There was Peggy Sue, talking (in great detail) about her prom dress and how she had fixed her hair.
And there was Chance, giving the whole “To be or not to be” speech from start to finish, and doing it magnificently.
When the film ended, Poppy bit her lip and blinked. She never would have imagined that she would actually miss the ghosts of Shady Rest Cemetery....
Mrs. Malone broke the silence. “Children! I had no idea! Why didn’t you tell us you were working on your own investigation?”
“We were going to, but then—well, we wanted it to be a surprise,” Poppy said.
“I can’t believe it!” Poppy said. “I simply cannot believe it.”
“Calm down,” said Will. “Mom and Dad get to keep the grant, we don’t have to move, Mrs. Farley thinks we’re all adorable. Everything’s right with the world.”
The Malones had finished dinner and Rolly had been put to bed. Poppy, Will, and Franny were now sitting in Henry’s tree house, nibbling on sugar cookies that Mrs. Rivera had baked that morning (Henry had thoughtfully raided the cookie jar before meeting them).
“But did you hear what Mrs. Farley said to Mom and Dad as we left?” Poppy asked indignantly.
“Of course we did,” Will said. “Can we talk about something else, please? Anything else?”
“I didn’t hear what she said,” Henry put in. “Not the exact words, anyway.”
Poppy sat up a little straighter and pursed her mouth in what she thought was a good impression of Mrs. Farley. “‘You must be proud to have such loyal children, Dr. and Dr. Malone,’” Poppy said in a prissy tone. “‘And so inventive! To fake a film of ghosts in order to help you keep your grant is moving. But to do it so well is remarkable. They must be experts with computer software. If I were you, I would definitely encourage them on that path. Yes, indeed.’”
Poppy slumped back against the tree trunk. “And then she closed that big stupid door.”
“So your parents kept their grant because Mrs. Farley was impressed by your video, even though she thought it was a fake.” Henry started to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” Poppy said crossly.
“No,” he agreed. “But it is ironic. Which is actually better, I think. Humor’s way too easy.”
“The worst thing is that Mom and Dad think we faked the movie, too,” Franny said gloomily. “They said they understood why we did it and that they were touched by our efforts and that it all turned out well in the end.”
“Then they made us listen to an endless lecture about professional ethics and standards,” Will added. “And how wrong it is to fake evidence—”
“Which we didn’t do!” Poppy almost shouted.
“Calm down, Poppy.” Franny took another cookie. “You know what your real problem is? You miss the ghosts.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment.
“We all do,” said Will. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but—”
“I know,” Henry said. “I kind of want them back.”
Poppy shook her head adamantly. “Look, we couldn’t go on having six ghosts in the house,” she said. “They were attracting too much attention. Sooner or later, the word would get out that our house was haunted. And you know what would happen then.”
Will and Franny nodded, their faces grave. They knew. TV and newspaper reporters calling for interviews, families driving slowly past their house and peering out the car windows at them, teenagers daring each other to run up on the porch at midnight....
“It would have been a nightmare,” Franny said. “But still—”
Poppy didn’t let her finish. “A complete nightmare,” she said firmly. “Imagine what the first day of school would have been like. We would all be marked before the opening assembly.”
Will nodded. “And with Travis around, I would have been in trouble all the time. I would have been grounded for the rest of my life.”
A faraway look crept into his eyes. “It might have been kind of funny to soap the neighbors’ windows, though—”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Poppy said briskly. “We did the right thing. The only thing. And I’m sure they’re all much happier back in the graveyard. After all, that’s where they belong, really.”
“It is,” Henry said slowly. “But I’ve been thinking, and what I think is that I have an idea....”
EPILOGUE
“Why should we bother talking to you?” Chance said. He was leaning against his grave marker, his arms folded, frowning down at the Malones. Rolly could be heard in the distance, playing tag with Bingo, but the other ghosts sat still and silent, refusing to even look up. “You got what you wanted. So now, begone with you!”
He flung his arm out, as if he wanted to scatter them to the four corners of the earth.
“Don’t be that way,” Franny pleaded. “We miss you.”
“Hmmph. You have a funny way of showing it, that’s all I can say,” Bertha grumbled.
Agnes nodded agreement. She was too hurt to talk.
“We can’t be friends anymore,” Travis said coldly. “You tricked us, with those stupid spirit traps.”
“Well, you tricked us first,” Poppy pointed out. “You said you’d help us with Mrs. Farley if we cleaned up the graveyard. You didn’t tell us that you were trapped here by all the brambles and broken branches. You didn’t mention that, as soon as the paths were clear, you’d leave the cemetery and come haunt us!”
Small smiles flickered on the ghosts’ faces.
“It was a good plan,” Buddy said.
“It was a great plan,” Chance corrected him.
“And it was so much fun to be out and about.” Agnes sighed.
“Trying out new recipes,” Bertha added.
“Hanging out with kids my age,” Travis said.
“Riding in all those new cars,” Peggy Sue said dreamily.
“Sittin’ on my own front porch, watching the world go by and playing my guitar,” Buddy said.
Poppy glanced at Will, Franny, and Henry. “Look, we’ve been thinking,” she said. “You can see why we can’t have a house full of ghosts. But it seems like what you really want is company. And that’s something we can help you with.”
Chance’s eyebrows went up. “Can you?” he said. “How, exactly?”
“Come right this way,” said Mrs. Rivera, waving a flashlight in the air. “The Graveyard Friends tour is about to begin.”
The last rays of the sun had disappeared an hour ago. It was a dark night in the Shady Rest Cemetery, with just a sliver of moon shining on the gray headstones.
A crowd of thirty people jostled one another as they gathered at the rusty cemetery gate, where Franny stood ready to take their tickets. She was dressed in a 1950s prom dress (an homage to the legend of the Hitchhiking Prom Queen), and her blond hair (freshly washed and curled) shone in the moonlight.
When Mrs. Rivera gave her the signal, Franny opened the gate (which made a satisfyingly rusty creak) and let the crowd in. The dark night and spooky setting led some visitors to chat nervously to one another, at least until they reached the tomb where Mrs. Rivera waited for them.
“Please do not speak unless absolutely necessary,” said Mrs. Rivera in a commanding voice. “The spirits need to feel peace and quiet and goodwill before they will appear to those of us still on the material plane.”
All the conversation died away. Mrs. Rivera waited until the deep quiet of the countryside had thoroughly unnerved everyone.
Then she pointed her flashlight at the ground so that she could guide their feet without casting much light among the gravestones. “And so,” she said in a low, mysterious voice, “now we begin.”
Poppy huddled with Will and Henry behind Travis’s gravestone, watching Chance pace nervously around his grave marker.
“Are you all right?” Poppy whispered.
“Backstage jitters,” he said with a careless wave of his hand. “I always felt this way before the curtain went up. But stage lore says that the mo
re nervous you are, the better the show, so this one should be absolutely spectacular.”
He gave Poppy a weak grin, then stopped pacing and stood with his head bowed as Mrs. Rivera led her group to an area just in front of the tall column that marked Chance’s grave. “And here we have the final resting place of a great Shakespearean actor,” she said. “Some people have said that on a clear, dark night like tonight, they have seen him walking and giving the speech that he loved the most when he was alive. Perhaps we shall be lucky enough to see him tonight....”
Chance waited five seconds (Poppy could see him counting them off silently), then stepped out of the darkness with a flourish.
The crowd gasped.
“To be or not to be,” he said, his voice ringing out and echoing through the warm Texas night. “That is the question....”
Mr. and Mrs. Malone were sitting on the wooden bench under the cypress tree.
“Isn’t it peculiar what some people will believe,” Mrs. Malone said, smiling at the squeals of fright that wafted through the air when Buddy appeared, playing a song on his guitar.
“To each his own,” Mr. Malone said philosophically, taking her hand and squeezing it. “Not everyone can possess the kind of scientific minds that we have, my dear.”
“That’s true,” she said, squeezing his hand back.
Her attention was caught by something on the edge of the cemetery, where a broad swath of grass lay between the tombstones and the trees.
“Rolly,” she called out in a penetrating whisper. “Don’t get too far away.”
“It’s okay.” His voice floated back to her. “I’m just playing with Bingo....”
Mrs. Malone frowned. “Do you think we should take Rolly to see someone, Emerson? I’ve heard of children having imaginary friends, but, really, an imaginary dog? It seems a bit odd to me …”
“If that’s the oddest thing he ever does, we should thank our lucky stars and go on a cruise to celebrate,” said Mr. Malone with a touch of vinegar in his voice.
“Emerson!” said Mrs. Malone, but she was smiling. “Well, perhaps you’re right. Everything does have a tendency to work out in the end. After all, even though we didn’t find any ghosts here, we did keep the grant, and Mirabella does seem to enjoy putting on her cemetery show. And, of course, the children needed a little project to keep them busy this summer, so it’s nice they were able to help her.” She sighed happily. “Yes, everything worked out very well, indeed. And some other investigation will come along soon, I’m sure of it.”
“I am, too,” he said. “Oh, look!”
Even from a distance, they could see the statue of the angel suddenly start to glow and could hear the visitors ooh and aah.
Hidden behind the statue, Poppy, Will, and Henry sat with the ghost of Travis Clay Smith, smiling at each other.
“I’m so glad we came to see this,” a woman said.
“I can’t wait to tell my friends,” another woman agreed. “They’ll all want to visit Shady Rest Cemetery when they hear about it!”
“I’ll bet you’ll be featured in every travel guide after this,” Poppy whispered to Travis.
“Yep. A star attraction. Right up there with the Alamo and Ralph the Diving Pig,” said Travis proudly.
“And did you read the words carved under the statue,” the first woman said. “‘Our Darling Angel’! Isn’t that touching!”
Will and Henry sniggered. Travis blushed.
“Hey, I didn’t write it,” he muttered. “And I didn’t pick out that statue.”
“See,” Will said to Poppy. “I told you he’d hate it.”
“The little cherub?” asked Poppy mischievously. “I think it’s sweet.”
“It’s a baby,” said Travis, who was starting to scowl.
Henry gave Travis’s foot a friendly nudge with his own. “It’s not just a baby,” Henry said, pretending to be very serious.
Travis gave him a quick glance.
“It’s a baby with wings,” Henry said, and his face broke out in a grin.
For a split second, Travis looked mad—then he glanced up at the statue and started laughing, too. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s a fat baby with wings!”
“It’s a fat baby with wings standing on tiptoe,” added Will, getting into the spirit of things.
“It’s a fat baby with wings standing on tiptoe and wearing a toga....” said Henry.
As Will and Henry kept teasing Travis, Poppy leaned her head back on the headstone and closed her eyes. She began thinking about how she would write up the notes of this investigation and what journals she would send her article to and what kind of title she would choose....
Maybe she should try to catch readers’ eyes with humor. “The Case of the Gallivanting Ghouls,” perhaps?
Of course, a certain formality in a title was always helpful; it made people take the work more seriously. Maybe something like “The Incident of the Angel That Glowed in the Night”?
Dimly, Poppy heard Mrs. Rivera leading the cemetery visitors to where the Hitchhiking Prom Queen awaited. The tourists can only see the ghosts when they buy a ticket, she thought with some satisfaction. But we can visit them anytime we want.
As if the ghosts had heard her thought, a wind—warm and welcoming and scented with perfume—swept through the cemetery and made the tree branches sway against the starry night sky.
And then the title of her article came to Poppy, as clearly as if a ghost was whispering it in her ear.
“A Gust of Ghosts.”
She smiled and opened her eyes. That sounded perfect.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SUZANNE HARPER grew up in Texas and lives in New York City. You can visit her online at www.suzanneharper.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors and artists.
CREDITS
Cover art © 2012 by Peter Bay Alexandersen
Cover design by Paul Zakris
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
The Unseen World of Poppy Malone: A Gust of Ghosts
Copyright © 2012 by Suzanne Harper
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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The text of this book is set in 12-point ITC Esprit.
Book design by Paul Zakris
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harper, Suzanne.
A gust of ghosts / by Suzanne Harper.
p. cm.—(The unseen world of Poppy Malone)
“Greenwillow Books.”
Summary: Nine-year-old Poppy is not sure she believes in any of the paranormal talents her family members claim to have, but when a crew of ghosts follows her home from the graveyard she may be the only one who can help them move on.
ISBN 978-0-06-199610-8 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN 9780062101754
[1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Family life—Texas—Fiction.
3. Austin (Tex.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H23197Gus 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011041879
12 13 14 15 16 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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