A Festival of Ghosts Read online

The Chevalier family kitchen was an anachronistic place. Centuries smacked into each other here. A shiny chrome fridge stood beside a fireplace large enough to roast a spitted boar (which they had never actually done, for lack of boar, but Dad very much wanted to try). A long table flanked by wooden benches took up most of the space. A merry band of mead-drinking warriors could feast comfortably at that table.

  No one feasted at it now, but Jasper saw evidence that his father had eaten a quick breakfast already.

  Unearthly howling came up from the sink. Jasper tossed some fresh rosemary down the drain to make it go away. “Shhhh,” he said to the sink. “Mom’s probably still asleep.”

  Jasper’s mother taught history, or at least she usually did. This year she was taking a sabbatical. Mom planned to spend her time by writing a novel, repairing broken bits of the barn and stables, figuring out how to restore the Ingot Renaissance Festival to its former glory, and catching up on her sleep.

  Jasper fixed himself some cereal and gobbled it down quickly. He went looking for his father and found him practicing fifteenth-century longsword techniques in the backyard, just like always.

  Everyone has their morning rituals. We brush teeth and make sure that our socks match, or else make sure that they don’t match in artfully pleasing ways. It gives shape to the day.

  Sir Dad’s ritual was to greet the dawn with a show of skilled swordsmanship. Sometimes Jasper joined him. This morning he very much needed to. Jasper wasn’t sure what the first day of school would be like in a newly haunted Ingot, but he was sure that a practice bout would help him feel ready for whatever happened next.

  He fetched two blunt training swords from the gardening shed.

  Sir Dad set down his own blade, which was sharp-edged and therefore much too dangerous for fencing.

  “Is that a new one?” Jasper asked.

  Sir Dad nodded. “Nell just finished it. She’s getting better at the decorative bits. Look at the family crest on the pommel, and the scrollwork at the base of the blade.”

  Jasper admired the decorative bits. “They look like copper.”

  “They are. Copper inlay over steel. It’s local metal. I understand that this helps with ghostly disagreements.”

  “It does,” Jasper said. “Try not to pick any fights, though. You can chase ghosts away, but they always come back.”

  Sir Dad smiled and swapped swords. “I’ll be careful.”

  First they practiced master strikes, which had truly excellent names like “Zornhau.” That meant “wrath-hew” in German. Then they took a few half-speed swings at each other. Sir Dad narrated the mock-fight as though describing it later, as a story told to an audience. “The knight struck with a Zwerchhau,” he said, blade cutting high and sideways.

  “The squire countered with another,” Jasper said, parrying the first and striking back at the very same time.

  The two got stuck trading that same move back and forth, both blades whirling overhead in a steady, ringing rhythm. This was Jasper’s favorite thing to do while dueling with Sir Dad. He had named it “the whirligig” when he was seven years old. Then a band of festival musicians took up the name and called themselves Zwerchhau Whirligig. They specialized in mandolin covers of classic punk ballads. Jasper wondered where they were now. Probably on tour somewhere on the West Coast. Jasper hoped they would come back in the summer, when the festival reopened.

  He hoped that the Fest would reopen.

  “The knight yielded to the whirligig,” said Sir Dad, savoring the silly word with a solemn voice. Then he broke the loop and stepped away.

  Jasper put his training sword back in the shed. “The squire went to check on the horses. Then he went to school.”

  “Have a good first day.” Sir Dad took up the new longsword again. It cut the air with a satisfying sound.

  Jasper opened the sliding stable door and went in. The horses seemed skittish. They usually were these days.

  Ronnie’s old stall was empty. Mostly. A poltergeist had moved in. Jasper challenged it to a quick game of catch with the rubber ball that he kept there. Poltergeists love to play catch. They are much less likely to throw tantrums if they regularly get to throw a ball.

  “Hey,” said a voice that sounded like Rosa.

  It turned out to be Rosa.

  “Hey,” Jasper said, surprised. “What’s going on? More lantern trouble?”

  “No,” Rosa said. “I just don’t want to walk to school alone. So I came here first. Even though it’s in the opposite direction.”

  Jasper noticed her oversize backpack. “School? Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.” She shifted the weight of the backpack straps on her shoulders.

  “You seem a little nervous,” Jasper said.

  “A little bit,” she admitted.

  “You weren’t nervous when a stampeding tree tried to squish you.”

  “That was different,” she said.

  “Very.”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  Jasper grinned. “Wait here while I get my bag. It isn’t nearly as massive as yours. What do you have in there?”

  Rosa shrugged, or at least she tried, but her backpack was too heavy to let her shoulders move much. “A mix of school stuff and appeasement stuff,” she said. “I might need more than I can fit in my tool belt. The building is very haunted, apparently.”

  “Yeah,” Jasper said. “I’ve heard that, too.”

  He went inside to grab his own school stuff.

  Rosa stayed put and waited. She didn’t want to follow him into the farmhouse. It was always awkward to see Mr. and Mrs. Chevalier at home. Hi! I’m so sorry that we messed up your festival. Well, I’m not completely sorry, because we all would have died horribly otherwise, but I am still kind of sorry.

  Fiore the horse snorted at her. She moved well away. Then she waved to the poltergeist on the ceiling. It waved back.

  5

  INGOT PUBLIC SCHOOL WAS A big brick box of A place. It loomed. The windows looked like eyes, heavily lidded and uninterested in nonsense of any kind.

  Dozens of other kids milled around outside the school, all calling out to each other and clumping into groups. Everybody seemed to know everybody else. Rosa missed the companionable distance of the city, and what it felt like to be surrounded by thousands of strangers all equally strange to each other. Rosa seemed to be the only stranger here. She shifted the weight of her massive backpack, surprised at just how much anxiousness prickled her skin.

  Several other kids shouted Jasper’s name. He waved.

  “You know lots of people,” Rosa noticed.

  He shrugged. “It’s a small town.”

  “I guess,” she said. “I mean yes. It is. So where are we supposed to go now? I know my homeroom number, but I don’t know which room that is. Or how to find it.”

  Jasper gave her a look. “You okay there, librarian? You can find books when they’ve deliberately hidden themselves inside the dust jackets of other books. I’m pretty sure that you can find a classroom.”

  Rosa breathed in slowly. “You’re right. Okay. Let’s go in.” She headed for the entrance, but she didn’t quite make it inside.

  The front door broke through its splintering doorstop and slammed itself shut. Rosa stopped just in time to keep it from knocking her over.

  “Interesting,” she said to the door. “Are you really trying to keep me out, or just making some sort of point?” She tried the latch. It was locked. The lock wouldn’t listen to her.

  Jasper reached over and opened it easily.

  “Interesting,” Rosa said again.

  “Still okay?” he asked.

  “Oh, I am very much okay,” she said.

  “Because you’ve got that look.”

  “Which one?”

  “The dangerous one.”

  “I like to think that I have more than one of those.” She clapped her hands and rubbed them together. It felt good to be dangerous.

  She stepped over the threshold to see
what might happen, but nothing else did. Then she glanced back outside.

  Dozens of other kids stared at her through the open doorway. Rosa’s sense of herself as dangerous slipped away in the glare of that attention. She couldn’t hold on to the feeling, much as she wanted to. It was like trying to hug a wraith, and wraiths don’t hug.

  Jasper opened his mouth.

  “Do not ask me if I’m okay,” she said.

  “Homeroom is over here,” he said instead.

  Worn wooden floors and freshly painted cinderblock walls made the school seem like an uncomfortable cross between a library and a hospital. The libraryishness should have made Rosa feel at home, but instead it felt more like an unsettling dream about home.

  Once, back in the city, she had dreamed that a flood engulfed the central library. A mermaid who haunted the fountain outside came swimming right in and began to browse through biographies. She gave Rosa a wish-coin to eat. Rosa ate it and learned how to breathe underwater. This should have been amazing, but it wasn’t. Books don’t like to get wet, she kept thinking. She couldn’t remember why they don’t like to get wet though, and the books wouldn’t tell her. This bothered her until she woke up.

  The mermaid later admitted that she had sent the dream on purpose, because she was bored. “You could have just told me how bored you were,” Rosa had said. She dumped bucketfuls of old bath toys into the fountain for the mermaid’s entertainment. It worked, mostly. The water spirit ate all the rubber ducks, but she spent weeks playing with the rest of the toys.

  Most appeasement work was just a matter of figuring out what each disgruntled haunting really wanted.

  Rosa wondered what sorts of things haunted this place, and what they might want.

  “Welcome, students, to the first day of school,” said a loud and disembodied voice over the intercom. “This is your principal speaking. I trust that you all had a wonderful summer!” The voice paused. “Please let your teachers know if you see or hear anything . . . weird. Um. Yes. Thank you.”

  “Was that supposed to be reassuring?” Rosa asked Jasper.

  “Probably,” he said.

  “It didn’t really work.”

  “Nope,” he said.

  Weirdnesses remained unseen and unheard for the most of the morning, much to Rosa’s disappointment. She spent the time sitting in a series of small, uncomfortable chairs. Rosa listened to teachers, and she listened to whispers that might have been ghosts but turned out to be classmates having furtive conversations while they shot sideways glances at her. She jumped, startled, whenever the bell told them all to switch rooms. Minutes ticked by as though crawling on their hands and knees.

  I’m just a student, she said to herself, just an ordinary student, learning things about math and not waiting for hauntings to start to make trouble, nope nope nope, definitely not.

  Things did get interesting in history class.

  Rosa and Jasper sat next to each other.

  “Noticed any weirdness yet?” he asked. Other students trickled in slowly and sat down—usually as far away from Rosa as they could manage.

  “Nope,” she said. “Except for the fact that everyone keeps staring at me.”

  Bobbie Talcott was staring at her right at that very moment. Rosa stared back with the steady expression of a duelist. Bobbie looked away first.

  “They’re just admiring your massive backpack,” Jasper said.

  “Shut up.”

  “Seriously. You could fit yourself in there.”

  “That’s the plan,” Rosa said. “This is a portal that will transport me somewhere very far away from here. All I have to do is crawl inside.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “Yes, you did. For a moment there you absolutely did.”

  Rosa studied the classroom, looking for any sign of a disruptive haunting. The walls were covered with posters of famous writers and their famous quotes about history. Maya Angelou’s poster smiled and insisted that History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.

  The teacher came in and dropped a heavy leather satchel on the desk.

  Rosa stared at him.

  He looked a whole lot like her dad.

  “Hello, everyone,” said the teacher. He wore glasses and a beard (unlike Rosa’s father), walked with a limp and a silver-tipped cane (which was also unlike Rosa’s father), and was clearly alive (which was very unlike Rosa’s father). “My name is Mr. Lucius. I’ll be your history teacher this year.”

  He wrote Mr. Lucius on the board. It was an old slate chalkboard rather than a new, shiny, dry-erase whiteboard. The chalk made a squeaky rasp against the slate.

  Mr. Lucius took attendance. “Jasper Chevalier.”

  “Here,” Jasper said.

  “Rosa Díaz.”

  It isn’t him, she thought. Definitely not. Mr. Lucius talks differently and walks differently, and also he’s alive. This is normal. It happens all the time. People catch little glimpses of the dead in the faces of the living. Sometimes the dead are really there, hitching a ride and peeking out from behind a stranger’s face. But usually not. Usually we’re just trying too hard to see someone who isn’t there, not at all, definitely not.

  “Rosa Díaz?” the teacher asked again.

  Jasper kicked her foot.

  “Here,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” Mr. Lucius asked, smiling.

  “Not really,” Rosa answered honestly.

  But I am sure that my dad isn’t here, she thought. I’d know. If my father’s ghost were in this room and haunting me then I would definitely know.

  “Isn’t this supposed to be your Mom’s class?” Rosa whispered to Jasper. She needed to think about someone else’s parents rather than her own.

  “Mom is on sabbatical,” he explained.

  “Do you ever call her ‘Mom’ while you’re both at school?” Rosa asked. “Or do you have to call her ‘Mrs. Chevalier’?”

  “I have to call her ‘Mrs. Chevalier.’ And during the festival I always called her ‘your grace,’ or ‘your majesty,’ because she’s royalty there. Here she’s a teacher. And I’m a student. We’ve got roles to play.”

  Rosa wasn’t sure about her own role. Was she really a student, or an undercover specialist pretending to be a student? What was the difference? If playing the role of an actual teacher was pretty much the same as playing the queen of the Renaissance Festival, then maybe there wasn’t much difference between a real student and a pseudo-one. Rosa still felt out of place, as though misshelved and wearing the wrong dust jacket.

  Mr. Lucius took up the chalkboard eraser and tried to scrub away the notes from a previous class.

  All of those notes rewrote themselves.

  He tried again. The notes returned. More writing followed until the board covered its whole surface in a swirling mass of chalk.

  Rosa felt each moment of time fragment and separate from every other moment. The temperature dropped. She knew what that meant.

  The chalkboard is remembering, she thought. Every mark ever made on it is coming back. All the words, all the names, all the dates. All at once. The chalk looked like mist and fog swirling thick outside a window.

  Faces pressed against that surface from the other side. Their mouths moved silently, shaping words without voices.

  Mr. Lucius threw both arms around his face in a flailing panic. The eraser flew out of his hands and smacked hard against the chalkboard.

  All of the faces vanished. The board emptied itself and became blank again. Chalk dust filled the room in billowing clouds.

  The teacher coughed a couple of times. “Let’s spend this class period at the school library instead of in here. Everyone go research something about ancient Rome. Anything about ancient Rome. Just go.”

  Students bolted from the room.

  Unseen fingers tugged at Rosa’s hair as she went with them.

  Th
e school library turned out to be a dinky little place with few bookshelves and several desks full of ancient beige computers. Rosa stood in the doorway, horrified.

  “What’s wrong?” Jasper asked her.

  “This room and every single thing about it,” Rosa told him. “But I guess it’ll work as a sanctuary for our history class.” She dug a pinch of salt from her tool belt and sprinkled it over the threshold. “Show me where to find the principal’s office? I’m supposed to tell him about all the haunted things, so I should tell him about this. We can look for random trivia about Rome later.”

  6

  PRINCIPAL AHMED SAT FIDGETING BEHIND his desk. He clicked the button of his ballpoint pen several times. Then he wrote something on a pad of yellow paper and frowned at whatever it was that he had just written.

  Rosa and Jasper stood awkwardly in his office doorway.

  “Hello?” Rosa said.

  The principal dropped his notepad. “Hello, students. Mr. Chevalier. And Miss . . . Díaz, is it? Yes? Hello. Come in. How can I help you?”

  They came in and sat down.

  “Something just happened in the history classroom,” Rosa explained. “The chalkboard turned into a palimpsest.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Palimpsest,” she said again. “Like an old wax writing tablet. You can rub them smooth, but traces of the old writing are still there. The tablet remembered everything ever written on it. The chalkboard just did the same thing.”

  “I know what a palimpsest is,” said Principal Ahmed.

  “Oh,” said Rosa. “I thought maybe you didn’t.”

  “I’m just surprised that you did. Quite the vocabulary word for a child your age.”

  “Hmm.” Rosa bit back several things that she would have liked to say out loud. “I’ve always lived in libraries,” she said instead. “Isn’t my specialized oddness why you invited me to attend school this year?”

  “Yes,” the principal said. Click click click went the cap of his pen. “I suppose it is. Can you help us then? Make this stop?”

  “No,” Rosa said.

  Click click click. “Really? I was told that you’re an appeasement specialist. Practically a professional.”