The Phantom Hour

by Kat Shepherd

  Clio looked around the empty dining room. What could have scared the dog so much? A massive dining table dominated the room, its curving legs carved to look like lions. The elaborate, high-backed dining chairs were upholstered with threadbare red velvet. A large mirror with a gilded frame hung above a dark wood credenza, opposite a wall covered with framed black-and-white photos of people in old-fashioned clothing standing in front of a house. Crimson wallpaper flocked with black velvet stretched to meet heavy crown molding, and the dusty crystal chandelier made the ceiling seem like it was closing in on her. I don’t blame him. It is a little creepy in here, Clio thought. Clio moved closer to the old photos, her attention caught by one particular picture. In it, a white family stared stone-faced at the camera. The mother had a tiny corseted waist, and she wore a dark dress with a long skirt and puffy sleeves, her blond hair coiled beneath a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with feathers. She held a bundled-up baby in her arms. The dark-haired father was dressed in a long-coated suit over a white shirt with a high collar. His tall black top hat was angled slightly forward on his head, as though pointing to his bristly mustache, and he carried a cane. In front of them, two little girls in white dresses held hands. Their fair hair was cut in straight bangs, and each had a white bow at the top of her head. Their pale eyes were barely visible against their milk-white faces.

  Clio looked more closely at the house in the background, and she immediately recognized the turret and the wraparound porch. “Cool,” she whispered. “This must be the family who built this house.” She carefully lifted the picture from the wall and turned it over to look for a date on the back. Scrawled near the frame were the words T. D. Plunkett and family, 1892.

  A cool breath of air curled against the back of her neck. Behind her, the crystals in the chandelier began to rattle violently against one another. Her shadow shrank and grew on the wall in front of her with the wildly swinging light. She gasped and spun around. The room was empty and still, but the chandelier continued to sway, the crystal droplets tinkling against one another like ice in a glass.

  Goose bumps rose on Clio’s skin, and a cold feeling of dread crept over her.

  She slowly hung the picture back on the wall, scanning the room as she did so. Nothing moved.

  Wesley’s ball lay at the edge of the carpet, and she knelt down to retrieve it. Just as her fingers brushed the ball, it rolled out of her reach. She leaned forward and reached for it again. The ball rolled farther away, an inch or two out of her grasp. Fighting rising panic, Clio crawled forward and extended her hand.

  The ball rolled away from her hand and disappeared under the table.

  Clio’s breath caught in her throat. Just leave it. Just leave the ball and get out of this room, she thought.

  But another part of her rankled at the thought of being spooked so easily. It’s just a ball. It’s not like it can do anything. She crouched on the floor, paralyzed by indecision.

  Finally, heart pounding, Clio slithered between the dining chairs into the shadows beneath the table. The second her hand closed around the ball, she hopped to her feet. “I’m okay!” she said breathlessly to no one. The room waited, silent and expectant. She could feel something watching her.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered to herself again. The words rung hollow.

  Clio ran out of the room, shutting off the light behind her. She dropped the old tennis ball into the trash can under the sink and firmly closed the cabinet door.

  She took a moment to check the baby monitor before grabbing her backpack and retreating to the TV room. Wesley was still in his bed, and he barely stirred when Clio clicked the remote and searched for the goofiest sitcom she could find, anything to get her mind off what had happened in the dining room. Her heart was still pounding.

  The house was calm and quiet again; the only sound was the ticking of the hall clock. Clio felt herself begin to relax as the final credits eventually rolled across the screen. She checked the monitor in the kitchen, comforted by the sound of Minna’s slow, even breathing. She poured herself a glass of ice water. The clinking ice made her think of the chandelier, and she shuddered. She poured the ice water into Wesley’s bowl instead.

  Clio checked her phone. The Lees would be home in less than an hour. She pulled a novel out of her backpack. She could probably finish a few more chapters before they arrived.

  Clio had just turned to a fresh chapter when she heard the stairs creak. Then, a slow, deliberate bouncing: thud … thud … thud …

  Something was moving down the stairs.

  Clio stood up, her skin crawling. She knew what the sound was.

  Stomach sinking, she walked into the front hallway.

  There, at the bottom of the stairs, was Wesley’s tennis ball.

  Clio stared at the ball in horror. She had thrown it in the trash earlier that night. She recognized the shredded spot where the rubber shone through.

  Afraid to breathe, she slowly bent down to pick it up, half expecting it to roll away from her fingers. Just as her fingertips grazed the worn yellow fuzz, a metallic gong tore the air. She screamed and jumped back.

  It was the hall clock. Clio gritted her teeth.

  The chimes continued, loud and relentless, boring into her head, as Clio rushed to the kitchen.

  A part of her hoped that she would be wrong, that this was a different ball that had somehow tumbled down the stairs. Accidentally. And very, very slowly. Her mind tried to grasp the idea and hold on to it, but she knew how foolish it sounded.

  She hurriedly opened the cabinet under the sink and peered into the empty trash can. She looked back to where Wesley was still sleeping in the TV room. He hadn’t moved. There was no point in asking herself how the ball had gotten from inside the trash can to the top of the stairs and back down again. Despite what Tanya might say, there was no logical way to explain it.

  Clio dropped the ball back in the garbage and slammed the cupboard shut. She leaned against the counter and looked across the empty rooms. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t deny it any longer.

  There was something supernatural inside the house.

  CHAPTER

  10

  CLIO SENT A text to her aunt and friends:

  By the time the Lees returned home, Clio was waiting, her backpack neatly tucked by the door. After chatting with both parents for a few moments, Clio climbed into the passenger seat of Mrs. Lee’s SUV. She was bursting with questions. She didn’t want to scare the Lees, but she needed to find out if they had seen anything strange, too.

  “I had fun playing fetch with Wesley tonight,” Clio said. “When he dropped his ball in the dining room, I noticed some neat old pictures on the walls. I guess the house must have a really cool history, huh?”

  Mrs. Lee smiled. “Apparently, the property belonged to the original family for a couple generations. The last Plunkett to inhabit the house was a distant cousin, Henry Plunkett. He was a bachelor who lived alone. When he passed away, the house was inherited by another distant relative who lived across the country, so it sat vacant for ten years until we bought it.”

  Clio chose her words carefully. “It must have been a funny feeling moving in to a house that sat empty for so long. Was it … spooky?”

  Mrs. Lee laughed and shook her head. “The only thing scary was all the repair work we had to do! The house was in quite a state when we bought it. There was even a family of raccoons living in the attic!”

  Clio forced a laugh. “Well, I guess that’s better than anything supernatural!” She checked for a reaction out of the corner of her eye, but Mrs. Lee seemed relaxed and unconcerned.

  “Mm-hmm,” Mrs. Lee said absently, turning onto Clio’s street. The conversation was going nowhere, and Clio was running out of time.

  “So it’s good that nobody ever saw anything … strange … happen, huh?”

  Mrs. Lee laughed as she pulled in front of Clio’s house. “Oh, I don’t know. It sure would make a good story if someone did, wouldn’t it?”

&nb
sp; * * *

  The following morning, Clio and her aunt had a large platter of doughnuts ready when the other girls showed up. Clio stood anxiously behind the counter, dressed carefully in a belted paisley-patterned shift dress over black tights. Her bright green cardigan was buttoned just so, and her twist-out was pulled into a high puff on top of her head.

  “Wow, this is really becoming a tradition,” Maggie said. She picked up a chocolate frosted doughnut and took a huge bite. “I think I like it. So what’s the big emergency, anyway?” She sat down cross-legged and tugged at her emoji-print leggings.

  Tanya nibbled at a maple glazed, holding it delicately in a napkin. Rebecca sat beside her, dressed in a cropped boyfriend sweater over a plaid shirtdress and balancing her blueberry-crumble doughnut on a small plate. Kawanna, in a plain black fitted tee and baggy gray Juilliard sweats, perched next to the counter with a tall mug of chai tea.

  Clio’s chocolate-coconut doughnut sat forgotten on her plate. She was too nervous to eat. She knelt down on the floor, her hands twisting together in her lap. “You guys, I think the portal to the Nightmare Realm might still be open.”

  “What do you mean?” Rebecca asked.

  Clio told them about the pantry, the silverware, the chandelier, and the ball. “I mean, if just one of those things had happened, it could have been an accident, or me being forgetful, or something normal. But all together? And what about the ball? I threw it in the trash can myself!”

  Rebecca put down her plate. “But we saw the portal seal. We checked it! How would it be open again?”

  “It was a pretty intense scene out there, with the ice and everything,” Maggie said. “I don’t think the portal would go to all that trouble just to say, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m still open!’”

  Clio shrugged. “It seemed sealed to me, too, but I don’t know what else it could be. Maybe something came out before the portal closed.” She shook her head. “But whatever it is, there’s something in that house.”

  “Minna’s not acting strange, is she?” Rebecca asked, chewing on a blue-painted thumbnail. Her shaggy bangs fell forward, obscuring her face.

  “No, she’s totally fine,” Clio said. “No one in the family seems to have noticed anything.”

  Tanya’s brown eyes were thoughtful. “Maybe whatever’s in the Plunkett Mansion has nothing to do with the portal. Maybe it’s something else entirely.”

  Kawanna put down her tea. “That’s an interesting idea.”

  Rebecca picked up her doughnut again. “You mean some other kind of supernatural being?”

  Tanya ran her fingers through her bangs, making them stand straight up. “I was thinking more like a weird magnetic field around the house or something that would move stuff around.” She pushed up the sleeves of her MATH CAMP sweatshirt and gazed at the ceiling, considering.

  Clio folded her arms. “I don’t think a magnetic field can cut paper dolls out of napkins, or take a ball out of a closed cabinet and carry it to the top of the stairs!”

  Maggie licked the chocolate frosting off her fingers. “Good point.”

  “There’s only one thing I can think of that would do that,” Clio continued. She looked at her aunt Kawanna and nodded.

  “A ghost.”

  “Not ghosts again,” Tanya groaned. “I told you; that stuff is all fake. Houdini proved it!”

  “Well, it didn’t feel fake to me,” Clio retorted.

  Kawanna stood up and held out her hands. “Keep cool, girls. We don’t know for sure what’s going on yet.” She walked over to the bookshelves and started stacking books on the counter. “We can start with research. Clio, you and Maggie are Team Ghost. Study the town’s history. See what you can find out about the Plunkett family.”

  Clio and Maggie stood up, and Kawanna dumped a load of books in each girl’s arms. “Tanya, you and Rebecca try to form a few other theories about what could be happening at the Plunkett Mansion.”

  Tanya opened her mouth, but Kawanna held up a finger. “See if you can come up with an experiment to determine if there’s a scientific explanation, a supernatural one, or both.” She piled books into Tanya’s and Rebecca’s arms. “Now, that should satisfy everyone.”

  “What about you, Auntie? What are you going to do?” Clio asked.

  Kawanna balanced a few doughnuts on a plate and headed toward the back of the store. “You think this store runs itself? I have paperwork to do! Unlike you doughnut-eating freeloaders, some of us have real jobs.” She winked at the girls and retreated into her office.

  Maggie looked at the tower of dusty books in front of her and sighed. “I always imagined ghostbusting would be more fun than this.”

  Clio laughed. “Is that what we’re doing? Busting ghosts?”

  “Sure. Why not? In the movies they had these cool ray-gun things, and they zapped up ghosts, like some kind of laser vacuum.” She called across the shop to Tanya, who already had her nose buried in a book. “How about it, T? You think you could make us some ghost-vacuum ray guns?”

  Without raising her eyes from her book, Tanya slid a pencil out of the pocket of her backpack and underlined something. “Definitely not.” Beside her, Rebecca typed notes on a silver laptop, her eyes sliding back and forth between the screen and the open book in front of her.

  Clio skimmed the index of a book called Piper: An Illustrated History. Maggie peered over her shoulder and pointed halfway down the page, knocking into Clio’s shoulder. “Look! The Plunkett Mansion!”

  “Yeah, Maggie, I know. That’s what I was looking for.” Seeing Maggie’s hurt expression, Clio tried to sound more encouraging. “Listen, we’ll cover more ground if you go through your pile and I go through mine. Here. What about this?” She picked up the book at the top of Maggie’s stack and handed it to her.

  Maggie opened the book and groaned at the small print filling the page. “Ugh! Too boring!” Clio raised an eyebrow, and Maggie relented. “Fine, okay! Researching.” She bent her head over the book but stood up a moment later.

  “Maggie…,” Clio said.

  “Relax, I’m just getting a pen!” Maggie walked slowly over to the counter and lingered over the pens in the cup beside the cash register. She tested each one on a small pad of paper she found under the counter. Feeling Clio’s eyes on her, she stopped. “I was just seeing if she had a purple one.”

  Clio held up her hands. “Fine. Whatever.” She went back to her book.

  Maggie walked across the room and flopped down on the floor with a loud sigh. The shop was quiet for a while.

  Across the room, Tanya and Rebecca conferred in soft voices, each pointing to a sketch that Tanya had made. “Looks like they’re having fun, at least,” Maggie muttered. Clio ignored her.

  Maggie looked back down at her book, absently clicking her pen. She felt Clio’s eyes on her. “What?” Clio’s eyes moved to the pen. “Oh. Sorry,” she said.

  A few minutes later, Maggie began to hum, her eyes skimming the page. Soon, the humming turned to singing, her pen clicking in time with the melody.

  Clio put down her pencil. “Maggie! Seriously!”

  “Sorry!” Maggie said. “This book was really boring, so I was just singing the words to try to make it more interesting. There’s, like, nothing in here.”

  “Then choose another book,” Clio said slowly, pointing to the pile in front of Maggie.

  “Fine. I will.” Maggie pulled out the thinnest book in the pile and opened it up. She put it down in disgust. “Ugh! This one’s even worse. It’s in cursive!”

  “Cursive?” Clio picked it up and read the inside cover. “Whoa! This is a diary. I think it must have belonged to the lady who owned the shop before. It’s really old.” She turned to a page in the middle. “November 9, 1950. Tonight I went on a date with Stanley Wilson. It was boring and his breath was terrible. If he asks me out again I will tell him no. Well, never mind; that’s probably not going to tell us much.”

  Maggie’s eyes lit up and she grabbed it out of Clio’s
hands. “Wait, Clio! You never know! There could be really important stuff in here. Maybe Bad Breath Stanley has some spooky secrets to reveal!” She stretched out on her stomach with the open diary in front of her and bent her knees, her rhinestone-studded flats dangling from her toes. Clio smiled and went back to her own book.

  A short time later, Maggie sat up. “You guys! Listen to this! May 22, 1951. Tonight I went out again with Butch. I told my mom I was meeting Sally at the library, and Butch picked me up on the corner on his motorcycle. Sally said Butch was dangerous, but I told her she just doesn’t understand him.”

  Clio’s voice was patient. “Maggie, what does this have to do—”

  “Just wait,” Maggie said. “Listen.” She held up the book and started reading again. “Butch took me to the Plunkett Mansion! It’s really creepy at night. Old Lady Plunkett was asleep, so we snuck down to her pond. There’s this cool old gazebo down there called a folly. We sat and talked in it for a while, and then Butch showed me the Plunkett family cemetery. It was so spooky! Can you imagine burying your family in your own backyard?”

  Clio’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute, the Plunkett Mansion has a cemetery?”

  “Yup. And listen to this: Butch told me the creepiest story while we were out there. He said that somebody drowned in the pond a long time ago, and it was so deep they never found the body. Butch swears that when he went swimming there once he felt something grab his leg and try to pull him under. I got so scared that I made him take me home after that.” She put down the book and looked around the room triumphantly. “But she thinks she’ll go out with him again if he asks her. At least he doesn’t have bad breath.”

  “Did you hear that, guys?” Clio asked. “They never found a body! Don’t ghosts sometimes haunt stuff because they want their body found?”