A Gust of Ghosts (5 page)

“Hey. Did you feel that?” Will grinned at her. “Maybe you called up his ghost!”

“It was just the wind, Will,” Poppy said. “A common meteorological phenomenon.” She went back to studying the side of the gravestone, chewing her lip as she thought about the best piece of moss to scrape off for later analysis.

“What are you doing?” asked Will, who had leaned against a nearby headstone to watch her.

“I told you, taking a sample of this moss,” Poppy said. “Or maybe it's lichen. I'll have to check in one of my books.”

“Careful,” Will said. “You know what people say about touching a gravestone—the ghost of Travis Clay Smith might come after you!”

“You just made that up,” said Poppy. “Now quit trying to scare me. It won't work.”

“I'm serious,” he said. “I read about it in one of the books Mom brought home. If you accidentally create a bond with a spirit, it attaches itself to you and follows you wherever you go. Some people even move thousands of miles away, trying to shake the ghost off, but it doesn't work.” He lowered his voice. “They're haunted forever!”

Poppy turned to give him a knowing look. “Uh-huh. So what you're saying is, you're scared to touch the gravestone.”

The hint of mischief in Will's face vanished. “I'm not scared of anything!”

“Really.” Poppy grinned at him, enjoying the chance to tease Will for a change. She gestured toward the glowing angel. “So go ahead. Put your hand on it.”

“Okay,” he said, without moving. “Okay.”

Her grin widened. “Come on, Will. You don't even need to use your whole hand. Just put one finger on it—”

“All right, all right!” He glared at her. “Stop rushing me.”

Poppy shrugged. “Hey, take your time. The statue's not going anywhere.”

Will reached out cautiously. His fingers had almost touched the words carved on the stone when the breeze came back, rustling the leaves on the trees and making the branches sway in the moonlight.

He jerked his hand back.

Poppy's grin widened. “What was that you were saying? About not being scared?”

Will scowled at her. “I'm not! I was just startled, that's all—”

“Then do it,” she said.
“I dare you.”

Will's eyes narrowed. “You're on,” he said.

He reached out and put his hand flat on the stone. “Travis Clay Smith, if you're here, let us know,” he said. “Come forth and let us see you.”

Poppy realized she was holding her breath.

Then Will gave her a cocky grin. “See?” he said. “Nothing to it.”

She let her breath out. Silly, she thought. What did you think was going to happen—

That's when she saw Will jump, as if he'd been shocked by a small jolt of electricity. His eyes widened; his face went pale.

“Will?” Poppy took a step toward him, even though, in the back of her mind, she suspected that he was playing a joke on her and would burst out laughing at any moment. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?” His expression was blank, as if he had just awakened from a dream. “What?”

“I said, are you okay?” Poppy gave him a look that was half worried, half suspicious. She wouldn't put it past Will to be playing a joke on her, pretending to have been possessed by a ghost or to have had a whispered communication from the World Beyond.

But even though his eyes gradually focused and some of the color came back into his face, he didn't grin at her or start laughing. He just shook his head slowly, as if trying to clear his head. “Of course,” he said. “I'm fine.”

“Okay.” Poppy kept her eyes on him. “Only you look like you're going to be sick.”

“I'm not going to be sick,” said Will. He started toward the car, but he kept his head turned so that he could keep his eyes on the statue. “I'm fine! Perfectly fine!”

Poppy gazed after him thoughtfully, then looked back at the angel statue.

The glow had vanished. The stone looked dull gray in the moonlight. There was nothing spooky about it at all.

Still, she could have sworn the angel was looking down at her and smirking.

I
t was almost three in the morning by the time they got home, brushed their teeth, and got into bed. Even though Poppy was tired, she still grabbed a book from the stack by her bed. No matter how late she went to bed, she found it hard to go to sleep without reading a few pages.

But before she picked up reading where she had left off the night before, she leaned back against her pillows and looked around her room, hugging the book to her chest with delight. Poppy had lived in all kinds of places, from apartments in bustling big cities to quiet farmhouses in the countryside. She had gone to sleep in yurts, houseboats, tepees, tents, abandoned railway cars, and even (during her parents' pursuit of giant prehistoric birds in Pennsylvania) a tree house that perched more than a hundred feet above the ground. But she had never had a bedroom of her very own. Even after a month, she still felt a thrill of delight each night when she snuggled down under her quilt to read in the cozy glow of her bedside lamp. So she looked around at the walls of her bedroom, covered with a faded pattern of buttercups, and curled her toes with happiness.

Then she opened
The Skeptic's Guide to Debating the Supernatural: Surefire Ways to Win Every Argument, Every Time
and started chapter three.

Soon she was absorbed in learning about Saint Elmo's fire, a mysterious glowing light often seen on ships' masts. In the past, she read, many people believed that it was a sign that the Chinese sea goddess Mazu was offering her blessing to sailors. Modern scientific theory, however, held that it was actually luminous plasma caused by an atmospheric electrical field....

There was a knock on her door.

“Go away,” she called out, not taking her eyes from the page. “I'm asleep.”

The door opened and Will poked his head in.

“I
said
, I'm asleep.” Poppy turned a page to find a vivid illustration of a sailor staring openmouthed at a ship's rigging surrounded by flames.

“Your light's still on,” he said. “You're sitting up in bed. And you're reading.”

“I'm
about
to go to sleep. Any minute now,” Poppy said, still absorbed in her book. It seemed that Saint Elmo's fire didn't just affect ships' masts. There was a fascinating story about a man in nineteenth-century England whose horse had started to glow during a thunderstorm—

“I can't. Go to sleep, I mean.” Will sat down cross-legged on the end of her bed and poked her leg. “Stop reading for a minute, Poppy! I'm trying to tell you something.”

Sighing, she closed the book, folded her arms, and leaned back against her pillows. “Fine. What's so important?”

He bit his lip. “Look, I know this is going to sound weird, but … well, you're the only one I would tell this to—” He stopped, took a deep breath. “Okay, see, here's the thing....”

He hesitated.

“What?” Poppy sat up a little straighter and gave him a worried look. It was very unlike Will to beat around the bush. “Just
say
it, Will.”

He took a deep breath and said in a rush, “I can't get to sleep.”

Exasperated, she collapsed back on her pillows. “Oh, well. That
is
a crisis. I mean, if Will Malone can't sleep, obviously the world has stopped turning on its axis.”

“Ha-ha, all right, very funny,” Will said. He sounded both irritated and worried. “But this is serious. I can't sleep because … well, I have this … creepy feeling. Like … like someone's watching me.”

Something about the way he said that made Poppy shiver.

Poppy's eyes darted to the shadowy corner of her room, then back to Will. She tried to sound matter-of-fact as she repeated, “Someone?”

He gave a quick nod, then almost whispered, “Or some
thing
.”

For a moment, they stared at each other.

Then Poppy kicked at Will under the covers. “Stop it,” she snapped. “If this is your idea of a joke—”

He shook his head. “I'm not joking, Poppy. Honest. I got into bed, but every time I closed my eyes, I had this feeling like … well, you know how when someone's staring at your back, you can feel it?”

Poppy nodded. Three schools ago, there was a kid in her class—Jason Long—who claimed to have laser vision. He'd always sit in the last row and aim his laser eyes at the back of people's heads, staring until they turned around. He'd done it to her once or twice. It was a weird feeling. Still …

“That doesn't mean there's a ghost,” she said.

“I feel like someone's staring at me or someone's standing right behind me. Then I turn around and no one's there,” Will said stubbornly. “Anyway, it's not just that. I keep seeing things out of the corner of my eye.”

“What things?”

“I don't know. Movements, shadows, just … something. And when I look—”

“Let me guess. Nothing's there.”

He stopped in the middle of a yawn and turned to face her, scowling. “Listen, Poppy,” he said. “When you told me about the goblins, I believed you, didn't I?”

“No.”

“Okay, maybe not at first, but—”

“I practically had to tie you and Franny to chairs to get you to listen to me.”

“Okay, you're right, but—”

“And even then, you kept complaining and arguing with me every step of the way,” she said, remembering. “It wasn't until we were in the cave and saw the goblin that you finally admitted that I was right.”

“Okay, fine, whatever.” Will threw his hands up in the air. “The point is, the goblins were real. And so are these ghosts. I can feel them.”

“It's probably just the power of suggestion,” Poppy said. “We just spent hours in a graveyard talking about ghosts, looking for ghosts, setting up cameras and tape recorders and motion detectors so that we could find ghosts....”

“We've done that before,” he pointed out. “I never felt like I was being spied on.”

When she didn't say anything, he added, “Poppy. The goblins were real.”

Poppy glanced down at her book. People used to think Saint Elmo's fire was supernatural, she thought, until a scientist investigated and found out that it was caused by the ionization of air molecules. Some people—including, it seemed, Will Malone—thought that a creepy feeling in the middle of the night was a sign that they were being haunted. As a scientist, she had a duty to at least look into it. It was probably nothing. But then, that was what she used to say about goblins....

“Okay,” she said. “You're right. I still think that there's probably a normal explanation for what you're feeling, but I'm willing to conduct an investigation tomorrow if you want.”

“Great,” Will said, relieved.

“But don't tell Mom and Dad!” she said quickly. “You know how they are.”

“Do I look like a complete idiot?” he asked, finally sounding like his regular self.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You're not scared anymore? You can go to sleep now?”

“Of course!” he said, sounding even more like Will. “And I wasn't scared. I was just …
unnerved
. It could happen to anybody.”

“I know,” said Poppy, smiling. “Just checking.”

As soon as Will left, she settled down once more with her book.

But she had only read a few sentences when she saw a movement out of the corner of her eye.

Poppy drew her feet up under the quilt and glanced over at the corner of her room, hoping that a mouse had not decided to take shelter under her dresser. She wasn't afraid of mice, of course—their behaviors were actually quite interesting, especially their ability to learn to run through mazes—but she still didn't like the idea of one scampering across her toes.

She stared hard at the floor but saw only the shadow cast by the dresser (and a dust bunny, which reminded her that she had promised to clean her room last week). After a few moments, she turned back to her book. This time she read a whole paragraph before there was another flicker, just at the edge of her vision.

She turned her head again. Nothing.

She went back to chapter three—and there it was again! This time she simply glanced to one side, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever was in her room.

She drew in her breath sharply. It was impossible … but it looked as if the shadow was
moving
.

P
oppy did not sleep well that night. Her dreams were all about shadows creeping from under her bed and out of the closet, flowing over the windowsill, and coming closer and closer to where she was lying in bed....