The Shade Riders and the Dreadful Ghosts (12 page)

When things had settled down, everyone
checked their exhibit. Some survived, and others didn’t. Benny,
Nova, Max Kim and Takeesha raced over to the area where the
autogyro crashed. Benny checked it over for damage.

“Is it all right?” Nova asked.

"Yeah, she took a spill, but she’s okay. She
bounced and landed on her feet."

"Whew, that's…really lucky," Nova said, "Hmm…
I wonder where the ghosts went." Nova looked at her watch. The eye
was gone. She felt much better without the ghosts staring at her.
Did Leandra actually do something? Or was that just a
coincidence?

Nova ambled away from her friends and pressed
one of the buttons on the watch. “Leandra are you there?” Nothing.
She pressed two more buttons. Still nothing. She wished she could
show Benny because she could use help figuring out the watch, but
for some reason she felt it was a good idea to keep it a secret for
now. She turned back to Benny’s table.

“Well, that was weird.” Leandra’s voice. Nova
looked at the watch. Her eye was back.

“What happened?” she said.“I was trying to
scare them not make them disappear. Not that I’m complaining.”

“So, you don’t know how to defeat the
ghosts?”

“No. At least, not yet, sorry. I’ve got to
go. Bye, love.”

The science fair ended. As soon as everyone
started packing up to go home, Nova picked up the Walkie Talkies -
they had escaped damage. She handed them out to her friends. She
noticed Takeesha’s eyes narrowing as she reached out slowly to take
a Walkie Talkie like it was going to bite her. Nova’s stomach,
which was still upset from the presence of the ghosts, lurched with
Takeesha’s suspicion.

The gang called their parents from a pay
phone outside the school office. Nova called home and told Scott
that she needed a ride now. Would he radio Mom? Scott said he
would. She said thanks and hung up. Nova sighed. She leaned against
a radiator in the hallway where she could watch the dark street
outside as she waited for her ride.

Nova felt exhausted, and pretty blue over
Takeesha. Good thing her extended family and good friends were
coming over to the farm for a get together and potluck tomorrow.
She couldn’t wait. Thinking about the fun she was going to have
tomorrow filled her with so much relief that tears threatened to
course down her face.

Before the family and friends get-together the next
morning, Nova’s mother told her and Scott that the hay fields were
ready to be cut and baled. Their job would be to stack the bales in
the haymow.

“Great,” Nova said, “just great.”

“Well, I can bench press 200 pounds,” Scott
said, “so I can carry a bale in each hand and walk all the way to
the catch pen.”

Nova flexed her biceps. Her large muscle
stretched the fabric of her shirt. “I’m stronger than you and I
don’t need to work out.”

Scott snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“I’ll make punch and bring it out to you two
tough guys.” Wilha headed into the kitchen.

“You know, you could help us stack bales,”
Nova yelled after her.

“I can’t even lift one,” Wilha said.

Nova sighed. “Oh, yeah.”

Nova and Scott trudged out to the barn,
climbed up to the haymow and waited. Minutes later, the sound of an
old tractor huffing up the road announced Mr. Kincaid and his two
sons, towing a wagon overflowing with hay bales. Nova opened the
barn’s side window so their neighbors could put up the escalator.
Then they attached the tractor’s power take off – a big pulley that
stuck out the side and was run by the tractor’s motor – to the
escalator with a wide, leather belt.

Soon Mr. Kincaid and his sons began unloading
the wagon, and the bales crept up the hay escalator and through the
window, where they hit the top of the tall grain bin. A huge dust
cloud hung over everything, making Nova and Scott sneeze. Nova
stood at the grain bin and tossed bales to Scott to stack for a
while, and then they traded places.

As the Kincaids found their rhythm, the bales
came faster and faster up the escalator. By then, the neat stack
reached half way to the rafters, and it was harder to heave a bale
to the stacker on the top. They had to be carried. Nova grabbed the
next one and the twine holding it together fell off. This kind of
bale was called “broken.” Nova jumped down from the pile of stacked
hay bales, kicked the broken one down a chute into a stall, then
grabbed four bales at once and hauled them up to Scott, who raised
his eyebrows. He tried to take them all himself, faltered and fell
down. He tried again but couldn’t do it. Finally, he gave up and
just took two at a time and stacked them.

Nova smirked. She didn’t know where she got
the strength, but she thought it was kind of clash.

“I can’t help it if I’m weird,” Nova said
throwing another bale up to the top of the stack.

Scott shrugged.

Soon Mr. Kincaid left to get more hay from
the field. Wilha

brought in a cooler with a spigot on the side
and some plastic cups. Nova and Scott climbed down the mountain of
hay bales and blew hay dust out of the cups. They poured red juice,
eager to cool off.

They had some time now to jump down the chute
in the

hallway into the huge, ten-foot tall pile of
broken bales. Nova went first. “Waa hoo!”

She moved out of the way fast as Scott came
down face

First, whooping and hollering. They jumped
down a few more times before the hay had to be raked into a pile
again. Nova got scratchy hay inside her clothing and dust in her
hair, but it was worth it. She hurried to shake out her clothing
while not exposing her bra to her brother.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve seen
everything.”

Nova turned red.

Soon Mr. Kincaid chugged back with more
bales, which started the process all over again until there were
none left in the fields, and the haymow was stacked full. Nova and
Scott had built a stairway up to the grain bin so the swing could
be used at the party that night.

Nova sat on a hay bale. The sweat made the
hay dust stick to her skin, making her feel like a giant cheese
puff. She slurped on ice cold punch and munched on pieces of wheat
kernel heads from the hay bales. This end of May hay was so tender,
full of leaves and had a lot of alfalfa because they had cows that
needed rich fodder to produce milk. But if the horses ate too much
alfalfa they could get colic, so grass hay was also mixed with the
alfalfa in the forty-acre field they owned. They traded with Mr.
Kincaid for the use of some of the land. He put his cows on it to
graze, and Nova and her family got hay cut, baled, and delivered to
the haymow.

“You kids better clean up for the
get-together,” came Mom’s voice up the barn chute.

“Let’s get rid of the juice.”

Nova and Scott took the remainder of the
punch in the cooler and tossed it out the top window without even
looking.

“Hey!” Mom yelled. “Now I have to change my
shirt and wash my hair. Thanks a lot.”

Nova and Scott ducked inside and laughed.
“Oops. She must’ve moved. Oh, I bet she gets us back for that.”

“I’ll be ready.” With his two arms
outstretched, Scott fanned himself with his tee shirt that he
removed two hours ago.

“I get the shower first after Mom.” Nova
strolled after Scott out of the haymow, down the hill, and toward
the house.

“All right, just don’t use up all the cold
water.”

Nova shuffled out of the bathroom. A horse
and buggy were clopping down the long driveway. They were followed
by Nova’s Uncle Pete and Carol and their three cousins on three
wheel bikes with baskets on the back. They parked, got off and set
their food on one of the two picnic tables. A small roller skate of
a car came down next. More people arrived as Nova grabbed the food
out of the kitchen and set it out on the picnic table. Soon the
farm yard was packed with people.

Nova played volleyball and then kick the can
with her cousins, loving every minute of the utter chaos. Barbecue
chicken, hotdogs, hamburgers, and barbecued spare ribs disappeared
into hungry stomachs. Kids ran and played all around the farm. They
took turns on the tire swing on the oak tree in the front yard,
spinning the rider until he or she couldn’t stand up anymore. But
most the kids were in the haymow with the board rope swing. The
noise, pushing and shoving, and jumping down the chutes, woke up a
few barn bats from their daytime slumber. They squeaked in protest.
Nova’s twelve-year-old cousin Suzie screamed and ran out of the
haymow pulling cobweb from her hair. A line of kids all shapes and
sizes formed along one wall waiting for the swing. Soon, Nova was
next in line. She stood on top of the grain bin and jumped onto the
swing while in flight and soared about fifteen yards across the
haymow. When the swing slowed, she was able to drag her feet
through the loose hay on the floor. She tossed the swing back up to
the person on the grain bin, and it started all over again.

Nova left the haymow and strode to the cooler
to get her third cola. Parents talked and played cards as
mosquitoes buzzed around their heads. When the insects finally got
too bad, they picked up the remainder of their potluck, grabbed
their kids, and headed home. People had flashing lights on their
vehicles now that it was dusk. The strobe effect gave Nova a little
headache, but she stayed in the driveway to wave goodbye to her
friends and family. Then she helped clean up the tables and
chairs-- folding them and putting them into the garage.

Finally, they trudged inside the farmhouse.
Exhausted but still excited from the party, Nova hung around the
living room and kitchen as everyone else proceeded to get ready for
bed. Through the open windows, Nova heard the loud chirping of
crickets and songs of the pond frogs in the horse pasture. She
grabbed her unfinished rug, yarn, and rug hook and sat down at the
dining room table.

Threading the different colored yarns through
the burlap backing was very soothing. Thinking back on the day, she
realized she had drunk six cans of caffeinated cola. No wonder she
was still up. She had also been so busy she didn’t see her filly
the whole day. Nova grabbed carrots from the refrigerator and
skipped out to play with Shade. The filly loved to chase her from
one end of the pen to the other kicking her heels and tossing her
head. Then Nova would chase her back. As Nova approached the catch
pen gate, two owls hooted. She felt a cool breeze brush against her
face.

Something was wrong.

Alone in the catch pen, Shade ran back and
forth against the fence trying to get in with the other horses. She
seemed alarmed, almost as if she were afraid of Nova.

It was very dark. Nova could only see a
silhouette of Shade, and it looked odd, with extra bulges across
Shade’s back. Nova’s imagination went into overdrive. Did Shade
have barbed wire wrapped around her body with a fence post lying
across her shoulders? She’d seen a bull like that once after it had
tried to push through a fence to get at better fodder.

Nova ran over the uneven grass, fell and
twisted her ankle. She crawled toward Shade on her hands and knees
until she came up against a burdock bush. She rose, testing her
legs to see if they’d hold her. They did, so she limped on.

Nova hobbled over, patting Shade’s shoulder.
She gave the horse carrots to try and calm her down. Shade gobbled
them up instantly. Nova reached for what she thought was a post on
her shoulders.

She felt soft feathers.

Holy chaos!

“Hey girl,” Nova said. “So I really did see
wings that first day we met.” She remembered that Shade looked like
she had wings as long as she stayed in shadows. As soon as she
entered the light that came into the stall, the wings disappeared.
That might explain why Shade sometimes was loose in the front yard
in the morning. Nova started to dance around but winced in pain
from the ankle. Instead, she hooped and hollered.

Blue Belle ran out of the barn when she heard
the excitement. Since she was a herding dog, Blue Belle naturally
began to chase Shade.

Shade took a running start, then sailed right
over the fence. Her golden brown wings tipped with black glistened
in the moonlight.

Nova couldn’t move. Clash!

Blue Belle crouched low and squirmed under
the barbed wire out of the catch pen and into the far pasture. She
ran after Shade in a frenzy, even though the horse was gliding a
yard off the ground.

A large dust cloud bloomed in the
distance.

The nanny pygmy goat that was keeping Shade
company for the night also managed to crawl under the wire and then
trotted behind, bleating to her friend.

"I can't believe it,” Nova said. “I just
can’t believe it.”

Nova shook herself back to reality and began
thinking. This had to stay a secret. She opened the catch pen gate
so no one would be the wiser.

Dark gray clouds appeared in front of Nova,
then transformed into two ghosts hovering in flowing robes.
Nova

watched one of them change into a grim
reaper, which swung his scythe to cut the other one, now a “Nova”
ghost, in two. Her

likeness released a blood-curdling
scream.

Nova turned and ran as fast as she could with
her ankle. A rut in the dirt jolted her to the ground, twisting her
already sore ankle again.

“Dear Vulcan. I don’t know if I can make
it.”

Nova got up. She limped and skidded toward
the garage door, grabbed the doorknob and twisted.

The door was locked.

“Let me in!” She banged on the door, watching
over her shoulder as the ghost drew closer with a floppy “Nova” in
its claws.

Ignoring the pain in her ankle, Nova ran to a
window on the

opposite side of the garage. The cats had
clawed their way through the screen long ago. She tried to open it.
Locked.