Spartacus Ryan Zander and the Secrets of the Incredible

by Elwood, Molly;

  Honestly, I thought I looked pretty cool. Like a twelve-year-old action hero. I wish I had a loose tooth I could spit in the sink.

  Instead, I washed my face and changed my clothes. The guy at the counter nodded his head when I passed by him. Much better.

  Out front, I called Eli back.

  “Okay, I got it. It took some creative web searching, but I got you a ride nearby—crazy, right?”

  “That’s why you’re the best,” I said. “Lay it on me.”

  “So I found a blog posted by some Goth girl in Algodones. She and a group of friends are meeting up at a cemetery nearby and—”

  “A cemetery?” I repeated, already not liking the sound of it.

  “And then they’re going to the circus,” he finished.

  “How do you know this?”

  “People put way too much information online. Anyway, just trust me on this. The girl’s name is Marianne. But she calls herself Calyxtus.”

  “Calyxtus?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Eli. “Some Goth thing, I guess. You need to meet them there at dusk.”

  “When’s that?” I asked.

  “You know, dusk. It’s when the sun goes down. Don’t be difficult.”

  I looked at my watch. Plenty of time.

  “They don’t know you’re coming,” said Eli. “I couldn’t get in touch with them. So you’re going to have to find a way to introduce yourself and get them to give you a ride. Maybe just beg them. Or give them money.”

  “I hope this works,” I said, sighing.

  “One last little thing you might find interesting,” said Eli. “They hate Bartholomew just as much as you do.”

  

  Eli told me that the cemetery was maybe an hour away. I walked through brown, scrubby shrubs, away from the road and the peach-colored houses. I had to carry my suitcase—or what was left of it—because its one remaining wheel was useless in the dirt. The fabric handle had split and was cutting into my hand. I wanted to throw it into the bushes. But I needed it for my mom, so I pushed on.

  Somehow, the hash browns hadn’t made a dent in my hunger; they had been like eating dust. I’d run out of the food from home, except for the can of spaghetti, which was dumb to bring without a can opener. I should have bought more food at the store. I was so hungry that my stomach felt like it was eating my esophagus. Luckily, I had more than enough water. I gulped it so I wouldn’t get dehydrated, but what I wanted was food.

  What I wouldn’t give for one bag of chips. One peanut butter sandwich. One—

  I shook myself awake. I heard you could go crazy, walking in the desert, imagining oases and sandwiches and stuff. So I started whistling, hoping it would help me focus, but the only song I could think of was a Rolling Stones song. One that, for some reason, felt like it had been playing on loop in my head since…

  Yesterday.

  It was the song from Lloyd’s tattoo.

  Wait. No, Dan’s tattoo. Lloyd was a killer named Dan.

  I still didn’t want to believe it. And seeing as I was losing my mind in the desert, a murderer really wasn’t something I wanted to focus on. But try as I might to get the song out of my head, I soon found myself humming it. Then, I was singing at the top of my lungs.

  “Hey, let me introduce myself, my name’s Lloyd, I’ve got a scary face!” I shouted. “Been riding my bike all year long, stole and killed, I’m a huge nutcase!”

  I definitely couldn’t remember the words, what with my brain all jumbled and slow in the heat, but my rhyme made me giggle like a madman. I stopped and pulled out the wanted poster. His eyes on either side of the paper fold were like two black buttons. Like two holes.

  Like two bullet holes.

  A huge nutcase was right—this man was insane! The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I stuffed the poster back into my pocket.

  What was Lloyd’s game? Why hadn’t he killed me?

  And what if he’d been following me ever since he dropped me off at the funeral and he showed up right now?

  I spun around and found I was still alone.

  The heat was really getting to me. My head was pounding.

  Now, new words were replacing the lyrics to the song: a jumble of false names on repeat, in time with the beat:

  Spartacus.

  Casey.

  Navin.

  Brodie.

  Brian.

  Jeff.

  Dan.

  Lloyd.

  And then I tripped and fell and scraped my palms.

  I was on the verge of getting one of the potential sicknesses Eli warned me about back in our planning stage: Desert Delirium. I had to get out of the heat and get some sleep before I passed out and got eaten by wolves or whatever lived in New Mexico. Giant pythons or something.

  Just a fifteen-minute snooze. Just ten. Just a minute…

  I shook myself again. I knew I had more than enough time to get to the cemetery ahead of the Goth kids. I just had to get there and then I could sleep…

  That’s when I saw a fenced-in green park ahead, looking strangely out of place in that brown and yellow landscape. Here it is, I thought: insanity. The park will just keep moving further as I get closer. But it didn’t; it stayed right where it was. I wasn’t sure it was real, though, until I touched the rusty gate for myself.

  It wasn’t a park at all. It was the cemetery! I’d walked further than I thought. A little stream ran beside it. For a cemetery, it sure looked inviting—and as much as I didn’t want to sleep in a cemetery, that’s where the shade was.

  The cemetery was set up with all the graves packed in tightly together in the middle and a ring of trees around the outside. Some of the headstones were ancient, just little broken-looking blocks. New ones lined the perimeter.

  However, that meant there was no place to lie down that wasn’t basically on top of a grave—and besides that, there was no way I was sleeping on that cemetery grass, made healthy from dead-people fertilizer.

  So I looked up at the trees. There was a large one that looked promising.

  I stashed my suitcase behind a bush and then hoisted myself up, one branch at a time, until I made it up to a large Y about eight feet off the ground. I threw a leg on either side of the wide branch and lay face-down against the bark, like a koala. It really wasn’t too bad. Comfortable, even.

  I was lost to the world the moment my eyes shut.

  

  I was just a little kid when I first saw Mom fly.

  I’d been sent home early from school for being sick, and seeing as we lived a couple blocks from the school, I’d walked home. I remember seeing this black-and-white figure standing on the roof of our two-story house, leaning forward, like one of those women on the fronts of pirate ships. It took me a few seconds to realize it was Mom. Instead of calling out to her, I ducked behind a rhododendron bush.

  What was she doing?

  There was no one else out on the street—there never was, really. And so I watched alone, in wonder. She stood there in her black swimsuit, hands on her hips, head tilted toward the sky, her toes curled over the edge of the red roof tiles. Then she turned her eyes down toward the ground. Her black hair stirred in the breeze.

  Mom always did weird things, but I’d never seen her on the roof before. I shifted my weight and a twig crunched underfoot. When I glanced down at my shoe, she jumped.

  I burst from the bushes, but couldn’t even muster a yelp. I imagined her crumpled on the ground, like a broken doll.

  Instead, there was an odd sproing—and then she reappeared in the air a second later, sailing from the other side of the neighbor’s fence, doing three backward somersaults before landing in our yard.

  She stood for a moment with her back to me, arms raised over her head. When she turned around, arms still up, she was beaming like a lighthou
se—until she saw me. Then, the look of joy melted right from her face.

  I stood there, frozen in time. Mom came over to me in her bare feet and knelt in front of me, her eyes searching for a sign that I was alive inside.

  “You can fly,” was all I could say.

  “Not yet,” she said softly. She leaned in closer, her voice just a whisper. “Let’s not tell anybody, okay? Not William, not Daddy, not Eli. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s our secret, Spartacus.” She searched my blank face to make sure I understood, then touched her cool forehead to my feverish one. And then she took me inside and made me soup.

  That afternoon in the cemetery, in the middle of the desert, I dreamt Mom crashed into a heap in the yard instead of just bouncing harmlessly off the neighbor’s trampoline.

  

  I woke with a jolt. I couldn’t remember where I was. Eli’s backyard during a sleepover? No, wait. New Mexico. In a tree.

  Getting ready to rescue my mom.

  Adrenaline crackled down my spine

  Then I remembered the kids I was supposed to meet—in a cemetery at dusk.

  Is it dusk?

  The sun was on the horizon and it was definitely getting dark. As I adjusted in the tree, I heard a voice.

  “Shhh! You hear that?” It was a guy—and he was right below me.

  “No,” said a girl’s voice. “Be quiet and concentrate, Puck.”

  “I really think I heard someone.”

  “If you did, then we’re on the right track,” said the girl. “Keep still.”

  There was a short silence and then they started humming—a weird droning noise.

  These were the kids Eli had told me about! But I was caught off guard, being up in a tree and all—that, and Hailey’s advice echoed in my mind: mistrust everyone.

  I moved slowly, like an ant in honey, until I could see below.

  Three people, all in black, right under me. They faced each other in the fading light, candles set up in a circle between them. One guy was bent over on his knees like he was bowing, his face pressed in the grass. Then he sat up into a backbend, looking straight up at me.

  I almost screamed, but kept it together enough to see that he had his eyes shut. And his face? Painted dead white, like moon-white, with black stuff around his eyes and lines across his lips.

  No, not like the moon. Like a skeleton.

  He might have been sixteen or so, but it was hard to tell. He faced down again, lit a knotted bundle of weeds on fire, and waved the smoke around his head. He passed it to the girl next to him before putting his face to the ground again. The others did the same. The spicy-smelling smoke rose up to me and I choked back a cough with my fist.

  What were they doing?

  “You ever wonder what it would be like to be buried alive?” said the non-skeleton-faced guy, Puck.

  “Shh!” went the girl again.

  Was this Calyxtus? It had to be.

  They continued humming. I shifted in the tree, trying to see more than the tops of their heads, but my backpack made a loud rustling sound.

  Their humming stopped and I flattened myself against the branch, cringing.

  Nice one, Spart.

  “You had to have heard that, Cal,” said Puck. “Do you think that was him clawing at the coffin?”

  Cal! It was Calyxtus.

  “It was above us, you creep,” said Calyxtus. “The coffin is under us. Anyway, stop being so morbid.”

  “It’s not morbid,” Puck said. “In fact, it’s a totally scientific question.”

  A light went on in my head: they were having a séance. Talking to the dead. I knew all about séances; Will, Eli, and I once held one for our dead hamster, Blueberry Pie. Will, though, actually dug her up. While we were chanting, he scared Eli and me by lowering her into our séance circle using a fishing line. Rather than scary, it ended up being gross—and kind of sad.

  “This isn’t the right time for your questions,” Calyxtus was saying. “Do you want to see Mr. Prizrak or not?”

  “I do,” huffed Puck.

  “Then shut up.”

  I noticed that the skeleton-faced guy hadn’t said anything at all. He was creepy.

  Puck said, “Try the incantation one more time.”

  Then the girl began to speak in a low, monotone voice:

  “Zacharias Prizrak, it is on this momentous evening we beseech you to join the living. We have waited for the hour of dusk to ask you to rise on this magical evening, this most auspicious evening. First, the moon is in the seventh house, just as it was the night of your murder.”

  “Murder,” Puck repeated.

  Skeleton Face rang a bell. I shivered.

  “Second, as Jupiter has aligned with Mars in this, the month of June, the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the spirits has reached its weakest point. The living are but shadows lost. Only in death is peace restored to humankind.”

  The bell rang again.

  “Third, and finally, your killers have returned tonight, as if to mock your death,” Calyxtus intoned.

  “We shall help you seek revenge,” both Calyxtus and Puck said together.

  “We shall help you seek revenge,” continued Calyxtus alone, “on your killers, the despicable and evil Bartholomew and his circus.”

  Bartholomew? Killers?

  And with that, I lost my grip and fell from the tree.

  

  The phrase, “getting the wind knocked out of you,” sounds a bit too mild to describe what happens to your body when you fall eight feet out of a tree. It glosses over the fact that, not only is all the air going out of your lungs, none of it is going back in. And that means no air for gasping in pain, no air for shouting curse words, and, worst of all, no air for explaining that you’re not the summoned ghost of Zacharias Prizrak.

  When I hit the ground, the three of them scattered. Calyxtus screamed bloody murder.

  “He fell from the sky!” she yelled.

  After a few seconds, though, they returned. Calyxtus leaned her pale face over me. Her hair was red—so red that in the slant of remaining daylight, it looked like it was on fire.

  “Crossing over must have been so painful! Look at him.” She put her many-ringed hand out and touched my face while I just writhed there, gaping like a caught fish.

  “Oh my god! He’s so scratched up,” said a voice I recognized as Puck’s. A narrow, white face with big, curly brown hair appeared in my field of vision, looking concerned. Puck wore a weird, formal-looking cape, like a vampire in an old movie. “I guess that makes sense, because he had to break through all sorts of dimensions to get here.”

  “Ughhh,” was all I could manage.

  “He’s so young,” said the girl. “Is it really him?”

  Skeleton Face came to loom over me. The other two looked up at him while he stared at me. I imagined him stomping me with his large leather boot. Instead, he just shook his head in a definitive no before walking away.

  “He’s just some kid!” said Calyxtus, jumping to her feet. “He’s not a spirit, Puck! Duh!” She blew out the candles and threw them into a basket before chasing after Skeleton Face.

  “He might be,” said Puck, looking wounded. “He could be Prizrak in his younger form. I’ve heard of that.”

  “I’m not—” I stammered, trying again. “I want to—” The air wasn’t coming yet. I wondered if I’d punctured a lung, if I were going to suffocate. Puck stood looking down at me a moment longer, doubtful.

  “Yeah, this sucks,” was all he said before following the others.

  “Uggghhh,” I gasped again. I had to ask them about the circus. I had to get to the circus! It was so late—and they were my only hope.

  Somehow, I picked myself up and scrambled after them. Skeleton Face sat in
the driver’s seat of a black, roofless Bronco while the other two shoved their séance gear into the back. I limped over, but they barely looked at me when I cleared my throat.

  “Uh, hey,” I finally said. “I know this is weird, but I was wondering if—”

  “Get out of here, kid,” said Calyxtus. She put her hands on her hips. She was in some sort of weird Victorian dress, black velvet with a string of safety pins crisscrossing the front. She must have been wearing twenty necklaces. “We’ve got work to do. Don’t provoke us, got it?” She glared at me with icy blue eyes.

  Puck stood to the side, looking bored.

  “I wasn’t provoking,” I said weakly. “I was sleeping and I woke up and you were there.”

  “You were sleeping in a graveyard tree?” asked Puck, suddenly interested. Calyxtus didn’t look impressed.

  “And fell out. So sad,” was all she said before stomping toward the front of the truck.

  “What were you doing sleeping in the tree?” asked Puck. He looked more relaxed after she left.

  “I needed a place to sleep, so I slept.” I had to get Puck on my side, so I lied. “Cemeteries are so, uh, you know…peaceful. I usually sleep in them when I can. And the tree was really, uh, comfortable.”

  “I like the way you think,” he said. “Well, we’re headed out. Going to this circus thing. Sorry we woke you.” He went to the front of the truck and when Skeleton Face started the engine, death metal music blared. Puck squeezed past Calyxtus to get into the back seat.

  What was I doing? Was I was going to let them leave?

  I ran to the open window on the driver’s side and, even though Skeleton Face just looked at me with that silent stare of his, I said it. Sure, it was in a rush, and the words just poured out, but I said it.

  “Could I come with you guys? I promise I’ll stay out of your way.” Skeleton Face’s eyes narrowed, so I went on. “It would mean so much if I could get a ride. I need to get to The Incredible. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “Death?” Calyxtus asked, her face perking up.

  Skeleton Face, still not speaking, stared me down. After what seemed like an eternity, he nodded.

  

  We were driving across the darkening desert in the roofless old SUV, me and Puck in the backseat, Skeleton Face and Calyxtus in the front. Puck’s black cape flew behind his seat in the wind.