Ghost Town

by Annie Bryant

  “Tell me about it,” Sam laughed. “Someday . . . we want to do a movie too.”

  “You sound just like Maeve! It would be cool if the three of you were in a movie together,” Isabel told them.

  “Yeah! Maybe Charlotte can even write the script,” Katani suggested.

  “Charlotte? Is she a writer?” Nik asked.

  “She’s a great writer,” Isabel reported. “She always has her journal out, and she even writes feature articles for our school newspaper, the Sentinel.”

  “What about you, Isabel?” Sam asked. “What kinds of stuff are you into?”

  Isabel looked shyly at the floor and shrugged.

  “Come on!” Nik encouraged. “I know you’re the creative type.”

  “Spill it,” Sam nudged Isabel.

  “Isabel is an artist,” Katani bragged.

  “Really? Cool!” Sam exclaimed.

  “What kind of art?” Nik wanted to know.

  “Well, right now birds are my favorite,” Isabel said.

  “Birds?” Nik and Sam asked in unison.

  “Isabel draws these really cool bird cartoons,” Katani explained. “She has her own cartoon corner in the Sentinel, too.”

  “You want to be a cartoonist when you’re older?” Nik asked, impressed.

  “I think I might, but I like other kinds of art, too. I can’t decide just yet.”

  “What other kind of art?” Nik wondered.

  “Maybe murals, maybe fabric design with Katani . . . maybe even performance art,” Isabel said.

  “Performance art! Cool!” Nik exclaimed.

  “You don’t even know what performance art is!” Sam teased her sister.

  “I do so know. It’s like when an artist is onstage and takes a big balloon full of paint and chucks it at a canvas— sorta like this.” Nik picked up the big throw pillow from the couch and lobbed it at her sister, knocking Sam back onto her sleeping bag.

  The pillow fight was on.

  A Close Encounter

  The fire snapped, and Maeve’s eyes popped open again. She rolled over and glanced bleary-eyed at her pink watch with the rhinestone-studded face. Only three minutes since the last time she woke up. This time the culprit was a shutter banging against the window upstairs. Even though Maeve was exhausted, every little creak of the old hotel startled her awake. I am so not a camping kind of girl, she shuddered.

  Lissie and Mr. Ramsey were sleeping in chairs on either side of the fire. Maeve had claimed the old couch— the mouse-free zone—and Charlotte and Avery were sharing a king-size mattress in front of the fire.

  Earlier in the evening sleeping on the couch seemed like a brilliant idea. After all, it was high above the floor and less likely to fall victim to a rodent attack. But now, in the middle of the night, Maeve was more worried about the wild animals she heard howling in the distance. Maybe she would be safer if she were closer to the fire. Besides, she was shivering in the nippy air.

  She took her pillow and blanket and crawled onto the floor. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a fire left at all. The flames had died down to a mere heap of glowing coals. Maeve maneuvered into the empty space on the mattress between Avery and Charlotte. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a movement in the darkness across the room. Was it just her imagination, or was the front door to the hotel actually opening?

  Maeve squeezed her eyes shut. Of course, it must be her imagination. Can wolves or coyotes or whatever was making that howling noise open doors? she wondered, as a shiver went up and down her spine.

  Through the tiny slits of her eyelids she saw a dark shadow slowly take shape against the heavy snowfall beyond the open door. A big, scary, tall man with a cowboy hat entered the room.

  Maeve clamped her hand over her mouth. If she screamed now, the ghost might swoop her away. She began to shake as the door closed noiselessly behind the silhouette.

  As the dark shape began to creep toward her, Maeve reached over and poked Avery’s shoulder. She opened her mouth to scream, but only a tiny gasp escaped from her mouth. She shook Avery hard, but Avery wasn’t responding.

  Suddenly, a howling sound echoed through the room. “Avery! AVERY!” Maeve scream-whispered into her friend’s ear. “What IS that?”

  “Dreaming. Just dreaming,” Avery mumbled and rolled over on her side. Maeve gulped and looked up. There was nothing there, just the grainy darkness. Maeve whipped the blanket over her head and burrowed under the covers.

  “I will do my math homework. I will do my math homework. I will do . . .” Maeve repeated over and over again until she fell into a troubled sleep.

  CHAPTER

  13

  A New Day in Dry Gulch

  Mr. Ramsey put a finger to his lips to let Charlotte know everyone else was still asleep. “Good morning, honey,” he whispered.

  Charlotte began her super cat stretch and almost immediately discovered she barely had any room to move. On her left, Maeve was sprawled across the previously empty part of the bed. Charlotte inched away from Maeve so she could lie on her back and prop herself up on her elbows without elbowing her friend in the face.

  The inside of the old hotel was still dark, but the gray light in the window told Charlotte it was morning. The windowpanes were still. At least the wind died down a little, thought Charlotte. But she could still see blustery gusts of snow blowing past the window.

  When Charlotte pushed herself up and crept toward the window, a still-sleeping Maeve groaned slightly and instinctively scooted closer to the fire. At the window, Charlotte breathed on the pane of glass and rubbed a spot so she could peer out. Main Street looked like a frozen ocean. The wind had sculpted the snow into great drifts and waves, and in some places it looked very deep. Yet the road was bare in other spots. Charlotte felt it was kind of romantic looking, almost like a great Russian wilderness in the early 1900s. In her mind, she could see the sleds of the proud Cossacks riding down the path.

  Charlotte’s father had put a pot over the fire, and the smell of brewing coffee was nudging the others awake.

  “I wish I had a croissant. After all, this is the Hotel de Paris, isn’t it?” a barely awake Maeve asked. “I’ll settle for pancakes, though. You are making some of your famous pancakes this morning, right, Mr. Ramsey?”

  Avery’s eyes fluttered open. “Pancakes? Did someone mention pancakes? My stomach is eating itself,” she groaned, sitting up.

  “Sorry, girls. No pancakes this morning. I’m afraid it’s beans and graham crackers,” Mr. Ramsey reported.

  “Beans for breakfast? We had beans for dinner! Blah!” Maeve grumbled, pulling the blanket over her head.

  “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the mattress,” Avery joked. “How’d you get here, anyway, Maeve? I thought you were sleeping on the couch.”

  “I hardly slept all night,” Maeve complained, sitting up and stretching.

  “I slept fairly soundly myself,” Lissie reported. “I bundled up and made a little cocoon with the blankets.”

  “Then YOU didn’t see the ghost,” Maeve reported.

  “Ghost?!” Charlotte and Lissie exclaimed.

  “That’s right,” Maeve said. “A ghost . . . a real ghost.”

  “No way. What did this ghost look like?” a skeptical Charlotte asked.

  Maeve shivered and looked over her shoulder as she spoke. “He was old. He had white hair and he was wearing this big, long overcoat and a cowboy hat. He looked really mean.”

  “So it was a cowboy ghost?” Charlotte asked.

  “Yeah, a cowboy,” Maeve insisted. “I woke up and this guy was opening the front door of the hotel. He stood in the doorway for a while and I could see the snow swirling around behind his head. He looked like one of those old cowboys you see in the movies.”

  Charlotte just stared intently at Maeve, waiting for her to go on.

  “He just stood there for a while and then shut the door and walked, no floated toward us. All I know is that one minute he was standi
ng by the door and the next minute he was standing right there,” Maeve said, pointing. “Right behind the chair Mr. Ramsey was sleeping in. He was looking down at us. Of course,” Maeve dramatically put her hand to her chest, “I pretended to be asleep. Otherwise, I would have had to scream really loud.”

  Avery scratched her head. “That’s weird. I think I had the same dream. A guy standing right there. He was old with white hair. He had on a long overcoat and a big cowboy hat. I dreamed he shook me awake.”

  “No, that was me,” Maeve informed her.

  “He shook YOU awake?” Avery asked, confused.

  “No, I shook you awake. At least, I tried,” Maeve said.

  “In my dream the cowboy shook me awake,” Avery repeated persistently.

  “That was no dream, Avery. It was totally real. I shook you awake so you could see the ghost,” Maeve told her.

  “Why didn’t you wake the rest of us up? Why didn’t you wake ME up? I’ve always wanted to see a ghost!” Charlotte exclaimed.

  “Well, I closed my eyes for one second—it was so scary—and then he was gone. I swear he disappeared into thin air.” Maeve snapped her fingers. “All I did was look over at Avery and when I looked back, he was gone. But I couldn’t go back to sleep for a long, long time after that,” Maeve said, falling back onto the mattress in exhaustion. “Is it okay if I sleep for the rest of the day?”

  “I thought you were hungry,” Avery said.

  “Uhh . . . right. I’ll go back to sleep after breakfast, then.” At that point nobody wanted to miss a meal.

  “Dad’s in the kitchen trying to rustle up something other than beans,” Charlotte told the girls.

  “I’ll go see if he needs any help.” Lissie threw on a hoodie over her shirt and went into the kitchen.

  When Mr. Ramsey and Lissie returned with armfuls of supplies, Mr. Ramsey announced in his best French accent, “Bonjour! Since Mademoiselle Maeve requests no beans, zees morning we are having zee Hotel de Paris delicacy, zee peanut butter and crackers. And for your drinking pleasure, vee have zee boxed milk. Voilà!”

  “Dad,” Charlotte groaned. Sometimes her dad could be so embarrassing.

  “Boxed milk?” Avery puckered her lips. “Eeeeeeew.”

  “It is from a very good box, I assure you, Mademoiselle,” joked Mr. Ramsey, offering the milk for inspection. “A very good year.”

  “I’d give anything for some chocolate chaud from a real French bakery,” Charlotte said, thinking wistfully of her favorite little café on the Île Saint-Louis in the heart of Paris.

  “Hot chocolate . . . yum,” Maeve said dreamily. “I can taste it now. If my cell phone worked, I’d call Montoya’s and ask Nick to make a long distance delivery.”

  “If your cell phone worked, we wouldn’t have spent the night in a ghost town, Maeve,” Avery reminded her.

  “Look what I found!” an exuberant Lissie cried as she came into the parlor, holding up an ancient-looking frame.

  Charlotte squinted, but she couldn’t tell what was inside from across the room. She got up to look over Lissie’s shoulder. “Cool. An old picture.”

  “I love black-and-white photos. If I were a photographer, I’d only take pictures in black and white,” Lissie said.

  “Like Ansel Adams?” Mr. Ramsey asked.

  “I LOVE Ansel Adams!” Lissie exclaimed, her yellow, catlike eyes glowing as she brought the old photo over for the girls to look at.

  “That’s HIM!” Maeve gasped.

  “Who, Ansel Adams?” Avery asked.

  “No, the ghost,” Maeve said, pointing at the figure in the picture.

  “This guy is your ghost?” Lissie asked, peering intently at the photograph in her hand.

  “Well, he looked a little older last night. Okay, a LOT older. But the eyes are the same. I’ll never forget those piercing eyes! He seemed so real! And totally creepy.”

  Charlotte pulled out her notebook and quickly jotted down all the details she could remember about Maeve’s ghost. With her job as feature writer for the Abigail Adams Sentinel, Charlotte was used to paying attention to the details. It was the mark of a good investigative reporter, her teacher, Ms. Rodriguez, had told her.

  “Are we going to eat or what?” Avery asked, reaching for a cracker and smothering it with peanut butter.

  “How about putting some Swedish Fish on that peanut butter?” Maeve suggested.

  “Swedish Fish on peanut butter?” Avery rolled her eyes as if it was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “That’s just plain weird, Maeve.”

  “Hey, the fish tasted good with the chocolate last night, didn’t they?” Maeve reminded her.

  “Don’t say chocolate unless you can back it up with the real thing!” Charlotte warned. “I have a major craving. That Hershey bar tasted so great last night.”

  “Here, Charlotte. Try a few Swedish Fish with that peanut-butter-cracker sandwich,” Maeve said, passing a handful of the red fish toward Charlotte. “Trust me . . . I’ve got a feeling I’m on to something.”

  “You STILL have Swedish Fish left?” Charlotte asked. “How is that possible?”

  “My motto is, ‘Never leave home without a huge stash of fish from Irving’s Toy and Card Shop,’” Maeve declared triumphantly.

  Charlotte squished a couple of Swedish Fish into the bottom half of her peanut-butter-cracker sandwich, replaced the top cracker, and sank her teeth into the sweet treat. “Huh,” Charlotte said. “This does taste good. But I’m not sure if it’s actually good or if I’m just super hungry.”

  Maeve looked triumphant. “See? I was right. You know when people ask if you were stranded on a deserted island and you could only have one thing with you, what would it be? I bet you all would say you’d bring moi. Come on, admit it.”

  “Uh, Maeve?” Avery said. “You were freaking out about the mice. I don’t think you’d be much help in the wilderness . . . even WITH your Swedish Fish. Besides,” she added with a grin, “the bears would smell your perfume a mile away.”

  “Bears are beary, beary cute,” Maeve cooed in response, grinning also.

  “Look, girls!” Mr. Ramsey called from the window. “The wind calmed down—finally! And the clouds are thinning. I think the sun might actually shine today.”

  “Great! Can we go exploring?” Maeve asked. Even though she was tired, she was getting restless.

  “But I thought you wanted to sleep,” Charlotte pointed out.

  “Sleep!? My Swedish Fish sugar rush just kicked in and I’m ready for anything!” Maeve jumped up and stretched.

  “I don’t see why we can’t do a little exploring, but everyone will have to bundle up. It’s still chilly out there.”

  As soon as the girls finished their peanut butter breakfast, everyone piled on layers of warm clothing. Charlotte tied her dad’s scarf over Maeve’s hat so her ears and neck wouldn’t freeze, and Lissie loaned Maeve a pair of warm boots.

  “Hey, this wilderness mix ‘n’ match fashion look is starting to grow on me. It’s kind of boho-chic or something. Katani should write about my look in her fashion tips for the next Sentinel,” Maeve said, admiring her reflection in the window. “Oh . . . I miss Katani . . . and Isabel.” The girls nodded in agreement as they put on their coats, gloves, and scarves.

  “Everyone ready?” Mr. Ramsey asked when they were all suited up for the cold. He pushed the Hotel de Paris front door open, and a gust of wind immediately snatched at their hair and pushed them along the board-walk.

  Charlotte sucked in a breath of icy air. Even though it was cold, it made her feel fresh and alive. But it wasn’t just the cold air. Charlotte thought she could feel the rugged spirit of the miners who had lived there decades earlier as she followed the others down the street.

  “Cool! A saloon from the olden days,” Avery called, darting inside an old building.

  The others followed her, stopping just inside the door. The girls were quiet as they looked around at the empty barroom.

  “Look at
the wood,” Lissie said, running her hand along the bar. “It’s hand carved and beautiful.”

  “Looks like there used to be a mirror on that wall there,” Mr. Ramsey pointed.

  “It seems like the spirit of the Old West is still in this place . . . all around us,” Lissie observed.

  “Yeah, I can just imagine the cowboys swinging open those doors and stopping by here on their way back from the ranch,” Charlotte mused, looking around the empty room that was still somehow full of life.

  The girls shuffled out the door to continue exploring. Charlotte scanned the storefronts and buildings up and down Main Street. Everywhere there were reminders that this had once been a bustling, ordinary town full of ordinary places: a barbershop, a bakery, a dry goods store, and a blacksmith shop. At the end of the block was a tiny church with dark wood pews and beautiful stained glass windows.

  “Did you know that many ghost towns have been ruined by vandals?” Lissie said. “We’re lucky that Dry Gulch wasn’t one of them. Most of the damage here seems to be from the wear and tear of the weather. Who would ever destroy such a piece of history on purpose?”

  Charlotte had read up about Montana ghost towns before the trip, but Lissie had taken over the history lesson, offering up detail after detail about the town and life on the frontier. Charlotte found herself annoyed at Lissie’s comments and even more irritated that her father seemed to hang on Lissie’s every word. It was just frustrating to have one person dominate the whole conversation and think everything she said was so important.

  “Imagine what it would be like to go to basket socials and calico balls,” Lissie pondered.

  “What are those?” Maeve asked.

  “Socials and balls were the ways people used to meet boyfriends and girlfriends back in the day,” Lissie said. “If you ask me, it sounds like it’d be a lot of fun.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Charlotte muttered under her breath. She wished she wasn’t so bothered by Lissie, but she just couldn’t help how she felt. Lissie was just so frustratingly enthusiastic.

  “I remember reading that there used to be a long chute that ran from the mine into town. In the winter, the locals had fun flying down the chute with frying pans,” Lissie was saying.