A Gust of Ghosts (6 page)

It was a relief to wake up and see sunlight streaming through her curtains. Then she realized that she had been awakened by the sound of loud voices in the hall, interrupted occasionally by thumps and squeals.

“Grab him around the middle. Around the
middle
, I said!” came Mr. Malone's voice.

“Watch out!” Franny cried. “You almost knocked me over.”

“You need to move faster,” Will said breathlessly. “Get out of the
way
, Franny!”

There was a thump, a small shriek from Franny, and the sound of Will snarling, “Now you've done it! We'll never catch him!”

Poppy heard the front door open, then slam shut. Driven by curiosity, she went to the window and saw Rolly, still dressed in his black pajamas, racing across the lawn. As she watched, he squeezed under the fence and disappeared.

She squinted at the house that Rolly had headed for. She had noticed it on the day they moved in, the one with the tree house and the colored lanterns hanging from the porch roof and the chickens in the yard. Even from a distance, she could hear hens squawking. They sounded hysterical. It was the sound of hens who had been awakened by a small boy running through their midst.

“All right, quiet down everyone,” Mrs. Malone said, sounding harassed. “Let's all stay calm—”

“Calm!” Mr. Malone said. “I live for the day when this house is calm. I haven't even had my coffee yet, and already a crisis looms!”

“It's hardly a crisis, Emerson,” Mrs. Malone said. “Although I do hope we can catch him before he runs through too many flowerbeds. We haven't even met most of our neighbors yet....”

Poppy pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and went into the hall, where her family was gathered, still wearing their pajamas. Her mother's glasses sat askew on her nose, her father's hair was standing on end, and Franny was scowling, her face covered with a green-gray clay mask. Will stood with his feet apart, his hands on his hips, looking exasperated.

“Why did you try to give Rolly a bath on your own?” he asked his mother. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking he'd be too sleepy to fight back,” she said, flustered. “I planned to take him unawares.”

“That boy is abnormally cunning,” said Mr. Malone. “We really should call someone at the university to see if we can have him studied. I assume that the abnormal psychology department would be the most interested, but the criminal justice division might put in a bid as well—”

“I just turned away for an instant,” Mrs. Malone said. “I reached over to get another towel and the next thing I knew, he was gone!”

“Don't worry, Mom,” Poppy said. “I'll bring him back.”

Poppy ran outside, then stood still in the middle of the neighbor's yard, listening as hard as she could.

Nothing. No suppressed giggle, no flicker of movement, nothing. Except … Except that her neck was prickling in the way that it does when someone is staring at you. Poppy suddenly felt a strong urge to whirl around and see who—or what—was behind her, but she resisted. Instead, she closed her eyes and tried to sense where the person was and whether they were friendly or not.

A voice from several feet above her head said, “That's your brother, right?”

Poppy tilted her head back and saw a boy's face framed by dark green leaves. He had shaggy dark hair, dark eyes, and a pointed chin that made him look like a fox.

The boy added, “His name is Rolly, right?”

“Right. How did you know that?” Poppy asked.

He grinned. “Yesterday I heard your mother yelling, ‘Rolly, stop trying to lasso the ceiling fan!'” He raised one questioning eyebrow.

“He thought he could hold the rope and fly like Superman,” Poppy said. “It makes sense if you're five.”

“Then the other night,” the boy continued, “I heard your father yelling, ‘Rolly, take those army men out of the microwave!'”

Poppy winced at the memory. Her father had had plenty more to say, especially since Rolly had already pressed the power button by the time Mr. Malone realized what he was doing.

“He was trying to conduct an experiment,” Poppy said. “It didn't go exactly the way he planned.”

“There was a lot of smoke,” the boy agreed. “And then the other day, I heard you yelling, ‘Rolly, you've got to quit stealing Dad's money—'”

“Old Roman coins, actually,” Poppy said, feeling that her family was not making a good first impression on the neighbors. “And he wasn't really stealing. It was more like borrowing.”

“So, based on the available evidence,” the boy finished, “I deduced that his name was Rolly.” He swung himself over the edge of the platform and dropped neatly to the ground. “I'm Henry Rivera.”

“Hi. I'm Poppy—”

“Malone. I know.” Henry looked pleased with himself. “You just moved here from Kansas, you have a twin brother named Will, he likes to play guitar, you're both going to be in the fifth grade, and you have an older sister named Franny. Right?”

Poppy stared at him, wondering with a slight chill what else Henry might have discovered about her family. “How do you know all that?”

“I'm training to be a spy,” he said. “I've been practicing my observation skills since school let out, just in case something nefarious happens. So far nothing has, except Mr. Zarafinitas stealing Mrs. Garrison's newspaper off her lawn every morning, but that doesn't count because everyone already knew he did that. Actually, my surveillance was pretty uninteresting until your family moved in.”

“Huh.” Poppy didn't like the sound of that. “That's weird, because really we're an extremely average family. Totally boring. Completely dull in every way.”

Henry gave her a sideways grin. “I'll bet. Your brother's hiding under my house, by the way.”

Poppy looked. Sure enough, she could see Rolly's bare feet in the dark shadow under the porch. “Rolly, come out of there. Right now.”

The feet were pulled back quickly.

“I'm not going to take a bath.” Rolly's voice floated out from under the porch, a little muffled but still defiant. “You can't make me!”

Sighing, Poppy knelt down and peered into the darkness under the porch. She could just make out Rolly, sitting with his knees drawn up under his chin. His black eyes glittered.

“Look,” she said. “Be reasonable. A bath is not going to kill you—”

There was a sudden scurrying movement as Rolly crab-walked his way farther under the house.

“Rolly, there might be snakes under there,” she called out.

Henry joined her. “He's pretty far back,” he said. “In fact, he's just a couple of feet from the other side of the house.”

Poppy sat back on her heels. “Can he get out over there? If he does, he'll run, and we'll end up chasing him all over the neighborhood.”

“Maybe I should stand guard to keep him from escaping,” Henry offered. “I could hold up a bar of soap to scare him back under the house.”

She grinned at the image of Henry holding up a bar of soap to drive Rolly back, like someone warding off a vampire by holding up a Bible.

“Thanks,” she said, “but I think we might need even stronger measures—” She leaned down and said loudly, “Rolly, if you don't come out right now, I'm going to use Franny's foaming gel in your next bath. The one that smells like
vanilla
.”

There was a long, tense pause. Then, reluctantly, Rolly crawled out from under the porch just as the back door opened. A woman stepped onto the porch carrying a plastic bucket. She was quite tall and had snapping black eyes and glossy black hair piled on top of her head, which made her seem even taller.

“What in the world is going on out here?” she asked. “When I heard all that noise, I thought the Hendersons' dog was getting after my chickens again.”

She glanced down at the bucket. “I was looking forward to dousing that rascal with water,” she said. Her gaze shifted to Rolly. “But perhaps there are others who need to be settled down instead? You, I think, are the one who disturbed my poor chickens.”

Rolly eyed her warily. “I don't like baths,” he informed her.

“I gathered as much,” she answered.

“Aunt Mirabella, this is Poppy, and that's her little brother Rolly,” Henry said. “You know …” He jerked his head toward the Malones' house.

“Ah, our new neighbors!” Her dark eyes, as bright and curious as a sparrow's, glanced swiftly from Poppy to Rolly. “Well, I don't suppose throwing water on you would be very neighborly, so I'll just water my flowers instead.” She gave Rolly a meaningful look. “
This
time.”

Henry's aunt descended the porch steps in a regal manner and began watering a flowerbed filled with red geraniums. “There you are, my lovelies,” she crooned. “Drink in all this lovely water so that you can grow. I talk to my flowers to encourage them, you see,” she explained to Poppy. “People have done studies showing that plants respond to the human voice. They can tell what you're saying, too. If you speak nicely and with lots of love, they grow strong. If you scold them and say hateful things, they wilt and die.”

“I think I've read about that theory,” said Poppy. She politely refrained from saying what she thought about it. “But who would say mean things to a geranium?”

Mrs. Rivera straightened up. “You would be surprised,” she said darkly. “There are people on this street who will stoop very low when it comes to the garden show. They'll even insult
petunias
. It's shocking, really, the depths to which some people will sink just to win a blue ribbon....”

Poppy snuck a glance at Henry. He was staring into the distance with the preoccupied air of someone who was doing his best to pretend that he was somewhere else. The tips of his ears had turned red.

“Oh dear, I am so sorry!” Mrs. Malone trotted across the lawn toward the Riveras' house. She was still wearing her nightgown but had put on a robe and slippers. It was unfortunate that she had lost one of the slippers in her hurry and that the robe (an old one of Franny's) was purple with pink polka dots and had a feather boa attached to the collar.

As Mrs. Malone came panting to a stop, she ran her hands through her hair (making it stick out at odd angles) and straightened her glasses. Then she smiled warmly at Henry and his aunt. “Hello. I must apologize if Rolly disturbed you. He's a bit liverish this morning, you see. We were up until all hours—”

Poppy squeezed her eyes shut.
No!
She wanted to scream,
Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it
—

“Hunting for ghosts,” Mrs. Malone finished.

There was a small, charged silence.

Maybe they didn't hear her, Poppy thought hopefully. Maybe they thought she was making a joke.

And then Mrs. Rivera said, “But there's no need to hunt! They are all around us. In fact, I know several personally that I could introduce you to. They are dear, dear friends of mine.”

Poppy opened her eyes to find that Henry was looking right at her. He raised one eyebrow and gave a rueful shrug.

“Really.” Mrs. Malone seemed a little taken aback by this. “And how, may I ask, did you meet these ghosts?”

Mrs. Rivera shrugged. “It was the easiest thing in the world. You see, I was born with the ability to connect to the Other World. Naturally, spirits of all types flock to me, since there are so few mortals who are sensitive enough to tune in to their vibrations.” She smiled kindly at Mrs. Malone. “Do not worry that you had a hard time making contact. Talent like mine is quite rare.”

“I can imagine,” said Mrs. Malone somewhat distantly. “Well, I must get Rolly home and into the bath. It was so nice meeting you.”

She took Rolly firmly by the hand and led him back to the house. Mrs. Rivera poured the last drops of water on her flowers and disappeared into her kitchen. Poppy and Henry were left alone.

Henry stared at the ground, his hands thrust into the pockets of his shorts. Poppy bit her lip and looked at the sky.

Finally Henry said, “Some people say my aunt is weird, but she's not. She's just … eccentric.” He hesitated a second before saying “eccentric,” as if he'd just learned it. He glanced at Poppy from the corner of his eye. “Do you know what that means?”

“Of course,” she said. “
Eccentric
, meaning unconventional or slightly strange—”

“There's nothing
wrong
with being eccentric,” Henry interrupted her, as if she had been arguing that there was. Before she could say that she agreed with him, he added, “
I
think it's interesting. Normal is boring.”

He gave Poppy a challenging stare, as if daring her to disagree.

Poppy felt a wave of relief wash over her. “Sometimes people have said that my parents are a little, er … offbeat, too,” she offered.

“Why?” Henry asked warily. “Just because they go ghost hunting?”