by Amber Benson
“I think it’s time to go back to your room, Noh,” her aunt said in a soft, lulling voice. “You’ve had a very long day, and I’m sure all the traveling has made you very tired.”
Aunt Sarah was strangely right. Noh found that she could barely keep her eyes open. She yawned loudly, quickly clapping a hand over her gaping mouth.
“Okay, Aunt Sarah,” Noh said sleepily. “Good night, Hullie. Mr. DeMarck.”
The two men nodded their good-nights.
“See you in the morning? Bright and chipper?” Hullie smiled.
Noh could only nod sleepily as she followed her aunt across the room, out the door, and into the arms of the waiting night.
Scary Things in the Morning
Nasty situations look brighter in the light of the morning sun.
Now, this assumption is not always a truth. And it is actually quite false in this particular case.
Remember that nasty thing that liked to file away information for later use? Well, it had spent the better part of the morning sitting on a toadstool out by the lake. When it wanted to, the nasty thing could make itself quite small—good for sliding through rabbit holes and into people’s ears.
It was pretending to be a toad so that it could eat flies with a long, winding tongue. Not that it couldn’t eat flies any time it wanted to, but catching flies just wasn’t as much fun without a great big lolling tongue to flick, flop, and twist about.
The nasty thing had no true shape. It had to make do with stealing other creatures’ shapes when it wanted to be seen. Mostly it liked being left to its own devices, so it chose to remain shapeless. In this state it was like a clear, undetectable gas.
After filling itself with a number of fly souls, it ceased being toadlike. It returned to the school, settling itself into a crack in one of the exterior walls of the West Wing to take a nap and digest the fly souls.
The nasty thing subsisted on the souls of the creatures it captured—little creatures like flies and beetles and spiders. But once, a long time before it had found its home at the New Newbridge Academy, it had eaten something big. And it had never forgotten the taste—and the power. The magnificent power the “something big” had given it.
Now the nasty thing, asleep in its crack, woke up with a start. It smelled something. Something big.
It puffed itself up and slipped back out into the midmorning air in search of its newly smelled prey.
No Noh
Noh woke up and stretched under her blanket. The sunlight streamed in through the window, hitting her right in the face. She didn’t mind, though. It was warm and inviting and made her want to smile. She threw off the covers and slipped out of bed. The floor was cold on one foot, the rug warm underneath the other. She quickly brought the other foot onto the rug and wiggled her toes happily.
She looked around her new room and felt happy, happier than she had felt in a long time. Then suddenly she remembered the conversation she’d had at dinner the night before with Hullie and the physics teacher, Mr. DeMarck, and instantly her good mood dissipated.
Two thoughts crossed her mind at the same time: (1) Had she really seen a ghost yesterday? And (2) If so, did that mean there was something wrong with her? From her experience, normal people didn’t see ghosts—or at least, the normal people she knew didn’t see ghosts.
She was cheered by the scientific part of her brain that said ghosts didn’t exist and there had to be a logical explanation for the appearance of the strange girl she’d met at the burned-out dorm. Maybe she was a local girl who was just using the empty building as her secret hideout. Or maybe Noh had just imagined meeting the girl. She did have a pretty active imagination, and it had been known to get her into trouble in the past.
Growing up, Noh had spent a lot of time on her own, and her imagination had been her only real friend. It wasn’t her father’s fault, really. He was a good dad. He always made sure that she had food to eat and a nice place to live with nice things inside of it to keep her occupied. And he loved her very much—that she was sure of. It was just that he was always so busy.
His work was very important and it took him away for long stretches of time. As a small child, Noh had had a succession of governesses, but once she was old enough to look after herself, she had asked her father to please let her stay alone. Since Aunt Clara wasn’t there to tell him reproachfully that it wasn’t a good idea for a child to stay on her own, her father had agreed.
Noh had become a very self-sufficient kid. She could do the laundry, cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner (eggs were her specialty), and make sure that the house was neat and tidy.
But even though she had liked being in charge of herself, now that she didn’t have to worry about that stuff anymore, she felt like a giant weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She felt free.
And that’s when the happiness quotient kicked in again. So, guilty that she didn’t miss her father more (she knew he’d come and visit before the start of the school year) and happy that there was a logical explanation for the “ghost” girl, Noh got her clothes together—making sure that the evil eye stone was safely in her pants pocket for good luck—and trooped off to the bathroom to begin her day.
Her hair slicked back and wet from the shower, Noh stood in front of the mirror brushing her teeth. She counted to 120 before she stopped twirling the brush around her teeth and spit.
She put her toothbrush back into the small cubbyhole (with her name stenciled on it) in the corner of the bathroom. She had deposited her toiletries there the day before at her aunt’s urging. She had grumbled about it then, but she had been so tired when they had gotten back from dinner that she wouldn’t have brushed her teeth at all if her toothbrush hadn’t already been there waiting for her.
Noh stared at herself in the mirror.
She knew that she wasn’t the prettiest girl in the world—her biggish nose and pointy chin made her look rather old-fashioned—but there was really nothing to be ashamed of in her features. They were strong and suited her long face well. Everyone said that she resembled her father, but Noh couldn’t help thinking that was because no one had ever met her mother. The only people in the whole world who had known Mabel (Harris) Maypother were her father and his two sisters. Well, Noh was pretty sure that there had been others, but those were the only ones Noh knew about.
Her mother had no other family. Her parents had died when she was twelve, and she had gone to live with her only other relation, a great-aunt who had been already half-deaf from age. The great-aunt had passed away two years before Mabel had met Noh’s father, and that was that. Mabel had been, for all intents and purposes, an orphan.
Thinking absently about her mother, Noh picked up a comb and ran it through her stick-straight hair. There was so much static electricity in the air that her hair stuck to the plastic comb in unruly clumps. She pulled out her barrette, knowing from experience that static electricity hair liked to stick to your face if you let it. Suddenly her fingers became like two slippery slugs, and the barrette slid from her grasp into the porcelain bowl of the sink.
As if in slow motion, the silver barrette clattered against the smooth whiteness of the bowl and began to circle around the drain like a race car driver. Noh reached out her hand, groping for the barrette, but she wasn’t quick enough. She watched in abject horror as the silver glinted once, then slipped down the drain.
“No!” Noh squeaked and stuck her fingers into the yawning mouth of the drain. It was cold and slimy to the touch, but Noh didn’t care. She could just feel the barrette with the very tip of her fingers. She shoved her hand farther down the drain until she heard a small click and her fingers scissored around the barrette, dragging it back up into the light.
She grabbed the silvery hair clip with her other hand and moved it far away from the sink.
“I almost lost you,” she whispered to the barrette, cradling it. It was a little dirty, but none the worse for wear. She wiped it off with her shirttail and slipped it into her hair. She w
as so happy to have her mother’s barrette back in her possession that she almost didn’t notice what the clicking noise had done.
“There, you’re all safe now… ,” she said again to the barrette, but suddenly her words trailed off. With a sharp intake of breath, Noh stared at the mirror. There was absolutely no reflection in it.
“Huh?” Noh gulped as she reached out a hand to touch the smooth sheet of unblemished silvered glass. It rippled as her fingers drew near it. She quickly pulled them away and looked around. She seemed to be alone in the bathroom, but she ran the length of the stalls just to make sure no one was hiding inside one of them. Satisfied, she returned to the mirror.
Instead of sacrificing her hand to the mysterious mirror, she took out her toothbrush and tentatively pushed it into the rippling glass.
It was halfway through the mirror when there was a sharp crack and Noh’s reflection magically reappeared. She quickly tried to pull the toothbrush back, but the mirror had solidified around it. She grabbed the butt end of the toothbrush with both hands and yanked.
But her efforts were for nothing. The toothbrush was frozen solid.
She gave up her fight with the unyielding mirror and draped a hand towel over the protruding toothbrush. If she was lucky, anyone who came across it would think that she had suction-cupped a tiny hook onto the mirror’s face. She didn’t think it was a very plausible story, but it was all she had and she was sticking to it.
She quickly finished getting ready, then quietly slunk out of the bathroom hoping no one had seen her going in in the first place.
The Crybaby
Henry was shut up in his room again. Not even Trina’s needling would coax him out of his foul mood. As far as Trina and Nelly could see, this black funk had lasted twenty-two days, and the end was nowhere in sight.
Nelly sat on the floor watching a line of worker ants parade across the stone. They each had a tiny parcel of dried, flufflike substance in their pinchers.
“I wonder where they found this stuff,” Nelly said as she chewed on the ends of her hair, watching them. She looked up at Trina, expectantly waiting for an answer.
“Looks like asbestos. I saw some earlier in the grass.”
Nelly rolled her eyes.
“That’s not funny, Trina—,” Nelly started, but she was interrupted by a loud wailing from up above them. Henry had started the final phase of his bad mood: the crying.
Trina sighed. “How many days does this part last again?”
Nelly thought for a moment. “It was three last time, but that’s not saying much. The whole thing only lasted seventeen days last time. He’s five days longer already.”
Trina nodded.
Together, they waited for the crying to subside, but it was a futile attempt. Henry had had a strong set of lungs in his human life, and he still loved to use them. It was going to be a long next few days.
Nelly shook her head as the wailing increased and promptly disappeared into the ether. Trina stayed a while longer, hoping that Henry would tire himself out, but finally even she had had enough. The whole thing had given her a terrible headache.
She sighed and slowly faded into nothingness in search of a little peace and quiet.
At that very moment, the front door to the West Wing opened and Noh stepped into the semidarkness. She had armed herself with a flashlight and a sweater. She wasn’t going to let the chill in the air keep her from investigating. She was determined to find out who or what the mysterious girl was once and for all.
Noh peered around the space and saw nothing out of place. It looked just like it had the day before. She walked to the staircase and ran a finger over the banister. It came away with a thick head of dust.
“Yuck,” Noh squeaked, and wiped the dirt down the front of her sweater. Undeterred, she gingerly put her foot on the bottom step. It creaked with her weight but held firm. When Noh decided that the place wasn’t going to fall down around her head, she began the climb to the second floor.
The stairs groaned with every step. She took the last few steps at a jog, happy to be on almost solid ground again.
Upstairs was just as unused and dusty as the rest of the place. She started down the hallway but stopped midstride when she heard a noise. She froze her muscles and stopped breathing so that she could listen more closely.
There it was again. And it wasn’t just the building settling or an animal scampering across the roof. What Noh heard was the sound of someone crying. It was the tail end of a long crying jag, so there was only a bit of sniffling and a few hiccups, but Noh would have known the sound anywhere.
She had spent many a long night crying herself to sleep. Usually it was when her father was away, but sometimes she found herself crying even when he was just down the hall. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure why she did it, but she figured every so often you got so filled up with sadness that tears were the only way to feel any better.
She debated with herself for a few minutes, trying to decide if she should leave the crier in peace or just barge in and demand to know what the heck was going on. Finally, curiosity got the best of her. She walked down the hall and threw open the last door on the left, not knowing what she was going to find behind it.
New Friends
Are you dead too?”
The boy who was occupying the dusty old room she had stepped into was about her age. She guessed that some people might think him handsome, but she found her first impression of him to be that of a big, sulky baby. She took in the red-rimmed eye sockets and tear-stained cheeks long before she noticed the large, well-lashed brown of his eyes, the square jaw, and the thatch of straight brown hair.
“No, I’m not dead,” Noh replied. She didn’t like having her leg pulled, and this boy was definitely trying to make her look stupid. “If you’re dead, then you’re not here anymore, and I’m right here,” she said tartly, pinching her upper arm hard enough to make her grimace. “See?” Noh waited for him to answer, but he just stared at her.
Finally, he shook his head and shrugged. “No, I don’t see. I’m dead and I can pinch myself too, if I want to.”
And he did.
Noh glared at him. “You are not dead. I’m not that gullible.”
The boy cocked his head curiously. “What’s ‘gullible’?” At first Noh thought he was being a smart aleck, but then it dawned on her that he was actually being very serious.
“Gullible means that you believe everything that everyone tells you all the time,” she said.
The boy scratched his head. “I don’t think you’re gullible, then. You don’t believe me, even though I’m telling the truth,” he said earnestly. “I wouldn’t lie about something this important. Maybe you’re dead and you don’t know it yet.”
Noh shook her head, but the boy didn’t look convinced.
“Look, I would know if I were dead,” Noh began. “I can promise you that—”
The boy interrupted her. “I’ve seen it happen before. Lots of times. No one really wants to be dead. They’re scared of it.”
He extended a hand toward Noh.
“I’m Henry.”
“Noh. Short for Noleen.”
She reached out a hand to shake Henry’s but found, to her utter amazement, that her hand slid right through his.
“Oh, goodness!” Noh exclaimed. “You really are dead.”
Hasta La Vista Dead
Noh had never met a dead person before (except for the maybe-ghost girl she’d seen yesterday). She found that it was really no different from meeting a live person—except for the no-physical-contact part.
She and Henry spent the next few hours testing the dead/live waters. Henry made Noh walk through him (which she could do effortlessly), throw an inanimate object at his head (the pen from her pocket went straight through his nose and out the back of his skull), and try to guess a number from one to ten (this would have required a bit of telepathy—which, sadly, Noh did not possess).
“I never knew a living person who
could see me before!” Henry exclaimed happily. The tears on his cheeks had long dried, and now his eyes glowed with excitement.
Noh shrugged. “Well, I think I might’ve seen at least one dead person before.”
“Wow, I just wonder how it’s possible. Maybe it’s a miracle.” Henry rubbed his hands together enthusiastically as he said this.
“I don’t think it warrants being called a miracle, Henry. Maybe ‘amazing’ is a more apt word,” Noh said thoughtfully. At least she knew that ghosts existed now, and even if that meant there was something different about her, well, she didn’t mind it one little bit. It was better to be different and see ghosts than to be normal and not see them at all.
But, like Henry, Noh did wonder what it was exactly that had given her this strange new ability. She was curious to discover if other people could see both the living and the dead too, or if this was a gift that belonged to her alone.
Noh’s stomach rumbled and she checked her watch. “It’s almost twelve. I better go if I don’t want to miss lunch. I think we’re having apple pie for dessert.”
As Noh started for the door Henry sighed jealously. “Boy, I wish I were human again. I haven’t eaten a piece of pie in forever.”
“At least you don’t have to worry about your teeth rotting out of your head. I had three cavities the last time I went to the dentist,” Noh whispered conspiratorially.
Henry grinned sheepishly at her. “I don’t care. I still miss sweets…”
As Henry spoke, a strange breeze blew through the room, stirring up eddies of dust that made Noh sneeze twice in quick succession.
“What the—,” Noh squeaked, looking around to see where the wind had originated from. She noticed immediately that all the windows and doors were shut up tight as drums.
“All of a sudden it’s so cold in here,” Noh said as she continued to sweep the room with her eyes.