The Rising

by Temple Mathews

  The shedemons parked the van. They pulled him out of the back and shoved him into a tunnel. Down they went, Rudy struggling to keep up as they descended staircase after staircase. Bare bulbs hung from the ceilings as they swept through a subterranean city—the Under City—teeming with rats and bats and demons coming and going.

  The most beautiful of the four shedemons, the one with the bright blue streak in her hair, moved close to Rudy, licking her lips as if she were about to kiss him. His eyes widened, and though he was scared after being walloped, he still opened his mouth a little in anticipation. He had no idea what to expect. When she drew even closer to him, she spit in his face and he was momentarily blinded.

  They herded him down a long flight of crude stairs cut into bedrock, and by the time they reached the bottom his vision had started to clear again. The air became thicker and hotter, the stone walls sweating. Finally they came to a cavern. Hundreds of demons were filing in. The mood was funereal, and in moments Rudy discovered why. This was a viewing room, a vault where demons from all over had come to see their leader—or what was left of him.

  The Dark Lord’s partially assembled body lay on a large flat raised marble stone and was guarded by a dozen female demons like the four that had come there with him. Rudy’s body shook. It felt like a jillion tiny bugs had found their way into his spine. He was terrified by what he saw. The Dark Lord’s body was lifeless, in some kind of state of “repair,” his tissue being melded together by a worm-like creature. There were urns full of blood all around the stone table. The Dark Lord wore a golden battle helmet and was totally motionless, like a corpse. Like the other demons in the cavern, Rudy filed past and hissed and spit with respect, and then he was roughly grabbed by a shedemon—What was that, on her chest, something on her chest, her sweatshirt?—who turned his wrist and punctured it in one swift move. She squeezed and drained off a cup of his blood and put it alongside others, then used a red-hot poker to cauterize the wound. He howled in agony, but no one cared.

  He was shoved into a chamber and sucked upward, riding a foul blast of air up and up and up, out of the Under City. He found himself at a door and stumbled out into an alley, and then he was thrown into the same van that had brought him there. Minutes later the shedemons dropped him off downtown. He wandered the streets in a daze until he finally met up with the demons from Edmonds, and then he got blind drunk trying to forget what he’d just seen. He was repulsed and stricken with fear. What would the future hold for him if the Great Leader was dead?

  Will sat quietly, contemplating all that Rudy had just told him. If the Dark Lord was indeed lying close by, near death, in this Under City, then that might explain how he had traveled with Will into April’s mind. What if he was in some kind of limbo between life and death? If Will was somehow able to find the body and destroy it, maybe, just maybe, in so doing, he could rescue his mother and vanquish the Dark Lord for good. But where was this Under City, and how could he find it?

  “How far down were you when you saw the body?” he asked Rudy.

  “I dunno, way down. Probably like . . . I dunno, if you turned the Space Needle upside down. Those stairs went on forever.”

  Will thought about it. The Space Needle was 605 feet tall. Another sixty-one feet would put the body at 666 feet below the ground. That had to be it. But who could lead him there? He had a gut feeling that the shedemons who had attacked him might be a link. The way Rudy described the female demons surrounding what was left of the Dark Lord’s body, Will figured they were of the same ilk who had kicked his ass at Gas Works Park.

  “You said the female demonteens had a symbol on their clothing,” he said to Rudy. “What did it look like?”

  “I don’t know . . . I wasn’t really focusing on that, you know, not with the body of the freakin’ Prince of Darkness lying there! And it was in parts, you know, kind of stitched together, but not with string or anything, more like . . . thin strips of human flesh. Oh, man, just talking about it is creeping me out!”

  “Here’s a news flash for you, Rudy. The Dark Lord is . . . somehow alive, or at least his spirit is. And if he gets a hold of us . . . of you . . . it’s going to get a whole lot creepier. If you help me, maybe I can find the body and destroy it. So do you think you can remember for me?”

  Rudy thought hard, forcing himself to revisit the cavern.

  “Birds. I think they were birds.”

  “What kind of birds?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know diddly-squat about birds!” whined Rudy, until Will shot him a withering look.

  “Okay, I’ll try. Um . . . they weren’t stupid-looking birds, like chickens or turkeys or dodo birds or something. They were more, you know, kind of cool, kind of like, I don’t know . . . majestic.”

  “Good. Okay. Let’s go to the computers.”

  Will led Rudy over to his computer station and began tapping keys. Soon, images of birds came up.

  “Recognizing anything? Anything ringing a bell?”

  “Not really. I mean, they weren’t really pictures of birds, I guess, more like symbols.”

  “Got it. Of course. A symbol. Like a school symbol, a mascot sort of thing?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Rudy.

  Will typed some more, and now they cycled through a series of school symbols that included birds—hawks, ducks, seagulls, condors, ravens, eagles, falcons.

  “Wait a second,” said Will. “I have an idea.”

  He then tapped into the Seattle School District’s database and skimmed through the high schools and the symbols for their athletic departments. He stopped at one when Rudy gasped. “That’s it,” said Rudy.

  Will read the information.

  “Lyndon Baines Johnson High School. The Fightin’ Falcons.”

  On the screen was the school symbol: a graphic artist’s rendering of a falcon, wings spread, talons extended, beak open, ready to strike. One mean-looking bird.

  “Yeah,” said Rudy, “that’s it. How did you know?”

  “I’ve seen that symbol recently myself,” Will said. “It was on a ring. I saw it just before it hit me in the face.”

  That evening, Will, Rudy, Natalie, and Emily all ate at the grand old oak table in the formal dining room. It was an elegant setting fit for royalty. Emily looked better than she had earlier that afternoon, but she took care to sit as far away from Rudy as possible. The menu was pizza, nachos, and buffalo wings. As usual, Rudy ate too much, and when he was done, he leaned back in his chair, groaning and patting his stomach.

  “You’re such a pig,” said Emily, her nose wrinkling.

  “I’m supposed to feel guilty because I like food?”

  “You’re supposed to act like a civilized human being. That is, if you actually are a human being,” Emily said.

  Before Rudy could reply, Will stood up. “Everybody get a good night’s sleep tonight. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

  “Let me guess,” said Emily, doing her best to sound particularly snarky. “We get to be cooped up in the haunted mansion all day again?”

  “No,” said Will. “Tomorrow’s different.”

  Natalie looked at him in anticipation. “What’s so different about tomorrow?”

  “We’re going to school.”

  Rudy lit up with a smile. So did Natalie. Emily thought about it, and finally decided it wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever heard. Anything to get some semblance of normalcy back into their freakishly disjointed and dysfunctional lives.

  “Oh, Will, that’s great. That’s fantastic,” said Natalie.

  “Pinch me,” said Rudy. “I think I’m dreaming. For real?”

  “For real,” said Will. “Since you two have vowed to stick around like a couple of bad pennies, and since I have to keep an eye on Rudy to make sure he’s completely cured, we’re all going to enroll at Lyndon Baines Johnson High School, home of the Fightin’ Falcons.”

  Then it hit Natalie and she smiled broadly. “Will,” she said. “We’re going to be . . . the New Kids
.”

  That night Will made Rudy sleep next to him, just to make sure the cure was was sticking and Rudy didn’t engage in any kind of weird sleepwalking, a habit most demons were guilty of. Rudy grumbled about Will not trusting him, but he was exhausted and nodded off quickly, sinking down into a deep sleep. Will wasn’t so fortunate. He couldn’t stop thinking about his mother. So he slipped out of his bedroom and went down to the lab to check the surveillance tapes of her room. They were clean. No one had attempted entry, save for the requisite medical support staff. Nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. He felt better, but it wasn’t quite enough to ease his mind. He wanted to actually see her. So he shot down to the hospital on his Suzuki.

  At the hospital, he entered her room and sat down and held her hand.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom,” he whispered as he sat with her. “I won’t let you down again. I’m going to find you. I promise.”

  He closed his eyes and felt her pulse. He tried to enter her mind the way he had before, if only to make sure she knew he was there, but he could not. He opened his eyes and gazed out at the city lights. Where was she? In what world? Will’s eyelids grew heavy and he drifted off to sleep. And then he was dreaming.

  Images came at him in waves. Natalie. Emily. The mysterious girl with the emerald eyes from Gas Works Park. The phantom shedemons, attacking like falcons, their ruby red claws slashing at him. And then he heard laughter. The deep husky laughter of the Dark Lord.

  The dream shifted and he was in a tunnel with wet walls. His vision was blurry. He touched a wall and looked at his fingers; they were covered with blood. He squinted and his vision cleared, and he saw that the walls of the cave were made not of stone but of flesh. He was somewhere inside a body. Then he entered a cavern with an opening to clouds above. Rain came down in sheets. But it was no normal rain: the droplets weren’t water, but blood. Will’s mouth opened, but no scream came out. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye: a woman with long hair was sitting on the floor of the cave with her back to him. He moved toward her, floating, his feet not touching the ground. He was afraid of who the woman might be; she looked familiar.

  He heard laughter. The cave turned into a bedroom in a house Will had never been in before. Pictures of children he’d never met hung on the walls in oval frames.

  The woman was still sitting on the floor.

  “Mom?”

  She would not turn to face him, so he had to circle around. Her hair hung down over her face. She lifted her head. It was April.

  “Hello, Will,” she said, her voice a spooky monotone. She was not the one laughing. It was deeper, a man’s voice. She said, “I have something for you.”

  She was holding an object in her lap. Will looked down and his stomach dropped.

  She was holding the Dark Lord’s laughing head.

  Will woke up. His shirt was damp with nightmare sweat. He watched his mother breathing for a few moments, then kissed her hand and left. He drove the Suzuki home, then he went up into his room where Rudy still slept, snoring. Will flopped down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He did not sleep the rest of the night.

  POTLATCH, IDAHO

  In a barn out on Onaway Road, a group of high school kids from Potlatch were gathered to take a group celibacy pledge. Not one tattoo scarred this group, but they each wore a mark, as upon entering the barn they’d had the backs of their hands stamped with a rubber cross, the ink a deep purple. Punch was served, along with homemade chocolate chip cookies. The boys wore jeans and button-down dress shirts, the girls a mix of pants and skirts with blouses. Rock music from the local praise station was playing, and some kids danced. Many of the kids were coupled up, boyfriends and girlfriends already going steady. The remaining kids were single but had been tempted, and they all had decided to wait until marriage before engaging in sex.

  A hand-painted banner read, VIRGINITY IS THE GREATEST GIFT YOU CAN GIVE YOUR FUTURE MATE. Three-by-five pledge cards were distributed and signed and placed into a huge pickle jar sitting on a stool on the makeshift stage. The jar had a cross on it. In a group service, the couples who were going steady exchanged purity rings, vowing to remain celibate because true love waits. The chaperones, locals Hanna Gaines and Larry Lebbert, were proud of these kids. Privately, they wondered if they would have had the strength to be pure when they were teenagers.

  As the celibacy pledge ceremony came to a close, the teens gathered in a circle, linked arms, and sang along to an updated version of an old Connie Frances song: “If it takes forever, I will wait for you.” At the song’s climax, the group burst into applause and hugged each other.

  Just then, one of the girls yelped. She swore she’d felt something on her neck. She said it felt like a claw. And then the pain began. Hanna and Larry were perplexed as they watched the teens, who were now all scratching and then clawing at the skin on their necks and faces. It was a spontaneous outbreak of some malady much worse than herpes: the kids’ skin was breaking out in inflamed pimples, blisters, pustules, chancres, and carbuncles. Their collective, rising wall of screams could be heard for miles.

  Chapter Twelve: The New Kids

  Lyndon Baines Johnson High School was perched high on a ridge on Capitol Hill with a view overlooking the city. It was an imposing three-story masonry building with four Tuscan columns flanking the main entryway and ornate cornices topping the elaborate brick-work. An American flag hung limp on a flagpole. On the west wall of the gymnasium was painted a thirty-foot blue falcon swooping down in attack mode. The school was home to some 2,400 students, a balanced mix of Caucasians, Asians, African Americans, and Latinos. The kids were just like high school students everywhere: cliquish and suspicious of perceived “outsiders.” So when Will, Natalie, Rudy, and Emily ventured onto the campus as the New Kids, climbing the concrete stops leading to the entrance, they were greeted with the usual stares from leery students. There were Fightin’ Falcon T-shirts and sweatshirts in abundance. It was just before first bell, and dozens of teens were lingering outside, socializing, sipping their Starbucks. It was cold as a coffin in winter, and the students’ breath was visible as they spoke to one another. Not one of them spoke to Will, Natalie, Emily, or Rudy. But their eyes . . . all their eyes were upon them.

  “So this is what it’s like being the New Kid, huh?” asked Natalie, speaking low to Will.

  “Yeah. Pretty much the same with every new school. You get used to it.”

  “I think it’s awesome!” said Rudy. “I mean, this is a fresh start for me. Nobody knows I’m a dorky screw-up here!” Rudy did his little dance and waved at a Korean girl with braces.

  “Hey, how’s it going? I’m Rudy,” he said, brightly. The girl turned away and whispered to one of her friends, no doubt dissing the new weirdo.

  “Nice going, Rudy,” hissed Emily, smacking Rudy on the arm. “You just made us all look incredibly stupid.”

  “Ow! I was just being friendly.”

  “Can we please hurry up?” Emily asked. She was mortified and couldn’t wait to get out of the spotlight. As they approached the school entrance, a tall kid with a skull and crossbones on his jacket kicked over a trash can right in front of them. Will didn’t even bother making eye contact. The others followed him as he stepped politely over the trash and went inside. They made their way through the crowd of students and found the administration office just as first bell rang.

  The school officials were sympathetic and bent over backward to welcome them because they were survivors of the tragedy at Harrisburg. They were assigned lockers and given new student welcome packets. Natalie was thrilled that she and Will were put in the same world history class for first period. Emily was mortified that she and Rudy would be sharing first period chemistry.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you,” Rudy offered.

  “I really wish you wouldn’t. Let’s see, how can I say this delicately? Um, how about this: I don’t want to be seen with you!” Emily rushed off down the hallway, leaving Rudy scratching his head as he
set off after her.

  Will and Natalie walked the long length of a hallway. Natalie did her best to stay as close to Will as possible as they passed a few stragglers. A couple of girls saw Will and smiled openly at him. Natalie took Will’s hand and shot them territorial looks. Back off, this one’s mine. But Will pulled his hand away. She wanted to protest but swallowed the words. She could feel his coldness. They reached the door to their history class. Will paused.

  “Listen, there’s no good way for me to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it. I think it’s better if we aren’t . . . together, you know?”

  Natalie’s heart thudded and she flushed with panic. “You mean . . . here at school?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  Will turned his eyes away from her. Why was he doing this?

  “Will, look at me.” She knew she sounded demanding, but she didn’t care. He couldn’t just say something like that and not explain it to her. Will returned his gaze to her. “Do you mind telling me why?” she asked.

  “I don’t want people to connect the two of us. I don’t want . . . them to use you to get to me.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not afraid.”

  “It’s not about you being afraid, it’s about not giving them an opening. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  She didn’t like it, but she did see what he was saying. She just wished he’d said something sooner, instead of springing it on her in the middle of the school hallway. “All right. I get it.” She could pretend.

  But first . . . She looked around. The coast was clear. She grabbed him and kissed him on the cheek. He blushed, then scanned the hallway.