The militia screamed, flailed, and lashed out with their weapons—just as Nell had said they would. Random bursts of flame from Humphrey blossomed in the fog. Firelight glinted on Englebert’s huge, goofy spear with his every desperate swing.
Well, now they’re distracted. Jasper thought. He held his quarterstaff in his right hand, took up the candle with his left, and stepped outside his circle.
The noise of ten thousand voices became instantly louder, overwhelming his ears. The air stole warmth from his goosebumped skin.
Englebert came at him. Maybe he recognized Jasper. Maybe he just swung at everything that moved. Either way, the older boy held his pole-arm entirely wrong. Jasper whacked it aside.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Englebert cried out as he dropped the weapon, hands stinging.
Ghosts came at Jasper. Some were in pain and lashed out at the living. Others were made out of pain. He spun his copper-tipped staff and kept them back. He pressed on, upstream against the flow of cold, haunted fog.
A guard threw a knife at him, which was ridiculous. Jasper could juggle four knives and a vase of flowers. He dropped the candle, caught the knife, and then scooped the candle back up before it hit the ground.
The knife felt solid and expensive. He decided to keep it, tucked it in his belt, and pushed on.
Here, close to the barrier and beside the breach, ghosts and spirits screamed as they passed through. Jasper couldn’t sort out joy from rage inside that noise, or whether or not he made it himself.
He slammed the candle down. It blocked the flow of fog.
“Not so fast,” he tried to say, but his own throat was raw and scratched. “Not so fast,” he tried again. “Come home. You’re invited. Just don’t crush us all when you get here.”
He dug in his pockets for the chantey-etched Zippo.
It wasn’t there. Sugar cubes and salt packets spilled out, but no lighter. He couldn’t find the lighter. It must have fallen from his pocket somewhere between this spot and the fairgrounds.
Jasper’s heart sank all the way down to his heels. Then he stood, turned, and waved both hands.
“Huuuuumphreeeeeeeeeeey!” he called out, voice ghostly and menacing.
Humphrey yelped somewhere nearby and cut loose with the flamethrower.
Jasper dropped, rolled, and tried to get out of the way.
Barron tried to blow the candle out again, but it was too late. Isabelle came through. She made herself a shape from scattered leaves and dust.
The old man seemed to shrivel. “I let you go,” he whined. “I set you free. Why aren’t you gone?”
“Remember me,” said Isabelle. Rosa heard her mother’s voice alongside the crunch of dead leaves rustling together. “I have no portraits pasted up in every public lobby to keep me known, and keep me whole. But my hand painted that first portrait, the one that still hangs in our home. You will remember.”
“Of course I remember,” Barron said, but he would not look at her.
She stepped up to the inside edge of Rosa’s half-circle. Her gown of leaves swirled in a whirlwind at her feet. Rosa tried to keep out of her way.
“You cut a wound in the world and made the world forget that it was ever there,” Isabelle went on. “But it festers.”
“No,” he rasped. “No. I built a town. A beautiful, prosperous town. With wealth from the mine I built it. Now I keep it free and unburdened.”
“The mine poisoned half of our wells. We died for your metal. I died for your metal. But the survivors honor you. They only know how to remember half of you.”
“Why won’t you leave?” Barron demanded and begged. “Why can’t I make you leave?” He lashed out with his rusting foil. Rosa ducked. The sword passed through the dust and leaves of Isabelle, but she remained. Then she raised her arm. This clearly took effort. It looked as if she didn’t remember how limbs worked when they still had bones inside.
Rosa scuffed away the line of her half-circle with one foot to let the ghost cross.
Please work, please work, please work, she thought. He’s afraid of you. Just you. Nothing else. He hardly even notices anything else.
“Remember me,” Isabelle said, her voice a soft scrape of dry leaves. She put one hand to Barron’s chest.
He sighed as though relieved. Then he burned.
Rosa looked away from the heat and the eye-searing brightness. When she looked back, scorched bones lay scattered where Bartholomew Theosophras Barron used to be.
Isabelle slowly turned the dust and leaves of her makeshift face to consider Rosa.
“You’re welcome,” Rosa said.
You owe me, is what she meant. You took my mother’s voice. She needs it back.
Isabelle said nothing. The whirlwind of her gown grew stronger. Then she was gone, dust and leaves scattering on their way down the mountain and into town.
Mist flowed like smoke from the candle flame. Other ghosts began to pass through on their own way home.
27
JASPER ROLLED ACROSS THE GROUND to convince himself, and his clothes, that they were not burning. They didn’t seem to be burning. He rolled one more time, just to make sure. Then he glanced at the candle. One whole side looked slick and half-melted, but the wick was lit.
Fog glowed around the candle flame.
Voices billowed through it and murmured to each other.
Jasper listened. He stood up. He stood very still.
The militia scattered, but Jasper was only vaguely aware of them. He was far more conscious of unseen fingers that brushed against his own. Small things at his feet made legs from sticks, and ran. A great lumbering and invisible something came up to him. Jasper couldn’t see what it was, but he felt an awkward impatience from it, so he stepped sideways to let it pass. The lumbering something went away downhill, into town.
“Welcome home,” Jasper said, his heart full of a feeling that he didn’t have a name for, one he had always missed but never knew was missing. He wondered how much of home he would recognize once he hiked back down through the foothills. He wanted to find out. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Not just yet. “Welcome home,” he said again, to everything around him.
Hoof beats struck the ground—sudden, close, and getting closer. Jasper tensed and tried to sort out which direction a horse might be coming from. He tried to make sure that he wouldn’t be trampled by it. But the beat of those hooves sounded confident rather than skittish.
Jerónimo trotted up and whinnied low.
He was not himself. Not only himself. He was now a haunted thing made out of smooth, riverworn stones piled up into a horse-shaped cairn. But he still wore his old saddle, and his stone hooves stamped out an impatient invitation.
Jasper didn’t feel too confident about riding a haunted horse. But riding did beat walking. He mounted up, careful not to touch Jerónimo with any of the copper that he wore or carried. He half expected the horse to lose his shape and scatter like a thousand dropped marbles. But he also half expected the horse to stay whole, and that half turned out to be right.
Jerónimo tossed his head and trotted down the mountainside.
The forest around them slowly woke to its own haunting.
Rosa hiked northward and down.
Jasper rode southward on a haunted horse.
They met on Isabelle Road beside the fairgrounds.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she answered, equally relieved. “Nice ride.”
“Thanks.” Jasper dismounted. “This is Jerónimo. I think. A piece of him, anyway.”
The cold, stone steed stamped against the road, impatient. Jasper offered a sugar cube. Jerónimo took it, but crunched granules of sugar fell back out of his mouth, through his mouth, and scattered on the ground. He stamped again and sidled up sideways, still asking for something.
“What is it?” Jasper asked. “Is it the saddle? You’ve worn that since yesterday. Probably feels raw. Even though yesterday you were made out of other stuff.”
He
couldn’t unbuckle the straps. The buckles had rusted together as though weeks and months had passed instead of a single day. Jasper took his new knife and cut all the straps loose. Jerónimo was already moving by the time his saddle hit the ground. Jasper and Rosa watched him gallop away.
“I think it worked,” Jasper said, his voice guarded, still unsure what their victory might mean.
“I think maybe it did,” Rosa said. “Any trouble at your end?”
“A little. I had to fight my way through the living.” He spun the quarterstaff once around his wrist.
“Lucky you. I had to duel with the dead.”
“Don’t you prefer the dead for company?”
“Shut up,” she said. “Not always.”
Floating lights filled the dusk like whole galaxies of fireflies. Actual fireflies stayed low in the grass and blinked anxious messages to each other.
“What are those?” Jasper whispered.
“Wisps,” she told him.
He had heard of wisps. “The kind that lead travelers off-road to get lost?”
“No,” Rosa said. “Not really. You’d probably get disoriented if you followed one around, but that isn’t the wisp’s fault. They’re lost, too. We should make a bunch of lanterns, just to give them somewhere to be. But . . .”
“But what?”
“But I’ve never seen so many,” she admitted. “We’d need a lot of candles.”
Larger things moved through the trees. Some of them were made out of trees. Others made shapes for themselves out of mud and moss.
“This is going to get interesting,” Rosa said. “And messy. Come on. Let’s find our parents. A piece of my mom is still missing.”
28
THE INGOT RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL STOOD in silence. No power tools hummed. No hammers struck. No one sang.
Jasper and Rosa picked their way through the half-repaired wreckage of the wall. Everyone else held themselves very still and watched the ghosts return.
A lute string sounded. Someone picked out a tune, one long note at a time.
Rosa spotted Uncle Fox. The musician still sat at the base of his tree, surrounded now by dozens of listening wisps.
Jasper pointed to where his parents stood together, hand in hand. He went to stand beside them. Rosa followed.
“This is something to see,” Sir Dad whispered. His voice sounded hesitant and ordinary, stripped of the accent that he loved to use. “But I’m sorry to see it. We’re done. This festival is over. Great, big, fantastical reenactment just can’t win an argument against history. Not when the real thing decides to rise up.”
Jasper swallowed. The sound of his throat sounded loud in his ears. I did this, he thought. I helped do this. We ended the unhaunting of Ingot. On purpose.
“Maybe it can,” he said. “Somehow. We’ll figure it out.” He put on the accent his father had dropped. “This is the largest and most splendid celebration of its kind to be found anywhere in the world.”
Sir Dad gave Jasper’s shoulder an awkward, affectionate pat.
“Have you seen my mom?” Rosa asked. “You haven’t met her, but she looks like me. Almost exactly like me. Except taller. I left her with Nell.”
“They’ll be near Nell’s shop, I imagine,” said Mrs. Chevalier. She stared at a tongue of blue flame as it danced above the chimney of the Tacky Tavern. Then she shook her head as though shaking off daydreams. “Over that way.”
“I know the way to Nell’s shop, Mom,” Jasper said.
“Be careful, son,” she said, but she didn’t sound worried. The thing Ingot feared most had already happened. Now both of Jasper’s parents watched the haunted festival as though it was burning to the ground around them—bright, beautiful, and ending forever.
We’ll figure this out, Jasper promised again. We will.
Rosa tugged his arm. They found Nell fussing around outside her shop. Athena Díaz stood beside her, arms crossed and eyes wide. She smiled. Hers might have been the only smiling face in Ingot.
“Specialist!” Nell called out when she caught sight of Rosa. “Two poltergeists are playing catch with my knives. On the ceiling. Standing on the ceiling. I’m pretty sure they’re poltergeists, anyway.”
“Long arms?” Rosa asked. “Large eyes? Short legs? Only visible when you glance at them sideways?”
She spoke to Nell, but watched her mother. They shared a look. That look meant something, it had to mean something, but whatever it was remained voiceless. Rosa held their eye contact carefully, worried that it might break and desperately wanting to know what it meant.
“Yes,” Nell said. “All of those things.”
Rosa nodded without looking away from her mother. “Poltergeists. Definitely.”
“They are throwing my knives around.”
“Try not to distract them, then,” Rosa suggested. “Or stand under them.”
“Thanks so very much,” Nell growled back at her. “If I’d known you were bringing all of this down on us, I might have been less helpful. Right now Mousetrap is reenacting old shows that its floorboards remember. Glass trinkets are melting in the glassware shop. The practice swords in the prop cabinet are rattling.”
“They probably want to practice,” Rosa said. “How’s my mom?”
Nell’s voice softened. “She’s been like this. Perked up and grinned just as soon as the ghosts came rolling home. But not a word from her.”
“She doesn’t have any words,” Rosa said. “She doesn’t have a voice. But I just returned it to the library, so I think we can find it there.”
Mom turned right around and walked away.
Rosa and Jasper went after her.
Nell followed in their wake, even though she grumbled about how much she did not want to chase them through whatever fresh mess they might create next.
Athena Díaz led them all through the festival and its parking lot. She left their family car behind, which was probably for the best. Rosa could hear haunted things happening inside its engine.
The small procession made its way into town, into the very center of the broken circle that surrounded Ingot.
29
BOOKS RUSTLED THEIR PAGES IN the stacks. It sounded like applause, or maybe warm rain in the distance. It sounded familiar. Rosa closed her eyes and savored that sound.
She also heard a noise like thunder coming from somewhere behind the main desk, but she decided to ignore that for the moment.
“Where should we look for Isabelle Barron?” Jasper whispered. “Upstairs? I bet she’s upstairs.”
Rosa nodded. “I’m guessing so. That room has changed the least since this place became a library.” She led them to Special Collections.
The door was locked.
“I bet we could just break this door down,” Rosa said. “We’re supposed to respect boundaries. But I bet we could.”
Mrs. Jillynip came fretting at them. Fierce eyebrows rode high on her forehead. “Please do not break anything. There is quite enough chaos and unrest already. The books are reshelving themselves according to some whimsical system that I don’t understand. The interlibrary loan materials are absolutely riotous. Neighbors I buried years ago are here to reread their favorites. Small lights are floating in the rafters. Things that I cannot look at directly are playing catch with my DISCONTINUED stamps. And the coffeemaker in the break room seems to have . . . awakened. It’s unhappy about something. I can’t understand the thundering growls that it makes.”
“Ah,” Rosa said. “That’s what that noise is.”
“It’s loud,” Mrs. Jillynip complained. She seemed almost tearful. “I can’t get it to quiet down. I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll talk to it,” Rosa promised. “It probably wants a respectful tribute.”
“Thank you, child.”
“But first we need to go upstairs. Would you please unlock the door?”
Mrs. Jillynip’s eyebrows shot up higher. “Are all of you going through?”
“Yes,” Rosa said.<
br />
“I trust that you will not handle any of the materials in Special Collections. Not without the proper gloves. Not without signing the clipboard.” She said “clipboard” as if it were a talisman that could protect her collection from every bad thing. Maybe it was.
“Of course,” Rosa promised. “No handling. We’re just passing through. We have business upstairs with the lady of the house.”
“I see,” Mrs. Jillynip said, though she said it in a way that meant I do not see what you mean, and I would rather not, so please go about your business without explaining it to me.
She unlocked the door. Rosa led the way through. Mrs. Jillynip closed and locked the door again behind them. Nell flinched at the rattle and click.
Scraping, scratching, wailing noises came down the spiral staircase.
“Are you sure we should go up there?” Nell asked. “We should maybe consider not going up there.”
Athena climbed the stairs.
“We’ll be fine,” Rosa said. “We’ve got Mom.”
There was a wind in the upstairs apartment. It disturbed clouds of dust from the floor and the furniture. It tore Barron’s map of Ingot into pieces. Those pieces swirled in a whirlwind. Dust and paper took the shape of Isabelle’s gown.
She moved through the room, agitated, picking things up and then setting them down again. The living stood together at the top of the stairs. The dead ignored them until Athena Díaz stepped forward, reached out, and took Isabelle’s hand.
“Hello,” she said with her own voice.
Isabelle snatched the hand free. It dissolved. She remade it from the dust she disturbed.
Rosa’s mom took the hand again. “Hello.”
Isabelle tore away. She tore herself in half and then reshaped herself in the farthest corner of the room.
“This place is mine.” The ghost spoke through clenched teeth made of ink-stained paper. “This voice is mine.”
A Properly Unhaunted Place Page 10
