His skin split over his swollen flesh and he started furiously scratching himself with newly-clawed paws, tearing his clothing and pale skin away to reveal mottled, moist scales beneath. He threw the last rags of his captain’s costume aside and crouched naked on muscular frog’s legs, croaking hoarsely at her.
The awful sight of Hubert’s transformation sent adrenaline surging through Millie’s blood, and that broke the spell of the eldritch choir. She stepped away from the hopping abomination that Hubert had become and looked all around her, again seeking escape when she knew there was none. All the other kids were turning into monstrous fish-frogs. Everybody changing into something mythical and terrifying. Everyone but her.
The sane, calm part of her mind made note that while the dark part of her mind had long dreamed of being able to become something feared and respected, something that could send all the kids who’d ever bullied her and all the adults who’d ever belittled her screaming for the safety of locked doors … she most certainly did not want to become one of these god-awful things. They stank. Sweet lord, they stank like fish and vomit and blood. And one look in their bulging eyes and she just knew that they weren’t in control of their own minds. They were slaves to Father Dagon.
If Millie ever became a monster, she wanted it to be on her own terms.
“Children, rejoice!” The leader of the choir shouted over the abominable song. “You are remade in your Father’s image, and now you shall meet him!”
Two of the men from the alcoves pulled open the huge metal barn doors, and suddenly the grotto was filled with the smell of seawater and the sound of crashing surf. Immediately, the gibbering, baying, croaking fish-frogs swarmed toward the water, and Millie was carried along with them. She managed to take a deep breath right before they all plunged into the dark, surging waves.
Immediately, she lost her gorgeous red wig amongst the thrashing, splashing limbs. Millie had never been a fast swimmer, but she had always been a strong one. It was hard to swim in her boots and poofy-sleeved shirt, hard to keep her head above water with the brass sword weighing her down in the croaking throng surging out to sea, but she did it.
The throng thinned, and Millie distantly glimpsed the sweeping spotlight in the lighthouse, which she remembered the bus passing. That way was town, and her parents’ house. Safety.
She started to awkwardly breast-stroke toward the lighthouse, but something grabbed the hem of her blouse. Hubert’s awful croaking face loomed beside hers, his bulging eyes gleaming with mindless hunger.
Millie shrieked and scrabbled her pirate’s cutlass out of its scabbard and jabbed it at him. She felt the blade sink into something soft. Hubert let out an inhuman barking cry and released her. She gave the sword another shove and let it go, too, splashing away as fast as she could.
He didn’t follow.
Millie staggered to shore on the rocky beach a few hundred yards north of the mansion. Her arms and legs were numb with cold. She was so exhausted she wanted to lie down and sleep, but she knew she couldn’t. The people from the mansion could find her here, and she wasn’t convinced that some of the fish-frogs wouldn’t track her down. Besides, she’d learned about hypothermia in Girl Scouts, and if she didn’t keep moving she might get so cold she’d die. She sat down on a rock to pour the seawater out of her boots and wring out her socks as best she could. Her feet were wrinkled from her swim, and she had no doubt they’d be covered in the worst blisters she’d ever had by the time she got home.
The compass had stayed in her back pocket, and when she pulled it out, she was surprised to find that it had been waterproofed and still worked fine. She put her damp socks and boots back on and kept going down the beach, hoping that the rocky cliffs would end soon so she could get back onto the highway like her mother had told her.
“Like my mother told me,” she repeated aloud to herself.
The sudden shock of realization made her stop and stand very still, shivering. Her mother had known this was going to happen. Maybe not exactly what had happened, but she knew something bad would happen. Why had she sent her to the party if she knew? Had her own mother betrayed her? Millie felt a new surge of terror and anger. If her mother was in on this, could she still go home?
But no. She shook her head, scolding herself. Her mom loved her. She did. She’d given Millie a real sword! And a flask so she wouldn’t have to drink the hateful Cosmic Cola. She’d given her the tools she needed to escape. Millie couldn’t understand why her mom would send her into the mouth of horror when her entire life she’d kept Millie away from anything and everything that seemed even slightly dangerous. But, she had … and Millie figured her mother had some explaining to do. At least.
Further, even if Millie did want to run away, where could she go? She didn’t know how to contact any of her other relatives, and she didn’t have any money for a bus or even for a pay phone. Millie had seen enough thrillers to suspect a conspiracy, and she didn’t know who could be trusted. If she couldn’t trust her own mom, she certainly couldn’t trust neighbors or teachers she’d only known for a few months, could she? There wasn’t much choice except to go home.
Shivering in the fitful wind, Millie plodded along the dark beach, eyes downcast, until she smelled burning gasoline and glimpsed the flicker of flames in her peripheral vision. She looked up. The Cosmic Cola bus had crashed over the guardrail onto its side and was burning. The whole thing was engulfed. Two firetrucks were vainly trying to put the flames out, and the local news van was filming a reporter a safe distance away.
This was how they were going to explain the kids’ disappearance, she realized. A big tragic bus crash that people would forget in a decade or two. Probably if she looked in the town records, she’d find that some other terrible accident had befallen the kids picked for the big Devil’s Night party thirty years before.
Left with no doubt whatsoever that this was a conspiracy, Millie crept onward, making sure that she wouldn’t be seen as she passed the crash.
She finally made it back to her parents’ house in the early grey dawn when the sun was just a rumor below the horizon. Exhaustion had dissolved her rage and terror into a disbelieving numbness. Her mother was sitting on the front steps, dozing against a porch pillar, one of the jack-o-lanterns she’d helped Millie carve sitting in her lap. Its candle had gone out. A wine glass and an empty bottle of merlot lay on the white-washed wooden planks beside her.
Millie shrugged off the blanket she’d pilfered from a beach house clothesline and shook her mother’s shoulder. “Mom.”
Mrs. Gibbs woke with a start, looked around, and then pressed a finger to her lips. Her eyes were very red, as if she’d been crying a long time that night. “We have to be quiet. If anyone knows you’re alive, they’ll come after you again. I won’t be able to do anything. I’m so sorry about all of this, honey.”
“What the hell is going on?” Millie whispered, then flinched, expecting her mother to scold her for using a swear word.
But her mother didn’t even seem to notice. “There’s a cult here, and it’s real, and Steve was a part of it long before I met him. And now we’re all sucked in. I’m so sorry.”
Millie felt her anger rise again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”