Mortals: Heather Despair Book One

by Leslie Copeland

  "No," I said, my voice shaking. Because, how did I know what I would do?

  "Lo sabía," he said. "And you're just alike, so I'll take that as an answer. Able Despair did not betray The Four. He was a good man."

  I stumbled, confused, into the double-wide. How could I know what my father had done? I'd only learned of this Coterie today, and I'd never heard of this Four, ever. And now apparently, we were the "New Four." Me, Lily, Trenton, and Oskar. I sat down heavily on the couch where Sam used to sleep. I let out a huge breath.

  A pounding from the hallway, and Bruce stomped into the living room.

  "You're back. You weren't on the bus," he said, glowering. That same frozen glare, like this morning.

  "I got a ride from a friend," I said. What could I say? A secret society of spiritualists saved me from attack and then we had a séance over tea? Yeah, that would go over real well.

  "What friend?" He squinted at me.

  "What, now I can't have a friend?" I said, slightly hysterical. Because it was true. Who did I know that could drive me home? All my friends were sophomores.

  "Give me his name," said Bruce. He leaned over me, scowling.

  What was I going to say, Cousin Art? Lily's weirdo cousin—Bruce would never understand. I fumbled for something to tell him.

  "Oskar Chandler," I said. It just slipped out. Oh no.

  Bruce stood stiff, like he was stricken. "Oskar Chandler," he intoned.

  Why, why did I tell him it was Oskar? This was bound to lead to nothing but trouble.

  "Knew it was a boyfriend. You're grounded, hear me? I know that Oskar. Mr. Slick, rolling around town in an expensive car. Think he's Prince Charming, going to take you to the castle? Think again." Bruce growled.

  "I don't think—what?" He had me so confused. "Oskar's a friend."

  Prince Charming? Please!

  Okay, maybe I did briefly think Oskar might carry me away. But now I knew, if anyone was being carried away to the castle, it was Trenton. I didn't want to out Oskar, tell Bruce that he was gay.

  "Grounded. And you can move your stuff out to the small trailer to think about it. Since you seem to like it out there." Bruce pointed at my bedroom, first door on the right. "Get going."

  "What?" I sat stunned.

  Bruce's face worked with rage. "Get. Your stuff. And move. To the small trailer!" he roared.

  "Okay, okay!" I ducked around him, into my bedroom, and gathered what I could. Clothes, water bottles, a few books. A sack of stale dog food for Sybil.

  I put it all in a black garbage bag and hauled it to the back door. I hesitated to exit, though. Thinking of those two who attacked me in town.

  Sybil stuck her head out of my backpack and whined. I think she smelled the dog food.

  "And take that flea-bitten dog with you!" Bruce yelled at top volume. "I told you, I never want it in the house!"

  I bolted from the back door, giving him one last glare over my shoulder. I'd rather be out here anyway, than in the house with him. I threw the stuff in the trailer, then poured some food out for Sybil. She dug into it. I poured water into an old hubcap for her. Poor thing was thirsty; she kept drinking and drinking.

  "Oh, Sybil. What are we going to do? We have to get out of here. But the Coterie says we have to stay." I lay back, on the creaky little cot. Closed my eyes. I'd just rest for a second . . .

  Chapter Nine

  The Secret of the Old School Bus

  I awoke in darkness, the flimsy cot of the teardrop trailer creaking beneath me. Home, I guess, for now.

  By the glow of twilight, the outline of the old school bus loomed through the overhead window. Sybil huddled close and warm. She was happy to have me around, anyway. I scratched the soft fluff behind her ears.

  From the double-wide came the smash of shattered glass. Urgent, arguing voices heightened in pitch, Bruce and Shirleen. They must have stepped near an open window, because they came through as clearly as one of Sam's messages.

  "That kid is weird, Shirleen. Weird like her father. You always said something was wrong with him." That was Bruce.

  Shirleen's voice spoke low. I held my breath to hear. "She's only a kid," said my mom. "It's not the kids' fault." Her voice—did it shake?

  "Sam can take care of himself, Shirleen. Heck, I was on my own at his age. And you know how those two—when they got together—" He stuttered off. I could hear him gulping his beer, even from the teardrop. "While Heather's living under my roof, she'll live by my rules. She's gonna cause trouble, she can just stay out there." He blustered on, but I'd caught the wobble of fear in his voice.

  "I'll talk to her," said Shirleen.

  The double-wide door creaked open, and Shirleen's steps clomped across the porch and whispered over the sand lot. A soft knock on my door. I lay still, my thoughts tangled and black, until she called my name. I relented and opened the door.

  There stood my mother, tired and small and old, hair uncombed, T-shirt stained. Unhappy creases between her eyes, around her mouth. I didn't remember her having those.

  I stared gold fire. She winced and studied the corner, where my cast-off clothes and empty water bottles had piled up.

  "I heard what you and Bruce said. That I'm weird." I glared.

  Her face lowered into the shadows. "I know you're upset about Sam." Her features breached the light, and she locked eyes with me for a flicker of a second.

  Her attempt at compassion only made anger burn in my gut. "Oh, like you care! You just don't want Bruce to get in trouble!" I shouted.

  "Heather. Try to understand. He's not like your dad was. This weird stuff you and your brother do, it's not easy to live with," she said.

  "No! He's not like Dad. Dad never called us weird. Dad let me sleep in the house!" I fumed while Shirleen hunched, hand raised as if warding me off.

  "It is his house, Heather," she whispered.

  "Mom, he kicked Sam out!" I shouted. Shirleen's cringe awoke me to the hot tingle of my hands, the electricity snapping down my spine. No, no, no. I took a deep breath, and let the energy calm down. Spoke softly. "Do you know what happened? Is Sam okay?"

  I waited. She studied sand underfoot.

  "Mom, I'm worried about you, too," I said. " All you and Bruce do is fight. I feel sorry for you, having to put up with Bruce." Probably shouldn't have stuck my tongue out, like the name left a bad taste.

  Shirleen's spine straightened. She scowled, deepening those creases. "You feel sorry for me? We wouldn't fight if it weren't for you and Sam. If you can't respect Bruce, he's right to send you out here."

  Salt stung behind my eyes. I blinked, fighting tears. "What about loving your kids?" I said.

  Shirleen turned away, crossing her arms. "You and Sam blew out every light bulb in the house and Sam tried to attack Bruce in the dark!"

  My eyes lowered to trace the shadows that crisscrossed the trailer floor. "I blew out the bulbs. Sam didn't do anything. I would have known, because—"

  Shirleen snorted. "Because? Because you read each other's minds. This is how it began with Able, too. You're messing with dangerous things you don't understand."

  Indignation flamed a crackle in my hands. "At least Dad would have known what to do. He would have taught us!" I said.

  Her voice was grating and ugly. "Your father had no idea what to do! He never knew his parents, and nobody taught him. He made most of it up. It's no wonder he got himself killed by the age of forty! That should teach you something—stop this crazy paranormal nonsense before it kills you, too!"

  "Wait, what? Dad died of cancer," I said. I pressed my hands to my forehead to dispel the spinning sensation.

  Shirleen backed up, her voice rasping hate. "Some people have to learn the hard way. Your father would not stop messing with the supernatural. One night, he came back all burned and withered. Told me he'd been attacked by an evil spirit. I took him to the hospital. The burns healed, but they diagnosed a type of cancer no one had ever seen before. You think that's a coincidence?"


  Dazed, I leaned against the trailer wall. I stared at Shirleen's grim mouth, so certain, so condemning. "Came back from where?" I whispered. That place called—and something deep within me tore loose and answered.

  But Shirleen's spine stiffened, and the question fell frozen to the sand. "It's better you don't know. Stop this, Heather. Before you get killed, like Able." She shook her head low at me. "I agree with Bruce. You've got to stay out here. We don't want to get killed, neither."

  Torn, I gazed up and away, past Shirleen, where the high desert sky flung diamonds. On and on, forever and ever. The junkyard trailers and trash flattened to unreal cardboard beneath the space of that endless night sky. A tingle tripped my bones. That place he came back from. It was somewhere beyond, like that night sky. Somewhere curses could happen, but also wondrous things.

  I pulled my gaze from overhead, unfamiliar strength surging. "I'm not stopping. Never! I'm going to finish what Dad started."

  Shirleen bared exasperated palms. "Just like Able. You'll have to learn the hard way." She strode off, abandoning me to my fate, I guess.

  My newfound strength evaporated and I panicked. "Mom, wait! Maybe we could move out, find Sam, be a family again! Like when Dad was alive? We don't have to stay here!"

  Shirleen turned, her profile stark against the silver-studded sky. "We live here now. Your father isn't coming back. Those days are over."

  "Mom—please," I said.

  "Good night, Heather." She shuffled off, went inside. The porch light flickered on, droning with yellow vengeance. Then the big yard light flared to life, adding its insect whine. The discordant noise felt like a heavy wall between us.

  I slammed the teardrop door. I blinked away a few tears, but hot anger absorbed the rest. "She won't talk about it, fine. You'll talk to me, won't you, Sybil?"

  The tiny dog sprawled asleep.

  "Who am I going to talk to? Anybody else out there?" I listened. Beyond the double-wide's circle of light, thick quiet enshrouded. Quiet as a graveyard.

  —Sam. Can't you answer me? I'm coming to find you.

  Still nothing from Sam. Not since he disappeared. So perhaps . . . no. I didn't even want to think that.

  But the thought revolved, turned sides to glitter and fascinate, and now return, like a faraway tossed gem that fell to earth. When I could no longer contact my father, it meant . . . surely Sam could not be gone in that way. Not dead.

  I peered out the eye-shaped window, where phantasm shadows wreathed the yard light's yellow circle. I hadn't seen Sam in the flesh since the previous night. No idea whether he'd left in one piece. There were a thousand places a person could hide a body in this old junkyard.

  Stop. Don't think like that.

  But there had been a night, when Bruce'd had a few too many, and he'd tried to scare me with a story about a body hidden in the junkyard. Now it rang true. All this junk, so far out in the desert—who would ever notice?

  It all played out in vivid color, like a movie in my head. Early morning crimson light, and Bruce came sniffing around the teardrop door. Sam—a notoriously early riser—burst out. Bruce shoved, Sam pushed, fists raised and swung. Down in the sand, arms, legs thrashing, Sam on top held Bruce down. Bruce, sunk in sand, reached out for a dark cloud. A gun? A knife? A lead pipe, a nasty piece of rebar, even a railroad spike. I shuddered, gazing at the upward-twisting, blackened piles of junk. Anything around here would do. The whole place bristled with possible murder weapons.

  So, Bruce knocked Sam with a—let's say a railroad spike. But he hit too hard, or maybe he meant to hit too hard. Then panic. Sam's body dragged, trailing down sand paths. Was he dead or alive when Bruce hid him deep in his acres of hoard?

  Sam's mangled corpse, buried somewhere in all this junk. I could see it so clearly, his head twisted back, blood in his hair, fingers outstretched, beckoning. I shivered. Maybe Sam sent this vision, contacting me from Cuidad del Muerto, from beyond the dead!

  I started up, a buzz of agitation—that feeling of dead electricity—icing my veins. I stepped outside the teardrop trailer. Eyes closed, I felt for the thread of ice that reeled me in like a spider's dragline. I followed after the sensation. I hardly knew where I staggered. When I saw starry explosions pluming behind my eyelids, I opened my eyes. Directly before me loomed the door of the old school bus.

  I froze, and the world around me also stopped and drew in breath. Together we awaited in silence. When the moaning hit my ears, I felt not surprise, but relief.

  "Sam!" I shouted, launching for the bus door. It creaked open on its own. I jumped back, fear prickling my neck, my heart pounding in my throat. I tried to call out, but only a strangled croak emerged. I stretched forth my shaking hand—touched the bus door.

  CREEE-AK!

  The sound could have shattered the bus windows. My heart almost matched it for noise. I crept up the stairwell, my hands spitting blue sparks. A wave of that weird, still energy jolted through me as I passed the driver's seat.

  Again the moan sounded, deep bellows, not much like Sam at all. The hairs on my neck rose as blue sparks enlaced my arms and wing-lit my shoulders. Something was very off—but I couldn't shake the vision of Sam killed.

  "Sam?" My voice stuck in my throat. I looked over rows of bus seats, lined up like headstones. Then my heart thudded hard, and I gasped. The misty shape, white and pale—empty eye sockets, grinning squares of teeth, the white globe of a skull. An exposed ribcage, long bleached bones—a skeleton. Large as life before me, sitting on the bus seat. And it moaned.

  My knees gave way in fear, and I tumbled into the foot-well between two seats. I curled against the wall, hugging my legs, blue electricity sparking through my entire body. The skeleton moaned and moaned while I cowered below.

  I peered over the edge of the seat. The skeleton sat, unmoved and still. But the wretched moaning grew stronger, the jaw swinging open in a miserable cry. "Ohhh-ohhh-ohhh mi!"

  Quaking, I readied myself to run, but the moans ached of such yearning, my fear ebbed. In that moment, I stood. Over the horrid moaning, I called, "Please! I'm looking for my brother. Sam, is that you?"

  It didn't feel like Sam. When the moaning abruptly stopped, the deep voice that spoke didn't sound like Sam—it sounded brisk and angry.

  "No hablar con el conductor cuando el autobús está en movimiento!" it said and expelled another miserable groan.

  "Hola? What did you say? Qué?" I tried my limited Spanish. I never paid enough attention in Spanish class.

  The voice crackled broken English. "Hi say, no talk to driver when bus moving! Okay, you sit down."

  More misery and more moaning. Definitely not Sam. The voice, whoever he was, lost in a delusion of life and movement. Clearly, something had happened to put an end to that. I ventured to say, "But the bus isn't moving. No en movimiento, Señor."

  "Qué?" said the voice. "QUÉ?!"

  The bus filled with thuds, squeals of tortured metal, the crystalline splash of glass, a thousand breakings, followed by screams. The reverberations of a crash, horrible and heavy, crepitant bone upon bone, then the moaning again. That horrible moaning amplified a thousand times.

  Over the still bones of the skeleton, nebulous flesh took shape. A translucent man glowed in a green jacket. He tipped a bus driver's cap and bowed his balding head. He was stout, with warm, lambent eyes and a dense black mustache. The man smiled, finger to his lips, in silent shush.

  "Hi," I said. Awe replaced fear. My blue glow melted away.

  "Esper! Uno mas esper!" He chuckled at me.

  "Are you a ghost?" I asked. What was Spanish for ghost? I should know this!

  "Mi nombre es Valente de los Santos." His deep voice resonated around the inside of the bus, seemed to swell, then fall away.

  I dug into my pathetic Spanish vocabulary desperately. "Your name is Valente? Um . . . oye, cómo vas?" I said.

  "Muy bien, gracias," he said. I think he was just being polite. He certainly didn't sound like someone things were going well fo
r.

  "Señor, usted . . . mira . . . el hombre nomo Sam?" I cobbled together some of my worst pigeon Spanish yet. Confusion contorted Valente's face. I cursed my ignorance.

  "I speak Ingles, little," said Valente. I'm sure he thought his English would beat my Spanish, and I agreed.

  "Okay, Señor. Did you see a man named Sam?" I blinked at the headstone seats, the window cracks, the vapors that veiled it all, and added, "In here?"

  "Samhain de los Espers? He no here."

  "Wait. You know Sam?" My mouth hung open.

  "Sí, Señorita. He no here. He go, a Cuidad del Muerto." Valente pointed to the darkened ceiling. I followed the upward direction of his finger, then shook my head. Sam had not gone through the ceiling. I breathed deep, coughing on the miasmic cocktail of ghost vapor and bus filth.

  "Thank you, Señor. I mean, muchas gracias." I had to ask. "One more thing. Is Sam . . . dead?"

  Valente's eyebrows met in the middle, and then his mouth widened in laughter. "Samhain no es muerto. No dead. Alive."

  "You're certain he's alive?" I asked, breathless.

  Valente nodded, eyes serious. His eyes lucent with a golden cast. Kind of like my own. "Sí, es bueno. Samhain is alive," he said.

  Some of the weight of fear lifted from my heart, though not all. I smiled and stepped closer.

  Valente flickered in and out, and fear trickled up my spine again. How dark this bus was!

  "You drove this bus? El conductor?" I asked. The question set off such an excited spate of Spanish that I finally had to block my ears to make Valente realize I couldn't follow his rapid speech. "Never mind. I can tell you're a ghost," I said. Stepping close to him, I reached over to pat the apparition. My hand passed through his form and brushed cold bones beneath. My skin tingled with charge, and when I drew back, little tendrils of blue clung to my fingertips.

  I wiggled my fingers until the blue disappeared. "You must have died here, in the bus crash."

  "Sí, sí!" Valente said, and spoke rapidly again. I could make out "niños," "autobus," "muerto," and little more.