Spookygirl - Paranormal Investigator (6 page)

After the last bell, Tim followed me to the bus loop like a lost puppy and asked if he could please, please visit Addison Funeral Services. At first I wished he’d go away; I really didn’t feel like being shadowed anymore and I had a lot on my mind with the whole locker-room thing. Then a couple of jocks in Palmetto jerseys walked by on their way to the student parking lot. One of them—I recognized him from drawing class—saw Tim and paused like he’d just spotted easy prey. I realized Tim was probably in for more harassment if I left him on his own, so I agreed to his request and quickly led him away from the jocks and toward my bus. He could be annoying, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to get his butt kicked. I gave the jock the stink eye over my shoulder as we retreated.

Dad was still working on Ralph Wilson’s mother when we got to the mortuary. Luckily, she didn’t seem to
be around to cause any trouble. I introduced Tim, so he at least got a peek at the embalming room. Then I showed him around the rest of the downstairs and explained the ins and outs of death spackle. He was fascinated; I wondered if that was genuine, or if he was just trying to be a good goth.

When we went upstairs, I tried to open the door to the apartment, but it wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t locked; the knob turned easily. I gave it a short shove and managed to open it a few inches, but then it slammed in my face like someone was blocking it from the other side.

“You know, I should probably tell you about Buster before we go in,” I said, pushing against the door with my shoulder but not really expecting it to give. I’d silently debated whether to introduce Tim to Buster. I suppose I could have gone up by myself and put Buster in his crate before letting Tim into the apartment, but Tim was so enthusiastic I couldn’t resist letting him have the full abnormal-poltergeist experience. Plus, I kind of wanted to mess with him. “Buster’s sort of—
OOF!
” The door opened easily this time, and I went sprawling into the living room, which was freezing. My breath came out in visible puffs.

Behind me, Tim stepped into the room and stared. The door slammed shut behind him, and what little color there’d been in his face drained away. The living room was upside down. All the furniture—the corduroy couch
and two chairs, the coffee table, the TV cabinet, even the filled bookcases—hung down from the ceiling as if they’d been anchored in place. The room echoed with happy, mischievous screams.

I stood up. “This is pretty typical. He’s showing off. Don’t react; you’ll just encourage him.”

But Tim was already backing away. He pressed against the door; when he couldn’t open it, he crossed the room in a panic, gawking up at the furniture overhead instead of looking where he was going. He was headed toward the living room window, and although I didn’t think he could actually go through it, he was moving fast enough to hurt himself if he kept going.

“Look out!” I said. Before I could reach out and yank him back, the couch flipped down from the ceiling and thudded to the floor in front of him, so that Tim tripped and toppled on to it. While he righted himself, the rest of the furniture drifted back into place.

Tim was trembling violently; he looked like he might throw up.

“What was that?”

“That was Buster.”

“When you said you had to tell me about him, I thought you were talking about a dog.”

“That’s not so far from the truth,” I said as Buster’s
favorite toy—a squeaky vinyl hamburger—sailed through the air toward Tim. I grabbed it before it could smack into him and tossed it down the hall.

“Go get it, Buster!” The burger’s squeaks soon mingled with Buster’s happy cries.

Tim calmed down after I ushered him into the kitchen. I thought about offering him soda, but he didn’t look like he needed any caffeine, and he looked grateful when I suggested chamomile tea instead. Buster tried to follow us; when I told him to bug off, he acknowledged my command by grabbing my hair and twisting it into a knot. After being threatened with the crate, though, he went back to his squeaky burger.

Tim stared warily at the kitchen doorway, as though he’d be able to see if Buster came back again.

“It’s okay,” I said, putting the water on to boil. “You can tell he’s nearby when the temperature in the room drops, but he’d never actually hurt anyone. At least, not intentionally. He just likes to play jokes.”

“What is he?”

“We don’t really know. I call him an abnormal poltergeist.” I explained how Buster had come to live with us. “I’m not used to having guests, and I’m so used to him that I forget he might startle other people.”

Tim raised a brow, indicating that
startle
was too weak a word.

I suddenly felt a little defensive about Buster, the same way a bulldog owner might feel if someone said his dog’s wrinkled face was ugly.

“Come on, he’s okay. Besides, I thought you said the whole ghost thing was cool.”

“That was before I actually met one,” Tim said, but he seemed to be unwinding a little.

“Ghosts aren’t all like Buster,” I said after pouring the tea. “Most of them don’t cause trouble like he does unless they’re agitated.” Like that awful presence in the locker room. “They’re usually harmless; they just stick around to keep an eye on things.” I told him about Mama Chen. “You’d never even know she was there.”

Retaining a little of his earlier curiosity, Tim said, “We should go to Mama Chen’s sometime. Maybe I’ll be able to see her like you can.”

“If you could see ghosts, you’d know.”

“What about Buster? Can you see him?”

“No, but he’s not a good example. He’s just weird. There’s no one set of rules they all follow. And not all ghosts are visible, either, so sometimes I can sense ghosts, but I can’t see them. I can see most of them, though.”

“How’d you first find out you could see them?”

“I’ve seen them for as long as I can remember. But it took me a long time to understand that not everyone could see what I could, and that ghosts weren’t the same as
living people.” I told him about the time Dad and I were on our way to pick up Mom at the airport; she’d flown out to Texas for a few days to help a cousin with some possible paranormal activity in a new apartment. A big accident had backed up traffic on the highway, and we inched past the remains of a crushed SUV and an overturned school bus. It must have been pretty grisly, because Dad told me not to look. But I wasn’t looking at the wreckage; I was more interested in all the confused blue kids who were wandering around, darting past the slow-moving traffic and sometimes passing right through cars. I remember saying something to Dad about how kids shouldn’t walk in the middle of the highway. Of course, he couldn’t see what I was referring to. I was only three years old, but that was when Dad could no longer deny that I had the same abilities as my mom.

Mom, of course, had realized this much earlier—when I was just a few months old. When I was six, she told me about the day she took me for a walk in my stroller past old Mr. Albertson’s house. Mr. Albertson had died years earlier, but he’d built that house with his own hands, and he wasn’t about to leave. As long as its new owners took good care of the place, he was a very polite, quiet ghost. That day he was in the yard, inspecting the front porch steps. He paused long enough to make silly faces at
me, which made me laugh. To anyone else, it would have looked like I was shrieking gleefully at an empty yard, but Mom knew better. She’d wondered if I would have abilities like hers, and my reaction to Mr. Albertson proved I did. After that, she raised me to see ghosts as a normal part of life, although she’d emphasized that being able to see them was something special, and that I shouldn’t broadcast my ability because not everyone would understand it.

I wasn’t sure why I told Tim all that. It’s not like I’m usually eager to outline all the ways I’m weird and freaky. He was just so genuinely interested that…I guess it made me feel sort of important. It was nice to share all that with someone without being ridiculed.

Still, now that my mom had come up, I was pretty sure I knew where the conversation was headed. I didn’t want to talk about her, or the night she died, or anything like that, so I changed the subject. “So why doesn’t Isobel like you?”

“Oh.” He looked a little sheepish. “Isobel doesn’t really like anyone. But me in particular…She doesn’t like me because I’m a vampire.”

Okay. What the heck was I supposed to say to that?

He continued immediately, saving me from the obligation of a quick reply. “Half vampire, really. But that still counts.”

“Ha-ha. Counts. Vampire.”

“I’m not kidding, Violet. I’ve always known I was…different.”

“Haven’t we all?” I wanted to point out that he didn’t know what “different” was unless he too had gotten in trouble in kindergarten for insisting that the long-deceased teacher said it was okay to go to the bathroom. Mrs. Bloomington had once taught kindergarten at Palmetto Elementary, but she’d also been dead for over fifteen years. My current teacher had neither appreciated nor condoned my disappearing act and my excuse that her late predecessor had given me permission to leave the classroom. That was before I really understood that not only could most people not see ghosts, but that they didn’t even believe they existed. And how was I to know that the authority of a living person outweighed a dead one?

“See, my dad left my mom before I was born,” Tim said.

“Have you ever met him?”

“No. I used to ask Mom about him, and all she’d say was that he drained her dry, financially and emotionally. Then I saw this old Dracula movie on cable, and…I dunno. I guess my imagination kind of took over. Plus, I like rare hamburgers, and I can see pretty well in the dark, and I really hate garlic and sunlight.”

“You were just in the sun half an hour ago, on the way home from the bus stop.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t like it.”

“You weren’t even wearing sunglasses!”

“I forgot them at home today.”

I was tempted to tell him he was being ridiculous, but the thing was, I felt like I was the last person to chastise someone for their beliefs. I mean, hello? Paranormal communication? Pet poltergeist? Gemstones with protective properties? Did any of those sound more rational than Tim’s Dracula Daddy theory?

I tried to remember other vampire legends. “Can you see yourself when you look in the mirror?”

“Yeah. But remember, I’m only half vampire.”

“Can you turn into a bat?”

“No, but—”

“Half vampire. I know. You don’t bite people and drink blood and stuff, do you?”

“I get kind of sick at the sight of blood,” Tim said, looking slightly squirmy.

“Okay, so then why doesn’t Isobel like you? She seems like the type who’d be really into the whole vampire thing.”

Tim sighed a little. “Goths don’t always like vampires. Plus she thinks I’m making it up. And she thinks I’m annoying.” He picked at a loose thread on his arm warmer.
“So anyway, I told you about my dad, now tell me about your mom. Was she really a ghost hunter?”

Darn. Right back to this. “She was a paranormal investigator, yeah. She also did lectures, and she and Dad ran a website that sold investigative equipment and books.” They’d made a great team—Mom was the intuitive, sympathetic one who sensed spirits and sought to help them, and Dad was the reformed skeptic determined to document significant scientific proof of his wife’s experiences.

“And the cops really thought your dad killed her?”

That was my least favorite part of the whole mess, and I seriously didn’t want to discuss it. Okay, so for about five minutes, the police thought Mom’s death was a murder, and Dad was their chief suspect. I hated that people still remembered that so many years later. That’s small-town living for you.

I gave Tim my most withering glare. “She fell down some stairs. That’s it. Shut up, okay?”

“Sorry.” He sunk down in his chair a little, looking appropriately scolded, but I could tell he was still curious.

Before he could start up with his interrogation again, though, the front door of the apartment opened and closed, and Dad came into the kitchen.

“Finished with Mrs. Wilson,” he said. His shirtsleeves
were still rolled up to the elbows, and he smelled like a chem lab mixed with industrial-strength soap. “Now that I have a little more time, how was school?” he asked me.

“Well, I got teased because of your job, everyone thinks I’m a freak, and worst of all, I have to take gym.” I motioned for Tim to follow me, and we went to hang out in my room.

On the way, I asked Tim if he’d taken any gym classes at Palmetto. The memory of the thing in the locker room was still lurking in my head, and I suddenly wondered if the presence stuck to the girls’ room only, or if it haunted the boys’ room, too. No way was I about to sneak in and see for myself, though. Ew.

He nodded. “Beginning Gym. Last year. It sucked.”

“Yeah. Hey, did you ever notice anything weird in the locker room?” I didn’t really think he’d be able to tell me much, but it was worth a try.

“Well, it usually smells weird in there,” Tim said. He obviously had no idea what I was fishing for, but he wanted to be helpful.

So much for that.

“Don’t they all?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “Hey, want to see Buster eat a cookie?”

That evening I couldn’t stop thinking about school and the presence in the locker room. Maybe I’d overreacted. After all, I’d been stressed about gym, and anxiety can play all kinds of tricks—I certainly wasn’t helpless when it came to spooky stuff. Mom had worked with all kinds of paranormal phenomena, and so could I. I knew she’d be really proud of me for dealing with this myself.

Besides, she’d always taught me that ghosts and stuff weren’t really dangerous. You just had to figure out how to handle them, and the first step in doing that was figuring out who—or what—you were working with.

The only thing was, I’d never done a paranormal investigation before, and Mom hadn’t told me much about them when I was little. I knew she and Dad had had all kinds of equipment, but if Dad still had any of it, I had no idea where it was or how it worked.