Page 126 of A Better World

“You can’t interfere!” someone shouted.

“The choice is made!” said another.

Keith advanced, his hooded face so shining black that it seemed like empty space. Russell shoved him, hard. But he was a rock. “This isn’t happening today,” Russell said. “You can pick other people. We’re leaving. We’re done.”

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Keith unsheathed a machete from a deep pocket along the sideof his costume. First handle, then steel pulled out from the black, as if by magic. Russell didn’t back down. “You don’t get to do this!” he growled, like a dog giving one last warning before it bites. Linda’d never seen him so angry, had never guessed he had it in him.

Then, Keith Parson lifted the knife. He slashed Russell Farmer-Bowen, age forty-two, of Plymouth Valley via Meredith, New Hampshire, and then Kings, New York, from throat to groin.

When terrible things happen, time goes excruciatingly still. You try to rewind it, even in the moment it has happened. You keep doing that, stretching seconds. A minute is a year, because in that time, you’ve lived so many alternate lives. Russell lay flopping on the ground like a fish, holding his insides to keep organs from falling out. Soon, he was still. The blood was enormous. It could have coated the entire auditorium.

She wanted to go to him. Keith blocked the way. He stood in the door, knife raised. She had no speeches to give. She had no cutting comments or insightful and dreadful parting gifts for the women of ActHollow. She had nothing.

“Is the murder of a nonparticipant allowed?” came a voice.

“The Beltane King acts as a conduit. It is not ours to question his discretion,” answered Jack with great glee. He was into this. In subsequent Winter Festivals, there would be more ornate sacrifices, she understood. This party would only get bigger.

Behind Keith, the crowd removed their robes. Naked, they took turns caking their feet in Russell’s blood, then embracing one another, indifferent to whom it was they held. They were bodies, twisted and kissing, coiled and indistinct. On the floor, Russell’s green eyes weren’t looking at her anymore. They never would again.

“May the sacrifice cleanse us,” voices murmured.

“One minute left,” Jack called. “Better run.”

The Labyrinth. They stumble-ran down the hall. Motion-sensor lights followed them, illuminating narrow rectangular pieces of their pathand then going dark again once they’d passed. They came to a crossroad. Panting, she hesitated. Josie and Hip stopped short.

From the direction they’d come, there was sudden cheering, and she imagined Keith Parson entering the Labyrinth. All three went left, passing Winter Festival adornments tacked to the walls—feathers and fur arranged in runic swirls.

Another crossroad. They ran straight this time, igniting more motion-sensor lights, giving Keith the jump on their route. Josie, the fastest, led the way, though none of them knew where they were going. The halls curved, led to a dead end. Scrambling, they doubled back, picked a different direction.

The walls moved. They were in one hallway, and as they ran, the crossroad it fed into changed. It was impossible to keep track of where they were coming from or going. Behind, footsteps. He was coming. He knew this place very well. Had been its murderous king for fifteen years.

They reached the center of the new crossroad, one they hadn’t seen before. “Here!” Hip whispered, placing his palm on a shallow cavity. A handle emerged, only it didn’t lead to an exit. It led back inside the belly of the shelter.

More panic. All alarms sounded inside her body.Deeper inside? Wasn’t that much worse?

“If we can find a way to the kitchen I know the exit,” Hip said.

That was all Josie needed. The two of them ran through, leaving her no choice but to follow. They found themselves in a candlelit room with a dirt floor. It was the same room as the candy skull and corn syrup cemetery from Samhain, only the furniture, obscured by decoration, was now revealed. A pew was pushed against the far wall, overlooking at least a hundred skulls. These were not fake. They were polished, with straight gleaming teeth. There were adult skulls, but, just as often, child-sized ones with soft and sometimes translucent sagittal sutures. They were human.

Along the back wall was that same massive altar, only the blood dripping down wasn’t candy. It was fresh, from a recently slaughtered goat. The air there smelled mineral rich, of calcium and salt.

“It’s this way!” Josie pointed to the tunnel on the left.

But Hip stopped. He nodded, and they saw. In rows between the pew and altar were wooden chairs, their seats and backs made of pink, brown, and black leather. These were soft and supple looking, some shaded with hints of down, some thick with short hair. Humans. This leather was human.

It takes a second after something like that. You need everyone to see it, to acknowledge it, so that you know you’re not going mad. And even then, what you’ve seen may be too hard to accept.

“The sacrificed who were killed running the Labyrinth. They skinned them,” Hip said.

Linda felt the blood withdraw along her scalp and groin, felt her skin go tight. This could be anyone. It could be them.

Hip ran his hand along the short strands of black seat-back hair from what had originally been a chest or arm. Along it was a stretched-out peace sign tattoo, which drove home to Linda that this really had once been a person, living and breathing, who’d shelled out a few bucks to the dude with the ink shop on the corner. The design hadn’t been so original, but maybe they’d just wanted to do it, for the sake of doing it.

There were scores of these skin-chairs… Was this the Fabric Collective’s secret back-room project?

“Oh God,” Josie said.

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