May Bird Among the Stars (18 page)

It was the last thing May had expected to hear. “Why?”

Bertha leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Well, shoot. I know what you left behind.” She looked at May again, seriously, and a hundred years of sadness seemed to shine there behind her eyes. Then she smiled her garlicky smile. “But I also got a better reason.”

“What's that?”

“We need you. So I've gotta believe in you.”

May stared at Bertha with a heavy lump in her throat, but Bertha only stared back at her evenly, clasping her hands together. “I believe you'll come back.”

•   •   •

Zombies, fortunately, are the stupidest of all the Dark Spirits, even stupider than ghouls, who have an IQ of -36. So when May and the others vanished into the trunk of the hearse, the zombies were left discombobulated and lost, staggering back and forth across the Nothing Platte.

Eventually, they bumped into the goblins, who were making the slow journey home, show tunes still ringing in their ears.

When the two groups converged and saw that neither of them had captured their prey, they argued bitterly The goblins blamed the zombies, saying they wouldn't know a Live One if it bit them on the severed limb. The zombies countered this with a resentful
“Eeeeeuuuuugh,”
which was the only word in the zombie vocabulary.

And then, although they were headed to the exact same place, the two groups went their separate ways.

As the goblins made their slow way south, choosing the route with the best malls, the story of Pumpkin's singing went with them. In every cafÉ, morgue, and boutique, the goblins stopped to share tales of a singer with the voice of an angel and the head of a rather large squash.

And from Stabby Eye to Fiery Fork, among all the murmurings about a living girl who had escaped the City of Ether and a living cat with little to no fur roaming the desert, a new rumor emerged.

Unbeknownst to him, Pumpkin was becoming a legend.

C
ommander Berzerko floated through the cat door of the Hocus Pocus lighthouse and followed it all the way to the depths. She burst into the Bogey's room, where the Bogey was poised over a handwritten invitation to the water demons.

All Dark Spirits Must Attend!

Big Announcement at Midnight!

The Bogey jerked, smearing the last exclamation point. He listened nervously to the commander. Through her enraged meowings, the Bogey understood that the goblins and zombies had come back empty-handed. They had let the girl and her friends get away.

“Meow, meow, meow!” Commander Berzerko spat. Though she had searched the edges of the Petrified Pass and the Nothing Platte, she hadn't been able to catch a scent anywhere. Where were they?! Where were they hiding? And where were they headed next?

She coughed a hair ball onto the Bogey's desk for emphasis. She met his eyes so that he knew she meant business. Then she stalked out of the room.

A map lay spread on the table of the colony's strategy room.

“Now, how were you plannin' to get into South Place?” Bertha asked.

May glanced at Beatrice, then back at Bertha. “Um, I guess we were going to go through the Hocus Pocus lighthouse.”

Several people in the room let out a groan, Bertha's groan causing those around her to sway Everyone waggled their hands in front of their noses.

Bertha shook her head. “A dangerous route. Isn't that right, Harley?” The man she had spoken to only twitched in the corner, muttering something about dust in the wind. May and Beatrice looked at Bertha questioningly.

“That's all he's done since he got back,” she explained, “and that was twenty years ago. He had some kind of trauma down there in the dungeons.” Bertha shrugged and shook her head. “Been absolutely hopeless ever since.”

May gulped. There was something else weighing on her, and she needed to bring it up now or never.

“There's a boy in South Place. Lucius. I want to—”

“Out of the question,” Bertha said, making a decisive chopping gesture with her hand.

“But—”

“We have a mess of undead risking their lives for this, and, honey, if you haven't noticed, life is precious in the Afterlife. A lot of us have lost spirits we love to the Dark Spirits. But you gotta be strong. Think of the big picture. We gotta get into
the city, park ourselves somewhere.” She thought, her upper lip twitching. “Hocus Pocus Horror Huts, most likely. Then we gotta get you into South Place fast—and get out fast once we get you in.” She looked up at Pumpkin, who had started wearing a handkerchief over his mouth and nose to ward off Bertha's breath. Pumpkin whistled and looked off into the distance.

After ruminating a bit, Bertha let out a raggedy sigh. “The lighthouse is plumb dangerous. But it's probably the only option we have. A small group of us'll take you in.”

She stuck her thumb on the place on the map where the lighthouse appeared and smiled gamely, a few bits of garlic plunking out and sticking on her wet lips. “Well, shoot. Down we go.”

That night Bertha, May and her friends, and a select group of undead worked and reworked their plans for entering Hocus Pocus and South Place. Afterward Beatrice insisted on poring over the many newspapers, books, and magazines in the library She and May read anything they could find on the city and its residents, just in case Bea's mother might be among them. “You never know,” Bea said. “Every town is an opportunity.”

A bottle of glowing ink perched on top of her papers, Bea carefully used her feather pen to copy any notes that seemed like they might be helpful. May sat beside her, trying to read up too, but fading fast. She rested her chin on her crossed arms and tried to stay awake. Somber Kitty curled into her lap and occasionally looked at her curiously, wondering when they were going to bed. He didn't dare venture away Everywhere he walked, some eager colony member wanted
to squeeze him tight or scratch his chin or—worse—talk to him in the goofy, high-pitched voice that humans sometimes used with animals as if they were complete dummies.

“Here's the name Longfellow,” May said, slamming her finger on a roster for a bingo event at the Phantom Nuns' Parish, which had been held to raise money for clothes for people who died while skinny-dipping.

Beatrice leaned forward breathlessly May read on, whipping her finger along the page. “Scorecards were handed out by Captain J. T. Morgan and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow….'”

Bea sighed and went back to her stack of papers.

About an hour later she folded her hands on top of the stack and looked at May solemnly “I can't anymore. I'm tired.”

Her bottom lip trembled just slightly Bea pulled her legs up under her skirt, wrapping her thin, pale arms around them.

“That's okay,” May said. “We can get up early and read more before we leave.”

Beatrice's eyelashes fluttered gently as she looked at May. “You were right, back in the pass. I can't keep going like this.” She looked down at where her feet were hidden under her dress. “I'm so tired, my toenails hurt.”

May laughed, but it was a wheezy, kind laugh.

“All these years, and I've hardly thought about anything else. Maybe … I just need to let it go.”

“Oh, no, Bea.” May reached out for her friend's cool hand.

“I don't mean I want to
forget
her.” Beatrice gave May a quivering smile. “I just mean that … maybe some things need to be meant to be. Do you know what I mean?”

May nodded. It made perfect sense.

“But …,” Beatrice warbled, on the verge of tears, “do you think I can stop missing her, May? Do you think spirits can change after all?”

“Oh, Bea.” May's own eyes filled with tears, and she wrapped her arms around Bea, then pulled back and smiled at her. “I don't think you need to change a thing.”

Beatrice smiled softly, let out a long sigh, then unfolded herself from her chair and floated out the door.

May stared after her. She longed to float down the hall and into bed too. But she turned back to Bea's stack of papers. If Bea gave up, who would look for her mom?

May pinched her cheeks to wake herself up and dug back into the stack.

A long while later, as May drooped over Hocus Pocus Focus magazine, her heavy eyelids just about to collide with her lower lashes, she spotted a paragraph buried in the classified section:

88 M
AGNOLIA
L
ANE,
H
OCUS
P
OCUS,
T.E.A.

One of several homes owned by Typhoid Mary across the Ever After, we have catered to sickly spirits since 1920. Unless you lost them to gangrene or some other mishap, you'll love putting your feet up at this home away from life. Convenient to haunting locations. Affordable afterliving. Pick up your skull-o-phone and call now! Or send a telep-a-gram to the address above to reserve an apartment!

At the very least, it was worth a try….

She tucked the paper under her arm and snuck around to the telep-a-booth down the hall. The telep-a-booth looked a lot like the teleporter beside it. But while the teleporter was for transporting souls, the telep-a-booth had an envelope symbol engraved on its glass door to indicate it was just for mental mail. May slid the door open and stepped inside the telep-a-booth.

A light appeared overhead, and she looked up to see recipient? spelled out in bright white letters.

May swallowed, read the address in the ad again, closed her eyes, and concentrated.
To Whom It May Concern, Typhoid Mary's Chateau for Sentimental Sicklies, 88 Magnolia Lane, Hocus Focus.

She looked up again. A shining envelope appeared, with the address across the front.

MESSAGE?
the booth asked next.

May squeezed her eyes shut and thought again:
Were looking for a specter by the name of Isabella Heathcliff Longfellow. Um….
She looked up to see that her thoughts were being recorded on a large white glowing sheet of paper. She reached out to touch it, curious, but her fingers passed right through it. She tried not to think about words like “underwear” and looked up again. The message, so far, read:

Were looking for a specter by the name of Isabella Heathcliff Longfellow. Stop. Um. Stop. Underwear. Stop.

“Darn,” May muttered. She didn't know how to erase it, so she just closed her eyes and tried to go on.

If she is there, please have her contact May Bird and Beatrice
Longfellow at—
she remembered something Bertha had mentioned earlier—
at the Horror Huts Hotel in Hocus Focus.

She looked up.

Um, the end.

Colorful lights surrounded her head as the paper folded itself and disappeared into the opening of the translucent envelope addressed to the chateau on one side and now labeled on the other with
SWAK.
Sealed With A Kiss.
It rose out of the hole at the top of the booth and then zipped up the chute.

May watched in awe. But a worry crept at the edge of her mind, like a mosquito whispering to her that she had made some kind of mistake she didn't comprehend. She considered going back into the library to read some more, but she was afraid she couldn't keep her eyes open another minute. Wearily, she floated down the hall to bed.

A few minutes later Somber Kitty, curled up beside Pumpkin, was the only one who saw the petals on Beatrice's necklace open, just slightly.

Late that night a mummy happened to be sitting on the porch of Typhoid Mary's Chateau for Sentimental Sicklies, resting his feet and drinking a slurpy soda, when a telep-a-gram arrived. The mummy watched the telep-a-gram float gently overhead, then land on the welcome mat with a flutter. Nosy, as most mummies are—even though their noses have long since fallen off—he picked it up and opened it.

When he got to the words “May Bird,” he nearly choked on his soda. By that time, despite the Bogey's efforts to
the contrary, May's reputation had preceded her—if not to the halls of Bo Cleevil's fortress in the Northeast, at least throughout the halls of South Place.

Taking the telep-a-gram with him, the mummy ambled off toward the lighthouse at top speed, in search of the Bogey

T
he Colony of the Undead was in a frenzy. Maps were dragged out of hidden crevices while a group of people locked themselves up in the strategy room and started banging around inside.

Lawless Lexy, who seemed to be Bertha's right-hand woman, led everyone through a crash course of lock picking, Dark Spirit detection, how to put a ghoul in a headlock, and other handy tricks for the journey. The entire group of undead jogged laps every morning without exception. They ran through an obstacle course of booby traps that spanned the entire area of their underground hiding place every afternoon, and they invited May and her friends to train with them. Fabbio often took the lead on these circuits, turning it into a race that nobody else was trying to win. Every time he arrived back at the starting line first, he twirled his mustache casually and tried not to show how hard he had tried.

Somber Kitty insisted on joining in on the martial arts lessons, though several of the undead snickered.

“Kitty, why don't you go curl up somewhere and relax?” Bea asked more than once. But Kitty merely looked at her coolly and executed his four-legged moves, balancing as best he could.

Pumpkin, trying to be more like Somber Kitty, often joined in too.

They were all given several bundles of notes on Hocus Pocus and South Place to study, curled tightly inside rubber bands. Pumpkin, who'd never used a rubber band before, shot them at every target he could think of, including Fabbio, who frowned at him irritably

Everywhere May went, someone patted her on the back or smiled at her widely or even bowed with respect. Bertha had told everyone that she was going on secret business, but everyone assumed the business was to save them all, as
The Book of the Dead
had predicted. When May heard whispers about this, she ducked her head in shame. She couldn't get up the courage to deny their beliefs. So she said nothing.