May Bird and the Ever After (11 page)

She waited until Pumpkin was looking in the other direction, then took a few faltering steps forward, out onto the open sand.

“Oh, dear.” Pumpkin caught up with her, clutching her arm as he kept his eyes on the cloaked creatures at the water's edge. May shrank from him, but he held on tight. “You're going to get yourself destroyed,” he whispered, trembling again. “I'm trying to help you.”

May looked around as they moved across the sand, wondering who it was that was trying to destroy her.

After a few agonizing minutes, they were standing next to the boat.

“Hurry. Hop in.”

May hesitated. She could see the water through the transparent bottom of the craft, and it looked like if she tried to step inside, she would fall right through. A cold nudge hit her from behind, and her feet went stumbling in anyway. It sank slightly under her weight.

She looked down the beach, wondering if she should call for help—most of the figures on the beach looked much more human than Pumpkin did. But she gave up that thought when she saw that one of the skeletal characters in black was gazing in their direction. He walked over to another robed skeleton and leaned toward him, his jaw bones opening and closing. Then they both looked in May's direction.

Pumpkin climbed down into the boat beside her and sat down, folding his hands tightly on his lap.

The boat stayed where it was.

“It's your weight in the boat. Get down,” Pumpkin whispered, gazing at the two skeletons down the beach, who had started to move toward them. “Oh, no. Oh, no no no.” He seemed not to notice that, now that they were in the boat, they needed to set it to moving.

May, huddling tightly, started to feel panicked too. Her gaze shifted from Pumpkin, to the robed creatures, to Pumpkin. “Shouldn't we push off?” she finally asked.

Pumpkin's lips trembled. “Yes, yes, you're absolutely right.”

He jumped back out of the boat onto the shore, sneaking another look at the two figures that were now advancing quite
quickly down the beach. Then he seemed to gauge the direction in which he wanted to push the boat. “Southern Territories, Southern Territories,” he muttered. Finally he gave the boat a hard diagonal shove and tried to jump in. Instead only half of him made it. The other half splashed into the water, his long legs flailing.

May stared, not knowing what to do. With one tiny push, she could shove Pumpkin off the boat and escape. But where would she go? Who would she go to? And what if the skeletons caught him?

Her hands shot out to grab him, her fingers turning to ice as she helped to drag him onto the boat.

He smiled at her crookedly. “Thanks.”

May merely gazed at him in reply, then toward the shore, then peered around, unsure as to whether she had made the right choice. “How do we paddle?” she finally asked.

“We don't,” he breathed. “We just have to hope I pushed us in the right direction. The greeters are experts. They don't miss. But one time I did this wrong and ended up at the Pit of Despair Amusement Park, clear on the other side of the realm. It took me a year to get home.”

Sure enough, the boat kept moving on its own. By the time the cloaked figures reached the part of the beach Pumpkin and May had launched from, they were far out into the water. The two skeletons stared after the boat for a moment, then one of them shrugged its bones, and the other patted him on the spinal column. They turned and drifted back along the sand.

Pumpkin and May drifted far and fast, until all of the figures on the beach became small. May could just make out the dark
opening of the alley they'd hidden in and a tiny, black speck standing in its shadow, moving its tail. It made a tingling start at the base of her neck. She shook it off and turned to look over her shoulder.

The boat indeed seemed to be steering itself. Up ahead, May could make out several places where the river branched off. Their boat slowly made its way into one of the branches, which looked like it went on forever, though it was no wider than two of the boats put together. A strip of beach lined it on either side, and poking out of the sand just by the mouth was a sign that read:
SOUTHERN TERRITORIES.

“Oh, thank goodness.” Pumpkin breathed. Looking back, they could see other boats heading in the same direction, drifting lazily behind them.

Back on the beach the spirits outside the southeastern portal, Spectroplex, weren't paying much attention to much of anything but themselves. If they had been, they may have noticed the tiny, black nose that occasionally peeped out from a certain alley. They may have even heard the tiny, plaintive sound of a meow or two, drifting out on the breeze. But most of the specters were busy coming to terms with their recent deaths.

Somber Kitty's slitted green eyes scanned the beach, but May was nowhere to be seen. He had curled up around her freshest footprint just at the edge of the alley, sniffing it thoughtfully several times. He longed to follow her tracks, where they led across the sand, but his instincts told him to beware. His gaze kept drifting to the bony fellows in robes.

Finally he couldn't wait any longer. He pressed his ears back,
watched a lady drift close by, and darted forward into the folds of her dress.

Keeping his paws tightly in rhythm with her movements and ignoring the bewildering cold zaps of her clothes, he scurried from spirit to spirit, following May's scent like a checker zigzagging its way to kinghood. At the water just beside a newly beached boat, he froze. Here the scent disappeared.

Somber Kitty's eyes rolled, and he let out a low, plaintive mew, which drew a few stares. Spirits began tugging one another's sleeves and pointing at him until a loud howl erupted from one of the robed creatures several yards away. And then the crowd flew apart as several of the creatures began zipping toward him, all howling.

Somber Kitty arched his back and hissed, leaping sideways and waggling in the air toward the boat. In a maneuver of amazing skill he teetered on his two side paws as they hit the bow, then shifted his weight into the boat, setting the craft in motion.

The cat trembled under the frontmost bench seat for several minutes. Eventually his desire to look for May overcame him. He snuck his eyes and nose up over the rim to gaze at the shore as it drifted away. Several robed creatures now stood there, pointing and waving toward him. He darted under the seat again, his tremble becoming a shake.

If he had remained aft, he would have seen the sign marking the path his boat drifted into, though he could not have read it.

The sign, crooked and glowing, leaning as if it might fall into the water, announced Somber Kitty's destination in bright green letters:
PIT OF DESPAIR AMUSEMENT PARK.

All had gone quiet now. Pumpkin and May stayed quiet too for a few moments, May gazing at the zooming stars above, still not quite believing them.

“Am I dead?” she finally croaked.

“Oh, I really don't think so.”

“Then what am I doing here? What is this place?”

Pumpkin turned his sad, droopy eyes to her and grimaced, his mouth stretching extra wide. “I'm not the best spirit to ask. Arista is. He's very smart.”

“Where's Arista?”

“Back home.”

“Home?” May asked hopefully.

“Back home in Belle Morte,” Pumpkin said, nibbling a finger. “Belle Morte? But what about my mom? What about Briery Swamp?”

Pumpkin shook his head. “Oh, my.” He eyed her sadly. “You should really ask Arista.”

“But when do we see him? How far to Belle Morte?”

Pumpkin seemed to consider, his eyebrows scrunching. “I'm not sure. I'm just a house spirit, you know. The next sign should tell us.”

A few minutes later they drifted past a gnarled tree that curved over the water. A sign hung from it that read:
FIERY FORK, 48 MILES, BELLE MORTE, 1,300,017 MILES.

May gasped. She couldn't even imagine how far that really was. “How long will that take?”

Pumpkin sighed, flinging his arms behind his head dramatically. “Ages. Most of the night probably. You should rest.”

She sank down in her seat, staying as far away from Pumpkin as possible. There was no way she was going to sleep. She stared up at the zipping stars that spread out over the dusky sky. An hour later it hadn't gotten an ounce darker, and Pumpkin was snoring gently, his huge head lolling on his skinny neck, his wide mouth open and drooling.

May tugged at the top of her black sparkly bathing suit nervously, then shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts. Her hands closed on a piece of paper, and she pulled out the scroll she'd picked up at the movie theater.

In red, drippy letters, the front of the brochure read:
I'M DEAD, SO NOW WHAT
? As May watched, the letters dripped down off the page onto her hands. May lifted up her fingers to see if it was ink, but there was nothing on them.

She opened to the next page, dazed. It was blank for a moment, and then a glowing green picture of a skinny man with a hangman's noose around his neck appeared. He lifted his hands in the air questioningly, his shoulders shrugging. More drippy writing scrawled itself beneath him. “Don't panic. The Afterlife can be scary! But that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable, too. Talk to your local Undertaker about ways to make the most of your Eternity. All visits are confidential!”

May turned the page. Again it stayed blank for a moment, before a glowing blob oozed across the page. It formed itself into a jellylike mass, from which suddenly sprouted two big round eyeballs and a pair of horns. The creature smiled at May. She flinched.

“The Ever After is filled with lots of strange spirits, some you won't recognize from your life on Earth. Don't panic. Only a few
are truly evil.” The blob creature moved its head to look behind itself, then its eyes widened in terror, as if something were chasing it. It went blobbing off the page. From the far right side of the paper, a dripping, dark, manlike creature appeared, with long gangly arms and a hunched back. His face was deformed into a mask of hatred, and he was dripping with slime. He drooled, rubbed at his nose with his forearm, and loped off the page.

May's blood ran cold. She quickly turned the page. What appeared there scared her even more. Two red eyes appeared on the page. “Remember, Bo Cleevil is watching you!” The eyes flared brighter red, and then disappeared, replaced by the line “Have a pleasant stay!”

May closed the brochure. It vanished from her hands immediately.

Pumpkin rolled over onto his side loudly, mumbling and snoring and flinging his cool arm across May's shins. May stared at him. He was, without a doubt, the ugliest thing she had ever seen. She wondered what he had looked like when he was alive. She wondered what had happened to him to make him look the way he did now. She gently pulled her feet out from under him.

She laid back and watched the stars zooming overhead. It reminded her of the night she and her mom had watched the meteors, and that planted a seed in her throat that grew into a lump.

The lump grew as she thought of how mean she'd been to Somber Kitty the last time she'd seen him. She might never see him again.

That was her last thought before she fell into a sleep so sound, she didn't notice when someone had carried her off the boat.

That evening news traveled quickly along the Styx Streamway System about a fugitive cat who had been spotted leaving the southeast portal, heading toward the Pit of Despair Amusement Park. Several Dark Spirits were dispatched with nets, daggers, and spears. But one creature and his slew of dogs, to the surprise of many, stayed away.