May Bird Among the Stars (23 page)

Finally, she stood back, clenching her fists. “No!” she yelled. “No! No! No!”

She felt Lucius's arm go around her and pull her away from the bars. They sat down next to each other. “My cat,” she said, looking at him mournfully.

“These dungeons are impossible to break out of,” Lucius said. “The prisoners whisper about it. They say the one wall's invisible just to tease you.”

At that, without warning, May burst into tears.

Instead of scolding her or telling her she sounded like a baby or saying she had gotten them here in the first place, Lucius patted her knobby left knee awkwardly.

“I won't go home without him,” May murmured.

“Where's home?”

May looked up at him. He was looking at her with the utmost earnestness.

“Home is where my mom is.”

Lucius stared at her solemnly.

She swept back the cuff of her shroud and showed Lucius her arm—not translucent, not glowing. “I'm alive.” She pulled back her death shroud to reveal how colorful she was, how solid.

Lucius took this in calmly, almost sadly.

“Aren't you surprised?”

He shrugged. “Disappointed.”

“Why?”

“Well, being dead seemed to be the only thing we had in common.” He grinned.

May didn't laugh. She just hung her head.

“Look on the bright side. At least the goblins thought you were dead.”

“How do you know?”

“Well,” Lucius folded his hands, “if they knew you were a Live One, we'd be getting a visit from the Bogey right about now.”

They both looked down the corridor as if the Bogey were about to appear in front of them.

“Look.” Lucius shifted. “You may be surprised by how things turn out. Take me, for example. Yesterday I thought being a slave to ghouls was the worst thing that could happen to me. Now I'm in a dungeon.”

“I'm so sorry. For everything.”

Lucius's eyes sparkled the way they had back in the Catacombs. “It was brave of you to try.”

May rolled her eyes. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, seeing you makes me feel more like my old self.” Lucius shifted again and cleared his throat. May smiled, trying to be optimistic. She wondered where Fabbio, Beatrice, and Pumpkin were at that moment. Hopefully, far out of Hocus Pocus. At least they were safe. But still, being away from them made her feel very alone.

May and Lucius were quiet for a while.

“So, did you come all this way just to find me?” he eventually asked.

“Well …” May fidgeted. “I was
hoping
I would find you. But actually, like I said, I'm trying to get home. The Lady of North Farm told me there's a way, under the Bogey's bed.”

Lucius tilted his head thoughtfully and turned to face her. “I thought that was just a tall tale.”

“What?”

Lucius blinked. “Well, that the Bogey has his own personal
portal to Earth. Everybody whispers about it. Gosh, and to think it's been there all this time.” Lucius's eyes brightened, along with his whole body. “I could go back to Earth with you.” And then, just as quickly, his glow faded. He seemed to wilt like a flower. “It was 1942 when I died. I suppose I wouldn't have much to go back to now.” And then another thought seemed to occur to him, and he went a shade or two even dimmer. “I suppose that's how the Bogey got me. By coming through that portal of his.”

May felt anger bubble up. She remembered hearing how the Bogey had stolen life from Lucius and the other luminous boys, by entering their nightmares. She took the fabric of her death shroud in both hands and picked at it.

Lucius tugged on the tie of his private school uniform. “It's a shame really, about the bars. There's a great shortcut just down the hall there.” He pointed. “The Lazy Way Ladder goes straight to the top, with an entrance on each level.”

May followed his gesture skeptically. “How do you know?”

Lucius grinned, puffing out his chest. “I know this place backward and forward. Picking the Fruits of Bitterness here. Digging ditches there. I've had to carry ghoul laundry”—he wrinkled his nose—”through half the hallways and corridors down here. I don't need a girl to rescue me.”

May tried to ignore how annoying he could be. “Well, if that's true, why haven't you escaped already?”

Lucius considered this seriously for a long moment. “Hope, I guess.”

“Hope?”

“Well, when you don't hope for anything, I suppose you don't really bother, do you?”

“No.” May shook her head. “I guess not.”

“I mean”—Lucius leaned back and stared at the low, colorless ceiling—”it's silly, but I've sort of just stopped hoping to get out. Maybe it's the air here.”

“Or a shadow,” May said, thinking of the heavy darkness that seemed to fill everything Bo Cleevil and the Dark Spirits touched.

“And then, of course, there's the Bogey,” Lucius added.

May leaned toward him sympathetically, not quite bold enough to touch his hand. She knew that he had been petrified of the Bogey ever since he had died.

They sat and stared at each other for a while.

Then, suddenly, Lucius slapped himself on the forehead. “I know how we can get out of here!”

May looked at him like he'd grown a third head. “Really?”

“Yeah, come on. Let's go.”

May looked around. “How?”

“Well, we'll just asport.”

“Asport?”

“Asport,
silly. You know, disappear and reappear. It's not easy, but if you practice enough, any spirit can do it. It's like whistling or blowing a bubble.”

May looked around. “But wouldn't the Dark Spirits know that? Wouldn't they make sure you couldn't asport out of here?”

Lucius thought about this. “Well, you can asport only a few feet. And most spirits don't know how.”

May nibbled her pinky nail. “Well, I don't think I can asport anyway. I'm not a spirit.”

Lucius wilted immediately. “Oh.” He looked about. “Right …
I hadn't thought about that.” For a few minutes his glow dimmed. And then he knelt in front of her and gave her his old devilish smile. “Just try it.”

“Oh, I don't—” Just then the thought
Why try?
crossed her mind. May looked at the poster across the dungeon. And then she looked back to Lucius, who was staring at her earnestly.

“If you think about it,” he continued, “being here in the lowest depths of South Place is the pits. But it is also something else.”

“What?”

“It's the closest you can get to the Bogey's bedroom.”

Through the empty hallways of South Place, Somber Kitty and Commander Berzerko careened like pinballs. When Somber Kitty zipped left, so did the commander. When he zipped right, the commander was right behind him.

The chase took them up the spiral of South Place, along the Corkscrew River. As Somber Kitty zipped past them, Dark Spirits of every walk of the Afterlife let out shouts of surprise. And then, when they saw Commander Berzerko coming fast behind him, they ran to hide.

It wasn't until he reached the Swamp of Swallowed Souls that Somber Kitty slowed down, realizing that he could not outfloat his pursuer.

“Meay.” He looked behind him. For the moment the commander was out of sight. A noise behind Kitty made him turn. The swamp bubbled and howled, and many of the bubbles were shaped like Black Shuck dogs. They seemed to claw toward him, trying to pull him in.

Panting, he turned. He could hear Commander Berzerko coming down the corridor. He could hear the
tap, tap, tap
of her claws.

She came slowly. Clearly, she knew that Somber Kitty had reached a dead end.

May closed her eyes for the thirtieth time.

“Just concentrate on being over here instead of over there. It's easy.”

“I'm trying,” May said.

Lucius stood outside of the bars, looking in at her. He had asported in and out of the dungeon about twenty times, showing off.

“It's not really that easy,” May said, frustrated. She tried to picture herself in the hallway beyond the bars where Lucius stood. She closed her eyes, then opened them. Again, she was still in the same place. “I just don't think it'll work for me, Lucius.”

“It will. Just forget where you are. You have to believe you're here and not there.”

May concentrated again. She could picture herself standing next to Lucius, outside the dungeon. She tried to believe it. She kept trying.

And suddenly, a very empty feeling came upon her. May mistook it for disappointment and opened her eyes. When she did, she let out a scream. Standing next to Lucius was … herself At least, a version of herself The girl looked like May, but she was as drifty and translucent as Lucius, and she was levitating about five feet from May.

Lucius studied the drifty spirit beside him and then studied the flesh-and-blood May Bird still standing inside the cell with her heart pounding.

“Oh, I guess it is impossible. You sent only your soul out.”

May opened her mouth several times before she got out a reply. “Well, what do I do if my soul's out there and I'm in here?!” she asked, panicked.

The three stood there for a moment—Lucius, May, and May's soul—staring at one another helplessly. “Why don't you try closing your eyes again and getting her back?” Lucius suggested.

May did. She tried and tried, but every time she opened her eyes, her soul was still standing out in the corridor, staring at her forlornly. “I guess she can't get back through the bars,” Lucius offered. “She doesn't seem very talkative, either.”

“I suppose I'll just be going now,” Lucius said with a sigh. Then, at May's look of shock, he giggled. “A joke! You don't think I'd leave you in there without your soul, do you?” He turned to May's soul. “I'm going to go look for a key.”

Lucius zipped away in a ball of light. While he was gone, May and her soul stared at each other nervously. May thought about trying to make conversation, but she wasn't sure about what to say.

Several minutes went by before Lucius came zipping back, dangling a key in his hand. “That was easy,” he said, looking dazed. “Very odd. The ghouls weren't even at their posts.”

He felt around the invisible bars, zapping himself several times. May and her soul both winced sympathetically. Finally, he got it. “There!”

With a
click!
and a
snap!
and the sound of a door sliding open, May looked at the empty space, gingerly stepped toward it, and tiptoed across the threshold. There was no
zap.
No nothing. And a moment later she was standing beside her soul The two reached out to touch each other's hands, and a blinding white light suddenly forced May to close her eyes. The emptiness inside went away as quickly as it had come, and her eyes fluttered open.

Lucius's grin infected her, and she smiled widely.

“Let's go find my cat,” May said, turning businesslike.

Ding! Ding!

The floor beneath both of them shook. “What's that?” May asked. It sounded like the chimes of a giant clock.

Lucius looked up toward where the sound was coming from. “The big clock. It's nothing.”

They zipped off down the hallway.

D
eep in the woods of Briery Swamp, Ellen Bird was no longer charmed by what she saw in the lake. The swimmer beneath its surface had begun to stretch into eight glowing points. Her smile had widened to reveal a malicious grin.

An arrow of fear raced down Ellens spine. The creature, now horrible instead of beautiful, reached toward her …

And then it stopped.

As quickly as it had come, it turned and swam in the other direction, down, down, down, until it was only a point of light, and then the light went out.

May's mother turned for the woods and ran home.

Far above, all over the star known as the Ever After, Dark Spirits left their posts. Goblins and ghouls swarmed out of the villages toward the sea. Mummies and zombies ambled along side by side in the direction of the water. Every mean and twisted soul in the realm converged on South Place for the largest meeting of evil in the history of the Afterlife.

•   •   •

In Hocus Pocus, Pumpkin, Fabbio, and Bea had made it to the city limits before deciding to entrust Isabella to the others and try to follow after May Bird. Aghast, they watched from a sewer grate as Dark Spirits great and small clambered to the edges of the sea and leaped in.

“This is bad,” Bea observed.

In fact, though nobody said it, they were all thinking the same thing: It was beginning to look as if the Lady had led May into a trap.

Above May and Lucius, the ceiling rocked with loud thuds. They both looked upward ominously, then at each other, then hurried on ahead, looking this way and that for Somber Kitty.

About ten minutes later they passed an arched opening onto a crumbling stone staircase that led downward.

“That's the Bogey's bedroom,” Lucius said, turning dim.

May peered down the stairs, then up the hall. “Well,” she said, biting her lip. “It could be that Kitty's already found his way there.” She started down the stairs, then turned to Lucius. “You can stay here if you want. I'll be right back.”

Lucius peered over his shoulder. “No thanks. I'll come with you.”

They found the door at the end of the hall. It protruded from the wall in the shape of a dog's snout, two stone fangs jutting from the jowls and a knocker hanging from the great stone nose.

May hesitated a moment, looked at Lucius, then pushed on the nose. The door creaked open. She drifted inside, followed by Lucius.

The room was decorated in black and gold. An enormous
bed covered in a black velvet blanket dominated the space, the headboard carved with fearful faces. Stuffed animals—nine little Black Shuck dogs in all—were scattered across the pillows. There was a closet door and a black bureau next to it with gold, skull-shaped knobs. On top were several knickknacks—trophies for Realm's Deadliest Henchman, the Scariest Spirit Award, and several South Place Dance-Off ribbons, including one for Realm's Baddest Break-Dancer.