We Fight for Hecate and Also Dead Fish Generally, attacking children with a sword is considered a no-no. Even if they are possessed by angry ghosts, you won’t get any points on the heroism leaderboards.
This made me worried about wading into the army of the dead. Trash
zombies? No problem. I sliced and diced my way through them, reducing them to mounds of plastic bags, fruit rinds, and greasy cardboard. Spirits in empty costumes? Also no problem. Die, Disney Princesses! Die, generic Star Wars characters! Unfortunately, this only slowed the spirits down.
They drifted up from their ruined shells and began re-forming as soon as I moved on to the next shambling group of baddies.
The possessed humans were trickier to deal with. Normally, my Celestial bronze blade would pass harmlessly through mortals. It was meant for
monster killing. But I didn’t want to risk hurting the spirits’ hosts. I tried to work around them, leaving them to Hecuba and Nope, who jumped on the delivery bikers and taxi drivers, knocking them down and subduing them with kisses. That would teach the ghosts!
Grover helped with the sorting. He danced around the edge of the mob, playing his panpipes. Once he made it to the gate, he skipped backward toward the park, blasting out the Ghostbusters theme song, which was guaranteed to enrage anyone with mortal ears. The possessed humans began peeling off from the other ghouls and staggering after our Pan-powered piper.
Gale ran around the yard, biting ankles and chattering insults, but this didn’t seem to have much effect. Annabeth held the doors, using the torches to
drive back any ghosts who got close. I imagined she was concentrating on one simple command: NOPE! Because that seemed to be the word of the week.
Some of the trash ghouls managed to climb the facade of the house. They rattled the windows and shook the iron filigree, but they weren’t able to
cause any real damage before disintegrating under the power of Hecate’s torches and Annabeth’s formidable nope-ness.
So far, Annabeth seemed to be holding her own. I knew how much those torches were taking out of her, though. We didn’t have much time.
Unfortunately, the ghosts kept re-forming as fast as we cut them down.
They could probably do this all night. We could not. These dead didn’t seem to have the same potency as Hecuba’s Trojans. When they touched me, I didn’t collapse into a dream vision. I saw snippets of things, but mostly it just hurt—like being snapped on the skin with a rubber band over and over and over. At first, it didn’t bother me much, but after a while, the pain started to build. Gale’s anti-ghoul salve had clearly worn off. I wished I could drink more nectar, even if it was candy-corn flavored, but I’d left the bandolier on the porch with Annabeth.
Meanwhile, the only possessed mortal seemingly unaffected by Grover’s
theme music was Policeman Pete. He’d probably never seen the Ghostbuster sequels and so didn’t have any cultural context for the rage they inspired. He trotted back and forth on his black horse, directing his troops of Mandalorians, Cinderellas, and garbage mounds. His rapier/baton flickered at his side. His eyes glowed in his borrowed jack-o’-lantern face.
His trash- and costume-minions closed around me. Their smoky gray fingers slithered across my face and arms. Every time they made contact, I felt that sharp snap of pain. My whole body was as raw as an open blister. I was slowing down. Their voices echoed in my skull. Hate. Cold. Unworthy to live.
They were a ton of fun, these dead guys.
My knees were ready to buckle. If I went down under a mob of angry ghosts, I knew I wasn’t going to get up again.
Then a different voice slipped into my brain. Hey, kid, tag us in.
I didn’t know how, but it was Janet the eel.
I looked around. Of course there were no morays in the front yard. That was ridiculous.
We’re still in our tank, Seaweed Brain, said Janet.
You don’t get to call me that, I thought back.
Okay, then, Alley Boy. Tag us in!
What do you mean?
You want to talk, or you want help?
At the moment, help sounded better. Okay, sure, I thought. But how?
The eels were all about show, don’t tell.
From the manse’s entrance, four streaks of yellow shot out around Annabeth like streamers from a confetti cannon.
Charge! thought Janet.
For Hecate! Fortunato replied.
For dead fish! Larry said.
For more dead fish! said Bigwig.
The most disturbing thing was that I could distinguish the voice of each eel.
The door knockers cheered them on. “Go, my eels of doom!” “Go, my seventeen snakes of the apocalypse!” “KEY LIME PIE!”
Each eel was encased in a sheath of water. They zipped through the air as easily as if they were in the open sea. Was this Poseidon’s doing? Hecate’s magic? Some unholy union of the two? I had no idea. I guessed moray eels could pick up all sorts of tricks from living in Hecate’s mansion and having their mucus scraped to make potions.
They wove through the ghostly crowd, boring holes in the chests of Star Wars characters and Disney Princesses alike. They seemed to know better
than to kill the mortals, but getting slammed in the face by a sixty-pound eel could put down even the hardiest New York taxi driver.
I felt a spark of optimism. Maybe we could turn the tide! My hopefulness didn’t last long.
The eels had no better luck banishing the spirits than we did: They could cause chaos. They could knock delivery drivers unconscious. Yet the dead simply rose again in columns of gray dust and looked for new hosts.
Annabeth fell to one knee. She held the torches aloft and yelled
“BACK!” with as much energy as she could muster, but she was losing strength.
Grover had done too good a job attracting the possessed families of trick-or- treaters. They were now chasing him along the sidewalk across the street, trying to surround him. He played a few more bars of the Ghostbusters
theme song, yelled “Help!” then continued to play. As slow as the possessed mortals were, I doubted my friend could evade them much longer. Hecuba and Nope panted as they leaped from ghoul to ghoul. So much body- slamming and kissing took a lot of energy. Gale burrowed through the trash ghosts, eating all the rotten fruit she could find, but they hardly seemed to notice.
I had to change tactics. Maybe if I struck off the head of this ghostly army
…
“Pete!” I yelled. “Get your ghosts off my lawn!”
I figured my buddy Geras, the god of old age, would approve of my cranky shouting. I also suspected I might not be seeing Geras again, since I was likely to die right now in my prime. (Also, if this was my prime, that was a whole ’nother level of sad.)
Officer Stuyvesant turned his horse in my direction. His ax-murderer jack- o’-lantern mask grinned … because that’s all it could do. He raised his rapier/baton and clopped toward me in a leisurely fashion. He was in no hurry. The longer we living beings fought, the weaker we got.
I sliced and kicked and punched my way toward the horseman. Each time a ghost touched me, I lost more strength. Their emotions and memories washed over me. I saw myself racked by pain on my deathbed. I felt a coarse noose being slipped over my neck while a crowd jeered. A musket ball
ripped through my padded woolen doublet, piercing my chest, and blood soaked through my clothes. Good times in ye olde New Amsterdam.
I must have sliced through enough costumed ghouls to fill a discount Halloween warehouse. They just kept coming. My Celestial bronze blade didn’t seem to do anything but make them angrier.
I searched for some kind of water source I could use …. Sprinklers?
Sewer lines? But I was already too weak. A sword, stubbornness, and cranky comments would have to do.
Behind me I heard Annabeth yelling at ghosts to back off. At least that meant she was still conscious. The Moray Eel Aerial Squadron zoomed around the yard, causing damage and consternation among the ghouls.
Grover kept piping his theme song.
I could do this. I waded through the dead. My teeth chattered. My feet felt like ice blocks.
’Twas a mistake to summon me, Stuyvesant’s voice whispered in my mind.
On this night, of all nights. Witchcraft and devilry. Thinking you could
control us with my mother’s torches. She is the queen of abominations. Her servants must all burn.
I’d heard of earworms, but his voice was more like a brain-eel.
(Apologies to my moray friends.) It locked its jaws around my cerebellum and refused to let go. I didn’t understand everything Pete said. His accent was antique, his English heavily skewed, but there was something very
New York about his tone: hard, disdainful, unimpressed. I could easily
imagine him banging on a car hood and yelling, Watch where yer going! I’m haunting here!
I kept marching toward him, my sword raised. As I got closer, I could see the police officer’s eyes, glassy and unresponsive behind the jack-o’-lantern mask. I tried to reach out to the horse’s mind, urging him to throw his rider.
Usually horses like me—it’s a Poseidon thing. But this one wasn’t interested, maybe because he was currently possessed.
Manhattan has become a monstrosity, Stuyvesant said. This is my mother’s legacy. Crossroads have ever been her domain, and all her roads lead to evil!
Clearly the dude had some issues to work through, but I imagined he would see therapy as another form of witchcraft.
Stuyvesant swept his rapier at my head. I met the blade with Riptide, but I was more exhausted than I realized, or maybe Stuyvesant was just too strong. My sword flew out of my hand.
I faltered, barely avoiding another rapier slice.
“Percy!” Annabeth yelled. Her voice sounded miles away.
The ghosts piled on top of me, dragging me down with sheer numbers. I fell backward onto the cranium-stone path, looking up at the black horse now towering above me.
Die, said Stuyvesant’s voice in my head. Join us in the grave.
His horse reared, then brought down both front hooves to crush my face.
