Kaz felt the box shift again in Claire’s hands. “Uh . . . I don’t want to talk about it until I know whether it works,” she said.
“Okay,” Claire’s mom said. “Be back in an hour. It’s almost time for bed.”
“I know,” Claire promised.
Kaz heard the front door close. He and Little John breathed sighs of relief.
“See, Kaz?” Little John said when they started moving again. “Nothing to worry about.”
“For now,” Kaz muttered.
Kaz did NOT like traveling inside a cardboard box. He couldn’t see anything, so he had no idea where he was.
“Are we almost there?” Kaz called to Claire.
“Almost,” she replied. “I see the purple house up ahead.”
“I can’t wait to see my friends!” Little John said, rubbing his hands together. As he did, his hands started to glow.
Little John made glowing look so easy. It annoyed Kaz that Little John could glow without even thinking about it.
Kaz tried rubbing his own hands together, but nothing happened.
Kaz needed to work on his glowing skills. He knew Claire’s grandma could see and hear ghosts when she was Claire’s age, but she couldn’t see or hear them anymore. Not unless they were glowing or wailing. What if the same thing happened to Claire? If Kaz couldn’t glow or wail, and Claire couldn’t see or hear him, how could they be friends?
“We’re here, you guys,” Claire said.
Kaz felt the box hit the ground with a jolt.
“I found a good spot to hide,” Claire said. “The box is right up against the house.”
“Let’s go, Kaz,” Little John said as he held tight to the ghost doll and started to pass through the side of the box.
“Wait!” Kaz yanked Little John back by his shirt. “How do you know it’s safe to pass through that side? If that’s not the side that’s up against the house, you’ll end up in the Outside!”
“Oh.” Little John gulped.
The ghosts felt a tap! tap! tap! on one side of the box. It was NOT the same side that Little John had started to pass through. “This is the side you want to go through,” Claire said.
Sometimes it’s good to worry, Kaz thought. At least a little bit.
Little John stepped into the side of the box a little more carefully this time. Once Little John was all the way inside the house, Kaz took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and plunged into the side of the box himself.
Something felt strange. The side of the box was all soft and squishy. It felt really different from when he passed through Claire’s water bottle. Or the wall of books in the library craft room.
There was also a small gap between the box and the wall of the house. Before Kaz realized what was happening, he felt his head and one arm push through the wall of the house. His middle was in the Outside, between the box and the house. His legs were still inside the box.
And he was stuck!
Kaz tried kicking harder, but nothing happened. He tried swimming backward. Still nothing. He opened his eyes and saw his little brother wafting around a fancy living room with the ghost doll. Little John had already expanded to full size.
“Little John!” Kaz called. “Help!”
Little John turned. “Kick harder,” he said.
“I am kicking harder!” Kaz cried. “It’s not working.”
“Try expanding!” Little John said.
Kaz expanded, but that just made his legs too big for the box. It didn’t help him pass the rest of the way through.
Little John let go of the ghost doll and swam toward Kaz. He grabbed on to Kaz’s arm with both of his hands and pullllled. Kaz kicked harder and Little John pullllled harder. Finally, Kaz popped all the way through the box and the wall and landed in the house with Little John.
“Ugh,” Kaz said, holding his stomach. “I feel skizzy.”
“Well, don’t spew,” Little John said as he reached for the doll.
“I’ll try not to,” Kaz said.
Little John swam toward the ceiling. “Come on,” he said. “Everyone usually hangs around upstairs in this haunt.”
Kaz had never passed through a ceiling before. He looked around and saw a staircase across the room. “I think I’ll take the stairs,” he said. He didn’t feel like passing through any other new objects for a while.
“Okay. I’ll see you up there.” Little John shot through the ceiling headfirst.
Kaz drifted slowly above the stairs. He wondered if any solids lived in this haunt. He hadn’t seen or heard any.
As he floated up and over the top of the banister, he saw and heard other ghosts. “Little John! Little John! It’s so good to see you again,” they all exclaimed as they crowded around Little John. Kaz couldn’t tell how many of them there were. They all hugged and kissed Little John like he was their long-lost relative.
Kaz felt shy. He hung back by the stairs until Little John called him over. “Kaz, come meet everyone. This is Art, Stretch, and Kiley, and their parents, Chester and Peg. Everyone, this is my brother Kaz!”
“Kaz!” Little John’s ghost friends swam over and pumped Kaz’s arms. “We’re so happy to meet you! Any brother of Little John’s is a brother of ours!”
“Thanks,” Kaz said, backing away just a bit. Little John’s friends sure were friendly.
“Have you reunited with anyone else in your family, dear?” Peg asked Little John once all the hugging and kissing was over. “Maybe your mother?”
“No.” Little John shook his head.
Little John had told Kaz that their mom must have visited this haunt before Little John had arrived. She even left behind a bead from her necklace, so anyone from their family would know she’d been here. Kaz had also found one of her beads in Claire’s school, back when he and Claire had solved the case of the ghost backstage. But neither ghost had any idea where their mom was now.
“What’s that under your arm, Little John?” Kiley asked.
“Oh!” Little John showed Kiley the ghost doll. “I found it at the library where Kaz and I live now. Is this your missing doll?”
Kiley shook her head. “No.”
“Are you sure?” Little John said. “It’s got red hair.” He ran his fingers through the yarn hair.
“Yes, but Red’s hair isn’t red like that,” Kiley said. “And Red isn’t a floppy doll.”
“Oh.” Little John looked disappointed. “Well, do you want it anyway? It’s kind of a weird doll. Watch! It doesn’t shrink.” Little John shrank down . . . down . . . down . . . The ghost doll remained full-size.
“Hmm,” Chester said. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“No. What?” Little John asked.
“That doll used to be solid,” Chester said.
You still have the doll,” Claire said when she opened the box, and Kaz, Little John, and the doll floated out into the library. “Didn’t your friend want it back?”
“It wasn’t hers,” Little John said.
“But guess what?” Kaz floated beside Claire. “Little John’s ghost friends know about transformation!”
Beckett looked up from the book he was reading. “Transformation?”
“That’s what it’s called when a ghost takes a solid object and turns it into a ghostly object,” Kaz said.
“It isn’t something any ghost can do,” Little John explained. “Chester said, ‘A ghost is either born with the ability to transform an object or he’s not.’”
“Who’s Chester?” Beckett asked with a scowl.
“He’s Kiley’s dad,” Little John said.
“Chester also said that you can tell if a ghostly object was ever solid because it won’t shrink,” Kaz said. “Let’s see if it’s true.” He wafted over to the ghostly lamp that floated above the table, grabbed hold of it, the
n shrank down . . . down . . . down . . .
The lamp did not shrink with him.
“Wow!” Claire said. She took her detective’s book out of her bag and opened it to Kaz’s page. Then she wrote: He can transform objects.
“I’m not sure it counts if he can’t do it on purpose,” Beckett grumbled as he read over her shoulder.
Claire wrinkled her nose at him. “You’re just jealous that Kaz can do something you can’t.”
“Hmph,” Beckett grunted.
“Chester says it’s a very rare skill,” Kaz told Beckett. “Very few ghosts have it. Chester only knew about it because his sister Molly had it.”
Kaz could hardly believe he had it. He just had to figure out how it worked.
Other ghosts, most ghosts, simply didn’t have the skill to begin with.
“So, once a solid object is transformed into a ghostly object, can it be transformed back to solid form?” Claire asked as she turned a page in her notebook.
Kaz and Little John looked at each other.
“I don’t know,” Kaz replied. It wasn’t a question either of them had thought to ask the other ghost family.
“Chester might not know, either,” Little John said. “His sister, Molly, blew away a long time ago. When they were kids. I don’t think he knows a lot about transformation.”
“I wonder if I’ll ever meet a ghost who can teach me about it,” Kaz moaned.
“I think you will,” Little John said. “We know there’s another ghost around who has that skill, too. Unless this doll just floated in by itself one day.” He raised the ghostly doll above his head.
“I don’t think that doll floated in by itself,” Claire said. “Otherwise, how did it end up in the secret room? The ghost who transformed it must have put it there. But who transformed it?”
“And why did they transform it?” Kaz asked. “Did they do it on purpose or was it an accident? Like when I transformed the lamp?”
“Maybe it’s not such a rare skill after all,” Little John said.
“Are you sure you’ve never met another ghost who could transform solid objects?” Claire asked Beckett.
“If I did, they didn’t tell me about it,” Beckett said.
“And you don’t remember when that doll got here?” Kaz asked. “Was it here when you moved in?”
“I’ve been here for twenty years, Kaz,” Beckett said. “Do you really expect me to remember what was here then and what wasn’t?”
“I would remember,” Claire said. “Because I would write it down.” She raised her notebook.
“Hmph,” Beckett replied.
“Maybe we should take a closer look at some of the other objects in the secret room,” Kaz suggested. “We could try shrinking them and see if any more of them were ever solid.”
Claire nodded. “That’s a good idea, Kaz. In fact, you could start with that jack-in-the-box over there.” She pointed at the ghostly box that floated in the corner of the room, right where Little John had left it.
“Let me try! Let me try!” Little John swam over, picked up the jack-in-the-box, and shrank down . . . down . . . down . . .
The box did not shrink with him.
Little John expanded back to his usual size. “This was solid, too!” he cried, glowing with excitement. The glow in his body spread through the jack-in-the-box.
“Careful, Little John,” Kaz hissed. “You can’t just glow in the middle of the room like that. Someone might see you.” Someone solid, Kaz meant.
“Sorry,” Little John said as his glow went out.
“Why don’t you guys go back to the secret room and see what else used to be solid?” Claire said.
“Okay!” Little John said. He and Beckett swam toward the back wall.
Kaz hung back. “I wish you could come with us,” he said to Claire.
“Me too,” she said, forcing a smile. “But I can’t. I’m counting on you to tell me everything that happens back there!”
“I will,” Kaz promised. Then he passed through the wall.
Kaz and Little John tried shrinking every single object in the secret room. They sorted the objects into things that shrank and things that didn’t. Or things that used to be solid and things that had always been ghostly.
“These keys were solid,” Kaz said as he shrank down . . . down . . . down . . . until he was even smaller than the set of keys.
“So were these keys,” Little John said. He turned a somersault through the ring that held all the keys together.
Even Beckett helped. “These socks were all solid,” he said, tossing a handful of socks into a pile with the keys. “But these were not.” He tossed another handful of socks onto the other pile.
“Thanks for helping us, Beckett,” Kaz said.
“Hmph,” Beckett grunted. “It’ll take you two all night to do this if I don’t help.”
He was probably right. There were a lot of ghostly objects in the secret room. And it took a lot of ghostly energy to shrink and expand so many times.
A couple of hours later, the ghosts had sorted all the objects. The pile of “used-to-be-solid” objects was way bigger than the pile of “always ghostly” objects.
“Why would a ghost transform all these objects and bring them back here?” Kaz wondered aloud as he hovered above the “used-to-be-solid” objects. “What was that ghost doing with all this stuff?”
“Who knows?” Little John said as he grabbed the redheaded ghost doll.
And what about the things in the room that were still solid? Kaz wondered. The shelf . . . the crates . . . the papers and glass bottles . . . the TOP SECRET envelope. Had those things always been solid? If so, how did they get in there?
Kaz wafted over to the envelope and tried again to turn it ghostly. Just to see if it worked this time.
It didn’t.
Kaz sighed. There was still so much to learn about the secret room.
A few days later, Claire came home from school and announced, “My class is going on a field trip to the historical society tomorrow. Who wants to come?”
“What’s a historical society?” Kaz asked.
“It’s a museum,” Claire said. “We’re going there to learn about the history of our town. Grandma says they’ll probably talk about the library because it’s one of the oldest buildings in town.”
“Sure, I’ll come,” Kaz said. If they talked about the library, maybe they’d talk about the secret room.
“I think I’ll stay and keep your dog company,” Beckett said, giving Cosmo’s ears a scratch. “I don’t care to venture too far from home.”
“And Windy and I will keep Beckett company,” Little John said as he hugged the redheaded ghost doll.
“Who’s Windy?” Claire asked.
“My doll,” Little John said. “I named her Windy.”
“That’s not really your doll, Little John,” Kaz said.
“Is too! Finders keepers,” Little John said, hugging the doll even tighter.
A lady named Mrs. Roman showed Claire and her classmates around the museum. Kaz hovered above.
“This is what downtown Kirksville, Iowa, looked like in 1910,” Mrs. Roman said as she pointed at an old black-and-white photograph.
Kaz had been downtown with Claire many times. It looked different in this photograph. There were no cars on the street, just two horses pulling a wagon.
Mrs. Roman moved down the wall and pointed out some more photographs. “Here’s the old courthouse. And here’s an early picture of a house most of you should recognize.”
“That’s the library!” one of the solid boys shouted out.
Claire stepped forward to get a closer look. Kaz looked over her shoulder.
A sign below the picture said “Walters Mansion. Built 1918.”
“She lives there.” A solid
girl pointed at Claire.
Mrs. Roman smiled. “You must be Karen Lindstrom’s granddaughter.”
Claire nodded.
“Well, you’re a very lucky girl,” Mrs. Roman said. “You live in one of the most famous houses in Kirksville! People used to come from all over to see it.”
“Why is it so famous?” the boy next to Claire asked.
“Because it’s big,” said a girl in the back.
“And old,” said another girl.
“When it was first built, no one around here had ever seen such a mansion before,” Mrs. Roman explained. “It still looks pretty impressive today, wouldn’t you agree?”
The kids all nodded.
“A man named Martin Walters built it as a gift to his wife,” Mrs. Roman said.
“That’s some gift,” the boy next to Claire said. “Here, have a house!”
Several kids snickered.
“It was indeed ‘some gift,’” Mrs. Roman said. “Especially when you consider the Walters didn’t have children to fill all those rooms. But one thing Martin Walters did have was money.”
“Where’d he get so much money?” asked the girl in the back.
“I’ll show you,” Mrs. Roman said. She led the students to another display inside the museum. The sign on the wall read “Walters Bottling Company.”
There were even more black-and-white photographs on this wall. And lots of old bottles stacked in crates on the floor.
“Hey, there were bottles like that in the secret room,” Kaz told Claire.
“Martin Walters established Walters Bottling Company back in 1900,” Mrs. Roman explained. “And he created a whole new kind of soda pop he called Walters Brew. That’s how he made his fortune.”
“What did it taste like?” asked a boy in a blue jacket.
“We think it may have been similar to root beer,” Mrs. Roman said. “But no one today really knows for sure.”
“Why not?” asked a girl in the back.
The Secret Room Page 2