Home, Sweet Haunt (12 page)

“Not like I was in any mortal danger,” Nora said with half a smile.

Her mother gave Nora a glare. “You left the apartment without permission. You will be punished.”

“Ugh.” Nora rolled her eyes. “I'm a ghost! Isn't that punishment enough?”

In that moment, Nora realized what she was good at. She didn't need art classes or gymnastics, or dance, or theater, or anything else. Nora was good at Halloween! She was great at scaring people. That was her best and
favorite skill, and now she would be scary
forever
. No costume necessary.

Nora had a goal. And it was a doozy.

She smiled. She finally understood what her parents meant when they'd said “the veil was thinner.” It meant she could be seen on Halloween. She could even leave the building, but only on that one day.

“I was thinking we don't need to wait until next Halloween to start haunting,” Lucas said. “We can begin sneaking around the building today. Let's take stuff off Mrs. Daugherty's tables. Rearrange her furniture. We can hide her slippers in funny places.” He clumped his way across the room. “Does it hurt when you pass through?”

“I don't know about the walls. Going through doors didn't hurt,” Nora replied. “It was easy.”

“Oh yeah!” Lucas fist-pumped the air. “I can't wait to get started.”

“Nora, you are grounded for a week. After that, there will be rules,” Mrs. Wilson said. She had a very serious look as she shook her head. “We are still having homeschool. And you can't go out of our apartment without permission. We need to know where you are. And—”

Interrupting, Mr. Wilson winked at the kids. “I want to come along sometimes.”

As part of their science homework that evening, Nora and Lucas were discussing how they were going to fish the dumbwaiter out of the basement. They'd convinced their mom that it was a physics issue and raising the platform would involve math skills.

Suddenly the knob on the front door turned. Nora and Lucas looked up.

“Did you lock the door when you came in this morning?” Nora's father asked, setting down the book he was reading.

“I walked straight through the wood, remember?” Nora said.

There were voices in the hall.

“I was worried about this,” Nora's mother said. “Ghost hunters.” She shooed the kids into Nora's room. “They'll come in with their infrared cameras and EMF meters. If they find signs of paranormal activity, we will never be left alone again!”

“We need to convince Mom and Dad that it's our
duty to scare the hunters away.” Lucas smiled. “We don't want anyone to move in, so we need to keep up the fright factor.”

Standing on Nora's bed, Lucas began to jump up and down. “How cool is this? We need to ‘borrow' a Ouija board from a neighbor. We could use it to practice our spelling words for school.” Lucas swiveled his hands as if he were working the pointer. “Tonight, I hope someone does a séance. I have some messages I'd like to pass to the living.” He flopped back on the mattress with a final body bounce and giggled. “We can make up anything we want.”

Nora rolled her eyes. “Or we can scream ‘Boo!' ” She sat down on the bed near Lucas's feet.

“Yeah,” Lucas said dreamily. “That's awesome.”

“Shhh,” Nora's father warned. “I can see that your mother was right. We need to discuss the parameters of this haunting thing. Until then”—he put a finger over his lips—“no noise.”

Whoever was on the other side of the door picked the lock and came in. Nora realized that she recognized the voices entering the apartment.

“Mom, wait!” she said, before her mother shut Nora's
bedroom door and barricaded it. “That's Caitlin.” She cupped her ear. “And LL. And Aleah.” Nora could hear them comment on the empty apartment. “They're looking for me.”

“Get out there and start haunting!” Lucas kicked Nora in the back. She fell off the bed, landing on the floor with a heavy thump.

“What was that?” Caitlin's nervous voice echoed through the burned-out space.

“A big rat?” LL sounded scared as she admitted, “I don't know.” Nora liked that she'd finally gotten under LL's skin. The scientist was a little less sure of herself now.

Aleah was definitely scared. “I think we should go downstairs,” she said with a quiver. “I don't see Nora anywhere. In fact, it doesn't look like anyone lives here. How could they? This is just a burned-out shell of an apartment.”

“Come on, Nora.” Lucas sat up on the bed. “Let's give them a real fright.”

“I think I already did,” Nora said, considering how she'd disappeared from their sleepover, and then when they'd gone to find her, they'd discovered that her
apartment was empty. Nora smiled. “I'll let them freak out a little for now. They should wonder what happened to me. Leave a bit of mystery. And then haunt them all year, just a tiny scare at a time.”

“Build it up for a big Halloween surprise?” Lucas asked as the front door to the apartment slammed shut.

“For sure!” Nora went out into the living room and stared at the back of the door. She could hear her friends' footsteps, as they decided to take the stairs, too frightened to stay on the tenth floor and wait for the elevator.

Nora smiled. “Next year will be the best Halloween ever.”

364 DAYS LATER . . .

Nora was hiding behind the couch when she heard the voices. She didn't want to be seen until the moment was right.

Caitlin and Lindsay were following Hallie through the front doorway of Hallie's apartment. LL and Aleah were with them. They were all friends now.

“I think it's great that we all wore matching costumes,” Caitlin said, cheerfully pulling off her wig. Her bracelets jangled as she brought her arm back down.

“We were the most awesome hippies out there,” Aleah replied in a far-out voice.

“Totally, yeah,” said LL, giving the peace symbol.
“Now let's check out our loot.” She dumped her candy onto Hallie's family room floor. The girls had set out sleeping bags for a slumber party.

Nora knew they were planning to watch scary movies. She was going to make the night even scarier.

Looking over her collection of candy bars and other wrapped snacks, Lindsay said, “Our apartment building has the best trick-or-treating.” She raised a handful of treats and let them rain through her fingers. “So much candy.”

“Last year LL and I had a good time at Caitlin's,” Aleah said, as if she'd forgotten that Nora had gone with them. Or tried to forget. “But this year was totally better. Way more candy.”

Nora would have to make sure that no one forgot her after this year.

“Ready?” Lucas whispered, settling down into the small hiding space beside her. He was wearing a white sheet with holes cut out for the eyes. Classic ghost.

Her brother was as annoying as ever, but now instead of chasing him away, Nora hung out with him. They were partners in haunting, and business was booming.

Turned out they didn't need to fix the dumbwaiter in
their building at all. With a little practice, they discovered they could go up and down all they wanted by melting through doors, walls, and even ceilings. Haunting inside the apartment building was great, but tonight was Halloween. Time to up the scares a lot. Maximum fright.

“Do you have the supplies?” Nora asked her brother.

He held up a canvas sack. Over the year, he and Nora had collected the perfect haunting supplies. They'd all been tested, effectively convincing the family in 6C to move away.

Haunting their own building was fun, but Nora had been waiting for this night for fifty-two weeks—364 long days and nights.

LL and Aleah climbed into sleeping bags while Caitlin and Hallie set up the first movie. Lindsay turned down the lights.

The TV cast an eerie glow across the room and set the perfect mood for haunting.

Nora gave Lucas a nod. He laid out his supplies behind the couch.

Lucas was not only an excellent actor, but he was a great director, too. They'd prepared a perfectly staged production.

Their show started with a bell. Lucas rang it near the TV once, then moved to the other side of the room. He moved around, in and out of walls so no one could see him, not yet. It was something Nora and Lucas had just discovered that night. On Halloween they could be seen, but only if they wanted to be seen.

The girls sat up on their beds, looking around for the source of the chimes, but never saw anything. Lucas came back to the couch and handed the bell to Nora. Then he went around the apartment stomping his feet and slamming doors.

He crashed and clomped until Lindsay got up and turned the light back on.

“That's odd,” she said with a shiver. “So much noise.”

“The people upstairs must be having a party,” LL remarked.

Nora winked at Lucas. It was time for phase three. He rattled chains. At the same time, Nora moved to the switch and turned the lights all off again.

Lindsay turned them on.

Nora turned them off.

It was a game for Nora and her brother. For Lindsay and the others, it wasn't very fun. Their faces were growing
pale. Their eyes began to bulge. Nora could see a bead of sweat on Hallie's forehead and goose bumps on LL's arms.

Next came the howling. Nora loved this part. “Oooohhhh,” she moaned. “Oooohhhhh.”

Through their experimental haunts over the past year, Nora had discovered that people were most scared when the ghosts did exactly what they expected them to do. Rattle chains. Slam doors. Move stuff around like a poltergeist might. If the ghost did something unexpected, it was easier to say it was a trick of the mind or a play of the imagination. Predictable ghosts were the terrifying kind.

While it was dark, Nora took a flashlight from the bag and shone it on Lucas and his sheet. He seemed to glow as he stepped through a wall like an actor coming onto the stage. This was the best part. Playing a ghostly visitor, he dramatically set a Ouija board down on the floor. Lucas carefully placed the pointer in the center, in the middle of all the letters.

Lindsay and Hallie huddled together in a corner, watching the sheet move across the room. “This is scarier than any movie,” Hallie squeaked, her voice shaky and barely audible.

LL stared at the board with her mouth hanging open.

Aleah held her hand. “What do we do?” she breathed.

“I think the ghost wants to talk to us,” Caitlin said. Nora could see her swallow hard as she moved to the board.

Caitlin lightly touched the pointer. Nora slipped behind her to guide her hand in the darkness. Lucas shone the flashlight on the board.

“N.” Caitlin reported the first letter.

“O.” The second one.

“Could it be?” Aleah said with a shudder.

“R.” There was only one more letter to go.

“A.”

Silence. The girls were all too scared to speak. It would be nice if they said
Hello
, Nora thought, but she knew that wasn't going to happen. She was a ghost, after all. And ghosts were scary, right? No sense in saying hi to a ghost.

Caitlin sat still, her fingers hovering over the last letter in Nora's name, waiting to see if there was more.

There was. But not another letter. Not what any of them expected.

On a silent count of three, Lucas flicked on the lights.

Nora slipped under the floorboards and popped up from beneath, up through the Ouija board.

“Boo!” she shouted, because that's what ghosts said.

The screaming went on for a long, long time.