Five Days of the Ghost (14 page)

Tuesday Afternoon:
My Room

I was the last one into the room so I locked the door and leaned against it, panting. Chief Copegog looked around and walked over to my desk. He pushed the lamp aside and climbed up on top, sitting there cross-legged and rigid. John sat on the windowsill and Noah pulled up the desk chair. I lowered myself onto the waterbed. We formed a sort of circle.

No one said anything. The roaring out in the hall suddenly stopped dead.

I heaved a big sigh and looked around. I could see past John out the window. The late afternoon sun lit up Chiefs' Island and the far shore of Lake Couchiching. My eyes focused on John's face. It was pale and he was chewing on his lower lip. Noah didn't look too confident either. He kept fidgeting with his earring. I could hear the silver cross tap, tap, tap against his thumbnail. Chief Copegog stared straight ahead as if he was looking through the wall. I wondered what he was seeing.

It was warmer in the room than in the hall, but still chilly. I was hanging on hard to control myself. It felt as if the house was filled with some kind of
weight
—like when you're worried bad about something it weighs you down and when you move, your arms and legs feel heavy. And inside my mind, hopes and fears spun around each other so fast I was starting to lose control like I did after Kenny died.

Even though I was cold and confused and more scared than I had ever been in my life, a strange thought slipped into my head. In the hall the ghost of a murdered man was making doors slam and bleeding on the floor and roaring, and there inside my room another ghost was perched on my desk—but outside it was a warm sunny day. It was all wrong. There should have been thunder and lightning and wind that tossed the wet branches, making them scrape against the windows, like in books. I almost laughed. I almost cried.

My eye was caught by the hook on my closet door. It hung down uselessly.

“Chief Copegog,” I said, but my voice cracked and I had to start again. “Chief Copegog, is Kenny in there?” I pointed to the closet.

“Nope. Can't feel him anywhere this house.”

I felt disappointed and relieved at the same time. The thing in the house wouldn't hurt him. But where
was
he?

Just then the house breathed again—different this time but just as terrifying. Instead of a sigh it was like a long, tired groan. It went on and on. John's eyes bugged out and his knuckles went white as he squeezed the edge of the windowsill. Noah stopped tapping the cross with his thumbnail and linked his fingers together in his lap to make one tight fist.

We waited for Chief Copegog to do something, but he kept staring at the wall. His face was even more mask-like and wooden than usual. He seemed off in his own world. If he was, I didn't blame him.

The groaning got louder, sort of seeping from the walls and ceilings. The groans were separated now, long and painful and angry, like a man was lifting something heavy, so heavy it hurt him.

I stared at my door. There was something outside in the hall. I looked at the wind chimes. Nothing.

“What's that dragging noise?” John's voice trembled.

Noah moved his head back and forth, slowly. His lips were pressed together. I bet he wished he'd never read a ghost book in his life, I thought.

The dragging noise continued along with the painful groaning. And it was getting louder. Someone was dragging himself toward my room.

“It's him,” Noah said finally. “It has to be.”

He didn't have to say who he meant.

All three of us stared at Chief Copegog as if we had realized at the same moment that it was his move next. His face was like a dark painting—no movement, not even a hint that anything was going on around him. Outside the room the groans got louder and louder and seemed to pound inside my skull. The dragging was a man pulling himself in agony along the floor—drag, pause, drag—a man drowning in pain.

I knew I was going to go crazy if somebody didn't do something. I opened my mouth but didn't get the chance to say anything.

Chief Copegog blinked. And with the blink his face came alive, as if he had been asleep all this time. His features seemed to sag. His wrinkles were like lines of pain across his face.

He nodded to himself and, a moment later, unfolded his legs and slid from the desk. He took a deep breath and began to walk toward the door.

“Chief Copegog, what are you going to—”

“Don't open the door!” I cut John's question off.

But it was too late. The door slowly opened.

Chief Copegog stood between me and the horrible thing in the hallway, but it was as if I could see
through
him. My arm raised itself, pointing into the hall.

“Look,” my voice said.

John stood and crept slowly toward me and gripped my hand so tight it hurt. He craned his neck to see out the bedroom door. Noah stood up slowly from his chair and moved toward me too, until his shoulder touched mine. The three of us stared at the thing we had feared would be there.

The man in the hallway lay on the floor, one arm stretched toward us, the hand on the end like a claw scratching at the wood. He raised himself a little, groaning, then dragged himself along the floor with his outstretched arm, then dropped to the floor with a painful grunt. He struggled toward us, little by little. But Chief Copegog blocked the way.

Bond's face was terrifying—as white as flour, twisted with pain and anger and hate. He stared ahead of him out of bright colourless eyes that cut into you like razors. His black hair was long and stringy.

We could see now that his other hand was clutching a long-handled knife that stuck out of his chest. Around his hand his shirt was soaked with blood that left a long ugly smear down the hallway. Bond was dressed in a long black coat and dark grey pants with pinstripes. His shirt was white at the neck with a high collar and a black tie. The big diamond pin in the tie sparkled in a grisly background of gore.

He hauled himself forward again, coughing from deep down, and bright red blood ran out of his mouth. It dripped off the end of his chin onto the floor.

He raised his head higher and those razor-eyes caught sight of Chief Copegog.

Oh, oh, I thought. I gulped, and realized I had been holding my breath. John's grip on my right hand tightened. I heard Noah catch his breath. We waited.

The feelings that twisted the man's face into a knot of hate and pain must have changed, because his face went blank. Instantly. Then his eyebrows raised, like he was asking a question.

After a moment Chief Copegog nodded.

“What's going on?” John asked. “What's happening?”

Noah's face was strangely calm. “I think we're going to see an old, old crime being rubbed out. I
think
. We
could
be watching—”

“Shhhhhh!” I hissed. “Look!”

Chief Copegog leaned over. He gripped the knife—his knife—by the handle. He drew the knife slowly out of Bond's chest.

“Oh, God!” John moaned as a gush of bright blood rushed out of the wound as the long blade came away.

Chief Copegog stood up straight, gore dripping from the blade of his knife. He stared at the knife for a moment.

Then he dropped it.

Bond's wide eyes followed the knife as it fell in slow motion to the floor and hit the wood soundlessly. It bounced, flicking crimson droplets into the air, then lay still. Bond looked up at Chief Copegog again. Chief Copegog's eyes moved from the knife to Bond and the eyes of the two men locked, like lasers coming at one another, locked on the same path. Both men were still, as if they were talking to each other along those laser beams, as if they didn't need to use voices anymore, not after all these years.

All my fear disappeared in a flash and I felt suddenly very sad as I watched those two men staring at each other after a hundred and fifty years of wandering alone between two worlds. Bond must have been caught between two worlds just like Chief Copegog.

Noah must have been thinking what I was thinking. “This is it,” was all he said.

“What is what?” John asked, irritated.

“Chief Copegog has to forgive him,” Noah added. “Bond has to be forgiven by the guy he harmed, see? Because he used Chief Copegog to cheat the Chippewas out of their land. Yeah,” Noah was getting excited, the way you do when you solve some kind of problem, when everything suddenly gets clear, “and Chief Copegog has to be forgiven by Bond for killing him.”

“Why should anyone forgive
Bond
?” John said.

“Come on, John,” Noah said. “Bond paid. Take a look at him.”

John said, “Yeah, I guess you're right. Look at that blood.”

Bond and Chief Copegog were still locked in on each other—a man in an old-fashioned formal suit with leather shoes and a diamond stick-pin in his tie and a guy with long hair, dressed in skins.

Then, slowly, each one of them nodded.

Bond slowly raised himself to his knees, then to his feet. As he stood, the blood that stained his shirt and coat gradually disappeared as if it was seeping back into his body.

Then Bond did a strange thing. He straightened his tie and buttoned his jacket as if he was expecting company and had just heard the doorbell ring. He turned without a sound and walked silently, floated, almost, down the hall. When he got to the top of the stairs he disappeared. He was there, then he wasn't.

Chief Copegog turned and walked into my room. It might have been my imagination but I thought his shoulders didn't look so slumped and the lines in his face didn't seem so rigid.

Noah was staring down at the floor. He raised his arm and pointed.

“Look,” he said quietly.

The blood was gone.

Tuesday Afternoon:
Chief Copegog

The four of us stood in the doorway of my room, staring at the spot where Bond had disappeared a moment before.

I said to Chief Copegog, “Where did he go?”

“He's goin' to Other Side now.”

“I gotta sit down,” John moaned. “I think I'm gonna faint.”

Noah sat down on the desk chair again. John flopped full length onto my waterbed and rocked up and down for a second. I was about to ask Chief Copegog about Kenny when Noah began to talk.

“Chief Copegog, how come Bond can go to the Other Side and you're still here? I don't think that's fair. We know what a bad man he was. You weren't—I mean, aren't. I don't get it.”

I felt suddenly ashamed when he said that. I had been thinking about me and my twin brother. I had forgotten all about Chief Copegog. Here he was helping me and I was ignoring him.

“Not worry, little girl,” he said. He had read my mind again.

He turned to me and smiled. “Now I got somethin' to say to all you kids, ‘specially Karen.”

Behind me I could hear John sloshing the waterbed, so he must have sat up.

Chief Copegog walked to the window. He turned slowly and stood there, his thick arms folded across his broad chest. It was strange, but he looked taller. He stood straight, with his shoulders back. He looked strong—not like an old man at all. I thought this must have been how he looked before he died—old, but powerful and straight.

“Hear my words, what I'm sayin',” he began. His voice sounded firm and very formal, and there was rhythm in his talk, like when he told us about his family. The S's in his words whispered and whistled.

“Your peoples, the Whites, they think, somethin's real, they got to be able to touch it, hold it in their hands. But lotta things—love, joy, hope—you can't hold them things in your hand. But them things, they're alive, they're real, like the red and gold on the hills in the autumn and the sound of the breeze when it sings in the marsh grasses.

“You kids, you thought Kenny was gone ‘cause he got kilt out there on the road. You figured, couldn't see him no more, couldn't touch him, couldn't hear him laugh, he was gone forever. Now you know, that's the wrong thinkin'. Spirit world is all around us, like the air. I tol' you that. I tell you again, now. Hear my words, what I'm sayin'. Spirit world is
alive
.”

Chief Copegog looked directly at me. His eyes weren't fierce now, but they sure were serious.

“Karen, you let that wrong thinkin' hurt you bad. You thought Kenny, he was gone forever. That's why your mind ran away from his dyin'. You hid your face from his dyin', tried to pretend it never happened. That wrong thinkin', it tore you down, made you small inside. Now you got to believe in Kenny. You got to let your dead brother help you, make you strong. Because he's real. He's still livin' in your memory”—he touched his forehead, then his chest with the flat of his hand—”in your heart. He ain't never goin' to leave them places. Let him make you
strong
.”

Chief Copegog crossed his arms again.

“That's what I wanted to say.”

Chief Copegog stopped talking. I could hear John behind me. He was making that sniffling noise he made when he cried but tried to hide it. I looked at Noah. He swallowed hard. Me, I was crying too, quietly. I didn't think I'd have any tears left after what had happened in the last few days, but I could feel them hot on my cheeks. They itched a little.

I knew, I knew what Chief Copegog was saying was true. I had been selfish. But …

“It's just that … that there's a big empty hole inside me since Kenny … went away.”

I felt an arm around my shoulder. It was John.” Didn't you listen to what he said, Karen? Kenny
didn't
go away. Not
really
.”

I turned to my brother and pressed my face to his bony chest. “But it hurts!” I cried. “I miss him!”

I heard Chief Copegog's voice behind me. “You got to let Kenny help you,” he said again. “You got to let him make you strong.”

I lifted my head up. John's arms were still around me. I nodded, and tried to wipe the tears away from my face.

“I wish I could talk to him, or at least see him,” I whispered.

“You can,” said Chief Copegog. “He's down there.”

He turned and pointed out the window, down into the yard. I burst from John's arms and ran to look through the glass, knowing all of a sudden where he would be.

I was right. Although it was sunny the yard, the willow tree glowed as if it was a lampshade and inside it was a million-watt bulb.