by Susan Vaught
She’d investigate, I wrote back on the iPad. And we’re doing that. I told Lavender what we’d figured out about the fake page so far. Music still jammed in my ears, blocking out the world except for the messages on my iPad.
Gotta be somebody local, since they had to go to the library? Lavender typed.
Maybe, I typed back. Or visiting. Or got help from a local friend.
What’s their beef with Toppy?
No idea, but he’s been arresting people for half a century. He’s going to check his cases.
How about Mayor Chandler’s hair helmet? A gagging stickman emoji popped up, and I smiled.
I’ve been trying to talk her into purple highlights.
Bug-eyed heart-face emoji. It’d be a good look for her. NN.
Nine o’clock. Offline time for my best friend. NN I sent, along with a sleeping kitty emoji.
Toppy didn’t have an offline time for me. I wasn’t totally sure he understood the interwebz were open 24/7, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
I sat in the dark and checked the fake Facebook page as my current playlist cycled through my favorites. No more updates. I made a folder in Photos, then saved all the pictures, and screencaps, too. If Facebook took down the page, I’d still be able to see what had been posted.
My face felt cool from being so close to my bedroom window with the curtains open. I knew if I touched the glass, cold would sting my fingers.
When I looked out into the night, winter moonlight bathed the field between our house and Thornwood Manor, making a few rolled bales of hay look like prehistoric cows on some alien planet. I had a straight-on view of the back of the mansion, with its three floors and the four-story tower-thingy right in the middle. According to architecture fanatics who commented on the Thornwood sites, it was an “Italianate tower” instead of a turret because it was square, not round.
Rows of windows, six on each floor, seemed like dark gateways to other dimensions. When I first moved in with Toppy, the mansion had creeped me right out and given me nightmares. Now I was used to its hulking silhouette.
My watch beeped, and I moved in my chair, shifting to my left hip because the hour was odd. I did right hip on the evens. What had Mom wanted when she called? One of her obligatory check-ins?
Pawned off her disabled kid. . . .
Jerk. I wished I knew who made that Facebook page. I’d pawn my fist off on his or her face, that was a promise.
My own face suddenly felt hot again, and I shut my eyes.
Mom might have seen the fake page already. She was probably upset. Toppy would calm her down. He was better at that than I was. Then he’d have a little time with Mayor Chandler, maybe give her some tea if he didn’t get nervous. Even though he kept telling me he was “too old for any of that foolishness,” I was pretty sure he liked her—when he wasn’t wanting to kill her.
Deep breath. Don’t get mad again. Don’t do it.
I relaxed my jaws, then my neck muscles and my hands, and then all my muscles, top to bottom. That’s one of the things this counselor taught me to do a couple of years ago, when Toppy drove me to Nashville to get help for my anger after I hollered at a teacher in class. If I kept my body chilled, I wouldn’t lose my temper so much, and if I did get really mad, I could distract myself and calm down before I exploded. So I used my superhero lists, and relaxing my muscles, and music. And avoiding Mom. Avoiding Mom really cut down on my blowups.
Oops.
My jaws had gotten all tight again, so I started over on my relaxing.
Even though Toppy teased me about being a comics nerd, I had grown out of a lot of my superhero obsession. Sort of. Still liked the comics and movies, maybe a little less than Lavender. But when we were younger, Lavender and I drew stick-figure cartoons where Super Max in her chair rocketed in to save the day. Lavender the Magnifico was never far behind, wearing her lightning bracelets and booming thunder at all who opposed her.
Deep breath, and hold.
Deep breath, and hold.
It made me happy to think about those silly pictures and stories.
Deep breath, and hold.
A few seconds—or maybe minutes—later, I checked my body. My muscles seemed relaxed, and the heat had left my face. Once more, I could feel the cold radiating off my windowpanes. I let out a long, slow sigh, closed my eyes, opened them—and froze.
Blinked.
Shut my eyes and opened them again.
“No way.” I ripped out my earbuds. My fingers fumbled with my iPad, tapping the camera icon, then lifting and aiming. My first shot flashed, and I swore, knowing I’d get nothing but glare from my own windows. I turned off the flash and jammed my finger on the button, taking a burst of Thornwood’s tower.
A single light flickered on the screen view as I took another burst, and another. My heart seemed to jump against my ribs as the flickering light moved to the next window, then vanished. A few thudding pulse-beats later, it appeared in the third-level windows, and disappeared. Second level. First level. And . . .
Gone.
I waited, barely breathing, squinting through the darkness at the back of the mansion.
What had I just seen?
A ghost? A ghost walking by candlelight. Wasn’t that one of the Thornwood ghost stories? Lavender had all the same books I did, maybe a few more since her mom used to run the tours from Something Wicked, her shop on Town Square.
“Don’t be silly,” I told myself.
But there had been a light. Had somebody broken into the mansion?
I kept watching for a long time, minutes that felt like hours. No light. No movement. Nothing.
I positioned my iPad so I could see it and the mansion, too, and I opened the bursts I had taken. The shots were mostly a lot of gray and black nothingness. I could make out a pinpoint of light, but only because I knew where I was looking. When I enlarged the shots, they got too grainy to see anything at all.
There had been a light, for sure.
I went to my favorite Thornwood Manor website, waited for the owl logo to load and fade, then scanned the history page until I got to the paragraph I wanted to send to Lavender:
Twenty years after Thornwood’s death in 1895, his eldest grandchild tried to set up residence in the mansion. The man fled less than a month later, complaining of frightening noises, terrible nightmares, and lights shining in locked rooms. The heir hired various caretakers, but none lasted more than a few weeks. One poor gentleman tumbled down the front stairs and broke his neck, marking the end of human habitation in Thornwood Manor.
I sent that to her, then sent the next paragraph, too.
In the Roaring Twenties, when the real estate company caring for the home allowed evening tours, guests reported cold spots and visions, and many thought they saw flickering lights in the mansion’s windows, as if someone walked the floors carrying a candlestick.
I watched Thornwood Manor for another few minutes, but it stayed dark. I pulled the best of my photos into an editing app, circled the little bit of light, and sent them after the paragraphs for Lavender to find in the morning.
Top of Thornwood turret. Oh, crud. I erased “turret” and put “tower,” and recorded the time I took the bursts. Then I added, See you tomorrow. It’s been one seriously weird Friday night.
4
DECEMBER 2
You’re sooooo wrong,” Riley Soza said to David “Bot” Botman, owner of Bot’s Electronics, one of the bigger stores on Blue Creek’s Town Square. It sat directly across from the police department, but the courthouse in the middle blocked the view. That meant Toppy probably wouldn’t see me spending my allowance on a bunch of wires and circuits, which was for the best. Panic wasn’t good for him this early in the morning, especially when he had to go in on a weekend to search his arrest files with Mayor Chandler, trying to find who might have created a fake Facebook page to make them both look pathetic.
“Superman is much better than Spider-Man,” Riley insisted. “So much better.”
He flexed the puny muscles of his way-too-long arms. “Strength, invulnerability, plus he can fly.”
Lavender sat at the parts counter gazing at Riley with unicorn-star eyes. She thought his long, dark hair was adorable. In fact, she’d been kind of silly about him since he came to live with Bot as his foster son three years ago. He was just one grade above us, but, like, half a foot taller than Lavender’s five-two. Every three seconds, she played with her red curls, tucking them behind first one ear, then the other. Sometimes, she fidgeted with the coat on the back of her chair. Her purple Magic Wins sweatshirt glittered in the shop’s winter lighting, and she kept scrubbing her dancer’s tights and fuzzy leggings against the counter’s glass, making squeegee sounds that gave me chills.
I don’t think Riley noticed.
I tried to go back to studying different wire grades, calculating length in my head as Bot boomed, “Boy, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice bounced off routers and switches and circuit boards and soldering irons, dragging my attention back to the never-ending Great Superhero Debate. I tell you what, if I really were a superhero, I would not want these geeks arguing about my strengths and weaknesses. In my head, I saw my stick-figure self in my stick-sketched rocket chair jetting by just long enough to drop a load of “dislike” thumbs on the store’s flat yellow roof.
Bot shifted his bulk in front of Riley, shaking a fist but grinning at the same time. With his white hair and white beard and big build, he looked a lot like Santa Claus, but with a ton of tattoos. “Supe is scared of rocks. Rocks! ” The dark skin around his eyes crinkled as he laughed. “Spidey’s scared of nada, and his extra senses trump super-strength any day.”
“I like Carol Danvers,” Lavender said as she stretched out her leg and pointed the toe of her purple everyday acro shoe at the far wall. “She can fly, too, and she loves Star Wars, like me. Ms. Marvel aces Superman and Spider-Man both.”
Bot and Riley gaped at her.
Riley grabbed his chest and faked a heart attack. “Oh, no you did not just say that.”
Lavender stretched her other leg, then bent her arms and gave him a bring-it-chump finger wiggle.
“I thought Lavender always championed Wonder Woman or Squirrel Girl,” Ellis Pritchard said as he leaned on the glass display case I was staring at.
Jeez! I almost jumped out of my skin. He always snuck up on me because he was small and quiet compared to Riley and Bot. He had cut his blond hair since I saw him a couple of weeks ago. It stuck up in bristles around his pale freckled face, making him look my age instead of nineteen.
“Arguing for a Marvel against the DC heroes is her latest tactic to destroy their arrogance,” I said. “I don’t think she’ll get very far. She ought to challenge them to a rap battle or a dance-off. She’d win those, no question.”
Bot and Riley talked over each other in their hurry to convince Lavender that Superman, Spider-Man, or basically any guy super was better than her girl super. Ellis shook his head. When he grinned at me, I grinned back automatically. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but if I could pick somebody to be an older brother, I’d definitely choose Ellis.
We both loved electricity and designing circuits and gadgets. We both didn’t really have a mom because ours took off. He got raised by his aunt, like I was being raised by Toppy, only his aunt died at Blue Creek Nursing Home last year. He never talked about his dad, and I figured Ellis was in the same boat as me, not even knowing who that was. So, see? Lots alike. Except he kicked my butt with computers. Lavender and I could hold our own with apps and programs, but Ellis—he could make computers tap dance if he wanted to.
He glanced at my chair and took in the rows of yin-yang symbols I had etched down both push-bars since the last time I was in the store. “You trying a Zen phase, or are you planning to take up surfing?”
“They make wheelchair surfboards and water chairs,” I said. “But I’d probably get seasick in the ocean.”
“Zen it is.” He saluted. “We could all use a little healthy meditation. What can I do you for this week, Max?”
I pointed into the display case. “Ten-gauge wire will handle forty amps, right?”
Ellis’s blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You up to something that’ll summon the fire department again?”
My face got hot. “No! And that was two weeks ago. Am I ever going to live that down?”
He grabbed my coil of wire. “Mistakes follow people. Especially three-alarm blunders. Like . . . your grandfather’s new Facebook page?”
“That’s just junk,” I told him. “Somebody did it for a prank.”
“Seriously?” He looked skeptical.
“Yeah.” I waved a hand in the general direction of the police station. “Some hacker with a grudge. Used the wrong name. Well, a name my grandfather would never choose, I mean.”
Ellis hesitated, then frowned. “Huh. Pretty sophisticated for a prank. If it’s not really Chief Brennan’s page, where’d all those old photos come from?”
“Like Toppy would even know how to take a picture of a print and post it. He’s never used the camera on that old flip-top phone he likes.” I laughed. “The hacker got them from the Gazette archives, best we can figure.”
“We?” Ellis raised his blond eyebrows, and I realized the shop had gotten quiet except for the vintage rock Pandora station Bot liked to pipe in through the always-expanding sound system.
“Toppy and Mayor Chandler and Lavender and me, and now the librarian and other officers, too.” Lavender came over to me as I added, “Most of the department’s in this morning, checking it out, trying to see if there’s any real threat involved. Last time I talked to Toppy, he had questioned the librarian. All the pictures had been accounted for in Gazette stories, and they were piling up cases released from jail this year to get a fix on who might have tried it.”
“There are, like, a hundred-fifty-million fake Facebook accounts trying to steal people’s identity and money and stuff,” Lavender said.
“And they rake in the dough,” Ellis said. “One way wealth gets redistributed from silver-spooners with big bucks to smarter people born with fewer resources.”
Bot wagged his finger at Ellis. “Internet Robin Hoods are criminals, not superheroes.”
“It’s not fair that money controls who a person can become,” Ellis said.
“It doesn’t,” Riley argued. “Well, I guess it does some. Maybe a lot.”
“No cynicism allowed in my shop, boys and girls,” Bot announced.
Ellis gave Bot a thumbs-down, but he stopped talking like he thought it was cool to steal from the rich.
“I don’t think the police will ever figure out who set that fake page up,” Lavender said, “but it got taken down this morning.”
“Well, that was quick work,” Bot said. “But I didn’t think Mayor Chandler and Chief Brennan got along that well, from, well—you know. Back in the day. But now she’s helping him?”
“She has a nice side,” I told him. “Plus, the hacker posted an awful old photo of her. Hey, you rang that wire up wrong, Ellis.”
Ellis studied the old-fashioned cha-ching register’s big numbers and grimaced. “Yeah. That’ll be $12.93 for fifty feet, not $1.29. Sorry.”
“Dork,” Riley said.
As Ellis punched him in the shoulder, I fumbled in the pouch hanging from my wheelchair arm and came out with my last grubby clump of five-dollar bills. When I forked them over, Ellis frowned and pinched them between his thumb and pointer like they might be contaminated.
“It’s just honey,” I assured him. “From making Toppy’s tea. Oh, crud. Look, don’t tell anybody he drinks tea with honey. He says people will think he’s going soft in his old age.”
Riley cracked up, and so did Lavender. Bot hustled off before anybody asked him to touch the sticky money. Ellis stuffed the bills in the register and gave me my change, looking like he ate something really sour. Then, as I zipped up my change pouch, Ellis asked, “So, you w
ant me to try to trace the Facebook page? I have some data-mining programs I wrote. I could try them out to see if I can find the server the page-faker used.”
“You can do stuff like that?” Lavender asked, sounding impressed.
“He wishes,” Riley said, and then laughed at his own joke.
“I can try,” Ellis said. “May not get anywhere, though.” He held up both hands like he wanted us to know he wasn’t promising anything—or, more importantly, setting himself up for endless teasing if he couldn’t pull it off.
Lavender fiddled with her hair. “Seeing as we don’t have any sophisticated cybercrime investigators in Blue Creek, and Mom said the FBI won’t help out unless the fake poster starts outright threatening people or breaking big federal laws, you’re probably our only hope.”
“That would be awesome, Ellis.” I handed my bag with the wire coil to Lavender, and she put it in my wheelchair backpack, then handed me the coat I had draped over the chair’s push-bars. “Thank you. You have my e-mail address if you find anything?”
He gave me the thumbs-up. “It’s in the store records. Just you be careful, Max. There was a lot of talk on that page about Thornwood’s Revenge. Seriously creepy stuff.”
Lavender helped me put on my coat, shaking her head. “Mayor Chandler says that’s just more junk. People have been telling scary stories about that scary man and his scary house for decades.”
“When you read all the old stories about Thornwood Manor, it’s not such a joke,” Ellis said. “You know his youngest daughter was just about your age when Thornwood’s wife snuck her out of the mansion and sent her to her brother and sister in Detroit, but she—”
“Died less than a week later in a carriage accident,” I finished for him. “Yeah, I know. And I know people said nobody was driving the carriage.”
Riley counted off on his fingers. “And then a caretaker broke his neck, and tour guests saw spooky stuff, and don’t forget the one grandson who tried to live there and had to run away. I know Thornwood was a jerk, but you have to respect his supervillain-fear-me game. People are still scared of what his ghost might be cooking up for Blue Creek, and I bet it’s nasty as he—um, heck.”
