The Howler

  “Not too much milk!” Nick shouted. “I like it dry. With lots of sugar.”

  “Why can’t he get his own cereal?” Vanessa whispered, making a disgusted face.

  “Because he doesn’t have to. He has me,” I whispered back.

  “Hurry, punk!” Nick shouted.

  I watched the shadows shifting on the glowing monitor. “Give me a few minutes!” I yelled.

  “Hey—” Nick called. “Which way do you like your nose to point—down or up? Because I’m going to fix it for you right now!”

  “Okay, okay!” I jumped to my feet. I knew Nick wasn’t kidding. He would love to move my face around and leave an ear where my nose should be.

  “Watch the screen,” I told Vanessa. I ran downstairs to the kitchen and made my brother a bowl of corn flakes. I heaped three teaspoons of sugar on it. And poured in just a splash of milk.

  Then I ran breathlessly back upstairs and into his room. Nick was sprawled on his bed, reading a sports magazine. He took the bowl from me with a grunt. No word of thank you. He never says thank you.

  “Get out of my room,” he muttered. “How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of my room?”

  “You’re welcome,” I said sarcastically.

  I hurried back to my room and slammed the door. “Anything happening?” I asked Vanessa. I brushed her out of my desk chair.

  “It’s all a fake, Spencer,” she said. “It just makes eerie colors on the screen, and the lights blink. It doesn’t do anything else. It doesn’t detect ghosts.”

  “Well…let me try something else,” I said. I opened the instruction book and found another set of codes. As I typed them in, the little gray box started to hum. The lights began to blink furiously.

  “Give it up,” Vanessa groaned. “It’s another fake. Just another fake.”

  “No. Wait,” I insisted. “It says on the box it’s guaranteed. Just wait. Give it a chance. Something is happening.”

  The box hummed louder.

  A yellow light began to blink.

  The monitor screen began to blink too.

  Behind me, I heard a click.

  A creak.

  I turned to Vanessa—and something behind her caught my eye. “Look—” I whispered.

  She turned and we both stared at my bedroom door.

  Slowly, slowly, the door was sliding open.

  “I knew it would work,” I whispered. “I knew it.”

  I held my breath and watched as the door slowly, silently, swung open.

  5

  “Wh-who’s there?” I choked out.

  “It’s me,” a voice said.

  And Scott stepped into the room. He stopped when he saw our shocked faces. “Hey—what’s your problem?” he asked.

  Vanessa burst out laughing. “Spencer thought you were a ghost,” she said.

  Scott rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Sure.” He stepped up to the computer and picked up the specter detector. “What’s this? A new game player? What kind of games do you have for it?”

  “It’s not a game,” I snapped, grabbing it away from him.

  “It’s another ghost detector,” Vanessa said. “But it doesn’t work.”

  Scott dropped onto my bed. He picked up my pillow and squeezed it between his hands. Then he bounced up and down as he stared at the monitor.

  “Why do you keep wasting your time, Spencer? I keep telling you, my house is haunted. There are ghosts all over the place.”

  “Scott—please don’t start that again,” I begged.

  “Yeah, Scott,” Vanessa agreed. “Please don’t start that.”

  “But it’s true! he protested.

  After I became interested in ghosts, Scott started bragging that his house was haunted. He was always coming into school and telling everyone how a ghost kept him up all night. Or how he spotted a ghost in the basement or the attic.

  A few kids believed him. But I knew he was lying.

  I knew what he was doing. He just wanted attention. He always had to be the first one to do this, and the first one to do that.

  And now he wanted to make sure he was the first one to see a ghost.

  It was kind of sad, really. Why did he have to be the center of attention? Why did he feel he had to lie and brag and make up stories so that kids would like him?

  “Come over here,” he said, jumping up from my bed. He tossed my pillow against the wall. Then he pulled me up from my chair and dragged me to my bedroom window.

  “Check out my house,” he said, grabbing the sides of my head and turning it to face his house. “Look at the broken shutters. The faded shingles. The sagging roof. The dark attic windows. It looks like a haunted house, doesn’t it?”

  “It just looks old,” I said. I jerked my head, trying to knock his hands away. “Just because it’s old and a little run-down doesn’t mean it’s a haunted house, Scott.”

  He groaned. He wouldn’t let go of my head. “Look at it,” he insisted. “No lie. I’ve seen ghosts in there. I hear them at night, clanking up and down in the attic.”

  “Give me a break,” I sighed.

  “Give us both a break,” Vanessa chimed in.

  Scott had no idea how serious this was to me. I really couldn’t stand to hear any more of his phony ghost stories. I decided to end his ghost talk forever.

  “Okay,” I said. “Show us. Show us your ghosts—right now.”

  6

  Scott’s cheeks turned pink: “Uh…I can’t right now,” he said, staring down at the floor.

  “Why not?” I demanded.

  “My mom has her book club over,” he replied. “And I’m not supposed to bother her.” He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “How about tomorrow?”

  I turned to Vanessa. “Is tomorrow okay?”

  She nodded. “I guess. But it’s a total waste of time. You know he doesn’t have any ghosts at his house. He’s making it all up.”

  “No way,” Scott insisted. “I’ll prove it to you. After school tomorrow.” He hurried away.

  The gray box buzzed. I spun away from the window and hurried back to the computer. The screen had gone black. The red and green lights had stopped blinking.

  “I can’t believe you bought this stupid thing,” Vanessa said. “It’s just a toy. That’s all.”

  I shrugged. “Whatever.”

  I thought about Scott’s ghosts all through school the next day. I knew there was no way he could show us any ghosts. I wondered what excuse he would give.

  Vanessa and I reached his house a little after three-thirty. He pushed open the back door, and we stepped into the kitchen. I inhaled deeply. “Wow, it smells good in here.”

  “My mom is roasting a chicken,” Scott said.

  “Do the ghosts like your mom’s cooking?” Vanessa asked.

  It was a joke. But Scott answered seriously, “I’ve never seen them eat. Sometimes they move the plates around, and we find them in different cabinets. But we’ve never had any food missing.”

  I squinted at Scott. Was he for real?

  No way, I decided. Scott will do anything to be the center of attention.

  And then I heard the howl. High and shrill.

  A ghostly howl. So near…So near…

  I gasped and turned to Vanessa. She’d heard it too.

  My eyes darted around the room. And I heard it again.

  A raspy howl, followed by eerie scratching sounds.

  The howl of a ghost.

  7

  Another eerie howl floated into the room. Then more scratching sounds.

  “Scott—let the cat in!” Scott’s mom called from the other room. “She’s at the back door again. Don’t you hear her?”

  “I’ll get her, Mom,” Scott called. He trotted to the door. “Dumb cat,” he muttered.

  I let out a long sigh.

  Vanessa laughed. “Did you think you heard a ghost?”

  “No. Of course not,” I lied. “I knew it was a cat.” I could feel my face growing hot. I always blush w
henever I tell a lie.

  I felt a little shaky. Why did I suddenly think Scott really had ghosts in his house?

  I guess it was because I wanted to believe so much.

  Matilda, Scott’s black cat, came running over our feet, desperate to get to her water dish. Scott appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Come on. We don’t want to keep the ghosts waiting.”

  We followed him through the front hall to the stairs. The hall was long and dark, with ghostly gray wallpaper and lights on the walls shaped like candles.

  “Scott—who is here?” his mother shouted from the living room.

  “It’s Spencer and Vanessa,” he called to her. And then he added in a deep voice that was supposed to be scary, “They’ve come to visit the Haunted Mansion.”

  “Huh?” his mother called. “Haunted what?”

  “She tries to keep the ghosts a secret,” Scott whispered to us. “She doesn’t want anyone to know about them.”

  “Yeah. Sure,” I muttered.

  The wooden stairs creaked and groaned as Vanessa and I followed him upstairs. “Sometimes I hear footsteps going up and down these stairs late at night,” Scott said. “I flash on the lights—and there’s no one here.”

  Vanessa shook her head. “He’s good,” she whispered. “He’s real good. He almost has me believing!”

  “Not me,” I whispered back.

  In the upstairs hall, we stopped under a door in the ceiling. Scott grabbed a rope that hung down from the door.

  “This leads to the attic,” he said. “I think this is where the ghosts hang out before dark.”

  He tugged the rope. The door creaked down. There were wooden stairs built on the other side of the door. “Careful. Some of these stairs are rotted,” Scott warned.

  I started up the stairs slowly, one at a time. The stairs were steep, and there was no bannister to hold on to.

  Halfway up, I turned back to Scott. “You’re telling us we’ll see ghosts here?”

  He nodded solemnly. “They’re not shy. They’re not afraid of us. They don’t care if we see them or not.”

  I climbed the rest of the way and waited for Vanessa and Scott to join me. The attic was long and low-ceilinged. It was one big L-shaped room that curved off to the right.

  There was one window, smeared with a thick layer of dust. Orange sunlight seeped through, but it lit only a small part of the room. The rest of the attic lay in shadow.

  I blinked several times, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the strange light. The attic was cluttered with cartons and stacks of magazines, books, and furniture. I saw couches and chairs covered in sheets, like Halloween ghosts.

  Cobwebs clung to an old coatrack, tilted against one wall. A stack of framed photographs leaned against the opposite wall. The photos were dark, the paper yellowed and cracked.

  In one of the photos, a strange-looking boy in a black cap appeared to stare out at us. He had dark circles around his sad eyes. His face was puckered like a prune. He looked more like a monkey than a boy.

  “Is that your baby picture?” Vanessa joked to Scott.

  He raised a finger to his lips. “Shhhh. Do you want to see a ghost or not?”

  We stepped out of the light into the shadowy area of the room. My shoes slid on the thick layer of dust over the floor. I tripped over a small table but caught it before it fell.

  We turned the corner. I squinted to see. This section of the attic was totally dark.

  Scott pulled a light cord. A tiny ceiling bulb flickered on.

  In the dim light, I saw an old rocking chair with one arm broken. A wooden clock lying on its side. A stack of dishes.

  And then…

  And then…

  Vanessa and I saw her at the same time. An old woman—so pale, her face so ghostly pale—standing against the curtained back wall. Her old-fashioned clothes were faded. No color. No color anywhere.

  My mouth dropped open. A tiny cry burst out.

  Vanessa grabbed my hand. “Scott wasn’t kidding!” she whispered.

  8

  I swallowed. Was I really seeing a ghost?

  The old woman stared out at us with glassy eyes. She seemed to stare into the distance, as if watching for someone else.

  She stood so still. Her faded blouse was tattered and stained. A faded brown hat covered her hair. Her hands were hidden in the ragged pleats of the long, old-fashioned skirt.

  “I—I don’t believe it,” I murmured. I realized I was trembling.

  Scott reached for the light switch. “Let’s leave her in peace,” he whispered.

  “No, wait,” Vanessa said. She took a few steps forward.

  “No—stop!” Scott grabbed her. “Don’t go any closer. She might be dangerous.”

  Vanessa pulled away from him. She stepped closer to the ghost.

  “Stop!” Scott cried.

  Too late. Vanessa stepped up to the ghost—and pulled off her head.

  “Huh?” I gasped. “It’s…it’s a dummy?”

  Vanessa laughed. “It took you long enough, Spencer!” she declared. “I knew it was a dummy as soon as I saw it.”

  Scott laughed. “I gotcha good, Spencer. You should have seen the look on your face!”

  He took the wooden head from Vanessa and placed it back on top of the body. “Actually, it’s an old dress dummy my parents found up here when we moved in. Women used it for sewing dresses and stuff. Dad put the head on it a couple of Halloweens ago.”

  He pointed at me and laughed loudly again. “Suck-er!”

  I let out a sigh. I felt like a total jerk. What could be worse than being fooled by that idiot Scott?

  The whole school would hear about it by tomorrow, I knew.

  I angrily kicked a carton out of my way and started toward the steps. I stormed out of his house and ran across the driveway to my yard. My hands were balled into angry fists. I wanted to go back and punch Scott’s fat face until he was a ghost.

  I hated feeling like such a jerk. But I knew it was because I needed to believe. I was so desperate to contact Ian, I’d even believe Scott!

  Vanessa came running after me. She stopped me halfway through my kitchen door. “Lighten up, Spencer,” she said. “You’ve just got to get over this ghost thing. Just forget about it.”

  When I turned to her, I suddenly felt like crying. “I…I don’t think I can,” I whispered.

  That night, I think I saw Ian’s ghost.

  9

  After dinner, I was fiddling with the specter detector, when Nick burst into my room. He shoved the end of a candy bar into his mouth and tossed the wrapper onto my floor.

  “What’s that?” he asked, chewing noisily. Chocolate ran down over his chin.

  “It’s nothing,” I muttered. I wasn’t in the mood to fight with him.

  “It’s another ghost detector—isn’t it!” Nick said. He grinned at me. He had chocolate stuck to his teeth. “You know what you are, Spencer? You are one of those loonies. You’ve become a nutcase.”

  “Takes one to know one,” I muttered.

  “You’re out there. You’re really out there,” Nick said, still grinning. “You’re out there searching for ghosts and goblins, right? With all the other nutcases. Ooh—look out, Spencer. You’d better search for UFOs too. You might find a UFO, Spencer. Wouldn’t that be a thrill?”

  “Give me a break,” I groaned. I really don’t—”

  “Look out!” he shouted. “I see something. Oh, no! Duck! Here comes a UFF!”

  And he slapped me in the back of the head—so hard, I went sailing off my chair.

  “Hey—stop it!” I shouted.

  “Didn’t you see it coming? You got hit by a UFF! Unidentified Flying Fist.” He laughed as if he’d just made the funniest joke in the world.

  I rubbed the back of my head. “You’re a total creep,” I muttered.

  “Don’t sit there. You could be in the path of another UFF,” Nick warned. “Go downstairs and make me a sandwich.”

  “Huh? A sandwich?
We just ate dinner an hour ago!” I said.

  “Yeah. A whole hour ago,” he repeated. He raised his hand. “Better hurry. Here comes another UFF.”

  I climbed unhappily to my feet. “What kind of sandwich?” I groaned.

  “Don’t ever ask me what kind,” Nick snapped. “Just make sure it’s something good.”

  He swung his hand, trying to slap me again as I passed by him. But I ducked, and the slap only brushed the top of my hair.

  Out in the hall, I turned and yelled back to him. “I could use a little support, you know!”

  He burped really loud in reply. Nice guy, huh?

  But then, at least, he took the sandwich I made to his room and didn’t pester me for the rest of the night.

  I spent another hour or so discovering what I already knew—the specter detector was a piece of junk. I unplugged it and heaved it into the trash.

  A little before eleven, I changed into pajamas. The winter wind rattled the panes in my bedroom window. I stepped over to the window and peered out.

  From my window, I could see the tops of the snow-covered evergreen trees around the shore of Wellman Lake. And I could see a wide section of the frozen lake. The ice glowed dully under the light of a bright half-moon.

  On moonless nights it was too dark to see the lake. On those nights, it looked like an enormous black pit stretching beyond the trees.

  A deep, dark pit.

  That’s what the lake was. A deep, dark pit that could hold a person forever.

  I pressed my forehead against the cold glass and gazed out. My eyes swept over the snow-covered yards. The streets had been plowed earlier that afternoon. High banks of snow lined the curbs.

  The wind shook the panes again. The dark trees outside seemed to shiver.

  And then just beyond the trees, on the shimmering gray surface of the icy lake, something caught my eye. Something moving across the lake.

  Something glowing, moving rapidly, steadily. The glow slid between the trees.

  I raised my hands to the sides of my face and gazed harder.

  And saw a boy gliding across the ice. Glistening, a soft blue light surrounding him. Such a cold light sweeping around him as he glided so smoothly over the frozen lake.