A Gust of Ghosts

by Suzanne Harper

  Henry stopped picking up dirty dishes and gave her an incredulous look. “Are you crazy? Do you really want to spend hours raking and pruning and pulling weeds?”

  Poppy winced. “Well, maybe not pulling weeds,” she admitted. “But here’s the thing....” She hesitated and gave him a searching look. “You can keep a secret, right?”

  “Sure,” he said. “No one at school even knows I have an aunt.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Look, I’m going to tell you something really important, but you can’t tell anyone. And if I tell you, you have to promise to get your aunt to help us....”

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  Poppy’s first thought was that she wished she’d brought sunscreen. Somehow, she hadn’t thought that a cemetery would be so bright and sunny and … summery.

  Henry’s aunt had been delighted to hear that they were interested in helping the Graveyard Friends. She had let them borrow a couple of rakes and some pruning shears from her equipment shed and had even packed them lunches to take to the Shady Rest Cemetery.

  “I’m glad we brought sandwiches,” said Will. “I’m starving. I vote we eat lunch before we go ghost hunting.”

  “I don’t know how you can even think about eating in a place like this,” said Franny. She did her best to shiver, but the atmosphere and the heat conspired against her.

  “Where are the ghosts?” Rolly asked. “Where’s the dog?”

  “Don’t worry, they’re here,” Will said, striding toward a granite tomb. “This looks like a good spot to put our food.”

  “Will, stop!” Poppy said. “Remember—”

  “Don’t touch the headstones,” Will said wearily. “I know, I know. You’ve only been telling us that every five minutes since we got up this morning.”

  “Well, that is how Travis ended up in our attic,” Poppy said. “And don’t talk to them, either.”

  Will rolled his eyes at Henry. “She’s kind of bossy,” he said, not quite under his breath. “You get used to it after a while.”

  Henry was looking around at the weeds, broken branches, and washed-out gravel paths and shaking his head. “You were right,” he said. “This place is a mess. It’s going to take a long time to clean it up.”

  “Who said anything about cleaning?” Will asked, surprised. “We’re here to get some ghosts on film and go home.”

  It was Henry’s turn to look surprised. He looked at Poppy. “You were serious?” he said.

  “Of course!” Poppy felt a little stab of disappointment. Henry had thought she was joking about the ghosts. Now he probably thought she was just as crazy as his aunt and her parents. “I mean, I think it’s worth trying,” she said quickly. “Just as an experiment, you know. Not because we actually believe in ghosts—”

  “No, of course not,” Franny said to Henry, fanning herself with her straw hat. “We came out here in hundred-degree heat because we think we won’t find anything.”

  “Whatever.” Henry shrugged. He gave Poppy a cool look. “But I wouldn’t have bothered carrying all this stuff if I’d known this was just a game.”

  Poppy swallowed hard. It’s not a game, she wanted to say. If we don’t contact these ghosts, we’ll have to move. Our whole future is at stake....

  But then she remembered that Henry’s aunt claimed that she talked to ghosts, too. And even though Henry said he liked people who were eccentric, he might have been just talking about his own family. He might decide that next-door neighbors who said they saw ghosts were just weird.

  The safest thing to do, she decided, was wait and see if anyone—or anything—actually showed up before saying anything else. After all, her parents always said that ghosts were notoriously unreliable....

  “Well, come on,” Poppy said briskly. “Let’s get started.” She opened her backpack, pulled out a tripod, and set it up so that the viewfinder was at her eye level. After peering through the viewfinder and adjusting a few knobs, she nodded with satisfaction. “All right, we’re good to go.”

  No one said anything. The only sound was birdsong from the trees to their left and the faint buzzing of a bee, zigzagging from flower to flower in a purposeful manner.

  “Um … how do we get started?” asked Franny.

  “Easiest thing in the world,” Will said airily. He began turning in a slow circle, squinting in the bright light. “Hellooo!” he called out. “Hey, Travis! Are you here?”

  “Honestly, Will.” Franny was nervous, which made her sound more exasperated than usual. “He’s dead. It’s not like he has lots of places to go.”

  Will paid no attention to her. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled again. “Hellooo! Anybody home?”

  Again, nothing.

  “Okay, we gave it a try,” Franny said briskly. “No one’s here, so let’s go home.” She brightened. “Hey, I have an even better idea! Let’s go swimming!”

  Poppy did her best to ignore this suggestion, even as a bead of sweat rolled down her face. “We haven’t even started,” she said, switching on the electronic motion detector. “If there are any ghosts here, with any luck they’ll be the kind who make the temperature drop forty degrees.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth when the sky darkened, as though a black cloud had covered the sun. A sudden, freezing wind blew through the graveyard, strong enough to make the branches of the oak trees bend and creak. Dozens of leaves whirled through the air, followed by an astonished blue jay. Tendrils of mist suddenly appeared, creeping out from under trees and curling around the headstones.

  As they watched, several strands of mist joined together to create a column of fog. The fog shifted and moved, gradually becoming more and more solid until finally they saw the figure of a man standing in front of them.

  He had thick dark hair that had been brushed back from his high forehead in a luxuriant wave, dark flashing eyes, and a large and noble nose. He was dressed in an old-fashioned suit with a gold watch chain hanging from his vest. Poppy could see that the jacket elbows were worn thin, the pant cuffs were frayed, and the watch chain was tarnished, but none of that seemed to matter to the ghost. He stood with one foot resting on the marble base of the tomb, his arms crossed and his head tossed back proudly.

  “Now that,” he said, “was an entrance.”

  Will and Franny stared at the ghost, their mouths hanging open. Poppy glanced at Henry, who looked surprised, but not afraid. Their eyes met, and he grinned at her.

  “Finally,” he said. “Something interesting is happening!”

  “You are speechless, of course,” the ghost went on. “Rooted to the spot! Overcome with wonder! I quite understand. People often had that reaction when they met me, even when I was alive. And now that I have Passed On, well …” He shrugged modestly, then smoothed back his hair and turned a flashing smile in their direction. “Naturally, the effect that my presence has on people is even more pronounced.”

  “I thought we were going to see a dog,” said Rolly.

  The ghost’s smile vanished. His head swiveled slowly so that he could give Rolly a chilly stare. Rolly, unimpressed, stared back.

  “A dog,” the ghost said contemplatively. “You came to see … a dog.”

  Then, his voice gradually rising, he went on. “You have just been treated to one of the most spectacular ghostly manifestations ever performed … and your only response is to wish to see a dog!”

  Rolly was unfazed. “Travis said—”

  The ghost’s face clouded over. “Travis,” he said, with the kind of inflection that made it sound like a curse. “What has That Boy been up to now?”

  Before his voice had stopped echoing off the tombstones, Travis appeared. The air shimmered, as if there was a heat wave and then, suddenly, Travis was in front of them, sitting on top of a particularly large headstone and kicking his heels.

  “Hey,” he said nonchalantly.

  “Hey,” they all automatically said back.

  Rolly fixed Travis with a beady gaze. “Where’s the dog?�
�

  Travis glanced toward the fence, put two fingers to his lips and let out a piercing whistle. One moment, Poppy saw only overgrown grasses and a line of dark trees by the fence; the next moment, an animal came racing toward them.

  “This is Bingo,” Travis said as the dog danced around him, jumping up occasionally as if to leap into his arms. “Down, boy! Sit! Good dog!”

  Bingo sat, panting. Like the other ghosts, he was not quite solid; Poppy could see the grass behind him.

  Rolly stared at him. “Can I pet him? Even though he’s a ghost?”

  “Sure,” Travis said. “He’s just like a regular dog except that he’s not alive.”

  Rolly knelt down and tried a few cautious pats on the head. Bingo barked, then dashed off. After a few feet, he paused and looked back over his shoulder.

  “He wants you to play with him,” Travis said. “His favorite game is Tombstone Tag. You could start with that.”

  Without another word, Rolly ran off with Bingo at his heels.

  “This is so cool,” Henry said, his eyes shining.

  “Young man, may I remind you that ‘cool’ means ‘at a low temperature’?” a voice said tartly. “Which I hardly think is an accurate description of a summer day in Texas.”

  Henry turned around in a circle. “Who said that?”

  “I did.” A tall, thin column of fog appeared near a particularly thorny bush. As they watched, the fog turned into a thin, tall woman who wore a trim navy suit with a skirt that reached her ankles. She had gray hair pulled back in a bun and steel spectacles perched on her long nose. Her sharp blue eyes gave Henry a wintry look. “I believe that the word you were grasping for is fascinating, intriguing, or perhaps impressive.”

  “How many ghosts are there in this cemetery, anyway?” asked Franny, her voice on the edge of hysteria.

  “Ah, perhaps I should introduce our dramatis personae,” said the dashingly handsome ghost. “I, of course, am Chance Carrington. You’ve heard of me, no doubt?”

  Seeing a row of blank faces, he sighed. “Ah, how fleeting is fame! I trod the boards back in the nineties—that’s the 1890s, of course—traveling the country and performing wherever there was an audience, from the grandest theaters in New York to miners’ camps out west. It was a marvelous life, traveling from town to town, hearing the applause and cheers of the crowd. I played all the major roles, of course. Romeo, Hamlet, good King Harry—”

  “Don’t forget Dastardly Dick and Nefarious Ned,” a sharp voice said. It’s difficult to drift in a belligerent way, but the misty shape managed to do so as it moved closer to where they were standing.

  A look of pain crossed Chance’s handsome face. “It’s true that occasionally I had to take on roles that were somewhat lower in tone—”

  “Ha!” The mist turned into a stout older woman wearing a blue-flowered dress, wire-rimmed glasses, and sensible black shoes. She looked like somebody’s grandmother, except for her hair, which stuck up all over her head in sooty black spikes. “I’d say so! The Plight of Penelope! A Poor Maiden’s Revenge! The Dastardly Deeds of a True Desperado! It wasn’t exactly Shakespeare.”

  Chance closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and smiled wanly at Poppy. “May I introduce Mrs. Bertha Plunkett. Born 1891, sadly struck down in 1947 when hit by lightning at a church picnic. A bitter loss to her family and, of course, to the garden club, the drama society, and the covered dish supper committee.”

  “And my peach pies won blue ribbons at the town fair ten years in a row,” added Bertha. “Nobody could beat my pies.”

  The tall, thin woman leaned forward. “Her husband was the mayor,” she whispered in Poppy’s ear. “And her peach pies were soggy.”

  “They never were,” Bertha said dangerously. “I never made a soggy pie in my life, Agnes Beech, and you know it!”

  “And this, as I’m sure you’ve surmised, is Mrs. Agnes Beech,” Chance said hastily. “Born in 1885—”

  “So she says,” muttered Bertha.

  “And tragically killed at the same doomed picnic that took Miz Bertha.”

  Agnes gave Poppy a meaningful look. “‘Let’s sit under the oak tree and wait out the storm,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, the lightning always hits the radio tower,’ she said. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she said—”

  “I think it’s time you stopped carrying that chip, Agnes,” said Bertha. “I said I was sorry.”

  Agnes gave a little sniff. “Sorry is as sorry does,” she said, “and I’d like to point out that I’m still dead.” She smiled thinly at the children. “But it’s a pleasure to meet all of you. It’s been so long since we’ve had company.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, too,” said Poppy, finally finding her voice.

  Standing in a graveyard surrounded by ghosts was far more unnerving than she would have expected, even in broad daylight. She glanced at the others and was a little annoyed to see that Henry seemed to have come to terms with what had happened faster than any of them. He was leaning against a marble column, his hands in his pockets, observing the ghosts with a pleased air.

  He looks as if he’ll start whistling any minute, Poppy thought, irritated.

  Will had also noticed this. He was biting his lip, but he was trying (not entirely successfully) to act like someone who saw apparitions every day of the week.

  Franny, on the other hand, was pale. “I knew we should have gone swimming,” she whispered to no one in particular. “I knew it was a mistake to come here.”

  Another breeze swept through the cemetery. This one, however, was warm and smelled like a flowery perfume. The air in front of them shimmered, and then began solidifying until a girl stood in front of them. She had green eyes and blond hair that turned up in a flip. She wore a white taffeta dress with a puffy skirt, high-heeled shoes, a strand of pearls, and a small rhinestone tiara.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Hitchhiking Prom Queen,” Chance said, making a graceful gesture in her direction. “Otherwise known as Miss Peggy Sue Perkins.”

  Peggy Sue Perkins rested her cool green gaze on them for a moment and then said, “Why in the world did y’all come here in the heat of the day? Everyone knows you should visit a haunted graveyard at midnight.”

  Will was gaping at her. Poppy nudged him, and his mouth shut with a snap.

  “We’re not allowed to go out that late on our own,” he managed to croak.

  “And we had to ride our bikes here,” Franny added. “It’s safer to do that during the day, especially when you’ve got a garden rake strapped to your handlebars—”

  “Your bikes?” Peggy Sue flounced over to a bench and sat down, sulking. “Well, that’s just absurd, that’s what it is. It is simply capital A absurd. You don’t even have a car for me to ride in!”

  “We’re sorry, we didn’t mean …” Franny took a nervous step backward, tripped on a flat stone marker half hidden in the tall grass, and fell down. “Ow.”

  “Now, Peggy, don’t go scaring the children,” another voice said.

  “Ah, and here is Buddy Owens, otherwise known as the Wailing Cowboy,” Chance said smoothly.

  A young man with sandy hair and an easy grin shimmered into view next to a tall cottonwood tree. He wore a cowboy hat, boots, and jeans and was holding a guitar.

  “Howdy,” he said. “It’s mighty nice of y’all to come visit us. We’ve been pretty much on our lonesome here for a long, long time.”

  Chance spread his hands wide. “And now you’ve met our little family. Welcome to our home.”

  He smiled another flashing white smile. It made Poppy suspicious. It made her think that he wanted something....

  She tilted her head and gave him an appraising look. “Why didn’t we see you when we were here before?” she asked.

  The ghosts exchanged shifty glances. Then Agnes said smoothly, “Well, we didn’t know who you were or what you wanted, did we? You have to understand, we’ve had to put up with some very rude people in our time.”

  “Es
pecially the ones from those TV shows,” Bertha said. “They say they want to talk to us, but they don’t, not really. They just want to annoy us until we let out a few bloodcurdling shrieks for their programs. No manners at all.”

  “That’s right,” Chance said. “So when we saw your parents setting up cameras, well … we decided to take a wait-and-see attitude, didn’t we?”

  He looked around at the other ghosts, who all nodded.

  “Then we got lucky,” Buddy added. “You called to Travis, which meant he could pay you a little visit.”

  “He told us how nice you all were,” Agnes said.

  “And how interested you were in the spirit world,” Bertha added.

  “And about the little fix you’re in,” said Buddy.

  “Yes,” Peggy Sue said. “With that Mr. Farley, who sounds just awful.”

  “So we thought perhaps we could help each other,” Chance finished.

  Poppy crossed her arms. “How?”

  “Come with me,” Chance said. He drifted up a little rise of ground to where a small stand of oak trees stood, with Poppy, Will, Henry, and Franny dutifully following and the other ghosts trailing behind. “Look.”

  They could see the whole cemetery. In the noonday sun, the wild thickets of bushes, broken branches, and weeds looked even worse.

  “This isn’t a bad spot to spend eternity,” said Chance. “Flowers, trees, a nice breeze most days.”

  “It’s been getting mighty lonely since that big road was put in, though,” added Buddy.

  “Yes, it used to be so friendly and comfortable here,” sighed Agnes. “People used to come visit, they used to care about paying their respects. Families would bring picnics, church groups or the Rotary would come out to trim the grass or put flowers on the graves. It used to be such a treat, listening to what people were saying.”

  “No one has time for that anymore.” Bertha shook her head mournfully. “It’s this modern world. Everyone’s in too much of a hurry.”

  There was a slight pause. Poppy glanced at Will, Franny, and Henry, who were looking around the unkempt graveyard with solemn faces.