The Ever After

Chapter Eighteen: A Deadly Mistake

MAY WATCHED MORE ANXIOUSLY NOW FOR tiny caves that might take them out to the beach again. She was starting to think that coming into the caves had been a deadly mistake.

Pumpkin took to whistling softly to pass the time and settle his nerves, and May kept having to remind him to stop. On the fifth or sixth time that he forgot and started whistling again, May came to an abrupt halt. She turned on Pumpkin with a stern gaze and, ignoring the tiny cold shocks that she was getting used to, she reached out with her free hand and physically closed his lips together. They felt like dried worms. May grimaced.

"Pumpkin," she said, "I really need you to be quiet."

Pumpkin stared at her, looking comical with his long eyes searching hers and her hand still on his mouth, his lips puffing through them like fish lips. "Muuvvt?" he slurred.

May scowled at him.

Puffffff.

With a sound like someone blowing out birthday candles, Pumpkin's face disappeared in blackness.

"The light!" May whispered, letting go of Pumpkin's lips. "It went out."

"Maybe I have something in my bag," Pumpkin offered. "Let's see," he whispered. "Food, water bottle, lucky silverstone . . ."

Ha ha ha.

May froze. A high, tinkly laugh had come from behind her. Pumpkin's teeth began to chatter. "What was-"

Hee hee hee.

This time the laugh came from in front of them.

Haa haaa heee hee haaa.

Laughing voices overlapped one another, climbing on top of one another and seeming to come from all different directions. The skulls on the walls began to shake.

May spun around in a circle.

"Maaaay," Pumpkin moaned. He sounded near tears. "What-"

HA!

The laugh was just beside her ear. May spun away. "Run!"

Dropping her pack with a crash, May started sprinting, and slammed right into a wall. A batch of skulls tumbled down, hitting her heavily on the shoulders and arms and legs.

May backed up and started running again. She could hear Pumpkin wheezing and groaning right behind her.

"Look for a tunnel out!" she cried. But her voice got lost. Hundreds of voices rang through the caves, laughing harder and harder-joyfully, delightedly.

May scraped against each wall as she ran. She didn't even know what direction they were going in now-they could be going back the way they'd come, which meant it would take hours to get outside again. May felt her legs start to give way. Her lungs pounded and squeezed against her ribs like an over-inflated balloon. She couldn't run much more.

And then she saw it. It was up ahead, so faint it could have been imaginary, the tiniest slip of dim dusky light. As she got closer, it became more defined: the jagged rock edges that marked the entrance, the gentle rise of the sand outside.

Ha!

She tore through the archway into the light, Pumpkin slamming into her from behind as she skidded to a halt. They emerged onto a tiny patch of beach, no bigger than a few feet across. And there, right at the tip of May's toes, was the oily, greedy water of the Dead Sea. Before she could back up, the water oozed forward, its tips stretching out and turning into long fingers of water that reached toward her. May sucked in her breath to scream, but a weight around her chest pushed it out of her in a whoosh. Suddenly she was being dragged back inside the caves, her feet making two long lines in the sand.

She only had a second to catch Pumpkin's black, terrified eyes before she was pulled into the darkness.