The Gloomy Ghost

by David Lubar

  I just started walking again. There were some people on the streets—not ghosts, real people. I ran up to a man and shouted, “Don’t you see me?”

  He looked puzzled for a second, but he kept walking. I tried again and again. It was no use. If people noticed anything at all, they just shrugged and told themselves it was their imagination. After that, they didn’t notice anything. I felt so invisible. I felt like I didn’t exist. It was worse than being a little kid.

  I ran up to another woman. Before I could shout anything, I realized that she looked familiar. She also looked very worried. And she was clutching her pocketbook like it held a treasure. Then I remembered, and I knew I had to follow her. Even if there was nothing I could do to help, I still had to go.

  Sixteen

  THAT’S A SWITCH

  I followed the nice lady all the way back to Madam Zonga’s. When she got there, she reached in her purse. Then she held up a bundle wrapped in a handkerchief. “I did what you told me,” she said. “It’s all here. All my money.”

  “All of it?” Madam Zonga asked.

  The woman nodded. Her face was very pale and her lower lip trembled. So did her hand. The corner of the handkerchief wiggled around like a ghost—I mean, like I used to think a ghost looked.

  “Good,” Madam Zonga said. I could tell she was trying not to act too excited. She was sitting at her table. “You have done well. Now I can remove the curse. Please be seated so we can begin.”

  I walked behind her. That’s when I saw there was another bundle on a small shelf under the table right in front of Madam Zonga. This bundle was wrapped in a white handkerchief, too. It looked just like the bundle the woman had brought. But I’d bet there wasn’t any money in it. I’d bet it was filled with cut-up pieces of paper or play money or something.

  Madam Zonga put a small bowl on top of the real money. Then she lifted the lid from a black box. There were two eggs inside. She picked up one of the eggs. I saw she had something hidden in her hand, too. I felt like I was watching a magic show.

  “Observe,” she said. She broke the egg into the bowl. She also dropped the thing she was hiding in her hand. It fell into the egg and spread out like red paint. “Yes! Yes!” Madam Zonga shouted. She jumped back in her chair and pointed. “Do you see?”

  The woman nodded and clutched the edges of the table with her hands. “Is that the curse?”

  “It is a sign of the curse. There is no mistake. That is why your luck has been so bad. Had you not come to me, who knows what misfortunes you might have suffered. But the spirit has told me what to do. He is here. He is in the room right now,” Madam Zonga said. She pointed at a corner behind the other woman. When the woman looked, Madam Zonga grabbed the package from the shelf and switched it with the one under the bowl.

  “Cheater!” I shouted.

  “Now we lift the curse,” Madam Zonga said. She started mumbling and waving her hands. Then she poured the egg out of the bowl, dropping it into a bucket on the floor. “We shall see…,” she said. She broke another egg into the bowl. “Yes. The curse is gone.”

  The woman reached for her money. I wondered what would happen when she opened the handkerchief.

  “One thing,” Madam Zonga said, putting her hand out. “You must keep the package closed for twenty-four hours. Do not open it until then, or the curse will become ten times as strong.”

  The woman nodded and grabbed her money. But it wasn’t her money. The money was in Madam Zonga’s lap. “I can’t thank you enough,” the woman said as she shoved the bundle back into her purse. Then she walked out the door.

  “No!” I shouted. I screamed so loud, I thought my head would explode.

  That’s when everything went crazy.

  Seventeen

  SMASH AND CRASH

  The first crash was so loud, I felt like my head was made of glass and someone had dropped a bowling ball on it. The table made the crash by flying straight up in the air and smacking into the ceiling. Madam Zonga’s chair flew apart right under her. Pieces shot in all directions. I tried to jump aside, even though I didn’t have to. A couple of the pieces went right through me. Madam Zonga was so startled, she just sat there like she still had a chair under her. Then she fell flat on her rear. There was stuff on shelves on one wall—candlesticks and vases and boxes. It all shot across the room like bullets, smashing into the other wall.

  Everything looked red. Maybe that was the color of anger. Red and hot. Even the air. It was like looking through one of those red glass jars that Mom collects.

  “Ahhhhhhggg!” Madam Zonga shrieked. She looked up over her head.

  I looked up, too. The table was still pushing against the ceiling, like an animal trying to get out of a cage. The plaster was starting to crack. Then, suddenly, the table zoomed back down and smashed against the floor. It went so fast, I could hear the air around it go whoosh. The legs snapped off. The tabletop hit the ground with another huge crash, right next to Madam Zonga. She leaped away, but she still didn’t get up.

  The curtain on the door to the back room ripped off the rod and fluttered toward Madam Zonga. She screamed louder and curled into a ball.

  Every lightbulb in the place blew up.

  As quickly as it started, it stopped. The redness faded.

  I just stood there, looking around at the smashed and broken pieces. Madam Zonga stared at her hand. The bundle of money twitched.

  “Wait!” Madam Zonga cried. She raced for the door. Her right foot got stuck in the bucket, but she didn’t stop. “Wait! Lady! Come back! You have the wrong handkerchief. You forgot your money.” She tore down the street, making a horrible clank with each step as the bucket hit the sidewalk. I guess she was in a hurry to give the money back.

  Wow.

  I’d never done anything like this in my life. I didn’t know how, but I knew for sure that I’d done it. “Rory did it,” I said, thinking about how often other people used those words. Yeah, Rory did it big-time.

  I know it’s bad to break things. Dad is always saying, “Be a thinker, not a fighter.” Mom is always saying, “Violence never solved anything.” And Mrs. Rubric has about a thousand different ways to tell the class stuff like that.

  But Dad watches boxing, and he cheers when one guy hits another. And Mom likes to slam things in the kitchen when she’s angry. And Mrs. Rubric—boy, can she whack a desk with a yardstick. She does it so hard, it makes my ears hurt.

  So I knew what I’d done was bad, but I still couldn’t help smiling a little, even though it was also kind of scary. I think good and bad might be like hot and cold. Some things are really hot, like fire, or really cold, like snow. But it’s not always easy to tell. If your hands are really really cold, snow sort of feels warm.

  I could worry about that later. Right now, I had something more important to think about. I knew that I could move stuff. And that meant I could get a message to Mom and Dad. But I still didn’t know how it had happened, except that it had happened when I got really really angry.

  I needed to find some ghosts. They could explain it to me. But when I went out of Madam Zonga’s shop, I saw that I didn’t need to look for ghosts. The ghosts had found me. Thousands of ghosts.

  Eighteen

  GALLOPING GHOSTS

  They were standing all over the sidewalk and the street. Cars and people went right through them, but they all just stood there, staring at me.

  “He’s the one,” someone said.

  “Yes, no doubt,” someone else said.

  I took a step back. “It was an accident,” I said. “I didn’t mean to break all that stuff.” I wondered how ghosts punished a kid who broke stuff. Whatever they did, I was sure I wouldn’t like it.

  “Let me through,” someone called from the back of the crowd. They started moving aside. A ghost came out of the crowd and walked up to me. I recognized him—it was the man from the Winston House who looked like a Pilgrim.

  He pointed a finger at me. “Are you responsible for this occurrence?�
� He raised his hand and pointed at the shop.

  I nodded. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t my fault, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out but a little squeak. I knew I was in big trouble.

  “Marvelous,” the man said. He clapped his hands together. “It’s so rare that we find a talented poltergeist.”

  “A what?” I asked, but my question was drowned out by the crowd. They’d all started talking and shouting. Ghosts were rushing up, crowding around me. Several of them reached out and touched me like I was some sort of good-luck charm.

  “Please!” the Pilgrim man shouted. “Give the youngster some room.” He bent down and put an arm around my shoulder. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Rory,” I told him. “Rory Claypool.”

  “I am Josiah Winston,” he told me. “Patriarch of the Winston family. But let us not talk about me. It is you who brought us here—you and your rare power.”

  “What power?” I asked.

  He stood up and pointed at the shop again. “The fleshsters use the word poltergeist,” he said.

  “Fleshsters?” I was getting even more confused.

  Josiah Winston nodded and looked at a woman who was walking down the street, strolling right through a sea of ghosts. I understood—fleshsters was what he called real living people. Before I could ask him anything else, he started talking again.

  “Poltergeist means ‘noisy ghost.’ It’s a German word. It’s used when objects go flying around a room, or when things get smashed. The way the fleshsters carry on about it, you’d think it was a common occurrence. But no, my young friend, no. It is a very rare power. To set such forces loose is quite a gift. And you, my boy, have that gift. Most of us have no such power.”

  Behind him, the crowd started to get noisy again. I guess I wasn’t the only noisy ghost. But he ignored the others and kept talking. “We have such great limits,” he said. “All of us can cause a little fright or sorrow. We can make the fleshsters tingle and shiver a bit.”

  He looked around nervously, then said, “At best, we can touch treasured items from our pasts—perhaps imbue them with a moment of animation. But you can do so much more.” He put an arm around me again and started walking.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Away,” he said. “This place is no longer safe. There are those who lurk in the streets, searching for signs of a disturbance. They have instruments that can detect these outbursts. And yours was quite a powerful display. You’ve set loose ripples that will not go unseen. We must leave.”

  He hurried me along the sidewalk. Behind us, I heard an engine roar like someone was stomping on the gas pedal. I looked back. A van came tearing around the corner so fast, it almost tipped over—the same van I’d seen before with the antenna on top. It drove halfway onto the curb, then stopped. A man jumped out—a tall, thin man with a shaggy beard. He was holding something that looked like a big radio with wires all over the place. There was a wand at the end of one of the wires, and he was waving it all around.

  “Yes! Yes!” he shouted. “Poltergeist! Look at the readings! I’ve never seen it so strong.” He waved the wand around some more and watched the lights on the machine. He swept the wand past me, then swung it back, pointing it right at me. “Aha! Yes!” He turned toward us and started running.

  The fleshsters—I mean, the people—in the street stared at him like he was crazy. At the same time, all around him, the crowd of ghosts tried to escape. The man slipped the wand into his belt and then reached into a big pocket in his coat. He pulled out something that looked like a jack-in-the-box. When he turned the handle, it made this awful sound.

  I realized it was screeching a tune. It was “Pop! Goes the Weasel.” When the tune reached the place where you’d sing the word pop, I saw a ghost next to the man get sucked into the box. The man kept cranking, faster and faster. Each time the tune reached the pop, another ghost got sucked inside. They screamed as they vanished beneath the opening at the top.

  “This way,” Josiah Winston said. He ran through a store, dragging me with him. We raced out the other side and made several turns.

  Finally, we went up the hill to the Winston House.

  “Who was that?” I asked as we went inside.

  Josiah Winston shook his head. “An annoyance. A pest who disturbs the peace of all decent ghosts. There are many ghost hunters in this world, but this one is the worst. His name is Magzmir Teridakian.”

  “Teridakian?” That was bad news. I remembered what Zoltan Teridakian had almost done to Norman, and what Husker Teridakian had tried to do to Sebastian. There didn’t seem to be any end to Teridakians. Angelina was lucky there wasn’t a witch-hunting Teridakian. Maybe there was and we just never found out about him. Maybe he’s still heading toward town.

  “Fear not,” Josiah Winston told me. “We are safe here. The house protects us. You are welcome to stay as long as you desire.”

  “But…” I tried to tell him I didn’t want to stay.

  He smiled. “Indeed. You are welcome to stay here forever.”

  Before I could say anything, the door burst open.

  Nineteen

  RORY THE STAR

  I jumped back, expecting to see Teridakian and his ghost-catching machine. But it was nothing to be scared of—just a bunch of ghosts. They filled the room. I guess they had to use the door because this was a ghost house.

  They all wanted to talk to me and tell me about themselves. And they all wanted me to show off.

  “Do it again,” a man said. “Smash something.”

  “Come with me,” an older man said. He grabbed my right wrist. “My business partner cheated me when I was alive. I want you to destroy his office.”

  “No, with me,” a woman said. She grabbed my left wrist. “Come teach my husband a lesson.”

  “Stop!” Josiah Winston shouted. “Give the lad some room. You’ll all get your turn. There’s time enough, and more time beyond. You’re acting like a bunch of fleshsters.”

  The two ghosts let go of me. All the ghosts stepped back for a moment, but that didn’t last. They couldn’t seem to keep away from me. I guess this was what it felt like to be famous. I looked around for the girl—the nice one who had helped me the first time I came here. But I didn’t see her. It was just too crowded. In a moment, they were all around me again, pushing and shoving to get close.

  I’d never had so much attention in my life. They all wanted to talk to me. But I started to realize that they really didn’t want to talk about me. They wanted to talk about themselves.

  It all began to sound the same. Half of them just wanted to brag.

  I was an important banker.…

  You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but I was once the loveliest girl in my village.…

  Yes, I was a great painter. They all copied me.…

  I climbed many mountains.…

  … I did …

  … I was …

  … I had …

  … I made …

  The room was filled with I’s.

  And half of them wanted me to smash something for them. As soon as I finished talking to one ghost, another would push forward and take his place.

  Finally, Josiah shouted, “Enough! Give us some peace.”

  The rest of the crowd grumbled, but they backed away and went out the door.

  “Thanks,” I said when the last of them had left. “If I had to listen to one more person’s life story, I think I’d scream.” As soon as I said that, I felt bad. I realized I didn’t know anything about the man who had saved me. “What about you?” I asked. “This is your house, right?”

  He shook his head. “This house was built long after I died. I am an ancestor of the man who built it. I never lived here. But this,” he said, patting the rocking chair he sat in, “was my chair. When it was brought here, I came with it.”

  “But why are you a ghost?” I asked.

  He smiled, then shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he told me. He
waved his hand toward where the crowd had stood. “Most of them have unfinished business. They left life too soon. But as for me, I don’t know why I remain here.”

  After that, he stopped talking. I thought he was finished, but then he started again. “I wasn’t the best man who ever lived. But I certainly wasn’t a bad person. I was only really bad one time in my life. Yet here I am. Maybe I expected this. It’s funny. We often get exactly what we expect. Notice how we can walk on the ground, but we walk through walls. I think that happens because we expect it to be that way—we expect solid ground. But I can’t complain. I am comfortable, and in good company. Someday, I imagine I’ll pass on. But enough about me.”

  The way he said it, I knew he didn’t want to talk about himself anymore. That was okay. I had other questions. “I still don’t understand what I did,” I told him.

  “You released a pure form of energy. It is produced by great emotions—rage, sorrow, fear.”

  “Can I control it?” I asked.

  “In time, perhaps,” he said.

  “How long?” I was good at learning things. I’d learned to ride a two-wheeler in less than a day. And that was really hard.

  “A century or two,” he said.

  “A century!” I knew how long that was. And it was more time than I had. Time! I looked at my watch. It was 7:15. It was morning already. I’d wasted hours being famous.

  “Thanks for helping me,” I said. “I have to go.”

  “But—”

  “I have unfinished business,” I told him. I ran toward the door.

  “Watch out for Teridakian,” he called after me.

  “I will.” I raced down the steps and rushed toward the hospital.

  Twenty

  RUNNING OUT OF TIME

  When I reached the hospital, I realized I still had no idea what to do. I stood there, watching my family watch my body. Mom and Dad and Sebastian and Angelina were there. So was Norman. A nurse came in and saw Norman. She told him the room was only for family members. Norman started talking to her, using really big words. Finally, the nurse told him he could stay.