“Holy shit!” Baz shrieked. The three of us were running with the rest of the villagers for the church. “What the hell was he saying, Poe?”
“The soul must burn,” I repeated.
“The hell does that mean?”
“The goat’s head.” Isabel gasped. “The Soul of Necuratul.”
There were more screams. The salt didn’t stop the dead. They’d eaten the bread. They had the power now, and they were coming.
“If we burn it, does this end?” Baz asked.
“Only one way to find out,” I said.
Isabel was the fastest. She bounded up the hill to the ancient church and had the door open in track-star time.
“Come on!” she yelled. I could hear the scuttling of those dead things coming through the village, could hear the screams of the old-timers who tried to fight them off without success. We reached the church and fell in along with some of the children. A few of the old-timers hurried after, but the whispering dark was bearing down on them. One of the old men from the bakery cried out as the dead showed their long, gleaming teeth and picked his bones clean. Two of the children struggled up the hill. Baz and I started for them, but we couldn’t reach them in time. That was when I thought I might lose it completely. We closed the door and sealed ourselves inside the gloomy church. Just us, a handful of kids, and Mariana’s mother against an army of the dead. They banged at the door again and again, and we backed away.
“Cut that shit out right now!” Baz yelled. It would have been funny if we weren’t completely terrified.
Mariana’s mother opened the door of the iconostasis and came back holding the goat’s head, which she handed to me. As we were yelling at her to burn it, she was trying to tell us something but we didn’t understand. The kids did, though. They ran around checking candles, and I realized we were all on the same page, at least. Mariana’s mother went to help them look, while Baz, Isabel, and I stayed up by the iconostasis. One of the kids let out a shout when he found a lighted candle. The banging got louder, and then there was a terrible crash, and the dead were inside.
The hollow-eyed girl stepped forward. She spoke in both her language and ours. “Give us the Soul. The debt must be canceled.”
Mariana’s mother shook her head at me, her eyes wide.
“If you burn it, we are damned forever,” the dead girl said.
The dead surrounded the living children. Mariana’s mother looked from them to the Soul of Necuratul in my hands. She shook her head again, and the message was clear: don’t give them anything, no matter what. But that meant giving up on the kids. I’d already seen two kids die and I wasn’t watching any more go down.
“Here. You want it, come get it.” I held out the goat’s head.
“Poe. Don’t do it, man,” Baz pleaded. “Don’t give it to the funky dead people.”
“We’re a part of that now,” Isabel cautioned. “Our hair is in those braids.”
“We’re part of this no matter what we do,” I said. “If they can end this, then let them.”
The hollow-eyed girl took the goat’s head in both hands. She had us follow her into the iconostasis, where she placed the head on the altar and spoke over it in hushed tones. Color flooded the faces of the dead, and the shadows under their eyes faded. And then, with small, contented sighs, many of them disappeared into thin wisps of smoke.
Suddenly the girl stopped speaking. She seemed afraid. She backed away just as the altar caught fire, and something rose from the flames. It was a huge man, more beautiful than anybody I’d ever seen, man or woman. He had long black hair, skin like marble, and wings like an angel, but his eyes were murky as the lake where we’d nearly been drowned. His lips stretched into a cruel smile; his teeth were sharp. And when I turned my head just slightly, he seemed to have the head of some beast with enormous curled horns on either side.
“The debt is paid!” the hollow-eyed girl insisted.
“The debt is never paid,” the angel-beast growled in a voice that felt like thousands of flies crawling across my skin. He towered over us. Flames licked at the golden walls. The murals dripped paint, and I could hear screams inside those paintings. The dead who still remained began to melt like wax, puddling on the floor and running through the church. The girl screamed, and that was enough for me.
“Run,” I croaked out. “Go!”
We bolted for the doors and pushed our way out into choking smoke. Every part of Necuratul was burning down. Suddenly the hollow-eyed girl was in front of us. I pulled up short. But she motioned for us to follow, and she led us to the forest. Behind us we could hear the beast shrieking. The fire was at our backs and getting closer, and I was afraid the whole forest would go up, trapping us.
