Sydney Mackenzie Knocks 'Em Dead Page 9

  “Pretty typical,” Johanna said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You can have electrical issues without a ghost, but if you have a ghost, then you will definitely have electrical problems.” She went back to the kitchen table to get the flashlight, and shined it at the bottom of the stairs. I remembered Elliott and Joyce talking the other day. They said it was happening “again.” So either Lay to Rest had been haunted before, or I-V had been lingering around the cemetery and Victorian for a long time.

  Mel took the flashlight. We followed her down the steps. At the bottom she shined the light all around. There was a stainless-steel table, the kind that a body would go on. It was shiny and clean, and unoccupied. The floor was cement, and there was a clean drain in the center.

  No sign of a corpse, zombie, or spirit.

  I felt something brush against my shoulder. I swung at it, thinking it was a spider web or the fingers of a phantom. But it was an ordinary string. I pulled it.

  And the room was filled with light. I looked at Johanna for an explanation. “Hauntings don’t mess up every single light,” she said.

  Then the knocking started again.

  * chapter twenty-four *

  THE SECRET ROOM

  WE LOOKED AT THE WALL where the sound was coming from. There was a workbench covered with towels and toolboxes. For just a second I wondered what kinds of tools would be needed down here with a dead body, but then I didn’t want to think about it.

  Mel stepped closer to the wall. For the first time since I met her, she actually seemed a little nervous.

  Johanna and I were still hanging on to each other as we stepped closer. Every inch of my body was covered in goose bumps.

  “Help me slide this,” Mel said, indicating the table.

  “Why? Whatever is on the other side of that wall might try to break through,” I said.

  Mel reached over the table and knocked a rhythm on the wall. It was a beat that needed two more knocks to be complete. A reply came from the other side of the wall—knock knock—finishing the pattern.

  “I know what’s behind there,” Mel said. “And believe me, I don’t want to let it out either.”

  Johanna asked, “How do you know? If one of us is suddenly psychic, it should be me.”

  Mel got to one end of the table. “Unfortunately, we have to let it out. Push this table with me.”

  I hoped she knew what she was doing. We pushed the workbench, and behind it was a low door. It was small, like it went to a hidden storage compartment. The door was painted over to be the same color as the wall. With the table in front of it, it was easily unnoticeable. There was a small metal ring, also painted the same color as the wall.

  Mel picked up the ring and pulled. The door didn’t move.

  “Maybe it’s locked,” I said, “to keep whatever is in there in.” I pictured the door opening and the souls of all the dead who’ve ever been at Lay to Rest coming out and swooping around. Three of them would instantly take over our bodies. The rest would fly upstairs, take over Joyce, Cork, Elliott, my parents—maybe they’d miss the twins before they hit the rest of the town. Buttermilk River Cove as we knew it would cease to exist unless One and Two could save them. . . . This would make a good movie. The tagline could be: Can two Dumb-Os save the planet?

  Mel pulled the metal ring again. “Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she grunted as she put her foot on the wall to give her more leverage on the little door.

  Pop!

  The door flew open and Mel fell back on the ground, hard.

  Travis and Nick came out of the storage compartment, covered with dirt, dust, and cobwebs. Travis was not laughing. Johanna was the first person he saw. He hugged her. “Thank you. I never thought we would get out,” he said. “You saved our lives.” Next he hugged me, then Mel. I noticed that he hugged Mel longer than he did me and Johanna.

  I hoped that Nick was going to give me a hug too, but he just sat on the floor against the wall with a serious look in his eye and a very dim flashlight in his hand. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “In my basement,” I said.

  “That tunnel led us to your basement. Why?” he asked.

  No one had an answer.

  The boys dusted off. We slid the table back and went upstairs. Travis was quiet. The rest of us asked one another questions we couldn’t answer:

  Why was there a tunnel?

  Why did it lead to the basement?

  Why would people want to sneak into the Victorian from the woods?

  Who dug it? When?

  Was it related to the Underground Railroad?

  We decided we should look on the computer to see if there was anything about tunnels and Buttermilk River Cove on the Internet. I got my laptop.

  “Is that yours?” Johanna asked.

  “Yeah. I had to cat-sit for the whole neighborhood for months to save up for it,” I admitted, something I’d never told Leigh.

  While it booted up, the guys ate cookies and sipped buttermilk cocoa. Travis was afraid that in the hour he was trapped he’d gotten dehydrated and become vitamin D deficient, and he thought chocolate chip cookies and cocoa were a good source of vitamins.

  “What do I search for? ‘Secret tunnels in Buttermilk River Cove, Delaware’?” I asked.

  “Does this cemetery have a website?” Nick asked. “Maybe it has a history section for information like the John Hancock thing and tunnels.”

  The mention of John Hancock made me feel bad again about making up the story. I googled Lay to Rest Cemetery and found Uncle Ted’s website. It needed serious updating. It was one page with terrible pictures of the Victorian, the address, and phone number. There were no links and no history section.

  “Try tunnels,” Nick suggested

  I googled “Buttermilk River Cove” and “tunnels” and was scanning the hits when the phone rang. I got it before it could wake anyone up. It was Alan, Johanna’s brother. I gave her the phone. She spoke for a second and hung up. “He’s on his way to pick me up,” she said.

  I quickly summarized the information I’d found. “It says here that there were tunnels throughout Delaware in the early nineteen hundreds as a way of hiding slaves who were escaping north.”

  I continued, “Then, it says that since emancipation most tunnels collapsed or were filled in.”

  Travis said, “Well, someone forgot to fill this one in, and it should be, because it is really creepy. Do you know how scared I was? I seriously thought I was going to die. The walls were closing in. Oxygen was running out. I really thought that the last face I was going to see was this one right here.” He patted Nick on the back. “My best bud. He didn’t say it, but I knew he would hold me as I sucked in my last breath. When archaeologists found us in a hundred years, they would find our bones wrapped together.” He looked at Nick. “Is this guy a friend, or what?”

  I thought he might cry.

  Nick waved him off. “You would’ve done the same thing for me if you weren’t hyperventilating.”

  “Weren’t you scared?” I asked Nick.

  “Nah,” Nick said. “I was pretty sure we’d get out eventually. But I was getting hungry.” He bit a cookie.

  “Are you kidding me?” Travis said. “He held my hand so tight, I thought he would squeeze it off. He said, ‘If I don’t make it, tell my mom I love her.’ ”

  Nick blushed. We all laughed, and soon he was laughing at himself too.

  “What was it like in there?” Johanna asked.

  “Well, it was dark—very, very dark,” Travis said. “And some areas were smaller than others, so small that we had to crawl.” He indicated his clothes. “That’s why we’re so dirty.”

  “Why didn’t you turn around and go back the way you came?” I asked.

  “An excellent question!” Travis snapped. “And one I asked my best bud many times while I was deep beneath the earth’s outer crust waiting to be crushed by tons of dirt and sto
ne. And a question that I would like an answer to. Nick, best bud, please tell us. Why couldn’t we just turn around, like I said a bazillion times?”

  “You’re going to think it’s crazy,” Nick said.

  Mel said, “Not crazier than a ghost talking to us through a homemade Ouija board.”

  Travis asked, “Seriously? It worked?”

  Johanna lit up with a proud smile. “It did.”

  Nick looked at me. “So it’s real.”

  “Right. Not a pretend haunting,” I said to Nick.

  “Who would pretend about something like that?” Travis asked.

  “No one,” I said.

  “Did the spirit tell you what it wants?” Travis asked.

  “It didn’t get a chance because someone was THROWING ROCKS AT US!” Johanna yelled.

  “Oops,” Travis said.

  I turned back to Nick. “So what was so crazy that you couldn’t turn around?”

  “I heard something,” he said.

  “In the tunnel?” I asked.

  “Actually, I heard it before going in. There was a sound that led us to the tunnel. That’s why we found it.”

  Travis said, “That’s right. It was like a thump.”

  The hairs on my arms lifted. “Or was it like a thud?”

  “YES!” Travis said. “It was like a thud!”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. The ghost thuds while I’m sleeping.”

  “Well,” Nick continued, “when we were in the tunnel, the thudding led us to your basement. But then the flashlight was dying, and I didn’t want to crawl back in the dark, maybe get lost. So we banged.”

  “And banging on a brick wall is tough on the knuckles.” Travis showed us the dried blood on the back of his hand. “I thought you said the tunnel was dirt,” Johanna said.

  “It was,” Nick said. “Except at the end. The area near your basement was lined with brick, and the walls were rounded. It reminded me of an old brick oven.”

  Mel stroked an imaginary beard and thought out loud. “An oven in the basement of a cemetery house?”

  “You know what?” I said, clicking on my laptop. I opened Uncle Ted’s antique website again. “Some bodies aren’t buried.” I pointed to one word on the screen: “crematorium.”

  Mel said, “That means . . .”

  Nick held up his hand. “We get it. You don’t need to explain.”

  “What?” Travis asked. “I don’t get it.”

  Nick explained, “We were sitting in an oven where bodies were burned to ash.”

  * chapter twenty-five *

  HARDY BOYS

  “I WONDER IF I-V WAS cremated?” Johanna asked.

  “Who?” Travis asked.

  “The spirit said its name was I-V,” I explained.

  Travis and Nick looked at each other, and the color faded from their faces.

  “What is it?” Mel asked.

  Johanna asked, “Do you hear the ghost? Is it talking to you right now? Shhhh! I don’t hear it.”

  Nick ignored her. “Or maybe,” he said, “its name is Ivy, like i-v-y.”

  Travis nodded and his shoulders shimmied really fast. “That’s so creepy that I just got a chill.”

  “What’s creepy?” I asked. “Who’s Ivy?”

  Nick said, “That name was carved on a brick in the basement.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  Mel said, “We need to check that out more closely.”

  Johanna’s eyes popped open. “Yes!”

  “No way,” said Travis. “No freakin’ way. I’m staying right here.”

  Mel asked, “What do you mean no freakin’ way? Don’t you want to check it out?”

  “No. I absolutely do not want to go back in there to check out a carving left by a ghost,” Travis said. “That’s what I mean by no freakin’ way.”

  “Maybe it’s not a good idea,” I suggested.

  Headlights came into the driveway of the Victorian. “Oh, bummer-fest, there’s Alan,” Johanna said. “I gotta go. Call me the second you find something. Who wants a ride home?”

  Travis’s hand jetted into the air. He shoved another cookie in his mouth and threw on his jacket. Mel tied her scarf around her neck. “I gotta go too. If I’m late again, my dad will kill me,” she said. “Mac, see what you can find out about the brick and let us know.”

  “You coming?” Travis asked Nick.

  “I’ll head home in a few,” Nick said. “After I look at that brick again with Sydney.”

  “Okay,” Travis said. “But make sure the sheriff knows that this time it’s not my fault if you’re late.”

  Travis, Johanna, and Mel left.

  I popped a cheese puff into my mouth. Even though I wanted to hang out with Nick, I wasn’t going to climb into the crematorium and check out a brick—no way!

  After the front door closed, Nick asked, “You ready?”

  “Awesome,” I said. “Let’s go.” I looked at my watch. “Unless you think it’s too late. We could do it some other time. Maybe during the day would be better . . . more light.”

  “Wait. Are you scared? I thought you liked this stuff?”

  “Oh, I do. I just thought you might be a little shaken up after being trapped in that tunnel. You know . . .” I pretended to be a talk-show host. “When you were trapped in the small dark tunnel, unsure of your direction, losing your flashlight’s batteries, losing oxygen, hearing the thud of a ghost, and not knowing if you would ever get out, weren’t you scared?”

  Nick reached for a cheese puff. “Maybe I was a little nervous when Travis mentioned that the walls were closing in and that he felt spiders crawling into his ears. But I kept it together, for his sake.”

  “What a good friend.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I’m pretty sure he’ll have nightmares. I just hope he doesn’t call me in the middle of the night to tell me about them. Sometimes being Travis O’Flynn’s best bud isn’t as easy as it sounds,” he said. “So, do you wanna look at the brick?” He didn’t wait for an answer as he walked to the basement door. “Who woulda thought our JoJo could be a . . . a . . . what would we call her? Not a fortune-teller. A ghost communicator? A spiritualist?”

  “Spiritualist sounds good. That would be a good title for a movie, The Spiritualist, huh? Although Johanna would probably call it The Spiritualist-Aphoner. Which is probably too confusing for a movie title.”

  “You sure do like the movies.”

  “Yeah. It’s probably what I miss most from California—movies and drama class.”

  “Buttermilk River Cove is about as far from the acting and the movie scene as you’re gonna get,” Nick said. “How about you play the part of a brave ghost hunter going into the basement of a big old Victorian house? We’ll be like the Hardy Boys!”

  “That would make me a boy.”

  “I thought you were an actress. Maybe you only play easy roles. You can’t act like you’re a Hardy Boy?”

  “No,” I said. “I can do it. I can act like a Hardy Boy like it’s nobody’s business.”

  “That’s what I thought. Let’s go.”

  * chapter twenty-six *

  IVY’S BRICK

  WE WENT DOWN THE STAIRS, moved the table out of the way, and opened the door. Nick shined a light inside.

  “Are we under the Last Chance Room?” Nick asked.

  I nodded.

  “I love that story about John Hancock.”

  I nodded, but that felt like a punch in the belly.

  “The smoke probably goes out the chimney.”

  I asked, “So where is this brick?”

  He climbed in, then turned back to look at me. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “One Hardy Boy wouldn’t let another one do this alone.” He held his hand out to me.

  Nick sat with his back against one of the brick walls. I crossed my legs and faced the same direction.

  Nick flashed the light on the bricks in front of us. It lit up a bric
k on which was clearly scratched Ivy, under which, less clearly, was etched 1825.

  I asked, “Did you see this number?”

  “I didn’t notice that. My flashlight battery was fading. I’d bet it’s a year.”

  Nick touched the brick. “You know, it feels loose.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his plastic Pizza Palace club card. He wedged it between the bricks and wiggled it. “You get the ninth slice free,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard. I have to get one of those.”

  Nick eased the brick out of its spot, studied it. “Nothing special.” He slid the brick back in, but it didn’t go all the way. He pushed it harder.

  “Wait,” I said. “Pull that out again.” I shined the flashlight into the brick’s hole. I got real close and blew dust out of the way. Then I put my finger in the hole.

  [Jolt of suspenseful music!]

  I yelled, “Ahhhh! AHHHH!”

  * chapter twenty-seven *

  SLUDGE-KICKERS

  NICK JUMPED!

  He grabbed my arm and yanked until it was free from the hole.

  He looked at my fingers.

  “What?” he asked. “What was it? Did something grab you? Bite you?”

  I opened both hands all the way to show Nick I was completely uninjured. “I just wanted to get even with you for the little trick you pulled on us in the woods.” I worked hard to hold in my smile.

  Nick’s face remained flat.

  I put my hand back in the hole and removed a piece of frayed cloth. “Here.” I gave the flashlight to a sourpuss Nick. I carefully unwrapped the fabric as something shiny fell into my hands.

  “It’s a silver locket,” I said, holding it up.

  Nick and I agreed that the Hardy Boys would investigate Ivy and the locket the next afternoon. His dad picked him up in a squad car.

  * * *

  Saturday, Nick Wesley and I walked down Main Street. We headed toward the library, passing the police station on the way. “Is your dad there?” I asked.

  “Nah. He’s out investigating a cold case this week.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s an old case that was never solved. We have a lot of them on account of Buttermilk River Cove having an ultra-small police department for most of its existence.”