Why I'm Not Afraid of Ghosts

  Back to business. What can I use here in Oliver’s room to scare Oliver into believing in ghosts?

  Robbie scanned the room. A big black three-ring binder decorated with green lightning bolts sat on the desk. A zip pouch full of sharp new pencils and a package of filler paper lay next to it. There was a stack of textbooks on the desk too.

  A computer sat on the desk. The monitor had fish swimming across it.

  A glass-sided tank sat by the window. Dirt, a geranium plant, and a bowl of water were inside.

  Robbie drifted closer. He peered through the glass.

  Yikes! A giant hairy red-legged spider stared back at him!

  A tarantula!

  What kind of kid had a tarantula for a pet?

  Robbie hated spiders.

  “So—do you play any instruments, Shawn?” Oliver asked.

  Robbie jumped. Did Oliver have to talk so loud?

  Shawn shook his head. “Nope. Mom made me take piano lessons when I was nine, but I hated them.”

  “Too bad. I want to start a band.” Oliver carefully placed the guitar on the floor.

  Robbie wished the old piano were still downstairs. He used to take piano lessons too, and he liked to play.

  He bet Oliver wouldn’t know any of the songs he knew though.

  Robbie hadn’t had many opportunities to listen to current music. People moved out of the house way too fast, and they took their radios and TVs and CD players with them.

  Still, he was sure he could learn a new song easily. He was sick of the old ones he knew. And it would be cool to be in a band.

  I’m doing it again! Robbie thought. Thinking about making friends with some dumb lifer! Being a traitor to ghosts!

  If the piano were still here, I could use it to scare Oliver, Robbie told himself. That’s what I should be thinking about!

  He peeked over Shawn’s shoulder to check out the comic book. All he saw were lots of people in weird masks and underwear.

  Funny papers sure had changed since Robbie was alive.

  Just as Robbie leaned in for a closer look, Shawn clapped the comic book shut and put it on the floor. Frustrated, Robbie drifted toward the door.

  “Got any bright ideas, little brother?” Dora asked, appearing right in front of him. “Or are you just mooning around as usual?”

  Robbie narrowed his eyes and glared at his sister. He wished he had an idea, but Oliver’s room hadn’t inspired him.

  Aside from the tarantula and some dirty clothes, there wasn’t anything scary in Oliver’s room.

  “Woof! Woof woof woof!”

  At the sudden noise, Robbie shrieked and jumped two feet in the air.

  He whirled to see a huge black Doberman pinscher leap up from under a pile of dirty laundry.

  “Ruff ruff ruff!” The dog stood, head forward It growled low and deep in its throat. Its teeth were huge and white, glistening with saliva.

  It stared straight at Robbie!

  If Robbie’s heart still worked, it would have been pounding.

  Before Robbie could even think to move, Spooky lunged right at him!

  5

  “No!” Robbie shrieked. He shut his eyes in terror.

  Then the dog jumped right through Robbie, barking like crazy.

  Robbie yelled and clutched his stomach.

  “Ohh! Oooch!” he groaned. Yuck! A lifer going through a ghost really made the ghost sick. The ghost’s energy got all churned up.

  “Spooky, cut it out!” Oliver yelled at the dog.

  But Spooky ignored him.

  “Woof! Ruff! Rrrrr!” The dog hit the hall running, his nails clicking on the wood floor.

  Still gasping, Robbie turned to watch the dog.

  “Meorrow!” A big fluffy orange-and-white cat tore down the hall Spooky charged after it.

  “Thunder!” Nell wailed, popping out of her room. “Oliver, you better make Spooky stop!”

  “Thunder?” Robbie murmured.

  Of course. The dog was after Nell’s cat. Not the ghosts.

  I’d get lost again quick if I were that cat, Robbie thought. As big as the cat was, the dog was huge! And fast.

  Robbie groaned. His stomach hurt so much, he wished he could just hurl and get it over with. If only ghosts could throw up.

  Dora hovered near the ceiling, smirking. She must have moved fast enough to get out of the way of the dog’s charge.

  “Smooth moves,” Dora taunted.

  “The dog surprised me,” Robbie protested. Yeah. That was it. The dog surprised him.

  That wasn’t the same as scaring him.

  “Look out, Robbie!” Dora teased. “I’m coming down. I don’t want to surprise you!” She began laughing.

  Robbie glared at her as she drifted down from the ceiling to the floor. She was laughing so hard, tears came out of her eyes.

  “Oh, you’re so good. You’re so scary!” she yelped. She laughed so hard, she drummed her feet on the floor. “Oh, you’re—you’re such a ghoul!” She floated out of Oliver’s room into the hallway, giggling the whole time.

  “Shut up! Just shut up!” Robbie charged up the hall, so mad, he forgot his stomachache.

  He ran right through Dora! Which he immediately regretted. Their ghost energies got all stirred and snarled up.

  Dora lay on the floor and moaned.

  Oh, well.

  At least she wasn’t laughing anymore.

  * * *

  “Here’s what I’m going to do,” Robbie announced. They were back up in the attic and feeling better. “I’ll groan and howl after he’s asleep. He’ll wake up with nightmares!”

  “You groan like a sick cow,” Dora commented.

  Robbie bristled. Of all ghost tricks, he was best at sound effects. “Oh, yeah? You sound like a dying cat.”

  “Oh, yeah? We’ll just see who’s the best groaner.” Dora stood up straighter, took a huge breath, and let out a series of truly awful groans.

  It sounded to Robbie as if she were lying deep inside a dark, dank cave. She even got her groans to echo.

  Robbie had to admit, she was good.

  But he couldn’t let her know she had impressed him. She was bossy enough already!

  “That’s nothing,” he said. He was determined to do a better groan. Then she would have to say something nice. “Listen to this!”

  He started with the low, terrified moan of a person who’s going home after dark and sees a big shadow coming after him. Then he raised it to the shivery mid-moan of someone who can’t run any faster. Finally, he lifted it into the shriek of horror as the shadow catches up to the person.

  For a second Dora looked like she might say something nice. Then she said, “Not even a sick cow. Sick calf!”

  “Oh, come on!” Robbie flopped to the floor in frustration.

  Dora took another turn moaning. It sounded to Robbie like the moan of someone whose body was covered with giant squirming, slimy slugs.

  She cut off the moan with a slippery gurgle. As though one of the slugs had crawled into her mouth!

  “Pathetic,” Robbie sneered. He groaned and moaned the way he imagined someone would whose toes and fingers were being nibbled off by rats.

  Then he groaned louder, as if the rats were eating their way up his legs and arms.

  He ended with one of his trademark hair-raising shrieks.

  Dora started moaning again before Robbie even finished.

  Pretty soon they were both howling so loudly, they couldn’t even hear each other.

  Robbie didn’t care. It felt good to moan and groan and howl, even if no one was listening. It was fun. Sometimes it got very boring being a ghost.

  He and Dora stopped groaning. They grinned at each other.

  “I don’t know about you,” Robbie declared, “but I’m ready for tonight!”

  * * *

  Robbie wished bedtime would hurry up. He couldn’t wait to put his plan into action. But the evening seemed to drag on forever. After dinner Oliver and Shawn watched horror movie
s on TV. So Robbie and Dora watched them too—invisibly.

  On the TV set Frankenstein’s monster lurched toward terrified villagers in Transylvania.

  “How come you like horror movies so much, when you don’t even believe in ghosts?” Shawn asked Oliver.

  Oliver shrugged. “They’re cool.”

  “I like pretending I’m the monster,” Shawn said. He hunched his shoulders, lifted his arms, let his hands flop down at the ends. Then he moaned.

  Robbie stared at the back of Shawn’s head. What an eerie sound the kid made! It was the sound of someone alone, scared, and in pain. The kid could go pro!

  Robbie sneaked around and peered at Shawn’s face.

  Shawn’s eyes glowed behind his red-framed glasses, and his jaw had dropped. He looked brainless and scary. And somehow bigger.

  Weird.

  Oliver studied his friend. “Awesome,” he murmured. Shawn looked pleased.

  The next movie, about a giant crawling eye, scared Robbie. He hid in the wall so Dora couldn’t see his knees knocking.

  “Buck-buck-buck-buck-buck,” Dora squawked.

  What is she doing? Robbie wondered. He peeked out from his hiding place.

  “Buck-buck!” Dora flapped her elbows like chicken wings. “You are such a chicken, Robbie! Look at these guys. They’re not scared at all!”

  Robbie glanced over at Oliver and Shawn. Oliver wolfed down microwave popcorn. Shawn snuck pieces of popcorn to Spooky, who was pretty sneaky about eating it.

  They all stared at the screen. Even Spooky.

  Occasionally Oliver or Shawn said, “That’s so dumb.” “That’s so stupid!” “No one would do that!” “This is the lamest movie on the planet!”

  But they didn’t turn off the TV until the very end of the movie.

  Shawn left after the eyeball movie. Then Oliver went upstairs, brushed his teeth, and climbed into bed.

  Robbie waited until Oliver’s breathing slowed into sleep.

  It was time to put his plan into action. He would use all his classics!

  First he tuned his voice so lifers could hear him.

  He coughed a couple of times to clear his throat. Then he launched into the groan of a man seeing a dead, rotting body for the first time. Kind of a this-is-so-horrible-I’m-going-to-barf groan.

  He thought about Spooky jumping right through him and groaned some more, remembering how much his stomach hurt.

  Oliver didn’t stir. His breathing stayed steady.

  Robbie moved closer to the bed.

  He moaned the moan of somebody in a haunted house, faced with dozens of ghostly skeletons and rotting corpses, waving loose arms and legs and bones. Wooooaaaagggghhhhh!

  No reaction from Oliver.

  Robbie shook his head. This kid could sleep through a train wreck!

  Robbie imagined something huge and scary appearing in front of him out of the darkness. When he had cranked his fear up to maximum, he shrieked.

  A beautiful, high-pitched shriek. Sharp as a knife.

  Oliver never even twitched!

  Robbie took a huge breath, then let out his best wall-shaking, floor-rumbling, black-cat-screeching groan, driving it up and up into a howl that ended in a shuddering scream of terror.

  Oliver sat up straight in bed.

  Robbie smiled.

  Finally! It was working! Nobody could ignore Robbie’s best groan!

  Wait a second.

  Oliver was just sitting there. His eyes were still closed.

  Was he sleepwalking? Robbie wondered. Or sleep-sitting? Was he even scared at all?

  Better make sure. Robbie started another groan.

  Oliver’s eyes opened. Wide.

  Yes!

  “I did it!” Robbie yelled. “I scared him. I win!”

  6

  Yes! Robbie cheered silently. Dora couldn’t scare Oliver. But I sure did!

  He watched gleefully as Oliver jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway.

  Robbie followed, grinning. For years and years Dora had been dancing around in her bones, taunting him with all the scares she could do that he couldn’t.

  This was so sweet!

  Robbie scampered down the hall after Oliver, posing like a muscle man, flexing first his right bicep, then his left.

  Oliver dashed to the master bedroom. He threw open the door.

  “Mom? Dad?” Oliver called from the doorway. “Dad?”

  No doubt about it. Robbie had won the contest!

  “What is it, son?” a grumpy voice mumbled from the bed.

  “Dad, Nell’s having one of her nightmares again,” Oliver explained. “She’s moaning and groaning.”

  “What?” Robbie cried.

  Nell? Nightmares?

  What was Oliver talking about?

  “Poor kid,” Mrs. Bowen murmured.

  “Guess we’d better check on her,” Mr. Bowen said.

  With yawns and groans, Oliver’s parents got out of bed. They followed Oliver back down the hall to Nell’s room. Robbie drifted along behind them, all his triumph washing out of him.

  Mr. Bowen listened at the door. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Maybe she woke up,” Oliver suggested. “The moaning was real loud just a couple of minutes ago.”

  Mrs. Bowen turned the door handle, and they all crept into Nell’s room.

  Robbie hung his head in despair. He felt terrible!

  Robbie’s classic moans, his awful groans, his piercing shrieks—Oliver thought they came from a little whimpering kid with nightmares?

  What a big fat failure!

  “I thought she grew out of those nightmares,” Mrs. Bowen said, sitting on the bed next to Nell. She touched Nell’s cheek. “Honey? You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Nell murmured in a sleepy voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “Were you having a nightmare?” Mrs. Bowen brushed Nell’s hair out of her face.

  “Kind of. There were weird noises in my dream.”

  “Are you okay now?” Mr. Bowen asked.

  “Sure.” Nell yawned behind her hand.

  “You sure showed me.” Dora’s voice behind him made Robbie jump.

  He wished she would stop doing that!

  Dora hovered right behind him and giggled. “That was so scary, Oliver thought he was hearing his ittybitty little sister!” she gloated. Then she burst out laughing.

  “Oh shut up,” Robbie muttered.

  He dragged himself back up to the attic, feeling miserable.

  “You are such a loser,” Dora teased. She danced across the floor, up the wall, and all over the ceiling. “Loser!”

  She wore a totally smug grin. She hung upside down, which made her smile even worse. “The tiniest of the whiny! The whimpiest of the impy!”

  Holding her skirts, she skipped back and forth on the attic ceiling. “You’ll feel even stupider when my plan works!” she announced.

  Oh, no! What if Dora came up with something really cool?

  “What are you going to do?” Robbie asked.

  If her scare worked, she would be impossible to live with! She would gloat. And call him names. And laugh at him.

  And there was no way he could get away from her. They were stuck here in this house with each other. Forever!

  Her next plan better not work.

  What could it be?

  Maybe he could sabotage it.

  No! He wasn’t supposed to think like that.

  They haunted the house together.

  They might insult each other for decades, but they weren’t supposed to get in each other’s way. Not when the goal was to scare a lifer! Ghosts were supposed to work together on hauntings.

  “What’s your plan?” Robbie asked again.

  Dora smiled her killer grin.

  “You’ll see,” she promised. “And watch out. It will scare the afterlife out of you!”

  7

  Oliver and Mike Conway strolled down the school steps together after their last class. Mike’s all right, Oliv
er thought. But he sure talks nonstop.

  “I’m not kidding, Oliver,” Mike was saying. He shoved a clump of red hair out of his eyes. “I’ve definitely met one ghost, and I’ve heard about some others.”

  Oliver shook his head. All the kids in this town were like Shawn, he thought. Obsessed with ghosts!

  “I’ve lived in a lot of different towns,” Oliver remarked. “But I’ve never met so many kids who believe in ghosts.”

  “You’ll believe too,” Mike warned. His face grew pale under his freckles. He glanced around and lowered his voice. “Sooner or later, you’ll believe too.”

  “Well, uh, thanks for the warning,” Oliver mumbled at last. He wasn’t sure what to say. Ghost stories didn’t scare him. But he was the new kid. He didn’t want to get off to a bad start.

  “No problem.” Mike nodded. “Just thought you should know.”

  Oliver and Mike turned onto Fear Street and headed in opposite directions. Mike’s family lived in a house that was also the Shadyside Museum of History’s Mysteries. Mike said it was full of stuff like mummies and suits of armor. Oliver thought it sounded cool.

  Oliver glanced down the block to his new house. It looked pretty good, considering how broken-down some of the others were.

  The big old house was gray with white window frames. A wide porch wrapped around two sides. Lots of lacy pieces of wood edged the roof, and there was a balcony on the top of the house. You reached it through a set of glass doors.

  Oliver squinted. If he did it just right, the house looked a little like the one in The Munsters. Just the kind of house a kid could explore for hours. Dig up good secrets.

  Oliver caught a glimpse of Shawn’s pale hair shining on the porch. Shawn was waiting for him again. Good!

  The kids Oliver had met in school were friendly enough, Oliver supposed. But he and Shawn had already discovered they liked the same comics and movies and games. And Shawn was funny.

  So what if he had ghosts on the brain. All the kids at school did too!

  Oliver shrugged off his backpack and pulled out his Frisbee. He always carried it with him. It was pretty chewed up from all the times Spooky had fetched it. But it still flew okay.

  “Hey, Shawn!” Oliver yelled, darting toward the house. “Think fast!” He tossed the Frisbee.