Ghost Girl in the Corner

by Daniel José Older

  And then a beautiful girl slid into her favorite violet dress and marveled at herself in the mirror.

  Tee opened her eyes, and for another moment, they held Corinna’s. She let that peaceful smile and glow take her over, overcome her.

  Then Corinna nodded once and stretched both her arms out, floating backward into the night.

  “You alright, Neville?” Tee called.

  Neville nodded, blinked a few times, and then walked a few steps. He pinched his pant legs at the thigh and hitched them up, then squatted and reached a long arm down to Father Thomas’s neck. After a moment, he shook his head, picked up a rifle that was lying beside the priest, and stood. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”

  “Oh, shit,” Tee said. “He made a phone ca —”

  The growl of a diesel engine and screeching tires filled the night as stark headlights lit the field, throwing sharp shadows against the chapel wall.

  “What the damn?” Izzy said. Neville had already sprinted over to them and was lifting Lani onto his shoulders, fireman-style.

  “He called someone,” Tee said. “Someone named Krin or something. While I was hiding out in the chapel. Sounded like they were gonna come get Lani.”

  The headlights got brighter as a Jeep came rumbling across the field toward them and then swerved to the side and squealed to a halt. Tee squinted through the brights; four guys with shaved heads hopped out. They wore combat boots and camo vests.

  “Get behind me,” Neville muttered, stepping forward. “Run if I say run; don’t ask questions.”

  “No,” Tee said. “We ain’t running if you ain’t running.” She stepped up beside him and Izzy followed suit.

  “Greetings,” one of the men said. “Seems you have something of ours.”

  “I don’t think so,” Neville said. He had the rifle in one hand, the pistol in the other, and Lani slung over his shoulders in her wedding gown. Neither gun was raised, but Tee could feel his whole body tensed to spring into action.

  On an insignia painted on the side door of the Jeep, a two-headed eagle rose from a sea of blood; in front of it was a shield with a star and three stripes, also dripping with blood. Two broadswords crossed in the background. Tee committed it to memory, then looked up and was startled to find one of the men staring at her. And he wasn’t a man, really; he was just a kid like her.

  “This can go a couple different ways,” the one who’d spoken before said. He was older, in his forties, and looked like he was trying really hard to appear calm. “None of which are good for you, my friend. So why don’t you choose the path of least resistance, as they say, and just —”

  Gunfire exploded in the night. Tee dropped, felt Izzy clatter to the ground beside her, prayed they were both okay. It wasn’t just a shot or two: the steady rat-tat-tat of an automatic weapon pounded across the sky. Tee felt like she was going to throw up.

  The guys in front of them were ducking and rolling around like bad extras in a shitty war movie. “Go! Go! Go!” one of them yelled as they stumbled into the Jeep, and another round of gunfire blazed through the night.

  Tee glanced at Izzy, who was panting but otherwise looked okay. Neville still stood tall with Lani slumped over his shoulders and a gun in each hand, a slight smile on his face. He watched the Jeep barrel off through the field, and then turned toward the woods. A slender figure was walking toward them at an easy pace.

  “Who — ?” Tee said.

  Izzy made bunny ears with her fingers. “The mysterious Mr. R, am I right?”

  “Ms. R,” Neville corrected. He shot them a wink and then looked up. “Nice of you to make an appearance.”

  “Well, no one told you to go picking fights with skinheads in the ass end of New York State, Neville.” The woman was in her fifties with short graying hair and a voice like an ashtray. She wore a brown pin-striped suit, the jacket hanging open to reveal a holstered pistol under her arm. She had what looked like a damn AK-47 in one hand, pointed at the ground.

  Tee gaped. “You … who … how?”

  She cocked her head at Tee and Izzy. “Who they?”

  “They cool,” Neville said. “From the neighborhood. We gotta get this girl home.” He nodded at Lani. “You got this?”

  “Who … is … she?” Izzy stammered, eyes wide with unabashed adoration.

  “Yeah, I already called in a cleanup crew; we good.” She paused, caught Neville’s eye. “You good?”

  “Yeah,” Neville said. “Imma be alright.”

  Standing in the parking lot in her pajamas and glasses, her hair pointing in about eight different directions and one of Neville’s briefcases in her hands, Bennaldra Jackson looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be thrilled or annoyed. “What is this?”

  “You left your briefcase back in Brooklyn,” Neville said, kissing her cheek and heading back to the Caddy.

  Bennie squinted at him, looked down. “I have a briefcase? … What?”

  Tee waited her turn while Izzy ran up, gave Bennie a quick hug and a high five, then darted off.

  “You guys, what the hell!” Bennie demanded.

  “It’s a long story,” Tee said, squeezing Bennie with all her might. “But don’t ask. Seriously. I know that’s weird. Just let this one go.”

  “Are you guys alright?”

  Neville honked twice. “Let’s roll, kiddos!”

  Tee kissed Bennie on each cheek. “Yeah,” she said, and meant it.

  “The hell was all that about?” Izzy asked as they sped through the last few miles of dark upstate roadways toward the city. Lani snored peacefully in the backseat beside Tee.

  “In case anyone asks,” Tee said.

  Neville shot her a smug smile in the rearview. “Bingo.”

  “Asks what?”

  “Why we all were running around upstate the same night a priest disappeared without a trace.” Something about the way Neville said without a trace left little to the imagination, Tee thought. It wasn’t just that no one would ever find Father Thomas’s body; there would be no body to find.

  “Cell tower triangulation!” Izzy said. “They could track our moves through our phones. Bananas!”

  Neville nodded. “Signal out here is crap enough that they won’t get an accurate location anyway, but now y’all got a reason for having been here. Nobody gonna ask, but I like to play it safe.”

  Izzy smacked the dashboard. “That’s why you insisted on going through the cash lane at all the tollbooths!”

  “Now you’re gettin’ it.”

  “I thought it was just cuz you old!”

  “Now hold on …”

  “Think anybody heard the gunshots?” Tee asked.

  “Naw, girl. This ain’t Brooklyn. Wasn’t nobody around for miles, and anyway, we in gun country.”

  “What about those racist-lookin’ guys in the Jeep?” Tee said. A shudder ran through her every time she remembered the blood-soaked insignia.

  “That was some shit we gonna have to look into,” Neville said. “Never seen their likes before.”

  “You gonna have Rrrrrebecca do it?” Izzy said with a sly smile.

  Neville shook his head. “Did she look like a Rebecca to you?”

  “Maybe! Okay, no, you right. Rrrrrrachel?”

  “I mean, won’t those skinheads come looking for us?” Tee asked.

  “How they gonna find us?” Neville said.

  Izzy snapped her fingers. “The plates!”

  “You think these are my real plates?” Neville guffawed. “That’s cute.”

  “They saw our faces,” Tee said.

  Neville chuckled again. “They gonna come to Bed-Stuy looking for an old black man and two black girls. I sincerely look forward to that. Those fellas didn’t look like they had much of an eye for detail, not when it comes to us anyway.”

  “Damn,” Tee said. “You’re good.”

  “Here’s the thing, though,” Neville said as the first cluster of suburbs and housing projects rose around them. “Y’all really can
’t go talking ’bout this to no one. Not a soul. If Bennie ask, it’s none’a her business, unfortunately. It’s gotta stay between you two, me, Lani, and our friend Ms. R, and those lanky bald-headed motherless trashbags back there.” He lit a Conejo. “Clear?”

  Tee and Izzy nodded.

  The highways became bridges and then the suburbs became skyscrapers, and Tee looked down at Lani sleeping soundly beside her. Corinna Dutch had come home in a body bag. Neville must’ve torn the neighborhood apart searching for her killer, and all the while he’d been right there, praising the Lord in their midst. The world had forgotten Corinna. Even with the full force of Manny’s printing press and all her loved ones, the world had moved on; even before her body had been found, the world had moved on. Everyone was in too much of a hurry to bother lifting up a black girl’s name, to cherish her memory. Tee shook her head and watched the city rise and fall around them.

  They would drop Lani off with her family. Amidst tears and late-night celebrations, Neville would let the family know to take her to the hospital and have her checked out. He’d tell them to keep a low profile — though it wasn’t like the cops were interested in the case anyway — and they would know that the one who’d taken their daughter was dealt with, and not to ask too many questions about how. Tee and Izzy would wait in the Caddy, staying as far away from the whole thing as possible, and then Neville would drive them to Izzy’s, where they could spend the night together without anyone barging in, and Tee could slip out in the morning undetected.

  They’d crawl under the covers, their terrible secret like a candle between them; they would memorize each other’s skin and the feel of flesh against flesh, their breath, all that they had lived and they would live still, and most of all the moment, this moment, because the city was impossibly huge, a forest, and now she’s nowhere lurked around every corner; they would hold each other and remember and remember and remember.

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  “Sierra? What are you staring at?”

  “Nothing, Manny.”

  Blatant lie. Sierra glanced down from the scaffolding to where Manny the Domino King stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “You sure?” he said.

  “Yeah.” Sierra looked back at the mural. She hadn’t been making it up: a single tear glistened at the corner of Papa Acevedo’s painted eyes. The tear wasn’t moving — of course it wasn’t moving: It was paint! But still: It hadn’t been there yesterday or the day before.

  And the portrait was fading; it seemed to disappear more and more every hour. This afternoon when she arrived at the Junklot to work on her own mural, it took Sierra a few seconds to find the old man’s face peering out from the brick. But fading murals and crying murals were totally different flavors of weird.

  She turned back to her own painting, on a much newer concrete façade adjacent to the old brick building from which Papa Acevedo’s face stared out. “Hey, Manny,” Sierra said. “You sure the people who own this building won’t be mad about my mural?”

  “We’re sure they will be,” Manny chuckled. “That’s why we asked you to do it. We hate the Tower. We spit on the Tower. Your paint is our nasty loogie, hocked upon the stupidity that is the Tower.” He grinned up at Sierra and then turned back to an old typewriter he’d been tinkering with.

  “Great,” Sierra said. The Tower had shown up just over a year ago, totally unannounced: a five-story concrete monstrosity on a block otherwise full of brownstones. The developers built the outer structure quickly and then left it, abandoned and unfinished, its unpaned windows staring emptily out into the Brooklyn skies. The Tower’s northern wall sat right on the edge of the Junklot, where mountains of trashed cars waited like crumpled-up scraps of paper. Manny and the other old guys who played dominos in the lot had immediately declared war on it.

  Sierra dabbed dark green paint along the neck of the dragon she was working on. It reared all the way up to the fifth floor of the Tower, and even though most of its body was just an outline, Sierra could tell it was gonna be fierce. She shaded rows of scales and spines, and smiled at how the creature seemed to come to life a fraction more with each new detail.

  When Manny first asked her to paint something on the Tower, she’d refused. She’d never painted a mural before, just filled notebook after notebook with wild creatures and winged, battle-ready versions of her friends and neighbors. And a whole wall? If she messed up, all of Brooklyn would see it. But Manny was persistent, said she could paint anything she wanted, said he’d set up a scaffolding. He added that if her old Grandpa Lázaro was still talking in full sentences instead of laid up from that stroke he’d had, he would’ve wanted her to do it too.

  That last one sealed it. Sierra couldn’t say no to even the idea of Grandpa Lázaro. And so here she was, on the second day of summer break, adding a few more scales along a pair of dragon wings and worrying about crying murals.

  Her phone buzzed with a text from her best friend, Bennie:

  party at sully’s tonight. First of the summmmmer!!!! Imma meet you at your house be ready in an hour.

  The first party of the summer was always amazing. Sierra smiled, pocketed her phone, and started packing up her supplies. It was nine p.m. The dragon could wait.

  She looked back at the mural of Papa Acevedo, barely visible now against the crumbling brick wall. It wasn’t just that there was a new tear on his face; his whole expression had changed. The man — the painting, rather — looked downright afraid. Papa Acevedo had been one of Grandpa Lázaro and Manny’s domino buddies. He’d always had a kind smile or a joke for Sierra, and whoever had painted his memorial portrait had captured that warmth perfectly. But now, his face seemed twisted with shock somehow, eyebrows raised, the edges of his mouth turned down beneath that unruly mustache.

  The glistening painted tear trembled and slid out of the old man’s eye and down his face.

  Sierra gasped. “What the —!”

  The scaffolding shivered. She looked down. Manny had one hand on a support beam, the other cupped around the phone earpiece he always had in. His head was bowed, shaking from side to side.

  “When?” Manny said. “How long ago?”

  Sierra looked one last time at Papa Acevedo and climbed down the scaffolding.

  “You are sure?” Manny looked up at her and then back down. “You’re sure it was him?”

  “You okay?” Sierra whispered.

  “I’ll be right there. Ya. Ya vengo, ahora mismo. Dentro de . . . quince minutos. Okay.” Manny poked the button on his earpiece and stared at the ground for a few seconds.

  “What happened?” Sierra asked.

  “Reporter stuff,” Manny said. He closed his eyes. Besides being the self-appointed Domino King of Brooklyn, he published, wrote, and delivered the Bed-Stuy Searchlight, churning out the three pages of local gossip and event updates from a little basement printing press over on Ralph Avenue. The Searchlight had been coming every day for as long as Sierra could remember.

  “Somebody you know?”

  Manny nodded. “Knew. Ol’ Vernon, we called him. He’s gone.”

  “Dead?”

  He nodded, shook his head, nodded again.

  “Manny? What does that mean?”

  “I have to go, Sierra. You finish this painting, you hear me?”

  “What? Tonight? Manny, I . . .”

  “No! Ha.” He looked at her, finally smiled. “Of course not. Just, soon.”

  “Okay, Manny.”

  In a flurry of jangling keys and heavy breathing, Manny shut down the industrial lights and let them out of the iron fence around the Junklot. “Have a good time tonight, Sierra. Don’t worry about me. But be careful!”

  Sierra’s phone buzzed as she watched Manny rush off into the Brooklyn night. It was Bennie again.

  You comin right?

  Sierra texted a quick yeh and pocketed her phone. An early summer breeze wafted through her
hair as she fast-walked past brownstones and corner stores, rounded the corner onto Lafayette, and headed home. She had to get ready for the party and check on Grandpa Lázaro, but all she could think about was Papa Acevedo’s teardrop.

  The first book in the New York Times bestselling Shadowshaper series

  Sierra Santiago closed her eyes and the whole spinning world opened up around her. A brisk wind whispered songs of the coming winter as it shushed through browning leaves and then whisked along the moonlit field, throwing Sierra’s mass of curls into disarray. Up above, the first round of overnight flights leaving JFK cut trails across the cloudless sky. Traffic whirred along just outside the park walls, and beyond that the shuttle train sighed and screeched to a halt; doors slid open; weary passengers collected their personal belongings as instructed, adjusted their earbuds, and headed off into the night.

  But that was the simple stuff. Sierra had learned to expand her senses out farther than any normal person. It wasn’t easy, but when she quieted her mind and the spirits were close, she could hear the city’s clicks and groans halfway across Brooklyn. Tonight wasn’t about meditation or the ongoing urban symphony, though. Where were her spirits?

  As if in response, a vision sizzled into view in her mind’s eye: there in the forest, not too far from her, a figure crouched. She could make out the silhouette leaning against a fallen tree, see the person’s fast-beating heart telegraph frantic pulses out into the chilly night. The person scratched something onto the tree and looked around for nearby spirits.

  I see you, Sierra thought, tensing her face into a smug smile. Whoever you are. Now who else is out there? She let the image go and immediately another appeared: the field she sat on the edge of; a figure lay facedown in the grass, breathing heavily. After a few seconds, the person hunched up on their elbows and peered into the darkness. Okay. Sierra nodded. Got it. What else?