October Girls: Crystal & Bone (4 page)

“Second offense.” The Judge’s face was hidden inside a dark hood, and he wore a monk’s robe billowy enough to hide his true shape. She wondered whether he was naked underneath, or if he was even there at all. He sat behind a tall podium carved of oak and alabaster.

“Well, I only had a narrow crack, and I had to hurry,” Bone said. “They told me I could skip back and forth as much as I wanted until my trial was over.”

“Duly noted.”

“And because the crack was closing fast, I couldn’t get all of me through there, so I jumped into the spider.” The excuse sounded lame even to her.

The Judge, who sounded a bit like James Earl Jones on helium, shuffled some papers that crackled like sheepskin. Apparently computers hadn’t made it to the afterlife yet. “Bonnie Faye Whitehart, you are trying the patience of this court.”

“Look, it’s not like I possessed a human,” she said. “This is the spiritual equivalent of jaywalking.”

“Just because you’re a Tweener doesn’t give you the right to play God.”

Score one for Shadowface.
“The jury said I had a free pass.”

“This is a probationary period,” the Judge said in his ominous squeak. “You’re not innocent yet.”

“I thought they called this ‘The Graveyard of Second Chances.’”

“Which is why you should be on your best behavior.”

Darkmeet has no trouble sending poor lost souls like me to burn in hell for an eternity. But slip into a spider for a few minutes and you’d think the golden stairway was crumbling and St. Peter was asking Judas for his hand in gay marriage.

“Okay, let’s plea bargain,” she said.

“You have nothing to offer the court.”

“Hold on a second.” She rummaged in her purse and brought out the pack of Milk Duds she’d swiped from the Tan Banana & Movie Emporium. “Processed sugar, milk chocolate, and caramel. Sinfully delicious.”

The mouth inside the hood audibly licked its lips. “Smuggling contraband across borders is a serious crime.”

She cracked the small cardboard box and let the chocolate aroma drift in the chamber. “I’d sure hate to be sent gently down the stream without sharing these.”

“Up the river, you mean.”

“Whatever.”

She popped a Milk Dud in her mouth. The sweetness flooded her tongue, almost making her sick. She smiled despite the nausea, smacking her teeth. “Mmm. Nothing says ‘All is forgiven’ like a Milk Dud.”

The Judge leaned forward, sniffing the air. “Perhaps we could show some leniency. You were a hit-and-run, after all. Still figuring out your way around.”

She palmed three of the caramel doots and gave them a little toss. The hood tilted up and down, following the arc of the candy. This was fun. But she didn’t have all day.

Who was she kidding? She had forever.

She put a dud between her teeth and carefully diced it in half, letting a thick strand of brown drool trail down the corner of her mouth. “I’m thinking a casket,” she mumbled and mushed. “Jush me and chocolatey gooey goodnessh.”

The Judge swept up his gavel and banged it so hard she could have sworn sparks flew from the mallet head. “Contempt of court,” he said.

She rolled out a dud and flicked it onto the bench. The hood dipped down after the candy like a vacuum cleaner on steroids, sucking it into a hidden mouth. She’d assumed the Judge was human, but she couldn’t be sure. He might just as easily be a Lurken, or one of the other monsters she’d only heard about. The Graveyard of Second Chances was so foggy, it was difficult to know exactly
what
was playing among the tombstones.

“How about time off for good behavior?” she asked, holding up a piece of candy as if it were a diamond.

The hood nodded, chewing sounds emanating from inside. “How good?”

Feeling magnanimous, she played out half a dozen Milk Duds, and they rattled across the bench like hailstones. A decidedly rodent paw emerged from the robe—
he’s not a Lurken, unless he’s got tentacles as well as arms
—and scooped up the candy. As it shoved candy toward its mouth, the hood slipped back a little. Firelight glinted off the wet, pointy nose and revealed a pair of dark Raybans perched across the snout.

Blind. Justice. I get it.

She tiptoed toward the gate of the crypt, looking forward to a little down time in her casket. All that “Rest in Peace” business had been just so much jabber. She’d barely slept a wink since she’d gotten here.

The Judge, as usual, wanted the final word. “I’ve got my eye on you, Bonnie Faye Whitehart.”

She wanted to say, “Here, I’ll give it back, it’s kind of sticky,” but figured she was nearly out of Milk Duds and more contempt was inadvisable. She skittered past the empty jury box and up the stone steps, then out the oak door to freedom.

Well,
relative
freedom. The afterlife was only a bigger prison.

No streets of gold, as some of the living pictured it. No street performers plucking harps, haloes tossed down on the sidewalk to collect tips. No white-robed choirs gathering in perfect harmony. No great buffalo hunts, no bodhi trees, no endless stacks of turtles, no virginal harems for suicide bombers, no sign that any of the Earth religions had been the “correct” one.

The Graveyard of Second Chances was locked in permanent night, and the full moon hung above as always. Mist drifted across the darkness, with tombstones protruding from the dirt like giant teeth.

The gnarled, bare branches of trees were visible here and there, and the faint suggestion of a stone wall surrounded the graveyard. Beyond that was an endless gray void, and Bone’s desire to flee was weaker than her fear of what might lay in that vast unknown.

“Bonnie!”

She groaned. The past had a way of catching up with you. She kept walking.

“It’s me. Tim.”

Three more steps, the grass like a sponge beneath her bare feet.

“Tim! Remember?”

She turned.

Tim McFarland had a serious crush on her in sixth grade. In a moment of blind stupidity or show of power, she’d let him sneak a kiss on the playground, eliciting a series of corny but sweet poetry from him over the course of the summer. He slipped the poems to her in theater camp, tucking folded stationary in the pages of Shakespeare.

Tim had been diagnosed with leukemia that fall, undergone chemotherapy, and withdrawn from school after all his hair fell out. He had died the following spring. During his final stay in the hospital, he’d written her a poem called “Winter of the Soul” that had made her cry.

Now, here he was, still bald and 12, and still, apparently, crushing on her big-time.

“Bonnie Faye as I live and breathe,” Tim said. He’d always been one for annoying attempts at cleverness. The poet thing.

“Howdy,” she replied, tucking the Milk Duds box in her purse. “How’s it going?”

“Could be worse,” he said. “I’ve got a hung jury. They’re deliberating the ‘Bad things happen to good people’ clause.”

“We’re like bugs in a jar to them. Entertainment.”

“You back with your boyfriend?” His pale face was guarded, two moons reflected in his glasses.

“He’s not my boyfriend. We’re just hanging out.”

“Does he get jealous when you cross back over?”

“None of your business.”

“Do you have a boyfriend on the other side, too?”

“What’s with the ‘20 questions’ routine? You’re worse than the Judge.”

“Look, just because we had a thing–”

“We didn’t have a
thing
. Just two kids fooling around. It was nothing.”

She didn’t enjoy the pain that flashed in his blue eyes. Well, not much. But it had to be done. Hurt a little now or hurt more later. Bone knew that drill.

“It meant something,” Tim said, his voice huskier, almost at pre-cancerous strength, cracking with adolescence. “Everything that happened over there was for keeps.”

“Over there,” Bone said. “It’s not that far away.”

“Christ, you’re a Tweener, aren’t you?”

“Can you say ‘Christ’ here?”

Tim held out his hands in another indifferent shrug, only this time he turned his palms up. “What are they going to do, crucify me?”

Bone glanced around. Crystal said she’d been dead two years of Earth time, but Darkmeet still felt strange and dangerous, where shadows crawled but the mist remained forever fresh. Though the Judge was the one she reported to, she sensed powerful, unseen forces hiding beyond the graveyard walls.

“Don’t tempt them,” she said. “If they’ve been here a while, they might be bored.”

“I’m not afraid of them.”

“Well, I need to stay out of trouble. They’re still deciding my Tweener case.”

“I’m jealous,” he said. “I died fair and square. Wasn’t even an accident.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” she said. “I’d just as soon be plain old dead.”

Sure, my death was an accident. But maybe it was justice, too. Because of why I was walking on the side of the highway at one in the morning when that truck came along.

“Hey, you made it through puberty. Try being a twerp for the rest of eternity.”

“Sixteen might be worse. Permanent angst.”

“At least you get to go through the Orifice.”

“In a way, it’s almost worse, because you get to see what you’re missing.”

“I miss my family.”

And they miss you, Cancer Boy. But guess what? It comes with the territory.

Except she’d never once visited her folks when she crossed over. Families tended to give you the damage you spent the rest of your life overcoming. Assuming you’d get the rest of your life. Otherwise, all you had was the damage.

“I’ll tell everyone in Parson’s Ford you said hello,” she lied. “Next time I’m there.”

“That would be nice.”

Nice. Pleasant. Sweet. Mediocre words for oatmeal souls.

“Sweet dreams.” Bone waved and headed for her grave, fully aware that Tim was watching her. And so were other things. She floated faster.

M
inerva Aldridge had scorched something in the oven and stunk up the little mobile home. Crystal didn’t mind too much, as the kitchen usually smelled of old onions and cigarettes anyway. Dishes were stacked on the counter and a half-empty bottle of Busch Light was packed with soggy butts. The box fan in the window rattled against its duct-tape restraints.

“Where you been?” her mother said. “Pettigrew’s been calling for the past hour.”

“Just been talking to a guy in the movie business.”

Momma touched her three-colored, possum-tinted perm. “Like making movies?”

“Yeah.”

“I was an actress, you know.”

Crystal braced for the story of how Momma had played Stella in the high school production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” She’d leave out the part about Roy Reed, the muscular greaser who’d played the Brando role. Roy and Momma had hooked up, but when Momma turned up pregnant, Roy hit the road. The last Crystal had heard about her daddy, he was working a halibut boat in Alaska, and all she had of him was a blurry photograph in the play’s program.

“You told me, Momma.”

“I remember when Stella said—”

“What’s for supper?”

“Squash casserole.”

“Good. I’m not hungry.”

“You better call Pettigrew.”

“I don’t have to jump every time Pettigrew snaps his fingers.”

“Honey, you could do a lot worse than a tow-truck driver. Marry a mechanic and you never got to walk.”

“I don’t mind walking.”

“I went to a lot of trouble for this one.”

“Jeez, Momma, I can get a guy without your love spells.”

“Yeah, like Charlie Horner?”

“That was an honest mistake. How would I know he was gay?”

“That boy had sugar in his britches since kindergarten.”

“Since when did you become an expert on men?”

Minerva scratched at the casserole dish and crinkled her nose. The steam made her mascara run. “There you go again, changing the subject.”

“I’m not changing anything except these heels. They’re giving me blisters.”

“Call Pettigrew first.”

“If it’s true love forever, then he’ll probably still love me in an hour.”

“I can mix the potions and throw the spells, but you’ve got to nudge things along.”

Momma had spelled him with a powder of dove marrow, bloodroot, and dried sourwood honey, but Crystal was still unsure whether Pettigrew was a keeper. He was tall and strong, but his fingers were rough and he lacked book smarts. He was into bluegrass music, and that hillbilly stuff made Crystal shudder with despair. The twang of banjo strings was not going to be the soundtrack of her life.

But Minerva had lost the antidote recipe, or so she said. This love potion would have to play itself out the natural way. Either it took or it wouldn’t. Either it was true love or false love, happy ever after or heartbreak, Scarlet and Rhett or “Dumber and Dumberer.”

I still believe in soul mates. I’m only 17, for Gosh sakes. I’m way too young to be bitter
.

She was waiting for that cosmic swell of the orchestra with each kiss, but all she heard was the
plink-plink-plink
of the “Deliverance” banjo boy.

Momma had no sympathy. “Well, you’d best be getting a husband soon so we can carry on the Aldridge line.”

“You did it without a husband.”

“I did it the hard way.” Momma’s eyes narrowed. “But I don’t regret any of it, because I got you out of the deal.”

“What if I don’t want children?”

Here it came. The lecture. About all the generations of Aldridges who had guarded the Orifice before her, who had boiled and bubbled and toiled and troubled and rhymed and spelled, all to stop the untelling horrors from slopping over into this world.

“You were born with a precious gift, Crystal, and it’s your duty to pass it on.”

Only one way to stop her.
“The second Orifice opened today. In the video store.”

Momma pushed a sweaty strand of hair back from her forehead with one flour-coated hand. “Anything come out?”

“Just a tentacle, but it didn’t touch anything.”

She didn’t dare mention Bone. Consorting with the dead was against the witch’s oath, and Momma would pitch a conniption fit if she knew her daughter had been friends with a ghost for the past two years. And Dempsey—that was way too complicated to get into at the moment.