The Ghost of Gruesome High

by Larry Parr

  I concentrated on running. Jennifer was the first to the car, followed closely by Wesley, who was panting hard and looking as if he were about to pass out. Alan and I weren’t far behind. We tossed the two remaining shovels into the sun roof and piled into the car. Wesley had the engine started and the car moving before I could even close my door. The little bug burned rubber and peeled out of the parking lot, bouncing over a curb and around the chain that blocked the exit!

  I had never felt so excited and alive in my life! Man, this was great! I let out a big WHOOP for joy! The others looked at me as if I were nuts!

  When we got to the bottom of the hill I had to grab Wesley’s arm to get him to listen. “Slow down!” I yelled. “Behind the bushes. Behind the bushes!”

  For a second I didn’t think Wesley was going to pull the bug behind the large clump of oleanders that we had planned to hide behind, but at the very last second he twisted the wheel hard and the little bug fish-tailed in the dirt and landed perfectly behind the bushes.

  “Quiet!” I ordered.

  We didn’t have long to wait. Within two or three minutes we heard a deep rumble as a newer red Camaro raced down the hill from the school, ran the red light at the bottom of the hill, and roared away into the night.

  For a moment we all sat there in stunned silence. And then the others all began jabbering at once. I tuned them out. I was suddenly very tired—and very happy.

  Part One of my plan had gone off perfectly, without even a single hitch!

  We only had to wait a few more minutes until Mr. Greenwald’s car rolled down the hill and pulled into the dirt area next to where we were hiding. We were all out of the bug and climbing all over Mr. Greenwald’s car before it even came to a full stop! Everyone was so excited we could hardly contain ourselves!

  “You were great!” I yelled before he could even get his door opened. The moment his door was opened I leaned inside his car and hugged him! I don’t know which one of us was more surprised by that—him or me!

  But I didn’t care, and I really don’t think he did either. We were all too giddy with excitement! My plan had worked!

  “Hey, you kids!” I yelled in a mock-deep voice. “Whatdaya think you’re doin’? I’ve called the cops, they’ll be here any minute!” We all laughed uncontrollably. We knew it wasn’t really all that funny—it was just such a release! I don’t think any of us really knew how scared and nervous we were until just this minute when we could let all the tension out!

  “You were aces, Mr. Greenwald,” Wesley said once we had stopped laughing. “Even I believed you’d called the cops. That was great!”

  “Actually,” Mr. Greenwald said, removing his glasses and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, “I did call the cops. A couple of my cop buddies will patrol the school for the rest of the night. After all, we can’t have our ‘ghost’ returning tonight, can we? The trap isn’t fully set yet.”

  No, the trap wasn’t fully set. Part Two of my plan was a bit trickier than Part One had been—but right then I believed we could do anything!

  * * *

  All of us got to school early the next morning. The first thing we did was meet in the quad. There was yellow police tape up around the hole we had dug last night, and lots of kids milling around it. It was a Big Deal!

  This was exactly what I was hoping for. Jennifer, Alan, Wesley and I gathered at a table on the edge of the quad, close enough to the hole and the excitement that we could hear what was going on, but far enough away that we could talk without worrying about tons of kids over-hearing us.

  The one thing all of us did was keep our eyes open for Ben Thompson. He was the Key to Part Two of my plan!

  Suddenly Wesley nudged me and whispered: “Bogey at three o’clock!”

  “What?” I answered.

  “Bogey at three o’clock!” he whispered more forcefully.

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded.

  He frowned at me as if I’d just ruined some game he was playing. “Ben Thompson’s right over there. He’s watching us.”

  Everyone immediately started to look in the direction that Wesley had subtly pointed. “Don’t look!” I instantly hissed. “You want him to know we know?” I took Mr. Bell’s gold coin out of my pocket and rolled it around in my hand. The heavy, smooth, warm metal felt good. It made me relax and somehow made me feel that everything was all right.

  “Well,” I said, taking a deep breath, “let’s make this look real. Don’t over-act. Just play it cool. And whatever you do, don’t look at Ben Thompson, not even once! Everyone got that?”

  Everyone nodded and made grumbling noises; I guess what I said was a bit patronizing, but it was just so important. This had to be done just right, or everything I’d planned would be blown.

  We got up in a group and began walking directly toward the spot where Ben Thompson was standing, leaning up against a pole as if he were half hiding from us. As we walked toward him, everyone was acting very excited in a secretive, whispery sort of way, laughing and nudging each other, and playfully pushing each other out of the way as if everyone wanted to be next to me and see what was in my hand.

  As we got within earshot of Ben, who casually stepped around to the back side of the pole as if that would prevent us from seeing him, everyone started whispering intently about treasure and gold. I kept “shushing” them and telling them to keep their mouths shut, but everyone kept acting as if they were just too excited to keep still.

  I had the feeling we were all over-playing it something awful. But I hoped that someone with Ben’s rather challenged intellect wouldn’t catch on.

  Now it was my turn to act. Just before we reached the pole that Ben was standing behind I “accidentally” dropped the gold coin. The “clank” it made when it hit the cement was absolutely perfect! It rolled toward the pillar, gleaming bright gold. I hurriedly bent down and chased after it as my friends all made distressed noises.

  As the coin approached the pillar I could see Ben’s dirt-crusted boots step toward the coin. This was the part of my plan that I dreaded the most. I hoped that I would get to the coin first, and that Ben wouldn’t make too big of a scene in front of my friends and everyone else that was wandering around nearby.

  But there was the possibility that Ben would get to the coin first and I would lose it. I wasn’t sure how I would explain that to Mr. Bell.

  Suddenly my worst fears seems about to be realized! The coin rolled up against Ben’s boot, then fell flat on the concrete. I desperately grabbed for the coin. At the same time, Ben’s hand reached down—only his hand didn’t grab the coin, it grabbed my wrist! Hard!

  My arm was yanked up, pulling me up with it. Somehow I managed to keep hold of the coin, but I felt like a rag doll in Ben’s vice-like grip. He pulled my arm up above my head and pulled me close to his face.

  “I warned you to keep away from this, little girl. Now give me that coin and—”

  Suddenly a voice said: “Ah, there you are, Miss Hoyle!”

  Both Ben and I turned. It was Mr. Greenwald. Without missing a beat, Mr. Greenwald grabbed my arm and pulled it out of Ben’s grasp and virtually swung me around in one smooth fluid motion until Mr. Greenwald was standing between Ben Thompson and myself. “We’ve got to hurry, Miss Hoyle,” he said as he took my arm and virtually dragged me away.

  It all happened so fast no one—including Ben Thompson—had a chance to react. One second Ben was holding my arm and threatening me, and within a matter of four or five seconds I was being hurried across the campus by Mr. Greenwald. I managed to glance behind me and saw that my friends had been caught flat-footed as well, but they were running to catch up with us. Ben Thompson was still standing by the pole, a look of bewilderment on his face. As I watch the bewilderment began to change to anger.

  But by then it was too late. I was out of his grasp and there wasn’t anything he could do about it right now.

  Mr. Greenwald hadn’t been part of my plan. “Mr. Greenwald,” I said a
s I was dragged across campus, “how did you—”

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since you got here today. I was afraid something like this might happen.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, still too surprised to put up any resistance to his dragging me across the campus.

  “The teachers’ lounge. I want you and your friends to stay there until at least lunch-time. Consider it protective custody.”

  I didn’t argue. And neither did my friends. Being in “protective custody” meant that Wesley and Alan didn’t have to hand in their history assignments. Alan had done his, but Wesley had put his off until the last minute—like he always did—and the last minute was taken up with visiting Jason at the hospital and then digging the hole at the school last night.

  While we waited I handed Wesley my notebook filled with all the information I’d found in the school library on the ghost. I guess he figured this was his best chance to get a grade because I saw him frantically copying stuff into his notebook.

  But most of the time I spent pacing nervously. I hated waiting. I hated being cooped up, even when it was for my own good. There was one moment of excitement when Principal Wright announced over the school p.a. system that a time capsule was going to be buried behind his office on Friday at noon. He encouraged every student and every teacher to bring something representative of the school to the office by noon Wednesday so the best items could be chosen for the capsule.

  That meant Parts One, Two, and Three of my plan had now been accomplished.

  Part One had been digging the hole and letting the “ghost” see us dig the hole.

  Part Two had been letting Ben see the gold coin so he would think we had found it in the hole we’d dug.

  And Part Three had been getting the principal to announce that an even bigger and deeper hole was going to be dug in the same spot to bury a time capsule.

  All that was left now was to catch the Bad Guys when they came to remove the coins and the body before the ceremony on Friday.

  Chapter 26

  Busted!

  I guess you can never be 100% sure of anything. Even after the principal announced that the time capsule would be buried I still wasn’t 100% sure my plan would work. There were still too many unknowns.

  For example, what if Mr. Bell were wrong about where he had found the coin? Or what if he were right about where he found it but the “ghost” had dug it up somewhere else and merely dropped it there?

  If either of those things were true then the murderer might not care that we were digging a hole behind the principal’s office and my whole plan would fall apart.

  But I really didn’t think that would happen for one simple reason. The ghost was still showing up at the school. What that told me was that the ghost wasn’t sure where the coins and the body were buried. If he had been sure he would have dug them up long ago and been done with it.

  The thing that clenched it for me was when Mr. Greenwald came into the teachers’ lounge half way through lunch with a smug smile on his face. He was so excited he could hardly contain himself. He motioned us all into a corner, away from the other teachers (who were not happy we were in their lounge!) and began whispering. “I just spent two hours in the principal’s office with Mayor Thompson!”

  That didn’t sound good to me. For a moment my heart sank.

  I guess Mr. Greenwald read my expression. He leaned forward with a big smile on his face. “He was furious! He demanded that Principal Wright cancel the time capsule and Principal Wright told him to get stuffed!”

  Mr. Greenwald was beside himself with joy. Suddenly I began smiling, too. “That means my plan is going to work, doesn’t it?”

  “It sure looks like it!” Mr. Greenwald said, beating a quick tattoo on the table with the fingers of both hands. “Why would the Mayor care if the school buried a time capsule unless he had something to hide?” Mr. Greenwald looked around the table at each of us with a big smile on his face. He ended on me. “Patsy, I think you’ve done it. I think you’ve finally put all the pieces together. You’ve accomplished what the police and I failed to do. You’ve set a trap that Mayor Thompson can’t wiggle out of! You are truly a remarkable young woman!”

  * * *

  We spent the next two hours in the teachers’ lounge. I always pictured the teachers’ lounge as being some fancy place with lots of neat stuff for teachers to do that they didn’t want us kids to know about, but that certainly wasn’t the case with this teachers’ lounge. It was just a room with six plain tables and a bunch of uncomfortable hard-backed plastic chairs. The biggest deal about the whole room that I could see was they had a machine that they could buy coffee and hot chocolate and chicken soup out of, and another machine filled with soft drinks.

  If this is all there is to the teachers’ lounge, then they’re welcome to it!

  Our lives were beginning to feel like something out of a spy movie. For lunch, Mr. Greenwald brought us sandwiches and bought us drinks out of the machine, and then he came and got us an hour before everyone else got out of school.

  He walked us to the parking lot and then followed us to the hospital so we could visit Jason. He wanted to make sure that Ben Thompson didn’t try anything.

  After our visit with Jason I wanted to drive out to Mr. Bell’s to return his gold coin. I had started getting nervous about holding it after Mr. Greenwald told me it was worth about five or six hundred dollars to a collector. Mr. Greenwald’s car was bigger than Wesley’s so we all piled into it and Mr. Greenwald drove.

  I think Mr. Greenwald was really looking forward to meeting Mr. Bell, but when we got there we couldn’t find him. I’m not sure Mr. Greenwald really believed my stories about Mr. Bell, but after we looked in Mr. Bell’s house to see if he was O.K., and Mr. Greenwald got a look at all the hundreds of TV monitors, and all the aluminum foil satellite dishes all over the yard and the house—plus the fact that the whole house itself was covered with aluminum foil—I think he believed everything I told him.

  We ended up leaving a note on the chair in his living room, and leaving the coin on top of the note. As I was getting into the car I took one last look at the remarkable little house and I could have sworn I saw an aluminum-foil covered head duck down on the far side of the roof. I smiled and yelled, “Good bye, Mr. Bell. Thanks for letting me use the coin! I’ll be back to see you again soon!”

  I think I saw an aluminum-foil-covered hand rise up and wave quickly from the far side of the roof. It happened really quickly, and light and shadows play some good tricks around Mr. Bell’s aluminum-foil house so I can’t be sure I saw a hand, but I smiled and waved back just in case. I really liked Mr. Bell.

  * * *

  Mr. Greenwald tried to talk us out of staking out the school that night. He reminded us how dangerous it was and stuff like that—and I’m sure he was right— but none of us were about to be left out now! We had worked too long and too hard to wimp out now. I think Mr. Greenwald understood; he didn’t really try to talk us out of it that hard.

  There was no guarantee that the Mayor and Ben would show up tonight—but I was betting they would. They couldn’t take the chance that we would come back tonight to dig up more coins and possibly discover August Wallenberg’s body.

  We met at eight-thirty at the donut shop on Sycamore and Elm, not too far from the base of the hill. I hadn’t really thought about how we were going to prove that the Mayor and Ben were trying to dig up a body and a bunch of stolen coins; I just assumed that if we caught them in the act they’d just admit it or something. I guess that was a bit naive.

  Mr. Greenwald, however, came prepared. He had a special video camera he’d rented downtown. It had special lenses or filters or something so it could shoot video in the dark. It was really cool.

  Naturally Alan knew everything there was to know about it—and he spent the next thirty minutes telling us about it; at one point Wesley wrapped the camera cord around his neck and pantomimed hanging himself. Alan ignored him and kept
right on talking!

  Finally, at nine, Mr. Greenwald said it was time to go. We all looked at each other and tried to smile, but we knew this was serious. It could be dangerous.

  We couldn’t take the chance of anyone spotting our car, so we left it in the donut shop parking lot and began hiking up the hill. It reminded me a lot of the very first night when we’d hiked up the hill to see the ghost. That seemed like such a long time ago. Almost two weeks.

  The only difference this time was that Mr. Greenwald was with us. I figured he’d slow us down, what with being so old and everything. I mean, the guy had to be at least thirty-five! But he not only kept up, he was actually leading most of the way!

  Once we reached the quad Mr. Greenwald took charge. He pointed out dark hiding places and told us that we weren’t to move or make a sound no matter what! He assured us that he had everything under control and no matter what happened we weren’t to confront anyone; after all, Mayor Thompson had already killed once, so he wouldn’t hesitate to kill again!

  I didn’t mind Mr. Greenwald taking over this part of things. I mean, he was doing a great job. Besides, I wasn’t in this for the glory—I wanted to solve the mystery and see justice done.

  Even so, I have to tell you that waiting behind a bush in the middle of the night for more than an hour and a half without moving and without making a sound is a lot harder to do than you think. I was just about ready to call things off and admit defeat when I saw movement!

  I turned my head and looked at Jennifer. I could see her suddenly sit up and take notice. I looked over at Mr. Greenwald and could see him do likewise. He silently lifted the special video camera to his eye.

  I couldn’t see Wesley and Alan but I’m sure that they, too, were focused on the area we’d dug behind the principal’s office. Quite suddenly two figures, dressed in black, crossed to the hole. Each figure carried a shovel and one carried a pick-ax as well. The one without the pick-ax carried a special high-tech lantern of some kind that only seemed to give off light in a small area, right where the hole was.