A smash sounded nearby, in the junk piles outside the bus.
Valente cocked his head again, then nodded. A grin flickered across his round face.
"They come," he said. His image wavered. "Los mortales."
His image hazed, then swirled in mists and vapors, dispelling into dark air.
"Wait! Don't go," I said. I leaned toward him.
"Adiós, Señorita," said Valente, hollow-voiced. I found myself staring into the vacant caves of the skull's eye sockets. I jolted back, knees shaking, and raced to the stairwell.
I wondered how Valente could know Sam? Was he the ghost who wrote to me at the séance? But I didn't think so. They didn't sound much alike. Valente spoke mostly Spanish, while the writer turned an English phrase with ease.
Then there was the apparition with eyes like black holes. I thought back to Sam's words. "There are things in this junkyard . . . well, I don't need to scare you."
Chapter Ten
The Mortals
Whispering. I could hear it above the wind that whipped through the junk piles and threw sand in my face and hair. Ghost whispers? Spirits calling? Or something more mundane.
"I can't believe we came all the way out here! Lily, what are we doing?" Trenton's voice squeaked among the creaking, windblown junk.
Los mortales. The mortals! They had indeed come.
I rounded the end of the closest junk pile, and nearly smacked into the three of them. Lily adjusted her glasses and cheered. "Heather!"
Oskar had his arm slung around Trenton's shoulders. He whispered in his ear, and Trenton giggled. Then they both waved to me, all smiles.
"You were supposed to go straight home," I said, crossing my arms.
"Oh, we did," said Trenton, "But then we sneaked out again."
"Even you, Lily? I'm shocked," I said. "What will the Coterie think of this?"
"She's right! We're in danger!" Trenton started huffing and puffing with anxiety, until I worried he'd hyperventilate.
Then, just as if he'd known Trenton for years, Oskar squeezed Trenton's shoulders and said, "Calm down. It's an adventure! You'll be fine."
Trenton's face reddened, and I thought he was choking. Then he relaxed so quickly, he appeared to be melting. He gave Oskar a relieved smile, and their eyes met—Trenton's frenetic blue with Oskar's cool hazel. Again, I felt a twinge of envy as they gazed into each other's eyes for a long moment.
If only someone would gaze at me that way. I'd never meet anyone special except ghosts. What boy would be interested in a paranormal weirdo like me?
I released a big sigh. "You want to tell me why you're here? In the middle of the night, in this very haunted junkyard? For example. I just saw a full-body emanation on the old school bus. Says his name's Valente."
"Really?" they all said. Oskar and Lily leaned forward, while Trenton gritted his teeth.
"No joke. I wouldn't be surprised if a few more show. Is that why you're here? Hunting ghosts?" I said.
A thumping in the junk piles, then rhythmic breathing.
"What is that?" Trenton clutched Oskar's arm.
I laughed, because I recognized the sound. Whistled. Sybil walked out from between two tire piles.
"Ghost dog!" Trenton wrapped his arms around Oskar and squeezed his eyes shut.
"No, it's Sybil. My Chihuahua? She's strictly a mortal dog," I said.
"I knew that." Trenton smiled weakly up at Oskar. "I'm totally prepared, if something really horrible comes along." I noticed he didn't let go of Oskar, though.
"We actually came to break you out," said Lily. "Oskar and I—"
"Lily and I had the same thought," said Oskar.
"We both sat up reading the books you lent us," said Lily.
"I was reading in my car, when I noticed it," said Oskar.
The wind whooshed by, colder than ever, and I shivered.
"Noticed what?" I said. The junkyard seemed almost to hum tonight, the air electrical and cold, fertile with ghosts.
"I called Lily," said Oskar.
"He called me," said Lily, "and I called Trenton. We decided, the Coterie doesn't need to know about this. Oskar picked us up, and we came to get you."
"The Coterie never tells me anything," complained Oskar. "I've been a member for a year now. There's a serious communication problem between the old ones and the new members."
"I thought you were the only new member," said Trenton.
"That was true for a long time," said Oskar, shaking his head ruefully. "Now you're all inducted. Well, you'll find out. Everything's secret, on a need-to-know basis. Orders all the time that don't make sense, and I just have to obey. Being a member of a secret society can be so irritating!"
I tapped my foot on the sand. More junk crashing, somewhere against the back fence. The wind was making me nervous, jumpy. "What did you find out?" I demanded. "Tell me!"
"The Four!" said Oskar. "The spiritualists that ruled the town, twenty years ago. Their actual names are kept hidden. I found out today your dad was one. Able Despair. But my book also mentions Maximilian Pollander!"
"And my book mentioned that my uncle, Arturo Benavidez was one. I guessed that, from what Abuelita said. But it also mentioned a Valente de los Santos," said Lily.
"That is the name of the ghost I saw," I said. I looked back, at the dark shape of the school bus. "He was one of The Four?"
"They all died, Heather. So yes, Valente would be a ghost. That part makes sense," said Lily, very primly.
"Oh," I said, a little disappointed they weren't more amazed about the ghost.
"But Max!" Oskar was almost shouting. "That does not make sense! I've been spending time with him, on a daily basis! You saw him! The guy appears perfectly normal. Except—the guy is dead!"
"And as for me, I suspect the Cousin Art who drove you out here may be none other than my uncle Arturo Benavidez," said Lily. "Also—supposed to be dead."
"Could they have survived after all?" A dent appeared on Trenton's brow.
I scanned around the dark, lumping shapes of the junkyard. Wondered who or what might be listening in on this strange conversation. "The one I saw was definitely, certifiably dead. Also, I can guarantee you that my father is dead. I saw him in the coffin."
I thought of it then, his still face, so quiet and calm in the satin-lined box. So unlike my father in life, who never stopped moving, who always had somewhere to get to, something to do.
"What does it mean?" I asked. "Maybe you're wrong about who they are. Or those two didn't die. They did both seem to be in hiding."
But I thought of that dead electricity I sensed around Cousin Art, the cold that swirled in when Max entered, and I wondered. Could the dead hide among us that well?
How long before my father showed up here, too? If he hadn't already. Someone got Sam away from here. Sam said he could hear Dad . . .
Spooked, I said, "What's your plan?"
"We're all going to Oskar's," said Trenton. "His parents have a big compound up the mountain, outside of town, and it's like an impermeable fortress. Plus, they have a huge stockpile of food from Costco. We could hold out for months."
"It's more like a lodge," said Oskar. "You're making it sound like I'm Batman." He tickled Trenton, who squealed.
I looked from one to the other. "Is it really safe?" I asked. "The Coterie told us to remain in our homes."
"It's got to be safer than this haunted dump," said Lily. "I don't rattle easily, but Heather—this place is scary." She looked around, eyes wide. Everywhere, creaking, banging, whooshing in the junk piles. Garbage and sand blowing around, bits of junk falling. And it was getting colder.
Oskar's sounded nice.
"Yeah, but Sam could come back here," I said. "I better stick it out. Could you just take Sybil with you?"
"Sure," said Oskar. "But what about you?"
"Abuelita said Sam was most likely to come back here. I'm staying," I said.
"But Oskar's compound could be our new base!" said Trenton. "Screw
the Coterie, Heather Despair! They lied to us. We can start our own Coterie, with no weird, possibly dead, old guys."
"Are you going to call it PEPPER?" I said. I smiled, and started to pick my way along one of the dark corridors. Sybil was just down here—I could hear that fast panting.
"It's PEPPIC!" shrieked Trenton against the rising wind.
Snatches of their conversation drifted to my ears, as I searched in the dark for my black dog.
"Will your parents mind?" Trenton was asking.
"My parents don't mind anything," said Oskar. "They're very liberal. They'll love to have you stay."
Oskar's sounded wonderful. Maybe I could visit later. Where was that dog already?
"Sybil!" I called.
Cross o-ver. A whisper on the wind. I could swear I heard those exact words.
"I'll cross over, all right," I muttered. "To Oskar's mansion of paradise and endless Costco food." I bet it was warm there, too. I was so tempted to just leave for the night. I shivered violently and wrapped my duster around me.
Passing a blacked-out corridor—midnight deep, bottomless dark, and the one where I'd seen the strange figure before—I glanced in. The void, featureless nothing on nothing, looked back. Wait. Was that a movement?
"Sybil!" I said, charging ahead. I plunged into the deep shadow.
"Where'd she go?" That was Trenton.
"I didn't see—she just disappeared." Lily.
"Heather Despair!" yelled Trenton.
Lily shushed him. "Trent! Do you want Bruce to come?"
"I'm down here," I called in my loudest whisper, but a gust of wind whooshed past me and drowned my voice. I kept picking my way along the dark corridor. I'd go back in a moment. They were only fifty feet away. Then—a scrabble near my feet. I jumped. The scrabbling sound became a familiar whine. I strained my eyes and could barely make out Sybil's black shape at my feet. "Sybil, come! It's dangerous out here tonight," I said.
The little dog cocked her head as if to say, "Then why are you out here?"
A whoosh tremored past in the air. Maybe the wind. But maybe, just maybe, it was a spirit. I caught Sybil up in my arms and tucked her inside my coat. I began to back out of the darkness.
Behind me, a tinkle of metal, then a clattering roar of junk cascading downward. Flowing like an unruly landslide, the junk poured, filling the corridor between me and the Paranormals. Shaken by the slide, the pile on the other side of the corridor avalanched down, forcing me to run and dodge. When I looked back, I saw the junk slide had created an impassable blockade of twisted metal scraps.
"Oh no. Sybil, we're trapped!"
Chapter Eleven
Emmett
Once the roar of junk settled down to a tinkle, I heard them calling me. I searched for an opening—any opening. Though the collapse of the high-piled junk walls had let in more light, it left no easy exit.
"Heather Despair! Are you all right?" Had to be Trenton, shouting again.
"I'm okay!" I called. The mountain of garbage between us rendered their voices faint. "I think this wind set off a junk slide. Stay hidden from Bruce! I'm going to walk around and find another way out."
"Okay, Heather!" I almost didn't hear them, since another piece of metal junk had come crashing down behind me. I turned.
"Wow, this wind is really—"
I stopped. There stood a boy about my age, fifteen or sixteen maybe, who I did not know. He stood stiff in a formal black suit and tie, with a high white collar. His black curls were parted straight down the middle and plastered sideways, the irises of his eyes black as midnight, and his face so pale, it nearly glowed. Overall, he gave me the impression of watching black-and-white television.
He stood there, staring at me, not moving. I shivered. He stayed frozen a moment longer, then walked toward me and smiled. He moved normally and naturally, and I scoffed at my misgivings. He was just a guy, after all, lost in the junkyard or something. I waved.
"Hi! Can I help you?" I said.
"Hello," he said. "That depends on where I am, and probably a good deal on who you are, too."
"Oh, you're in Bruce's junkyard," I said. "Bruce is my stepfather, and this . . . is his junkyard. Do you need a guide to find the way out? You can come with me."
The boy swiveled his head one way, then the other. "This is nearly the right location. You can help me find one thing. Is there possibly a school bus here?"
"It's right over there. Or was, before all this junk slid in the way." I pointed in the approximate direction of the bus. Why would he be looking for that?
"Excellent," said the boy. He reached into his pocket and produced a large spider that trailed from his hand on its web.
"Careful! That might be a black widow. They're really poisonous," I said. I watched him jiggle the spider up and down like an eight-legged yo-yo. Something was very off about this boy after all.
"Indeed. And what might your name be, young girl?" he asked.
"Young girl!" I snorted. "I'm the same age you are. And my name is Heather."
"I'm older than you are," said the boy in a haughty tone. He stepped forward and bowed. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Emmett Groswald Cornelius St. Claire Marie-Claude Juan Rodriguez Gabriel Lysander Tippetarius Zetian O'Toole Carlisle Fitzhugh. You—" He looked me over and grinned. "may call me Emmett."
"All that is your name?" I said. His sudden smile, so open and full of sunshine, stunned me.
"Indeed." Emmett extended his hand. I pulled back, for he held out the hand still attached to the spider.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said, moving the spider to his other hand. He took my hand to shake it. His skin felt cool and pleasant to the touch, though I got a small shock as I drew my hand away. Cursed electricity! I thought I'd gotten it under control. Now I'd shocked this boy too, and he was . . . kind of cute. Weird, but cute, with his dark curls and disarming smile.
Emmett didn't seem to notice anything unusual.
"Now that we've been formally introduced, I must ask you. Are you afraid of spiders?" he said, twirling what looked more and more like a definite black widow.
"Not so much, but that one—" I flinched.
"Excellent!" And with that, he cast the spider toward my hair! I gasped, groped my hair, thought I felt spindly legs connect, but instead of a spider bite, the blurry colors of a rainbow filled my sight, whirling around me, and my nose zinged with the sharp scent of a lightning strike. I clenched tight in terror until the whirling stilled. Then my vision cleared. Grease and old gum smell, lumps of seats in the dark. I stood inside the old school bus.
"That went well," said Emmett into my ear. He stood so close, when I turned, I saw into the deep black of his irises—like bottomless wells. He flashed that disarming smile, and I grinned foolishly back. Then I went somber again. How had we gotten here?
"The last person I did that to passed out," said Emmett. I thumped down on the bus seat, holding my dizzy head. No kidding.
Emmett plucked the spider from my shoulder and released it into a crack on the floor. "I'm so sorry," he whispered to it. He turned to me. "Frightened her dreadfully. But you see, I haven't got much sense of direction. There's a lot of energy around here, and it threw off the portal. With a spider, I arrive at the right location every time." He bowed his head to me, so I could see the stark white part in his black hair.
"How wonderful for you," I murmured. I gripped the bus seat, trying not to panic as I surged with blue electrical charge. I'd have to find Trenton, Oskar, and Lily, let them know where I was. I took another long look at Emmett.
Emmett inspected me in turn.
"You're a ghost," I said.
"And you're a strange girl," said Emmett. He grinned and wavered translucent. I could see the bus seats and windows right through him. "Most mortals find this kind of experience very frightening."
"Ha. I frighten myself worse than this every day," I said, deadpan. I wasn't about to let him see me freak out. But in truth, I was freaked out. Another gh
ost! Of course, that made sense. Who else would I meet? It was crazy to think I, Heather Despair, would be lucky enough to bump into a cute boy in the junkyard. Unless he went bump in the night. Then I'd meet him for sure.
Why had he not set off my alarms like Valente? I sensed nothing unusual about him, even sitting right next to him. He appeared, for the moment, completely mortal. Like Max—the dead, hidden seamlessly among the living.
No, wait. I could feel it again, the dead electricity, the cold chill. Then, glancing past Emmett, I saw why. The skeleton sat propped in a bus seat, right across the aisle from us. Valente had returned.
"Emmett. Behind you. Do you see what I see?" I whispered.
"What, you mean the skeleton, or the ghost?" asked Emmett without turning around. He kept searching his pockets, pulling things out and putting them back. A bone, a small scroll, a pair of ancient-looking spectacles, a vial of red liquid—the only color I'd seen on his person—and a small bat. The bat flapped wildly to escape his pocket and skimmed once around the bus ceiling, before squeezing through a crack in the window and flying away into the night. Emmett watched it go and shrugged. "She'll be back. They always come back, did you know that?"
I didn't answer. A clouded shape fogged the skeleton, and soon Valente bobbed his head at me, still in his bus driver's uniform.
"Hi, Valente," I said in a small voice. How very, very strange this was. Even stranger—I was getting used to it.
"Hola, cómo estás. How are you?" said Valente. He nodded at me, then shook Emmett's hand. "Señor Emmett and Señorita de los Espers." Valente's image wavered in and out. I thought I saw him wink. I rubbed my eyes.
"Momento," said Emmett. He put on the spectacles and produced a long metal pole with two tines on the end. It resembled a large tuning fork.
"What's that?" I asked. It reminded me of something, although of course, that something could be just a large tuning fork.
"It harnesses spectral energy. Spectricity!" said Emmett. "Wear these," he added, handing me some goggles with thick speckled glass in the lenses.
"Why? What do I need these for?" I strapped them on.
"Hold on to the bus seat," said Emmett. I had barely understood him, when Emmett seized Valente's hand. Electric bolts shot from Valente, arching overhead into Emmett. The explosive force knocked me onto the bus seat. I grabbed on.
Mortals: Heather Despair Book One Page 9
