A Gust of Ghosts

by Suzanne Harper

  “Really.” Mrs. Malone seemed a little taken aback by this. “And how, may I ask, did you meet these ghosts?”

  Mrs. Rivera shrugged. “It was the easiest thing in the world. You see, I was born with the ability to connect to the Other World. Naturally, spirits of all types flock to me, since there are so few mortals who are sensitive enough to tune in to their vibrations.” She smiled kindly at Mrs. Malone. “Do not worry that you had a hard time making contact. Talent like mine is quite rare.”

  “I can imagine,” said Mrs. Malone somewhat distantly. “Well, I must get Rolly home and into the bath. It was so nice meeting you.”

  She took Rolly firmly by the hand and led him back to the house. Mrs. Rivera poured the last drops of water on her flowers and disappeared into her kitchen. Poppy and Henry were left alone.

  Henry stared at the ground, his hands thrust into the pockets of his shorts. Poppy bit her lip and looked at the sky.

  Finally Henry said, “Some people say my aunt is weird, but she’s not. She’s just … eccentric.” He hesitated a second before saying “eccentric,” as if he’d just learned it. He glanced at Poppy from the corner of his eye. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Eccentric, meaning unconventional or slightly strange—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being eccentric,” Henry interrupted her, as if she had been arguing that there was. Before she could say that she agreed with him, he added, “I think it’s interesting. Normal is boring.”

  He gave Poppy a challenging stare, as if daring her to disagree.

  Poppy felt a wave of relief wash over her. “Sometimes people have said that my parents are a little, er … offbeat, too,” she offered.

  “Why?” Henry asked warily. “Just because they go ghost hunting?”

  “Well, that,” said Poppy. “Among other things.”

  He eyed her closely. “Like what?”

  “Oh, you know,” said Poppy evasively. “Just things …”

  “Henry!” Mrs. Rivera flung up the kitchen window. “Can you pick some lemon verbena for me? I need to make more Fascinating First Impression charms for Mr. Eldon.”

  “Sure, Aunt Mirabella,” Henry said.

  “Thank you, dear,” said Mrs. Rivera. “You know how nervous Mr. Eldon gets when he goes on a date. I do hope he gets married soon; I feel that even my spells can’t really compensate for the way he giggles....”

  The window closed. Henry gave Poppy a sidelong glance. “Okay, I know that sounds weird,” he began, a defiant note in his voice.

  But Poppy was shaking her head. “You haven’t heard about the time my parents camped out for six months in a Bavarian forest because of a rumor that werewolves were using a clearing as a place to transform during a full moon,” she said.

  Henry raised his eyebrows slightly. “Werewolves? Really?”

  “Really.” Poppy hesitated, studying his expression to gauge his reaction. “So … does that sound weird? Or just eccentric?”

  “Eccentric,” Henry said firmly. He grinned. “And pretty cool, too.” He jerked his head toward the wooden platform in the branches above them. “Hey, listen, do you want to see my tree house?”

  “Sure!”

  As Poppy climbed up the wooden slats, she felt a small, warm glow inside. It was the kind of glow a person got when she had maybe just made a new friend.

  Chapter SEVEN

  “Of course we’re going back to the graveyard,” said Mrs. Malone a short time later, sounding rather cross. The Malones had gathered in the kitchen and were eating their delayed breakfast with gusto, despite the fact that the oatmeal had congealed into lumps and the toast was cold. The capture of Rolly had given them all hearty appetites. “What kind of paranormal investigators would we be if we gave up after just one night?”

  “Sensible ones,” muttered Franny.

  “And if there are ghosts in that graveyard, my camera trap will film them,” added Poppy. “There’s really no reason for us to spend another night out there.”

  Mrs. Malone ignored this. “Honestly, Emerson, you should have heard that woman!” she said as she poured a cup of coffee. “She made all kinds of outrageous claims about how some of her best friends were from the spirit world, but she doesn’t know a thing about the scientific method or investigation techniques! You wouldn’t believe it—I’m sure she doesn’t even know what a magnetometer is!”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Mr. Malone was nibbling a piece of toast, reading the sports page, and absently stirring his cup of coffee, all at the same time. “Well, the world is full of foolish people who are willing to believe all sorts of nonsense. You mustn’t let it bother you.”

  “I know, but you should have seen how she reacted when I mentioned last night’s work,” Mrs. Malone said, sitting down at the table. “She had this little smile on her face, as if she thought we were, well … rather silly, hunting for ghosts deliberately. I suppose she just goes into a trance and talks to them as easy as pie!”

  Poppy decided not to point out all the times when her mother had gone into a trance in order to set the right atmosphere for a séance. Mrs. Malone was already annoyed enough.

  “Maybe we should try that,” Will said. “Instead of going to the cemetery, I mean. We could stay here, in the air-conditioning, and practice our trances.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Franny said with such enthusiasm that both Mr. and Mrs. Malone interrupted their conversation long enough to give her searching looks.

  “Are you feeling quite well, dear?” asked Mrs. Malone.

  “I feel fine,” Franny said. “I just realized that I haven’t gone into an altered state of consciousness for a long time. Neither has Poppy. We’re all getting rusty.”

  “She’s right,” said Will. “It’s not good.”

  Mr. Malone gave them a jaundiced look as he stirred his oatmeal, trying to work out the lumps. “Nice try,” he said, taking a bite and returning to his newspaper. “But your mother and I aren’t duped that easily. We are going back to the cemetery tonight and every night until we get some results.”

  “But it’s hot—”

  “And buggy—”

  “And boring—”

  “This is not a discussion. The decision has been made,” Mr. Malone said. “It’s time you children developed a strong work ethic. It’s the only way you’ll get anywhere in the world.”

  This was greeted with barely suppressed groans.

  “That’s absolutely right,” said Mrs. Malone. “Why, your father and I would never have tracked the viper goddess of Machondo to her lair if we had given up after one night!”

  “Very true, Lucille, very true. As I recall, we had to camp near that ruined temple in the jungle for—what? At least two weeks, wasn’t it?” Mr. Malone said. He got the smiling, faraway look in his eye that his children knew meant he was reliving past glories. “Now that was an investigation! Have I ever told you children the story—”

  “Yes!” they all said at once.

  His dreamy expression vanished. “There’s no need to shout,” he said stiffly. “I merely thought you might be interested in hearing about one of your parents’ more famous cases. Since you clearly would rather remain ignorant, I will simply eat this delicious breakfast and read the paper.”

  He turned to the entertainment section with an irritated rustle. “And don’t blame me if someday you come face-to-face with a viper goddess and haven’t the faintest idea about how to handle the situation.”

  “I bet a dog would scare her away,” Rolly said thoughtfully. “Dogs scare a lot of people.”

  “Dogs are not the solution to all of life’s problems,” said Mr. Malone. “A fact you will learn in time, although not soon enough for me.”

  Mrs. Malone suddenly seemed to see Rolly for the first time. “You, young man, need a bath,” she said.

  Rolly opened his mouth to protest.

  “No arguments,” she said firmly. “You’re absolutely filthy.”

 
Rolly jumped up from his chair and began backing toward the door that led into the living room. Mrs. Malone followed him with the wary, watchful attitude of a big-game hunter approaching a particularly cunning and dangerous wild animal.

  “Please don’t make this difficult,” she said. “Approached in the right spirit, baths can be quite relaxing—”

  A low growl came from the back of Rolly’s throat.

  “Would you like to use some bubble bath?” Mrs. Malone’s voice had an edge of desperation. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  “No!” Rolly shouted, ducking under Mrs. Malone’s arm and making a dash for the door.

  But this time, the rest of the Malones were ready for him. Mr. Malone stepped in front of the door, blocking that avenue of escape. Poppy and Franny moved to either side of the kitchen table, dancing on their toes, ready to block him from running out the other door. And Will made a diving tackle, then lay on top of Rolly, pinning him in place until Mrs. Malone could get a firm grip on him.

  “There we go,” she said, panting. “Thank you, everybody. Rolly, we are going upstairs. Now.”

  She wrestled him out of the room and up the stairs. Quiet descended on the kitchen, broken only by occasional thumps, splashes, and cries of outrage from above.

  Poppy ate her oatmeal slowly. She didn’t really notice the lumps because her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking about the shadow that had slid around her room last night and the strange feeling that Will had had.

  It was probably an optical illusion. She hadn’t had time to record how the light in her room changed with the phases of the moon. Perhaps she should start observing what kind of shadows were cast by the tree outside her window, making sketches each night in her logbook.

  Of course, Will said he had seen shadows out of the corner of his eye as well. To conduct a thorough investigation, she’d need to find out where he saw them and look for other causes for them, too....

  She was so lost in thought that she jumped when the phone rang.

  Without looking up from his paper, Mr. Malone answered it.

  “Hello, Emerson Malone here.” He listened for a moment. “Oh, hello, Mr. Farley! How good to hear from you! How are you this fine morning?”

  Poppy, Will, and Franny looked at one another, suddenly alert. They had heard the name Farley many times in the last six months, of course. Mrs. Evangeline P. Farley, the institute’s founder, was eighty years old, immensely rich, and full of various enthusiasms. Luckily for Mr. and Mrs. Malone, one of those enthusiasms (in addition to traveling carnivals, tree houses, and beehives) was anything to do with the paranormal. It was the Farley Institute that had given Mr. and Mrs. Malone their grant, and that had led to them moving to Austin, Texas, and settling into a new home.

  “Of course, of course, we’d like nothing better than to give you a progress report on our grant,” Mr. Malone said, his voice even heartier. “In fact, we’ve had some major breakthroughs just in the last day or two.”

  Poppy crossed her fingers on Mr. Malone’s behalf as he blithely went on. “Yes, we have some very interesting things to tell you about. Very interesting indeed. I don’t think we’ve encountered such a hotbed of paranormal activity since we visited Machu Picchu back in the early nineties.”

  He paused to listen. “Of course, we’d love to meet you. Today is fine. How is one o’clock? Good. See you then.”

  As soon as Mr. Malone hung up, Poppy, Will, and Franny pounced on him.

  “Who is Mr. Farley?” Will demanded.

  “Was he calling about the grant?” Franny asked.

  “And what breakthroughs were you talking about?” Poppy asked. “I haven’t noticed any breakthroughs.”

  “It was a figure of speech,” said Mr. Malone. “Try not to be so literal, Poppy.”

  “What are you all squabbling about now?” Mrs. Malone walked into the kitchen, her face flushed. She was still wearing Franny’s robe, but it was now soaked with water. Rolly followed her through the door, looking damp and resentful. He sat back down in his chair and took a moody sip of orange juice.

  “Bubble bath,” he said, as if continuing an interrupted argument, “is not fun. It makes me sneeze.”

  “Of course it does, when you empty a whole box on the floor,” said Mrs. Malone, exasperated. “Honestly, I think we should just turn the hose on you in the front yard. It would be far less trouble, and you would probably end up a lot cleaner.” She took a deep breath and turned her attention to the rest of the family. “Emerson, who was that on the phone?”

  “That was Woodrow Farley,” he said. “You remember, Mrs. Farley’s nephew.”

  Mrs. Malone looked apprehensive. “Oh dear.”

  Mr. Malone went on. “He said he wants to come over today to see us.”

  “You said you were going to give him a progress report,” said Poppy. “What are you going to tell him?”

  “Now, dear, don’t worry,” said Mrs. Malone. She patted Poppy on the shoulder as she headed for the stove. “Our first official report isn’t due for six months. Mr. Farley probably just wants to meet us in person and hear a bit more about what we’re working on.” As she turned sideways to squeeze her way between the table and the refrigerator, she suddenly shivered, then cast an annoyed glance at her family. “Did someone leave the refrigerator door open again?”

  Will leaned back in his chair and pulled on the refrigerator handle. “Nope, it’s closed.”

  “Well, I distinctly felt a chill in the air,” she said.

  “Maybe it was a cold spot,” said Will mischievously. “Maybe the Dark Presence is back.”

  Mrs. Malone turned from the stove and glared at him. When they had first moved into the house, she had thought that it was haunted by a malevolent spirit that she called the Dark Presence. The fact that they had been unable to find any evidence of this remained a sore spot.

  “You shouldn’t joke about things like that, Will,” she said sternly. “It’s bad luck to try to pin the blame for something you did on a ghost. They don’t like it, and they often decide to get revenge. It’s just not worth it.”

  She turned back to fill a bowl with oatmeal. As she did so, the pot crashed to the floor, spilling a gooey mess all over the linoleum.

  “Oh no!” she cried. “Of course, this would happen this morning of all mornings!”

  “Like I said,” Will murmured. “The Dark Presence.”

  “I said, this is no time for joking,” Mrs. Malone snapped, her face flushed. “I must have knocked the handle with my elbow. Franny, get a wet towel to clean this up. No, a mop! Mr. Farley will be here before we know it.”

  Poppy frowned. From where she was sitting, it didn’t look as if her mother was close enough to knock the pot off the stove even if she had tried. So how, she wondered, had the pot fallen?

  “Will, get a bucket of water,” Mrs. Malone went on. “Rolly, don’t move an inch until we have this cleaned up. I don’t want you traipsing oatmeal all through the house with Mr. Farley about to walk through the door.”

  “If we had a dog, you wouldn’t have to clean it up,” Rolly said. “A dog would just lick it up off the floor. That’s what a dog would do. If we had one.”

  “I’d sooner bring a banshee into the house,” Mr. Malone snapped. “A dog would bark, it would run wild through neighbors’ yards, it would bite people—”

  “It sounds just like Rolly,” Will said. “Except with more fur.”

  “Exactly,” said Mr. Malone with the air of someone who has handily won a debate. “And one Rolly is, in my opinion, quite enough for this family to handle.”

  Rolly slumped down his chair until only his eyes appeared above the table. “I want a dog,” he said under his breath.

  “If we lose the grant, we’ll just get another one,” Mr. Malone said airily. “Nothing to worry about. There are dozens of places that want to support our kind of work. If the institute pulls our grant, we’ll just get another grant and go somewhere else.”

  Poppy’s stomach clen
ched. “You mean we would have to move?”

  Mrs. Malone saw her stricken face and hurried to reassure her. “Don’t worry, dear, it won’t happen.” She bit her lip. Mrs. Malone was naturally honest, so she added, “Probably.”

  Her soothing tones were completely undercut by her worried expression. “Oh, if only those Moldavian vampires had actually showed up,” Mrs. Malone said fretfully. “The cemetery seems promising, but it could take months of observation before we see any ghosts. And every other lead we’ve followed up on has turned out to be nothing. That UFO sighting was a weather balloon, the lake monster was someone’s pet alligator that had escaped from the bathtub—”

  “Yes, yes, all right,” Mr. Malone said testily. “I’ll admit we’ve had a run of bad luck. But you’re all worrying about nothing. I’ll simply go back to the cemetery and pick up the film from the camera trap. We’re sure to capture evidence of ghosts, which we can then show to Mr. Farley. Once he sees what we’ve discovered, our grant will be safe. In fact, we might even get awarded more money.”

  “What if the camera doesn’t record anything?” asked Poppy. “What then?”

  “Highly unlikely,” said Mr. Malone. “There have been hundreds of sightings at that cemetery over the years. Couldn’t you sense the atmosphere last night? The air was positively thick with ectoplasm.”

  This was met with an unconvinced silence, broken at last by Franny. “Well, maybe we’re wrong about Mr. Farley,” she said, trying to sound hopeful. “Maybe he’s just a nice man who wants to meet us.”

  “I wish you were right, my dear, but I have a sense that Mr. Farley is more than just a dutiful nephew,” said Mrs. Malone. “In fact, I fear that Mr. Farley is going to be our Nemesis.”

  Chapter EIGHT

  “What do you think a Nemesis looks like?” Will asked. He was sprawled on the rug in Rolly’s bedroom, with Poppy and Franny sitting cross-legged next to him.

  “Move over,” Franny said, nudging him to one side. “I can’t see.”

  “Shh,” Poppy said. “Sound travels both ways, you know. We don’t want Mom and Dad to hear us.” She scooted closer to the heating grate in the floor and leaned over to look through the metal bars. “Not to mention Mr. Farley.”