May Bird and the Ever After

  May swallowed. Her chest began to flicker hotly.

  She turned slowly and quietly. The sound was now coming from her room at the end of the hall. And there was something else coming from there too. A pale blue glow, like someone had left a television on.

  There wasn’t a television in all of White Moss Manor.

  May’s limbs zinged.

  “Hello?” May whispered, her breath barely coming out. “Mom?”

  The tapping stopped for a moment, and then started again.

  “Hello?” she whispered, but very low this time.

  She looked back at her mom’s door, torn. Her mom had looked so tired. The last thing May wanted to do was to wake her. Especially for something that was probably nothing. May tried to think like her mom would: It was nothing. It was her imagination getting away. The light was probably coming from the moon.

  Quietly May padded down the hallway. She stopped just short of her door. Her breath, which had been on its way to her mouth, changed its mind and froze in her throat.

  There, sitting on her bed, with its back to her, was a figure. Stretched out to one side, its long, white fingers drummed against the windowsill, while the other hand seemed to be tucked up in front of it, as if it was supporting its chin. Its body was long and skinny, covered by a long, ragged shirt and a pair of ripped pants, and its head, from what May could see of it, was enormous and round like a pumpkin, with a tuft of hair up top. Through the figure’s body, the round orb of the moon and the trees below were completely visible. He was like a piece of light. . . .

  May couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She opened her mouth to scream, but only a squeak came out.

  At the noise, the creature perked its head to the left, and then swiveled to look at her.

  The thing was nothing close to human. Its mouth was a giant, jagged gash. Its nose, two holes in powder white skin. Its eyes were long and droopy, the sockets hanging around horrible black eyeballs. Looking at May, they widened in surprise, and then squinted in concentration. Finally the mouth split open and stretched from cheek to cheek in a wicked smile—revealing crooked, broken teeth.

  May’s voice finally found its way to her lips. She screamed.

  “Moooommm!”

  The smile on the creature in front of her descended into a deep, horrible frown. It shot up from the bed, rushing toward her. At the same moment, the sound of footsteps hitting wood echoed at the end of the hall. May jumped back and flattened herself against the wall, still screaming.

  The creature sailed through the doorway, its face a mask of ugliness. May threw her arms up in front of her, but instead of lunging for her, it sailed right past her, disappearing around the corner and down the stairs just as Mrs. Bird’s door flew open.

  “May, what is it?” Mrs. Bird cried, running to her daughter and grabbing her shoulders. “Shhhhhhh. Shhhhhhh.”

  For several agonizing seconds May couldn’t catch her breath to say anything. She flung her arm in the direction of the stairs, and the word finally came out. “Ghost!”

  Mrs. Bird frowned. “A ghost?”

  May nodded, thrusting her hand toward the stairs again and panting. “He went down there.”

  Mrs. Bird looked at her for another moment, then walked into the stairway and disappeared. She was gone long enough for May to worry she’d sent her to her doom. But to her relief, she reappeared a few minutes later. May was standing against the wall, nibbling hard on her fingers.

  “Did you see it?” May asked, looking over her mother’s shoulder.

  Mrs. Bird shook her head, her eyes heavy-lidded, her mouth set in a droopy, tired line. She sighed. “No, honey. There’s nothing down there. Come on.” Putting one hand on May’s back, she ushered her down the hall and into her bedroom.

  “But, Mom, it was there, I swear.” A few taps on the stairs and in the hallway, and Somber Kitty appeared, rubbing against May’s shins.

  “It was just a dream, baby.”

  “But, Mom—”

  “C’mon, hop in.” Mrs Bird had pulled down the top of the covers into a triangle, and rubbed the sheets to indicate where May should hop. May stared at her, disbelieving. “Hop in.”

  “But. . .”

  Mrs. Bird sighed, running a hand through her soft, fuzzy brown hair. “Please, honey, I’m tired.”

  May stared for a second longer, then crawled up under her mom’s arm, into the space provided.

  “But, Mom.”

  “Honey, I promise you, it was just a dream.”

  “Can I sleep with you?”

  Mrs. Bird shook her head. “May, you’re ten years old.”

  May tugged at her nails, frustrated. She and Somber Kitty exchanged looks. Somber Kitty let out a long sigh, and then hopped off the bed and pranced back into the hallway, his footsteps sounding on the stairs, and then May heard the swinging of the cat door to the front.

  “Mom?” May searched the space behind her mother in the hallway with her eyes.

  Mrs. Bird turned, tugging at the hem of her pink nightshirt drowsily.

  “Will you look out the window? What if it’s in the yard?”

  Mrs. Bird frowned, then knelt on the bed and looked outside. She turned to May. “Nothing.”

  “Okay. Will you check the back too?”

  Mrs. Bird nodded wearily and made her way to the door.

  After her mom had gone, May sat in her bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, eyeing the comers of her room. Finally, once she got the courage to move, she sidled up to her window.

  May leaned forward and gazed out onto the lawn. There was Somber Kitty, out on the stone walkway, playing with his tail. And there, in the glow of the moon, standing on the grass, with the bush behind him visible through his skinny, see-through legs, was the horrible creature with the pumpkin head, watching her.

  Meeting her eyes, he quickly turned, floating across the grass and into the woods.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  What Lives in the Lake?

  Somber Kitty was right outside May’s door that morning when she crawled out of bed. He looked up at her gleefully, doing a little arabesque.

  “Some guard cat you are,” May muttered.

  “Meay?”

  The two made their way down the stairs, one staggering, the other trotting, to the breakfast table. May slumped over her oatmeal, watching her mom putter around the kitchen. Occasionally Mrs. Bird watched her in return, the two doe-eyeing each other thoughtfully. But neither of them said anything.

  “I’m going outside,” May finally muttered.

  “Remember, no woods,” Mrs. Bird said, wiping the counter.

  May walked down the hall and outside, looked around to make sure there was no one standing in the grass, and planted herself on the stairs. She had been up most of the night, hiding under the covers and watching her door, knowing that at any moment the ghost would come through it. He hadn’t. At dawn she’d dared to look out her window again, but he hadn’t come back. She sat for several minutes, restless, eyeing the line of trees across the lawn. Then she got up and went down onto the grass. Now, walking under the sun to the edge of the woods, she felt like a dark blotch, moving across the ground.

  At the edge of the trees she paused. Something fuzzy knocked into her calves, making her jump.

  “Kitty, you scared me.” She crouched and picked him up, his body stretching out underneath him like a piece of chewed gum. Together they stared into the darkness beneath the trees. May searched the branches above, as if the creature from last night would actually appear up there, swinging by his knees.

  “What lives in the lake?” she asked Somber Kitty.

  “Meay.”

  “Do you think it’s a ghost?”

  “Mew.”

  “Do you think it’s coming after me?” she whispered low. “Meow.”

  She didn’t know whether that was a yes or no. She took it as a maybe, and hurried back into the house.

  That afternoon May sank down at her desk, moved her mate
rializer to the floor, and wrote down notes from The Ghost Hunter’s Guide to the Paranormal, which she had found in the crooked-floored, crooked-shelved recesses of White Moss Manor’s dusty library that afternoon. As she wrote, she leaned her head on her free hand and let out the occasional yawn. Her notes read:

  Come after dark

  Scared of: iron, obsidian, silver, periwinkle, horseshoes, spitting, salt

  When one is around, the temperature drops.

  Upon copying this last line, May stood up and made a beeline down to the thermometer that hung outside the back door, then carried it back to her room and hooked it to the wall next to her bed.

  A few seconds later she was back to reading again, and her eyelids were getting heavy. She began to droop farther and farther down on her desk, her elbows sliding, and her head finally resting on her hands. Somber Kitty, who’d curled up on the floor by her chair, listened to the steady noise of her breathing and watched the sun droop outside the window, below the horizon, until darkness slowly crept up from the trees.

  May only stirred once, to turn her head to the side. And then she jerked up, suddenly wide awake.

  There on the wall in front of her, among the many imaginary creatures May had drawn over the years, was one she had done when she was only three or four. The creature in the drawing had a round, lopsided head, like a pumpkin that had grown on its side, and a gash of a mouth. He was wearing a long, ripped shirt, a jacket, and a pair of trousers rolled up at the bottom. A tuft of yellow hair sprang from the top of his head.

  May sat, her mouth hanging open, for several minutes. There was no mistaking him.

  It wasn’t possible.

  As she tried to make sense of it, May’s eyes drifted to her letter on the windowsill. She stood up and grabbed it, pulled it out of the envelope. Amazingly it was still legible, though even more blurred than before. She read bits of it: “the danger you will endure” and then “great need of your help.”

  She looked at the envelope itself, and sighed.

  The tree, and the woman’s face hidden in its leaves, was gone.

  May stuck her thumbnail between her teeth.

  “Mew?” Somber Kitty inquired.

  “Shhh,” May hissed, concentrating. One question after another started racing through her head.

  Was the creature in her room the danger she had to endure?

  Was it the creature from the lake? Were they the same?

  What did it have to do with this Lady?

  May looked out the window, pressing her nose against the glass. She could only see the shadow of the trees. She felt like a prisoner.

  Are you out there? she thought, trying to picture the Lady from her letter. She squinted, trying to see her eyes in the trees. Do you need me? It was hard to imagine. May knew she wasn’t much good for anything, not much that was useful. Wasn’t that why her mom thought she needed Saint Agatha’s?

  A few minutes later, a chill slid across her and roused her from her thoughts.

  “Honey, why don’t you take a bath?” her mom called from downstairs.

  May sat on her bed and peeled off her black shorts and black slippers, not noticing that the mercury in the thermometer by her bed had dropped. She walked into the bathroom, smoothing her bangs away from her forehead and turning on the spigot. She had just turned to close the door when the bath water splashed behind her. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

  She turned.

  A woman with long black hair and pale white skin and hollow, dark-circled eyes sat in the bathtub. She was completely translucent. And she was wearing a shower cap.

  May felt a scream rise up in her throat, and clamped down on it, hard.

  Slowly, pretending she didn’t notice, she backed out through the bathroom door and tiptoed to her mom’s room, where she found Mrs. Bird sitting in front of her computer.

  She stopped on the edge of the room, squeaking to a halt and trembling.

  Her mom looked up. “What’s wrong?”

  May’s breath fluttered in her throat. Visions of Saint Agatha’s suddenly danced in her head. “Um.” She looked back over her shoulder, toward the bottom of the stairs.

  “May?”

  May hesitated. She didn’t move. “Can you come, um, check the, um . . .” What could she say? “I think I saw a spider in the bathroom.”

  Mrs. Bird eyed her quizzically. “A spider? May, can’t you squish it?”

  “Um, I don’t squish spiders.” She paused, then whispered, “I think it’s a tarantula.”

  “Oh, May.” Mrs. Bird looked longingly at her laptop, then slowly stood up. The old floors creaking as she walked, Mrs. Bird led the way down the hall.

  They passed the stairs.

  Somber Kitty was sitting about halfway down, looking at the banister, clearly wondering if he should jump onto it and slide, which he sometimes liked to do.

  As Mrs. Bird turned the corner into the bathroom, May waited for her to shriek or leap backward, but none of that happened. When May turned the corner, her mom was just pulling back from the bath, where the woman still sat.

  “The water’s spider-free, May. It’s fine.” She bent down to turn off the spigot.

  The woman in the tub looked at May, her big, dark eyes mournful and horrible. May looked from her, back to her mom, and back to the woman. Somber Kitty entered the room and leaped up onto the sink, trying to catch the drips from the tap.

  Both her mother and her cat were relaxed and carefree.

  May was on her own.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Hauntings

  It looked like life at White Moss Manor would never be normal again.

  It was not so much that the house seemed to be flooding with ghosts as much as it seemed that ghosts had been in the house the whole time, and May simply hadn’t seen them. This impression was created because, from that day forward, whenever she saw a ghost, it appeared to be right at home.

  The night after the ghost in the bathtub, May came face-to-face with a woman dangling by a rope from the rafters of the back stairway, her neck tilted at a horrible angle. May threw both hands over her mouth and sprinted down the stairs, hiding under the high bed in Bertha Brettwaller’s old guest room. When she investigated an hour later, the woman was gone.

  In the kitchen for a late-night snack that night (she hadn’t eaten all day), May found six men in football uniforms, sitting at the table, moving their mouths but making no sound. May’s mom sat in the one seat not occupied by a ghost, working on her laptop. Only Somber Kitty looked at the men from time to time as he lapped at his water dish.

  The next evening Mrs. Bird found May, hiding behind the couch in the dusty, rarely used second parlor, where she’d just seen a pair of small, glowing children with missing hands, playing hide-and-seek. When Mrs. Bird questioned her, May said she’d been catching dust bunnies.

  Strangely the creature with the round, lopsided head was the only one who appeared more than once. While the others never showed up a second night in a row, he returned night after night, appearing in the strangest of places at the most unexpected times. May opened her closet to get her pajamas, and there he was, dangling from a clothes hanger, a wicked smile plastered across his face. May walked down to the study to grab a book, and he was lying on the chaise lounge, one hand lazily draped behind his head while he looked out the window at the fireflies that had come out to light up the backyard like dancing stars. She sat at her desk, and she would find him in her doorway, watching her, and she’d crawl under her bed until he went away.

  For five nights in a row May stayed up each night, most of the night, with her eyes on her bedroom door for ghostly intruders. And every morning just before dawn, she watched through her bedroom window as the ghosts trickled down the front walkway and into the woods in what seemed to be the direction of the lake. It was only when the last ghost disappeared into the trees that she ever fell asleep.

  Dark circles formed under May’s and her mother’s eyes. Though May tried
her best to hide the situation, it would have been hard for anyone not to notice her spitting and throwing salt wherever she went. She’d started wearing every piece of silver she could find. She’d tied a four-piece set of silverware around her waist like a skirt, and pinned the onyx brooch from her shelf onto her shirt.

  She collected all the food she could fit in her arms, filled her favorite canteen with water, and built a tepee in the most protected corner of her room. It was filled with her small collection of silver dollars and dried periwinkle from one of her mother’s wreaths. She posted a NO TRESPASSING sign on the entrance. It became her nightly hiding place, where she curled against the back wall and watched for ghosts.

  But life at the manor had changed in another way, too. A host of papers, catalogs, and brochures had begun pouring in from Saint Agatha’s, landing on the kitchen table in a heap as they tumbled out of Mrs. Bird’s arms. While May stayed as far away from them as possible, Mrs. Bird pored over them in earnest, clutching her tea mug in one hand and turning the pages with the other.

  “May, they even have seminars on making good first impressions. Isn’t that great? Wouldn’t you like to make good first impressions?”

  May had become afraid of going outside. So at times like these, May avoided her mom by drifting from room to room of the manor—the two parlors, the library, the five unused bedrooms, and the attic, which had the highest window in the house.

  She didn’t know what she was looking for. But it seemed that if she looked hard enough, she’d find a way to save herself from Saint Agatha’s. She pressed her forehead to the windowpane, staring toward the woods, Somber Kitty tripping along at her heels until he’d get bored and zip away.