Howard turned and looked behind him. “Well . . . I don’t want to miss the next tour group,” he said. “But I’ll tell you how to get there. First, go back to that last room. Find the door that says BANK VAULT and pass through it. There’s a tunnel in there. Follow it until it splits in two, then go right. At the next split, turn left. The tunnel will get a lot smaller. When it turns a corner, you’re below the library. Easy-peasy. But your solid friend can’t go with you. No solids allowed in those tunnels. They’re dangerous for solid people.”
Kaz gulped. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go by himself.
“Excuse me!” Wendy said sharply. She walked through Howard and stopped beside Claire and Maddie. “You two have to stay with the group.”
“Sorry. We’re coming,” Claire said as she and Maddie started walking.
Satisfied, Wendy hurried to the front of the group. Claire and Maddie slowed down.
“Are you going to tell me what’s happening?” Maddie asked Claire. “Is there another ghost down here?”
Claire nodded slightly.
“Does he know Kaz’s brother?” Maddie asked.
“No,” Claire said. “But he knows the way to the library. He just told Kaz how to get there through a bunch of tunnels that only the underground ghosts know about! Little John and that other ghost could be somewhere in one of those tunnels.” She turned to Kaz. “You’re going to have to go check it out.”
“But . . . I don’t want to go by myself,” Kaz said.
“You have to,” Claire said. “I can’t pass through walls, and I can’t go in those tunnels.”
Claire was right. Kaz had to go alone. There was no other choice.
“Good luck,” Claire said. “We’ll meet you back at the library.”
* * * * * * *
Right, then left, then up into the library, Kaz repeated Howard’s directions to himself as he passed through a gritty cobweb.
There were no windows or lightbulbs in the ceiling in this part of the Underground. Some of the boards around the doorways were cracked and broken. And there were places where the ceiling had caved in. But he kept going. He floated through cobweb after cobweb. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
All of a sudden, he heard laughter. Ghostly laughter.
“Hello?” Kaz called.
“Hello,” a ghostly voice called back.
Kaz could see the ghosts up ahead now. There were three of them. Two men and a lady. They hovered in midair, right near a bend in the tunnel. They were laughing at something just around the corner.
“What’s so funny?” Kaz asked as he wafted up behind them.
The lady ghost pointed. “Ghost hunters,” she said. Which made the other ghosts laugh even harder.
Kaz saw two solid men partway down the tunnel. There were bright lights on their helmets. Big headphones covered their ears. One of the men held a strange-looking gadget that beeped. The other held a black box. They stared very seriously at the dirt wall in front of them.
“I didn’t think solid people were allowed in these tunnels,” Kaz said.
“They’re not,” said one of the ghost men. “But those two sneaked down, anyway.”
“What do you suppose they see?” asked the ghost lady.
“Nothing,” one of the ghost men replied. And they all laughed.
“Um, do you guys know the way to the library?” Kaz asked the ghosts. “Is it that way?” He pointed a shaky finger at the ghost hunters.
“Yes,” the ghost lady replied. “But don’t worry about them. They’ll never know you’re there.”
She was probably right. If she was wrong, and somehow those ghost hunters managed to catch Kaz and put him in their black box, he could probably pass through the side and escape.
Kaz took a deep breath and continued down the tunnel. Toward the ghost hunters.
“Go through them! Go through them!” the ghosts behind him urged.
Kaz let his left foot dangle through the head of one of the ghost hunters as he sailed above them. The ghosts behind him laughed and laughed.
Even Kaz couldn’t help smiling a little bit. The “ghost hunters” hadn’t noticed him at all.
Kaz kept going. At the next split, he took the left tunnel. This ceiling was a lot lower, just like Howard had said it would be. The whole tunnel was getting smaller and narrower. Kaz had to shrink a little to fit through it.
All of a sudden, he stopped. He heard something. It sounded like ghostly crying.
Kaz followed the tunnel around a corner. There, in front of him, was the very same ghost boy that he and Little John had chased through the library yesterday.
Unfortunately, Little John wasn’t with him.
The ghost boy hugged his knees to his chest and sobbed.
“Hello?” Kaz said gently. He didn’t want to scare the boy the way Little John had.
The boy stopped crying for a second. He looked up at Kaz, and his eyes widened. He started to swim away.
“Wait!” Kaz said, wafting after him. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”
Surprisingly enough, the boy stopped.
Kaz drifted a little closer. “What’s your name?” he said. “My name’s Kaz.”
“Oliver,” the boy said.
“Hi, Oliver,” Kaz said. “Why are you crying?”
Oliver wiped the back of his hand across his face. “I got blown away,” he said with a sniff.
“Oh no,” Kaz said. “From where? Where’s your haunt?”
Oliver shrugged.
“How did you get blown away?” Kaz asked.
Oliver shrugged again. “It was an accident,” he said.
Kaz felt bad for Oliver. “I got separated from my family once, too,” he said. “We used to live in this old schoolhouse, but it got torn down and then the wind blew us to different places. But guess what? I found my whole family again!”
Now Oliver looked at him with interest.
“Unfortunately, I lost my little brother yesterday,” Kaz went on. “Do you know where he is? The last time I saw him, well . . . we were chasing you.”
“That wasn’t very nice of you,” Oliver said in a small voice.
“We weren’t trying to be mean,” Kaz said. “We wanted to know why you were crying. We wanted to help.”
“How did you find your family when you got lost?” Oliver asked.
“A solid girl helped me,” Kaz said. He expected Oliver to have questions about that. Whenever Kaz told another ghost about Claire, the ghost always had lots of questions.
But the only thing Oliver wanted to know about Claire was, “Can she help me find my family?”
“Maybe,” Kaz replied. “Probably. But we’re leaving in a couple of days and—”
“I know what happened to your brother,” Oliver interrupted. He sniffed again. “I’ll tell you . . . if your solid friend can find my family. But she has to help me first. Deal?” He held out his hand.
What if Claire can’t find Oliver’s family? Kaz wondered.
Well, he didn’t have any other options. So he shook Oliver’s hand and said, “Deal.”
“Where’s your solid friend right now?” Oliver asked.
“Her name is Claire,” Kaz said. “She was at the Underground, but she’s meeting me in the library. Do you know how to get to the library? Do we just swim up through the ceiling?”
“Pretty much,” Oliver said. “It takes a while, though. Hold your breath and kick as hard as you can. Eventually you’ll come out in the parking garage.”
Oliver took a deep breath and swam up through the dirt ceiling.
Kaz did the same thing.
Deep breath . . . then kick, kick, kick, kick, kick through the concrete . . . kick, kick, kick, kick, kick . . . kick, kick, kick, kick, kick . . . oh, how Kaz hated concrete. He was starting
to feel skizzy again.
But if a little kid ghost like Oliver could swim through it, so could Kaz.
Kick, kick, kick, pop! He was in the parking garage.
Oliver was, too.
“Okay. Where’s your friend?” Oliver asked as a solid car drove through him.
Kaz darted out of the way so the car wouldn’t drive through him, too. “We’ll meet her and her cousin upstairs,” he said. They hadn’t actually agreed on a meeting spot. But Kaz had a feeling Claire and Maddie would go to the children’s center.
The ghosts swam up through the ceiling. The ceiling seemed to go on longer than it should, until Kaz realized he was passing through a shelf of books behind the checkout desk. He veered to the side and led Oliver past the elevators, past the security guard, and through the glass wall into the children’s center.
Kaz looked around. He didn’t see Claire or Maddie. “They’ll be here soon,” Kaz told Oliver.
The ghosts drifted around the children’s center.
“Did you come here two nights ago and knock a bunch of books on the floor and leave a message on all the computers that said ‘cancel the Halloween party or else’?” Kaz asked.
“That wasn’t just me,” Oliver said right away. “Lots of ghosts helped with that.”
So it was ghosts. There was one mystery solved.
“Why?” Kaz asked. “Why would you do all that?”
“We don’t want all those solid kids to stay the whole night,” Oliver said. “The library is supposed to be ours at night. Ghosts get the library at night. Solid people get it during the day. That’s the deal.”
“What deal?” Kaz asked.
“The deal that the solids and the ghosts made,” Oliver said.
“What solids? What ghosts?” Kaz wanted to know. And what was it with Oliver and deals, anyway?
“I don’t know,” Oliver said. “The deal was made a long, long, long time ago. And now those solids are breaking the deal. It’s not fair. We want them to know it’s not fair. That’s why we knocked all the books on the floor.”
“Oh,” Kaz said. He didn’t know what else to say. He wondered if Maddie and the others knew about this deal. Not that it mattered. The party was canceled. The ghosts would have the library to themselves on Halloween.
“What about when the escalators stopped working?” Kaz asked. “Did you or the other ghosts make that happen?”
“No,” Oliver said. “But I bet those solid people think we did. Solid people always blame ghosts when stuff like that happens.”
“True,” Kaz said. “Lots of solid people say they don’t believe in ghosts, yet when something happens that they can’t explain, they think ghosts did it.”
“Are you sure your solid friend is coming?” Oliver asked.
“Yes,” Kaz said. But it had been a while since they’d separated in the Underground. Kaz had managed to get all the way through the secret underground tunnels into the library. Shouldn’t Claire and Maddie have been back by now, too?
Maybe they’re in a different part of the library,” Kaz said. “Let’s go look for them.” He started to pass through the glass wall when, finally, he saw Claire and Maddie walking into the library.
“There they are,” he said. “Over here, Claire!” He waved.
Claire smiled. “We need a private place to talk,” she told Maddie in a quiet voice as she stomped the rain from her feet. “Kaz is back. And there’s another ghost boy with him. But it’s not Little John or the ghost from the Underground. Should we go in one of the bathrooms?”
“You want to take boy ghosts into the girls’ bathroom?” Maddie shrieked.
A couple of girls turned to look at Maddie and Claire.
Maddie’s face reddened. She probably realized how that sounded. She leaned close to Claire and said, “I know where we can talk,” she said. “Follow me.”
She led Claire and the ghosts up the escalator to the third floor. They went over to the teen area, past some bookshelves, and over to a black tape that stretched from the wall to a pillar. Maddie ducked under it.
“Are we allowed back there?” Claire asked.
“Yes. This is the teen work room,” Maddie said. “It’s where teen volunteers go to work on projects.”
Claire ducked under the tape. Kaz and Oliver sailed over it. And now they were in a small room with a table and chairs and a row of cabinets.
“There are librarians back there,” Maddie said, pointing to another door they could sort of see through next to the cabinets. “We should talk softly.”
Claire nodded. “That means you guys shouldn’t wail,” she said to the ghosts.
“You’ll tell me everything the ghosts say, though. Won’t you?” Maddie asked.
“Of course,” Claire said. She sat down at the table. “So, who’s your friend, Kaz?”
“His name’s Oliver,” Kaz said, wafting closer. “Oliver, this is Claire and Maddie.”
“Hi, Oliver,” Claire said, waving at him. Oliver waved back.
“Claire can see and hear you, but Maddie can’t,” Kaz told Oliver. “Claire, Oliver is the ghost who’s been crying in the dumbwaiter. He got separated from his family. That’s why he was crying. He knows where Little John is, but he wants you to help him find his family before he’ll tell us about Little John.”
Claire repeated all of that for Maddie.
Kaz also told Claire about the deal that some solid people and ghost people made about the library a long time ago and how that was why the ghosts had messed up the children’s center.
Claire repeated that for Maddie, too.
“So now we know who’s been haunting the library and why,” Maddie said. “But we can’t do anything about it. The party’s already canceled.”
“How many ghosts are in your family?” Claire asked Oliver. “And where did you last see them?”
“There are five ghosts in my family,” Oliver said. “My mom, my dad, my brother, Owen, my sister, Olivia, and me. I last saw them at home, before I accidentally passed through the wall.”
“You mean we just have to take you home and then you’ll be with your family?” Claire said. “That’s easy. Where do you live?”
“In the castle by the sky church,” Oliver said.
Claire turned to Maddie. “He lives in the castle by the sky church. What’s that?”
“No idea,” Maddie replied.
“It’s a big, big screen that plays music videos,” Oliver said, stretching his arms wide. “There’s a huge pile of instruments, mostly guitars, that goes from the floor to the big, high ceiling. You can watch movies about outer space and play video games. Lots of solid people come to visit, too. Our haunt is kind of a museum.”
Claire repeated that for Maddie.
“Oh, he probably lives at the MoPOP,” Maddie said.
“What’s the MoPOP?” Kaz asked.
“It’s a museum that has music and science-fiction stuff,” Claire replied.
“Yeah . . . that’s . . . where . . . I . . . live . . . !” Oliver wailed. He was so excited that he started to glow.
Maddie laughed. “Well, let’s take you home, Oliver!”
“I thought you said that girl couldn’t see or hear us,” Oliver said, pointing at Maddie.
“You’re glowing,” Kaz said, trying not to feel jealous.
“I am?” Oliver looked down at himself. “Hey, I am! I didn’t know I could glow.” He beamed with pride.
Kaz sighed. Everyone could glow. Everyone except him.
“We have to shrink so we can fit in Claire’s water bottle,” Kaz told Oliver. “That’s how we’ll travel to your haunt.”
Kaz thought Oliver would have some questions about traveling inside a solid girl’s water bottle. But he shrank down . . . down . . . down . . . and passed through the bottle like he knew exactly what to
do.
So Kaz did, too.
Then Claire and Maddie headed out into the rain.
* * * * * * *
The MoPOP was an even weirder-looking building than the library. From inside Claire’s water bottle, it looked like a spaceship. Part of it was light blue. Part of it was silver—or was it gold? It seemed to change color, depending on how close you were to it. A train track in the sky ran right through the middle.
“That’s where I live!” Oliver said, bobbing up and down inside the bottle.
Kaz grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t get too excited. If you pass through Claire’s water bottle before we get inside, you’ll blow away.”
Oliver tried to calm himself down. Claire and Maddie went inside the museum and paid admission.
“Okay, now it’s safe to pass through,” Kaz said. He and Oliver passed through the bottle and exp-a-a-a-a-a-nded.
The lady at the ticket counter gave Claire and Maddie a map of all the exhibits.
“Mom! Dad! I’m home!” Oliver yelled. But there was loud music playing around the corner, so Kaz wasn’t sure Oliver’s family could hear him.
Oliver went over to a big wooden door and passed through it. Apparently it was heavy, because Maddie and Claire had to work together to pull it open.
Kaz followed the girls into what looked like an enchanted forest. There was a shiny castle to the right. A ghost lady around his mom’s age passed through the castle wall near the ceiling. “Oliver?” she said, her eyes wide with disbelief.
A ghost man around Pops’s age passed through behind her. “Is that you, son?”
“Mom! Dad!” Oliver cried as he swam to his parents and hugged them.
“What?” Maddie asked Claire. “Why are you smiling like that? Is his family here?”
“Yes,” Claire said.
Oliver introduced his parents to Kaz, Claire, and Maddie. “That one can’t see or hear us.” He pointed to Maddie. “But the other one can. They brought me home!”
“You got help from solid girls?” Oliver’s mom asked.
“Yes!” Oliver said. He told his parents all about Kaz and Claire and what it was like to travel inside a water bottle.
The Underground Ghosts #10--A Super Special Page 6
