Page 111 of What Happens at Nightfall

They’d have to take a different route.

Adam knew this land, he knew every inch of it, every tombstone and tree, but the dark and the candles and the performers turned the familiar into something fantastical and terrible. In the dark, it was impossible to see faces. Adam could hear the rustle of Ingrid’s bustle as she hurried along behind them, Jess’s mother’s ragged breathing, Cal’s breathless commentary, and, always, throughout it all, Jess’s hand, warm in his, anchoring him as the dizzying celebration of death in life and life in dearth whirled around him.

They feinted around a group of skeletons playing lutes, edging past a crowd watching a silent film projected on the side of a mausoleum, and ducked underneath an aerialist performing contortions from a rope dangling between two poles.

Above them, the parrot flapped ahead, squawking back at them, “Avast! Avast!”

“I still don’t think that means what he thinks it means,” panted Jess.

Sycamore was blocked by a crowd watching Death of Classical perform “Quartet for the End of Time.” Adam skidded to a stop, trying not to panic, trying to figure out which way to go, when suddenly, impossibly, he saw a line of hyacinths blooming. It was the wrong season for hyacinths. He hadn’t planted any there. But there they were, pink and purple, shimmering faintly with their own uncanny light, marking the trail.

“We’ll have to take the Hyacinth Path,” said Adam, and felt like a puzzle piece had clicked into place. That was where they were always meant to be, where this had always been leading. The Hyacinth Girl on the Hyacinth Path.

Neither living nor dead. Knowing nothing. Staring into the heart of light.

They barreled down the slope, skidding and sliding, almost slamming right into the group of spectators gathered around the tomb. For a crazy moment, Adam wondered if he’d gotten it all wrong, if this was just another one of Allison’s set pieces.

But then he saw the fog seeping down the path. It wasn’t an effect created with dry ice. This fog oozed sulfur and damnation, tinged with the reek of roses past their prime, rotting and drooping, making the visitors pull back with cries of delighted disgust.

“The smell!” one exclaimed. “They really went the extra mile this year.”

“Excuse me. Coming through.” Adam shouldered a path through the mob.

“Adam—” Jess clutched the back of his fleece.

On her plinth, the reclining stone woman turned her head and stretched out the hand holding the garland to them, her marble lips forming a word. “Hurry.”

In the recesses on either side of the open door, the statues stirred, their marble mouths gaping in the same warning. “Hurry, hurry.”

“Hurry,” said Jess, giving him a shove in the back.

Light spilled out of the open doors of the mausoleum. Adam could see candles, banks and banks of candles, set in tiers on and around Cornelia’s sepulcher.

In front of them stood Ben.

He was wearing a long black robe that Adam recognized as part of Melinda’s Hermione Granger costume from three Halloweens ago. The hood had been pulled up to fall in folds around his face.

“Ben!” Adam shouted. “Ben!”

“Wow,” said Cal, sounding a little put out. “You really went all out.”

“This isn’t part of the show,” Adam said tensely.

A shadow rose in front of him, blurring the light. Adam watched in horror as the smoke took shape, swirling into the bowed legs and cleft hooves of a satyr, the bulbous features of a particularly unattractive garden gnome, and the proud horns of a card-carrying arch-demon.

Belfagor raised his hands and the copper door moved of its own accord. Adam bolted forward, trying to keep the door from closing, feeling like Samson holding up the temple, only he wasn’t a Samson; he was just a puny horticulturalist who had been doing more strategic work than actual digging these past few years.

“Ben!” he shouted, straining against the door. “Ben!”

Against the stark crimson and black of his hood, Ben’s face looked like a skull.

“Mom! The door!” he could hear Jess say, and the terrible strain lifted as Jess wedged her shoulder against the door. Adam was vaguely aware of Cal and Ingrid there, too, pushing the door open, inch by painful inch.

Released from his burden, Adam stumbled forward, only to be stopped by Belfagor, who rose into the air between Adam and Ben. He was wearing something that looked like harem pants, and a very jaunty fez between his horns. “So you want to watch, do you? Watch your son meet his destiny!”

His voice was everywhere and nowhere. It made Adam’s skin feel filthy, like he had just been swimming in a toxic lake.

“Um, Adam . . .”