Behind me, Tim stepped into the room and stared. The door slammed shut behind him, and what little color there’d been in his face drained away. The living room was upside down. All the furniture—the corduroy couch and two chairs, the coffee table, the TV cabinet, even the filled bookcases—hung down from the ceiling as if they’d been anchored in place. The room echoed with happy, mischievous screams.
I stood up. “This is pretty typical. He’s showing off. Don’t react; you’ll just encourage him.”
But Tim was already backing away. He pressed against the door; when he couldn’t open it, he crossed the room in a panic, gawking up at the furniture overhead instead of looking where he was going. He was headed toward the living room window, and although I didn’t think he could actually go through it, he was moving fast enough to hurt himself if he kept going.
“Look out!” I said. Before I could reach out and yank him back, the couch flipped down from the ceiling and thudded to the floor in front of him, so that Tim tripped and toppled on to it. While he righted himself, the rest of the furniture drifted back into place.
Tim was trembling violently; he looked like he might throw up.
“What was that?”
“That was Buster.”
“When you said you had to tell me about him, I thought you were talking about a dog.”
“That’s not so far from the truth,” I said as Buster’s favorite toy—a squeaky vinyl hamburger—sailed through the air toward Tim. I grabbed it before it could smack into him and tossed it down the hall.
“Go get it, Buster!” The burger’s squeaks soon mingled with Buster’s happy cries.
Tim calmed down after I ushered him into the kitchen. I thought about offering him soda, but he didn’t look like he needed any caffeine, and he looked grateful when I suggested chamomile tea instead. Buster tried to follow us; when I told him to bug off, he acknowledged my command by grabbing my hair and twisting it into a knot. After being threatened with the crate, though, he went back to his squeaky burger.
Tim stared warily at the kitchen doorway, as though he’d be able to see if Buster came back again.
“It’s okay,” I said, putting the water on to boil. “You can tell he’s nearby when the temperature in the room drops, but he’d never actually hurt anyone. At least, not intentionally. He just likes to play jokes.”
“What is he?”
“We don’t really know. I call him an abnormal poltergeist.” I explained how Buster had come to live with us. “I’m not used to having guests, and I’m so used to him that I forget he might startle other people.”
Tim raised a brow, indicating that startle was too weak a word.
I suddenly felt a little defensive about Buster, the same way a bulldog owner might feel if someone said his dog’s wrinkled face was ugly.
“Come on, he’s okay. Besides, I thought you said the whole ghost thing was cool.”
“That was before I actually met one,” Tim said, but he seemed to be unwinding a little.
“Ghosts aren’t all like Buster,” I said after pouring the tea. “Most of them don’t cause trouble like he does unless they’re agitated.” Like that awful presence in the locker room. “They’re usually harmless; they just stick around to keep an eye on things.” I told him about Mama Chen. “You’d never even know she was there.”
Retaining a little of his earlier curiosity, Tim said, “We should go to Mama Chen’s sometime. Maybe I’ll be able to see her like you can.”
“If you could see ghosts, you’d know.”
“What about Buster? Can you see him?”
“No, but he’s not a good example. He’s just weird. There’s no one set of rules they all follow. And not all ghosts are visible, either, so sometimes I can sense ghosts, but I can’t see them. I can see most of them, though.”
“How’d you first find out you could see them?”
“I’ve seen them for as long as I can remember. But it took me a long time to understand that not everyone could see what I could, and that ghosts weren’t the same as living people.” I told him about the time Dad and I were on our way to pick up Mom at the airport; she’d flown out to Texas for a few days to help a cousin with some possible paranormal activity in a new apartment. A big accident had backed up traffic on the highway, and we inched past the remains of a crushed SUV and an overturned school bus. It must have been pretty grisly, because Dad told me not to look. But I wasn’t looking at the wreckage; I was more interested in all the confused blue kids who were wandering around, darting past the slow-moving traffic and sometimes passing right through cars. I remember saying something to Dad about how kids shouldn’t walk in the middle of the highway. Of course, he couldn’t see what I was referring to. I was only three years old, but that was when Dad could no longer deny that I had the same abilities as my mom.
Mom, of course, had realized this much earlier—when I was just a few months old. When I was six, she told me about the day she took me for a walk in my stroller past old Mr. Albertson’s house. Mr. Albertson had died years earlier, but he’d built that house with his own hands, and he wasn’t about to leave. As long as its new owners took good care of the place, he was a very polite, quiet ghost. That day he was in the yard, inspecting the front porch steps. He paused long enough to make silly faces at me, which made me laugh. To anyone else, it would have looked like I was shrieking gleefully at an empty yard, but Mom knew better. She’d wondered if I would have abilities like hers, and my reaction to Mr. Albertson proved I did. After that, she raised me to see ghosts as a normal part of life, although she’d emphasized that being able to see them was something special, and that I shouldn’t broadcast my ability because not everyone would understand it.
I wasn’t sure why I told Tim all that. It’s not like I’m usually eager to outline all the ways I’m weird and freaky. He was just so genuinely interested that…I guess it made me feel sort of important. It was nice to share all that with someone without being ridiculed.
Still, now that my mom had come up, I was pretty sure I knew where the conversation was headed. I didn’t want to talk about her, or the night she died, or anything like that, so I changed the subject. “So why doesn’t Isobel like you?”
“Oh.” He looked a little sheepish. “Isobel doesn’t really like anyone. But me in particular…She doesn’t like me because I’m a vampire.”
Okay. What the heck was I supposed to say to that?
He continued immediately, saving me from the obligation of a quick reply. “Half vampire, really. But that still counts.”
“Ha-ha. Counts. Vampire.”
“I’m not kidding, Violet. I’ve always known I was…different.”
“Haven’t we all?” I wanted to point out that he didn’t know what “different” was unless he too had gotten in trouble in kindergarten for insisting that the long-deceased teacher said it was okay to go to the bathroom. Mrs. Bloomington had once taught kindergarten at Palmetto Elementary, but she’d also been dead for over fifteen years. My current teacher had neither appreciated nor condoned my disappearing act and my excuse that her late predecessor had given me permission to leave the classroom. That was before I really understood that not only could most people not see ghosts, but that they didn’t even believe they existed. And how was I to know that the authority of a living person outweighed a dead one?
“See, my dad left my mom before I was born,” Tim said.
“Have you ever met him?”
“No. I used to ask Mom about him, and all she’d say was that he drained her dry, financially and emotionally. Then I saw this old Dracula movie on cable, and…I dunno. I guess my imagination kind of took over. Plus, I like rare hamburgers, and I can see pretty well in the dark, and I really hate garlic and sunlight.”
“You were just in the sun half an hour ago, on the way home from the bus stop.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t like it.”
“You weren’t even wearing sunglasses!”
“I forgot t
hem at home today.”
I was tempted to tell him he was being ridiculous, but the thing was, I felt like I was the last person to chastise someone for their beliefs. I mean, hello? Paranormal communication? Pet poltergeist? Gemstones with protective properties? Did any of those sound more rational than Tim’s Dracula Daddy theory?
I tried to remember other vampire legends. “Can you see yourself when you look in the mirror?”
“Yeah. But remember, I’m only half vampire.”
“Can you turn into a bat?”
“No, but—”
“Half vampire. I know. You don’t bite people and drink blood and stuff, do you?”
“I get kind of sick at the sight of blood,” Tim said, looking slightly squirmy.
“Okay, so then why doesn’t Isobel like you? She seems like the type who’d be really into the whole vampire thing.”
Tim sighed a little. “Goths don’t always like vampires. Plus she thinks I’m making it up. And she thinks I’m annoying.” He picked at a loose thread on his arm warmer. “So anyway, I told you about my dad, now tell me about your mom. Was she really a ghost hunter?”
Darn. Right back to this. “She was a paranormal investigator, yeah. She also did lectures, and she and Dad ran a website that sold investigative equipment and books.” They’d made a great team—Mom was the intuitive, sympathetic one who sensed spirits and sought to help them, and Dad was the reformed skeptic determined to document significant scientific proof of his wife’s experiences.
“And the cops really thought your dad killed her?”
That was my least favorite part of the whole mess, and I seriously didn’t want to discuss it. Okay, so for about five minutes, the police thought Mom’s death was a murder, and Dad was their chief suspect. I hated that people still remembered that so many years later. That’s small-town living for you.
I gave Tim my most withering glare. “She fell down some stairs. That’s it. Shut up, okay?”
“Sorry.” He sunk down in his chair a little, looking appropriately scolded, but I could tell he was still curious.
Before he could start up with his interrogation again, though, the front door of the apartment opened and closed, and Dad came into the kitchen.
“Finished with Mrs. Wilson,” he said. His shirtsleeves were still rolled up to the elbows, and he smelled like a chem lab mixed with industrial-strength soap. “Now that I have a little more time, how was school?” he asked me.
“Well, I got teased because of your job, everyone thinks I’m a freak, and worst of all, I have to take gym.” I motioned for Tim to follow me, and we went to hang out in my room.
On the way, I asked Tim if he’d taken any gym classes at Palmetto. The memory of the thing in the locker room was still lurking in my head, and I suddenly wondered if the presence stuck to the girls’ room only, or if it haunted the boys’ room, too. No way was I about to sneak in and see for myself, though. Ew.
He nodded. “Beginning Gym. Last year. It sucked.”
“Yeah. Hey, did you ever notice anything weird in the locker room?” I didn’t really think he’d be able to tell me much, but it was worth a try.
“Well, it usually smells weird in there,” Tim said. He obviously had no idea what I was fishing for, but he wanted to be helpful.
So much for that.
“Don’t they all?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “Hey, want to see Buster eat a cookie?”
CHAPTER FIVE
high school hell gate
That evening I couldn’t stop thinking about school and the presence in the locker room. Maybe I’d overreacted. After all, I’d been stressed about gym, and anxiety can play all kinds of tricks—I certainly wasn’t helpless when it came to spooky stuff. Mom had worked with all kinds of paranormal phenomena, and so could I. I knew she’d be really proud of me for dealing with this myself.
Besides, she’d always taught me that ghosts and stuff weren’t really dangerous. You just had to figure out how to handle them, and the first step in doing that was figuring out who—or what—you were working with.
The only thing was, I’d never done a paranormal investigation before, and Mom hadn’t told me much about them when I was little. I knew she and Dad had had all kinds of equipment, but if Dad still had any of it, I had no idea where it was or how it worked.
So I grabbed my laptop and searched the Internet for paranormal investigation techniques.
Along with all kinds of warnings that I pretty much ignored, I found plenty of information about equipment. Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to things like digital thermometers or electromagnetic field detectors or fancy cameras. I did have the digital camera on my phone, though, and I also had an app for recording sound bites. I thought that would work well enough as a digital voice recorder. Photos might give me proof of spirit activity, and recordings could give me something called EVP—electronic voice phenomena. According to my reading, it seemed like ghostly noises that weren’t audible in person sometimes came through in recordings.
The trick would be finding a way to conduct the investigation at a time when the locker room wasn’t full of girls dressing for gym. For that, I’d have to be a little sneaky. Like I said, sometimes you’ve got to break a few rules when you’re dealing with ghosts.
The next morning in the locker room, I changed clothes as fast as possible, while the blood pounded in my ears and that horrible rage constricted around me. I slipped my phone into the pocket of my gym shorts, stuffed my regular clothes and bag into my locker, and skidded into the gym at full speed. I wasn’t ready to go back in the locker room yet. I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t. Maybe I’d just stay out here and…
Then I saw Coach Frucile and several students setting up a volleyball net. Hmm, which was worse: the wheezing evil in the locker room or volleyball?
Considering my habit of getting hit in the head by gym equipment, I figured it was a tie.
At least I lucked out—my team wasn’t among the first to play, so we sat on the bleachers and watched while two other teams struggled on the court. Coach Frucile was focused on the game, yelling out instructions and corrections and insults I assumed were supposed to be encouraging. She wasn’t paying any attention to the bleachers at all, so after a few minutes I was able to slide off my seat and slip out into the side hall. From there, I took a deep breath, steadied myself, and headed back into the locker room.
The thing swelled around me again immediately, all sorrow and anger and invisible darkness, a fog bank of unrest. It dripped out from the showers and filled the room, silent and creeping, as heavy and drifting as an approaching thunderstorm. Fighting against it, I pulled out my phone and started snapping photos of the room around me. I couldn’t see anything on my phone’s tiny screen, but later I would transfer the pictures to my computer and blow them up to study them more closely.
The air pulsed, physically pushing me. Although everything looked still, I felt like I was fighting the winds of a hurricane. Hot spots turned into cold spots, then back again. I went from sweating to shivering.
The pressure in my head was starting to blur my vision again. I switched to the recorder app and tried to talk to the thing. According to what I’d read online, I was supposed to ask questions, then wait for answers that might not be audible until I played the recording back.
“Who are you?” I asked. I was yelling, but the blood pounding in my ears drowned out even the sound of my own voice. “What do you want? Is there something you need help with? Something that would let you move on?”
Then I looked down at the phone. Its screen was blank; it had turned off. I tried to turn it back on, but nothing happened. It was dead.
So much for getting EVP.
Suddenly something wrenched the phone from my fingers and flung it across the room, into the shower alcove. The overhead lights flickered, and unlocked locker doors began to open and slam shut repeatedly. A first aid kit bolted to the wall near Coach Frucile’s office shuddered and fell open, spilling banda
ges and antibacterial wipes and disposable cold packs onto the floor. I pressed my back against the end of one bank of lockers.
“You can’t hurt me!” I yelled as invisible winds whipped around me, pulling at me, dragging me toward the alcove.
Then the thing’s intensity pulled back a little, just enough for me to notice Coach Frucile watching me from the doorway.
“Um,” I said, breathing hard.
“Forget your inhaler again?”
“Kind of.”
“Get back in here. Your team’s up. If I catch you leaving my class again, it’ll be a week of detention. Got it?”
“Got it,” I muttered. To tell the truth, I was so glad to get away from the thing that I almost welcomed the idea of volleyball—until I took my first ball to the forehead, anyway. I wondered how much of my encounter Coach Frucile had witnessed. Had she heard me yelling? Had she seen the lockers opening and shutting on their own? Had she wondered why the first aid kit’s contents were all over the floor? If she had, she gave no sign.
I managed to find my phone when I reluctantly returned to the locker room to change after class. Despite having been tossed around, it worked just fine once I got it out of the locker room. None of the photos or recordings I’d gotten were on the memory card, though.
After that, I started going to school in my gym clothes, with my regular clothes crammed into my messenger bag. When first period ended, I changed in the bathroom. Anything to avoid the locker room. I felt unsafe in there.
Drawing was better, since I had Tim to talk to. But Head Jock (technically Jake Bartle, though I preferred my own nickname for him) and his minions were still upset about the Dirk thing, so they looked for any excuse to give me a hard time.
They had even started calling me “Spookygirl.” I suppose it could have been worse—Spookygirl sounded kind of cool, like a superhero name. And at least it kept the jocks from picking on Tim, which had apparently been the status quo before my arrival. I even encouraged the attention, reporting on Dirk’s activities whenever he was spooking around.
Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator Page 5