Rules for Ghosting

by A. J. Paquette

  Particularly since they were opening the room of a dead girl, someone who might have somehow brought down a curse, daylight seemed like a good idea.

  “Poppy,” Oliver said through a yawn, “you were right after all—you know, about the spooky-weird, not just the cool-weird.”

  “Duh, I’m always right. You should know that by now. But you were right too.”

  “Huh?”

  Poppy grinned. “We have to find a way to stay in this house. As soon as all this ghost stuff is over. Night!” She leapfrogged over the banister and disappeared down the hallway.

  They set to work immediately after breakfast the next morning. Although Dahlia wasn’t able to ghost through the wall of the hidden room, she used something she called Clearsight to look through the wallpaper, and found a door buried under a couple layers of the brightly patterned paper.

  “Right here,” she said, marking the spot on the door with her hands after going through the zapper. This time, she came back moving extra slowly, like she had a heavy backpack on her shoulders, and Oliver hoped it wasn’t hurting her to keep using that machine.

  Poppy dove for the box cutter, but Oliver got to it first. “Mom would kill me if I let you use this without her permission,” he said, elbowing his sister out of the way. It didn’t take much effort to cut a door shape out of the checkered wallpaper. Dahlia showed them where to cut, though when she was visible she didn’t have her ghost sight, so some of the edging was off. Still, in less than fifteen minutes the door was visible. Oliver got a wrench and stuck it through the empty hole where the doorknob had been removed.

  He turned the wrench and pulled the door toward him. It swung open wide.

  Chapter 21

  The hidden room was beautiful. Dahlia gazed in through the slowly opening doorway and something shivered inside her, something like a bud lifting its tiny head to the light, opening one petal and then another. So this was the mysterious cursed room! Why did it feel so … comforting? She looked around for signs of ghostly energy, but couldn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary. Of course, she was still fully corporeal, so maybe she wouldn’t see anything until she resumed her true form.

  She took in the high poster bed—dull and worn with age, pink satin trim just visible under the thick layer of dust, but gleaming shimmery silver in the early morning light from the far window. A tall, ornate chest of drawers filled one wall, and a plush carpet was spread across the floor.

  Almost without registering what she was doing, Dahlia’s feet began to move through the open door and across the floor, her eyes running over every detail.

  “Hey,” Oliver said. “Didn’t you say you … couldn’t come in this room?”

  Dahlia felt a sudden lurch in her insides. “I did say that—I couldn’t—”

  And yet, here she was. The room that had been blocked to her as a ghost had let in her non-ghostly form. Oliver seemed to understand and returned to exploring, and Poppy was fiddling with a music box. Dahlia turned her attention toward the bed. Right next to it, something hung on the wall. She walked over to it and blew off a cloud of dust. It was a wide, flat calendar of yellowed cardstock. At the top, she read, The Star Lover’s Guide to 1954.

  Dahlia swallowed. What was it about this place? Why did it seem almost familiar?

  “Wow!” Poppy’s gasp was so loud that Oliver’s hand shot out to shush her. Their parents might be two floors and multiple rooms away, but sound had a way of carrying the best when you least wanted it to.

  Strange feelings rushed through Dahlia as she watched Poppy brush dust off the coverlet and lift up the edge to peer at the sheets. Oliver walked over to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. He wrinkled his nose. “Clothes,” he said. “Old ones. Lots of lace and stuff.”

  Dahlia was growing more and more confused at the strange feelings churning inside her. “Wait,” she whispered, but the other two didn’t hear her. Poppy had her hand on a wooden chest that sat under the window. Suddenly Dahlia couldn’t take it anymore. She felt a rush of emotion welling up inside her, so hot and fast and strong she could hardly contain it. She ran across the room and yanked Poppy away from the chest. “Stop!” she said. “Just leave everything alone!”

  Poppy turned around and raised an eyebrow.

  Dahlia found that she was trembling. What was going on with her? There was some connection here, something about this place she could almost remember but not quite. Some draw pulling her just as strongly as the fear was trying to push her away.

  “Never mind,” she muttered, moving toward the bed. “Just jittery, I guess.” Her legs looked sharply outlined again, so she knew the others saw her bobbing around on a short floating skirt. She didn’t have much longer before her next zap.

  “It looks like the room was frozen in time,” Oliver said. “Somebody locked it up years and years ago, after Laura Silverton’s death, I guess. And no one’s set foot in it since.”

  “No kidding,” Poppy said, waving her dust-blackened hands and turning back to continue investigating.

  Dahlia ran her hand along the edge of the coverlet, gently swirling the dust up into the air. The bed was neatly made, with a folded pile of clothing on the end. Almost as though it was still waiting for the room’s inhabitant to wake up and get dressed. Dahlia sat down on the bed, and her eyes fell on the nightstand.

  Reaching over, she picked up a tiny silver frame. She blew the dust off the frame and saw a tiny black-and-white photograph containing three fuzzy, washed-out faces: a wide bearded man, a stern but smiling woman, and a small apple-cheeked girl.

  Dahlia’s hands turned invisible. The picture frame dropped through them, clattering to the floor. Her breath catching in her throat, Dahlia jumped up and shot back toward the main storage area. She had to get back to the Seesaw, had to zap herself again as quickly as she could, and then start searching that room from top to bottom. Because, because—

  The small face in the frame was her own.

  This had been her room.

  How could she not have known it? And yet, of course, she now realized that somewhere deep down, she had known. Right from the start, bits of knowledge had been there, little tendrils of remembrance. She thought of the date on the calendar—far later than Laura Silverton had lived. She thought of her discomfort at the others fingering the things in the room—her things.

  “What’s the matter?” Oliver asked behind her as she finally slowed to a stop, hovering over the loose board.

  Dahlia bent over to pick up the Seesaw but her hands passed right through it. The jolt caught her off guard—was she growing so used to Manifesting that she was forgetting she was a ghost?—but once her form stabilized, she steadied herself and picked up the device. Might as well bring it back to the room, as she would certainly need to use it again soon.

  “That closed-up room was yours, wasn’t it?” Oliver asked. “It wasn’t that Laura girl’s after all. You were a lot younger in that photo, but it’s definitely you.”

  Dahlia walked back toward the room on leaden feet. “I don’t know anything about Laura, but I do remember this being my room. It just … the memories came back to me all at once. I’m sure we’ll find some clues in here.” She paused on the threshold. “Or, I hope we will. I don’t think I was in here when I was young. It was much later. I do remember my early childhood years, you know. My memories don’t stop until a year or two before I died, until …” The memory came to her like a slap across the face. “Until my father left. That’s when everything changed—I can almost remember. My mother pulled back into herself. I hardly saw her. She let most of the household staff go. She became kind of like a ghost herself.”

  Oliver looked down at the ground. If he was uncomfortable hearing all this personal stuff, he didn’t show it. He just looked sad.

  Dahlia shook her head. “Come on, let’s get searching. Your party is going to start soon, isn’t it?”

  She stepped through the door, with the Seesaw clutched tightly against her chest. As
she crossed the threshold, though, something felt different. There wasn’t a wall keeping her out, like when she was a ghost, but something was pushing against her, holding her back like a web, like a soap bubble and with just a bit more pressure … the push became an energy, which pulled suddenly taut. Dahlia leaned in harder, and finally it burst in a gush that knocked her backward.

  There was a loud grinding noise, as if the walls themselves might be coming apart. The floor lifted and dropped, shook itself like a dog, then was still. Dahlia barely kept her balance, panting a little.

  She knew what had just happened: she’d broken through the force that had kept her out of the room while she was in her ghost form. When she was back to normal, she knew she would be able to use her Clearsight and see right through this room, just like any other part of the house. But why? And how?

  Had she just broken the curse?

  Arms shaking, Dahlia set the Seesaw on the ground inside the door.

  “What was that?” Poppy asked. “Are you okay? You went all white and the room kind of went boom and jiggled. Do you think anyone downstairs heard that?”

  “I sure hope not,” said Oliver.

  “Is everything all right up there?” Mrs. Day’s voice drifted up the stairs, sounding thankfully far-off.

  The kids exchanged looks. “Fine!” called Oliver quickly. “Just, uh, dropped something heavy. No problems here!”

  A rumbling man’s voice chimed in. “Perhaps we should make sure all is well.”

  “Rutabartle?” Poppy whispered. “What’s that nosybones doing here?”

  “Checking up on the party, probably,” said Oliver.

  Poppy giggled. “Do you think he’ll like our decorations?”

  Dahlia wanted to join in the lighthearted conversation. She also wanted to think about this question of the curse and the dispelled energy and what that would mean for the Day family. Instead, all she could think of was that she was standing in this room, in her very own room, walking on the floors that she had walked on before she died. Maybe the actual room where she had died.

  It was like a blanket had been lifted off the air surrounding her and it now hummed and whispered to her in soft, familiar tones. She dove back into her search with a renewed energy.

  “Papers,” Oliver told Poppy, also busy searching once again. “Like a journal, or photographs, anything that could be a keepsake. Holler if you find anything.” He was over by the window, opening up the wooden chest that rested below the sill.

  “I’ll take the dresser,” Dahlia said, feeling she didn’t want anyone else pawing through her underclothes.

  Poppy lifted the bedskirts and started burrowing underneath. “Musty stockings,” came her muffled voice. “Some kind of lace napkin, uh, handkerchief? A wooden ball …”

  “We don’t need a running commentary, Poppy. Just tell us about stuff that looks important.” Oliver closed the chest and moved over to pull a wicker basket out from under an antique rocking chair.

  Dahlia sifted through drawer after drawer, but with the exception of some very fine undergarments, didn’t find anything of interest. One starched pinafore in a blue poinsettia pattern made a lump rise in her throat. She almost remembered a package coming in the mail, her father’s familiar handwriting scrawled over the label … she remembered the hurt that stormed across her mother’s face, her own eager thrill as she pulled the dress out of the package.

  She held it up now: it might have fit a small eight-year-old, and some bits of leftover memory told Dahlia that she had passed her twelfth birthday when the dress had arrived. The mix of being remembered and yet so misremembered had been a crushing blow. Yet, looking closer, Dahlia could see that careful snips and stitches had changed the fabric. It was no longer the pinafore of her memory. This had been painstakingly worked over by—she looked closer—by childish fingers. She herself must have transformed the too-small dress into a frilly top that would fit her just right.

  But she suddenly knew something with absolute certainty: she had never actually worn the top. It was like the rest of her past life—not quite right to begin with, nearly fixed, but ultimately left forgotten in some dark corner. And suddenly it was all too much. Dahlia gripped the fabric and ripped it clean down the middle.

  “Hey,” said Poppy, darting over to her side. A long dust bunny dangled off the end of her ponytail. “What are you doing? What is that?”

  “Nothing,” Dahlia muttered, ripping it again. “Just some old”—rip—“long-forgotten”—rip—“completely useless piece of—”

  “Wait,” Oliver said gently, pulling the fabric from her hands. But it was too late. The pieces were tiny and as they drifted down to the wood floor, past her now-ghostly legs, she saw the sharp image of the expired top pulling away. Instinctively she reached up her hands to catch it, looking down at her outfit and wondering whether it wasn’t too late to try it on, to reclaim some piece of her former self. But her hand—still corporeal from the last Seesaw jolt—passed right through. The lump in Dahlia’s throat grew as the blue-patterned top slipped through the attic ceiling and was gone forever.

  She took a moment to compose herself. “Never mind that,” she said at last, trying for firmness but unable to keep a wobble out of her voice. “It’s just some old stupid part of my past.”

  Oliver looked unconvinced, but Poppy jabbed him aside. She grabbed Dahlia’s hand, tugging it gently in her own. “I had this splinter one time,” she said. “Oliver said it was stupid baby stuff but it wasn’t, it was big and jagged and it hurt like crazy. I didn’t want anyone to touch it and, okay, I went nuts when Dad got out his tweezers. But you know …” She scuffed at the floor with her shoe. “It had to get worse before it could get better. It hurt to get it out … but then, in the end, it was better.”

  Dahlia blinked. And then she smiled slowly. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  Beside her, Oliver was looking at Poppy with surprise. Then he turned to Dahlia. “You’ve remembered your past then?”

  “Not everything. I’ve got some bits and pieces, but I need to remember how I died. I suppose that’s the splinter I need to dig out. And I think the only way I can remember everything is to find my Anchor.”

  “What about that big bump before, when we came in here the second time?” Poppy asked. “What was that about?”

  “I don’t know. It felt …” Dahlia stretched her mind back. “Like some kind of energy force. Like something not all the way there. Not completely whole.”

  “Could the energy have just vanished? Gone out into the air?” Oliver asked.

  “I don’t think ghostly energy can just, um, dissipate. It’s not like an actual ghost that would cross over—these kinds of energies have to go somewhere else. Matter won’t just disappear, even ghost matter.”

  “So do you think it’s got anything to do with that Laura person, like we thought?” Poppy asked. “Or with the curse?”

  “Again with the curse,” Oliver said with a groan.

  Dahlia smiled wanly. “It can’t be a ghost—I’d have seen her if she hadn’t crossed over. All I know is that this force or curse or whatever it is has been trapped in here for a very long time. And now it’s out.”

  “It’s out?” Poppy said. “Oh, man. We’ve set the curse loose in the house, haven’t we? And just in time for the party too!”

  And that was when they noticed that the clomping and banging they had been hearing for the last few minutes was not ghostly at all, but consisted of footsteps climbing the attic stairs. This was followed by the voice of Jock Rutabartle: “What is all this talk I’m hearing about ghosts and haunting and a curse being loose in the house?”

  Chapter 22

  To Oliver, Rutabartle sounded more annoyed than angry, like they should know better than to make haunting jokes in a normal house that was soon to be sold to and inhabited by normal people. “Be cool,” Oliver whispered to the others. “He can’t possibly guess what we were really talking about—he’ll think we were just goofing off.
”

  “Oliver? Poppy?” Mom was in front, and she came up the stairs at a brisk pace, with Rutabartle immediately behind her. “Good, you’re both here. I’ve set out a cold lunch downstairs and as soon as you’ve eaten I want you to change for the party. Guests may begin arriving as soon as three o’clock, and that’s not much time at all. More likely not until five, but one can never be too careful. Isn’t that so, Mr. Rutabartle?”

  Rutabartle stood frozen in place. His eyes bulged and his face looked like it was being colored in with an invisible red crayon. Wait, invisible? Oh! Oliver gasped and turned quickly around, in the direction both Mom and Mr. Rutabartle were now staring with open mouths. Next to Poppy hung the old-fashioned torso, right arm, and smiling face of Dahlia Silverton.

  “Is … that—is that … tell me, are any of you seeing that …,” Rutabartle stammered.

  “Good grief,” said Mom, bringing her hands together with a sharp clap. “Have you two found yourself a ghost? Do you have a name, dear? You aren’t a projection, are you? Oliver? Are you fooling around with us?”

  “I’m Dahlia Silverton, ma’am,” said Dahlia, sounding rather wispy as her remaining arm disappeared and the nothingness started to chew up toward her neck.

  Mom started slowly circling around Dahlia. “And you seem to be … disappearing? Is that supposed to happen? Are you all right?”

  “Oh, well—yes. It’s because of the—”

  “Just the way things are! With ghosts!” Oliver cut in quickly. He didn’t like the way Rutabartle’s face had gone from red to white and was now inching toward green. Bringing up the Seesaw right now was probably not the best idea.

  “She’s nice,” said Poppy. “We’re trying to help her remember how she died. We opened up the secret room, see?”

  Mom seemed to notice the sliced-through wallpaper for the first time. She ran her finger along the dusty wall and frowned. “You shouldn’t have disturbed things without asking me.” She tilted her head toward Rutabartle, whose mouth was now opening and closing in an obvious attempt to bring his brain up to speed with what was going on.