by Robert Gray
“Sorry, lass, but we be arriving late tomorrow evening, whether you like it or not. But you’ll be happy to know I got something special planned for you and yer family. That should cheer you up some.”
For our final night aboard the Dead Lady, the captain threw us a feast on the main deck of the ship. The crew drank mugs of gray frothy ale and ate pot after pot of fresh brains, while my family and I opted for the chocolate chip muffins dripping with caramel butter, plates of fried dough dipped in sugar and tall mugs full of spiced pumpkin cider, which Three Petes had made themselves.
During the feast, Captain Mossbeard stood and knocked his wooden leg against the floorboard to get everyone’s attention. “Settle down, maggots. It’s time for a toast.” The captain raised his glass, and we all did the same. “To a fine family. May the wind always be at yer backs, and the stars find you home safely. Here’s to the Hallowses, who I will forever call friends.”
Dad thanked the captain and crew for all their hard work in getting us to the human world, while Mom thanked everyone for helping her through her illness. Sam and I even got into the spirit, and soon thank yous were being tossed around by everyone.
“And I have a special surprise for you two,” Captain Mossbeard said to Sam and me. “Meet me on the bridge in ten minutes.”
Sawbones snickered, and John Wart nudged me with his forearm and said, “You’re gonna love it. Made it myself.”
“What do you think it is?” Sam asked. “I bet it’s a sword … or an eye patch … or a pirate flag … or buried treasure!”
“Buried treasure. Now that’s the best kind of treasure,” John Wart said, and the deckhands cheered and raised their mugs.
After our ten-minute wait was up, Sam and I rushed up to the bridge, and the captain handed Sam his present first.
“Oh, it’s horrible!” Sam exclaimed. He pulled out a curved sword with silver skull patterns woven into the handle.
“Now, you’re a real pirate,” the captain said and clapped a hand on Sam’s back.
“And I didn’t forget about you, lass.” He plucked a small rectangular box from his waistcoat and handed it to me.
When I slid open the lid, my jaw nearly plinked to the deck. It was the most horrible necklace I had ever seen!
I ran my fingers over the stones, and they began to glow, changing colors from blue to green to red to purple to orange.
“Let me help you put it on,” John Wart said, and I lifted my hair so he could clasp the necklace around my neck.
I couldn’t stop touching the stones. Not only did they glow and change colors, but they were also so smooth, and they shifted from cool to warm, giving me goosebumps, and then melting them away.
“I’ve never seen stones like this.”
“Not stones, lass,” Captain Mossbeard corrected, “fairy hearts.” He gave me an odd smile then, more of a sneer, really. “Rare and beautiful stones for a rare and beautiful girl.”
The party continued for hours. I was having such a great time dancing and singing pirate songs, I didn’t want the night to end, but Mom thought otherwise and sent Sam and me off to bed, using the excuse that we had a long day tomorrow.
While cozy under my blanket, I listened to the ocean slap against the side of the ship and soon fell into a deep, comfortable sleep.
My brother poked me in the face some time later.
“Wake up, Eve. We’re here.”
“Where’s here?” I managed, rubbing my eyes and stretching out my legs.
“New Jersey.” Sam peeked through the porthole above me. “Hmm, doesn’t look all that new to me.”
SIX
FRUIT, CLOWNS, PIZZA, AND OTHER TERRORS
An old yellow bus waited for us at the other end of the dock. URNS must’ve sent some spies in advance, because the driver was an iGor named Hal. He had a big hump, twig-like legs, and his deformed knuckles swung at his ankles as he charged angrily toward me.
“C’mon, hurry up, we don’t have all night,” he snarled and ripped the bag from my hand.
Nothing like a happy greeting to make the whole transition smoother, I thought.
“I’ve seen slugs move faster,” Hal continued as he shoved me onto the bus.
My legs felt like jelly, probably from being on a ship for so long, and I swayed onto the bus with the help of Hal’s ever-patient guidance.
“That’s it!—Come on!—Hurry up!—Today!”
As everyone gathered into the bus, and Hal tossed our belongings into a messy pile in the back, I watched the clouds swallow up the Dead Lady as it drifted away. Within seconds the ship disappeared, along with any hope of turning back.
The bus took off like a lightning flash, weaving in and out of the thin traffic. With one hand firmly pressed on the horn, Hal began barking out landmarks and human history and culture. I had started to doze off somewhere around our wonderful tour guide’s third telling of how humans are apt to bust your beak if you inform them you don’t have the money to pay off your gambling debts.
In what felt like an instant later, I awoke to Hal shouting in my ear. “Get up, princess. Carriage ride’s over. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
I stumbled off the bus and into my new life, which began with a dull beige house, half covered by manicured shrubs and trees that were far too alive and colorful to be real. Beyond the house, a mountain range stretched as far as I could see. Its peaks glowed red by the fiery ball slowly opening up on the world like some adorable eye.
“It’s worse than I imagined,” Sam said. “And did you see the graveyard?”
I shook my head, no.
“No waking dead. No ghouls. Not even a single ghost. Eve, I’m scared.”
I placed a reassuring hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I’m scared, too. Hopefully the worst of this trip is over.”
But as I watched Hal unpack the bus, kicking and throwing bags out the back, I thought otherwise … The Move was about to get a whole lot worse. And in case I had any doubts, just then I heard glass shatter in one of the bags—probably my fragrance vials. “Can you at least be a little careful? That’s my stuff.”
The iGor tossed a bag at my feet. “Well, if it’s yours, you carry it.”
Oh, yeah … this was going to be a disaster.
I marched to the front door and turned the handle. Locked. Dad staggered up behind me with five armfuls of luggage, trying to find the keys with a sixth.
“Is it so dangerous here we have to lock our doors?” I asked.
“It’s not like that, Eve,” Dad said, rummaging through a key ring for the right one. “Humans just like to feel safe by locking their doors.”
“Safe from what? Do they get snatched in the middle of the night?”
“Maybe. I don’t know—Ah-ha!—here it is.”
“That’s comforting,” I muttered and followed him into the house.
The first room we entered had boring white walls cluttered with pictures of fruit in various poses: in bowls, on tables, hanging from trees. Ugh! A long green couch—also with fruit patterns!—filled the center of the room. I rushed into another room to catch my breath. Big mistake. I just landed in the belly of the beast. Pictures. Statues. Wallpaper. Curtains. Fruit everywhere.
“So, what do you think?” Dad asked.
“It’s adorable!” I screamed.
“I want to go home,” Sam cried.
Mom and Dad tried to comfort us by acting as if we were on vacation at Terror World, only the best amusement park ever.
“Ooh, look at this, everyone,” Dad said. On the edge of the wooden coffee table, he picked up some rectangular device.
“What a marvelous—” He pushed some buttons until a large rectangular moving picture appeared on the wall. We watched, shocked into silence, as humans screamed, sirens wailed, and bombs exploded. Dad fumbled with the device, trying to turn the picture off, but instead made it louder.
“It’s awful! Make it stop!” I yelled.
Dad banged the device aga
inst the edge of the table and two silver tubes—its guts, I supposed—spilled onto the floor. “I can’t. I think I broke it.”
Sam had the solution. He ripped the moving picture from the wall. It crashed to the floor, hissing and spitting out sparks and smoke. We backed away from the dying box. Very slowly.
“Maybe we should go unpack in our bedrooms,” Mom suggested. “Won’t that be fun?”
Sam and I glanced at each other, and then we both took off down the hall.
I managed to snag the larger of the two rooms … not that it was any great victory. My room had green polka dots scattered on purple walls and windows trimmed with pink lacy material. At least it didn’t have any fruit in it, and it didn’t have those adorable oversized clowns riding in little red cars like the ones I saw all over Sam’s walls.
“I’m not going to be able to sleep in here with those faces staring at me,” Sam called out from his room. “Are you sure you don’t want to switch?”
“They’re only cartoons. Nothing to be afraid of.”
But those clowns were scary, with those big eyes and smiling faces that seemed to follow your every move.
Switch rooms? No thanks!
After we finished unpacking, Sam and I sat in what my dad called the living room—I noted the house didn’t come with a dead room, which would’ve suited my current mood much better—while Mom and Dad contacted home to let them know we arrived safely.
“So, I just wrote to Grandpa on the Ouija board, and you’ll be happy to know he hasn’t burned down the castle yet,” Dad said as he entered, trying to break the awkward silence. “I also called URNS to give them an update.”
Sam immediately started in: “Why do we have to be here? This place stinks.”
“I told you. It’s for the best,” Dad said.
“For whose best? Not mine,” Sam growled. The tips of his ears turned purple as the veins in his head throbbed. “And did you see that graveyard back there? Who am I supposed to play with? At least Eve’s a human. She can make human friends. I’m a ghoul. AND IF YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED, THERE’S NO OTHER GHOULS HERE!”
“Calm down,” Mom said, coming in behind Dad. “You’re going to ooze yourself dry if you keep yelling.”
I kept quiet, though I wanted to say that even though I looked human, I was sooo not going to be making friends with them.
Dad went on about how this move was only temporary, and before we knew it, we’d be laughing about the whole thing.
“Besides,” Dad added, “there are other things to play with here besides humans.”
“I bet the creatures of the night are just as fun here as they are at home,” Mom offered.
Sam considered this for a moment. “Do you think this place has hell hounds? What about vampire bats? Or giant spiders?”
“You won’t know until you get out there and take a look,” Dad said with his you-go-get-’em smile.
“And Eve promised that she would raise the dead with her spell book. Right, Eve?”
“Oh, did she?” Mom asked.
“Well, I said I would try.”
“We should go to the graveyard now,” Sam said, bouncing in his chair with excitement. “What do you think?”
Dad squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “Not today, champ. We need to get settled. And I have to go find my new job: Pizza shop owner.”
I had forgotten about the pizza place URNS had given us as cover, mostly because I hated pizza—not that I ever tried it, but since I hated humans and they loved pizza, it made sense that I hated pizza, too.
“That reminds me,” Dad said, beaming as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. “URNS gave me a company van. Let’s go check it out.”
He hurried us into a cement room with two big square doors, a place he called the grrr-aj. Parked inside was a gleaming white van with the words GHOULICIOUS PIZZA written in cursive along the side.
“Isn’t it beautiful? Oh, and look at this.” He brought us around to the other side where a cartoonish image of a ghoul wearing a chef hat and an exaggerated mustache filled the van’s sliding door. Above the chef’s head, a thought bubble floated that read IT’S NOT DELICIOUS UNLESS IT’S GHOULICIOUS!
“But, Dad, you’ve never driven a van before,” I said.
He waved me off. “Nonsense. While I was in Human Awareness Training at URNS I got to drive something just like this. And I barely hit a thing.” He climbed into the van and started it up. “So, who wants to go for the ride besides Eve?”
I looked to Mom for support, hoping she would see the inherent danger in letting her only daughter get into that death machine.
“You’re gonna be working at the pizza place anyway,” Mom said with a slight tilt of the her head. “You might as well get used to the ride.”
“I’ll be what? But I … I hate pizza.”
“You won’t be eating it. You’ll be serving it,” Dad said.
“But … But …”
But Mom was already pushing me into the van.
Okay, so my dad’s driving skills weren’t so bad. He didn’t even hit anything—well, living at least. There were about a dozen garbage cans along the way that might live out their existence as trays.
When I didn’t have my arms covering my eyes, I searched for humans, mostly so I could justify how different I was from the species. Not long after we left, I spotted a group of older humans strolling along the street. My first sighting! I studied their appearances as we passed them, but besides the weird devices against their ears and in their hands that they stared at or talked to, they looked just like me.
The more humans I saw, the more confused I became. These creatures didn’t seem violent at all. I expected a world of chaos, a world where humans killed each for the fun of it, but everyone here appeared to be happy. I even saw one smile and wave at us as we drove by.
So not what I expected … but, then again, hadn’t the sun fooled me with its marvelous glow? Maybe humans worked the same way. Maybe they looked happy on the outside because on the inside they were daydreaming about burning us.
Yes, that made a lot more sense to me.
“I have a feeling you’ll like the spot URNS picked for the pizza place,” Dad said.
I doubted I’d like much of anything here, but I nodded anyway.
“From what URNS told me,” Dad continued, “the place used to be a cafe. For a few years, anyway. It went out of business sometime last year. Before that, it had been a candle shop. Owned and operated by the same family for some thirty-five years. And before that, it had been a church. Supposedly, the building has been in town for over 160 years, which is a long time, at least by human standards.”
I hadn’t been paying much attention to Dad, but when we pulled along the curb, my eyes fell upon the corner building, and I blinked away the miserable thoughts that had been swirling around my head. Except for the blood-red awnings over the front door and windows that read GHOULICIOUS PIZZA, the place looked like a smaller version of our haunted castle back home.
“What do you think?” Dad asked.
“This is the place?”
Before Dad could nod, I rushed to the front door.
The inside was even more horrible. It looked like our dungeon at home, complete with cracked stone walls covered in spiderwebs. Fire pots filled with a bluish-green fabric made to look like fire lined the walls, and frayed white cheesecloths and silver candelabrums dressed each dark wooden table.
I felt a hand against my shoulder, and I spun around to see Dad smiling.
“So …?”
“It’s horrible,” I said, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“Nothing. It’s just … this place reminds me so much of home.”
He gave my shoulder a gentle shake and whispered, “I thought you’d like it. C’mon, let’s take a look around.”
The devices looked complex, but fortunately, everything had a label—oven, cash register, dishwasher, soda machine. On t
he counter in front of the oven, Dad picked up a thick manual. “This should explain everything we’d ever need to know about the pizza business.”
Even with the manual I figured it would take a long time for us to master everything. “So, when do we open?”
“Same day you start school.”
“Oh, yeah, when’s that?” I asked, expecting Dad to say something like two months, maybe even a year.
“Tomorrow.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
I guess it should come as no surprise by now that Dad wasn’t kidding.
SEVEN
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH THE HUMAN KIND
I noticed Mom waiting for us on the front porch as we pulled into the driveway. At least I thought it was Mom. It was hard to tell through all the mushy skin-colored makeup on her face and the wide, pale blue hat that covered her snakes.
“Do you think I can pass for a human?” Mom asked, adjusting her special sunglasses.
“Nope,” Dad said. “You look way too horrible to be a human.”
“What about you, Eve? What do you think?”
The makeup made her skin look like melted wax, and that hat was just ridiculous. “You look great, Mom. Where do you think you’re going looking like that?”
“I’m taking you shopping for school clothes.”
This was bad on so many levels.
“In public? But, Mom, you can’t be serious? I mean, you’re not, well, an expert in human teenager fashion.”
“Nonsense. Fashion is fashion. It’s not all that hard.”
I wanted to enlighten her on the complexities of color and fabric, and how putting together the perfect outfit was a delicate blend of eye and flair. But regardless of what I thought, Mom had it in her mind that she was taking me school shopping, and I knew better than to argue.
Dad dropped us off at a place called Main Street, or so the signpost read. It was a small town cramped with tiny stores pushed up against one another as if they were waiting on line for free tickets to see the Ghastly Brothers in concert. Each store tried to make up for its lack of size with gigantic names like Hair & Nail World, Jerry’s Appliance City, and Krumblers: Home of the World-Famous Chili-Cheese Dog.