Page 124 of A Better World

John Parson took the stage. His voice was small and didn’t carry. He didn’t speak up; people quieted to hear. “It is not by luck alone that we persist. Every year, the gods demand a price.”

Linda felt something very cold inside her. A sleeping thing awoke.

“Around this ritual, we built Hollow. But I should say we discovered Hollow, because it has always been here, just as God has been, made incarnate through our caladrius. He is old, but soon he will be new.”

He sat down in a chair with wide arms and a tall back—a throne.

Jack, the new king, ascended the podium. He pressed his hand against the heavy stone door behind him, and nanoparticles coalesced into a handle. He opened it, and there was the Labyrinth.

“Every year, one of our children, and sometimes more than one, become sick from the very product that gives this community life. We ask our God to heal that sickness or accept its hosts as offering. Every year, we participate in a town-wide race, from which the slowest is culled. That slowest is offered up, to be renewed, or accepted as sacrifice. Every year, we participate in a challenge of strength. That champion acts as the executor of these tasks. And so it is, this year.”

Linda looked over to her family, and she could see their tight expressions.

“Our sick have been stolen. And so they must be replaced,” Jack said. “Our last was not last. There was one person who never completed the race.”

The faces in the crowd all turned.

PART VRun(The Labyrinth)

The Labyrinth

The leaders ofPlymouth Valley made a fifty-foot aisle that ended at the Farmer-Bowen family, a gauntlet of white robes.

“All things in Plymouth Valley are fair, and so the exits are unsealed. If the chosen make it out before the Beltane King catches them, they win,” Jack said. His eyes were narrowed in anger but his tiny-mouthed grin went wide. This was what happy Jack looked like. He hooked the arm of the small-hipped young woman beside him, who couldn’t have been older than fourteen. She was beautiful in a muted, childlike way.

Linda thought of the first time she’d met him, and the way he’d daintily stepped over so much trash.

Sally Claus pushed through the crowd and shoved Linda, hard. Lloyd Bennett, charming Lloyd Bennett with dimples that could melt any heart, spit on Linda’s cheek. It was hot and thick and stuck before sliding inside the neck of her robe.

The chatter grew. There were catcalls, and shouts, and laughter. Daniella threw a rock at Hip. “Creepy fucker!” she cried. “You didn’t deserve to pop her cherry.”

Heinrich charged, fist flying with a weak sucker punch that grazed Russell’s jaw.

Ruth Epstein, who’d recently declared herself God, slapped Josie in the back of the head, her ring catching Josie’s hair and snagging a lock from her scalp. Strong and distracted, Josie didn’t look back, just cupped her cranium from behind.

Hip watched this, and Linda could tell he was trying to figure outhow to stop it, though he’d been told his whole life not to lay hands on other people.

Nanny Jones, who’d wanted Russell’s job back in September, smashed their glass against Russell’s cheek and sliced a sideways letterCalong the fullness of his nose. He fell on his ass, hands bracing from behind, blood dripping. He got up slowly and caught the blood on his sleeve with dulled, drugged surprise.

They were driven like cattle. Josie tripped while climbing the steps to the podium. Hip, alert now, yanked her back up before someone could stomp her hand. Russell trailed them, pinching his nose and opening the wound even worse. Probably, he thought the blood was coming from inside. He didn’t know he’d been cut.

The robed mass converged. She saw white and she saw skin and she saw faces of rage as angry as Gal’s had been in the nightmare house. They were all like this, on the inside. From his corner chair, the forgotten titan John Parson hissed—

“SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!”

Then they were all hissing. The sound reverberated in Linda’s chest, and she had the sensation that these weren’t people anymore. They were something bigger and less human than that, with a soulless kind of intelligence.

The members of ActHollow met them at the Labyrinth entrance. Daniella stayed a little back and it occurred to Linda that on the day Mr. Scaley took that bullet for her, a part of Daniella had died along with him, trapped under the burden of so much mess. What persisted was the stunning shell, and the drive to survive.

Beside Daniella, as she had always been and would always be until it killed her, was Rachel. Throughout her time in PV, Linda had always felt that Rachel was different. She was honest with herself. Now, high on Glamp, her face was contorted in misdirected rage. As if her person had been erased, this expression made her look, at last, like everyone else. “You did this to yourself!” she screamed, her eyes wet with maniacal tears.

Finally, Anouk. She handed Linda, Josie, and Hip each a cluster of fresh sage wrapped in black ribbon. She didn’t appear insane, but shewas insane. The myriad contradictory thoughts, the cognitive dissonance, had reversed inside her like fish scales, cutting and slicing until what remained was a broken, bleeding, hollowed-out thing that spoke words without meaning, that parroted ideas, that walked and saw and heard but nonetheless was deaf and dumb and blind. She smiled at Linda like this was a regrettable, but nonetheless fitting and necessary, end to their friendship.

“Upon such sacrifices, my Linda, the gods themselves anoint. You’re so lucky!”

The Farmer-Bowens were at the door, just under the sign that read:BEWARE THE SACRIFICE. Russell trailed them, moving slowly up the steps, bewildered as he’d been that night she’d spied him through the keyhole, naked and vacant.

“SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!”

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