Ghost Squad

by Claribel A. Ortega

“No time for your ominous meowing, Chunk,” Syd said.

  Lucely tried to pull away, but Chunk had now wrapped her body around Lucely’s legs.

  “I can’t move,” Lucely said.

  “Just keep her occupied. I’ll find the keys,” Syd said, turning the corner up ahead.

  Chunk began howling now, and Lucely tried her best to calm her down.

  “Hurry, Syd,” Lucely pleaded, hoping Babette was a deep sleeper.

  Sweat trickled down Lucely’s forehead, her stomach doing somersaults.

  A few moments later Syd returned.

  “I couldn’t find the keys,” she told Lucely. “Babette must have moved them.”

  Chunk sauntered out of the room, immediately disinterested in them, probably to find a box to squeeze into and sleep. Syd quirked an eyebrow knowingly in the cat’s direction.

  “I think I hear footsteps coming from upstairs. We have to go before Babette sees us.” Syd took Lucely’s hand, and as quietly as they could manage, they bolted out the door.

  The front door flew open, and Babette stood on her porch, an elegant shadow. Lucely and Syd had run as far as they could without a light and crouched behind a giant bush to catch their breath.

  “Whoever you are, you don’t know who and what you’re messing with,” Babette warned. Her voice carried in the night air, commanding and threatening. “Babette Faires will be your thorn.”

  All around them they could see the garden coming to life, thorny vines whipping and striking at the air. The sound of the door slamming shut propelled them both out from behind the bush and across the footbridge. Lucely had never run faster in her life.

  By the time they reached the other side of the cove, both girls were out of breath and shaking.

  “We almost died,” Syd said.

  “And all for nothing.” Lucely replied.

  “Not for nothing.” Syd smirked, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a ring of large, rusty skeleton keys.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t find—”

  “Chunk was being weird. I swear sometimes I think she’s Babette’s spy. Better to be safe than sorry. Come on, before I change my mind about disturbing the dead.”

  When Lucely and Syd made it to the cemetery, the moon was directly overhead, casting an eerie glow over the McMaster family mausoleum in front of them.

  “I’m not opening it.” Syd handed the keys to Lucely.

  “First, the footbridge, and now this? I’m beginning to question our friendship.” Lucely shook her head. Above the ancient marble doors were some words that looked like Latin. She hoped they weren’t some sort of curse.

  Lucely tried several keys before the right one clicked into place, opening the door with a sound that reminded her of her tío Fernando attempting to get out of his recliner.

  It was cooler inside the mausoleum than outside in the humid Florida heat. Even at night the air was almost unbearable. As soon as they entered the room, a pungent odor filled Lucely’s nostrils. It smelled like dirty gym socks and moldy cheese, and she had to hold her breath to keep from barfing.

  The light from their cell phones reflected off the marble walls, illuminating a row of square headstones on the back wall, each marked with the name of a deceased family member.

  “Okay then, do the thing.” Syd flailed her hands.

  “What thing?”

  “I don’t know?! Find Anastasia’s coffin and look inside? This was your idea!”

  “No way! I am not sticking my hand inside a coffin!”

  “Then why did we even come here?”

  Lucely sighed, hating that Syd was right. If they had any hope of finding the missing pages, they had to look everywhere.

  Together, they stepped up to Anastasia’s casket and shifted the heavy lid aside just enough for Lucely to reach down and run her hands along the inner walls of the coffin. The smooth marble felt like silk on Lucely’s hands. Then her fingers grazed against rough stone.

  “Wait, I may have found something,” Lucely said, breathless.

  Syd shone what little light she could through the gap where Lucely’s hand had been. “I can’t really see anything in there.”

  Lucely plunged her arm back into the dark space. “Let me see if I can shimmy whatever it is free from the wall.”

  A cloud of dust erupted as she pulled the rough-hewn stone from its place, and both girls jumped back, waving their hands wildly and coughing.

  “Gross, dead-people dust,” said Syd.

  When the air finally cleared, the empty space where the stone had once sat was now visible. A rolled-up piece of paper peeked out from the space behind the stone. They looked at each other, mouths open. “Is that—”

  But before Syd could finish, Lucely had reached in and grabbed the paper, settling onto the cool marble bench nearby.

  Syd moved to join her, holding up her light as Lucely delicately unrolled the parchment.

  “I think it’s in Latin or something.” Lucely ran her eyes over the odd words and symbols. She turned the paper over, but there was nothing on the other side. “Maybe we could try translating it on our phones?”

  As soon as Lucely had said the words, the inscription began to change. Like a puff of smoke passing over the paper, the once illegible words were now all in English.

  “Whoa,” said Syd.

  Lucely gulped as she read the first few words on the paper aloud: “A Spell to Wake the Sleeping.”

  “You think this might be one of the missing pages from the spell book?”

  Lucely extracted the book from inside her jacket, opened it to the back, and compared the piece of paper to the torn edges in the book. It was a match.

  This was it. Lucely looked to Syd, who cleared her throat in response.

  “Hold on. I have an idea. Point the flashlight at the floor.” Syd took a piece of white chalk from her pocket and drew a large pentagram on the floor. Of course, Syd knew how to draw a perfect pentagram. When she had finished, they both sat down in the middle of the magical symbol, the concrete ground cold beneath them.

  Lucely shivered. “Maybe this is a bad idea. I mean, what if something goes wrong?”

  Syd sighed. “Luce, it’s either this or nothing. You want to save your fireflies, don’t you? We can’t chicken out now.”

  Lucely turned it over in her mind. There really wasn’t anything else she could think to do, especially now that they were here with a possible answer in their hands. She nodded at Syd and said a silent prayer that things would work out.

  “Together.” Syd took hold of Lucely’s hands as they began to read the rest of the inscription aloud.

  “Lavender, lilies, blossom and bloom,

  I call on the spirits to enter this room …”

  They paused and looked around. Fear had been creeping up on Lucely since she’d left her house, and now it was raging.

  “Rotten and putrid

  Beneath the trees,

  I call on the spirits and let them roam free.”

  Lucely held her breath, Syd’s hands tightening around hers.

  They waited one minute. Then another.

  A strong breeze swept through the room, chilling Lucely to the bone, but aside from that, nothing particularly magical seemed to happen.

  “Maybe check on Macarena?” said Syd.

  Lucely unclipped the small mason jar from her backpack and tapped gently on the glass. “Maca?”

  Macarena flew out of the jar, appearing before Lucely, and yawned.

  “Everything okay, Luce?” she asked.

  Lucely hesitated. “Do you feel anything different with Mamá’s spirit?”

  Her cousin closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Sorry, prima. It feels the same as it was before.”

  Lucely sighed, fighting back tears. So the spell to wake the sleeping hadn’t worked to heal Mamá and the rest of the firefly spirits. “Thanks for trying. You can go back to sleep now.”

  Macarena shrugged sleepily before transformi
ng back into a firefly and settling at the bottom of her jar.

  “Huh, that’s weird. I didn’t see this on the paper before.” Syd pointed at two letters that had appeared: E. B.

  “What do you think it means?” Lucely asked.

  Syd shrugged. “Could be the initials of the witch that created the spell?”

  “Well, whoever it was must not have been very good at magic.” Lucely tucked the useless paper into the spell book. They waited a while longer, hoping for some other sign that the spell had worked. But when it was obvious that nothing was going to happen, they made their way out of the mausoleum.

  Lucely and Syd felt defeated as they walked back to their bikes.

  A crack sounded from somewhere behind them.

  “Get down, shh,” Lucely whispered, diving behind a nearby gravestone.

  A shadowy figure stalked across the cemetery and toward the mausoleum where Lucely and Syd had just been, seemingly oblivious to their presence.

  “Is that … Mayor Anderson?” Syd asked.

  The figure was becoming clearer in the moonlight: a ridiculously tall man, hunched over, a long, fluffy handlebar mustache hanging from his face. It certainly looked like Mayor Anderson.

  “What is the mayor doing creeping around the cemetery in the middle of the night?” asked Syd.

  Lucely gave her a grim look, and they both turned their attention back to the entrance of the mausoleum, waiting for him to come out.

  Moments later, he emerged. Something seemed different about him. It was almost as if he were floating instead of walking, but in jerky, unstable motions.

  His gaze shifted in their direction, locking in on their hiding place as if he could see them through the darkness.

  Lucely held back a scream when she noticed Mayor Anderson’s eyes, which were now glowing an unnatural green.

  LUCELY STRUGGLED TO KEEP her eyes open as she sat in the school library the next day waiting for Syd to arrive. She hadn’t gotten home until after one in the morning the previous night, and she thanked whatever saint was looking over her that her dad hadn’t woken up. What little sleep she had been able to get was interrupted by nightmares of corpses breaking out of their graves, the words of the spell running on repeat in her mind, and the sickly green glow of Mayor Anderson’s eyes.

  The school day had passed by in a haze of yawns and eye rubbing. Lucely even tried splashing her face with cold water in the bathroom, but that didn’t seem to help. She wanted nothing more than to go home and take the longest nap in the history of naps. But after what she’d seen in the cemetery, she was even more determined to find something that would help the firefly spirits and her dad.

  A few of her classmates were goofing around nearby, and Tilly Maxwell, who seemed to hate Lucely for no good reason, pointed at Lucely’s sneakers and whispered something to a girl next to her. They erupted in laughter before walking away.

  Her sneakers had been white once, but despite her scrubbing them with an old toothbrush and washing her shoelaces, now they were pretty much falling apart. There was even a hole on the side that hadn’t been there that morning. Lucely buried her face in the book she was holding, wishing the earth would swallow her whole.

  Just as Lucely was about to fall asleep, using her book as a pillow, Syd strode into the room and sat down with a huff. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Band practice went late. Andy got his lips stuck in the tuba again.”

  Lucely yawned in response.

  “Wake up, Luce! You’re gonna want to see this.” Syd pulled Babette’s book, Magic and the Occult: A History, out of her backpack and flipped it open to a section she’d flagged. “I was scanning through it in study hall when I came across this passage.”

  Syd began to read aloud while Lucely followed along.

  “Las Brujas Moradas, or the Purple Coven, was a well-known coven from Logroño, Spain.

  “During the Spanish Inquisition, their oldest member, Alanza, was accused of being a witch. The coven attempted to fight back, but the village ran them out, so the coven fled to the small coastal city of St. Augustine, Florida. They spent their days caring for the sick of St. Augustine and helping bring new life into the world as well as protecting the city from …”

  Syd looked at Lucely, her eyes wide.

  “What, what, Syd?” Lucely nearly tipped over in her seat.

  “As well as protecting the city from dangerous and malicious spirits.”

  The weight of the words sent Lucely slumping back into her chair. Mamá had mentioned something about there being another ancient order served with protecting St. Augustine. Could she have been referring to Las Brujas Moradas?

  Syd continued to read.

  “Many townspeople believed that the Purple Coven had a book of magic filled with curses and hexes, while others believed it was the source of their power and the very thing that protected their city. The book is said to contain the most powerful of magical spells, including healing, love, and … resurrection.”

  Syd paused before she read the next part, “The last known documentation of such a book existing claimed that it had been buried somewhere in the Tolomato Cemetery. To this day no book has ever been found.”

  “Omg,” Lucely said as Syd closed the book. “Do you think …”

  “It has to be,” said Syd. “Babette said she’d found this book in the cemetery, remember? Maybe she found the spell book there too!”

  “But we tried one of the spells already, and it didn’t work.”

  “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t others hidden around town. If we keep searching, I’m sure we’ll be able to find more clues that will lead us in the right direction.”

  “But we don’t have time for a scavenger hunt, Syd! It could take us weeks, or months, or even years, to find the spell we need. I don’t know how long my fireflies can keep holding on.”

  Syd wrapped her arms around Lucely, pulling her into a hug as tears began to wet her eyes. “If there’s anyone who could find the spell, it would be the two of us, Luce. Magic or no magic, I will always be right by your side. We’re a team.”

  Lucely knew that Syd was right. If they had any chance of bringing Mamá back, of making sure her spirit family was okay, they had no choice but to track down the rest of the missing pages.

  “You’re right. We have to find the spell, Syd,” Lucely said, more determined than ever. “But you know we can’t do this alone. You’re not gonna like this but …”

  Syd gave Lucely a probing look.

  “Babette is the only one who can help us. She’s probably hiding an encyclopedic knowledge of magic in her hair or something.”

  Syd crossed her arms in front of her chest. “My answer is still no way. Not unless you plan on pulling double dusting duty when she inevitably punishes us for meddling again.”

  Before Lucely had a chance to respond, to beg for Syd’s help, the windows of the library blew open with a loud crash, sending papers flying and causing Syd and Lucely to scream in unison.

  When Lucely had gotten to the library earlier in the afternoon, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Now the sky was blotted out with menacing black clouds. Wind and rain raged in through the open library windows louder than Tía Milagros after someone made a mess in the house.

  The hair on Lucely’s arms stood on end. Something wasn’t right.

  She collapsed to the ground, gasping for air as the memory of the fire-breathing mist monster consumed her. Something bad is coming. It’s coming with the rain.

  As quickly as the memory came, it vanished. Lucely’s vision slowly returned to the room. It felt as if she was being pulled from the depths of the ocean toward the surface. By the time Syd’s face had come into focus, Lucely could tell by her expression that whatever had just happened terrified her.

  Mr. Castañeda, the school librarian, ran into the room to see what all the commotion was about. “Are you girls okay? I’ve never seen a storm like this.”

  Syd was the first to break eye contact, responding with a nerv
ous laugh. “We’re fine, Mr. C. Just a bit of wind and rain.”

  He got to work trying to close the windows, but they refused to budge. Mr. Castañeda was soaked in seconds. A fog began to roll into the room, moving toward them like a fox on the hunt, but only Lucely and Syd seemed to notice it.

  “Lucely Luna.” A haunting voice cut through the howling wind and seemed to whisper in their ears.

  “What was that? Who’s speaking?” Syd’s question was met with no response.

  “We should probably get out of here,” Lucely shouted.

  Mr. Castañeda finally surrendered. “I’m going to go get the janitor. Maybe he can help me close these windows. You girls shouldn’t go out in this storm. Wait here.”

  The moment Mr. Castañeda was gone, they heard what sounded like footsteps behind one of the stacks.

  “This isn’t funny,” Syd called out. “Quit hiding and show yourself!”

  Syd wielded a large book above her head while Lucely clung on to Syd’s backpack as they inched closer to the noise.

  “Hello?” Syd called out, and this time something answered.

  A chorus of low moans echoed throughout the room, vibrating the very air around them. Lucely pulled Syd back as she swung the book wildly into the air, screaming.

  “Come on!” Lucely said.

  They broke into a run just as one of the bookshelves came crashing down where they had been standing.

  Transparent figures glided across the floor, arms outstretched toward Lucely and Syd. Their movements were jerky and unnatural. These were nothing like the spirits Lucely had grown up with—these were monsters. They looked like smaller versions of the fire-breathing mist monster from her vision, with gaping, black holes where their eyes and mouths should’ve been.

  “Syd, keep moving!” Lucely grabbed Syd’s hand and ran faster than she had in her entire life.

  “What are those things?!” Syd’s voice quivered with disbelief.

  The air was frigid, causing goose bumps to form all over Lucely’s body. A smell like dead mice and ancient earth filled the room as the ghosts attempted to surround them.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “This way.” Syd pulled Lucely under a low arch in the section where the kindergarten class had reading time.