“Pumpkin, what are you doing?”
Pumpkin held a gleaming silver knife in one hand and was carving something into the wall, biting his lip in concentration.
“Pumpkin!” May reached and took the knife from him. “Where’d you get this?” May looked to see that he had written “Pumpkin was he—”
“It was just lying there on the table. Look how shiny it is.”
May put the knife back down on the table and scowled at him. Apparently he’d decided the grotto was safe, because he merely grinned back at her, holding his nose. But May had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Lucius was peering around the room. “I haven’t seen anything like civilization in years,” he said, his eyes wide. “You don’t think he might be hiding here, do you?”
May shook her head, ignoring the bad feeling. “Don’t worry, Lucius.” She turned and squinted at the carving of the tree again, and then peered at the shelves along the nearest wall, which held various stacks of scrolls.
May walked over to them and pulled one out. Carefully she unrolled it.
“Look!” she called back over her shoulder to the other two. She took several papers from the different piles: The Lower Realm at a Glance: A Criminal’s Guide to the Southern Territories; Top 100 Destinations For Looting and Pillaging; What to Expect When You’re Expecting to be Executed.
Lucius remained on the other side of the room, by the door, hovering unsurely and staring around. Pumpkin came and looked with her, still holding his nose.
Beside the shelves of brochures was a huge book. May scooted over to it and read the cover. Who’s Who in Nine Knaves Grotto and Maps to Where They Live.
May rubbed the cover with her hand. “Look at this.”
Finally Pumpkin drifted over. “Oh, nifty.” He grabbed the cover and pulled it open.
Suddenly windows started slamming shut.
Then the two double doors.
Lucius, standing by a window, cast about quickly with his eyes. “It’s the Bogey!”
With a lightning fast zip, he careened across the tavern toward the last open door, but just as he did, one of the sacks of liquid fell from above and landed on his head, burst open, and splashed him with black water.
His face contorted into one horrified look. And then he vanished.
“Lucius!” May screamed. She leaped toward him, but Lucius had gone. Only a round puddle of seawater lay on the ground where he’d been hovering. “No!” At the same time May felt breathing on her neck. She turned and leaped back to see she was face-to-face with a man hanging from the rafters by his knees, his hands hanging down below him, one of them holding a watergun filled with black liquid.
May tried to run, but he pushed her up against the wall with one frigid hand, holding the water gun to her throat.
He smiled a wicked, sickly grin at her.
“Welcome to the grotto. I hear yer looking fer me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
John the Jibber
Pumpkin let out a startled scream and shot for the door. The man laughed. “I’d freeze where ye are, or ye’ll end up like yer friend.”
Pumpkin, hovering and quaking, slowly turned.
“Get back here where I can look at ye.”
Pumpkin complied, sidling up behind May.
In a vaporous swirl the man oozed down from the rafters and came to an upright hover an inch off the floor. He was a gruesome sight. Underneath his filthy clothes, which were ripped and covered in mold, his body was gaunt. His hollow cheeks sucked themselves underneath his cheekbones so that he looked like he was trying to make a fish face. Cockroaches crawled out from beneath his collar and into his hair and scraggly beard.
“A Live One! Look at you.” The man laughed heartily again and lowered his water gun. He wore a smile, but his eyes glinted like steel. A cockroach ran along his bottom lip. “I haven’t seen one of your kind in years. I couldn’t believe it when they said you’d come through the gate! What a sight! I’m John.” He thrust out his hand. “Ye can call me Mr. Jibber.”
May stared at his hand. “Where’s Lucius?” she asked, too stunned to speak above a whisper, her eyes glued to the spot where Lucius had vanished.
John eyed her sympathetically. “I’d say he’s about a hundred miles south of us right now, dearie.”
“No!” May threw her hands up over her mouth. Tears welled along the ridges of her eyes.
She felt a cold pricking on her chin. John the Jibber had tucked an index finger there and was lifting her face to look at him. “Chin up, lass. Don’t waste yer time feeling sorry fer what’s already past. Nothing you or I can do.”
May shrank back, not just from his words, which sounded mean and hard, but from the unbearable smell. Just when she’d gotten used to the smell of the town hall, he’d appeared with a stench three times as bad. He smelled like maggots and slime and mold and old socks and all the bad things May could think of. As she moved backward she bumped into Pumpkin, who was cowering behind her. She felt stuck between them like ham in a sandwich. She turned back to John and swiped at her tears. “Y-You’re John the Jibber.”
“Don’t like the looks of me, eh? Well, I don’t blame ye. But it isn’t me fault, what happened to yer friend. Everybody knows not to use the west door of the tavern. Except intruders.
May was speechless. John seemed to take this as agreement, because he once again burst into a wide grin.
“Hey, mates,” he called back over his shoulder. “C’mon out! We’ve got ourselves a Live One in the grotto!”
An explosion of voices filled the hall.
“We’re not yer mates, John the Jibber,” one voice called. It seemed like it was almost just beneath May’s feet.
“You wish, Jibber!” said another.
Slowly specters began arriving from all directions—oozing up through the cracks in the floor, pouring in through the front door of the hall. The women were as rough-looking as the men. Many of them were covered in scars and tattoos, several were missing fingers. One was missing a head. As May watched in awe, they watched her in return, crowding around her and Pumpkin, but only staring at her. Some grabbed drinks from the bar before they joined the others.
“Can I touch her?” one woman with three teeth and a rope mark around her neck asked, leaning forward and sticking an index finger against May’s arm. They all seemed to think this was a good idea and followed suit. May shrunk back, horrified.
“It sure is an honor meeting you,” one man said. “Can I have your autograph?”
May just stared at him, her eyes blurred with tears.
He ran and got a quill pen from behind the bar and shoved one of the brochures toward May. “Make it out to ‘Guillotined Gwenneth.’ That’s me girlfriend.”
May did so, stiffly, the ink coming out of the quill pen with a green glow.
Immediately everybody in the room crowded around her, waving brochures. Spirits who looked like pirates, spirits wearing black-and-white-striped prison suits, spirits in cowboy hats. Behind her, Pumpkin whimpered.
John hovered backward a few steps and waited. Soon the crowds drifted back to their tables and began talking, laughing, and drinking, but they continued to cast looks her way. John pulled a long bench away from one of the tables, then came and wrapped an arm around May’s neck and pulled her forward. “Now have a seat, and you can tell me what brings you to John the Jibber.”
May sat down on the bench awkwardly, sniffling. Pumpkin drifted down beside her, nibbling his fingers.
John stared at her for some time. When she said nothing, he finally leaned toward her, conspiratorially.
“So, what brings you?”
May could feel everyone’s eyes on her. She swallowed and sniffled. She didn’t know what to do. She looked at Pumpkin, who sat gazing at all the faces with his teeth chattering, offering no help at all.
The Jibber whipped a dirty, rotten hanky out of his coat and handed it to her. “Now, enough o’ that snifflin’. If you’re worrie
d about us sounding the Bogey alarm, don’t worry. Those in the grotto don’t bow to the Bogey or Bo Cleevil. Yer safe from that here, missy. Evil Cleevil’s a pain in our side, and we sure wouldn’t help him fer nothing. Made things tough for us, he has. He’d as soon throw all of us knaves in the sea as he would look at us, and we feel the same about him. And we won’t even punish your friend here for trying to take yonder knife.”
He eyed Pumpkin, then turned back to May. “Now come on, out with it.”
Grief stricken, May took the hanky, pinching it gingerly and eyeing it with disgust. “Um”—May swiped at her nose—“the Undertaker said you’d help us.”
A roar of laughter burst out behind her. The whole hall went into an uproar.
“Help from the Jibber, that’s a good one!” one woman shouted. “He’ll help you, all right. Right into the gallows!” another man added.
When May looked back at John, he was just grinning at her. She nibbled on a nail. “What do they mean?” she asked, wiping her eyes with trembling fingers.
John smiled confidently. “Ah, they’re just jealous of me. On account of me being the wiliest knave in the grotto. They like to make fun, but don’t pay ’em no mind.” He winked, flashing another horrid smile.
“What do ye drink?”
“Umm, drink? I don’t know.” Her throat was very dry. “Do you have orange juice?”
“Well, let’s see.” John hovered out of his seat and toward the bar. “No orange juice. But we have That’s the Spirit spirits, Spirit of Saint Louis spirits, Let the Spirit Move You spirits . . .”
“Will spirits make me drunk?” The whole bar went into hysterics. May blushed.
“I’ll have something,” Pumpkin piped in, his teeth ceasing to chatter. He met May’s stern gaze with an innocent shrug.
“I wasn’t offering ye any,” John replied hoarsely.
“Do you have anything that’s not spirits?” May asked, elbowing Pumpkin in the arm.
As John thought for a moment, a stream of black water went zipping through the air past his head. He ducked just in time to miss getting hit in the cheek. Behind May, Pumpkin wheezed and ducked against her back. John held up his water gun, pointing it in the direction the water had come from.
The shooter was a roly-poly man wearing an eye patch and a T-shirt that said I’D RATHER BE IN BELLE MORTE. He was guffawing, holding his belly as he laughed. “Came close that time, Jib. . . .”
Splash.
Something like a bright turquoise egg splattered against his head, sending out a splash of black liquid. His face contorted into an expression of terror, and then he vanished. The whole room went silent, and then broke out into laughter.
“Old Lefty finally got wet!” somebody cried.
“The ghouls got ’im now!”
What lay on the floor where Lefty had sat were the rubbery remnants of a water balloon.
“I think I’m going to faint,” Pumpkin gasped beside her.
May wanted to ask if someone had just hit Lefty on purpose with seawater, but just then, John sidled up to them at the table.
“Things are gonna get rowdy in a minute. We better get moving.”
“It’s yer turn next, Potbelly Petey!” somebody yelled.
As she said these words, the woman with the rope burn from earlier pulled a water gun out from between her ample bosom and fired at the man who’d just spoken. His eyes widened right before the water hit, and then he disappeared.
With that, the hall erupted. Big balloons filled with seawater went flying in all directions, water guns came out from pockets and bosoms. It was a Dead Sea free-for-all.
“This is no place for a kiddie,” John the Jibber said, keeping his gun cocked and looking around pertly. “C’mon.”
He expertly led them out from underneath the torrent of water balloons flying overhead. One came so close to May’s head she felt it whizzing past her ear. It hit a baby-faced man in a cowboy hat and he disappeared.
“Hey, who hit Billy the Kid? Sure that he didn’t deserve it!”
As a fresh volley of balloons flew over their heads, May, John, and Pumpkin burst through the doors onto the town octagon. May had a chance to look back one last time to the puddle of water by the west door, and then the doors swung closed. Two men had already come out ahead of them, and one was trying to push the other into the fountain.
“This way,” John said, leading them across the octagon and into an alley, May’s feet clomp clomping as they rushed along. Pumpkin kept a tight grip to the back of her bathing suit.
“Mr. Jibber, why are they doing that to each other?”
“Just for fun, lass. They’ll quit soon.”
“But isn’t going to South Place a terrible thing?”
“Oh, aye! A fate worse than death.”
He took a left, then a right, and another left.
“So you need my help,” he threw back over his shoulder breezily. “What is it you’re aiming to do? Off somebody? Robbery?”
“I need to get in to see The Book of the Dead.”
John froze in his tracks. He turned to her, crouched down to May’s eye level, and wiped a cockroach off his cheek. There was a steely glint in his eye.
“That’s a good joke, lass. Who told you to say that to me?”
“I need to get home, back to Briery Swamp, to my mom and my cat. The Undertaker said my only chance is the Book.”
John jerked up straight and yanked on his beard a few times, his eyes still locked on May’s.
“The Book of the Dead.”
John looked at her for a few more minutes. Then the glint disappeared from his eye, and he became businesslike. “It’s a big job. Most would say impossible. The Eternal Edifice . . . It’s a fearsome place. I don’t know anyone who’s gone in and come back out again, except meself, that is.”
Beside May, Pumpkin trembled.
“You’ve seen the Book?”
John frowned. “Yes, I’ve seen the Book. Had it right at me hands, I did.”
“What did you go to find out?”
“Why, the only thing worth knowing, really. Where the greatest treasures are hidden. There are a few in the realm. I been looking for the treasure of Queen Sheba for the past hundred years.”
“Where did it say it was?”
John smiled grimly. “It didn’t. The Book wouldn’t open fer me. Blasted stupid book.
“Anyway, the Edifice is guarded. Heavily. Ghouls, goblins, you name it. All working for Bo Cleevil. They took over the Edifice a few years ago and haven’t budged since. What makes ye think yer britches are big enough fer it?”
May shrugged. She thought of telling John about her letter, just to prove somebody thought her britches were pretty big. But then she thought better of it.
“Well.” John looked at May and stroked his beard, then waggled one of his black teeth and pulled it out. “Nobody can ever say John the Jibber was a yellowbelly. Things have been dull round here anyhow. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you,” May breathed.
“Now, how do you propose to pay me?”
May’s stomach lurched. “Pay you?”
John chuckled, but this time his laugh was as cold as crushed ice. “You don’t think I do this kind of thing for my health? The city is a dangerous place! Probably the most dangerous in the realm, except that I hear Bo Cleevil’s building something fearful in the northeast. We’ll all be risking our teeth. I don’t risk mine for free.”
“But. . .” May’s lip trembled. “I don’t have anything.” “Jewels?”
May shook her head.
“Bilocation tokens? Fast-forward motion potion? Elixirs of any sort? I wouldn’t mind being a bit fatter. Or seeing the future.” “I have two teleport tokens.”
“Please.” John seemed to rack his brain. “Have you by any chance got an extra head? I might be able to sell it to one of the fellows here.”
May just stared now, silently. Then it hit her. “Oh! I have some soul cakes, and Pumpkin has a starligh
t.”
John rolled his eyes, then looked Pumpkin up and down. “I’ll take your house ghost.”
“Ohhh,” Pumpkin moaned.
“You can’t!” May gasped, horrified.
“Listen, lass, if you want to see the book, you’ll have to pay up.” John smiled, friendly. “A trip into the city is bad enough. But a trip into the Eternal Edifice, shooo . . .” John ran a hand along his forehead. “I don’t know. It would be the biggest trick of my life getting us all in there and getting us out again.”
“Maybe I could pay you once I get back home to Briery Swamp. . . .”
“Ha! So long, lassie.” John turned and started walking away.
“Wait!”
John kept walking. May felt a cold arm around her shoulders and turned to look at Pumpkin. “Well, I guess that means it’s back to Belle Morte,” he said, trying to sound breezy.
May slumped against Pumpkin’s arm. They had already lost Lucius. This fact was so terrible she almost couldn’t believe it. Maybe Pumpkin was right.
She tried to picture never seeing home or Somber Kitty again. Up ahead of them, John vanished around a corner.
May pulled her sack off her back. “Wait! I have something else!”
A moment passed, and then John’s head appeared around the corner. May dug into her bag and pulled out her comfort blanket.
“I have this.” She held her blanket out. “It’s from North Farm.” John eyed them both suspiciously, drifting back toward them, then eyed the blanket.
“No, it ain’t.”
“Look at the label.”
John read it. “A comfort blanket.” He jabbed at it with his finger. “How’d you get this?”
May swallowed. She hadn’t thought he’d ask.
“It’s none of your business,” Pumpkin said, surprising both of them. John turned a look of irritation on him.
“But it’s yours if you take me to see the Book,” May said quickly. Pumpkin looked at her, impressed.
John ran his hands along the fabric of the blanket, his eyes gleaming again. “It’s rare. I could get a good price for it.”
May waited.
“Ye wouldn’t be hiding anything important from John the Jibber, would ye, lass? I don’t want to get mixed up with no Northern Spirit business.” As he said this his eyes belied his greed. They were glued to the blanket.
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