Scaredy Kat (6 page)

“Maybe he was possessed, you know, like in
The Exorcist,
” Jac said. “Or maybe he murdered someone, and he doesn’t want you to find out. Or maybe someone murdered him!”

This was another funny aspect about Jac’s character. There was a whole realm of things that terrified her, mostly in the insect
world. But with stories like this, Jac actually seemed to relish being scared. The creepier, the better.

“I got out of that room pretty fast, so I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, we’ll have to go back,” Jac said. I arched an eyebrow at her. Really? Go back?
We?

“So you never found the boy in the picture?”

“No, I did find him. Sort of,” I added. I explained how the boy had seemed completely unaware of me, despite my best efforts
to get his attention. Then I described finding the message in the window—
help me.

Jac clapped her hands together.

“Awesome! It’s like that movie where the guy gets accidentally turned into a fly!”

I don’t know where Jac found the time to watch these ancient horror films, but she certainly had a commanding knowledge of
them.

“And you came back here after that? Nothing else happened?” Jac asked.

I glanced over at my computer, thinking of the photograph of those spirit orbs clustered around me that had caused me to take
to my bed with panic.

“Kat?”

I looked at my friend.

“What? Did something else happen?”

Max made a little whimpering noise in his throat. My mom and I call it sleep barking. He makes woof sounds, but without opening
his mouth. And his feet twitch like he’s running.

“Kat?”

“The picture I e-mailed you. You asked about the light show.”

Jac nodded.

“Those are spirit orbs, Jac. Like, dozens of them.”

“But you took that picture —”

“Here. In this room. And I have to tell you, I’m pretty freaked out about it.”

“So your room is, like, outrageously haunted.”

“I don’t get the sense those orbs came with the room, Jac. I’ve never sensed anything in my room. I think they’re attached
to me. I think when I got the sight on my birthday, all of a sudden I kind of sent a signal to the underworld that I’m open
for business. And they’ve flocked to me. It’s me that’s outrageously haunted. I’m pretty sure that these spirit orbs follow
me wherever I go.”

“Wait, so a spirit orb is like a ghost?”

“It’s a soul. Sometimes a collection of souls.”

“Which is different than a ghost?” Jac frowned in concentration.

“Yes. I mean, I’m not actually sure. It’s—a ghost can be a number of things, right? Sometimes it’s just energy. Like a shadow
of a life that stayed after the life was gone. It’s not an actual personality, just an echo. Then there are earthbound spirits.
When they died, they might not have realized it. Or maybe they had such an intense belief that death was the end that they’re
unable to experience anything else. Um, trauma, like some really awful thing happening—that can cause a spirit to stay here
rather than move on to the next level. And every once in a while there’s just a bad egg.”

“Like food poisoning?” Jac asked. Jac was terrified of getting food poisoning, and was the most rigorous inspector of expiration
dates I’d ever known.

“No, I mean of the spirit variety,” I said. “Think of some really bad person, who’s totally obsessed with material things
or physical things, you know, like drinking or something.”

“Like Houston Ramada!”

“Well, yeah in a way, but I’m thinking of someone more, you know, evil than ditzy. Someone even worse than Brooklyn Bigelow.
Someone who derives all her power from having money or controlling people. You see, when someone like that dies, she may refuse
to move on. Physical life is where she has all her power, and she doesn’t want to know any other kind of existence. So she
hangs around, either manifesting as a ghost, or looks for someone vulnerable to act as a host.”

“A host?”

“Yeah . . . like, a person to sort of live through. Someone she can invade, and kind of occupy her consciousness a little
bit. It’s sort of like that cartoon where the guy has an angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other. The spirit would
act as the bad influence on one shoulder, trying to encourage the host to do what the spirit wants. Like control other people,
or get lots of money or eats tons of food or something.”

Jac drew her knees up to her chin.

“Kat, I was just
kidding
about the possession thing. Now you’re telling me it’s actually possible?”

I sighed.

“I don’t know, Jac. I really don’t. The spirit world isn’t that simple. My mom thinks it’s possible for a negatively charged
energy or spirit to become attached to a human to try to influence that person. But not everyone believes that can happen.
My mom says some psychics and mediums don’t think it’s possible.”

“Do you believe it?”

Jac was almost whispering.

“I don’t think I can afford not to,” I said. “I feel like I have to be on my guard.”

“Why?”

I got up and went over to my computer. With a few clicks of the mouse, I pulled up my most recent photos. I found the one
of me sticking my tongue out, and maximized it to fill the entire screen.

“Because of this,” I said.

Jac slid off my bed and joined me next to the computer.

“The spirit orbs,” she said.

I nodded.

“They all want something from me. And for all I know, there are more arriving every moment,” I said.

“You don’t see them right now?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“No. But they’re there. I’m not just saying that because of the picture. Seeing the photograph was kind of a wake-up call.
It tuned me in to it. They’re not manifesting or trying to communicate right now. But I feel them, Jac. I feel them everywhere.
They’re all over me. They’re all around me. And they want me to let them in.

“I’m going nuts—I want to jump right out of my skin. It’s like . . . having cooties or something. Except that I’m, like, terrified
of them. I think it’s partly because of that old man. All that rage coming off of him. I don’t want to have anything to do
with a spirit like that. But apparently what I want doesn’t matter. They’re here. And I have no idea what to do about it.”

My voice started to shake a little bit. My heart was racing slightly, and the nausea returned. Just talking about it made
me want to unzip my body like a suit and run far, far away. Jac put her hand on my arm.

“Well, you know about one of them, right? Tank appeared to you. Tank seems to have reached out for help. So let’s start with
him. Tank is one spirit that you can do something about.”

“Can I, though?” I asked. “I went over to the house, Jac, and I figured I’d find the answer there. Or that at least I’d find
out what I was supposed to do next. But I came up totally empty. Tank won’t communicate directly with me. How can I possibly
help him?”

Jac looked thoughtful.

“I guess you’re going to have to find out who he is,” she said. “Then maybe you can find out how he died. That’s what we did
with Suzanne Bennis. And once we knew that Miss Wittencourt’s guilt and sadness was keeping her here, you knew how to help
her move on. So first we have to know Tank’s story.”

I sighed.

“Any suggestions?”

“You said the date on Tank’s painting, the one his aunt Ruby did, was dated a few years back.”

I nodded.

“So you have a date, at least, when you know he was living in the house. You’ve been in this house two years. Tank’s family
was probably the last family to live there before the house went empty.”

“Possibly. But we don’t know who they were, Jac. We don’t even know their names.”

“There must be a way to find out. Like, town records or something.”

“I don’t know anything about town records. What would we do, call the town hall and ask about aunt Ruby?”

Jac shrugged, a small smile on her face.

“Don’t you know anybody else on this street that might remember them?

I shook my head.

“We’re not exactly the outgoing, host-a-neighborhood-barbecue kind of family,” I said. “I don’t know any of my neighbors.”

Jac suddenly sat up very straight, her eyes wide.

“I know! How about we go outside and see if there’s a name still on the mailbox?”

I stared at Jac, my mouth slightly open.

She smiled, making her appear even more elfin than usual.

“You may express your gratitude for my brilliance by supplying more baked goods,” Jac declared grandly.

“Then we’d better go to the kitchen.”

Jac was already at the door.

“I don’t see why we can’t wait until the rain stops,” I complained.

I pulled a rain poncho over my head, generating a field of static electricity that caused the hair on the crown of my head
to stand straight up.

Jac pointed at me and laughed.

“Kat! You look adorable with a mohawk!”

“This is the thanks I get for letting you wear my raincoat?”

Jac grinned and pulled a ball cap over her red hair. The hat was big on her—she looked like she was about eight years old.

“Ready?” she asked.

I glanced back in the direction of my mother’s office.

“It’s fine, Kat,” Jac said. “We’ll only be gone two minutes. She won’t get worried.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t understand why her door is still closed. There’s no other car parked out there.”

“Maybe she’s meditating,” Jac suggested.

“She does that at dawn,” I replied.

“Come on!” Jac said, pulling me by the arm.

I submitted to Jac’s pressure. It was like being pulled by a tiny bird or a miniature poodle. But the force of her personality
far exceeded the force of her little arms.

I opened the front door and we walked outside. The rain had let up a little, but it was still coming down fairly steadily.
Jac led the way, and I followed her obediently onto the sidewalk, feeling like a puppy.

The house had a fairly regulation mailbox—a black metal structure shaped like a loaf of bread, with a door on the front and
a red flag that you raised if you wanted the postman to pick up mail. I couldn’t see any lettering on the side that faced
our house. Jac walked around the other side.

“Here!” she said.

I moved to where Jac stood, and bent down to examine the mailbox. There were no letters there now, but an outline of the letters
that had once been there, and presumably peeled off, were legible.

“V-A-N,” I read, squinting.

“H . . . is that an E?” Jac asked.

“Yeah, E-C-M . . .”

“I think that’s an H.” Jac rubbed several fingers over the surface of the mailbox to wipe the water away.

“Okay, H, and the last letter is T.”

“Van Hecht,” said Jac. “There was a conductor named van Hecht, I think.”

“It’s a pretty distinctive name,” I said. “Can’t imagine there are too many van Hecht families in this neck of the woods.
So it might actually be easy to trace. Let’s go back to my house. I’m getting soaked. My socks are wet.”

“Hang on,” Jac said. She was peering at the front door of the house.

“Jac . . .”

“I just want to go up and touch the door.”

“Jac, that’s stupid. It’s probably locked.”

“I just want to touch it,” Jac said. “It’s my first haunted house!”

I was getting wetter by the second, and I was beginning to feel chilly, too. But there was no dissuading Jac from an idea
once she had it. The fastest thing would be to just let her do her thing so we could get inside.

“Okay, then. Come on.”

Jac clapped her hands together like a kid trying to prove she still believes in fairies.

I shook my head, but inwardly I was amused. Jac was turning into a regular junior ghost hunter. I liked the idea of having
her as my sidekick.

We reached the door, and I put my hand on it.

“Well, there it is. A regular door. Have a touch, and let’s go!”

Jac placed her hand on the door, palm flat and fingers spread, just below a brass door knocker.

“Spirit vibes,” she said, eyes wide.

“Wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” I said. “Can we go now?”

Jac pulled her hand off the door, but then she grabbed the door knocker and rapped it loudly.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “There’s no one in there, Jac.”

She turned to me, her face shining.

“Maybe the house will let us in,” she said.

I sighed. I waited. Nothing happened.

“It doesn’t work that way. Nobody’s home,” I said. “Come on. Are you ready?”

Jac looked wistfully at the door, then turned to me.

“Okay. Yeah. Let’s go.”

We were three or four steps down the walkway when we both stopped in our tracks.

The red flag on the mailbox had been raised.

The flag that moved by itself was apparently enough of a brush with the supernatural for Jac for the time being. She beat
a hasty retreat, speeding back up the walkway to my house and yanking open the front door. By the time I’d gotten my coat
off, Jac was already halfway up the stairs to the second floor.