Zara, The Ghost Zapper

by Katrina Kahler

  All of this was so new and so strange, I just smiled and followed my friend.

  Lots and lots of tiny pale headstones filled the Henderson house’s backyard.

  “Ms. Henderson had almost thirty cats,” Maria said.

  “Why?”

  Maria shrugged. “Lonely, I guess.” She pointed to the back door. “You lead.”

  Holding my yo-yo in one hand and my ghost zapper in the other, I pushed the backdoor open. I forced myself to ignore my better judgment and that knot in my gut. I peered in through the crack in the door. I saw a pretty average kitchen: sink, counter, cupboards. Of course, most of the doors had fallen off the cupboards, cracks laced the counter, even from here I could tell the sink glowed green with moss. Looking up I saw the ceiling covered in cobwebs.

  “Gross,” I said walking into the room. Turning to Maria, “This place is even messier than your roooooooooooooooooom!” I said as my legs slipped out from under me.

  Next thing I knew, I laid prone on the floor, stuck in yellow goop. “Gross!” I yelled.

  “That’s a good sign,” Maria said, stepping over me into the room.

  I sat up, looking at the yellow goop I had slipped in. “What is this stuff?”

  “Ghost spit,” Maria said as if I should already know that. “Ectoplasm if you want to get all science-like. Like I said, it’s a good sign. It means my senses were right. This is a ghost sanctuary.”

  I stood up and wiped some of the yellowish goo off of me. It felt like a cross between oil, Jell-O, and mud. “Sanctuary? So, there’s more than one ghost?”

  Maria nodded. “Yep, bright girl.”

  We walked through the kitchen into the living room; at least, what used to be the living room. Only a couple of broken wooden chairs and a moss covered sofa remained in the room. On top of the sofa and chairs sat lots of transparent cats: fat cats, skinny cats, Siamese cats, spotted cats, cats missing tails, long cats, short cats.

  “Apparently the cats didn’t feel like leaving, yet,” Maria said.

  If the cats saw us, they didn’t seem concerned. They all simply lay and sat there like cats do, slowly and contently purring. Somehow I sensed they knew we were there and they just didn’t care. Now that scared me.

  “What cats?” a voice said.

  “Can ghost cats talk?” I said.

  “No idea,” Maria said with a slight tremble.

  A man stood up from behind the couch. He looked very old; in his sixties, I’d guess. He was quite well dressed and carried a walking stick, just like Grandpa. He had a white moustache and matching hair. I had seen him wandering around town pushing a shopping cart.

  “I’m not a ghost or a cat,” he said. “But that still doesn’t give you permission to be in my new home.”

  Chapter 6: Home Sweet Home?

  “Ah, sorry. Didn’t mean to be trespassing in your home,” I told the strange old man.

  “His name is Bob Brown and it’s not really his home,” Maria said. “He’s just sleeping here during the day lately.”

  The man gave us a toothy grin and pointed to himself with one thumb. “Yep, that’s me, Bob,” he said “I just found this place a couple of days ago. It called out to me. I like it.”

  I heard Maria say inside my head, “He can’t see the ghost cats. Only ghost hunters and sensors can usually see ghosts. Still, he can feel them, maybe…”

  “Hey, you’re thinking thoughts to me!”

  “Yeah, we can communicate telepathically,” Maria said. “Probably should have mentioned that sooner.”

  “Would have been nice,” I said out loud.

  “What would have been nice?” Bob asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Kids today! So impolite!” Bob said crankily.

  “You have to leave now, Bob,” Maria ordered.

  Bob stood his ground. Crossing his arms, he said, “Nope. Not done with my catnap, yet. A man needs his beauty rest.”

  “He’s immune to my powers,” Maria thought to me.

  “Of course he is,” I said.

  “Of course I am what?” Bob asked. “I don’t think you two kids are right in the head.” Pointing directly at me he said, “And why are you carrying a yo-yo and a pen?”

  “It’s a laser pointer,” I corrected.

  He took a step backwards. “You’re starting to freak me out.”

  All the cats in the room now stood up. Their soft purring became faster, louder and angrier. They started arching their backs and puffing out their fur, trying to make themselves look bigger to scare us like cats do. They didn’t really look any bigger, but they still succeeded in scaring us - mostly me.

  I knew I had to do something pronto. Luckily, Grandma always taught me to be extra alert in any situation. I counted twenty-one ghost cats in the room. Time to start sending them back to where they belonged. Wherever that may be.

  I aimed my zapper at a grey cat stalking towards me. I pushed the button. A beam of red light shot from my zapper to the cat.

  The cat disappeared in a poof. The other cats started to yowl in panic. Bob looked around the room, I wondered if he could sense what was going on.

  The cats came at me while Bob flung his arms over his eyes.

  “Are you crazy!” Bob shouted. “You could blind somebody with that thing!”

  No time to answer Bob. Not that I really had an answer, anyhow. I needed to take out the cats as quickly as possible. Luckily for me (and luck is a kind of loose term when you’re covered in ghost goo and surrounded by ghost cats) the zapper felt and responded very much like a video game joystick. I just needed to point and click. I had gotten very good at the target shooting games. Now it finally made sense why Grandma had given me all those games.

  I eliminated five of the cats before they even knew what hit them. I smiled with each ghost I zapped. Who knew ghost hunting could be so enjoyable?

  “Watch out for that one!” Maria shouted, pointing down by my right leg.

  Sure enough, a Siamese cat crept across the floor towards me. I aimed. I clicked. The cat disappeared in a poof.

  Two cats came leaping at me.

  “Duck!” Maria shouted.

  Zap! Zap! I blasted the two cats before they reached me.

  I turned my head towards Maria. “No need to duck when you’re as fast as I am!” I bragged.

  Suddenly, a sharp throbbing pain tore through the back of my left leg. Turning, I saw a cat down there, claws extended, whacking me.

  I aimed and fired before the cat could hit me again. The cat disappeared. I bent down and rubbed my leg where the cat had nailed me.

  “That actually hurt! A lot!” I said.

  “Of course it did,” Maria said. “These cats are hitting you with ghost energy. It’s like really being hit. Now do you see why it’s dangerous to have so many ghosts together?”

  “Wow, the ghost cat that keeps attacking my foot is really getting annoying and it actually really hurts!” I said, blowing away two more approaching cats.

  “I can help that,” Maria said. Bending down, she touched the spot on my leg where the cat had whacked me. The pain stopped. “How’s that?” she asked.

  I sighed, relieved of the pain. “Better.”

  “I blocked your brain from receiving any pain signals,” Maria said, as if she was talking about the weather.

  “Oh, okay. Still good. I think.”

  Not only had the pain stopped, but the cats had halted their attacks. I had eliminated at least half of them. The others stood back, next to Bob, eyeing me. Bob, for his part, still had his hands covering his face.

  “I think these ghost cats know they’ve met their match!” I said.

  Maria shook her head. “No,” she said slowly. “They’re regrouping…”

  The cats purred and started circling around me, faster and faster. As their circling went faster the purring grew louder. The cats looked like a blurry streak!

  Nope. Didn’t like the looks of this at all.

  “Shoot th
em! Quick!” Maria shouted, her voice cracking with worry.

  The ghost cats spinning around me made it extremely easy to target and hit them. I basically only had to aim my zapper in the same place, click the trigger, and simply let the cats run into the beam. The ghost cats may have been scary, but they didn’t appear to be any smarter than normal cats. In a snap I had taken care of all the cat ghosts.

  I grinned. “That was easy!”

  “Too easy…” Maria cautioned.

  I shook my head. “Maria, there is no such thing as too easy. Who’s to say that I’m not just a naturally gifted ghost hunter?”

  Bob removed his hands from his face. “There’s something weird about you two! I’m out of here, bye girls,” he said as he departed out the door.

  My grandma had taught me well. Even though I really didn’t realize she had been teaching me at the time. From all her stories I knew the only way to get rid of a ghost was to zap them with a special laser or bop them between the eyes with a magic yo-yo. Now, the magic yo-yo really made sense.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Maria pointed behind me. In one quick fluid motion, I spun around and zapped another cat ghost with my laser. It just smiled at me, it didn’t poof away. This ghost was different...I knew that the only way to defeat it was to use my yo-yo. I flicked my yo-yo out towards its head. This cat certainly wasn’t a push over! It waited till the last instant then stepped to the right, sending my yo-yo whizzing harmlessly by it. The yo-yo snapped right back into my hand, only the cat moved like a super cheetah now. It leapt on top of me before I could attempt another shot.

  It grabbed my yo-yo arm, making it impossible for me to hit it again. Having taken a lot of karate, I knew what to do when something held onto me. I hiked my knee up quickly at its stomach. The cat ghost saw my move coming, though, and escaped my knee by springing into the air. Using the momentum from its body and catching me off guard, it jumped onto my back.

  “The reflexes of a cat ghost are pretty awesome,” Maria said to me.

  “Kind of noticed!” I groaned.

  Maria reacted fast. After all, she had taken all those karate lessons with me. She leapt at ghost cat, screaming, “Hiyaaaaaaa!”

  Maria hit it...square on its bottom with a flying kick that could have stopped an angry bull. It barely noticed her karate kick...this cat ghost was strong!

  “Me...ow!” it said, pointing at Maria. Her kick hadn’t stopped it, but the kick certainly did distract it. It had released my yo-yo hand when it pointed at Maria. I flicked the yo-yo at Cat’s head again. He ducked out of the way and flashed an awful smile.

  “Me...ow, you can’t beat me. Me...ow, I can see you twitch before you even think.”

  This called for a different course of action.

  Maria pointed to a barf green curtain draped over a window. “The curtain!” she shouted.

  “It’s hideous! So what?” I shouted back.

  “Use it!” she shouted.

  Ah, that Maria is a sharp one.

  “Silly girl and silly girl. Curtain no stop us. Me...ow we play with curtain.”

  I concentrated on the curtain, setting my mind on pulling it towards us with all my might. Sure enough, it went from hanging limp on the rod to straight. Then the curtain came flying across the room towards us.

  This ghost cat didn’t seem concerned at all. It had a huge smile across its face.

  “Now me...ow, I have you trapped!” it cried.

  “Yeah, yeah, you got me. Now what?” I asked.

  “Me...ow, get out of my house!” it demanded. Suddenly, his eyes and smile widened, becoming unnaturally huge and gaping. “I’m too clever for you little girl!” it said.

  Maria leapt at the ghost cat one more time. I’m pretty certain she only did this because she knew I needed another distraction.

  Maria caught the cat in the side and it fell to the ground Then Maria flipped up to her feet.

  “You no scary, me...ow,” the ghost cat said.

  “Whatever you do, don’t look behind that cat!” I warned.

  “What?” it said, turning to look behind.

  I had timed it well. The curtain wrapped around the ghost cat’s head as it turned around. Concentrating as hard as I could, I willed the curtain to continue to wrap around its body. It grabbed the curtain, ripping it off his face.

  “Silly girl, you no stop me…”

  Pow! I hit him right between his eyes with the yo-yo. The ghost cat stopped in its tracks and fell over backwards. Its eyes returned to normal size. A couple of transparent cats leapt out of his body. I went for my zapper. I didn’t have it.

  “Here! You dropped this,” Maria said, tossing me the zapper.

  I blasted the last two remaining cat ghosts. I smiled.

  Chapter 7: Communication

  “So, there was more than one cat ghost in the house,” Grandma said.

  Grandma, Mr. Lopez (Maria’s dad), Maria and I sat around the table, while Hammy paced down the table’s center. We ate cookies and drank milk while discussing the ghosts that Maria and I had taken care of. The whole scene was kind of normal and freaky at the same time.

  “Yeah, I counted twenty-one cat ghosts,” I said in between gulps of milk.

  Grandma looked at Mr. Lopez. “You thinking what I’m thinking, Javier?”

  “It’s an increase in ghost activity,” Mr. Lopez said calmly, like regular people talked about sport scores.

  Hammy shook his head. “Not sure I like this…”

  “It’s a perfectly natural, unnatural event,” Grandma said slowly. “Ghosts come and go in cycles. These cycles often coincide with the coming of a new ghost hunter. The universe likes to balance things out.”

  “So, what’s our plan of action?” I asked.

  Grandma smiled at me. “I’ll let our special guests explain it to you.”

  I sat back in my seat, a little on guard. “Please tell me there are no more ghosts. I’ve had enough ghosts for today.”

  Grandma shook her head. “Nope. Your parents want to talk to you from the dig site in Egypt.”

  I couldn’t see my eyes, yet I knew they had popped wide open. “Do they have some sort of magical device to communicate with?” I asked.

  “That depends.” Grandma reached under her chair and pulled out a notebook computer. “Do you call the Internet magical?” Grandma opened

  the computer and placed the screen in front of me.

  There, beaming on the screen sat my mother and father.

  “Happy birthday, Zara,” Dad said.

  “Yes, my love! Happy birthday,” Mom said. She accented her statement by blowing me a kiss.

  For one of the few times in my life, I couldn’t speak. I hadn’t seen or even talked to my parents in months. I had kind of gotten used to not talking with them over all these years. After all, they were archeologists, digging up the past in far off places; not a lot of phones or Internet around.

  Mom’s dark hair was cut in a bob just below her ears, shorter than I had ever seen it; she looked tired, yet still had that sparkle in her gray eyes that seemed to almost make them glow. The constant sun from the dig had made more freckles appear on her nose. Part of me - a little part of me - always wondered how a woman like her could marry such an average looking guy like my dad.

  People often say I look like dad. I never really thought so. Eyeing him now though, I did see some resemblance that went deeper than sharing the same eyes and ears. We had the same jaw - by that I mean neither one of us had much of a jaw. We both were a little short - but not that short, plus we both had tightly packed muscles. Dad had glasses, which I didn’t need yet, but might need in the future. I hoped not.

  “Mom! Dad! So great to see you guys!”

  Mom smiled. That’s why I liked Grandma’s smile so much: it reminded me of my mom. “Zara, there is no way we would miss this big event. The day I learned I was a ghost hunter was the third most important day of my life.”

  Dad leaned forward into the scree
n. “And the other two revolve around me and you, Zara,” he said with a grin.

  “Are you guys really archeologists or is that some sort of cover story?” I asked.

  “It’s both,” Mom said. “We are archeologists, but it also helps cover our ghost hunting. We’re searching for artifacts that will help us understand the ghosts and our worlds better.”

  Dad nodded. “Yes, in order to understand ourselves in the present, we must understand our history.”

  “Now you’re talking like Hammy,” I told Dad.

  He laughed.

  “Hey,” Hammy said. “I heard that! I’m right over here you know!”

  “Hammy is very wise,” Dad added.

  “Thank you,” Hammy shouted.

  “He is, without a doubt, the smartest hamster I’ve ever met,” I said with just a hint of sarcasm.

  “Thanks!” Hammy said. Suddenly, he seemed to detect the tone of my voice. “Now, wait a minute...”

  Mom ignored Hammy. “Zara, an entire new world has opened up to you. It can be fascinating and scary. But, trust me, my daughter. The fascinating part greatly outweighs the scary.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Only been at this a day and I’ve already figured that out.”

  Mom and Dad both looked into the computer screen. I knew from the worried looks on their faces they had more to say.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

  Mom hesitated, so Dad stepped in. “The ghost activity is growing,” Dad said.

  “Yeah, so I’ve been told.”

  “This may mean there may be a super ghost on the loose...”

  “Super ghost?”

  Hammy couldn’t take it any more. He scurried across the table and grabbed me by my shirt.

  “Didn’t you read all the material I told you to read??!!” he shouted.

  “I haven’t had any time yet,” I said.

  Hammy put his face so close to my face that I could feel his breath. “That’s no excuse! You need to find the time!”

  Grandma stood up and pulled Hammy away from me. She lifted Hammy up to her face and calmly said, “Hammy, control yourself. Breathe, hamster, breathe.”