Ship of Souls

by Zetta Elliott

  There are paved paths that wind throughout the park, but I like the sound of dead leaves crunching under my feet. Plus I kind of want to see whether Nyla’s with me or with Keem. So I veer off the path and into the woods, then wait a few minutes to see whether Nyla follows my lead. She doesn’t. A girl in boots like those shouldn’t be afraid of a little mud. But Nyla stays with Keem on the paved path. They don’t even pretend they’re looking for birds—they only have eyes for each other.

  Just as I’m starting to feel sorry for myself, I feel the bird stirring inside my coat and remember I’m not alone. I pull the zipper down a bit to check on her. “You OK in there? You slept a really long time.”

  The bird pokes her head out and looks around. Her alert eyes seem to glow. “Something’s happening,” she says.

  The alarm in her voices pricks at my ears. “What? Where?”

  “I don’t know. Stay here. I’m going to investigate.” And with that she flies up into the branches of a nearby oak tree. I watch as she hops from branch to branch, her head cocked to one side and then the next. Then, without any warning, she flies away.

  “She said ‘something’s happening,’ not ‘something’s wrong,’” I whisper to myself. Still, I felt more confident when the bird was sleeping soundly near my heart.

  I glance over my shoulder to see what the two lovebirds are up to. Nyla’s leaning up against a big tree, and Keem’s standing a little too close to her, one hand pressed against the trunk above her head. I’ve seen guys do that with other girls at school. If someone did that to me, I’d feel trapped, but girls seem to dig that crap. I wonder how many girls have stood like that beneath Keem’s arm. I want to believe Nyla’s too smart to fall for that slick jock talk, but I can hear her laughing at his corny jokes. Keem thinks he’s so smooth…

  I’m so busy trying not to get caught staring at Keem and Nyla that I almost walk right into a tree. “Excuse me,” I say and chuckle to myself. I take one step around the tree, and next thing I know, I’m flat on my face.

  I lift my head above the dry brown leaves and look for the root I must have tripped over. Then something pinches my calf and I cry out—mostly in surprise.

  “D—you all right?”

  I hear Nyla’s voice, but before I can even think of an answer, something bites my leg. I roll over and find the weirdest trap I’ve ever seen clamped down on my left calf. It looks like the jawbone of a wild animal or a really big dog, except that along with pointy teeth, the jaw is lined with curved bits of metal and the sharp talons of a large bird. I try to shake my leg free, but the jaw—or trap, or whatever it is—simply slides down my jeans until it reaches my ankle. Then it digs in. And that’s when I scream!

  “D?”

  I can tell by the sound of her voice that Nyla’s moving now, coming toward me. But then I feel a sharp tug, and suddenly I’m being dragged along the ground—slowly at first, like I’m a big, heavy fish that the person reeling me in can’t handle. Then the pull gets stronger, and leaves and twigs start flying as I try to grab hold of anything that will slow me down. I try to call for help, but my head hits a rock, my teeth snap down on my tongue, and blood starts filling up my mouth. I feel like I’m drowning and falling at the same time.

  I spit out a mouthful of blood and cry, “Help!”

  Finally I manage to grab hold of a sapling. I flip over onto my stomach and see Nyla and Keem racing toward me. The jaw digs in deeper, and the sapling starts to bend. Just as my fingers lose their grip on the slender tree, Keem dives at me and grabs hold of my right hand. I reach for him with my other hand, and for a moment we’re stuck in a tug of war. Keem swings his legs around and presses his feet into a big rock. Nyla searches for a heavy branch and holds it behind her head like a baseball bat. Problem is, there’s no one to hit. It’s like I’m being dragged along by a ghost!

  Out of desperation, Nyla just starts beating the ground. Dead leaves fly up, and Nyla cries out, “There’s a chain!” She drops the branch and reaches down to grab it. It’s pulled taut and leads to a massive uprooted tree about twenty feet away. There’s a gaping hole in the ground that’s only partly covered by the snakelike roots of the dead tree. And down that hole is where I’m headed unless we find a way to break that chain.

  Keem calls to Nyla, “We’ve got to get this thing off his leg! Get another branch—a smaller one we can use to pry it off.”

  Nyla frantically sifts through the dead leaves on the ground until she finds a strong, short stick. She rushes over to me and tries to wedge it between my ankle and the trap’s jaws, but I can’t keep still—first of all, it hurts! And second of all, I’m still being pulled toward that hole in the ground. Keem’s tugging on me with all his might, but whatever it is just won’t let go. Keem’s yelling at Nyla, trying to tell her what to do. And Nyla’s yelling at Keem, mostly because she’s frustrated that the wedge won’t work. I’m hollering because it feels like some beast is biting into my ankle with its razor-sharp teeth.

  Suddenly, beneath our loud, panicked voices I hear a strange hissing. Actually, I don’t really hear it—I feel it. It’s like a cold, wet mist that slithers along the ground—and it’s coming out of that hole. Something touches the sole of my shoe and then winds up my leg. I get goose bumps all over, and then I hear, “It belongs to US.”

  I look over my shoulder so I can see where the voices are coming from, and then I yell even louder than before because something is coming out of the hole in the ground!

  “Don’t let it get me! Pull harder—pull harder!”

  “I’m pulling as hard as I can!” shouts Keem. “You want me to pull your arms out?”

  “But look! It’s coming—it’s coming for me!”

  Nyla looks over at the uprooted tree and sees the gray mist oozing out of the hole in the ground. The horror I feel is now stamped on her face. Tendrils of fog unfurl like fingers and follow the length of chain that leads straight to us.

  “It’s ours!” The voices seem louder now that I’ve been shocked into silence.

  “Oh—my—God.” Nyla’s words barely come out as a whisper, but somehow Keem hears her and follows her frightened gaze.

  “What the…”

  The ground beneath me starts to rumble. “Give—it—BACK!”

  All of a sudden, a deafening cry comes from above. We all look up, expecting to find the hawk we saw earlier, but instead a blinding white light fills the late afternoon sky. We don’t know whether to shield our eyes or plug our ears because a second later the hissing voices explode in an earsplitting shriek. And then…

  Everything stops. The bright light dims, the angry voices grow silent, the jaw clamped on my ankle goes slack, and the sinister smoke seeps back underground. Keem pulls the terrible trap off my leg and hurls it away in disgust. I see the flash of silver as Nyla reaches for my face. I try to speak, to thank my new friends, but instead I pass out in Nyla’s arms.

  9.

  When I come to, Keem and Nyla are arguing over me.

  “He’s bleeding pretty bad—we better take him to the hospital.”

  “And say what? ‘Here’s our friend. Some crazy beast-trap-chain thing tried to drag him underground while we were hanging out in Prospect Park.’” Nyla rolls her eyes. “They’re not going to believe that!”

  “So…we’ll say a coyote did it! They’ve attacked kids before.”

  “In Brooklyn? If we blame a wild animal, he’ll have to get rabies shots—the ER doctor will have to report it, his foster mother will get involved, maybe even ACS.”

  “No!” I mumble feebly. “They’ll send me to the group home. I can’t go back there…”

  Nyla takes a deep breath. “Keem, take off your hoodie and give me your T-shirt.”

  “What for?”

  “We have to make a bandage to stop the bleeding. Come on—hurry up!”

  Keem does as he’s told and pulls the baggy sweatshirt over his head. When his T-shirt comes off, I wait for Nyla to sigh and swoon over Keem’s six-pack abs. But
Nyla’s too busy tearing Keem’s yellow Lakers shirt into strips. I try not to cry out as Nyla ties them tightly around my ankle. Keem shivers and pulls his hoodie back on. For just a moment I think I see a hint of envy in his eyes. All of Nyla’s energy is focused on me.

  “Come on. We have to find a cab.” Nyla puts her arm around my back and tries to help me stand.

  “You go get the cab. I’ll handle D.” Keem gently pulls her away and then picks me up like I’m a sack of feathers. Feathers…where’s the bird?

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “To my place,” Nyla answers. “My mom’s a nurse.”

  It would take us a long time to go back to the main entrance of the park, so Nyla leads us straight to the park’s edge. A cast-iron fence topped with sharp spikes is meant to keep people out of the park, but there are gaps in the fence that give us access to the busy street. In two or three places, the iron bars have been twisted apart by cars that jumped the curb. Nyla rushes ahead of me and Keem and flags down a gypsy cab. A yellow cab would never stop for kids like us, but gypsy cab drivers in this city have seen it all, and before long we pull up in front of Nyla’s brownstone. Keem reaches into his back pocket, but before he can pull out his wallet, Nyla flings a ten at the driver and tells Keem to bring me over to the basement door. “I’ll come down and open it from the inside,” she says before dashing up the stairs and letting herself in the front door.

  In less than a minute Nyla opens the black iron grate under the stoop and lets us into her home. Keem’s eyes open as wide as mine as he carries me down a long hallway and into a family room that looks like something out of an IKEA catalogue. Nyla’s house is nice. I’m hoping I don’t drip blood all over the place. I’m also hoping the bird will be able to find me here. “I’ve got to get back to the park,” I mutter between my clenched teeth.

  “Wait here. I’ll go get my mom.” Over her shoulder Nyla says, “Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge.” She steps into the hallway and presses an intercom button on the wall. “Mom?”

  Keem peeks inside the mini fridge tucked under the bar, but like me, he’s afraid to touch anything. “You met her mom before?”

  “No.” Why would he think that? “You?”

  Keem shakes his head and wanders over to the entertainment center, which includes a flat-screen television that practically covers the entire wall. Keem whistles with appreciation. “Imagine watching the game in here!”

  “Mom!” Nyla tries the intercom one more time, and then goes over to the foot of the stairs and hollers, “MOM!”

  Footsteps overhead tell us that Nyla’s mother is home after all. “Nyla? Why are you yelling like that?”

  Nyla changes her tone of voice. “Hey, Sachi. Listen—I need a favor.”

  We hear the soft slap of slippers as Nyla’s mother comes downstairs. “What kind of favor?”

  “A friend of mine got hurt in the park. I need you to fix him up.”

  “What happened?”

  Keem frowns and looks at me. Will Nyla tell her mother the truth?

  “He—uh—we think he stepped on an old trap. You know those illegal traps they use to catch bears and stuff. Tore his ankle up pretty bad.”

  The pause that follows is long enough for us to know that Nyla’s mother isn’t buying that explanation. “Why would there be a metal trap in the park? And why didn’t you take him to the hospital?”

  Nyla sighs impatiently. “He doesn’t have health insurance, OK? Listen, Sachi, I don’t have time to chat right now. He’s in a lot of pain.”

  There is another pause, and Keem and I have to strain our ears to hear what’s said next. “You know I lost my license. Why are you doing this, Nyla?”

  “Because I have no choice. He’s just a kid, and he needs your help. You owe me, Sachi. You know you do.”

  Nyla’s mother says nothing for a long moment. Finally she says, “Where is he?”

  Nyla leads her mother down the hallway and into the family room. I shift on my barstool and try not to look too pathetic. Keem stands next to me, his hands jammed into the front pocket of his hoodie.

  “This is Keem, and this is D. His left ankle’s pretty messed up. You guys, this is my stepmother, Sachi.”

  “I’m your stepmother now, am I? You called me ‘Mom’ a moment ago.”

  “Relax, Sachi. It’s just easier this way. I don’t have time to explain our sordid family history.”

  I wouldn’t mind hearing that story, and judging from the look on Keem’s face, he wants to hear it, too. Sachi is a pretty Asian woman. She’s about Nyla’s height, and she has bobbed black hair that refuses to stay tucked behind her ear.

  To Nyla she says, “Get me some gloves.”

  Nyla goes around the bar and opens a couple of drawers before returning with a pair of latex gloves. Sachi rolls up my pant leg and gently unwinds the makeshift bandage. I wince as air pours over the gaping wound. Sachi purses her lips and peers at my ankle. “This was no trap. An animal did this.” She frowns and begins pulling off the tight plastic gloves she just put on. “He’ll need a rabies shot. Let’s get him to the ER.”

  Nyla steps in front of Sachi to block her exit. “It wasn’t an animal.”

  “I know a bite mark when I see one, Nyla.”

  “He was cut with a claw, but it wasn’t on an animal, OK? Look—I can’t explain it right now. Just clean him up. We have to get out of here before Daddy gets home.”

  “Are you in trouble again? Christ, Nyla, we just moved here…”

  “I know you’re not going to lecture me about getting into trouble. I saw you on the computer yesterday. And I know you use my laptop when I’m not around.”

  Sachi’s face loses most of its color and then blushes hot red. “I—I was just checking my e-mail.”

  “Oh, really? Well, I’m sure Daddy will be thrilled to know you’re already back online.”

  Sachi’s lower lip starts to tremble. “You can’t keep doing this, Nyla. We’re family.”

  “You’re right, Sachi. We are. And that’s why you’re going to help my friend.”

  Sachi rolls her lips together and looks at the floor. Then she goes into a nearby bathroom and opens a cabinet. She comes back with a bunch of medical supplies and sets them on the counter next to me. To Keem and Nyla she says, “Hold his hands and try to keep him still.” To me, in a kinder voice, she says, “Try to be a brave boy, OK? I don’t have any anesthesia, so just squeeze their hands if the pain’s too much for you to handle.”

  “I can handle it,” I say, but then I squeeze the heck out of their hands as the alcohol spills into the wound. It gets worse when the needle starts sliding in and out of my skin.

  “Dang, D—I can’t play ball if you break my hand!”

  I look up at Keem and almost manage to laugh.

  Nyla reaches over and pulls my hand away from Keem’s. “Hold both of my hands, D. I can take it.”

  I don’t have to glance at Keem to know he wishes he’d kept his mouth shut.

  Finally Sachi puts the needle down and tells me she’s done. She gently squeezes my knee and says, “I’ll give you something for the pain. Nyla, get him something to eat. He can’t take pain medication on an empty stomach.”

  “You were really brave, D. I know that must have hurt a lot.” Nyla smiles at me, then lets go of my hands and goes behind the bar to look for some snacks.

  “Potato chips?”

  I nod my head, but Sachi comes back into the room and says, “Keep looking.”

  Nyla pulls bag after bag of snacks out of the cupboard. When she calls out, “Peanut butter pretzels,” Sachi nods and Nyla brings them over. She sees Keem eyeing the other bags on the counter and tells him to help himself. I’m told to eat five pretzels before swallowing the pill Sachi sets on the bar next to a glass of water.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on?” she asks us.

  Nyla doesn’t exactly shake her head. She just nibbles at a pretzel and avoids her stepmother’s worrie
d eyes.

  “What should I tell your father when he gets home?”

  Nyla shrugs. “Just tell him I’m out with friends.” Nyla grabs her jacket and turns to us. “You guys ready to go? You can take the snacks, if you want. And, Keem—grab us a couple of bottles of water, why don’t you.”

  Keem does as he’s told and puts a bag of chips and some water into his book bag. Nyla tries to get around her stepmother, but Sachi doesn’t budge. Nyla sighs and says, “Tell Daddy I’ll be home soon. Before dark.” Then Nyla surprises us all by leaning in and kissing her stepmother on the cheek. “Thanks for helping us out, Mom.”

  Sachi’s cheeks flush again, but she steps aside and lets us pass. At the door she calls after Nyla, “Be careful, sweetheart.”

  10.

  Keem’s the first one of us to talk. “So…where’s your real mom?”

  “‘Real mom’? Sachi’s the only mother I’ve ever known. My birth mom bounced when I was four.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  Nyla shoots Keem a look that says, “I don’t want your pity.”

  Keem tries again. “I mean, your stepmom’s cool.”

  Nyla glances over her shoulder. Her stepmother is watching us from the parlor window. Nyla waves and then turns back to us. “Yeah, Sachi’s all right.”

  “Did you really have to blackmail her like that?” I ask.

  Nyla just shrugs. “I wouldn’t have told on her—she knows that. My dad’s kind of hard-core. Sachi and I look out for each other.”

  “Why can’t she use your computer?” Keem asks.

  “When we lived on base, Sachi had a little problem with Internet gambling.” Nyla pauses for effect then says, “Let’s just say my college savings account ain’t what it used to be. But enough of my family drama—where exactly are we heading?”

  “Back to the park,” I say.