Mariana and Vasul exchanged glances.
“What do you mean?” Vasul asked.
I told them everything. The lost children. The visions. The warning.
“I know it sounds crazy, but before I came on this trip, this fortune-teller told me I’d be tested. That this was a test of some kind. What if she was right?”
Baz licked his lips nervously and lowered his voice. “They cut your hair. That was always the first part of the ritual, right? Cut the hair and weave it into a braid to show your intent, your loyalty to Satan.”
“Then say the incantation and drown them in the lake,” Isabel finished. “Right?”
“Mariana, you said it yourself in the church: superstitions have power. That’s why they’re hard to root out,” John added. He was pacing.
“I think they’ve decided to go back to the old ways,” I said. “The really old, bad ways. Today I swear I saw someone wearing a red robe in the church—”
Vasul shook his head. “No one wears red in this village anymore. Not since the old days. It’s considered bad luck, like tempting the devil.”
“I saw it,” I insisted, but now I wasn’t so sure. I was accusing Mariana’s mother of something awful, and I half hoped I was right so I wasn’t crazy, and I half hoped I was wrong because it was a terrible thing to imagine.
“Poe’s not the only one. We were all there. Those kids—” Isabel stumbled over the word. “Whatever they are—they were warning us!”
Vasul and Mariana huddled together, whispering in their own language. I couldn’t read their expressions. Were they frightened? Upset? Angry? Did they even believe me? They hugged, and then Mariana turned back to us. Her eyes were as dark as the evening shadows glooming up the room. “If what you’re telling us is true, we have to leave as soon as possible. We have to gather the children…”
“I didn’t survive the London School of Economics to end up in a lake,” Vasul tried to joke, but his smile was a ghost.
“Mariana, did your mother give anybody else haircuts?” I asked.
“All of us. All of the children,” she whispered.
“We have to warn the others,” Vasul said softly to her.
She looked at him for a long time. “None of the old ones can stay up past eleven, eleven thirty. That’s to our advantage. We’ll round up the children and take them to the church around midnight. When we’re sure it’s safe and there are no old ones around, we’ll give you the signal: a lantern in the front window. It’s going to be quick, so you’d better be looking for it. We can’t afford to do it twice. When you see it, haul ass to the church.”
“And then what?” John pressed.
Mariana’s mouth was set in a grim line. “Then we get the hell out of here.”
We tried to act normal. At dinner we sat in the tavern, pushing meat around on our plates with our bread. If the old-timers noticed, they didn’t say anything. Then we went up to our room to sit by the window with its view of the church pressed against the ominous forest and waited. The moon rose, a red wound in a dark sky. I’d never seen a moon that color before. It was exactly the kind of sight that we’d hoped to take pictures of and post on our Web pages—AWESOME RED MOON OVER NECURATUL! But right now it just gave me the shivers.
“What time is it?” Isabel asked.
“Midnight,” I answered.
“Where’s the signal?” Baz peered into the night-hushed town.
“Maybe we should just go,” John said. “They know the score.”
“We promised,” I said, but I honestly wanted to run.
My watch showed five minutes after, then ten. Every passing second seemed a lifetime. Finally white light strobed across the front window of the church, once and out, just like Mariana had said.
“Come on,” I said.
We sneaked down the stairs with our shoes in our hands, careful not to make a sound. Dying firelight came from the kitchen. Mariana’s mother, the tavern keeper, the old woman at the gate, and several other old-timers sat at the table. Their voices were hushed but urgent, like when your parents are having a fight they don’t want you to know about. We held our breath. How could we get past without being seen? I motioned for Izzie to go first. She made it to the door and gently lifted the latch, nudging the door open by degrees. John tiptoed out next, followed by Baz. A little gust of wind banged the door shut after him.
Chairs scooted across the kitchen floor. Mariana’s mother and the tavern keeper hurried over, and I sank down and huddled in the shadowed staircase. Satisfied that everything was okay, they headed back to the kitchen and their discussion. Whatever they were talking about, it was full of passion and fervor, and Mariana’s mother seemed like she was trying to convince the others of something. I wasn’t sticking around for more. Quickly I slipped out after my friends, and we raced to the church through empty streets, the darkened houses like sleeping guards that could come awake at any moment. Up on the hill the church loomed.
The door had been left ajar, so we slipped in. A few prayer candles burned at the back of the church, but their pool of light wasn’t very wide. I didn’t see anyone.
“Mariana?” I whisper-yelled into the gloom. “Vasul?”
A soft moan came from the front of the church. We followed it. “It’s from behind the iconostasis,” I said. This time the door opened easily.
“Holy…” Baz said. This part of the church was painted too. But it was a different history on these walls. Murders. Hangings. Mob violence. Enemies crucified upside down. The gruesome goat’s head—the Soul of Necuratul that was supposed to have been destroyed—had been propped up inside a niche in the wall like a treasured relic. A candle glowed beneath it, casting light up, making the hollow eyes seem alive with a strange fire. The plaits of child’s hair fell to the floor and pooled several inches thick.
The moan again. Izzie flicked on her flashlight and swooped it around. The light fell on the altar. Mariana had been tied up and stretched out there. Her mouth was gagged, but she tried to speak anyway. Or scream would be more like it. She was looking at something just behind us.
I never saw the blow coming.
Above me the ceiling of the church came into focus. Those children cowering in fear in the lake, their parents readying the stones to weigh them down. My head felt like it had skidded along the pavement for a mile.
“Can you hear me?” Mariana’s voice.
My head throbbed as I turned it in her direction. Mariana stood a few feet away, a blur of red. I blinked and she came into focus. She wore a hooded red robe.
“It’s called devil’s cloth,” she said as if I had asked a question. “It was worn by the priest who would consecrate the sacrifice to the Dark Lord. Of course, traditionally that priest was male, but we’re trying to marry progress with tradition here.”
I tried to move and found my hands were bound together and a rope had been slipped around my ankles. It was the same with my friends. All the young people stood around us. None of the old-timers were present. It was an under-twenty-five crowd only. The children had been gathered and brought around. They looked sleepy and curious, like this was some kind of game they were playing but they didn’t understand the rules just yet.
“What are you doing?” I croaked.
“Putting things right. Saving Necuratul before it’s too late,” Mariana answered.
“The old-timers. Did they make you do this? Are they forcing you to—”
They all laughed.
“The old-timers? Force us? They begged us not to do it! Every single one of them was ready to pack up and leave Necuratul, let the bulldozers and ‘progress’ take it. Be obliterated by people with more power than we have. ‘Make do,’ they pleaded. ‘Appreciate what you have.’ But we’ve seen the world. We know only the powerful are respected and safe.” She joined hands with Vasul and Dovka. “So we start the tradition again. But we modernize. Why sacrifice our own when we could sacrifice others?”
Dovka snipped a small section of hair from ea
ch of us. “Once we join your hair to the goat’s head, your souls will be promised to the other world.”
“But that’s not fair,” Isabel said. “We had no say.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Dovka answered.
John was sweating heavily. “Look, my parents are rich. They’ll pay any ransom.”
“John, what are you doing, man?” Baz growled.
“S-sorry, cuz,” he stammered.
“John,” Baz said again, but that was all.
Mariana glanced from John to us and back again. “You would be willing to leave your friends, your own cousin, to their fates?”
John wouldn’t look at us. “Don’t hurt Isabel.”
“John…” Isabel started and stopped.
“The breakdown of civilization, the end of the tribe. No loyalty,” Vasul said. “This is what the world is.”
“At the club where I work, there are so many bored, rich kids. Totally entitled. Always looking for that next thrill to talk about over beers. Just like this one,” Dovka sneered.
“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” John choked out.
Mariana thought for a minute. “Very well. You can be part of our new tradition.”
“Whatever you want. I’ll do it.”
“I am glad to hear it.” She jerked her head, and Dovka drew a razor from her pocket and moved so fast I could barely register what was happening. I hope it was the same for John. Isabel shrieked John’s name, and the next thing I knew, John was on the ground, lifeless, and the rest of them were spattered with blood.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Baz keened. He closed his eyes and started a prayer in Hebrew, even though I knew he hadn’t been to temple since his bar mitzvah. This was the kind of fear that made you pretend there was a god to save you. The kind that brought everything into such sharp relief that you could watch a friend die and still hear a mouse scuttling in the corner, the wind whistling against the side of the church.
Isabel had gone silent.
Mariana put her hand on John’s head. “We offer not only our loyalty but this blood as well, O lord, as a promise of our fidelity. From now on we will always make such an offering. It is a new world and that calls for new commitment.”
The kids huddled together. They looked scared. Dovka spoke soothingly to them and they calmed. She had them wind our hair into the braids on the goat’s head and they did it without question. Dovka said something in Necuratuli. “To prove our loyalty,” she translated, looking at us.
Mariana opened the ancient rites book and began to read in a tongue that demanded attention, a language that spoke to your bones, made your heart beat faster, whispered to all those places inside that hide our worst thoughts, our most terrible fears. It was a calling-up, a calling-out. A naming. When she was finished, she closed the book and forced us to our feet. The kids had finished their grisly task, and Mariana’s crew tied Baz, Isabel, and me together. Our hands were fastened to the point of pain. Another rope was tightened around our waists and Dovka held the slack. Vasul and the other guys carried John’s body on their shoulders like pallbearers.
Just then the door to the church banged open. The old-timers blocked the exit with their shovels and lanterns. Mariana’s mother spoke sharply to her daughter, and Mariana answered in English.
“We won’t stop, Baba. This is the future. In the hundred and thirty years since the village stopped the sacrifice, things have only gotten worse. It’s time to start again. Our generation will have everything.”
The tavern keeper grabbed hold of Mariana’s wrist, but she broke his grip easily. “Uncle Sada, you can’t stop us. You should thank us, instead. We are saving the village,” Mariana insisted.
“You will curse us all,” he answered back in English, surprising me.
The old-timers rushed them then, but there weren’t enough of them, and they weren’t strong enough to stop what was happening. The younger ones held them back easily. “Now we go to the lake,” Mariana said.
The group pushed us through the village, the old-timers following, pleading. We left them standing on the other side of the wall. They looked worried, like parents sending their kids off to prom instead of cold-blooded ritualistic murder.
Dovka pulled us after her into the forest. If we slowed, she gave the rope around our waists a sharp tug, and we’d stumble into one another. Fighting back was out of the question. The night was warm and oppressive. It pushed its hands against our lungs, made us sweat as we trudged through the forest in a clump. Somebody started singing. The Stones. “Sympathy for the Devil.”
“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name…”
There were a few giggles, like this was a fraternity prank, a bunch of kids on their way to outsmart their friends in some goofy one-upmanship. I even tried to tell myself that—anything to rationalize what was happening. But then I’d remember the razor at John’s throat, and the terror would come over me again. The singing got louder, and Vasul shushed them. John’s lifeless body was slung over Vasul’s shoulder. We carried on in silence, the lanterns lighting the way. The lake with its top hat of fog came into view. Dovka stuffed our pockets and shirts with heavy stones and pushed us into the cold, black water.
“Go out farther,” Mariana called, holding a gun on us. We stumbled backward until only our heads were visible. “That’s good. Now we wait.”
“I’ll n-never sit in the student union studying,” Isabel stammered through tears. “Never go to a frat party or date an Irish boy named Declan.”
“Guys named Declan are all assholes,” I tried to joke, but it came out hollow.
Baz had stopped praying. In the four years we’d been friends, he’d never been so quiet, so still.
Vasul and his friends laid John’s body on the ground.
“Why are we waiting?” one of the guys asked. “Let’s get this done.”
“We’ve made the offering. It’s up to The One to accept it,” Mariana said with finality.
In the distance I could hear the old-timers singing the old songs, skeletal melodies with nothing to disguise the despair. Dirges. My grandmother said that when her father had succumbed to the dysentery in the camp, her mother sang until her voice was ragged. Like that was the only thing left to her.
The night pressed on. The cold water numbed us, and Isabel’s teeth chattered. I tried to move my fingers just to keep the circulation going, anything to keep from losing feeling or falling asleep and going under. At first, I counted silently, trying to keep my mind from going to dark places, but when I reached two thousand eighty-three, I couldn’t remember what came next, and that scared me so bad I stopped.
After a while Dovka got bored and started a conversation about remixes. Somebody chewed gum, offered the pack to the others. A girl slapped at a bug on her arm, flicked it off. It was all so ordinary. Just a to-do list that included murder. And I wondered what had happened, what flipped that switch in the human brain that allowed people to rationalize atrocities, whether it was racism or terrorism or genocide or drowning people you’d shared wine with, their pockets heavy with stones you picked up yourself and put there.
Under the water I felt Isabel grasping my hand, and I was glad for the feel of it. Seemed the only thing I could be sure of right now. “S-sorry I p-put that Celine Dion ringtone on your phone that time,” she said.
“That was you?”
“Yeah.”
“You suck.”
“Yeah.” She bit off her laugh when it became a cry.
Suddenly Mariana stood at attention, motioned to the others. “It’s happening,”
The fog thickened and there was a strong smell, like sulfur, that made me feel as if I were choking. Bubbles appeared on the surface of the lake, and it was noticeably warmer. Uncomfortable, like a sauna. The mud beneath our feet seemed to give way a bit. Baz was in only neck deep, but Isabel’s mouth dropped below the waterline, and I wasn’t far behind her. She snapped her head back, trying desperately to keep her nose free, and Baz and I pushed
against her as best we could to keep her upright. But it was hard with our hands tied behind our backs. Isabel panicked and nearly brought us down with her thrashing.
“Hold on, Iz,” I said, nudging her up with my shoulder. “Don’t let her fall, Baz.”
In answer he gave her a boost from his side.
The mud gave just a little more, and the water swirled around us. Isabel was crying now and blowing bubbles, coughing out water.
Mariana and the others were like ghosts on the bank silhouetted by ravaged trees. “Necuratul, Necuratul, Necuratul,” they chanted. Something was coming through the forest. I heard cracking sounds and the sulfur smell grew stronger. I could barely breathe.
I yelped as something brushed against me in the black water.
“What was that?” Isabel cried out.
The bump came again, pushing us forward this time. I stumbled and Baz yanked on the rope, keeping the three of us upright. The movement was everywhere at once. The wind picked up.
“Vengeance,” it whispered.
Something bumped me again. Then we saw the heads rising from the deep, dark lake, the dead eyes circled in shadows, the open mouths where maggots and small snakes crawled. They surged past us to the bank, and the fog shifted again. It was hard to see. The forest echoed with screams. Shouts. It wasn’t English, but I didn’t need a translation. It was the language of fear.
“C-come on!” I tugged on the rope that tied me to my friends. Our pockets and shirts were still heavy with stones and our limbs nearly frozen from our time in the water. Every step was tough going. We stumbled out of the lake and fell to the ground. Our bodies were too heavy to get far. I reached my fingers out and into Isabel’s pocket, pushing past the painful burn of the rope as it dug into my wrist. I only managed to pull out two stones. She tried to do the same for me but couldn’t reach. A sharp scream came from somewhere inside the forest, and my breath quickened.
“Go, go, go,” Isabel said, almost like she was willing herself forward.