Many of the bodies wear the clothes they had on when they died. These Grownups did not dress like us. They all wear a one-piece outfit that is both pants and shirt together. The outfits are in different colors: orange, yellow, blue, red, some greens, and, once in a while, purple. Dark stains dot the fabric. Judging from the fact that those stains are darkest where an arm or a leg is missing, I realize most are from long-dried blood.
Some rooms have tangled bodies stacked so deep I can’t even guess how many lives the twisted limbs once represented. Other rooms don’t have full skeletons at all, only teetering piles of bones—arms and legs, severed before or after death, thrown together haphazardly like children’s toys.
One room makes me stop and stare, because there is nothing but skulls. They are neatly stacked into a shape I recognize—the same squat, stepped pyramids that were carved into my coffin.
The Grownups turned death into art.
I look at Aramovsky, wondering what he thinks of his angry gods now. The skulls frighten him, but also excite him. He finds all of this fascinating.
As we walk, as we look through open doors, things get worse: skeletons hanging from the ceiling by metal rings around their wrists and ankles; a room with nothing but the bones of a hundred left arms arranged in pinwheels of overlapped hands; a room where skeletons sit in chairs, facing each other, held in permanent poses by stiff, curling wires.
El-Saffani continues to walk ahead of us, but the twins don’t seem as brave anymore. They’re scared, just like me, just like Bishop, just like the rest of our group. I think we’re all waiting for the skeletons to move, to laugh, to rise up and come after us.
After a while, I try to stop myself from looking into the rooms full of mangled people, but every time I fail. I notice a pattern: a few of the shriveled dead still have dried skin on their faces. On those corpses, I can sometimes make out forehead symbols.
And every symbol I see, every last one, is an empty circle.
My symbol.
I stand closer to Bishop, close enough that I keep bumping against him as we walk. So many dead. So many bones—broken, blackened, shattered, sawed and chopped.
Why did the Grownups do this to each other?
Up ahead, the twins hesitate at an intersection. We catch up to them and I see why they stopped. My stomach flutters at the sight: two neat rows of footprints going both left and right.
“Bishop,” I say, pointing to the tracks, “did you cross over your own path on the way here?”
He scratches his cheek. A little of the dried gray dust flakes away. I shiver as I realize the dust covering the circle-stars is basically the same stuff as the dead bodies we’ve passed by.
“Yeah, I guess,” he says. “We turned around a few times. Maybe we walked the same halls more than once.”
Is he lost? Did we waste precious time coming here?
“Bishop, focus,” I say. “We need to find the haunted room. You said it had three pedestals and a ladder, remember?”
I’m hoping those details will jog his memory, but as he again scans the footprints and the hall, I don’t see a flicker of recognition.
He leans into an archway, looks around, leans back out. He seems confused.
“It’s close to here,” he says. “I’m pretty sure.”
Gaston steps forward.
“I know where the room is.”
He speaks quietly, as if he’s afraid that simple statement will somehow anger Bishop. Gaston’s eyes keep flicking toward Bishop’s bone-club. Maybe Gaston realizes—like I did—that we’re far away from the others, that Bishop and the circle-stars could find a way to make him vanish and no one would ever know.
Bishop stares down at the smaller boy. I brace myself for yet another argument.
This time, however, there isn’t one. Bishop sighs and nods.
“I really don’t remember,” he says. “Gaston should take over.”
Gaston lets out a held breath, sags as the tension leaves him.
“You got us most of the way, Bishop,” he says. For once, he’s not poking fun. I could be wrong, but I think he’s trying to make Bishop feel better about getting lost.
Gaston examines the footprints, thinking. He points down the dim hall that leads right.
“At the corner up there, we turn left. At the end of that hall we turn right.” He looks at me, speaks quietly. “On the way there, you’ll see four archways. I wouldn’t look in the third one if I were you.” He shifts his gaze to Aramovsky. “Both of you…just don’t look.”
I see Bishop shudder. The twins stare at the ground. Visca and Bawden drift close to each other, so close their shoulders touch, as if the memory of what they saw drives them to seek comfort.
Whatever waits in that room, it must be beyond anything we have seen so far. How it could be worse, I can’t imagine.
Bishop nods. “Gaston is right. I remember what’s in there. You don’t want to see it. El-Saffani, lead the way.”
The twins head down the hall. We follow. We turn left.
Bishop is giving orders now? Maybe he does want to take over. I’ll need to be careful and pay attention to everything he does.
We pass four archway doors. At the third one, I think of following Gaston’s advice and keeping my eyes straight ahead. No, I don’t have the luxury of ignoring things. I am the leader: I need to know everything that we face.
I look in.