Best-case scenario: Frank Goolz and his daughters were walking around the old cemetery looking at things with his funny goggles. Worst-case scenario: they were running through the woods to escape a madman with a plank of wood or a decomposing ghost with a thing for crabs. And I was on my way to join them, armed only with a yellow raincoat and a pack of cigarettes. No phone. No flashlight. No revolver. No goggles.
“I hope Madame Valentin likes to smoke,” I said to myself as I approached the old cemetery. I struggled to roll between graves to reach the church and knocked on the wall above the hole Suzie had created to get in.
“Ilona? Suzie? Are you in there?”
Something moved inside. I knocked again and a large white shape flew off the tower. I had scared off an owl. It flew down toward the trees around the Hewitt grounds. The dogs were unusually silent. I didn’t like not hearing them barking. It reminded me of the night Suzie had used the Stone inside the church. It reminded me of all the horrific sightings of Madame Valentin.
I moved away from the church, crossed the cemetery, and got back on the road, then stopped to listen, doing my best to ignore my fear. Nothing moved. Nothing attacked. Nothing howled at me from the darkness.
“Thank you,” I muttered in case the ghost of Madame Valentin was listening. “I’ll ignore you and you won’t eat my face. Deal?”
I went to the top of the hill and looked down at the thick patch of trees. I was starting to think I’d never find them when a blue light cut through the darkness.
“Oh, thank God,” I said. I blessed the sight of Frank Goolz’s silly goggles. He was down there, and he and the girls were probably fine. I thought of going down to meet them, even though I knew it could be a oneway trip for me, as it was way too steep to come back up without help. But then a dog barked. I froze. Others joined in, yapping angrily. The two tiny dots of the goggles turned toward me. I waved. I must have been easy to see, in my bright yellow. The blue dots moved away from me and emerged from the woods—but not on Frank Goolz, on a huge bearded creature, holding three dogs on leashes in one hand and brandishing a plank of wood with the other. The dogs went wild as they approached, and the creature lifted the goggles off its face to take a better look at me. It was Hewitt. He must have taken the goggles from Frank Goolz. Which meant that wherever Frank Goolz was, it wasn’t a good place. And Suzie and Ilona were with him.
“Oh, cheese!” I yelped, spinning around to find an escape. “Oh, cheese, oh, cheese, oh, cheese!” I repeated, going as fast as I could toward the cemetery. I could hear the dogs barking and closing in. If Old Hewitt let go of the leash, I was done.
“Cheese, cheese, cheese!” I headed for the church. Love sucks, I thought as I slammed against the wall. I pushed myself off the chair, dropped onto the ground, and crawled into the hole like a mole on steroids. I wiped tears of fear out of my eyes and rolled over to pull my legs in after me. The dogs’ noses poked excitedly into the hole, fighting to get in first. They yapped and barked as they scratched at the ground, digging to make the hole larger.
“Get, get, get!” Jonas Hewitt encouraged them. I grabbed the jagged edge of the wooden floor and pulled myself up and in, scratching and tearing the skin on my stomach. I rolled onto my back.
“I’m dead,” I said. Old Hewitt banged on the walls and howled. The dogs scratched the ground and barked. I tried to keep breathing as I grabbed a bench and struggled to push it over the hole. It only half covered it. It wouldn’t keep them out for long. I crawled away from the hole and went for Alex’s gun. I’d never fired a BB gun in my life. BBs would probably be like mosquito bites to dogs this size. I held it tight to my chest. I could hear the dogs snarling ravenously as they tried to tunnel into the church.
“GET! GET! GET!” Old Hewitt yelled. As far as I was concerned, I was pretty much gotten.
The bench I’d pushed over the hole shifted. It made little jumps as the dogs pushed against it. I pointed the BB gun and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. I’d had recurring nightmares about being eaten by sharks that felt more comfortable than this. I held the BB gun by the barrel, thinking maybe I could use it as a bat against the first dog that came through the hole.
Old Hewitt threw something against the wall. From the sound of it, I knew it was my wheelchair. “I’m not weak like my boy. When I get you, I’ll get you for good!” he shouted.
There was a plastic box glued to the butt of the gun. I opened it and BBs cascaded to the floor. I gathered them quickly, but now I had to figure out how to load them before the dogs got inside.
Outside, Old Hewitt started cursing at his dogs. I found a switch on the BB gun, pressed it, and cranked open the barrel. I tried to place a BB, but it fell on the floor because my hands were shaking so much. I finally managed to put one in place and push back the barrel. The dogs kept trying to twist their huge bodies through the hole. It was probably the first time in dog-attack history that the dogs were too big to do the job.
“Please help me,” I said, holding the gun tightly against my chest.
“I’m going to kill you people, you hear!” Old Hewitt yelled, slamming his plank again and again against the wall.
“I hear,” I whispered. The dogs had finally abandoned the hole and begun barking and scratching at the walls around the church. I heard Old Hewitt hammering at the chains and padlock at the main door.
My heart was trying to burst through my chest like a wild animal. I heard something move up by the ceiling. I looked up. A huge white owl peered down at me.
“If you stay around, you’re going to see a real nice massacre,” I told the owl. It seemed to nod. “Why don’t you fly away like your mate? At least you can do that.”
You’ll have to learn to fly first. That was what Ilona had told me. I looked up at the owl, at the beam it was standing on, at the nest beside it.
There was something on the wall next to the nest: a trace, like a dark footprint, visible in a ray of moonlight. “You’ll have to learn to fly first!” I shouted. “Sorry, owl.” I aimed the gun, then took my chances and fired. The owl flew away. I missed the nest. I picked up one of the BBs that had fallen on the floor and reloaded the gun. This time I hit the nest, but it didn’t budge. It was hopeless even if my theory was right. I reloaded the gun as the door started to crack under Old Hewitt’s attack. I shot and hit the nest again. This time it moved a little. I searched the floor for another BB. Old Hewitt was kicking the door with all his might, and with each strike there were signs that he was almost in. The dogs knew it. They had stopped barking and were whining expectantly, ready to charge inside.
“We’re gonna do you like we did that old witch!” Old Hewitt screamed, slamming his body against the door.
My finger found a BB on the floor. I put it into the barrel. Aimed.
“Please,” I said, and shot. I hit the nest, but it barely moved.
“Crap, Ilona! Next time bury it!” I yelled. I thought it was the end of me, but the nest disagreed. A piece of it fell off. The rest stayed put, but it had gotten knocked off balance. A moment later the whole thing crashed to the floor with a THUD. I threw the gun aside and scrambled to the fallen nest like my life depended on it. And there it was. The Stone of the Dead.
I grabbed it and started turning the dials, praying for something to happen. The chain and the padlock were still holding the door. It had come open partway, but not enough to let them in. The dogs took turns poking their noses in. It sounded like they were barking my name.
“You’re done getting into other people’s business,” Old Hewitt said, sliding the plank into the gap. He was using it as a lever to break the chain. I kept turning the dials on the Stone, crawling away from the door on my elbows as fast as I could. I reached the altar. There was nowhere else to go. The chain broke. The door flew open. The dials clicked. The Stone was jammed.
I looked up, bracing for an attack. But there were no dogs. Just reality rapidly expanding all around me. And then POP! The universe exploded in a maelstrom of light and sound. I closed my eyes. I heard Old Hewitt scream as loud as Peter had. The dogs yelped. And then there was silence.
The door was open wide, but I was alone inside the church, pressed against the wall by the altar, the Stone in my hand.
I knew something had changed. I felt it. This wasn’t the reality I was used to. Even the feel of the air was different—colder, emptier, as if the church had moved outside the normal atmosphere and was drifting in space.
The light around me was too bright, even for a night with a huge full moon outside. The shadows of the benches went in the wrong direction, deep black lines toward the wide-open door. I looked up and saw a circle of white light right above me. Then, clutching the Stone desperately, I stood up. It seemed completely natural, like I had never been in a wheelchair. I was on my legs and it felt like something I did all the time. I could have walked out of the church. I decided to run. Not out of fear, out of pure joy. I was going as fast as I could when I jumped off the porch and landed on the cemetery grass.
“This is awesome!” I yelled. And then I saw the dogs. They were lying silently on their sides right outside the church. They didn’t move. They didn’t bark. They didn’t even breathe. One second they were barking and yapping, ready to get me, and the next, they were lying there like three pelts of cold black fur.
Old Hewitt was nowhere to be seen. But I didn’t want to stay around, in case he came back asking who killed his dogs. I had the feeling that losing the Stone would mean losing the use of my legs again, so I held it tight as I walked down the hill toward the Hewitt place. I was sure that’s where I would find the Goolz.