The Twilight Prisoner (5 page)

Jack could hear Cora's screams, but they sounded far off and dreamlike. His fingers, which felt as long and unwieldy as tentacles, twisted around hers. Then suddenly, with a pop, a pungent animal smell filled the air, and Jack was sitting next to Cora in the dark on the lip of a small basin tucked into an alcove. A pair of paws loomed above them, and Jack flinched before he realized it was just a statue of a dancing bear standing on its hind legs.

Euri grinned. “That's why no one likes to take this fountain. The bear reminds them of Cerberus.”

Jack smiled as if to show he hadn't really been scared.

“What just happened?” asked Cora.

“We fountain-traveled,” said Jack. “The dead use the city's fountains to travel aboveground for the night.”

He stood up and looked around. Strange sounds filled the air—braying laughter, spine-tingling roars, high-pitched nonsensical chatter. In front of them was a series of brick arches topped with a clock; on a balcony beneath it, Jack could see the silhouettes of animals: a kangaroo playing horns, a penguin playing a drum, a goat playing panpipes, a hippopotamus playing a violin. It was the Delacorte Clock.

“We're in Central Park,” Cora said with a puzzled look.

Jack nodded. “In the zoo.” He had walked through it many times on the way home from Chapman but had never seen it at night.

A gate creaked open and a living zookeeper, his head bobbing to the music on his headphones, exited the seal enclosure with a large pail.

“He's going to see us!” Cora said, looking around for a place to hide.

“No, it's okay,” said Jack. “He can't. Remember, we're still technically a part of the underworld, so no one living can see us.”

Cora watched as the zookeeper walked right past them. Even though he stepped through Jack's foot, his eyes never once shifted in their direction. As soon as he passed, Cora pulled out her cell phone. “I want to call my mom.”

“She won't be able to hear you,” said Euri.

But Cora was frantically pushing the power button on her phone. “It's dead!”

“Phones don't work in the underworld,” Jack explained gently. “But we'll be back before she even knows you're gone.”

“She needs to be able to reach me,” said Cora.

“Why?” asked Euri.

“Because she does!”

Something bayed from the corner of the zoo. A moment of silence followed before the rest of the animals began to shriek and roar in a deafening cacophony.

Jack turned to Euri. “What was that?”

“New exhibit. Three-headed dog. Let's go.”

Euri darted into the air, and Jack grabbed Cora's hand and followed. He could hear Cora suck in her breath as they flew over the Delacorte Clock, their feet grazing the animal band.

“Where should we go?” he asked Euri.

“Probably into the city for a little while,” she said, steering them swiftly away from the zoo.

Cora looked uncertainly back over her shoulder. “And then we can go back to that stream, right?”

Euri nodded. “But we should travel back through another fountain.” She began to fly west, across the park, sailing higher and higher.

As they rose after her, Cora looked down. “What if I fall?” she asked in a shaky voice.

“You won't,” said Jack. “Just hold my hand and enjoy the view.”

Beneath them, dark thickets of trees, their leaves still clinging to the branches, gave way to patches of yellow light that illuminated stone bridges and meandering roads, empty playgrounds and shadowy statues. A twinkling line of apartment buildings and luxury hotels encircled the park and beyond them, higher in the sky, helicopters with blue lights darted like dragonflies. Cora's hand was clammy and Jack could feel it pulsing in his own. Below, he caught sight of Bethesda Fountain and flew down to show Cora the ghosts streaming out from beneath the feet of the winged statue of the Angel of the Waters. Hundreds at a time burst into the air in translucent geysers.

Cora's face softened as she tilted her head back to watch. “Every night they do this?”

“Every night,” said Jack.

A few child ghosts waved at them and they waved back.

“Good times,” remarked Euri with a sour expression. “But there's a guard floating toward the fountain.”

She shot into the sky as Jack pulled Cora up after her.

“Wait!” Cora cried, looking down at the terrace.

“What?” Jack asked.

“I think I just saw Austin flying with another ghost!”

Jack looked back just in time to catch the receding silhouettes of a tall figure with spiky hair and a heavy-set ghost. His stomach flip-flopped. “That couldn't be him.”

“It looked exactly like him!”

Jack felt annoyed that Cora cared. “But he made it back,” he reminded her. “He's probably at his apartment by now.”

“Are you sure?”

“He's fine,” Jack insisted. But he wished he felt more certain.

Euri joined them. “What's wrong?”

“Cora thinks she saw Austin fly out of the fountain,” Jack explained.

Euri dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “He went back. Trust me. You think he wanted to hang around in the underworld?”

Cora gave her an exasperated look. “You don't even know him.”

“Do
you
want to hang around in the underworld?”

“No,” Cora admitted.

“Well, just forget about it, then,” said Euri. “There are a lot of spirits here. Some of them are bound to look like people you know.”

Jack tried to feel reassured. Euri wouldn't let some living kid wander around the underworld. She liked the living. She would have tried to protect him. Cora must have just seen someone who looked like Austin—maybe even a distant ancestor. He touched Cora's shoulder with his free hand. “Don't worry. Austin's fine. And you will be, too. I'll make sure of it.”

He turned and saw Euri was staring at them with a frown. Wayward strands of hair angrily poked up out of her head and her hands were bunched into fists. He realized that he had once said nearly the same thing to Euri—and then failed her. He dropped his hand from Cora's shoulder.

“I have an errand to do,” Euri said brusquely before flying ahead of them and out of the park.

“An errand?” Cora said to Jack as they darted after Euri. “
Now
?” She peered down over the snarl of yellow cabs and buses on Central Park West. “You'd better not let me fall.”

“I won't.” He shook his head, puzzled. “I thought she'd go to the East Side. That's where her parents' apartment is. She used to haunt it.”

“Well, she's going to the Museum of Natural History,” said Cora. She pointed at Euri, who was hovering above a bronze statue of Teddy Roosevelt atop a horse. Behind her was a building with four enormous Roman-style columns, topped with more statues of scientists and explorers. Giant banners advertising the latest exhibits hung above three padlocked doors. A stream of ghosts disappeared through them.

Jack floated up the stairs with Cora, following Euri through the doors. He felt Cora's grip tighten. “It's okay,” he said as he pulled her through. “Look, we're inside.”

They were standing in an echoing exhibit hall with a soaring vaulted ceiling. In the center of the hall were towering dinosaur skeletons. Ghosts in white lab coats, tweed jackets, and khakis and pith helmets scurried around them, greeting one another, drawing calculations in the air and waving copies of what appeared to be scientific journals. One group in baggy pants, white shirts, and brown fedoras floated alongside a barosaurus skeleton, taking measurements.

Jack expected Euri to continue on to another hall, but instead she sailed up and disappeared through a tiny door near the top of the ceiling that Jack had never noticed before. Jack pulled Cora into the air and they darted through the closed door after her. They followed her down a stairway and into a room with about twenty cabinets on rails. “Where are we?” asked Cora.

“It looks like some sort of storage room,” said Jack. He pulled open one of the cabinet doors. It contained several drawers of carefully catalogued dead beetles. “I think we're in the entomology section.”

But Euri didn't stop there. She continued on through another door, past some elevators, and into a windowless hallway, lined with offices. On the floor of the hallway were glass tanks filled with tarantulas and what looked like several different kinds of cockroaches including a large, wingless, brown one. The label on its tank read “Madagascar Hissing Cockroach.” Euri dipped her hand into it.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

Euri turned to face them. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her hair looked slightly charged. “Can I have a word with you, Jack?” she said, pointing grimly toward one of the offices.

“Um, sure.”

“I'll wait here,” Cora offered.

Euri didn't thank her.

Jack followed Euri into an office with a couple of windows. It was filled with colonies of bedbugs in small jars. Jack stood across from Euri. They were finally alone together but it felt all wrong. “What is it?”

Euri suddenly gave him an uncertain look. “Nothing.”

“Then why are you ...?”

“You didn't call,” Euri interrupted with a forced smile. “You didn't write.”

“Is this about Cora?”

“Cora?” said Euri as if she'd never heard the name before.

Jack felt the blood rush to his face. “I didn't hear from you for months. I could see other ghosts, but the only one I wanted to see was you. I tried to contact you through the Ouija board. I went to Central Park practically every day looking for you. I even tried to find a way back . . .”

For a moment, Euri's arms uncrossed themselves and the muscles in her face relaxed. But then she scowled and said, “Until you gave up and started hanging around with her!” She jabbed her finger in the direction of the door.

Jack began to feel exasperated. He took a deep breath. “Euri, I'm alive. You have to understand—”

“You're not really alive,” Euri interrupted, her voice growing louder. “You can fly by yourself. You can see ghosts. You're a freak! But have it your way.” Her pale eyes filled with tears. “Because I'm going!”

“Euri,” Jack protested. But it was too late. With an angry swing of her ponytail, she flew out through one of the windows.

Jack floated back through the office door to Cora.

“What happened to Euri?” she asked.

“She left,” he said, absently. For a moment, he felt guilty. Euri had been loyal to him, waiting for him to come back, and he had abandoned her for a living girl. But then he thought about what Euri had said—how she had called him a freak. Was that really what she thought of him?

“We'd better follow her,” said Cora.

Jack cast an annoyed glance back over his shoulder. “Why?”

A worried furrow appeared in Cora's brow. “Do you know how to get back to that stream?”

As they flew over Central Park after Euri, Jack silently defended himself.
I'm not a freak
. But he didn't feel reassured. The starless sky glowed a faint, eerie pink from the city lights and, as he skirted the tops of trees, racing to keep Euri in sight, flocks of starlings burst from the branches, their wings beating in a collective panic.

“It's me,” Cora said. “Euri thinks we're—”

“No,” Jack interrupted. “It's not that.” Cora was right—of course Euri was jealous. But he couldn't bear to hear Cora dismiss the idea of them being together before he had the chance to tell her he liked her. “She's just being ...” He hesitated. “Euri.”

“How did she die?”

“She killed herself.”

He thought Cora would be surprised, but instead she just sighed. “I could never do that to my mom.”

“Your mom?”

For a moment, Cora looked flustered. “I mean I wouldn't do it because I like being alive. But my mom, she's . . . It's just the two of us. My dad left us when I was little.”

Jack nodded, hoping Cora would say more. He realized that he had never met her mom—he had only heard Cora talk to her on the phone.

A pained look crossed Cora's face. “If anything ever happened to her, I'd die. I'd keep on living, because that's what she'd want me to do, but inside I'd be dead.”

Jack thought about his own mom. “For a little while you'd feel that way. But not forever.”

“My mom was the one who found out about Chapman,” Cora interrupted, as if she hadn't heard him. “She told me I was smart, that I could go to school anywhere. She even called Mr. O'Quinn and told him that they should recruit me. She would do anything for me. She's the only person in the world I can say that about.”

Jack looked at the string of streetlights below that illuminated Literary Walk—a long tree-lined promenade south of Bethesda fountain—and made it look like a tiny landing strip. He wished they could touch down there and he could tell Cora that he would do anything for her, too.

“Why did Euri kill herself?” she suddenly asked.

Jack thought for a minute. “She didn't get along with her parents.”

“A lot of people don't,” said Cora sympathetically.

“But that doesn't sound like enough of a reason to kill yourself.”

Jack had to admit that Cora was right. He had always thought there was more to Euri's story. “I guess she's a bit of a mystery.”

“Is her name really Euri? Like Eurydice?”

“She took the name after she died,” Jack explained. “When she was alive, her name was Deirdre.”

Cora pointed to Euri's silhouette as it veered onto Fifth Avenue. “Do you think we're going to her parents' apartment now?”

Jack shook his head, perplexed. “I think we've already passed it.”

They continued to follow Euri as she flew due east, over the Chapman School and Park Avenue and toward tall apartment buildings on the easternmost edge of the city. As soon as they hurtled over these buildings—Cora clutching his hand tight—they could see the snaking line of red brake lights on the FDR Drive, and beyond it, the dark expanse of the East River. Jack knew that New York ghosts couldn't leave the island of Manhattan, but he almost wondered whether Euri was trying to.

Then, just as she neared the river, she veered sharply south, racing over the cars stuck on the crowded highway below and into a different type of traffic—hundreds of ghosts merging and shifting on an aerial freeway.

“Hold on,” said Jack as they joined the throng, making sure to stay a dozen or more ghosts behind Euri so she wouldn't notice them. Many of the ghosts were aggressive fliers, cutting in front of Jack and Cora, and nearly causing them to crash.

“On your left, Jack!” Cora shrieked as a ghost in an African tunic nearly rammed into them.

“Watch out!” she shouted as a naked baby in an enormous lace bonnet swerved in front of them.

“I saw the baby,” Jack muttered. Cora, he realized, was a backseat flier, and she was making him tense.

But the ghostly traffic moved quickly and they sped through Turtle Bay and past the United Nations. At Houston Street, Euri hung a right and moved westward into the city, flying low past clumps of living teenagers from the projects and hipsters in T-shirts, past the Jewish delis and high-end clothing boutiques and cramped-looking bars. Euri turned onto Ludlow Street and sailed through the window of a four-story brick tenement. Jack put his finger to his lips as he and Cora landed on the fire escape and peeked into the apartment.

The apartment was one of the smallest Jack had ever seen—a single room with a stove and sink at one end and a bed at the other. The phone was unplugged and clothes were scattered across the floor. An unshaven man sat slumped on the bed, a notebook beside him, plucking at a guitar. He was very pale and had dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn't slept in a long time. “Enjoy this double destruction. . . .” he sang in a whiny tenor.

But before he could finish the line, Euri pulled on one of his guitar strings until it snapped. “Oh, man,” he said as the string sprang into the air. “Not again.”

With a sigh, he stood up and walked to a guitar case propped against the wall. As he knelt down and pulled a coil of wire from inside it, Euri kicked the case. It fell over and hit him on the head. The man rubbed his head and laughed in an eerie way.

“I can't believe it,” Jack said turning to Cora. “Euri'sa poltergeist.”

“A what?” whispered Cora.

“A poltergeist,” Jack repeated. “Normally the dead can't affect the living when they haunt. But if something tragic separated them, the dead can do things to a living person like . . . well, like that.” He pointed back inside the apartment. Euri had flown over to the sink and turned on the faucet. The man didn't get up, just dully watched the water blasting into the sink.

“What's wrong with him?” Jack whispered.

“I don't know,” said Cora. “Hemust be someone Euri knew when she was alive.”

“He must be. Otherwise she wouldn't be able to haunt him like this.”

Cora peered at the man. “How old do you think he is?”

Jack shrugged. “Thirty, maybe?”

“No, he's younger. Maybe twenty-two or twentythree,” said Cora. “And Euri doesn't age, right? When did she die?”

Jack understood. “You're right. They must be around the same age.”

It was hard to believe that now, though, since the man's face was lean and defined with the beginnings of a scruffy beard. Euri, in her school uniform and messy ponytail, looked half his age, but Jack knew if she were still alive she, too, would be in her early twenties. As she zoomed over to the light switch and turned it on and off, Jack wondered why the man didn't run out screaming into the night. Instead he sat quietly with his guitar in the flickering light. Euri looked annoyed by his lack of reaction. She reached into the pocket of her jacket and threw something on the floor. It began to hiss loudly like a tiny steam pipe and then quickly scampered into a pile of dirty clothes.

“Was that a cockroach?” Cora asked recoiling from the window.

“A Madagascar Hissing Cockroach,” Jack corrected.

Cora screwed up her face. “That's nasty!”

Jack tried to look disgusted, too, but he couldn't suppress a smile. “I guess we know why Euri went to the museum.” He pointed to another hardy-looking roach clinging to the side of the sink and hissing furiously. “Something tells me this isn't the first time she's donated a specimen.”

The living man either ignored the new cockroach or didn't see it. He continued to sit stooped and listless over his guitar.

“I hate you!” Euri screamed.

“This isn't right,” Cora whispered. “We've got to stop her.”

“I . . . HATE . . . YOU!” Euri shrieked, forcing Jack to cover his ears. He peered at a group of living hipsters hanging out on a stoop below. Not a single one looked up.

“I... HATE ...”

Cora let go of Jack's hand and, before he could stop her, she opened the window and scrambled through it. Grabbing Euri by the shoulders, she spoke quietly but firmly. “Stop it!”

Jack flinched, expecting a fight. But, to his surprise, Euri's angry red-faced expression changed into something resembling shame. She looked down at the floor. The man on the bed stood up, turned off the gushing faucet and, with a troubled sigh, closed the window that Cora had left open. For a moment, no one spoke.

Suddenly, a small boy flew through the closed window with a canvas bag on his back, waving a newspaper in his hand. “New Underworld Security Alert!” he shouted. “Mann Down exclusive! Read all about it in a special edition of
The Underworld Times
!!”

The boy tossed a paper to each of them and then looked around at the trashed apartment. “You haven't been haunting, have you?”

“No,” said Jack and Euri simultaneously. The newsboy winked at them and flew back through the window. “Jack,” said Cora, clutching his arm and pointing to the column.

LIVING AVENGER ON THE LOOSE?

A MANN DOWN EXCLUSIVE!

Mann Down has just learned that the underworld security team has issued a new alert after receiving information about a potential “living threat.”

Is the security team finally admitting that the Living Avenger is running rampant through the underworld?

Speaking with Mann Down earlier this evening, newly appointed Security Commissioner, Stephen Kennedy, refused to comment, instead urging the public to remain calm but vigilant. “We have stationed guards at all streams and ports of entry into and out of the underworld for the next four days,” he said.

Cora sank to the floor. “I can't stay here for four days!”

“Actually you can't stay here for more than—”

Before Euri could finish the sentence, Jack shot her a fierce look. Cora looked frantic enough as it was. If she found out that they would automatically be dead after more than three days in the underworld, she would really panic.

“For more than what?” asked Cora.

“Euri means we can't stay in this apartment for more than a few hours,” Jack hastily explained. “We should go somewhere else.” Jack silently reread the headline and turned to Euri. “What happened to Clubber?”

Clubber Williams was the old head of the guards. During Jack's last visit to the underworld, Clubber had tried to kill Jack by tossing him out a fourth-story window.

“They fired him for unprofessional conduct,” said Euri. “And for not catching you. Kennedy was the city's police commissioner in the 1950s—he cracked down on juvenile delinquents.”

“Who's the Living Avenger?” Cora asked.

“Um, I think that might be me,” Jack said. He tried to give Cora a reassuring smile, but she was busy frantically pressing buttons on her cell phone.

“Neat name,” said Euri. “Do you have a mask, too?”

“Very funny.”

“Enjoy this double destruction,” the man screeched while strumming his restrung guitar. Jack felt like cutting the guitar strings himself.

Cora finally gave up on her phone. “I don't even know what time it is!”

Jack pulled Dylan Thomas's watch out of his pocket and tipped the face so Cora could see it. “If you take a watch into the underworld it will stop working, but this one is from here. It's almost eleven.”

Cora waved it away. “I'm supposed to be home by now. My mom is going to freak!”

The man stopped playing and leaned his chin on the top of his guitar, as if Cora's despair had spread to him.

“It'll be okay,” Jack stuttered. “Look, I'm sure it will be. There must be another way out that the guards don't know about.”

“But you said we had to go back to the living world the way we came,” Cora said.

“We know there's at least one secret way back that allows you to break the rule,” said Jack. “I took it last time. And if there's one, there must be more. Right, Euri?”

He hoped Euri would say something positive, but she just shrugged. “You mean that storm drain you tried to take me out last time? The guards are all over that now.”

Cora stood up and grabbed Jack's arm. “You've got to take me home.”

“I will,” said Jack soothingly. “We'll figure it out.”

“No, I mean right now.” Cora's voice began to rise as she tightened her grip around his arm. Jack had never seen her like this. “I need to see my mom
right now
!” she repeated.

“You're wasting your time,” said Euri. “Your mom won't be able to see—”

“I'll go myself!” Cora interrupted. “I'll walk.” She ran to the window, opened it with a bang, and climbed out onto the fire escape.

“Wait!” Jack called after her. “I'll take you.”

“You're making a big mistake,” said Euri.

Jack cast a sorrowful glance back at her. “I already did.” He flew through the window after Cora.