They always put out big plastic cauldrons of candy. “Halloween rocket fuel,” Grandpa calls it. Grandpa has a beer, Mom sips a glass of wine, and they don’t stop until the decorating is done. Grandpa always hides behind a skeleton and makes it talk. Mom always demonstrates the stuff she bought in the post-Halloween sales last year. “The skull lights up purple,” she says, “and the rat moves its head when you go by.” It makes her laugh.
This year, Mom hides a new fog machine on the steps, and she places two life-sized witches on the front bench of our porch, legs crossed like they’re just hanging out. She hides plastic rats in the plant pots, and I hang a giant spider so it hovers directly over the front door. It looks like it’s about to eat you. I strap three full-sized skeletons to the railings of our front steps and stick their bony hands through so their fingers graze your legs as you walk up.
“Nice touch, Mikey,” Mom says.
She goes back to humming a tune while she and Grandpa stretch fake cobwebs. They face each other on the street, take an end each, and step farther and farther apart until the white cobweb stretches to double the length. Then Grandpa and Mom give it a final hard tug and walk back together. The cobweb loosens into big fluffy clouds that they pull apart and stretch over the deck.
“Good job, Dad,” Mom says. She hasn’t been this happy since my dad left for Nigeria. “Now Mikey, let’s finish your costume.”
It’s late by the time I go up to bed. I get into my PJs, but I don’t feel like sleeping. I text Kyler to see if he wants to play Romanii. He doesn’t answer. I imagine him seeing the text and ignoring it. It makes me feel really bad.
I kneel on the floor next to my storage box of bricks and keep making my model Rome. On the floor next to me, The Hound of Ulster lies open at the page where Cuchulain is at the ford and has to kill his best friend, Ferdia, who was one of Maeve’s champions. That doesn’t make me feel any better. I close the book.
I wish I could talk to Kyler now more than anything. I can’t think of anyone else who would understand what was happening last night. I try to come up with ideas to explain what the Celt was doing, why people like Mariko seem to know he’s here but then keep it secret and let it happen. Nothing makes sense without Kyler.
When there’s a knock on my door, I glance at the clock and realize it’s an hour past my bedtime. I scramble into bed, but my light is still on, so it’s hardly worth the effort of pretending.
Grandpa comes in, limping slightly after the stairs. “Still up, Mikey Boy? Everything all right?”
“Sorry Grandpa. I was thinking too much to sleep.”
Grandpa sits down at the end of the bed. “I hope I didn’t upset you earlier. I’m not good at talking about stuff like that.”
“No, it’s not that.” I sit up. “I was thinking about Celts.”
“Celts?” Grandpa smiles.
“Yeah.” I picture the Celt throwing himself to the ground as the car drove past. “Do you think all warriors get that PT—”
“Post-traumatic stress,” Grandpa says.
“Yeah, that thing you were talking about. Do you think they all got it, no matter when they were living, what war they were in?” Grandpa hesitates, so I prompt him. “Like the Celts. They were fighting all the time, killing people, seeing friends die. Did they get it?”
Grandpa adjusts his position on the bed. His stick rattles to the floor, and he leaves it there. He scratches the back of his neck. “I guess they must have, Mikey. And I guess they must have felt pretty bad about the things they had to do and see in war just like everyone else. Maybe they even got concussions from falling off horses and such, just like our modern guys get serious concussions from being near explosions again and again. Maybe all soldiers have suffered similar things no matter what war they were in, but in the stories the Celts seem pretty proud of being warriors, don’t they?”
Grandpa pauses, and I can’t help thinking about Cuchulain. Yes, he was proud, but he was troubled, too, by the things he had to do. He was a good man, who sometimes had to do bad things, and the fighting made him change for a while.
“I think they were right to be proud, Mikey. I’m proud too: proud I fought for my country, proud I fought for my Marine buddies, proud of the friends I made. There’s no one you care more about, apart from your family, than a friend who’s stood beside you in war. People are people. They’re pretty much the same all through the ages.”
He taps his one good foot on the floor, looks at my copy of The Hound of Ulster and then says, “But I reckon there was one big difference. And this is just me thinking now. I’m not an expert, just an old man. But all the Celts and such, they lived and fought and died to have stories sung about them. If you hear good things about yourself, often enough, you believe it, right? If you have stories where the heroes are bigger than life, but they still find war hard, you believe that too. Maybe it helped for other people to tell their stories, to recognize how hard they fought, how hard they died. In those days everyone had a hard life. Everyone was close to death. Maybe they understood war better.”
“What do you mean, Grandpa?”
“You come home from war nowadays, and no one understands. You’ve just seen people struggling to find food, and in the supermarket there are fifty cereals to choose from. You’ve just seen people terrified for their lives, and here people panic if they don’t get a parking space. You’ve felt the thrill of fighting and surviving, and now the most exciting thing is getting a dollar off a bottle of beer. The contrast drives you wild, and no one turns your experiences into a song.”
He looks at the library book again. “How many years ago did that guy live? And people are still telling his story. All his heroic deeds—”
“And how hard it was, too,” I say, thinking about the hound, and Ferdia, and Cuchulain’s son.
Grandpa nods. “That’s what I mean. Is it a good read?”
“Yeah, it’s great. He fights at a ford against all these champions—”
“Better get some sleep,” Grandpa says, reaching for his stick. “Halloween tomorrow. You’ll be too tired to enjoy it.”
“And at first he fights duels one on one—”
“Isn’t Halloween the night your Celt guys believed all the spirits were supposed to come out from the underworld?” Grandpa says as he reaches the door.
“Otherworld,” I say.
“Heh, heh, heh.” Grandpa laughs as he switches off my light. “Now, if you were a Celt, that would be one heck of a night to do guard duty.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It’s Halloween, and the whole school is crazy. After recess the kindergarteners parade around the blacktop with masks they made in class. We all line up and clap. One curly-haired kid drops his mask and bawls his head off like it’s the worst thing that has ever happened. Normally, Kyler and I would nudge each other and joke about it, but today Kyler’s standing next to Quinn, and it’s him and Quinn stifling their giggles, not me.
I lean forward in front of Casey Rubens to catch Kyler’s attention. “Hey.” He turns his back. “Dude, you’re gonna be so psyched. I worked it out.” I don’t care if I sound dumb. No one will guess what I’m talking about. I just have to get him interested.
“What are you, Mikey?” Casey gets in my face. “Some sort of medieval guy or something?”
I dodge around her. “No, I’m a…” but I stop. Kyler glares at me, and I don’t dare say it. When we finally join the parade, Kyler partners up with Quinn. I end up on my own.
On Halloween, Kyler and I always go up and down our street together. It’s mega fun. One of the houses sets up a whole cemetery in their backyard with dry ice and strobe lights. Another turns their garage into a haunted house. This year, because Dad is away, Mom’s asked Grandpa to invite all his poker buddies to dress up as wizards and hand out candy. Even as a normal Halloween, tonight would have been awesome, but now I finally understand what’s going on with the Celt, this Halloween is going to be triple awesome beyond awesome. Or at least it w
ould be, if only I could tell Kyler what I know. Missing Dad is one thing, but this Halloween without Kyler is the worst.
As our class takes its turn parading past the other grades, I catch Kyler glancing back at me. For a moment I think he’s going to give in and talk to me. “I know what’s happening with him,” I whisper.
Kyler pulls off his Dumbledore beard and chews his bottom lip. I can tell he’s looking at my costume. The thing is, I’d already decided on it before we argued. Now, I guess, it looks like I’m trying to make him mad.
I asked to change my costume last night, but Mom wouldn’t let me. “Not after all that effort I put into making the shield,” she said. She’d found a big rectangular storage container lid in the garage a few days ago and spent hours spray-painting it blue and adding swirls of gold around the outside. It looks really cool. My whole costume is pretty awesome, but it’s not going to make Kyler like me again. No way.
I can’t carry a sword because it’s against school rules to bring in weapons, but you can still tell what I am. I have a cardboard helmet and a reddish brown cloak, which Mom made for me when Kyler and I were Roman soldiers a couple of years ago. I’m wearing a yellow tunic, actually a piece of material with a hole cut for the head, and a pair of Mom’s red leggings. She’s used fabric paint to give them a plaid pattern. I have one of Grandpa’s belts tied around my waist, and a big red mustache is stuck below my nose.
Kyler almost swallows his bottom lip then turns to whisper to Quinn. Quinn looks at me and laughs. Even worse, Ryan O’Driscoll catches up with them and joins in on their conversation. He’s wearing a black cloak, a pair of glasses and is holding a wand. It’s unreal. Ryan is so not the Harry Potter type. He’s always a soldier. He’s been one every year that we’ve been at school. Now he actually jokes with Kyler, and they pretend to duel.
“Death to Celts,” Ryan yells.
Kyler looks surprised at first, but then he joins in. “Yeah, death to Celts!”
I look down at my shoes. This is not the Halloween I expected.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Where’s Kyler?” Mom asks for the millionth time. She’s dressed as a witch and is wedged between the two witches on the bench. It’s the only place left to sit. “Isn’t he normally here by now? Shall I call Mariko? Or are you going down to his house first?”
I wish she’d be quiet. I don’t know where Kyler is.
I’ve been thinking about him all day, when I haven’t been thinking about the Celt, that is. It’s the most important night in Operation Getaceltorix. Halloween is the key, and Kyler isn’t with me. Because I wanted the Celt to myself, I’ve messed everything up.
In the hallway, by the open front door, Grandpa empties a bag of pretzels into a bowl for his poker buddies. “Did you put the beers in the fridge, Christina?” he asks.
“That’s your job, Dad,” she says.
“Let me have a look.” The fridge creaks open. “Guess I did.”
“The day you forget to chill the beers is the day I start worrying,” Mom says. She stretches out her legs and sighs. “I love this moment of quiet before…oh wait, here come the first ones. How cute!”
Twins dressed as peacocks toddle up the sidewalk, their big diaper butts waddling behind them. They have little baskets in their hands. I don’t know about cute—they look completely bewildered to me. Their parents follow, sometimes crouching behind the kids, sometimes running ahead, taking photos.
Mom leaps up from between the two witches and skips down the front steps to greet them, “Happy Halloween!” The girl squeals. The boy hides his face in his mom’s knees. All the adults laugh while Mom takes off her witch’s hat and apologizes. “I forgot, sorry,” she says.
“I’ll get Kyler later,” I mutter while she coos over the toddlers. “When it starts to get dark.”
“Sure, honey. Just let me know when you go. Same rules as ever. Stay on the street. Take your phone. Meet back here at nine.” I may not have Kyler, but I have an alibi. I’ll pretend to go to his house and look for the Celt on my own.
The twins, smiling now, wobble up the front steps while Mom and the parents trail behind ready to catch them if they fall. Grandpa opens the door and all you can hear is a howl. Both kids raise their hands toward their parents to be picked up, and the boy bursts into tears.
“Oh no,” Mom says, “now we’ve really done it.”
Grandpa takes off his skeleton hands and laughs. “Heh, heh. Cute little tikes,” he says to the parents. The twins aren’t sure whether taking off your hands is more or less scary than having skeletal hands in the first place, but Grandpa keeps chuckling and giving them candy.
I sit on the steps for a while, eating chocolate and getting kind of nervous. The sun sets. More and more kids my age arrive, pillowcases over their shoulders, mostly empty, but some starting to get weight at the bottom. Lots of adults are coming through, too. Their kids straggle out in front, running to one house and the next, screaming. It’s suddenly all noise, people yelling “trick or treat,” guys laughing, moms giggling. A bunch of pirates let off firecrackers.
“Hey, Mikey,” Mom calls from the bench. “Could you get more candy from the garage? We’re running low already.”
“Sure!”
I’m just grabbing the candy from the bottom shelf when Kyler walks in. He climbs up the folding stepladder that Mom used to reach the Halloween decorations on the top shelves and looks down on me. Kyler’s so short he never usually looks down on anyone over the age of three.
“That’s the wrong sword,” he says. “A medieval pommel looks stupid on a Celt.” His black academic robe hangs two steps below his feet, it’s so long on him.
“Dumbledore? Seriously?” I rip open the bag.
“At least everyone knows who I am.” Kyler flings his empty pillowcase over his shoulder and points his wand at me. “Like, who are you, Mikey?”
“I know. I look dumb.” I throw him a peanut butter cup from the bag, his favorite.
“Yeah, and you are dumb, too. I thought you were my friend.” I’m kind of annoyed, even though he’s right, when Kyler says, “Ryan ditched me. We were going trick or treating together, but all he wanted to do was trick me into telling him where you last saw the Celt. Then he ditched me.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Sorry,” Kyler says, climbing down the stepladder to meet me.
I could be mad, but I ditched Kyler in the first place. “Sorry, too,” I say, and with that mushy stuff over I spill everything. “I know why he’s here. It was Grandpa who gave me the idea, and the fact that the Celt said it was his duty, his mission, to be here. He’s a guardian, Kyler, protecting us from the people that cross from the Otherworld. He was a champion when he lived and he still is.” Kyler looks astonished. “Don’t you see? That’s why your mom said they come on certain nights. The people from the Otherworld leak into our world all the time through this Hole of Ulster portal, when bad things are happening like earthquakes and stuff, and guys like Cuchulain have to hold them back. He’s a secret hero fighting to keep the balance of history right, all the time. No one can admit this is happening, but it is. The VA patch them up and send them out there again and again. And Halloween is the worst night of all. There will be a huge battle. I know it. It’s the biggest secret in the history of secrets, ever!”
Kyler whistles. “Whoa, Mikey, eat more candy. You’ve got some scary-low blood sugar going on.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Kyler steps back. “You’ve been doing a lot of thinking while I’ve been out. That’s, like, a lot to take in.”
“I know, but you haven’t seen him like I have.” I grab the rest of the candy bags and walk outside just as some guy shouts, “Watch out will you? There are kids around.”
“Oh wow,” Kyler says. We exchange glances.
There’s the thud of feet, and the Celt is running up the other side of the street, dodging between children. “Look at them all out here,” he yells.
&nbs
p; “There’s always one weirdo,” a dad with green skin and a bolt through his neck says.
“You see!” I dump the candy bags at the bottom of the front steps. “Hey Mom! We’re going out right now! See you at nine!” I yell.
Kyler grabs his robe in one hand and sprints past me. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“Quick or we’ll lose him.”
“Got your phone?” Mom calls from the porch.
“Yeah!”
We speed up and swerve around a gang of teenagers in hockey masks.
“This is amazing,” Kyler says.
“Amazing isn’t big enough. We’re getting proof of the biggest secret that ever existed,” I shout. “It’s a zillion times better than amazing.”
“It’s amazillioning!” Kyler shouts, and he’s right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
We’re three streets over and breathless. It’s too hard to keep up with the Celt, what with weaving through people, dodging little kids, saying sorry to everyone who shouts, “Hey, what’s going on?” and, “Careful, guys!” One minute the Celt is right in front of us, running through a whole bunch of zombies, next minute he’s racing down an alley leading to someone’s backyard. He scales the huge wooden fence as if it’s a stepladder not an eight-foot vertical surface, and he’s gone.
“We’ll never climb that,” Kyler whines as he pulls to a standstill.
“I know!” I stop running and bend over to catch my breath. “Bummer!” A fence rattles. The Celt must have jumped over another fence on the other side of the yard.
“We’ve lost him!” Kyler says.
“He must be going to Ardee Park…Park Two,” I add for Kyler’s benefit, “even if he is using a crazy route.”
We hit the street at top speed, but Kyler, being Kyler, can still ask, “Why that park?”
“He thinks the road looks like a ford. That’s where he has to fight to defend the portal,” I say, gasping for air.
The Lost Celt Page 13