Claire slowed to a fast walk, but still she stayed right with Kaz. She followed him into the fiction room, then back through the entryway and into a brightly colored room with low bookshelves. The sign on the door read: CHILDREN’S ROOM. Most of the solids in here were Kaz and Claire’s size. Or smaller. Kaz sailed right over their heads.
Oh no!
Another open window!
Kaz banked to the left and swam back the way they’d come. Claire spun on her heel and zoomed after him.
Kaz swam up to the ceiling. But swimming along the ceiling in this place was scary, too. There were round, bright things up there that felt dangerously hot when Kaz swam too close. Even worse, this room had a—Kaz didn’t know what it was—some sort of whirly thing in the middle of the ceiling. Like the Outside wind, it pullllled Kaz toward it and blew him around and around in circles really, really fast.
“HELP!” Kaz screamed, his arms and legs flailing. But who would help him? His family wasn’t here.
As he spun around and around and around, he saw Claire touch a button on the wall.
The whirly thing in the middle of the ceiling slowed down. It slowed enough that Kaz could break away.
Whoa. Now Kaz felt skizzy. Really skizzy.
Before he knew what was happening, his stomach heaved and his insides spewed all over Claire.
“Ew!” she cried, leaping out of the way. “I didn’t know ghosts could throw up.”
Two small solid girls looked at Claire like she was crazy. They couldn’t see Kaz, so they probably couldn’t see the spew on Claire’s arm, either.
Claire wiped the spew away with the bottom of her shirt as the two girls hurried away.
Kaz’s stomach felt better now. He kicked his legs and swam to the next room.
“Hey, stop!” Claire called, running after him. “Come back! I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.”
Kaz didn’t believe her. She was a solid. His family always said: Never trust a solid.
He swam from room to room to room . . . through the entryway . . . and back through all the rooms. Again and again and again.
Claire never lagged far behind.
Kaz’s arms and legs were starting to ache. He didn’t know how much longer he could swim.
Just then, another ghost—a ghost man—swam out from between two bookshelves. He was about Pops’s age, and he wore a fancy black jacket and matching top hat.
“This is getting painful to watch,” the ghost man said as he swam alongside Kaz. “Do you want to get away from that pesky solid?”
Kaz could only nod. He was too tired to speak.
“Then follow me!” The ghost man darted out ahead.
With a burst of energy, Kaz swam after him.
Claire followed close behind.
They zipped through the children’s room . . . through the entryway . . . and into a small room at the back of the entryway. The craft room. There was a table and chairs in the middle of the room, and a bunch of colorful paper objects dangled from the ceiling. They looked like birds.
The ghost man sailed under those paper birds, straight toward a wall of books at the back of the room.
Kaz moaned. He knew what that ghost man was about to do.
“NOOOOOOOOO!” Kaz and Claire screamed together as the ghost man passed through the wall.
Kaz screeched to a halt before his foot touched a single book. Claire hit the wall of books with a hard thump.
The door blew closed behind them, and Kaz was trapped in this little room. Trapped with a solid girl who could see him.
There was only one thing for Kaz to do.
SHRINK!
Kaz took a deep breath and shrank down . . . down . . . down. Then he swam up to the paper birds and tried to hide among them.
The ghost man’s head popped back through the wall of books. He looked around. “Where are you, boy?” he asked.
Kaz pressed his lips together. He knew the ghost man wanted to help him, but he couldn’t risk that girl spotting him. So he remained quiet.
Claire moved slowly around the table, her eyes scanning every inch of the room. “Aha!” she cried, pointing at Kaz. “There you are!”
But solids can’t swim in the air like ghosts can. Kaz was safe. For the moment.
The ghost man’s hand appeared through the wall. “Over here, boy.” He waved Kaz toward him. “She can’t follow you back here.”
Kaz stayed where he was.
“What’s back there, anyway?” Claire asked the ghost man. “Some sort of secret room?” She craned her neck as though she could see into it through the rows of books.
The ghost man ignored her. “Hurry up,” he said to Kaz. “Unless you’d rather stay with this solid girl.”
No. Kaz certainly didn’t want to stay with Claire. But he didn’t want to pass through that wall of books, either. Passing through a wall of books would be even worse than staying in a room with a solid girl who could see him. She’d get tired of chasing him eventually. Wouldn’t she?
“Suit yourself,” the ghost man said. His head and hand disappeared.
Kaz ducked behind another paper bird. Claire’s eyes followed as he drifted from one bird to the next.
Claire opened her bag and slowly pulled out one of those books along with a tall, skinny object. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said again as she pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.
Kaz wasn’t taking any chances. Keeping one eye on Claire, he moved slowly among the paper birds.
It was interesting how she held the tall, skinny object between her thumb and first finger and moved it across the page of her book. Kaz knew there was a word for what she was doing. That word was writing. Claire was writing in her book.
Kaz’s mom and grandpop could pick up a solid piece of chalk and write or draw with it on a chalkboard. But it took a lot of energy and a lot of skill to do that. More skill than Kaz or either of his brothers had.
“What’s your name?” Claire asked after a little while.
At first Kaz didn’t answer. But was there really any harm in letting her know his name?
“Kaz,” he finally said.
“Kaz what?”
“Just Kaz.”
“I’m Claire. Claire Kendall.” She held out her hand for Kaz to shake.
Kaz did not swim down to take it.
“Did you just get here today?” Claire asked as she moved her writing thing across the book again.
She made it sound like he’d come here on purpose. “The wind brought me here,” Kaz said.
“Today?”
“Yes.” Kaz nodded.
“From where?”
“The old schoolhouse.”
“What old schoolhouse?”
“I don’t know,” Kaz said. Was there more than one old schoolhouse in the Outside?
Kaz cleared his throat. “Can I ask a question now?”
Claire stopped writing. “I guess,” she said, looking at him expectantly.
“How come you can see me when I’m not glowing?”
“What’s glowing?”
“It’s what ghosts do when we want solids like you to see us. But I can’t do it, so you shouldn’t be able to see me.”
“Solids like me?” Claire raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you call people who aren’t ghosts?”
“Yes.”
Claire wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think I like that word. You should call us ‘people.’”
“But ghosts are people, too,” Kaz said. “We’re just not . . . solid people. Like you.”
Claire started writing again.
After a couple of minutes, Kaz said, “You didn’t answer my question. How come you can see me when I’m not glowing?”
Claire closed her book and laid her writing thing on
top of it. “I don’t know,” she said. “It started a year ago. We lived in Seattle then. I just woke up one morning and I could see ghosts. I don’t know why. It was kind of scary at first. There was one in our house. There was another one at my school. I tried to tell people, but no one believed me. In fact, the kids at school made fun of me. They called me Ghost Girl.”
Kaz didn’t understand. Why would anyone call Claire a ghost girl? She wasn’t a ghost.
“Then my dad lost his police job,” Claire went on. “So we moved to Iowa. Moving here was supposed to be a ‘fresh start.’” She snorted. “Some fresh start. My parents started their own detective agency, which they won’t let me help with. In fact, they made me promise I won’t tell anyone I see ghosts. They want me to ‘act normal’ here so people don’t think I’m weird. But guess what? There are ghosts in Iowa just like in Seattle! So how am I supposed to act normal?” She threw her hands up in the air.
Kaz shrugged. He didn’t know what was normal for solids.
“Do you think it’s weird that I see ghosts?” Claire asked.
“Well . . . ,” Kaz said. He did think it was kind of weird, but he didn’t think it would be polite to say so.
“That other ghost who lives here says it’s weird. His name is Beckett. I don’t think he likes me very much.”
“That’s because you’re a solid and he’s a ghost,” Kaz said.
“So?” Claire narrowed her eyes at Kaz. “Don’t you think ghosts and”—she paused—“people who aren’t ghosts can be friends?”
“Well . . . ,” Kaz said again. Could they be friends? His family would say no.
Claire opened her book again. “Okay, I told you my whole life story, but you haven’t told me much of anything about you. Will you tell me your life story?”
“Are you going to write it in that book?” Kaz asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because this is my ghost book,” Claire said. “It’s where I keep track of all the ghosts I meet. Do you want to see it?”
Kaz still didn’t want to get too close to Claire, but he was curious about her book. He expanded back to his normal size, then slowly drifted down . . . down . . . down, hovering a few feet behind her.
Claire flipped back to the beginning of the book. “This is Warren,” she said. “He was my first ghost.”
“You draw pictures of us in your book, too?” Kaz asked.
“Yes.”
Her drawings were good. Better than the ones Kaz’s mom and grandpop made on the chalkboard back at their haunt.
Claire turned the page. “This is Anne. She’s the ghost who lived at my school in Seattle . . . and I don’t know who this next one is.” Claire turned another page. “She didn’t tell me her name. I met her at a gas station in South Dakota.”
Kaz didn’t know what a gas station or South Dakota was.
The next page showed a drawing of Beckett, the ghost who had just disappeared through the wall. And the page after that caused Kaz to draw in his breath. The ghost in that picture looked exactly like his brother Finn!
Kaz couldn’t speak. All he could do was point.
“I don’t know that ghost’s name, either,” Claire said. “He wouldn’t talk to me at all.”
“Th-that’s my brother!” Kaz said. “Finn.”
Claire hadn’t written very much about Finn in her book—just the fact that she first saw him on June 4 in the fiction room. That wasn’t long after Finn had blown away from their haunt. Claire also saw Finn on June 6 and 9.
That was all she wrote.
Kaz told Claire all about Finn: how he passed through to the Outside and blew away.
“Do you know where Finn is now?” Kaz asked.
Before Claire could answer, the room went dark and Kaz heard a ghostly WOOOOOOOOOO! coming from somewhere outside the craft room.
Claire clutched her book to her chest, grabbed her bag, and hurried to open the door. The whole library was dark.
Kaz swam into the entryway. He moved much faster in the dark than Claire did. He was used to darkness. His old haunt was always dark.
Those hot things in the ceiling lit up, and the library became bright again. A small crowd had gathered in the entryway.
“I saw it!” cried a solid boy in a striped shirt. “I saw the library ghost.”
Squinting in the bright light, Kaz looked around. Solids could only see ghosts when they were glowing. But ghosts could see other ghosts all the time.
Kaz didn’t see any other ghosts.
“I saw it, too!” said a solid girl in pigtails.
“So did I,” said another solid boy, wearing glasses. “It was right there.”
“Right where?” Claire asked as she opened her book.
“There.” The boy with the glasses pointed at the air above the sprawling floor plant, next to the spiral staircase.
“Henry,” said a lady who was probably the boy’s mother. “You know there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
No such thing as ghosts! That was like saying there was no such thing as solids.
“Maybe you saw a shadow behind the plant,” the mother went on.
“It wasn’t a shadow.” Henry stuck out his bottom lip. “It was a ghost. It was floating above the plant, up by the ceiling. You could see right through him.”
“We all heard him moan,” the girl in pigtails said. “Shadows don’t moan.”
“And they don’t turn off the lights,” said the boy in the striped shirt.
Kaz drifted among the solids. The ghost man, Beckett, had passed through the bookcase and hadn’t returned. So who had these solid kids seen?
Finn, he thought. Who else?
But where did Finn go?
“This isn’t the first time that someone has seen a ghost in this library,” Grandma Karen said in a mysterious voice.
“That’s right,” said a very old solid as she hobbled over with her cane. It was the same lady who had gotten mad at Claire for running in the library earlier.
“I used to own this house,” the older solid said in a croaky voice. “Back before it was a library. I had a small apartment here on the first floor, and I rented out the rest of the house. We saw ghosts here all the time back then. It was hard to keep renters. When Mrs. Lindstrom said she wanted to buy the place, turn the first floor into a library, and live on the second floor, I was happy to sell it to her.”
“Well, I don’t believe there are any ghosts here,” said Henry’s mother. “Kids, let’s check out our books. It’s time to go home.”
The old woman and all the other solids, except for Claire, walked away.
“That Beckett!” Claire shook her head as she wrote some more in her book.
“What about him?” Kaz asked.
“I don’t know why he keeps coming out and—what was that word you used before? Glow? I don’t know why he keeps glowing around all those little kids. He must like to scare them.”
Kaz drifted in a circle around Claire. “I don’t think Beckett is the ghost they saw. I think they saw my brother Finn.”
Claire looked confused.
“The guy in your book,” Kaz said, pointing. “We were just talking about him.”
“Oh, him,” Claire said. “I haven’t seen him in more than a month. I don’t think he’s even here anymore.”
“Well, we know those solids—”
“Don’t say ‘solids,’” Claire interrupted.
“Okay, those kids,” Kaz corrected. “We know they didn’t see me, and they couldn’t have seen Beckett. He went back behind that bookcase. So there’s got to be another ghost here. I think that ghost is my brother Finn.”
Claire shook her head. “If there was another ghost here, I would know it. Beckett’s been doing this forever. Like I said, I think he likes to scare little
kids.”
“But wouldn’t we have seen him come back through the bookcase?” asked Kaz.
“Not if he went through a different wall.”
That didn’t seem possible to Kaz. If Beckett had passed through a different wall, he would’ve been in the Outside. No ghost ever went into the Outside on purpose.
“Well, I’m going to look around and see if Finn is here,” Kaz said. He swam toward the children’s room.
Claire closed her book and put it back inside her bag. “I don’t think he is,” she said, hoisting the bag onto her shoulder. “But I’ll help you look. Just in case.”
“Finn?” Kaz called as he swam up one aisle of bookshelves and down another. Claire looked high, low, and all around the room.
“Finn? Are you here?”
Kaz and Claire searched the children’s room, the fiction room, and the nonfiction room.
No Finn.
“We can try upstairs if you want,” Claire said. “That’s where I live.”
Claire led Kaz up the spiral staircase.
“This is our living room,” Claire said, rounding a corner. “And that’s our kitchen over there.” She pointed.
Both of those rooms had strange things in them, things Kaz had never seen before. But he didn’t take time to ask Claire about those things now. He was more interested in finding his brother.
Claire led Kaz down a narrow hallway. “This is my parents’ office,” she said, flinging open a door. “And that’s my bedroom over there . . . and my grandma’s bedroom . . . and the bathroom . . . and my parents’ bedroom.”
Living room. Kitchen. Office. Bedroom. Fiction room. Nonfiction room. Children’s room. Craft room. This library had completely different rooms than the old schoolhouse had. And there was so much stuff here. What do these solids do with all this stuff? Kaz wondered as he paddled after Claire.
Finally, they reached the room at the end of the hall. “This is the turret room,” Claire said. “It’s my favorite room in the whole library.” She walked to the center of the room and turned in a circle.
The Haunted Library Page 2