May Bird Among the Stars (21 page)

Bea caught up just behind May. “Mama!” she cried, throwing her arms around the woman.

May stole a glance over her shoulder, almost unable to believe her eyes. Her fingers trembled on the string.

“Beatrice!” Isabella whispered.

The ghouls started to drift forward. Biting her lip hard. May let an arrow fly. This time it zipped into the air, covering about half the distance to her target, and then froze … and fell. The ghouls watched it with their mouths open. When it was clear the arrow would not magically rise again from the ground, they let out loud howls of laughter.

May looked back at mother and daughter, hanging on to each other for dear life. She slung her bow over her back, backing up. “Let's go!”

With the ghouls clambering after them, they zipped like lightning into the streets of Hocus Pocus, not bothering to duck and hide when a Dark Spirit crossed their path. Most spirits were so shocked to see them moving so boldly that they stopped and stared before they gave chase. Others tried to grab them, swiping at them. One managed to get hold of Beatrice's sash, and it came off in ribbons.

Spirits closed in on all sides of them until a horde was on their tail down the main boulevard.

“We've got to lose them,” May shouted over her shoulder, and zipped into a side street, then another and another, counting on Bea and Isabella to keep up. When she looked over her shoulder and saw that they were, at least temporarily, alone, she veered in the direction of the Horror Huts, praying she'd be able to find the group. And suddenly, there they were, at the gaping, smiling skull face that marked the back entrance. Bertha and the others—Fabbio, Pumpkin, and Somber Kitty included—were just coming down the hall. Bertha looked angry, relieved, and intent all at once. Somber Kitty leaped at May, dangling on her shroud before she swooped him into her arms. He gave her an earful of reproachful meows.

“Righty,” Bertha said. “Let's go.”

The sewer that led out of the city had an opening four blocks away, and the group made their way quickly, Beatrice and Isabella clinging to each other all the while, as if one or the other might vanish at any moment. May followed just behind Bertha, occasionally looking behind her and casting a triumphant glance at the two. They weren't out of trouble yet, but close.

As they ducked down alleys, they could hear loud groups of spirits combing the streets, roaring and snarling, in an uproar again over the three specters who'd streaked the boulevard so boldly.

“What'd you guys do?” Bertha growled. “Ring the dinner bell?” Then she thrust a finger forward, indicating an alley across the way and a tiny metal sewer grate protruding from the road. But May's attention had been drawn to something else poking above the building at the end of the alley.

Once the coast was clear, the group darted across the street. May following along blindly, her eyes pinned to the thing above the rooftops.

“Everybody in,” Bertha said, grunting with the weight of the sewer grate as she lifted it and ushering her people—and then Pumpkin, Fabbio, Bea, and Isabella—down into the sewer. But May had drifted past them, farther down the alley, to its very edge.

Here, the tight alleys of the city opened up to the beach. And there, in the middle of the sand, perched on the very edge of the sea and mounted on a pile of black rocks, was the lighthouse.

Above the doorway was an ornate, carved stone banner, which could only be read when the light shone through it. What it said sent chills down into May's heart:
ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

“May! Let's go!”

May swiveled. Bertha was standing halfway out of the sewer, waving her on with her dagger. Pumpkin had poked his head out too and was staring at May, nibbling on a finger. He looked at her hopefully.

May looked down at Kitty snuggled tightly in her arms. She looked at Bertha, whose mouth suddenly settled into a sad, grim line, as if she understood. And then she looked at Pumpkin, her heart pounding painfully. She thought of her mother. She thought of how much safer her friends would be without trying to help her. And then she set her jaw.

May turned and floated away.

“May!” Pumpkin howled behind her, so loudly that his voice sounded hoarse. But May didn't look back. Not until the sound of his cries became muted and echoey.

When she did turn. Bertha and the others were gone, and the sewer grate was back where it belonged.

May swallowed. She hugged Kitty tight. And then she turned forward again, checked the beach, and zipped toward the light house.

C
ommander Berzerko roamed the empty streets of Hocus Pocus, her ear tilted to the slightest sound, her nose pointed to the cobblestones, sniffing. The cat and his girl had been here, she was sure of it. And so it boggled her mind that she couldn't catch their scent.

Ghouls and goblins ran the streets with the last of their prisoners. Commander Berzerko watched them indifferently, cleaning her paws, staring up at the nearby buildings darkly. Where were they? It was almost time for the festivities to start, which meant her time above was up.

Hearing a sound, she turned but saw nothing. Only the lighthouse standing behind her, surrounded by empty beach.

She sniffed the air one last time.

Then she let out a reluctant meow and jumped into the waters of the Dead Sea, returning to the realm below.

Glurb, glurb, glurb.

As May descended the spiral stairs, pushing ever farther downward, her death shroud cast a faint glow around her as if she were a lightning bug falling from the sky. Around her, the sea gurgled and glubbed and bubbled. It seemed to call to her, enticing her down, down, down.

Pausing to look upward, May searched for a speck of light coming from above, but there was nothing. She gazed downward again, unsurely, and then continued.

After nearly an hour of descending. May began to wonder if she had somehow taken the wrong stairs or come through the wrong lighthouse, although the
ABANDON HOPE
sign seemed to be a pretty good indication that this was the place. The stairs seemed to plummet endlessly onward, so that even Kitty squirmed impatiently where May had tucked him under her shroud.

Under her breath, May hummed “My Favorite Things.” But that made her think of Pumpkin and his shocked expression when she left, so she stopped.

She began counting stairs and had already counted to 2,007 when she slammed into a wall. May stuck her hands out in front of her and felt around. Besides the stairs that led up, she was surrounded by only walls.

Panic rose up inside her. May pulled Somber Kitty out of her shroud and set him down, then felt blindly along the walls with her hands, looking for a latch, a knob, something, squinting in the dim light.

Sniff. Sniff.

She crouched and felt for Kitty. He had his nose pressed up against one of the walls, smelling it, and May let her fingers travel along his snout to the place where he was sniffing. There was a tiny, uneven hole.

May rubbed her finger against it, perplexed.

“Meay,” Kitty whispered, equally perplexed.

May sank onto the stair behind her and crossed her arms. And then she remembered. The key!

She dug into her left, then her right pocket and grasped the small, cool piece of metal. She pulled it out, feeling for the hole again. “Cross your paws, Kitty,” she whispered. She stuck it into the hole. A perfect fit.

She gave it a small twist, and the floor disappeared from underneath her.

May landed with a splash flat on her back, then came up spluttering. “Uck,” she grunted, wiping the smelly slime off her face. She was in a trough of some sort, feeding a waterwheel at one end of a stream.

She had only a moment to feel extremely proud of having made it this far before she noticed a pair of slitted eyes glowing at her in the dark. Kitty perched expertly on the edge of the trough, completely dry and flapping his tail casually.

May was about to stick out her tongue at him teasingly when a movement caught her eye, and she ducked back into the muck, pulling Kitty with her. She leaned forward on her elbows.

A few specters stood at the far end of the trough, gathering up slime in buckets. And then a ghoul appeared from around the waterwheel, gabbling at them.

“Hbblblgbglblg!”

The ghouls urged the specters onward, in the opposite direction. Prisoners, May assumed, though none of them wore shackles. Every one of them had stooped shoulders, their eyes cast to the ground.

When the group had passed, May and Kitty sat up again and slowly, slowly, climbed out of the trough.

A cobblestoned street stretched before them, lit with a dim purple light and lined on one side by a wide, dismal field. Floating in the air, just at the field's nearest edge, were glowing purple letters that read:
MAP.

Just as she started toward it, a noise drew May's attention upward, and she shrank back into the shadows. Overhead, black gondolas slid greasily along, suspended by nothing. Most of them were empty, but there was the occasional cartful of goblins or ghouls jabbering along. Beyond them, there seemed to be no sky and no ceiling, either—only a gray haze drifting far above.

May waited for a break in the gondola traffic, then she and Kitty zipped across the street to look at the map. It was a three-dimensional spiral, showing a river moving down, down, down through the middle of the place, like a corkscrew. Tiny stars floated on the river's surface, marking areas labeled
CORKSCREW RIVER, DEAD SEA MILL, PHLOAT-IN PHANTASMAGORIA, GHOUL VILLAGE, GOBLINS GROTTO, SWAMP OF SWALLOWED SOULS, WILD HUNT MANOR, ZOMBIE PITS, RECEPTION HALL.

“The Corkscrew River,” May whispered, pointing to the spiraling, flowing line she had noticed first. “That's our way. It looks like we just need to follow it to the bottom.”

As her pinky touched the map, a tiny, ghoulish face appeared.
You Are Here.
It looked like the river was just across the field.

May scooped Kitty under her arm and darted in that direction, casting a look at the gondolas above, which were still empty. In a few moments they arrived at the mouth of the river.
A gangplank led to an area where several empty rafts had been corralled. A sign stood beside the gangplank.

WELCOME TO SOUTH PLACE: DARK SPIRIT CAPITAL OF THE UNIVERSE

MAYBE YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN EVIL. OR MAYBE YOU BECAME A BAD EGG LATE IN LIFE. IN ANY CASE, AT SOME POINT, YOU WENT ROTTEN TO THE CORE, AND THAT'S WHY YOU'VE BEEN DIRECTED TO OUR REALM, WHERE YOU'LL FIND YOURSELF AMONG LIKE-SPIRITED SPIRITS. HERE IN SOUTH PLACE, WE HAVE SO MUCH TO OFFER YOU. WE TORMENT THE LIVING AND SO MUCH MORE … EVIL.

IT'S JUST MORE FUN.

May blinked at the sign a few times. Then she turned to spot a poster like the kind one might find at a travel agency hanging in the air nearby. It showed two zombies and a goblin enjoying a game of Scrabble with the headline
IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR YOUR WORST NIGHTMARES TO COME TRUE, YOU'VE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE!

May and Somber Kitty looked at each other. “Meow,” he said.

“I agree,” May said, assuming he meant.
Let's get out of here.

They climbed onto one of the empty rafts and pushed off.

T
he Corkscrew River made a slow, greasy spiral downward.

Occasionally, the water lapped up the sides of the raft, making May and Kitty huddle in the middle of it and stare uneasily at its many holes and the dingy, frayed ropes that held it together.

When rafts full of Dark Spirits passed by, May and Kitty ducked. Some rafts held specters with daggers and thieves with masks like raccoon eyes and handkerchiefs tied around the lower parts of their faces. Some held creatures even more hideous than the ones May had seen already in the Ever After.

On either shore they could see the sights of South Place. To the right, atop a crooked hill, perched a village full of small, jagged stone houses, with windows like gaping eyes. A handful of prisoners clambered up and down the hill with buckets, fetching water from the river. Ghouls stood in the streets bartering, jabbering, drinking slurpy sodas, and pushing around their captives.

The raft drifted into oily black rapids and then crested a small waterfall. May crouched, pulling her shroud hood over her and Kitty to block him from the spray.

Several black skyscrapers sprung up on either side of the river, stabbing the misty, skyless sky. One misshapen monstrosity of a building straddled the river. Across its base, which arched over the water, were the words:

THE CHAMBER FOR DARK SPIRIT RELATIONS: CONVINCING THE REALM WE AREN'T UP TO NO GOOD, WHICH OF COURSE WE REALLY ARE

As the raft drifted under the building, a voice came over a hidden loudspeaker in the echoey, drippy dark:

“Dominating the Afterlife is only one of the many hats we wear here in the dark realm under the sea. Just like other spirits, we haunt Earth. Here are a few of the services we perform on our distant, living cousin planet:

• “Horrific hauntings
  
• Taking advantage of kind old ladies
  
• Inspiring terrible nightmares
  
• Internet pop-ups
  
• General torment and misery.”
  
• They floated out from under the building and over another waterfall.
  

Down, down, down they went. May felt the world above getting farther and farther away as they floated past dark villages, gaping caves with fearsome murmurings coming from inside, and decrepit bridges that snaked their way over the water, looking like they might collapse at any moment.

On the fifth floor down, May and Somber Kitty floated past a black, bubbly, howling swamp. A crooked sign announced it to be the
CAVERN OF THE SWAMP OF SWALLOWED SOULS.
Shortly after came an enormous manor, with black hedges pruned in the shapes of gargoyles, arched windows shrouded in darkness, turrets spiking up from the roofs, and pillars guarding the great front doors. In the foreground was a large hedge maze and a great lawn.