Strangely, he was not looking at me but at something over my shoulder. I turned to follow his gaze. The hall was vacant. “Why were you staring at me?”
He hesitated before leaning forward and whispering, “Do you . . . see them?”
I mimed his gesture and tone. “See who?”
He straightened up. “Nothing. Sorry I gawked.” He then did an about face and raced away. It was only then that I remembered Principal Steck’s assembly, when he’d informed the student body of the impending arrival of those freaky Mythcorp orphans. That must’ve been who Morgan was. Some orphan. I’d thought they were supposed to be like a bunch of grotesque albino’s, More-eyes or something like that.
Later that day, at lunch, I was sitting alone sensing I was not alone. Always I sense others who chill the air around me. I don’t feel this chill; I see it in faint breath-clouds. Just another inexplicable aspect of the Sanson family curse. Gramps referred to it as the Sanson Chill. Dad calls it free AC. I call it BS.
By now it was clear who the orphans were. Twelve snow-white yahoos with eyes the shade of crystallized milk and platinum ponytails running down to their bums sat together at the long table in the center of the cafeteria, along with Morgan. Lexi, princess of the Goths, strode up to the long table with her slightly-less-Goth girlfriends Missy and Misty, whose personalities were as interchangeable as their pink-highlighted hair and names. “Mind if we join you?” Lexi asked Morgan. He offered a look of surprise before nodding.
As he shimmied over to make room, the smallest orphan, whose name—Ash—I’d overheard someone mention, stood. It was a very old gesture I’d seen in some movie. Ash sat. The girls giggled.
Lexi and Misty and Missy dropped their conversation with Morgan after only two minutes. Their occasional glances at Ash had become more and more obvious and lingering. Now they were completely focused on the pint-sized Morai. More than focused. They seemed mesmerized, heads leaning on fists, elbows on table, eyes unblinking, tongue’s tracing lips.
If I was cursed, this Ash was blessed.
Throughout the conversation—or soliloquy, as Ash did all the talking—the girls laughed and smiled and shifted closer and closer to Ash. Meanwhile I watched Morgan talk to himself in hushed tones while I downed some Nanex, the medical solution designed to keep my joints lubricated. I was going to like these orphans. They made me look normal.
Maybe this Ash would even know how to lift my curse.
I made a point of following him at the end of the day. Unfortunately the Goth chicks seemed to have the same idea, though I imagined their intentions were somewhat different.
How to ditch these chicks?
The final bell rang. Halls filled with students. By the time Ash and his black-clad shadows reached the former Undertaker Classroom, I was stewing in impatience. What were these girls expecting, a four-way albino quickie? That’s it, I thought, one more giggle and I’ll—
Misty (or Missy, I can never tell the difference) giggled, reaching out to grab Ash’s hand.
“Achoo!” I added a nose wipe for show and pretended to flick snot on the floor. The chicks snapped off a trio of ‘Eew’s’ and pattered away. Like every other yahoo at Philicity High, they’re convinced my ‘condition’ is contagious.
Ash stood there looking me over, feet facing the stairs to his dorm. I approached and he shifted so that his entire focus was on me. “It’s Ash, right?”
“That’s correct,” he nodded and for a second I thought he might bow. “You are Charles Henri Sanson.”
I gave him a questioning look. At least, I thought it was a questioning look; I can’t actually feel my facial muscles move, so for all I knew I was giving him some silly expression.
He explained: “Mr. Monmouth, back at the Home, gave us a student manifest and we studied it before our arrival here.”
“And you happen to remember my name because?” It came out sounding rude.
The school was empty now. I could hear the Iconocops doing their rounds. Better make this fast.
“We have pretty good memories,” Ash explained. He peered in my eyes. Was this that Mesmer thing the Iconocops had warned us about? I didn’t feel mesmerized. But his eyes were massively eerie. “Did you want something, Charles Henri Sanson?”
“It’s just Charlie. I was listening to your convo with the Goths.” The thud of boot-steps sounded around the corner and down the hall. “And I was wondering if you knew how to lift a curse. I got a real bad one and I figured since you’re extra-human . . .” We turned as the footsteps grew louder and more rapid. What the heck?
“Come on, follow me,” Ash ordered. He turned and made for the stairs but slammed to a halt when he realized I wasn’t following him. He looked shocked. “I can help you, but not if you’re caught breaking curfew. Follow me now, please.”
What an arrogant prick. He was actually ordering me to follow him. What, did he think he could mesmerize me? Maybe you need a pulse to be mind-screwed by these Morai yahoos. I lingered, wanting to follow but wanting more to see if I could resist his best efforts. Ash cocked his head at me like a curious bird. Poor fool. The footsteps went BOOM-PATTER-BOOM and Mr. Dodds rounded the corner, followed by some kind of clatter.
He was dragging one of the Morai. “—and if I catch you clowning around down there again after curfew, without a teacher, you’ll be on the first bus back to the Home.” He bent down and shoved his face to within an inch of the Morai’s pale mug. His chem-shades were definitely still on. He probably wouldn’t risk a face-to-face with a Morai otherwise. “Got it?”
“I am going to find that beastie,” the Morai braved. “You can’t stop me.” With that he stomped up the stairs, nodding at Ash as he passed him.
Wes ignored me, lingering only long enough to play the staring game with Ash and make sure both Morai fled up into the old undertaker room. When the sound of his boot steps had died down, I marched up the steps and knocked on the door. I didn’t even get to my second knock when Ash opened up. Another Morai was with him. Apparently it took two of them to yank the oak mother open.
“Thank you Lamorak, but he’s cool,” he said. Lamorak disappeared into the depths of the room.
“Was that the dude Mister Dodds just caught snooping?”
Ash smiled. It was a pleasing sight even for a straight-shooting straight guy like me. “No. Mister Dodds caught Pellinore. You can tell the difference by their hair. Lamorak wears his in three braids. He thinks one or two come off as girly.”
“But three are manly?”
Ash shrugged. As he opened the door to pass through it, I noticed Morgan was watching us. Ash closed the door and followed me down the steps. I asked him about the gawker.
“He grew up with us at the Home,” he explained as we chummed down the hall towards the gym. “Morgan has a variation of our gift. He’s cool—a little off. Mumbles to himself. Now, tell me about this curse.”
For the first time in my life, I told the full tale of my storied family, all the way back to before the French Revolution, and covering all the royal executioners in our family tree. Ash listened better than any shrink would have. He waited until I was done to ask about my disease. I told him everything about that too. He asked me if I was a zombie. “I suppose,” I said, surprised to find I wasn’t insulted. “But hey, zombies are people too, right?”
He nodded. “Now, I am going to tell you a little story, and when I am done, maybe we can strike up some kind of deal.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Maybe,” I offered, trying not to sound enthusiastic. Was it possible that I’d finally stumbled on someone with the ability to lift my curse? In the gym he told me his tale. I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but he sounded confident. And hey, when you’ve got a 300 year old case of bad-juju, you’ll grasp at any straw you can find, no matter how short.
Someone screamed.
A crash like a plane belly-flopping in the hall. Ash ran out through the gym door with me hot on his trail. Another clatter guided us
towards the back doors, a few yards past the Morai stairs. By the time we arrived the booming had stopped. Shards of glass lay strewn about, and the aluminum doors themselves were all twisted and bent out of shape. Someone had wanted in—badly.
“No blood,” Ash said. His calm demeanor was a tad disturbing. If I had a pulse, it’d be racing right now.
“Did you hear that?” I stepped through the remains of the doors. “Across the baseball diamond. Look, the trees are moving. Someone’s fighting out there.”
“Just the wind,” he said. Why would he bother to lie about this? There was clearly a fight going down out there. I could only just make out what looked like a bear. The other aggressor seemed tucked neatly into the shadows.
“Someone’s coming,” Ash said. “We’ll finish our discussion tomorrow. Good night.”
When I turned around Ash was gone, the Morai door slamming shut.
I sighed, breath-clouds lingering around my face. Was Ash a yahoo, or my future savior?
Chapter 5
Word of Ash’s ‘possible Mesmer’ spread faster than . . . well, nothing spreads faster than rumors in a high school. The student body, feeding on this Morai fodder, split: about two thirds were convinced Mrs. Deem had been bamboozled, while the other third weren’t not completely half-duped into thinking Ash hadn’t not made a somewhat good point.
The views among the Morai were just as cluster-fugged.
Meanwhile, I lost track of Sanson and by 3:00 P.M. was convinced the day was a bust. But then, while Ava and I were dusting off our nasty cots, someone knocked on the door. Ash and Lamorak opened it and I sneaked a peek.
“Son of a snitch,” I mumbled, so low only a ghost could’ve heard me.
‘You eye-screwing that boy again?’ Castor taunted. Of all the spooks, Castor is the Crown Prince of Sarcasm, and he looks the deadest. His clothes, entrails of an old Iconocop uniform, are torn and stained with blood. His face is split by a cut, so when he sneers—which is always—he looks like a ghostly version of the Joker. ‘Why don’t you shimmy on over there, ask your boy-toy for a cuddle? Little fairy bastard. Ha!’
“Go hump Cleopatra,” I ordered the spook. He sneered and drifted on his back over the floor in an attempt to peep under Ava’s skirt.
A few ticks later Lamorak walked away, leaving Ash to banter with Sanson. I shuffled over to the bathroom door, used it to hide while eavesdropping on my favorite Morai. But Ash was still fifteen feet away and whispering. Who whispers? Baddies—that’s who. He was up to something.
‘Whatcha doing?’ Naked Charles asked, popping into existence between me and Ash.
“Ah, jeez-friggin-Louise!” I hissed and ducked behind a dust-encrusted cot. Naked Charles hovered over to my hidey-hole. He, like all my other blasted spooks, never walks—he glides to wherever he pleases, his feet always riding on a two-inch cushion of air.
‘Whatcha doing down there?’
“For the love of all that is holy, go away!” When I looked up, Naked Charles was gone. But the memory of his happiness was not. “Earle Combs, Mark Koenig, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig—”
“Naked Charles hanging around again?” Ava, standing over me. She knows I always recite Murderers Row whenever I need to banish the memory of Naked Charles’ nakedness.
“Yep.”
I peaked over the cot. Ash had closed the door and was now passing time communing with Lamorak. I kicked the butt out of an urge to sneeze. Forcing your peepers to stay open during a sneeze-urge works, but whenever I do it I can’t help but cringe at the thought that my peepers might pop out.
“You can’t hide from him, you know,” Ava pointed out.
Did she mean Ash or Naked Charles? The door burst open and Pellinore backed inside, roaring “I’m going to find that beastie and you can’t stop me.”
I expelled the air I’d been holding in and traced Ash’s movements as he cinched over to the door. Apparently satisfied, he then slipped out. I stood and made for the door but Ava grabbed my arm. “Where are you going?”
“I need some water. I’m totally parched, sure as sure.”
“There’s water in the kitchen back there.”
I groaned. “Yeah but . . . I like the fountain water downstairs. It’s got more flavor. Seeya.”
That did it. Ava huffed and puffed away, muttering something about my treating her like a dum-dum. Free of friends and spooks, I was finally able to pursue my paranoid investigation. Just as I reached for the knob, Naked Charles walked through the oak, his cock-a-doodle-do emerging from the brass knob.
“Ah!” ratcheting my hand back. “What the flip, Chucky? That was frigging nasty.”
For once he wore a serious expression. ‘That boy is surrounded by my kind. I think he died.’
I knew he didn’t mean Ash. Even my spooks keep their distance from that little punk. So Sanson must be out there with Ash. Something was going down. I walked around Naked Charles, fully aware of how absurd this would look to anyone watching me, and stepped out.
I tore down the steps two at a time. Ripped up the hallway. Empty. Where had the dickering duo gone? “Marie? You around?” Sometimes my voice summons her. There’ve been times when I managed to detain her attention long enough to get her to do some spying. She could be incredibly useful. Could, being the operative word.
‘Where would you go for a tete-a-tete?’ her voice wafted down to me.
I craned my neck. Marie was passing through the metal beams overhead, spiraling like some mystical corkscrew. Her white dress, impeccable as ever, twirled, looking like milk being stirred into a hot cup of coffee.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
‘Why don’t you think on it some, hmm?’ Marie drifted through a rafter.
“Why don’t you just tell me where they are instead of spewing your ghostly riddles?”
‘Think,’ drifting down to me, wearing a pedantic expression.
I sighed. Sometimes she gets in these funks and there’s nothing to do but haggle with her until you either win her respect or she grows bored and just spills the beans.
‘Where would you go in a school if you didn’t want anyone to be able to sneak up . . . on you?’ Her focus was shifting to something outside. I followed her glance through the huge windows here at the back of the school out to the lacrosse field and baseball diamond, where late afternoon shadows were creeping. I didn’t see anything. But I’ve learned that spooks see much that we do not.
A light switched on in my noodle. “The gym. You stand in the middle of the gym and no one can sneak up on you. That’s dynamite. Thanks Marie.” But she wasn’t listening. I didn’t want to think about what might be out there. What spooks a spook?
I raced down the hall lined with tempered-glass windows towards the gym situated on the far end. On reaching its double doors, I stopped to catch my breath. You can’t sneak up on people when you’re wheezing like a moth-eaten squeezebox.
The chrome sign above the doors read Charles Ward Gymnasium Est. 2015. So, it was founded in the year of the War. I wondered who Charles Ward was and if he’d been among the masses to lose his life to the tragic events of that disaster fifteen years ago.
I tip-toed closer and eased open the right door. Thankfully it did not squeak. Something wicked bad was going on inside, a true obamafest. The gym was full of people who no longer possessed pulses. No, not zombies, not vampires, but spooks, a whole gym full of dead people too pathetically emotional to have crossed over. I did not gasp like some pansy-pants feckling. I most emphatically did not gasp.
Well, maybe I gasped a little. But it was a manly puff of air. More of a grunt, really.
The spook-horde was milling around Sanson and Ash, and they did not look happy. Not like my spooks. These were hard-core phantasms, poltergeisty haunters. They were clearly upset about something and I suspected poor snarky Sanson knew what that was—even if he didn’t know about them.
I retreated. Headed for the fountain and sipped water. Mmm, flavorful.
“You s
houldn’t drink that, it’s swimming with germs.”
I jerked away from the fountain. Spat. “Holy crack man, don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“Whoa, you’re wound tight,” Galahad was smirking, scanning our surroundings.
I checked the gym door—still closed. “What are you doing here?”
“Ava said you were up to no good.” He leaned in close as if revealing a super-duper secret. “Are we in some kind of pisser?” with a smile.
From over Galahads shoulder a raggedy spook phased through the gym doors, back first. It—he—looked as if he’d spent his last day as a pig, wallowing in the dirt. His neck sported a mean red ring. I stole three steps towards the spook. It turned, noticed me noticing it.
“Oh crap!” I grabbed Galahad by the arm and started yanking him away, back down the window-lined path we’d come from.
“What are you doing?” His white ponytail flapped around, slapping me in the chin.
“I heard something, all right.” I couldn’t tell him that I’d just seen a spook tear its head off and give me the evilest evil-eye in evil-eye history. Good grief, I was starting to miss the Home!
More running and panting. Some sweat. Galahad was dry and breathing fine. The Morai don’t sweat; something to do with low body temperature and special glands or something. I never really paid much attention in Morai physiology classes back at the Home. By the time we reached the doors situated near the stairs, I was hacking up a lung.
Hands on my knees, cramped and damp with sweat, I tried to make light of what had just happened. “Who’s . . . the . . . man?”
“Are you okay?” Patting my back. If anyone else had done that, I would’ve taken it as condescending. But Galahad is not like other people. Not even like other Morai. He has no guile, no conceit. He was genuinely concerned. “Yeah, I just feel like a fatty-patty after a marathon jog. Woo.”
KABOOM!
We dropped to hands and knees as glass exploded and clattered all around. When the tinkling sounds stopped, we braved a glance behind us.
“AH!” Galahad echoed my cry and we scrambled to our feet to run. I slipped on a few shards and slashed my right palm as I caught myself. Ignore the pain. Just run. Galahad was already on his feet, eight yards down the hall. Morai are superhumanly coordinated, like cats. He paused, glanced back.
Orphan of Mythcorp Page 3