Emil is a nice-looking guy, with a head of thick jet-black hair, and usually a paper hat perched on top of it. Like everything else here, the hat is traditional, like the ones you see on butchers in old children’s books.
“Best-looking boy in the neighborhood,” Old Man Baublitz says. “Plenty of girls. Always.” He jerks his thumb at Gus. “So how come this one turned out lookin’ like a pig’s butt?”
He turns to Emil. “Guess the mailman was an ugly son of a gun!” Then he just about busts a gut laughing.
Gus bites his lip. He knows he has to keep his mouth shut, because he’s supposed to respect his grandpa, but if it was me, I’d say something. With all due respect, Old Man Baublitz isn’t exactly God’s gift to women, if you know what I mean.
“Leave the kid alone, Pop,” Emil says.
“Hey, I was just busting his chops,” protests the old man. “Jeez, so sensitive.”
This is how old people talk in Brooklyn. Still.
“You’re a handsome boy. Don’t listen to him,” a woman with a stroller says to Gus, who blushes bright red.
He turns to Nat with his eyebrows raised. “Don’t ask me,” she says quickly. “But speaking objectively, chewing like five pieces of gum at one time does not make you particularly attractive to the opposite sex.”
Gus blows a bubble. “It was three. And why are you making assumptions? I could be gay.”
Nat raises one eyebrow. “Believe me, no one of any gender is going to want to look at that.”
Gus blows an even bigger bubble. “Says you!”
“You’re drooling,” I observe.
Gus wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
“You guys can wait outside until I finish Mrs. Rubin’s order,” Emil says.
We head outside and sit on the narrow stoop of the apartment entrance nestled between the shops on Court Street. Nat slips off her backpack and it lands with a thud.
“So what have you got in there?” Gus asks. “The entire Brooklyn Public Library?”
Nat undoes the strap. “Just part of it.”
She empties the contents onto my lap.
About ten books slide out. I read a few titles. Best Ghost Stories. The Scariest Tales Ever Told. The Horror Hall of Fame.
“Research,” Nat says simply.
As I look at the pile of books, I feel something loosen in my chest. It’s like I’ve been wound up tight ever since these things started happening and I haven’t even noticed.
“So…you do believe me?” I say.
Nat picks up one of the books. “Look, I’m not saying your apartment is haunted, but…”
Gus takes a deep breath. “But it’s a possibility.”
“Maybe we can find out what’s really happening when these things occur,” Nat says.
“Like maybe there’s something causing people to have hallucinations?” I ask. “Because I’m not the only one who’s been seeing things, you know.”
“Most of which had logical explanations,” Nat counters.
I hate it when she makes sense.
“Only you heard the humming and saw the lights going on and off.”
Gus is looking at the books uneasily. “So…you’re going to read all of these, right? And tell us what you’ve learned?”
“Wrong,” Nat says. “We’re going to read them. We’ll split them up.”
Gus groans. “This is sounding more and more like homework.”
I grab one from the pile. I read the title out loud. “The Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions.”
Gus bursts out laughing. “No way! That cannot be his real name. What is he, like a circus clown?”
I take a look at the serious-faced man on the cover. “I don’t think so. And anyway, clowns are freaking scary, so let’s not go there.”
Nat grabs the book impatiently. “He happens to be one of the most famous ghost story writers ever. I spent a whole afternoon at the library looking this stuff up.”
Gus brightens. “Hey! I know. I can look on the Internet. And you guys can read the books.”
I know what that means. Gus will take two minutes doing an online search and then spend the rest of the time playing games.
“I’ve already looked on the Internet,” Nat says. “There’s a whole lot of stuff, but mostly it’s people going into dark houses and using weird machines to detect the presence of ectoplasm or whatever.” She clearly doesn’t believe that sort of thing is valuable.
“So nothing about what to do if your apartment is haunted?” I ask. I can’t believe I didn’t bother to check this out myself.
“For the most part, the sites I went to tend to think that either people are imagining things or that there’s some other explanation,” Nat says.
“Hey! Lazybones! Quit hanging outside wit’ your friends!” Old Man Baublitz yells to Gus.
“Dad said he was going to call me when Mrs. Rubin left,” Gus answers.
Emil is at the door with a broom. “She left about five minutes ago.”
“So why didn’t you call me?” Gus asks.
Emil sighs. I think he knows Gus really doesn’t want to be a butcher. “I guess I was hoping you’d take some initiative.”
Emil stretches and turns to me. “So, how’s your folks, Danny? Your dad still working on that film?”
“Not right now,” I say.
Emil smiles. “I remember he used to talk about it all the time. It sounded great. He doesn’t talk about it much anymore.”
“Yeah,” I say, not knowing what else to add.
Emil hands the broom to Gus and sees the books. He bends down and picks one up. “So who’s into ghost stories? I used to love them when I was a kid.”
“Really?” says Gus. “Danny’s been having all sorts of weird things happening in his apartment, right?”
Emil’s eyes brighten. “Yeah? Like what?”
I can see that as long as I’m telling Emil about the apartment, Gus won’t have to sweep. So I go through all that’s happened: the knocking on the door and the lights going on and off and Mrs. Sarah Delano Cabot’s unscheduled appearance in my bedroom.
Emil is rapt. He rubs his jaw a few times and mutters a curse word under his breath. Then his eyes narrow.
“You making this up, Danny?”
“No, I swear. Why would I?” I protest.
“Seems like you wanted that room pretty bad,” Emil says.
Nat begins to gather up the books. “I thought that too at first. But there are too many things that other people saw too.”
Gus turns to Emil. “You ever seen a ghost, Dad?”
“Don’t be stupid, Gus,” his dad snaps. He stares back into the shop.
“What about Grandpa?” Gus asks excitedly.
Emil shrugs. “Your grandmother said it was ’cause he’d been out on a drunk all night, but he always swears that didn’t matter.”
“Hey, Pop!” Emil calls into the store.
There’s some shuffling and Old Man Baublitz comes out, wiping his hands on his apron. “Jeez,” he mutters. “Guess I’m the only one around here workin’ today, huh? You boys enjoying the sunshine?”
Emil ignores him. “I was just tellin’ the kids about when you saw that ghost.”
Gus looks annoyed. “How come you never told me the story before?”
The old man laughs. “Your grandma would have hung me up in the window if I had. When I told your dad he didn’t sleep for a week.”
We turn to Emil. “Pop, don’t exaggerate,” he says. “It was one night.”
Gus is impatient. “So what was the story?”
“This must have been about ’fifty-five or ’fifty-six,” the old man begins, and Emil sighs and goes back into the shop. “I’d just gotten out of the service. I know it wasn’t ’fifty-seven because tha
t’s when the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles. The lousy stinkin’ bums. After all we done for them. Rooting all those years. And then they up and leave us. I tell ya—”
It’s hard to explain to someone not from Brooklyn what it meant to folks who were around back then when our baseball team moved. My grandmother always says, “It was like they pulled my father’s heart from his body, I swear. That man was never the same.”
“So it was after you left the army,” Nat says patiently, trying to get the train back on track.
“Right. So I’m walking up Hicks Street, you know, near the fire station? In those days there were still lots of bars around there, with lots of cheap booze for the sailors and the guys who worked loading and paintin’ ships at the docks, you know?”
Gus brightens when he hears his dad start sweeping in the shop.
Gus nods. “Yeah, go on, Grandpa. Take your time.”
“So I’m feeling pretty good, having had a few, but not so much that I’m in my cups,” the old man says. I marvel at how many ways these old guys have for saying they were drunk. “It’s dark, but I see this young woman standin’ in the doorway of one of the carriage houses—you know, the ones with the round windows?”
We all know which ones he means. In the old days, a lot of them were boardinghouses.
“So here’s the thing. She’s dressed funny. I mean, she looks like a young woman, but she’s dressed like someone from the war. You know, the one in Europe.”
“So she was dressed in old clothes,” Nat says.
The old man nods. He looks like he’s seeing her again right now. “She was real pretty, but sad-lookin’ too. All pale, with dark circles under her eyes.”
We kids exchange glances. This is getting good.
“She calls out to me, ‘Hey, mister! Got a minute?’ Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I was already dating your grandmother, so I wasn’t about to be doing anything with no tramp. She was speakin’ with some type of accent. I could tell she wasn’t from here. I try to keep walkin’, but she reaches out and grabs my arm.”
Emil has stopped sweeping and stands in the doorway, listening.
The old man can see we’re hooked. He leans in. We lean in. Emil leans in.
“So I’m about to tell her I ain’t interested, when she pulls out a rope and asks me if I could tie a slipknot. She says she don’t know how.”
The old man takes a swig of coffee.
“So what did you do?” demands Gus.
The old man shoots him a look. “I was gonna beat it, but she was clutchin’ my arm so tight and the look on her face was so pitiful. So I said, ‘Sure, I can do that. No problem.’ ”
A customer pushes past us and goes into the store. Emil gestures to one of the guys who works there to help the customer. No way he’s missing this.
“I make the knot in the rope and hand it back to her. She looks so happy. ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you, Thank you!’ It was a little weird how thrilled she was with it, but I thought, Okay, lady. Whatever floats your boat, you know? She goes back inside without even a good night, and I head home.”
The Old Man sits back and looks at us, nodding.
“That’s it?” asks Gus incredulously.
Emil smacks him on the back of his head. “No, that’s not it, you dope. Let your grandfather finish.”
I look at the Old Man, trying to imagine him as a young man, weaving his way through the Heights. His voice is now barely a whisper. “So I don’t think much of it, until a few days later. I’m walking by the same house on the way home for lunch. You know how in those days your grandma and me lived on Henry Street? I don’t think you ever saw that place—”
“Dad!” Emil prods him.
“Oh, right. So I’m walking by that place and I see a different lady out front, watering the plants in her window box. I’m curious, so I ask her about the woman with the rope.”
Another customer comes into the shop. Emil looks worried. A few more and he’ll have to miss the end of the story.
“Come on, Pop,” he pleads.
“So…she says, ‘What woman?’ Nobody’s living there but her and her husband.”
Nat is clutching a book to her chest so hard I’m surprised she can breathe. Gus is still holding a piece of gum he unwrapped five minutes ago.
“Then a strange look comes over her. She asks me to describe the woman. I tell her what she looked like and she goes and gets her husband. He’s my age. She says to me, ‘Tell him about the woman,’ and I do, and I think he’s gonna faint right then and there. I ask what’s the problem and this is what he tells me.”
None of us moves. Not even Emil. People push past him to get into the store.
“When the guy was a kid during the war, the army sent this lady to stay with his family, ’cause they were renting out rooms. She was real quiet, from Germany. Never talked to anyone. Just sat in a chair all day, smoking cigarettes. He would run errands for her, getting her stuff to eat, like that. His parents would leave it for her in her room, and she’d barely touch it.
“One day she’s visited by a bunch of guys who say they’re from the government. It turns out in Germany she was a double agent working against the Nazis. I guess the gestapo found out and tortured her pretty bad. But some of our spies got her out and were keeping her safe here in Brooklyn, trying to get what information they could out of her.
“After the government guys leave, she calls for the boy to get her something. She has a list and one of the things on it is rope. She asks him if he knows how to tie knots. He was pretty proud of himself, being a Boy Scout, and showed her all sorts of knots, plus the ones the sailors down at the navy yard taught him. She’s all interested and asks him to tie her a slipknot. He does, and she thanks him.”
The old man pauses one last time. He sure knows how to tell a story. He should be in one of these books Nat checked out.
“That night the woman is all happy. First time they see her smile. The next morning, the kid’s mother goes up to get her for breakfast and finds her. She’d hanged herself with the rope.
“And that night I walked by? It was ten years to the day she’d done it.”
The old man looks pretty pleased with himself. He heads back into the shop. “Next customer!” he sings gaily. Like he didn’t just scare the freaking life out of us.
Gus shivers. “Jeez, that was creepy as—”
Nat cuts him off. “Your grandpa tells a good story. But it has nothing to do with Danny.” She picks out three books and hands them to me. They’re all anthologies of ghost stories.
I look at them skeptically. “You sure this is a good idea?”
“What’s the problem?” she asks impatiently.
“I’m just…I dunno, I guess I’m afraid if I read too many of these, I’ll, you know, get ideas?”
“So it is all in your head!” Nat says triumphantly. “You admit it!”
I grab the books. “I’m just jumpy enough as it is. This might make it that much worse.”
“Hey!” Gus has that look on his face he gets when he has one of his ideas.
Nat’s shoulders sag. “Yes, Gus?”
Gus’s eyes are shining. This is going to be good. “How about that lady on Montague Street?”
“You mean the psychic?” asks Nat.
“Yeah!” Gus says. “I bet she’d be able to help.”
I’m trying to think of a diplomatic way to tell Gus what a ridiculous idea this is. I give up. “That’s a ridiculous idea. She’s totally bogus.”
Gus’s face falls. “How do you know?”
“Don’t you remember when Luis’s aunt had that whole thing with her?” Nat says.
“What thing?” Gus asks.
“You know…” I pick up the story. We all know it. Luis is in our class. “She went to that woman because she wanted to kn
ow if her husband was fooling around. The woman made her give her ‘gifts’ and money and all sorts of things so she could get in touch with the spirit world. Luis said it turned out to be a total con. They called the cops on her and everything.”
Gus won’t admit defeat. It’s kind of admirable in a way. And also irritating. “Yeah, but that was different. This one is about a ghost.”
“Let it go,” Nat says. “We’re not using her. She’s going to ask for money, and we don’t have it.”
“How about those guys on the Internet?” Gus will not let anything go.
“How about not?” I say. “You think my parents are going to let a bunch of strangers post videos of our apartment on the Internet? And what do you think the chances are of anyone renting the room if they think it’s haunted?”
“We have to prove this ourselves,” Nat says, then adds quickly, “If there is anything to prove, of course.”
“Other than that I’m nuts,” I grumble.
“That’s it!” Gus says.
This is going to be good.
“Okay, Mr. Ghostbuster,” Nat says. “What is it?”
“Danny just needs proof,” Gus says. “Like a photograph or something.”
I pretend to faint on the street. “I cannot believe it. History was made today.”
Gus lifts me up. “What are you talking about?”
“You actually came up with something useful,” I tell him.
I can see that Gus is trying to decide whether I’m actually giving him a compliment or busting his chops like the old man.
“I did?” he says.
Nat nods. “Yes! That’s actually a smart thing to say.”
“Remember Katia the dog walker who took those photos of our apartment? The ones she said showed what she assumed was my face reflecting in the window? What if it wasn’t?” I ask.
Nat looks at me. “We need to see those pictures.”
I agree. “I’m sure my mom has her email.”
There is a line of people coming to pick up their orders, as it’s getting close to dinnertime. Emil waves from behind the counter.
Gus grabs the slimmest volume of ghost stories and heads inside. “Catch me up later!”
The Ghost in Apartment 2R Page 11