The Howling Ghost (4 page)

“This thing hasn't been turned on in years,” he said finally.

Cindy was disturbed. “It came on two days ago.”

“Are you sure the light came from here?” Adam asked.

“Positive,” Cindy said.

Watch was doubtful. “These wires are worn. I don't
think they're capable of carrying an electrical current.”

“I know what I saw,” Cindy insisted. She scanned the rest of the room. “He must be here somewhere,” she said softly, desperately.

Adam tried to make her feel better. “If a ghost did take your brother, it might have taken him somewhere else.”

Cindy sighed. “So, you're saying he could be anywhere, which is the same as saying we're never going to find him.”

“No,” Adam said quickly. “I meant we've only begun to search. Let's look around some more.”

There wasn't much to the room. Besides the searchlight, there was a plain wooden desk and chair, a simple cot, and a bathroom that looked as if it hadn't been used in years. The faucet in the sink didn't even work. When they tried it, a faint smell of gas came out instead of water.

But Sally did find something unusual on one side of the desk. Carved in the old wood, on opposite sides of a roughly shaped heart, were two words:
Mommy
and
Rick.
The words were probably carved by a child. Adam looked to Sally and Watch.

“Do you know who operated the lighthouse last?” Adam asked.

“I heard it was a bloodsucking sailor,” Sally said.

Watch shook his head. “No. The bloodsucker was the guy who used to run the bait shop on the pier. Bum said the lighthouse was last run by a woman—an old woman.”

“Is she dead now?” Cindy asked.

“Most old people in Spooksville are dead,” Sally said.

Watch nodded. “This was at least thirty years ago. I'm sure the woman is dead.”

“You have to be dead to be a ghost,” Sally said, trying to encourage Cindy.

“What about this Rick?” Adam asked.

Watch shook his head. “I don't know what happened to him. Bum might, if we can find him. There might also be records in the library that we could check.”

Sally made a face. “We have to go to the library? Yuck!”

“What's wrong with the library?” Adam asked reluctantly.

“The librarian's a little strange,” Watch said.

“A little?” Sally said. “His name's Mr. Spiney and when he takes your picture for your library card, he actually takes an X-ray. He likes to see your bones when you check out a book, to make sure they're
healthy. If you go in the reference room, he locks you inside. Just in case you're thinking of stealing one of his precious magazines or papers. The last time I went in there I was a prisoner for two nights before he let me out. I read the last ten years of
Time
magazine and
Fangoria.”

“I'm glad you put the time to good use,” Watch said.

“Mr. Spiney also forces you to drink milk when you're at the library,” Sally said. “ ‘Don't want to let those bones crumble before their time,' he always says. I swear I saw that guy at the cemetery once digging up skeletons. I hear he's got a whole closet full of bones at home.”

“Let's not worry about Mr. Spiney,” Adam said, not wanting to listen to another weird Sally-Watch conversation. “I want to go to the library.” He paused and turned to Cindy. “As long as that's all right with you?”

Cindy nodded sadly, still looking around. “I was hoping so hard I'd find Neil here, waiting for me.”

Adam patted her on the back. “We're making progress. That's what's important.”

They started to follow Watch down the stairs.

It was then that the searchlight came on.

By mysterious chance, the light was pointed not
out to sea but toward the stairway. Watch was already several steps down the stairs when the light blazed to life, but Cindy was just stepping down into it. Like the rest of them, the sudden light blinded Cindy. Rather than stepping onto the stairway, she stumbled and slid over the side. Adam saw a falling blur off to his left and heard her scream. Not sure what he was doing, he dove to catch her.

The searchlight went off.

Adam saw stars, not much else. But after a second or two he realized he was holding on to one of Cindy's hands, and that she was struggling desperately at the end of it. If she let go, or if he let go of her, she would plunge over a hundred feet to the floor of the lighthouse. Adam screamed for Watch to help.

“Pull her over toward you on the stairway!” Adam called.

“I can't reach her!” Watch shouted back, cleaning his glasses on his shirt. He did have the worst eyes of all of them.

“I'm right here!” Cindy cried. The trapdoor that led into the upper room was fairly wide. Cindy had stumbled off the side opposite the stairway. As Adam's vision cleared, he saw her feet kicking in midair. Sally kneeled by his side and tried to grab Cindy's other hand.

“We won't let you go!” Sally cried.

“You're knocking my hand loose!” Cindy screamed.

“Oh,” Sally said, and sat back on her knees. “Sorry.”

“Watch,” Adam said anxiously, losing his grip on Cindy, “put your glasses back on and reach out and grab her feet. I'm going to lose her.”

Watch rubbed his eyes. “I really can't see yet. Cindy, keep talking or screaming or something. I'll hone in on you.”

“OK, I can talk,” Cindy said breathlessly. “What should I talk about? I've always been afraid of heights. I don't like ghosts much either. But I like ice cream. I like school. I like singing. Some boys.”

“Which boys?” Sally asked, climbing back up on her knees.

“Gotcha,” Watch said, reaching out and grabbing Cindy's feet.

“Are you sure you've got her?” Adam asked.

“Don't let go of her yet if that's what you're asking,” Watch said, pulling Cindy closer.

“That's exactly what he's asking,” Cindy said frantically. But just then her feet touched something solid. “Oh. Thank goodness. Is that the stairs below my feet?”

“It better be,” Watch said, pulling Cindy farther
over. “It's what I'm standing on. But I still can't see.” Watch pulled her all the way on the stairs. “You're safe.”

Adam let go of Cindy's hand. “Whew,” he said. “That was close.” He turned back toward the searchlight and complained to Watch. “I thought you said the light couldn't come on?”

Watch came back up the steps, Cindy by his side. Watch studied the wires that led to the searchlight, but once more shook his head.

“Did you guys touch anything?” Watch asked.

“No,” Adam and Sally said.

“I don't see how it turned on,” Watch said. “These wires are shot.”

“Could it have another source of power?” Cindy wondered aloud.

They all looked at one another.

Then they heard a sound.

A faint howling sound.

It seemed to come from far off. From somewhere out over the ocean. But it wasn't so far away that it didn't scare them. They hurried down the stairs and out of the lighthouse. Actually, they ran out of the place and worked their way back to the jetty on the rope. They could check it out later, they decided.

W
atch couldn't find Bum, so they ended up at the library. To Adam, the place looked more like a ghost house than a place for books. But he was getting used to such things since moving to Spooksville.

Mr. Spiney met them at the door. He had to be the thinnest man Adam had ever seen. Tall and bent, he looked as if his skinny bones were about to burst through his wrinkled skin. He had large hands that looked like claws. He wore an outdated black suit, with vest, and he bowed slightly as he let them inside
his library. His voice, when he spoke, made him sound like an old fish.

“Hello children, and welcome,” he said. “I do hope your hands are clean and your minds are not dirty. Would you like a glass of milk?”

“No thank you,” Sally said quickly. “We're just here to check a few reference materials.”

“Sally Wilcox,” Mr. Spiney said, peering a little closer. “How nice of you to visit me again.” He reached out with one of his clawlike hands. “How are your bones feeling these days?”

Sally took a step back. “Fine, thank you. We don't want any milk and our bones are all perfectly hard and strong. Can we please look at your old newspapers? And can you promise not to lock us inside the reference room?”

Mr. Spiney took a step back and eyed them with a trace of suspicion. “What are you going to do with my newspapers?”

“Just read them,” Watch said. “But I wouldn't mind a glass of milk.”

Mr. Spiney smiled and nodded. “If you don't drink your milk, you're bound to get osteoporosis.” He looked at Cindy and Adam. “Do you know what that is?”

“No,” Cindy said.

“And we don't want to know,” Adam said.

Mr. Spiney huffed. “Very well. But don't come running to me when your bones begin to crumble. It will be much too late then.”

Mr. Spiney led them to a dark room located on the second floor of the library, and then he went to fetch Watch's milk. Sally, of course, believed the milk would be poisonous, but Watch said he was thirsty and didn't care.

Spooksville's official paper was called
The Daily Disaster.
Adam was amazed by how large the obituary section was for such a small town. In each issue, it took up half the paper. Sally was right about one thing: not everyone stayed for long in Spooksville. The cause of death was often listed as simply
disappeared.

Watch believed they should start searching for information about the lighthouse from thirty years ago.

“Do you know for sure that it closed then?” Cindy asked, helping him get the papers down from the shelves.

“According to Bum it was about then,” Watch said.

“What are we looking for anyway?” Sally grumbled.
“They don't write about ghosts in the paper. Not even in
The Daily Disaster.”

“I assume we're looking for the person who turned into the ghost that stole Cindy's brother,” Adam said. He glanced at Watch. “Is that right?”

Watch nodded. “I'd be happy to find out who Mommy and Rick were,” Watch replied, spreading the papers out on a table in the center of the small dark room.

They searched the papers for more than an hour. During that time Mr. Spiney appeared three times with glasses of milk for everyone. Sally refused to drink any, but Adam and Cindy finally decided to have a little so they wouldn't be rude. Mr. Spiney stood nearby while they sipped. Adam made a face and almost spit out his milk.

“This tastes like it's got sand in it,” he complained.

“It's not sand,” Mr. Spiney explained. “It's calcium powder. It will make your bones so hard that even when you've been dead and buried twenty years, they'll still be nice and white.” He grinned at Cindy and Adam, and for the first time they both noticed what big teeth Mr. Spiney had. “You'll both make beautiful corpses,” he said with feeling.

Cindy set her glass down and coughed. “I think I'm getting a milk allergy.”

Mr. Spiney finally left them alone, and not long after that Watch uncovered a paper that had an article about the lighthouse.

Last Saturday there was a power failure at the lighthouse. Not long afterward a ship, the
Halifax,
smashed into the reef off Springville and sank. Its captain was listed as Dwayne Pillar. Captain Pillar went down with his ship; his body has yet to be found. What caused the power failure at the lighthouse has not been determined. But the absence of a light was clearly responsible for the wreck of the ship.

By unfortunate chance, the following evening the son of Mrs. Evelyn Maey, the lighthouse keeper, was playing on the jetty beside the lighthouse when a wave washed him out to sea. Five-year-old Rick has yet to be found, and the authorities fear he has drowned. Evelyn Maey was unavailable for comment.

“That's it!” Sally exclaimed.

Everyone looked at her. “What's it?” Watch finally asked.

Sally was excited. “Don't you see? The ghost of Captain Pillar stole Rick because his mother messed up the searchlight and caused the captain's ship to crash. It was his way of getting back at her.”

Watch nodded. “That's logical. But what does this ghost have to do with Neil?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “He didn't do anything to the sailor.”

Sally spoke with strained patience. “That doesn't matter. Rick was five years old. Neil was five years old. The sailor ghost just likes five-year-old boys. Also, note the time of day Rick was swiped. Near sunset. It was the same time of day Neil disappeared.”

“Those are a lot of coincidences,” Adam admitted.

“But I thought the old woman's ghost stole Neil,” Cindy said.

“What made you think that?” Sally asked.

“Because the ghost that grabbed Neil had hands like an old woman,” Cindy said. “She howled like one, too.”

“Since when do old women howl?” Sally asked. “Look, we have a clear case of a ghost snatching a boy
just like your brother. It's got to be the same ghost. I'd bet my reputation on it.”

“That doesn't exactly make you a heavy bettor,” Adam muttered.

“Where do you think this sailor ghost is?” Cindy asked, ignoring him.

“He probably lives out on his ship,” Sally said.

“Which just happens to be sunk underwater,” Adam remarked.

Watch was thoughtful. “But that doesn't mean we can't get to the ship, and that it wouldn't have an air space in it that a person could survive in for a few days. Neil could be there, and alive. They say the
Titanic
had whole rooms that the water didn't get into. And that was underwater a whole lot longer than this ship.”