Ghost Squad

by Claribel A. Ortega

  Lucely’s calves ached. They were running in circles trying to avoid the ghosts, but they weren’t getting any closer to the exit.

  “LUCELY LUNA!” the voices boomed from every corner of the library as Lucely pulled Syd into a small alcove.

  “How do they know your name?” Syd asked, clearly terrified.

  Lucely shook with fear. “I don’t want to think about that right now. We have to find a way to distract them long enough to escape.”

  “Can they even be distracted?”

  “No idea, but it’s worth a shot. And I have a plan.”

  After filling Syd in, Lucely dropped down to all fours, crawling as quietly as she could until she reached a row of the old computers they used during design class. Going down the line as quickly as she could, she pressed the power button on every tower. Syd was doing the same on the opposite side of the library.

  Once she was finished, Lucely looked around to make sure the coast was clear. She could hear the ghosts wailing somewhere near the sci-fi section. They swept the floor with their blank faces and sunken black voids for eyes. She looked across the library to her left, where Syd was standing waiting for her signal. She nodded, and they took off at a sprint toward the door, hoping their plan would work.

  As Lucely approached the last set of bookshelves, one of the monsters materialized directly in front of her, blocking her path.

  Lucely came to a sudden halt, frozen with fear.

  “Lucelyyyy,” the monster hissed. “Come with meeee …”

  She couldn’t move, though she wanted to. Couldn’t scream, though she was trying to. All Lucely could do was close her eyes and pray that she would make it out of there alive.

  The evil spirit growled at her, a horrifying expression of glee on its face. The gaping maw where its mouth should’ve been stretched across its face in some terrible mimic of a smile.

  Then, in a voice made of nightmares, it began to sing.

  “Duermase, mi niña. Duermase, mi amor …”

  A scream caught in Lucely’s throat. It felt as if the monster were ripping her spirit right out of her body as it sang the very lullaby Mamá always sang to her. Her eyes were becoming heavy, and despite the fear hammering in her heart, she knew she was moments from losing consciousness and falling into the clutches of the monster.

  “LUCELY!” Syd’s voice cut through the haze just as the computers finished booting up, blasting the Windows intro music throughout the library at full volume.

  Lucely snapped out of the trance, in a stupor. The monster that just moments before had been sucking the very life out of her fled toward the center of the room, where the horde of evil spirits were descending on the computers like a tornado in a flurry of howls and mist.

  Lucely ran to Syd, who was standing by the exit, and together they burst through the doors and into the rain, grabbing their bikes and peddling away from the library as fast as they could. When they finally stopped, so had the wind and rain. Syd hopped off her bike and collapsed onto a patch of grass, not caring that it was wet since they were both already soaked through.

  “What … just … happened?” Syd asked, still trying to catch her breath.

  “We almost got poltergeisted, that’s what! And I think one of them was trying give me some sort of Dementor’s Kiss.” Lucely tried not to burst into tears. “Syd, this is bad, real bad. Whatever just happened—whatever those things were—I’m almost positive that it was entirely our fault.”

  “MAMÁ.” LUCELY CUPPED her grandmother’s mason jar in her hands. “Mamá, despierta.”

  She examined Mamá’s tiny firefly, hoping for some kind of sign, but Mamá still didn’t stir. Not even her wings fluttered now.

  Lucely sat down at the base of the willow tree, defeated. Absolutely everything was upside down. She was losing her family’s home, Mamá was … gone, and now she and Syd may have accidentally been responsible for the arrival of those evil phantoms at the library.

  Lucely hid her face in her hands and let the tears come. She had never felt so alone.

  “¿Y esa lloradera?” A shrill voice floated down from one of the top branches. Small at first, then louder as it got closer.

  “¿Qué te pasa?” Tía Milagros sat next to Lucely on the ground, looking uncomfortable. This tía was not the type to sit on the grass and chat. Her hobbies were more akin to a neighborhood gossip, always perched on a rocking chair or peeking through the blinds, tutting her teeth at everyone and everything. When she wasn’t cleaning, that is. She made the best pastelitos though—the kind with ground beef and scrambled eggs—so she wasn’t all bad.

  “Do you know what’s wrong with Mamá?” Lucely wiped her eyes and sniffed.

  Tía Milagros’s face was in a perpetual scowl that served only to enhance the curlers and face mask that she passed away in and were now her permanent state of being. But upon Lucely’s question, her face softened. Then her expression turned grave.

  She sighed. “I’m not sure. I have never seen this happen before. Even when I was a young girl,” Tía Milagros said in a heavy accent.

  Lucely hesitated before gathering the courage to tell her about the spell she and Syd had found in the cemetery. “We were just trying to help. Do you think we might have made things worse?”

  Tía Milagros reached for Lucely’s hand. “No, no, mija. I do not know what is happening, but I do know that no child is capable of this … brujeria. This is dark magic. The storm is bringing something with it, something evil. Every day we feel it growing stronger. And Mamá’s not the only one affected by it. I feel it in the air, heavy on my bones. On all our bones. Like we are being stretched too thin.”

  “Manny,” Lucely said, remembering her cousin’s fit the other night and the terrifying vision that followed.

  “Manny, Mamá, Tío Elido. Me. We’ve all been having nightmares.” Tía Milagros’s voice was small, afraid.

  Lucely gasped, and despite the suffocating heat, a shiver took over her limbs.

  “It’s like we’re reliving our own deaths, and then, everything after. Everything you are spared from enduring when you cross over. All the pain and tears of our family and our loved ones.” Tía Milagros clutched her locket, which Lucely knew had a picture of her children and husband, all still alive and living in New York. “It’s painless to die, Lucely. It’s peaceful. What hurts the most is watching those you loved in life mourn you in death. It’s enough to break a heart. Even one as hard as mine.”

  Lucely threw her arms around her tía. “I don’t know what to do. How to help.”

  Her world seemed to be crumbling around her like a week-old cookie she’d left in her pocket. How could she fix this? Where would she even begin?

  “I’ll talk to the others, see if they have any ideas,” Tía Milagros said. “We Lunas are not the giving-up type. You have your father’s spirit in you, all our spirits. You are the only one who can stop this, Lucely. We believe in you.”

  LUCELY AVOIDED BUSES whenever she could—the tough material covering the seats always reeked of caked-in sweat and burnt plastic—but her class trip to city hall was their best opportunity to spy on Mayor Anderson to see what he was really up to. Lucely was sure she had seen him that night in the cemetery. They had to find out if he was connected to the ghosts somehow.

  Syd had saved Lucely the window seat because she knew how sick she got on buses.

  “Ready to be spies?” Syd whispered, wiggling her eyebrows.

  Lucely smiled. “Yep. Got my dad’s tape recorder from his dresser last night. Good thing he sleeps like a rock.”

  They went over their plan in hushed voices, heads together for the entire drive.

  City hall was an extravagant building, with a giant fountain and perfectly manicured gardens out front. It reminded Lucely of pictures she’d seen of the architecture in Spain with its terra-cotta roofs.

  Rain was coming down in sheets as the class poured out of the bus in their school-issue yellow ponchos. They looked like ducklings following M
r. Lopez into the building as he went over the rules. Everyone had a buddy to keep them from wandering off for any reason.

  Lucely had no issue adhering to the buddy system, since she and Syd did that even when it wasn’t required. The not-wandering-off part? Not so much. She threw Syd a knowing look as they filed into the building, making sure to stick to the back near the class aide. Mrs. Stein was nice enough, but she was also, like, ninety-eight years old, and they had a much better chance of giving her the slip than Mr. Lopez.

  Lucely and Syd followed their class around for nearly an hour, nodding along and pretending to be interested in the rich history of their city when really they were thinking of the best way to get up to the government offices without getting caught. Mr. Lopez wouldn’t be doing another head count until lunch, and then they’d be wrapping up their tour with a meet-and-greet with the mayor right before they went home. If they were going to have any chance of picking up something juicy, they needed to record for a few hours. They had to go now.

  “Bathroom break!” Mr. Lopez called from the front of the line, and Lucely knew this might be their only chance.

  “Okay,” she whispered to Syd. “He’ll do another count after the bathroom break, and then we make a run for it.”

  “Got it,” Syd said.

  They waited for the rest of their classmates to take their bathroom breaks and line up again.

  Once Mr. Lopez had done another count, and just as they passed the staircase that would take them to the mayor’s office, Lucely and Syd slipped into an open janitor’s closet.

  They peered out from the cracked door, crossing their fingers that they hadn’t been caught. Mrs. Stein stopped, looking confused for a moment, before shrugging and continuing.

  “That was close.” Lucely let out a breath.

  “The wrath of Mrs. Stein has been avoided again.”

  “God forbid she knit us a cozy sweater!” Lucely shuddered.

  Syd laughed and put a hand on Lucely’s shoulder. “You’ve gotta work on your jokes, Luce.”

  They both laughed as they ran up the stairs and toward the mayor’s office.

  Lucely had no idea if he would even be in there, but this might be their only chance to figure out how he was involved before it was too late.

  Palm trees lurched outside the office windows, threatening to snap in the howling winds as the storm continued to rage. Lucely rubbed her arms. The AC was blasting, and that—combined with being out in the rain earlier—made for a chilly situation. She was sick of rain.

  When they got upstairs, Syd smiled and nodded at the adults she passed in the hallway as if she belonged there. They probably thought they were someone’s kids, because nobody stopped to ask them what they were doing there.

  The mayor’s office was at the end of the hall, between two giant ferns. On the door was one of those envelopes where people put mail. Lucely hoped the microphone on the recorder was strong enough to pick up sound from inside it.

  She looked over to Syd, who was busy loitering in front of Mayor Anderson’s secretary.

  “Now,” she mouthed, and Syd nodded in response.

  “Hi, I’m lost. Can you help me?” Syd asked the secretary.

  A look of panic came over the older man’s face as he signaled for Syd to sit down and began asking her questions. Lucely made her move over to the mayor’s office, pressed her ear to the door, and heard a deep voice inside. She stepped back quickly so she wouldn’t attract any suspicion.

  He was definitely in there.

  Lucely looked back at Syd before slipping the recorder into the large envelope on the door, making sure the little red light indicating it was on lit up before she did. Then she turned around and went straight for Syd.

  “Cinderella!” Lucely whispered. Syd snorted at the code name she had insisted on.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you. Mr. Lopez asked me to come find you.”

  The man at the desk looked visibly relieved, wiping beads of sweat from his bald head. “You two get back to your teacher now,” he said. Lucely nodded, taking Syd by the hand as they ran down the hall. Now they just had to wait.

  They found their class just as they were walking into the cafeteria for lunch. Lucely slid in right behind Mrs. Stein and coughed as Syd took a sip of water from a fountain right next to her. Mrs. Stein just smiled at them sweetly and shuffled out the door toward the rest of the class. She had seen them, which would be enough, Lucely hoped, to make her think they had been there the entire time.

  After lunch, Lucely followed her classmates down the hallway of offices she had walked past an hour before. She could feel every nerve in her body buzzing.

  Mr. Lopez gestured toward a man who looked to be about nine hundred years old. “This is where you pay a parking ticket.

  “And this is where you get a marriage license,” he said, introducing the class to a woman who was chewing gum and looking down like she could actually see the germs on the children’s faces.

  When they eventually reached the end of the hallway, Mayor Anderson slipped out from his office like an eel. He was tall—much taller than he looked on television—and wore a beige trench coat and the shiniest shoes Lucely had ever seen.

  “Welcome, class, ahem. I am Mayor Anderson and …”

  Lucely watched intently as he droned on. There was something off about him. It was almost as if the words coming from his mouth didn’t match up with his lips moving, like he was in a badly dubbed movie or something. She shivered, remembering the thing that had looked like him in the cemetery. Sure, he seemed kind of weird, but not like a giant mist monster. Not even close.

  Maybe they were wrong about him, Lucely thought briefly. Those monsters couldn’t be the same as the person standing before them now, could they?

  “Come in, come in. Don’t be shy.” The mayor flourished his arm in an exaggerated gesture, and the class trickled into his office cautiously. Lucely tried to lag behind to see if she could snatch the recorder quickly, but the mayor was still standing at the door, smiling down at her.

  Lucely chuckled nervously and ducked into the office. Syd was nowhere to be found. The mayor swept into the office and stood behind his desk, gesturing for Lucely to join the rest of her class, which had gathered in front of it. Lucely chanced one more look out the door behind her, but Syd wasn’t there. She had been with her just a moment ago. Reluctantly, she joined her classmates, craning her neck every few seconds to look for Syd.

  A few minutes later, Syd sauntered into the office with Mrs. Stein in tow.

  “She had to use the ladies’ room and couldn’t find the right door,” she told Mr. Lopez as Syd rejoined the class.

  Syd winked at Lucely, patting the side pocket on her jacket casually.

  Lucely suppressed an excited smile. The rest of the class trip was an agonizing wait until they were back on the school bus, where they could listen to the recorder undisturbed.

  They made sure to be the last students to board so that they’d get to sit up front where no one would ask them what they were listening to. Lucely had brought a headphone splitter so they could both listen at the same time.

  At first there was nothing but static. Long stretches of it, broken up only by the occasional person coughing or speaking unintelligibly. Then Lucely thought she heard something muffled. She turned it up, and that’s when the voices started. Not just one or two—it was at least three people speaking in hushed tones and quick whispers.

  “The plan is in motion,” a scratchy, high-pitched voice said.

  “We’ve only collected fifty so far, which is by no means enough!” responded another voice—this one sounded like it had a cold.

  “Quiet. Do you want that bumbling secretary outside to find us out?” Mayor Anderson said.

  “Pah!” Lucely couldn’t tell if this was in response to the mayor or if the second voice had just sneezed.

  “You must continue to collect them and avoid that witch and her annoying assistants,” the mayor said. “Or
better yet, capture them if we can. They would make excellent additions. Especially the cat.”

  Murmurs of agreement resounded, and Lucely looked at Syd who wore the same startled expression she was sure she wore herself. Witch and her assistants and cats. The voices were talking about them.

  “When will we know it’s time?” asked voice two.

  “I cannot believe you have forgotten again,” said the mayor with a sigh. “We must collect enough souls before the full moon on Halloween, and then at the stroke of midnight, when the whole town is distracted by the Halloween Festival, we complete the ritual. Then we will outnumber them, and the town will be ours to control.”

  One of the voices sounded just like Mayor Anderson, that was for certain, but who were the others?

  “We mustn’t forget about that dreadful firefly tree,” said the second voice.

  “That is the most important part of all. Their magic has already begun to fade—soon they’ll no longer be able to protect the town.”

  Lucely grabbed Syd’s hand tightly just as the recording stopped. Out of battery.

  “What are we gonna do?” asked Lucely in a daze. They knew about her tree. About her ancestors. Whoever was in that office was behind whatever was happening to her family.

  “I HAVE AN IDEA,” Syd said, digging her toes into the cool grass beneath the willow tree in Lucely’s backyard, the fireflies flickering overhead. “You said that the fireflies could sense something was off, right? And they’re supposed to protect you.”

  Lucely nodded, her eyes narrowing. She didn’t like the look on Syd’s face.

  “What if … we took a few of them with us—ones that haven’t been affected by the storm—and use their spirit energy to try and help us take down some of the ghosts all over town?”

  Lucely shook her head. “No way. I won’t put them in any more danger.”

  Syd sighed. “Well, we have to do something about the poltergeist problem. You’ve heard the reports of hauntings all over town. It’s only gonna get worse.”