The Shade Riders and the Dreadful Ghosts (15 page)

“I don’t feel like it either.” Scott started
toward the bike trailer and hauled out a couple more bags to take
inside.

Wilha came out of the kennel, made a face,
and stuck her tongue out.

Mom sighed and stomped inside. “I’m still
making some. Eat it or not, it’s up to you.”

When Nova left the bathroom after taking a
shower, she said, “I still smell the corn, Mom.”

“Oh for crying out loud.” Mom clunks her
mystery book against the side of the dining room table.

“Well, what do you want? We’re sick of
thinking about corn for eight hours a day-Monday through Saturday.”
Nova checked the pork chops with cream of mushroom soup on the top
and licked her lips. Boy, she was so hungry. The potatoes were
boiling, and she turned them down before they foamed over the
top.

“What other vegetable do you want then?”

“How about some carrots or tomatoes from our
garden?” Nova peeked in the refrigerator. “Oh, there aren’t any
carrots. I’ve been feeding so many to Shade.”

“And I didn’t buy any because I thought we
had plenty. Cut up the tomatoes and put them on a plate for the
others. Sprinkle a little fresh basil on top. I’ll eat the corn
alone.”

The family sat down and ate the meal. It was
delicious though Nova’s nose wrinkled from the smell of corn.

“What are your plans tonight everyone?” Mom
asked.

“I’m going to meet Takeesha at the
fairgrounds.”

“Do you need to meet her? Can’t you stay
home?”

“We already made plans, Mom.”

“Ask Takeesha if her mom can take you home.
Take a radio and Wilha can ride with you.”

“I wanted to go to Jarva’s house,” Wilha
said.

“Okay, after you drop her off, you can go to
Jarva’s. It should still be light out. Scott, what are you going to
do?”

“I’m going to barrel race and ride Chocolate
in the back.”

“Belle will like that.”

The two girls rode their bikes to the
fairgrounds. As soon as they arrived Wilha took off. Nova parked
her bike and strolled inside to find her friend. She scanned the
whole building, but Takeesha was nowhere to be found among the
milling dogs and owners. She skipped outside and looked over the
grounds. She couldn’t find her there either. Nova approached a tall
woman leader who was observing the class.

“Pardon me, have you seen Takeesha
anywhere?”

“What does she look like?”

“She’s about a foot taller than me with brown
skin, and she has a black lab called Boomer.”

“Oh, Boomer, Yes, I know who you are talking
about. She dropped out or something. She hasn't been showing
up.”

The leader left to help a boy whose dog
wouldn’t sit on command. Nova waited for a while then she strolled
to the girl’s bathroom.

The doorway was blocked by a tall skinny
girl’s body.“Where do you think you are going? This is a girl’s
restroom.” Nova frowned and pushed her way through anyway.

“DON’T GO INTO THE GIRL’S BATHROOM. THERE IS
A BOY IN THERE.” The girl said in the hallway. Nova cringed. She
used the washroom, but she couldn't look at herself in the mirror
when she washed her hands. She wondered why this happened to her so
often. Was she really that ugly?

She peeked into the mirror for a second and
saw the small Neanderthal man staring at her with a vicious face.
She jumped back. When she looked again, he was gone. Was she
somehow projecting this man’s face on her own? Was this what people
were seeing when they looked at her? She began to sweat, and a cold
chill ran down her back.

Nova got on her bike and took off away from
the fairgrounds. She rode her bike through town hoping nothing else
would happen to her. Then she turned a corner and stopped
short.

Takeesha was with a gang of older kids,
running and spray painting stuff on the walls and windows of
stores.

“Dear Vulcan.” Nova’s stomach was knotted up.
This wasn’t the Takeesha she thought she knew. She also thought
they had been inseparable friends, at least until lately. Nova
winced and hunched down further on her bike seat and backed up into
the shadow of an alley.

Suddenly, a pink iridescent man ran onto the
street in front of her. Then he grew into a huge muscular
iridescent greenish glowing muscular man.

“Dear Vulcan, what the…?”

The monster reached under a lone red car and
flipped it over with ease.

“Holy chaos!”

He picked up a bike stand and threw it
through the drug store window. Shattered glass flew everywhere. He
grabbed a bicycle taxi and threw it down hard against the pavement
causing it to twist and break. The gang members under the
streetlights stared, their faces white. The huge man strode toward
them. Then Nova blinked and the man was down on the road, a dark
pony or young horse with wings stood on his chest, breathing in his
face.

Shade!

Nova almost whistled but stopped herself. If
she did that, Shade would come to her and possibly bring the green
man with her. That was a scary thought. Nova could hear the
iridescent greenish glowing man talking loudly to someone, but she
didn’t know who it was. He seemed to be talking to his bandaged
finger. What was that all about?

"I'm trying to catch the horse, but it now
has my arms pinned." He tried to kick the horse off himself, but
his legs weren't strong enough.

Nova heard a huge crash of garbage cans
behind her, and a couple of fighting cats growled and screamed at
each other. Then the hair on her neck stood on end. She felt cold
and an utmost dread. Nova slowly turned.

Sure enough, five ghosts were staring at her.
They soon began to crowd around her. The ghosts changed from
peaceful looking people in old fashioned pioneer clothing to
skeletons in robes. Nova could feel the blood drain from her
face.

"Nova I'm here for you.”

It was Leandra speaking from the watch.

“You need to ride to Benny's house as fast as
you can. I'm on the trail of Nocturnal Ned and...think I have him
finally."

“Oh… okay.”

Nova didn’t know if she should ride right
past the green glowing man or try to avoid him and ride around.

She decided to go around. Taking off on her
bike, she took one last look at where Shade and the man were.

Shade took off into the night sky. The man
was back to

normal size, pink iridescent, and a woman
that looked like Leandra in a long gray coat, tackled him with
shiny, silver handcuffs clutched in her hands.

Nova raced passed buildings and could no
longer see the arrest attempt. She wished she could have watched
it. But the ghosts were on her tail. They screamed like banshees as
they floated around her, trying to get in front of her bike.

“Bike don’t fail me now.”

Nova rode down an open-ended alley to escape
the flying banshees. She was sweating, her legs were burning
something awful, and she didn't think she could keep up the pace.
Suddenly a dark Buick pulled into the alley in front of her, making
a horrible racket reeking with exhaust. The owner must have tried
to come up with an alternative fuel. Nova swerved and skidded to
turn around and shot some pebbles up onto the car.

“Hey, are you trying to get killed?” the
driver yelled as he half got out of the car.

There was no other way around. Nova realized
she had to turn back and ride through the stupid ghosts. She
started out slow but gained speed until she rammed them with all
she had. She felt the cold and the horrible feeling of fear as she
passed through them.

The ghosts screamed and reached for her. Nova
clutched her stomach, faltered and fell off her bike, scraping her
knee on the pavement and her ankle on a petal. She could feel the
blood rolling down her leg when she stood up to get back on. Nova
looked back; the ghosts were almost on her.

She started to pedal. Her leg hurt a lot, but
she had to get away. She put out every ounce of energy she had into
out running the ghosts. Between the large dinner and the day of
detasseling corn, she was pretty wiped out. She took a turn down a
road toward Benny’s house, rode in the gutter near the curb, and
ended up running over something sharp.

Her front tire blew.

“Crap!”

Just when Nova thought she was doomed,
somewhere she found a reserve of energy and kept going until she
got to her destination. She dropped her bike and staggered to the
door. To her surprise, Max Kim opened it and let her in. Out of
breath, Nova said, “Ghosts… chasing me." She plopped down on the
couch in the living room and panted. Her chest felt like it was
going to explode.

Then Nova noticed pillows all over the room.
They look like they had been thrown around. Had Benny and Max Kim
been having a pillow fight?

“Turn out the lights.” Benny disappeared into
his room then rushed back out. Max Kim made the room dark.

“I’ve got a magnetic meter, here.” In his
hands, Benny had a gadget that used a compass and a bar magnet. He
rolled to the door and took a reading. Nova and Max Kim looked
outside just in time to see the ghosts vanish in wisps of
white.

“What is causing them to go away?” Nova
asked.

“I don’t know. But it looks like they are
made of plasma from an aurora borealis right above this house. Here
look. Right up there.” Benny pointed upward out the window.

“Yeah, I saw one above the school the other
day,” Nova said excitedly. “That’s what’s causing them. It has to
be.”

“Well, how do we fight them?” Max Kim
said.

“Infrasound can’t be fought. It’s a sound
that we can only feel, not hear. It makes people think they see
ghosts. Elephants, whales, and tigers use the special sound waves
because they carry a huge distance. Even the Inuit people fear the
deadly Aura Borealis.”

“But it’s not deadly for us. I think Leandra
knows something,” Nova said folding her arms on her chest. “Too bad
she’s busy arresting Ned.”

It was dusk, humid and
drizzling a little. At Nova’s farm, the flies and mosquitoes were
buzzing about Nova and Max Kim’s heads. Nova held onto the long
lounge rope used for getting a horse to exercise by running around
a person in a circle.

Shade circled around her about four yards
away. The other horses were in the back pasture. Shade’s mother,
Chocolate, had lost interest in her filly a while ago.

Darkness approached, and Shade’s beautiful
black and gold glossy wings expanded. Still on the lounge rope, she
flapped twice, then glided around a yard off the ground.

“What is that?” Max Kim said pointing.“Are
those… wings?”

“Yeah, I’ve meant to tell you about
that.”

Max Kim stepped toward Shade, ducked down low
so as not to get into the way of the rope. He pranced right into
Shade's tail, then he got swept up into the air behind the flying
horse and was riding above the ground in a slipstream force.

“Holy chaos!” Nova yelled. “Be careful.”

Shade continued to fly in a circle. After a
moment of panic, Max Kim began to laugh and tried out a couple
somersaults in mid-air.

“Look at me, Nova, I can fly! Whee…this is so
much fun!”

“I don’t know about this…”

After about half an hour, Nova landed Shade,
dropping her to the ground. In the next minute, Max Kim’s face was
in Shade's tail again. At least he had landed on his feet.

Nova grabbed him by the shirt and said,” Max
Kim it’s very important that you don’t tell anyone besides Benny
and Takeesha, got it?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I mean it.”

"I know," Max Kim said. “Man, that was fun.
You want to try?"

The next day, Takeesha
called. “Hey Nova, I just heard from Max Kim that your filly has
wings? That can’t be true! How come you get to be so lucky? When
can I come over to see this miracle?”

“Benny’s coming over tonight. Why don’t you
join us.”

“Okay, I’ll ask if Boomer and I can come
over.”

It sounded like Takeesha put the phone
receiver down and called her mother. Then she heard a quiet
conversation between two people in the background. Takeesha picked
up the phone.

“I can come over after supper, but Boomer’s
staying home.”

“Good, I’ll see you then. Wait, you didn’t
tell your family? Did you?”

“Oh gosh, Nova, you should know me by now. I
can keep a secret. You know what I mean?”

But for the first time she could remember,
Nova wasn’t sure she knew Takeesha.“This isn’t just a secret. It is
a huge secret!”

“Come on, girl! I’m fine with it.”

“Okay, see you tonight.”

After dinner, Nova strolled into the bathroom
to wash barbecue off her face and hands. While she was drying up,
the communication device on her wrist vibrated. She saw Leandra’s
eye watching her. Nova spoke into the watch. “What’s up?”

“I want all of you to come over again. It’s
very important.”

“Does Shade need to come?”

“No, just you kids. It will only take five
minutes.”

Leandra winked then her eye disappeared.

Around 8:15 P.M. Takeesha, Max Kim and Benny
arrived at Nova’s farm. The kids headed down toward the gate.

“Let’s wait for sundown in the woods,” Nova
said. “I brought some mosquito and tick repellent.”

The kids strolled and wheeled through the
gate and moved down the tractor path, walking along side of Benny.
They sprayed themselves down and sat on logs in the woods to wait
for dusk. Nova fiddled with the lounge line as the kids sighed and
waited.

They swatted at mosquitoes, gnats and biting
horse flies. “This had better be good,” Benny said. Takeesha
nodded.

“It was so much fun riding behind Shade,” Max
Kim said. “Just wait and see, you won’t believe your eyes.”