Five Days of the Ghost

by William Bell

  “Put everything together—his age, the medicine bag, when the ghost appeared here—it must have been him.”

  John slapped his leg, “And we gave him cigars!”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t care anyway. I didn’t.

  “Well, I know what I think we should do to test this out,” Noah said, standing up. “We should set up our equipment tonight and wait for the ghost to show up in the hall.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” said John. Then he looked straight at me. “Maybe we’ll find out we’re wrong, Karen. Maybe we won’t get anything, like last time. But it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “So let’s go to my room and assemble all the stuff.”

  “Okay,” I said tiredly. After the guys left I walked over to the window and pulled the curtains shut, almost knocking the glass bowl that had held Chief Copegog’s medicine bag onto the floor. I didn’t look out the window as I pulled the drapes shut.

  When I turned to go to John’s room I noticed that my closet door was open a little.

  Wait a minute, I thought. I knew that it had been closed and locked when I’d left for Chiefs’ Island. Was it locked when I got home? I couldn’t be sure. My mind had been on other things.

  Who had been in there? John and Noah? It couldn’t have been them. They’d left for the library before I’d left for the island. Unless—no, I wasn’t even going to think about that. I put the little hook in the little eye, shot a quick look at the silent wind chimes, left the room, and closed the door behind me.

  I mostly stood around sulking and thinking while John and Noah set up the equipment. I must admit that after a few minutes of watching them I began to get into it. For one thing they looked so dumb, like a couple of comedians, stumbling around and bumping into each other. Noah was fussing over the buttons on the machines and John the organizer wrote up a schedule for changing batteries. They were going to keep up the surveillance all night.

  The video camera was perched on a tripod in the hall, pointed at my door.

  “Anything that passes down the hall will be recorded.” Noah said.

  I reminded him that the camera hadn’t captured Chief Copegog but he ignored me. Boys always think girls don’t know anything about machines.

  At the top of the stairs they set up a little voice recorder, one of those ones that has the mike right inside. They put another one right outside my room.

  “That’s where all the action has been,” John reminded us. “So we got the video aimed there and we got sound there.”

  John wanted to sprinkle talcum powder all over the floor so footprints would show up.

  “You mean preternatural footprints,” I sneered.

  “Oh, shut up, Karen.”

  Noah and John argued about whether footprints would show up in white powder. Noah said in all the stuff he had read about ghosts, he’d never heard of that. I said Skinny Minnie would have a heart attack and foam at the mouth if she saw powder all over the hall and that she’d tell Mom and Dad and they would ask a lot of questions and unless the guys wanted to tell Mom and Dad that we thought we were ghostbusters we better not do it.

  The guys agreed.

  The next thing we argued about was that they wanted to wait in my room for Bond the Creep’s ghost to show up.

  “No chance,” I said. “I wanna go to bed.”

  I was dead tired and I wanted to sleep. My body still ached all over from the rowing. Sitting around waiting with those guys would drive me nuts.

  “You’re gonna sleep?” John asked.

  “I’m gonna try.”

  So they set up shop, with their new batteries and their time schedules, in John’s room. I went into my room and shut the door.

  And locked it.

  I checked the closet door again—locked. I went over to the big bay window, pulled the curtains open, and sat on the ledge, pressing my face against the glass. The moon was almost hidden by clouds and Chiefs’ Island was almost invisible—just a dark blurry shape out there.

  Sure hope it wasn’t you who did it, Chief Copegog, I said to myself.

  I wondered if he was sitting on the gravestone waiting for me to bring him more cigars. Then I thought I could feel those fierce eyes on me, and I stood and shut the curtains.

  I felt sad and afraid at the same time. Why couldn’t things be simple so I could understand them?

  I pulled off my housecoat and dropped it on the floor. I turned on the reading light over my bed, then I snapped off the overhead light. My room instantly became a dark cave with a little pool of yellow light where the waterbed was. I looked at the closed door. There was a thin line of light under it.

  I sighed and climbed into bed. I didn’t even try to read, just snuggled down deep and closed my eyes and waited for the ghost to start its show.

  I didn’t have long to wait.

  DAY

  FIVE

  Early Tuesday Morning

  I was deep inside a real bad dream when the noises started. In the dream I was dressed in an old-fashioned Dracula-movie nightgown again and I was sort of floating through a graveyard, out of control, as if I was hypnotized. The graveyard was misty and silvery with moonlight and the gravestones glowed as if they were alive. There was a low dark shape slinking along beside me and I knew it was a werewolf. The moonlight glistened on its long teeth.

  Ahead I could see an old Chippewa man with piercing red eyes and a necklace made of animal teeth and a long, wicked-looking knife in his hand.

  The werewolf raised its head and there was terror in its green eyes. It turned around slowly and melted away between the graves. Then I heard what scared it. A tinkling sound, like bits of glass clinking together.

  When I woke up I knew I had awakened into another nightmare. I could still hear the tinkling sound. It was the wind chimes. My bedroom was freezing and my breath made frost clouds that puffed into the pool of yellow light my bed lamp threw onto the waterbed.

  I sat up, leaning back against the wall, and gathered the blanket around me, staring at the door. Waiting. The tinkling of the wind chimes faded to silence.

  Then it came–the pounding, the noise that had awakened me. It started as a strong knock, like someone with big hands wanted to get in. But the pounding got louder and harder, almost desperate. The door shook and rumbled so hard I thought it would fly out of the frame.

  Then dead silence. No jangle from the wind chimes. No banging. Only the harsh rasp of my breathing.

  The door handle turned slowly, first one way, then another. I shivered, not just from the cold.

  Whoever was on the other side of my door trying to get in seemed angry that the handle wouldn’t work, because the knob started to rattle like crazy and the pounding shook the door again.

  It stopped.

  I took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. Maybe that was the end—

  Something scratched around the bottom of the door!

  I heard myself gulp down a cry. Maybe this time the ghost would come in. I had a crazy thought. I wondered if ghosts could bleed. Would Bond’s blood drip and splash onto my rug?

  But I heard a laugh and footsteps ran away down the hall. They stopped dead. Silence. Laughter again. The footsteps ran back toward my room but turned into the bathroom.

  I heard someone rummaging around in there, opening the medicine chest, moving bottles around. Something fell and smashed on the floor. The medicine chest door banged shut and the footsteps ran back into the hall. The laugh came again.

  And that’s when I realized something was very wrong.

  I had been too scared and shocked to notice it before. That wasn’t a grown-up’s laugh! And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that the running and the footsteps weren’t like a man’s either.

  The sounds of walking around in the hall kept going for a few more minutes. Then, click, click, click. Back and forth. Something being dragged on the wooden floor, click, click, click, up the hall to the stairs, back toward my
door. A while later, Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Last, the skittering laugh as the footsteps ran down the hall toward the stairs.

  Soon after that the wind chimes gave one last jangle and the room began to warm up. The poltergeist had gone.

  I fell sideways on my bed, exhausted. Every muscle I owned had been held stiff and tight—from the cold and from fear. I slid down under the blanket and tried to drift off into sleep.

  No luck, though. A few minutes later, the banging on my door came back. But this time it sounded normal. I knew it was the boys. I got up, put on my housecoat and went to the door.

  John had on those goofy yellow polo pajamas—the ones with tight cuffs and ankles—and his slippers. Noah was wearing jeans and no shirt.

  They looked excited and a little spooked.

  “Did you hear him?” John blurted out. He looked at my face and added, “Dumb question.”

  Noah was all business. “Karen, did anything out of the ordinary happen?”

  I shot him a sarcastic look and he added, “Anything different, I mean?”

  “Yeah, it went into the bathroom this time.”

  “The bathroom?”

  “Who ever heard of a ghost taking a pee?” John said, and laughed at his own joke. I was so keyed up I laughed too.

  “Okay, let’s check the equipment,” said Noah, ignoring him.

  John led us out into the hall. We moved quietly and whispered so we wouldn’t wake Skinny Minnie up. All three of us noticed what was wrong right away.

  The batteries had been taken out of the voice recorder. They were sitting on the hardwood, four of them, lined up in a neat row, the labels facing in the same direction.

  “It’s mocking us,” Noah said. “Well, that makes sense. A poltergeist is playful.”

  The red light still glowed on the video camera. Noah was checking it out when we heard him cry, “Hey! What’s this?”

  “Shhhhhhhhh!” John hissed. “Skinny Minnie might hear you!”

  All three of us held still, listening, staring at the door that led to Minnie’s room above the garage. It never occurred to us that the ghost’s racket would have wakened her. Anyway, her door was closed.

  John and I stepped up to Noah, who pointed to the lens of the camera. Some tan-coloured goo was smeared all over the glass. No way was that thing taking any pictures now.

  “Looks like your pimple cream,” I said to John.

  “Very funny.”

  I noticed a squashed-up tube on the floor beside one of the tripod legs and picked it up. Sure enough, it was John’s pimple cream. I handed it to him, smiling.

  “Must have got it from the bathroom,” he murmured.

  “This sure is weird.”

  The voice recorder at the top of the stairs was messed up just like the one outside my room.

  “I guess all we can do is see if the camera picked up anything before it was tampered with,” Noah said, removing the camera from the tripod. “I’ll hook it up to the TV.”

  A few minutes later we were in the dark living room huddled in front of the TV, watching a still picture of the upstairs hall.

  “Hey, I just thought of something,” Noah whispered, not moving his eyes from the screen.

  “Mmmm?” I said.

  “Well, listen. Bond the Creep died way over a hundred years ago, right?”

  “Right,” John answered.

  “So, don’t you get it?” Noah still had his eyes glued to the TV. He didn’t intend to miss anything. “His ghost wouldn’t know what a voice recorder is! Or a video camera!”

  “Yeah, so?” John tore his gaze from the screen and looked at Noah.

  “So how would he know how to screw them up? I mean, he wouldn’t even know what they are.”

  Something clicked in my brain, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Oh. Yeah. Well, I guess he … learned about them.” John laughed. “He hasn’t had much to do for all these years.”

  “No way, man. Ghosts are frozen in the time frame they died in. They can’t go back to school.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. But—”

  “Look!” I cut in. “Something moved!”

  “Yeah, I saw it too!” Noah said.

  On the TV screen a sort of grey shape came into view, then disappeared.

  “Go back,” said John. “Let’s see it again.”

  “No, wait, let’s let it run,” Noah answered.

  The shape came back. It wasn’t the shape of anything. It certainly wasn’t what you’d call a human shape.

  But the hand was.

  It was grey, too, mist-coloured, and small. It sort of appeared in front of the camera, palm facing us. A little hand, not a grown-up’s. It came closer and closer to the camera, then it disappeared and the lights almost went out.

  “That’s the goo he put on the lens we’re seeing,” said Noah. “We won’t see any more.”

  He reached over and pressed a couple of buttons.

  He and John watched the grey shape and the hand over and over.

  I didn’t.

  Because I was filled with a feeling I couldn’t describe. A mixture of terror and … and hope.

  Everything started to make sense now. The sounds outside my bedroom door, the shape, the hand. Everything.

  Before I knew what I was doing I jumped to my feet and started running.

  “Karen, where —”

  “The study!” I shouted. I didn’t care who heard me now. “The sounds in the hall! He was running for the study!”

  The two guys were right on my heels when I got to my dad’s drafting table and clicked on the lamp.

  There on the table the charcoal sticks were broken and scattered. And there was a single piece of paper, with the marks drawn in charcoal.

  The fear-hope feeling was like a burning inside me, filling me up. Snatching the paper from the table I ran for the stairs and flew up them two at a time.

  “Karen! What’s the matter?” John shouted from behind me. He sounded terrified.

  I ignored him and tore down the hall and burst into my room, slamming the door back against the wall. I flipped on the light, grabbed my chair, and dragged it to the closet. The little hook hung uselessly. The closet was unlocked.

  Throwing open the door, I shoved the chair inside and climbed up onto it. I grabbed the brass box, jumped off the chair and carried it to the desk.

  “Karen, what’s going on?” Noah asked, his voice tense. “Tell us.”

  I got down on my hands and knees and snatched the key from its hiding place, not caring now if the guys knew about it. I unlocked the big heavy padlock and dropped it onto the desk. My fingers trembled as I grabbed the lid.

  I raised the lid of the box and carefully lifted out Kenny’s stuff—the slingshot, the pocket watch on the long thick chain, the pink skateboard wheels and chunk of painted wood, the photo.

  There was nothing left inside.

  The red, white and blue striped ball was missing. I remembered one of the sounds I had heard in the hall—thump, thump, thump—a ball bouncing! And the plastic toy airplane with the little pilot inside was missing too. When you dragged the toy along, the pilot’s head snapped from side to side. And the wheels went click, click, click. I began to laugh and cry at the same time, going crazy. My voice rose higher and higher like a siren.

  “I know who it is! I know who the ghost is!”

  “Karen, stop it!”

  I snatched up the paper from the study and practically threw it at John.

  “Look! Hold it up in front of the mirror.” I could feel myself getting hysterical. I was getting out of control. But I didn’t care. It was all clear now.

  “It’s Kenny!” I screamed. “It’s Kenny! It’s Kenny! The ghost is Kenny!”

  Tuesday Morning

  The three of us spent the rest of the night talking. I sat on my bed with my legs tucked under me and the blanket gathered around me. A box of Kleenex sat on the pillow and used tissues lay scattered around me like lumps of
snow. John had pulled my desk chair over to the foot of the bed. Noah sat cross-legged on the rug. He had put his T-shirt on inside out and hadn’t noticed yet. Neither had John.

  It took John and Noah a while to get me calmed down, and when they did I broke down and cried for a long time. It was like something I had been keeping inside, fighting to keep deep in the darkness, had burst out into the light. I couldn’t stop the tears. I didn’t want to.

  I had to argue pretty hard, too, sniffing and blowing my nose the whole time, because at first they wouldn’t buy the idea that the poltergeist or “preternatural event” or whatever they wanted to call it was Kenny’s ghost—not even after I held the sheet of paper up to the mirror. John held out as long as he could. He didn’t want it to be Kenny. When he realized he couldn’t pretend anymore his face sort of crumpled and got red and he started to cry too.

  When that happened I got off the bed and hugged him and I could feel the big sobs tossing around inside his skinny body like waves. I knew how he felt. All the pain from losing his little brother had come back. Finally, when John had settled down a bit, he looked up at me. His face was streaked with tears and his nose was running. His hair stuck out in all directions. He didn’t look like John.

  “I miss him,” he said.

  I bent down and hugged him again. “You don’t need to miss him any more,” I said. “He’s back!”

  “He can’t be back! He can’t be!” John burst out as he pushed me away. “He’s … he’s dead, Karen!”

  I sat back down on the waterbed and turned to Noah. “You believe he’s back, don’t you?”

  Noah leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked at the floor. His long black hair covered his face.

  “Um, I don’t know, Karen. I mean, what you’re saying sounds pretty weird, even to me.”

  He looked up at me and the hair fell away to show half his face. Water stood out in his eyes.

  “I don’t want to hurt you any more than you are already,” he said softly, “but Kenny died, Karen. Maybe you never really accepted that—you know, dealt with it. Even if the poltergeist is him, it’s an apparition, not a real person. You gotta face that.”