Sydney Mackenzie Knocks 'Em Dead Page 8

  I jumped. My heart rate sped up.

  I thought I heard a rustle in the woods on one side of the cemetery.

  “What was that?” I asked. “Did you hear that?”

  “Shh,” Johanna said. “Are you the spirit who has been haunting the cemetery?”

  I couldn’t believe what I was feeling, but the tinfoil triangle on Q-tips was moving under my fingers. It was gliding across the wood. It went to the letter Y. Then slowly it went to E. Then to S.

  I gulped. This was totally scary.

  I looked at Mel suspiciously. “Was that you?”

  She shook her head, but I didn’t believe her. I gave her a questioning head tilt like, Come on, tell the truth. She whispered, “Seriously. If I’m lying, I’ll kiss a cow’s butt.”

  I thought about this and looked at Johanna. “Have you ever seen her do that?”

  “No. I’ve seen her kiss a cow, Travis, and a duck, but all were on the face or head or beak. The butt would be new.”

  “You kissed Travis?” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” Mel said. She took in a breath like she was going to tell me the story about the kiss when Johanna interrupted.

  “Not now. Mel, did you move the triangle or not?”

  “NOT!”

  Phew. So there is a haunting. I’m not a liar and still have friends. I should feel “yay!” but, you know, now there’s a ghost and all.

  “Fine. Then let’s continue,” Johanna said. “Spirit. Tell us your name.”

  The triangle moved to I. A cloud blew in front of the gray moon, hiding any natural light we had.

  There was another rustle in the woods. It was louder this time.

  “You heard that? Didn’t you?” I asked.

  Mel said, “I did.”

  The triangle moved some more. It moved to V.

  Then I felt a little stone hit me in the back. “Ouch!” I cried, and I took my hands off the table. Then a stone landed on the board. Another hit the water jug. Another hit Mel in the head. They were all coming from the direction of the woods. Mel tried to run out, but Johanna pulled her back inside the sea-salt circle.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her. “Are you crazy? It could be a wicked spirit.”

  “Someone hit me with a stone. I’m gonna kick some butt.”

  “Someone? Or something?” Johanna asked.

  “You aren’t a Ghostbuster,” I said to Mel. “You’re a mere mortal. You can’t kick a ghost’s butt. Geez, I knew this was a bad idea. Now we’ve opened a portal to the other side! All kinds of evil can slip through into our world.”

  Mel snorted. “Portal? Come on. Are you for real?”

  Then we heard a noise. Not any kind of ghostly howl or cry. It was a laugh. A human laugh.

  “I know that sound.” Mel pulled away from Johanna and crossed the salt circle. She ran straight for the woods.

  There was more laughter—eighth-grade-boy-style laughter.

  Mel said, “They’re gonna get it.”

  Johanna grabbed the flashlight. “Come on. We have to save them.”

  “You should let her get them for scaring us like that.” Then I added, “What about the portal? You can’t just walk away and leave it open.”

  Johanna set both palms on the board and said, “I pronounce this séance session closed.” I thought her next line was going to be You may now kiss the bride. She pulled me by the arm. “Just come on. I don’t want her to go to prison at such a young age.”

  I followed Johanna into the woods where Mel had tackled Travis. She was smacking him in the head. Nick couldn’t help him because he was laughing too hard. We pulled Mel off and possibly saved Travis’s life.

  * chapter twenty-one *

  THE SECRET IN THE WOODS

  TRAVIS WAS BENT OVER WITH laughter about how they’d scared us. I was too mad to think it was funny.

  “You jerk!” Johanna said, and swatted at Nick, making Travis laugh harder. So she tossed a few kicks his way.

  Mel laughed at Johanna beating up Travis.

  I crossed my arms across my chest. “That was mean,” I said. I was serious, and when Nick caught my eye, he knew I meant it. He stopped laughing, but Travis was clueless.

  Mel said, “Lighten up. It was a joke.”

  No one had ever told me to lighten up.

  Nick looked at me, and I could tell that he knew that what Mel had said bothered me. “Oh, we have something so cool to show you.” He swung his hand against mine in a come-with-me way.

  “You want us to follow you into the woods? How do we know it’s not another trick?” I asked.

  Mel followed Nick and looked at me. “You don’t. That’s the excitement! This is how we have fun around here. Come on, Syd.” She didn’t have to coax Johanna.

  The four of them walked away from me.

  Travis wiped tears of laughter out of the corners of his eyes and said, “You’re gonna love this.”

  I had a choice:

  Stay here all alone in the dark woods next to the cemetery without so much as a flashlight or sea salt, where it was quite possible that an evil ghost had recently slipped through a portal from the spirit world to ours.

  Or:

  Trust my four new friends, two of whom had just played a huge joke on me that was not funny, and two who had just communicated with the dead, and follow them deeper into the dark woods next to a cemetery, where it was quite possible that an evil ghost had recently slipped through a portal from the spirit world to ours. Remember, they had the flashlight and sea salt—although we only “guessed” that the salt protected us from the wicked; we were not actually sure.

  What to do?

  Nick turned back to me. “You coming?” His eyes were oh so cute.

  Nearby leaves crackled, making me jump out of my skin. I ran to catch up to the flashlights in front of me.

  “What is it?” Mel asked Travis.

  “If I tell you, it will spoil the surprise,” Travis said. “But it’s gonna be good.”

  “Is it alive?” Johanna asked.

  “Nope,” Nick said.

  Great, then it’s dead.

  Johanna asked, “Is it a skeleton? A skull? Oh my God, you’ve found human remains, haven’t you? A femur? A rib?”

  “You need to lay off the TV,” Travis said.

  Mel said, “Because there’s sooo much other stuff to do around here.”

  Nick said, “We’re almost there.”

  “What happened to NASCAR?” I asked.

  “A fart,” Travis said.

  “A fart?” Mel asked.

  “A farce,” Nick said. “He means a farce. They kinda rhyme, but mean very different things.”

  “We made up the NASCAR thing,” Travis said. “So we could SCARE YOU!” He yelled “scare you” so close to me that he made me jump again.

  We walked for another minute without talking.

  Nick stopped. He shined his flashlight at a huge clump of weeds at the base of a small incline. “There it is.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “What do you mean ‘what is it’? Can’t you see?” Travis asked like he was offended that I didn’t immediately appreciate their amazing finding.

  Mel stepped closer and stretched her neck to get a closer look. “A cave? Why would there be a cave out here?”

  I said, “Maybe it’s a bear den.”

  “Huh, I hadn’t thought of a bear den,” Nick said.

  Johanna said, “Or it could be for dragons or crocodiles.”

  I liked her ideas more than mine, because I imagined a werewolf home.

  “But it’s better than just your plain old everyday cave,” Travis said.

  We didn’t understand so he gave us clues. “Rhymes with funnel . . . and it starts with a t.”

  “A tunnel!” we yelled.

  “I’d heard that there were tunnels in town, but I didn’t believe it,” Nick said.

  “How do you know that?” Travis asked.

  “Someone pays attention in schoo
l,” Mel said.

  Nick said, “VanOstrum told us that the Underground Railroad went through Buttermilk River Cove.”

  Johanna said, “I don’t see any railroad tracks.”

  Nick said, “It wasn’t really a railroad. And actually, it wasn’t really underground. But I guess this part was.”

  Johanna asked, “Where do you think it goes?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Mel said. “Go ahead, boys. Check it out and let us know what you find.”

  “Um,” I said. “Is that a good idea? What if the roof crumbles in?”

  The boys hesitated.

  “Mac might be right,” Travis said.

  Mel put her hands under her armpits and flapped her elbows up and down. “Bawk! Bawk, bawk!”

  Nick started into the tunnel. “If we hear a bear snoring, or see the ceiling start to collapse, we’ll come right back out.”

  With that, they vanished into the dark hole.

  * chapter twenty-two *

  TUNNEL

  JOHANNA, MEL, AND I FOUND a boulder not too far from the tunnel entrance where we planted our butts and waited for the boys to come out. It was cold. We sat real close, trying to share our body heat.

  “They’re crazy,” I said.

  Mel said, “They’ll be fine. Nothing exciting ever happens in Buttermilk River Cove. Believe me. No yeti, no cave-in. The only exciting thing I can think of was the time the horse fell through the ice.”

  I said, “You already told me about that.”

  “See,” Jo said. “That’s all we got.”

  I said, “I guess it is pretty boring. You don’t even have a movie theater.”

  “Boring? You think it’s boring here because it’s not like Hollywood?” Mel asked. “Sorry we’re so boring for you.”

  I did it again. I forgot that it was okay for her to think Buttermilk River Cove was boring but not me.

  “I didn’t really mean boring,” I said. “Actually a séance in the middle of a graveyard is exciting, right?”

  “Right,” Johanna said.

  “And finding a secret tunnel hidden in the woods is exciting,” I said. “I’ve never done that before.”

  “Me neither,” Johanna said.

  Mel was still silent.

  “And living in this amazing cemetery in a haunted house is . . . well . . . it’s amazing. So maybe there’s no movie theater. So what? Actually, this place is anything but boring.”

  I waited for Mel’s reaction.

  “I guess,” Mel said. “Maybe things are changing.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “JoJo can really talk to the dead. Nick and Travis could run out of that tunnel being chased by a phantom or a creature from the center of the earth.”

  Mel said, “That would be exciting.”

  Johanna added, “Or the tunnel will collapse, and we’ll have to stick pipes in the ground to talk to them and give them air. And the National Guard will come up to the top of this hill to dig them out, and we’ll be on the news.”

  “Now, that would be cool,” Mel said.

  “Except it would mean that Nick and Travis would be trapped in an underground tunnel,” I pointed out.

  “Right,” Johanna said. “That part probably wouldn’t be good.”

  I wiggled my butt cheeks, which were starting to freeze onto the boulder, and I thought back to the board. “What do you think I-V is?” I asked.

  Johanna said, “I was thinking it’s IV, like in a hospital when the doctor puts a tube in someone’s arm and the liquid goes in.”

  I asked, “What does that kind of IV have to do with a spirit or a haunting?”

  “Maybe he has one stuck in his arm and needs help getting it out. Like that fairy tale about the lion with a thorn in his foot. And the brave mouse pulls it out and they become best friends. Maybe the spirit needs us to pull the IV out.”

  I didn’t think that was right, but it was interesting to see how her mind worked.

  “That’s possible,” I said. “But I was thinking maybe it’s the beginning of a name, like Ivan, or Ivanna, or . . . or it could be a last name.”

  The wind blew the bare tree limbs overhead. A chill went up my back that felt like more than just cold temperature. I didn’t want to talk about ghosts anymore. “So, tell me about the time you kissed Travis.”

  “Ooooo,” Johanna said. “Tell her, tell her.”

  “It was nothing. It was on a dare. And I have a policy never to turn down a dare.”

  “She does,” Johanna confirmed.

  “Who dared you?”

  “Me!” Johanna raised her hand. “She won’t admit it, but I think she’s had a secret crush on Travis for like a year.”

  I asked Mel, “Do you?”

  “No!”

  “Why would she keep it a secret from you?” I asked Johanna. “I mean, wouldn’t you guys talk about stuff like that? You know, like make a plan to see him or something.”

  Johanna said, “I guess so. I used to think Michael Finnegan was cute, and we followed him everywhere. One time we even pretended there was free pizza at the Pizza Palace just so we could hang out with him. Remember, Mel?”

  “I remember.” Then she added, “Look, I don’t have a thing for Travis.”

  Yes, she does, Johanna mouthed to me.

  “What happened to Michael Finnegan?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s still around. He plays hockey.”

  There was a rustle in the woods. Johanna shined her flashlight toward it. A bird flew out of its beam.

  “They’ve been gone awhile,” I said. “You think they’re all right?”

  Johanna said, “It has been kind of a long time.”

  “Let’s give ’em a shout,” Mel said.

  We walked to the entrance to the tunnel, which from here looked more like a cave. Mel pulled aside some branches that blocked the entrance. Johanna shined the flashlight in the hole while Mel cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, guys! What are you doing?”

  No answer.

  “Travis!”

  No answer.

  “Nick!”

  No answer.

  Mel said, “I bet they’re right here around us, hiding. Just getting ready for the chance to scare us again.”

  I looked around in the dark but only saw darkness.

  We crept around the area and didn’t see anything.

  “Maybe they went back to the house, and they’re sitting at your kitchen table right now, sipping hot cocoa and laughing that we’re out here in the cold,” Johanna said.

  “Probably. Come on—let’s go up there and give them a piece of our minds,” Mel said. “I’m getting frostbite.”

  We went to the site of the séance and gathered Johanna’s supplies. Then we entered the Victorian through the workroom door, took off our muddy boots, and went into the kitchen.

  No boys.

  We ladled cocoa into mugs, cupped our cold hands around them, and sat down. “What do you think we should do?” I asked. “It’s ten o’clock. Maybe we should call the police or something.”

  “Call Sheriff Wesley and tell him that we lost his son and Travis in a hidden tunnel under the cemetery?” Johanna asked.

  “I don’t think I wanna make that call,” Mel said.

  “Let’s give them fifteen more minutes,” I suggested.

  “And you said nothing ever happens in Buttermilk River Cove,” Johanna said to Mel. “I think Nick and Travis really might be lost.”

  That’s when we heard a noise.

  * chapter twenty-three *

  SOMETHIN’ SOMETHIN’ IN THE BASEMENT

  I JUMPED. “WHAT WAS THAT?”

  Mel said, “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I did,” Johanna said. “It was like a knocking, or banging.”

  It happened again.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  Mel’s eyes bulged.

  I asked, “Do you think a spirit is trying to get in the house?”

  “I think they can float thr
ough walls,” Johanna said. “But if that’s what’s happening, we’re at a whole new level of haunting.”

  It happened again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Knocking.

  Mel said, “Sounds like it’s coming from downstairs. Do you have a basement?”

  “Sort of.”

  Johanna asked, “What’s down there?”

  I just looked at them because the words wouldn’t come out.

  “What’s down there, Mac?” Mel asked.

  “It’s where we keep the . . . the ummm . . . err . . .”

  “WHAT?” Johanna asked, but I couldn’t get the words out.

  “The dead bodies?” Mel asked. “Please say it’s bodies.”

  All I could do was nod. I felt the color leave my face.

  Mel’s face lit up. “Are there any down there right now?”

  “I don’t think so. But I haven’t been down there.”

  Johanna asked, “Well, have any been delivered?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “I don’t think they just show up on your doorstep like a package from UPS.”

  “Maybe Uncle Ted left you a little extra somethin’ down there before he kicked the bucket,” Mel said. “And then our little séance called it back to life!”

  “Do you think I could do that? What am I saying? I could totally do that! I’ve been reading about this stuff for two days. But it could be that he was never really dead, like John Hancock.”

  “Or,” I said softly, “he’s undead.” The words made my entire body shiver.

  An eerie quiet filled the room as we thought about these possibilities. The silence was interrupted by more knocking.

  “Let’s check it out,” Mel said.

  “Maybe we should wake up Elliott,” I said.

  “To tell him we had a séance and opened a portal and there could be a spirit in your basement right now?” Mel asked. “Sure. Go for it. Let me know how that works out for you.”

  I shrugged because she was right—it sounded crazy.

  “It’s decided then,” Mel said. “We’re going down.”

  I didn’t remember deciding on that.

  Mel opened the basement door and flicked the wall light switch, but it turned on a light in the hallway behind us.