Cattywampus

by Ash Van Otterloo

  Katy relaxed, and Delpha felt Tyler’s grip on her sleeve slacken. But something still wasn’t right. Katy cleared her throat. “Delpha, about my hands—”

  Delpha hissed, “Shhh! Don’t. Move.” Her eyes scanned the dimly lit graveyard.

  Beneath the chorus of crickets, Delpha’s ears detected a weak hum. Nausea swept her gut. It wasn’t the wind. This was a feeble, human moan. Like an old patient in hospice. Like a person hoarse from grief. Like the rattle of the dying. Somewhere behind Delpha, another gravelly voice mingled with the first. Off to the left, yet another joined in—raspy and grating. Delpha, Tyler, and Katy jumped at each new voice, forming a triangle with their backs pressed together.

  The eerie humming crescendoed, each new voice clashing then settling into a dizzy tornado of harmony, until it reached a volume that ran Delpha’s chest clean through. Delpha felt Tyler and Katy whimpering against her shoulders but couldn’t hear them over the din. Then the warm press of Tyler was gone, and he lay on the ground by her feet—fainted dead away. Katybird grabbed Delpha’s hand, and Delpha, scared spitless, squeezed back.

  Words bludgeoned their way through the night, and Delpha realized she recognized them—they were from “Idumea,” a song that had always struck her as bittersweet.

  “A land of deepest shade,

  Unpierced by human thought!

  The dreary regions of the dead,

  Where all things are forgot!”

  From the shadows, forms materialized. Ragged, skeletal figures staggered from all directions, clothed in overalls, threadbare aprons, and tattered dresses. Delpha swallowed a scream. Their faces were desiccated, shriveled, and misshapen beneath long-faded sunbonnets. Decayed women, young and old, brushed grave dirt from their skirts, gaping at Delpha and Katy with baleful eye sockets. A few had skeletal cats circling their ankles, growling to be petted, or shabby, dead-looking owls perched on their shoulders. One or two women had jaws tied shut by knotted strips of cloth or wands jammed into matted gray buns atop their heads.

  All of them looked surprised to be standing there. They stopped singing. Delpha’s knuckles ached from Katy’s vise grip. She couldn’t wrap her mind around what her eyes were telling her: The residents of the Wise Woman Cemetery had woken from their everlasting sleep.

  Tyler sat up with a bleat of terror. “Delpha?” he whimpered, clinging to her flannel sleeve and pulling himself to his feet. “I thought you said ghosts ain’t real.”

  “They ain’t!” Delpha whispered fiercely, hoping to intimidate the world back into logical order.

  “Well, they’re standin’ right here, so I guess they’re a little bit real,” Katy squeaked. “But they can’t touch us. They’re haints. Haints aren’t part of the natural world, so they can’t touch you.” Her voice was prim, like she was reciting a memory verse for Sunday school.

  The haint-things seemed cannier now, like they’d been released from a trance. That can’t be good, Delpha thought.

  “Oh God,” Tyler whimpered. “It’s all those graves we walked on. Pure bad luck. Quick! Show ’em something they’ve never seen before—ghosts get confused by new things!” Tyler began to perform the latest viral dance with frantic enthusiasm. Katybird let loose a manic, nervous giggle, squeezing the devil out of Delpha’s wrist.

  “Turn me loose, Hearn,” Delpha growled. “Tyler, stop that. The only person you’re scarin’ is me.” Delpha swallowed her terror. Someone needed to take charge, and it wouldn’t be either of these boneheads. Locking her eyes on the things that inched toward the center of the clearing, Delpha fought to stay logical. There was a skinny gap between two of the creatures, just wide enough to dart through out of reach. Delpha licked her lips and motioned.

  “Listen, y’all. We’re gonna run for it, on my signal. One, two …”

  Before Delpha could say “three,” a tall haint with a basket let loose an earsplitting wail to Delpha’s right. “AAAAAAIIIIEEEE!!”

  Tyler fainted again. Katybird screamed back at the haint and kept screaming, only pausing every few seconds to fill her lungs again so she could scream some more. The ghost-thing followed suit, until a fat, stern-looking creature with a wand strode over and clunked the hollering one across the skull with a rotting broom handle.

  “Imagine goin’ on like that—a growed woman,” the chubby thing rasped to the taller one. The orange glow of the embers cast a hellish light across her rotten face. “You was a jabbermouth in life, Sukie Hearn, and you’re an even bigger one now yer dead!”

  Sukie rounded on the chubby creature, reaching with skeletal fingers for a mouldering leather pouch at her waist and pulling out a ghastly-looking rat. The rat skeleton moved. “I’m gonna hex yer bones, Sowmarie McGill! I’m gonna turn you into a mudpuppy! Or stretch out your earlobes and tie your arms together with ’em! You ain’t goin’ to heaven as anything natural, anyhow, that’s fer sure!”

  Sowmarie battered Sukie soundly over the head again, dislodging her dentures, which she’d apparently been buried with.

  As if on cue, fights broke out among the ghastly beings all around them, and as far as Delpha could tell, the ones with the wands were on one side and the ones with dead-looking pets were on the other. The wand corpses threw fizzling spells from mildewed wands, and the pet-owning corpses screamed like banshees, hollering curses in mountain accents and Scottish burrs. Delpha began to understand the pattern: The things with wands were McGills, the things with animals, Hearns.

  Delpha and Katy stood dumbstruck by the fire, as haints hiked up their moth-eaten skirts and climbed tombstones to get clearer shots at their opponents, woolen stockings slouching around their withered ankles. The entire graveyard swarmed with Delpha’s and Katy’s ghostly ancestors, all intent on destroying one another. So that’s what the “Wend-to-War” hex does. The truth of it didn’t sink in at first, but when it did, it hit with the force of an anvil. Delpha swallowed hard, as cold sweat broke out all over her skin. She was in a hundred miles over her head now, and she couldn’t fathom how to fix it. If Puppet’s presence in the Hollow was a problem, this was a mile-wide F5 tornado.

  Somewhere far away, Katybird yelled Delpha’s name and kicked her squarely in the shin. Delpha turned to her, still in shock. “It’s a dream,” Delpha whispered in a flat voice. A nightmare. It had to be. She bit the inside of her cheek.

  Katybird’s breath was warm and close. “It ain’t. We’ve gotta get out of here before these things realize who we are. Look how the two clans hate each other! Imagine if your kin realize I’m a Hearn … or the other way around!” Katybird blinked tears. “Besides, they ain’t normal ghosts. Look! These haints can move things in the real world.”

  As if to prove Katy’s point, one of the dueling witches managed to sheer off a tree branch with a sputtering bolt from her fingertips. The limb cracked and fell on top of her grisly rival with a sickening thud. The old witch struggled beneath it, neck twisted at a creative angle, and her moldered pet fox bared its teeth at Podge. Podge hissed, then scampered into the woods. Katybird let out a wail of anguish, clutching her sides and screaming Podge’s name, too scared to run after him.

  “Not ghosts. Zombies,” Delpha whispered. Her senses rebooted. There were rules now. Rules were good. The zombies had bodies—real bodies that could do damage. Delpha hoped this meant they could be damaged, too. But there were over a hundred of them, which meant Delpha, Katy, and Tyler were sorely outnumbered and trapped in the center of the clearing. From the look of it, outrunning the zombies wasn’t likely. Delpha opened her spellbook shakily.

  “Podge is tame! He can’t defend himself!” Katy sobbed, face streaked with snot and tears.

  Delpha ignored her, tearing through musty pages for a suitable-looking hex. She wouldn’t be so careless this time. There. Her eyes landed on a page titled, “Stayeth Put Hex (nay wand needed).” Ducking as a decayed owl swooped at her head, Delpha cleared her throat and muttered in a shaky voice,

  “Do not leaveth, do not stray.

  Ev
il, in this circle stay.”

  As she spoke the final word, Delpha crumpled to her knees. Around the edge of the clearing, a dark ring formed in the grass. A pair of dueling zombies who ventured near it bounced backward from it and howled in pain. Delpha smiled grimly and struggled to her feet. She turned to Katybird. “I did a hex to keep ’em here in the graveyard! Don’t know how long it’ll last, though.”

  Katybird already had an unconscious Tyler draped over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “He fainted, and he won’t wake up,” Katybird wheezed, staggering. She turned to the spot her raccoon had ran off and hollered. “Podge! Podge?”

  Delpha searched for a break in the whirlwind battle. Her gaze drifted to the pile of broken wood beside the fire coals. Puppet.

  “You’re not gonna like this, Hearn, and I can’t believe I’m doing it, but …” Without pausing to explain, she yanked out her homemade wand, focused on the pile of rubble, and tried to will it to be Puppet again. Nothing moved. Delpha struggled to remember the way her mind had felt when she’d done puppet magic by accident. It was like trying to recall a food she’d tasted only once. Her mind folded inward, straining hard. Nothing. Instead, she tried using the sort of concentration she used while whittling something complicated. A cool, clear sensation.

  The edges of Delpha’s vision darkened as the half-charred boards of Puppet clattered and whirred into place. In front of her, Puppet teetered on stack-stone legs, impatient to do her bidding. A trickle of warm blood left Delpha’s nostril as she stumbled to the outhouse, kicked open the door, and flopped inside, waving feebly for Katy to follow. Katybird bit her lip and balked. “But Podge!” Several zombies with dead pets pointed at Delpha and leered.

  “Look at ’er wand! A McGill witch! Quickly, sisters, spill ’er blood!” Their sagging jaws gaped, and a rasping sound of pure evil poured from their throats, making the hair on Delpha’s neck rise.

  “Come on, Hearn!”

  Katybird balked, even as a fireball hex sizzled over her head.

  Delpha shook with strain and fear. “If Tyler gets hurt,” she hissed, “it’s gonna be your fault! At least get in to save him.”

  That did it. Katybird heaved Tyler inside Puppet and crawled in after him, sobbing. Just as Delpha slammed the door shut and latched it, undead hands began clawing at the outside of Puppet’s walls, trying to find their way inside. Delpha slumped against the wooden wall and concentrated as Katybird blubbered. “We could have stayed longer! We could have found Podge.”

  “Thanks, Delpha, for saving our backsides, you mean.” Delpha reached for her puppet magic again. Her head weighed a thousand pounds. Gritting her teeth, Delpha pounded Puppet’s floor and croaked, “Go, Puppet, RUN!”

  Puppet lurched toward the woods with Delpha keeping it under her control just by the skin of her teeth. A few tenacious zombies howled in protest, surprised to find themselves clinging to the sides of a moving shed. The last one flew away like a bug from a windshield as Puppet crossed the “Stayeth Put” circle.

  As they careened into the forest, Delpha went down her mental checklist, her breathing fast and ragged.

  Get her spellbook back: check.

  Dismantle Puppet: check, then uncheck.

  Figure out how to get the undead Hearns and McGills back in the ground?

  Nigh impossible.

  KATY HAD ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY: IF LIFE EVER scared her spitless, she got along by looking after someone who was an even bigger mess than she was. And right now, life had scared her mouth drier than a box of Q-tips, and she couldn’t stop shaking. Even miles after their screeches faded into the distance, the zombies’ awful, gaping faces leered in her head, making the baby hairs on her arms stand on end. So, whimpering, Katy braced herself against Puppet’s rocking floor and threw herself into reviving the limp and unconscious Tyler Nimble. “Tyler! Tyler!”

  Tyler woke with a flailing start, rubbing his eyes. When he realized his head was resting on Katy’s knobby knee, his face went redder than an August tomato.

  Suddenly, Katy realized her fingers had been protectively clutching Tyler’s head to keep it from bumping around the tilting floor. She yanked her hands away and wedged them behind her back, looking at the ceiling with her mouth pursed. Tyler struggled to sit up, but couldn’t keep his balance. “Are we in … a closet?” he squeaked. His ears blushed, too. Katy shook her head wildly, not sure where to start explaining. She half hoped the chatty boy had amnesia and wouldn’t remember her and Delpha fighting, or the magic, and especially not the zombies.

  Delpha cleared her throat. Her back was pressed so far into the corner, she seemed to be trying to slip clear through the wall like Kitty Pryde from X-Men. Before speaking, she tossed Katy a dirty look, as if all this were Katy’s fault. As if Katy had cast that stupid hex and raised a whole graveyard. As if Katy had almost gotten them all killed.

  Katy wasn’t done being mad at Delpha, not by a long shot. She tossed her hair sideways so Delpha could see her glaring right back.

  “Where … where are we?” Tyler blurted, tugging his shirt down to cover his belly paunch. “Katybird? Delpha?”

  Katybird tensed, looking to Delpha for a cue and then hating herself for doing it. Delpha raised her jaw and shook her head. Don’t tell him.

  Tyler groaned. “Y’all aren’t fightin’ again, right? ’Cause that’s one of my least favorite things, right next to fried chicken liver and my math teacher figuring out I never learned my sevens. Even if my moms are fussin’ over which way the toilet paper goes, it’s video games for me till the air clears. Anyway, the last time y’all fought …”

  Memory flooded into Tyler’s hazel eyes. “The … the graveyard! With the zombies! And the abracadabra!” He waved an imaginary wand in an imitation of Delpha so funny, Katy would’ve laughed if she weren’t so mad and scared. A dopey grin spread across his face, then faded back into a crimson fluster. “But how’d we get away? How’d I get here?”

  Again, Katy found herself glancing for Delpha’s direction. Delpha opened her grim mouth as if she might say something, but then clamped it shut again and gripped her wand till her knuckles went white, giving her head a firm shake. Tyler looked hurt.

  Katy rolled her eyes. “We have to tell him, Delpha. It ain’t his fault he woke up before we got him home.” Katy’s voice came out clipped and forced, and her knees bounced in agitation. Why did she keep waiting for Delpha’s approval? For mercy’s sake. “We’re in a bewitched outhouse,” Katybird explained.

  “Woodshed,” Delpha corrected.

  Katy rolled her eyes again. “Anyway, Delpha hexed it so we could get away from the zombie witches. It hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride, either.”

  “Wait—y’all didn’t kill the zombies?” Tyler pressed his eye to a knothole in the side of the woodshed, clutching his stomach. Katy peered through a crack, too. Weeds whizzed beneath them, giving the uncomfortable sensation that the closet was floating through the woods. “Where are they now?”

  “Delpha cast a hex to keep them in the graveyard,” Katy muttered. A flare of envy made her glare at Delpha again.

  “How’d … how’d I get in the shed?”

  Katy stopped glaring at Delpha but didn’t bother wiping the sour look off her face before telling him, “You fainted. I carried you.”

  Tyler blanched at this news, looking like he might cry. “Oh man. I’m real sorry about that.”

  “It isn’t your fault, Tyler. We wouldn’t’ve had any faintin’ or carryin’ if a certain someone hadn’t gone and done out the nastiest spell in that awful book …”

  “The awful book you stole? Stop yapping, Hearn. We’re almost there,” Delpha muttered. She sniffed hard, bracing herself against the doorframe with one hand as she squinted out a moon-shaped hole in the door. Delpha’s movements had a deliberate sort of grace about them, like everything she did was part of one long, calculated dance: nothing extra. She didn’t talk extra, either, and was putting out a serious don’t ask questions vibe. Which was a
good thing, since Tyler was bouncing on his heels like he wanted to ask a dozen more. One look from Delpha, and he stopped. It pestered Katy, the way Delpha could do that. Even so, Katy found herself begrudgingly hoping Delpha had some sort of plan to get them all out of this mess.

  The outhouse jarred to a stop, and Delpha suddenly collapsed to her knees, forcing Katy and Tyler to opposite sides of the shed. She was sweating and looked almost green, like someone just getting over a round of the flu.

  “You all right, Delpha?” Tyler asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “Get out,” Delpha wheezed, knocking the door open with a limp hand. Pale rays of early-morning sun streamed in. “We’re a coupla minutes away from your house.”

  “You know where I live?”

  “It’s the Hollow. Everybody knows where everybody lives. There’s not that many houses. Now, out. Katybird and I”—Delpha swiveled her pupils around like daggers—“have things to do.”

  “But … but!” Tyler exclaimed, crestfallen. “There’s an army of undead grannies runnin’ ’round the graveyard like beheaded chickens. If you let me try, I might could help somehow!”

  “Nope. Out. Quick! Hearn and I have to go.”

  Where will we even go? Katy wondered incredulously. She should go straight to her mama and nanny, but she was overcome with shame for having any part of the mess they’d just left in the graveyard. Maybe they could put it right, after a quick peek in Delpha’s book. Katybird pursed her lips, looking Delpha over. No way can Delpha drive Puppet again, weak as played-out catfish. “Delpha, you look like something the cat dragged in.”

  “Manners, Hearn. Try ’em sometime.”

  Katy tried to push down her anger. “What I mean is, looks like your magic is sappin’ you dry. My nanny says Hearn magic is all about convincing nature to do what we want, not forcin’ it. That’s why it don’t cost our bodies when we do it. Looks like McGill magic runs a little different.”