Home, Sweet Haunt (11 page)

This was an odd conversation in a bizarre dream. Nora pinched herself again, thinking it would be best to wake up and get this guy out of her head. No matter how hard she pinched her leg, he wouldn't disappear.

As long as he stayed, she had a question for him. She didn't know why she wanted to know, but she did. “When will it be my time?” Nora let the question hang in the air.

“It already passed,” he said before fading into the darkness.

Nora stared at the empty spot where he'd been sitting and shook her head. What did that mean:
It already passed
? It made no sense at all.

He'd never actually mentioned death. Could it be that there was something else he was talking about? Nora was so confused. And the more she thought about his words, the more her confusion grew.

It wasn't possible. It couldn't be . . .

“No! No! No! I don't want to die!”

Nora woke up screaming.

She was awake. That was for certain.

She'd been screaming. That was for certain too.

So why were her friends all still asleep?

“Caitlin?” Nora got out of her sleeping bag and went over to Caitlin. She was the closest.

“Caity?” Nora poked Caitlin on the arm.

“Ugrla,” Caitlin mumbled, swatting at Nora as if she was a bug and rolling over before letting out a huge snore.

“Wow. She must be exhausted,” Nora said, moving on to wake up LL. She stepped over LL's duffel bag and quietly bent down next to her pillow.

“Hey,” she whispered in LL's ear. “I can't sleep. I had a bad dream. Wake up and hang out with me.”

LL didn't move. Nora tried to get Aleah to wake up, but same thing. She was crashed out. Nora checked the time. It had only been a few hours since they'd gone to bed. No wonder no one had heard her scream or woke up now. They were all sound asleep.

The first rays of sunlight were starting to turn the sky orange and yellow. Nora sat down on the couch and wondered if the girls would wake up when the room was completely filled with light, or if they'd sleep a lot later than that. She hoped the light would get them up.

To waste time, she flipped through one of Caitlin's gymnastics magazines while she waited.

When the sun was fully round in the sky, Caitlin began to stir.

“Hi.” Nora was happy when Caitlin peeled out of her sleeping bag and stood up. She'd been lonely.

“Where's Nora?” Caitlin woke up Aleah.

Aleah yawned. “What do you mean?”

“Yeah,” Nora asked Caitlin, “what do you mean? I'm right here.”

“Did she go home?” Aleah asked Caitlin.

Caitlin shrugged, and then they both woke LL.

“Go away,” LL muttered, slinking down into her sleeping bag like a turtle into a shell. “Studies show that the average person needs six to eight hours of sleep, or else.”

“Nora's gone,” Aleah said. “Did she tell you she was leaving?”

“No.” LL looked at Nora's empty sleeping bag.

“Heeellllooo.” Getting off the couch, Nora stepped into the center of the room. She waved her arms and stomped her feet. “I'm right here.”

LL looked toward her but didn't make eye contact. Caitlin's cat, however, hissed at Nora.

Ignoring the feline's glare and knowing she was a scaredy-cat, Nora stomped louder. The cat scurried away, but no one else reacted to the noise.

Nora got right up into Caitlin's face. “Can't you see me?” she asked, beginning to wonder if maybe this was part of that odd dream she'd been having. It was possible that Nora was still asleep.

“I thought she had a good time,” Caitlin said with a frown. “I don't understand why Nora ditched out.”

“Maybe her parents discovered she was missing and came to get her?” Aleah suggested. “They are worriers.”

“And she left without saying good-bye?” Caitlin wrinkled her nose. “I don't know Nora very well, but after what she did to get here”—Caitlin pointed to the dumbwaiter panel—“it's hard to believe that she'd leave without a word.”

“Maybe she left a note,” LL suggested.

“No note,” Nora said. “Come on, guys. I didn't leave.”

She lay back down on her sleeping bag and closed her eyes. “Okay,” Nora told herself. “I know you're tired, but it's time to wake up.” She acted like she was hypnotized. “On the count of three, you are going to open your eyes and be awake.” She counted. On three, Nora snapped her fingers and opened her eyes.

“Ugh!” Nora rolled out of the bag and onto the floor as Caitlin swept up the bag and Aleah took the pillow out from under her head.

“I'll toss these in my room. Then let's get breakfast,” Caitlin told the others. It was as if they'd given up looking for Nora.

“But I'm here,” Nora said, her voice dropping as sorrow sank in. “Why can't you see me?”

Nora followed the girls down the hallway into Caitlin's messy room. Caitlin tossed the sleeping bag and pillow onto the beanbag chair and said, “Maybe this afternoon we should go up to the tenth floor and check on her. I bet Aleah's right, her parents must have found out she wasn't in her own bed and come down to get her.”

“Makes the most sense,” LL said with a nod. “Nora's so nice she probably didn't want to wake us all up.”

They all agreed that was what had happened and
that after breakfast they'd go knock on Nora's door.

“But . . .” Nora began to follow them to the kitchen. She was still confused, but now she felt another emotion: anger that they were ignoring her. “Hey!” Nora exclaimed as Caitlin shut her bedroom door. The door slammed hard in Nora's face. It should have hurt, but it didn't.

“That's weird,” Nora said with a shiver as she realized the door had passed
through
her. It hadn't actually hit her.

Maybe the girls were playing one last Halloween prank on her? Nora had to get out of there to find out.

As she reached for the knob, Nora noticed there was a mirror on the back of Caitlin's door.

She didn't see herself in the glass. “Huh?” Nora got closer. In Caitlin's messy room it was possible the glass was dirty or . . .

No. The mirror was the cleanest thing in the room.

Nora got so close to the reflective surface that she should have seen the flecks of gold in her eyes. She should have been able to count every freckle on her face. She should have seen—well, she should have seen her reflection.

But Nora didn't appear in the glass.

Nora was invisible.

“You're not invisible,” Nora's mother explained after Nora had told her what happened at Caitlin's. “You're a ghost.”

“We all are,” her father said.

Nora was back in her own apartment, sitting on the smoky, burned, and uncomfortable red velvet sofa.

After discovering she didn't need to open the door to leave Caitlin's bedroom, Nora slid through the apartment door at Caitlin's, took the elevator up, and stormed into her own apartment without turning the knob.

Her parents were upset that she'd snuck out and been gone all night.

“Go ahead and punish me!” Nora exclaimed. “What
are you going to do?
Kill me?
I'm already dead!” So it wasn't the best way to handle the situation, but Nora was furious. “You should have told me!”

“What's going on?” Lucas came in from his bedroom just then. His hair was sticking straight up. “What's with all the shouting?” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked at his sister. “Nora?”

“Ask them,” Nora growled.

That was when the Wilsons called a family meeting. The third in Nora's life. No, actually the third since Nora's death.

Lucas sat next to Nora on the couch. Their parents both stood.

“I'm a ghost?” Lucas asked. He was very excited to hear it. “That explains so many things!” He gave a sigh of relief. “I was beginning to think Mom and Dad were crazy,” he told Nora. “They aren't crazy! They're dead. We all are!” Lucas bounced on a squeaky couch spring. “This is great news.”

Nora spun to face her brother. “What is so great about it?”

“Well,” Lucas said, “think of the adventures we can have.”

Nora plugged her ears. “No adventures.” She rotated back to face her parents. “How did this happen?” Nora needed to know. “I saw the newscast. I
know
we were rescued.”

“Oh. Right.” Lucas stopped bouncing. “I remember the fireman who carried me downstairs.”

The mystery deepened.

Nora's father began the explanation. “Yes, Nora. We were all rescued. But the person who owned the building insisted the fire was our fault and claimed we should pay for the damages.”

“I saw the report. You didn't have insurance.” Nora wanted him to skip forward to the dead part of the story.

“We couldn't afford to fix the apartment.” Mrs. Wilson picked up the telling. “And it
wasn't
our fault.” She looked at Lucas since he was the one who hadn't seen the TV newscast. “So, after the fire was out and we could come back to the apartment, we refused to leave. And the person in charge refused to fix the damage.”

“A week passed.” Mr. Wilson paced the living room as he spoke, and Nora was reminded about the people on the ninth floor who heard ghosts moving around.
The haunting was in 10H. Her apartment.

“Then apartment management cut off our phones and refused to allow anyone up to see us,” Nora's mom said. “We were at a stalemate with the apartment owner. No repairs were done. I didn't want you kids to go to school for fear that you couldn't get back inside. I was worried that someone would nab you and use you to lure us out. I was stubborn.”

She went on. “And frustrated. It was hard, but I used every argument I could think of to convince your dad that we needed to leave the apartment. We needed to hire a lawyer. I mean, we'd filed maintenance reports and those were public record. The fire department had confirmed that the fire was caused by faulty wiring. There was no way we'd lose a lawsuit. They'd have to fix the apartment.”

“I finally agreed.” Mr. Wilson stopped pacing. He put an arm around his wife.

“I went to see a lawyer.” She glanced at the door. “But couldn't leave.”

“What do you mean, ‘couldn't'?” Nora asked.

“Was the door jammed like in the fire?” Lucas asked.

“No,” Mrs. Wilson replied. “My feet couldn't cross the
doorway downstairs, the one leading outside the building.”

“I tried also,” Mr. Wilson put in. “It was as if there was an invisible wall.”

“That's when we discovered that there had been a carbon monoxide leak,” Nora's mom began. “We don't know where the leak came from, but it must have happened while we slept. We never realized that the carbon monoxide detector was destroyed in the fire so the alarm never went off. We'd been dead awhile before we realized what had happened.”

Nora remembered Aleah mentioning a carbon monoxide news item when she'd been looking for horror stories online. Nora just hadn't realized that particular story was about her family.

“I didn't know we'd all died until that moment,” Mrs. Wilson said, her voice cracking.

“Why didn't you tell us right away?” Nora asked. “We'd have understood.”

“Get real.” Lucas gave Nora a shove. “We'd never have believed them.”

“We wanted to shield you from the news for as long as we could,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Plus we didn't know how this ghost stuff works.”

“I can walk through walls,” Nora reported. “That's how I came home this morning.”

“Sooooo coool!” Lucas said. Nora could see his head spinning with a plan to use his newly discovered superpower. “We can fix the dumbwaiter and do all sorts of things.”

At Nora's parents' questioning glance, she explained how she'd gone down to Caitlin's in the dumbwaiter. She'd left that part out when she'd stomped into the apartment, demanding answers. They'd asked where she'd been, but hadn't stopped to wonder how she'd gotten there in the first place. The door was still locked, after all, not that it actually mattered.