Elatsoe

by Darcie Little Badger

  This is an Arthur A. Levine book

  Published by Levine Querido

  www.levinequerido.com • info@levinequerido.com

  Levine Querido is distributed by Chronicle Books LLC

  Text copyright © 2020 by Darcie Little Badger

  Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Rovina Cai

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Control Number 201995698

  Hardcover ISBN 978-1-64614-005-3

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-64614-006-0

  Published August 2020

  This book is dedicated with the deepest love to my grandmothers Jean and Anita “Elatsoe”; my father, Patrick; my mother, Hermelinda; my brother, John; my darling, T; and, last but not least, to all the dogs we’ve loved.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Some Notes on This Book’s Production

  ONE

  ELLIE BOUGHT THE LIFE-SIZED plastic skull at a garage sale (the goth neighbors were moving to Salem, and they could not fit an entire Halloween warehouse into their black van). After bringing the purchase home, she dug through her box of craft supplies and glued a pair of googly eyes in its shallow eye sockets.

  “I got you a new friend, Kirby!” Ellie said. “Here, boy! C’mon!” Kirby already fetched tennis balls and puppy toys. Sure, anything looked astonishing when it zipped across the room in the mouth of an invisible dog, but a floating googly skull would be extra special.

  Unfortunately, the skull terrified Kirby. He wouldn’t get near it, much less touch it. Maybe it was possessed by a demonic vacuum cleaner. More likely, the skull just smelled weird. Judging by the soy candles and incense sticks at the garage sale, the neighbors enjoyed burning fragrant stuff.

  “Look, a treat!” Ellie put a cheese cube in the skull’s mouth. Although ghosts didn’t eat, Kirby enjoyed sniffing his old favorites: chicken kibble, peanut butter, and cheddar. He’d been her best friend for seventeen years—twelve alive and five dead—and Ellie was confident that if food couldn’t persuade him to be brave, nothing would. “Yum, yum!” she said. “Smells cheesy! Skull Friend won’t hurt you!”

  Kirby, in a fine example of the English springer spaniel breed, hid under the bed.

  “Fine,” Ellie said. “We have all summer.” She’d spent five dollars on a gag, a gag that would not be abandoned after just one wasted cheese cube.

  Kirby had progressed a lot since his death. Ellie still wasn’t allowed to bring him on school property, but since the sixth-grade howl incident, Kirby hadn’t caused any trouble, and his cache of tricks had doubled. There were the mundane ones: sit, stay, heel, play dead (literally! wink, wink!), and track scents. Moreover, the door had been opened to a bunch of marvelous supernatural powers. He just had to learn them without causing too much incidental chaos.

  Ellie ate the cheese and chucked a squeaky yellow bear plush across the room. It stopped mid-arc, suspended two feet above the gray carpet. The air around Bear Buddy shimmered, and its head squished twice: squeak, squeak!

  “Good boy,” Ellie said. Maybe, for Kirby’s peace of mind, the skull should make a funny sound. A rattle? A wee scream?

  Bear Buddy flopped out of Kirby’s mouth and landed on the hardwood floor with a pathetic half-squeak. Strange. Usually, he returned the toys to Ellie. Kirby wasn’t the kind of dog who treated fetch like a game of keep-away.

  “Bring Mr. Bear Buddy!” Ellie said. “Bring it.”

  In response, Kirby turned fully visible, as if somebody had flipped a switch from “shimmery transparent” to “opaque.”

  “You okay?” Ellie asked. It took effort for the dead to be seen. He rarely became visible without her clear command to appear. “What is it? Are you still scared? Does this help?” She covered the skull with an old sweater. Instead of relaxing, Kirby tucked his tail and darted from the bedroom.

  “Hey!” Ellie ran into the hall, but he wasn’t there. “Kirby!” she called. “Here, boy!” He popped through the stucco wall, whining. Paranormal vibrations hummed through her bones. She felt like a tuning fork, one resonating with worry.

  He was anxious. Terribly anxious. Why? The skull? No, he couldn’t see that ridiculous thing anymore.

  When Ellie’s grandfather had a heart attack, Kirby threw a fit, as if he could sense Grandpa’s pain. Maybe, to ghost dogs, emotions resembled radio signals, and the signals were strong when they belonged to a loved one.

  Could somebody be in pain? Somebody Kirby knew?

  Ellie’s parents were at the movies with their phones turned off. Sitting in that dark theater. Enjoying a rare but treasured date night. Would it also be their last?

  No. No.

  Maybe?

  She tried calling them both. No answer.

  They were probably fine. That said, every time Ellie left the house, the oven was probably turned off, but she still double-checked its knobs.

  Ellie had to know, with absolute certainty, that her parents were safe.

  The six-screen theater was five miles away from home. Three miles if she cut across the river using the old railroad bridge. It had been closed to traffic for years; Ellie couldn’t remember the last time a train crossed the Herotonic River on its rusty tracks.

  Sometimes, as Ellie walked home from school, she noticed people on the abandoned bridge. It drew even greater crowds at night. Darkness protected graffiti artists. They climbed forty, fifty, sixty feet above the river to paint the highest trusses. She wondered if the risk was worth the payoff. From the deck, a plummet into the Herotonic River might be survivable (if the artist could swim and the river was calm). Much higher? Perhaps not.

  It was possible—likely, even—that those who climbed bridges at night were more resilient than mere humans. If so, Ellie didn’t want to meet them. She could handle mundane dangers, like violent men with guns or knives, but every tunnel, bridge, and abandoned building in the city was allegedly home to monsters. She’d heard whispers about clans of teenage-bodied vampires, carnivorous mothmen, immortal serial killers, devil cults, cannibal families, and slenderpeople. Even if most of the urban legends were fictitious, Ellie had a ghost dog companion. When it came to strange stuff, she could not be too open-minded.

  At the front door, Ellie slipped into tennis shoes and a reflective athletic jacket. Her bike had red lights on its handlebars and seat. They might alert drivers to her presence, but she needed something stronger to illuminate her path across the bridge. After a moment of frantic searching that left half of the kitchen cabinets yawning open, she grabbed a battery-powered flashlight from the clutter drawer.

  “Heel
, Kirby!” she said, and they stepped outside together.

  Ellie lived near the top of a small mountain. The ride downhill would be quick, if not safe. She fastened her helmet and pedaled her bike to the crack-latticed cement street. From a hundred-year-old oak tree that dominated her modest lawn, a barn owl hooted twice. When Ellie pinned it with her flashlight beam, the bird lighted from its branch and silently flew away. “Damn it,” Ellie said.

  Many owls—most owls—were just ordinary birds with a greater reputation for wisdom than they deserved. Ellie regularly volunteered at a raptor rehabilitation center. There, a great horned owl named Rosie fought everything that moved, including the bald eagle in a neighboring cage, veterinarians, handlers, rustling leaves, and its own shadow. Ellie’s grandmother often said, “A wise woman knows how to pick her battles.” Ellie would add that an unwise bird nearly dies by attacking its reflection.

  The second kind of owl, though, Owl-with-a-capital-O, was a bad omen times ten. Owl will wait until your life skirts the precipice of tragedy and shove you straight into the abyss.

  As Ellie sped downhill, her wheels click-click-clicking double-time, the neighborhood was all cricket chirps and empty streets. People started work early in her blue-collar town. They might not be sleeping at 9:00 P.M., but they were settling down. Television screens projected talk shows and sitcoms through uncovered windows.

  Near the base of the mountain, the buildings she passed abruptly changed from private homes to businesses. Ellie’s brakes hissed against butyl rubber as she took a sharp turn onto Main Street. To the right, three men smoked pungent cigars outside a tavern called Roxxie’s; she parted their sour-smelling mist. “Hey, slow down!” one guy hollered, and she could not decide whether he sounded angry or amused.

  Brick factory buildings flanked the river, their facades crumbling, their windows dark and occasionally cracked. They used to manufacture plastics in town, and the chemical footprint persisted. White signs warned would-be fishermen: WARNING! CATCH AND RELEASE ONLY! HEROTONIC FISH AND WILDLIFE CONTAMINATED WITH PCBs! Near the bridge, somebody had vandalized a CATCH AND RELEASE ONLY sign with a skull-and-crossbones.

  Ellie walked her bike across a rocky strip of weeds between the street and bridge. Long grasses brushed her cotton pants, every tickle unnerving. She imagined disease-filled ticks scampering up her legs. Their bites would stitch a quilt of welts and ring-shaped rashes across her flesh. Her father counted every tick he extracted from dogs and cats at the public shelter. Every year, the number rose. They were either more abundant or more efficient hunters. Ellie had not decided which was worse. Before her, steel trusses jutted from the wide bridge deck and cut the sky into diamonds. At sunset, the slices of empty space resembled jewels on a giant’s necklace.

  A metal walkway ran along one side of the bridge. The smooth, narrow surface was easier to bike across than gritty cement. Ellie jumped on her bike, then shifted to a higher gear and accelerated. Her legs burned from her calves to thighs; although she biked often, she also biked slowly, always mindful of her surroundings. But it was nighttime. Darkness obscured the view, and there were no pedestrians to avoid.

  Or so she thought. Halfway across the bridge, part of a low diagonal beam shifted. Somebody was trying to climb the great structure.

  Key word? Trying. As Ellie approached, the person slipped a couple inches and dropped something. The object, which was suspiciously shaped like a spray-paint can, fell into the river. “Just passing through!” Ellie shouted. She mentally reached for Kirby. He was at her side within seconds, an invisible comfort. Dead or alive, dogs could skip from deep-nap-unconscious to awake-and-ready-for-anything almost instantaneously. She envied their skill.

  The person flattened against the wide beam the same way squirrels put their bellies to the ground and froze when they were trying to escape notice. Ellie stopped, balancing on her bike wheels and one steadying foot, ready to ride at a moment’s notice. Kirby was wagging his tail, acting like he knew the wannabe Spider-Man. Did he? Was this why Kirby had been so upset earlier?

  “You okay?” Ellie asked. She shone her flashlight on the climber. It illuminated his backside, an awkward angle. The butt did look familiar.

  “Stand back!” he called. “I’m gonna hop down.” Okay, his voice sounded really familiar, too, but she must be mistaken.

  “Jay?” Ellie asked. “You cannot be … Hey, careful! Don’t fall in the water!”

  In an attempt to dismount from the beam, the climber swiveled around, chest against the metal, his feet dangling several feet above the deck. Then, he dropped onto the walkway with a graceful thunk and roll. Yep. Ellie had seen that somersault before. It was him: Jay Ross. She and Jay met when their mothers attended the same Lamaze program. They weren’t next-door neighbors, but they lived on the same block. Went to the same school. Celebrated their birthdays together. Point was: Ellie knew Jay, and he’d never done graffiti more permanent than chalk on the sidewalk.

  Second point: Kirby also knew Jay well. Maybe Ellie didn’t have to worry about her parents after all.

  Ellie propped up her bike on its wobbly kickstand. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Ellie?” Jay lifted one hand, his index finger extended, and poked her in the middle of the forehead. “It is you!” He laughed and ducked his head, embarrassed. “Sorry. Just had to know that you were solid. This bridge is supposed to be haunted.”

  “It is,” she said. “My dog’s here. Are you okay?”

  “Kirby? Heeeey boy! Are you taking a walk?” Jay leaned over and wiggled his fingers, enticing the dog closer. Always excited to greet an old friend, Kirby ran up to him. Jay petted the shimmer-over-hot-asphalt mirage that signaled an invisible ghost, mindful not to put his hand through Kirby’s body. “Ellie, did you catch my paint?” he asked.

  “The river caught it.”

  He lightly smacked his own forehead. “Always bring a backup. Of course I’d mess this up.”

  “And what is ‘this,’ exactly? Should I be worried?”

  “I just … It’s personal. Don’t worry. I can’t continue without paint, anyway.”

  “Right. Are you walking home? Want to borrow my jacket, so cars can avoid you?” For probably the first time ever, Jay wore black from chin to toe. His tennis shoes, sweats, and turtleneck were ripped from a catalog of cartoon burglar apparel. In fact, at certain angles, he resembled a floating head. A head with short blond curls and wide-set hazel eyes. He and Ellie looked pretty different, which used to annoy her. As children, they’d pretend to be twins, but strangers didn’t believe that a white Celtic-and-Nordic-American boy and a brown Apache girl came from the same family.

  “Thanks,” he said, “but it’s fine. I’m wearing a yellow tank under this. Look.” He whipped off the turtleneck so quickly that its fabric fluffed his hair with static electricity.

  “That wouldn’t do you any favors if you fell into the water,” she said. “Climbing human pyramids doesn’t qualify you for this.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t climb. I’m the base during stunts,” Jay said, as if her misunderstanding of cheerleading procedures was the real issue.

  “You should find a safer spot to vandalize. Or not vandalize at all. How about that?”

  “Ellie, I’m not here to paint,” he said. “It’s Brittany.” He slumped on the tracks with his knees tucked against his chest. Jay looked sad. Puppy-in-the-rain sad. As much as Ellie loathed romantic relationship talk—she’d never been on a date, didn’t plan to go on a date, and didn’t know how to counsel or console friends about the whole “dating” thing—she couldn’t leave a puppy in the rain.

  “Brittany?” she asked. “Your girlfriend Brittany, or the Brittany in chess club who hates you?”

  “Girlfriend,” he said. “Ex-girlfriend. I guess both Brittanies hate me now.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It just happened yesterday night.” He rapped a metal bar behind him. “The last time we came here, she drew a heart on the
bridge. It has our names in it. Jay plus Brit. I just want to draw a zigzag crack down the middle, like it’s broken.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ellie paused, thoughtful. “So. Twenty minutes ago, did you feel a strong emotion? Fear, maybe?”

  “Not really,” he said.

  “Damn. We can brainstorm a safer graffiti plan tomorrow, okay?” she said. “Gotta go.”

  He stepped back, nodding. “What’s the rush, Ellie? Do you want company?”

  “Ah, no thanks.” She threw one leg over her bike and balanced on her tiptoes. “I’m worried about my parents because … well, it’s probably nothing. Doesn’t matter.”

  “You have my number,” he said. “Need anything, give me a call.”

  “Same here.” She reached out to ruffle his hair, and Jay tucked his chin to help a five-foot-nothing buddy out. His scalp shocked her.

  “That’s supposed to be lucky,” Jay said, smoothing down his hair.

  It occurred to her that luck could be bad.

  Mounting dread chased Ellie across the bridge, down a web of streets, and through the cinema parking lot. She spotted the Bride family car, a battered-looking minivan, near the entrance. Her parents were the kind of people who enjoyed Monday night movies because the low traffic freed superior parking spots and theater seats. Flushed from the two-wheel exercise, Ellie leaned against the ticket booth and asked, “When does the movie The Lonesome let out?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” the employee said. His red vest, an usher uniform, was a couple sizes too loose. It made him seem too young for the night shift.

  “Can I wait in the lobby?” she asked.

  “That’s fine. Just stay behind the velvet rope.”

  He seemed ambivalent to her bicycle, so Ellie wheeled it inside to prevent theft. Her mountain bike had new high-performance tires. Although their performance rating was based on grip, maneuverability, and durability, Ellie figured that they also performed well at attracting thieves. Plus, her bike was neon green, not the most subtle color.

  Inside the lobby, several Formica-topped tables were clustered beside the concession stand. Popcorn kernels crunched under Ellie’s tennis shoes and became lodged in their squiggly treads. She sat and basked in butter-smelling air, comforted by the relative calm. Her parents had made it to the movie theater in one piece; they weren’t trapped in a burning wreck along the highway. If her mother or father had experienced an in-movie health crisis, one painful enough to trouble Kirby, there’d be EMTs outside and several missed calls on her phone.