The Boy with Words for Skin

Chapter 28: First Things First

The twins came back a few seconds later and dumped what they'd collected at my feet. An axe, two butcher's knives, and a baseball bat with nails hammered through it.

"That's it?" I said.

"What? We put the nails in the bat," D-rip said. "Dibs on the axe!" He leaned down and grabbed it.

"The bat's mine," Z said. He grabbed that. "Revenge is gonna be sweet."

Kit sighed and shook her head. She went over to a drawer, yanked it open, and took out the two biggest knives we had. She brought them over and set them on the floor. "Here." She was not happy.

I turned to the kitchen table. No one still sitting looked at me.

"Light. Keys. We need your help."

Light nodded. He stood and, to everyone's surprise, the kitchen brightened back to its normal gloom. "I'll go. For Porcelain."

My mouth fell open. I hadn't expected it to be that easy. "Thanks, Light."

He came over to us and picked up one of the knives. He looked at the blade and nodded.

"Keys?"

He sat there but didn't look up. He was thinking hard, though.

"We need you, Keys," I said.

He slowly looked up at me. His eyes were totally blank.

"We do have an axe," D-rip said. The head of the axe rested over his shoulder. "Maybe we don't need him. We can just chop down the door."

Kit shook her head. "It'd hear us coming. If this is going to go right, we really do need a key . . ."

Us? We? "Kit, you do realize you're not coming, right?" I said

She looked at me sharply. "Of course, I'm coming! Porcelain needs me!"

"And so does everyone else we're leaving up here," I said.

She looked at the others still sitting around the table, Evry and Legs and Rope and Eyes and Mair and Keys. She knew that they'd need someone to hold them together while the rest of us went into the basement. nodded. She also knew they would especially need her if we didn't come back.

She nodded. "You're right."

Chair legs scraped the floor and we all turned. Keys had stood up. Slowly, he came over to us, shoulders slumped, eyes down. He looked like he was ready to pass out any second.

Kit shoved through the middle of us and hugged him. "Thank you, Keys," she whispered.

He pushed her away. "I can't really hold anything with these." He held up his nine skeleton keys. "You guys need to keep me safe. I won't have any weapons."

"What are you talking about," D-rip said. "Those are weapons! Jab those things into its eyes or throat if you get the chance!"

Keys looked at his fingers in wide-eyed horror and then quickly put his hands behind his back.

"So, the plan is to give that thing a ton of food and wait for it to fall asleep. Then we go into the room. But then what? We need a real plan of how we're going to kill this thing," I said.

"We don't even know what it looks like," Light said.

"Well, from what we heard at night, it sounds like it walks on two feet," I said.

The others nodded.

"And it sounds huge," Z said.

"Which means it's probably really strong," Keys said.

"We need to overpower it. We all go for it at once." I was surprised at how confident I sounded. "We need to go for anything that will hurt it bad. The throat, its eyes. We should try to make it so it can't move around. That means cutting the Achilles—"

"Jeeze, Words!" Kit dug her nails into her hair.

"What?" I said. "We've got to talk about this stuff. If this plan is going to work."

Kit started pacing. "I can't believe this is happening. This is not good. This is not good."

"No, it's not," I said.

She stopped and looked at me.

"But what else are we supposed to do?"

We looked at each other for a few seconds. Eventually, she nodded and then started pacing again. I reached down and picked up a knife.

No one said anything until Face and Tang got back.

The empty cloth bags they took with them now had lumps in them. They found more than they thought they would—a possum, two squirrels, and a raccoon. Kit offered that we give it the rest of the turkey, too. "The more meat, the better, right?" she said.

Face shook his head. "I don't think it's into anything . . . well done."

I swear she almost passed out.

I filled them in on our plan of attack—swarm it and go for the weak spots. They both listened and nodded.

"Makes sense," Face said.

Tang grunted his approval.

They each picked up a knife.

I led the way to the basement door and pulled it open. I looked down the stairs. The darkness felt alive, like an animal that was clawing its way up to get at us.

I thought about Face and Tang. They'd lived down there in that darkness, feeding that thing for months. Maybe they really only fed it to keep themselves safe, and maybe they wouldn't have cared if it ate us rather than them, but they were risking their own lives to save Porcelain. We'd never be friends, but it was nice to see that they didn't only care about themselves. And there was a part of me that knew I should be grateful to them for teaming up with us to kill that thing. I'd never tell them that, though.

"Light," I said. "You're up."

Light nodded. He pushed his way through everyone and stepped down onto the top stair. Instead of shooting a beam of light out of his hand, he closed his eyes and concentrated. His face and arms started to glow. It gave off light in every direction instead of just one. Everything came into view, the cracked plaster, the splintered wood of the stairs.

We all cried out in surprise at his surprise. Even Face and Tang were impressed by the awestruck sounds they made.

"Come on," he said. He barely kept himself from smiling as he started down the stairs and led the way.