“We think she’s here because of the Stone,” I said. “She showed up every time one of us used it, except the time I was in my bedroom, but I think it was almost out of juice. And now apparently she’s sticking around.”
Frank Goolz nodded. He took his notebook back and tapped his drawing with the tip of his pencil. “That’s what the Stone of the Dead is meant to do. It brings the dearly departed back into this world. It also kills anyone who uses it too often. A dead person comes in, a living one goes out. A nice, balanced process, really.” He laughed, spitting cookie crumbs on the table.
I forced down the bite of cookie. Not only did it taste like a nightmare, but it turned into superglue once chewed.
“Why did it make me walk?” I asked.
“Well …” He put his hand on the arm of my chair and leaned forward, fixing me with his intense gaze. “I have no idea. It’s not supposed to do anything like that. But I’ll think about it.” He leaned back. “Maybe the Stone is even more magical than I thought. No wonder it cost a fortune.”
“You should ask for a refund,” Ilona said dryly.
“I can’t ask for a refund,” he responded. “The guy who sold it to me lost his mind and died. You kids have to stop playing with it if you don’t want to lose your heads.” He slapped me on the back of the head. “Literally. Right?”
I massaged my head where he’d slapped me. He’d hurt me a little, even though he probably hadn’t meant to.
“You don’t like them? The cookies?” Ilona asked.
I was breaking the rest of mine into tiny pieces on the table, wishing I could make it disappear.
“They’re fine,” I lied, taking the tiniest piece and putting it on my tongue like a pill. It tasted of rancid butter and cough medicine.
“I put arak in the dough. It’s a traditional Turkish liquor,” she explained. “That’s why they’re so delicious.”
Everything about the Goolz had to be different, even their cookies.
I swallowed the itty-bitty piece of cookie and rinsed it down with bad cocoa. “This dead woman, why is she here?” I asked. “What did she do to Alex? And Peter?”
Frank Goolz took a few sips of his coffee, thinking it over. “I don’t know. Depends on who she is and what happened to her when she was alive. Dead people are often in terrible moods when they are revived. And if they’re holding a grudge, they can be a real pain. Did it look like she wanted to eat your friend?”
I remembered Peter screaming and imagined the attic lady snacking on his face. My stomach turned. “He’s not really our friend,” I said.
“She’s really eating people?” Ilona asked. She bit off a large chunk of her cookie and chewed eagerly. “That is so disgusting!”
She meant eating Peter was disgusting. She adored the cookie.
“I didn’t say that.” Frank Goolz drained the rest of his coffee. “My point is that we don’t know what she wants or why she wants it. But I suggest we find out.” He stood up. “Let’s go.”
This time my stomach dropped. “Go where?”
“You’re going to show me the place where you saw her attacking that boy. I’ll bring some equipment.”
“What about Suzie?” Ilona asked.
“What about her?”
She nodded toward the stairs. “She’s still cooking with fever up there. We can’t leave her alone.”
“And we won’t,” Frank Goolz told her. “You’re staying here to look after Suzie. I’m going with your friend.”
“What? No!” She dropped the remains of her cookie and jumped out of her chair. “No way!”
“What? Yes way!” he said, smiling.
Funny that no one asked if I wanted to go. A miniscule part of me was thrilled about ghost hunting with Frank Goolz, but most of me was terrified at the idea of going back out there where the zombie ghost was waiting for us in the dark.
“But why are you taking him?” Ilona asked. “Why not me?”
“Because he used the Stone and you didn’t.” He sounded almost displeased that she wasn’t addicted to it like the rest of us.
“What difference does that make?” She gave me a hard look, which stung worse than my fear.
“The users of the Stone are a very exclusive club, darling,” he said. “We attract its manifestations like magnets. Your friend was the first person to see that lady in our attic, even before he joined that club. Now she appears wherever he is.” He leaned over and tapped my chest with his finger. “I think she’s attached herself to you, Henry.”
“Harold!” Ilona said.
I instinctively brushed the spot where he had tapped me, as if I could detach her.
Frank Goolz went into the hall and came back with a pair of elegant black leather boots. “Come on, then, Harold-not-Henry! We’re going to find out what happened to that boy.”
“What if she attacks us?” I asked.
“We should be fine. Well, more or less.” He slid his bare feet into his boots and pulled up the zippers. “Tell him, Ilona. It won’t be the first time we’ve fought something from beyond.”
I looked at Ilona.
“You’ll be fine,” she barked, sounding extremely annoyed. “He promised your mom that nothing bad will happen to you. He’ll keep that promise. He should be more scared of her than any flesh-eating demon.” She bared her teeth and lunged at me, impersonating a demon out for flesh. I knew she was just sour that I was going on this ghost hunt, while she was going to miss all the action.
“It’s his idea,” I pleaded.
“By the way, Ilo,” Frank Goolz called from the hall. “We might need to take the Stone with us. Could you fetch it for me?”
I tensed and immediately forgot about her anger, my soul lifting at the delicious thought of reuniting with the Stone.
“Nice try, Dad,” she said. “But I’m not giving it back.” She shot another dark look at me, and shook her head in disappointment at my expression. I must have looked like a puppy that got its bone confiscated.
Frank Goolz came back into the kitchen, wearing a long black coat like Ilona’s and carrying an old leather satchel.
“What if I tell you, as your father, to give me the Stone right this minute?”
“What if I tell you, as your daughter, that I won’t ever give it back to you, as we agreed?”
He stared at her sternly. She stared back, even sterner. I looked at both of them, hoping he would win.
But he gave up first. “You’re so much like your mother.” He slapped me on the shoulder, hurting me again. “You know what that means, old boy? We’re not going bonkers in the woods and dying tonight!” And he laughed.
15
GHOST HUNTERS
We left their house through the back door to avoid Mum seeing us. She would have definitely lost it if she saw him taking me out for another nighttime stroll.
As we approached the church, Frank Goolz was walking a good ten feet ahead of me, pointing his flashlight in every direction, talking excitedly and grinning as I struggled to keep up on the steep road.
He turned around when he realized I was losing ground. “Come on, Harold. Hurry up. She’s not going to wait for us all night.”
I was happy he finally got my name right.
“Aren’t you scared, even a little?” I asked, stopping to catch my breath. “Peter, the last guy she took, he’s a big fellow, and he was screaming like she was squashing him like a bug.”
“Did you see him being squashed like a bug?”
“No. He was behind a bunch of bushes.”
“How do you know he was squashed, then?”
“I don’t, but I heard how he screamed. And I saw how she grabbed him with her rotten skeleton hands.”
He nodded then continued up the road. “All the more reason to hurry up!” he said over his shoulder. “He could be still alive. He might need us to stop her from tearing him apart.”
“Do we really want to be a part of that?”
Frank Goolz stopped and pointed his fla
shlight at my face as I caught up to him.
“Are you scared of her, Harold?”
“Only a little,” I lied.
“You shouldn’t be. There is nothing to fear.”
“Two really tough boys have met her. One disappeared. The other screamed his head off. I would say there’s a case to be made for fear.”
“You know what I tell my daughters when they’re scared?” He held the flashlight under his chin, which made him look spooky.
“To return to their coffins and close them tight?”
He smiled. “Close. I remind them that the world we live in is like a story. Like a fairy tale. And that it’s fun that there are scary creatures in it, like monsters and demons and whatnots that live in the dark. If there weren’t, we would be living in a dull story. Would you want to live in a dull story?”
“I’ve always lived in a dull story. So far.”
“Well, that’s over. Now, you live in an exciting story. And tomorrow at dawn, you will be thrilled to tell everyone how you survived an attack by a vicious demon. Story of my life.” He laughed, but stopped suddenly, lifting his head like a dog smelling a rabbit. He pointed his flashlight toward the hilltop. “Did you see that?”
I followed the light as he moved it from one side of the road to the other. “What?”
“There!” he said, and my heart stopped. A shadow that could have been our monster flew across the beam of light and disappeared into the dark.
“Oh, crap!”
“Indeed.” He stepped behind my chair and grabbed the handles. But instead of getting us away from the apparition, he pushed me at high speed up the hill toward it.
“This is so wrong,” I said.
He dropped the flashlight on my lap but didn’t stop. “Find her with the flashlight! Don’t lose her!”
I caught the flashlight right before it rolled to the ground. “Find her!” he shouted again.
“Oh, God,” I said. “Oh, God.” I pointed the light forward, hoping she wouldn’t jump out of the dark and land on top of us.
He slowed to a stop at the top of the hill. We had reached the cemetery and I was shining the light at the old tombstones. I realized that it was no longer the bumps in the road that made my hand so unsteady. I was shaking like crazy.
“You see her?” he asked.
I tried to speak, but my throat had dried up.
I looked up at him. He was breathing heavily from the run, but he was also smiling. He winked when he caught me staring. “Can’t you feel it, Harold?” he asked, his voice a breathy whisper.
“What?” I finally managed to say.
“Her presence. Watching us. Can’t you feel it creeping up your spine?”
And suddenly I did feel it. “When you see a ghost, aren’t you supposed to run the other way?”
“Bah! Absolutely not. You go after it.”
And so we kept going, deeper into the cemetery. “Now. Show me where she attacked that boy. She might be spectrally attached to the area.”
I aimed the flashlight toward the bushes where she had grabbed Peter.
“So spooky! It’s perfect,” he said, steering us toward the dreaded spot.
“Don’t we need garlic or a crucifix or something?” I suggested as he pushed me into the dome.
“A crucifix!” Frank Goolz hooted. I had to part the branches with both hands as we moved deeper into the dark. “Oh, come on! You don’t fight a demon with symbols and superstitions.” He let go of my chair and searched his satchel.
I moved the flashlight around. The network of branches and dark leaves formed a perfect prison. I pointed the light at the ground right in front of me. Some of the thick roots snaking around us looked like they had been scraped with a knife. I imagined Peter kicking off their bark as he tried to escape.
“How do you fight her then?” I squeaked. The feeling of her presence was creeping so far up my spine it was practically strangling me.
“We can start with this.” Instead of a crucifix, he took out a huge old revolver. I didn’t know what was scarier: a zombie ghost waiting in the dark for the right moment to attack—or someone like Frank Goolz with a gun.
He took the flashlight from me and looked around, pushing branches aside with the gun barrel and shining the flashlight into the gaps. “Show yourself!” he called. He did a 360-degree search of the dome and then sighed. “Why isn’t she coming after us?”
“Is that really such a bad thing?”
“Harold, when you go hunting for ghosts, the least you should expect is to be attacked by one. Right?” He dropped his satchel on the ground and held the gun out for me to take. I looked at it like it was poison.
“Just take it,” he said impatiently. He shook it right in front of my face until, finally, I reached for it. I took it ultra-carefully. It was heavy, so I held it against my lap, making sure the barrel was pointing away from both of us. He knelt to look through his satchel, then switched off the flashlight and stood up. He turned around. He had transformed into a masked monster with two huge, shining blue eyes.
I nearly tipped over. “Oh, crap!” I shouted.
“What?”
“That!” I pointed to his face.
“Oh, this?” He tapped the contraption. He had put on a pair of goggles made of two thin brass telescopes attached to a metallic mask. They buzzed strangely and glowed with an eerie blue light. He adjusted the telescopes, twisting and turning the many dials on them.
“I see,” he said, looking around the dome.
“You see what?”
“Mostly shrubs and plants and plenty of nothing. But it’s all very blue.”
“What are those?” I asked.
He turned back to me, shining the blue lights into my face. He looked like a demented mechanical insect.
“Best buy ever.” He adjusted a dial. “Did you know Thomas Edison built a radio to communicate with the dead? He made goggles to see them, too. These are the goggles. They work better than the radio, I hope,” he added, laughing.
He picked up the satchel and walked deeper into the bushes, until I couldn’t see him anymore.
“Mr. Goolz?” I called, realizing I was alone in the dark with a gun. “MR. GOOLZ!”
“Yes?” I jumped at his voice and turned around. He had popped his head into the dome exactly opposite from where he had disappeared, his goggles still shining their blue light on me. “What’s the matter, Harold?”
“You disappeared!” The gun rattled dangerously on my knees as I gripped it with a shaking hand.
“Yes, and so did she, I’m afraid. I’m sure it was her we saw at the top of the road. And then she just vanished.” He switched off the blue light, removed the goggles, and put them back in his satchel. “I’m going to take that back from you, before you shoot someone.” He took the gun away and handed me the flashlight instead.
I immediately switched it on, trying to cast away all the darkness and hopefully some of my fear.
“She’s obviously not as interested in us as she is in those kids.” He sighed in disappointment.
“Why would a couple of bullies mean anything to her?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what we have to find out, Harold.” He got behind my chair and pushed me out of the dome. The gun in his hand rattled near my face as the chair jumped and bounced on the uneven terrain.
“What’s in there?” he asked, once we were back on the cemetery grounds. He pointed at the abandoned church with the barrel of his gun and I turned the beam of the flashlight to it.
“Just owls. And the gun we found. That’s where Suzie activated the Stone.”
He started for the church. I set the flashlight on my lap and reluctantly followed. When we reached it, he turned and looked back toward the trees hiding the Hewitts’ farm at the bottom of the hill.
“And down there?” he asked.
“Dogs and bad people,” I explained. The dogs had started barking steadily. I thought their message was quite clear: stay away. “Alex lives down
there.”
“Who?”
“The first boy who disappeared.”
He nodded and leaned forward, squinting into the distance. “That’s interesting,” he said.
“What is?”
He snatched the flashlight from me and aimed it at a spot in the trees.
“There,” he said. “See it now?”
I braced myself for the attic lady, and yelped and cursed when I saw something just as bad instead. Jonas Hewitt was standing at the edge of the trees, looking up at us. He was holding his plank of wood, and as we watched, he started up the hill toward us.
“We gotta go,” I said.
“Hold on,” Frank Goolz said. “He looks like he wants to talk.”
“Old Hewitt doesn’t talk. He hurts people instead. And he has a plank.”
Frank Goolz switched off the flashlight and handed it back to me. The moon illuminated Old Hewitt as he dragged his heavy weight up the hill.
“We have a gun. I think we win.” Frank Goolz hid the gun in the satchel. “Hello there!” he yelled, waving at Old Hewitt.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Old Hewitt yelled back.
“Taking a night walk with my young friend Harold here.”
Old Hewitt didn’t stop until we were within striking distance. He was breathing heavily from the climb and looked even more dangerous up close.
“No one comes here at night!” It sounded more like a rule than a simple statement. He pointed his plank at Frank Goolz. “I know you. You’re that big-shot writer.”
“Indeed,” Frank Goolz said, adding a funny mock bow. Old Hewitt spat on the ground, just like Alex always did.
“I saw you snooping around. You got no business on my grounds.”
“Actually …” Frank Goolz searched for something in his satchel. I didn’t know what would be worse, the gun or the goggles, but he took out his notepad and pen instead. “I have some questions I’d like to ask you.”
“Are you some kind of cop?”
“No, I’m just a big-shot writer, like you said.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Harold? Would you mind switching on the flashlight so I can show this man a couple of my sketches?”
A Bad Night for Bullies Page 9