I hung back as the crew gathered around the guy I now realized was wearing a Crimptown tour guide T-shirt. Jess had her camera on as the guide chatted with Dad, but I barely heard a word.
The truth was, Roland nailed it. It was weird—beyond weird—to hear someone just sum me up like that. Especially when I hadn’t even thought about most of it. I mean, yeah, when teachers split the class into groups, I usually took charge of mine. But I wasn’t pushy or anything. Actually, the way Roland said it made me sound kind of lazy. Student achieves below apparent ability. I got that comment on report cards a lot. But whatever—my grades were good enough. What difference would a few points higher really make?
And as much as I hated to admit it, Roland was dead-on about the trust thing. I’d always had lots of friends, but there were only a handful of people I really, truly trusted. Right now it was down to Dad, Grandma, Trish, and Mark.
If someone betrays that trust, you’re done. No second chances.
That part was 110 percent accurate, too. I mean, if someone you trust betrays you, why would they deserve another chance? You can forgive them, but you can’t force yourself to trust them again.
“Hi, Kat!” Hailey said in a stage whisper. I looked up, startled to find her at my side.
“Hi,” I whispered back, struggling not to try flattening my hair again when I noticed Jamie right next to her. Oscar had followed them over, and while his gaze was fixed on the crew, I could tell he was listening. “So, you guys have done this before?” I asked. “Spent the night in a haunted place while they film?”
Hailey nodded enthusiastically. “Four times! The haunted hotel in London was my favorite.”
“What about your dad?” I asked, glancing around. Hailey rolled her eyes.
“He’s back in our room, of course,” she muttered. “We always ask him to come, but . . .” She shrugged.
“We usually find a place to camp out,” Jamie added softly. “Jess doesn’t like us too close to the cameras.”
“Mi Jin brought the Ouija board,” I said, nudging his elbow. “After all the big talk earlier, you’d better introduce me to some ghosts.”
“Just you wait.”
And there was that smile again. Jamie didn’t just smile with his mouth—he smiled with his whole face. His nose crinkled, his eyes brightened like he was about to laugh, even his ears seemed to stick out a little more. (And they already stuck out quite a bit. Which was fairly adorable.)
The guide started moving toward the theater’s bar, and the crew followed, Jess’s camera still rolling. Dad stood next to her, listening intently to the guide. I caught his eye and gave him a thumbs-up, and he grinned. Well, he looked confident. Maybe the meeting with Thomas Cooper had been okay after all.
Of course, Dad was a pro at pretending nothing was wrong, even when everything was falling apart.
Crimptown was a labyrinth of tunnels made of crumbling gray brick and moldy wooden planks. Rusting pipes hung low overhead, occasionally dripping what I chose to pretend was water, despite its yellowish color, on the hard-packed dirt floor. Each tunnel had a few small storage rooms with rusty barred doors, which Red Leer had used as cells to lock up the men he kidnapped until he could smuggle them to his ship.
According to the guide, Crimptown only spanned about a dozen city blocks, but the complex system of winding narrow tunnels was several kilometers long, connecting all the theaters, hotels, restaurants, and anyplace else with a bar on the waterfront. Dim bulbs hung from the ceiling, and long, wooden slides marked the spots directly below the bars. The crew all shined their flashlights up the first one we’d seen, illuminating the trapdoor overhead. It was pretty horrifying to imagine all those poor guys getting thrown down the slides, waking up a prisoner in one of these dark, depressing cells.
Two hours, five rat sightings, and countless stubbed toes later, Jess lowered the camera and stretched her arms.
“Time to set up camp,” she announced. “Mi Jin, Sam, Roland, we need more footage of the trapdoors—seems like the best place for Sam to start trying to make contact. Jack, Lidia, we’ll take the EMFs and start checking out the cells.”
Dad glanced at me. “And the kids . . . stay in a cell?”
“Jamie and Hailey know the drill,” Lidia assured him. “No splitting up, no exploring unless it’s with an adult, and everyone gets one of these.” Rummaging through her backpack, Lidia pulled out a few walkie-talkies. “No goofing around with them,” she added, giving Oscar a pointed look.
“Goofing around how?” Oscar asked innocently.
Lidia smiled as she handed me a walkie-talkie. “Oh, I don’t know . . . adding your own sound effects while we’re filming, maybe?”
Oscar stuffed his walkie-talkie in his pocket. “Amateur stuff. I can do better than that,” he told her.
I rolled my eyes as we followed Mi Jin into one of the cells. “Because masks and rubber snakes aren’t amateur?” I muttered. Oscar ignored me.
“All right, gather round,” Mi Jin said cheerfully, plopping down on the dirt and unzipping her backpack. Jamie and Hailey immediately sat on either side of her, and I knelt down next to Jamie, doing my best to avoid a damp spot from the leaky pipes. Oscar sat cross-legged between Hailey and me just as Mi Jin pulled something out of her bag and set it in the center of our circle with a flourish. “Ta-da!”
“Wow.” I leaned forward, staring at the Ouija board.
Mi Jin had attached a small, square circuit board along the top between YES and NO. A thin cord connected the circuit board to a mouse, which was embedded in the center of a wooden teardrop-shaped planchette. At the tip of the planchette was a small, circular lens.
“Why’s it all . . .” Oscar waved his hand at the board. “Computerized?”
“Moving solid objects takes a lot of energy for ghosts—electricity’s easier to manipulate,” Mi Jin explained, flipping a switch on the circuit board. It hummed to life, the tiny lightbulb flashing green. “You use it just like a regular Ouija board.”
“The electrical current helps them move the planchette,” Jamie added. “Much better chance of communication.”
Oscar looked about as skeptical as I felt. Our eyes met for a second, and his lips quirked up. I ducked my head to hide my grin.
Mi Jin looked amused. “We’ve got a couple of nonbelievers here,” she informed Jamie and Hailey. “I’m counting on you two to change their minds.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts?” Hailey asked me, wide-eyed.
“Um . . .” I sat back on my heels, thinking carefully. I didn’t want to offend her or Jamie. “I guess I just need to see proof before I believe something’s real.”
Hailey nodded, turning to Oscar. “You too?”
Oscar shrugged. “Something like that.”
Laughing, Mi Jin stood and brushed the dirt off her jeans. “Try exactly like that. Just one of the many things Kat and Oscar have in common. Right, Kat?” She winked at me on her way out of the cell.
“So who are we contacting?” I said quickly, before Oscar could ask what Mi Jin was talking about.
“Sonja Hillebrandt,” Hailey replied immediately, her cheeks flushed with excitement. “She’s the nice one. Red Leer was evil.”
“Good call,” I said. “No evil pirates invited to this party.”
“Oh no, I totally want to contact him, too!” Hailey pulled a small notepad and a red pen from her pocket and set them next to the board. “Angry ghosts have more energy, so it’s a little easier. But Sonja’s the hero, right? She sacrificed her life to save her brother and all those prisoners. It’s only polite to invite her first.”
I couldn’t help smiling at her enthusiasm. “You’re not scared at all, huh?”
Jamie shook his head. “Nothing scares her.”
“True,” Hailey agreed, flipping the notepad open. “Oh, Kat! Do you still have that piece of pa
per you’ve got with the other messages? Can I use that instead?”
“Sure.” I pulled the square of paper out of my back pocket and handed it over. Hailey unfolded it, smoothing it out on the dirt. Jamie adjusted the Ouija board, then took the planchette and set it in the center.
“Ready?”
“Why not.”
He and Hailey placed the tips of their fingers along the edge of the planchette. Oscar and I followed suit.
“So, I’ll try to contact Sonja,” Jamie explained. “Hailey’ll write down any responses we get. We all have to focus on Sonja. Maybe try picturing her, like that portrait from your blog post,” he added to me. “Okay?”
“Sure,” I said, and Oscar shrugged again. The four of us stared at the board. When the planchette immediately started to move, I looked up at Jamie. “You’re doing that,” I blurted out, then cringed at how accusatory I sounded.
Jamie smiled without taking his eyes off the planchette. “This is how we get started—like a warm-up. We’ll move the planchette around until Sonja takes over.” He cleared his throat. “Sonja Hillebrandt . . . please join us. We’d like to ask you a few questions. We invite you to talk with us.”
As he spoke, we continued moving the planchette in slow circles across the board. I pressed my lips together, trying not to giggle at Hailey’s dead-serious expression. Jamie cleared his throat.
“Remember, everyone needs to focus on Sonja,” he said quietly. I chanced a peek at him. His gaze was still fixed on the planchette, but the corners of his mouth twitched. The urge to laugh increased, and I bit hard on the inside of my cheek.
Nearly a full minute passed with the four of us sitting in the dingy cell in silence, scraping a computer mouse stuck in a wooden plank across a board. The whole thing seemed more and more absurd with every second.
“Oookay,” Oscar said at last. “No offense, but this is—”
“It’s not working because you aren’t focusing on Sonja,” Hailey interrupted. Her tone was terribly patient, as if she were talking to a toddler. I started snickering—I couldn’t help it—and she turned to me. “You too, Kat! You have to focus.”
Her schoolteacher voice and stern expression just made me laugh harder. “Sorry,” I said, ducking my head. “It’s just . . . Has this really worked for you guys before?”
Hailey nodded. “Yeah! We contacted our grandfather right after his funeral.”
The laughter died in my throat. “Oh, I didn’t realize,” I said, flustered.
“It’s okay,” Jamie said quickly. “It was a couple of years ago. And it was just a regular Ouija board. But we definitely talked to him.”
“Why are you so sure it worked?” Oscar asked.
“We asked him a few yes-or-no questions first,” Hailey replied, tapping on the board. “Stuff only he would know. And then we asked where his pocket watch was.”
“His watch?”
“It belonged to his father,” Jamie explained. “Kind of a family heirloom. And after the funeral, we couldn’t find it anywhere. Our mom was going nuts looking—she kept blaming herself for losing it.”
“So we used the board to ask Grandpa,” Hailey said in a low, conspiratorial voice. “And the planchette spelled out J-A-R.”
“And you found the watch in a jar?” Oscar said. To his credit, he seemed to be making an attempt at not sounding too disbelieving.
“Nope.” Hailey’s eyes sparkled. “We looked in all the jars we could find, but no watch. And then we realized Grandpa just hadn’t finished the word.”
“Our mom interrupted us,” Jamie added. “She got really freaked out when she saw us using the Ouija board—she hates these things. She made us get rid of that one, actually. Anyway, she walked in right after we got to the R.”
“So what word did you think your grandpa was trying to spell?” I asked.
“Jared,” Hailey said. “Our uncle—Mom’s brother. Turns out he was going to sell the watch.”
Oscar looked dubious. “He actually had it?”
Jamie nodded. “Yeah. We told Mom, and . . . Well, like I said, she hates Ouija boards, so at first she didn’t want to listen to us. But Jared was at the funeral, obviously, and that was the last time we saw the watch, because Mom had laid it out on a table with some family photos and other stuff of Grandpa’s, and . . .”
“It wasn’t the first time Uncle Jared did something like that,” Hailey said sadly. “Mom always calls him the black sheep of the family.”
“He and Mom don’t exactly get along,” Jamie finished. “So she went and confronted him about the watch. She got it back, but they haven’t spoken since then.”
“You see?” Hailey said, sitting up straighter. “Proof. Grandpa told us where to find the watch.”
I exchanged a glance with Oscar. I had to admit, it was a good story. But I wouldn’t call it proof.
“I don’t think they’re convinced just yet,” Jamie told Hailey with a sigh.
“Not quite.” Leaning forward, I placed my fingers back on the planchette. “But I’m getting there. Convince me.”
Grinning, Jamie reached for the planchette. Hailey and Oscar did, too, and we fell silent.
This time, I focused on Sonja.
I pictured her dark hair, her pale face, her delicate smile. I imagined her swapping her dress for her brother’s clothes, tucking her hair up into a cap and hiding a knife under her coat. Sitting on a bar stool, fake-sipping a drugged drink, pretending to pass out, getting thrown through a trapdoor, sliding down, down, down until she hit the dirt floor, then whipping out her knife and running through the tunnels, sprinting toward this very cell—
The planchette twitched.
I barely managed to stop myself from pulling my fingers away. No one said anything, but I could tell they all felt it, too. Hailey leaned forward, staring intently at the board. Jamie closed his eyes. I glanced at Oscar, wondering if this was another prank. If so, it was a pretty mean one, considering how seriously Jamie and Hailey took this.
The planchette twitched again, then slid over until the lens magnified the letter H. I squinted at Oscar’s fingers—it didn’t look like he was moving the planchette, but I couldn’t tell for sure. An E followed, then L . . . It slid away briefly before heading back to L. Then, slowly, the planchette scraped across the board to the left side, stopping on O.
“Hello.” Jamie’s voice, though soft, made me jump. “Is this Sonja?”
As the planchette crept across the board to YES, I glanced over at Oscar. His brow was furrowed, no trace of a smile on his face. Leaving two fingers on the planchette, Hailey reached over and picked up her pen.
“Hi, Sonja,” Jamie said calmly. “Thank you for joining us. How many spirits are present right now, including you?”
The planchette moved down to the line of numbers, where the lens settled over 3.
Jamie nodded. “Three. Thank you. Can you tell us who they—”
The planchette jerked violently, and Jamie fell silent. Our hands all moved quickly across the board as the lens magnified letters: G–A–T–H–E . . .
“Are you doing this?” I whispered to Oscar. He just shook his head without looking up.
Hailey carefully wrote down letter after letter, whispering each one under her breath. The planchette fell still at last, and she held the paper up for us to read:
G A T H E R T H E W O M E N
“Gather the women . . .” I chewed my lip. “That’s what Sonja did, right? She gathered a bunch of women to—”
Before I could finish, the planchette jerked beneath my fingers again. The four of us stared as it scraped across the board. F–R–E–E–T–H–E–M—NO.
Jamie cleared his throat. “Sonja, are you still there?” The planchette twitched, then slid back over NO. “Who are we speaking to?”
The little green light on the circuit board s
tarted to flicker. I held my breath as the planchette began to move again.
L–E–E–R
“Wait, hold on,” Hailey breathed, her handwriting getting messier as she scribbled down the new letters. “Ask about the third ghost. Sonja said there’s three here.”
Jamie nodded. “Is there another—”
The planchette jerked up to YES, then immediately zoomed over to NO before heading back to the letters. F–R–E–E–T-H . . . It paused, twitching.
“What’s the deal?” Hailey asked, pen still poised over the paper.
“I think they’re both trying to answer,” Jamie said quietly. “Red Leer and whoever the third ghost is, they’re both trying to control it.”
Oscar and I shared a look. He wasn’t buying this any more than me, I could tell. Not that I thought the Coopers were moving the planchette on purpose to trick us. They clearly believed they were communicating with ghosts . . . but that didn’t make it true. If Jamie and Hailey knew their uncle was the kind of guy who’d steal his dead father’s pocket watch, maybe spelling out their suspicions on a Ouija board had been easier than admitting it out loud.
I glanced down when the planchette lurched again.
K–E–E–P–H–E–R–A–W–A . . .
“Keep her away,” Hailey said excitedly, still scribbling. “From . . . Kat, this is the same message that printed the other day! Keep her away from the medium!” She waved the paper at me, and I let go of the planchette to take it.
The green light flickered faster . . . then stopped. The planchette fell still, and Hailey groaned.
“Did the batteries die?”
Before anyone could respond, a distant crash caused us all to jump. A split second later, a scream echoed through the tunnels.
Hailey leaped to her feet first. She was halfway to the cell door when Jamie grabbed her wrist.
“What are you doing?” Hailey yelled, trying to tug her arm away. “Someone might’ve gotten hurt, we should—”
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