark lips. She turned Bizzy’s wheelchair around. Bizzy’s expression was blank. “I want to see your grandmother’s face as she plummets to her death!”
In the emerging sunlight, I could see that Bizzy’s eyes were closed. It was as if she was sleeping peacefully. Vivienne grabbed the arms of Bizzy’s wheelchair and began to roll her to the absolute edge of the cliff.
I scanned the ground around me and spotted a fallen branch. I estimated Bizzy was ten feet away.
I had to act quickly.
“Nooo!” I sprung forward and picked up the branch in one hand. Leaping off the ground, I spread my arms out in front of me and jumped toward Bizzy and Vivienne. Vivienne continued moving the wheelchair toward the cliff as I made a straight path toward Bizzy.
The banshee stood silent next to Vivienne, her eyes growing wide with excitement.
“Biiiiizzy!” I yelled, extending the branch in front of me as I crashed into the ground and slid into Vivienne, inches from the base of Bizzy’s wheelchair. I saw the edges of the chair’s two wheels dip below the cliff’s edge. With every bit of strength I possessed, I jammed the branch through the spokes of the wheelchair.
Then I held on for dear life. I felt Bizzy slipping over the precipice, dragging me with her through the slick muddy grass. I groaned as I tried to anchor myself with my heels. Slowly, we slid together, my grandma and me inching over Deadman’s Drop. The banshee’s eyes grew wider, as if someone had placed a heaping plateful of food in front of her and she hadn’t eaten in days.
Bizzy was tipped at an angle over the cliff. My heels caught on something—a rock, maybe. Using the leverage I had, I clenched my teeth and began to pull on the branch. The branch creaked, nearly spli
ntering from the weight of Bizzy and her chair. But it was working. Inch by inch, the wheels of Bizzy’s chair returned to solid ground.
With my final tug, I tipped the chair completely away from the cliff, and Bizzy, still unconscious, fell on me. The chair followed on top of her.
Bizzy’s weight on me meant she wasn’t tumbling down the cliff. I wanted to hug her, but there was no time. I rolled her off me carefully and quickly scrambled to my feet, covered in grass stains and mud. In the meantime, Vivienne le Mort stood to the side. I panted, clutching my aching sides.
When I finally focused on Vivienne, I was shocked.
She was staring at me, laughing. She clapped her hands. The banshee, less than half her height, stood next to her, looking sullen.
“What a show! Right on cue, too. Saving your grandmother at the risk of your own life … If I had a mortal heart, I might find the whole thing rather touching. But I must ask you, foolish girl, did you really think about the consequences of such an action? Even after you saw your grandmother’s name on your hand?”
“I … I … don’t understand …,” I said, still gasping for air.
Vivienne le Mort took a step toward me. “It may not be exactly how your grandmother was scheduled to die, but it will be close enough to ensure fate marches on as planned. I knew that if it unfolded right in front of you, because of your attachment, you would not stop until you saved her.”
“You knew I would save Bizzy? You brought me here to save her?”
“You honestly think after watching this dreadful little town so carefully, I would just let you go rescue the boy? I’ve heard you read Merlin’s foolish little account and now you fancy yourself the boy’s Keeper, do you? Well, you will fail just as Guinevere failed! You cannot possibly fathom how long I have waited for this day. Imagine never knowing when you would be relieved of the task of overseeing imbeciles such as yourselves! My dear sisters may not see it my way, but they soon will. To finally be in control, I would have stopped at nothing!” Vivienne le Mort punctuated her remarks with a nasty snort. “The most impressive part of my brilliant plan, of course, is that I knew a banshee would arrive to take Beatrice Mortimer when you saved her. Because you have inherited Morgan’s silly intolerance for the wail of the banshee, only one question remains: Who will die first? You and your decrepit grandmother here on the hill? Or the boy-who-would-be-king in the cannery? I suppose it does not matter, but perishing at the hands of the banshee’s cry is very painful …,” Vivienne said, ending in a cackle of laughter.
I focused on the banshee. She skipped to Bizzy, who was curled up on the ground next to her wheelchair, slowly, surely, silently. Upon reaching Bizzy, the banshee placed a pale hand on her. Bizzy’s chest rose and fell under it.
First the banshee whimpered. Her dark eyes grew bigger and wider. They turned into black whirlpools, dominating the top half of her face. She let out a small cry. After a few seconds, the cry swelled into a deafening shriek. It wasn’t long before my lungs and brain sizzled as if they had been set on fire, firmly under the spell of the banshee’s wail.
As I crumpled to the ground in pain, I thought about how close I’d come to rescuing everyone—Drake, Bizzy, and myself. Now we were all at the mercy of a devilish banshee spirit, in the midst of throwing the deadliest of tantrums.
“I must leave you now, to ensure the Last Descendant perishes according to fate’s plan. Good-bye, Elizabeth Mortimer. You can be certain another banshee will arrive to collect your soul soon enough.”
A Metaphor Before Dying
The pain I felt as I lay dying on the grass next to Deadman’s Drop is hard to put into words. It felt like someone was trying to force my brain through a really sharp cheese grater. I’d never experienced anything like it. I lay there, paralyzed by the banshee’s scream, as I watched Vivienne le Mort float away, down the hill. She was headed to the cannery, to make sure Drake’s demise went according to plan.
I twisted my body, writhing in the wet grass.
Bizzy groaned. Dragging myself with my arms toward her and the banshee, I rose to my knees, then to my feet. The earth seemed to be wobbling with me, like I was straddling a teeter-totter. I could barely keep my balance. Concentrating, I lunged at the ground where I thought I saw a metallic gleam. There, among the trash, lay a crumpled remnant from Bizzy’s hot chocolate preparation. Dizzily, I smoothed the discarded scrap and held the shiny sheet of aluminum foil in front of the wailing banshee’s face.
Whoosh. The blast of sand ripped right through the shiny square, hitting my face, knocking me over.
It had worked.
Without waiting to catch my breath, I stumbled to Bizzy.
She was awake now, no longer under the spell of Vivienne le Mort. Bizzy grimaced in pain.
“Sweet Pea,” she said. She tried to get up, but faltered.
“Hold on,” I said, lifting her frail body back into the chair.
“Where’d she go?” Bizzy asked, confused. She put her arm at the side of her wheelchair and came up with a handful of sand. “A banshee? For me? How did you …”
“I used the aluminum foil. I held it up and the banshee saw her reflection in it.”
“My oh my. Those banshees’ll never learn not to mess with a Mortimer!”
“Vivienne went down the hill,” I said, “after Drake.”
Bizzy became agitated as the gravity of the situation hit her all at once. “There’s no time to lose! We’ve got to go after ’em!”
Without any delay, I began pushing Bizzy down the hill. My legs felt like Jell-O and my head still pounded from the banshee’s wail. Bizzy noticed two figures in the distance and commanded me to stop. Under a canopy of cedar trees at the base of the hill, I spotted the unmistakable black robe of Vivienne le Mort. Facing her, a few feet off, was a woman in a white robe.
We rushed forward and hid in some bushes only a few yards from the two women.
“It’s Agatha the Enchantress!” I whispered to Bizzy upon recognizing the woman in white. We were close enough to overhear their heated conversation.
“Please get out of my way, dear sister.” Vivienne le Mort’s voice dripped with sarcasm as she addressed Agatha. “I must go ensure the boy’s thread is cut in fulfillment of your prophecy.”
“Have you even considered the possibility that by cutting Lancelot’s thread before his time, you caused my prophecy about the Last Descendant?” Agatha asked.
“And what of Morgan’s wrongs? It was she who caused the rift. I am only following the truce you agreed to, Agatha,” Vivienne said, scowling.
“Morgan’s mistake was born out of love. But yours was one spawned by hatred and contempt. That makes all the difference. Look at what you’ve become, Vivienne, I beg of you. You were once beautiful, but this obsession with Doomsday has transformed you into a ghoul!”
“I will have to take comfort in the fact that I do not look as bad as the poor girl and her grandmother did when left to die at the hands of the screaming banshee!” Vivienne le Mort cackled.
“I beg your pardon!” Bizzy said, leaving our concealment and wheeling herself between the sisters. “I don’t take too kindly to people reportin’ my passin’ before it happens … I may be gettin’ up there, but I ain’t dead yet!”
Agatha turned toward Bizzy and at the same time spotted me standing in the bushes. I detected the slightest smile forming on her face. It was obvious that Vivienne le Mort was shocked to see us.
Agatha gazed intensely at me. Our eyes connected and I could hear her voice in my head.
“Go after the boy,” Agatha’s voice echoed as I stared back at her. Her lips didn’t move. “I will handle this.”
“How did you, a feeble old woman …,” Vivienne said, almost growling. Frenzied, she descended on Bizzy, with her hands out as if she was going to strangle her.
Agatha raised both of her arms in response. “It is time to reset fate!” White lightning shot from Agatha’s palms, hitting Vivienne and knocking her off her feet backward,
away from Bizzy. Bizzy wheeled out of the way. Vivienne sprung to her feet. She raised her hands at Agatha, snarling as black smoke–colored beams projected from her hands. The two Ladies of the Lake had their hands raised, their faces studied with concentration, as bolts of light continued to shoot from their palms.
The beams met halfway between them in one big bundle of gray light, rising up into the sky. It was almost as if a huge transformer was blowing up, splattering the Crabapple sky with bright light.
Bizzy wheeled toward me, over the loud popping of the colliding currents.
“Go, Sweet Pea!” she screamed. “Run like the wind!”
Knowing I didn’t have a moment to lose, I raced down the hill of Cedar Tree Park to Delores Avenue, thinking of Drake the whole time, wondering if I was already too late.
Legends, Old and New
I understand that legends and myths teach us important lessons or explain phenomena in the world that are hard to fathom, Mrs. Tweedy, but now, I wonder how many legends are actually true.
At least one of them is.
I’d heard several Crabapple urban legends about the kids who used to hang out in the storm drains that run underneath the town. There were stories that a gang of high school kids graffitied all eight miles of them. Other rumors suggested that a group of boys would take baseball bats and go “batting,” which involved shining a bright light into the cavernous concrete pipes and swinging away in the hopes of connecting with a bat flying out of the dark tunnels.
The Death Catchers Page 23
