Rules for Ghosting Read online

  “Yes, yes,” he called, as he slammed the door shut and shifted the vehicle into gear. “I’ll be back first thing on Monday, you have my word. Well, good-bye!”

  Dahlia shot down onto the bed of the truck. Oh, no! He was taking Mrs. Tibbs away. What could she do? Forcing her mind into focus, she grappled with the tarp. It was tied down tight with bungee cords securing the various boxes, bags, and suitcases, and Dahlia couldn’t get enough power to pry it up. Apparently, sitting on a branch was one thing and moving anything that required force was another. Or was her emotional state affecting her focus? Giving up on interacting with the objects, Dahlia shot her hand through them. There was the Spectrometer, and there was that evil black box. It burned her hand when she accidentally brushed against it, and Dahlia couldn’t help wondering how Mrs. Tibbs felt inside her little prison. How could Dahlia get the box out of the truck? She forced all her energy on making contact with the sides of the box, concentrating as hard as she could.

  Too late she realized that the truck had begun to move, and she looked quickly up. Silverton Manor’s front gate hung wide open, and the truck would pass through just fine. But no opening would be wide enough to let Dahlia through. She could feel the Boundary getting closer—she punched the surface of the tarp as hard as she could—and closer—the material was fraying ever so slightly, and a tiny hole started to appear—and closer—in another second she would break through and the force of momentum would be enough for her to propel the canister out—

  SLAM! The truck sped through the Boundary, and Dahlia was thrown back across the courtyard, skidding down into the ground and tangling up with a colony of expired earthworms.

  The truck roared away around a far corner.

  Dahlia had lost Mrs. Tibbs.

  For several minutes Dahlia stayed where she was, hardly noticing that somehow she had managed to stabilize her form so she was now sitting on top of the ground. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. What would happen to Mrs. Tibbs? Would the Ghouncil intervene, if the Liberator was away from Silverton Manor? Did they even know what had happened, and if they did, would they care? Dahlia’s eyes burned and her heart ached and the world around her pulsed a dull blue-gray.

  Pushing back her fears that it was over, that she had failed, that all hope was gone, she forced herself to focus on making a plan. Plan B, specifically. She’d failed to keep Mrs. Tibbs from being taken from Silverton Manor. Now she had to redouble her efforts to break through the Boundary, so she could leave the manor and find Wiley’s house. She wasn’t sure what would happen after that, but she would find a way. “There’s no way my very first ghost friend is going to end up on that nasty ghosterminator’s dissecting table,” Dahlia said, clenching her fists and squaring her jaw.

  She shot back toward Silverton Manor.

  Dahlia zipped through the front door, passed through a coatrack and glanced through a silvery, shivery mirror. A buzz of voices came from the kitchen, and Dahlia slid through the walls in that direction. The whole family sat around the table, munching steadily on some sort of gooey casserole. The twins had a long ropey strand of cheese stretched between their two mouths, upon which they had strung two or three noodles. They appeared to be playing a complicated sucking game to see who could get the noodles to their own mouth first. Mr. Day was muttering to himself in a ringmaster’s voice, occasionally stopping to jot something down on his paper napkin with an orange Sharpie. Mrs. Day flitted from one side of the kitchen to the other, scribbling and checking off boxes on her various to do-lists, making phone calls, putting trays into the freezer, and occasionally stopping to stuff a few noodles into her mouth.

  Oliver and Poppy were shoveling down their food as fast as they could. Their heads were bent and their faces lined up next to their bowls as if for maximum efficiency. Dahlia came up behind Oliver, focused her concentration, and jabbed him in the shoulder as hard as she could. He jumped a little, then reached over to scratch distractedly at the spot. Dahlia groaned. Despite her best efforts, she could tell it hadn’t felt like more than a tickle. Why was it so hard to make Contact? She thought about dashing up to the attic and zapping herself, but how would she explain that to the rest of the family?

  She focused on Oliver again, this time stopping to clear her mind fully and then karate-chopping down hard on his shoulder. He jumped more visibly this time, then turned and looked over his shoulder, eyes wide. He exchanged a glance with his sister. “Dahlia,” she saw him mouth to Poppy, who nodded.

  “Hey, Dad,” said Poppy. “Can you practice your new ringmaster’s speech for us? We haven’t heard it all the way through yet!”

  Mr. Day beamed. “Now there’s an idea!” He wiped a cheesy smear off his chin, cleared his throat, and stood up. He even whipped off his hat for the occasion, holding it out like a baton. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “As master of ceremonies of the finest circus on this side of—”

  While he spoke, Oliver leaned forward and swiped the orange Sharpie. Scooting his own napkin onto his lap he wrote, D: We have news. Meet in attic in 5. P found—

  “Oliver,” Mrs. Day interrupted, cutting off the ringmaster’s speech abruptly. “How is the decorating coming along?”

  “Oh, super well,” Oliver began, stuffing the napkin into his pocket. “In fact, it’s—”

  “—taking us a bit longer than we thought,” Poppy cut in smoothly. “We’ve got some cool ideas. It’ll definitely be done in time for the party tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Day deflated a bit. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, all right. That reminds me …”

  Right then the phone rang. Mrs. Day grabbed the receiver, while Oliver and Poppy wolfed down the rest of their dinner. “Mr. Rutabartle! … Sure! … Well, of course. No, that’s perfectly fine. How many additional guests should we expect? … Oh, right—ah, yes, in advance of the auction. So they can get the lay of the land? Okay, I suppose. Well, if I might add …”

  “Come on,” Oliver said, grabbing Poppy’s hand, and looking around the room with a significant eyebrow wiggle, like he wanted to let Dahlia know he was leaving, wherever she might invisibly be.

  “Why are you making googly eyes at the cookbooks?” Junie asked, popping the cheesy tightrope and slapping it back at Joe’s face. But this was so funny that she then started laughing hysterically, and didn’t notice when Oliver and Poppy slipped out of the room. Dahlia followed right behind them. She shot straight up through the floors so she was well settled in and freshly zapped by the time they cleared the top of the stairs. She settled the loose board carefully overtop of the Seesaw and wobbled into Oliver’s room.

  He and Poppy burst in a second later. “Dahlia,” Poppy said. “Good, you’re here. You’ll never guess what we’ve found!”

  But Dahlia turned right then, and could not believe what she saw: there on Oliver’s bed, gleaming neon orange in the last rays of the sunset, sat Rank Wiley’s Aspirator.

  “Oh!” Dahlia gasped. “Where—when—how did you get that?”

  “Oliver swiped it right out from under old Wiley’s nose,” Poppy boasted, dropping onto the bed next to it and poking the bulging sack. “That nasty man has no idea he drove away without his prize.”

  Could it really be? Dahlia dropped down next to the device and prodded it with a gentle finger. It was so horrible that she hated to get too close; it was also extremely weird for her now-corporeal form to be able to touch the machine that was so threatening to her as a ghost. “Mrs. Tibbs,” she whispered. “Are you in there? Can you hear me?”

  “Hell-o!” The voice was faint but unmistakable, and Dahlia felt her insides do a little cartwheel. Mrs. Tibbs was okay! The relief was so strong that for a second Dahlia felt the air around her roar and swell into one giant bubble of joy. Wiley hadn’t moved her to the ironite box after all. “Tut-tut, my girlish gadabout, is that you out there? You’ve been gone for quite some time! And your voice sounds all scratchy and worn out. You aren’t—”

  “Oh, Mrs. Tibbs—we’re going to figure a way to g
et you out of there,” Dahlia cut in, having a good idea what the Liberator was about to say. Sure enough:

  “—doing any Dialoguing with those living children, are you? Don’t forget the Ghouncil—”

  “Do you suppose we could just break the machine?” Oliver asked. “Smash the canister or something and get her out that way?”

  “Or look at all these buttons,” said Poppy eagerly, her fingers twitching above some of the settings. “We could keep pressing until something, you know, makes it come apart? I mean, it has to come apart, right?”

  “Under no circumstances should the living children tinker with this machine!” came Mrs. Tibbs’s disembodied voice from inside the bag. “Dahlia, speaking to you only, please understand, I would advise you to place this receptacle somewhere safe but not attempt to mess with it. We do not know how this device works. When ironite goes bad it can … poison a soul.”

  “Poison?” Dahlia echoed, too alarmed to even smile at how Mrs. Tibbs was keeping the Ghouncil’s rules by not talking directly to Oliver and Poppy.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Tibbs, “and it is taking all my energy to even speak through this barrier, so I must stop now and recollect my strength. But do not attempt to get me out yourself, child. Honestly, I would suggest you forget me altogether for the time being. Find your way out of the Boundary and then contact the Ghouncil to intervene. They do like being called in as experts, you know …” Her voice trailed away, and Dahlia suddenly noticed that she herself was almost fully ghost-solid again—which she knew meant that to the living kids, she would be disappearing.

  “Hey, don’t go,” Poppy said to her. “We’ve got something else to show you. I found some old papers in my room that are pretty cool.”

  “Can you go back through the Seesaw?” Oliver asked. “So we can look through this stuff together?”

  Dahlia was more excited than she’d been all day. Mrs. Tibbs was safe—even if there was no way to get her out yet, at least Wiley couldn’t hurt her—and now there were new clues! Things were looking up. Fully restored to her own ghostliness, Dahlia shot through the walls, plunged her hand into the floorboard, and zapped herself again.

  But something was different this time. The jolt was quicker, but it felt strange somehow, like falling and scratching a knee that already had a scab on it. She felt herself turn corporeal, but she also felt suddenly exhausted, her newly physical body much heavier than usual.

  “I bet I’m using it too often,” she murmured. “It can’t be good for me.” Yet she had no desire to slow her usage. This was a tool, a gift she’d been given. She had to find any available information, and she didn’t have long to do it. Whatever the price, she was willing to pay it. Just as long as she could solve the mystery of her death and discover a way to break through the Boundary.

  Chapter 20

  Oliver leaned back on the bed, hands behind his head. Poppy was totally boasting about her discovery, but he had to admit it was a sweet find. “There was this bookshelf in my room and when I moved in I just piled my princess collection overtop of the junk that was already there. You know, who has time to do all the sorting and cleaning and junking stuff out, right?” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I did remember there was a ton of paper there, so after I finished draping all those sheets today—” Here she shot Oliver a dark look and he grinned back. “I went to see what I could find. And … ta-da!”

  She thrust out a leather binder stuffed with crinkly, yellowing pages. Putting the folder in Dahlia’s hands, Poppy sat back on the bed, beaming.

  “This is remarkable!” Dahlia whispered, sitting down next to Poppy on the bed. “I didn’t think to go through your shelves, since I thought all of that was simply your things.”

  Poppy nodded.

  “We had a quick look through,” Oliver interrupted, leaning forward. He wanted to get to the good stuff. “And it’s pretty weird. You know how people in the village talk about a curse? Well, there’s stuff about that in here.”

  Dahlia picked up a newspaper clipping and read out loud: “Society Belle Found Dead in Youthful Prime! Laura Silverton, seventeen, was found dead today in her attic bedroom in Silverton Manor. The local Rose Cup Queen and famed beauty had been in poor health and confined to her home for the past several months with undisclosed symptoms, but officials are baffled as to the cause of death …” Her voice trailed off. “Laura Silverton! That’s one of the first names in the family Bible that Mrs. Tibbs and I saw in the library.”

  Oliver couldn’t help noticing that Dahlia’s feet were see-through. They needed to hurry up—even though she would still be able to see and hear them in her ghostly form, it wasn’t the same. He reached over and picked up the papers. “There’s a lot more here, especially about the curse. It looks like this girl Laura’s death started the rumors, but it’s much more than that. People think there’s something evil about the house—there’s a list that goes on and on of recorded health problems of people who’ve lived here: madness and weird unspecific illness and people getting sent to institutions and stuff.”

  “Something evil in the house?” Dahlia looked bewildered.

  “Does any of this sound familiar to you? Do you remember anything about all those illnesses being in your family?”

  “Nothing,” she whispered. “I mean, there were all those medical books we saw in the library. Could there be a connection? Oh, this doesn’t make any sense. Why can’t I remember?”

  “There’s something else you should know,” Oliver said, feeling uncomfortable. “We didn’t find anything about you in this folder. Nothing at all.”

  “Amnesia!” Poppy yelled suddenly.

  “What?” Dahlia said. She was now just a head with an upper body and arm stumps, floating gently above the bed.

  Poppy rifled excitedly through the papers and pulled out a news article, which she jabbed at and yelped when her finger punched a neat hole right through it. “Oops! Well, look—see here, this list of symptoms the Silvertons have displayed over the years? Some people got amnesia as part of their illness. They said it was another part of the curse. So that must be what happened to you. That’s why you can’t remember, get it? You had the curse before you died, and memory loss was part of that.”

  “Poppy, the curse isn’t real,” Oliver said. “It’s not like you get cursed and then get a list of symptoms. People start calling it the curse, but there has to be some logical, scientific reason. Right?” He looked at Dahlia, remembered he was speaking with a ghost, and cleared his throat quickly. “Anyway,” he rushed on, “there’s a lot in here, but I don’t know how it all fits together. It’s like there’s a piece missing and I’ve got no idea what it is. I just think it has to be something logical, something that ties it all together.”

  Dahlia was studying the papers in her lap. As Oliver watched, the pale-blue print of her dress’s collar faded into air, like it was being worked on by a giant invisible eraser. Now she looked like one of those portraits in the long room downstairs, nothing but a head and shoulders—all the more alarming when the head and shoulders suddenly bounced up into the air.

  “The hidden room,” Dahlia said, her eyes suddenly alight. “That’s the missing piece. I’ve been thinking a lot about that room, but look back here.” She flipped to the first article. “Laura Silverton was found in her attic bedroom. There’s no way it’s this tiny room—what do you bet there’s another room, hidden away behind that wall over there?”

  “Wait, there’s a hidden room?” Poppy said.

  “Of course—there has to be,” Oliver said. That explained the lack of space he’d noticed in the attic. It made perfect sense.

  “If she died in that room,” Dahlia continued, “that would explain why it got boarded up. Maybe that’s why I can’t get in. Maybe her death left some kind of energy-block in place.” Dahlia turned to look right at him. “Maybe the curse comes from her.”

  Poppy bounded to her feet. “Let’s open it up and find out. Mom loves any excuse to pull out her old tool kit
.” She started for the door.

  “Wait!” said Oliver. “I don’t think so.”

  “Come on, you know she would.”

  But Oliver shook his head. “Normally she would, but right now? She’s all about this party tomorrow. If she doesn’t send us straight to bed she’ll think of some task for us to do. She’s definitely not going to make more work for herself right now.”

  “But we have to get inside there!” Dahlia said, and her wide, panic-filled eyes were the only thing left visible in her now-ghostly face. “And you have to be the ones to do it—the room is blocked off to me for some reason.”

  “We will,” said Oliver. “And we’ll do it tonight. We just won’t clue Mom in first.”

  “I’ll get back to the Seesaw,” said Dahlia. “I don’t know how long I can keep using it, but—”

  She disappeared.

  Poppy turned the doorknob and stepped into the hallway. “I’ll go get the toolbox. We’ll find a way in, no problem.”

  Alone in the Matchbox, Oliver looked around. “I wish I knew where you are when you’re invisible,” he said. “It gives me the creeps not knowing what you’re up to.” He swiveled his head from side to side. He felt a prickling in his right shoulder and swatted at it. A second later there was a light scratching sound from the window. The surface was slightly steamed up. Oliver took a step closer to the window and grinned as two tiny stars appeared in the condensation of the windowpane, then below it a wide, half-moon smile.

  Getting into the closed-up attic room turned out to be easier than Oliver had expected, though their plan to tackle it that night quickly fell apart. First Mom stopped by Oliver’s room lecturing about the big day tomorrow, then Dad with JJ in tow demanding a slumber party. By the time they had all left, JJ bribed with future promises, Oliver couldn’t keep his eyes open. Poppy crept into his room just after midnight, looking more than halfway asleep herself. They agreed to start first thing in the morning.