Ghosters

by Corbitt, Diana;

  Joey and I peek over the edge at the striped tail and hollowed out fur. It’s a raccoon, or, at least what’s left of one.

  “Can I keep the tail?” Joey asks.

  “What? No,” I say, answering how I think Mom would have. “It’s probably full of—Kerry, look.”

  I wrestle the hand she’s holding the EMF meter with up to her face. Three green lights cast an eerie glow. At that moment, all three of us could win an owl eyes contest.

  Kerry clutches the EMF meter to her chest. “Flipping awesome.”

  “N-now, let’s not get too excited,” I say, shining my light at the bare beams above us. “On Ghosters they’d check if those exposed wires on the ceiling are what’s making that thing light up.”

  “Good idea.” Kerry peers up at the spot where a cluster of old wires snake in and out of a hole. “I’ll hold the EMF meter up there. If it stays lit, then it’s bad wiring that’s lighting it up. If it doesn’t . . .” She turns to Joey. “Make sure you get this.”

  “Get what?”

  “She wants you to keep the camera aimed at her,” I explain. If Kerry is going to be around my brother, she’ll have to be more specific.

  Standing on tiptoes, Kerry raises the EMF meter up near the wires. Two of the three lights go dark, and a crooked grin crosses her lips. She heads back to the junk pile, and immediately, three lights blaze.

  “That’s proof,” she sputters. “We’ve got a ghost.”

  “Flipping awesome,” my newly British brother says. He follows my flashlight beam with the camera. “But I still don’t see anything.”

  The little hairs on my arms stand up. Even though Kerry’s device is glowing like crazy, it’s still hard to accept there’s a real ghost down here. With us. Now.

  Kerry’s holding a toy, I tell myself, failing to rub away the sudden goose bumps that have risen on my arms.And these are popping up because I’m cold. The simplest explanation is always—

  “Looklooklook.” Kerry practically stuffs the EMF meter in my face. “Now we’ve got four lights.”

  Oh, man. I smile through gritted teeth. What if that thing really does work? Contest or no contest, I don’t know if I’m ready to see a real ghost yet.

  Joey’s face glows green as he leans in to see. “What if your EMF measurer is broken?”

  Kerry shakes her head. “Impossible. I just got it.” She holds the glowing meter alongside her head and whispers into the camera as Joey records her. “See? Four lights. And since we can’t blame the wiring that means there’s got to be a gh—”

  The EMF meter goes black. “What the . . . ?” Kerry flips it on and off, shines her light around the room. “Is that your plan? You tease us with four lights and then run off?”

  As if copying the EMF meter, her flashlight goes out. “This too?” She taps it against her hand. “Blasted batteries. As much use as a chocolate teapot.”

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her, half relieved. “We shouldn’t have trusted those old—”

  A dark shape explodes from the remaining pile of junk behind her.

  I shriek, grab onto Kerry as she turns to see. By the time I think to aim the flashlight, it’s too late.

  “Whatever it was went that way,” Joey says, staring into the darkness.

  Kerry bounces her gaze back and forth between Joey and the shadows. “Did you see what it was?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Come on,” I tell them. “Let’s go back upstairs before this flashlight—”

  It goes dead.

  CHAPTER 7

  BLACK.

  Cave black.

  Can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face black.

  I scream. Kerry screams. Like some terrible off-key duet, we scream together.

  “Joey?” I reach out for him, arms waving. God, where’d he go? Kerry calls out too. Blind, we bang into junk as well as each other.

  “Come on,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “Say something, Jojo.” I move my arms back and forth in front of me. I stumble over Joey.

  He lands on his back with an ooof, me on top of him.

  “You okay?” I ask. Even though he won’t like it, I feel his head, his face.

  I’m not surprised to discover Joey covering his ears with his hands. Probably expects us to scream again. Even though there’s a Fourth of July show going off inside me, I scramble to my feet, pulling him up with me.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him. “We won’t yell anymore.”

  To my relief, he doesn’t shake my hand away. After a few bumps and stumbles, our eyes finally adjust, and we all work our way toward the light and pound our way up the stairs. The last one in the kitchen, I yank away the chair and bolt the door behind us.

  “Oh, my gosh. That was intense.”

  Kerry leans against the wall. “Good thing . . . you propped . . . that door open,” she pants, squeezing the words in between inhaler puffs.

  It doesn’t surprise me that Joey heads straight for the sink to wash up. Reminded of all the stuff I touched down in the basement, I head over too and pump three big squirts of antibacterial soap onto my hands.

  “We just saw a ghost,” Kerry says pushing in beside me.

  “Congratulations.” I offer her a soapy hand. “Guess that makes you an official ghost chaser now.”

  “So are you,” Kerry tells me.

  Laughing, we shake, then, hands dripping bubbles, turn to Joey who’s heading for the refrigerator.

  “You’re a ghost chaser too,” Kerry tells him.

  “Yeah.” I giggle. “Come back here so we can congratulate you.”

  “No thank you.” He stares into the fridge. “Why are you two so happy? We don’t know what that brown thing was.”

  He’s right. It could have been anything. But if it wasn’t a ghost, how do I explain the EMF meter . . . and what about the flashlights . . . ?

  All the excitement has made me hungry. There’s a freezer bag full of chocolate chip cookies on the table. I dry my hands on the dish towel and pull out two. One for me, one for Kerry.

  She surprises me by raising her cookie high. “To our first ghost,” she says, as if making a toast.

  What the heck.I laugh and tap my cookie against hers. “To the ghost.”

  “I don’t get it,” Joey says, still looking into the fridge. “You’re afraid of the ghosts, but you still want to find them?”

  Still smiling, Kerry glances at me, then shrugs. “It sounds a bit barmy when you say it out loud, but yes—and what happened down there was supernatural. I mean, how else do you explain both flashlights going out at the same time?”

  Joey shuts the fridge and turns toward us, a half empty jar of pickles clutched to his chest. “Coincidence,” he tells her. “Those flashlights are probably as old as me. The batteries too.”

  I shake my head. “I had a battery-powered night light in my room when I was little. When those batteries wore down, the light would dim little by little. These flashlights just snapped off like a switch.”

  Joey opens the jar and reaches in. “But we didn’t see a ghost.”

  “True, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.” Kerry takes a bite of cookie and grins. “I guess the only way to make you a believer is for one to come up and grab you.”

  Kerry and I start to laugh, but Joey looks confused. Feeling a little guilty, I stop laughing and shake my head at Kerry, hoping she’ll notice. She does. He sits down across from us, and we rest for a while, lost in our own thoughts. The only sound is the ticking of Grandma’s teapot-shaped clock.

  Joey finishes eating his pickle and stands up. “All I know is that something flew out of that junk pile. What exactly did you see, Theresa?”

  “I don’t know . . . something small. It all happened too fast, so I couldn’t—”

  Kerry gasps. “A ghost raccoon.”

  I smirk. Seriously? That’s the best she can come up with?

  “Why not? We all saw the body.”

  “Dad says there are no ghosts
,” Joey tells Kerry, “human or animal.”

  “O . . . M . . . G.” She snatches up the phone. “What a bunch of twits. We’ve been sitting around here guessing and the whole time we had it recorded.”

  Holy crabs, she’s right. I slide my chair closer to Kerry, and Joey hunches between us. The recording starts out bouncy as Joey tramps down the stairs, but once he reaches the bottom, the camera work improves. Still, it only shows what the flashlights are aimed at. We fast-forward to the part right after the dead raccoon.

  “Okay,” Kerry whispers, “it happens right after I check the wires with the EMF meter.”

  I stab my finger at the screen. “There it is.”

  Something brown flashes across the bottom.

  I frown at Joey. “Could you have jerked the camera around anymore?”

  “Probably, but what would be the point?”

  With no idea how to answer, I blow out a long breath and watch the rest of the recording. After a bit, the flashlights go out, and the screen goes black. Joey covers his ears during the screaming part, which is still loud enough to make the speaker crackle. I imagine the three of us lurching through the darkness. Weird, but kind of exciting too.

  Even though we can hear our voices, the screen stays black until we close in on the stairs. The phone case must have been hanging from Joey’s wrist by the strap, because the recording ends with a jerky shot of his shoes and legs banging up the steps two at a time.

  “So now what?” Joey asks.

  Yeah, now what?I stand and push in my chair. I don’t know about these guys, but I have to know what flew out of that junk pile. “We go back.”

  Kerry picks up her flashlight. “Look at you, the brave ghost chaser. We’ll need more batteries.”

  I race to the drawer and pull out four more D cells.

  “Those are just as old as the first ones,” Joey says.

  “That’s true.” Kerry takes two. “But we have to try. Aren’t you curious to know what that brown thing was? It’s probably to blame for draining those other batteries.”

  “I would like to know what that brown thing is, but I still think the batteries died because they were old.”

  Kerry shakes her head. “Remember how the EMF meter measures electromagnetic fields? That’s because ghosts are made of energy. If they want to show themselves or make something move, they have to draw more energy from another source.”

  Joey opens the pickle jar on the counter and fishes out the last one. “Then, if a ghost drained all the flashlight batteries, why didn’t it touch the one in the phone?”

  Kerry squints, her mismatched eyes barely visible. “That, I can’t say.”

  “Maybe it wanted to be recorded?” I suggest. Since there’s nothing but juice left in the jar, I point at it, hoping Joey will get the clue and throw it away.

  He doesn’t. “Why would a ghost want to be recorded?” Joey asks, handing me the jar.

  Kerry and I look at each other and shrug.

  He munches his pickle as I empty the green liquid into the sink. “Ghosts or no ghosts, there’s a good chance those batteries will die too.”

  Kerry flicks her flashlight on and off. “Well, they’re all we’ve got. I suppose we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed.”

  “Is that supposed to preserve the batteries?” Joey’s face bunches up as he examines his hands. “I don’t think I can work the camera that way.”

  “No, Jojo, it . . .” I wave it off. “Maybe I should check in with Dad before we go down there again. He might have heard the screaming.”

  “I’ll do it.” Joey starts for the living room, pickle juice trailing across the floor.

  I sprint past him. “No, that’s okay. You’ve got a mess to clean up.”

  Although I really do hate sticky floors, having Joey clean up the pickle juice is really just an excuse to keep him from blabbing to Dad. It would take less than a minute for Mr. Honest to spill his guts about the broken railing, the rats, and the brown thing. After that, we’d not only be banned fromthe third floor, butthe basement too.

  I creep over to the living room, expecting to find Dad in front of the TV. He’s not. The TV is off too. After checking the dining room and the bathroom, I hear his voice coming from the back of the house, the room he’s decided to call his den. He’s talking on the phone, and by the loud tone of his voice, it can only be his sister, Gloria. I head over.

  “Yeah, she’s fine,” he tells my aunt. “She’s got a new friend over right now. Joey . . . ? Well, remember how I got that time we moved . . . ? I know it wasn’t a diagnosed condition back then, but . . .” There’s a long pause. “Of course.” His voice rises even more. “Look, I—sure, there’s a risk, but what are my choices?”

  Diagnosed condition? Choices? Since it’s all stuff I’m probably not meant to hear, I act like I haven’t and step into the room. “Is that Tita Gloria?”

  Dad’s sitting in front of his computer, phone pressed to his ear. Obviously surprised to see me, his eyes go wide for a moment. “Uh . . . yeah,” he mumbles to both me and his sister. “Like always, she called to give me a hard time.” He holds the phone up. “Say hi and bye to your aunt.”

  Already? I holler across the desk, “Hi and bye, Tita Gloria!”

  He sets the phone down and focuses on the computer screen.

  “So . . . get any writing done?” I ask.

  “Just catching up on e-mail.” He glances up. “Your brother all right? Thought I heard something a while back.”

  Joey. Right. “Yeah, that was me yelling. I kinda had some trouble . . .”

  He looks up and immediately his eyes narrow on mine. “Theresa . . . ?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is that cobwebs on your glasses?”

  I pull them off. “Yeah, I sort of walked into some.”

  Even though it’s probably not smart, I stick around, hoping he’ll ask what I was yelling about. His eyes stay on the computer, and I blow out a frustrated breath and leave. Nobody calls me back.

  Having already propped open the basement door, Kerry waits on the first step with Joey right behind, cell phone in hand.

  “So? Did you tell him what happened?” Kerry asks.

  “He didn’t ask.” I make myself smile and pick up my flashlight. Since Kerry is a step below me, our eyes are almost even. “Still think it was a raccoon ghost?” I ask.

  She shines her light down into the darkness. “Let’s go find out.”

  CHAPTER 8

  WE STAND AT the bottom of the steps and hear more scuffling noises. I can’t tell if the rats are running away or coming back, but they stay out of sight, so I guess it doesn’t matter. We march through the laundry area and past the freezer. Kerry leads us back to the box with the dead raccoon.

  I tap her shoulder. “Is the EMF meter doing anything?”

  She holds it up. Nothing.

  Both relieved and disappointed, I take a few steps and shine my beam into the darkness. The light reveals an open doorway. Kerry and I look at each other with stiff smiles. Joey turns on the camera.

  The basement seems to be divided into three sections: laundry area, junk storage, and whatever is beyond that doorway.

  “The ghost must have gone in there.” Kerry starts toward it, but I grab her arm.

  “Wait, what if what we saw was something real, like an animal?”

  “It ran away,” Joey says.

  She glances at my brother and nods. “I’m going with that.”

  I shine my light back at the doorway. “Sure hope you guys are right.” What would be worse: meeting a real ghost face to face, or some wild animal that’s so freaked out it charges right at us?

  We shuffle along a narrow path and shine our lights through the doorway. The area is the size of a large bedroom, and I can see two-by-fours in the few places where there aren’t any cabinets. What the heck is this?

  For a while, all we do is stand there. Nothing charges us, and we creep forward. Against the far wall, a workbench stre
tches from one side of the room to the other. Scattered across the top are what look like pieces of a tiny half assembled wooden chair. If not for the dust and all the cobwebs, a visitor might think the owner had left just a few minutes ago.

  Why didn’t Dad mention this place?“Hey, Joey, check it out,” I whisper. “We just found Grandpa Joe’s workshop.”

  In the center of the room stands a square worktable with a thick butcher block top. A gallon-sized can of turpentine and a can of WD-40 are the only things on it.

  Kerry inches around the table. “I guess when your grandfather passed away your grandmother decided to leave this room just as he left it.”

  “Looks like it.” I pick up the turpentine can and give it a shake. Empty. “Mom never told me much about Grandpa Joe. She sure didn’t say he liked building things.”

  Kerry holds up the EMF meter and frowns. Still nothing.

  I step toward the wall of cabinets and signal for Joey to follow.

  On the other side of the worktable, Kerry stops, her light focused on the floor in front of her.

  “What?” I take a few steps. “What are you looking at?”

  She holds a finger to her lips and motions for us to join her. There, behind the table, is an object the size of a medium-sized dog covered by an old brown drop cloth.

  Is that it? I swallow hard. It’s the right size. Right color, too.

  Always filming, Joey circles around to the other side.

  “Pull the tarp off,” I whisper. “The EMF thingy’s dead, isn’t it?”

  Kerry nods and places her equipment on the table. “Then why don’t you do it?” Both hands free, she gives me a push and giggles as I scurry back against the workbench. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Ha, ha.” I rub my arms, which have suddenly gone all goose pimply.

  Joey notices. “Think those related to the three green lights?”

  “What green lights?” My eyes flash to the EMF meter. He’s right. They must have popped on while we were goofing around.

  Kerry gives me a nervous smile. For a while, she just stands there, looking at the mysterious canvas-covered shape. “This is it . . . my first chance to communicate with an American spirit.”