Texting the Underworld (13 page)

The elevator bell rang. “Hurry,” Conor whispered. “Oh, hurry, hurry.”

They didn't wait for the door to open all the way, just shoved the wheelchair in. Conor flung himself at the
CLOSE DOOR
button.

“Hey,” they heard the man in scrubs say. “Where'd that wheelchair go?”

Conor pushed
LOBBY
, although he wondered if that was a good idea. Would the empty wheelchair roll out of the elevator into a whole troop of security guys?

“Sorry I made noise,” Glennie said out of thin air as they turned the wheelchair around to face the door.

“Wasn't your fault,” Grump said. It was like the wheelchair was talking.

“In 1998, forty-eight people lost their lives in roller-coaster accidents.” Ashling's voice quavered. “This thing we're in, is it like a roller coaster?”

“Why would that worry you?” Glennie's voice again. “You're already dead.”

“Don't be rude to the banshee, kiddo,” the wheelchair said.

The elevator stopped moving.

Conor braced himself for the worst.

The door opened.

It was the worst.

Three security guys stood there, staring into an elevator that looked empty except for a wheelchair. “What is this, a joke?” the tall one said.

“Any idea which floor it's from?” the short one asked.

The third security guard, who was medium size, reached for the wheelchair's arm. He missed, stumbled a little, and braced himself on the elevator door. The other guys cracked up.

If he jerked the chair out of the elevator, could Ashling stay in contact with them all so they'd still be invisible? Conor doubted it.

Glennie, however, had her own ideas. She poked him and breathed, “Push it out.” Without waiting for him to reply—as if he could—she made a whirring noise and pushed.

Conor pushed, too.

He also prayed.

Ahead of them, three jaws dropped. The tall, medium, and short security guards backed hastily away as the empty wheelchair rolled out of the elevator and headed for the front door. Glennie kept up the whirring noise.

From the general vicinity of Grump came a crackling sound, like a walkie-talkie. “ER to cardiac ward,” Grump said in a high-pitched, muffled voice. “Repeat: Please send electric self-guiding wheelchair to the ER. Inside doors blocked, use the front. Over.”

Grump made the crackling sound again, then said in a deeper voice, “Already on the way. Over and out.”

“Will ya look at that?” the tall security guard said. “Did you know they had electric self-guiding wheelchairs?”

“You didn't know that?” the medium-size guard said. “Where you been?”

“I never seen one,” the short guard said. “But I heard about 'em. You gotta stay on top of things, Louie.”

The sliding doors opened. They were outside.

“ER's to the right,” Conor whispered. All he could hear was his heart pounding. They turned, conscious of the three guards watching them through the lobby's huge windows. “You guys are nuts. I can't believe that worked.”

“Quiet, kiddo,” Grump said. “We ain't out of this yet.”

“I don't understand why they let us pass,” Ashling whispered. “What is a self-chiding wheelchair?”

“We'll explain later,” Glennie said.

They scuttled past the emergency room and around a corner, seeking a private spot. In a dark alley, everyone disconnected. Grump was visible by the gleam of his wheelchair. Glennie was a shadow with white raccoon eyes.

“Rats,” Conor said. “We didn't bring a flashlight.” How was he going to tie knots in the dark?

Glennie pressed something plastic into his hand: a mini-flashlight, part of the stocking haul from last Christmas. “Glad I came?” she said.

He didn't have to see her face to know it was half smirking. Grump's voice came into his head:
Glennie's as much of a con artist as I am.
Exactly what had Conor contributed to this effort so far? Glennie should have gone alone.

Conor's cell phone vibrated.

U get out?
Javier texted.

Yup. How u?

Nrse km, no prob. Snored. Dint fart.

K.

Set yr fone 2 ring.

Y?

So u here it, dork.

K. By.

Gd luk.

Gd luk.

Conor hesitated, then reset his phone ringer. “This is stupid. It'll never ring anyways.”

They put their socks back on—nobody'd notice floating shoes in the dark. They pulled their scarves up and their hat brims down, so all that showed were their eyes. Ashling took Grump's hand. Conor lashed them together with a strip from Ashling's cloak, while Glennie held the flashlight. Then Grump stood up and Ashling floated them high enough for Conor to lash Glennie to her legs. Last of all, he stood on the wheelchair seat to do a sloppy, one-handed job of lashing his hand to Ashling's.

The invisibility chill washed over him. Everything fizzed and lightened. He shut his eyes, grateful that six hours had passed since dessert.

“Good-bye, wheelchair,” Glennie said.

“We must kick straight up,” Ashling cried. “Kick, kick, kick!”

“Grump can't kick,” Conor yelled.

“Then you and the girl must kick harder!”

Conor got his legs moving. Below him, Glennie made an
oof
sound—she was kicking, too. Cold air rushed past his face—heading straight up turned out to be much faster than bumbling along horizontally.

“Whooooooo-hooooo!” Grump yelled. “Yeeeee-haw!”

“There's South Station!” Glennie hollered. “And the John Hancock building! This is sooooo cooool!”

Conor had never hated her so much in his life.

He opened his eyes a crack. Boston was a spiderweb of lights, just like a satellite map image and maybe the last familiar thing he would ever see. The city got smaller and smaller. He shut his eyes again. And kept kicking.

Up, up, up . . . and they were soaking wet. Cold wisps drifted across Conor's eyelids. His eyes flew open and he saw . . . nothing, at first, then a faint grayness. Even under the scarf, his nose was so cold he thought it might fall off. He shut his eyes again so his eyeballs wouldn't freeze. It got harder to kick—he was almost too cold to move.

“I'm letting us go visible,” Ashling shouted. “It's too much work to keep us invisible and floating.” It hadn't occurred to Conor that keeping them in the air was an effort. His stomach clenched in terror.

“It's freezing,” Glennie yelled below. “I hate this.” He wanted to ask her if she was glad she came, but he didn't think he could unfreeze his jaw. Grump hadn't said a word for several minutes. Was he all right? If he wasn't, there was nothing Conor could do about it now.

The cold hurt. He couldn't feel his hand or his eyelids. He almost wanted Ashling to let him drop and be done with it.

But then they burst out of the mist into a moonlit cloudscape, the air still freezing cold but clear and dry. The moon was behind them, so bright that they cast a shadow on the dead-white plain of cloud. Here and there, the flat surface swept up in bright, moon-washed peaks.

It was so beautiful Conor almost forgot to be cold.

Almost.

“Stop kicking now,” Ashling said. “We must wait to be pulled.”

They bobbed in the frigid air, still rising gently. Nothing happened.

“Remember when Grump used to hold us up to touch the moon?” Glennie shouted.

Conor craned his neck to see how Grump was doing. The old man's head was sunk on his chest. Ice had formed on his scarf and the sling holding his arm. As if he sensed Conor's concern, he lifted his head and gave his grandson a stiff nod.

“How's the arm?” Conor yelled.

“Hurts like a son of a gun.” Grump's voice seemed to float away on the wind. “But cold air helps.”

“You okay?”

“Sure, kiddo. Why not?”

Conor knew he was lying.

“Ah!” Ashling said. “Aha!” They jerked forward, then stopped.

Something forced them backward, then sideways. Conor hoped his lashing held.

And then they moved forward, slowly at first, then faster, much faster. A cloud peak slid by underfoot, then another. Their speed made Conor's eyes water.

“Here we go-o-o-o!” Ashling yelled.

They must be over the ocean now. Conor imagined freezing cold whitecaps. Sharks. The fairy horse that drowned and ate you. He'd almost prefer spiders.

Almost.

The night dragged on. The cloud peaks no longer amazed. Conor half dozed, cold, scared, tired, aching. He couldn't imagine how Grump felt, or even Glennie, dangling below.

His eyelids drooped. There was a sharp, cold spot on his neck where his scarf needed adjusting, but the rest of him went warm. Which made sense . . . because his blood was burning.

He stands there in the shadows, angry and panting, looking for Aengus so he can continue killing him. But she distracts him, puts her hand on his chest. “Calm yourself,” she murmurs. “Breathe.” The firelight catches her strange eyes, blue with a wedge of gray.

He's seen her do this to a panicked young bull six times her size. He wonders if he should be insulted. But he does breathe, just as she said. His heart slows. “You are good with cattle,” he tells her, covering her hand with his. “I am the best of all,” she says. But then she slips her hand away, suddenly shy, her uncanny gaze on the ground.

“You had something to tell me,” he says. She keeps her gaze stubbornly down.

He jolted awake, shivering, sorry to be back in reality.
This is nuts. I'm dreaming this stuff because of what she's told me. It's not real.

Ashling rolled her head around on her neck, as if getting the kinks out.
That was you, for sure,
he thought.
Who was I?

“Are you getting tired?” he asked, whitecaps and sharks on his mind.

“What will you do about it if I am?”

Good point
.

Ahead, the horizon had a halo of gray. As they rushed forward, it acquired a rosy hue. Without meaning to, Conor let out a moan. Surely they must be almost there.

Wherever
“there”
was.

“Patience, Conor-boy,” Ashling said.

As it turned out, “there” arrived with absolutely no warning. One minute they were scudding along, the next . . .

“
Ach!
Here we go!” Ashling yelled. Conor had time to say “Whu . . . ?” and then they were spiraling down, plunging through the clouds, hurtling toward the exact whitecaps that had been haunting his thoughts.

He closed his eyes. Glennie was shrieking. He tried to think about Grump, his parents, even Javier.
Good-bye,
he thought.

“I didn't think of this!” Ashling hollered.

“Think of what?” Conor yelled back.

“We're falling too fast. We will all land on top of the little girl.”

“Slow down!”

“I'm trying! Help me—spread your arms out wide!”

Conor spread-eagled facedown like a skydiver, his cheeks rippling, his teeth so cold he was afraid they'd shatter. Below him, Glennie was doing her best to spread out, too, but was hampered by having her hands tethered. Not much Grump could do, with his arm in a sling.

Below, the whitecaps broke on a pile of rock in the middle of the Atlantic. It was getting closer by the second, drawing them to it.

“Conor-boy,” Ashling hollered, “untie your sister!”

“Are you KIDDING?”

“DO IT! NOW!”

Every instinct screamed that untying Glennie would kill her. Conor imagined his sister smashed on the rocks or drowning in the waves. He couldn't do it—he wouldn't. He tried to stretch his arms out beyond the capacity of blood and muscle, anything to slow them down.

They didn't slow down.

“CONOR!” Ashling screamed. “We will crush her!”

“Okay! Okay!” Conor pulled his mitten off with his teeth, and it flapped away on the wind. Ashling bent over, lowering him so he could pull the tail of belt leather that would release Glennie's arms. He swung back and forth, stretching, and just missed the flapping tail.

It seemed to him they were slowing down—was that wishful thinking? The pile of rock—a small island now—loomed closer. Its surface was in motion, but he had no time to puzzle about that.

The tail hit his hand. His fingers were too cold to grasp it.

“CONNNNNORRRR!” Glennie shrieked. Below her was nothing but rock, still coming on too fast.

He swung again, desperate . . . and caught the tail in his hand, clutched it, tried to pull. It was stuck, frozen. He used his legs to swing himself, then pulled, pulled, pulled.

And it worked. The lashing unraveled on one arm.

Then the other.

Glennie fell, screaming.

Grump shouted.

Conor shut his eyes, not wanting to see. They were slowing down now, he was sure of it—if he'd waited, kept Glennie with them, could he have saved her after all?

But then his feet glanced off something soft and landed on something hard. Ashling crashed into his side, almost wrenching his arm out of its socket. He slipped and slithered, then thumped down on his butt in what felt like a puddle. The air smelled of seaweed, salt air, and something disgusting—poop, lots of it, and wet animals. He opened his eyes.

He was on a rocky shore. A wave smashed into smithereens a couple of yards from his feet. He was in fact sitting in a puddle, Ashling beside him, Grump beside her, lying there panting.

Conor's butt was soaking wet. But his most immediate concern was his nose.

Which was less than an inch from the much larger nose of a giant red grizzly bear.

Its tawny eyes gazed deep into his. It bared its teeth. Something changed in its eyes, promising disaster.

But then the bear put out its tongue and slurped him once, from chin to forehead. It turned away and snuffled at a crab near Conor's hand, but didn't eat that, either.

“That creature's dead,” Ashling said. “It's not hungry anymore. Everybody and everything here is newly dead.”

“Where's Glennie?” Grump struggled to sit up.

“Glennie!” Conor yelled. What if she'd fallen in the ocean? What if she landed too hard and broke everything? What if something ate her?

“I'm here!” Glennie hollered, her voice far away and muffled.

Conor's spine turned to jelly, and he slumped with his head on his knees.

“Conor,” Grump gasped, “can you get us untied?”

Conor undid all the knots, then struggled to his feet. Water from the puddle ran down the backs of his legs. He was on a giant rock, barely big enough to be called an island. It should have been freezing, stuck up in the middle of the ocean like that, but it was comfortably warm.

It also was crowded: dogs, cats, cows, sheep, chickens, people in funny clothes, llamas, people in regular clothes, several parrots, lizards, a dozen orangutans, some lions, an alligator, a bunch of animals he couldn't name.

Glennie appeared in the distance, raccoon hat untied, frog mittens dangling, leaning on a tiger.

“I landed on him,” she yelled. “All he did was lick me. It's SO COOL.”

Conor took a step and his foot almost slithered out from under him. He looked down. The rock was slimy with white bird dung and a greasy brown substance. “If they don't eat,” he asked Ashling, “why do they still poop?”

“One of Death's great mysteries,” Ashling said. “Are you all right, old man?”

“Yeah,” Grump said, “but I feel like heck. The painkillers wore off over Bermuda.”

Glennie left her tiger and wandered over. She cocked her head at Conor's soaked corduroys. “What did you do, wet your pants?”

Conor took off his parka and one sweater and tied them around his waist. They were too warm anyway.

“We must hurry,” Ashling said. “Careful you don't slip on your way to the portal.” She pointed. Next to a cluster of men in long colorful robes was a jagged cave entrance, about the size of 36A and 36B Crumlin Street combined.

Ashling set off, pushing and shoving, manhandling and lionhandling her way forward. Glennie followed, supporting Grump by his good arm, with Conor in back, holding him up by the gait belt. Conor wasn't sure he and Glennie were accomplishing much—if Grump started to fall, they'd all go down in a poop-smeared heap.

“This stinks,” Glennie yelled to Ashling. “It must be gross inside.”

“The animals do not relieve themselves in there,” Ashling yelled back.

“Why not?”

“Another of the great mysteries.”

Every time Conor felt himself falling he grabbed an animal that would normally be on TV or far away in a field. But even the lion didn't object when Conor clutched at a handful of mane—it regarded him sadly, with just a hint of reproach.

“No wonder everyone hates this portal.” Ashling tugged at her cloak, which was trapped under a moose's foot. “I hardly ever come here.”

“Why isn't everybody going in?” Conor asked.

“You'll see soon enough. Move, blast you, you great big whatever!” Ashling shoved the moose repeatedly in the back of the knee. At last, the hoof released her cloak.

One of the men in the long robes came up to them. “Excuse me. Where are we supposed to go?”

“You speak English!” Conor said.

“We are speaking Urdu.”

“No, no, we're . . .” Conor's brain engaged.
Sweet. I have a universal translator.
“Um. I think you're supposed to follow the animals through that entrance.”

“Guh.” The man returned to his companions.

“What's the problem?” Conor yelled, but got no answer. He and Glennie maneuvered Grump around a cow and a giraffe, slithered past a Shetland pony.

They arrived at the portal. And they saw the problem.

About ten feet inside the huge cave entrance was a rock wall with a slit at the base, barely wide enough to accommodate the polar bear that squeezed itself in as they watched. When the bear was gone, a llama sniffed at the entrance and tried to back away from it. The crowd of beasts behind the llama growled and pressed forward until it reluctantly slipped inside. Its place was taken by a leopard, who also stopped and sniffed.

“Cripes. This'll take a while,” Glennie said.

Grump groaned and clutched at his broken arm, leaning back against Conor so hard they both almost fell down. Glennie shooed six penguins off a rock so Grump could sit for a minute.

Grump was panting. “Holy macaroni,” he kept saying.

“Stop complaining, old man,” Ashling said. “You wanted to come.”

“He's trying to save his family,” Conor protested.

“He's a hindrance.”

Conor wanted to hit her.

The island was getting more and more crowded. Humans and animals kept appearing out of thin air, dazed and nervous, clearly with no idea where they were. Conor supposed some of them might have died so suddenly that they didn't even know what was happening. He could see the advantage of having a banshee guide. He wondered if the Irish were the only ones to come up with that idea.

He had his answer when a tall black woman in a colorful robe and headdress strode past the moose and shoved a warthog out of her way. She hauled behind her a skinny old woman in a pink T-shirt and a long orange-print wraparound skirt, her face contorted in a silent shriek.

“What a mess,” the tall woman said. “I hate this portal.” She paused, assessing Grump. “What's wrong with that old man? He looks as if he's in pain.”

“He is in pain,” Conor said. “Can you help him?”

The woman pierced him with a look. “Pain? How is that possible?”

“He's not dead. Me neither.”

“What is this?” The woman wheeled to face Ashling. “You have brought the
living
to the
Underworld
?”

Ashling flicked Conor a long-suffering eye roll. “This is my affair, not yours.”

“That old man is in
pain,
the boy says.”

“Dude, he does not know real pain. He should try an ax in the head.”

“Why do you call me ‘dude'? Is this a rude epithet?”

“We have business with the Lady. If you don't like the old man's pain, take it away from him.”

“Only the Lady can do that. Or Nergal.”

“Then you'd better stop being emo and let us go find them.”

The old woman in the pink T-shirt whimpered. The tall woman pulled her aside and talked to her in a soothing voice.

“Who is that?” Grump eyed the tall woman as if she'd broken his other arm. “What's this ‘Underworld'?”

“That's Oya,” Ashling said, not fondly. “She guides the Yoruba dead. Their Underworld is the same thing as our Other Land. It's right here.”

“Yoruba?” Grump sputtered. “This place is Irish!”

“The Yoruba are from West Africa,” Conor said, doing Mr. Rose proud.

“I know where they're from. My point is—”

“My tiger's not from Ireland,” Glennie said. “Neither are moose.”

“
My
point,” Ashling said, “is that Oya has no right to scold me. Only the Lady has that right. And sometimes Nergal.”

“He's Babylonian,” Conor said. A flock of pigeons and an armadillo slipped through the narrow cave entrance. He stared past them, hoping he'd see light flickering down there somewhere.