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“John, what are you doing, man?” Baz growled.
“S-sorry, cuz,” he stammered.
“John,” Baz said again, but that was all.
Mariana glanced from John to us and back again. “You would be willing to leave your friends, your own cousin, to their fates?”
John wouldn’t look at us. “Don’t hurt Isabel.”
“John…” Isabel started and stopped.
“The breakdown of civilization, the end of the tribe. No loyalty,” Vasul said. “This is what the world is.”
“At the club where I work, there are so many bored, rich kids. Totally entitled. Always looking for that next thrill to talk about over beers. Just like this one,” Dovka sneered.
“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” John choked out.
Mariana thought for a minute. “Very well. You can be part of our new tradition.”
“Whatever you want. I’ll do it.”
“I am glad to hear it.” She jerked her head, and Dovka drew a razor from her pocket and moved so fast I could barely register what was happening. I hope it was the same for John. Isabel shrieked John’s name, and the next thing I knew, John was on the ground, lifeless, and the rest of them were spattered with blood.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Baz keened. He closed his eyes and started a prayer in Hebrew, even though I knew he hadn’t been to temple since his bar mitzvah. This was the kind of fear that made you pretend there was a god to save you. The kind that brought everything into such sharp relief that you could watch a friend die and still hear a mouse scuttling in the corner, the wind whistling against the side of the church.
Isabel had gone silent.
Mariana put her hand on John’s head. “We offer not only our loyalty but this blood as well, O lord, as a promise of our fidelity. From now on we will always make such an offering. It is a new world and that calls for new commitment.”
The kids huddled together. They looked scared. Dovka spoke soothingly to them and they calmed. She had them wind our hair into the braids on the goat’s head and they did it without question. Dovka said something in Necuratuli. “To prove our loyalty,” she translated, looking at us.
Mariana opened the ancient rites book and began to read in a tongue that demanded attention, a language that spoke to your bones, made your heart beat faster, whispered to all those places inside that hide our worst thoughts, our most terrible fears. It was a calling-up, a calling-out. A naming. When she was finished, she closed the book and forced us to our feet. The kids had finished their grisly task, and Mariana’s crew tied Baz, Isabel, and me together. Our hands were fastened to the point of pain. Another rope was tightened around our waists and Dovka held the slack. Vasul and the other guys carried John’s body on their shoulders like pallbearers.
Just then the door to the church banged open. The old-timers blocked the exit with their shovels and lanterns. Mariana’s mother spoke sharply to her daughter, and Mariana answered in English.
“We won’t stop, Baba. This is the future. In the hundred and thirty years since the village stopped the sacrifice, things have only gotten worse. It’s time to start again. Our generation will have everything.”
The tavern keeper grabbed hold of Mariana’s wrist, but she broke his grip easily. “Uncle Sada, you can’t stop us. You should thank us, instead. We are saving the village,” Mariana insisted.
“You will curse us all,” he answered back in English, surprising me.
The old-timers rushed them then, but there weren’t enough of them, and they weren’t strong enough to stop what was happening. The younger ones held them back easily. “Now we go to the lake,” Mariana said.
The group pushed us through the village, the old-timers following, pleading. We left them standing on the other side of the wall. They looked worried, like parents sending their kids off to prom instead of cold-blooded ritualistic murder.
Dovka pulled us after her into the forest. If we slowed, she gave the rope around our waists a sharp tug, and we’d stumble into one another. Fighting back was out of the question. The night was warm and oppressive. It pushed its hands against our lungs, made us sweat as we trudged through the forest in a clump. Somebody started singing. The Stones. “Sympathy for the Devil.”
“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name…”
There were a few giggles, like this was a fraternity prank, a bunch of kids on their way to outsmart their friends in some goofy one-upmanship. I even tried to tell myself that—anything to rationalize what was happening. But then I’d remember the razor at John’s throat, and the terror would come over me again. The singing got louder, and Vasul shushed them. John’s lifeless body was slung over Vasul’s shoulder. We carried on in silence, the lanterns lighting the way. The lake with its top hat of fog came into view. Dovka stuffed our pockets and shirts with heavy stones and pushed us into the cold, black water.
“Go out farther,” Mariana called, holding a gun on us. We stumbled backward until only our heads were visible. “That’s good. Now we wait.”
“I’ll n-never sit in the student union studying,” Isabel stammered through tears. “Never go to a frat party or date an Irish boy named Declan.”
“Guys named Declan are all ass**les,” I tried to joke, but it came out hollow.
Baz had stopped praying. In the four years we’d been friends, he’d never been so quiet, so still.
