Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost (12 page)

She was right. The entire bottom floor of Casa Clark
reeked. I'd noticed it the second I'd opened the door. The smell was gross enough to interrupt my nonstop freak-out at having survived a paranormal experience. That's what it was called, right? When you caught a ghost acting up? I'd already called Reggie from the bus. Wasn't there, or wasn't picking up. Then I'd tried to call Kevin. Wasn't there, or wasn't picking up. Then I'd tried to call Angus. Went straight to voice mail.

All the way home on the bus my thoughts had ricocheted around my head. I had seen all those toaster levers sliding up and down with my own eyes. I had seen the freezer door swinging open with my own eyes. I had been alone in the grocery.

I chewed my cuticles, as nasty a habit as nail-biting, but I didn't care.

It had to have been Louise, the ghost in the walk-in, the Kikimora. Except it couldn't be Louise, the Kikimora. No person with half a brain believed in ghosts. It was like believing in unicorns, the Loch Ness monster, Big Foot, special personal angels who watched over you. I calmed down thinking of all the lame woo-woo things that did not exist, ghosts included.

Then how did you explain the toasters pretending to be toasting and ejecting their invisible pieces of toast? How did you explain the door of the walk-in freezer opening all on its own? The door had been shut firmly—I'd heard the smart click of the handle as clearly as Mrs. Dagnitz's voice complaining about the fish smell.

“That halibut was fresh,” she said. “It shouldn't smell like this. Minerva, don't you smell it?”

“It's disgusting,” I said, pinching my nose shut with my fingers.

Quills shrugged and took his opportunity to slink back down into the basement.

I was happy to help Mrs. Dagnitz throw open the windows and reclean the counters with Windex, grateful not to be in trouble for having missed family yoga that morning.

“Don't go easy on the stuff,” she said over my shoulder. “We have got to get that smell out of here before I do something I regret.”

“Like order a bag of McDonald's fries? They cover every smell in the world. They've done wonders for the inside of Quills's car.”

Mrs. Dagnitz laughed. “Really? I just might have to try that.”

I knew she never would. Mickey D's excellent fries had nothing in common with broccoli or pomegranate juice or any other antioxidant food. Still, she didn't get all horrified over my admitting I had firsthand knowledge of McDonald's, and after I was finished scrubbing the counters, she let me go.

Before heading up to my room I trotted down to the basement and plucked Jupiter from where he snoozed in his hammock on the third floor of Ferret Tower. I cradled him in the crook of my arm like a baby doll. He
blinked and trembled a little, his usual behavior before he's fully awake and eager to hide your shoes. The moment I let Jupiter loose in my room, he did his mad ferret inchworm dance straight under a pile of dirty clothes.

Out of habit, I took my rebus notebook from my desk drawer—a composition notebook with a purple-and-white marble cover. I sat down in front of my computer and IMed Reggie, who you can find online pretty much around the clock, especially since he'd been dumped by his first real girlfriend, Amanda the Panda, a ballet dancer one grade ahead of us.

Ferretluver:
Hey Reg. Here's a rebus for you:
Noon lazy
.

BorntobeBored:
D'oh. Lazy afternoon. You're losing your touch, Minerva C.

Ferretluver:
Yeah well, I'm a little distracted these days.

BorntobeBored:
Breaking up with the tool?

Ferretluver:
You mean Kevin? Just cuz you got kicked to the curb by the Panda that's no reason to be Regzilla.

BorntobeBored:
Been tortured by more wedding shopping?

Ferretluver:
It's just a reception. They already got married.

BorntobeBored:
Whatevah.

Ferretluver:
So I gotta ghost question.

BorntobeBored:
Mwahhahahaha.

Ferretluver:
Do you think a ghost could set a fire?

BorntobeBored:
Duh.

Ferretluver:
Duh? Like this happens all the time?

BorntobeBored:
Just saw a cool TV show on a haunted jail, where a guy who died in one of the cells used to set the beds on fire. Every prisoner they ever stuck in there burned to a crisp while he slept. Which turned THEM into ghosts. So now the jail cell is doubly haunted.

Ferretluver:
Riiiiiiight. Thank you. Drive through, please.

BorntobeBored:
I'm not being The Exaggerator!

The Exaggerator was Reg's superhero identity—he said if he ever was called upon to rid the world of evil, he wouldn't lift a sword, but would force the evildoers to surrender by exaggerating everything he said until they begged for mercy.

We joked about that for a while. Then he said that in his humble opinion an unexplained fire was actually a ghost temper tantrum. He said that really old places like Ireland have a lot of cranky temper-tantrum-throwing ghosts, and that every pub and church had a story about a fire being set in it. Then he logged off to watch a documentary about King Tut.

Kevin popped on for a while and IMed me about his
cousin visiting from Vacaville, California, and about his new World of Warcraft character. We had been boyfriend and girlfriend for two weeks. Some of my friends had one boyfriend in the morning, but another one by the afternoon. By comparison, Kevin and I were like an old married couple. His new character was a gnome rogue, MiniVanDamme, specializing in assassination and leather-working. I wondered if IMing him about MiniVanDamme was the same as watching him play WoW, something I vowed I would never, ever do.

While I was IMing with Kevin, Angus called my cell and I let it go to voice mail.

His message said, “You must be tired—you've been running through my head all day long.” This was a well-known lame-o flirt line, but I couldn't tell by Angus's tone of voice whether he was using it for real or not.

For some reason I couldn't name, I decided I didn't want to talk to Angus just yet. Even though I'd tried to call him the second after I'd torn out of the grocery—the toaster levers hopping up and down behind me, the door to the walk-in freezer swung open wide—now that I'd calmed down, something told me to wait, to collect my thoughts, to figure out a few things.

I couldn't get the idea of a ghost temper tantrum out of my head. I didn't know much about ghosts, but it stood to reason that if they were so difficult that they refused to move on to the higher plane, they would be prone toward pitching hysterical fits. I Googled
“Kikimora,” half hoping my search would return the name of a band or an anime character, but there it was: “Kikimora is a female house spirit in Slavic mythology.”

Angus was telling the truth.

The average Kikimora is a small humpbacked woman in a tattered dress. She usually lives behind the stove or in the basement (or in a walk-in freezer!!), and minds her own business as long as her home is not disturbed. If someone fails to keep her home tidy or if it is disturbed in any way, she grows enraged. Reading this, I could feel the blood thrumming inside my head. I tried to remember my conversation with Paisley. Had she said they were rearranging anything in the grocery to make way for her pastry counter? The grocery wasn't large, so Nat and Nat
must
have moved some stuff around.

Then I read this: “Once angered, the Kikimora will come out of her hiding place and spin. If a person witnesses a Kikimora spinning, they will soon die.”

I leaped up from my desk, knocking my chair over, sprinted to the end of the third-floor hall, and took the fire pole straight down into the kitchen, startling Mark Clark, who was starting the dishwasher.

“You haven't done that in a while,” said Mark Clark.

“What?” I cried. I wondered if watching old toasters toast ghostly slices of bread was somehow the same as spinning.

“Taken the pole. You said you were too old for it.”

“I took it just a couple days ago,” I said. Who cares when I last took the pole! I was possibly on the verge of death. It didn't say how the person witnessing the spinning Kikimora died. Did their blood turn to sand? Did they spontaneously combust? Were they hit by a truck?

Mark Clark pressed the Start button and the dishwasher started making its swooshy-swishy cleaning sound. “When you were a baby, you had this portable crib, and if you had trouble sleeping, we'd roll you in here and start up the dishwasher, even if there weren't any dishes in it. You'd fall asleep in a second.”

“How cute of me!” I said. I was panting. I collected my hair, tied it in a big knot on top of my head, and then pulled it out again.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“It still smells like fish in here,” I said. “Why does it still smell like fish?” I sounded like Mrs. Dagnitz, obsessing about the fish odor. Maybe this was my mother's problem—she'd seen a Kikimora spinning there among the ancient Indian pueblos of Santa Fe and was on edge from awaiting her death. Morgan was right. I should be nicer.

I tried to catch my breath, told myself that it would be all right, that I had not seen Louise spinning, nor had I seen Louise at all. And if worse came to worst, and I had seen her spinning, ideally I would die before Saturday, which would mean I wouldn't have to go to Mrs. Dagnitz's wedding reception.

Mark Clark and I got ourselves Otter Pops, then watched a movie on his monitor. The computer room was the coolest place in the house because it had what is called a cross breeze. The movie was PG-13. There was some smooching and some jokes that I didn't get that made Mark Clark grimace and go, “Aw no,” then reach over and cover my ears with his palms. I'd forgotten all about Jupiter, rummaging around upstairs in my room. I did not want to go back up there by myself, but if I asked Mark Clark to come with, he'd wonder why, and I wasn't into having a don't-be-silly-there's-no-such-thing-as-ghosts lecture.

Lucky for me, when I raced back upstairs, Jupiter was curled up inside a bucket hat I'd left on the floor, sound asleep.

In the morning, after I'd eaten a bowl of muesli (yuck!) and a container of strawberry yogurt, I called Mrs. Dagnitz and asked her if she needed me to do anything for Mark Clark's birthday, which we were celebrating that night. Did she want me to clean the dining room? Bake Mark Clark's favorite yellow cake with mocha frosting?

“Does the kitchen still smell like fish?” she asked.

The kitchen did still smell like fish. The entire bottom floor still smelled like fish. When Quills had come home the previous night from listening to some music somewhere, he'd said, “Gawd, did Shamu die in here or something?”

“Kinda,” I said.

“I don't think I can possibly cook in that kitchen with this heat and that fish smell,” said Mrs. Dagnitz. “That halibut was—”

“Fresh. I know,” I said. “We practically caught it ourselves. I'll Windex the counters again. Should I scrub the floor, too?”

To my ears I sounded like a total poseur, but my tactic worked. Mrs. Dagnitz said I didn't need to do that. It was so thoughtful of me to offer to help, but she had it all under control and I should go out and enjoy my summer and realize that these were the best years of my life. She asked if I was going to see that lovely friend Chelsea, and I lied and said of course, that Chelsea and I were practically inseparable and that today we were going to practice new hairdos and paint our nails and go to the mall and shop for accessories.

“Just make sure you're home by, say, five o'clock.”

“I'll call you from my cell when I'm leaving Chelsea's,” I said.

Sometimes I was such a good daughter.

Cryptkeeper Ron's real name was Ron Freary. He owned a car dealership near the mall that sold—well, I wasn't sure what kind of cars they were. It took no sleuthing at all to find this information. Watch late-night television for more than ten minutes and you will be assaulted by a “Come to Ron Freary's for a Scary Good
Deal” commercial. Quills always joked that the scary thing about Ron Freary was not his deals, but the cornflake-sized pieces of dandruff clinging to the shoulders of his sports coat.

Morgan let me borrow his mountain bike. I caught him just as he was walking out the door with poor Ned, corgi and babe magnet. “Say ‘hey' to Jeannette for me!” I called as I swooshed down the driveway. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him frowning after me.

If anyone would know about Louise, and whether she was capable of setting a fire, it would be Cryptkeeper Ron. It was because of her that he'd put Corbett Street Grocery on his tour of haunted Portland.

As I coasted down through the neighborhoods, I tried hard to remember going on the Halloween tour. It had been more than two years ago. Practically another lifetime. We'd bombed around town in a bus painted black, with a waving ghost painted on the side.

We stopped at an apartment house, a boarded-up factory that made Styrofoam heads for wigs and hats, and at a cemetery that should have been way scary, but it was across the street from a burger joint broadcasting the World Series, and as we tromped around the gravestones you could hear guys hollering, “Hey, Ump! One more eye and you'd be a Cyclops!”

The grand finale was a maze of the narrow tunnels
that ran beneath a local tavern, where in times of yore sailors were shanghaied, drugged and kidnapped, and stuck on an oceangoing ship, where they were forced to work as crew members. Cryptkeeper Ron said that even some stragglers touring the tunnels had gone missing, but that his lawyers told him never to mention that. Har! I was in fifth grade, and even I'd known it was a joke. I remember touching one of the tunnel walls. It was wet, even though there was no water anywhere that I could see. That frightened me more than any talk of shanghaied sailors.