“Is your brother part snake?” Jamal whispered.
“He’s part something, that’s for sure,” I whispered back.
I reached into the bag, grabbing another sandwich with one hand and a bundle of rope with the other. I tossed my brother the sandwich. “Still hungry?” I said. “Well, okay.” I handed the rope to Jamal. “Slippery Eight. Quick.”
The night before, in my sister’s room, I had written wishes on pieces of paper, and tied them onto some rocks. I had color-coded them so I wouldn’t get confused.
The wind picked up and it started to rain. Lightning cracked the sky. Jamal looked up, his face clouded with worry.
“We should get inside,” he said.
“Lightning can’t hurt me,” my brother said.
“Meow,” said Owen. He hissed at my brother. My brother showed Owen his teeth, which shut him up pretty quick. Owen scampered up the nearest cottonwood tree and perched on a low branch, keeping his eyes on my brother.
I decided to try my first wish. The one on red paper. It said, “I wish I never had a brother.”
Without telling anyone I was about to do it, I threw the rock into the well. The sky flashed. The well belched up a cloud of gross-smelling mist. Then it belched up a spout of dark water. Which was also gross-smelling. Then it belched out a rock. My rock.
“Uh-oh,” Jamal said, holding his rope tied in a perfect Slippery Eight. He didn’t even have to look. He is that good.
My brother glared at me. His eyes were bright red. His face was bone. His teeth weren’t just sharp and pointy. They were fangs. Each tooth was a fang. Each finger was a claw. He uncurled from the ground. He raised his fists to the sky and howled. Owen howled. I think I howled too.
“You just wished you didn’t have a brother!” my brother said. “I can’t believe you! I would never do that to you!”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
But I wasn’t sorry at all. I grabbed the second rock. The one with the blue paper. I threw it into the well. Again, lightning flashed and the well belched—first mist, then water, then the rock. My brother started slapping his ears and stomping on the ground. (Had his feet always been claws? They couldn’t have been. Still, I was getting a clearer picture as to what my brother actually was. Maybe he was like the path in the unbuildable land, too. Maybe you could only see the true parts of him if you knew where to look.)
“You wished that I’d go back to where I came from? MEAN!” My brother started to cry. “Well, joke’s on you. You can’t undo your own wishes, dummy.” He walked over and grabbed the last rock. There was a piece of notebook paper tied to it. The notebook paper was folded in the shape of a star. “You don’t get to throw in your wish, and I’m going to eat your friend. How do you like that, dummy?”
“Well,” I said. “I think that’s a terrible idea. Jamal! The rope!”
Quick as lightning, Jamal threw the rope around my brother, cinching it tight. My brother clenched his razor-sharp claws around the rock. There was no way we were going to get it out of his hand.
Jamal wrapped the rope around and around my brother, dodging his teeth.
“Quick, Arne!” Jamal shouted. “Push him in!”
But I couldn’t. He was my brother. I couldn’t push him into the well.
My brother laughed—a high, wicked, demonish laugh. “Doesn’t matter what you try to do. You can’t undo your own wish. Even if you push me in, I’ll still come back. And when I do, I’ll eat the baby. And then I’ll eat the mom, and then the dad, and then your stupid friend and his family too. And everyone else in the neighborhood. And your teacher. I don’t think I’ll ever be full.”
“But not me,” I said.
“Of course not you. You’re my brother. You’re the only home I have. I used to have a home. But I don’t anymore.” And he sounded almost sad. In fact, I think he really was sad. I had taken him away from his home with my stupid wish. That had to hurt, right?
And I was about to explain it, I really was. And maybe if I had, he would have done it on his own. In the end, it didn’t matter. Owen the cat, with a loud warrior yawp, leaped from the low branch of the cottonwood tree. In midair, he grabbed the end of the rope and leaped across the well, pulling my brother behind. My brother, losing his balance, toppled over and fell into the well.
“You!” he screamed as he disappeared into the darkness. “You meanies!”
And then I heard the rock fall out of his hands and hit the side of the well. And then I didn’t hear anything. Just the wind in the sumac bushes and the rustle of the cottonwood trees.
The old well had nothing to say. Nothing at all.
“Meow,” Owen said from the other side of the well. He sat down and began licking his left paw.
“I agree,” I said, slumping down and falling heavily onto the ground.
“But—” Jamal got up and looked into the darkness of the well. There was no belch. There was no sound. There was just the foul-smelling wind and the dark. Jamal squinted, trying to see as far as he could. “Won’t he come back? He said he’d come back.”
“It wasn’t my wish,” I said. “It was his. He wrote a note to me in class that he wished he could go home. I thought before that he meant our home—that is, my home. But now I’m not so sure.”
And I’m still not.
“In any case,” I continued, “it was his wish, and he was holding the rock, and he let the rock go into the well. So it looks like the wish stuck.”
And so far, it has. And I don’t know for sure if my brother is happy about it.
All I know is this: When we walked back through the unbuildable land, the air turned sweet and the sky cleared up, and the lightning went away. And what’s more, there was a funny sound coming from the rustling branches of the sumac bushes and the cottonwood trees. “Thank you,” they seemed to whisper. “Thank you.” I know that sounds crazy. But I swear it’s the truth.
When we got back, both Jamal and I faced Certain Grounding on account of the fact that we had skipped school. My mom and his grandma both waited for us in our respective front yards, their arms folded tightly across their chests.
“Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?” my mom shouted.
“Are you aware, young man, that your mother and father are both on the phone with the police this very minute?” Jamal’s grandma roared.
Both my mom and Jamal’s grandma grabbed us by our respective ears and hauled us inside. In spite of that, Jamal and I glanced at each other and winked. We had both practiced what our excuses would be—collecting soil and water samples to analyze for our Concerned Environmentalist badges in scouts. It is too bad that there isn’t a Returning Demons to their Bottomless Pit badge, because we totally would have earned it.
“Look who decided to come back,” my dad said. I thought he was talking about me, but he wasn’t. My dad sat on the bench in the kitchen. Jeeves and Bertie, my two rats, sat perched on each of his knees. They inclined their noses toward me and sniffed, as though making sure I really was who I appeared to be.
“Hi, guys,” I said, gathering my rats in my arms. I was so glad to see them, I thought I might cry.
“I told you they’d come back,” my mom said.
“Must mean the house is now free of ghosts,” my dad said. “Silly rats. Don’t they know ghosts and goblins can’t actually hurt you?”
I figured I’d just let my dad believe that. I didn’t want to destroy his innocence.
My dad, as it turned out, decided to take the day off. After first chewing me out for skipping class without permission, he told me that my bad behavior made him realize that he needed to cut some hours out of the work week.
“Starting today, I’ll be volunteering in your classroom,” my dad said. “So I can see firsthand what goes on in that school of yours. And then, young man, you and I are playing Monopoly.” He had already taken out the box.
“Boy,” my sister said, picking up an OatieBit and throwing it, in one clean, long arc, right at my face. I open
ed my mouth wide and caught it.
“Good Arne,” the baby said.
MY GHOST STORY
BY DAV PILKEY
MARCOS AT THE RIVER
BY DANIEL JOSÉ OLDER
I haven’t been back here since that night two years ago when my father died. Then, it was summer. I wore a red T-shirt and even though it was late, the sky still glowed purple and red over the abandoned sugar factory across the river. Now it’s October, and the night is everywhere, pushing through the skyscraper corridors on the howling wind. The air tightens and releases like giant gasps; the whole city seems like it’s trembling, waiting for the storm to hit.
That night two years ago, my abuela sent me to get my dad—he’d gone for another of his walks down by the East River. I was alone, but I felt strong, excited by her trust in me and full of the joy of the city around me, right up until the gunshot shattered all that. Today, a dozen shimmering spirits hover in the air behind me. They stir slightly; I hear them rustling and their guttural moans and impossible whispers. We look out at the river, and then the sky opens up and it begins to rain.
After it happened, everybody had questions, but I could tell they didn’t really want to know. The cops, for instance. They sat me down in an ugly gray room with bad words and love poems scratched into the ugly gray walls. They gave me soda and some old candy, and one sat down and leaned in real close, way too close, and said, “Marcos, I understand you haven’t been speaking. Well, I want to tell you something. It’s very important that you speak and tell us what happened that night, okay, little buddy?”
Like I had chosen to stop speaking.
Like I didn’t want to speak.
Back then, I was still trying. That was before I realized that me trying made people think I actually would and then they’d get frustrated when I didn’t—because I didn’t, hard as I tried. I never ever spoke, still haven’t spoken—and then frustration turned to rage and rage to apologies, apologies to discomfort and then absence.
Now I don’t even try.
But that was before all that, so when the cop asked me to tell him what happened, I opened my mouth like I’d been doing and nothing came out, not even a little gulpy noise. A therapist came in, asked the same questions, gave me some paper and markers to draw with, looked at me with big, blue, sorrowful eyes like I might somehow feel bad for her and start talking so she wouldn’t shatter.
Didn’t work.
Nothing works.
My abuela sees the spirits too, although she probably doesn’t see much else through all those cataracts. She wears gigantic librarian glasses that make her eyes look like foggy planets, too big for her wrinkly face. But she’s been seeing the spirits even longer than I have. Says they been around her since she was little like me, but never this many, and never this wet.
More important, she understands them. Back when those glowing shadows first started showing up, Abuela was the one who taught me not to be afraid. I was anyway, at first. I mean, of course I was! The night by the river was still all I could see, all I could think about, that thick, wet air all I could smell—and then I walked outside our housing project. It was the evening of my father’s funeral—no body; they never found him—and I had a suit on, all tight and itchy. There, shimmering over the walking path to our building, was a spirit. I knew what it was—Abuela had told me stories. I could make out its human form beneath that shroud, just looked like skin and bones, but I knew I wasn’t just making it up: The pavement all around it was soaked. Water dripped from its barely-there arms, its grinning jaw.
I turned and ran. What would you do?
The truth is, if I open my mouth, I won’t be able to stop what comes out. See, it’s all there, the whole night, lurking, waiting. Festering. Has been for two years. I get flashes of it: My father yells, sees me, his eyes frantic, then looks at someone else. A heavy splash. A shadow, running. That’s it. I know the rest is there, but I can’t look at it. It’s like the sun. I’m sure I’ll go blind. And that’s blocking everything else. There’s a two-year-long traffic jam of words in the back of my throat, but it’s gridlocked: a standstill. I accept it now, and mostly the social workers and therapists do too. Abuela keeps talking to me like one day I’ll answer, and I don’t mind.
Earlier tonight, as NY1 blared about the approaching storm, Abuela stirred a pot of frijoles negros and sighed. “You have to do something,” she said. I looked up from the TV. Thick garlicky steam heavied up the air, and the sound of bubbling beans mixed with stern warnings about evacuation procedures and flood levels.
Me? my wide eyes said. She didn’t even bother looking at me.
The house was full of spirits. We’re used to it at this point. After the one outside, more came. They’d leave again, or just hang there, dripping and gargling and be gone when I’d come back. But then they started gathering in Abuela’s apartment, gradually at first. I went away to a care center and they were there too, and then I came back and more had shown up. “We can’t live like this,” Abuela said. “These spirits . . . they are not happy. They are not home.”
I muted the TV and padded past two hovering spirits into the kitchen. I didn’t want to be a burden to my abuela—she was all I had left, all that was keeping me from going back to one of those creepy care centers. A thin puddle covered the tiled floor, no matter how much we mopped. I stepped gingerly through it and stood beside my abuela as she opened the oven to check on the chicken. “Whatever it is you must do, do it, Marcos. Soon. I wish I could tell you, but they won’t speak to me.”
She handed me the mop and I shoved a layer of river water off the kitchen floor, swatting spirits out of the way. Outside, trees danced and whispered in the wind and, farther away, ambulance sirens wailed.
“Manhattan is on high floodwater alert as the storm front approaches from south of the city,” the news anchor said, waking me. “The East River is poised to breach into the Lower East Side at any moment.” I felt the truth of it in my gut. The river is coming to us. I couldn’t ignore it anymore, couldn’t look away. The river is coming to us. “The mayor’s office has told New York One that if anyone hasn’t yet evacuated from the designated zones, they are urged to seek high ground and shelter.”
Abuela was knocked out in her easy chair, her belly rising and falling in the flickering light of the TV. The spirits flitted and fluttered around the apartment—seemed like there were even more of them now . . . eight, nine, ten! The kitchen floor shone with a newly formed puddle. The leather couch rustled as I climbed off it, but otherwise the only sounds were the whistle of the wind and water drip-dropping from the glowing shrouds around me. Abuela slept on as I tiptoed to the door, pulled on my rubber boots and rain jacket, and then slipped out of the apartment.
Spirits. They lined the hallways of my building, at least a dozen on my floor, and I could see more shimmering from the stairwell. They followed me in a quiet, dripping procession, lighting my way down the steps to the lobby and out into the storm. The streets were empty of people but full of movement: Trees thrashed and plastic bags whipped through the gray air. Way off at the far side of the housing project, someone ran for a taxi that sped off without stopping. I turned toward the river and began to walk.
Halfway across the pedestrian bridge over the highway, I paused. A few cars passed underneath, windshield wipers keeping furious time, headlights glaring through the gathering gray. Behind me, the crowd of spirits thinned to a line almost three blocks long so they could cross the bridge in single file. I raised my hands as if to demand an answer, but the spirits had nothing to say—they just hung there, glowing, dripping, waiting. A stream of water ran the length of the bridge and spilled down the ramp up ahead. Beyond that, a few trees swished in the little park along the crashing river.
Now it’s raining, pouring actually, and black waves crash up onto the walkway. A hundred spirits stand behind me, dripping and waiting. He’s out there, somewhere, my dad. I used to check each spirit, once I stopped being so freaked out by them, for
some sign that it was him: a familiar look in those ghostly eyes maybe, or a scrap of the blue T-shirt he was wearing that night. But no, none of these spirits are him. My dad is out there, his broken body slowly corroding in the dark waters. If he has a spirit, it’s probably waiting for . . .
Waiting for what?
I turn to the shrouds behind me, a tiny city of them now, their haunted glow lighting up the night. Waiting for what? They seem to nod collectively, goading me forward. Waiting for me? I eye the wild waves as they spill onto the walkway around me, ankle-deep, and then recede. The spirits started leaving the river after my father died in it. One by one, then many at a time, and now . . . hundreds. And the water itself is trying to escape. Escape a spirit that won’t rest.
Waiting for what?
And then I know. Whatever it is you must do, do it, Marcos, Abuela had said. Soon. The one thing I haven’t done, couldn’t do, all this time.
I close my eyes.
The first word that comes out is more like a grunt: “Egh.” I cough and try again, feel the collective strength of the spirits behind me rustle and gather.
“It.”
I spit the word out and then say it louder to match the howling wind.
“It was warm.”
A full sentence.
“A warm night.”
Out in the river, something breaches the surface of the water. Something bright.
“I wore a red T-shirt!” I yell, and the light gets brighter. “And the sky still glowed purple and red over the abandoned sugar factory across the river.”
I can see its form now, a glowing body suspended in midair, arms flailing to either side.
“Abuela sent me to come get you, because dinner was ready.” The wind picks up and I have to yell louder to keep from being drowned out by the crashing waves. “And when I got here, there was someone else here . . . a man. I didn’t see his face.” The glowing man hovers toward me, hands outstretched. “You had your blue T-shirt on and you were . . . you were arguing, I think. I heard you tell him something, but I didn’t know what. So I hid in this bush.” The rain splatters against my face; I’m soaked all the way to the bone, but I barely feel it. Another wave crashes around me and I yell louder. “I hid but you saw me, Dad. You looked at me and then back and then yelled something and then I heard the bang and the bang was the whole world and you fell backward, into the river with a heavy splash, and I didn’t see the man’s face or know who he was, but I was scared and he started turning, so I ran and ran and ran.”