“Unfortunately, Mom accepts everything she hears without questioning it,” Cassandra said. “She wants ghosts to be real so bad it doesn’t matter if what we find is bogus or not.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because if ghosts exist, then Dad still exists—somewhere—anywhere—waiting for her.”
“Your dad, he’s…” My words trailed off as I suddenly had no desire to finish my own question.
“He had a heart attack when I was nine.” There was no grief or sadness in Cassandra’s voice as she said it—just the acceptance of unchangeable fact. I couldn’t imagine ever healing enough to be able to talk about the death of my family that way. Even thinking about it made me feel like some ravenous creature was shredding my insides with its hundreds of large knife-like teeth.
“Mom thinks she’s going to find Dad someday,” Cassandra said peering into the display case in front of her. Behind the glass, a couple porcelain dolls were trying on ball dresses from a miniature wardrobe.
“You think she won’t?”
“I’m pretty sure Dad’s soul has better things to do than hang around strange, abandoned houses,” Cassandra said. “But I’m not about to tell Mom that. She may go a little nutty over this ghost-hunting stuff, but it brings her comfort. I’m not about to, you know, disrespect that power.”
I realized she was right. We all got our comfort wherever we could. I wouldn’t want to disrespect that either.
Cassandra looked at me. “I think, there are rare cases where people’s souls do get trapped between worlds. They can’t move on for some reason. I know people like that who aren’t dead—my mom for one. She can’t move on from Dad’s death. She’ll never get remarried and she’ll never stop hunting for some sign that he still exists—” Cassandra broke off as she saw my startled expression. “What’s the matter?”
“The storage closet!” I said in a rush. “I forgot to close the shelves after I got Davey out.” All I needed was for someone else to get stuck in there.
Without a word, I turned and started back up all those steps once again, giving Fiona a salute. I was either going to pass out cold by noon today, or sleep like the dead tonight. Not that the dead were much of an example of resting in peace around here.
In the study, I took the emergency flashlight from its charger on the wall before entering the closet. I gave the small space a quick once over to make certain it really was empty this time. Cassandra popped her head inside, looking around with interest. Taking a step, she caught her foot on one of the now empty boxes lurking in the shadows at our feet. Staggering, Cassandra grabbed hold of the wooden framing on the backside of the bookshelves and jerked it closer to steady herself.
Groaning on its rusty hinges, the secret door crashed shut. There was an ominous click on the other side of the shelves as the door locked itself behind us.
Chapter Eighteen
I heard Cassandra rattle the door trying to open it. It didn’t budge.
I stared at the darkness, just beyond the edge of the dim flashlight beam. A pair of glowing green lips hovering in the air.
“Oh crap,” the lips muttered in Cassandra’s voice. “I think we may be in trouble.”
I giggled.
“What?” demanded the lips.
“Your lipstick is glowing,” I said, trying to rein in the rising desire to laugh myself into a hysterical state. Exhaustion and stress—not a good combo for me.
“Glow-in-the-dark lipstick is a tradition for Mom and me on these ghost hunts. It helps us keep track of each other in the dark. Haunted houses are notoriously badly lit places,” the disembodied lips said. “My nail polish glows too.” In an instant, ten little moons of glowing light joined the lips hovering across from me. They danced merrily in the air like a ghostly chorus line as Cassandra wiggled her fingers for emphasis.
It was too much for me. I snorted, then burst out into a nervous round of laughter. The circular beam of the flashlight bobbled over the dusty shelves as my body shook. Cassandra and I both lost it then, like a couple of naughty preschoolers with no self-control whatsoever. Here we were, locked in, possibly for hours, and I was laughing like I hadn’t in years. It felt good, too. Like the spasms of laughter shook all the built-up tension from my body. I couldn’t even remember the last time I laughed that hard. Cassandra’s glowing smile slid down toward the floor. I flashed the light’s beam in her direction and found Cassandra now sitting on the ground with her back to the secret door.
“You don’t happen to have a cell phone on you?”
Me? A cell phone? Was she serious?
“I left mine in the RV. They interfere with all the equipment we use to detect ghosts,” she explained.
In other word, we were pretty much screwed.
“I’m shook. If Trevor ever got wind of this, I’d never hear the end of it,” Cassandra muttered, shaking her head.
“Who’s Trevor?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“My bae back home.” She said it so matter-of-factly, like every sixteen-year-old girl had a boyfriend where she came from. Maybe they did. I’d been too busy recovering from chemo treatments and painful operations to find time to do normal teenage stuff growing up. No boyfriend, no first date, no driver’s license. I realized that were I to be permanently locked up in this tiny storage closet, my life would hardly change at bit. Not exactly the kind of epiphany most girls hope for.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Cassandra asked.
“Not currently,” I said evasively. As if I’d ever been on a date in my life.
“That surprises me,” Cassandra said, squinting at me with greater interest. “You’re so pretty.”
“Me? Pretty?” I snorted. All the boys in my old neighborhood knew about my cancer, something that put a big damper on their desire to start a long-term relationship with me.
“No, really. You’ve got that naturally flawless look that makes the rest of us look overdone.”
I paused, thinking silently to myself. Hadn’t Kat said something similar? Could someone become pretty without realizing it was happening? Especially when they were distracted by years of cancer treatments?
“Oh, look,” Cassandra said, brightening. “Mr. Dale forgot his Sprite. At least we won’t die of thirst before help comes.”
I figured dehydration was the least of our worries. Cassandra picked up the six pack anyway, pulled a can loose from its plastic ring, and held it out to me. Carbonated drinks were not my thing, but I could tell Cassandra meant it as a friendly gesture. I hesitantly took the Sprite from her. It was room temperature. Yum.
Cassandra cracked the top on her soda and lifted it in the air as if toasting the situation, before taking a gulp of warm Sprite.
“How long do you think it will be before they find us?” I asked.
“They’re all downstairs with Davey and his parents, which means they won’t hear us if we try calling or banging on the walls just yet,” Cassandra said. She gestured toward the Sprite in my hand. “You might as well enjoy your drink, because it may be a while before they come looking for us.”
Most teenagers love soda. I didn’t want Cassandra to think something was wrong with me right from the start, so I hesitantly popped open my can. It hissed and fizzled unappetizingly in my hand.
Bottoms up, I thought, taking a couple of reckless swallows. It was worse than I remembered. The carbonation burned my throat going down and made my eyes water. I took a few more hasty swigs for good measure, then placed the rest of the still full can down on the nearest shelf hoping Cassandra wouldn’t notice if I didn’t drink anymore of the nasty stuff.
I illuminated the floorboards beneath us with the flashlight. “That’s odd. The flooring in here looks the same as the rest of the study,” I said slowly.
“Maybe the study used to be one big room,” Cassandra suggested. “Someone must have come and put the false wall of shelves in later. Do you think this room was created just to hide all those photos and letters we found?”
; “Hide them from whom?” I softly asked the empty air. Cassandra shrugged as if I’d meant the question for her.
“This is not turning out to be our day.” Cassandra rested her chin in one hand. “And it’s all my fault.”
“Don’t forget, I was the one who locked Davey in here in the first place.” There was a moment of silence as the two of us contemplated the situation. “Maybe Neader will come get us out,” I deadpanned.
Cassandra glanced heavenward. “Xavier Kensington, if you are anywhere nearby, we could definitely use any spectral help you might choose to offer.”
“Didn’t your mom say it was dangerous to tease ghosts by talking to them that way?” I asked, suddenly apprehensive. All I needed was to be trapped in a tiny closet with a riled-up ice monster.
“If his ghost looks anything like the painting outside, he’s welcome to haunt me any time he chooses,” Cassandra said. “And since he’s dead, Trevor can’t possibly complain about—what’s the matter?” Cassandra broke off suddenly as I let out a startled gasp.
I stared across the dark space between us, my eyes growing wider by the second as a strange sensation spread across my lower arm. I glanced down and watched in horror as four shallow furrows sank suddenly into my flesh. Like invisible fingers pressing themselves lightly against my wrist. It felt like the phantom touch of some unseen person, their grip gentle but firm against my bare skin. The warmth of it sent tingles skipping up my arm.
“What is it?” Cassandra demanded, her own eyes beginning to glitter with fear.
I couldn’t even fill my lungs with enough air to speak, much less find the words to explain what was happening. The phantom hand pushed against my wrist causing the flashlight’s beam to move slowly up the wall. With my heart slamming itself against the back of my ribcage, I watched the light climb in horrified fascination.
This could not be happening. Some ghostly being had me in their grip, guiding my hand against my will, and all I could do was sit there gaping uselessly.
“You’re freaking me out here, Wren.” Cassandra followed my stunned gaze over to the creeping light and turned to watch it crawl up the wall. My hand jerked suddenly to a stop.
For one moment, the ghostly touch lingered against my skin and then, quickly as it had come, the invisible sensation lifted away, taking its warmth with it. My skin felt suddenly cold and exposed.
“Wait a sec,” Cassandra said sharply, pointing to the circle of light above her head. “Is that a handle?”
Say what?
I forced myself to focus my attention on the flashlight beam on the wall. There, revealed within its circle, was an old-fashioned brass door handle. It was high up. Too high for a boy of Davey’s age to reach, but not too high for Cassandra or me.
Cassandra chuckled softly under her breath. “Wren, you’re a genius. I would never have seen that handle in the dark. You must have ultraviolet, night vision.”
Or a ghostly benefactor.
“Let’s get out of here,” Cassandra said, scrambling to her feet. As she dusted herself off, I glanced uneasily around the small space of the secret room. As far as I could see, we were completely alone. But I didn’t trust my eyes anymore. Cassandra stood on tiptoe and reached for the handle.
“This the haunted library?” a teenage boy’s voice demanded somewhere just outside of the storage closet.
Cassandra froze, her fingers still resting on the handle. She turned to me, the whites of her eyes glittering in the dim light of the flashlight as we stared at one another in surprise.
Who’s that? Cassandra mouthed the words so the guy outside wouldn’t hear. I shrugged.
“This doesn’t look all that scary.” It was a girl’s voice that spoke this time. They both sounded like they might be a little older than Cassandra and me. But what were they doing in the study? Nobody was allowed up on the second floor without a guide.
“Let’s go back. I don’t want to get in trouble,” the girl said.
“Amanda, are you kidding? Look at this place. Do you think they’ve got anything valuable hidden in that desk?”
“Jamie, don’t you dare,” Amanda’s laugh sounded high and thin—like she was scared. “We’re going to be in enough trouble if any of the staff catches us up here.”
“We gotta bring something back to prove we were up here,” Jamie said.
“Take a picture with your phone. Then they’ll have to believe us.”
There were soft shuffling noises on the other side of the bookcase as Jamie and Amanda, presumably, got themselves into position for a selfie. That’s was when the Sprite chose to take its evil revenge.
Without warning, I let loose with a burp so loud it would have made the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 feel envious. I slapped a hand over my mouth in horror. Cassandra’s eyes became the size of shiny UFOs as she valiantly fought to hold in the laughter working to break free of her rigid body. She jammed one hand into her mouth and bit down hard with her teeth. That had to hurt!
“What—was that?” Amanda’s voice sounded tight as a rubber band about to be fired across the room.
“It sounded like old door hinges or something,” Jamie said nervously.
Old door hinges? Was he kidding me?
It was all too much for Cassandra. The laughter snorted up through her clenched fingers, again and again, like a hog in convulsions.
There was a horrible and heavy silence beyond the bookcase. Jamie and Amanda could definitely hear us, I was sure of it. I put out my hand toward Cassandra thinking to help cover her mouth, but my foot caught on the same empty box and I went sprawling into her instead. Both of us crashed into the back of the bookcase. The shelves rattled beneath the impact of our combined weight and there was a tremendous crash as some of the books on the other side fell to the study floor.
There was a gasp of terror from Amanda. Jamie went off into a torrent of swearing—beginning at one end of the four-letter alphabet and making his way through the whole dictionary.
That’s when the music box started to play.
Cassandra and I froze in the darkness. We were like two stone statues, our ears straining to hear the sweetly sad notes of “Moonlight Sonata” playing softly on the other side of the wall.
Whatever had been in the closet a few moments ago holding my hand, was now outside in the study with our unexpected visitors. Traveling through walls was obviously no issue for this particular music-loving spirit.
The music box was the last straw for our friend Amanda. Her shrieks of terror were so long and loud they pierced the walls of the secret closet, making my eardrums throb. There were thundering footsteps as Jamie and Amanda beat a hasty retreat out of the study. The shrieking continued to echo through the museum, moving to the second-floor landing and then down the stairs to the first floor. I heard Matt’s voice calling out from somewhere below. The shrieking finally stopped.
“Let’s get out of here while we still can,” Cassandra hissed. She was breathing hard, making up double time for the oxygen she’d missed while holding her breath trying not to get caught.
Cassandra reached up and took hold of the door handle on the back of the bookcase. There was a loud grating sound in the darkness. The door didn’t budge.
Uh, oh.
Cassandra tried again, rattling the handle forcefully back and forth. “I think it might be rusted,” she said through clenched teeth. “If I can just get it to—ah ha!” With a loud cracking sound, the bookcase finally popped open. We stumbled into the blinding light of the study, finally free. As Cassandra turned to carefully shut the bookcase behind us, I stared down at the now silent music box.
I rubbed at my still tingling wrist with my free hand, trying to rid myself of the memory of the ghostly fingers I’d felt. The touch had been gentle as if the ghost didn’t want to frighten me.
“What are you waiting around for?” Cassandra demanded of me as she hurried past, headed for the study door. “If anyone catches us in here, we’re dead. Let’s go!”
Still distracted, I followed slowly after her. We tiptoed as quickly and quietly as we could out of the study and across the upper landing. There was a lot of noise coming from downstairs. Someone was sobbing hysterically, while a lot of other people talked excitedly over the top of each another. Cassandra paused at the top of the stairs. Her freckles squished up her face as she grimaced over her shoulder at me.
“It will be more suspicious if we don’t go down to see what all the commotion is about.” I pointed down the steps with one finger.
With a resigned sigh, Cassandra started downstairs. I quickly followed.
A huge group of guests and museum staff members had gathered over by the entrance to the Postmodern Doll Room. A teenage boy with spiky blond hair was gesturing toward the roof and talking like crazy to Matt. That had to be Jamie.
“Something tried to kill us!” The boy’s voice cracked with fear. “It was throwing things around the room and attacking us on every side!” The brown-haired girl beside him nodded her head firmly, hiccupping in agreement through her tears.
“Did you actually see the spirit?” It was Mr. Dale who spoke this time, his voice breathless with enthusiasm.
“We didn’t see it, but we heard it.” Jamie’s eyes were huge against his pale face.
“It growled at us,” Amanda sobbed. “Like some kind of slavering monster!”
Oh, for pity’s sake! It was only a burp for crying out loud. You’d think I’d let loose the demons of the underworld the way they were going on about it.
“Matt, why don’t you take our guests into my office.” Aunt Victoria appeared suddenly at the frightened girl’s side and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You can take a full report of the incident in there.”
Matt nodded, carefully leading the weeping Amanda away from the crowd of curious spectators. Jamie followed sullenly behind them.
Gabrielle came marching across the entry hall to meet Aunt Victoria. “What now?” she demanded.
“We seem to have had a ghostly manifestation,” Aunt Victoria said.
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