Tj and The Haunted House

by Hazel Hutchins

  TJ and the Haunted House

  Hazel Hutchins

  Copyright © 2003 Hazel Hutchins

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Hutchins, H.J. (Hazel J.)

  TJ and the haunted house / Hazel Hutchins.

  “An Orca Young Reader”

  Electronic Monograph

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 9781554697618(pdf) -- ISBN 9781554697618 (epub)

  1. Haunted houses—Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  PS8565.U826T32 2003 jC813’.54 C2002-911438-1

  PZ7.H96162Tj 2003

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2002115989

  Summary: TJ worries that he has taken on more than he can handle when he agrees to turn his home into a haunted house to raise money for a school trip.

  Free teachers’ guide available.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support of its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Cover design by Christine Toller

  Cover & interior illustrations by Kyrsten Brooker

  In Canada:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Station B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  In the United States:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  05 04 03 • 5 4 3 2 1

  To family and friends.

  HH

  Chapter 1

  My name is TJ Barnes and I don’t believe in ghosts — but my friend Seymour does.

  Two weeks before Halloween, Seymour began acting strange. He asked if I could hear mysterious breathing when we were talking on the phone. He began taking “sneak peeks” into mirrors to glimpse something no one else could see. Finally, way too early in the morning, our doorbell rang. When I stumbled to the door, there was Seymour.

  “Hey,” he said and walked past me into the living room.

  “Seymour,” I groaned, “I’m not even awake yet.”

  “Sorry, but the world’s greatest idea can’t wait any longer,” said Seymour. “Are your parents here?”

  I shook my head. My parents took over the local hardware store last year. They work really hard at trying to make it a success, including going in early and staying late.

  “Perfect,” said Seymour. “They won’t have messed up the evidence.”

  He was acting even stranger than usual. He was walking up to objects in our living room and just … well … peering at them. The remote control, The World Atlas, the lamp on the end table — he peered at them from above and then from below and then sideways.

  “What on earth are you doing?” I asked.

  Seymour looked at me meaningfully. He has short curly hair and crooked eyebrows, and his meaningful look was kind of lopsided. Or maybe it just seemed lopsided because half of my brain was still asleep.

  “It’s moved,” he said.

  “What’s moved?”

  “The atlas. Last night it was over on the bookshelf. This morning it’s by the TV. Don’t you wonder how it got here?”

  “I know how it got here,” I said. “There was a great TV show about diamond mines after you left. I was looking at maps of the north.”

  “Oh,” said Seymour.

  But Seymour is never stopped that easily.

  “That lamp — you didn’t move that lamp did you?”

  “No,” I said. “Seymour … ”

  “Last night it was turned just slightly this way.” He reached out and touched it very carefully with his fingertips. “Am I right or am I right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t care. I’m not even awake! What are you … ”

  Seymour was halfway up the stairs, stepping on and off the fifth step.S quea Squeak He looked around him as if the air itself was talking.

  “Aha! Strange noises, moving objects. The place … “he paused for emphasis, “the place is haunted.”

  I was disgusted. Totally disgusted.

  “Seymour! That step has always squeaked.”

  “Then the house has always been haunted — why didn’t you tell me?” said Seymour.

  “This is ridiculous.” I climbed past him up the stairs. “I’m going to go back to bed. Wake me up at ten minutes after eight as usual.”

  “Seven minutes after eight,” said Seymour, following me. “I always ring the doorbell at seven after eight. Any later than that and we’ll be late for school; not that I really care if we’re late.”

  He was peering at things again, the walls, the ceiling, down the hall. My best friend drives me nuts.

  “You have to admit, this house has enough nooks, crannies and side rooms to be haunted,” said Seymour. “How old is it, anyway?”

  “It’s not haunted,” I said.

  “But how old is it?” asked Seymour.

  “It used to be my great-grandparents’ house,” I said.

  “Then your gran would know how old it is,” said Seymour. “We’ll ask her when we go for the kittens today.”

  The moment he said those words, my whole world changed. A wonderful feeling spread through me from head to toe. The kittens! I’d been so mad at Seymour that I’d actually forgotten.

  I’d been waiting for ages. Today was the day I was going to bring home Alaska and T-Rex.

  Two months, that’s how old kittens should be when they leave their mother. Seymour and I knew that because we’d done a report on cats last spring when I’d taken care of Gran’s four adult cats. Those cats had almost driven me crazy, but I’d ended up liking them. Now I was going to take care of kittens of my very own.

  “Do you want to see the food and water dishes I got for them?” I asked.

  I take care of the pet supplies at the hardware store and I’d earned everything for the kittens myself.

  “I saw them,” said Seymour. “Five times.”

  “Did you see their new bed?” I asked.

  “I saw the bed six times,” said Seymour. He sighed. “But I could see it a couple more times. Maybe it’s got a new piece of lint on it or … ”

  Seymour stopped dead in the hallway outside the spare room. He looked at me in that funny, cross-eyed way he gets when he’s thinking hard about something.

  “Now what?” I asked. I was almost willing to talk to him because I really had shown him the kitten bed at least six times already.

  “Nothing,” said Seymour, but he still stood there and he still looked cross-eyed. It was my turn to sigh.

  “Go on. Tell me.”

  “There’s a cold spot here.”

  “No big deal,” I told him. “It’s always cold right there. Even on a hot summer day or in the middle of winter when the furnace is blasting away, it’s always cold by that door. It’s just the spare room. There’s some sort of draft or something.”

  “I don’t feel a draft,” said Seymour. “It’s just … cold. Do you ever hear strange noises in this room? Knocking? Music?”

  “Ghost noises, right?” I asked.

  Seymour nodded.

  “No,” I said. “No noises. The house isn’t haunted, Seymour. Why do you want it to be haunted?”

  Seymour smiled and followed me into my bedroom.

  “If it were
haunted, our class could sell tickets to it on Halloween. And if we could sell tickets, we could make money. And if we could make money, we wouldn’t have to sell stupid magazine subscriptions to go on our camping trip!”

  At last things were beginning to make sense. Every year the kids in our grade go camping. Everyone looks for-ward to it, but we have to raise money by selling magazine subscriptions. I hate selling magazine subscriptions.

  I looked at Seymour. I knew I had a decision to make and it wasn’t an easy one. There’s a reason I don’t believe in ghosts. Ghosts scare me.

  “Seymour,” I said, “listen to me very carefully. This house isn’t haunted. I don’t want to live in a haunted house. It is not haunted.”

  “Okay,” said Seymour. “I’m listening.”

  “But … “I said.

  “But … “said Seymour.

  “It could be haunted … “I said.

  “Exactly … “said Seymour.

  “If we turned it into a haunted house just for Halloween,” I said.

  “Hurrah!” said Seymour. “Let’s go see if the kitten bed has magically changed color overnight.”

  Chapter 2

  “Peeled grapes,” called Amanda, waving her hand in the air. “I’ll be in charge of the peeled grapes.”

  Seymour and I had told the teacher our haunted house idea first thing that morning. Ms. K. waited until just be-fore lunch to discuss it with the rest of the class. She knows how easily our class gets off track. Ms. K. has taught us two years in a row.

  “And spaghetti, I can do that too,” called Amanda.

  “We want a haunted house, not a food fair,” complained Seymour.

  “It’s not for eating,” said Amanda. “You blindfold people and tell them you have eyeballs in a bowl. If they’re brave enough they reach into the bowl and feel … ”

  “Peeled grapes,” said Seymour. He looked at Amanda with new appreciation. “Yuck!”

  “And the cold spaghetti is worms,” said Amanda. “If you want, we can put ketchup on the worms to make it look like blood when the blindfold comes off.”

  “Where did you learn this great stuff?” asked Seymour.

  Amanda just smiled.

  There were other ideas — lights that moved, eerie music, spooky deco-rations.

  “Is everyone agreed?” asked Ms. K. “If I can get the school’s permission, is this something we’d like to do as a class?”

  Everyone’s hand was raised.

  “Thank goodness,” said Ms. K. “I hate trying to sell magazine subscriptions.”

  Seymour and I arranged to meet Ms. K. at the hardware store later that afternoon. Before we got the school’s permission, we needed my mom and dad to agree to turn our place into a haunted house.

  “We’ll clean up afterwards. We’ll vacuum and wash the kitchen floor and tidy everything, even things we don’t use,” said Seymour.

  “We’ll put the hardware store on the posters as a sponsor,” I explained. “It will be great advertising.”

  Mom and Dad had about fifty more questions, of course, but in the end they felt good about the idea.

  “If it’s helping the school and if it’s going to be supervised, then I’m in favor of it,” said my mom. She smiled and added, “Do you really wash floors, Seymour? Our house could use a good cleaning.”

  “I like the advertising idea. You’re turning into a real businessperson, TJ,” said my dad.

  Actually, I’d just been trying to think of reasons why they should let complete strangers wander through our house. Dad, however, was still smiling at me with his best “I’m proud of you, son” look. Parents who dream of having their own business and then manage to make it happen get really caught up in Hardware Store Land. They see everything as if they’re looking out a display window.

  Of course Ms. K. and my parents still had to talk the idea to death. By the time they were finished, Seymour and I were getting restless. The haunted house was a neat idea, but it was still two weeks off. Something else was a whole lot closer. KITTEN TIME!

  Mom drove us over in the car. Gran was watching for us out the window. So were her four adult cats. It’s a very strange feeling to walk up the front steps with five pairs of eyes following your every move. It could have been seven pairs of eyes, but T -Rex and Alaska were tumbling over and over each other in the middle of the rug.

  Seymour and I had named the kittens ourselves. Seymour can’t have cats at his house because of his allergies, but he still likes them, and if he takes his medicine he’s okay around them for a few hours. Seymour considers himself a dinosaur expert. He’s the one who named the gray striped kitten with the white paddy paws after his favorite carnivore, T -Rex.

  I’d named the calico kitten — all white and black and orange — myself. Her name was Alaska because her white fur was as bright and clean as new snow and because she had looked adventurous right from the start.

  It was also her name because Gran’s cats had used our redial button to phone Alaska thirty-seven times when they’d been at our house.

  “I knew you’d be in a hurry,” said Gran after she’d given each of us, including Seymour, a hug. “I’ve got everything ready.”

  I’ve always known my gran is the world’s greatest grandmother, but she still surprised me. She’d built one of her carrying boxes for the kittens. It was painted with a prehistoric jungle and an amazing assortment of dinosaurs. The name T-Rex was painted over the door.

  “Wow!” I said. “Thanks!”

  “I’ll make Alaska her own box when she’s grown,” said Gran. “They can ride together for now.”

  “You’re great at making things, Mrs. Barnes,” said Seymour. “Maybe you could give us some pointers about fixing up TJ’s house.”

  My gran’s eyebrows lifted.

  “Our class is going to turn it into a haunted house and charge admission for Halloween,” I explained as I tucked the kittens one by one into the box.

  “It’s to raise money for their class camping trip,” said my mom.

  I gave the kittens a last pat, told them I’d take good care of them and fastened the latch on the box. I looked up just in time to see the look on Gran’s face. I can’t explain why, but all of a sudden I knew what she was going to say next.

  “Better be careful you don’t wake up the real ghost,” she said.

  I also knew what Seymour was going to say, but there wasn’t anything mysterious about it. Seymour asks questions like water running downhill.

  “What real ghost?” asked Seymour.

  “The one in the spare room of course,” said Gran.

  My heart sank down to my toes.

  Chapter 3

  “Is there really a ghost? Have you seen it? What’s it like? How long has it been there?”

  They were Seymour’s questions, not mine. I’d already heard way too much.

  “Sorry, Seymour, we don’t have time to give Gran the third degree,” said my mom. “I have to get back to the store.”

  Once we were in the car, however, Seymour began asking Mom the same questions.

  “Is it always in the spare room? Does it move around? Does it write messages or knock on walls or cry at night?”

  Mom just shook her head.

  “This is the first I’ve heard of any ghost,” answered Mom. “Gran lived in the house when she was a little girl, but after that it was rented out. We moved in three years ago.”

  “How old is the house?” asked Seymour.

  “It was built in 1893,” said my mom.

  “Over a hundred years old! It’s got to be haunted!” said Seymour.

  I ignored Seymour as best I could. It wasn’t hard. I was holding the box with Alaska and T -Rex on my lap. As soon as the car began moving they started mewing their little kitten hearts out. I opened the door and put my hand inside just so they’d know someone was still with them. After that they were quieter, but my hand felt weird because two small, rough tongues were licking it.

  Mom dropped us at the
house and then went back to the store. I took the kittens upstairs to show them the kitty litter. That was the number one stop as far as I was concerned. Seymour stood in the cold spot outside the spare room.

  “This is great,” he said. “This really is a haunted house. We’ll put it on the posters.”

  “No, we won’t,” I said. “Maybe it used to be haunted when Gran was little, but it isn’t haunted any more. I know about these things. I live here.”

  After I showed them the kitty litter, I took the kittens into my bedroom and set them in the cat bed. They looked small and lost — two fluff balls with great big eyes. I was glad there were two of them. This was their first time away from their family and I would have felt sorry for them if they’d been alone.

  Seymour settled cross-legged in the middle of the cold spot. From his position he could watch the kittens, but from the look on his face I could tell he was also thinking about ghost things.

  That was fine. Seymour could think about ghost things if he had to. I was going to think about the kittens.

  I sat on the floor beside them. That seemed to make them feel better. Pretty soon Alaska crawled out of the cat bed and over my leg and began to look around the bedroom. She was the snoopier of the two. A little while later, T-Rex followed her. In spite of his name, he wasn’t as brave unless his hunting instincts clicked in. We’d noticed that at Gran’s house too. Just now he was happy to sit quietly as Alaska explored my bedroom, but when I shifted my running shoes under the dresser, T-Rex was after the moving laces like a shot.

  Seymour laughed. The kittens were startled and then realized it was just Seymour. They peeked into the hallway. Alaska went first, of course, but T -Rex followed. When they reached Seymour they crawled over his legs, and Alaska began to climb her way up his back.

  “Help,” said Seymour.

  Kittens have tiny claws, but they’re really, really sharp. Seymour was making YEOWCH faces even though he was trying not to flail around and hurt either of them. I lifted Alaska from his back and set her on the floor. T Rex came over to check out what was happening. That’s when they noticed the spare room.

  It was weird how it happened. They just turned around and kind of froze in one spot. They sat down. They stared into the spare room.