Spookygirl - Paranormal Investigator

by Jill Baguchinsky

  Isobel screamed. Yanking her hand away, she scrambled to her feet and took off, running as fast as her industrial platform boots could carry her. The other goths, no longer worried about looking stupid in front of their leader, followed. Tim and I stood up and watched them retreat. Irma and Delores drifted nearby, both doubled over with laughter. Irma let the black ball fall onto the grass.

  “That was really awesome,” Tim said. “How’d you do the footsteps thing?”

  I glanced around, pretending to be afraid again. “I didn’t plan that part.”

  “What?!”

  “I’m kidding! Don’t pass out or anything.”

  He toed the ground. “I knew you were kidding.”

  “Sure you did.” I retrieved the black ball from where Irma had dropped it, then blew out the candle and packed everything up.

  “Want me to walk you home?” Tim asked.

  “Sure, thanks. There’s just one more thing I have to do first. Well, two more things.” I took out the necklaces and approached Irma and Delores. “Wonderful job, ladies. Thank you. Where do you want these?”

  “Oh, I’m right over there,” Irma said, motioning for me to follow. “And Delores is two rows closer. We’ll show you.”

  As Irma led the way, Delores floated along beside me.

  “So pretty,” she said, her eyes fixed on the necklaces, which glimmered in the moonlight. “My Henry never gave me anything this nice in forty years of marriage.”

  “Your husband’s name is Henry?” I asked, thinking of the dead janitor who was now spooking around school, hassling me every time I tracked in mud or left fingerprints on a clean window. It couldn’t be the same Henry. Could it?

  “Yes,” Delores said, still paying more attention to the necklaces than me.

  “Henry Boyd?”

  That caught her attention. “That’s him. How did you know?”

  “Delores, I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but your husband passed away about two months ago. My dad’s funeral home handled his arrangements.”

  I thought the news might upset her, but instead she just scowled. “That can’t be right. I’ve been waiting for him for years. If he went and had himself buried next to his mother…Did this Henry need a haircut?”

  “In the worst way,” I said, picturing Henry’s thinning curls.

  “Thank you for telling me, dear. As soon as I find that deceitful old goat, I’ll give him what for.”

  “He’s back at Palmetto High School,” I said. “You should be able to find him there.” I didn’t have even a twinge of guilt about tattling on Henry.

  I draped Delores’s necklace over the plaque that served as her headstone. “Are you sure I can’t leave them somewhere safer?” I asked as I followed Irma to her grave. “The maintenance people will find them, or visitors will take them.” It was a shame the ladies couldn’t just wear their new treasures, but it wouldn’t be wise to have a couple of necklaces levitating around the cemetery.

  “Oh, we know,” Irma said. “But at least we can enjoy them for a little while first. I do so love shiny things.”

  She pointed out her plot; when I went to put the necklace down, I saw her full name and gasped. “Irma Morris? Wait, you’re Mrs. Morris, aren’t you?” I knew Irma had looked familiar! The last time I’d seen her, she was silent and still, covered in death spackle and laid out for her viewing.

  “Yes, dear. That’s me.” Irma looked a little confused.

  “My dad owns Addison Funeral Services,” I explained. “I did your de—I mean, I did your makeup.”

  “How nice of you, Violet.” Irma smiled and patted my arm, a gesture that felt like nothing more than a draft of cool air. “I took a peek before they put me in the ground, you know. I looked very pretty.”

  “You’re such a nice girl,” Delores added. “Come visit us again sometime. I want you to meet my son.”

  Irma clucked her tongue. “Delores, your son is thirty-eight years old and has a potbelly. Violet can do better.”

  Delores gave her friend an icy glare.

  Before an old-ghost-lady catfight could break out, I said good-bye to Irma and Delores and turned back to Tim. He was staring nervously at the necklace on Irma’s headstone. Irma was nudging it with her toe, making it move back and forth so that it twinkled in the moonlight.

  “Oh, come on,” I said as I hoisted the messenger bag over my shoulder and started for home. “You can’t tell me you’re not getting at least a little used to this stuff by now.”

  Tim still seemed a little jumpy. “That wasn’t…I mean, that wasn’t really Charlie back there, was it?”

  “There is no Charlie.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You really think a serial killer named Charlie would be interested in cheap costume jewelry from the mall?”

  “Well, you never know.”

  I gave him an exasperated glance. I guess séances—even the fake kind—aren’t for everyone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  the black rose

  After Halloween night, I was unwilling royalty among the goths. I guess my faux séance had truly impressed them, or else they were terrified I’d sic the ghost of Charlie the serial killer on them if they didn’t kiss my butt a little. Either way, they did their best to welcome me into their ranks no matter how hard I resisted, and Isobel tolerated Tim because he was my friend. I put up with all of it because Tim was in black-eyeliner heaven.

  (Okay, and because it’s nice to be adored instead of mocked, no matter who’s doing the adoring.)

  The following Monday, Tim and I were on the second floor of the east building, heading to the library for lunch. As we passed a door that was slightly ajar, we heard a quick, conspiratorial hiss. It was Derek, the jumping goth, peeking out from behind the door.

  “Come here.”

  The door led to one of the emergency stairwells that allowed access to the roof, which was why students weren’t normally allowed to use it. The fire code prohibited the school from keeping the stairwells locked, but the doors were equipped with alarms to keep anyone from sneaking in. Except for this door, apparently. When I asked Derek, he explained that the stairwell’s alarm had been broken since last spring.

  “The administration’s too busy with important crap like dress code violations and football games to notice,” he said, smirking.

  The trapdoor to the roof was already open; we followed Derek up the ladder and found the rest of the goths already there, shading themselves from the sun with umbrellas and passing around a bottle of what had to be industrial-strength sunscreen.

  We sat down with them; they weren’t my favorite people to spend a lunch period with, but the breeze felt so nice that I didn’t care about the company. The first cold front of the fall had moved through over the weekend, and the weather was surprisingly cool—for Florida, at least—and pleasant. It did seem like an awfully sunny choice for a bunch of creatures of the night, but I guess the roof’s isolation in an otherwise overcrowded school was worth a little sun exposure.

  “You okay up here, Mister Half Vampire?” I asked Tim.

  He put on his sunglasses and held up his hand, shielding part of his face. “I’ll be fine.”

  “We spend lunch up here every day,” Derek said, sitting beside us, “except when it looks like it might rain. Charlene’s afraid of getting hit by lightning.”

  “Three thousand people die from lightning strikes every year in Florida,” Charlene informed us as she rubbed sunscreen on the back of her neck.

  “That sounds a little high,” I said.

  “Look it up,” she huffed.

  I shrugged. “Hey, the more people who get hit by lightning, the more business for my dad.”

  Charlene sneered, but the rest of the goths looked interested, as if they hoped for more funerary anecdotes. Then Isobel glanced over the edge of the building at the central courtyard below and made an offended hmm sound, and all attention returned to her.

  “Behold, the void,” she
said flatly. “It assembles.”

  I followed her gaze. In the courtyard, a herd of jocks and cheerleaders gathered around one of the long planters that ran along either side of the sundial. A series of pizza boxes sat on the planter’s ledge; the jocks were enthralled by the pizza, and the cheerleaders were enthralled by the jocks. I saw Cherry picking the pepperoni off her slice and feeding each piece to Jake Bartle by hand.

  It was a school rule that everyone had to spend the lunch period in the cafeteria, (unless, of course, you found an unobtrusive place to hide). Like the dress code, that rule apparently didn’t apply to the jocks or the cheerleaders. They’d never get in trouble for skipping lunch and hanging out in the courtyard, but we were risking detention or worse.

  “How’d they get the pizza?” I asked.

  “One of them probably left campus to get it,” Derek said. “Or maybe they got it delivered right to the front office.”

  “And that’s allowed?”

  Isobel rolled her eyes. “For the void? Of course.”

  I had to admit, as far as nicknames went, “the void” was a pretty good fit.

  “I’m surprised Dead Dirk’s not following them around,” I said, squinting. “Then again, it can be hard to see ghosts when the sun’s this bright. It turns them kind of transparent.”

  I’d assumed Tim had told the goths all about the ghost in the art wing, but judging by Isobel’s quick response, I was wrong.

  “Dirk Reynolds?” she asked, uncharacteristically quietly. “He’s still here? You can see him?” The usual affectation was temporarily gone from her voice.

  “I’ve only seen him in one of the art rooms,” I said, taking note of Isobel’s sudden interest. I hadn’t noticed before, but now I realized I’d never spotted Dirk around the jocks anywhere else at school. Only in drawing class.

  “And he’s there regularly?”

  “Yeah. I see him a couple times a week.”

  “Will you do me a favor?” Beneath her frilly black parasol, Isobel tilted her head. “Ask Dirk about the black rose, and tell me what he says.”

  I was surprised by her request, but I nodded. “Sure. I can’t promise anything, though. He doesn’t like me.”

  As I thought about Isobel’s cryptic question, I began to wonder if maybe there was a reason I’d only ever seen Dirk in the art room. A reason that had nothing to do with the jocks.

  I didn’t get to ask Tim about Isobel’s request until we were on our way to drawing class, and he didn’t have any idea what it was about.

  “I can’t imagine they would’ve been friends,” I mused. “A star athlete and the queen of the goths?”

  “Isobel was a freshman when Dirk was a junior,” Tim said. “So I guess it could be possible. But can you imagine the two of them hanging out?”

  “Nope. Maybe Dirk used to tease her or something. Maybe the black rose is some sort of code for something he did. She seemed interested in the fact that he’s always in the art wing.”

  “Isobel’s a great artist,” Tim said. “Her stuff ends up in the state art fair every year. She has Advanced Portfolio first period—you can’t get into that class without advance approval from the teacher. And you know that mural in the hall by the gym?”

  “That ugly Trojan?”

  “Yep. That one.”

  “It’s all crooked and out of proportion.”

  “I know. She did that on purpose because she hates Palmetto so much. There was a contest last year to see who’d get to paint the mural. The winning design was guaranteed to be up for at least a year. So Isobel did this really great sketch—I mean, it was a Trojan with a sword and a football, so it was still stupid, but it looked professional. So she won, but when she painted the final mural, she pretended to have trouble with the proportions. She made all these, like, mistakes. On purpose. And it has to stay up because she won the contest. The art teachers all know what she did, but they won’t say anything because they’re all pissed that the sports programs get all the funding while the art programs keep getting cut. It was pretty brilliant.”

  “Wow.” Clearly, I hadn’t given Isobel enough credit. Her trick with the mural was pretty ballsy. I could definitely get behind someone who hated Palmetto as much as she did, even if she did seem a little too interested in one of its former star athletes.

  Dirk was present during class that day, ghosting around near the portfolio racks. After twenty minutes of drawing a bowl of fruit with sepia-colored Conté sticks, I pretended I needed to check something in my portfolio and wandered over to the racks.

  “Hey,” I whispered when I was close to Dirk. “You know Isobel? Tall girl, black hair, queen of the goths?”

  Dirk gave me a strange, wary look. “Yeah. But her hair was brown when I knew her.”

  Like I cared. “She wanted me to ask you about the black rose.”

  “What?” His eyes widened. “Tell her it’s gone.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Figure it out,” he said, and he vanished. Ghosts can be so damned cryptic.

  It wasn’t much of a message to relay, but I shared it with Isobel on the roof during lunch the next day. It seemed to upset her. “Tell him I won’t accept that.”

  “I will, but it would help if I knew what we’re talking about.”

  Isobel sighed and glanced at her fellow goths. Then she stood up and tilted her head, indicating that I should follow her to the opposite end of the roof. The others stared after us in awe, as though I’d been awarded a private audience with a celebrity.

  “I can’t talk about this in front of them,” Isobel said when we were out of earshot. “I promised Dirk I’d never tell, but this has been bothering me since he…you know. Since he died.” She looked troubled. “He’s not here right now, is he?”

  “I’ve never seen him anywhere but the art room. I’m starting to think he might be stuck there.”

  She nodded. “I think I might know why. See, everyone thinks Dirk was dating that Cherry skank his junior year. She spread that around after he died because it got her a lot of attention. But really, he couldn’t stand her. And he was sort of involved with someone else.” Her expression was uncomfortable and almost embarrassed. “Me.”

  I suppose I’d seen that coming, but hearing her admit it still surprised me a little.

  “You? And part of the void?”

  “He wasn’t like the others,” she said. “Not really. He did the football thing because he was good at it, but also, mostly, because his dad pushed him. His dad used to tell him he was stupid, and that football was the only way he’d get into college. Dirk wasn’t stupid.” Isobel’s voice grew defensive. “I mean, he wasn’t great at math and stuff, so his grades were crappy. But he didn’t deserve to be put down like that by his own dad. He had so much going for him besides sports.” She paused, as though she needed to collect her thoughts. “I first met him in the art wing, in room 314.”

  “That’s where my drawing class is,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yeah, I figured it was the same room. This was back when I was a freshman. Mr. Connelly let me stay late one afternoon to finish a project. About twenty minutes after the last bell rang, Dirk came in and started setting up an easel across the room. He didn’t say anything, just got a canvas and some acrylics and started painting. He was doing this abstract thing with reds and purples and oranges. It was anger and frustration in big, bold blocks of color. Every so often Mr. Connelly would go over and give him advice—not that he really needed it. The painting was amazing.”

  Isobel went on with her story. Mr. Connelly liked her work and wanted her to submit some pieces to the county’s annual exhibit, so she started staying late every day to get them done. Sometimes Dirk was there, sometimes he wasn’t. On the days he showed up, he usually painted; occasionally he sketched instead. He always worked in silence, until one day when he stepped back from his canvas and asked Isobel what she thought of his latest painting. After that, they started talking pretty regularly.


  “Dirk had talent. He was the one who should’ve been submitting to exhibits and stuff,” Isobel said, “but his dad wouldn’t let him. The jerk said it was a waste of time that should’ve gone into more football practice instead.” Since Dirk’s dad wouldn’t let him take art classes, Mr. Connelly let Dirk work in the art wing before or after school, depending on his football practice schedule, of course. Dirk’s dad thought he was spending that time either out on the field or in the gym’s weight room.

  Because of all the pressure from his father, Dirk was almost ashamed of how much he enjoyed painting. He vented a lot to Isobel, and she vented back about how much she hated school. Their various miseries put them on a surprisingly compatible wavelength.

  “It all had to be kind of secret because Dirk was terrified of his dad finding out. How stupid is that? A six-foot-four football player being scared of his worthless little jerk of a father who couldn’t just accept his son for who he was.” Dirk was so secretive about his art that his entire relationship with Isobel played out inside room 314. They never so much as got coffee or saw a movie together.

  Despite that, I could tell from the pain in Isobel’s voice just how serious their connection had been. She loved him; I could hear it in the way she still tried to protect him from his dad’s judgment.

  “The Black Rose was an oil painting Dirk had been working on. He said he was dedicating it to me. I didn’t really have my look together back then, but I was already wearing a lot of black, and he knew I was thinking about dyeing my hair. The painting was gorgeous—it was this abstract, geometric rose done in black against a white background with all these sharp lines and jagged shapes. It kind of looked like stained glass without the color added in. I was going to keep harassing him until he agreed to put it in the county exhibition, but then he went to that stupid party and…

  “What a dumbass thing to do.” Her voice softened, and she stared into the distance. “Drinking that much and then thinking he could drive home. But that’s how he acted around the other jocks. He turned into exactly what you’d expect, just another member of the void. I never even bothered trying to talk to him outside of the art room. But when he was painting, it was like he became a different person. I think that’s the only time he was able to be himself. That’s why I’m not surprised he’s still hanging around in room 314. It’s where he was happiest.” She was blinking rapidly, and she smiled almost apologetically. “I shouldn’t cry. I’ll smudge my stupid mascara.”