Sam stared at me in wide-eyed terror. Both of his hands covered his mouth. So whose hand was…? I looked down. My hand was on top of…a hand. No arm. Just a hand.
“Yaaah!” I hurled it from me and scrambled back.
“Mmmuhhhuummm.” A zombie lay on top of the tomb. She rolled off, landed with a wet thud, and lurched to her feet. Red-rimmed eyes stared out of her bloated and bruised face. Her matted hair hung in filthy clumps. Her remaining hand clasped a sword…made of Celestial bronze.
I sucked in my breath. “It’s one of the demigods Hades told us about.”
She took a laborious step toward us and raised her weapon.
Make them fully dead…Hades’s words flashed through my mind. One thrust of my sword and I could free her from zombiedom and send her to the Underworld.
But I hesitated. Destroying monsters and vaporizing the ghosts of long dead people was one thing. Stabbing a fellow demigod, even a zombified one—
“I can’t do it.”
“Don’t have to.” Sam whipped the caution tape into a lasso, roped the zombie girl’s torso, and wrapped her up tighter than a mummy. As an afterthought, he tucked her severed hand into a fold in the tape. “That might come in handy later. Ba-dum chhh!” He mimed a rimshot.
“Hilarious. Where’d you learn to rope like that?”
“Knew a demigod rodeo cowboy. Long story. I’ll—Watch out!”
Sam pushed me out of the way and kicked one of his legs forward…right into the stomach of a boy zombie wielding a bow and arrows. I had to stop myself from cheering as Sam trussed him up with an orange plastic retaining fence.
“Two zombie demigods down, three to go.” He picked up the zombie girl’s fallen sword and began to stand guard. “Try the ring.”
PUT ON THE RING
WARNING! You’re about to spoil a great story by not making a choice! Page back, then click one of the links to advance the story. Otherwise, the next section may not make any sense to you.
“Outside,” I blurted.
Sam nodded, then took a quick step backward.
I stared at him. “What?”
He gestured expansively with both hands. “Go ahead.”
“Go ahead with what?”
“Manifest your power, call on your parent. I don’t know exactly how it works, I’m not a demigod, but for external godly parents, it usually looks like a full exhale, a sharp inhale, and then focused concentration like you’re trying to shoot lasers out of your eyes or something.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Zombies and ghosts were coming in droves now. I hadn’t seen this many brain-dead bullies since we started middle school. Sam just stared at me anxiously. The demons snuffled and moved even closer.
I exhaled. Then I took a deep breath and focused all of my energy outward, calling on my parent—whoever it was—to help, to give me power. I reached out to the air and the earth, the waters, and then the sun, trying to connect myself to any of it. I opened my eyes and looked around. All I saw was a frantic satyr and an army of zombies.
I bit my lip and focused even harder, my knuckles turning white around the hilt of the sword.
Nothing.
Wrong choice, said a familiar voice.
“What?” I said.
“Huh?” said Sam. “I didn’t say anything. You need to hurry.”
I warned you in Austin. You must begin to know yourself…said the voice, deep inside my head.
I nodded and apologized silently, shifting my attention inward, to my very core…and then I felt it—something deep inside my chest, something that may have always been there.
The answer.
“Sam, what’s our main advantage over these guys?”
“Uh, we’re alive?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Speed. And we don’t need to kill them, right? All we’re trying to do is capture the Mormo.”
“Okay…” he said.
“So we split up and run to opposite sides of the cemetery. Half will follow me, half will follow you. We meet back in the middle in five minutes, and that’ll buy us enough time to get the Mormo into the pithos.”
“I don’t know if—”
“On three. One. Two. Three!” Before my lazy satyr friend could object, I sprinted to my right, easily weaving between the dimwitted zombies and the unfocused ghosts. I’d realized the obvious: the undead were only dangerous if you tried to fight them, or were standing still. We didn’t need to do either.
The enormous karaoke demons trudged in my direction as I ran toward the far side, darting in between towering mausoleums. The moon was full and bright, the zombies slow and doddering. I got to the fence at the edge of the property and turned around to see at least forty zombies moving toward me, a good sixty-five yards away. The demons were even farther back, and the ghosts flitted about, confused. The Mormo was around here somewhere, but if he waited just a bit longer, we could confront him as two against one instead of two against a million.
Two solid minutes went by until the horde was almost on me, and then I jogged in a looping semicircle around them, back to the spot where I’d left Sam. About thirty seconds later, Sam trotted up, huffing and puffing.
I smiled and leaned against the nearest mausoleum. We were alone in the alley.
“Look!” said Sam. He pointed at the tomb I was leaning against. It was covered with chalk X’s. “It’s Marie’s,” Sam crowed, stopping abruptly as a mist began to ooze from the wall. I leaped back.
We watched in awe as the mist coalesced into the translucent form of a dark-skinned woman wearing a turban. She peered at us, then spoke with an indistinguishable lilting accent. “You requested my favor with the Mormo?”
“Yes. Yes!” I couldn’t believe the X trick had actually worked. “Can you help us capture him?”
“I’m afraid all I can offer is my advice. For years I was able to keep the Mormo at bay, but he is relentless. The zombies and ghosts will keep coming, and eventually, you will be overwhelmed. Your only hope is to neutralize him.”
“We have the pithos…” I offered.
“Ah, yes. But how are you going to get him inside it? For that, you need an object of power.”
“A what?” I asked.
“An object of power,” she repeated. “I tried many during my time on Earth, but none was strong enough to entrap the Mormo.”
“They’re back!” shouted Sam, pointing to two approaching skeletons.
“Wait, I just thought of something!” I reached into my pocket and removed the wooden ring we’d found under the bridge in Austin. I held it out to Marie Laveau.
The spirit smiled. “Ah, yes. That just might work.” She began to fade into the above-ground tomb. “Good luck…”
“Hold on!” I called after her. “What do we—”
But she was gone.
“What does the ring do?” shouted Sam, as he kept his eyes on another half-animated corpse.
I stared at the ring. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, put it on!” shouted Sam, scanning the graveyard wildly as four more undead trundled toward us, their tattered clothes and clumps of skin dragging along the ground. “They’re almost here! Come on!”
We took cover behind a crumbling tomb cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Sam dropped a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I patted it and turned to give him a smile.
Sam stared at me in wide-eyed terror. Both of his hands covered his mouth. So whose hand was…? I looked down. My hand was on top of…a hand. No arm. Just a hand.
“Yaaah!” I hurled it from me and scrambled back.
“Mmmuhhhuummm.” A zombie lay on top of the tomb. She rolled off, landed with a wet thud, and lurched to her feet. Red-rimmed eyes stared out of her bloated and bruised face. Her matted hair hung in filthy clumps. Her remaining hand clasped a sword…made of Celestial bronze.
I sucked in my breath. “It’s one of the demigods Hades told us about.”
She took a laborious step toward us and raised her weapo
n.
Make them fully dead…Hades’s words flashed through my mind. One thrust of my sword and I could free her from zombiedom and send her to the Underworld.
But I hesitated. Destroying monsters and vaporizing the ghosts of long dead people was one thing. Stabbing a fellow demigod, even a zombified one—
“I can’t do it.”
“Don’t have to.” Sam whipped the caution tape into a lasso, roped the zombie girl’s torso, and wrapped her up tighter than a mummy. As an afterthought, he tucked her severed hand into a fold in the tape. “That might come in handy later. Ba-dum chhh!” He mimed a rimshot.
“Hilarious. Where’d you learn to rope like that?”
“Knew a demigod rodeo cowboy. Long story. I’ll—Watch out!”
Sam pushed me out of the way and kicked one of his legs forward…right into the stomach of a boy zombie wielding a bow and arrows. I had to stop myself from cheering as Sam trussed him up with an orange plastic retaining fence.
“Two zombie demigods down, three to go.” He picked up the zombie girl’s fallen sword and began to stand guard. “Try the ring.”
PUT ON THE RING
WARNING! You’re about to spoil a great story by not making a choice! Page back, then click one of the links to advance the story. Otherwise, the next section may not make any sense to you.
I swallowed once, hard, leaned my own sword against a nearby crypt, then slipped the ring onto my finger. I winced, ready for anything…
I felt dizzy and my stomach moved into my throat, as if I was descending too fast in an elevator. The landscape had changed—it was now unrecognizable—but my body didn’t feel different. I tried to summon lightning bolts or stir raging floodwaters. I tried to call down the sun or raise crops from the muddy earth. Nothing. I looked to Sam in despair, and—
He was huge! A giant! I was only as tall as his shoe. The ring had shrunk me!
He was frantically searching for me. “Zane?” shouted Sam. “Come back!”
I pulled one of his shoelaces to get his attention. “I’m right—”
“Ahh!” he shouted, swinging the demigod’s sword.
I ducked instinctively, even though the blade was nowhere near the ground. “Sam!” I screamed. It sounded like a squeak. “I’m right here!”
He looked around wildly, then raised the sword again. I finally remembered to yank the ring off my finger, and my personal elevator instantly brought me back to size. As I shook off the feeling of vertigo, Sam made a choking sound and fell backward. “You were gone!” he said.
“I didn’t go anywhere…” I said. “Just down. I was tiny!”
“The incredible shrinking ring!” he said, mouth agape.
The Mormo’s laughter echoed across the cemetery, and a fresh wave of skeletons and half-decomposed corpses sludged toward us. In the distance, I heard the enormous karaoke demons grunting and moving. I thought fast. “Marie said we had to use the ring to beat the Mormo.”
“But how can being tiny convince him to go inside the pithos?” asked Sam.
“I don’t know yet. But I feel like you should wear it. We might be able to surprise him if he can’t see one of us,” I said.
“You…trust me to do that?” asked Sam.
“Sam, you’re as much of a hero as I am,” I said. A slow, scraping sound filled the air and I shivered. “Okay,” I said, handing him the ring. “Go.”
Sam looked at me nervously and slipped the ring onto his finger, instantly disappearing. “Did I shrink?” came a small voice from below.
“Definitely,” I said, looking down and being careful not to move my feet. “You’re a cute little teeny tiny goat man.”
“Shut up. I’m going to head left and see if he follows me,” said Sam, his voice growing increasingly faint as he moved away. “You can count on me!”
I needed a really, really good idea. What would the Mormo want? What could I promise him was inside the pithos?
The scraping sound grew louder, and I ducked down, laying the pithos on its side.
“Over here, fang face!” I heard Sam squeak. Fortunately, he still had a big mouth for such a little guy.
I saw the Mormo stop and turn. “Here’s what’s going to happen, demigod,” he called, both his teeth and his voice oozing venom. “Eventually, I’m going to catch your friend, and I’m going to kill him. Then I’m going to come back and kill you. You won’t leave, because you have to get me into that fragile little pithos…and I’m not ever, ever going to do that. And if I don’t get you…the zombies will.” He smiled a little wider, then set off in the direction of Sam’s voice.
“No!” I shouted, and took a few steps forward, but I couldn’t leave the pithos unattended. “Sam! Come back!”
When the only reply was the grunting of the undead, something inside me snapped, and I took off running after the Mormo. I wasn’t going to leave my best friend alone, not when he was the size of a mouse in a zombie-filled New Orleans graveyard with a deadly demon chasing after him. “Sam!” I called again. Then I started singing our code song. “Oh when the Saints! Go marching in!” It was my way of telling Sam that we needed to get out, that none of this was worth it, that I’d rather have my best friend alive than know who my godly parent was, or kill a bunch of zombies, or make Hades happy.
“Oh when the Saints go marching in!” I heard Sam’s voice answer and I followed it, looping around back toward the pithos. “Oh I want to be in that number! Oh when the Saints go marching in!”
I turned down a long aisle of mausoleums to see the Mormo narrowing in on an aisle. I sang even louder, hoping Sam would take the hint and get out. “Oh when the Saints—”
Now, I’m not the greatest singer, but I can carry a tune. So what the Mormo did next astonished me.
He covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, just like the little boy in Preservation Hall. Then he started keening as if in agony.
Guess not everyone is a music lover.
Music, I thought. Music is his weakness. It hurts him.
Jazzed by my revelation, I stopped in mid-song. That was a mistake. The Mormo sprinted toward me. “Sam, sing! Sing and try to get as close as you—”
From out of nowhere, Sam’s reedy voice picked up where I’d left off. “Oh when the Saints go marching in.”
The Mormo clamped his hands over his ears again and grimaced in pain. He snapped his fingers, sending a cluster of zombies my way, and another in the direction of Sam’s voice.
“Keep going!” I shouted to Sam. “I’ll get the pithos!”
“The ring is working! The zombies can’t figure out where I am!” Sam shouted back. “Wait, I’ve got an even better idea….”
I sprinted around the standing mausoleums, searching for the pyramid-shaped tomb where I’d left the pithos. Behind me, I heard the Mormo’s howling melt into Sam’s caterwauling.
“Keep it up!” I shouted as I spotted the pithos. I grabbed it and ran back to find the Mormo writhing in pain on the ground, while a horde of zombies knelt around him, seemingly searching for Sam. My satyr friend was still singing—he sounded very close now.
Then I spotted him—he was standing on the Mormo’s shoulder, singing right into his ear.
I started singing my heart out too as I laid the jar on its side and uncapped it.
“When the Saints go marching in!”
We finished the chorus and stopped singing.
The Mormo dropped his hands.
“You can’t bite both of us at the same time!” I yelled. “Whichever one of us you attack, the other will go all diva on you!”
“And I know Italian opera!” Sam added.
“Gahh!” The Mormo began to dissolve, and Sam jumped to the ground. If the Mormo vanished now, we were sunk….
I moved forward. “You can’t escape music!” I cried in desperation. “It’s everywhere!”
He solidified again. “Not if I destroy it where it reigns!” He stood and prowled back and forth like a caged lion. “Silencing New Orlea
ns jazz is just the first step. Nashville, Memphis, Detroit, Seattle, Cleveland—”
“Country, blues, Motown, grunge,” said Sam from somewhere near my left shoe. “Wait. Cleveland?”
“Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” I supplied.
“Ah.”
The pieces fell into place. “Zombies can’t sing or play instruments, can they? Not even the trom-bone—ba-dum chhh!”
Sam added a sliding note. “Wah-wah-waaaaah.”
“Silence!” the Mormo shrieked. “I must have silence!”
“That’s why you’re making zombies—to help you silence all music. Well, there’s only one place where you can get the peace and quiet you want.”
Right on cue, I heard Sam’s words echo from inside the pithos. “Yeah! In here!”
“Never!” The Mormo rushed me, fast as lightning.
“Ninety-nine bottles of goat milk on the wall! Ninety-nine bottles of milk!” Sam’s voice reverberated in the empty jar. “You take one down—”
“Gahhh!” The Mormo fell to his knees.
“—and pass it around—”
“He’s got ninety-eight verses to go. So what’s it going to be? Eternal peace within the pithos or the musical renderings of Sam the Satyr?” Making sure Sam was no longer inside, I righted the jar. “It’s your choice.”
“Ninety-six bottles of—”
The Mormo shape-shifted into gas. Like a genie returning to its bottle, he vanished into the pithos. I quickly slammed down the lid.
“—one down, pass it around—”
“Sam, you can stop now. We got him!”
“Ninety-five—Oh.” Sam broke off. “We got him?”
“We did, and guess what? It wouldn’t have happened without you, the so-called lowly satyr! Even Hades would have to admit that.”
“I couldn’t have been much lowlier, that’s for sure.” Sam suddenly grew back to normal size beside me. “Ah, that’s better. Here, take this. I’ve had enough of being a cemetery rat.” He passed me the ring. “Your plan worked.”