17 Spooktacular - My Sister the Vampire (7 page)

‘Aagh!’ Olivia jumped up and grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Will everyone please stop saying that word? Otherwise
I’ll
have to turn into a you-know-what and
haunt you both!’

Ivy laughed so hard that she accidentally spat out her Marshmallow Platelets. ‘Look out,’ she finally gasped to Brendan. ‘Or it’ll be the Mystery of the Perky Pink
Poltergeist next!’

Olivia cringed. ‘What did I
just
say?’

After school Olivia followed her sister down the street towards the Franklin Grove Museum.

‘We need to start at the beginning,’ Ivy was saying. ‘Whether it was an actual ghost, or there’s some rational explanation, I’m sure that we’ll find a real
clue at Café Creative!’

‘A clue, hmm?’ Olivia gave her a gently chiding look. ‘You do remember you’re not wearing the deerstalker any more, right?’

‘I know. Don’t you miss it?’ Ivy heaved a mock sigh as she pushed open the big front door of the museum. ‘I kind of liked that hat, actually. Now if only I could find a
black one, with bat-shaped ear flaps. I could be Goth Holmes! The latest style!’

Olivia closed her lips firmly, but she couldn’t completely hold back a giggle as she imagined it. ‘Now that’s an image that deserves to go viral on the Vorld Vide
Veb!’

‘Better than the Happy Vampire, that’s for sure.’ Ivy scowled.

‘I dunno . . . she was kind of cute,’ Olivia said, batting her eyelashes. Then she took off running before her vamp twin could grab her.

She skidded to a halt in the doorway of Café Creative.
Hmm . . . it’s going to be hard to do any investigating here!

Under Lillian’s management, the café had become a huge success. Today customers were filling almost all of the tables, sipping frothy coffee drinks and smoothies, while other
visitors wandered through the open space around them, picking up the pens, felt tips and paint brushes that had been left out for community use and making their own contribution to the latest mural
growing on the walls.

Unfortunately, now that the café was so popular, it was a lot harder for the twins to snoop around with any subtlety.

As Olivia and Ivy peered into corners and knocked on walls looking for hidden compartments, Olivia caught more than one visitor giving them strange looks. And when Ivy started poking around
underneath the tables, Olivia winced at the expression on the faces of the customers who sat there. They pulled in their legs and tugged their bags closer.

‘Um . . . Ivy?’ Olivia beckoned to her twin as Ivy emerged from one table and started towards the next. ‘Do we even know what we’re really looking for?’ she
whispered.

Ivy’s shoulders sagged. ‘Not really,’ she confessed. ‘Just . . . anything weird. Right?’

Before Olivia could answer, a rasping voice sounded just behind them.

‘You two!’ It was Joan Calhoun, the head barista. She glared at them, her muscled arms crossed over her apron. ‘You girls may be related to my manager, but that doesn’t
mean you’re allowed to loiter around here and disturb my customers. If you’re not going to order food, or’ – she jerked her chin meaningfully at the community mural on the
walls – ‘
doodle
something, then you need to find somewhere else to be. Got it?’

‘Sorry.’ Olivia cringed. As her twin mumbled an apology of her own, Olivia took a deep breath and turned on actor-mode. ‘Actually . . .’ Smiling ruefully, she sidled up
to the café counter. ‘Could I order a cake and orange juice, please? That was why we came here in the first place. We were just distracted by . . . erm . . . remembering how amazing
the Halloween party was.’

‘That’s right,’ Ivy agreed, nodding vigorously. ‘We were . . . uh . . . looking for
clues
to how Camilla did the special effects.’

‘Hmmph.’ Joan grimaced as she stepped behind the counter and pulled out a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerated case. ‘I’m just glad I wasn’t working that
night. Unlike some people, I don’t find scares fun.’

Olivia gave a heartfelt sigh of agreement. ‘You and me both!’

‘Besides . . .’ Joan shook her head as she uncapped the orange juice. ‘Living in Franklin Grove my whole life, I’ve had more than enough of the real thing to deal
with.’

Uh-oh.
Olivia felt Ivy tense beside her. It took all of her acting training to keep a sympathetic smile on her own face as she said, ‘What do you mean?’

Please, please, please don’t let those scares have been vamp-related!

‘Haven’t you ever heard the legends?’ Joan fixed her with a beady look. ‘This town is full of spectres!’

Olivia’s eyes widened. ‘You mean . . . ghosts?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Joan didn’t even bother to look down at the orange juice she was pouring. Her gaze held Olivia’s with magnetic intensity. ‘Most people around here seem
to have forgotten the old stories, but not us Calhouns. According to my grandma, back down South, our family used to be a wealthy lot. We moved up here in the late nineteenth century, and we have a
legend of our own.’ She leaned across the counter, lowering her voice to a very serious whisper. ‘Apparently – and you two will appreciate this part – there were a pair of
twin sisters, my great-great-great aunts, who were separated by tragedy in their teenage years. We have a portrait of them right here in this museum, you know.’

‘Twin sisters!’ Olivia breathed, leaning closer. ‘I saw that portrait.’

‘It’s a good one, isn’t it?’ Joan nodded. ‘But it’s not a happy story. According to old family lore, the tragedy that separated the twins left their souls
restless in the afterlife. Now, one of the sisters is said to be forever trapped here, cursed to haunt our town – and you can tell when you’ve seen her, because she’s always
decked out in a fancy red dress.’

A red dress . . .?

Olivia used every ounce of her acting ability to keep her voice from quivering. ‘What were their names?’ she asked Joan.

But she had a horrible feeling that she already knew half of the answer.

Five minutes later, Olivia’s legs gave out in the museum hallway as she stared once again at the portrait of the Victorian twin sisters: Patience and Hope Calhoun. She
leaned back against the wall and slid helplessly to the ground, her gaze still fixed on their faces . . .

Their
familiar
faces.

‘I can’t believe it . . . I might actually have talked to a ghost!’ she whispered. ‘It would explain why the girl in that fabulous red dress was behaving so strangely at
Camilla’s party. I thought she was just in costume . . .’ She shook her head helplessly. ‘Could I really have been talking to the ghost of Patience Calhoun?’

‘Hey, woah there,’ said Ivy, sliding down beside her. ‘Remember, we still don’t know any of this for sure. Until we do, there’s no point overthinking it.’

‘You’re right,’ Olivia said. ‘But, still . . . Joan’s story is kind of checking out.’

‘I know, but we still need proof. Until we have some, we should keep an eye out for that girl you were talking to.’

‘You’re right,’ Olivia said firmly. ‘There could be a perfectly rational explanation . . . and if there is, we’ll find it. But . . . what now?’

Ivy sighed, thunking her head back against the wall. ‘I have to admit, I was just wondering the same thing!’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘But actually . . . maybe I
do
have an
idea. Why don’t we go see Camilla and get the full details of exactly what she
was
planning for the party? Who knows, maybe there was some kind of technical malfunction. She was
using a lot of fancy equipment – for all we know, something could have gone wrong, and
that’s
what really caused all the spooktacular stuff. All this fuss could be for
nothing!’

‘You might be right,’ Olivia said, as she took out her phone to call her friend.

Olivia had been in Camilla’s room countless times since she’d first moved to Franklin Grove. But she’d never seen it look like this. Camilla’s mother had
let the twins into the house and sent them upstairs, and when Olivia first opened the bedroom door, she couldn’t even see her friend inside beneath all the chaos.

It looks like Lillian was right – Camilla may just have gone crazy!

Two huge new corkboards had been hung on opposite walls of the bedroom, each of them completely covered in masses of newspaper clippings, photos, and random scraps of paper with notes scrawled
all over them. Long lines of coloured string ran between the two corkboards, forming a spiderweb of connections across the room, with sticky notes attached to each string.

‘Come on in!’ Camilla’s voice sounded from across the room. She was kneeling underneath the final lengths of string, scribbling notes. She looked up with a mad glint in her
eyes. ‘But don’t disturb anything!’

‘Um . . . OK.’ Olivia shot a wide-eyed look at Ivy before crouching down in front of the tangle of string that filled the room. She kept her questions to herself as she carefully
crawled underneath the tendrils, but as soon as she reached her friend, she gently laid a hand on Camilla’s shoulder. ‘Can you tell us what’s going on here?’

‘I can’t stop thinking about what happened on Halloween!’ Camilla raked her hand through her spiralling curls, rattling out her words with just as much intensity as if she were
in the middle of shooting one of her movies. ‘It was just too weird! My parents told me to stop worrying about it, but I can’t, because something was
very
wrong! And at first I
thought I was overreacting, imagining that it had to be something unnatural – but the more I look into things, the less crazy I think I am.
You
don’t think I’m crazy, do
you?’

‘Uh . . .’ Olivia looked helplessly at her sister, who was crouching behind her.

Before either of them could answer, Camilla raced on, wildly jabbing her fingers towards the corkboards. ‘I had no idea until I started researching,’ she babbled, ‘but this
Halloween was
not
the first time there’ve been reports of a poltergeist in Franklin Grove.’

Olivia winced. ‘Could we
please
use another word for it?’ she begged.

Camilla shrugged impatiently. ‘Whatever you want to call it, this town is full of ghost-like phenomena. Look!’ She pushed past Olivia and Ivy to wriggle out from under the mass of
strings. As soon as she was free, she started jabbing at different notes on the boards. ‘See all these different incidents? They’re all reports of doors slamming shut or swinging open,
windowpanes rattling, and eerie, howling winds. And it’s always around this time of year!’

Ivy gave a nervous-sounding laugh as she followed Camilla out from under the strings. ‘Well . . . at least the howling wind has an obvious explanation. The wind always gets a little more
“howly” in the autumn, doesn’t it?’

‘That’s true.’ Olivia crawled after her twin. ‘In fact, in Franklin Grove, we could probably rename the whole holiday “Howl-oween”!’

Camilla shook her head irritably, picking her way through the strings until she found the one she wanted. ‘As soon as I figured out those details, I started digging, tracing all these
incidents back as far as possible. Apparently, this kind of stuff didn’t start getting reported until the 1860s. So I decided to research some local history, see if there were any significant
historical events in Franklin Grove that happened at the end of October in the 1860s. And guess what?’ She pinched the yellow string she’d found, holding it up as she followed it to the
corkboard on the opposite wall. ‘I found one story that fits
perfectly.
’ With a grin of fierce concentration, she pointed to the note that was attached to the yellow string.
‘That wind that we heard sounded anguished, didn’t it? Like the howl of a person in pain.’