Jimmy Stone's Ghost Town (15 page)

"We're not here for trouble, Billy." Gasp
said.

Oh my God! This boy's name was Billy too. It
was just too eerie. If I wasn't freaked out before, I certainly was
now.

"We've got nothing for you boys. We just
want to spend some time with Mr. Blairsden and we'll be on our
way."

"Well," the Syob Nagooc leader said, "we
don't think Sam wants to spend any time with you. He's a bit
occupied with us at the moment."

I couldn't see what, exactly, Syob Nagooc
was doing around the statue, but I assumed it was just lounging
around, smoking cigarettes or drinking beer or setting off
fireworks or something else stupid. Nothing I haven't seen from my
father already. They just wanted trouble. They just wanted to give
us a hard time because they were bored.

"I know who you are,
Gasp," he continued. "I see you around here
all
the time. You think you're a
big-shot, tough-guy because you're a guide and a Town Elder and
Super Ghost of the Year and whatever else you think you
are."

The boy floated closer to Gasp and the two
were barely three feet apart at this point. I was worried what
might happen. I was worried about what, exactly, might go down here
in the town circle. Right in front of Samuel Blairsden.

"You know nothing about me," said Gasp.
"You're just a kid. A little bored kid with three friends that will
do anything you tell them because they're too scared to find other
friends of their own. That's all."

"Excuse me," said the boy
and took another step closer toward Gasp. They were practically
face to face now. I wouldn't be surprised if their see-through
ghost noses were touching. "
Excuse
me?"

I had no idea what to do.
I stood frozen behind Gasp with David and Trex just behind me. I
wasn't prepared for a physical confrontation - especially one with
a
ghost
! I didn't
even know if I
could
fight a ghost, let alone
want
to.

I turned quickly and looked back at David
and Trex.

"David," I said whispering to him loud
enough for him to hear, but not the others. "What should we
do?"

Before David could speak,
Gasp stepped even closer to the Syob Nagooc leader and now their
noses and chests
were
touching. It was about to go down!

"EARS!" I suddenly said to David. "Your
EARS!"

"What about them?" David asked raising his
hands quickly to feel his ears, see if they were still there after
what I'd said.

"No," I said. "Evade. Anticipate. React.
Strike. Your Principles! Shouldn't we be using them right now?"

David thought about it briefly and shook his
head quickly as he began to answer.

"No, Jimmy. We're not ready to use them.
This situation is too volatile for the Principles to even be
effective. There will be a time for them, but now isn't it."

I sighed heavily and
turned back around from David toward Gasp and Syob Nagooc. I
was
ready for EARS. I
knew I could do it, but I trusted David. If he said it wasn't time
for EARS, then it wasn't time for EARS.

"You're messing with the wrong guys, Gasp.
This isn't a fight you want. Just take your little non-ghost-people
and their little puppy and walk away."

And before Gasp could even answer, make a
move, or think about what he might do, Trex let out a loud bark and
tugged hard against David's grip on his leash. It was almost as if
he'd heard and understood the boys insult. He didn't like being
called a "little puppy" and he, apparently, wasn't going to take
it.

The leader of Syob Nagooc laughed at Trex's
bark and his group of boys joined in right after.

I turned around quickly toward David and
Trex just fast enough to see Trex pull himself free of David's hold
on his leash. He bolted forward as he let out another deafening
bark.

"Hahaha," laughed the boys, "That dog is
mad!"

The leader shook his head and laughed right
in Gasp's face.

"What's he gonna do? Is the little puppy
gonna fight your battles for you, Gasp?"

Gasp looked as if he were
gearing up for a punch. He was ready by now to take care of the
situation himself - at least
try
to - by showing Syob Nagooc that he wasn't afraid
of them.

But he didn't have to.

Before Gasp even had the chance to pull his
arm back, wind up that punch and throw it, Trex was right beside
him.

And when I say right
beside him, I mean
right
beside him
. Trex was
standing tall on his hind legs, staring down the leader of Syob
Nagooc like some mythical creature. He was barking and barking and
barking until a funny thing happened.

As the barks began to get
louder and louder, the leader of Syob Nagooc began to shrink away
just a bit, but it wasn't until the barks began to morph slowly
into actual
words
that the leader's cronies nearly made a mess in their little
ghostly jeans.

What started as loud barks
turned into
louder
barks and those barks, emanating from the slobbering mouth of
Trex, standing tall on his hind legs, turned into words and those
words became clear to everyone standing in the town circle that
day.

"
MOVE!
" Trex barked.
"
MOVE!
"

If you could have seen the
look on all four of Syob Nagooc's face, you would have laughed
until you were rolling around on the pavement. We were
all
shocked, but I don't
think
anything
could have prepared those boys for what they saw and heard
out of Trex that day.

Trex didn't have to say
the word "move" more than twice before Syob Nagooc scattered faster
than slugs near a salt shaker! They didn't
float
away from the circle and the
statue of Samuel Blairsden. They
flew
away!

And, as shocked and fearful as we were of
what we'd just seen out of my dog, David and I couldn't help but
bust out into a round of huge belly laughs. Even Trex, now back on
all fours and barking normally again, seemed to partake in our
moment of pure free happiness and hilarity.

"Good boy!" I said as Trex bounded over to
me and shoved his snout right into my legs. I got down on one knee
and started petting him furiously all over. "Good boy!"

Gasp turned towards us and contributed a few
laughs of his own, but it wasn't long before he was serious again
and ready to continue onto the statue.

"I have one question before we go see Mr.
Blairsden over there."

"Yes," said Gasp. "I thought you might."

"How?" I asked.
"Just
how
does
that happen?"

"Not everything in Ghost Town, Jimmy Stone,
is how it appears. Remember?"

"I remember," I said and
bobbed my head up and down in agreement. "I remember. And,
after
that
,
I'll
never
forget
it again."

Chapter Twenty Nine

After the excitement of Syob Nagooc's
appearance on our mission, I'd had just about enough of Ghost Town.
I was ready to go home. I knew, unfortunately, that wasn't going to
happen anytime soon. The only way I'd be able to get home was to
finish the challenge we'd been handed by the Oracle Essex. We
needed to find that first item, and we needed to find it now.

"This is Samuel Blairsden," Gasp said as we
approached the huge statue. "And this is his nose."

Wow. Gasp wasn't kidding
when he said this statue was the first (and only) thing he'd
thought of when the Oracle Essex mentioned "a nose leads the way"
in her letter. It'd be hard for me to describe Samuel Blairsden's
nose properly to actually do it justice. It was big and bulbous and
pointed in a way that I'd never seen a nose before. This was a
special nose, indeed, and one that you'd probably
never
see again for the
rest of your life.

"You ain't kiddin!" I said
loudly and slapped David in the chest quickly to make him look. He
was already looking and in stunned amazement when I continued
tapping his chest to get his attention. "That is one
serious
nose!"

"You can see," said Gasp, "why he's so
revered in the Seven Realms. A nose is a very special thing, Jimmy,
and Samuel Blairsden had the most special of them all."

Was this some kind of joke? Did they really
revere noses here in the realms? I mean, what a strange thing to
look up to.

"It's got to be here, somewhere." Gasp
started to look around the statue. He floated around it and
searched high and low for anything that might stand out.

You have to remember that
not only did we not know
where
to look for this first thing, but we also had no
idea
what
we were
looking for.

"It's got to be here!" said Gasp again as
his frustration began to grow.

"Did you look up his nose?" I asked. "The
letter did say 'a nose leads the way' so there could be something
up there."

Gasp floated in front of
the statue and turned himself upside down to peer inside the
cavernous nostrils of Samuel Blairsden's nose. He looked around for
what seemed to be several minutes (there was a
lot
of nose to search) before
turning himself upright and shaking his head.

"Nothing," he said. "Not a thing up
there."

And it was in that moment when we thought
all was lost, Gasp was frustrated to the very max, and we thought
we might have to pull out the map and start over that I peered up
at Samuel Blairsden's nose, down the bridge, and over the tip to
see just where it was pointing.

Straight ahead of the large, black statue,
just out of reach of the town circle was a huge iron gate wrapped
in vines, weeds, and just about every other type of vegetation you
can imagine. On the front of the gate was a sign just barely
hanging on by a thread. It was crooked and falling, but you could
still make out the words written in bold across the front.

GHOST TOWN CEMETERY - ENTER AT YOUR OWN
RISK

I pointed towards the wrought iron gate and
said "over there" loud enough for everyone to hear.

Trex barked. David mumbled something under
his breath that sounded like "oh great," and Gasp literally
gasped.

"I think I know where we have to go to find
that first thing," I said and took in a deep breath, filling my
lungs with just enough air to push out another small sentence.
"Follow me."

Chapter Thirty

You'd probably think that seeing a sign
hanging on the front of a very ominous looking wrought iron fence
that says "GHOST TOWN CEMETERY - ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK" would be
enough to scare anyone away.

And you're right. It probably would have
been enough to scare just about anyone away. I know David and Trex
were anxious about the prospect of heading into the cemetery, and
so was I, but it wasn't enough to stop me. Not anymore. After all
I'd seen in Ghost Town, what could a creepy little cemetery hold
that could shock me, surprise me, or scare me out of my boots?

"Jimmy," said David while my finger still
hovered in the air pointing toward the large black gate. "Are you
sure about this?"

I was sure. It was just
a
feeling
I had,
and I couldn't really describe it, but I just
knew
that whatever we were looking
for would be behind that fence.

"The Oracle told us 'a
nose leads the way' and I can't think of a nose more obvious than
that one there," I said and moved my arm to point back up at the
statue of Samuel Blairsden with his enormous and oddly shaped
honker. "This has
got
to be it."

"He's got a point," said
Gasp as he stepped up next to me and peered into the darkness of
Ghost Town Cemetery. "Blairsden's nose
is
pointing right past that
gate."

"If you guys say so," David said and pulled
slightly on Trex's leash to make sure he joined up beside me and
Gasp.

David seemed deflated, and not really like
the David I'd come to know. Maybe it was the time we'd spent in
Ghost Town, or maybe it was the fact that we'd seen so much since
we arrived. I don't know, but it almost felt like we'd switched
roles. I'd become the strong, confident one and David lingered in
the shadows.

"Hey, Gasp," I said.
"Maybe this is a dumb question, but
why
do you guys even
have
a cemetery here in
Ghost Town if you're all ghosts?"

"Actually, Jimmy, that's not a dumb question
at all." Gasp glanced over at David and Trex before looking at me.
"You see, all the ghosts here in Ghost Town are buried in this very
cemetery. If they weren't they wouldn't be able to reside here in
Ghost Town."

"Buried? But what's
actually buried here? I thought all these ghosts were once part
of
my
world."

I was confused and looking
for answers. Not that they mattered all that much at this point,
but I
had
to know
now.