The Ghost Let Go
by
Bruce Coville
(Author of My Teacher Is an Alien; Aliens Ate My Homework; Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher; Into the Land of the Unicorns, and many others)
Published by Oddly Enough at Smashwords
Copyright 1994 Bruce Coville
For more information about the author and his works, please visit http://www.brucecoville.com/
The Ghost Let Go
by
Bruce Coville
Thunder rumbled overhead.
A crack of lightning split the midnight sky.
My father said a word I don’t get to use.
“What’s the matter, James?” asked Chris Gurley. (My father’s name is actually Henry, but Chris and I were sitting in the backseat and pretending he was our chauffeur, so we were calling him James.)
“Nothing,” Dad muttered, as heavy drops began to spatter the windshield. “I just wanted to get back to Syracuse before this storm started. I’m exhausted.”
We were driving home from a Halloween storytelling concert put on by a couple of Dad’s friends. I was thinking about their last story, the tale of “The Phantom Hitchhiker,” when I spotted a woman walking along the road ahead of us.
I felt a shiver, as if the story was coming true. Stop it, Nine, I told myself. You’re being silly. Before I could suggest to Dad that we should offer the woman a ride she turned and ran straight at us, waving her arms wildly. As she got closer I could see that she was screaming. For a terrifying moment, I actually thought she was going to fling herself onto our hood.
“Dad, watch out!” I cried—unnecessarily, since he was already slamming his foot against the brake and wrenching the steering wheel to the right. I caught a terrifying glimpse of the woman’s twisted, screaming face through my window as we shot past, missing her by inches.
We were going way too fast when we hit the side of the road. Next thing I knew we were bouncing down a steep bank and I realized with horror that we were going to roll over.
Everything seemed to slow down as the car went onto its side, then its top. When we stopped, I was hanging upside down in the dark, held in place by my seat belt. The radio had somehow gotten turned on, and a country-and-western song was blaring through the dark, which only added to the weirdness.
“Nine!” cried my father, shouting to be heard above the radio. “Chris! Are you all right?”
“I think so,” muttered Chris. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was also upside down.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Except for the blood rushing to my head.”
I noticed that my voice was shaking.
“See if you can unhook your seat belts,” said Dad.
I reached down with my hand. The car roof—which was now the floor—was only a couple of inches from my skull. Bracing myself, I fiddled with the seat belt. When I finally opened the buckle I fell to the ceiling, landing on my head.
I heard a thump as Chris landed beside me. Between the music, the darkness, the hanging upside down, and the terror of the accident, we were pretty confused. It took a few moments of crawling around on the ceiling/floor to find one of the doors, and a few more to pry it open.
The rain was coming down so hard that within seconds my clothes were soaked and clinging to my skin. I was so relieved to be out of the car that I didn’t really care.
Once we had finished checking to see if we really were all okay, my father muttered, “I’d like to get my hands on that dame. Do you think that was some sort of Halloween prank, or is she merely crazy?” He stopped as if struck by what he had just said and looked around nervously, obviously wondering if a crazy woman might be watching us even now.
“Where do you suppose she went, anyway?” asked Chris, sounding as nervous as I felt.
I looked around, but between the darkness and the rain, I doubt I would have seen her if she was standing more than ten feet away.
“You two keep your eyes open,” ordered Dad. Then he turned his attention to the car.
“How bad is it, Mr. T?” asked Chris after a minute.
“I won’t know until we can get a better look at it,” he said mournfully.
I felt really bad for him. The Golden Chariot, as he calls our car, is a 1959 Cadillac. It’s huge (comparing it to a modern car is like comparing a seven-layer cake to an Oreo) and it’s my father’s pride and joy. He’s a preservation architect, after all, and he likes his cars the way he likes his buildings—big, old, and fancy. Given the time and money he had put into the Chariot, I could see why he would feel bitter toward the woman who caused us to plunge into the ditch.
Despite her spooky appearance, it didn’t occur to me to think the woman might have been a ghost. After all, Dad had seen her, too, and while by this time in our lives Chris and I had seen several ghosts, Dad had yet to spot one. It just wasn’t something you expected of him.
“Well, we can’t stand out here in the rain,” he said gloomily. “We’d better see if we can find someplace where we can make a few phone calls.”
“That may not be easy,” said Chris.
She was right. We had been taking one of my father’s famous “shortcuts” along an old country road and we hadn’t seen a house for the last two miles. Which meant we could either walk back those two miles through the pounding rain, or keep going on the hope that we might find a house not far ahead. Since we couldn’t really get any wetter even if we tried, we decided to gamble on going forward.
“Besides,” said Dad, “maybe we’ll run into that maniac, and I can give her a piece of my mind. Wait a minute while I get the flashlight.”
Lying on his back, he managed to retrieve a flashlight from the glove compartment. Following his lead, we scrambled out of the ditch and up to the road. The rain was pelting down so hard that it hurt. Since there was pretty much zero traffic, we were soon walking side by side. I kept looking around, worrying that the woman might jump out of the bushes or something. What she had done already was so crazy there was no telling what else she might do.
Here’s the first thing I learned that night: if you walk through freezing rain for twenty minutes, you’ll probably be willing to knock on the door of a house you normally wouldn’t get near on a bet—especially if there’s no other house in sight. Of course, given how dark it was, “in sight” didn’t amount to much in this case.
Actually, we didn’t even see the house at first. We only realized it was there because I bumped into something and shouted “Ouch!” When Dad lifted the beam of the flashlight to see what the problem was, we saw a mailbox. The name B. SMILEY was painted on the side.
“They’ve got to be kidding,” snorted Chris.
“I don’t care if Smiley shares the house with Dopey, Doc, and Grumpy,” I replied, “as long as they let us out of this rain.”
Though the house wasn’t visible from the road, we found an unpaved driveway just past the mailbox. It was lined with trees whose branches met overhead, making it almost a tunnel. The branches provided a little relief from the storm, but the effect was so creepy I decided I would have preferred the rain.
Just before we left the tree-tunnel a bolt of lightning revealed the house. It was about fifty feet ahead of us. Tall and brooding, it had a steep roof and a pair of spooky gables. It looked like something out of a nightmare, the kind of place you’re supposed to find when your car breaks down on a cold, rainy night. The only light came from a single window on the second floor.
My father waited until the rumble of thunder had passed, then said, “Well… is it?”
What he meant was, “Is it haunted?”
This wasn’t an unreasonable question. Ever since Chris and I had met “The Woman in White” at the Grand Theater, we had been growing increasingly sensitive to ghosts. Sometimes we could tell if a place was haunted just by looking at it.
Sometimes, but not always.
“I can’t tell,” replied Chris, shouting to be heard above the sudden gust of wind that made the shutters on the house begin to bang.
“Me either!” I bellowed.
I didn’t bother to add that I had come to the conclusion that people were a lot more dangerous than ghosts anyway. Not that I don’t find ghosts eerie. Something about meeting the spirit of a person who has crossed into the world of the dead makes my flesh tingle no matter how many times it happens.
“Well, standing in the rain is stupid,” said Dad at last. “Let’s go.”
Leaving the cover of the trees, he sprinted toward the porch. I don’t know why he bothered to run; we were already totally drenched. Maybe it was the promise of shelter being so close. Pointless or not, Chris and I sprinted after him.
The steps sagged beneath our weight as we dashed up to the porch. It was a relief to be out of the downpour—even if it meant standing at the threshold of such a weird-looking place.
Dad stared at the door for a moment, but didn’t make any move to summon the owner. “Don’t be silly, Henry,” he muttered to himself at last. “It’s just an old house in the country.” He played the beam of the flashlight over the doorframe until he found the doorbell button. He pushed it vigorously.
No one answered for a long time. I was wondering if we were going to have to start walking again when an old man’s face appeared at the little window in the door. His expression was hard to read, and at first I thought he was going to turn around and leave us standing on the porch. But after a moment the door creaked open.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
His voice was scratchy, as if he didn’t use it very often.
“We had an accident up the road a bit,” said my father. “Could we use your phone, please?”
A strange expression flickered across the old man’s face. It vanished almost immediately, as if he had caught himself telling a secret. His features froze into place, only his eyes betraying that something bothered him. With a shake of his head he said, “Don’t have a phone.”
My father sighed. He tried to keep it from showing, but I could tell from his eyes he was feeling a little desperate. “Is there anyone near here who does have a phone?” he asked.
The old man shook his head again, and I noticed that he was wearing a hearing aid. “No one near here at all,” he said.
“Any chance you could give us a ride?” asked Dad. He was sounding more desperate with each question.
Another shake of the head. “I don’t drive anymore.”
Dad looked back at the storm. He took a deep breath, then said, “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could we possibly stay here for the night?”
It was the old man’s turn to hesitate. He studied the three of us for a moment, then nodded and stepped aside so that we could enter.
His silence was spooky, but not as spooky as his house. The place looked like something from another time—or at least as if it hadn’t been cleaned since some earlier period in history. Dust lay thick on every surface. Cobwebs tangled in the corners. The pattern on the carpet had nearly disappeared.
“My name is Henry Tanleven,” said my father, extending his hand.
The old man looked at my father’s hand as if he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it. Finally he took it in his own and said, “Benjamin Smiley.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Smiley,” said my father. “And my apologies for intruding on you this way. This is my daughter, Nine, and her friend, Chris Gurley.”
Mr. Smiley looked surprised by my name. “It’s really Nina,” I explained, as I did almost every time I first met someone. “People call me Nine because they like the way it sounds when you put it together with my last name.”
Usually people take a second to figure out the joke, then smile and nod. Sometimes they start to smile before I explain, because they’ve already figured it out. Despite his name, Mr. Smiley looked as if he had no idea what a joke was. He just stared at me and said “Nine” in a flat voice.
Before I could think of what to say, an enormous clap of thunder shook the walls of the house.
The lights went out.
A terrifying screech ripped through the darkness.
I shouted and reached for Chris. She was trying to grab me as well, and for a weird moment we sort of clawed at each other.
“Shut up!” yelled Mr. Smiley.
Was he yelling at us, or whoever had made the screech? If the latter, it didn’t work, because the same voice shrieked, “Lights! Turn on the lights!”
“Stupid bird,” muttered Mr. Smiley.
“Bird?” I asked in a small voice.
“It’s my parrot, Commander Cody,” he said in disgust. “He tends to get excited when the weather is rough.”
At that moment the lights came back on.
“Thank you!” squawked the bird.
I felt a little safer. The bird was weird, but it was a normal kind of weird, if you know what I mean. Which was more than I could say for Benjamin Smiley. An air of deep sadness seemed to cling to him, and I felt that simply by knocking at his door we had done something incredibly intrusive.
“Come along,” he said. “I’ll show you where you can sleep.”
“Jeremiah!” squawked the bird, as we started up the stairway. “Go to Jeremiah!”
We followed Mr. Smiley along a hallway where the pink and gray wallpaper had started to peel but was refusing to let go altogether. “You two can stay in here,” he said, opening the door to a room that smelled dank and musty. He waved his hand to the right. “The bathroom is down the hall.”
He flipped a switch, turning on a single bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. The bed itself, covered with a worn, pink chenille spread, was old and sagging. Given the circumstances, it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
“I’m glad we had already arranged for you to stay overnight with us,” my father said to Chris. “At least your parents won’t be worried about where you are.”
“My parents always worry when I go someplace with Nine,” replied Chris.
My father rolled his eyes. Turning to Mr. Smiley, he said, “I don’t mind sleeping on a couch. I feel terrible troubling you like this.”
“No need for that,” said the old man gruffly. “You can use the room across the hall.”
As soon as they were gone Chris closed the door and said, “This whole thing is fishier than Mrs. Paul’s kitchen. Something very weird is going on here.”
“I agree. Only I can’t put my finger on anything specific. I mean, it’s a little odd for the old guy to be living out here all alone, but lots of people are sort of odd. It just feels like there’s something more…”
“Didn’t you recognize what happened to us out there?” she asked. “It was just like the last story we heard, the one about the phantom hitchhiker.”
I shivered. “I was thinking about that one just before we had the accident,” I admitted.
You probably know the story. A man is driving down a country road late at night and picks up a young female hitchhiker. Later—after the girl has either gotten out of the car or vanished, sometimes after asking him to deliver a message—he stops and has to stay with some people along the road. The man either describes the hitchhiker to his hosts, or spots her picture on the mantelpiece. A terrible look comes over their faces, and they tell him that his passenger was their daughter, who had died in a horrible car crash many years earlier.
I saw a couple of problems in matching that story up with what we had just experienced. For one thing, the woman we saw hadn’t been hitchhiking.
Chris nodded when I pointed this out. “But remember, in the story it’s always a man traveling alone who spots the ghost. So maybe the fact that we were in the car kept her from trying to catch a ride.”
“Also, we didn’t spot anyone’s picture on the mantel.”
“No, but did you notice the look on Mr. Smiley’s face when your father said we had had an accident? I bet he’s heard that before!”
“So what are you saying? That we’re trapped in the classic American ghost story?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying, except that there’s something weird going on around here.”
I looked around the room. It was oddly bare. The only furniture besides the bed and nightstand was a low dresser with two items on top of it: a small lamp and a big old family Bible. I started to examine the Bible, but Chris called me to the closet instead. “Take a look at this!” she whispered.
I went to stand beside her. The closet was filled with women’s clothes, all of them old-fashioned looking.
Before I could think of what to say, we heard a knock at the door. Quickly, Chris closed the closet.
“Who’s there?” I called.
“It’s me,” said Mr. Smiley. “I brought you some towels.”
It was an unexpected kindness, and I revised my opinion of him upward a couple of notches.
We stripped and dried ourselves off, then climbed into the old bed. It creaked and groaned underneath us, and the worn springs tended to roll us toward the middle.
“It’s going to be a long night,” muttered Chris after a few minutes of this.
“It already has been,” I replied.
Given the night’s excitement, I didn’t know if I would be able to sleep or not. But exhaustion can work wonders, and it wasn’t long before I nodded off.