Mortals: Heather Despair Book One

by Leslie Edens

  I reached out to message him with my mind.

  “All right,” Emmett was saying, “Let me make this clear. If I weren’t so cruxing forgetful, I’d have told you this by now. In fact, maybe I did. Regardless—you must keep quiet about the unusual things you can do. Understand?”

  I nodded, but . . . I kind of sent a little message anyway.

  —Sam! I’m here! In the spirit world. Please, are you all right?

  “No! Not here! It’s dangerous!” Emmett expanded like a frightened cat, wider and taller, until he stretched a good fifteen feet high and three feet across. I stepped back, but . . . I might have sent another message.

  —I’m outside the city of the dead with a spirit named Emmett. I’m coming to find you!

  “Stop! Please, Aether, for the love of All. There are malevolent spirits out here who can sense that you’re sending telepathic messages!” He hovered above like an overblown balloon, shielding me from the sky.

  “He hasn’t answered me anyway.” I sighed. Emmett snatched at the air and tucked something into his waistcoat. I stared, then said, “I can feel them—my father and brother. Please, Emmett! If you knew how much I’d cried over Sam’s disappearance, you’d help me find him.”

  Emmett’s face fell into sorrow, and he shrank down like a deflating balloon. The two Chihuahuas popped out of his chest, fresh and ready to romp around on their bat wings. They yipped and shrieked, fluttering in the air, more like butterflies than dogs. “Not here. I’m sorry. Opening that part of your mind here could bring on an attack. Your father and brother must know this. They won’t answer. We cannot discuss this until we’re safe inside All’s Hold. I’d have warned you earlier, but I didn’t realize—you’re much more talented than I thought. I’m dead serious about this—no more messaging, or I’ll send you careening back to the prior world myself, so fast you’ll need an airsick bag.”

  “I’ll try. I can’t always control my, um, talents,” I said.

  “Ah. Exactly why we must hurry. I am beginning to see. Usually, I can sense abilities like yours.” Emmett floated urgently toward the city, tugging me along behind him.

  “You could have asked me,” I said.

  After what seemed like only moments—although the distance had appeared vast from above—we reached the city wall. Emmett unlocked a tall iron gate that creaked terribly and required a heavy iron key. He slid the gate open for me, then wafted through the wall himself. Once on the other side, he adopted his lecturing stance.

  “These gates are not strictly necessary for any useful purpose, since any of the spirits could pass right through them, but most of us agree they make for great effect—the sort of effect we definitely want in a place called Dead Town. In fact, these gates cause spirits who wander to carry several thousand heavy iron keys about their person. These, once again, have little purpose, since many of them don’t fit anything at all, and a lot of them fit gates and doors the spirit will never again need to access. But I’ve observed that spirits tend to attach to objects like keys as material and solid. The spirit term for this kind of attachment is ‘kriot.’ Mortals in the prior world who gain a lot of kriot sometimes become hoarders of objects, or great collectors, or establish great materialistic empires. King Solomon’s spirit, now a resident of Dead Town, was an early holder of massive quantities of kriot, before he reached his current state of high levity. This spirit now holds so little that he often goes completely nude, floating a good fifty feet above the town. Were he not so vaporous, it could be embarrassing to some of the lesser-evolved spirits.” Emmett flashed his infectious grin at me. “I myself find it highly amusing.”

  I smiled back at him—that smile! It was impossible not to—but then my eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the city walls, and a wave of awe washed over me. We stood inside a huge maze of dark, narrow streets, the high walls almost blocking out the daylight. Not that there was much daylight. Since we’d come inside the city walls, the sky had grown a lot darker and foggier. I hadn’t an inkling which way to go or what direction we were headed. I drew closer to Emmett as we walked along the dark streets.

  The walls, constructed of small stones, had a cold quality, bleached of color and warmth. When I brushed my hand against them, they remained solid, but were cool and slightly damp to the touch. A slimy vapor clung to my fingertips. I held out my hand to Emmett.

  “Ectoplasm. It’s like dust on your level. It’s everywhere here. But it’s not so bad. It’s clean, it doesn’t smell, and we have no such thing as dust mites, thank All. Now there’s a permutation of existence, right in your realm, that is truly horrid. Dust mites. Ye-ech!” Emmett shuddered, wavering in and out of materiality.

  I felt inclined to agree with him about the dust mites. Still, the ectoplasm unsettled me. Anywhere I looked, bits of it wafted up and formed tantalizing shapes, shifting like shadows. As a child, I’d found shadows as compelling as real people. Thinking of this, I searched around for a shadow. I found none.

  “You don’t have shadows,” I said.

  “You’re right. We don’t. That’s because, my dear, we are shadows.” Emmett grinned wickedly, and I wondered whether to take him seriously or not.

  We wound along endless twisting streets, and I lost all sense of direction. We encountered no other people, but every so often, we’d come upon a cobblestone circle with a fenced statue in the center. The statues, with their shifting, abstract shapes, complicated by the many dark birds perching on them, perplexed me. So still were the birds, that I doubted they were animate, until one of the Chihuahuas—Sybil, perhaps—bumped into a bird. The flock rose screaming into the sky. They ascended more like wraiths than birds, leaving vaporous trails behind them. I admired the tangled patterns of vapor that knotted in and out.

  “Are they dead birds? Do animals come here?” I asked.

  Emmett shook his head. “They’re not dead. They’re just here.”

  “But—how? Why, if they aren’t dead?” I asked.

  Emmett folded his arms at me. “Look, birds travel, okay? Birds come here, birds go there, birds are everywhere. Have you never noticed there’s something a little funny about birds?”

  “Hmm. Not really. I’ve often wondered why certain people obsess over their migratory patterns,” I said.

  “It may be because they suspect something funny is going on. Which it is,” said Emmett. “There’s a lot that’s funny going on with birds, like there’s a lot more up here than there used to be, but I can’t get into all that right now. As for other animals, we think—those of us who have put any thought into the matter—that the more attached to people they are, the more likely they will come here. But we’re not entirely sure. We do know we have a lot of dogs.”

  He gestured to a pack of mongrels galloping along the far end of the court. Two burly, black dogs with burning red eyes and a third smaller dog that glowed greenish white. A fourth, a brown mutt, seemed normal until he turned sideways. Then I saw he was almost flat. I nudged Emmett and pointed.

  “Oh, yes. I’ve seen him around. Must have been run over. But come on. They’re waiting for us,” he said.

  “My father and Sam?” I wrung my hands with eagerness.

  “No—the spirit council. I want to introduce you. Come on, I think we might be late,” he said. He hurried down one of the countless alleys spoking out from the cobblestone circle. I rushed after him as he advanced down a darker and darker alley, ending in a stone wall. When he reached the dead end, he walked through the wall. I stood alone in the dark alley.

  “Emmett?” I reached out, tried to push my hand through the wall. Maybe I could? But no. The stones remained hard, unyielding. “I can’t walk through walls!” I shouted.

  A rustling made me turn. The glowing ghost dog nosed through the gray weeds at the other end of the alley.

  “Hey, puppy. Good dog!” I said.

  The two black dogs appeared next to the white dog. They growled in sync, their eyes red-hot coals, and stalked toward me.

  “
Emmett! I need help!” I pounded on the wall, my voice squeaking. Where was he? How could he leave me here?

  The dogs crept closer. Then, from above, a rapid barking—the two flying Chihuahuas plunged down to defend me! Their barks and screeches echoed off the alley walls as they darted in to nip the two bigger dogs.

  “Sybil, be careful! And you too, Elvira!” I said. Though I couldn’t tell which was which anymore, or whether there even was a which.

  The Chihuahua offensive proved futile seconds later, when the larger dogs shook them off, not even bothering to snap at them. The black dogs had their sights trained on me, and all the tiny flying dogs in the spirit world would not deter them. They advanced, growling and slavering, their eyes glowing hotter and redder, pacing around me. Behind them, the white ghost dog followed, wagging its tail.

  “Bad dogs! No! Go home!” I shouted. My knees turned to jelly, and my voice came out a lame squeak. The dogs barked furiously. They charged, snapping and snarling.

  “Emmett!” I screamed. In terror, I held out my hands. Blue spectricity roiled across the alley walls, long fingers of lightning snaking out and striking the dogs. They fell back yelping, but shook it off and advanced toward me again.

  My hands burned, little flames of spectricity flecking up from my palms. I tensed, ready to strike. The dogs left the ground, leaping for my throat. I lifted my hands to cut them down, but as they flew toward me, they slowed . . . slowed . . . stopped. They hung in midair, frozen before my face. Behind them, the ghost dog glowed. Beams of light shot from its coat in all directions, and a larger beam of light enveloped the black dogs. The ghost dog tilted back. He appeared for all the world to be holding them.

  I hardly dared breathe. Everything hung still. Then Emmett poked his head through the wall. “Everything oka—Good All!” he said, eyeing the scene. “Specter, is that you? What a good dog!”

  Emmett slid past the frozen black dogs to the ghost dog, patting its head and scratching behind its ears. Specter lost concentration as Emmett patted him, and his hold on the black dogs weakened, so that one snapped mere inches from my face. Fed up, I slapped at it with one of my spectricity-filled hands, and it spun backward. I gathered my strength, encouraged by this. With an angry growl of my own, I focused the full force of the spectricity on the two dogs. Both flew over the alley wall in a haze of blue and crashed down in something noisy.

  Emmett gulped. “Great cruxing All! What did you just do?”

  “Those dogs were about to turn me into a pile of ectoplasmic kibble! And where were you?” I shouted.

  “We’d better get moving,” he said with a stern expression.

  “Look, I’m sorry I had to—express myself—but I can’t walk through walls!” I said.

  “I don’t know about that! I’ve never seen a mortal wield that much spectricity. You certainly aced the spectricity test! I saw nothing like this when I watched you in the junkyard,” he said.

  “When you did what?” He’d admitted it! I knew that figure in the junkyard was him!

  He cocked his head at the alley wall where the dogs had gone over, like he still couldn’t get his mind around it. “Bit of spectricity, some flickering light—nothing like this.”

  “You should have watched me at school. You would have seen plenty,” I snarled.

  “Oh, really? I’ll try that next time,” said Emmett, quite serious. I let out another furious growl, thinking of him spying on me, but he only laughed and flashed that disarming smile.

  “You’re in a great mood,” I said. “Considering I could have been eaten. Considering this whole thing was your fault.” I smiled a little too, in spite of myself.

  “Yes, I’m terribly sorry. I believed this alley contained a dimensional shortcut to the center of town, but as so often happens, I’ve lost my sense of direction. And the dogs—usually harmless, but lately they’ve been attacking people. For about the last hundred years.”

  “Hundred years? Emmett, that’s not lately. What happened a hundred years ago?” I asked.

  Emmett opened his mouth to answer, but from far away came a roar that resolved into a thousand individual screeches. Closer and closer drew the sound. I glanced at Emmett and he glanced at me.

  “It’s birds! They noticed the spectricity. We need to go, now!” said Emmett, snatching my hand. He recoiled. Spectricity remained in my hand, enough to shock him. He went transparent and wafted around like an old blanket in the wind. After a moment’s flickering, he solidified again.

  “Put that spectricity away so I can float us out of here!” he shouted.

  “I don’t know how!” I shouted back, terrified.

  “Bad enough that I have to fly. But now I have to do it whilst being shocked. One moment.” He extended his right arm. A large tuning fork dropped from it. How many of those things did he have? He leveled it at me before I could flinch, and I experienced a snapping sensation as the spectricity lifted from my hands and clung, crackling, to the fork. Glancing up, I almost lost my breath. A black, ominous cloud of birds plunged downward, wraithlike tails whirling behind as they dove straight for us.

  Emmett took my hand, gritted his teeth, and we shot upward like a Roman candle, straight into the mass of birds. I covered my face with my hand, squealing as we burst through the scratching, pecking flock and emerged above. Glancing down, I saw the two Chihuahuas ascending after us, far below, in a gyre of flapping wings and wagging tails. The birds whirled in confusion, and the horde honed in on us. With angry screeches, the mass of birds swooped after us, ignoring the dogs, completely focused on me and Emmett.

  Emmett yanked me sideways, ducking into a moldy-smelling cloud. We floated inside and he eyeballed the town below, a labyrinthine structure punctuated by black castles and towers. Beyond the farthest wall stretched a cold, gray sea.

  I pointed. “Is that the Dead Sea?”

  Before I got an answer, Emmett dragged me down in a crazy death dive aimed straight for a gray-and-black bullseye. I gasped for air, my stomach still up in the clouds, as we blew past the Chihuahuas, knocking them into tailspins. Still we plummeted. The bullseye circles took shape: a granite castle roof. Surrounding the castle, a moat of black water.

  “Stop!” I tried to say. Our momentum was too great. We’d surely crash—but seconds before we splattered against the castle stones, Emmett hit the brakes—inches above the ground, so quickly I nearly blacked out.

  “Inside!” he shouted. Towing me after him, he sped across the roof to a heavy door. He melted through the door, but when my hand bumped the wood, he popped back out.

  “Cruxors, where is that key?” He pawed through his waistcoat, then his arms, his chest, his neck—his hands disappearing into his own body as he searched. A long piece of twine strung with hundreds of keys fell jingling from his waistcoat to the flagstones below. I picked it up and tugged. Yet more string snarled with keys emerged from beneath his waistcoat.

  “We’ll never find it like this!” I said. I faced the mass of birds closing in on us, raising my hands. Spectricity sparked between my twitching fingers.

  “All right, birds. Let’s see how you like me now!” I aimed the blast upward.

  Dozens of birds wheeled and flapped away; a few unfortunate slower ones spun squawking downward, feathers trailing smoke. Behind me, I heard another loud squawk—or more like a creak, really.

  “Huh. Forgot it wasn’t locked,” said Emmett, floating next to the open door.

  “You—you forgot? It was open?!” I raced inside. I slammed the door shut, hard. Emmett popped through a second later.

  “Well, I don’t use doors much,” he said, continuing our conversation as if we hadn’t just been fighting off rabid birds. Correction: I was fighting off rabid birds. Emmett was looking for his keys.

  We huddled inside the murky castle chamber, listening. Instead of the screech of birds, now a weirder sound greeted our ears. It sounded like “Squee-yip! Squee-yip!”

  “Sybil and Elvira!” I said. Emmett cracked the door wide
enough for them to squeeze through, but several crows got their beaks and claws in. Emmett shot spectricity bolts at them with his tuning fork.

  “Careful! Don’t hit the dogs,” I said.

  The Chihuahuas—or were they bats?—squeezed through the tiny crack and inside. Emmett flicked the stunned crows. They fell with disappointed caws, and he shut the door tight.

  “Ha ha!” said Emmett, spearing the air with his tuning fork. He gave me a devilish half-grin. “High marks on the spectricity! A-plus! That was a bit dicey. But we made it. All’s Hold, safe and sound.”

  Still shaking, I gathered Elvira and Sybil in my arms and squeezed them tight. I reached for Emmett and hugged him, too.

  “Oh!” He dropped his tuning fork with a clatter.

  “Are we safe? They can’t get in?” My whole body still shook. I breathed in deep, surprised that Emmett smelled like the air in a high mountain storm—like lightning. He stayed material while I nestled into him, but then he flickered. He wafted in and out, shaking in his own way, and I couldn’t hold on. I let go and sat down, my heart thumping hard.

  Emmett floated dumbstruck. He materialized strongly and said, “Of course we’re safe! This is All’s Hold. There isn’t a safer place in the whole spirit world!”

  He bounced up and levitated around the chamber ceiling, until I said, “You’re certainly in high spirits.”

  Emmett cracked up. “What a terrifically bad joke!” he said. Pink spotted his cheeks briefly, but when I glanced again, it was gone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Few Minutes in Ecto-time

  I stared above. Nothing but murk, stretching into darkness. I took a few more steps down the immense spiral staircase, following Emmett. I stared below. More murk. More darkness. Dead Town had no shadows, but it made up for it with a more than ample supply of blackness and gloom.

  “Where does this spiral staircase lead to?” I asked.