My Friends Are Dead People (12 page)

“
Well,” Vince added, “you
can’t move us like . . . that bench.”

Meanwhile, a slimy green zombie was
shuffling down the street kicking empty candy boxes into the
gutter. As he reached the bench, he kicked it into a shop.

“
What the heck! Well, the
bottom line is, no one is coming in,” Vince quieted his voice as
the zombie trudged by, “except for that thing. He must’ve just
entered. Crazy new h-h-halloween–”

Vince then noticed Dorian and disappeared
immediately, along with his buddy.

“
That was easy,” said
Lin.

We climbed up a steep alley, following Lin,
who was skipping excitedly ahead of us. Embedded into the walls
were dead tree trunks and roaring gargoyle statues, half of them
with infernal flames dancing in their mouths and the other half
emitting sounds of an applauding crowd.

“
Sounds like they’ve
started the pre-show,” said Jacoby.

“
Lin, how did you get in
here last time?” I asked.

“
We summoned welgo
droppings.”

“
I don’t
understand.”

“
Me neither,” Katie chimed
in.

“
They thought the smell
was Jack’s smell. You should’ve seen . . .” Lin’s words were
drowned out by a thunderous cheer. “Please, please, can we go to
the monster’s ball?” he shouted. “Please, Jacoby! I haven’t gone in
ten days!”

Jacoby waited for the noise to die down
before he answered.

“
Tomorrow, Lin. We
promised to support Kala.”

“
But that’s at the end,”
whined Lin. “We’ve got time!”

I peeked at Katie’s watch at the same time
she did.

7:11 PM

“
You two are always
checking the time,” remarked Jacoby, ignoring Lin tugging on his
oversized shirt. “I guess it’s alright.”

“
You don’t think we
should?” I said.

“
It really doesn’t matter.
Lin, stop pulling on my shirt.”

I hadn’t realized until then, but we were
inside the festival grounds, which were a mix between an amusement
park and a small city – with spider-haunted hotels, a windowless
skyscraper towering into murky clouds, a super-dome for Halloween
events, admission huts, outdoor exhibits displaying skool skeletis
artifacts, and tall pillars blaring Halloween music.

Just to our right, there
was an information booth and two long lines of eager samhains
waiting to get into
The door To
Nowhere
, shrouded in green fog. A child
monster kept running in and out of the fog, tiptoeing in cautiously
and storming out with a smile. Next to the information booth was a
tilted black sign splattered with blood.

T h E F o u R G a m e
S

Boral'S SpeeD RoaD -
prelims - line population: 10 (waiting)

WanderinG LosT - prelims -
line population: 95 (waiting)

Jack'S MemoriaL - prelims
- line population: 58 (waiting)

JacK O'GameS -
quarterfinals - line population: 28,194 (entering)

Jacoby informed us that there were four
major games played at the festivals and that we only had time to
attend one of them. Lin threw a wild fit. He bit his feet twice and
swallowed his own skin, which was a pretty gross sight. Jacoby also
explained to Katie and me that Lin had to be supervised at all
times because of his transformations.

The festival was split into four sections: a
food court, a merchandise pumpkin patch, a scare park, and an
amusement park, with each section housing one game. We started at
the amusement park to our left, which was where the Jack O’Games
were held. I was glad to start there because the posted stats
showed that they had the lowest number of deaths per hour: 0.5. The
scare park’s was the highest, at 4.0. It also had a murder rate of
1.0 per hour.

All the booths and attractions were to the
right of the main road. To the left were the giant walls of the
stadium and a huge moving line. The right side had everything:
scary shows, souvenir shops, one-minute psyclin classes, Mildewy
Lime drinking fountains, flying flyers, and educational and scary
tours of Berlin, the historical home of the tortics.

We walked for a few minutes and stopped
where a crowd of samhains was gathered around a tall pole that
soared into the fog. As a tall skeleton screamed into an opening at
the bottom, a ball of light shot a quarter of the way up the
shaft.

“
Any bets, Jacoby?” said a
teenage gargoyle, brushing by us. “Leonard?”

“
Eight Red Rollers,” said
Lin, wiping his tears.

“
Not today, Peter,” said
Jacoby.

Peter dropped a package of
candy in a cauldron and, without bothering to put his mouth up to
the opening, just
roared
. The light rocketed up the
pole and disappeared into the fog.

The small crowd gave him a round of
applause. Lin slipped over to the cauldron and stealthily dropped
six individual pieces of red balls into it. Peter hadn’t noticed
and hoisted it onto his shoulder and walked off.

“
Jacoby, don’t miss Hess!”
Peter yelled back to us. “He’s going to be the first one to make it
to the next round! I know he is!”

“
You see that?” Lin said
to Katie and me in a conspiratorial whisper. “Good way to play
games for cheap is to be cheap. Peter got gypped.”

“
Lin, if you ever get
caught, you’re on your own,” said Jacoby.

“
So what he did was bad?”
I said.

“
Yes. Only a sealed
package of candy may be used as legal tender. No individual pieces.
Even for a bet. If he had been caught, Lin could’ve gotten a
serious thrashing. Young melkian gargoyles like Peter are quite
strong and quick-tempered.”

We started again, moving along the walls of
the stadium. The history of the Jack O’Games was written along the
bottom. Most of the writing was obscured by giant thorn bushes and
knotted trees. However, the name of the games was clearly visible
between two massive pillars:

JACK OTTAGGAEMENEL
LANTERN
’
S
GAMES

“
Jack O . . . taga . . .”
I tried pronouncing with great difficultly. “The ‘O’ actually
stands for his middle initial?”

“
His real last name,”
corrected Jacoby. “Over time humans shortened it to the ‘O’ and
added ‘lantern’. Only a few can pronounce his real name, and,
surprisingly, they’re all human.”

“
But isn’t the ‘O’ an
abbreviation for Jack ‘of the’ lantern? Back at the cemetery, you
said that was what it meant.”

“
No. I said that was what
it meant to some humans, but I didn’t say it was
accurate.”

“
Is that the actual
spelling?”

“
Why don’t you ask him? We
got it from him. He wrote it on an old tree a long time ago. I
doubt he would have misspelled his own name.”

I was no longer paying attention to Jacoby,
trying to see what had captivated Katie. A skinny warlock was
dragging a frightened donkey over to a caged monster.

“
What’s he going to do?”
asked Katie. “Is he gonna feed it to that–”

“
I think he is,” I
muttered.

The
hee-hawing
donkey flopped, and the
warlock slid him the rest of the way and shoved it inside the cage.
The drooling monster approached the donkey while the donkey snorted
and kicked in frenzy.

“
What’s wrong with this
place?” exclaimed Katie in a huff.

Katie was right. What was the deal with this
psychotic place? That warlock had just fed a donkey to a
monster!

“
Come on, you two,” said
Jacoby, motioning for us to move across a log bridge. “You don’t
need to see this.”

Spanning the top of the bridge was a
dangling sign that read:

MONSTER MASH

2:00 – SOLD OUT 4:00 -
SOLD OUT

6:00 – SOLD OUT 8:00 –
SOLD OUT

We all heard the music booming from within
an orange-and-white-striped circus tent behind a cornfield.

“
Please, Jacoby,” begged
Lin. “Can we just stick our heads inside for one second? Just one
tiny look. No bat dance, I promise.”

“
Lin, I told you not
until–” Jacoby paused to let a loud foot-stomping thud tremble by
us. “We had better get moving.”

No one argued as we followed Jacoby back
over the bridge, startled by the unexplained ground jolt.

“
Katie, Jesse, stay very
close,” he said, without turning around. “I don’t want to lose you.
The games commemorate Jack. Many of the fans like to play pranks on
newcomers. You are an obvious target to them. I can’t have you two
wandering off. Is that clear?”

Katie nodded.

“
What kind of pranks?” I
wondered hesitantly.

“
Jesse, it doesn’t matter.
If they come in close contact with you or give you more than a
glance, they will know you’re human and kill you.”

CHAPTER TEN

KALA
’S FATE

“
Jesse, you’ll be fine,”
concluded Jacoby. “Just stick with us and don’t make yourselves too
conspicuous. They won’t question you two if you don’t give them a
reason. Alright?”

It wasn’t
alright
at all. I
suddenly lost all interest in seeing what went on inside the
stadium. We could always give the Monster Mash a try. There was
even a
Magic Potential
cubicle, a warlock scholar speaking about the
Hidden History of Samhain
, and a stage featuring
The
Magician’s Greatest Bloody Performance
.
They all sounded like better choices to me than risking my life to
see the game. But if we had to go, I had to take precautions. I
wasn’t about to just stand there waiting to be killed. I eyed an
insurance booth advertising curse security plans as we passed
it.

“
Jesse, don’t worry,”
Jacoby said, sensing my mood, as we walked along the stadium, “no
one will even look our way.”

I could see what he meant,
as I watched Dorian paying a
trembling
merchant at a souvenir
stand five Red Pops for five black wristbands, with Kala’s name
printed on it.

“
Cool!” said Katie when he
got back.

Dorian handed them out, and everyone tied
them around their wrists.

The ground vibrations and
noise from within the stadium rumbled more intensely. Just as I
looked up, a large bolt of light flashed high up in the air,
followed by thunderous
BOO’s
.

Jacoby came up to one of the entryways, set
between the stone legs of a giant spider.

ENTRANCE TO THE LOWER LEVEL

SECTION GHOUL 1-50

“
I believe this is the
best place to enter,” he told us, touching the side of a cracked
urn that rested on the ground.

After seeing Lin touch it, Katie and I did
the same thing before entering. The long dark tunnel amplified the
roar of the crowd. I could see a section of the stadium seats
through an opening ahead. There was another flash of light; this
one lasted a lot longer and illuminated the whole tunnel. A huge
disfigured creature flew by the entrance, and the sound of a
witch’s cackling chased after it.

A hooded skeleton was slumped on a stool by
the entrance, mumbling into his collar bone, as if it was a
walkie-talkie. When we arrived, he bowed his skull even lower and
droned in a tired voice, “Read out loud.”

Written on the wall behind the skeleton was
some kind of declaration.

Jack O’Games

I swear to keep my magic inside my pocket.
If I get caught, I agree to twenty-four hours of whatever
punishment the Haunt House subjects me to. I will not in any way
assist the samhain players and understand that the same punishment
would apply. I am not a human in disguise. I am a samhain. I am
aware that if I enter in violation, I will be killed. May I come
in?

Jacoby was just finishing up reciting the
inscription. “. . . if I enter in violation, I will be killed. May
I come in?”

“
Trick or treat?” asked
the skeleton.

“
Trick,” said Jacoby
without hesitation.

“
Proceed at your own risk.
Next!”

Dorian nudged my stiff body toward the
skeleton. I didn't want to go in. How could they risk our lives? We
looked human!

The stomping of the crowd
outside shook the tunnel, so I could barely hear the skeleton
shout, “
The proclamation must be read or
you may not enter!
”

Dorian nudged me again. I read the
proclamation, unable to hear myself say any of it. The skeleton
didn’t order me to speak louder so I spoke in my normal voice.

“
. . . the same punishment
would apply. I am not a . . .” I paused. I wasn't going to say
“human”. If they caught me, then I could say I never read it. “I am
aware that if I enter in violation, I will be killed. May I come
in?”

The skeleton couldn’t hear me over the foot
stomps.

“
May I come in?” I
repeated a little louder.