Five Days of the Ghost (11 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAY
FIVE

Early Tuesday Morning

I was deep inside a real bad dream when the noises started. In the dream I was dressed in an old-fashioned Dracula-movie nightgown again and I was sort of floating through a graveyard, out of control, as if I was hypnotized. The graveyard was misty and silvery with moonlight and the gravestones glowed as if they were alive. There was a low dark shape slinking along beside me and I knew it was a werewolf. The moonlight glistened on its long teeth.

Ahead I could see an old Chippewa man with piercing red eyes and a necklace made of animal teeth and a long, wicked-looking knife in his hand.

The werewolf raised its head and there was terror in its green eyes. It turned around slowly and melted away between the graves. Then I heard what scared it. A tinkling sound, like bits of glass clinking together.

When I woke up I knew I had awakened into another nightmare. I could still hear the tinkling sound. It was the wind chimes. My bedroom was freezing and my breath made frost clouds that puffed into the pool of yellow light my bed lamp threw onto the waterbed.

I sat up, leaning back against the wall, and gathered the blanket around me, staring at the door. Waiting. The tinkling of the wind chimes faded to silence.

Then it came–the pounding, the noise that had awakened me. It started as a strong knock, like someone with big hands wanted to get in. But the pounding got louder and harder, almost desperate. The door shook and rumbled so hard I thought it would fly out of the frame.

Then dead silence. No jangle from the wind chimes. No banging. Only the harsh rasp of my breathing.

The door handle turned slowly, first one way, then another. I shivered, not just from the cold.

Whoever was on the other side of my door trying to get in seemed angry that the handle wouldn't work, because the knob started to rattle like crazy and the pounding shook the door again.

It stopped.

I took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. Maybe that was the end—

Something scratched around the bottom of the door!

I heard myself gulp down a cry. Maybe this time the ghost
would
come in. I had a crazy thought. I wondered if ghosts could bleed. Would Bond's blood drip and splash onto my rug?

But I heard a laugh and footsteps ran away down the hall. They stopped dead. Silence. Laughter again. The footsteps ran back toward my room but turned into the bathroom.

I heard someone rummaging around in there, opening the medicine chest, moving bottles around. Something fell and smashed on the floor. The medicine chest door banged shut and the footsteps ran back into the hall. The laugh came again.

And that's when I realized something was very wrong.

I had been too scared and shocked to notice it before. That wasn't a grown-up's laugh! And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that the running and the footsteps weren't like a man's either.

The sounds of walking around in the hall kept going for a few more minutes. Then,
click, click, click
. Back and forth. Something being dragged on the wooden floor,
click, click, click
, up the hall to the stairs, back toward my door. A while later,
Thump! Thump! Thump!

Last, the skittering laugh as the footsteps ran down the hall toward the stairs.

Soon after that the wind chimes gave one last jangle and the room began to warm up. The poltergeist had gone.

I fell sideways on my bed, exhausted. Every muscle I owned had been held stiff and tight—from the cold and from fear. I slid down under the blanket and tried to drift off into sleep.

No luck, though. A few minutes later, the banging on my door came back. But this time it sounded
normal
. I knew it was the boys. I got up, put on my housecoat and went to the door.

John had on those goofy yellow polo pajamas—the ones with tight cuffs and ankles—and his slippers. Noah was wearing jeans and no shirt.

They looked excited and a little spooked.

“Did you hear him?” John blurted out. He looked at my face and added, “Dumb question.”

Noah was all business. “Karen, did anything out of the ordinary happen?”

I shot him a sarcastic look and he added, “Anything different, I mean?”

“Yeah, it went into the bathroom this time.”

“The
bathroom
?”

“Who ever heard of a ghost taking a pee?” John said, and laughed at his own joke. I was so keyed up I laughed too.

“Okay, let's check the equipment,” said Noah, ignoring him.

John led us out into the hall. We moved quietly and whispered so we wouldn't wake Skinny Minnie up. All three of us noticed what was wrong right away.

The batteries had been taken out of the voice recorder. They were sitting on the hardwood, four of them, lined up in a neat row, the labels facing in the same direction.

“It's mocking us,” Noah said. “Well, that makes sense. A poltergeist
is
playful.”

The red light still glowed on the video camera. Noah was checking it out when we heard him cry, “Hey! What's this?”

“Shhhhhhhhh!” John hissed. “Skinny Minnie might hear you!”

All three of us held still, listening, staring at the door that led to Minnie's room above the garage. It never occurred to us that the ghost's racket would have wakened her. Anyway, her door was closed.

John and I stepped up to Noah, who pointed to the lens of the camera. Some tan-coloured goo was smeared all over the glass. No way was that thing taking any pictures now.

“Looks like your pimple cream,” I said to John.

“Very funny.”

I noticed a squashed-up tube on the floor beside one of the tripod legs and picked it up. Sure enough, it
was
John's pimple cream. I handed it to him, smiling.

“Must have got it from the bathroom,” he murmured.

“This sure is weird.”

The voice recorder at the top of the stairs was messed up just like the one outside my room.

“I guess all we can do is see if the camera picked up anything before it was tampered with,” Noah said, removing the camera from the tripod. “I'll hook it up to the TV.”

A few minutes later we were in the dark living room huddled in front of the TV, watching a still picture of the upstairs hall.

“Hey, I just thought of something,” Noah whispered, not moving his eyes from the screen.

“Mmmm?” I said.

“Well, listen. Bond the Creep died way over a hundred years ago, right?”

“Right,” John answered.

“So, don't you get it?” Noah still had his eyes glued to the TV. He didn't intend to miss anything. “His ghost wouldn't know what a voice recorder is! Or a video camera!”

“Yeah, so?” John tore his gaze from the screen and looked at Noah.

“So how would he know how to screw them up? I mean, he wouldn't even know what they
are
.”

Something clicked in my brain, but I didn't say anything.

“Oh. Yeah. Well, I guess he … learned about them.” John laughed. “He hasn't had much to do for all these years.”

“No way, man. Ghosts are frozen in the time frame they died in. They can't go back to school.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean. But—”

“Look!” I cut in. “Something moved!”

“Yeah, I saw it too!” Noah said.

On the TV screen a sort of grey shape came into view, then disappeared.

“Go back,” said John. “Let's see it again.”

“No, wait, let's let it run,” Noah answered.

The shape came back. It wasn't the shape of anything. It certainly wasn't what you'd call a human shape.

But the hand was.

It was grey, too, mist-coloured, and small. It sort of
appeared
in front of the camera, palm facing us. A little hand, not a grown-up's. It came closer and closer to the camera, then it disappeared and the lights almost went out.

“That's the goo he put on the lens we're seeing,” said Noah. “We won't see any more.”

He reached over and pressed a couple of buttons.

He and John watched the grey shape and the hand over and over.

I didn't.

Because I was filled with a feeling I couldn't describe. A mixture of terror and … and hope.

Everything started to make sense now. The sounds outside my bedroom door, the shape, the hand. Everything.

Before I knew what I was doing I jumped to my feet and started running.

“Karen, where —”

“The study!” I shouted. I didn't care who heard me now. “The sounds in the hall! He was running for the study!”

The two guys were right on my heels when I got to my dad's drafting table and clicked on the lamp.

There on the table the charcoal sticks were broken and scattered. And there was a single piece of paper, with the marks drawn in charcoal.

The fear-hope feeling was like a burning inside me, filling me up. Snatching the paper from the table I ran for the stairs and flew up them two at a time.

“Karen! What's the matter?” John shouted from behind me. He sounded terrified.

I ignored him and tore down the hall and burst into my room, slamming the door back against the wall. I flipped on the light, grabbed my chair, and dragged it to the closet. The little hook hung uselessly. The closet was unlocked.

Throwing open the door, I shoved the chair inside and climbed up onto it. I grabbed the brass box, jumped off the chair and carried it to the desk.

“Karen, what's going on?” Noah asked, his voice tense. “Tell us.”

I got down on my hands and knees and snatched the key from its hiding place, not caring now if the guys knew about it. I unlocked the big heavy padlock and dropped it onto the desk. My fingers trembled as I grabbed the lid.

I raised the lid of the box and carefully lifted out Kenny's stuff—the slingshot, the pocket watch on the long thick chain, the pink skateboard wheels and chunk of painted wood, the photo.

There was nothing left inside.

The red, white and blue striped ball was missing. I remembered one of the sounds I had heard in the hall—
thump, thump, thump
—a ball bouncing! And the plastic toy airplane with the little pilot inside was missing too. When you dragged the toy along, the pilot's head snapped from side to side. And the wheels went
click, click, click
. I began to laugh and cry at the same time, going crazy. My voice rose higher and higher like a siren.

“I know who it is! I know who the ghost is!”

“Karen, stop it!”

I snatched up the paper from the study and practically threw it at John.

“Look! Hold it up in front of the mirror.” I could feel myself getting hysterical. I was getting out of control. But I didn't care. It was all clear now.

“It's Kenny!” I screamed. “It's Kenny! It's Kenny! The ghost is Kenny!”

Tuesday Morning

The three of us spent the rest of the night talking. I sat on my bed with my legs tucked under me and the blanket gathered around me. A box of Kleenex sat on the pillow and used tissues lay scattered around me like lumps of snow. John had pulled my desk chair over to the foot of the bed. Noah sat cross-legged on the rug. He had put his T-shirt on inside out and hadn't noticed yet. Neither had John.

It took John and Noah a while to get me calmed down, and when they did I broke down and cried for a long time. It was like something I had been keeping inside, fighting to keep deep in the darkness, had burst out into the light. I couldn't stop the tears. I didn't
want
to.

I had to argue pretty hard, too, sniffing and blowing my nose the whole time, because at first they wouldn't buy the idea that the poltergeist or “preternatural event” or whatever they wanted to call it was Kenny's ghost—not even after I held the sheet of paper up to the mirror. John held out as long as he could. He didn't want it to be Kenny. When he realized he couldn't pretend anymore his face sort of crumpled and got red and he started to cry too.

When that happened I got off the bed and hugged him and I could feel the big sobs tossing around inside his skinny body like waves. I knew how he felt. All the pain from losing his little brother had come back. Finally, when John had settled down a bit, he looked up at me. His face was streaked with tears and his nose was running. His hair stuck out in all directions. He didn't look like John.

“I miss him,” he said.

I bent down and hugged him again. “You don't need to miss him any more,” I said. “He's back!”

“He can't be back! He can't be!” John burst out as he pushed me away. “He's … he's
dead
, Karen!”

I sat back down on the waterbed and turned to Noah. “You believe he's back, don't you?”

Noah leaned over, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked at the floor. His long black hair covered his face.

“Um, I don't know, Karen. I mean, what you're saying sounds pretty weird, even to me.”

He looked up at me and the hair fell away to show half his face. Water stood out in his eyes.

“I don't want to hurt you any more than you are already,” he said softly, “but Kenny
died
, Karen. Maybe you never really accepted that—you know, dealt with it. Even if the poltergeist is him, it's an apparition, not a real person. You gotta face that.”

“What do you know about it?” I snapped. “You've never lost anybody!”

Noah looked straight into my eyes. “Yes, I have,” he said quietly.

I thought of the picture in his room, hanging over his bed, and I felt bad for what I had said.

“Haven't you seen her since she left?”

Noah looked at the floor again and sniffed.

“Nope. She calls every Sunday, though, when she knows
he
is in church, giving one of his stupid sermons. She's in Edmonton. Someday,” he said in a hard, determined voice, “I'm going out there and not coming back.”

“I'm sorry, Noah, for what I said.”

He looked up and gave me a weak smile. “That's okay. You're right in a way. I guess I haven't really
lost
her, but it feels like it at times—most of the time, actually. I don't know what I'd do if she
died
, like Kenny.”

“You
know
it's him, don't you, Noah?”

Noah heaved a big sigh and nodded. “Yeah, Kenny's here all right. At first I figured the Chief's medicine bag released the power stored up inside the house by Bond. He was a really tough personality with a strong life force. When we found out about the murder, it all fit—or seemed to. The medicine bag belonged to the guy who killed Bond. I don't think there's any doubt about that. But, yeah—some of the noises you described, and the running and laughing, and the marks made with the charcoal—they don't fit with Bond. They're too
playful
.”

“Right. They're all kid stuff.”

Noah ran his fingers through his hair and fiddled with the cross hanging from his ear for a moment. He turned and looked at the door.

“On the other hand, that pounding and banging on the door seems too angry, too violent. I don't know, Karen, maybe—”

“Maybe what?”

Noah turned back and gave me a long look, then said, “Nothing. Nothing. We know Kenny's here. That's the main thing. Right?”

I sniffed and wiped the tears away for the millionth time.

“Do you think Kenny wants to get a message to us?”

“Yeah, I guess that's a possibility. He could be just playing, you know. Remember, that's what poltergeist means. And another thing, Karen. You better realize that he could stop any time.”

“You mean he won't stay?” John cut in.

“I don't know. But ghosts are funny. Sometimes they turn up for a while and then all of a sudden they just stop appearing. Sometimes they hang around forever almost. We just don't know.”

“I wonder why he didn't appear to Mom and Dad,” John said, almost to himself. “They miss him too. I know they do.”

“That's easy. Adults are too realistic—most of them, anyway. And besides, Karen is his twin. From what you told me, they were especially close.”

I shot a look at John. I was surprised he had talked to Noah about me.

“So what should we do?” asked John.

Noah let out a big yawn and pushed his hair back from his face. “I don't know, John. To tell you the truth, I'm too tired to think. This has been some night.”

“I know what we should do. I know who we should talk to about this.”

John looked at me. “I don't know about that, Karen. I think we should stay away from there.”

“No way. I'll ask him to help us. John, I
know
he's not a bad guy. I know it. I don't care what you and Noah found out or didn't find out in the library, I don't think he'd hurt us.”

Noah said, “You remember the first time I went with you guys to see him? He said something to you, Karen. Do you remember?”

John and I nodded at the same time.

“Well, I think he's got a special interest in you. And I agree—he wouldn't hurt us.”

John shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it's worth a try, I guess.”

John got up and went to the desk. His yellow polo pajamas were all wrinkled. He picked up Kenny's watch and looked at it. Then he turned to me. The look on his face broke my heart.

“I wish he hadn't come back,” he said in a shaky voice. Tears ran down his face.

“Why?” I shot back. “Why not?”

“Because when … if he goes, it'll be like we lost him
twice
! I don't think I could stand that.”

“He isn't going to go away again,” I said softly. “I won't let him.”

Before he left my bedroom Noah gave me a strange look.

After the boys left I lay back and covered my eyes with my arm. My mind started to replay pictures of my twin brother Kenny. The pictures were like short scenes cut from a movie.

I saw him on a hot summer day playing in the dark cool boathouse. He was five. He was wearing white shorts with blue stripes down the sides. He was barefoot and had tossed his T-shirt carelessly onto the dock. His short chubby body was a rash of freckles. He had caught a few spotted leopard frogs along the lakeshore where the reeds and lily pads were and put them in a bait bucket. The silver-coloured bucket hung below the water, tied to a ring bolt on the dock with a piece of the twine Mom used to tie her tomato plants.

Then I saw him playing pirates in there when he was seven, all by himself, jumping in and out of the rowboat with a wooden sword in his hand and a white hankie folded to make a headband to hold down his blazing red hair, shrieking orders to his imaginary crew and threats to the imaginary enemy. The boathouse was where he and I first tried smoking. We coughed a lot and then threw the cigarette into the water and forgot all about it.

In another picture, Kenny stood on the dock, holding a string with both hands. He was ten. He was wearing jeans and a Hillcrest T-shirt. His body was bent to the side from the weight of the big pike on the end of the string. The proud grin on his face was huge. Dad knelt on the dock, a camera held up to his eye.

All summer when we were little kids we used to play in the tree house in the weeping willow by the lake. The long hanging branches made a cave that shut out the rest of the world. We played school and we played house. Kenny played with my dolls without complaining. When we got older we'd act out scenes from
Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang
or
Anne of Green Gables
. The willow tree was where we always went if something was wrong or if we wanted to be alone together.

These mental pictures of the willow tree reminded me of the time Kenny and I and some kids from the neighbourhood were playing hide-and-go-seek and I was “It.” I guess we were about six. It was autumn, I remembered— the trees had turned. There were a few kids from the neighbourhood playing with us and I was counting, my forehead pressed against the rough bark of one of the maples on our front lawn, my eyes squeezed shut. “Eighty, ninety, a HUNDRED!” I counted and opened my eyes. I walked carefully along the cedar hedge that separated our front yard from the street, looking in and under the hedge. I turned and walked across the lawn, peered around the corner of the house, and headed for the back yard. Behind me I heard Jannie Baker shout, “Home Freeeeeee!” Suddenly I got an image in my mind of Kenny sitting on the big branch that jutted out of the willow tree a few feet from the ground. Even though the branch was low, the hanging branches and leaves hid it from view. But in my mind I could “see” Kenny sitting on it in the gloom, trying to peer through the yellowed leaves to see if I was coming. I ran back to the front of the house and slapped the maple “home” tree shouting, “One, two, three on Kenneeeee!”

After that day we found out that Kenny could see pictures in his head of me sometimes too. But we never told anyone, not even Mom or Dad.

A year or so later we discovered that, not only could we send each other messages when we weren't together (which wasn't very often), we could also sort of “talk” when we were in the same room without looking at each other and without saying anything. Like if I went into the kitchen to get a glass of milk I would know if Kenny wanted one too without asking him. One time in grade five we cheated on a test when I didn't know how to do an arithmetic question and Kenny did. He “sent” me the answer and I got perfect on the test. We didn't do that too much, though. Only when we had to.

Another picture began to form in my mind, slowly, like a backwards dissolve. I tried to fight it down. I opened my eyes and looked over to the brass-covered box on my desk. The astrology figures on the brass glowed softly in the light—the Bear, the Scorpion.

The Gemini.

My mind drifted as my heavy eyelids began to close against my will. The picture began to backwards dissolve again. I fought it, pushed it down, but I couldn't stop it.

Kenny stood in the pool of cool shade under the willow branches, holding his new street board by the front truck.

Karen! Karen! Lookit! I can do a Simon Sez
…