May Bird Among the Stars Read online

  Bea and the others, gathered in the dining car, had listened with concern as May shared the contents of her strange letter.

  “A bump in the road?” Captain Fabbio twirled his mustache. “What means this?”

  “I don’t know.” May brushed a crumb of cookie off of Somber Kitty’s mouth. He’d eaten his right away, before May could catch him. She looked at her own cookie, then took a tiny nibble. If Somber Kitty was going to be poisoned, then so would she.

  “I don’t see why I don’t get a cookie,” Pumpkin muttered. He narrowed his eyes at Kitty, but that only made him look like he needed glasses. Somber Kitty licked the crumbs out of his whiskers extra loudly (for Pumpkin’s benefit) and gazed out the window insouciantly.

  Over the several days they’d spent on the train, the house ghost and the living cat had come to the realization that the other considered himself May’s best friend. Since then they had regarded each other with cool disdain.

  “This Lady, she no know what she is talking about,” Fabbio blustered.

  May shrugged. It seemed the Lady knew a whole lot more than May wished she did. She knew May was in the 178th car of the northbound train, for instance. She had known when May and Pumpkin were in the Catacomb Cliffs by the Dead Sea. She had known the woods of Briery Swamp.

  Bea’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “I’m sorry, May, but I don’t like the sound of it. ‘The Lady’s smile is ambiguous’ and all that….”

  May crossed her arms. There was no question that the Lady was questionable.

  “But she says she’ll grant me what I desire,” May murmured. It was the one line of the telep-a-gram that stood out like a flashing sign in her mind. More than the ambiguous smile or even the danger. What she desired, more than anything, was to see her mom again.

  Bea reached across the table and patted her hand, making May’s skin tingle at the touch of her cold, ghostly fingers. She wore a look that was both encouraging and unutterably sad. Beatrice Heath cliff Longfellow had a permanent sadness about her that made its way even into her smiles.

  “I know, May. But everything I can find on the Lady says she’s surrounded by danger. Look here.” Bea shuffled through the books—opened to various pages—strewn across the table in front of her and pointed to a passage.

  Lady of North Farm

  Location: The frigid wilds of the Far North.

  Known for: Acts of great kindness, acts of similarly tremendous nastiness, excellent sewing skills, keeping trespassers captive for all eternity, associating with beings of light.

  Holo-photo: None. None of the holo-to graphers we sent ever came hack.

  If you’re planning to visit: See page 195.

  May turned to the page. It contained a list of insane asylums in the Greater Ether Area. She leaned back.

  Bea closed the book and rested on it, arms crossed under her chin. She had read almost every book in the train library, some twice, looking for information that might lead her to her own mother, whom she hadn’t seen since she’d died of typhoid in 1901, a few days behind her mother. She had been—and still was—eleven years old.

  May noticed deep circles around Bea’s eyes, and for the moment it seemed her ghostly glow had gone a little dim.

  “Well, I don’t think I have a choice,” May ventured. “I did everything to avoid the Lady before. And look, here we are. On a train, headed straight for her. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  They were just throttling past the neon-lit World’s Most Rotten Hot Dog stand, but May was staring past it, thinking of the long journey that had brought her here: her failed attempt to find the way home without the Lady’s help.

  “No choice. No coincidence. Pah! We take this train on purpose.” Fabbio waved his long arms dismissively “And what about this bump in the road?” Fabbio looked out the window. “I see no bump.”

  Pumpkin let out a loud sigh. “‘Bump in the road’ is an expression” He was wearing a toga he’d found in an abandoned suitcase, tied with a curtain tie. He flounced one tassel around dramatically as he talked, smiling haughtily at Kitty from the corner of his eye. “It doesn’t mean a real bump. It means—”

  Bump.

  “Meay!”

  Somber Kitty, hissing, bounced against one of the closed windows, then landed on all fours. Pumpkin flew across the table under a cascade of cards; Beatrice and May hurtled off of their bench onto the ground; Fabbio tumbled flat against the wall behind him.

  Scccccccccccccccrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrccccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

  The train came to a dead halt.

  A bone-chilling stillness followed.

  The Bogey.

  Pumpkin whimpered and zipped under the table. Somber Kitty positioned himself between May and the rear car door. And they all readied themselves for whatever might come through it.

  Chapter Two

  Cleeuiloille #135

  Cureled in the corner of the car, they all waited to see what I would happen next.

  Several minutes passed. Finally, crouching, May reached for her death shroud, which lay on a seat nearby. As she slipped into the robelike garment, tying it around her neck, it became transparent, and her body—black bathing suit, shorts, and all—took on the ghostly, translucent tinge of a ghost. She remained just a pinch more colorful than the others, and she didn’t levitate—but at least she blended.

  “Meow,” Somber Kitty whispered, shimmying toward the windows like a soldier. Clearly, the curiosity was killing him.

  “No, Kitty.” May crawled forward and pulled him back by the scruff of the neck. Cats—in fact, animals in general—had been banished from the Ever After long ago, because the Bogey’s Blach Shuck dogs were scared of them. Living people had been banished too. In her shroud May was safe. But Somber Kitty wasn’t.

  “Sit,” she whispered sternly. Somber Kitty lay down, restless as a tiger. May inched her face up to the glass.

  Outside, crooked rooftops rose above a high stone wall. “It’s a town,” she whispered. She pressed her nose against the glass and looked down the side of the train in either direction. “There’s nobody out there.”

  The others drifted to the glass and peered out. Somber Kitty leaped onto a chair and placed his paws against the window-pane.

  A stone arch hung above an opening in the wall, just to the left, proclaiming the town to be Everville, T.E.A.:

  PARDON OUR DUST! COMING SOON! CLEEVILVILLE #135. COMING ATTRACTIONS: CRAWL-MART, CHAR-BUCKS, SKULLBUSTER VIDEO.

  “Crawl-Mart?” May whispered.

  “They have all the shelves at floor level for spirits who have been de-limbed,” Beatrice explained. “They’re very popular.”

  Fabbio floated down the aisle and reappeared a moment later with his Fabbio scarecrow. In a flash he’d opened the window and shoved it out. It went flopping into the air and landed on the ground beside the train.

  Everyone looked at him quizzically.

  “To see if anybody comes to get me,” he said.

  Nobody did.

  “Should we go outside?” May asked.

  “Meay,” Somber Kitty said definitively.

  Bea backed away. “I don’t know. Perhaps we should just stay here until the train starts moving again. I read in the Star Gazer about a specter in Hag Hollow who was taken by a gang of gremlins when she was waiting too long for her train. ”

  “There’s no such thing as gremlins,” said Pumpkin wisely, smoothing back the small tuft of yellow hair that sat atop his giant, misshapen head. Still, his eyes darted to the windows nervously.

  They waited. And waited. But the train didn’t move.

  Finally, as if by silent vote, and with Pumpkin trailing far behind, they all floated down the aisle toward the caboose.

  The town of Everville was small, with crisscrossing streets that ran vertically from the train tracks. On either side were dwellings—spooky, colorful, and lopsided houses with drooping wooden balconies leaning over the avenue. Dang
ling signs hung like fall leaves over the street, advertising various businesses: Near D’well Saloon, Jake’s Dry Goods for Drowned Specters, Sepulchral Salon and Day Spa. Filmy, glowing tumbleweeds blew up and down the roads.

  It looked like an average ghost town, if May had had to guess what an average ghost town would look like. But something had gone very wrong in Everville.

  The buildings were empty. The streets were completely deserted. The doors to every building hung open, as if every single soul had had to leave in a hurry. Things were strewn across the streets: cowboy hats, shackles, newspapers, books, toys. Two guns had been dropped in the street, about twenty paces away from each other, as if they’d been poised for a duel. A gaggle of hangman’s nooses hung in the town square, swinging empty and forlorn, as if they had just been vacated.

  And there was something more. A shadow hung overhead like a dark, wet sock. It was heavy and heartless. Unlike the rest of the Ever After, which glowed with an eerie green light, Everville sat bathed in an absence of glow. May remembered the stormy skies she had seen from the train.

  They kept walking. In the town square a giant plaque had been erected in front of the Everville town hall. In glowing, glinting, red letters it read REMEMBER, Bo Cleevil IS WATCHING YOU. A pair of red glowing eyes lay emblazoned beneath the words. Pumpkin nibbled his nails and looked around at the empty buildings.

  May walked up to it slowly, reaching out to touch the letters. Within an inch of their surface, her fingers began to tingle, and she yanked them away.

  Few spirits had ever seen Evil Bo Cleevil, but according to all reports, he made the Bogey look like a cupcake. And over the years, he had gained power—buying up (and stealing) prime real estate, assembling a horde of ghouls and goblins to haul off innocent spirits to his fortress in the northeast, building an undersea lair called South Place. He was the one who had sent the Bogey to catch any living people, or Live Ones, hiding in the realm—and suck them into nothingness through his horrible fingers.

  May wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t choose being turned into nothing over meeting the owner of those terrible eyes. But The Book of the Dead said she would meet him. Would, and then some.

  “I hear Bo Cleevil is part vampire,” Fabbio whispered fretfully.

  “I’ve read that every time you hear a bell ring, Bo Cleevil has locked another spirit in his fortress dungeons,” Bea said. She straightened the silky blue ribbon—a little frayed around the edges—that cinched the waist of her dress. “And he rides a giant bat.”

  May cast a fearful gaze at Beatrice. “Didn’t he banish all the animals?”

  Beatrice wrinkled her forehead. “He may have let a few favorites stick around. You never know.”

  “No, no, no,” Pumpkin said. “Bo Cleevil is a hitchhiker who roams the roads of the Ever After looking for a ride.”

  Everyone was silent for a while, thinking their own thoughts. May was thinking of The Book of the Dead and its predictions. It made her heart go cold inside.

  “The sign says it’s Cleevilville number one thirty-five,” Beatrice said finally. “Do you think this has happened to other towns, too?”

  May’s heart felt too heavy to say yes, but she felt yes. She picked up one of the books lying open on the ground, slipping her finger inside to hold the page, and turned it to look at the cover: The Modern Ghoulish-to-English Conversational Dictionary.

  She read the page:

  Page 28

  Conversations you might have in a town you are about to destroy: Kkkeooeoa jaaa?: What are you up to?

  Kkkeeooeoa hghghfuslvblblll: I am up to no good, as usual.

  Glklklkbjbjbjbullljjj ggggiiiyyylsdshio: Let’s go pillage that street.

  Jrglglgleehhee?: Why the long face?

  Hjsdsjkji skjkjiojehvhvaijifd: I am in a very bad mood, as usual.

  Lklklklkdsne euebhgbhb?: Can you please tell me where the bathroom is?

  Hklklkle ghuhurel knsibbibbib: I’ll bet her guts are delicious.

  May’s throat grew tight as she read on.

  Popopwoewn dshuhuihiuh: Let’s eat her.

  Kllklklihhii glubbhur?: What’s that smell?

  Hohfodhope. Skjkljkl Ikjhhljklw, jurlll?: It’s my armpits.

  They smell fabulous, huh?

  Beatrice, too, had picked something from the debris: a charred newspaper. She opened it gingerly and flipped through the pages, her blue eyes moving back and forth rapidly. “Nothing about us anywhere. It’s a good sign.” She looked hopefully at May.

  May scratched Somber Kitty’s ears. “Can I take a look?” The front page was scrawled with the masthead The Daily Boos. There was a specter interest story about a group that was banding together to keep a favorite sepulcher from being turned into a nightclub. In local news a tele-token mint had been broken into, meaning some spirit was on the loose and able to tele-port all over the realm, making many other spirits jealous. A neighborhood watch had formed in West Stabby Eye for three poltergeists who had escaped a nearby zoo.

  “I speak poltergeist, you know,” Pumpkin said.

  “That’s nice, Pumpkin,” Beatrice said, taking the Ghoulish-to-English dictionary from May and tucking it into her bag.

  “No, really, I do.”

  “I’m sure you do,” May said politely.

  “I still think they’re spooky, though.”

  May grinned. She used to think that Pumpkin was pretty spooky himself. In fact, she had once thought he was the most terrifying creature she’d ever seen. Until she had gotten to know him.

  “I’LL say. They can make you lose your mind,” Beatrice said matter-of-factly. “Just by yelling nonsense at you. I read it in my book on Dark Spirits. You have to cover your ears to keep from going insane. And also …” She considered, biting her bottom lip as she tried to recall. “Oh, yes, they smell like rotten bananas.”

  May continued flipping through the pages of the newspaper. There was an op-ed on the pros and cons of cannibalism, though one contributor complained the topic was irrelevant for everyone except certain groups of pygmies. A local man had found a talking skull in his nightshade bushes and was trying to find the body it belonged to.

  Of their escape from Ether there was no evidence but for a small blurb on page 27 that read:

  LIVING CAT/SACRED DEITY SPOTTED IN ETHER

  Spirits in the City of Ether were shocked Tuesday when a living cat with exceptionally large ears and little to no fur was spotted near the Eternal Edifice. Local authorities attempted to capture the cat, who escaped into the desert on foot.

  An unusually large number of Egyptian witnesses on the scene claimed that the cat was sacred and asked that he please be returned to the main pyramid on Tutankhamen Drive in New Egypt if found. New Egypt officials are offering a reward of one mummy of solid gold encrusted with rubies for the safe return of Dinè Akbar, or “Big Ears.”

  “Good thing John the Jibber’s not with us,” Pumpkin joked, but May turned a look of such hurt upon him that his smile vanished. “Sorry.”

  Judging by the way their former traveling companion, John the Jibber, had betrayed them at the Eternal Edifice, there was no doubt that he would have traded any one of them for a mummy in a heartbeat. Still, May shuddered at the memory of watching his soul disappear into the Bogey’s horrible, sucking fingers.

  Nonplussed, she continued to flip through the pages. “Nothing about us anywhere,” she finally said. Page 6 had a box of movie listings at the Everville Spectroplex:

  Guess What’s Coming to Dinner?

  Tomb with a View

  Drifty Dancing

  “I suppose they won’t be showing any more movies in Everville,” Beatrice said, and everyone was silent.

  Pumpkin shivered. He took the paper from May’s hands. “Does anyone want to hear their horoscope?” he asked. Without waiting for a response, Pumpkin asked everyone their birthdays and then read Bea’s: “‘Gemini. Be on the lookout. You are destined to meet a horrible fate.’” Fabbio’s: “‘Leo. You may as well stop b
eing so pompous. You’re headed for doom.’”

  May told him Somber Kitty was an Aquarius. He scowled and sighed and said flatly, rolling his eyes, “‘Aquarius. Trust your instincts. You are right to be sad.’“

  “Meay,” Somber Kitty said pensively. Somber Kitty was always sad.

  Pumpkin looked at May.

  “Sagittarius,” she said warily.

  Pumpkin scanned the page. “Ah.” He stabbed the paper with his finger, then frowned. “‘Stay in bed today’”

  Everyone looked at the ground, utterly depressed.

  “What’s yours, Pumpkin?” May asked.

  “Oh.” Pumpkin thrust his finger into his mouth and blushed. “I don’t have one.”

  He looked so crestfallen, even Somber Kitty looked sympathetic. Unlike Bea and Fabbio, who were specters, Pumpkin was only a ghost. And that meant he had never been born.

  “Is all superstition,” Fabbio said stiffly, thrusting his chin in the air. After a moment he added with a sniff, “I am no pompous. I am the picture of modesty”

  His eyes traveled to Beatrice, and then he dropped the rest of his words. She was twisting the long locks of her hair thoughtfully. “What are we going to do, May? Without a train? North Farm must be thousands of miles away.”

  “I don’t know.” May thought better of her reply and added, “But we’ll figure it out.”

  “I’m sure if we just think it through …,” Bea added gently, still running her fingers through her curls. She looked at Captain Fabbio uncertainly.

  On the long train ride Bea and Fabbio had shared tales of their many travels, including the day they’d found each other. Beatrice had happened upon him sitting in a cobblestone alley in Fiery Fork, newly deceased, crying into his collar over the loss of his men in the Alps.

  Young Bea, who’d been dead for many long years by then, took him under her wing, revealing her own search for her mother and suggesting that they find their lost loved ones together. They had covered the entire southern half of the realm, from city to town to cemetery, before they’d encountered May and Pumpkin and landed on the train headed north.