Karen's Haunted House

  I stomped down the hall and knocked on the second door on the left. Then I flung open the door.

  “Listen, Druscilla Peterson,” I began. Then I stopped. Druscilla was in her nightgown, sitting up in bed. A box of tissues was next to her. She was reading a magazine. Bottles of medicine stood on her bedside table. Her nose was red and puffy. She stared at me in surprise, then sneezed and grabbed a tissue.

  “What happedd to you?” she asked. She sounded very stuffy-nosy.

  “Um, how long have you been sick?” I asked.

  “All weekedd,” she said. “Dot that you care.”

  Well, for heaven’s sake.

  Mrs. Porter followed us into Druscilla’s room. “Yes, poor thing,” she said. “She came down with it Friday night. She’s been in bed ever since. Now, can I get you girls some juice? Or do you, ah, need to get cleaned up?”

  I remembered that I was covered with soot. “I better go get cleaned up,” I said meekly.

  “Thank you, anyway,” said Hannie.

  “We hope you feel better, Druscilla,” said Nancy.

  I slunk out of the room and down the stairs. We told Mrs. Porter good-bye. Hannie and Nancy walked me home, and then they headed back to the haunted house. I felt worse than ever.

  The Apology

  If you have never been covered with soot and ashes, you might not know that it takes about three showers to get really clean again. Well, it does. I had to shampoo and shampoo and shampoo my hair. Then I put on clean clothes. I lay on my bed and thought.

  Druscilla had been very sick all weekend. She had not been faking it. So she could not have done the spooky things at the haunted house. And she could not have set up the buckets of ashes.

  So who had done those things? Was the house really haunted? I did not know. But one thing was clear: I owed Druscilla an apology.

  After dinner I asked Daddy if I could go next door for a minute. Also if I could pick some of his mums from the garden.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” said Daddy. “But do not be gone too long.”

  So for the second time that day I climbed the steps to Morbidda Destiny’s porch. It was dark outside. I shivered. What if the witches were in the middle of casting a spell? I rang the doorbell. A small black shape ran by my legs, and I almost screamed. But it was just Midnight, Morbidda Destiny’s black cat. (Witches always have black cats.)

  Mrs. Porter opened the door. She smiled at me. “Well, you look much more like yourself,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said. “May I see Druscilla again, please?”

  Up in Druscilla’s room I gave her the flowers. She looked at me suspiciously.

  “I owe you an apology,” I said. (I hate apologizing. But it is very necessary sometimes.) “I am sorry I accused you of haunting the haunted house. It was haunted all last weekend, and today too, and now I know you could not have done it.”

  “Hauted how?” asked Druscilla.

  So I told her everything that had been happening.

  “Ooh, that souds spooky,” she said. “Could it have bid Sab or Charlie?”

  “Sam is a practical joker, but he got ashes dumped on him too,” I said.

  “Baybe he did that just to throw people off the track,” said Druscilla. She sniffled.

  “Maybe. But he looked really mad,” I said.

  “Baybe it was Bobby,” said Druscilla. “You said he threw a spider at you.”

  I nodded. I needed to think about all the evidence.

  “I also need to apologize for telling you you cannot be Cinderella,” I said. “It is not a problem if we are both Cinderella.”

  “No, of course dot,” said Druscilla. She blew her nose. “I ab sure we will look differedt, adyway.”

  “Yes,” I said. “There is no way we could come up with the exact same costume.” Druscilla and I chatted for awhile longer. She said she had been very lonely and bored all weekend. The kids at Stoneybrook Day School were nice, but she had not made many real friends yet.

  I decided again to try to be friends with Druscilla.

  Finally I went back home. Druscilla had promised to come help decorate the haunted house when she was better. Maybe with her help, we would get to the bottom of our ghost mystery.

  Sam or Charlie?

  “Okay, if it is not Druscilla, then maybe it is Sam or Charlie or Bobby,” I said on Tuesday at recess.

  Hannie pushed herself slowly in the swing. “Or a real ghost,” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Or a real ghost.”

  “I think it is Sam or Charlie,” said Nancy. “I do not want it to be a real ghost.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “A real ghost will be much harder to catch. But I have a plan for catching Sam or Charlie. Or Bobby. Listen.”

  The other two Musketeers leaned forward while I whispered my plan to them. We agreed to try it the next day. We were going to be ghostbusters!

  * * *

  “Our room is almost finished,” said Ms. Colman. “There is very little left to do. Today is Wednesday. We will work today and by Thursday, we will be completely done. On Friday, if you want to see the bats, come at dusk. That is the time they leave the house each day. And Friday is the day they will go off to their new homes.

  “Eww,” I said.

  “Meanwhile, Bobby should finish the closet,” said Ms. Colman. “Karen, Hannie, and Nancy can set the table with our skeleton-party refreshments. Sara and Audrey can sprinkle more dust around, especially in the corners. Any questions?”

  No one had questions.

  “Remember our plan,” I whispered to Hannie and Nancy as we gathered our supplies. They nodded. Today was the second-to-last chance we had to catch the spook. Sam’s class had already finished their room, so Sam was not at the house. But we could still investigate our other suspects.

  In the meantime, the Three Musketeers got to work. We tried to make the refreshments table as yucky as possible. We had a bag of gummy worms, and we put them all over the fake food. It looked disgusting.

  “I am glad we do not have to eat this,” said Hannie.

  “If a skeleton eats something, can you see it in its bones?” asked Nancy.

  “Eww!” I said, giggling. “That is so, so gross.”

  “I bet you can,” said Bobby. “I bet you can see everything.”

  “Yuck!” I said. Then I bit part of a gummy worm and let the other half of it hang out of my mouth. I stuck my hands out in front, as if I were a zombie. “Agh,” I said in a deep voice. I staggered around the room, staring at nothing. “Agh.”

  Hannie and Nancy laughed, and so did Bobby.

  Suddenly the lights went out!

  “Aiiee!” screamed Nancy. Audrey screamed too.

  It was practically dark outside, so it was very dark inside our room. But there was enough light for me to see Bobby standing still, looking scared. So, Bobby was not our ghost. There was no way he could have turned out the lights from where he stood.

  “Everyone, please stay calm,” said Ms. Colman. “I am sure it is just a fuse, and it will be fixed in a moment.”

  “Quick,” I whispered. “Our plan!”

  Hannie and Nancy and I sneaked over to the door and opened it. The hallway was very dark, but we could see a little bit.

  Two doors down, Charlie came out of his room. Several of his classmates were with him. “What is going on?” he said. He sounded cross.

  I looked at Hannie and Nancy. “It must be Sam,” I said, and they nodded.

  The lights flashed back on. I blinked for a moment, then ran for the stairs. “Come on!” I called. “Let’s catch him!”

  The haunted house had one old phone, in the kitchen. I ran to it and called the big house. Nannie answered.

  “Nannie, is Sam there?” I asked. When Nannie said he was not, I gave Hannie and Nancy a thumbs-up. I covered the phone with my hand. “It is him! He is not at home! He must have snuck over here!”

  Then Nannie said, “Oh, here he is now, with the groceries. I asked him to
pick up a few things. I better go help him unload them.”

  I hung up the phone. I did not know what to think. “Sam was at the grocery store,” I told Hannie and Nancy. “He just came home.”

  “With real groceries?” asked Hannie suspiciously.

  “Yes,” I said. I felt very disappointed.

  Charlie or Sam?

  The ghost was not Bobby. Sam had been at the grocery store. The Three Musketeers decided it must have been Charlie somehow, but we did not know how. We would have to keep an extra-careful watch on him.

  Thursday was our last day at the haunted house. Druscilla was finally over her cold, and she came to help with last-minute details. We gave her a tour of our room. She had probably seen creepier things in her own house, but she acted very impressed.

  “And here is a creepy closet,” I said, opening the door. Bobby had rigged the door so that when it opened, spiders on elastic strings dropped down. Plus there were glow-in-the-dark skeletons painted inside.

  “Ooh,” said Druscilla.

  “And here is our blood punch,” said Hannie. We had filled a punch bowl with Hawaiian Punch and then added more red food coloring to it. It looked just like blood.

  “Bleah,” said Druscilla, wrinkling her nose. I watched her nose carefully, to see if she was casting spells with it. She did not seem to be.

  “And here are our dancing skeletons,” Nancy said. Ms. Colman had cut several skeletons out of light tissue paper. We had hung them on threads from the ceiling. A crack in the window let in a breeze, making them look as if they were dancing.

  “Creepy,” said Druscilla. “This room is really great.”

  I smiled at Druscilla. I could not forget that she was going to be Cinderella too, but otherwise she was pretty nice. For a W.I.T.

  “I am sorry to hear that your plan did not catch the ghost yesterday,” Druscilla said quietly. “I really thought it would work.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Today if anything happens, we are going to stick to Charlie like glue.”

  Just then, over our heads, heavy footsteps thumped back and forth. We heard the scrape and clanking of metal chains. We heard a voice wail, “Whooooooo!” and then a creepy laugh: “Ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!”

  Druscilla looked at the ceiling, her eyes wide. “Something like that?” she asked, pointing upward. “Someone is in the attic!”

  “Charlie!” my friends and I yelled. Then we tore down the hall to Charlie’s room. Charlie was not there.

  “Aha!” I cried. “It is definitely him!”

  “Definitely who?” asked Charlie from behind me.

  I was not expecting to see him there, and I yelled. “Aaaugh!”

  Charlie held up a can of paint. “I was getting more paint,” he said. “What are you all doing out here?”

  “There is someone in the attic,” I said.

  “Or something,” said Hannie.

  “Let’s go see,” said Charlie.

  Mrs. Papadakis had blocked off the attic stairs with ropes so that people would not go up to the attic. But we ducked under the ropes: Charlie first, then the Three Musketeers, then Druscilla.

  “No one has been up here,” said Charlie. “Look at the steps.”

  Sure enough, the attic steps were covered with a thick layer of dust. It had not been disturbed.

  “Let’s go up anyway,” I said bravely.

  We climbed the steps slowly, with Charlie in the lead. After all, he was the biggest.

  Charlie opened the little door at the top of the stairs. He felt around on the wall for a light switch and flicked it on. I leaned past Charlie and looked into the attic.

  Then I gasped.

  There Is a Ghost!

  You will find this hard to believe. (I did.) But it’s true: All over the floor of the attic, there were footprints in the dust. Even though there had been no footprints on the attic stairs.

  “Is there another door?” asked Druscilla.

  We all looked, but we could see only one door, the one we had come in.

  “How did someone get in here without coming up the stairs?” asked Nancy.

  “They floated in,” said Hannie. Her voice shook.

  That did it. We stared at each other, then we all yelled and leaped for the door. With all of us pushing to get out, we caused a traffic jam, which just made us push harder. I was terrified that a ghost would clamp a cold hand on my shoulder, right then and there.

  Finally, with a little “Oof!” we managed to burst through the doorway. We thundered down the steps to the second floor. Ms. Colman was waiting for us at the bottom.

  “Girls, you are not supposed to go into the attic,” she said. “We are not sure it is safe.”

  “It is definitely not safe!” I said. Charlie, Druscilla, Hannie, and Nancy nodded their heads. We had solved the mystery. The ghost was real.

  * * *

  “That was so spooky,” said Hannie.

  The Three Musketeers and Druscilla were sitting at the kitchen table in the big house. We were still shaken up. Nannie had fixed us some emergency hot apple cider. We each had our own cinnamon stick.

  I nodded and reached for a ginger snap. “It was just about the spookiest thing I have ever seen,” I said.

  “It could not have been Charlie,” said Nancy.

  “It was not Bobby or Sam,” I said.

  “It was not me,” said Druscilla, smiling.

  I smiled back at her. “No, it was definitely not you.”

  “It was something that can float up stairs,” said Hannie. She shivered just thinking about it.

  “If it floated up the stairs, why did it leave footprints in the attic?” asked Nancy. “Why didn’t it just float around the attic?”

  “It had to walk around in the attic,” explained Hannie. “Because it had to make a lot of noise to scare people.”

  I put my head in my hands. My plan to catch Sam or Charlie had backfired. I had almost ended up catching a real ghost. Or a real ghost had almost caught me! I decided that I would forget about catching anything. I would try to enjoy the haunted house anyway, and leave the ghost alone. But … would the ghost leave me alone?

  Going Batty

  This Halloween was turning out to be the Halloweeniest ever. Not only had I found a real ghost, but something else was spooky: Daddy’s new bat friends.

  I had looked at the two new bat houses on the back of the garage. They looked just like small, plain wooden boxes. I could not see a door anywhere. Daddy explained that the bottom was open. The bats would fly in from the bottom, then cling upside down inside the box. I wrinkled my nose. What kind of creepy animal would sleep upside down? Only a witchy bat, of course.

  On Friday evening before dinner, my big house family walked down the street to the haunted house. It was a cool, clear night. A fat, pale moon was just starting to rise. The sky was not completely dark yet.

  Many people had gathered around the haunted house. Mrs. Porter and Druscilla were there, along with Druscilla’s mother.

  “Welcome, everyone,” said Mrs. Porter. “I want to thank you for your support of one of nature’s most misunderstood animals, the bat.” She talked about how bats are good for eating insects, and how people do not have to be afraid of bats.

  Sure, I thought.

  Then she talked about how they planned to save the haunted-house bats.

  “In just a few minutes the bats will swarm out of the chimney,” said Mrs. Porter. “Once they are out on their nightly insect raid, an animal-control worker will cover the chimney opening with netting. When the bats realize they cannot return home, they will look for new homes. Many of you have installed bat houses in your yards. If you have baited them with fruit, bats will find them and move into them very quickly. In just a day or two I hope that all of our lovely bats will have new homes.”

  The crowd clapped their hands. I sighed. I did not want bats living behind our garage.

  “Oh, look!” Elizabeth said. “There they are now.”

  We looked up
to the roof of the haunted house. Dozens of dark little creatures were flying out of the chimney. They did not make any sound. They looked like small brown birds.

  I shivered and grabbed Daddy’s hand. I pressed close to his sweater. If a bat came after me, I wanted Daddy to protect me.

  “There must be hundreds of them,” said Daddy. “I am glad we will be able to help some of them with our bat houses.”

  “I think they are neat,” said Kristy.

  I watched the bats as they flew away through the night. I still did not think they were neat, or lovely. But at least none of them had swooped down to attack me. And at least they slept all day. I probably would not run into any bats soon. That is how I wanted to keep it.

  Will the Real Ghost Please Stand Up?

  “There. How is that?” asked Kristy.

  I stood back and looked at myself in the mirror. Kristy had fixed my hair in a very fancy princessy hairdo.

  “It is wonderful!” I said. “Thank you, Kristy.”

  “No problem. Can you put on the rest of your costume while I help Andrew?”

  “Yes,” I said. It was Halloween afternoon. Kristy had agreed to take Hannie, Nancy, Andrew, Druscilla, and me trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. Then we would go to the haunted house together around five o’clock. I could not wait.

  Soon we were standing in front of Druscilla’s house while Kristy rang the doorbell. Andrew had decided to be a dinosaur this year. Hannie was a butterfly. Nancy was a pumpkin. And I, of course, was Cinderella.

  Kristy came down the steps. (She was dressed as the bride of Frankenstein’s monster.) Druscilla was right behind her. When I saw her, my eyes opened wide. Then I started to laugh.

  Druscilla and I did not look anything alike! I was Cinderella after she had become a beautiful princess. Druscilla was Cinderella before her fairy godmother had made her beautiful. Druscilla was dressed in a too-small, raggedy dress with tears and rips in it. She had smeared dirt on her face. Her hair was wild and uncombed. She looked as if she had been scrubbing floors all day. I had been worried for nothing.