“We’d love to have you!” Louise said. “I’m sure you don’t want to sleep in that horrible cemetery room with Ida, though.”
“We do!” the Mattigan kids all promised.
“Youngsters these days,” Kirk said. “There’s no telling what they’re into.”
“Scary,” Marcus agreed. “See what I—?”
“Dad!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Midnight
“Actually, Dad,” Max said. “We’re kind of tired.”
Marcus looked at his watch. “It’s not even six o’clock!” he said. “Do you guys all have Theo’s sleeping sickness now? Is it contagious?”
“What he means,” Maddie said, Eyeballing her brother, “is that we’re not up for anything fancy tonight. We were talking about just watching a movie.”
“Oh, which one?”
“Ghostbusters!” Ida said.
“I see what you did there,” Marcus said. “You know? I like her.”
“Yeah,” Maddie laughed, enjoying seeing Ida blush at her father’s compliment. “We thought that would be perfect. Okay?”
“Sure. But I think we’ll head out first thing in the morning, so don’t stay up too late. Especially you, Theo Mattigan. Lecture?”
“I’m good.”
“Great!” Maddie said. And that was all the permission the kids needed to rush back upstairs to Ida’s room.
Ida found pillows and sleeping bags for everyone. The Mattigans all rolled them out at the foot of various tombstones.
“Now what?” Max asked. “Midnight is nearly six hours away.”
“I’ll go check on Sam,” Ida said. She hurried into her closet and through the secret hole between the houses.
“Okay,” Maddie said. “I was hoping we could talk. How are we feeling about this?”
“What do you mean?” Theo asked.
“She means making the ghost admit it exists when it doesn’t want to. Right?”
“Yes, exactly,” Maddie said, sounding surprised. “I mean, it’s a really, really nice thing Sam’s doing for his mom, but maybe not so nice for the ghost.”
“I have to pee,” Theo said.
“Fine, Theo,” Maddie said. “Don’t fall asleep in there.”
“I’m good!”
Theo had just left when Ida came back in, looking shaken and sad.
“What’s wrong?” Maddie asked.
“Sam is flipping out.”
“Why?”
“He saw your dad’s interview. It’s all over the Internet now, the name his mom writes her books under. Someone found it out. So, now she’s going to come back to this, too. He feels like, in one day, he’s totally ruined her life.”
“Wow,” Max said, looking at his phone.
“What?” Maddie asked.
“I found her author name and linked to one of her books. It’s the number-one bestseller.”
There was an amazed pause, after which Max and Maddie looked at Ida.
“No!” Ida protested. “No way! That is not what this is about. You saw the videos! Sam is falling apart over there! Go look for yourself if you don’t believe me!”
“We believe you,” Maddie said, though not very kindly. “Maybe we should just watch the movie.” She forced a smile and added, “It’ll help make the time pass.”
Ida and Max agreed, so they got it started on Ida’s computer, which they set up on her bed.
Theo came back, but he climbed into his sleeping bag instead of joining everyone.
“Really, Theo?” Max asked.
“Tired,” he muttered.
“That’s your real name.”
“Flumpf.”
The movie was only ninety minutes, so there were still hours to go when it ended. No one knew what to do and everyone had a lot on their minds, so they agreed to try to sleep the time away. Ida set her phone’s alarm for 11:45, turned her light off, and got into bed. Max and Maddie got into their sleeping bags next to Theo, who was of course sound asleep.
One by one, each of them fell asleep.
At 11:45, Ida’s phone buzzed. She climbed out of bed, then gently shook Maddie’s shoulder. Maddie came awake instantly. She touched Max on his shoulder and he was awake in a moment, as well. They climbed out of their bags and, using the dim light thrown off by their phones, looked down at Theo.
They didn’t wake him.
Together, Max, Maddie, and Ida tiptoed into her dark closet. They left it open, but didn’t turn on the light. Max and Maddie stayed inside while Ida snuck through the hole with her phone already on video mode.
Then Max and Maddie waited.
In the dark.
After a few minutes, they checked their phones: 11:50.
“I’m nervous,” Maddie whispered. “What if something goes wrong? And I still don’t feel good about this whole—”
“Shhh,” Max whispered back. “Spies are silent.”
11:55.
“This is—”
“Shhh!”
11:58.
11:59.
“Crikey.”
Midnight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nothing
“I’m going through,” Maddie said.
It was 12:15 a.m., and neither Ida nor Sam had appeared, and they’d heard nothing at all from Sam’s room.
“Okay,” Max agreed.
They went through.
Sam and Ida were in Sam’s room. Fifi was there, too. No one looked harmed, or possessed, but everyone looked confused and concerned.
“Nothing,” Sam said when he saw Max and Maddie. “It didn’t come.”
“It didn’t come?” Max asked. “But, how is that possible?”
Maddie’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.
“Maddie,” Fifi said, “this isn’t some big set-up.” She sounded like herself again. “Whatever was in me is gone. But really gone. Maybe it knew what you were all planning and just left. When our mom gets here in a few hours, she’s going to be devastated. She’s going to kill us.”
“Maybe she will, and maybe she won’t,” Maddie said. “I’m going to bed.” She turned and walked back into the closet and then climbed through the hole into Ida’s room again.
Max didn’t know what to make of the situation. He offered a shrug to everyone, then turned and followed his sister.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Not a Trick
“Mattigan offspring,” Marcus whispered.
Maddie opened her groggy eyes and saw her dad’s head poking into the bedroom. For a moment, she panicked, thinking she was at home and Bigfoot had come upstairs.
“We leave in fifteen,” her father told her. “Breakfast on the road. Charming bedroom.”
The head disappeared.
Maddie looked at her phone. It was six, but felt earlier. She climbed out of her sleeping bag. She was still dressed, so there was really nothing to do but grab her bag. No one else had heard her dad, so she quietly nudged Max awake. She put a finger to her lips before he said anything.
“Outta here,” she whispered.
Max was also dressed, so he was ready to go, too. Together, they nudged Theo.
“Hmph!” he growled, but he didn’t wake up.
“What’s going on?” Ida asked, getting out of her bed. Max and Maddie sighed. “Please,” Ida begged, sensing what was going on. “You have to believe us. This wasn’t a trick. Don’t go yet. Can we at least check on Sam, to make sure he’s okay? His mom might be home already.”
“All right,” Maddie agreed. “I’ll go with you. Max, get Theo up, will you?”
Maddie and Ida went into the closet.
Max nudged Theo.
He nudged him harder.
Then he squatted down and shook him.
“Herm
pf on yermpf!”
“Get up, you lazy bermpf!”
But Theo was already back asleep.
“You leave me no choice,” Max said. He grabbed the bottom of Theo’s sleeping bag and started pulling it off of him. But Theo just laid there until he was completely free of it.
“Hard ball, eh?” Max asked. He went and actually tried to lift Theo up onto his feet by his armpits, but discovered that sleeping people are incredibly heavy. He barely got his brother halfway up before he had to abandon the idea. As he let Theo sag back down to the floor, two things got swept out of the little pain-in-the-neck’s pockets.
A small paper packet.
And a loose-leaf sheet of paper.
Max first picked up the paper packet and looked inside. He sniffed it. Then he put it in one of his own pockets. Then he picked up the loose paper and read it.
He quickly folded it back up and put it in another pocket.
“Ah, Maddie—?” he asked.
He realized she was still in the closet with Ida, so he hurried in to get her.
“Maddie,” he said as urgently as he could, but she and Ida had their heads sticking through the clothes. He tugged on her sleeve. “Maddie!”
Maddie and Ida pulled their heads back into the closet. Both had tears in their eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Max asked. “What’s going on?”
“That was so beautiful,” Maddie sniffed.
“What?”
“Sam’s mom is home. She’s in there with Sam and Fifi, and they’re blubbering all over each other.”
“And that’s beautiful?” Max asked. “How?”
“Sam told her about burning all her research and how he wanted to prove her work was valid or even summon her lost baby for her. She was totally stunned, but then she thanked him. She said she needed to let it all go, especially her wish to have the son she lost come back somehow, or to even know where he is. She said that’s what it’s been all about, but that she has two wonderful living children, here and now, and that that’s more than anyone could ask for. She said she didn’t have the strength to burn her work, though, and that he’d done her a huge favor. Then she started crying. And Fifi told her that her name was out and her book was selling like crazy, and she started crying even harder, and said that was wonderful because she’d always been ashamed of what she wrote, but now she’d be forced to do what she loved without pretending. It’s a total love fest over there.”
“Ah, wow,” Max said. “That’s really — great. But we need to go. Like, now.” Max bugged his eyes out, his signal that something major was up.
“Oh,” Maddie said, wiping her eyes. “Okay. Right. Let’s go.” She turned to Ida and said, “My dad’s a stickler about travel times.”
They went back into Ida’s room and found Theo sleeping on the floor.
“Theo!” Maddie shouted.
“He’s gonna sleep on the ride home,” Max said, again with the bug eyes. “Can you carry him?”
“Uh, okay,” Maddie said. “You grab my bag.”
Max grabbed both their bags while Maddie managed to scoop Theo up.
“Yumpf,” he muttered, but he didn’t fight her.
All the kids headed downstairs.
“I’m glad I met you guys,” Ida said. “I’m sorry things—”
“We’re glad, too,” Maddie interrupted. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I hope we can stay in touch.”
“I do, too.”
Marcus was already at the door with the Kubatniks. “Ready?” he asked. “You’re kidding me with that kid,” he said when he saw Theo.
“Stayed up too late again,” Maddie said. “You take him,” she added. “He’s your lump.”
“Lumpf.”
“Sigh,” Marcus said, accepting the transfer. Then he turned to their hosts and said, “Thank you very much for letting us stay with you, and for helping me with my investigation.”
“It was our great pleasure!” Louise cried. “I was going to say come again, but I hope you have no reason to.”
“But you are welcome any time!” Karl hastened to add. “I’ll send the video I took straight away.”
“Thank you kindly,” Marcus said, heading out with Theo.
“Bye!” all the Kubatniks called.
“Bye!” Max and Maddie called back. “Thank you!”
The moment they were out of sight of the duplex, Max handed the piece of loose-leaf paper to his sister.
She read it as they walked down the street.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Home
Just minutes under five-and-a-half hours later, Theo sat alone on a chair behind the Game Room table in the basement of the Mattigan Mansion. On the other side sat his brother and sister. Theo had been awake for a few minutes, but was only now finally coming to his senses.
“Listen very closely,” Maddie said. “Please don’t waste your time telling us that believing in ghosts is silly. We know that Theo stole the last page of Sam’s journal and dropped the rest of those pages all over the floor to hide that fact. We know that’s why the secret Mrs. Inada discovered didn’t get rescanned and reposted on the Internet, which is why you didn’t attack Sam again last night. We know that Theo read that page — which is why you came through the hole in the wall and attacked him last night when no one was watching. Which is why you are in him right now, at least for a few more minutes.”
“But—”
“Shush,” Maddie said. “Listen.”
It was Max’s turn then. “We all read the page,” he said, “which we’ve destroyed, by the way. It had a bunch of theories on it, but we’re pretty sure we know the right one. It’s the one that says ghosts have nothing to do with dead people. That they are not the spirits of once-living creatures. That they are living creatures.”
To this, Theo said nothing.
“Now, Mr. or Mrs. Shadow,” Maddie said, “you are going to come out, and you are not going to attack either of us. You are going to talk to us. You are going to tell us all about yourself. Then we are going to tell you all about us. And then you are going to want to live with us.”
“No, I—” Theo started to say.
“Hold on,” Max said. “We haven’t shown you why.” He got up, went to the door, and opened it.
In came J-Rod the alien, Dracula the vampire, and Bigfoot the Sasquatch. They looked at Theo, whose eyes nearly fell out of his head.
“You have no memory of your parents,” J-Rod said. “You simply found yourself here, as an infant. Like the rest of us.”
Suddenly, Theo started to shake. Then his skin turned inky dark. Then it turned entirely black. The shadow seeped out of him and onto the floor.
Then, slowly, it rose into the shape of a woman.
“Yes,” the shadow woman sighed. But then, in a voice that sounded positively thrilled, she said it again: “Yes!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Voodoo Re-do
Maddie knocked softly on the door.
“Come in,” Theo said. He was sitting on his bed screwing together two toys, a robot and a rocket ship. “Uh oh,” he said when he saw the little paper packet in his sister’s hand.
“Tell me about this, Theo,” Maddie said. She was determined not to get upset.
“In New Orleans, when we met Lady Haiti in her voodoo shack,” her brother explained, “and she gave us the cure for Dracula? Remember when she said she could help us get Mom back?”
“She snuck you this!” Maddie realized. “When? Wait — when she hugged us all?”
Theo nodded.
Maddie sat down on the bed and thought a moment. “You realize this has been making you sleep,” she said.
Theo nodded again.
“Teachable Moment, Theo. You should never, ever take strange medicine or herbs or anything like t
hat, for any reason. It’s one thing for a desperate vampire, but you are an eight-year-old boy. You could have gotten very sick, or worse!”
“I know,” Theo admitted. “My bad.”
“Let me see if I understand,” Maddie sighed. “You’ve been eating this stuff, these ground-up roots or whatever they are, and that’s why you got all excited when Dad told us about the ghost in Ashland. You thought they were connected?”
Theo nodded.
“And that’s also why you kept thinking it would be easy for us to catch it.”
Theo nodded again.
“And you thought the whole time that this ghost was going to be Mom.”
Another nod.
“You think Mom is dead?”
“Don’t you?” Theo asked as tears gathered in his eyes. “Dad doesn’t even try to find her anymore. He hardly tried at all! And he solves all of his cases!” The tears fell.
Maddie put her arms around her brother and let him cry himself out. “I think Mom’s case was too close to him,” she said when he was done. “He let the police handle it.”
“But we’re broken, Maddie,” Theo sniffed, picking at the toy he’d just put together. “We’re a broken family. I don’t want to be broken.”
“Theo,” Maddie said, amazed and tearing up herself now. “Look at what you’re doing.”
“What?”
“Is that broken?”
“This?” he asked, looking at the rocket-robot. “Well, yeah, but not really. Not exactly. Not anymore.”
“Why?”
“I made it into something else. Something cool.”
“Well, we can do that, too — with our family. I’m not saying it’ll be better. I mean, that rocket was cool, and so was that car, but they were both kind of messed up after all the use they got. And you made something really neat with them, anyway. And think of all of Max’s used books. He likes them better than new ones. You know why?”
“He says they’re cooler with all the wrinkled pages and bent-up covers. He says they’re full of experience.”
“That’s us, too. And now that I think about it, we’re also Dad’s fixed-up furniture. Stuff that got damaged, but is really great anyway, after a few small repairs and a fresh coat of paint, ‘cause, like he says, it’s got that lived-in feel you can’t get from perfect stuff fresh from the factory. I’m not saying we need to give up on Mom, Theo, but it’s been two years. Until she comes back, we’re a family of Frankentoys. I know I’m not making much sense, by the way.”
Ghost: Mysterious Monsters (Book four) Page 5
