May Bird and the Ever After

  “May!” Pumpkin gasped, thrusting his white finger toward the last scene. But May had already seen it. The picture was of a small, swampy lake, nestled into a blanket of trees. Far off in the hills beyond it, a white house could be seen.

  Tears quivered on May’s eyelids.

  She felt an arm around her, and Pumpkin leaned his big round head against hers.

  “We’re close,” he whispered.

  May accepted his cold hug gratefully. She hoped he was right.

  Her feet crunched on shattered glass as they moved forward again, this time to a scene that showed a dark figure cloaked in black, with glowing red eyes and long skeletal fingers. He held up his hand while a group of four eight-legged creatures bowed to him. “The water demons,” Beatrice said, floating up behind them with Fabbio at her side.

  “Do you think these pictures are telling a story?” May asked.

  Nobody answered.

  The next few windows were broken, offering a sliver of a view outside, of the zipping stars and below, the city, which looked tiny. May’s fear of heights sent her knees wobbling and her stomach churning. She could see where Ether ended and the desert began. It seemed to stretch forever.

  A heavy thud fell on her back. “What are ye all standing around fer?” John the Jibber’s face was contorted in anger and fear. “The Book!”

  He dragged May forward by the back of her bathing suit, but as he did, her eyes caught on the second-to-last pane of glass, and she pulled out of his grasp. The panel depicted a city—not at all like the one they were in. It was nestled on the side of a great mountain. Many of its buildings had fallen, with plumes of smoke rising from the ruins. Spirits crouched in fear on the streets, many of their faces filled with terror as others—ghouls, goblins, demons—ran rampant everywhere, hauling spirits around in sacks. Enormous winged creatures flew through the air, ridden by ghastly skeletons.

  “Have you ever seen a city like this?” May asked John. He had come to a stop, and now he stared, pale faced, as mesmerized by the scene as she was. He licked his lips nervously and shook his head.

  A castle at the edge of the city loomed up into the sky. Spirits stared out through its windows, fearful and terrified, looking like they were crying to get out. Thousands of others dotted the hills, tied in chains. And there in the lower corner of the picture, tucked between a few shadowy, chained figures, were two spirits who looked very much like Beatrice and Fabbio. And beside them was a spirit with short black hair, big brown eyes, and knobby knees.

  May glanced at the others to see if they’d noticed, but their eyes were elsewhere.

  May looked back at the girl again. It was her, May. And it wasn’t.

  She seemed to be wearing the death shroud she wore now, but looking closely, one could see she had a quiver of gleaming silver arrows strapped to her back. Her face was striped with white and black paint, making her look like a skeleton.

  It was the face that was different. The girl in the picture had the face of a warrior. Her mouth was set in a grim, determined line. Her eyes were shining with anger and despair. She looked full of darkness. And it was hard to tell, truly, if she was alive or dead.

  That’s not me, she told herself, shaking her head. She didn’t want the others to see such a horrible scene. And where was Pumpkin? Quickly she glanced toward the final panel, but it was shattered beyond recognition.

  “What happens?” She reached down and sifted frantically through the shards of glass on the floor beneath her. “What happens to everyone? . . . Ouch!”

  She lifted up her hand to watch the stream of blood trickle down from where she’d sliced her skin. At the same time she heard the faint barking of dogs.

  May felt all the blood drain to her feet.

  “Ooooohhh,” Pumpkin moaned.

  Again John grabbed the back of her bathing suit and lifted her up, pushing her toward the arched doorway at the end of the hall. “There’s no time, girl. Come on now.” A great clanking rang up the floaterator shaft behind them.

  They gathered in front of the revolving door, which was spinning all on its own. May looked up at John.

  “Go on, lassie,” he said, nudging her forward. May squared her shoulders and stepped forward, keeping in sync with the movement of the door. It spat her into a cylindrical room with no windows. In the middle was a podium. And on the podium sat a small black book.

  The others followed. John came through last, and hurriedly jammed his sack into the door to keep it from rotating.

  Everyone looked at May expectantly.

  “You are going first,” Fabbio said, tapping her shoulder lightly. “Go on, May.”

  May looked at Pumpkin and Beatrice for approval, then stepped up to the podium and reached her hands gently toward the Book. As soon as her fingers touched the cover, it began to glow and buzz. Wincing slightly, she pulled it open. Behind her, everyone gasped.

  “Ye’ve got it, lass!”

  May’s heart raced with excitement. The page that opened before her was filled with thousands of words, and the lines twitched slightly. It took a moment for May to realize the words were changing, shifting, and rearranging themselves.

  She was in the As. She read the first passage her eyes came to:

  Abraham Lincoln: Former president, killed by shooting, retired in the southern town of Gaunt, enjoys golf and long floats along the sand.

  “I guess it’s alphabetized by first name,” May said.

  “Then look fer Sheba, girly. Remember, yer looking up the treasure first.”

  “But . . .” May was inches from finding out how to get home. And Beatrice needed her mother. It all seemed much too important to—

  John reached out for the top of her bathing suit and squeezed it in his fist, his face forming itself into a mask of grim, seething anger. “Do it, lass!”

  May flipped through to the S section, looking for Sheba. There was nothing. She shook her head. “There’s nothing here on Sheba.”

  “Check again.”

  She did. And shook her head.

  John leaped forward as if to throttle her, but Fabbio stepped in front of him stiffly.

  “She say there is nothing there,” he boomed, readjusting the parachute on his back. “I am suggesting you back up.”

  Just then a loud whine from down the hall announced that the floaterator had roared back into life. Pumpkin whimpered and pressed himself against the part of the wall farthest from the door. Fabbio wrapped his arms tightly around Beatrice, whose eyelashes fluttered madly.

  “Look up John the Jibber, then,” John cried desperately. “Hurry. Find out how I make me riches.”

  May nodded, biting her lip, her pulse thumping in her ears, and flipped through again. “John the Jibber. John the Jibber.”

  Ding. They all looked at the door. Down the hall the muffled sounds of barking were followed by the sound of the floaterator door sliding open with a creak.

  “Go on!” John cried.

  May looked down at the Book. “Here it is!” She stabbed at the entry with her finger. “Here it is! ‘John the Jibber, born 1805. Betrayed his fellow smugglers to the king of England and led them into a trap, from which they escaped. Was later found by same smugglers and murdered. Resided in Nine Knaves Grotto for more than two hundred years until’ . . .”

  May paused. The barking was no longer muffled. It sounded like it was right outside the revolving door, accompanied by the sound of ghouls. Fabbio drew a dagger from a hilt on his belt. John braced himself against his sack to keep the door from revolving.

  “Go on, go on . . .”

  May swallowed. “No, I—”

  “Read it!”

  May let out a long deep breath. “‘Met his second death on the top floor of the Eternal Edifice, where he was sucked into nothingness.’”

  John cried out and backed up harder against the door.

  At the same time, in front of May, the pages began flipping on their own. She gazed down in amazement. They flipped to the Ms, then
to the Mas, and then there was her name:

  May Bird: A type of bug found in the West Indies, which mates in May.

  May Mary Bird: Irish, born 1863, died 1923 when her buggy went over a cliff. Lives in the Western Territones in town of Flat Canyon.

  May Mary Bird: Irish, named after her great-grandmother [see above], born 1940, resides in Pluckville, Iowa.

  May’s breath caught when she landed on the next name.

  May Ellen Bird: Born in the portal town of Briery Swamp, West Virginia. Currently standing in the tower of the Eternal Edifice.

  May’s throat went dry and cold. There was a loud crash, but she didn’t look up. She felt as if she’d entered a deep trance.

  The words of the entry kept changing, arranging themselves into different lines. May tried to read each one before it changed.

  Little, known visitor to the Ever After, who returned home to Briery Swamp, West Virginia, after a brief and ineffective sojourn in the Ever After.

  Known far and wide as the girl who destroyed Evil Bo Cleevil’s reign of terror. Resides in Briery Swamp, West Virginia.

  Little known visitor to the Ever After, was sucked into nothingness on the north edge of the City of Ether.

  May was gripping the paper so hard that it ripped in her hands, the sheet with her name on it remaining between her fingers. She didn’t notice the barking had gone quiet. “It doesn’t say how I get . . .”

  She looked up, and at the same time, her whole body went numb. The door was no longer where it had been—it was lying shattered in the hallway. Pumpkin, Beatrice, and Fabbio were in the arms of a group of ghouls.

  And beside them, his black top hat resting perfectly on his head, his white eyeballs trained on May, and his sharp pointed teeth revealed in a wide grin, stood the Bogeyman, holding a leash full of panting, sitting Black Shuck dogs. He tilted his hat at her, his white eyeballs glinting.

  He drifted forward and took the slip of paper out of May’s hands, then ran his fingers along the words and nodded. His face then contorted into a fearful grimace, and he smiled again, shook his head at her, and waggled one finger in a no-no-no gesture. There was a tiny suction cup on the tip of the finger, just as John had said.

  The Bogey then turned to John the Jibber, who cowered against the wall. Slowly he raised the same finger toward him. John squirmed.

  “Sir, heh heh, I know what this must look like. Ye see, it’s like this. I promised the phantom I’d bring her to the front hall, but ye see”—John swallowed loudly—“er, the little rascal gave me the slip. Run up here to get at the Book. I was just trying to stop her when—”

  The Bogey pulled his hand back and placed his finger against his chin, as if he was listening thoughtfully. He kept smiling. His smile sent deep chills through May, who took in what John was saying slowly, flabbergasted.

  “Now, ye all promised me my freedom, ye know, if I brought her in. She’s got the letter, ye know, from the Northern Spirits. On their side, she is. I found it meself—just go on and look in her knapsack, and I’ll just be on me way. . . .” John let out a nervous laugh and took a few steps sideways, toward the floaterator at the end of the hall.

  The Bogeyman smiled extra wide and chucked his chin up and down a few times as if he was joining the Jibber in a joke. Then he shot out his hand again, pointing his fingers toward John. John’s eyes widened in terror. “No, oh please, no!”

  Strange things began to happen to John’s body. It began to unravel in a long rope of vapor—first his feet, then his ankles and his legs, and on up—the vapor disappearing into the Bogeyman’s fingers. “Ahhhhhhh!” he screamed, more and more of him twisting in a long thread of vapor until his mouth, too, had vanished. And then, with a sucking sound, the last of his greasy, mud-caked hair disappeared completely.

  Ooooh,” Pumpkin moaned as the Bogeyman looked around at them all.

  He made a fast motion with his hands. The ghouls sprang forward.

  Somber Kitty knew something had gone horribly wrong. The little bit of fuzz covering his body stood up on end, along with his tail. Crouching in a duct across from the Eternal Edifice, he was bewildered by the chaos surrounding him. But his gut told him that May, so close, was in trouble. He had picked up her tracks in front of a bakery and followed them here, where, curiously, they had doubled back. Another scent, rising up from far below the street, told him that she had returned this way, right into the great building before him.

  He had searched the building from all sides, sniffing along the bottom of its wall, and that had taken more than an hour. Now he watched the front stairs—the only entrance he could find—and tried to gauge his chances of darting fast enough to make it through the ranks of horrible creatures staggered along its stairs.

  Somber Kitty could think of no other strategy. If he was going in, he was going like a warrior.

  After a deep growl, he leaped forward.

  He took the stairs two at a time. For a moment the creatures were too shocked to do anything, and then they began lunging for him, jabbing toward him with their spears and swiping at him with their claws. Ahead of him the golden doors stayed resolutely closed. Somber Kitty slammed into them, turned with his back against them, and hissed, swiping forward with his tiny right paw.

  A few of the creatures made a sound like laughter. They swooped down to claim him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nothingness

  Hello?” May was crouching at the bottom of a dark pit, her arms wrapped around herself, shivering. “Is anyone there?”

  “May?” Pumpkin’s voice echoed back to her.

  “Pumpkin! I thought they’d taken you! Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m in some kind of pit.”

  “Me too!”

  Another voice rose out in the darkness. “Hey, are you two all right?”

  “Beatrice!” Fabbio called. “You okay?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m okay,” May called. Everyone voiced agreement. But May knew none of them were okay. John the Jibber was gone. And there was no one who knew how to help them. They were caught. May rubbed at her elbows and knees where they’d been scraped a few moments before, when she’d been dropped into the pit.

  Then she began feeling along the walls. And then, with a gasp, she felt her shoulders. Her knapsack was gone. It must have been torn off in the struggle.

  Suddenly a blue glow illuminated the area, and May looked toward a giant Holo-Vision screen mounted in the wall.

  “You all have this HV?” Fabbio called. Again everyone voiced agreement.

  The blue screen dissolved into a scene of a specter—the same one who had been in the movie at the Spectroplex—with a knife in his chest. He smiled at the camera, seeming to smile directly at May.

  “Hello, and welcome to the uppermost dungeons of the Eternal Edifice. On behalf of the great Bo Cleevil, we would like to extend our regrets that your stay is under such unfortunate circumstances.”

  “What circumstances? What’s going to happen to us?” May asked as if the man could hear her, but he went on talking.

  “Because you are being detained for questioning, you may at this time enjoy a few extra minutes or hours of the afterlife before you are destroyed completely. To prepare for your execution, you may like to empty your pockets of all valuables at this time. You may also wish to say a silent good-bye to all of those that you have ever loved. Remember to remain in your pit patiently until the ghouls come to get you. Though of course”—the man chuckled softly—“you have little choice.”

  He turned serious again, his big dark eyes focused on the camera. “Remember, execution is, quite literally, nothing to be scared of. Once you have vanished from existence completely, you won’t know the difference.”

  He gave a chilling smile. “Have a pleasant stay!” Suddenly the HV blinked off, and the pit was enveloped in pitch-blackness once again.

  “Ohhhh,” Pumpkin moaned.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Be
atrice moaned.

  “No worry, Beatrice, I will find a way.” The grunts of Captain Fabbio leaping and jumping and trying to climb carried into May’s pit. But May had gone numb. She crouched down against the wall and hugged herself tight, staring toward the darkness of the ceiling. At any moment the boulder covering the pit would be pushed aside, and she would be dragged out. She would never see her cat, or her mom, or her woods, or anyone again.

  “Pumpkin,” she finally called. “I’m so sorry. You’d be back in Belle Morte if it weren’t for me.”

  There was a long silence, and then, “I really didn’t have anything else to do.”

  “Hush, you two,” Beatrice called. “You sound like you’re giving up! We just have to think.”

  May was thinking a lot. She was thinking of how she had thought once that if she could go somewhere else, she could be someone else. But she had come here, clear across the universe, and her life had not amounted to much of anything. She was thinking how much she had let everyone down.

  They waited in silence for a long time. But for all their thinking, nobody came up with a way out of the pits. Occasionally May heard the muffled sound of ghouls jabbering above, and then the scrape of a boulder being moved from its place, and terrible screams as a spirit was dragged out of its pit and away.

  “I just hope it’s not the Bogey who does it,” Beatrice said heavily, her earlier note of hopefulness gone. “I couldn’t take that. I’d rather be . . . destroyed by the ghouls.” Then came the sound of her softly crying, and the weight of May’s guilt hung more heavily on her shoulders than ever.

  She reached out toward the dirt in front of her and began to trace a picture of Somber Kitty, to make up for all the ones she hadn’t drawn of him at home. She sank back and placed her hands against her hips, missing him. Her fingers skimmed the tops of her shorts.

  And then, like a spark of lightning, she remembered the vial of seawater in her pocket.

  It must have been hours before a scraping sound came from above May, and the boulder covering her pit was moved, letting light spill in and admitting two ghoul faces who jabbered at May. May’s heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest as she watched them throw down a ladder made of chains and climb toward her. They dragged her back out of the hole, where she quickly looked around the room, a great gray cell filled with boulders to mark each pit. She was careful not to scream or call out, though she wanted to. She knew Pumpkin was scared enough as it was.