The Elevator Ghost (5 page)

Clifford B. Mizer stood beside them like a statue. And they all watched in horror as the monster struggled free of the canvas.

Crraww.
There was nothing muffled about its roar now. It was as loud as a locomotive going through a railway tunnel.
Crraaaww
.

“No eyes on my batmonster,” Galina said, looking over at the creature she'd drawn on her father's canvas. She curled against Carolina Giddle and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

“Consequences,” Luba repeated, looking sternly at her sister. “Galina should get to work and fix — ”

“Oh, be quiet. I want to hear what happened next,” Elsa muttered. “Did the batmonster eat everyone up?”

Carolina Giddle smoothed the curls on Galina's forehead.

“Not exactly…”

There was a scrabble of the monster's claws as it began tearing around the soundstage, knocking over props and movie equipment. It was like a giant vulture trapped inside a cage. A smell issued from it that can only be described as a hundred rotten eggs exploding. They could hear the flapping of its huge bat wings as it tried to find a way out.

Electrical cords snapped. Sparks caught on the mess of spilled paint, turpentine and shredded canvas. One whole side of the soundstage exploded into fire. Clifford B. Mizer began to holler for help as he grasped the trunk of a fake tree.

Diego was able to free himself from the accountant's clutches. He raced to the soundstage entrance, where he worked the levers that opened its huge doors. He leaped back just in time to escape being caught by the Scaly Batmonster's claws as it stampeded through the opening.

Diego watched as it spread its wings and took off, gradually disappearing into the clouds. Clifford B. Mizer and his accountant hurried out after him.

By this time Soundstage Ten was fully aflame. They could hear the sirens of fire trucks rushing to the studio, but it was a windy day. In no time at all the flames spread to the other buildings on the lot.

When Clifford B. Mizer told everyone what had happened, they said he was crazy. The police and the insurance company insisted he'd lit the fire himself. The accountant disappeared (some say with a suitcase full of the studio's money), and no one ever saw him again.

“And I never said a word,” Diego told me. “Clifford B. Mizer got just what he deserved.”

Luba sighed and stretched. “Did anyone ever see the batmonster again?”

“Only one or two people who happened to make the mistake of drawing the creature in places where they shouldn't.”

Galina pulled her thumb from her mouth, slipped down from the sofa and marched over to the canvas. The large tin of white gesso was still out on the plastic work-mat beside the easel, but she couldn't figure out how to pry off the lid.

“Here, I'll help you,” said Luba.

Elsa rummaged through her father's supplies and found a couple of paintbrushes.

“Me, too,” she said, handing one of the brushes
t
o Galina.

It took about half a can of gesso, but the monster disappeared.

Carolina Giddle found her two friends in the sunroom that night. She told them about her evening and nibbled on the last piece of squiggy square as she sipped her tea. The two shook their heads and laughed softly.

“Brings to mind some of my own antics.” The young woman smoothed the lace on her white dress. “I remember Willard Strutt and I playing Truth or Dare. He took my dare and fell off the porch roof at school. I had such a crush on him. All those blond curls and freckles. Cute as a bug's ear. I think you got to know him, Beulah.”

“Oh, yes. He was one of the boys at Ada's Halloween party. The night…well, you remember. The night you…intervened.”

“Intervened?” Carolina Giddle gave her crystal earrings a slight shake.

The old woman and the young woman exchanged glances.

“It's quite a tale.” Grace brushed her hand over Carolina Giddle's. It was like the touch of a gentle breeze. “Bears telling…but some evening when you're not tuckered out from babysitting.”

“Yes,” Carolina Giddle said. “You know how I love a good story.”

FIVE

Ghost Ship

“
O mio babbino caro
,
”
Mama Bellini trilled as she swirled into the living room in her red going-to-the-opera dress.

“Bellissima!” Papa exclaimed, slicking back his hair and straightening his bowtie. “Look, children. Look at how beautiful your mama is. She should be on the stage tonight!”

“Oh, Papa!” Mama Bellini gave him a kiss on the forehead.

“I wanna go, too,” Angelo Bellini scowled.

“Sweet baby.” Mama Bellini hurried over to hug her five-year-old. “When you're bigger you can go. Right now opera is just for Mama and Papa, yes?”

Angelo pushed his mother's hug away and opened his mouth.

For a second everything was quiet in the Bellini apartment. Angelo's older sisters, Amanita and Corrina, looked at one another and gritted their teeth. Mama's hand swooped to her forehead as if she were trying to ward off a headache. Papa closed his eyes and shook his head.

It only took a second. Then Angelo uttered a scream that shook the ceiling lamp and sent the Bellini dog, Alfredo, whimpering for cover under the couch.

“I wanna go!” Angelo howled. He screamed again, so loud that no one heard the doorbell.

It was only when he stopped to draw breath that they heard someone knocking.

Mama and Papa both grabbed their coats as they headed to the door to admit Carolina Giddle.

“Ohgoodyou'rehere.” Mama's words were moving even faster than her high-heeled ­opera shoes. She nearly knocked Carolina Giddle over at the doorway.

“We'll be back before midnight.” Papa gave Carolina Giddle a nervous smile as he eased past her.

By this time Angelo was not only screaming nonstop but was stamping his feet faster than a dog trying to get at a flea with its hind leg. The radiator began clanging in time to his dance. Neighbors on both sides of the Bellini apartment were pounding on the walls.

Carolina Giddle hurried in, picked up the little boy and held him so close that his hollers were muffled in her frizzy sweater.

“Hushabye, hushabye,” she crooned, but Angelo managed to give her a couple of kicks. “Mercy me!” Carolina Giddle exclaimed as she released him. Angelo crumpled onto the rug, sobbing and banging his head against the floor.

“He's always like this,” Amanita sighed. She was four years older than Angelo. “Maybe we can put him up for adoption.”

“Or take him camping and forget to bring him home,” said Corrina, who was a year and a half younger than Amanita. “Time out doesn't work. He throws fits that are the ­worstest in the world.”

“Well,” Carolina Giddle drawled, “he may think he throws the worst fits of anyone who has ever lived, but Angelo isn't a patch on the Tantrumolos.”

“The Tantrumolos?” Amanita and Corrina said.

“Yes, the Tantrumolos. I'll tell you about them, but first…” Carolina Giddle reached into her bag. She pulled out tea candles, a can labeled
Ghost Host: The Drink That Soothes,
and a plastic container filled with dessert squares. “I just this afternoon baked up a batch of granghoula bars. My mother showed me how to make them when I was just your age and we lived on a little island off the coast.”

Angelo had quit banging his head and was crouched on the floor crying softly enough that he could hear what Carolina Giddle was saying. He even paused totally as the babysitter displayed one of the bars and mentioned the ingredients. Strawberry jam and crushed chocolate cookies, pecan nuts and green maraschino cherries with a ghostly cap of whipped white icing.

“An old sea captain who lived on the island told me about the Tantrumolos,” Carolina Giddle continued as she put the kettle on and arranged the tea candles on the coffee table. “If I'm going to tell you the story the captain told me about the Tantrumolos and the ghost ship of the Southern Seas, it's best told by candlelight.”

Carolina Giddle looked over to where ­Angelo crouched, scowling.

“If you're going to continue with your fit, Angelo, please keep to the other side of the room. We need to be safe where candles are involved. If you get tired of the fit, there's a place beside me on the sofa. And, girls, once you have your drinks and granghoula bars, find a spot and get comfortable. While you're getting settled, I'll just bring Chiquita up for a bit of fresh air.”

She reached into her bag and produced a cage that contained a tarantula spider. Chiquita scampered over to the mesh wall for a closer look at things.

It only took Angelo a minute to scoot across the room and confront the arachnid nose to nose.

“This is one of Chiquita's favorite stories,” Carolina Giddle said. “She won't want to miss it.”

When Barney Boonswagger was a young man sailing the South Seas — he wasn't a sea captain yet, of course, just a deckhand — the old sailors liked to tell tales of a mysterious sail-ship they saw at times. There have been stories of ghost ships for as long as men first began coursing the seas in boats of one sort or another. But Barney took little stock in these tales spun over cups of rum in the twilight.

One night he was taking his turn on watch, up on the deck of a small cargo vessel, when the fog crept in. It was the kind of fog some sailors called a pea-souper — so dense that you could barely see a hand in front of your face. Someone at the ship's helm sounded a foghorn, and every few minutes, that mournful
whooo
rolled out into the night.

That's when Barney thought he heard someone crying somewhere out on the water.

“Help me!” the voice came, so muffled by the fog that it sounded like someone trying to holler with a woolen scarf over his mouth.

“Help me!”
The voice was louder and closer.

Clinging to the railing, Barney peered over as far as he could, to see if he could make out who was crying for help.

And that's when the strangest thing happened.

It was a calm sea, with the ship moving slowly and steadily through the shroud of fog. But all of a sudden the vessel lurched, as if it had been suddenly pushed by a giant hand, and Barney fell over into the sea.

He called out as he fell, but at that moment the foghorn sounded and drowned out his cry. Then, for what seemed like an eternity, he was plunging downward through the water. In desperation, he began to struggle to the surface. With his lungs almost bursting, he crested and drew breath. He was hoping to see the side of the cargo ship close by, hoping that he could hear its engines.

But there was nothing. All he could see was the fog swirling around him. Everything was eerily silent.

He hollered for help. His call sounded exactly like the one that drew him to the ship's railing and then into his plunge overboard.

The fog began to clear a bit, and Barney gasped to see that he was only a couple of feet away from the wooden hull of a ship. A rope ladder was being lowered over its side. Swimming the few strokes to where the ladder dangled just above the water, Barney grasped the first of the rope rungs and gradually worked his way up.

What do you think he saw as he flung himself over the railing and onto the deck?

“What?” Angelo said. He had inched his way along the floor and now sat right beside Carolina Giddle's feet.

He reached for a granghoula bar and began licking the icing off its top.

Well, it looked like a whole crew of ghosts, but not a crew such as Barney had ever seen. These looked like they might belong in a pirate movie, except they had an ashy white appearance. As they moved about the deck, some of them seemed to disappear into wisps of fog and then reappear a minute later as the fog shifted.

All of them were scowling.

“Who…who are you?” Barney stuttered.

One of the crew, who had the largest three-cornered hat perched over a scarred brow, growled, “We are the Tantrumolos of the dreaded ship
Horribilis.
”

“And you are our entertainment,” said another ghostly figure. This one wore an eyepatch and packed a huge pistol in one hand. “I decide how you will die this evening and join our crew.”

Before Barney could say anything, a sailor with a wooden leg and a hook in place of his left hand yelled, “I'm the one who saw him at the railing, just ripe for the picking. I say we make him walk the plank. We haven't had a good plank-walking for a hundred years.”


At this, the ghostly sailor with the hat began to jump up and down.

“I'm the captain,”
he hollered.
“And I want him keel-hauled. Run him underneath the ship a couple of times.”

“No, it's my turn
,
”
the ghost with the eyepatch screamed.
“You killed the last one. Remember? Flogged him to death.”
He pointed at a sad-looking shadowy figure at the ship's helm.

“MINE!”
the captain screamed and drew his sword. He lopped off the good hand of the Tantrumolo with the hook. The ghostly hand flew through the air and began slapping the captain across the face.

The wounded Tantrumolo howled,
“TAKE THAT, YOU POCK-FACED BILGE RAT!”

The ghost with the eyepatch raised his pistol and yelled,
“MINE! MINE! MINE! I'M THE ONE WHAT KNOCKED THE SHIP AND GOT HIM INTO THE BRINE!”

He shot holes into the others, which didn't seem to have much effect, being as they were already ghosts. But it did make them even madder.

In no time the entire crew of the
Horribilis
had become a whirlwind of ghostly sailors screaming at one another. Swords clanged. Oaths flew along with knives and buckshot.

“DIE, SCUM! MEET YOUR MAKER, YOU MURKY MUSKETEER!”

“I'LL SWASH YOUR BUCKLE, YOU BILIOUS BABOON!”

Barrels of rum were thrown about and smashed so that Barney had trouble staying upright on the slippery deck. Ripped sails fluttered down like ribbons. Even the ship itself seemed to heave and groan.

Barney decided that anything was better than staying aboard the
Horribilis,
and he leaped over the side.

Bits of flotsam and jetsam were scattered around where he landed in the water. He grabbed hold of an empty barrel that kept him afloat.

Gradually the ghost ship and its horrible screams and yelling and musket fire drifted away, and Barney was all alone, floating in that silent sea.

That's when he saw a most welcome sight — a light growing brighter by the minute. Yes, it was a rescue boat that had been sent out from his ship when the crew realized a man had fallen overboard.

“Here!” Barney called out. “Over here!”

Of course his rescuers were anxious to know all that had happened to him in the couple of hours he had been missing.

“If I told you,” Barney said, “you'd never believe it.”

“And so he didn't tell anyone until many years later, long after he'd quit sailing the seven seas. He told me when I was just about your age, Amanita.” Carolina Giddle brushed a lock of curly hair back from Angelo's forehead as he leaned against her arm and nibbled a last little bit of granghoula bar.

“Bilge rat!” Angelo giggled.

“Yes.” Carolina Giddle gave him a little tickle. “And now it's time for everyone to be off to bed.”

“Aagh.” Corrina clenched her teeth and gave a little moan.

“You said the b-word,” Amanita whispered. She put her hands over her ears.

But Angelo just yawned, waved goodnight to Chiquita and said, “You gonna tuck me in, Carolina Giddle?”

The apartment was as quiet as a tomb except for some contented little clinks from the radiator when the Bellinis returned.

“I can't believe it,” Papa Bellini said in a hushed voice.

“You're a magician,” Mama Bellini added.

“No. Just a storyteller,” Carolina Giddle replied as Mr. Bellini pulled out his wallet to pay her.

Carolina Giddle's work for the evening wasn't quite finished. A little later she rang old Mrs. Floss's doorbell.

“We have three people for the séance,” Mrs. Floss said excitedly as she ushered Carolina Giddle into her apartment. “Mrs. Chan is hoping to get in touch with her grandmother, and Mr. Winkle is just here for support.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And for some of my dandelion wine.”

The four joined hands at the card table Mrs. Floss had set up. Carolina Giddle closed her eyes. For a few minutes everything was silent except for the sounds of the old people breathing. Then Carolina Giddle nodded her head at Mrs. Floss.

“Your husband says to tell you he misses you and he hopes you found someone to go square dancing with.”

“Oh, my.” In the dim candlelight, it was possible to see a twinkle in the old lady's eyes. “We did love to go dancing.”

Mrs. Chan's grandmother only spoke very little English, so it was more difficult to pass on a message from her.

But what surprised Carolina Giddle was a voice she hadn't called up.

“That little house from long ago,” the voice crooned. “Where blackbirds sing and daisies grow,/Beyond the bend on the old bayou/Someone's a waitin' there for you.”

Carolina Giddle had known only one person in her life who spoke in rhymes, and he had died thirty years ago. He was a dockworker with eyes the color of nutmeg. She remembered the rough feel of his hand when he held hers.

Now she blushed as she sipped a glass of Mrs. Floss's dandelion wine.