May Bird and the Ever After

  Walking very slowly, May peered through the open doorway. The mausoleum was pitch-dark inside, clearly deserted. She shifted from foot to foot, then stared up at the sky, then back at the door. She walked into the mausoleum at a snail’s pace, feeling her way along a wall.

  Pssssspppppsss.

  Voices were whispering in the darkness.

  May shrank back against the wall, her heart racing.

  Suddenly a blue flame leaped into the darkness, illuminating a tall starlight and a man holding it, surrounded by a circle of other spirits. May shrank farther into a corner and tried to make her breathing as low and quiet as possible.

  “You see, that wasn’t so bad,” the man holding the starlight said, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Now let’s try again. Laura, this time you do the honors.”

  A pretty woman with curly black hair leaned forward and blew out the light.

  “Hoooooh.” Voices chimed in from all over. “Hooooooooh.”

  The inside of May’s throat began to itch from the dry, stuffy air of the room. She dared to put her hand to her throat to rub it.

  The candle leaped back to life, and she froze.

  “You see. If you just do your ‘Hooooh’ chant, it’ll really calm you down. Feel the positive energy. Say to your—”

  Cough.

  May couldn’t help it. It was one of those coughs that just popped out.

  The spirit with the starlight locked his eyes on her. The others turned to follow his gaze and shifted around in surprise. The woman with the black curly hair frowned—her upper body having come detached from her lower body at the waist—and absently pulled herself back together again.

  May waited for a scream, pointing fingers.

  The ghost who’d been speaking cleared his throat. “Hi, friend, can we help you?”

  “Um, um, yes . . . um, I’m lost. I just stepped in here by mistake. Sorry about that, I’ll be . . .” May was tiptoeing toward the door.

  “Wait.”

  Her stomach doing a little flip, May turned.

  “You’re not really lost, are you?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” the man said. “You’ve come to the right place. Mausoleum 387A. We don’t judge one another here. I’m Albert.”

  “I’m May.”

  “Well, May, lots of specters are scared of the dark.” Albert smiled warmly. “Especially those who died at night. Laura here just got in from a night-boating accident. How did you die, May?”

  May’s mind raced back to the night of the lake. “Um . . . I drowned.”

  “It was probably at night, am I right?”

  May nodded.

  “That’ll do it. I myself died in a caving accident in Peru. Don’t worry, you’ll get over it. We were just doing our darkness chants. Something to help you feel less afraid when you’re assigned a house to haunt. Have you gone to get your assignment yet? You can be arrested if you don’t, you know.”

  May shook her head, befuddled.

  “Mmmm. Well, anyway, here’s the chant.” Albert pursed his lips, his eyes on May’s. “‘Hooooooooohhhhhh.’ You try it.”

  May glanced at the doorway again.

  “Okay, here we go. I’m going to blow out the starlight candle. Are you ready?”

  Everyone nodded and muttered that they were.

  Albert held out the candle for May to blow on. She did, and joined in when everyone started hooohing. They did this several more times.

  “Oh, I feel much better, thank you!” May said, backing up quickly.

  “Wait.”

  “No, I really have to go.”

  “Well, if you must. But be careful out there. The gargoyles have been out. Supposedly there’s a Live One on the loose.”

  May froze.

  “Say what you want, but I feel sorry for that poor soul,” one woman said, shaking her head and tsk-tsk-tsking.

  “Can you imagine running into one? That would be the thrill of my afterlife! I’d have my whistle to my lips faster than you can say ‘undead,’” another woman added.

  Everyone agreed.

  “And I heard there was a knave helping her. And a ghost. My wife was just calling about it.” Albert looked around at the other specters apologetically, gesturing to the small skullophone clipped to his belt. “Of all the unlikely—”

  “Did the ghost get away?” May leaped forward, startling Albert.

  “Oh dear, don’t scare me like that. She didn’t say. She said the knave was incarnerated.” May’s stomach flopped sickly. “And oh, wait, the ghost, let’s see . . . she did say, I think he escaped. Frightful ugly ghost, by reports. So many ghosts are. . . .”

  May, her insides lighting up with hope, rushed toward the door, then on second thought, she turned around one last time.

  “Hey, do you know where the Final Rest Hotel is?” she gushed. May knew it was unlikely Pumpkin would even remember the name, but if he did, he might find his way there.

  Albert tapped his chin. “I think it’s on Sewerside. Not a very pretty place. Are you sure you want to go there?”

  “Thank you.”

  May slid outside and looked both ways, up and down the narrow cobblestone street.

  May walked through the city like a ghost, mixing with spirits up and down the busy streets, and drifting through the dark alleyways that crisscrossed Ether like a giant web, searching for Pumpkin.

  She had decided the hotel would be her last resort. Most likely, if Pumpkin had escaped, he was somewhere in the city, lost.

  All around were marble mausoleums, small pointy churches, tall apartment buildings with broken windows and fire-singed doorways, grand hotels with vaulted roofs, and old stone cottages, temples, and shrines. Every time May turned a corner, she expected to see Pumpkin standing down the next street, but the city was vast and crowded, and she finally began to feel discouraged. She wondered if she shouldn’t head straight to the Final Rest after all.

  She came to a stop in front of Specter’s Sweets Suite, which had a variety of skeleton bread and skull cakes in the window, beneath a sign that read FRESH! SACRIFICED TODAY AT VARIOUS WORLD ALTARS!

  May’s stomach growled. She laid down her bag on the bare sidewalk next to a skullophone booth and rummaged through it. All of her food was covered in green gook, and most of it had disintegrated.

  She looked back up at the sign, then into her bag again, pulling out one of her transport tokens. Then she squared her shoulders and walked into the shop. “I want three of those soul cakes,” she said loudly, pointing to the second shelf behind the chubby man at the register, who wore a big white baker’s hat. “But will you take this for them?” She couldn’t remember ever being so bold with a stranger in her life, but the words had come out easily. She blushed and held out the token.

  The man surveyed the token and grinned at her. “Oui.”

  May handed over her coin, and the man grabbed a pair of tongs and lifted three soul cakes into a bag.

  “Thank you.”

  “Newly dead, eh?” he asked with a thick French accent.

  May nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t forget to peek up your houze azzignment,” he advised.

  May thanked him, then stepped out into the street and bit into her first soul cake ravenously, hardly noticing where her feet were carrying her. When she looked up, she stumbled backward a few steps.

  Ahead of her was the Edifice, gleaming white against the gray of the other buildings, several blocks wide, and soaring into the sky. May craned her head back on her neck to take it in, unable to see where the building ended, then slid her eyes back down the sides to stare at the gleaming golden doors, shielding her eyes from the glow. Finally she took in the area around her.

  She was standing in a large square packed with thousands of spirits—ghosts and specters milling along in one endless line that curled around itself over and over again, its tail disappearing around a corner and down a wid
e boulevard. For a moment May shrank back with a shock, sure that the crowd had something to do with her—that they all had gathered because they’d heard there was a Live One in the city.

  “It’s impressive, isn’t it?”

  A teenage girl in overalls, missing her left arm, had just floated in front of her.

  May focused on her with difficulty, she was so dazed. She nodded.

  The girl leaned in close to May and whispered, “Hard to believe Bo Cleevil owns it now, huh? What’s the afterworld coming to?”

  May followed the girl’s eyes up to a set of enormous white steps that led to the doors of the Edifice. Staggered all along the steps, their black teeth dripping and their bodies slick with slime, stood a whole troop of more than fifty ghouls, looking over the crowd suspiciously, scuttering back and forth beside the line that wound its way up the steps and inspecting each ghost by poking and prodding them with the points of their spears.

  Two gargoyles lay on their haunches in front of the doors, and two others perched at either corner at the top of the doors, ready to pounce. And in the middle of it all, at the very center of the landing and standing several stories tall, was a marble statue, its arms crossed, its features hidden in the folds of a marble cloak. Only its eyes showed, glowing a deep, burning red from underneath a marble hood.

  May felt a shudder run from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair. She didn’t need anyone to tell her who the figure was. She just knew it deep down in the very root of her soul.

  “They say a spirit’s more likely to fit through the eye of a needle than get into the Edifice unnoticed,” the girl continued in her low voice, not noticing that May had turned the ghostly shade of pale that was more suitable to her surroundings. “All sorts of secret stuff in there. Nobody knows what.”

  May let out the deep breath she suddenly realized she’d been holding. How on Earth had John the Jibber ever made it in? If she’d had even the tiniest hope of getting to the Book on her own since she’d lost him, that now disappeared.

  “It’s a shame. The city’s gotten to be so serious since the Dark Spirits moved in. So many rules. Well, that’s the afterlife for you, I guess. Just the way it goes.”

  The weight of despair that had been with May for the past few hours dragged her down even farther. “I guess,” she murmured.

  “You may as well get in the line.”

  May once again tore her eyes from the Edifice. “The line?”

  “For haunting assignments, from the High Ghost Court. I could tell you were new.” The girl smiled sadly, chomping gum between her teeth. “Every spirit has to go. It’s where you get assigned your house to haunt.”

  “Oh.”

  May surveyed the crowd.

  The girl continued, waggling her left stump sociably. “You can request a house if you want. If another spirit is already there, the High Ghosts will just assign you somewhere else.”

  May blinked at her. “Who . . . who are the High Ghosts?”

  “Gosh, you really just got run over by the potato wagon, didn’t you? It was a tractor that did me in.” The girl blew a bubble with her gum. “They’re part of Ghost Court, the highest law in the land. They still get their orders from the North, though the court’s in the Edifice. I’m sure it makes Bo Cleevil crazy angry. But he can’t do a darn thing about it. Not for now, anyway. I guess he’ll figure it out eventually.”

  The girl nodded over her shoulder. “You better get going. End of the line’s that way. If you get there in time, they’ll give you a number to mark your place. See?”

  Chomping, the girl held up her number, which was scrawled on a glowing tile: 30,090.

  “Uh, thanks.” Glancing from time to time at the Edifice, May drifted along the crowd, hoping that she might catch a glimpse of a round pumpkin head and a yellow tuft of hair. She happened to see the front of a newspaper held in someone’s hands. May could just make out part of one headline: LIVE ONE BREACHES CITY GATES . . .

  Suddenly the crowd began to rustle and move about. Everyone gazed at the landing on top of the courthouse stairs. A figure draped in a white cloth, with two holes for eyes, drifted out, ghouls on either side of him.

  The ghost spoke loudly, his voice booming. “Hear ye, hear ye. Today’s session is closed. Please come back tomorrow, thank you.” All over the square a resigned grumble arose, and spirits began to drift and disburse in all directions.

  In a matter of minutes, though, the square was empty, and there was no Pumpkin. The only thing that stood between May and the Edifice was empty space, dotted with a couple of stragglers. “Pumpkin, where are you?” she whispered sadly.

  Keeping wide of the front stairs and the entrance, May walked with unsure steps to the west wall of the Edifice, stopping inches away. Etched into the marble, in every spare space, were words in different languages. She read the ones that she could.

  I wish my mom would feel better.

  I wish I had a parrot.

  I wish I could fly

  Before her eyes, new words would squeeze their way in with the ones that were already there. May reached out to touch the words, and a bolt of lightning ran through her fingers.

  She leaped back, staring at the Edifice. Then she walked back across the square and into the nearest alleyway, dragging aimlessly until she found a sign pointing toward Sewerside.

  Sewerside turned out to be every bit as undesirable as the spirits at Mausoleum 387A had promised. May tried to blend in as she walked along, but she had to fight not to gag at the smell. Now that she had arrived, she realized she had no idea how to find the hotel. The whole area was much bigger than she had expected.

  Eventually she noticed a skullophone booth standing on a corner. On a hunch, she ducked into it and looked for a phone book. There was one in the slot below the skull. She flipped through the hotels section. Final Rest . . . Final Rest . . . There it was, right between Fade to Black Bed-and-Breakfast and the Float On Inn.

  Next to the name of the hotel were two and a half gravestones. May read:

  Located on one of Sewerside’s quietest streets, the Final Rest is a popular haunt for outlaws, lost souls, and other spirits looking for a resting place that combines privacy and discretion. We recommend that families and those not desiring to associate with scalawags look elsewhere for their accommodation needs.

  “One-seven-eight Many Moans Way,” May read, out loud this time. She looked around her. “Well, that helps,” she muttered sarcastically.

  “What else do you need?” a nasal voice asked. May looked at the skullophone. Then at the skullophone book. Then at her feet. A woman was sitting under the grating, with plugs in her ears, staring up at May. “It’s no Shangri-la, but we like to think we’re an efficient city. What more were you looking for?”

  “Um, I need to find out where one-seven-eight Many Moans Way is.”

  The woman rolled her eyes. Her face was blue. “Just look at the map. In the back.” She pointed one stump of a finger toward the book.

  “Oh.” May flipped through to the last few pages. There it was.

  May looked at the index, then traced a line to Many Moans Way with her fingers, then looked outside the booth to see what street she was on.

  “That’s only three blocks away! Thank you.”

  The woman nodded.

  A few minutes later May arrived at two large but decrepit doors, covered in cobwebs, with ghostly spiders dangling from every corner. The building itself was small and squat, and looked like it would be too cramped for a house, much less a hotel. There was no mark on the door but for the street number.

  May pulled on one of the handles—gently at first—and then with all her might. It opened with a loud groan, sending a cloud of dust flying at her face and setting off a jangling bell.

  May hurriedly stepped inside and waved her hands in front of her face, coughing.

  When the dust cleared, a small man in an ascot stood before her, grinning with a mouthful of crooked teeth. His face was covered in red
bumps, a few of which oozed green.

  “C’min C’min.” He waved May forward. A name tag on his vest read CONNER O’KINNEY.

  He ushered May into a dingy marble foyer that sprawled below a giant chandelier covered in webs and spiders. At one end a large marble staircase with an ebony banister that had been mostly rotted away spiraled upward. May could hardly believe she was in the building that had looked so tiny from the outside.

  “What can I do you for?”

  “I’m looking for a room, sir, room nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine.”

  “Ah, you want that one, do you? Not a problem, not a problem.”

  Conner walked behind a large wooden desk that was missing one leg. May watched him as he flipped through the pages of a book, unable to keep from staring at the scars on his face.

  “The fever, it was,” he said, making May blush and look at her feet. “No need to be embarrassed, child. Took my whole town. Plenty of nice specters walking around with boils like this. Let’s see, nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine, nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. Oh.” Conner frowned. “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s right, the room’s taken.”

  “By a ghost with a big head?” May begged breathlessly.

  “Mm, no, it was a specter in fact. Can I interest you in another room? I have a suite just a few floors below that’s quite as popular, and available.”

  May shifted from foot to foot, crushed. “Well, do you mind if I wait in the lobby awhile? I’m hoping to meet someone.”

  Conner frowned. “Most spirits coming in here don’t relish being looked at. Discretion is one of our selling points.”

  “Well, can I just get a room on that same hall?” May couldn’t quite believe her own pushiness. But she set her chin.

  Conner, apparently annoyed now, looked in his book. “Ninety-four forty is available. Just follow the stairs up to the ninth floor. Turn left and it’s the four thousandth, seven hundred and twentieth door on the left.”

  “But, four thousand . . .”

  Conner already appeared preoccupied, so May did what he’d said.

  She followed the marble staircase, which swept past each floor regally. Again May marveled at how so much space could fit into such a tiny building.