The Gloomy Ghost

by David Lubar

  I was so excited, I ran right through the door. Inside, there was a woman sitting at a table. She had a scarf on her head and big earrings. She was staring into a crystal ball. Another woman, who looked like a grandmother, sat on the other side of the table. This was great. I knew I’d come to the right place.

  The woman with the earrings waved her hand over the crystal ball, then looked up at the other woman and said, “You were wise to come to Madam Zonga. I know all. I see all. I can speak with the spirits.”

  Boy, was this a relief. I ran up to her and said, “Hi!”

  “I hear the spirits speaking,” Madam Zonga said.

  “Yeah. That’s me. Rory. I need help.” It felt so good to be able to talk to someone, I jumped up and down and clapped my hands together. This was super lucky. I could tell her about my body under the bushes, and then she could call Mom and Dad. I wouldn’t have to stay dead.

  “What do the spirits say?” the other woman asked.

  “Oh, this is terrible.” Madam Zonga gasped and clenched her fists. “They tell me you have a curse on your money.”

  “What?” I didn’t know what she was talking about. “That’s not what I said.” Maybe she was talking to other spirits. I looked around the room, but there was nobody else there.

  “Yes,” Madam Zonga said, “they are very clear about this. And they are worried about you. There is a terrible curse.” She closed her eyes and shuddered.

  I turned away from her and ran over to the woman. “I didn’t say anything about money. I ate some berries and I’m gonna die. Help me.”

  She didn’t hear me, either. “A curse?” she said. She hunched up in her chair like she was trying to hide. “Can you help me?”

  “Of course,” Madam Zonga said. She raised a finger to her lips to make the other woman be quiet. Then she stared into the crystal ball again for a minute. “The spirits are guiding me. They have told me what to do. You must take all of your money from the bank and bring it to me this evening. Wrap it in a handkerchief—a plain white handkerchief. With the help of the spirits, I will remove the curse.”

  “You can do that?” the lady asked.

  “I will try my best,” Madam Zonga said. She reached out and held the other woman’s arm. “It is very dangerous for me to try, but I must help you.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.” The woman stood up and hurried out the door.

  “What spirits?” I said to Madam Zonga.

  She got out of her chair as soon as the lady left. Then she went through a curtain to another room and picked up the phone. “Hi,” she said to the person on the other end. “It’s me. I got a good one. We’ll make enough to get out of town. Get packed up. I want to be out of here tonight, before she realizes we have her money.”

  She hung up. Then she laughed.

  When I saw Madam Zonga laughing, I got so angry, I tried to hit the table, but my fist went right through it. “You liar! You cheater!” I screamed. She didn’t hear anything. “You’re just a big fat fake!”

  Yip growled at her. She didn’t notice.

  It was no use. She couldn’t hear either of us. I raced out of there. I had to get home. But I was so angry, I could hardly think. Calm down, I told myself. I took a deep breath, even though I didn’t need to breathe, then I took a couple of steps. As I walked toward the curb, a van came by. It slowed down. There was something turning around and around on the top of the van. It looked like some kind of antenna. The van stopped.

  I took another really deep breath. That was better. I was hardly angry at all. The van drove past me and went down the road.

  I realized I could get home quicker if I took a shortcut. I didn’t have to go along the streets. I could just go straight toward my house. Instead of walking around Hutchin’s Department Store on the corner, I went through it.

  Yip followed right along. I didn’t worry about anything in front of me. I just walked. When I came out of the other side of the store, I kept going straight toward my house. I went through parked cars and trees and the bookstore and the shoe store.

  Then I walked right through a house. At first, I started to go through the porch, but then I learned something. If I really looked where I was walking, I could go up steps. But I had to pay attention and remind myself that they were there. If I walked without looking, I went through the steps. After I came out of that house, I went through another. I was walking through the next house after that when I heard something that made me stop.

  “All aboard!” a voice shouted.

  I knew that voice. It was Becky. I looked around and I realized where I was right away. I was in the middle of her house, in the living room. I followed the voice to the playroom. Becky was there with a train set. That’s right—I remembered something. Today was her birthday.

  “Great trains,” I said.

  She didn’t hear me. That’s okay. But they really were great trains. I wish I had a set like that. Becky was running them around in a big loop. Besides the train and the track, she had some tiny houses and trees and a couple of cows.

  She had lots of extra train cars, too. I watched while she added cars, making the train longer and longer. It was really great. She didn’t just hook up the cars. She made the train do it. She’d put a new car behind the train, then have the train go backwards. When it bumped into the next car, everything got hooked together. Then she’d make it go forward around the track.

  Yip barked and chased after the trains. He kept trying to pick them up in his mouth. It was funny. I wanted to play with them, too, but seeing Becky play with them was almost as good. Maybe I could ask for a train set for Christmas. Of course, I’d have to be alive to ask for it.

  Alive!

  I looked at my watch. It was 5:27. I’d been watching the trains and I’d forgotten all about getting home. Now, I had only—I tried to figure it out, but I couldn’t. I just knew it wasn’t a lot of minutes.

  “I gotta go,” I said to Becky as I rushed out of her house.

  Nine

  HAS ANYBODY FOUND MY BODY?

  When I got home, I ran around to the backyard to see if my body was still there. It was. I tried to grab my legs so I could drag myself out from under the bushes, but I couldn’t put my hands on me.

  Maybe I could get someone inside to find me. I think Sebastian almost heard me before, when I’d shouted. Maybe people in a family can sort of hear ghosts. I went to the porch and walked carefully up the steps. The back door goes right into the kitchen. That’s good, because I didn’t want to go anywhere near the living room. Even thinking about the living room, where the you-know-what was, made me start to sink into the floor a little.

  Mom was in the kitchen, walking back and forth, saying, “Where could he be? This isn’t like him to run off.”

  Dad was sitting at the table. “Rory’s fine,” he said. “I’m sure he’s just afraid to come home. But it’ll start to get dark soon, and he’ll come back.”

  I tried to make them hear me. “Look under the bushes!” I shouted. But they didn’t hear anything at all.

  Maybe Angelina or Sebastian would hear me. I went up the stairs. At first, I couldn’t find them. I thought they’d be in their own rooms. But they were both sitting in my room, looking real sad. “Hey, I’m okay,” I said. “You just have to find me.”

  Sebastian sort of frowned, then said, “I know he’s okay. I just know it.”

  Angelina nodded. “Yeah. I sort of feel that, too. But I wish he’d come back. I’m worried.”

  I heard a doorbell, then footsteps. Norman came up the hall and into my room. “Look, I got a new set of magnets,” he said, holding up a box. He reached in and held up two big bars of metal. “Check this out.” He put one magnet on the rug, then he moved the other near it. The first one slid away. I’d seen that before. I have some tiny plastic dogs that do the same thing. The heads push each other away, but the head sticks to the tail.

  “Not now,” Sebastian told him. “We’ve got problems.”

  �
�What’s wrong?” Norman asked.

  Sebastian looked down at the floor for a moment, then said, “Rory is missing.”

  “Oh, no.” Norman picked up his magnets and dropped them back in the box. “Have you looked for him?”

  “We’ve been looking all day,” Sebastian said. “I went everywhere—to the school and the park and the mall. And all around the neighborhood. Dad’s been driving all over town. He just came back a couple of minutes ago. And he called the police, and they’re looking, too.”

  The police? Wow. Oh, wow. I felt that big guilty feeling, when you know you’ve been really really really bad. The police were looking for me. As bad as that was, I realized it was also good. Maybe they’d find me. But they hadn’t yet. Nobody had found me. It was those stupid bushes. If I wasn’t under there, they’d see me. But my hiding place was just too good.

  I looked at my watch. Oh, no. It was 5:49. That’s real close to being 6:13. I ran back down the stairs and out to the yard. I wanted to drag myself out so they’d find me and take care of me and I wouldn’t have to stay dead. But that wouldn’t work. I couldn’t touch myself. I couldn’t move myself.

  No. That was wrong. I was so excited when I realized what to do, I shouted, “I got it!”

  With Yip chasing along behind me, I ran to the bushes. It would work. It had to.

  Ten

  REPULSIVE RORY

  It was true—I couldn’t touch myself. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t move myself. It meant I could move myself. It was just like with the magnets. At least, I hoped it was. There was some kind of force keeping me from putting my ghost hand on my real body.

  If it worked like magnets, it would save me. If it didn’t, I was in big trouble.

  I went to the back of the bushes and tried to touch my shoulders. The closer my hands got, the more I felt something pushing me away. But I just kept pushing back harder. I got on my knees and really pushed harder than I’d ever pushed in my life. Or after my life.

  “Move,” I grunted as I pushed.

  I moved.

  What I mean is, my body moved. I slid. Just a tiny bit at first. But I kept pushing, and my body kept sliding. I was slowly moving out from under the bushes.

  It was hard at first. I really had to push. Once I got myself moving, it was a little easier. Moving my body was like sliding a heavy box across the floor. The funny thing was that I didn’t feel tired. I could push forever. I sure hoped I didn’t end up having to do anything forever. I could still see that woman in my mind—the one in the haunted house who was screaming and falling down over and over.

  “I did it,” I said as I realized my body was mostly out from under the bushes. But I kept pushing until I was all the way out. I didn’t want to take any chance that they wouldn’t find me. Then, just to be sure, I pushed myself closer to the middle of the yard, next to where I’d left my bike. It’s a two-wheeler. I learned how to ride it last month.

  I checked my watch. It was 5:58. I just needed to get Mom and Dad to find my body. I looked up at the house. Someone was staring down at me from Angelina’s bedroom window. It was Darling. She’s Angelina’s cat.

  I wondered if she could see me. Cats were always looking at things. They’d sit in the middle of a room and stare at something that wasn’t there. Or maybe it was there, and nobody else could see it. I ran back toward the house and up the porch steps. I got so excited, I almost ran through the steps again.

  Yip chased after me. “No, you’d better stay out,” I said. I was afraid he’d scare Darling.

  Yip ran back into the yard. I went inside the house.

  “Here, kitty,” I called, walking into Angelina’s room.

  Darling stared at me. The dark part of her eyes got bigger, like when I play with her with a string. Then she jumped down from the windowsill and walked across the carpet.

  “Good girl. Come on.” I hoped she’d come. Sometimes cats just do what they want. Actually, I think they do what they want all the time—and once in a while what they want is what you want, so you think they’re doing it for you.

  But she followed me out to the hall. I went along the hallway, leading her toward the stairs. We went past my room, where Sebastian and Angelina and Norman were sitting.

  Darling looked over and went, “Mrewwww.”

  “Do you want to go out?” Angelina asked.

  “Merrowwwll,” Darling said.

  “Come on,” I called to her. I had to get her to the back door. It wouldn’t work if Darling led Angelina to the front. I went down the stairs. Darling followed. I got her to follow me through the kitchen.

  “Here you go,” Angelina said. She opened the door and let Darling out.

  “Look in the yard!” I shouted.

  Angelina was still looking down at Darling. She started to close the door.

  “LOOK!” I shouted again.

  She wasn’t looking. It had all been wasted. She’d never see me out there. The door was almost closed. I checked my watch. It was 6:03. Even I could figure out that kind of math. I only had ten minutes left.

  I could scream and shout, but it wouldn’t do any good. Angelina would never hear me or see me. There was only one other thing I could try. It was a mean, rotten thing to do, but it was my only chance.

  Eleven

  THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME

  “Yip,” I called. “Get the cat, Yip.”

  I felt really bad. I liked Darling. But if she could see me, then she could see Yip.

  And she sure could see him. He started to bark and run across the yard toward her. But he wasn’t growling—he was wagging his tail. It looked like he wanted to play.

  Darling sure didn’t want to play. She looked back at Yip, hissed, then went dashing toward the edge of the yard by the big oak tree.

  “Darling!” Angelina shouted. There was no way she wouldn’t hear the yowling. She opened the door again and stepped onto the porch.

  She started to chase after her cat. She’d gotten only halfway down the steps when she saw me. I mean, she saw my body lying there. She froze for a second. Then she screamed, “Mom!” and went racing across the lawn.

  Mom and Dad were out the door in just a couple of seconds. Dad didn’t even use the steps—he just leaped from the porch to the yard. There was a lot of screaming and shouting. But then Mom ran back into the kitchen and called the emergency number.

  I was so happy, I didn’t notice anything wrong at first. They’d found me. I was going to be okay.

  I jumped up. But I didn’t come down. I was starting to float away. “Hey!” I shouted when I realized my feet weren’t on the ground.

  I looked at my watch. It was 6:11. I counted out loud, “Eleven, twelve, thirteen.” I had three minutes. No, it was eleven right now, so I only had two minutes. But I think I was already starting to become a real and forever ghost because the time was getting close.

  I didn’t want to be a ghost forever.

  The ambulance came. People with white shirts and pants were running all over.

  They put a mask on my face, just like on television. Then they put a needle in my arm. I really hated to watch that. But it did something good to me. I came back down. I wasn’t floating anymore. I guess they were keeping me alive.

  “Yip,” I said, grabbing the dog and giving him a hug. “I’ll be okay. They’ll make me better.”

  They put my body on a stretcher and took me to the ambulance. I went with them and got inside. I’d never been in an ambulance. Yip jumped out of my arms and went chasing after Darling again.

  Before I could follow him, the ambulance started to drive off. I wanted to get him, but I had a funny feeling I should stay with my body. I looked back and saw everyone following in Dad’s car. They raced along right behind the ambulance.

  We were really racing, too, with the lights and the siren and everything. It was pretty exciting. I couldn’t wait to tell Becky all about it. I wish I could take the ambulance to show-and-tell at school, but I don’t think they’ll let me do that.r />
  At the hospital, more people rushed out to meet the ambulance and they got me inside really quickly. There were doctors and nurses all around me and they were doing all kinds of stuff with needles and tubes and wires. The doctors were shouting lots of things with real big words that sounded just the way Norman talks. I couldn’t understand any of it.

  I didn’t want to watch. It felt really funny seeing them doing all that stuff to me. I figured I’d just walk around for a while. They’d make me better even if I didn’t stand there and watch. I wondered what it would feel like to go back into my body. Maybe it would be like going to sleep again. Then I’d wake up and everything would be fine. I hoped that’s what it would be like. I guess I’d find out soon enough.

  Then I thought of something really scary. What if they fixed me, and my body woke up and was all better, but my ghost stayed outside?

  No. I didn’t want to think about that. No way. That was almost as bad as thinking about breaking the you-know-what.

  I walked out of the little room where they were taking care of me. I realized something else. It didn’t smell like a hospital. There wasn’t any smell at all. I tried to remember whether I’d smelled anything at all since I became a ghost. I didn’t think so. Even when I’d hugged Yip, there hadn’t been any puppy smell.

  The hallway was crowded. There were a lot of people in the hospital.

  Then I realized it wasn’t just people. As I looked around, I saw that there weren’t just doctors and nurses and patients in the hospital. There were also ghosts. Lots of ghosts.

  Twelve

  HOSPITAL HOSPITALITY

  There was a man pacing up and down the hallway. I knew he was a ghost because all the doctors and nurses walked right through him.