The Golden Ghost

by Marion Dane Bauer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Marion Dane Bauer

  Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Peter Ferguson

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone

  Book and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web!

  SteppingStonesBooks.com

  www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bauer, Marion Dane.

  The golden ghost / Marion Dane Bauer ; illustrated by Peter Ferguson. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Stepping Stone book.”

  Summary: On a bike outing to the abandoned houses by the old cement mill, Delsie and her friend Todd discover one of the houses is not empty—and a ghost dog haunts the area.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89818-1

  [1. Dogs—Fiction. 2. Ghosts—Fiction. 3. Homeless persons—Fiction.] I. Ferguson, Peter, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.B3262Go 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010004116

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To Polly and Daisy, my favorite dinner guests —M.D.B.

  For Robbie and Hannah —P.F.

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Ghost Houses

  2. Through the Open Door

  3. Goldilocks

  4. The Last Sips of Summer

  5. Ghost Dog!

  6. Moving On!

  7. Home

  8. Sunshine

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  he big dog was pacing, pacing. She moved in a steady loping trot around the small house. She made one circle with her nose to the ground. She made another testing the air.

  From time to time she ran onto the front porch of the house and checked up there.

  Then she went back to circling again.

  She ran without pause. She seemed to run without effort, too. She didn’t pant. She didn’t slow her pace. The big dog just kept running.

  Her silky reddish-gold fur rippled with each step. Her eyes were dark with knowing. She had been alone and lonely for so long. She had been waiting for so long.

  When would someone see her?

  At last, she stopped in front of the house. She sat, pointed her soft muzzle at the summer sky, and howled. The cry drifted out and out.

  Away from the empty house.

  Away from the empty cement mill that stood like a sentinel over the scene.

  Into the empty blue sky.

  The big dog cocked her head, waiting for some kind of reply.

  When no response came, she went back to pacing.

  Pacing.

  Pacing.

  Delsie and Todd sat on the curb in front of the grocery store.

  Delsie scuffed her feet in the gravel that had gathered in the gutter. She scooped some into her hand and let it trickle between her fingers.

  Panning for gold, she thought. We could pan for gold.

  But when she looked over at Todd, she didn’t say it.

  He seemed to have run out of patience with her ideas. And maybe she had run out of good ideas, too.

  Just as they had run out of summer.

  Here it was Labor Day weekend. School started in three days. And they had nothing better to do than sit on the curb in front of her parents’ grocery store.

  Bug, Todd’s small black and tan dog, lay at their feet, panting. Apparently, he didn’t have any good ideas, either.

  Delsie lifted the little dog onto her lap. “Why did they name you Bug?” she asked him. “You’re too cute to be called Bug.”

  It was an old complaint. When Bug was a new pup, Delsie had wanted to call him Shadow. That was what he looked like, a glossy black shadow with sunlight peeking out. His reddish-brown paws, his reddish-brown muzzle, and his sweet reddish-brown eyebrows were the sunlight. Mostly, though, he was shadow.

  “Because his eyes are buggy,” Todd answered, though she’d been talking to Bug, not to him. “Anyway, Ryan named him.” Ryan was one of Todd’s brothers.

  Todd had three older brothers. He had everything, really. Three older brothers. A dog. Two cats. He even had hamsters that kept making new hamsters until Todd and his brothers had to go all over town begging people to adopt them.

  Delsie didn’t have any brothers or sisters. She didn’t have any pets, either. She didn’t even have a hamster. “No dogs,” Delsie’s dad said. “No cats. No hamsters. No guinea pigs. No bunny rabbits. No little white mice. No groundhogs. I’m allergic.”

  Delsie’s dad liked making jokes, though Delsie didn’t think that one was very funny.

  She had never asked for a groundhog.

  Delsie rubbed inside one of Bug’s floppy ears. He leaned into her hand and groaned with pleasure.

  Bug was an odd-looking dog. His long, fringed tail was elegant. His snub nose was comical. They seemed like ends that belonged on two different dogs.

  “Maybe he should have been called Prince,” she said. “Or Clown. Just about anything would have been better than Bug.”

  Behind them, Delsie’s father emerged from the store with a broom.

  “Waiting for a taxi?” he asked.

  That was a joke, too. Milton was a very small town. It had one grocery store, one school, and one old cement mill on the edge of town. The mill had shut down before Delsie and Todd were born. There were two churches and two taverns, too. (“One tavern for each church,” Delsie’s dad always said.)

  No taxis.

  Todd laughed, but Delsie didn’t. She just said, “We’re bored. We need something to do. Something spectacular.”

  “You could sweep the walk,” her dad offered, holding out the broom. “A clean walk is always spectacular.”

  Delsie usually liked helping out around her parents’ store. But not today, with the sun shining so brightly and the summer almost gone.

  She kissed the top of Bug’s head and ignored the broom.

  Todd jumped up and took it. He would have stood on his head for Delsie’s dad if he’d asked him to. Todd’s father had moved to another state and rarely called.

  “I wish I could have a dog,” Delsie said. She said it loudly enough for her father to hear as he headed back inside the store.

  Her father didn’t slow his stride as he said over his shoulder, “No dogs. No cats. No hamsters—”

  Delsie interrupted. “I know. No groundhogs, either. You’re allergic.”

  “Right!” her father said. The bell over the door jangled as the door fell closed.

  Todd began sweeping, though there wasn’t much on the walk except more gravelly dust.

  Delsie stayed where she was. She rubbed Bug’s other ear, and he groaned some more. How she wished she could have a dog of her own! Any kind of dog would do. Even one named Bug!

  Maybe she could get a dog without any fur, if there was such a thing. If a dog didn’t have any fur, would it still make her father sneeze?

  Delsie didn’t much mind being an only child. She didn’t have to put up with teasing, except for her dad’s. She didn’t have to share her bedroom. She didn’t have to
watch her birthday cake disappear before she’d had seconds. Todd had to do all those things.

  But while being an only child was okay, being a dogless one wasn’t.

  There seemed to be hardly a moment in Delsie’s life when she wasn’t longing for a dog. She missed having one most when she was waiting to fall asleep at night.

  That was when she pretended her dog was there, snuggled in close beside her. She even slept on the very edge of her bed to make sure her dog had enough room. (It would be a girl dog, she’d decided.)

  Delsie gave Bug a hard squeeze. He said “Ooomph,” and squirmed away. The street was empty, but still she looped her hand through his leash to keep him close.

  Billows of dust rose from Todd’s sweeping. Delsie got up to move out of the way with Bug.

  “Is that all you’re going to do?” she asked. “Sweep my dad’s walk?”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Todd said.

  That was the problem, though, and Todd knew it. She was out of ideas.

  She scrambled through her brain for something. “We could check out the ghost houses,” she said after a thorough search. She didn’t know where that idea had come from. Had it been lurking in a dark corner?

  Todd stopped sweeping. He studied her, his eyes narrowed. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  She hadn’t been. Not really. But the look on Todd’s face made her suddenly determined.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m serious. Why not?”

  She waited for him to tell her it was a dumb idea.

  The truth was she knew it was dumb. Every kid in town had been told not to hang around the empty old houses by the mill.

  But Todd surprised her. “Okay.” He took one last swish at the walk and leaned the broom against the storefront. “The ghost houses it is,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  It had been her idea. What could Delsie do but follow?

  s Delsie pedaled behind Todd’s bike toward the edge of town, she had plenty of time for regrets.

  People were always telling her that she let her imagination run away with her. Even Todd said that sometimes, and he was her best friend. Here she’d gone and proven the point again. Who wanted to check out ghost houses, anyway?

  They weren’t really ghost houses, of course. That was just what the kids called them. They were houses that had been built for the long-ago workers at the cement mill.

  Now they stood staring at one another across an empty street, as silent and dusty as the abandoned mill. No one lived in them now. No one had lived in them for a long time.

  The kids in town liked to say that ghosts lived there … if what ghosts did could be called living. Boys were always daring one another to check them out.

  Why hadn’t she suggested going back to Todd’s house instead? They could have run through the sprinkler. Or they could have made popcorn and watched one of Todd’s mom’s old movies.

  What was wrong with imagining ordinary things like that?

  Todd had pulled ahead. Delsie sighed and pumped harder. At least the mill wasn’t very far.

  They bumped across the rusty railroad tracks that led to the old mill. Beyond the tracks Todd stopped in the long grass beside the road. He stepped off his bike.

  Delsie jumped off her bike next to him. She pulled off her helmet and wiped her sweaty cheek against her sleeve. Then she looked back at the old mill looming above them.

  A smokestack rammed itself against the blue of the sky. There was a bank of silos, too, and some old buildings. All of it was the dirty white of old cement dust. All of it was silent and empty.

  The houses were strung along a red-gravel street in the shadow of the mill.

  They looked pretty much alike. They were square and small and as empty as the mill.

  The street was deserted, too. Patches of scraggly grass sprouted here and there in the gravel.

  Just standing in the middle of all that emptiness made Delsie’s arms prickle into goose bumps.

  She gave herself a shake.

  What was the harm, anyway? The only thing they were doing was checking out a bunch of old houses. She might have a good imagination, but she didn’t believe in ghosts.

  At least she didn’t think she did.

  Still, she said, “It’s not so hot anymore. Maybe we should just keep riding instead.”

  It was true that the day seemed cooler now. In fact, here, beneath the mill, an odd chill touched the air.

  Todd gave her arm a poke. “Aw, come on,” he said. “It was your idea. You’re not going to chicken out, are you?”

  Delsie thought of turning the moment into a joke. All she’d have to do was flap her elbows and squawk like a chicken. What stopped her was the thing Todd always said about her. That she wasn’t like other girls.

  By that he meant she wasn’t prissy, worried about getting her clothes dirty … scared.

  So she said instead, “Of course I’m not chicken.” Then she added, “Which one should we check out first?”

  “That one.” Todd nodded in the direction of the nearest house.

  They dropped their bikes in the grass, and Todd moved out ahead of her. He jumped up the steps onto a rickety porch. He reached for the doorknob.

  It rattled in his hand, but the door didn’t open.

  “Shoot!” Todd said.

  Delsie was careful not to let her relief show. If all the houses were locked, they couldn’t go in, could they?

  She stepped up onto the porch and pressed her nose against the front window. It was so dark inside she couldn’t make out much.

  What had she expected? Ghosts didn’t need to turn on lights to see.

  The house next door was locked, too. The front windows on this one had been broken and were boarded up, so they went around to the side.

  They peered through a small window into what seemed to be a bathroom.

  Would ghosts need a bathroom? Delsie wondered.

  “You see that ghost on the toilet?” Todd asked, as if he could read her mind. Actually, sometimes she thought he could read her mind.

  “No, only the werewolf in the bathtub,” she said.

  He gave her arm a poke again, a little harder than he needed to.

  Delsie rubbed the spot, but she didn’t say anything.

  The next house was locked … and the next and the next.

  This wasn’t so bad. Two more houses and they would be at the end of the street. After that they could cross over and do the other side, stare into the windows, stare into the empty dark. Then they could go home.

  What was so scary about that?

  When they were back at school on Tuesday, they could brag about checking out the ghost houses. The boys would be impressed. Some of the girls probably would be, too.

  The prissy girls would say it was a dumb thing to do. But they would be impressed anyway.

  Delsie ran ahead of Todd to the next house. She bounded up onto the porch and reached for the doorknob. Two people could play this game! She’d rattle the locked door, and then she’d say, “Shoot!”

  The doorknob felt smooth in her hand. The metal was cool. And it turned easily.

  It turned and the door swung open.

  Delsie sucked in her breath.

  She looked at Todd. His face had gone pale beneath his sandy hair and his scattering of summer freckles.

  “Well,” he said. Then he didn’t say anything more.

  She waited.

  “I guess this is it,” he said finally. “Come on.”

  And he stepped ahead of her through the open door.

  elsie stood on the porch for a long moment, waiting for Todd to come back. Who did he think he was, anyway—Goldilocks? You didn’t just barge into a stranger’s house like that.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the mill. Then she looked up and down the street.

  Why was this house unlocked?

  What—or who—was waiting inside?

  Not a ghost, surely. Ghosts wouldn’t need to unlock doors. At least the ghosts you rea
d about in stories wouldn’t.

  Finally, standing on the empty porch on the empty street by herself grew more scary than being inside with Todd. So Delsie stepped through the doorway, too.

  The house was … well, it was just a house. There was even a bit of furniture.

  Nothing fancy, that was for sure. A sagging couch stood along one wall. It looked like a leftover from a garage sale. The “coffee table” in front of the couch was a piece of plywood with cement blocks for legs. Stuffing poked out of the arms of a big blue easy chair.

  There was a small television set, the kind with rabbit ears on top. Delsie didn’t think those even worked anymore.

  But then maybe ghosts didn’t need antennae to watch TV.

  She shuddered. She had to stop all this ghost stuff.

  And where was Todd, anyway?

  Just as she asked herself the question, he appeared in the doorway of one of the side rooms, probably a bedroom.

  “It’s almost like somebody really lives here,” she whispered. She hadn’t meant to whisper. It was the way her words came out.

  “Yeah,” Todd said. He was whispering, too.

  He didn’t pause, though. He moved on to the next room. Delsie followed. This was the kitchen. And if the first room had seemed odd, the kitchen was even stranger.

  There was a single chair and a rickety table. The table was set. It was actually set with a spoon and a bowl and a mug. The mug looked as though it had once had coffee in it. Brown sludge lined the bottom.

  The bowl was crusty. Old oatmeal? Did ghosts eat oatmeal?

  But she was being silly.

  This wasn’t a ghost house. A real person lived here. And that was probably worse.

  They had walked into a real person’s house. If they got caught, whoever lived here wasn’t going to be thinking about Goldilocks. He was going to be thinking about calling the police!

  The same thought must have come to Todd at the same instant, because he said, “Come on,” exactly the way he had earlier. Only this time he was heading out the door.

  Delsie followed.

  At least she started to follow, but after a step or two, something stopped her. She had no idea what it was. Whatever it was bumped softly against her leg, held her in place.