Page 39 of Dead End

She moved my hair out of the way, and I felt her settle. “Only the biggest celebration in the whole world. We celebrate the solstice of the new year with pies, cakes, brewing competitions, costumes, and dancing. It’s the night of the blood moon eclipse.”

“That’s what I don’t get.” I looked up at the moons overhead. “You don’t even have a sun, so how do you keep track of the new year?” It was something that’d been bothering me since we settled here. I was fairly savvy in the ways of science and understanding nature, but this had befuddled me from the start.

Jessica giggled. “You keep thinking like a mortal, Tobs, but that’s not how things work here. A year just means the end of one harvest cycle and the beginning of another. All of the crops here grow by moonlight.”

“But moonlight is just sunlight reflected off of the moon’s surface,” I said, still not getting it. My brain didn’t want to wrap itself around any of this.

“We have a sun, Toby, but it’s not the sun mortals have. Our sun is black, kind of like Michael’s dark fire. It’s right overhead; you just can’t see it. We don’t need much of it because our moons give us enough lunar light to feed our night-blooming crops.”

“You’re awfully smart for a spi—” I cleared my throat, “arachnid.”

“And you’re awfully curious for a mortal,” she quipped with a giggle.

She had me there. Mortals, apparently, were notorious for taking things at face value rather than working to find answers. I laughed, reaching up and patting Jessica on her little spider head. “I’m glad you’re here, you know.”

“Duh, who wouldn’t be?”

“I’m serious!” I shook my head. Sometimes she was really full of herself. “I’m glad I have you. You’re like a little conscience and encyclopedia in my ear.”

“You forgot to say intelligent, witty, and easy on the eyes.”

“Let’s not get too carried away.” I rolled my eyes.

We headed out of town, and I made sure to stay on the other side of the road when we passed the Killer Clown Motel. I shivered, remembering the way they’d chased us down the street. The fear in Jason’s eyes... I watched the motel, though, as I passed. The lights were on, but it only highlighted the wacky colors and the big light bulbs blinking around the sign. I vaguely remembered this place in the mortal world. It was an old Motel 6 converted into a church. There used to be a huge parking lot there and a chapel a little farther back. But I supposed a church had no place in a world like this, so it made sense.

Still, I wanted nothing to do with that place. I wondered if Payton lived there. Picturing the clowny cheerleader living in a creepy, dingy place like this didn’t feel right. She seemed too high-maintenance for a motel. I still didn’t understand what I ever did to piss her off or why she seemed to have some vendetta against mortals, but I’d gladly steer clear of her. Plus, I was getting sick of her muttering to me in riddles when we passed in the hall about how I was out to ruin her life. Like, dude, I just got here. If I was going to ruin her life, at least give me a couple of months to get my own life together.

We left town and headed farther down the street, passing the old gas station. There were a few cars parked under the pumps now and a couple people milling around, so it felt less like a horror movie than it did that first night. I thought a part of it was due to the shock of the bus accident and disorientation. Looking at this town through a new lens, it was actually quite charming. Well, to me, it was. I still didn't really know how the others felt about being stuck here. I knew I needed to have that talk with Maddie. She’d been so quiet about all this, and after finding out she was a real witch with actual magical powers, she probably had a lot of adjusting to do.

I thought we all had a lot of adjusting to do. I hadn’t even begun to delve into what it meant to be a necromancer. I get the shivers just thinking about it. I’d always had a sort of fascination with morbid things, but I never thought there was a legitimate reason for it. Thinking about raising the dead seemed like a taboo thing. In all the movies I’d ever watched, bringing the dead back to life was supposed to be a no-no. They say what you end up bringing back won't be the person you thought it was going to be.

But those were mortal rules. I wasn’t about to traipse around bringing zombies to life or anything, but I definitely needed to do some research and figure out just how far my powers could go and what my limits were.

We’d only been walking for about twenty minutes when I saw the graveyard up ahead. On the other side was that wooded area we’d hauled ass through on that first day. The darkness of the trees loomed in the distance, and I was suddenly thankful I didn’t have to cross that forest to get to the cemetery. I now had a name for it—The Hangry Forest.

I reached the tall, black wrought-iron gates and took a deep breath. The cemetery was huge, but it looked old and unkempt. The entire thing seemed to be built on a narrow hillside, which didn’t make any logical sense because normally, graves need to be level in order to prevent mudslides and tragic unearthings when earthquakes happen. But I suppose Jessica was right; I was thinking like a mortal yet again. I refused to try and make logical sense out of everything in this crazy town.

The gates squealed open and let me right in. I crossed under the archway that read Midnight Hollow Cemetery in twisting wrought iron. On either side of the entrance were two stone gargoyles, perched there to ward off anyone who came in with ill intent. For some reason, it made me feel just a little safer knowing those things were guarding this place.

It smelled like wet moss and tilled earth. My shoulders relaxed as I began to weave through the graves. Some of them were very well kept up and had flowers placed on top, while others were covered in spiderwebs, the stone chipped, and the inscriptions faded away with time. I headed in farther, catching on quickly to the fact that the newer graves were towards the back end of the graveyard. Keeping track of the years as they passed seemed to work relatively the same as in the mortal world, numbers-wise, but the months were off.

“This place always gives me the heebie jeebies,” Jessica whispered in my ear with a forced shiver.

I scoffed. “You’re a talking tarantula who lives in a Halloween town, and this place freaks you out?” I shook my head. “You’re so weird.”

“What? Dead things creep me out.”

“Why don’t you go wait for me at the entrance then?” I suggested, coming to a stop and surveying the graves. “I’ll try not to take too long.”

Jessica mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out, but she crawled down the length of my arm and hopped onto the ground. “Scream if you need me,” she said before scuttling away.

I continued to scan the headstones. A chill washed over my skin, and I pulled my cloak in tighter. There wasn't any sort of breeze tonight, and the branches of the trees weren’t swaying, so there wasn't really a reason I should be shivering. I looked around, feeling the hairs on my arm stand up. For a second, I got the sense that someone was watching me. I couldn’t shake it, and I didn’t think it was Jessica, either. I wondered if there might be a groundskeeper nearby or something.

Before I could think too much about it, a name caught my attention. Two names, actually. David Grimm and Mari Hallowell. Grimm? I didn’t understand as I hurried over to my parents’ headstones. Why was my dad listed as David Grimm? We were Hallowells. Well, I suppose so were my aunties. Which, now that I thought about it, didn’t make much sense. Why would my dad have the same last name as my aunties?

Wait a second. I remembered my aunties mentioning something about the Grimm necromancers, but I hadn’t put two and two together. Honestly, I’d never given it any thought. Was my dad’s last name really Grimm? I filed it away for later and made a mental note to ask the aunties about it.

The stones looked fairly new compared to the rest of the graves around them. Not yet cracked or faded. Their names were etched into it and filled in with metallic golden paint. October 31st, 2019 was listed below their names—the day they died. The day I watched them die I hadn’t even had the luxury of passing out while it happened, and the memory of it haunted me every night and day. Every time I closed my eyes, I could picture my mother’s terrified tears and the shocked look on my dad’s face in the rearview mirror. I heard their screams daily.

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