The railing was very cold, and slick from condensation. The air grew colder and damper and the music got louder as they went down, down at least three stories into the earth. She was glad for the cover of her vest. The widely spiraling stairs were at first lit with electric lights, but those changed to guttering, Medieval-looking torches in iron sconces.
“Mind the open flames!” Zatanna called up over the music. “Don’t get burned!”
Just as the music switched to Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like The Wolf,” the stairs opened up into a big natural cave whose walls were strung with white-and-orange string lights. Along the left side was a big buffet line with a half-dozen pizzas from DiLouie’s in white cardboard boxes and few steel banquet serving bins atop flickering Sterno cans. At the end of the long table beyond the food were plastic tubs of different flavors of Cosmic Colas on ice. There wasn’t even any water. Millie was glad she brought her flask.
On the right side of the cave were some big heavy steel barn doors which had either corroded or were painted a rust brown. A bit of water puddled beneath them, and Millie wondered where they led.
The side of the cave directly opposite the stairs held a raised stage with a few big speakers and some sound equipment but no instruments. A DJ in a black turtleneck and jeans and a pair of huge headphones sat at a sound panel with a couple of turntables and reel-to-reel deck beside the stage. He gave her a little wave when he noticed her staring at him, and that made her flush with embarrassment and look away. And when she looked away, she noticed four other men—Chaperones? Security guards?—standing quietly in alcoves carved into the limestone walls. They were also dressed in black, and at first glance she thought they were statues or decorative dummies, but then one scratched his nose.
“Dig in, kids!” Zatanna shouted over the booming music. “Our very special musical guest will be out in a little while!”
The seventh graders swarmed to the food line, chattering and pogoing with excitement as they flopped pizza onto paper plates with greasy fingers. The other kids had gotten increasingly rambunctious as they’d drunk more soda and eaten more sweets, and the louder they all got, the more Millie lost her appetite and wished she could be someplace that wasn’t so noisy. And that frustrated her. She was finally someplace cool with the cool kids; why couldn’t she enjoy it? Why couldn’t she just join in like everybody else?
Was this what getting old was like? To feel isolated in the middle of huge crowd and want to be someplace quiet? To feel oppressed rather than privileged to be in the middle of something everybody said was cool?
The DJ cued up Madonna’s “Holiday” and a bunch of the kids started dancing, Cosmic Cola cans sloshing in their hands.
“You should get some pizza!” Hubert yelled at her elbow.
She turned toward him, startled. His eyes were glassy, and he had an enormous grin on his sweaty, flushed face. He gripped what had to be his third or fourth Cosmic Cola of the evening.
“I will,” she yelled back. “In a minute or two!”
“Okay,” he replied. “I’m not trying to boss you. It’s just you should enjoy yourself! You earned it!”
I should, she thought. I should stop being a stick in the mud and get some pizza, at least.
Just as she made her way to the back of the buffet line, she saw a group of men and women in strange hooded robes come down the stairs in single file. Startled kids stopped dancing and let them pass as they made their way to the stage. When the last hooded figure—the thirteenth—had emerged from the stairway, two of the silent men in black suits pulled an iron gate Millie hadn’t noticed over the entry to the stairs and chained it shut. The girl’s stomach dropped and she lost any and all interest in pizza.
The DJ stopped the music and turned on the stage lights. Zatanna stepped up and approached the microphone.
“And here’s our special musical guests tonight, direct from Innsmouth,” she announced. “The Esoteric Order of Dagon Choir! Let’s all give them a hand!”
Some of the new blood kids started golf-clapping uncertainly, but Hubert and the other old blood kids started cheering and whistling and stomping their feet and chanting like they were at a football game: “FAA-ther DAA-gon! FAA-ther DAA-gon!”
Millie blinked, feeling profoundly confused and unsettled. This didn’t make any sense. Was Father Dagon the lead singer? Or was it the name of a song? What was going on here?
Zatanna hopped offstage. The leader of the group pushed his hood back and stepped regally to the microphone. The old, thin, white-bearded man scanned the crowd of kids. He wore a strange golden crown that was all high, asymmetrical spires in front with some coralline flourishes around the headband. It both looked like something someone found at the bottom of the sea and something she’d expect to see floating in outer space.
“You are the Chosen,” he intoned into the microphone. “You are the Promised. You are the Honored. Tonight you ascend as you descend, and the gift of your lives ensures that Father Dagon smiles kindly upon your families and communities for the next generation. Those of you whose families are outsiders, rejoice! From this night forward, your sacrifice ensures that your bloodlines flow with ours. Your kin will be joined with the host, and you will all be profoundly blessed.”
Millie felt her heart flutter in her chest and she took a step back, bumping into Hubert. The gift of their lives? Sacrifice?
“Father Dagon, take me first!” Hubert screamed behind her.
Millie frantically looked around for some other exit, or a place to hide, but there was none. Just the heavy metal barn doors that led someplace dark and watery, and the chained gate to the stairs.
The man with the crown took a deep breath, as did the twelve choir members behind him, and they began to sing. It was loud, like opera, but there was no melody and the voices of the chorus ground against each other like glass in disharmony. Millie whole body broke out in goosebumps and her heart pounded in her chest and she plugged her fingers in her ears, but there was no getting away from this strange, horrible, atonal music, no way to keep it from pounding into her skull like hurricane waves smashing against the beach, no way to keep from feeling like someone was reaching inside her skull and twisting her brains until up was down and down was up, and it was all so terrible that she just wanted to laugh and laugh and never stop ….
And the other children around her were laughing, laughing ‘til they shrieked, laughing ‘til they vomited up pizza and sweets and Cosmic Cola. The still-sane part of Millie’s mind noticed that Zatanna and the men had gotten out hard-shelled ear muffs like her stepfather wore when he went to the gun range. And they just stood there on the margins, wearing their ear protection, impassively watching and waiting … for what?
Hubert finished puking behind her and gasped, “It’s happening! It’s happening! Praise Father Dagon, I am Becoming!”
She turned. The boy’s whole head was swelling up like a grotesque balloon, his eyes bulging, his mouth widening impossibly. His back and shoulders hunched spasmodically, and she heard the crack of breaking bone. He yawned, making a terrible retching sound, and Millie watched in horror as his crooked white incisors, bicuspids and molars popped bloodily from his jaw, jumping free like popcorn kernels, only to be followed by the sharp grey irregular jags of brand-new teeth erupting through his raw gums, teeth like a shark’s or a barracuda’s. His eyes had bulged so much she was sure they’d pop right out of his head, the whites turning black, his blue irises turning a mottled golden like a frog’s.