The Marauders Contract
We stood in the shadows of Valencia Boulevard, looking up at gold letters etched in black marble: DOA RECORDING STUDIOS.
Underneath, stenciled on the glass doors: NO SOLICI-TORS. NO LOITERING. NO LIVING.
It was almost midnight, but the lobby was brightly lit and full of people.
Behind the security desk sat a tough-looking guard with sunglasses and an earpiece. I turned to my friends. "Okay. You remember the plan."
"The plan," Grover gulped.
Harry nodded.
"Yeah. I love the plan." Annabeth said, "What happens if the plan doesn't work?"
"Don't think negatively."
"Right," she said. "We're entering the Land of the Dead, and I shouldn't think negatively."
I took the pearls out of my pocket, the three milky spheres the Nereid had given me in Santa Monica. They didn't seem like much of a backup in case something went wrong. There was four of us and my mother, yet I only had three pearls.
Annabeth put her hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry, Percy. You're right, we'll make it. It'll be fine."
She gave Grover a nudge. "Oh, right!" he chimed in. "We got this far. We'll find the master bolt and save your mom. No problem."
Harry said nothing, the little pessimist.
I looked at them, and felt really grateful. Only a few minutes before, I'd almost gotten them stretched to death on deluxe water beds, and now they were trying to be brave for my sake, trying to make me feel better. I slipped the pearls back in my pocket. "Let's whup some Underworld butt." We walked inside the DOA lobby.
Muzak played softly on hidden speakers. The carpet and walls were steel gray. Pencil cactuses grew in the corners like skeleton hands. The furniture was black leather, and every seat was taken. There were people sitting on couches, people standing up, people staring out the windows or wait-ing for the elevator. Nobody moved, or talked, or did much of anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them all just fine, but if I focused on any one of them in partic-ular, they started looking ... transparent.
I could see right through their bodies.
The security guard's desk was a raised podium, so we had to look up at him. He was tall and elegant, with chocolate-colored skin and bleached-blond hair shaved military style. He wore tortoiseshell shades and a silk Italian suit that matched his hair. A black rose was pinned to his lapel under a silver name tag.
I read the name tag, then looked at him in bewilder-ment. "Your name is Chiron?"
Harry face-palmed.
He leaned across the desk. I couldn't see anything in his glasses except my own reflection, but his smile was sweet and cold, like a pythons, right before it eats you. "What a precious young lad." He had a strange accent-British, maybe, but also as if he had learned English as a second language. "Tell me, mate, do I look like a centaur?"
"N-no."
"Sir," he added smoothly.
"Sir," I said.
He pinched the name tag and ran his finger under the letters. "Can you read this, mate? It says C-H-A-RO-N. Say it with me: CARE-ON."
"Charon."
"Amazing! Now: Mr. Charon."
"Mr. Charon," I said.
"Well done." He sat back. "I hate being confused with that old horse-man. And now, how may I help you little dead ones?" His question caught in my stomach like a fastball.
I looked at Annabeth for support. "We want to go to the Underworld," she said.
Charon's mouth twitched. "Well, that's refreshing."
"It is?" she asked. "Straightforward and honest. No screaming. No 'There must be a mistake, Mr. Charon.'" He looked us over. "How did you die, then?"
I nudged Grover. "Oh," he said. "Um ... drowned ... in the bathtub."
Harry looked bewildered.
"All four of you?" Charon asked. Annabeth, Grover and I nodded. "Big bathtub." Charon looked mildly impressed. "I don't suppose you have coins for passage. Normally, with adults, you see, I could charge your American Express, or add the ferry price to your last cable bill. But with children ... alas, you never die prepared. Suppose you'll have to take a seat for a few centuries."
"Oh, but we have coins." I set three golden drachmas on the counter, part of the stash I'd found in Crusty's office desk.
"Well, now ..." Charon moistened his lips. He looked up and frowned. “What about you? How did you die” He asked Harry, who had been silent thus far.
“My uncle beat me to death,” the boy said with all the seriousness in the world. We all spun around to stare at him.
Charon scowled. “Hate when that happens. Sorry kid.”
Harry shrugged. “No need to be sorry.”
I looked over at Annabeth who appeared to be deep in thought. Was Harry abused as a kid? It would explain his aversion to adults, his constant paranoia, and a lot of other strange things he did.
Charon looked back at the pile of coins and sighed. “I suppose…If you can pay?” He took the coins and gestured for us to follow him and a few others.
We crammed into the small elevator awkwardly and waited.
Harry was suspiciously quiet throughout the entire ride, he refused to look at any of us, just staring ahead at the solid steel doors.
It was a while before suddenly we weren’t in an elevator anymore, we were in a wooden barge, drifting down a long black river filled with all kinds of junk.
“The river Styx,” Annabeth murmured. “It's so…”
“Polluted,” Charon was sneering at all of the rubbish surrounding them. “Mortals throw their worthless, broken promises down here and pollute the waters without a care.”
Harry’s eyes were glued to a piece of paper.
I leaned forward and roughly made out what it said.
The Marauders Contract
- Never betray any of the others
- Cause mischief wherever we go
- Always carry chocolate for Moony
- One for all and all for one
- Help James get a date with Lily
Name their firstborn after me
SIRIUS NO
He looked devastated.
“Are you alright?” I whispered. He nodded without taking his eyes off the paper.
“I don’t know why…but-” He cut himself off and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
—
They reached the dock without much fanfare and stepped out. Charon wished them luck and sailed away without another word. “You are doomed. Good luck.”
The dead queued up in the three lines, two marked ATTENDANT ON DUTY, and one marked EZ DEATH. The EZ DEATH line was moving right along.
The other two were crawling. "What do you figure?" I asked Annabeth.
"The fast line must go straight to the Asphodel Fields," she said. "No contest. They don't want to risk judgment from the court, because it might go against them."
"There's a court for dead people?"
"Yeah. Three judges. They switch around who sits on the bench. King Minos, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare-people like that. Sometimes they look at a life and decide that person needs a special reward-the Fields of Elysium. Sometimes they decide on punishment. But most people, well, they just lived. Nothing special, good or bad. So they go to the Asphodel Fields."
"And do what?" Grover said, "Imagine standing in a wheat field in Kansas. Forever."
"Harsh," I said.
"Not as harsh as that," Grover muttered. "Look."
A couple of black-robbed ghouls had pulled aside one spirit and were frisking him at the security desk. The face of the dead man looked vaguely familiar.
"He's that preacher who made the news, remember?" Grover asked.
"Oh, yeah." I did remember now. We'd seen him on TV a couple of times at the Yancy Academy dorm. He was this annoying televangelist from upstate New York who'd raised millions of dollars for orphanages and then got caught spending the money on stuff for his mansion, like gold-plated toilet seats, and an indoor putt-putt golf course. He'd died in a police chase when his "Lamborghini for the Lord" went off a cliff.
I said, "What're they doing to him?"
"Special punishment from Hades," Grover guessed. "The really bad people get his personal attention as soon as they arrive. The Fur-the Kindly Ones will set up an eter-nal torture for him."
The thought of the Furies made me shudder. I realized I was in their home territory now. Old Mrs. Dodds would be licking her lips with anticipation. "But if he's a preacher," I said, "and he believes in a different hell... ."
Grover shrugged. "Who says he's seeing this place the way we're seeing it? Humans see what they want to see. You're very stubborn-er, persistent, that way."
We got closer to the gates. The howling was so loud now it shook the ground at my feet, but I still couldn't fig-ure out where it was coming from. Then, about fifty feet in front of us, the green mist shimmered. Standing just where the path split into three lanes was an enormous shadowy monster.
I hadn't seen it before because it was half transparent, like the dead. Until it moved, it blended with whatever was behind it. Only its eyes and teeth looked solid. And it was staring straight at me. My jaw hung open. All I could think to say was, "He's a Rottweiler."
I'd always imagined Cerberus as a big black mastiff. But he was obviously a purebred Rottweiler, except of course that he was twice the size of a woolly mammoth, mostly invisible, and had three heads. The dead walked right up to him-no fear at all. The ATTENDANT ON DUTY lines parted on either side of him. The EZ DEATH spirits walked right between his front paws and under his belly, which they could do without even crouching. "I'm starting to see him better," I muttered. "Why is that?"
"I think ..." Annabeth moistened her lips. "I'm afraid it's because we're getting closer to being dead."
The dog's middle head craned toward us. It sniffed the air and growled. "It can smell the living," I said.
"But that's okay," Grover said, trembling next to me. "Because we have a plan."
"Right," Annabeth said. I'd never heard her voice sound quite so small. "A plan."
“A dumb plan,” Harry said. He didn’t look very affected by the fact we were in the Underworld and could die at any moment.
We moved toward the monster. The middle head snarled at us, then barked so loud my eyeballs rattled. "Can you understand it?" I asked Grover.
"Oh yeah," he said. "I can understand it."
"What's it saying?"
"I don't think humans have a four-letter word that translates, exactly."
I took the big stick out of my backpack-a bedpost I'd broken off Crusty's Safari Deluxe floor model. I held it up, and tried to channel happy dog thoughts toward Cerberus-Alpo commercials, cute little pup-pies, fire hydrants. I tried to smile, like I wasn't about to die. "Hey, Big Fella," I called up. "I bet they don't play with you much."
"GROWWWLLLL!"
"Good boy," I said weakly. I waved the stick. The dog's middle head followed the movement. The other two heads trained their eyes on me, completely ignoring the spirits. I had Cerberus's undi-vided attention. I wasn't sure that was a good thing. "Fetch!" I threw the stick into the gloom, a good solid throw. I heard it go ker-sploosh in the River Styx. Cerberus glared at me, unimpressed. His eyes were baleful and cold. So much for the plan. Cerberus was now making a new kind of growl, deeper down in his three throats.
"Um," Grover said. "Percy?"
"Yeah?"
"I just thought you'd want to know."
"Yeah?"
"Cerberus? He's saying we've got ten seconds to pray to the god of our choice. After that... well ... he's hungry."
"Wait!" Annabeth said. She started rifling through her pack. Uh-oh, I thought.
"Five seconds," Grover said. "Do we run now?" Annabeth produced a red rubber ball the size of a grapefruit. It was labeled WATERLAND, DENVER, CO.
Before I could stop her, she raised the ball and marched straight up to Cerberus. She shouted, "See the ball? You want the ball, Cerberus? Sit!" Cerberus looked as stunned as we were. All three of his heads cocked sideways. Six nostrils dilated. "Sit!" Annabeth called again. I was sure that any moment she would become the world's largest Milkbone dog biscuit.
But instead, Cerberus licked his three sets of lips, shifted on his haunches, and sat, immediately crushing a dozen spirits who'd been passing underneath him in the EZ DEATH line. The spirits made muffled hisses as they dissi-pated, like the air let out of tires. Annabeth said, "Good boy!" She threw Cerberus the ball. He caught it in his middle mouth. It was barely big enough for him to chew, and the other heads started snap-ping at the middle, trying to get the new toy.
"Drop it.'" Annabeth ordered. Cerberus's heads stopped fighting and looked at her. The ball was wedged between two of his teeth like a tiny piece of gum. He made a loud, scary whimper, then dropped the ball, now slimy and bitten nearly in half, at Annabeth's feet.
"Good boy." She picked up the ball, ignoring the mon-ster spit all over it. She turned toward us. "Go now. EZ DEATH line-it's faster."
I said, "But-"
"Now.'" She ordered, in the same tone she was using on the dog. Grover and I inched forward warily. Cerberus started to growl. "Stay!" Annabeth ordered the monster. "If you want the ball, stay!" Cerberus whimpered, but he stayed where he was.
"What about you?" I asked Annabeth as we passed her.
"I know what I'm doing, Percy," she muttered. "At least, I'm pretty sure... ."
Grover, Harry and I walked between the monster's legs.
Please, Annabeth, I prayed. Don't tell him to sit again. We made it through. Cerberus wasn't any less scary-looking from the back.
Annabeth said, "Good dog!" She held up the tattered red ball, and probably came to the same conclusion I did-if she rewarded Cerberus, there'd be nothing left for another trick. She threw the ball anyway. The monster's left mouth immediately snatched it up, only to be attacked by the mid-dle head, while the right head moaned in protest. While the monster was distracted, Annabeth walked briskly under its belly and joined us at the metal detector.
"How did you do that?" I asked her, amazed.
"Obedience school," she said breathlessly, and I was sur-prised to see there were tears in her eyes. "When I was little, at my dad's house, we had a Doberman... ."
"Never mind that," Grover said, tugging at my shirt. "Come on!"
We were about to bolt through the EZ DEATH line when Cerberus moaned pitifully from all three mouths.
Annabeth stopped. She turned to face the dog, which had done one-eighty to look at us. Cerberus panted expectantly, the tiny red ball in pieces in a puddle of drool at its feet. "Good boy," Annabeth said, but her voice sounded melancholy and uncertain.
The monster's heads turned sideways, as if worried about her. "I'll bring you another ball soon," Annabeth promised faintly. "Would you like that?" The monster whimpered. I didn't need to speak to the dog to know Cerberus was still waiting for the ball. "Good dog. I'll come visit you soon. I-I promise." Annabeth turned to us. "Let's go."
Grover and I pushed through the metal detector, which immediately screamed and set off flashing red lights. "Unauthorized possessions! Magic detected!" Cerberus started to bark. We burst through the EZ DEATH gate, which started even more alarms blaring, and raced into the Underworld. A few minutes later, we were hiding, out of breath, in the rotten trunk of an immense black tree as security ghouls scuttled past, yelling for backup from the Furies.
Grover murmured, "Well, Percy, what have we learned today?"
"That three-headed dogs prefer red rubber balls over sticks?"
"No," Grover told me. "We've learned that your plans really, really bite!"
“That isn’t a new lesson. We already knew that,” Harry rolled his eyes.
I wasn't sure about that. I thought maybe Annabeth and I had both had the right idea. Even here in the Underworld, everybody-even monsters-needed a little attention once in a while. I thought about that as we waited for the ghouls to pass. I pretended not to see Annabeth wipe a tear from her cheek as she listened to the mournful keening of Cerberus in the distance, longing for his new friend. 19 WE FIND OUT THE TRUTH, SORT OF Imagine the largest concert crowd you've ever seen, a foot-ball field packed with dead people.