“That word looks like ‘lethe’ to me,” Jasper said.
“But why would Letheans want to attack a school?” she said, thinking out loud. “I do get why they would study banishment circles, how they work, and the things that happen when they stop working. It’s all horribly misguided and wrong, but I still get why they’d try. But why would they attack a school?”
Footsteps squeaked against the wooden floor behind them.
The specialists looked up.
Bobbie and Humphrey Talcott looked down.
“I knew it,” Bobbie said, hands on hips as if she were a schoolteacher.
Rosa and Jasper both stood up slowly.
“Can we help you?” Rosa asked, though she made the words sound like a formal challenge. Do not stand so close to us. Do not even share our air without permission. Step aside or be prepared to bleed.
“You’re the one who poisoned the water,” Bobbie said. “You silenced all those other students.”
“Nope,” said Rosa.
“You destroyed our house!” The word “house” echoed in the yawning hallway.
“Untrue,” said Rosa. “We did save both of your parents, though. You’re welcome.”
“And now you’re breaking into the school.”
“So are you,” Rosa pointed out. “And what are you doing here, exactly?”
“Following you,” Bobbie said. Her voice was a trumpet on the battlefield, triumphant and loud. “Proving that all of this is your fault. Are you poisoning the water again, or else trying to burn the building down?”
“Neither,” said Rosa. “Your flamethrower-wielding brother is the pyromaniac here. Not us.”
“Then why is your hand on fire?” Bobbie demanded.
“This is Tim,” Rosa said calmly. “Say hello, Tim.” The fire that was Tim bowed to the Talcott siblings.
Bobbie looked like she wanted to tie Rosa to a stake, make a pile of forbidden books at her feet, and then set fire to her like a martyred librarian in days of old.
“And now goodbye,” Rosa said. “I really don’t have time for you.” She hoisted her backpack over one shoulder and brought Tim inside the history classroom to search for more signs of Lethean sabotage.
The other kids followed her. Bobbie continued to sputter, obviously brimming with righteous anger. Rosa knew how good that felt. But she also knew what it felt like to borrow the feeling from somebody else.
“You’re still carrying your grandmother around,” she said while looking for hidden inscriptions underneath the chalkboard eraser tray. “She didn’t knock your house down with the rest of the household spirits, did she? Gran wasn’t ever haunting that house. Just you. And she’s still got you. She’s whispering at you right now, isn’t she?”
Bobbie opened her mouth to start yelling. Then she stopped, and pointed.
A lone piece of chalk hovered in front of the board. It scratched out the letters of a name with slow, deliberate, squeak-making marks.
Talcott.
“The two of you really shouldn’t have followed us in here,” Jasper whispered.
“What’s going on?” Humphrey asked. His voice sounded brittle and skittish.
“Your ancestor poisoned a lot of kids,” Rosa told him, her voice cold as she dropped facts at his feet. “After that Franz Talcott helped Barron engineer a way to banish all the ghosts who haunted them both. So those poisoned kids might hold a grudge against anyone with your family name.”
“I don’t understand anything that you just said,” Bobbie complained.
Rosa shrugged. “Your ignorance is not my problem.”
The air around them dropped down to a temperature colder than Rosa’s voice.
“It’s quickly becoming our problem,” Jasper said. He grabbed two chalkboard erasers and whacked them together. Chalk dust billowed throughout the room.
It settled down into the shapes of children.
Some chalky figures sat at their desks. Others climbed on top of their desks. More stood on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. A boy knelt on the chalkboard as though sideways were down. He held the hovering chalk that had written the name Talcott.
“Our ancestor killed them?” Humphrey whispered.
“He did,” Rosa said. “We should probably run.”
They ran.
26
THE FOUR KIDS FLED TO the cafeteria.
Folding lunch tables were still there, still unfolded, and still covered with lunch trays of abandoned, half-eaten food. The room smelled like stale yuck.
Rosa, Jasper, Bobbie, and Humphrey dodged between tables on their way to the exit doors.
“Stop!” Rosa shouted.
They came to a tumbling stop in the center of the room.
“What is it?” Bobbie demanded.
“They’re blocking the exit,” Rosa said. “Look. Floating chalk dust. See?”
“No,” said Bobbie. “It’s dark in here and I can’t see any floating chalk dust.”
Rosa dropped her backpack. It made a loud and punctuating thunk against the floor. “Jasper, would you please hold Tim for me?”
The wraith leaped from Rosa to Jasper, who held his hand high and scanned the cafeteria by Tim-light.
Humphrey flinched away. Jasper smiled. He enjoyed carrying a handful of flame near the kid who had once tried to burn him.
Rosa rooted around in her backpack, dumped half of it on the floor, and finally found a small, flat rock with a hole in it. She gave it to Humphrey. “Here. This is a worry stone. Use it to take a peek around us.”
“It’s a what?” Bobbie demanded to know.
“A. Worry. Stone. You worry away the middle to make the hole. Then you look through that hole to see if there’s anything nearby you need to worry about. Start looking.”
Humphrey looked.
“We’re surrounded,” he whispered. “Kids. Dead kids. Our age. They’re all around the room. Holding hands. Making a big circle all around us. We can’t get out. They’re all dead and we can’t get out.”
“Breathe,” Rosa suggested. “Are they closing in on us? Getting closer?”
“No,” Humphrey said. “They’re just standing there. Facing away from us.”
“Wait, what?” Rosa said, surprised. “They’re doing what? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. They’ve all got their backs turned.”
“What does that mean?” Bobbie demanded.
“Probably nothing,” Rosa said. “Never mind. Humphrey, just keep looking. Tell me if they do anything different.”
Humphrey kept looking.
He flinched when he looked at his sister.
Notice that? Jasper asked with eye contact.
Rosa nodded.
They got to work. She took one particular piece of string and handed it to Jasper. He used a thumbtack to pin it to the wooden floor and held it there, perfectly still.
“What are you doing?” Bobbie asked. She tugged at her scarf with one finger, but the cloth only tightened in response.
“Is that a specific question, or a general one?” Rosa tightened the other end of the string around a particular piece of chalk. “Or are you just venting because you don’t understand what’s happening, and you don’t like being told what to do?”
“All of the above,” Bobbie said.
“Thought so,” said Rosa. “What I’m doing is drawing a circle identical to one I made before, in my room. Same chalk. Same string. Same size. I need what’s hiding inside that other circle, so I need to convince them both that they’re really the same. Which is difficult. But I was in a rush when I came here, and didn’t come fully prepared, and that was very, very stupid of me. Does anyone know which way is north?”
No one answered her.
“You’re all local!” Rosa said, exasperated. “Bobbie, you’re so very proud of being local! If this is your town, and you know it so well, then how can you not know where north is? I need a compass. Where is my compass . . . ?” She searched around in the mess of specialist
supplies, but couldn’t find it. Then she tried to picture all of those old library maps in her head, took a guess, and marked north, south, east, and west. Rosa reached for the eastern side where the hilt should be.
Please work, please work, please work.
It didn’t. Her hand held empty air. She erased the four compass points and made new ones. The circle remained empty.
Bobbie knelt to help search for the compass, and found it. “That way!” she said. “North is that way.”
Rosa made four new marks on the circumference of the circle. She closed her eyes and reached inside. This time her fingers closed around the hilt.
The weight of her sword felt perfect as she lifted it up. Tim’s reflected firelight danced across the blade.
Humphrey gulped. “The ghosts are coming closer. They still have their backs turned to us, but they’re tightening the circle.”
“Step inside the one I just made,” she told him. “It’s small. There’s only room for the two of you. But it might keep you safe.”
Humphrey hesitated. “Are you sure? We made a circle around our house. That went badly.”
“Because you tried to make it permanent,” Rosa explained, exasperated.
He stepped inside. Bobbie tried to follow him, but she couldn’t cross the line of chalk. She tried again. Humphrey didn’t notice. He poured all of his attention through the stone ring and the surrounding ghosts.
“Are you going to fight them all?” he asked.
“Nope,” Rosa said. “Hopefully they’ll notice that Jasper and I aren’t named Talcott.”
“Hopefully,” Jasper agreed. He shifted Tim to his left hand and took the bell from its shopping bag with his right. Local ghosts did not enjoy the touch of copper, so if it came to a fight then at least he could swing the bell around.
“We came here to talk to them,” Rosa went on. “Someone has been stopping me from talking to them. We need to figure out who that is.” She took up a fighting stance. Her blade cut the air with a sound like a breath. “But it helps if they know that I’m dangerous.”
“Everyone knows that you’re dangerous,” Bobbie said. She sounded frustrated and scared. She still couldn’t step inside the small, chalk-drawn sanctuary.
“Thank you,” said Rosa.
“You’re welcome.”
“I also needed my sword to do this.”
Rosa took a swing at Bobbie’s head.
27
BOBBIE SCREAMED IN ANGER AND surprise.
So did her grandmother.
Rosa struck between the two of them, close enough to shave the fine hairs on the back of Bobbie’s neck. She pivoted, pushed, and pried away the scarf with the blade of her sword.
“Get in the circle,” Rosa told her. “Now you can.”
Bobbie stumbled inside and almost knocked her brother out. They squished uncomfortably close together in the very small space.
“I can’t hear her,” Bobbie whispered. She touched the bruises on her neck as she stared at the inert puddle of scarf on the ground. “I couldn’t tell the difference between her voice and my own thoughts anymore. But now I can’t hear her.”
“You’re welcome,” said Rosa.
“You could have warned me,” Bobbie said.
“Not without warning her. And then it wouldn’t have worked.”
The scarf twitched. It twisted and writhed until the middle knotted itself into the rough shape of a head, neck, and shoulders. The two ends of the scarf became long, reaching arms. It lacked the fabric to make any more of a body, so the half-figure floated up to hover at Rosa’s eye level. Wisp light glowed in the folded hollows of its eye sockets.
“You tore down my ancestral home,” Gran hissed at Rosa with distilled hatred. “You will never belong here. Get out of Ingot. Go back where you came from.”
Rosa and Jasper stood closer together. Tim put up tiny and fiery fists in Jasper’s left hand.
“Sorry I can’t summon up another weapon,” Rosa said.
Jasper swung the bell like a mace from its length of chain. “I’ll manage.”
The specialists separated. They tried to flank the hostile ghost, to surround her and trap her between the bell and the sword. But Gran moved too quickly. She sculpted the fabric of her hands into sharp, hardened claws and lashed out at them.
“She’s over there!” the Talcott siblings shouted. “Right over there!”
“We know where she is!” Rosa shouted back. “Shush and let us focus!”
Craft your time, Catalina de Erauso wrote centuries ago. Time is made by motion. Make your own. Do not allow your opponent to take it from you.
Rosa tried to be patient. She tried to take her time, and to take it away from the vengeful scarf. But Gran easily avoided every strike. Her claws bloodied Jasper’s arm and raked a gash across Rosa’s forehead.
“We tore out your tulips,” Bobbie said.
Gran stopped, hovered, and listened.
“Dad did most of the work,” Bobbie went on. “He took them out carefully, one by one, and planted roses there instead. After that we took down the cheesy, hideous painting you kept in the living room. Humphrey and I drew all over it. We made dinosaurs stomp across that landscape. Then we sold it for five dollars at our neighbors’ garage sale. You hated our neighbors. We used the money to buy the kind of ice cream that you never let us get. And ever since then Mom hasn’t said a single thing about you. Not one unkind word, or any other kind of word. We forgot you. We were happy to forget you. When you came back we tried to build a fence around the house to keep you out.”
The scarf-made figure turned to face her grandchildren. “You cannot cut me out of you. You cannot drain the blood inside you that is mine. You cannot be anything other than mine.”
“I won’t be like you,” Bobbie promised. “You’re selfish. I’m not going to be.”
She stepped outside the protective circle.
Gran lunged at Bobbie and reached for her throat. But Jasper was quicker. He swung hard. The scarf lost all shape when the copper bell smacked into it. Cloth and metal writhed together like wounded snakes. Jasper dropped the whole mess and kicked it toward Rosa, who grabbed a handful of scarf, pulled, and stabbed.
Her sword punched through fabric.
A shriek tore the air, and then faded.
“Is she gone?” Humphrey asked. “Did you just kill our dead grandmother?”
Rosa caught her breath, lost it, and caught it again. “Nope,” she finally said. “Can’t be done. Already dead.”
Tim jumped down to the floor, climbed over the motionless scarf, and kicked it several times until it caught fire. Jasper gently picked up the wraith and stomped the fire out.
“What do we do when she comes back?” Bobbie asked. It wasn’t a demand. Just an honest question.
“Make a memorial,” Rosa said. “Give her some tulips and a small corner of the garden. Nothing else. Ever. She’ll stay there. And then she’ll stay away from your neck.”
“The garden doesn’t exist anymore,” Humphrey pointed out.
“Make do with potted plants until you have a garden. Now shush and look around. Something’s weird.” She held her sword ready.
“What is it?” Bobbie asked.
Jasper caught on. “You’re outside the circle. But chalky ghosts still aren’t chasing you.”
The door to the playground opened with a slow creak.
The four living kids stared at it. Cold air and snowflakes swirled over the threshold. Jasper held Tim close to shield him from the wind.
“The dead kids are holding it open,” Humphrey said as he peered through the stone.
That’s weird, Rosa thought.
“That’s perfect,” she said out loud. “Quick. Outside. Both of you.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Bobbie asked.
“Nope,” Rosa said. “We still have appeasement stuff to sort out here.”
“Can I keep the worry stone?” Humphrey asked.
“Sure,” Rosa s
aid. “Use it to keep an eye out for your grandmother.”
He bolted for the door.
Bobbie stayed put, agitated. “Our family has done amazing things too, you know. We’ve done important things.”
“So not all Talcotts are vicious grandmothers or kid-poisoners?” Rosa asked sweetly.
“No,” Bobbie said.
Rosa stopped making fun of her. “Ancestry is like that. We don’t get to choose. I wish we could. My dad died inventing a new kind of stupid.”
“How?” Bobbie asked.
“Maybe I’ll tell you later. Right now you need to be anywhere else. Try the library. Safest place to be if Gran comes back. Go.”
Bobbie went.
The door remained open.
Jasper retrieved his bell and pulled it away from the torn, scorched scarf. “Talk to me, librarian.”
“The chalk ghosts weren’t chasing Talcotts,” Rosa said. “I think they’re trying to protect us. Maybe we should . . .”
Rosa stopped, stared, and dropped her sword.
Her father walked into the room.
28
“MR. LUCIUS?” JASPER ASKED.
The substitute history teacher leaned on his cane in a rakish and gentlemanly sort of way. He carried a leather briefcase in his other hand. “Jasper. Rosa. You shouldn’t be here, either of you. School is closed for the day.”
The door to the playground slammed shut as he spoke.
Rosa grabbed Jasper and yanked them both inside the chalk circle.
“Hey!” he said, caught off guard. Then he saw the stricken look on her face.
Mr. Lucius set down the briefcase, took off his glasses, and tucked them into a shirt pocket. His posture shifted. Jasper recognized that kind of shift. It happened when performers stepped right out of character.
“Your little circle won’t work very well against the living, Rosa,” said the man who was not Mr. Lucius anymore.
“You’re alive,” she whispered. “You grew a beard. You’ve got glasses. And a cane. And a limp. And you’re alive. I thought you were haunting me. I kept thinking that my history teacher looked a whole lot like my dad because my dad was haunting me. But I knew that you couldn’t be him. Not really. Because my teacher’s alive and you’re dead. I thought you were dead.”
A Festival of Ghosts Page 13