The Hungry Ghosts

by Miguel Flores

  “Apologies!” He stepped back and held his hat between his hands, a forced grin embedded on his face the whole time. “I’m here to investigate any and all rumors, hearsay, and smells of magicks in the nearby area. I have reason to believe that a resident of this building may have witnessed an event.”

  Doris didn’t budge one bit. “None of my girls would know anything about that, so you can be on your way.”

  “Madam, please.” His smile wavered. “If you could just let me in so I can conduct some short interviews, I will gladly—”

  “No.” Doris took one step forward, forcing the wizard to take one step back. “You may not.”

  “But—”

  “Good day!” Doris maneuvered herself behind the door and slammed it shut. As soon as she locked it, she turned around and stared directly at Milly. The very wrinkles around her eyes seemed worried. “Follow me,” she said. “Everyone else, go to your rooms.”

  Milly locked eyes with Ikki before following Doris into the kitchen.

  Doris spun around and put her two wrinkled hands on Milly’s shoulders. “Please tell me you don’t have that book.”

  “What book?” Milly asked unconvincingly. She glanced at the back of the kitchen. “I . . . lost it,” she admitted, which didn’t seem to be altogether untrue.

  “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”

  “I—”

  Doris closed her eyes and let out a long breath. She smoothed back stray strands of her graying hair with one hand. “I’m sorry, Milly. I believe you. I do. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”

  “I am safe,” Milly said. “Everyone is.”

  Doris looked at Milly, or through her, eyes glazed over as if she was remembering something, but then she shook her head and turned away. “Let’s shut all the windows. I don’t think it’s safe for anyone to leave the house for a few days.”

  Milly nodded.

  “Will you finish up in here? I’m going to check on the others.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks, dear.”

  Doris hugged Milly, then shuffled out of the kitchen. As soon as she was gone, Milly ran to the window.

  The book was nowhere to be found. She jumped outside and scavenged around the back of the house but couldn’t find it anywhere. “Where is it?” she whispered to herself. “Where did it go?”

  After another minute (then two, then three) of looking, she gave up and walked back to the open window-wall. She was in the process of closing the slat when she looked down and remembered the cat’s tiny pawprints leading away from the house. Following them was a set of little girl’s haphazard footprints.

  A tiny tuft of blue borkoink hair lay in the grass.

  Cilla.

  CHAPTER SIX, PART TWO

  on the frightening appearance of a witch’s nose

  Milly sat on the living room floor next to a lantern. The oil was almost gone. Doris had told Milly to stay at the house while she searched for Cilla, but that had been hours ago.

  The other girls all slept in the same room. She tried to get them into their beds, but they all wanted to stay in the living room with her. Annie and Little Nene were huddled together, their limbs tangled in each other’s blankets.* Marikit had made her bed (very uncomfortably) on one of the chairs. Abby had strewn several sheets over a table and snored peacefully from underneath.

  If Cilla hadn’t been missing, Milly might have enjoyed this impromptu sleepover. Instead, she huddled beneath a patchwork quilt and watched the front door with bleary red eyes.

  Ikki crawled out of the pillow fort she’d been sharing with Nishi and Lissy and dragged herself over to Milly.

  Milly blinked up at her. “You okay?”

  Ikki nodded, then sat down. Milly lifted her arm and the small girl crawled into the open space. She leaned on Milly’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

  After some time, Ikki whispered, “You think she’s okay?”

  Milly played with Ikki’s hair absentmindedly. “I don’t know.”

  “Doris will find her though, won’t she?”

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  “Do you think she’s really a witch?”

  Milly’s stomach tightened. “No. I don’t think so.”

  Ikki rubbed her face into Milly’s shoulder. “Do you . . . do you think it’s my fault she left?”

  This time Milly was certain. She knew who was to blame. “No, Ikki,” she said. Firmly. “I am very certain it isn’t.”

  “Okay . . .” Ikki said. “I hope she gets back soon. I kind of miss her.”

  “Me too.”

  Milly held Ikki until she fell asleep. When the lantern’s light began to fade, Milly scooted out from the cover and lay Ikki’s head down on a stray pillow. She stood up and stretched her fingers toward the ceiling. It was getting too late to stay up, but no matter how tired she was, she couldn’t sleep.

  If only she hadn’t let Cilla see the book in the first place. Or let her run away. Or let her fall off the cliff. What a bunch of stupid things to do. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Milly walked toward the hallway and tried to calm herself down.

  “I wish I could do something,” she whispered to herself. “Anything. I can’t even use magicks to help her. That’s what got us in this mess in the first place.” She wanted to cry. “Why can’t I just . . . want the right things? Or do the right things?”

  Why can’t I just be the right thing?

  A soft scratching noise came from the front door.

  Who was that? It couldn’t be Doris; she wouldn’t have even knocked. Was it Cilla? The wizard? The . . . cat?

  Milly crept toward the door. A strange green light glowed from the bottom, bleeding out into the hall. Milly froze.

  That definitely wasn’t Doris.

  She heard a strange mumbling sound from the outside, and the door’s handle twisted on its own. Slowly, the door opened, as if the wood itself was refusing—but failing—to let the stranger in.

  The light faded when the door creaked all the way open, revealing the silhouette of an old, hunched woman with a very crooked nose.

  A witch.

  The air smelled burnt and old.

  The witch wore layers of tattered fabrics like a crow that had collected the feathers of other birds. She leaned on a long wooden staff, and her skin looked like ash. Her hair came down in tangled cords. The ground around her was covered in shadowy hands and feet, but they didn’t seem able to touch her or the house. She didn’t seem to notice them either.

  The witch raised her crooked nose and sniffed around. She spoke, but not at Milly. Past her.

  “Where is she?” The witch turned toward Milly and tried to look deeper into the house. “Where is the witchling?”

  Milly crossed her arms like she’d seen Doris do and tried to look brave and bigger than she was. She kept the hand with the mark tucked under her armpit. A shiver ran up her leg. “You’re not welcome here. Please leave.”

  The witch continued to turn from side to side, sniffing the air. “Is it one of your little sisters?”

  Milly gulped and tried to pull her shoulders back. It was getting harder to breathe. “You’re . . . not welcome . . . here.”

  The witch cracked a smile, revealing her broken teeth. “Am I frightening you?”

  Milly tried to say no, but her throat was getting dry.

  “Good. You should be frightened.” The witch drummed her fingers against the staff in her hands. “Believe it or not, I am actually here to help your little sister. I heard there was a wizard in the area looking for her. I thought I’d spirit her away. Keep her safe.”

  Milly felt her hands tighten into fists. “Why should I believe you’re telling the truth?”

  The witch’s upper lip twitched. “You have no reason to. You have no reason not to. What makes yo
u think anything you know is the truth?”

  Milly shook her head. “Witches are liars. They keep secrets from people. They do things in the dark. They . . .” Milly trailed off, realizing who it was she was describing.

  The witch tossed her head back in a cackle. “I’m sure your sister isn’t like that.”

  “My sister isn’t a witch,” Milly said.

  “Ah, and how do you know that?”

  “Because . . . because I just know, okay? She . . . it’s impossible.”

  The witch jerked her head and lifted her nose again. She took a deep breath and grinned. “She’s here. I can smell her brimming with magicks.” She turned from the door and stepped out into the grass. “I’m afraid you’re about to be very wrong, my dear.”

  Milly started after the witch, but she heard a creak and spun around to see Ikki’s horrified eyes watching from the other room.

  “Milly?”

  “Stay here,” she whispered. “Shut the door. Don’t open it for anyone.”

  CHAPTER SIX, PART THREE

  uh-oh

  The winds and waves were quiet when Milly stepped outside. The very grass beneath her feet felt brittle, as if any wrong step would shatter the tension covering the cliffside. Up ahead, Milly saw the witch shambling down the hill toward an old woman and a little girl clutching her borkoink.

  The quiet inside Milly broke, and she sprinted toward the three.

  “Makisuyo,” the witch said, “give us some privacy.”

  The air around the witch picked up in speed. It whistled toward and past Milly’s ears, making it impossible to hear what anyone was saying. Milly saw the witch raise her hand. A green light flashed, and Doris fell to the ground. Cilla flinched but didn’t move.

  “Run!” Milly shouted, but her voice was swallowed up in the wind. “Run, please! Just run!”

  Every single word was ripped from her mouth. Her legs grew heavy. The wind pressed against her, forcing her knees to the dirt. She tried to claw her way toward them, but all she could do was watch helplessly as the witch put a hand on Cilla’s shoulder.

  “Don’t take her!” Milly tried to scream. “I’m the witch! I’m the witch!”

  No one heard.

  The witch raised her staff in the air, and a flash of light filled the sky.

  Milly shut her eyes. Stars spotted her vision, and a loud thunderous crash reverberated around her. She grabbed fistfuls of grass. It felt like the whole world was being torn away.

  When she opened her eyes, the wind was quiet again. Doris was clutching Junebug to her face.

  Cilla was gone.

  THE FIRST HIATUS

  some girls actually can run forever

  Cilla, some might say, was an expert at running away. She was never found unless she wanted to be found. She was never caught unless she wanted to be caught.

  She really hated when the others told her to stay in place. It felt like they weren’t taking her seriously. Especially Milly. It’s not like she never came back. She always did. Eventually. Most of the time the others barely even noticed when she was gone.

  There was a big gap between running from something and running toward something, but Cilla couldn’t always tell the difference. She’d always known Milly was a witch, but Milly never seemed to want to be one. Cilla had heard plenty of stories about how bad the witches were, but they didn’t seem true. If witches were really that bad, why was her big sister so good? And kind? And gentle?

  (Most of the time, anyway.)

  She was starting to doubt whether Milly was a witch, after all.

  But then she saw Milly reading a book. One that she didn’t want Cilla to see. And Cilla started to wonder.

  Cilla waited until the dark of night, when even Milly was asleep, before she crept into the attic. Although she couldn’t read as well as Milly, she knew enough to recognize the word “witch.” The book felt heavy in her hands. It felt old and full of magicks and . . . grown-up.

  The first picture-spell she tried to replicate was making a flame appear.

  “I command you to light up,” she said to a nearby candle. Nothing happened. Cilla tried numerous iterations of the spell, but nothing she did could make magicks respond to her the way she saw them listen to Milly.

  She tried one for making a puddle disappear, one for making grass tie itself into a knot, one for getting vegetables to grow faster. It was this last one she’d been attempting when Milly caught her with the book.

  So Cilla, as was her specialty, ran.

  You already know how that went.

  When Cilla fell off the cliff and lost the book, she was devastated. All she’d wanted was proof that Milly could do magicks. All she wanted was for Milly to show her how to do it, too.

  Instead, Milly stopped talking. Cilla now knew for certain that her sister was a witch, but knowing hadn’t made a difference. If anything, it only made her feel more confused.

  Cilla kept trying to do magicks on her own. She tried to do what Milly had done and talked to the winds. She talked to the flowers. To the soap bubbles and the dirt between her toes and to cobwebs and dust motes and milk squash and eggs.

  Nothing responded.

  Cilla didn’t have any idea what she was doing wrong. So she decided to pray for something different this time.

  As luck (or misfortune) would have it, the book fell back into her life.

  This time she wouldn’t waste her chance. She ran farther, far enough that not even Milly could find her, and spent the entire day talking to Junebug and attempting magicks. She found a bush of devil plums that she’d once stained Ikki’s bedsheets with and drew moons on her own hands.

  Late in the day, Doris found Cilla curled up on the ground next to a tree. Discarded plum pits lay around her, and she’d left a small drool stain on the page she’d been using for a pillow.

  When Doris picked her up, Cilla didn’t complain. She buried her face in the old woman’s hair and breathed deeply while clutching the book underneath her borkoink. Doris carried her for hours in the quiet dark. She carried Cilla over the fields and beneath the stars. She carried Cilla until her arms couldn’t do it anymore, and then she put the girl on her back and carried her some more.

  Unfortunately, they had no idea what waited for them.

  As soon as they stepped into view of the house, Cilla felt the book in her arms pull toward the witch.

  Run. Get out while you can.

  Doris put Cilla on the ground. “Stay behind me.”

  Cilla nodded.

  “Makisuyo,” the witch said, “give us some privacy.”

  Despite Doris’s determination, the winds quickly pinned her to the ground, leaving Cilla standing alone. Cilla felt like wood, like her legs were made of bark and branch.

  “Run,” Doris gasped. “Leave the book and run.” But Doris’s voice sounded distant and empty.

  “Hello, witchling.” The witch reached out her hand. “I’m here to take you away. That is what you want, isn’t it?”

  Cilla froze. Was it what she wanted? In the middle of that cyclone of angry winds, the witch was offering Cilla everything she’d ever thought she wanted. A chance to run. A chance to be a witch. A chance to be taken seriously.

  She saw Milly crawling toward her, and she turned to the witch with her crooked nose and broken teeth.

  No. For the first time in her life, Cilla didn’t want to run. She wanted to go home, to sleep in her own bed, to hug Milly and eat breakfast with Nishi and catch frogs with Lissy.

  She wanted to run home.

  But despite that, Cilla knew what she needed to do. If this witch was looking for someone with magicks, then that meant Milly was in danger. And her big sister had never been as good at running as her.

  So Cilla showed the witch her plum-stained hands. And off they went.

  CHAPTER SEVEN


  sometimes home is the place you run from

  Milly crouched beneath Elma with her arms around her heaving chest. She didn’t know why she’d come here.

  As soon as her limbs were able to move, she’d run from St. George’s.* She didn’t know why. She didn’t wait for Doris to see her. She didn’t go back to the house.

  She just ran.

  She ran and ran and ran and didn’t once look back. She kept running until she couldn’t run any longer. She ran until breathing hurt almost as badly as the shame.

  Elma’s branches rustled gently overhead, moving with the wind.

  Milly blinked open her wet eyes to find herself in the middle of their boxed offerings. A beetle crawled over one of the ribbons. She wiped her eyes with a sleeve and looked out over the ocean. The waves were calm now, almost tauntingly so.

  “Please help me,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  The winds didn’t respond. She felt the same presence at the edge of her fingertips. But it was faint. And leaving.

  “What good are you?!” Milly’s voice cracked. “Why would you save her only to take her away?”

  Low thunder rumbled in the far distance.

  “Help me get her back!” Milly stared out at the sea, then spun around and pressed her forehead against the tree.

  “What do I do now?” she whispered.

  Unseen to her, a brief spark flashed at her fingertips.

  “Maybe you could try crying some more.”

  Milly turned around. Angry.

  There was the cat again, sitting on a large root protruding from the ground. She glared. She was so tired of being surprised by random strangers. “Go away,” she said, and turned back around. “I’m not in the mood to talk.”

  “That’s fine,” the cat replied. “I can talk plenty for the both of us.”

  Milly felt a tail brush her arm as the cat made his way over to sit beside her.

  She groaned and buried her face in her knees. “Why are you here?”

  “You literally just asked for help.”