Elizabeth Webster and the Portal of Doom

by William Lashner

  “Did she say hello?”

  “She was too freaked. But I remembered Mrs. Acosta said the same thing. I got the name of the cemetery, too.”

  “It sounds creepy.”

  “I know. Cool, right?”

  “No, not cool,” I said. “Just creepy.”

  Right when I said it, the door to the classroom opened and Keir sauntered out. That was the thing about Keir, he was a saunterer. You couldn’t tell what was going on from his walk. Good or bad, great or dreadful, he just sauntered on. The only way to learn what was happening was to ask.

  “So?” I said.

  “So nothing much,” he said.

  “He just wanted to chat?”

  “Sort of. He said he likes my comments in class. He called them inspiring. He said he sees a lot in me.”

  “I bet he does.”

  “But he fears I’m not working up to my potential.”

  “Oh man, if I had a nickel for every time—”

  “And he’s upset that I’m not handing in my homework.”

  “Why aren’t you handing in your homework?”

  “Because you told me I couldn’t pay my friends to do it for me.”

  “So it’s my fault.”

  “Exactly so,” said Keir. “And that’s what I said to Mr. Armbruster. But I told him you’ll try to do better from here on in. He’s looking forward to our presentation.”

  “Our presentation?”

  “Well, that’s the story. And you’d better get to working, Elizabeth, if I’m going to have anything to say at all.”

  Natalie looked at Keir and then at me as I sputtered with frustration, then back at Keir. “I think Mr. Armbruster is wrong, Keir,” she said, a wide smile breaking out. “I think you’re working fully up to your potential.”

  “Why, thank you, Natalie. So what’s this about that Olivia?”

  “Natalie thinks she found her,” I said. “At a cemetery.”

  “Dead?”

  “Not yet,” said Natalie. “We’re going to talk to her this afternoon.”

  “I can’t make it, sorry,” said Keir.

  “What do you mean you can’t make it?” I said.

  “I have a thing about cemeteries. I avoid them is what I do. It’s worked out for me so far. Besides, I have plans.”

  I gave him a look. “Plans? What kind of plans?”

  “Just plans,” he said, avoiding my eyes.

  “Make sure Barnabas comes with you.”

  “I will,” said Keir. “I’ll meet him outside the school as always. I’ll be back at the house by dinner.”

  “Maybe Henry can join us, then,” said Natalie. “Three’s a good number when visiting at a cemetery.”

  “Any number’s fine,” said Keir, “as long as you’re not the one they’re visiting.”

  THE CEMETERY

  We took Henry’s car service to the cemetery, which, let me tell you, sure beat the two buses and the long walk. If I couldn’t have the pool or the butler, maybe I’d settle for a car service. But only if I didn’t have to get up at five like Henry to make morning swim practice. When the car let us off at the cemetery gates, I stopped for a moment and looked around. It seemed oddly familiar.

  “Wasn’t this where we reburied Beatrice?” I said.

  “I think it was,” said Henry. “Yes, right over there. Maybe I should pay my respects. Let her know I’m still thinking of her.”

  “She knows,” said Natalie. “Trust me. First let’s find out if Olivia is here.”

  We wandered around the cemetery looking for a lost girl spending her days among the tombstones. It didn’t take us long to find her, sitting cross-legged on the ground, playing with the petals of a ragged bunch of flowers.

  She was older than we were, tall and lanky, with curly red hair that was long and loose and a bit wild, almost like a mourning veil around her head. She looked like she belonged right where she was, beside a grave with a marble marker that read TRAVIS JOHNSTONE.

  We quietly walked to the graveside and stood in a row until she looked up at us through her curls. Her face wasn’t sad or mournful, like Barnabas’s face, it was just flat. As if nothing got through, as if nothing mattered.

  “So let me guess,” said the girl. “You’re the middle school kids they’re talking about, the ones who have been asking all kinds of dangerous questions. The ones my mother told me not to talk to.”

  “That’s us, all right,” said Natalie proudly.

  “Why are our questions dangerous?” I asked.

  “The fact that you don’t know is dangerous enough. You three should just play with your dolls and forget about all of this.”

  “How come everyone thinks we still play with dolls?” said Natalie.

  “You don’t?” said Henry.

  “I didn’t say that, it’s just—”

  “Why did you stop going to school?” I said.

  Olivia looked at me for a moment and then turned away. “After what I’d been through, was math going to save me?”

  “But math rules!” I said.

  “The whole school thing seemed so unreal after what happened, I couldn’t bear it. The doctor told my mom I just needed time, so she lets me come here, hoping the phase will pass. But it’s not passing, and a century won’t be enough for me to feel like I belong in school anymore.”

  “And you belong here?” I said.

  “With him, yes,” she said. “And Diego. And my dad, just three rows down.”

  “What happened at that house?” said Natalie.

  “If I snapped my teeth and hissed,” Olivia said in her dead voice, “would that send you running? It should.”

  “But it won’t,” I said. “I’m sorry, but just like you, we have a friend in trouble. And the trouble he’s in is from Pili.”

  Olivia went back to picking at her flowers. “Then he’s in a world of trouble.”

  “Tell us about the doctor,” said Natalie.

  “Which doctor?” she said.

  “With the eye patch,” said Henry.

  “And the dog,” I said.

  “Oh,” Olivia said in her flat voice. “That doctor.” She picked at the flowers more violently and then started twisting the stems as she said, “He told us it would be bad.”

  Natalie knelt down and gently took hold of the mangled bouquet. She straightened what stems she could straighten and arranged what was left of the petals until they almost looked like flowers again. Then she carefully laid them in front of the headstone with Travis’s name.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “He told us it would be bad and we had to do it his way,” said Olivia. “But Pili didn’t want to do it his way. Who would? That wasn’t the kind of girl she was, at least not then. We figured we knew what we’d find. Drugs. Crime. We’d seen enough movies. Travis and Diego were caught in a trap, but we could get them out. Our way. Sneak in, sneak out. We could do it ourselves. We’d seen the movies.” She paused for a moment and closed her eyes. “But this wasn’t like the movies.”

  “What was in the house?” said Natalie.

  “A nest,” said Olivia. “A nest of monsters, horrid beasts in human form, all teeth and nails, slithering around in the shadows like snakes and feeding themselves on the blood of their living victim, who was hung like a trophy on a wall.”

  “Which one was on the wall?” said Natalie.

  “Travis,” said Olivia as she stared at the headstone. “Still alive. Crazed with fear and pain.”

  I tried to imagine the scene painted by her words, but I couldn’t. I had seen ghosts and demons and the very strange Court of Uncommon Pleas, I had seen a chupacabra suck the life out of a goat, but this was too much. This gasp of horror was beyond my imagining.

  “Just the sight of it was enough to convince us both that all our movie plans were ridiculous,” said Olivia. “We backed away from the window, keeping our gaze on the monsters as we stepped quietly away. But we didn’t step quietly enough. Burning-red eyes turned in our di
rection, two of which belonged to Diego. Then came the inhuman howls. And then came the dogs.”

  I looked up just then, looked around. The snap of danger that had chased Pili and Olivia was still in the air. I could hear the monsters howling and the dogs charging. Then I spied a strange figure standing at the cemetery entrance, as if summoned by the story. It was tall and thin and still and sad, a little like Barnabas. With a start I realized it was Barnabas. I had told him where we were going that afternoon, but why was he here?

  “What happened next?” said Natalie, still kneeling next to Olivia.

  “Something charged right past us, a fierce gray thing that leaped straight into the pack of dogs that were about to tear us to pieces and sent them scattering like bowling pins.”

  I looked up into the sky, high and blue and clear. Clear of clouds, clear of vultures. If Barnabas was here, where was Keir?

  “As the dogfight continued,” said Olivia, “the doctor appeared like a ghost out of the darkness. He had come to save us, he said. He had come to end the horror.”

  I pulled my gaze from the sky and stared at Olivia as she continued her story.

  “They went back in to finish what needed finishing. The doctor, and his gang, and Pili, too. She decided that the only way to save her brother was to do it the doctor’s way. When they went in, I sat on the ground, hugging my knees. And then, as the fire raged, I ran. I didn’t know what else to do. When I was finally home safe, I went right up to my room and crawled under my covers. Who could I tell what I’d seen? Nobody. So that’s who I told. And in truth, I still haven’t come out from under the covers. And I haven’t seen Pili since.”

  “You said Pili tried saving Travis the doctor’s way,” I said. “What was Dr. Van’s way?”

  She turned her head and looked at me. “Who is Dr. Van?”

  “The dude with the eye patch and the dog,” said Henry. “His name is Dr. Rudolf Van.”

  “Van is just part of his last name,” said Olivia. “His full name is Van Helsing. Dr. Rudolf Van Helsing. And his way is to hunt the monsters and kill them. To stick stakes into their hearts and burn their corpses until not one of them remains on the face of the earth. And that night Pili joined the vampire slayer’s crusade.”

  As soon as the implications of Olivia’s story slipped through my thick skull, I knew right away what had happened to Keir. He had said he had plans, which meant avoiding Barnabas after school and slipping away to find his own path to safety. He thought maybe it lived in a full-color brochure, but what he would find instead was… was…

  I spun toward Barnabas and started running.

  VAN HELSING

  What was left of the house was perched on a cliff high above the Schuylkill River. It had once been sleek and modern, with huge windows and a pool. Yeah, a pool. It would have been something like my dream house—please, Mom, please, just this once—if it hadn’t been a burned-out wreck. The windows were vacant holes between bare pillars of stone. The roof was gone. Even the pool was filled with charred trees and sodden furniture. Gasp! The pool! So why were we there?

  The kettle of vultures flitting between the trees might clue you in.

  Charlie Frayden had used his bird-watching forum to find the latest sighting of the great flock of turkey vultures that had invaded the area. And once we had the general location, Olivia was able to guide us to the exact piece of land. It was the same property where she had seen the nest of monsters that Dr. Van Helsing had destroyed. Van Helsing had returned to the scene of his crime, or his victory, depending on your point of view.

  Now, in the twilight, we stood in a line before the burned-out hulk. There were five of us: Henry and Natalie and Barnabas and me, along with Olivia, who had felt obligated to come along because Pili was part of it all. We were there intending to save Keir McGoogan from the clutches of the vampire slayer, if there was anything left to save.

  “He’s not here,” said Henry. “There’s nothing here.”

  “The vultures say he is,” I said.

  “Maybe they jammed a stake in his heart and then brought his body here,” said Natalie. “Maybe we’re too late and poor dead Keir lies somewhere in the rubble.”

  “I don’t think so, Mistress Natalie,” said Barnabas, “or that creature wouldn’t still be standing guard.”

  Barnabas pointed to the far edge of the cliff, where the gray wolf-dog stared at us with her pale eyes. La Loba. The sight of her sent a prickle up my spine even as the hairs on the animal’s back rose at the scent of us.

  “There was another small building a little way down the cliff,” said Olivia. “Maybe that wasn’t destroyed by the fire.”

  “But how do we get past the animal?” said Henry.

  “As calmly as possible, Master Henry,” said Barnabas. “Wolves are like the nobles of my time, pouncing on fear. Sadly, there’s little for me to be afraid of.”

  Slowly, bravely, Barnabas made his way around the pool and through the rubble toward the gray beast at the edge of the hill. When he reached her he stooped down, started talking too softly for us to hear, and held out a hand for the beast to smell.

  La Loba leaned forward and snarled.

  Barnabas reached past her bared teeth to rub her neck. A moment later La Loba was on her back as Barnabas scratched her belly. The beast let out a contented moan.

  “Hurry, children,” said Barnabas, his attention still on La Loba. “We might not have much time.”

  We hurried in a single file toward the hill, Henry in the lead. We kept Barnabas between us and the moaning animal as we reached the edge. A stone stairway led down to another structure, a large box of cement and glass, singed by the fire but still intact. A soft light glowed from inside.

  When we reached the bottom we could see through the windows into a single large room, lit by portable lanterns, with a desk at one end and upholstered chairs arranged around a low table at the other. And hanging from the wall above the desk, duct-taped in place with a crazy splatter of thick silver bands, was Keir.

  That’s right. Keir McGoogan was duct-taped to the wall. He actually looked good in silver—it nicely set off his hair.

  Pili was standing off to the side in her leather jacket, looking up at the boy on the wall. And standing in front of Keir, with his cape and cane, his back turned to us, was the vampire slayer himself.

  Somehow we needed to get into that room and save Keir. If Barnabas could keep La Loba distracted, and if Natalie and Henry could create some sort of diversion that would lure Van Helsing away, then maybe Olivia could hold up Pili, giving me enough time to free Keir so that we all could run, run away. It seemed like a plan, a weak wack-brained plan that relied on impossible stealth and abilities I didn’t have, but a plan all the same. I was still working out the details when Van Helsing, as if he’d known we were there all along, slowly turned to face us.

  And he was smiling.

  Just then we heard the snapping of a branch behind us. We spun around to see a tall woman in a green overcoat standing next to a squat bruiser with a red bandanna atop his bald head. The man held some sort of rifle. The woman held a great silver sword.

  So much for plans.

  A STRANGE PROPOSITION

  Welcome, my friends,” said Dr. Rudolf Van Helsing as the four of us were forced inside the office. “Welcome to the battle between the living and the undead.”

  We weren’t tied up or duct-taped like Keir. Instead, the woman in the green overcoat flicked her sword in the general direction of the chairs facing Keir and we dropped right down, quickly and quietly.

  A moment later, the final member of Van Helsing’s gang, gripping two old dueling pistols in his gnarled hands, escorted Barnabas in as well. Even with his pale face, Barnabas didn’t seem as frightened as the rest of us. I suppose being immortal has some advantages.

  On either side of Keir now stood the members of Van Helsing’s vampire-hunting crew, who he introduced with a great flourish. Along with Pili there was Mrs. Calabash with her long gray
hair matching her silver sword. And there was Dolp, with his red bandanna. And, surprise surprise, there was Mr. Jack of the soda shop, whose false story had helped dupe Keir into seeking Dr. Van on his own.

  I gave Mr. Jack my angry face and he shrugged, but I couldn’t hold his lies against him. His loyalty was to Pili, and I could admire that. In fact, I could admire the way this whole plot had played out so neatly. From the first moment I had spied Van Helsing, and you remember when that was, he had been planning just for this.

  “So this is your Sedona Academy for Special Cases,” I managed to say.

  “It’s smaller than it looks in the brochure,” said Natalie.

  “And there are no horses,” said Keir from the wall.

  “The deceit was unavoidable. Once I learned of the court order allowing this little monster to leave the Château Laveau, I figured a special school with horses and private chefs was just the right kind of lure. All we needed was a proper introduction, which Pili provided, and then a full-color brochure full of lies, which we sent straight to Ms. Delgado. Nothing sells like a full-color brochure full of lies. But here is a truth for you. At the Sedona Academy for Special Cases, we teach our students the one thing they cannot learn on their own: how to die.”

  “Sweet school,” I said.

  “It is good to see you again, Olivia,” said Dr. Van Helsing. “I know Pili missed you. She hoped you would finally agree to join us. You, as much as anyone, know the horror that we are fighting.”

  “I don’t see a horror taped onto the wall,” said Olivia, “just a kid.”

  “He’s one of them, O,” said Pili. “And not so young. He’s almost a hundred years older than we are.”

  “He’s still a boy, frozen in time from the moment he was bitten,” I said.

  “And you put him on the wall,” said Olivia, “like they put Travis on the wall.”

  “Payback to the monster,” said Pili.

  “He’s not a monster,” I said. “He’s our friend.”

  “These things have no friends,” said Pili, “only victims.”