Five Days of the Ghost (6 page)

Noah talked calmly. While he explained why we had to go over to Chiefs' Island again it suddenly struck me. Here we were, three normal kids—well … pretty normal, I thought as I looked at Noah's pierced ear and long black hair, and at my brother, looking like a wet noodle with a notebook in its hand—talking calmly about
ghosts
. And two of us
believed
it all.

When Noah finished talking he looked at John.

“Okay with me,” my brother said. “I wanted to go back anyway. But,” he held up a finger and wagged it the way a teacher does when she wants to tell you how much hassle you'll get if you don't do what she says, “I want to go on record right now. I'm not saying what's been going on isn't ghosts, but I'm not saying it is either. I still think it's preternatural.”

“Fair enough,” Noah said. Then he looked at me, sweeping his hair back for the millionth time.

He didn't say anything. I felt my brother's elbow dig into my ribs.

“Oh, all right,” I said.

“When?” said John.

“Why not tonight?” Noah said. “There'll still be a full moon.”

Why did I always think of werewolves and mouldy dead bodies whenever somebody said the words “full moon”?

“Hey,” John cut in on my thoughts, “why not fix it with your dad so you can stay at our place tonight? Then you don't need to worry about what time we get back.”

“Okay,” Noah said, “but I'll need a few hours to get some equipment together. We gotta do this right.”

You'd have thought he was planning a picnic.

Late Sunday Evening

Noah came over that night a little while after dinner with a big canvas sailor's bag full of stuff.

“What's
that
?” I said, closing the kitchen door behind him.

“Oh, just some ghost-hunting equipment.” He smiled.

He had his long hair combed straight back on his head and held there with a barrette. The cross was still dangling from his ear.

“Where can I put it?” he asked, pointing to the bag.

“Come on upstairs. Hurry, before Minnie comes into the kitchen on a search-and-destroy mission and finds you here.”

“Who's Minnie, your dog?”

I explained on the way up the back stairs.

We went to John's room. John was getting his stuff ready too. It was arranged in a row on his desk.

John's room was always neat. The only thing on his floor was his rug and his furniture. His dresser drawers were always shut, without clothes spilling out of them. His bed was always made. His desk top was always clear. And his DVDs and CDs were in their cases, stored in a box in alphabetical order. He drove me nuts.

On his wall was a big poster showing the DNA spiral with lots of coloured balls and sticks, and photos of planets and rockets from science magazines.

“Hey, let's see what you've got,” he said to Noah when we came into his room.

Noah put down the bag and pulled the drawstrings. When he did that a picture of the little leather medicine bag flashed across my mind. He reached inside and pulled out a video camera and laid it on the desk. Next, one of those little idiot-proof digital cameras. Then a small voice recorder. Then, on top of all that electronic gear he laid the wooden cross that I had seen hanging over his bed.

Next to Noah's stuff, John's candy bars and flashlights and bug lotion looked pretty lame.

“All
right
,” John said when he saw all the gear. “Ghost Hunters Incorporated!”

He pulled open his desk drawer and said, “Look what I've got to add.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” I cut in. “You can't use those.”

“Why not? They were just sitting in the basement, gathering dust.”

“Because you can't, that's why.”

“Yeah, I know, because they were Kenny's. Well, I think they've gone to waste long enough.”

I looked at the two red and white plastic two-way radios on the desk. They were toys, but pretty powerful.

“Well I'm not using them.”

“No sweat. Noah and I will use them. Right, Noah?”

“Whatever.” Noah turned to me. “How about a look at the medicine bag?”

We sneaked out of the house about twelve thirty. While we were waiting to leave, Mom and Dad had called from Vancouver to tell us they had arrived safe and to give us their phone number at their hotel. After that we'd waited for Skinny Minnie to hit the sack. I had made two trips to the door of the guest room at the far end of the hall and heard nothing. Minnie was dead to the world.

John had on his burglar-black outfit, same as Friday night. Noah was dressed in black too—even down to his deck shoes. I had on a navy-blue track suit, one with a hood. I wanted that to keep the mosquitoes out of my hair.

We stashed the two bags—Noah's sailor's bag and John's pack sack—in the bow of the rowboat and climbed in. John rowed. Noah and I sat scrunched together on the back seat. The medicine bag was buttoned in my shirt pocket. It felt warm.

I wasn't so sure I wanted to give the bag up. It scared me a bit, sure, and I supposed Noah was right about the bag unleashing some kind of power in our house. But I still sort of wished I could have kept it. In the boathouse maybe, not in my room.

Once we had cleared the shore Noah whispered to me, “Nervous?”

I jumped and he laughed. “I guess that answers my question.”

“I just don't like the idea of being ripped apart by a werewolf or something.”

Noah said calmly, in his deep commonsense voice, “Werewolf? You don't believe in
them
, do you?”

I was shocked. This guy was supposed to be the big expert on all this.

“Don't you?”

“Naw, that's just old legends and myths. Like vampires and talking skeletons.”

“I read that there really was a Count Dracula,” John cut in, puffing as he rowed.

“There was, and he was a bloodthirsty, nasty guy, but that's a long way from an undead dude with red eyes who creeps around at night in a cape sucking blood out of people's necks.”

“And turns himself into a bat or a wolf,” John added.

I was getting mixed up. “Wait a minute. What are you doing here, then?”

“Because I think ghosts are real, that's why. Or could be. I also think we shouldn't be afraid of them. They won't hurt us. At least that's my opinion.”

“Sorry, but that doesn't make me feel any better.”

“Yeah, well, I don't blame you. I mean, there's an awful lot of nonsense floating around about the occult and the supernatural and all that. And the biggest lie of all, as far as I'm concerned, is the idea that ghosts come back to hurt people. I know some people believe that, but I don't.

“All the movies and books nowadays are based on that,” John said.

“Right. That's what I call the Revenge Theory. Like in
The Changeling
. Remember, Karen? The ghost of the little boy wants revenge on the rich famous Senator. Who ends up dead. Most movies and books are based on the Revenge Theory.”

“Sure, because that makes a more interesting story,” John said, resting on the oars for a moment. “Blood and guts and stuff.”

“Right,” Noah answered.

I didn't feel any less scared, but I was sort of half interested.

“What other theories do you have?”

“Well, there's the English Castle Theory. In England they've got tons of old castles and manors and houses and bridges and a lot of them supposedly have a ghost haunting them. The ghost is there because of something—usually some kind of disaster, like a murder or horrible accident or wrecked love affair—and it just sort of hangs around. It
appears
. It doesn't try to make contact with live people and it doesn't try to hurt anyone.”

“So that's the theory you like,” I said.

“Nope, I think it's dumb too—probably. I think those ghosts are dreamed up by tourist bureaus.”

I was beginning to wonder if Weird Noah ever gave a straight answer.

“Why do you think it's wrong?” John puffed. He was pulling at the oars again.

While Noah talked, I tuned out and looked down the lake toward the narrows. It was a beautiful night, calm, with no wind, and a big silver moon splashing light on the water. The oars creaked as John rowed, and the bow whispered to the water. I could have stayed out there all night. Except that me and two crazy boys were going to find a
ghost
.

I tuned back in to what Noah was saying.

“Do you remember Marley's ghost?”

“Yeah,” I said, “from
A Christmas Carol
. What about him?”

“Hey!” John put in. “Maybe Karen and I didn't see
anyone
Friday night. Maybe it was an undigested bit of beef! Or a fragment of an underdone potato!”

Noah laughed and said to me, “Marley warned Scrooge that if he didn't change his skinflint ways he would end up like Marley, right?”

“Right.”

“So Marley was condemned to walk the earth and see humans suffering and not be able to help them. He had the chance to help people when he was alive, but he didn't. All he cared about then was money. Now he wants to help, but he can't. So he suffers, too. See? It's kind of, like, moral suffering. Marley warns Scrooge to change his ways so he can avoid that.”

I tried one more time. “Is this the theory you follow?”

“Mostly.”

I groaned.

“My idea is that a ghost is a dead person—”

“Brilliant!” I cut in. “Wonderful—”

“—who can't get into heaven or wherever we go when we die because he has to atone for something first.”

“A-tone?”

“Yeah. It means, like—” Before Noah could answer, the boat ground up onto the rock on the shore of the island.

“We're here,” John announced. As if we didn't know.

A few minutes later we were ready. We wrestled the rowboat well up onto the rock shelf, with the oars and life jackets stowed inside. We had bug lotion smeared on our hands, necks and faces. I pulled my hood up and tied the drawstrings.

John and Noah had the two-way radios hung on their belts, like cops on TV. Noah looked like a newsman with his video camera and voice recorder hung around his neck.

I got to carry the cross. I wondered why a guy who didn't believe in werewolves and vampires brought a cross with him, but I didn't say anything.

John led the way, peering at his compass and then heading into the trees. We walked slowly in the dark bush, twisting and ducking and stepping over fallen logs. After a long while John's breathless voice hissed that the clearing was just ahead. We crept to the edge of the trees. All the night noises had faded away.

“Hang on,” Noah whispered, “I wanna get a shot of the whole place.”

He knelt and panned slowly across the graveyard. The place looked the same as it had two nights before—the moonlight making the leaning gravestones glow and throwing gloomy twisted shadows across the clearing. “Okay, done.”

Noah lowered the camera. He switched on the tape recorder and whispered, “Where do we find your ghost?”

“This way,” John said.

He began to move to the left through the trees, counting his steps. He stopped and dropped to his knees. Without thinking, I did too. The three of us crawled slowly to the edge of the trees. Then we peered into the clearing.

At the far end of the graveyard, sitting on the same new headstone, was the Chippewa man, staring into the trees to our left. He was dressed the same way, he was sitting the same way, ankles crossed, hands on his knees, looking relaxed—and he was just as terrifying. That strange light showed every detail of his clothing and his face. Luckily, we couldn't see his eyes at that angle.

Out of the comer of my eye I saw Noah bring the camera up again. “This is
great
!” he whispered as he began to shoot. When he brought the camera down again John talked, his voice trembling.

“Maybe … maybe we should just take his picture and get out of here.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, holding the cross in front of me.

“No way I'm leaving without checking that guy out!” Noah said in hushed tones. “Besides, we agreed you're going to give back the bag.”

“Well,” I said, “we could just leave it here.”

“Or toss it to him and run,” John whispered.

Instead of saying anything more, Noah got to his feet and stepped into the clearing. He stopped dead.

“Wow!” he said out loud. “It's
freezing
!”

John stood and followed. I didn't intend to wait for them alone, so I went too.

Noah led us slowly, step by step, toward the man on the gravestone. Our feet swished through the damp grass. The man seemed to be sleeping or dreaming. He didn't move a muscle.

We kept walking over the cold uneven ground, side by side now. Noah held the camera at chest level, shooting. I held the cross in front of me, feeling silly. And scared.

When we were about twenty feet from the old man his head slowly turned and he faced us.

Close up, his craggy mask-like face was almost inhuman. His long hair was pulled back from his wrinkled face and held tight by the leather headband. He had thick eyebrows and broad cheeks. His mouth was a hard straight line under his large flat nose.

It was his eyes that got to me, though. Deep black wells with tiny red fires at the bottoms under the heavy brows. Eyes that seemed to nail me down, or stab through me. When he looked at me I felt trapped.

We stopped. Nobody said anything.

My heart was pounding. My breath clouds were coming faster and faster. So were John's and Noah's. But the Chippewa man had none.

“The bag,” Noah hissed. “Give him the bag.”

I switched the cross to my left hand. My right hand slowly unzipped my track top and unbuttoned my shirt pocket. I drew out the bag and held it out in front of me.

Nothing. The red light glowed on the camera—Noah was still shooting. I couldn't take the tension anymore so I quickly walked forward and shook the bag. I heard feet swishing in the grass behind me.

“Ummm, John and I found this the other night.We think it's yours,” I said in a cracked voice. I waited, half expecting a blood-freezing shriek or a wolf howl.

But a big grin split the man's face, lighting up his eyes.

“Yep, that bag, she's mine all right.”

His voice was rough, like pebbles scraping around in a pail. And it seemed to come from miles away.

He held out his hand and I dropped the bag onto his wrinkled palm. He slipped one of the bag's drawstrings up under his belt and tied the bag on. His belt was decorated with quills and coloured beads, just like the bag.

His grin disappeared and his face was like a carved wooden mask again.

Silence.

I stood there shaking, holding the cross out, keeping it between me and the spooky figure on the gravestone, wondering if it would do any good.

John's voice sounded strained. “Uh, do you live around here?”

Boy, could he come up with stupid questions sometimes!

“Yep.” The man's body seemed to relax a bit. He pulled at his earlobe.

More silence. It's hard to think of something to say when you're in a forbidden graveyard at midnight and you're standing across from an old, half-naked man you think might be a ghost. He didn't look cold, but I was freezing.

John and Noah were shivering like they'd been tobogganing in their underwear for the last two hours. And the man had that sort of glow that he'd had two nights ago. I could tell now that it wasn't from the moonlight.