May Bird Among the Stars

  A woman, presumably Dorothy, was just blowing out her candles. Several of those spirits around her shook her hand and wished her well.

  After a few more minutes May squeaked out an “Excuse me?”

  Dorothy drifted their way. She wore a long, lavender dress, and her corn-colored hair was done up in a loose, old-fashioned bun. “Hello there. May we help you?” She looked back and forth between them with her sunken-in eyes.

  “Yes.” May cleared her throat. “We’re looking for Mrs. … Mrs. …” May looked at Beatrice to finish for her.

  “Mrs. Isabella Heathcliff Longfellow,” Beatrice practically whispered, then looked back at May.

  “And we were hoping,” May continued, “that you might know her.”

  Dorothy nodded. “I do.”

  May felt a shudder run through Bea’s hand. She herself felt as if she’d just gone over the dip of a roller coaster.

  “But she isn’t here,” Dorothy said, her hand playing with the lace collar at her throat. “What a shame. She left just this morning. For the City of Ether.”

  “But—but,” May sputtered. “We sent a telep-a-gram!”

  Bea shot her a wide-eyed look of surprise.

  “I’m sorry,” Dorothy said, sounding slightly offended. “We didn’t receive any telep-a-gram. She goes away all the time.” Dorothy sniffed, then added with gravity, “She’ll be gone about a month or so. Looking for her daughter.”

  “But this is her daughter!” May shouted, waving Bea’s hand at them.

  Dorothy’s dark eyes blinked, incredulous. “Oh?” she gurgled. “Oh, my! Oh, my dear! Truly?” She wrenched Bea’s hand from May’s and clutched it tighter, staring at her intently. “Why, yes! Yes, you are! You look just like her!”

  Bea let herself be yanked all around like a rag doll. Her eyes had gone glassy.

  “She talks about you all the time! She’s been looking for you for ages! Oh, I’ll dash off a telep-a-gram to her right away! She’s riding the Bony Express! I know exactly which carriage….”

  Several spirits had congregated in the room now, hearing that Isabella’s daughter had arrived. Many were wiping away tears while others were exclaiming how remarkable it all was. Still others murmured to Beatrice that her mother was a wonderful lady. But Bea appeared to be in shock. She just stood there.

  “You come back here bright and early in the morning and see if we haven’t heard back from her. Oh, my dear!” In her frenzy, several strands of corn-hued hair had worked themselves loose from Dorothy’s bun and swung around her face, causing her to swat them away.

  May looked at Beatrice for a response. But—nothing.

  “Well, thank you,” May said tightly, backing away, her heart pounding. “We’ll be back in the morning.”

  “First thing tomorrow!” Dorothy practically shouted.

  May floated Beatrice back down the corridor and outside onto the front steps, where she sat her down. “Bea?” She remembered something she had seen on TV about needing to pat people on the cheeks when they were unconscious. She tried this with Bea.

  It failed to work for several minutes, but eventually, whether it was because of the patting or not, Bea finally turned to looked at May, her eyelids fluttering wildly like the tiny legs of a centipede bristling. Her eyes traveled over May’s face in wonder.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. And then she fainted dead away.

  That night May and Pumpkin sat awake by the window, watching as the inhabitants of Hocus Pocus drifted off to their graves for haunting time.

  “May?” Pumpkin asked.

  May looked at him. He seemed to have been thinking of something for a long time.

  “I don’t know if they’ll let me come back anymore. To haunt your house. Now that I’ve skipped out on haunting duties for so long.”

  Pumpkin stared out the window, pensive. “Things in South Place will be dangerous,” he finally continued. “If you make it home tomorrow, maybe we won’t have a chance to say goodbye.” Pumpkin’s bottom lip trembled. He smoothed his tuft of hair nervously. “I just wanted you to know I’ve had … the best time ever.”

  May felt too sad to speak, but she managed to choke out: “And the worst.”

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  “Having you as a friend makes me glad I was never born,” Pumpkin joked, and they laughed again.

  And then a tear dribbled from Pumpkin’s eye, and May caught it with her finger.

  “You won’t forget me, will you?” he murmured, sucking in his bottom lip.

  “Oh, Pumpkin.” May wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. She pulled back and looked into his eyes. How could there be a life without Pumpkin? Even all the times, growing up, she hadn’t known he was there, she now realized she’d felt him near her, and it had made her feel safe. “How could I forget my first friend?”

  He was the first friend life had handed her—but also the first friend she had ever made herself. He had saved her from the water demon. Tackled the Bogey. Bargained with poltergeists. Sung goblins to sleep….

  With a start. May realized something else. “And you’re my hero,” she blurted out.

  Pumpkin stiffened. He blushed. He looked back over his shoulder, then at May. “Does that mean you love me a little bit more than …” Pumpkin nodded his head toward Kitty, who lay on the bed watching them drowsily.

  May stared at him, not sure what to say.

  He waved his hands in the air and shook his head. “Don’t answer that. You love us the same, right?”

  “The same. And different,” May replied finally, and strung her warm fingers through Pumpkin’s cold ones.

  A ghoul passed by outside the window, his slimy arms twitching. He filled both May and Pumpkin with the dread they had almost forgotten for a few minutes.

  “It’s getting so dangerous here in the Ever After,” Pumpkin said, watching the ghoul until he slimed around a corner. He squeezed May’s hand tighter. They sat for a long time in silence, and then Pumpkin said something that made May wince.

  “I hope you never come back.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  A Long-lost mother

  Many light-years away Ellen Bird stood on the edge of a great tangle of plants. In her hand she carried a flashlight. In her was a brown hag packed with sandwiches and nuts. On her feet she wore thick rubber boots over blue jeans.

  As Ellen Bird set foot in the first prickly bush, she was almost sure she sensed the dimmest light flicker, somewhere deep and far ahead.

  She was almost sure. But Ellen Bird had never believed in things she couldn’t see.

  She tromped into the briars.

  Crash!

  May was dreaming about her mother’s brown curls when the silence of room 206 was shattered. Everyone tumbled out of their beds, staring at one another in a daze. Pumpkin smoothed his tuft. Fabbio jumped to attention.

  Crash!

  Except for Pumpkin, who zipped under the bed, the inhabitants of room 206 darted to the window, yanking open the curtains and peering outside.

  Down on the street the city was in an uproar. Ghouls were chasing spirits with nets, goblins were rattling chains as they zipped after this specter and that ghost, slapping shackles around their legs and wrists and dragging them away.

  “What’s happening?” Beatrice asked.

  They all turned to Bertha, who had already hurried to the door, her silver dagger in her hand, to peer through the eyehole. She took a good look at the hall, then zipped back to the window.

  “This is bad.”

  Outside, specters zipped out through the front door of the motel toward their carriages, trying to escape. Some were captured by zombies. Others managed to steer their carriages onto the street, only to be stopped just outside the parking lot.

  Everville—or what had once been Everville—leaped into May’s mind. “Are the Dark Spirits taking over?” she asked.

  Bertha nodded once, heavily, as if she couldn’t get up the energy to nod twice.
Her mouth twitched, and her gray eyes took in the scene as sharply as an eagle. When they landed on some unknown sight, she gasped and shut the curtains tight.

  “It couldn’t be.”

  She peeked again and turned. “It is.”

  Bertha’s eyes took on a fiery, fearful glint. She faced the others. “It’s Commander Berzerko.”

  “Commander who?” May asked.

  For the first time. Bertha appeared to be at a loss. She peered about the room wildly.

  “Everyone, under the beds!” she snapped. The occupants instantly did what they were told, grabbing their belongings and shimmying up against Pumpkin.

  “If we open the door,” Lawless Lexy whispered, “they’ll think we’ve fled. So, everyone, be still!” She opened the door to their room, then quickly darted under the bed with the others. “As long as Berzerko doesn’t sniff us out, we’ll be okay.”

  Everyone cast glances at Bertha, but she didn’t seem to notice. They waited with bated breath—some more bated than others—as they listened to the sound of ghouls pouring into the building.

  Flip, flip, flip.

  “Pumpkin, what is it you are doing?” Fabbio asked.

  Pumpkin was flipping through Bea’s Ghoulish-to-English dictionary. “I want to know if they’re saying they’re going to eat us!”

  Everyone went still and listened.

  “Gbbblebelbelebleeb! Gurrgllelelejijij!”

  “Let’s hope they have souvenir stationery,” Pumpkin translated in a whisper.

  “Shhh!” everyone hissed back.

  “Grllllllly blllrrrrrrgggle!”

  “And ice machines,” he translated again, sticking his finger in his mouth fretfully.

  “Shhh!”

  The ghouls could be heard getting closer down the hall, followed by the sound of doors being opened. Then the door of their room creaked, and two pairs of slimy ghoul feet appeared in front of the bed, hurrying away just as quickly.

  “Meow,” Somber Kitty whispered, and May put her hand over his mouth.

  “Meow.” This time the meow had come from somewhere outside.

  Somber Kitty and May looked at each other in the dark.

  It was hours before the city of Hocus Pocus was quiet. The gang under the bed waited another hour after the ghouls had left before crawling out to peep, very carefully, through the blinds. They took in the scene below with dawning despair.

  The city had been ransacked. Ghouls and goblins ambled through the streets, alongside groups of spirits in chains. More spirits were being added by the minute—caught in doorways and alleyways.

  Below, a ghoul staked a sign into the ground from an armful of signs he was carrying:

  PARDON OUR DUST! COMING SOON: CLEEVILVILLE #147.

  COMING ATTRACTIONS: CRAWL-MART, CHAR-BUCKS, SKULLBUSTER VIDEO.

  BROUGHT TO YOU BY YOUR FRIENDLY RULER, Bo Cleevil.

  REMEMBER, HE IS WATCHING YOU AT ALL TIMES.

  “My mother,” Beatrice said. “What if she comes back?” Fabbio scooted next to her and patted her head stiffly.

  “No can do.” Bertha turned to one of the chests of drawers and began retrieving her things, stowed inside. “We’ve got to head back to the colony.” She looked at May solemnly. “There’s no way you can get into South Place now.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. We’ll leave now. We’ll use the sewers. It’s confusing down there, but I know the way.”

  As Bertha packed, May noticed the watch she wore on her wrist. Under the glass face was a tiny skeleton. The skeleton had one long arm and one stumpy arm that was missing a hand. The stumpy arm pointed to the number 7, the long arm pointed to the number 2. It was 7:02 in the morning. May thought of Typhoid Mary’s. They were supposed to be on their way there right now.

  Bertha stopped her packing for a moment and turned to look at them. “Did anyone know you were coming here?”

  May shook her head.

  Bertha shook her head in response, bewildered. “It’s as if they knew you were.”

  May’s belly suddenly let out a painful glurb. Her telep-a-gram. Her face and ears felt like they had caught fire.

  “My mother …,” Beatrice interjected.

  “We can’t wait for you,” Bertha barked. “Too dangerous. And you’ll never find your way out of the city on your own.”

  Beatrice trembled. She looked as if she might fall apart—cascade down onto the ground like a waterfall or cease to exist altogether. “But what if she comes back and … they catch her?”

  Bertha cast her a pained, conflicted look. She peered at her watch, then out through the window and onto the street. She looked at May, who had already risen and was standing in the doorway, determined.

  Bertha let out a husky groan. “If you two go, you go on your own. We can’t go with you.”

  Beatrice nodded and floated to the doorway, reaching out to clutch May’s elbow.

  “You got an hour. I’ll gather the rest of my crew in the other hotel rooms and we’ll take to the sewers at eight—not a minute after.” Bertha adjusted her own shroud, then unhooked her watch and held it out toward May. “Here, take this. Be sure you get back. Trust me, this is not a place you want to be stranded without someone who knows the way out.”

  Minutes later May and Beatrice burst through the doors of Typhoid Mary’s, looking about the hall wildly. It had been a death-defying trip through the streets of Hocus Pocus. Bea had almost walked right into a zombie, but May had pulled her back, and they’d ducked into a series of alleys, losing the zombie near an arcade. Then a troop of ghouls had filled both sides of their path, and they’d had to duck under a sewer grate.

  Now Beatrice tugged at her dress as they hurried down the hallway. The watch Bertha had given May read 7:22.

  “Let’s split up. I’ll meet you back here,” May said, zipping off to one side of the building while Bea zipped off to the other. When they met again, the watch said 7:28.

  “It’s empty,” May said, stricken.

  “I know.” Bea’s lips were quivering. She looked completely dejected. There was no Dorothy, no telep-a-gram from Isabella, no anything.

  They drifted back out to the front stairs. From here, they had a view down Magnolia Lane. Beyond it, the city gave way to a dusty road that led into a wide prairie, strewn with trash heaps and the occasional spooky shanty.

  Seeing Bea’s stricken face caused an earthquake in May’s heart. She looked at the watch again. “We can wait here a little while, to see if a telep-a-gram comes,” she offered.

  Bea nodded numbly and sat. They stared off into the prairie. Every once in a while a cloud of vapor rising from one of the trash heaps drifted across the landscape.

  When the skeleton watch pointed to 7:46, May began to fidget.

  “How much time?” Beatrice whispered.

  “Fourteen minutes.” If they went at their absolute fastest and didn’t run into any problems, May imagined it would take them at least eight minutes to get back to the Horror Huts.

  “It’ll come,” Beatrice said, her eyes trained on the horizon. “She’ll write and tell me where to meet her.”

  “I know you’re right,” May said. But she wasn’t sure. In fact, she was beginning to believe the opposite was true.

  “I know it doesn’t make sense,” Bea said, her voice creaky. “But I just feel it. I feel we need to stay here.”

  A minute passed. As May began to tug Bea upward, her eyes traveled to Bea’s neck. “Bea, look!”

  The flowers on Bea’s necklace were in full bloom.

  They stared at it a moment. “What do you think it means?” Bea whispered.

  May tugged her hand. “I don’t know. But we have to go.”

  And then a movement on the prairie caught their eye, and they turned to look.

  It resembled a cloud of vapor, but this one seemed to be moving purposely toward them. It disappeared behind a pile of trash for an instant, then reappeared around the nearer side.

  Bea stood stock-st
ill. She didn’t seem to be able to move.

  The figure became more defined by the second. It sorted itself into a shape before their eyes.

  “That’s her suitcase,” Bea said. “That’s her dress.”

  May squinted, but she could hardly make out a thing. Still, the figure seemed to spot them, because it came to a full stop. And then a sound drew the figure’s attention to the left. A troop of ghouls had wandered into the prairie on the west end. They, too, had spotted the lady with the suitcase and were starting to make their way toward her, first floating slowly, unsure, and then picking up speed.

  Bea followed the woman’s gaze.

  “Gblbblblbelbelebeleb!”

  Time seemed to freeze. And then Bea found her voice. “Mama, run!”

  The ghouls began to zip now, but Bea’s mother didn’t run. She started to sway. “May, do something!”

  May didn’t think. She only acted. She grabbed her bow from her back and zipped forward.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Going Down

  Without a word, the lady dropped her suitcase and backed away, tripping over the hem of her dress.

  Reaching her a moment before the ghouls, May pulled an arrow taut along her bow and aimed at the foremost ghoul. Her arm shook, but the line of ghouls skidded to a halt, colliding into each other and jabbering.

  Bea caught up just behind May. “Mama!” she cried, throwing her arms around the woman.

  May stole a glance over her shoulder, almost unable to believe her eyes. Her fingers trembled on the string.

  “Beatrice!” Isabella whispered.

  The ghouls started to drift forward. Biting her lip hard. May let an arrow fly. This time it zipped into the air, covering about half the distance to her target, and then froze … and fell. The ghouls watched it with their mouths open. When it was clear the arrow would not magically rise again from the ground, they let out loud howls of laughter.

  May looked back at mother and daughter, hanging on to each other for dear life. She slung her bow over her back, backing up. “Let’s go!”