May Bird and the Ever After (33 page)

May gazed down at the water, making patterns in it with her fingers. She stared around the group for a few moments. Then she crossed her arms over herself decisively. “I'm not going without them, Mr. Jibber.” Then she added, less surely, “And if that means you won't take us, that's, um, fine.” The truth was it wasn't fine. May held her breath, waiting for John to explode at her.

He looked shocked. He gazed back and forth among the three helplessly, then growled.

“Er, have it your way. Let's go in.”

May's body went slack.
Thank goodness.
“Are we close?” she asked, once she'd recovered.

John laughed. “Close?” He took the starlight from her hand and held it up toward the wall. “It's right here.”

May let out a small scream. Before them, carved into the gray rock of the tunnel wall, was an old woman's face, surrounded by leaves. It was covered in cobwebs and flecks of ectoplasm.

“I
knew
we are close,” Fabbio asserted.

May, her eyes huge, hunched her shoulders and reached out to touch the face ever so gently. The Lady . . .

“Ahh!”

The mouth flew open wide and snatched for her hand. May leaped back, yanking her arm away.

The mouth immediately recoiled. May had time to glimpse a tiny hole in the back of its stone throat before it closed.

Pumpkin had already started flailing a path down the sewer. He stopped a few feet away, watching fearfully.

“Ah, ye wouldn't get far without me, ye see? Ye've got to be careful with these doors. They're ancient and tricky, meant to protect the Edifice from more than the likes of us. Here, hold this.” John dug into a hidden pocket in his pants and thrust a white key into May's hand. May took it, confused.

“It's me skeleton key, made out of the bone of a master locksmith. I stole it off Harry Houdini last year on the Sea of Tranquillity while he was tubin'.” John winked, but his smile stayed hard. “When this mouth opens again, I want you to stick the key in the hole, all right?”

“I'll lose my arm!”

“Trust me.” John smiled again, without the smile reaching his eyes. May nodded. “Okay.”

With his left hand John reached out and pinched the lady's nose. Nothing happened for several seconds. And then the face's eyes began to bulge. Its mouth began to twitch.
I'm sorry,
May thought, grimacing.

A few more seconds and the mouth flew open, panting hard. John thrust his hands against the top and bottom lips, prying them farther apart. “Now!”

May hesitated, holding up the key, her eyes locked on the powerful stone teeth.

“Do it, lass!”

“It's going to eat you!” Pumpkin moaned in the background. But May set her jaw and thrust the key back into the throat, fumbling it against the hole, until it slid in with a click. Nothing happened for a moment, and John gave a grunt. And then the mouth opened wider and wider, all the way up to the ceiling, until finally it split right down the middle. Both sides slid apart like an elevator door. A skinny stone stairway waited on the other side.

“C'mon,” John whispered, rescuing the key from the rubble.

He floated up the stone stairs first. May followed, then Beatrice and Fabbio, who had to stand sideways and jam himself through the door.

“Captain, why don't you leave your parachute here.”

“I do nothing of that sort,” Fabbio snapped, jamming himself in harder. “A soldier, always prepared.”

“Captain, really. . .”

Beatrice looked at May for support, and Fabbio followed her eyes, both of them looking to May to resolve the conflict. She nibbled on her pinkie.
Poor Fabbio,
she thought. Specters didn't change.

“Well, I suppose if it's really important to you . . .” Together she and Beatrice helped yank the pack so that both Fabbio and the parachute came through. John the Jibber stood a few stairs above them, shaking his head in disgust.

Pumpkin reluctantly brought up the rear, and the doors slammed closed behind him, making them all jump.

At the top of the stairs was an impossibly long hallway, so long that the end was nowhere in sight. It was paved all around with tiny mirrors.

“Don't touch anything, ye hear me?” John whispered. As he did, Pumpkin reached his arm to the side.

“But it's so shiny!” He thrust a hand forward. As soon as his long fingers connected with glass, a great sucking sound was heard, and Pumpkin's hand disappeared through the wall. “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

“Pumpkin!”

May leaped forward and wrapped her arms around Pumpkin's waist just as Beatrice wrapped him in her arms from the other side. Pumpkin's body sucked up tight against the wall, and everywhere he touched seemed to dissolve and go black, sucking harder and harder.

May felt someone else's arms around her from behind, and then she was toppling backward, down the stairs. Pumpkin and Beatrice came tumbling down on top of her, and May felt herself land on something soft that groaned,
“Ay, Dio mio!”

After a few moments of confusion Fabbio pushed May off him, and they all stood up, making sure they were in one piece, and looking at one another wide-eyed.

John stood at the top of the stairs, “Ye idiot!” he hissed at Pumpkin, then looked over his shoulder. “We'll be lucky if we're not caught by the time we reach the ground floor!”

Up at the landing, the blackness that had spread on the mirror began to turn opaque again, until it was back to its previous shiny surface, appearing as harmless as before.

John fished in his sack and brought out a bolt of silk, muttering out of the side of his lips. “The mirrors will trap your soul unless they're covered up.” Morosely he flung the bolt into the air, and it went rolling down the hall, like a red carpet, disappearing into the darkness.

“Stay on the silk path, ye got it?” he threw back over his shoulder, shoving May out in front of him and not waiting for the others to reply.

Meanwhile, he counted.

“Seventeen paces, eighteen paces, nineteen paces . . .”

This went on for a good hour. Every once in a while they came to the end of the silk bolt, and John pulled another one out of his sack, throwing it out in front of them, where it spread itself out evenly. Fabbio let out a deep sigh, making it clear that he was getting impatient.

“Goodness, does this hall ever end?” Beatrice asked, rubbing Fabbio's shoulder soothingly.

“Nope,” John said, bewildering all of them, then went back to muttering. “One thousand, three hundred eleven paces . . .”

They were at one thousand, seven hundred ten when he came to a stop. “It should be here.” He took a long stick out of his bag and poked it forward. To May's amazement it didn't disappear into the mirror. “Ah.”

John stepped forward too, right into the wall. And he didn't disappear. He took several steps, and then turned to face the others. “C'mon, then.” He looked to his left, then walked in that direction, disappearing completely behind a ledge that blended in so well with the rest of the mirrored wall that it was practically invisible. May and Fabbio gasped.

“Ay!” Fabbio breathed.

A moment later John's head reappeared. “Soft spot. C'mon. I ain't got all night.”

To May's surprise Pumpkin was the first to follow, smiling in wonder. Everyone else trailed after him, holding their palms for
ward and grinning in awe when they didn't bump into anything.

“It took me a week and a half to find that last time,” John whispered, leading them into the dark stone hallway ahead. “I hear the hall loops around on itself eventually, so ye never get to the end. Spirits end up trapped, walking the hall forever. Lots of things like that in the Eternal Edifice. Powerful architecture, it is.” He stopped and looked forward, then behind them, as if to make sure no one was following them, then he continued. “The upstairs is much more modern. That's where all the guards are, and that's where we get on the floaterator. But word is Cleevil doesn't even know this way exists. In any case, he's left it alone. Now”—he yanked on his beard—“where was that service entrance?”

As he ran his fingers along the wall, a white, sparkling light began to glimmer farther down the tunnel.

“Mr. Jibber,” Beatrice whispered. “What's that?”

“What?” John looked up, jolted, and cursed. “Hurry,” he whispered. “Find the door!”

As they all fanned out, feeling along the wall, the beautiful light continued to grow. Watching it, May began to feel warm inside.

“Here!” she heard someone say, but it was like she heard it in a dream, and then someone yanked on the back of her bathing suit, and she was pulled backward, into the deep arch of a doorway. Fabbio shifted stiffly, his elbows jarring everyone else.

“Have ye ever seen a North Farm spirit?” John whispered, his body trembling against the others. Everyone shook their heads.

“Well, yer about to.”

They squeezed hard up against the door as the light grew to a blinding white, and moments later a form drifted past them—long and white, and as filmy and soft as a cloud. May held her
breath, mesmerized, and held the hand that Pumpkin slipped into hers. The spirit had a round head that tapered down to a long, gently pointed tail, like a comet, but its light was too blinding to make out any features. It floated slowly by until its light became dimmer and dimmer, and then it disappeared.

Behind May, John began to fiddle with his skeleton key, and then there was a loud crack as the door opened onto the stairs.

“Follow me.”

John crouched lower and lower as he climbed the stairs, until finally he knelt down and crawled the last two on his hands and knees, peering around the corner of the landing. He ducked back just as two pairs of slimy, clawed feet appeared and passed by.

Slowly and silently he crouch-walked back down the stairs, mopping his forehead with a rotted handkerchief and looking around nervously, up and down the stairs.

“There's a couple ways we can get to the floaterator from here. One's through the Aurora Atrium, which has lots of nooks and crannies to hide in, but is guarded by at least twenty ghouls. Or we have the recreation hallway. That's where the guards have their Holo-Visions and arcade games and such, to use on their time off. We're less likely to meet ghouls that way, but we'll have to pass the goblins' lounge, and there's no place to hide that way—just a straight shot to the lobby. I'm thinkin' the atrium—”

“But. . .,” May interrupted, without meaning to. Her gut told her to use the hallway. When John paused and looked at her, she stammered. “What are the goblins like? Surely they're not as bad as the ghouls?”

May was surprised when John actually seemed to consider her
question. “They're faster. And they have bigger teeth. But they
are
a lot more likely to be fallin' down on the job. Lazy little things, and vain, too. When they're haunting down on Earth, they're either sleeping under people's beds or hiding in their closets, looking fer things to wear.” He seemed to catch himself rattling on nervously. He thought for another minute. “All right, lass. We'll do it yer way.”

May swallowed.

“Yes. That is also the way I would suggest,” Fabbio interjected.

“Do ye lasses have any baubles on ye? Jewelry or a nice handkerchief, perhaps?”

May and Beatrice both shook their heads. “Why?” May asked.

“Something we can throw at them if they see us. They'd be mighty distracted by a fine bauble. I'm kickin' meself fer not bringin' any.”

May thrust her hands into her pockets. She pulled out the quartz rock she'd brought from her shelf at home. “What about this?” She hated to give it up. It was the only thing she had from the woods back home.

“It might work. Keep it handy, and I'll let ye know if we need it.”

May tucked the rock back into her right pocket. As she did, her hand brushed against something else. It felt like a tube of lipstick. She pulled it out and held it up—a glass vial full of black liquid. She whimpered.

John squinted. “Gwenneth! Of all the stinking knaves! That's Gwenneth's handiwork, I'll swear it. A sea capsule. Breaks when it's squeezed. She's probably taken out two hundred knaves that way.”

May's mind leaped to all the times the capsule could have
broken in her pocket, and shuddered. Then she thought back to Gwenneth on the dock at the grotto, hugging and patting her.

“She likes to get 'em when she's nowhere around,” John spat. “Gets a satisfaction out of it. A poor soul'll sit down on his bed, and . . .” John ran his hand across his throat. “Sick. Put it there, girl, down in that corner.”

“But what if somebody steps on it?” May asked.

“Lay it down, child. I'll not debate with ye. We're on a schedule.”

May gazed at him, confused. “What schedule?”

John blinked for a moment, then shook his head, as if shaking off a bee. “Stop askin' so many questions and lay that vial down.”

May considered. In a place like this, surrounded by enemies, a vial of deadly water seemed like a good thing to have. As John watched, she scooped down and laid the vial in a comer of the stairs, but when he turned around, she picked it up again and very gently slipped it into her pocket.

When she stood back up, she met eyes with Beatrice, who'd been the only one watching her. She let May know with her eyes that she'd seen and understood. She reached out and squeezed May's hand. “Careful,” she whispered, then leaned closer. “I'm not sure I trust your friend.”

May had no time to answer before they all gathered, crouching, behind John at the top of the stairs. “When I give the signal, we float . . . or, er, tiptoe . . . forward, fast as we can into the hall across the way. Ye got it?”

“Of course we
get
it,” Fabbio whispered, thrusting his nose in the air.