Texting the Underworld (3 page)

“You don't know much about being a banshee.”

“It all happened in such a rush. The Lady said I'd learn as I went along. Considering how new I am, I am doing the best of anyone in the world's memory.” She peered at him. “Don't you agree?”

“Yeah, yeah. You're doing great.”
You're a total screwup.

“We usually stay in our family's home. Have you a small space, a bit confined? I'm used to being underground, see.”

Conor opened the door to the game cupboard under the eaves. “Is this okay?”

She peered in at the shelves of games and retired toys, Glennie's threadbare Mother Goose rug on the floor to sit on while deciding between Mario Kart and Pokémon. A shelf in the back had a bunch of old board games: newish Clue, oldish Monopoly, ancient Trivial Pursuit.

“This is very fine,” she said. “Have you any straw?”

Conor felt around under his bed—momentarily concerned that the spider might be under there, but not wanting to be a wimp in front of the banshee. He located his regulation Adventure Boys sleeping bag and pad and spread them out on the Mother Goose rug. He even gave her his extra pillow.

“One thing everyone says about the Ee Nay-ill.” Ashling flung herself down on the sleeping bag. “Since the world began, no one has seen the match of our courtesy to guests.”

Conor shut her into the cupboard, knowing she could get out easily enough—ever since his mom studied childhood suffocation, house rules decreed that all closet doors have inside latches.

Something skittered across the ceiling—the spider, once again over his bed. Conor watched it dully, willing it to go someplace else. He wasn't about to try killing it again, with a banshee in the cupboard waiting to wail. Maybe he'd get a glass from the kitchen, try to trap it and release it out the window. Maybe . . .

But the spider solved the problem all by itself.

It fell off the ceiling onto his pillow.

Stone dead.

Conor couldn't sleep. Every time he dozed off, he startled awake because he thought he'd stopped breathing. He took his pulse . . . Was it slower? Faster? What would it feel like if he were dying?

Sometimes he concentrated so hard on his heartbeat it pounded in his ears. That couldn't be healthy.

A little after one in the morning he got up and settled in the window seat with a flashlight and his notebook of maps. He flipped straight to one of his real maps—South Boston, comfortably familiar. Thanks to a friend of Grump's who worked at City Hall, he had written in the names of every homeowner for three blocks north, south, east, and west of 36A Crumlin Street. He had measured the distance to the corner market, the mailbox, the Italian deli, and Glennie's favorite cupcake store.

Finger tracing the three blocks from home to the nearest park, then six to the skating rink, Conor almost laughed out loud at himself. A banshee in the game cupboard, for cripes' sake. He must have been asleep after all. What a bizarro dream.

A door slammed somewhere in the night. A bright light blasted in the window at the head of his bed.

Something clanked out there. Somebody said a word forbidden in 36A Crumlin Street.

Grump. He expected Conor to meet him.
Cripes.

Conor clambered onto his bed and knelt on his pillow to slide the window open. He held his breath, hoping he hadn't awakened anyone—not Glennie, and certainly not the banshee in the game cupboard.

Who was totally a dream, by the way.

He stuck his head out, weaving it to see through the grating of the fire escape that served his and Glennie's rooms. Below him, a portable floodlight lit up the backyard. A dark, rangy figure hunched over an object on the ground.

The object fell over with a clank. The dark figure lunged. The forbidden word sounded again.

Conor crept halfway out onto the fire escape, supporting himself with hands on the rusty grating, his cowardly thighs still clamped to his windowsill. “Grump,” he whispered. The fire escape gave an ominous creak and he froze, so busy praying for stability that he almost forgot to worry about waking up Glennie.

Grump lumbered to the fire escape. He peered up at Conor through the grating. “Hey, kiddo. Comin' down?”

“Shhh.”

Grump flashed one of his big, doggylike grins, which always made you want to grin back. “Relax, kiddo. Everybody's asleep.”

Well, yeah, Grump. That's the point.
Conor summoned the worst possible threat. “You'll wake up Glennie.”

What if Grump's the one who's going to die? What if
he blows himself up?
Maybe Conor should go down there after all.

The banshee was a dream. Get real.

Grump jiggled the fire escape. “So what if we wake Glennie up? A girl needs a little moonlight in her life. So does a boy. Come on down. I gotta mix up the fuel and put it in the mold to harden, and the stove's all teetery.”

“It's a school night.”
And you're mixing rocket fuel on a teetery camp stove at one in the morning.

“You're awake, ain't ya?”

“How would I get down there? Mom'll hear the door.”

Grump paused the way he did when something in the modern world—a grandson, for example—perplexed him beyond all hope of understanding. Conor could hear his sigh two stories up. “Conor. If I'd had a fire escape outside my window when I was your age—”

“It
creaks
.”

“So go slow and find the uncreaky parts.”

“It's not safe.”
Not to mention . . .

“Hey, kiddo,
I'm
not safe.”
Exactly.

Conor inched his hands forward, putting a little more of his weight on the fire escape.
Screeeeek.
It sounded like a banshee. Or like a metal fire escape parting company with a wooden house. Even though he was close enough to see Grump's angular face, he still felt dizzy looking down.

He inched one knee onto the metal grating.
Screeeeek
.
The fire escape shivered.

He couldn't do this. “It's . . . it's a school night, Grump. I'm going back to bed.” He inched himself backward until he was almost inside.

“Suit yourself, kiddo.” There was no ignoring the disappointment in Grump's voice. As Conor shut the window, he thought his grandfather muttered, “School night. Cripes.” But maybe he heard wrong.

Conor sat down on his pillow, struck by the shivers.
It's still April, for cripes' sake. It's freezing out and I'm in my pajamas.
Something fell over again out back, and the forbidden word made it through the closed window.

First a dream, then Grump in the backyard. What a crazy night. And a
school
night, for cripes'—

The cupboard door creaked. Out crawled the banshee.

Conor's heartbeat pounded in his ears. The banshee yawned and settled into the beanbag chair. Conor breathed in and out, very slowly, very carefully.

“You people don't sleep much,” Ashling said.

She's a dream. Dream, dream, dream. I'm dreaming.

Ashling yawned so loud this time she sounded like a hyena.

“Shhh.”
Okay, she's a noisy dream
. “You'll wake up my little sister.”

“Ah. So we are supposed to be asleep now. I wondered.”

“I
have
to go to sleep,” Conor said. “I have school tomorrow. Today.”

Ashling's face lit up. “School! Sock hops!”

“Shhhh. Wait . . . what?”

“Sock hops. You dance.”

“I don't know what a sock hop is.”

“I know everything about school. You take off your shoes and dance jitterbutt.”

“I think that's when Grump was a kid.” Conor clambered off his bed to the floor near Ashling, so she'd remember to whisper. “And I think it's jitter
bug
.”

“How old is this grump?” She was not whispering.

“Shhh. Eighty-one.” No more swearing from the backyard. Maybe the camp stove was behaving itself.

Ashling shrugged. “Not so old. There could still be jitterbutt.”

“Anyways,” Conor said, “school isn't about dancing. We learn stuff.”

“I learned to tend cattle, the best in my whole family. When the beasts saw me coming,
ach,
how they—”

“We don't have cattle around here. We buy meat in the store.” Maguire's Market, three and a half blocks due east. It was on his map, lying on the floor by the window seat.

“Store! You trade with coin, get a hi-fi and a smart phone!”

“Keep your voice down.”

“And some gee.” She peered to see his face in the moonlight. “You are wondering how I know so much. I got it all from talking with the Dear Departed. I have an unquenchable thirst for learning, the Lady says.”

“What . . . what is
gee
?” Conor asked.

“You wear it on your legs. Blue gee.” She eyed his red pajamas, with the hole where he'd cut away the Space Rangers emblem the day he turned twelve. “Not like what you have on.”

He wished he still had that Space Rangers emblem on him. The years before age twelve seemed so orderly and safe. “You mean
blue jeans
?”

“I don't know. Do you have coin? I would like to see coin.”

He pointed at his dresser, where he put his change. Ashling jumped up, took a quarter and sniffed it. “Silver, yes?” She came back and held it under his nose until he took it. It was a Mississippi state quarter, with magnolia blossoms on it.

“No. I think it's made of nickel. It's not that valuable in itself. It's . . .” He searched what he remembered from social studies. “It's a unit of exchange.”

“What's that, then?”

He gave the quarter back to her. “I don't really know.”

The light went out in the backyard. The door slammed again.

Ashling paid no attention, tracing the magnolias on the quarter with her finger. “Beautiful craft. I once knew someone who could work like this.” She sighed. “Gone now. Gone, gone.”

“Keep it,” he said. She was making him sad, for no reason he could identify.

She shook her head and put the coin back on the bureau. “The craft of this World prevents me from becoming a wraith when I am supposed to. I must not have Worldcraft on my person when the Death approaches. That I
do
know.”

Conor tried to imagine this sturdy, red-haired girl turning into a wispy ghost in the form of an old hag.

She poked him in the chest. “If I should transform—”

“I know, I know. Anyone who sees you will die.” Conor's spine turned to ice. “You keened before, outside. Did anybody see you?”

“If they did, they're before the Lady now. Dead, I suppose you'd say. Dear Departed.”

Forgetting to be quiet, Conor rushed to the front hall window. He hurled it open and thrust his head out. No corpses on the moonlit sidewalk. He almost cried with relief.

“Pixie?” His mother, from his parents' room, sounding sleepy. “What are you doing?”

“Just . . . just throwing a dead spider outside.”

“Another one? Why didn't you throw it out your own window?”

There was no good answer. “I don't know.”

“Go to sleep, Pixie. It's late.”

As he closed the window, he heard his father's blanket-muffled voice. “What does he think, the dead spider's going to crawl in his window and get him back?”

“Go to sleep, Brian.”

Conor crept back to his room and shut the door.
I have to get some sleep. It's a school night.

“Nobody dead?” Ashling was standing on his bed for a closer look at his Grand Canyon poster.

“You don't care?”

She regarded him calmly. “Why should I? They go to the Lady, get another life.”

“You said your life was cruelly taken from you by the dreaded raiders of the Dahl Fyet'ugh. Other people don't like losing their lives, either.”

Ashling lifted off from the bed and floated to the floor. This time, her braid stayed in midair. She looked like she was underwater.

Exhaustion dropped on Conor like an ax. He wanted it to be four hours ago, when all he had to worry about was pre-algebra and a spider in his sheets. “I'm going to bed. See you in the morning.”

“Good night, Conor-boy.” She crawled back into the cupboard and pulled the door shut behind her.

Conor got to sleep at daybreak. When he woke an hour later, he again convinced himself it had all been a bad dream. But he peeked into the game cupboard and there was Ashling, sound asleep, red hair unbraided and spread out on the pillow, red cloak over her like a blanket, her shoes stashed on top of Monopoly.

The game cupboard smelled like woodsmoke and wet earth. As he crouched there, watching her and wondering what would happen next, Conor thought he heard . . . something, a lone flute, the tune just beyond the reach of his memory. The back of his neck prickled.

Somebody coughed, down in the kitchen. Conor froze. Was somebody sick?

Out the bedroom door, down the stairs in a panicky blur. He skidded into the kitchen to see his parents standing back to back near the coffeemaker, shoulders tense, each with a folded section of the newspaper in hand. His mother was dressed for work at the clinic. His father was in his mailman uniform, his feet pointed toward the back door.

Glennie was ready for school, peering hopefully into the granola sack even though she knew the contents never had been and never would be Honey-Glazed Nutsos.

“It's seven-oh-five,” his mom said when she saw Conor. “Where are your clothes?”

“Who's sick?” Conor panted.

Everybody stared at him as if he were some kind of Nutso himself.

“Nobody's sick,” his dad replied. “My watch says seven-oh-seven.”

“Somebody coughed.”

“That was me,” said his mom. “I choked on some granola.”

“Stuff could kill ya,” his dad said. “Why're you still in your pj's? What time you think it is?”

“There's . . . there's a thing,” Conor said.

“There's always a thing,” Glennie said darkly, pouring granola into a bowl.

“She says she's a banshee,” Conor said. “One of us is going to die.”

His dad let out an exasperated breath. “Conor, my pop's stories ain't real.”

“Dad, come upstairs, okay? Mom?”

“Pixie, it's seven-oh-six. I have to get in to the clinic early today. I'm already late.”

“Mom. Please.”

Dad sighed and put his coffee cup in the sink. “Go ahead, Moira. Con, I'll give you two minutes. Then I gotta go.”

“I'm coming, too.” Glennie abandoned her granola even though she'd already poured milk on it. This was a bad omen: Glennie hated soggy granola. She probably thought there was a good story in the offing to tell her friends.

“You can't say anything to anyone,” Conor said.