Eclairs, Scares & Haunted Home Repairs

by Erin Johnson

  16

  The Good Morning Diner

  We bustled out of the Oishi Bakery, Hank leading the way.

  “Are we heading next door?” I jogged after him. “To ask Emi and Haru about the house?”

  He shot me a quick grin over his shoulder. “Absolutely.”

  It was a short journey, the buildings being so crowded together. I glanced up at the upper stories. The windows on the diner side matched up with those on the bakery side. They were practically living on top of each other, and if they could hear as much of each other as Yori had said they could…. I shuddered.

  The bell on the door jingled as we pushed inside the Ohayou (which meant good morning) Diner. This place was hopping! As many tables and chairs as could fit crowded the small space, every seat occupied by a happy diner. Stools even lined a shallow counter that ran along two walls of windows, cramming in even more customers. The diner had to be doing something right.

  I lifted my nose and took a deep whiff of savory bacon, buttery pancakes, and the comforting scents of brewing coffee and steaming green tea. I followed Hank, and Maple followed me, with the others trailing behind, as we slid sideways between chairs and tables. I held Iggy high overhead to avoid burning anyone’s hair off. Loud chatter and the scrape of utensils bounced off the high ceiling. A tub of dirty dishes whizzed by my head and magically zoomed through two swinging doors to, I assumed, the kitchen.

  A tall, handsome guy in his early thirties with wavy hair and glasses stood beside a table in the corner. A magical quill and notepad hovered beside his head, scribbling a table’s order. The top sheet of paper ripped off and flew through the tiny crack between the swinging doors to the back. I grinned. Clever way to run orders back to the cook.

  The pad and quill dropped into the pocket of the man’s red apron and he dashed through a half door to behind the counter, and then through the double doors to the back. We threaded our way through the dense crowd, following him, and crowded close together in the tiny open space in front of the old-fashioned brass register.

  I turned around and found the brick wall that was Yann right behind me. I craned my head back. “I think the waiter’s in the back.”

  “What?” He cupped his hand to his ear, the din of the restaurant making it hard to hear.

  I repeated myself, louder.

  “He’ll be right back,” a tiny voice said.

  I whirled around, searching for whoever had said that.

  Hank grinned. “Hi.” He waved his fingers.

  I followed his gaze to a young girl, maybe ten (though I was bad at kids’ ages) who sat on a stool behind the counter, coloring. The glass case in front of her, similar to the one at the bakery next door, stood empty. Huh. Maybe they’d sold out of their baked goods already? It was still pretty early, though.

  She looked up and gave Hank a shy smile, her long ponytail swinging over her shoulders. “Hi.” She looked back down at her crayon drawing of a bluebird and scribbled.

  Wiley leaned over to get a look. “That’s a good drawing.”

  She blushed but didn’t look up. “Thanks.”

  I grinned. It was pretty good, actually.

  “I’m Wiley.” He winked.

  The little girl grinned. “I’m Mai.” She spotted Yann, and her eyes widened. “You make the wood toys.”

  He beamed, his eyes sparkling below his bushy brows. “Ya! Dat is me.”

  He whittled magical toys for the village kids all the time.

  “You want dat me make you someding?”

  She nodded, her ponytail flying.

  Yann rubbed his palms together. “What to make… what to make….” His eyes landed on her drawing. “A bird?”

  Her eyes lit up. “Yes. Can you make it fly?”

  He chuckled. “I can try.”

  I smiled at her. “Do you have school today?”

  Her brows lowered and she scoffed. “It’s summer!”

  Oh yeah. I grinned at Hank. Silly me.

  “You’re losing your touch with the youth,” Iggy snarked.

  I tried again. “Is this your family’s diner?”

  She nodded.

  “It smells good in here.”

  She nodded again. “It tastes good, too.”

  I loved the honesty of children. I titled my head toward the swinging double doors. “Is that your dad who just went back there?”

  At that moment, the doors swung open again, and the guy with the glasses emerged, a tray with plates of food in each hand and plates of potatoes and a bowl of porridge magically hovering beside his head.

  “There he is.” Mai pointed.

  The guy’s cheeks flushed bright red and he shot her a look, then turned to us. “No. I’m Haru. I’m Mai’s big brother.” He shot her another look and she rolled her eyes, then went back to coloring. He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Our father passed away before she was born, and I’ve helped out her and her mother ever since. She sees me as a father figure, that’s all.”

  I gulped. Got it. Brother—not dad. The story Misaki had told us a couple nights ago came back to me. His father must be the lawyer, Daichi, who’d disappeared the night of the big typhoon.

  Haru edged out from behind the counter through the half door. “I’ll be with you in just a minute. There are menus on the counter if you’d like to have a look. There might be a short wait for seating but—”

  Hank held up a hand. “Actually, we’re not here to eat.”

  I eyed the bacon on Haru’s tray. Was that a hard no on eating?

  Haru lifted a thick brow, then glanced over his shoulder toward the crowded tables.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Haru’s eyes tightened as a customer called out for coffee. He turned his head and shifted the trays. “Be right with you.”

  I gave him a smile. “You need to hire some help, it looks like.” I’d meant it as a compliment on how busy they were.

  His expression grew stony and he took a half step back. “No. This is a family business. We prefer to do things ourselves.”

  “Oh.” I frowned. “I just meant—”

  Haru gave Hank a pleading look. “We’re swamped right now. Maybe you can come back and—”

  “I hate to bother you, you’re clearly busy, but Yoshi and Yori”—Hank’s jaw jumped as he spoke their names—“said you’d lived in the old house on the corner?”

  Haru turned ashen. “What’s this about?”

  17

  Emi

  The air buzzed with tension as Haru looked around at our faces. “Why do you want to know about the house?”

  Hank licked his lips. “We’re remodeling it and there have been some… incidents.”

  Iggy leaned out of his lantern and cupped a fiery hand to the side of his mouth. He loudly whispered, “Bad incidents.”

  I shot him a look. Yeah, pretty sure Haru gathered that.

  Iggy smirked.

  He shifted his trays, piled with full plates of food. “I don’t want to—”

  He was cut off as a woman, probably also in her early thirties, came in through the back. I caught a glimpse of the tidy white kitchen with butcher-block counters as the doors swung. She carried a couple of plates loaded with bacon and seasoned potatoes in her hands, and wore a red apron that matched Haru’s, though hers was covered in flour and batter stains.

  She grinned as she spotted Mai and blew a loose tendril of hair out of her face, the rest of it gathered in a loose, low bun. She moved straightaway over to the little girl and kissed her cheek.

  Mai grinned and held up her drawing.

  “Is that the bird you saw yesterday at the park?” The young woman’s dark eyes sparkled.

  Mai nodded.

  “I like how you drew it singing.” The woman straightened and turned, finally noticing me and my friends. Her thick brows drew together as she looked from the pale Haru to the rest of us. Her smile dropped and her eyes grew hard as she slid up beside him. “What’s going on?”
<
br />   I opened my mouth to explain, but Haru cut me off, quickly muttering, “They moved into the old house.” This must be Mai’s mom then, the lawyer’s young wife.

  Her eyes widened and she looked quickly down. “You shouldn’t be there.” Her eyes darted to mine, then around at all our faces, then back down to her feet. She’d been full of life when speaking to her daughter, but now I noticed how tired she looked. Bags darkened the skin below her eyes, which were tight and bloodshot.

  She glanced behind her. “Mai.” She tried for a light tone, but a current of anxiety ran through her voice. “Why don’t you help Haru wait the tables?”

  “Really?”

  The woman nodded, and Mai hopped off her stool and bounced through the half door. She stopped beside Haru. “Where first?”

  He grinned down at her, then looked back up at the woman. He leaned close and spoke quietly in her ear. In all the din of the voices and silverware clinking against plates, I lost his words, but she nodded, and the plates floated from her hands and joined the two already magically hovering beside Haru’s head. He threaded his way through the narrow spaces between tables toward a party near the window, Mai skipping along at his heels.

  The woman turned to us and tugged her apron strings tighter around her slender waist. “I’m Emi. You probably already know, I used to live in that house.” Her throat bobbed and she kept her eyes down. “Haru said you mentioned… incidents?”

  Hank and I exchanged glances, and Maple edged closer to me.

  Hank nodded. “We found messages… threats, scrawled across the walls this morning.”

  Emi’s cheeks and neck flushed pink and she kept her eyes on her feet.

  I licked my lips. “And a couple of days ago we saw a man in the tower.” I hefted Iggy up. “Well, he was transparent and green, so I think I can confidently say he was a ghost… or a mirage.” I gave a dry chuckle, trying to lighten the mood, but Emi’s stricken expression cut me off.

  “Daichi?” Her wide eyes searched my face. “You saw him?”

  I grimaced. “I’m not sure who I saw, sorry.”

  She hugged her arms tightly around herself and shook her head. “It’s haunted. His spirit never appeared to me, but I always knew it was.” Her wide, red eyes lifted to mine. “It’s why we left.”

  Maple gripped my arm tightly and whimpered. I knew how she felt. Suddenly, this theory that someone had just been playing pranks was seeming less likely.

  Emi bit her dry bottom lip. “I know you’re new in town, but you’ve probably heard the story.”

  I nodded, feeling a little bad that this woman’s life had become an urban legend.

  “Daichi disappeared the night of the great typhoon.” Her eyes drifted past me and I glanced back, following her gaze. She watched Mai, her daughter, as she handed a plate over to an older gentleman. Emi gave a wistful sigh.

  I frowned as I thought over what she’d just said. “Daichi, your husband, disappeared?” I lifted a brow. “A few moments ago, Haru said he’d passed away?”

  She shrugged, her arms still tight around herself. “The truth is, we don’t know what happened to him. But it’s been ten years… and he went out in that violent storm. Plus….” She unfolded her arms and wrung her hands. “Plus, after that night, things started happening at the house.” Her eyes grew far away and her chest heaved. “We’d hear noises at night… footsteps. In the morning, things would be moved around. The house started to fall apart. It was fairly new back then, Daichi had built it just a couple of years before—it was his dream house. But the wood began to rot, pipes burst, the roof caved in.” She shook her head. “I knew. I just knew it was his spirit, unable to rest. We didn’t know what to do—it kept getting worse, we couldn’t sleep.” She gulped. “So we called on Madame Shi, the necromancer, to hold a séance.”

  “I can tell this is going in a good direction,” Iggy muttered.

  I glanced at Maple to see how she was holding up… and to ask her to pry her claw-like fingers out of my arm. But the whites showed all around her big blue eyes as she stared, riveted, at Emi. Maybe I’d just let her hold on, then.

  “What happened?” Sam breathed.

  Emi let out a shaky breath. “Nothing good.”

  “Whhhaaaatt?” Iggy’s pitch rose in mock surprise.

  18

  Abandoned

  Wiley sidled closer to Maple’s other side, so that they jostled into me.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I glanced at Wiley. His eyes were as big as Maple’s.

  Emi’s chest continued to heave with her quick, shallow breaths. “She came over one night. Started by walking all over the house, burning herbs and chanting spells. She said she was cleansing it. We went over every inch of the house.” Her jaw twitched. “As we did, we passed through the dining room and—” She shook her head. “And the chandelier dropped from the ceiling and crashed down beside me.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “It nearly killed me.”

  “Eep.” Maple shrank tighter against my side. I glanced at Hank, wide-eyed, and he slid closer to me. That was a comfort—but my chest still felt tight as I held my breath, waiting to hear whatever was coming next.

  “We gathered around a table, in the dark, and joined hands. She made contact.”

  “Was that a good idea?” Iggy shrank back in his lantern.

  “She told us Daichi was there. And that his spirit was… angry.” Emi’s cheeks flushed and she dropped her head. She continued in a small voice, so that we had to edge closer to make out her words in the noisy diner. The happy chatter clashed horribly with her terrified words. “Then he possessed her. Daichi took over her body. She writhed and screamed at us and said….” Her throat bobbed and tears welled in her eyes. “And said horrible things.”

  Goose bumps prickled my arms.

  “When Madame Shi came back to herself she told us things would get worse, much worse, if we stayed. She said our lives were in danger. And after what I’d seen that night, I believed her.”

  Emi pressed a hand to her stomach. “By then, I knew I was pregnant with Mai and I couldn’t risk it.” She gulped. “We moved out—abandoned the house and let the village repossess it. We took what we had and opened our diner.”

  Hank cleared his throat. “Thank you—for sharing your story with us.”

  She gave a curt nod. “I’d better get back to cooking.”

  “Oh, uh—one last thing.” Hank winced. “I hate to ask but… Yoshi and Yori said that you might be able to verify that they were home last night? Did you see or… er… hear them and their… er, guests?” Hank’s cheeks flushed pink, and I fought a grin at his embarrassment.

  Emi’s eyes widened in surprise as she searched Hank’s face. Suddenly, her expression darkened and her lip curled. Her arms dropped to her sides and her hands balled into fists. She let out a huff. “Let’s just say because of them I got very little sleep.”

  Er. Guess that explained her bloodshot eyes. I couldn’t imagine having the twins as neighbors… especially when the buildings were so close they practically lived on top of each other.

  Iggy made a face. “My deepest sympathies.”

  Emi’s mouth twitched toward a grin. She lifted a hand in farewell and moved behind the counter. Yann and Annie turned to go, and I moved to follow, but suddenly had another thought. I spun around. “Emi?”

  She paused in front of the swinging doors to the kitchen. “Hm?”

  I wasn’t sure the best way to ask this. “Any idea why Daichi’s spirit would want to hurt you? I mean, if you’re a ghost, why go after your wife, son, and unborn daughter?” I bit my lip. “Sorry to pry, but was he an angry person… you know, when he wasn’t a poltergeist?”

  Iggy gave me a double thumbs-up and loudly whispered, “Great job. Really tactful.”

  I tried to ignore him.

  Emi paled. “Sorry, I have to get back to work.” She turned, paused, and then spun around. “Just please, please, don’t stay in that house.” Her face c
rumpled. “It’ll be the end of you.” She pushed through the swinging doors and disappeared into the kitchen.

  19

  Rally

  We trudged back through town toward the house. Despite all that had already happened, it was only midmorning. People moved about the streets now, ducking into shops, buying vegetables from a farmer’s cart or popping into a café for a steaming mug of coffee or tea.

  I sighed. That sounded good, right about now. This day was beginning to feel like a never-ending one. I was already emotionally worn out from vandalism and creepy twins and ghost stories—oh my!

  Hank walked beside me, brows scrunched together in his “deep in thought” look.

  I nudged him with my shoulder. “Should we just burn it down and start over?”

  Hank looked up at me, eyes blank. Then my words registered, and he smirked.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying!” Iggy crossed his arms as the lantern swung from my hand. “No one ever listens to me.”

  “We listen. We just choose to ignore.”

  He stuck his tongue out at me.

  Hank shook his head as we climbed a hill. Hooves clopped along the stone-paved street as a deer-drawn cart came toward us. We moved to the right and our friends, who followed, did the same. “Yoshi and Yori are lying. I’m sure they have something to do with the vandalism.”

  I nodded. “They’re jerks, that’s for sure.” I shook my head. “But Emi said they’d kept her up all night. And I’m guessing if we checked with the bartender at the Spotted Owl, they’d vouch the twins were there last night.”

  Hank sighed. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Where are we going?” Maple called.

  I turned. She walked beside Wiley, hands tightly gripping her gray work smock. “I’m not sure we should go back to the house. Like… ever.” Her chin quivered as she caught up to us.