One by one, they put their hands into the center, palm on fist. Even Derrick, whose hands felt like limp fishes.
“Right!” Min cried, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “All of us. Tomorrow. Let’s hunt some ghosts!”
“Why are we here again?” Derrick asked, his green eyes narrowing into slits. Beads of sweat gathered along the edge of his hair and his hands were trembling. For someone who studied monstrous creatures from the ocean, Derrick seemed surprisingly nervous about the supernatural. Of course, thought Min, if Derrick didn’t want to see a vampire squid all he had to do was stay out of the ocean. A ghost could find you anywhere.
“I already told you—to solve a puzzle,” Min told Derrick. “Okay, sure, that whatever-it-was looked spooky, but we need facts.” She shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose and tried not to think of Nai Nai, her ancestors, or anything else that might be floating inside that weird basement. Scientists were tough.
The Scary Place was surrounded by tall, leafy trees that seemed to guard the house. Even in their shade, Min felt hot and sticky—another scorching day with enough humidity to make her feel like she was breathing soup. Min, at least, had come prepared. In addition to her cell phone, she had a notebook, a pen, and her own thermometer. Jayid had brought flashlights. Derrick, who had tried to chicken out, had nothing extra at all.
The three “Ghosties,” as Min liked to call them, waved eagerly from the weathered porch. Brian Sehen, Amanda Estrella, and Ike Kai all wore matching black tee shirts emblazoned with the words “GHOST HUNTER.” Twelve-year-old Ike, who was Hawaiian, had golden eyes and curly, chestnut hair. Ten-year-old Amanda had deep dimples and long, straight black hair tipped in magenta. She was short but had the energy of a firecracker. And of course, there stood Brian, with his white-blond hair and large, gapped teeth that were always visible because he never stopped smiling.
“Come on in!” Brian called to them, scooping his hand through the air. “The stuff lives in the basement.”
“Yeah, don’t be scared,” Amanda giggled. The edges of her hair danced like red flames. “The ghost seems totally cool.”
“I heard that the ghost kids throw pebbles at anyone who walks inside the Scary Place,” Derrick shouted. “Did that happen to you?”
“Nah,” answered Brian, while Min (just to be sure) searched every single window for an old man’s face, “I think that part’s just legend. But this place is definitely haunted. That’s why my parents bought it, so they could turn it into a spooky bed-and-breakfast. You guys ready?”
There was nothing for it.
“Ready,” Min announced, taking the lead.
“Go science.” Jayid began to march through the thistle-filled yard.
When the Geekers reached the porch, Brian instructed them to watch their step. “It’s rickety out here, but the floor inside is still pretty good.”
The six of them walked through the large doorway and made a lopsided circle inside the giant foyer. A dusty smell mixed with rotting wood made Min’s nose crinkle. Most of the dingy wallpaper had peeled off; there were large splotches all over the walls, big and dark as thunderclouds. Although the house was completely empty of any furniture, there were plenty of cobwebs hanging from the ceiling like dirty icicles.
“Well,” Brian began. He rolled onto his toes and swung his long arms. “This is it.”
There was an awkward silence. It occurred to Min that the two groups could not have been more different. They were eyeing each other with no one saying anything. Finally, Min said, “Right, then. Lead the way.”
“Down this hall,” Brian told them happily. “We already set up our equipment, which we borrowed from Amanda’s mom. She’s a for-real Ghost Hunter. Amanda’s mom told us exactly what to do to get a ghost to come. Like, you have to talk to them like they are people. Which they were.”
While Brian chattered, Ike whipped up his hand like he was holding a stop sign. “Wait a sec,” Ike said, bending down. He grabbed a large rock and jammed it against the door to keep it wide open.
“What are you doing?” Derrick asked. Min noticed his voice was very, very high.
Ike gave him a look. “Have you ever watched a scary show? If ghosts get mad they can lock you inside and you might not ever get out. We like to keep our options open.”
Falling into the single-file line with Brian in the lead, Min heard the floorboards groan with every step. They made their way down the narrow hallway only to stop at another, smaller door. It squeaked when Brian swung it open. “Twenty stairs to the wine cellar,” he told them, pointing down into what looked like a hole.
“Wait—why is there a green glow down there?” Jayid asked, furrowing his brow.
“’Cause we set up my grid lights in the middle of the cellar,” Amanda answered proudly. “That way, if something moves, we can see it. Grid lights shoot out a set light pattern. Awesome for tracking ghosts!”
With the cellar door open, a cool, damp draft hit Min’s face. Brian’s, Jayid’s, Amanda’s, Derrick’s, and then Min’s shoes clattered as they began their descent, but not before Ike had placed a second rock to keep the hall door open. “Options,” he repeated before taking his place at the back of the line.
When they finally reached the wine cellar, Min could tell they were definitely underground. She was grateful for the grid lights, because without them it would have been pitch black. Bright green polka dots splayed everywhere like a galaxy of stars. Min could make out the uneven bricks in a room shaped like a loaf of bread. Jayid turned on three regular flashlights and handed one to Min and one to Derrick, who muttered, “I want out.” Their cells were for filming only.
“Just sit wherever you want,” Brian told them softly. “The spirit should be here pretty soon.”
They all plopped down around three empty soup cans. Each can held a grid light that pointed upward. There were other gadgets placed in different spots across the floor. “EMF meters,” Amanda explained. “Stands for electromagnetic field. They go red when the ghosts are around.”
For the first few minutes all Min could think was that her bottom was turning into a block of ice. The Geekers fidgeted with their phones, ready to film at a moment’s notice. Brian’s ghost hunters, on the other hand, sat like statues. The Geekers shifted around as they waited, waited, waited for something to happen.
Ten minutes crawled by: Brian asked, “Is there anyone here with us?” He got up and walked around the entire room, calling out to the air, before settling back down again.
Twenty minutes: Derrick burped.
Twenty-five minutes: Jayid blew his nose so hard Brian accused him of trying to scare off the ghost.
Thirty minutes: Min rubbed her bare arms. It was much colder down here than she expected. Sixty-one degrees again. She knew because Brian held a box with a small wire that read out the temperature on a digital screen. It worked much better than her under-the-tongue thermometer.
At thirty-nine minutes Min had to admit the basement was creeping her out. For one thing, the lights played tricks on her eyes. Every so often something seemed to swim through the dots like a shark, although she could usually trace it to a movement of one of the Geekers stretching an arm or waving a hand. Mostly, but not always. Every crack of a knee made her jump. She noticed Jayid and Derrick had gone quiet, too.
Suddenly, Ike cried, “I sense a presence. It’s coming—it’s coming now!”
At that moment a cloud rolled into the cellar, exactly as it had on Brian’s post. Derrick’s eyes seemed to pop while Jayid jumped to his feet. Min herself stayed frozen on the ground.
“Geekers, use your cells—film it!” she finally said when she got her mouth working again.
“Who are you?” Ike politely asked the mist. “Why are you here? Are you from the past? Did you die in this house?”
The pearly air thickened and coiled. Min could hardly believe what was happening, but she could not deny the evidence right before her eyes. Goose bumps pricked her skin as the cl
oud revolved like a top. She could sense it, could actually feel whatever this thing was.
“The temperature just dropped ten degrees!” Brian yelled, thrusting his temperature gauge into the middle of the cloud. “I told you, Geeks, I told you! Paranormal activity!”
“Paranormal this!” Derrick yelled as he sprung up like a kangaroo.
There was a rat-a-tat-tat like beats on a drum. It was Jayid’s and Derrick’s shoes as they blasted up the basement stairs, each one shoving the other to get ahead.
That was enough for her. “Later!” Min cried. Running as fast as she could (she was the best sprinter) Min was already on her fellow Geekers’ heels by the time they reached the hallway. Grateful the cellar door was still open as well as the wide-open one at the front, the three of them dashed like crazy until they all stumbled down the rickety steps right into the yard. Light blinded her eyes; she almost choked in the swamp-like air outside of the Scary Place.
From somewhere far away Min heard the word “Cowards.” The sun beat on their heads like a yellow, accusing eye.
“There has to be an explanation,” Min told Jayid and Derrick when they were safely inside Min’s family room. Since they’d run the two blocks back to Min’s house, the three of them were still panting. “There just has to be.”
“I didn’t see anything like dry ice or anything fake,” Jayid gasped. “I checked it all out with my flashlight before that thing came inside.”
“We were wrong,” Derrick yelled in a cracked voice. “Mind blown!” He, out of the three of them, was the most frightened by the swirling pillar of white, although they were all pretty rattled. Jayid’s eyebrows were still high up his forehead, and Min kept taking great big gulps from a water bottle.
“We are the worst,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We acted like little kids on Halloween.”
“Did we get anything on our phones?” Derrick squeaked.
They looked at their cells. Every one of them started with white mist, but their shots swiftly changed so that it looked like they were filming on a roller coaster. Mostly they caught their feet running, running, running.
“Okay, that’s humiliating. But we’ve still got our logic,” Min told them, trying to gain control. “First step—we need to write everything down. Let’s sit.” She fell onto her couch and pulled out her notebook, clicking her pen. “According to Brian’s text, the first ghost came into the basement yesterday at approximately two thirty,” she said, writing as best she could with wobbly fingers. “So that was Monday. The people present were Brian, Amanda, and Ike. Now as for today,” under the word Tuesday, “there was Brian, Amanda, and Ike, and then me,” she wrote down Min, “plus Jayid and Derrick. That makes a total of six people.” She blew a piece of hair out of her face. “Now, for our constants.”
“What does that mean?” Derrick asked. He was so hunched his chin almost touched his knees.
“It means the things that were the same. Like, on both days, the basement was sixty-one degrees. But when the ‘spirit’”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“showed up, it dropped to fifty-one degrees. It was one hundred degrees outside yesterday and one hundred and one today, which is pretty much the same. Eighty-seven percent humidity both days. Hmmm.” She tapped her pen against the paper.
“So what—those are all just numbers!” Derrick almost shouted. “We all saw it. We felt it! That proves it’s real!”
“Not . . . yet,” Jayid answered slowly. “What about those ghost meters on the ground? Maybe those guys jacked them up. Maybe they used them to prank us.”
“Yeah? And how are we going to prove that?” Derrick demanded.
That question took a long time to answer. Min chewed the corner of her lip. Derrick rubbed his forehead while Jayid stared at the ceiling. His gaze finally dropped to Min’s. As the older two, they’d always been able to signal each other as to what they were thinking. Min shot a look back to Jayid, who nodded back resolutely.
“We can’t end our investigation like this. Derrick, we’ve got to get more evidence,” Min told him as gently as she could manage.
“How?” Derrick demanded, brushing Min’s comforting hand away.
Jayid said, “We’ve got to go back there tomorrow. As Geeks 4 Science, we need to find the truth. No lights, no gadgets, or any of their weird EMF meters that can interfere with the facts.”
Derrick shook his head. “The ghost hunters will want to use them.”
“See, that’s just it—they won’t be there. Because this time,” Min paused, looking from Derrick’s whey face to Jayid’s dark, resolute eyes, “we go to the Scary Place alone.”
It was Friday. Min stared at her logic sheet, completely frustrated. The facts and figures she’d gathered all week were completely useless. She knew the answer was there, if she could only see it, but so far, the only thing that seemed real was that strange, churning, frigid ghost!
She looked at the grid she’d drawn that showed the activity, day by day.
Wednesday: The Geekers had shown up at two o’clock on the dot. Brian had given them the key and the temperature gauge before settling on the porch with his team, leaving the Geekers to hunt on their own. Inside the basement the Geekers had waited well past an hour, but there was nothing. No fog, no cloud, no spirit.
“It’s ’cause you guys aren’t believers,” Ike had told them when the Geekers opened the door and stepped outside. The Ghosties had greeted the news of “nothing there” with maddening grins.
“Ghosts can tell,” Brian had explained. “Come again tomorrow—but this time it will be all of us. And I’ll tell you right now, you’ll see the same ghost! It comes for us fans!”
Thursday: This time Jayid asked the Ghosties to leave their equipment outside, just in case. “Whatever,” Amanda had answered. “It doesn’t matter. We can go old school, but our ghost will show up!”
With flashlights and cell phones only, they saw the misty ghost arrive, right on schedule. Six investigators and one very large, swirling entity. Jayid had ground his teeth while Derrick tried to hold Min’s hand.
Friday: The Geeks had tried going solo again. Just Min, Jayid, and a very reluctant Derrick.
“Can we borrow your EMFs?” Jayid asked Amanda. He was still suspicious that the meters had somehow generated the ghost in the cellar. To that end he’d tucked a tiny screwdriver into his back pocket.
“Absolutely,” Amanda told him. “But remember, a ghost is like Tinker Bell—you’ve got to have faith!”
That time the Geekers had waited for almost two hours. The meters (which never lit up) had been secretly opened, but there were just wires and batteries inside—no dry ice. “Bummer,” Jayid had murmured before screwing them back together. “Guess that’s not it.”
Legs stiff, rear ends sore, they had tried to be patient, but no ghost, no mist, no anything had shown up. Which led to . . .
Saturday: Today. One last, final try before the Geekers would be forced to admit spirits really did exist. Sorry, Nai Nai, Min thought, but real spirits must have something better to do than roll around in a wine cellar. It was only moments away from two o’clock, which meant she had to start walking and meet up with the other Geeks. Still, Min wasn’t quite ready to put down her notebook. “The facts,” she said aloud, glaring at her figures. “The answer has to be in the facts!”
She scanned the numbers for the hundredth time. Min’s information showed the steady temperatures and humidity that had stayed the same all week long, so that wasn’t the key. And with or without the ghost equipment made no difference in the results. The equipment definitely didn’t matter. Truth was, the ghost actually did seem to show up only when the ghost hunters were there. Maybe the spirit truly preferred the Ghosties over Geekers.
And so, grudgingly and for the last time, at two o’clock Saturday, both the Geekers and Ghosties settled down once more in the dark, dank cellar. Once again and right on time, the thick spirit Amanda had named Pearl showed up.
; “Oh, she just loves us.” Ike laughed. “I’ll admit Pearl isn’t very talkative, but at least she’s consistent. Hi, Pearl! Glad you’re here!”
“Okay, this is just stupid. I’m leaving,” Min announced. She was so frustrated that she didn’t care if Pearl was unhappy with her departure. Stomping on the earthen floor, Min discovered she was just plain mad. This whole thing made no sense and she hated it when she couldn’t figure out a problem. Try as she might, the Geekers had been defeated. Which meant the Ghosties had won.
“Me, too,” Jayid grunted as he rose to his feet.
“Don’t leave me here,” Derrick screeched. “Sorry, Pearl!” He made a peace sign with his fingers. “Later!”
The three of them trudged up the cellar steps. At the top of the stairs, Min’s sneaker accidentally kicked the stone Ike had dutifully placed by the door. “Ouch!” she cried, hopping on one foot. “Why do they keep doing that? Pearl’s supposed to be a friendly ghost, so how come Ike keeps putting those ridiculous rocks at the doors so they can escape? My toe hurts!”
“Yeah,” Jayid agreed fiercely. “They think we’re the cowards, but we never needed an escape plan. We always shut the doors when we went into the cellar.”
“Actually, I kinda wanted to keep them open, just in case,” Derrick admitted guiltily, “but Jayid wouldn’t let me.”
Suddenly, it felt as though a million bees were buzzing inside of Min’s head. “Wait a second! Just—wait!” Min looked at her notes. She stared at the rock. She sucked in a breath as the answer hit her with the force of a meteor.
“Hey, Ghosties!” she cried as loudly as she could down the rickety stairs. “Pearl isn’t a spirit. I figured it out! I know exactly what’s down there, and it’s not paranormal!” Even though her toe hurt, Min did a little dance at the top of the stairs.
Super Puzzletastic Mysteries Page 20