Fly Like a Bird

by Jana Zinser

  Raven adjusted her nurse’s hat. “You’re going to scare that old Reuben guy, aren’t you?”

  Ivy looked across the field to Reuben’s farmhouse, which sat across the creek from Deadman’s Woods, about a quarter of a mile as the crow flies. The graveyard guarded the border of Reuben’s fertile fields.

  Nick touched Ivy’s arm. “Don’t worry. Reuben’s used to ghosts.”

  “Well, I guess he deserves it for all the things he and Uncle Tommy have done to Uncle Walter. But we’re not staying behind. We’re going with you,” said Ivy.

  “You can’t come. You’re mere mortals. This is for ghosts only,” Jesse said.

  “Shut up. Ghosts don’t talk,” Nick said. “You guys can come.”

  Raven flipped back her long black hair. She exhaled white puffs of cold air from her pink lipsticked mouth and rubbed up against Jesse like a cat on a scratching post. “That old Reuben guy is creepy, with all his ghosts and stuff.”

  Jesse laughed and flicked Raven’s nurse’s hat with his finger. “They’re not real, you know.”

  “Hey, let’s go,” said Nick.

  Ivy looked at her watch. “All right. Patty should be asleep by now. She doesn’t need any more ghosts in her life.”

  Nick spread his arms and flapped his sheet. “Let’s go talk to the dead.”

  “I’m not staying here by myself,” Raven said, hurrying to catch up as King barked from inside the camper.

  The cemetery dumped out into Reuben’s back pasture. The creek, although low for that time of year, still flowed beneath the frozen patches of ice. They forged across the creek with their flashlights illuminating the slippery ground. They crossed the wide expanse of flat land known for its high yield and crept inside Reuben’s drafty old barn. Stale hay on the dirt floor emitted a musty smell, and the wind whistled through the holes in the roof. A few chickens huddled in a corner.

  “Okay, you guys stay here,” Jesse said, his voice barely audible against the wind. He hit Nick’s shoulder. “You go first.”

  Ivy watched the two ghosts float away toward the farmhouse. Nick danced, throwing back his head and howling like a dog as he led the way in his white sheet while Jesse followed, skulking around the side of the house.

  Several minutes passed. The wind howled, muffling any sounds coming from the farmhouse. The old barn creaked and groaned, sounding like a ghost trapped in its weathered wood.

  “What was that?” Raven asked.

  “Ghosts,” Ivy said, straining to decipher the noises in the wind. She closed her Raggedy Ann eyes for a second as the wind whipped her red-yarn hair. Something was wrong. “Wait. I know what they’re doing. Those guys aren’t coming back for us.”

  Raven held on to her nurse’s hat, so the wind wouldn’t blow it away. “What do you mean?”

  “They set us up,” Ivy said. “Like a snipe hunt when they take you out hunting for snipe. But there’s no such thing as snipe. Time to go.” Ivy headed to the barn door, with Maggie right behind her.

  “What?” Raven said.

  Maggie turned and flicked her glittery wand at Raven. A few sparkles blew away in the wind. “We’ve been tricked. We’ve been snookered, Nursie-poo.”

  Raven frowned, and her white nurse’s coat flapped in the air as she stomped her high heels. “I’m cold. I don’t have time for this.”

  “Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to be stranded out here with Reuben’s ghosts,” said Maggie.

  “I’m pretty sure Nick left the keys in the Monstrosity,” Ivy called over the wind as they trekked across the field.

  The moon and stars on Maggie’s magic robe danced in the blustery wind as the tall outline of Merlin led them across Reuben’s pasture back to Deadman’s Woods. They maneuvered around the hard stubble of the corn stalks still left in the ground after harvest. Raven tiptoed across the field so her high heels wouldn’t sink into the snow and ground. “Wait for me.”

  They crossed the creek, higher this time, and arrived at the graveyard a few minutes later. The dark clouds pulled away from the moon, and its light lit up the graveyard. The snow began to ease up.

  Maggie pointed. “At least the camper’s still there.”

  The girls hurried toward the Monstrosity, dodging the gravestones. The snowy ground hid icy patches and Ivy’s foot slipped out from under her. The other girls didn’t see her fall and kept walking.

  Ivy gingerly got up, glancing at the stone marker near her. It was Mildred Thrasher’s grave. She shivered and looked around. Her friends were almost at the camper. She cleared the snow from the grave marker. It read, “Mildred Darlene Thrasher. Born June 10, 1937. Died December 14, 1959. May she rest in peace.”

  Ivy read the words again. The date wasn’t right. That was the night her parents died. The night Mildred went missing. She remembered from the old newspapers that Mildred’s body wasn’t found until a few days before Christmas.

  Why would Conrad inscribe on her grave that she died a week before her body was found? Unless Conrad knew she died a week earlier because he had killed her! She jerked, as if a thousand cold needles had stabbed her. She looked toward the Thrasher place, obscured by the trees at the edge of the cemetery. Luther was right. The dead could talk.

  The girls called to Ivy from the camper. She shook the snow off her Raggedy Ann pinafore and ran to the truck. Jumping into the driver’s seat, she started the engine.

  “What’s wrong?” Maggie asked from the passenger’s seat.

  “I think I saw a ghost,” said Ivy.

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Maggie said.

  Ivy tapped the big steering wheel. “The Monstrosity-atrocity never looked prettier.”

  King barked. He jumped into the front seat from the back of the camper and licked Maggie’s cold face. Raven sat on the bench in the back by herself, but scooching as far to the truck cab window as she could get. They locked the doors. Ivy drove the Monstrosity out of Deadman’s Woods as the moon illuminated the cemetery, leaving the ghosts behind.

  Through a small clearing, she saw Thrasher’s pond glistening as it reflected the eerie moon’s glow on its surface. Ivy’s heart pounded. She stopped the camper and leaned forward to get a better look. She pointed out the windshield. “Look, Maggie. Without the leaves, you can see right through to Conrad’s pond.”

  They stared at each other. Goosebumps crept up and down Ivy’s back. Maggie’s neighbor, Virgil Jackson, was right. He could have seen Thrasher’s pond from Deadman’s Woods. Even on a snowy night, the clearing offered an unobstructed view of the deadly pond.

  Ivy drove on through the cemetery. Suddenly, they heard a muffled yell and the sound of running footsteps.

  “What was that?” Raven whispered hoarsely.

  Maggie put her hand over Raven’s mouth through the open cab window. “I don’t know. But if you’d be quiet, maybe we could hear.”

  Raven pulled Maggie’s hand away from her mouth. “You’re going to ruin my lipstick.”

  Ivy pulled the truck behind a clump of trees. “It’s probably the guys coming back to get the Monstrosity.”

  The girls looked out the camper windows. Two men dressed in black ran down the hill, dodging the old gravestones and scurrying past the girls in the half-hidden camper.

  Maggie tapped her magic wand against the window. Glitter sprinkled down and stuck to the cold windowpane. “That’s your Uncle Tommy and Reuben Smith, isn’t it, Ivy?”

  Ivy wiped the icy window with her Raggedy Ann sleeve and peered outside. “Yeah, it is. What are they doing?”

  “Look, they painted their faces black,” Maggie said, pointing. “Why would they do that?”

  “Who knows? It’s Uncle Tommy, remember?”

  Sprinting down the snowy slope, Reuben got tangled in some low willow branches. He slipped and rolled down the hill, bowling Uncle Tommy over like a pin at the Blue Moon Bowling Alley.

  Maggie sat back in her seat. “Good Lord, you guys. Reuben isn’t even at home for the ghost-boys to sc
are. Where are they then? This is getting too strange. Let’s get out of here. They deserve it for leaving us in the barn.”

  Ivy drove out of the snowy Deadman’s Woods, leaving the ghosts to reappear on their own. The headlights of the old camper lit up the falling snow. As they passed Rosie’s house, the Thrashers’ car, Moby Dick, pulled onto the road behind them. The huge white whale of a car followed the camper into town. Although Weston had graduated high school several years ago and worked with his father on the farm when he felt like it, he had never really grown up.

  When they reached town, Moby Dick pulled up beside the camper, forcing Ivy into the oncoming lane. The Monstrosity and the whale rode side-by-side down Main Street.

  “I really wish this night would end soon. Weston Thrasher is giving me the creeps,” Maggie said.

  Ivy motioned for Maggie to roll down the passenger window.

  “What do you want?” Ivy yelled at Weston.

  Weston leaned out the car. His long greasy hair blew across his face. “I wanted to show you this.” He held up a dead, black and white cat. He gripped it by the tail and dangled it from the car window. It bounced against the door and left splotches of blood and bits of fur against the paint of the white whale. “Rosie won’t miss this one, do you think?”

  King leaned out the passenger window, barking and growling.

  “Maybe Maggie’s mutt will be next. Crown the King,” said Weston.

  Raven closed her eyes and groaned. “That’s so sick. I think I’m going to throw up.”

  Ivy glanced over at Weston and the dead cat. She took a sharp left turn and the Monstrosity wobbled down the alley by the Coffey Shop. Moby Dick couldn’t react in time, and the huge car drove on, its bloody torment smeared on its white door. Ivy stopped the camper in the alley by the back door of the Coffey Shop.

  Raven’s face turned as white as her nurse’s cap. “I’m tired of spooks and dead cats. I really don’t feel very well. I want to go home.”

  The wind whistled outside, and the unstable camper swayed on the truck bed. Snow stuck to the windshield and caked the blades. After they dropped Raven at her house, Raggedy Ann and Merlin sat in the Monstrosity for a minute to clear the icy windshield.

  “He’s the stuff of horror movies,” Maggie said.

  “Growing up with his father, you know he wouldn’t turn out good,” Ivy said.

  Because of the raging snowstorm, Ivy and Maggie drove back to Deadman’s Woods to rescue Nick and Jesse. The bald tires slid on the icy road and snow fell in heavy clumps. The clouds drifted over the moon and blocked its hazy light. As they drove around the corner past Rosie’s house, Ivy sighed. “Poor Rosie. She’ll miss that cat. Those animals are all she has.” “I know. Remember when she said her cats were better company than us?” Maggie said.

  They both laughed. “She was right,” Ivy said.

  As they approached Deadman’s Woods, the snow swirled all around them like in a child’s snow globe. Then, through the twisting white flakes, they saw them. Two hazy white figures floated in the dark of the country road. It was the ghosts.

  Ivy stopped the camper and leaned out the window to get a better view of the apparitions flying toward them. Their sheets flapped behind them in the howling wind. Their painted white skin blended in with the swirling snow.

  Nick opened the back of the camper and jumped inside. King scampered over and licked Nick’s face. Jesse pushed Nick and King out of the way and dove onto the camper floor, twisted in his ghost sheets. His usually perfect hair was wet from the snow and plastered to his head. The door blew shut behind them.

  Ivy stared at her friends. “What in the heck happened to you guys? You look like you saw a ghost.” She laughed.

  Nick shivered as he sat down on the bench in the back of the camper. “We did.”

  The girls laughed at the shivering boys, whose wide eyes were glazed with blank expressions. Jesse’s sheet bunched around his arms. Nobody said anything for a few seconds.

  “You know the spooks Reuben is always talking about?” Nick asked.

  The girls looked at each other and nodded.

  “Well, we saw them,” Nick said.

  “What exactly did you see?” Ivy asked.

  “It’s kind of hard to describe,” Nick said. “It was like dark, floating kind of people. There were two of them.”

  “They were like these smoky shadows with dark, sunken faces,” said Jesse. Snowflakes clung to his eyelashes. “I told you it was a bad idea.”

  Nick wiggled his hand through the air. “Evil, black cloud beasts.”

  “Woo,” Ivy said in a quaking ghost voice. She put her hand up to her mouth and whispered to Maggie. “Uncle Tommy and Reuben?”

  Maggie nodded and smiled.

  Ivy turned around from the driver’s seat. “So, Nick, you want to drive now?” She knew Nick never let anyone else drive the Monstrosity.

  “No, you’re doing fine.”

  They got back into town after ten o’clock. The town’s Halloween pranksters had been busy. Toilet paper flapped in the branches of the trees like unraveling mummies in a haunted house. Ivory bar soap mingled with the frost on the windows. An abandoned outhouse lay on its side, surrounded by burning hay bundles.

  Ivy drove the camper around the town square past the library. Maggie grabbed Ivy’s arm. “Wait, Ivy. Stop.”

  Ivy pulled the camper to a stop and Maggie pointed to the flagpole outside the library. “Look, someone tied a pair of old-lady underwear to the top of the library flagpole.”

  Ivy stared at what she was sure was Edna Jean Whittaker’s precious pretties snapping in the wind in ghostly surrender. Uncle Tommy and Reuben had struck again.

  But the boys, in a zombie trance in the back of the camper, didn’t even notice.

  Chapter 21

  THE LAWN CREATURES

  Late the next morning, Ivy stopped by Uncle Walter’s trailer to deliver some of Grandma’s homemade cinnamon rolls. When Uncle Walter unlocked the door, Ivy pointed to his small yard.

  “Hey, Uncle Walter, what happened to your lawn creatures?”

  Uncle Walter ran his fingers through his brown hair with a hint of silver showing on the sides.

  “What’d you mean?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “Gone?”

  Uncle Walter stepped outside and looked around. His snowy yard was empty, his lawn creatures kidnapped. “How do you like that? An art heist on Halloween night.”

  When Uncle Walter and Ivy entered the sheriff’s office in the basement of the county courthouse to report the theft, Edna Jean Whittaker gestured wildly at Charlie. Her high-pitched voice screeched. “A UFO landed on my lawn, and you tell me you can’t find it. Someone defamed the public library’s flagpole with some poor soul’s unmentionables, and you don’t know who did it. And my Tiny Fifi was dog-napped.”

  Charlie remained seated at his desk. “Who?”

  Edna Jean adjusted her slightly crooked wig. Her expression looked wild behind her thick glasses. “Tiny Fifi. You know, my canine companion. It was Luther who did it.”

  Charlie tapped his pencil against his desk. “Oh, yeah. Your poodle. Now Edna Jean, why do you suspect that Luther is the perpetrator?”

  Edna Jean pushed her glasses up on her nose. “After the UFO destroyed my fence last night, Luther came early this morning to fix it. After he left, I couldn’t find Tiny Fifi. She wasn’t in her little princess bed or anywhere.”

  “All right, Edna Jean. I’ll check it out.”

  He turned to Uncle Walter and Ivy standing on the other side of his desk. “Now what can I do for you, Walter?”

  Uncle Walter shifted his weight off his aching knee. “Well, Charlie. Someone stole my lawn art last night.”

  “Run that by me again?” Charlie said, trying not to laugh.

  “You know, my lawn creatures.”

  “That junk in your yard?”

  “It’s not junk,” said Uncle Walter.

  “I didn’t mean i
t that way.”

  Uncle Walter sat down. “Someone took them last night while I was passing out candy over at my mother’s house.”

  Charlie cleared his throat. “Could be another Luther Matthews deal.”

  Uncle Walter tapped his fingers on the table. “I don’t think so. Can’t imagine why he would want them. It’s more like a Tommy deal.”

  “No. Trust me, it’s a Luther Matthews offense,” said Charlie.

  Uncle Walter shook his head. “I really doubt it. I—”

  “Listen, we’ll run out to Luther’s place and see what he’s got to say for himself.”

  Uncle Walter stood up. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You need to—”

  Charlie clicked the padlock closed on his file cabinet and stood up. “Humor me.” He rubbed the white patch in the middle of his bristly crew cut, which over the years, had widened. “Edna Jean and I are headed to Luther’s place on a similar investigation anyway. Why don’t you come along?”

  Charlie drove out to Luther’s house with Edna Jean in the front seat and Ivy and Uncle Walter in the back. He parked in Luther’s driveway and they all walked up to Luther’s snow-covered porch. Ivy heard the sound of a basketball hitting a backboard. It was Weston shooting baskets at the barn over at the Thrasher place. How could Luther stand to live so close to them?

  Charlie hiked his pants up over his big belly and knocked on Luther’s door. The screen door bounced and hit the huge stacks of wood Luther chopped from the woods behind his house. The door, hanging only by the bottom hinge, smacked Charlie’s head.

  “Luther, Deputy Sheriff Carter here. Your danged door just accosted me. Open up.”

  Luther answered from inside his dilapidated home. “I’m kind of busy, Charlie. What do you want?”

  Charlie leaned his hand against the side of Luther’s house and paint flaked from the wood. “I want to know if you absconded with Edna Jean Whittaker’s canine.”

  Edna Jean held her hand to her ear. “She’s in there. I can hear my precious baby. He’s got her.” She cupped her hands around her mouth, calling to her dog. “Tiny Fifi.”

  A muffled yapping came from inside the house. Charlie nodded to Edna Jean. “Looks like he’s got the poodle hostage.”