Pleasing the Ghost
Read Pleasing the Ghost Online
Authors: Sharon Creech
For the TASIS Lower School's young authors
Excerpt from
The Boy on the Porch
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Chapter 1
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Chapter 2
W
ITH THE
W
IND
I
'm Dennis, your basic, ordinary nine-year-old boy, and usually I live a basic, ordinary life. I go to school, I take care of my dog, I eat, I sleep. Sometimes, though, my life is not so ordinary. This is because of the ghosts.
Another one arrived last week. It came on the wind, like the others. It's not an ordinary wind that brings these ghostsâit's a bare whisper of wind that tickles the curtains. No one feels or hears this wind except me and my dog, Bo.
The first ghost came a month after my father died. It was my great gran, but I didn't know she was a ghost. She seemed real enough to me. When I mentioned Great Gran's visit to my mother, she said, “Dennis, Great Gran's in heaven.”
“Not last night she wasn't,” I said.
A month later my old cat, Choo, flew in my bedroom window. I could see him plain as anything, but he felt as light as a leaf. When I held his puckered old face up to my mother, she pressed her hand against my forehead. “Oh Dennis,” she said. “Not feeling well? Choo's been dead for six months.”
There have been other ghosts since Choo and Great Gran. There was an old man who used to live next door, a woman who said she had lived two hundred years ago, and a policeman. A constant parade of ghosts, but never the one I really want.
I asked the policeman ghost, “Why do ghosts visit me? Why don't they visit anyone else I know?”
“You didn't send for us? Sometimes we're sent for.”
“I didn't send for you,” I said. I hadn't sent for Choo or Great Gran either, though it was nice to see them. And I certainly hadn't sent for the dead old man or woman. “But if I did send for a specific ghost, would he come?”
“Hard to say,” he said. “Can't always go where we aim! I was just out riding on the wind, and this is where it brought me. Thought maybe you sent for me.”
Imagine! To ride on the wind and whiz into people's windows like that!
Last Friday, as I climbed into bed, I heard one of the whispering winds. When my mother came in to say good night, I asked her if a storm was coming.
“Storm? I don't think so. Look how calm it is. Not even a breeze out there.”
So I knew that this was another ghost wind. Soon it would be followed by a faint whistle, and then the wind would swirl and roll and twist in through the room trailing a cloud of blue smoke. Out of that blue smoke would step a ghost. That's how it happens. It doesn't matter if the window is open or not. The wind and the ghost will come right through it.
I've tried to tell my friends and teachers about these ghosts, but they just laugh. “What an imagination!” my teachers say. One boy at school, Billy Baker, punched me in the chest. “You don't see no ghosts, you stupid liar,” he said.
Billy was new at our school. My teacher sat him next to me. She whispered, “You and Billy have something in common. I know you'll be nice to him.”
Nice to him! I tried, but he was the grumpiest crab I'd ever met. After he punched me for no good reason, I decided someone else could be nice to him. And as for having something in commonâhah! The only things we seemed to have in common were that we were both boys and we were in the same class.
Bo whimpered in his sleep. Did he sense what was coming? The wind whistled, and the curtains curled in the air. Bo's yellow fur stood on end.
The ghosts had never hurt me, but still I was afraid. What if it was a wicked, horrible ghost? But I also wanted to know who it would be. Maybe it would be the one ghost I wanted, the one ghost I prayed for, the one ghost I'd sent for.
I had an odd, quivery feeling as that wind blew harder, reeling and rolling through the window, twisting the curtains high into the air. Bo crawled up beside me and covered his ears with his paws.
“Get ready, Bo. Here comes the ghost.”
Whish!
blew the wind.
Whew!
The curtains flew this way and that, knocking a book off my desk.
Whisk!
My socks lifted off the floor and danced in the air.
Bo scooted around in a circle, trying to get his head under the covers.
Whish! Whisk!
The curtains flipped into the air and sank down again, wrapping their ends around the chair. Suddenly the wind calmed. In came a quiet stream of air and a wisp of blue smoke, which swirled and floated across the room.
“Here it comes, Bo. We're about to have a visitor.”
The blue smoke twisted and twirled, floating down to the floor and forming itself into a pair of green boots.
“It's here, Bo!”
The smoke formed a sturdy pair of legs in blue trousers. Next appeared a purple sweater across a big chest and arms. The smoke wiggled and wobbled and formed into a head topped by a red cowboy hat.
The ghost had arrived.
T
HE
G
HOST
I
recognized him immediately. “Uncle Arvie! It's you, isn't it?”
“Riggle!” said the ghost, brushing himself off and rushing to hug me. His hug felt like tickling cobwebs.
It was Uncle Arvie, all right. That's just the way Uncle Arvie talksâor
used
to talk, when he was alive. Most people couldn't understand a word he said. Only his wifeâAunt Juliaâand I could piece together what he was saying. But it wasn't easy.
Bo poked his nose out from under the blanket, sniffed the air, and barked. He tilted his head from side to side, staring at Uncle Arvie.
“Don't be scared, Bo. It's Uncle Arvie!”
“Yip,” Bo squeaked.
“Elephant?” Uncle Arvie asked.
“No, it's my dog.”
“Elephant!” Uncle Arvie insisted.
This was not going to be an easy ghost to have around.
When I was little, Uncle Arvie spoke just like everyone else, saying normal words at the normal time. But one dayâwhen Uncle Arvie was still aliveâhe woke up speaking this way.
Uncle Arvie had had a stroke, and words were twisted in his brain. He knew what he
wanted
to say, but the words that came out of his mouth were not the words he chose. Sometimes they weren't even words at allâor at least not words that most people knewâlike
riggle
and
fraggle
.
“You're supposed to be in heaven now,” I said.
“Railroad, yin.”
“Heavenâup there.”
Uncle Arvie waved his arms as if he were flying. “Railroad!”
He strolled around my room, looking at things. He picked up the book that had fallen on the floor. “Pasta,” he said. “Wig pasta.” Next he examined the pictures on my bookshelf, picking up one of me and my mother. “Macaroni and Dinosaur!” he said.
“It's my mother and meâ
Dennis
,” I said.
“Macaroni and Dinosaur! Macaroni and Dinosaur!”
Uncle Arvie examined a photograph of my father and kissed the picture. “Dinosaur's pepperoni,” he said. Uncle Arvie pointed toward the door. “Pepperoni?”
“My father isn't here.”
“Nod pepperoni?”
“He's gone. Heâ”
Uncle Arvie tilted his head just like Bo, waiting for me to finish.
“He's in heaven,” I said.
“Nod!” Uncle Arvie put his hands over his mouth. “Nod railroad? Nod pepperoni railroad? Nod, nod.” He was very upset. My father and Uncle Arvie were brothers.
“I was hoping maybe you'd seen him thereâin heaven.”
“Nod, nod,” Uncle Arvie cried. “Nod, nod pepperoni.”
I gave him a tissue. “Last year,” I said. “Right after you. He was very sick.”
Uncle Arvie blew his nose.
“We miss him,” I said.
Uncle Arvie held the picture to his chest.
“We miss you, too,” I said.
Uncle Arvie put the picture back on the bookshelf and lifted another photograph. It was one of Uncle Arvie and his wife, Julia.
“Oh, Heartfoot,” he said. “Oh, oh, Heartfoot.” He hugged the picture and kissed it.
“
She's
not in heaven,” I was glad to report. “Aunt Julia's fine!”
“Oh, Heartfoot.” He put the picture back and turned suddenly. “Please,” he begged. “Three pleases.”
“What?”
Uncle Arvie held up four fingers, looked at them, and then pushed one back down. Three fingers wiggled.
“Three what?” I asked. It looked as if Uncle Arvie wanted three things, but I had no idea what he might want. “Food?”
“Nodâ”
“Money?”
“Nod, nodâ”
“Clothes?”
“Nod, nod, nodâ” He waggled his fingers in my face.
“Nail clippers?”
“Nod!” Uncle Arvie glanced pitifully at his fingers.
“Maybe I'll understand in the morning,” I said. “You'll be here in the morning, won't you?” Some ghosts stay; some don't.
“Yin!” he said.
“Good. Then maybe we should get some sleepâ”
“Stamp!” Uncle Arvie agreed. He lay down on my desk, with his long legs sticking straight out in the air over the edge, as if they were held up by something invisible. Soon he was snoring. Bo wiggled out from beneath the blanket, sniffed the air, and whimpered.