Rules for Ghosting (19 page)

Oliver wasn't sure he agreed at all, but he knew what Mom wanted from him so he gave a reluctant nod. He noticed Poppy didn't even give that, but Mom didn't press the issue.

“Now,” she said, grabbing JJ firmly by the hands. “Shall we head downstairs and make sure everything is ready for our guests? I'll need you all to come and change into your party clothes too.”

“Moooom,” Poppy whined.

“New bedroom!” said Junie. “I want to stay in the new bedroom!” She was jumping a little again, and Mom's arm flopped up and down with her.

“Sleepover!” Joe trilled like the world's most annoying freckled bird.

Mom looked down at her watch, and up at Oliver's and Poppy's gloomy faces. “You won't want to hang around the party for long, will you?” she asked.

Poppy snorted.

“SLEEPOVER!” chorused JJ.

Mom peered around the room. “It's awfully dusty in there. What about the portrait room? No, we'll have guests tromping all over the house, and Rutabartle will want them to look in the rooms if they're going to be putting in bids …” She sighed. She glanced over at the open door of Oliver's tiny room. “I don't suppose …”

“NEW BEDROOM!” JJ shrieked.

“Fine,” said Mom wearily. “You can sleep over in here,
if
it gets a good airing out first, dust down all the surfaces—all of you—and
Oliver and Poppy, you'll stay over with them?” She tried to catch Oliver's eye in a won't-you-be-a-good-older-brother look.

“Not with JJ,” Poppy griped. But Oliver figured that with all the energy the twins had used up today, they would be out pretty early. And then he and Poppy could keep looking for clues. For a pesky little sister, she'd turned out to be amazingly skillful.

“Fine,” said Oliver quickly. “But do we really have to make everything all nice for these stupid guests tonight? Why should we make it easy for them to buy this house out from under us?”

Mom frowned. “Oliver, you've got to understand something. Rutabartle's being very underhanded in yanking us out so quickly, but he's within his rights. We're just house sitters, honey. This isn't our house, and it never was. We have to deal with it and move on. We'll find somewhere else that's even better—you'll see.”

But they wouldn't. Oliver knew that. This was
it
, the house of his dreams, the only place he wanted to move into and live for the rest of his life. He'd never find somewhere else like this.

And in a few hours he was going to lose it forever.

Dahlia felt adrift. Mrs. Tibbs was gone. Her Anchor was nowhere to be found. And now her new friends, Oliver and Poppy, were being booted out of Silverton Manor. In a few weeks she'd be completely alone again, like before. Only now that she'd had friends, even for this short time, she knew it would be worse. Much worse.

Dahlia dropped down into the house, through floors and ceilings, passing through a potted plant that, even with its scratchy chlorophyll insides, didn't give her a boost; passing through a cobwebby decoration, through the far corner of the kitchen and into the mudroom. What was the point? What could she hope to do? Everything she'd tried to accomplish seemed to go wrong—in fact, she had the distinct feeling she was continually making things worse rather than better.

And then a scuffling noise drew her attention. Looking up, she caught the mudroom door closing behind someone.
Someone who trailed a sort of black cloud in their wake. Dahlia looked more closely through the door.

Hat pulled down low over a bushy head, long lean body hunched over as though trying to be as unnoticeable as possible, Rank Wiley passed through toward the back hallway.

Rank Wiley?
What was
he
doing here?

Oh. Of course. He must have realized his Aspirator was gone. He'd come back for Mrs. Tibbs.

The thought galvanized Dahlia into action. She suddenly realized that not only was all not lost, there was still more she could end up losing if she wasn't careful.

“Fine,” she said, grinding her teeth up into a determined sort of smile. “It's not the end of the war, just the start of a new battle.”

With that she propelled herself into a mini ghostwhirl and shot back up toward the attic. First she would give herself a good zap, then she'd go tell Oliver and Poppy that Wiley was back. Maybe she could even find a way to stop him herself. After all, he couldn't Aspirate her if she was in living form, could he?

Could he? She didn't think so, and at any rate, it was the only idea she had.

She reached the Seesaw in a few seconds and eagerly plunged her hand through the surface, waiting for the
zap
that would tell her she'd become visible to living eyes.

But nothing happened.

She put her hand through again. Nothing. She tried the
other hand. Nothing. Desperately, she flipped over and waggled her head around inside of it. But not even a crackle of energy lit the clunky old machine, which sat there as dead as any non-expired doornail.

Dahlia's thoughts were in a panic. What had happened? The last time she'd stuck her hand through there had been no problems … a little tiredness, heaviness, but no signs of it not working!

She thought back to the energy burst she'd felt when she entered the room with the Seesaw. Was there some connection with the breaking of that barrier and the breaking of the Seesaw? If so, the timing could not be worse.

Oliver and Poppy were nowhere to be seen, either. Oliver's jeans and T-shirt were scattered halfway in and out of his room. She guessed the kids were now dressed in their party best and their mom had conscripted them for last-minute prep work. Downstairs, she heard the doorbell gong ring out. The first guests must be arriving. And where was Wiley? What was he doing right now?

The Aspirator sat, fully visible in its lumpy carrying pack, on Oliver's bed.

Dahlia had never felt so powerless in her life. “Mrs. Tibbs,” she whispered at the Aspirator. “Are you there? Are you all right?” But there was no reply. Mrs. Tibbs was trapped inside ironite, after all; it had probably taken all her energy just to speak out last time.

Dahlia was on her own.

Around her, the house shook a little, the walls vibrating in a low, hollow moan. She thought again of the force that had been trapped in the concealed room, which had kept her out for so long. What was it? And if it was the source of the curse, why did the energy feel more like fear than evil?

Dahlia shook her head. The more she thought, the less she seemed to understand.

Leaving Oliver's room and the Aspirator, she passed through the walls into the hidden bedroom, which still felt so familiar. She
knew
this room. And yet she still remembered so little of it. Slowing her pace and letting herself drift, she felt something. There was a distinct pulse somewhere on the edge of her senses, but she couldn't place it. She let herself sweep across the floor space: past the bookshelf, past the little writing desk, where a decades-old pen lay next to a piece of lined paper.

The pulse was clearer now. It was as though Dahlia was being pulled in a specific direction. She snapped herself into focus, and right away drifted to a stop. Where had that pull come from? It was there for a second … Dahlia focused. She pulled energy into herself. She gritted her teeth.
Come on!
But nothing happened.

With a great sigh, Dahlia let herself go limp again. She half-closed her eyes. And … yes! She started to move. She'd been trying too hard, maybe? There
was
something in this room, and if she let it …

She was moving toward the window. The grime-coated
pane overlooked the forest, with the roofs of Longbrook visible in the distance. There was a sudden
zing
in Dahlia's memory and she saw her own hands opening the latch, straining to lift the window, feeling a pure rush of joy as she dragged the old wooden chest over below the sill and kneeled on it to reach her head up and out. Dahlia could smell crisp autumn air filling her lungs … and a sharp pain that came along with it, a feel of loss or longing.

There was something else too. In that memory, she wasn't just leaning to look out the window, she was leaning
over
something. Something long and sleek, something shiny, something …

Dahlia felt another pulse, stronger.

It was nearby! Her Anchor.

Fluttering a little in her excitement, Dahlia tried to focus. She narrowed her eyes and sharpened her Clearsight, turning in a full circle and looking carefully through every piece of furniture in the room. Nothing called to her, and yet the pulse was still there. So close, and yet …

A thrum tingled through her toes, and for the first time Dahlia considered the wooden chest below her. The chest she'd been hovering above, the chest the other Dahlia of her memory had dragged over to the window ledge, had kneeled on to look out, had …
opened up and
—

Dahlia reached out a single ghost finger and pushed through the wooden chest-top, through a layer of crinkly-soft clothing, through a collection of papers and a few stray
books … and there it was. Nestled in careful wrapping, lying at the very bottom of the chest was a telescope.

This!
This was it.

Dahlia reached both hands through the coverings and placed them on her Anchor.

And there is love, so much love circling this shiny spyglass, this gift, this most precious of good-bye presents her daddy left with her before his last trip. He brought it wrapped in a giant box with a big red bow, and how Dahlia loved the wrapping, just as much as the telescope at first, but more important than either of those was
him,
Daddy, the very best person in the whole world and the one she loved above anyone else. She'd just moved into this new attic room with the big, wide window—how long she'd wanted to, and what joy when she was finally old enough!—and he knew how much she loved that window and its view and when he handed her this present, on this night before his big trip, he said, “This is a special one, Dolly-dear, you can see far with this beauty. I want you to look out at the sky and watch the stars and know that wherever I am, I'll be looking at them, the same as you. For always.” She'd thrilled to his words, his gift, and stayed up hours past bedtime that night, finding stars and constellations and whole invisible worlds she'd never thought existed
.

She'd never close her window again, she decided, not ever again. The telescope would stay pointed out through the opening so she could always see the stars and so she could always watch for her daddy coming home. And she did. She watched
and watched and the days passed, summer growing from warm to hot to scorching and then, gradually starting to frizz off into autumn as the leaves withered and died and slowly, slowly, something inside Dahlia started to chill too
.

When did she first know? When Mama stopped talking about him, stopped answering her questions, started turning away and getting very busy whenever her usual string of questions began? Mama never said anything, never told her that he wasn't coming back. Not until
…

Dahlia jolted. Pain seared through her head. She almost,
almost
didn't want to remember any more. But how could she stop here?

Not until the night she finally heard it for sure. He'd gone, Mama said, he'd gone down another path and thought a clean break would be better and easier for them all and he had called to tell Mama but he hadn't even told his Dolly good-bye! How could he not say good-bye? How could he leave, just up and leave and never come back? It was too much to believe but Dahlia believed it all too well because now she saw looking back in her memory the determined glint in Daddy's eye, the look of true good-bye in his last hug, the way a cold steel burned behind his quick brisk steps as he walked away from his house, from his life, from her. He had started a new life elsewhere
.

And he wasn't coming back
.

The moment Dahlia realized this, fully realized how completely her love had been courted and bought and then so casually thrown away, all her love hardened into hate. She ran up to
her room and grabbed the telescope, roughly pulling it down from the windowsill. She couldn't bring herself to throw it across the room and smash it, but she shoved it into the very bottom of her trunk and slammed the lid shut. She would never touch it again. And more than that—she pulled the window shut and yanked the curtains closed. She would never again look out at that starry night sky, would never allow herself to dream stupid dreams of love and fondness and people coming back for those they cared about. She pulled the latch tightly over the window and took a deep breath and turned her back on it forever
.

Dahlia came back to herself with her particles heaving and weaving in and out of focus to her blurry eyes. This was it—the Anchor, the unfinished business, the thing that had been tying her to Silverton manor. She'd found it. And yet she now felt worse than ever.

She thought of her own portrait, nestled in the dark of the attic. Was that why her mother had stored her there, safely out of sight? Had she found it simply too painful to remember the girl she had loved and lost?

Now Dahlia had all the pain, all the agony of the memory. But what she didn't have, what inexplicably had not come with the Anchor, was the last thing needed to complete her Liberation process.

She still had no idea how she had died.

The rest of the afternoon and evening passed all too quickly for Oliver, who was kept busy running from one chore to another, laced in his too-tight shoes that pinched his feet and his pressed pants and his hated plaid flannel shirt. He wondered where Dahlia was, and hoped she was having a better time than the rest of them.

Once the guests started arriving, the kids were put into helper mode, offering tours to the main rooms of the house, refilling glasses and passing around trays of appetizers. Oliver wasn't sure why the appetizers couldn't stay on the side tables for people to grab themselves, but apparently this was part of the charm. Mom still held out hope that Rutabartle might change his mind—she'd obviously grown attached to the house too—but Oliver knew better. More than one group of guests he'd escorted around had muttered to themselves what an intriguing property this was, musing about prospects
for future land valuation, and would this be a good investment property, all things considered? Oliver had to bite his lip to keep from offering a hundred and one reasons why this would
not
be an ideal place for them to live. But the more time passed, the more discouraged he got.