The Haunting of Sunshine Girl (16 page)

“I don't think this professor has had anything resembling a line of students waiting for his office hours in a long, long time,” Nolan says in agreement.

“If ever,” I add.

By the time we knock on the professor's office door—room 4B-04—I'm shivering. Even standing next to Nolan isn't enough to warm me in this cold.

“It must be below freezing in here,” I complain, my teeth chattering. Then I remember that Nolan doesn't feel it.

From the other side of the door, someone shouts: “Come in!”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Expert Help?

This might just be
the messiest room I've ever seen. Nolan has to push extra hard to open the door because there's a stack of papers behind it. And stacks of papers scattered across the floor. And books piled so high they're almost as tall as Nolan, threatening to topple over. I wonder how long the professor has worked here.

“Professor Jones,” Nolan says, holding out his hand to a tiny man seated behind the desk. “I'm Nolan Foster.” He pauses, hoping to see a flicker of recognition at the name he shares with his grandfather, but there's nothing.

Professor Jones looks like he's about a hundred years old, with glasses as thick as coke bottles on his face, the tiniest wisp of white hair on the top of his mostly bald head, and his skin stained with age spots. No wonder Nolan wasn't able to find his name in the university's e-mail system—I'm not sure the man has ever actually heard of e-mail. He clearly came of age in a time before the Internet existed. There isn't even a computer on his desk.

Instead, his desk is piled high with papers and books, the stacks so tall I have to stand on my tiptoes to see the whole of the professor's face behind them. He's definitely past the age when most people would have retired. He smacks his lips because he's missing a few teeth.

“Have a seat,” he says. His voice is dry as paper. It's probably the driest thing in this whole rain-drenched state.

Nolan and I tiptoe between piles of paper to sit on the chairs opposite his desk. Well, not on the chairs themselves, exactly; instead, we perch on the books piled on top of them. I feel paper crinkling beneath my weight, and I sit up straight, trying to make myself lighter so I don't ruin the books beneath me. Not that it looks like they're all that well taken care of, but I still don't want to be rude. I finger what remains of the long, narrow wound on my left hand, curved along the fleshy part between my thumb and forefinger.

“So you're having a ghost problem?” the professor croaks.

“How did you know that?” I ask, folding my arms across my chest, trying to keep warm.

“Why else would you be here?” he answers, a smile playing on the edges of his thin lips. “Whose ghost is it?” The skin on his neck jiggles when he talks.

I shake my head. “I don't know. I mean, I think it's a little girl, but we don't know who it is.”

Nolan adds, “I've done research into the deaths that occurred in and around Sunshine's house but couldn't find anyone who matched up with the ghost.”

“I think she must be about ten. Because she wants to play with me all the time.”

“She wants to play with you?” Professor Jones echoes. A little bit of sparkle breaks through the milkiness of his gray eyes.

I nod. “Checkers, Monopoly, that kind of thing.”

“And have you played with her?”

He asks the question so expectantly that I hesitate before answering. Maybe I wasn't supposed to engage with her the way I did. Maybe when I made that very first move on the checkerboard I made an enormous mistake, like by sliding the piece across the board, I was inviting her to stay.

“I thought it might make her happy.”

The professor's smile looks like it takes enormous effort: it happens slowly, first his lips widen, then his eyes crinkle, and a few of his yellowed teeth show. He wheezes heavily, as winded as if he'd been lifting weights, not just his own face.

“I thought it would be harmless—” I add softly.

The professor shakes his head. “Few spirits are truly harmless,” he says firmly. “Not here on Earth.”

Great, that makes me feel so much better. Guess this guy never heard of breaking things gently. My mother would say he has bad bedside manner, like some of the doctors she's worked with over the years.

“Lately, my mom, she's just been acting strange, and the other day—” I reach into my bag for my phone, ready to show him the way my mother cut herself, but the professor starts talking before I can explain.

“Even the friendliest of spirits is dangerous. Because it simply should not be here. It is a fish out of water. A hawk with broken wings. A horse with a broken leg. Do you know what they do to horses with broken legs, child?”

I glance at Nolan. He raises his eyebrows but nods, prompting me to tell my story.

“I think the ghost is doing something to my mother. Or maybe not the little girl ghost. Maybe it's some other ghost we haven't identified yet. But she tried to hurt herself—my mom, I mean. Not the ghost—”

The professor claps his hands and I jump. I wouldn't have thought he'd have the strength to press his hands together hard enough to make such a loud noise.

“Spirits don't belong here,” he says hoarsely. I lean forward to hear him better. “Fish out of water. Hawks with broken wings. Horses with broken legs.”

I shake my head. “I'm sorry, I don't really understand what you're getting at—”

“They're meant to move on,” he says sharply. “They don't belong here.”

I glance helplessly at Nolan.

“My grandfather was a fan of yours,” Nolan tries, like maybe he thinks the professor will respond to flattery. “His name was Nolan Foster, just like me. I thought he might have sought you out over the years—”

“Never heard of him,” Professor Jones interrupts, waving his hand dismissively.

“He wasn't an expert or anything,” Nolan explains. “Just a believer.”

“Bet they called him crazy,” the professor wheezes, coughing in between each word. Nolan nods, and Professor Jones adds, “That's what they called me.”

Is that why the university stuck him off in the middle of nowhere in this nearly abandoned building? Maybe he thinks we're here to make fun of him—and, maybe that's why he's speaking in riddles.

“Can you help us?” I ask finally.

“You can help yourself,” he answers.

“How?”

The professor's eyelids flutter heavily, like he's falling asleep. “How?” I repeat, my voice high pitched with desperation. Now his eyes close completely and his chin falls against his chest.

“We should go, Sunshine,” Nolan says. “I think I may have led us to a dead end.”

I shake my head. “I don't have time for dead ends.”

“I know.” Nolan nods. “I'm sorry.” Slowly I stand. We're almost out the door when I hear the professor mumble something behind us.

Nolan turns and steps closer to the desk. “What was that, Professor?”

He says it again, but it just sounds like nonsense to me. I strain to make sense of what he's saying, but it just sounds like “ooooo-each” to me.

“Sorry, I didn't hear that,” Nolan says. “Could you tell me again?”

“Loo-seeech,” the professor says. Now his eyes are open wide—and locked with mine.

“Nolan,” I whisper. “We should go. I don't think he can help us.” I don't want to spend another moment in this icy cold room. It makes me feel hopeless. Is this what happens to believers when they get old? Do they sit in lonely little rooms, all their knowledge overlapping until it comes out as nothing more than gibberish? Is this what happened to Nolan's grandfather? What will happen to him? To me?

Nolan goes back and leans over the desk to shake Professor Jones's hand. But instead of pressing his hand into Nolan's, the professor picks up an enormous old book off his desk and holds
it out in front of him with trembling hands. There aren't any words on the book's worn leather-bound cover, just faded gold markings, like maybe once there was an elaborate drawing on the cover that had long since worn away.

“Thank you,” Nolan says politely.

“Well, that was weird.”

Nolan shrugs. “He tried to help us.”

“I don't think he
could
help us.”

I shudder when I think about Professor Jones all alone in that lonely cold room. When all of this is over, once Mom is safe, I'll go back and visit him. I'll bring him cookies or soup or pudding or whatever you're supposed to bring to an elderly person and spend a whole afternoon listening to his gibberish and pretending to understand it.

“He gave me that.” Nolan gestures to the tattered, leather book he placed carefully in the backseat. We're almost back in Ridgemont.

“Did you see all the books in his office? He probably gives one to every visitor.”

Nolan smiles. “I don't think he gets many visitors.”

“No,” I agree. “I don't think he does.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Luiseach

“
I think I've figured out
what a luiseach is,” Nolan tells me when he walks me home from school a few days later.

Pine needles fall onto my head from the Douglas firs above us. “I thought evergreens didn't shed their leaves in the fall,” I complain, brushing the needles from my hair.

“Missed one,” Nolan says. Before he can get close enough to take it out for me I flip my hair over and jump up and down.

“What else you hiding in there?” he laughs.

“It's not funny.” My hair is so poofy that I could probably use it to smuggle contraband. I pull it into a messy knot at the nape of my neck. “Anyway, what were you saying? You figured out what a
what
is?”

“A luiseach,” he answers. “Remember, before we left his office, Professor Jones said it?”

“All I remember is gibberish,” I answer honestly.

“I know it sounded like that, but I saw the word in the book he gave me.”

“How did you know how to spell it?” Nolan reaches into his backpack and pulls the book out. It looks even more enormous than it did in the back of his car: bound in wrinkled brown leather and so thick that Nolan has to use both hands to hold it. “You've been carrying it around with you all this time?” It must weigh a zillion pounds.

He nods. “I'm reading it every chance I get. It doesn't always make sense—parts of it seem to be written in some kind of code, and parts aren't even in English, but I think I'm finally getting something out of it.” He opens to a page he'd marked with a bookmark. “There,” he says, pointing to a word in the center of it. I take the book. The paper is yellowed and thin, as translucent as wax paper. The font is so tiny I have to squint to read the word.

Luiseach.

“Louis-each?” I say, trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach. Who knew that just seeing a word printed on paper could provoke a physical response? “How do you know that's the same word he said?”

“It was the only word in the book that was close to the one the professor said to us.”

He didn't say it to
us,
I think but do not say, remembering the way he stared at me as he spoke. He said it to
me.
“You read the whole book already?”

Nolan shrugs like it's no big deal to be able to read a thousand-page tome in a matter of days.

Suddenly a big fat raindrop falls from the sky, landing right in the center of Nolan's new word. Quickly Nolan stuffs the book back into his bag. “Let's make a run for it,” he says. “I don't want to risk the book getting wet.” He breaks into a sprint, reaching for my hand as he does so.

My fingers wrap around his automatically, as though, unbeknownst to me, all this time they'd just been waiting for a boy's hand to hold. At the same time, my stomach is doing somersaults, high kicks, back flips—whatever a stomach does that makes it feel like it's trying to leap out of its rightful place in your belly and come flying out of your mouth.

So I slide my hand out of Nolan's grasp, put my head down, and sprint. By the time we get to my house I'm panting the way Oscar does when it's ninety degrees outside. Not that I can even remember what those kind of temperatures feel like. My hair is soaked, but for once it's not due entirely to the rain. I'm actually sweating, for what feels like the first time since we moved here.

“Not a runner, huh?” Nolan laughs as I open the door for us. I lead the way into the kitchen, slip off my backpack, and collapse into a chair at the table. Nolan grins, getting us drinks out of the fridge as though this is his house and I'm his guest. Or at least with the same familiarity Ashley used to navigate our kitchen back in Austin. Which is kind of nice.

When I finally catch my breath I say, “Okay, so tell me what you think a luiseach is exactly.”