Squishy Taylor and the Vase That Wasn't (5 page)

I wake up in the dark with something touching my face.

‘Can you hear that?’ Vee whispers. She’s hanging over the side of the bunk. Her fingers are tapping my ear.

I scrabble at her hand. ‘
No, shhh
,’ I say.

I listen for a while, but don’t hear anything.

‘We need to do that thing they did in the movie to scare off the ghost,’ Vee says, sounding scared.

‘Vee, go back to sleep.’

In the morning, Vee looks ragged. Over breakfast, she talks to Dad and Alice about hauntings in a scared voice. They are too rushed to really notice. But this ghost thing is getting serious.

‘Let’s go straight to Haunted Guy’s after school and get this straight,’ Jessie says in my ear as the tram
dings
through the rain. She’s looking at Vee’s tired face.

I nod. I want to discover the truth
and
look after Vee. We’re on a mission.

Haunted Guy lives on level twelve, which is the very top of our building (apart from the roof). The corridors are exactly the same. His door is almost like ours – only without the
dirty
fingerprints.

‘What are we gonna say?’ whispers Vee, as Jessie holds out her fist to knock.

‘We’ll tell him the truth,’ Jessie says, hitching up her schoolbag.

‘What truth?’ I ask, but she’s already rapped twice.

Haunted Guy doesn’t answer the door. A lady does. She’s wearing jeans and a massive bright scarf.

We all smile at her.

‘Hello,’ she says, smiling back. ‘What can I do for you people?’

Grown-ups love it when kids make eye contact, as long as you’re smiling. That’s something Mum taught me. Even if you feel shy, meet the grown-up’s eyes. Gets ’em every time.

‘Um … we came to talk to, um … the man who lives here about his … his … missing vase,’ Jessie says.

The lady chuckles. ‘You mean you want to know all about the
ghost?
’ she asks. ‘How did
you
hear about it?’

We all talk at once.

Jessie says, ‘We live downstairs.’

‘We saw him in the foyer
right
after it happened,’ I say.

‘The ghost was on our iPad, but we’re not allowed to look at it anymore,’ Vee explains.

‘All right, all right,
slow down
,’ the lady laughs. ‘Sounds like we’re neighbours. I’m Mina, and the man you saw was my brother, Harry. Wanna come in? Harry’s still at work, but you can talk to me.’

The apartment is the same shape as ours, but has about one-tenth of the stuff in it.

‘Firstly,’ Mina says, shoving a laptop aside and piling crackers on a plate, ‘the ghost is not real, I promise you. Now sit down.’

We all sit around Harry’s table.

Vee says, ‘The ghost
is
real, we saw the security footage.’

‘You saw the security footage?’ Mina looks a little bit surprised and glances at the laptop on the table. Then she looks back at us with arched eyebrows. ‘How did you manage that?’ Her listening smile reminds me of Mum when I’ve come home from some
crazy adventure
.

So Jessie explains about hacking into the security footage and seeing the Chinese ghost. Vee tells about Mr Hinkenbushel stopping us from looking, and how we’re banned from the iPad.

I say, ‘So Vee thinks it’s a
ghost
and Jessie thinks it’s a
hoax
to steal the vase. Either way, we know the vase needs to be returned to China. We knew if anyone would care about what we discovered, your brother –’

‘Harry,’ Mina says.

‘– Harry would care. And –’

Jessie interrupts. ‘And maybe he’d let us check the security footage again on his computer.’ She nods towards the laptop.

Mina bursts out laughing. ‘You are some seriously
cheeky
kids!’ she says. ‘Listen, I don’t have the password for his computer, so we can’t check that security footage. But I promise there’s no ghost. OK?’

Vee nods. But I’m annoyed. Even though Mina is funny and nice, we saw the ghost with our own eyes. She doesn’t seem to care about the temple at all. She’s just making promises with that
grown-up bossiness
, like we should just believe her. Plus, the laptop is
right there
in front of us. I bet Jessie could
crack
the password.

Mina is still talking. ‘There’s no way that vase is anything special. I keep telling Harry that Mum bought it from a two-dollar shop on Sydney Road, but he’s got this whole other story.’

‘Ming Dynasty, acquired during the Opium Wars.’ Jessie nods, sounding like a teacher.

Mina looks a bit surprised. People don’t expect kids to be as smart as Jessie is. ‘That’s what Harry says, yes.’

‘But the police must have looked at the security footage too,’ Jessie insists. ‘What does Mr Hinkenbushel say?’

‘Um … the police couldn’t really … help,’ Mina says.

Mina looks
weirded out
that we know about Mr Hinkenbushel, so I explain. ‘He’s our next-door neighbour. We hate him so much that we made a
revenge
video about him one time.’

Mina laughs again. ‘You’re filmmakers too, huh? I edit video, documentaries mostly.’ She reaches for the laptop on the table and then changes her mind. She stands up instead. ‘All right. Enough. Don’t you kids have somewhere to be?’

She closes the door behind us and we head down to the lift.

‘How can she
know
there’s no ghost?’ Vee asks, sounding hopeful and nervous at the same time.

‘She can’t know,’ I say. I love the mystery of it.
Haunting or hoax?
‘I bet Mina was looking at the ghost too. Bet she wants to make a famous documentary about it.’

‘If we could just get on the internet,’ Jessie says. ‘I bet there’s something dodgy in the footage.’

The lift isn’t coming.

‘Stairs?’ I suggest, and we turn and
pelt
for the stairwell, schoolbags bouncing on our backs. When we reach the landing, I look up at the last set of stairs before we go down. These stairs are special, because they go to the roof. They’re more like a metal ladder, and they’ve got a tall gate in the middle to stop people going all the way up.

Stuff designed to stop people is
awesome
, because it’s difficult.
Difficult equals fun
. Vee and I glance at each other, then ditch our bags and race up the metal ladder together. Our shoulders bump and our arms tangle on the rails, but Vee beats me to the gate.

‘Guys,’ Jessie calls from below, ‘what are you
doing
?’

Vee swings a leg over the gate, then drops down the other side.
Too easy.
I follow and by the time I’m over, Vee is at the very top landing, by the door. You can tell it goes to the outside, because drops of rain are beating underneath. Also, there’s a sign on the door saying
Rooftop Access
. It’s locked, of course.

‘I reckon the roof door has the same lock as our balcony,’ I say, leaping down the stairs two at a time. ‘The
bobby-pin trick
would work for sure.’

Vee laughs. ‘Let’s do it!’

Jessie shakes her head at us.

When we reach our corridor Mr Hinkenbushel is arriving home, pulling his keys out of his pocket. We stop talking as soon as we see him and he ignores us.

I realise he is the only other person, apart from Haunted Harry, who we
know
has seen the ghost. He was
there
, on the same screen as us.

My heart is all fast and brave from climbing the gate and thinking about the locked door to the roof. I don’t stop to think.

‘Um, excuse me, Mr Hinkenbushel –’

He turns and glares at me. ‘What do you want?’

‘Um, what are you doing about that ghost?’

‘What?’
He looks at me like I’m a piece of dirt.

I don’t feel quite so brave anymore, but I keep talking. ‘The ghost in the footage. We know you saw it too.’

His face goes red and angry. ‘I didn’t see a ghost, because there was no ghost.’ He gets louder and redder and the
spit
starts to gather around the corners of his mouth. ‘You kids think you’re
so
clever, but you’re just nosy, brainless idiots with nothing better to do than –’

‘OK, fine, sorry,’ I say.

We
dash
through our own door while he’s still shouting.

‘Subtle move, Squishy Taylor,’ Jessie says and we all laugh.