16

Out on a Limb

You could read all the scary stories you wanted (Lottica had read her fair share) and not come a within a light year of the fear she felt backed up on a dead end street against the iron fence of Cemetery Hill. It wasn't the vague terror of the unknown. It was the cold, heavy pit-of-the-stomach dread of what might come next. Heart racing, she wondered what the two caped men would do to her and Nick.

It was like finding yourself in one of those contrived Hollywood scenes where characters tiptoed, seemingly against all common sense, into range of the salivating alien beast or the demonic madman. The classic this-can't-be-happening-to-me syndrome was happening to her.

She knew she had to snap out of it and help come up with a plan, but her head felt compressed. She grew claustrophobic. Where had Nick gone? She was hot, her thinking muddled. She began to experience tunnel vision. Feeling she was on the verge of fainting, Lottica reached up to slap herself into some kind of action, and—thwuck!—she hit paper-mache: her ridiculous Headless Horseman pumpkin mask.

She tore the mask off and kicked it into the street where it rolled about thirty feet and landed facing them with the mischievous grin that Lottica herself had painted. She instantly felt her head clear, though her heart was still pumping furiously. She turned to Nick, who was eyeing her footwork with the pumpkin head and then took off his own mask, sticking it in his pillowcase.

"Nick, we need help."

"That pretty much sums it up. Any suggestions?"

"Let's go back to those houses," she said, motioning back up the street. "Tell them I'm sick, which is pretty much true. Ask to use their phone to call Grandfather Breima to come pick us up."

Nick nodded. "Okay, let's get your mask and try it."

They started away from the iron bars and stepped into the street just as a car with only its running lights on slowly turned the corner and headed towards them. Nick grabbed Lottica and pulled her behind the low guardrail barrier that marked the end of the street.

"I think it's them," he whispered, leading her farther along the cemetery fence and behind a tree that hung over the rusting wrought iron.

The car crawled down the dead end street. Even though it was raining, the windows were down on both the driver and passenger sides.

"Nick, we should make a run for it," Lottica urged.

"Let’s wait. They haven't seen us. They may just turn around."

And that seemed to be what they were going to do. The black sedan began to swing wide to turn around when Nick and Lottica heard a sharp crunch. The car stopped immediately. It backed up and then its high beams flashed on, revealing a glaring orange grin: the crushed remains of Lottica’s Headless Horseman's mask.

"Over the fence," Nick barked at his sister.

"How?" Lottica asked. The iron bars were eight feet high.

Nick patted the tree whose branches hung into the cemetery grounds. "You go up first. I'll hold your pillowcase."

The tree was slippery from the rain, but Lottica was agile. She'd taken gymnastics years before and, though she never got the hang of doing cartwheels, she'd gained a lot of confidence with her balance.

Nick gave her a boost and Lottica quickly scrambled to a thick branch that stretched across the cemetery fence. She saw the car's lights go off and heard the slamming of the doors. Climbing out on the branch, she swung around and dropped to the spongy wet mat of leaves covering the grass on the other side.

"Nick, hurry!" she called back through the iron bars.

Nick handed her their pillowcases through the fence and began climbing. He was taller than Lottica, but he had a harder time finding a purchase for his hands, and he was making a lot more noise. Lottica turned her attention to the caped men in front of the car holding up her mask. Just then she heard a heavy thunk. She turned expecting to find Nick on her side of the fence.

He wasn't.

He was flat on his back at the base of the tree outside the cemetery. And the two men, their capes whipping around in the light rain, were rushing directly for her brother.

"Get up, Nick. They're coming!"

He scrambled off the ground and barked. "Give me one of the pillowcases!" Lottica threw him one. He tightly grasped one end and swung the other end around in a large arc and then over the fleur-de-lys points of the iron bars closest to the trunk of the tree. The pillowcase lodged in the iron points and gave Nick a solid handhold. He hauled himself up the trunk to where he could get a decent foothold.

He was about to swing over into the cemetery when he heard a voice that seemed a surprising cross between his father and his grandfather.

"Come down, young Breima!" The heavily accented voice commanded.

Nick hesitated. The two caped men were about thirty feet from the tree. "Who are you?" he shouted, feeling emboldened.

The taller of the two men took a step forward. In response, he held out the glowing red stone on the chain around his neck. As if commanded, the shorter man sprinted towards Nick’s tree.

At the onrush, Nick tightened his grip, swung out on the limb, and dropped into the cemetery next to Lottica. He bounded up and grabbed her hand and the pillowcase next to her, ready to run.

But Lottica wouldn’t budge. "We gotta go!" he urged.

"We can't." She pointed back at the pillowcase Nick had used to leverage himself up the tree. It was solidly wrapped around the top of the iron bars.

And then Nick realized what had frozen her in place: from a rip in the pillowcase the brilliant blue of the Kareima radiated forth.

The two caped men saw it too and rushed forward.

Realizing he would not be tall enough to reach the gemstone, Nick dropped on all fours by the fence.

Lottica understood at once. She launched herself off Nick's back and seized the pillowcase. It tore as she pulled on it, and three things happened at once.

Nick buckled under her.

Lottica sprawled backward.

The Kareima shot through the air like a small star.

In unison, the caped men’s hands thrust through the iron bars straining to catch the arcing gemstone. Their eyes wide and greedy. Their gloved hands waving wildly.

Time did its standing-still thing.

Fate did its can’t-escape-me thing.

Lottica did her best home-run-robbing catch.

Flat on her back, she snatched the Kareima out of the air. Right out of the grasp of the caped men. She clutched the gemstone tight as Nick hurried to help her up.

The cape men banged against the iron bars cursing in incomprehensible Lebreiman, as the siblings dashed into the shadowy maze of headstones and tombs of Cemetery Hill.

As cold as her terror was, Lottica could already feel the heart-shaped Kareima tingling in her hands with its other-worldly warmth.