by Leslie Edens
“Indeed. And what might your name be, young girl?” he asked.
“Young girl!” I snorted. “I’m the same age you are. And my name is Heather.”
“I’m older than you are,” said the boy in a haughty tone. He stepped forward and bowed. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Emmett Groswald Cornelius St. Claire Marie-Claude Juan Rodriguez Gabriel Lysander Tippetarius Zetian O’Toole Carlisle Fitzhugh. You—” He looked me over and grinned. “may call me Emmett.”
“All that is your name?” I said. His sudden smile, so open and full of sunshine, stunned me.
“Indeed.” Emmett extended his hand. I pulled back, for he held out the hand still attached to the spider.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said, moving the spider to his other hand. He took my hand to shake it. His skin felt cool and pleasant to the touch, though I got a small shock as I drew my hand away. Cursed electricity! I thought I’d gotten it under control. Now I’d shocked this boy too, and he was . . . kind of cute. Weird, but cute, with his dark curls and disarming smile.
Emmett didn’t seem to notice anything unusual.
“Now that we’ve been formally introduced, I must ask you. Are you afraid of spiders?” he said, twirling what looked more and more like a definite black widow.
“Not so much, but that one—” I flinched.
“Excellent!” And with that, he cast the spider toward my hair! I gasped, groped my hair, thought I felt spindly legs connect, but instead of a spider bite, the blurry colors of a rainbow filled my sight, whirling around me, and my nose zinged with the sharp scent of a lightning strike. I clenched tight in terror until the whirling stilled. My vision cleared. Grease and old gum smell, lumps of seats in the dark. I stood inside the old school bus.
“That went well,” said Emmett into my ear. He stood so close, when I turned, I saw into the deep black of his irises—like bottomless wells. He flashed that disarming smile, and I grinned foolishly back. Then I went somber again. How had we gotten here?
“The last person I did that to passed out,” said Emmett. I thumped down on the bus seat, holding my dizzy head. No kidding.
Emmett plucked the spider from my shoulder and released it into a crack on the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to it. He turned to me. “Frightened her dreadfully. But you see, I haven’t got much sense of direction. There’s a lot of energy around here, and it threw off the portal. With a spider, I arrive at the right location every time.” He bowed his head to me, so I could see the stark white part in his black hair.
“How wonderful for you,” I murmured. I gripped the bus seat, trying not to panic as I surged with blue electrical charge. I’d have to find Trenton, Oskar, and Lily, let them know where I was. I took another long look at Emmett.
Emmett inspected me in turn.
“You’re a ghost,” I said.
“And you’re a strange girl,” said Emmett. He grinned and wavered translucent. I could see the bus seats and windows right through him. “Most mortals find this kind of experience very frightening.”
“Ha. I frighten myself worse than this every day,” I said, deadpan. I wasn’t about to let him see me freak out. But in truth, I was freaked out. Another ghost! Of course, that made sense. Who else would I meet? It was crazy to think I, Heather Despair, would be lucky enough to bump into a cute boy in the junkyard. Unless he went bump in the night. Then I’d meet him for sure.
Why had he not set off my alarms like Valente? I sensed nothing unusual about him, even sitting right next to him. He appeared, for the moment, completely mortal. Like Max—the dead, hidden seamlessly among the living.
No, wait. I could feel it again, the dead electricity, the cold chill. Glancing past Emmett, I saw why. The skeleton sat propped in a bus seat, right across the aisle from us. Valente had returned.
“Emmett. Behind you. Do you see what I see?” I whispered.
“What, you mean the skeleton or the ghost?” asked Emmett without turning around. He kept searching his pockets, pulling things out and putting them back. A bone, a small scroll, a pair of ancient-looking spectacles, a vial of red liquid—the only color I’d seen on his person—and a small bat. The bat flapped wildly to escape his pocket and skimmed once around the bus ceiling, before squeezing through a crack in the window and flying away into the night. Emmett watched it go and shrugged. “She’ll be back. They always come back. Did you know that?”
I didn’t answer. A clouded shape fogged the skeleton, and soon Valente bobbed his head at me, still in his bus driver’s uniform.
“Hi, Valente,” I said in a small voice. How very, very strange this was. Even stranger—I was getting used to it.
“Hola, cómo estás. How are you?” said Valente. He nodded at me, then shook Emmett’s hand. “Señor Emmett and Señorita de los Espers.” Valente’s image wavered in and out. I thought I saw him wink. I rubbed my eyes.
“Momento,” said Emmett. He put on the spectacles and produced a long metal pole with two tines on the end. It resembled a large tuning fork.
“What’s that?” I asked. It reminded me of something, although of course, that something could be just a large tuning fork.
“It harnesses spectral energy. Spectricity!” said Emmett. “Wear these,” he added, handing me some goggles with thick speckled glass in the lenses.
“Why? What do I need these for?” I strapped them on.
“Hold on to the bus seat,” said Emmett. I had barely understood him, when Emmett seized Valente’s hand. Electric bolts shot from Valente, arching overhead into Emmett. The explosive force knocked me onto the bus seat. I grabbed on.
“Hold on!” shouted Emmett over the buzzing and zapping. He extended the tuning fork. A great roar rent the air, a lightning bolt ripped through the bus ceiling, and the tuning fork, Emmett, and Valente were electrified. Luminous clouds of greenish gas swirled through the bus interior, stinking of sulfur. For one long, eerie moment, Emmett and Valente flashed transparent, skeletons showing through. A sucking sensation pulled at my hair, tugging upward, like a giant vacuum cleaner from above, and everything moved backwards. The lightning receded up through the ceiling. With an ear-splitting crack, it disappeared, leaving only a dark spot that smoked slightly, like a bag of burnt popcorn.
I sat frozen, death-gripping the bus seat. Brandishing his tuning fork, Emmett bowed to Valente. They both seemed no worse for the experience. What on heaven and earth had all that been about? I wondered if the Paranormals had heard any disturbance. Where were they, anyway?
“That’s got it! Muchas gracias! You may go,” said Emmett. Valente sat there, one huge, toothy smile, but did not move.
“Go! You . . . may . . . go. Now.” Emmett gestured for Valente to leave, but Valente only sat and grinned. “Crux it all!” Emmett frowned. He pocketed his spectacles, then plucked the goggles from my face so deftly, I hardly felt it. Into his coat pocket they went. He addressed me and said, “Excuse me, but could you help me out? We’re done here, and he usually understands me, but things being what they are now—I’m not getting through. Would you mind telling this fellow what I said?”
I gibbered, tried to find my voice. At last, I said, “You have spiders, bats, and a magical tuning fork that spits lightning, but you can’t communicate with him?”
Emmett shook his head, his eyes pleading with me to help him make sense to Valente.
“Sheesh, I don’t know,” I said. “Do you need Spanish? I could get my friend’s phone.”
“Ah. The electrical devices. Unfortunately, we—that is, Valente and I and others like us—have a little problem with anything that uses electricity. So, I’m afraid those wonderful apps that you mortals are so fond of down here are out of the question. It’s frustrating, I know. We do have our work-arounds, but at the moment, I’m stuck. Could you just—?” Emmett folded his arms and waited, watching me.
I stared back at the ghost boy, holding his tuning fork that still sung with electrical charge—or spectrica
l charge, or whatever he called it—and at Valente, happily planted on the bus seat, ignoring Emmett. I held up my hands, spread my fingers, amazed to discover that the charge from my hands was gone, too.
“What was all that? Who are you? I can’t even believe this. Valente, vámonos!” I snapped my fingers. Valente vanished without so much as a parting nod.
Emmett’s eyebrows went up. “You got through to him! Passed the test with flying colors. Say, it was superb to meet you, whatever your name was.”
How had I done that? I held my fingers before my face. I snapped again.
A bat came hurtling through the air with a shriek-like squeak, spun in a circle, and crash-landed on Emmett’s chest. It lay flat against his black-and-white tie, then sank and disappeared. His chest had absorbed the bat.
“Wow, Elvira. Relax. I wouldn’t leave without you. Take a chill pill,” said Emmett.
I lowered my hand. No more snapping.
Emmett bowed his head to me. “As I said, lovely to meet you. Many thanks.”
“Wait! Emmett!” I reached out, but my hand passed through his fading form. In a second more, he’d disappeared. I gazed around the now-quiet bus and sank down on the bus seat. “There’s so much I wanted to ask,” I said. I had to get to the Paranormals—should be easy to reach them from this side. But I took a minute to think. I stretched out my hand. No sparking. I wasn’t overloaded with blue electricity for once. Much as Oskar predicted, Emmett had somehow relieved me of it. How? If only he’d come back. The image of that disarming smile floated in my mind’s eye. It brought a tingle to my stomach that wasn’t electrical.
Oh no! I couldn’t possibly. Why did I want to see Emmett again so badly? This was ridiculous. I couldn’t like a ghost that way. For heaven’s sake, Heather. Get a grip!
“Emmett?” I called again, despite myself. “Come back?”
Chapter Twelve
The Other Side
A thin crack of light split the air, illuminating the bus interior. I shaded my eyes. Out of the crack popped Emmett’s disembodied head.
“Did you say something?” asked the head.
“Urgh,” I said, staring at the head. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
The light crack widened, and the rest of Emmett stepped out. His arms grasped his floating head and pulled it to rejoin his body. “I could have sworn I heard you say something. It sounded like—”
“Like what?” I squinted at him.
“Like ‘take me with you, Emmett! I want to see the other side!’” He regarded me from the corner of his eye. “Was that it?”
“Oh!” I had not said that. “No.”
“Oh.” Emmett’s face fell. “So, you don’t want to visit the other side?”
“Well . . .” I hadn’t said I didn’t want to visit it either. Maybe I had thought I wanted to visit. Maybe I had only wished, and somehow he heard it. Could a ghost hear a wish?
Cross over.
The tingling was back, in my fingers and toes, running up and down my spine. Yes. I wanted to. More than anything I’d ever wanted before. The other side—the place Dad came back from—surely the place Sam waited in the City of the Dead. I struggled to catch my breath.
“Yes!” I burst out at last.
“Oh,” said Emmett, still flat and disappointed. “You don’t want to.”
“No, no. I mean yes! I do! I do want to! Please?” I clutched my hands over my heart to convince him of how much I really did. Then I remembered the Paranormals. Trenton, Oskar, Lily. I hated to leave them—but what if this was my only chance to find Sam?
“Oh, you do want to? Then I shall escort you,” said Emmett. He flashed his huge grin. “I would have offered anyway, except I haven’t really picked up the place, but if you don’t mind a slight amount of ectoplasmic residue—I apologize in advance, though, for any spiders. They don’t really bother me, so I leave them where I find them.” He paced away from me, talking on and on. I cleared my throat.
“Oh! Off I go, then. Perhaps we shall meet again. Whatever your name was.” He swerved around and glided back, almost colliding with me in his haste to shake my hand.
“Heather. Aren’t you forgetting something?” I said.
“Probably. Happens all the time, now that I’m past my second millennium. I haven’t forgotten my name’s not Heather, though.” Emmett giggled. I stared at him because—well, I had never heard a ghost giggle.
“What?” I said. “Oh, never mind. Emmett, you said you’d escort me to the other side.”
“Oh, right!” A sunshine smile lit up his face, and my stomach fluttered. That smile!
“I forgot, but you needn’t worry. The agreements of the dead follow them. You might say it’s the one thing we take with us. If I agreed, it shall be done—even if I don’t remember doing it.” He speared the air with his tuning fork, then tucked it under his arm. “Coming?” Emmett held out his hand. This time, no spider dangled from it.
I took his cool hand. I met his gaze. “Can my friends come with us?”
He shook his head, smile growing wider and wider. “Just you.”
“Wait. I know where I’ve seen you before,” I said.
Emmett’s smile hardened into a grim line. “Hold on,” he said.
He drew me forward. It glimmered in the space next to us—the dark whirl, the spinning cyclone of stories and visions, churning up through the bus ceiling. Emmett reached out, and it reacted, whipping toward us as if magnetized. It hit us with a rush of air.
My body shifted fast sideways, the interior of the bus whizzing past and away, like I had stepped out of time and space for a quick cup of coffee and would be right back. My body slid one way and my head the other, or was it my feet? My feet seemed to touch my head as I rolled like a wheel through a bumpy meadow, a flatter and flatter meadow that squeezed until it held only the essence of me. The essence of something that was not me squeezed out of the wheel through another sideways passage. Too late, I remembered Sybil.
We crashed through, into a real, three-dimensional meadow, surrounded by gray, dead grass and ringed by woods. Emmett stood over me, gripping his tuning fork, almost dashing compared to me. I writhed on the ground, clutching at the grass. I felt like a bus wrecked with a train in the middle of a tornado. Shaken up, dizzy, cramping with nausea—and there, a few feet away, lay Sybil’s inert body. I stretched out my hands toward her. Some sort of filmy black material clung to them. I clawed it away and dragged myself over to Sybil. Hugging her to my chest, my head spinning, I lost it completely. I leaned forward and threw up.
“Good All! You know, that happened to the last person I brought up here, too?” It was Emmett again, helpfully standing over me and doing nothing.
“Really. I’m surprised you remember,” I said. I wiped my mouth.
“No, you got me. I don’t remember. I just made that up to be polite.” A tight and tiny smile this time.
I pulled Sybil into my lap and stroked her head. She didn’t move. I couldn’t see her breathing!
“Emmett, my dog’s hurt! I forgot she was curled up in my pocket. What should I do?” I said.
“Hurt? She’s more likely dead,” he said in a blasé voice. My eyes blurred with tears, but through them, I saw his expression change to concern. He stuck the tuning fork into the ground and reached for Sybil. He tapped her ears and tail with his forefinger.
“Interesting,” he said. Reaching inside his coat pocket, he pulled out another black Chihuahua, identical to Sybil. “Even more interesting.” He set the two Chihuahuas together.
I sucked in a breath as Sybil raised her head and came nose to nose with the other Chihuahua. Two black Chihuahuas blinked their eyes and shook their ears. Two black Chihuahuas opened their mouths to bark and produced squeaky bat screeches instead. Two black Chihuahuas backed up in surprise and stretched out their tiny, bat-like—wings?
I had to squeak to get the words out, my voice shook so. “What are those?”
“It appears Sybil and Elvira have procreated, as
it were,” said Emmett. He nodded all around at the field, the sky, the surrounding trees. He looked downright proud.
“They’ve what? You mean they’ve had babies? But how?” The small dogs rose into the air and swarmed around us, flapping wings and wagging tails. I jumped to my feet. “Those aren’t babies! What the heck are these things?”
“Something new,” said Emmett, his face soft with wonder. “These are our children.”
He floated up, hovering a foot above the ground. With waving hands and pointing fingers, he began to lecture.
“You see, all that spectricity I was transporting might have caused some, ah, unexpected procreation. We in this place do not have babies such as you would know. Anything born anew in Dead Town is a part of something that already was. This is a little different than what you are used to. You, in the mortal world, give birth to new beings made by two other beings. We, in Dead Town, create new beings from halves of two other beings. One half of one and one half of the other—that is the usual way it is done. The originals are altered. We don’t increase our population. But something new is created anyway.”
I might have found all this more fascinating if I hadn’t been fretting about Sybil turning crazy flips in the air over my head. However, Sybil—whichever one was Sybil—appeared completely happy.
“Which one is my dog? How can I take her home like this?” I demanded.
Emmett glided over to the tuning fork and seized it. “One moment,” he said. He hefted the tuning fork high in the air. It roiled with spectricity, then rose and rose, like a balloon lost at the fair, until it faded from sight in the gray indistinct sky. “There. That’s done,” he said.
I watched, craning my neck to see it go. When I lowered my gaze, his black eyes met mine.
“It was you I saw in the junkyard, wasn’t it?” I said.
Emmett tore his gaze from mine, staring up into the sky as if the tuning fork might be due to come crashing down any second. “I have no idea what you mean. Why would I hang around a grungy old junkyard if I didn’t have to?” he said.