Underworld Read online

  A very unpleasant one.

  “This is a portal,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  “A what?”

  “A portal,” John whispered. “A direct link from here to the Underworld. That’s why you don’t feel dizzy this time.”

  I hadn’t even noticed, but he was right. I didn’t feel sick, for once, though we’d just jumped between astral planes.

  “This is a doorway through which the souls of the departed enter the world of the dead after they pass,” John explained softly. “The doorway closes behind the dead once they enter. They can never leave again —”

  “Unless they escape,” I interrupted. Because this was what had happened to me.

  He glanced down at me with a teasing smile. “Unless I choose to let them escape,” he said, “because they seem to want their mothers so badly.”

  “That was two years ago,” I reminded him. I shouldn’t have mentioned the thing that morning about being inexperienced with men, even if it was technically true. He was never going to let me help him if he always thought of me as someone he had to protect. “And do I have to remind you that you didn’t let me escape, I —”

  “Shhh.” He held up a hand. “Someone’s coming.”

  I looked past his shoulder as a family walked down the pathway along with Mr. Smith and some other people who were dressed in business attire and carrying clipboards. It was difficult to hear what they were saying, but not hard to imagine what they were discussing … a crypt. The people dressed in business attire were probably from a local funeral parlor.

  The family wore the somber, unhappy expressions of the newly bereaved. Someone they loved had passed away.

  Not far behind them followed a man in coveralls — obviously a groundskeeper who worked in the cemetery. He was pushing a wheelbarrow, in which he was collecting the many palm fronds that littered the path. The high winds of the approaching storm must have torn them from the trees in and around the cemetery.

  I remembered the hurricane for which we’d been dismissed early from school the day before. Was it still on its way? I had no way of knowing. From John’s crypt, I couldn’t quite see the sky, though the warm air certainly seemed oppressive enough for rain.

  I tried to concentrate on staying quiet, the way John had asked me to.

  This was hard to do, though, when I kept remembering the last time I’d stood amongst so many poinciana blossoms, the fiery red flowers beneath my feet. It had been the night I’d run into John in front of this very crypt, and been so convinced he was going to kiss me … only he hadn’t. I’d thought he’d hated me, until I’d learned the next morning from my cousin Alex that poinciana blossoms had turned up all along the walk in front of my mom’s house.

  There was only one person who could have put them there.

  Who could have guessed that less than a week later, I’d be inside that crypt with that person, going to search for Alex. It was incredible how much had changed. What was my mom going to say when she saw me? Would John let me introduce him? What had my grandmother told everyone about what had happened at school? Knowing her, it definitely wasn’t anything good.

  “What about Furies?” I whispered to John, suddenly fearful. “Can Furies use the portal?” I looked down to check my necklace — clear — and noticed for the first time that I wasn’t wearing my Snow White gown or slippers. Somehow I was back in the clothes I’d worn to school the day before, a black zip-front sundress along with a pair of metallic silver flats.

  Which was good, because running around Isla Huesos in a long white dress would not only have attracted too much attention, it would have been inconvenient, especially considering the temperature. Even inside the crypt, the air was as thick and as warm as soup. I could only imagine what it was like outside.

  “Furies escape the Underworld by finding weak-willed people to possess,” John whispered back. “Only the newly dead can use this portal. Or me. That’s why Mr. Smith had to start locking the grate. Too many people have seen me coming and going, and have gotten curious.”

  I looked around the small dark room — its walls were so old and ill-maintained, the roots of the enormous poinciana tree growing nearby had begun to push through — and tried to imagine anyone curious (or foolhardy) enough to follow John into it.

  “Can Mr. Graves and the others use it?” I asked, thinking of how Henry had said he’d never been to Isla Huesos.

  John shook his head.

  So it was another one of those things only death deities could do, like the ability to make birds come back to life, and create thunder at will.

  It didn’t seem fair.

  “Do you ever take them with you?” I asked. “Like me?”

  “I should have taken them this time instead of you,” he said. “Unlike you, they’re capable of grasping the meaning of the word quiet.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “You’ve seen them,” John said, with a grin. “If people notice me walking in and out of a crypt, what do you think they’re going to say about Henry, or Mr. Liu, or Frank? And you’ve heard Mr. Graves. He refuses to entertain the idea of any of them going.” He shifted into a fairly good imitation of the blind man. It wasn’t unkind, but it was accurate. “Isla Huesos is an island of sin. If the dead go unsorted, there will be nothing but pestilence.”

  I got the message. Still, I was concerned.

  “But wouldn’t they like some time off?” I asked. “Not Mr. Graves, maybe, but the others? We could do something about their clothes, the way you did your own.” I pointed to John’s black jeans, T-shirt, and tactical boots, which I was fairly certain he hadn’t acquired by strolling into the local menswear shop downtown with a credit card. “With so many people opting for homeschooling these days, it wouldn’t be hard to explain what Henry’s doing out of class. And I don’t think anyone would say much about Mr. Liu or Frank. Isla Huesos is a really popular stop with motorcycle clubs, and those two could completely pass for a couple of —”

  I broke off, realizing John was looking down at me with one eyebrow raised.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, his mouth twisted into another lopsided grin. “You just never run out of suggestions for how I could do my job better, do you?”

  “Well,” I said, flushing. “I’m only trying to help. Isn’t that what a consort is supposed —?”

  He held up a hand for silence, then listened.

  “I think they’re gone,” John said, nodding to the grate.

  “But how are we going to get out of here?” I asked. “We’re locked in. Do you want me to call Mr. Smith?” I pulled out my phone, which I’d been relieved to find in my book bag, hanging from my shoulder. “I’m sure he has the key —”

  John turned his head to give me a cynical look. Then he reached out and grasped the chain in both hands.

  “John,” I cried. “What are you —?”

  Then I remembered the night I’d stood in front of this very crypt and seen the shattered remains of a similar chain lying in front of it. Not severed by bolt cutters, but literally pulled apart, the way he was doing now. Because his leather coat had disappeared exactly the way my gown had, he had on only his jeans and the black T-shirt he’d thrown on that morning.

  So I got to witness firsthand how those metal links got broken. The muscles in his upper arms pumped to the size of grapefruits, and the fabric of the T-shirt tightened around them almost to tearing….

  Then the metal gave way with a musical twang, and the chain snaked noisily from the grate, falling to the rain-softened earth with a clunk.

  “By all means,” John said, brushing his hands together in a self-satisfied way, “let’s call Mr. Smith.”

  I ducked my head, hiding my blushing cheeks by pretending to be busy putting my cell phone back in my bag. Encouraging his occasional lapses into less than civilized behavior seemed like a bad idea, so I didn’t let on how extremely attractive I’d found what he’d just done.

&n
bsp; “You know,” I remarked coolly, “I’m already your girlfriend. You don’t have to show off your superhuman strength for me.”

  John looked as if he didn’t for one minute believe my disinterest. He opened the grate for me with a gentlemanly bow. “Let’s go find your cousin,” he said. “I’d like to be home in time for supper. Where’s the coffin?”

  “It’s at my mom’s house,” I said.

  “What?” That deflated his self-satisfaction like a pin through a balloon. He stood stock-still outside the door to his crypt, the word HAYDEN carved in bold capital letters above his head. “What’s it doing there?”

  “Seth Rector and his girlfriend and their friends asked me if they could build it in my mom’s garage,” I said. “They said it was the last place anyone would look.”

  John shook his head slowly. “Rector,” he said, grinding out the word. “I should have known.”

  I threw him a wide-eyed glance. “You know Seth Rector?”

  “Not Seth,” he said, darkly.

  “Wait. You know his dad?” The Rectors were an extremely influential family in Isla Huesos. Besides having the largest and most ornate mausoleum in the cemetery — it made John’s, which was fairly large, look like a kid’s playhouse — Seth’s father was a realtor and developer whose signs, Rector Realty, were plastered over the windows of every empty shop downtown. “What’s your connection to the Rectors?”

  “It’s a long story,” John said, the corners of his mouth tugged down as if he’d tasted something unpleasant. He turned around and started walking towards the cemetery gate. “Your mother’s house is only a few streets from here. We can walk without anyone noticing us if we stick to the side roads.”

  “You say that about everything,” I complained, trailing after him. “Everything is a long story, too long to tell me. I suppose after two hundred years, or whatever, things get a little convoluted, but can’t you paraphrase? How do you know the Rectors?”

  When we rounded the corner, it became apparent there wouldn’t be time for any stories at all, paraphrased or not. Not because the gray clouds that were hanging so threateningly overhead had burst open, the way I was half expecting them to, but because the family we’d seen earlier, along with Mr. Smith and the people holding the clipboards, were climbing into their various vehicles in the parking lot right in front of us.

  It shouldn’t have been a big deal. We were just an ordinary young couple, taking a late afternoon stroll through the cemetery.

  I’d forgotten that, due to the “vandalism” that had occurred there earlier in the week, the cemetery gates (which John had kicked apart in a fit of temper) had been ordered locked twenty-four hours a day by the chief of police.

  So it kind of was a big deal.

  Still, that didn’t explain why one of the women — the grandmother, if her gray hair was any indication — took one look at my face, made the sign of the cross, cried, “¡Dios mío!” then passed out cold right in front of us.

  Dead?” I echoed. “She fainted because she thinks I’m dead?”

  “Missing,” Mr. Smith corrected me. He sank down into the creaky chair behind his large desk and began to shuffle through some papers. “Presumed dead. Mrs. Ortega fainted because she thought you were a ghost.”

  John, who’d been leaning against one of the cemetery sexton’s many metal file cabinets, straightened upon hearing this, bristling. “Why do they think Pierce is dead?”

  Mr. Smith had known John for a long time, since dealing with the local death deity was one of the unwritten job responsibilities of the Isla Huesos Cemetery sexton. He’d gotten to know me only recently, however, and I couldn’t help feeling as if he didn’t care for me too much … or maybe it was that Mr. Smith didn’t approve of me, exactly.

  “Well, there’s already been one young woman brutally murdered in this cemetery in the past forty-eight hours,” Mr. Smith said, giving me a sour look as he pushed on the center of his gold-rimmed glasses. “A young woman who happened to be Pierce’s guidance counselor, Jade Ortega. Now another young woman has disappeared. It’s a small community, what do you expect people are going to think?”

  I was sitting in front of Mr. Smith’s desk. During all the commotion after Jade’s grandmother fainted, the cemetery sexton had smuggled John and me through the back door of the small cottage that served as the graveyard’s administrative offices.

  I was having a hard time processing the fact that it had been my former guidance counselor’s family — of all people — that we’d surprised in the cemetery. They’d been arranging a place in the Ortega family crypt for her.

  On the one hand, Mr. Smith was right — Isla Huesos was a small community, and Jade had died recently, so why wouldn’t we have run into her family in the cemetery?

  On the other hand, I didn’t understand why anyone would want to bury their daughter in the same cemetery in which she’d been murdered.

  Mr. Smith had explained that, as soon as Jade’s body was released from the coroner, her family wanted to place her remains close to where they lived, so they could “visit her often.” Jade had grown up in Isla Huesos, leaving it only to go away for college, after which she’d returned to work at Isla Huesos High School, so she could “give back to the community.”

  “She gave back to the community, all right,” I’d muttered. “With her life.”

  “I don’t suppose you can tell me where you’ve been.” Mr. Smith lowered his glasses to peer at us over the frames. “Although if it was one of those horrible cheap motels up the Keys, I don’t want to know, actually. It will destroy all my romantic illusions.”

  It was my turn to bristle. “Of course not!” I cried, feeling my cheeks turning red. “John took me to the Underworld, to escape the Furies.”

  Mr. Smith’s skin turned the opposite of mine … not red, but a shade or two lighter. He grew very still behind his desk.

  “The Underworld,” he repeated. “To escape the Furies. God help me.”

  “What did you think?” John hadn’t liked the motel remark anymore than I had, but it didn’t make him blush. He looked angry, his dark eyebrows furrowed, his mouth tightening to a thin line. I saw that muscle in his jaw begin to throb dangerously. Outside, thunder rumbled … but this could have been an approaching rain band from the hurricane that must, judging from the darkening sky, still have been on its way. “You saw firsthand what happened to Jade. Do you think I was going to stand by and let that — or worse — happen to Pierce?”

  Mr. Smith seemed to have trouble formulating his next sentence. “No, of course not. But I would have hoped — certainly, I can understand why, after what happened to Jade — and with Miss Oliviera’s uncle getting arrested — you were both upset … but you, John … I would think you’re old enough to know better.”

  John glanced at me. I looked back at him, concerned. I could tell John wanted desperately to stomp out of the cemetery sexton’s office, but I didn’t think that was the best idea. I wasn’t sure, but I thought Mr. Smith might have been close to having a stroke. He showed all the signs — incoherence of speech, staggered breath, sudden change in color.

  “Mr. Smith,” I said anxiously. “Could I get you a glass of water, or something?”

  “It’s just,” the cemetery sexton burst out, “this isn’t ancient Greece, John. You can’t simply whisk a girl off to the Underworld, and not expect there to be consequences.”

  The muscle in John’s jaw twitched some more. It was surprising to hear the word consequences from someone’s lips other than John’s. He used the word quite a lot, especially in reference to my behavior.

  “I’m aware of that, Mr. Smith,” he said.

  “I don’t think you are,” Mr. Smith said chidingly. “Because if you were, and you had to do it, as you claim — which I don’t believe you did, so I’m in no way condoning your behavior — you’d have shown a little more discretion, and the outcome wouldn’t be this.”

  Mr. Smith had found what he was looking for on his de
sk. He held up a copy of that day’s paper. Most of the front page was devoted to the storm, which was very definitely on its way.

  Mandatory evacuation for tourists, screamed the headline. Schools closed. Football game may be canceled.

  Underneath was a montage of color photographs of downtown business owners boarding up the plate glass windows of their restaurants and shops in preparation of the hurricane.

  I couldn’t see what any of that had to do with us. Probably he really was having a stroke.

  “Do you see it?” Mr. Smith demanded, tapping the paper.

  Farther down, in letters almost as large, was a headline about Jade’s murder. There was no photo of my uncle Chris, but I knew he was the “local man” who’d been picked up for questioning, thanks to a tip. Also that the “tip” had been an anonymous phone call that my uncle had been seen in the area around the time Jade was believed to have been killed, even though he’d been home, asleep. Uncle Chris had been released, but was still considered a suspect, in spite of the fact that there was no evidence whatsoever to connect him to the crime or to the victim. Some tip.

  “I’m sorry, no. I really don’t see what any of this —” I started to say.

  The cemetery sexton tapped the paper again, impatiently. “Here,” he said.

  I looked where he was tapping.

  Local Girl Missing, Feared Dead.

  Beneath it was a photo of me — my most recent school photo.

  “Oh, no.” My heart filling with dread, I took the paper from Mr. Smith’s hands. “Couldn’t they have found a better picture?”

  Mr. Smith looked at me sharply. “Miss Oliviera,” he said, his gray eyebrows lowered. “I realize it’s all the rage with you young people today to toss off flippant one-liners so you can get your own reality television shows. But I highly doubt MTV will be coming down to Isla Huesos to film you in the Underworld. So that can’t be all you have to say about this.”

  He was right, of course. Though I couldn’t say what I really wanted to, because John was in the room, and I didn’t want to make him feel worse than he already did.