Haunted Tales (3 page)

Mary shivered in her chair and glanced up to see if her
office door was open. She was surprised to see a middle-aged man sheepishly
walk from the door towards her desk.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered nervously. “I’m probably in the
wrong place.”

Mary smiled up at him and slowly rose from her chair,
pushing against the armrests to leverage her decidedly pregnant body into a
standing position.

“You’re pregnant,” he blurted out.

Her smile widened. “Yes, I know,” she said with gentle
humor.

Shaking his head nervously, he exhaled softly. “Of course
you know,” he said with chagrin. “I’m such an idiot. I really should be
leaving.”

“Wait,” she exclaimed, holding out her hand as she slowly
walked across the room. “Don’t make me waste all of that effort.”

His eyes widened in horror, and then he saw the smile on her
face and relaxed. “Sorry,” he said again with a sheepish smile. “I’ve never
done anything like this before.”

Biting back a chuckle, Mary leaned back against her desk.
“Like what?” she asked.

He looked around her office. “You know, been to a psychic or
anything like that.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint you,” she replied. “But you
still haven’t been to a psychic. I’m a private investigator.”

“But I thought…” he stammered. “I came here…”

He looked around helplessly.

“I can see and communicate with ghosts,” she said. “But I
don’t look into the future or read palms or find missing items.
 
I just have the ability to communicate with
some dead people.”

“How?
 
How can you do that?” he asked.

“Well, it all happened the night that I died,” she replied.

He stared at her, his jaw dropping, and stepped backwards to
the door. “You think you’re dead?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I got better,” she said, trying to keep
a straight face. She looked at the fear in his eyes and took pity on him. It
really wasn’t his fault that he was slightly awkward. “I died on the operating
table and had an out-of-body experience.
 
I even went towards the light.” She paused for a moment and met his eyes.
“I was given a choice. I could continue on or go back and live. I could be with
my family.
 
I could live my life. But
things would be different for me.”

She folded her arms loosely over her belly and sighed. “So,
I came back,” she said. “And found, to my great surprise, that now I could see
and communicate with ghosts who were stuck here, on this side of the light,
because they needed someone alive to help them move on.”

His face lost the look of fear and he stepped toward her.
“So, you’re for real?”

She shrugged and nodded. “Pretty much,” she said. “I’m in
the profession of helping people move on, and sometimes that means I’m solving
crimes. But sometimes it means I just have to do research. Pretty average
private investigative work.”

He studied her for a moment. “How much do you charge?” he
asked.

“Well, when you have ghosts for clients, you really can’t
expect to make too much money,” she replied. “Generally, I end up working for
free.
 
But the disability income from the
Chicago Police Department makes up the difference.”

“You can’t work because you were shot?” he asked.

Mary sighed.
This
isn’t going to help at all
, she thought. “No,” she said honestly. “I can’t
work because I see ghosts.
 
That either
classifies me for disability because I’m psychologically unstable, or, as my
friend and psychiatrist Gracie puts it, I got too much going on to concentrate
on my job.”

He actually smiled, and Mary felt herself relax. “You don’t
seem crazy,” he ventured.

“Why, thank you,” she replied.

Once again, he flushed with embarrassment and started to
step back. “I’m so sorry,” he faltered. “I can’t believe I said that.”

Mary laughed and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it,” she
said. “Now tell me why you decided to come here today.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a narrow
piece of laminated paper that was folded in fourths.
 
He unfolded the paper and handed it to
her.
 
She looked down at a spelling test
that was obviously done by a child.
 
Most
of the words had been spelled incorrectly, and there was a bright red ‘F” at
the top of the page with red writing that was nearly faded. Mary squinted at
the words, trying to read them.

He gently took the paper back from her. “I’ll read it to
you.
 
You
have the ability to do much better than this. I believe in you. You should
believe in yourself
,” he said, and then he looked up and met her eyes. “My
name is Andrew Tyler, and I need you to help me find who murdered my fourth
grade teacher.”

Mary picked up her bottle of water, took a sip and then sat
down in her chair on the other side of the desk from Andrew.
 
She picked up a yellow note pad and pen.
“Okay, why don’t you give me the details, and I’ll see if this is a case I can
help you with,” she said.

He nodded. “Okay,” he replied. “Her name was Miss Banks,
Kristen Banks, and she was a fourth grade teacher at Centennial Grammar School
in Polo in the mid-seventies.
 
It was a
couple weeks before Spring Break, and she was engaged to a soldier who was
serving in Vietnam.”

He paused and took a deep breath.

“She must have been working late, after
school,” he said, nervously brushing his hair off his forehead.
“The
janitor found her in the morning.
 
They
said she’d tripped down the stairs and struck her head on the rail.
 
They said it was an accident, a horrible
accident.”

Mary looked up from her notes. “But you don’t think it was
an accident?” she asked.

Shaking his head, he nervously tapped his fingers
together.
 
After a moment, he took a deep
breath and leaned closer to the desk. “I saw her,” he said, lowering his voice.
“After she was dead.
I saw her.”

Mary leaned back in her chair. “What did you see?”

Shrugging, trying to remain casual although Mary could see
the emotion he was trying to contain, he continued, “They kept us in the same
classroom but brought in a substitute to teach us for the rest of the year.
Often, I’d glance up, and I’d see her, for just a moment, standing next to her
desk. And the
look on her face
…”

He stopped and took a deep breath. “She looked so sad,” he
said.
“So incredibly sad.
 
She would look out at all of us and slowly
shake her head.
 
Then she would look
directly at me, and she would say something.
 
But I couldn’t hear it.
 
I
couldn’t understand it.”

Clasping his hands together tightly, he stared down at them
intently.
 
Finally, he looked back up,
his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “They told me that the last thing she
did before she died was grade my spelling test,” he said, his voice thick with
emotion. “The last thing she did was take the time to write me a note that she
believed in me and that I needed to believe in myself.
 
That note changed my life.”

“Perhaps she was sad because she couldn’t be with you and
the rest of the students,” Mary suggested. “Perhaps it was her regret that she
couldn’t continue making a difference.”

“No,” he said decisively, shaking his head. “No, it just
doesn’t make sense. She was really athletic.
 
She would dash up and down those stairs a couple of times a day.
 
And now, as an adult, as I review the
accident and the momentum it would have taken for her to not only fall but also
crack her skull on the railings, I believe she was pushed.”

“Didn’t the police look into it?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No, they just decided it was an
accident,” he said. “I’ve always thought it was more than an accident, so much
so that I bought the old school when it was put up for sale.”

“You bought it?” she asked incredulously.

“Yeah, they were going to tear it down,” he said. “And I
knew that any evidence would be gone when the school was gone, so I bought it.
 
But, the city still wants to condemn it.
 
They’ve only given me a couple of months.”

Mary put down the pad and the pencil. “Okay, this is really
impressive, and you’ve done a great deal for your former teacher,” she said.
“But I don’t know if walking through an empty school building is going to
produce anything.”

“It’s not empty,” he replied.

“What?” she asked.

“When the new school was built about twenty years ago, they
didn’t want any of the old furnishings.
 
They wanted everything to be new, so I added a contingency to the
purchase that I got to keep all of the furnishings,” he said, “desks, tables,
chairs and even some of the older library books.
 
Anything they didn’t use in the new school, I
bought.”

“Have you been back to your old classroom?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been doing a little
investigating on my own.”

Mary studied him for a long moment. “This means a lot to
you, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said emphatically. “She changed my life. I owe her
so much. I feel like I can’t rest until I find out, once and for all, if her
death was just an accident or if she was murdered.”

 
“Well, I guess we
should take a look,” she said.

His face broke into a wide smile. “Thank you,” he said,
standing up and leaning over the desk to shake her hand. “Thank you so much.”

Mary shook her head. “I haven’t done anything yet,” she
said.

“That’s okay,” he replied. “I know you will.
 
I believe in you.”

“There are ghosts in the library?” Clarissa whispered,
following Maggie into the children’s section of the library, in the far
southeast corner.

“Shhhhh,” Maggie said, looking over her shoulder to make
sure her mother wasn’t close by. Kate Brennan, Maggie’s mother, had picked the
girls up after school and brought them to the library.
  
“I told my mom that we had to come here to
work on our special Halloween school project. She doesn’t know we’re also
looking for ghosts.”

“But ghosts are here, right?” Clarissa insisted.

“Sometimes,” Maggie said. “Ghosts like to hang around old
stuff, like old books, so sometimes they’re here.”

“Okay, I’m going to start looking for them, too,” Clarissa
said, moving her eyes to one side as she walked alongside the book stacks.

“Just be careful,” Maggie cautioned.

“What? Ouch!” Clarissa cried as she walked into a tall
bookshelf.

The Youth Services librarian hurried across the room from
her desk. “Are you okay?” she asked, bending over to examine the red mark on
Clarissa’s forehead.

Tears shining in her eyes, Clarissa nodded. “Uh huh,” she
replied, embarrassed and achy. “I’m fine.”

“Did you trip?” the woman asked, looking around for a ripple
in the carpet or some other obstruction that would have caused the accident.

Clarissa shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “I just didn’t
see it.”

“But you were walking towards it,” the librarian said,
confused.

Clarissa sighed. How was she going to explain that she was
looking sideways instead of forward?
 
Looking for ghosts was hard.
 
Then
she had a thought, and her face brightened. “My mom once walked into a fort
that she didn’t see,” she supplied. “I guess it runs in the family.”

The librarian looked even more confused. “Well, I suppose
so,” she said, standing up, “As long as you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” Clarissa said, pasting a smile on her face.
“Really.”

As soon as the librarian turned around, Maggie grabbed
Clarissa’s hand and pulled her down the aisle between the stacks to a small
table tucked into a hidden corner.
 
She
helped Clarissa into a chair and hugged her. “Are you okay?” she asked.

A few tears slipped down Clarissa’s cheek, but she nodded at
her friend. “I’m fine,” she sniffed. “But I don’t think I’m going to look for
ghosts in the library anymore.”

“Don’t worry, Clarissa,” Maggie said. “I can find a ghost
for you. This is one of my special ghost places.”

Clarissa wiped her eyes and looked around slowly. “There’s a
ghost here?” she whispered.

Maggie nodded and pointed to a darkened corner with some
leather-bound books behind a glass case.
 
Clarissa’s eyes widened in amazement as the glass case opened by itself
and a book slowly slid from its place and floated in the air.
 
Then it settled on its back and opened wide,
the pages slowly flipping from front to back.

 
“The books are
floating,” she whispered excitedly. “They are actually floating.”

Maggie shook her head. “No, there’s a ghost in the aisle
taking the book out and looking through it,” she said.

“There’s a ghost in there?
Really?”
Clarissa exclaimed. “I want to see it.”

“Try
squinting
your eyes,” Maggie
said.

Clarissa scrunched up her face and squinted as hard as she
could.

“Can you see him?” Maggie asked.

Clarissa shook her head. “No, and the squinting makes my
head hurt.”

“Try looking sideways,” Maggie suggested.

Clarissa moved her head so it was facing forward and then
she moved her eyes sideways.
 
The air in
front of the glass case seemed to ripple, like the air above a sidewalk in the
summertime. “I think something’s happening,” she said excitedly. “The air is
wiggling.”

Maggie nodded. “Keep it up,” she said. “I think
it’s
working.”

Clarissa tried to bring the wiggles into focus, but they
just remained soft and blurry. “I don’t see anything but blurs.”

Maggie sighed. “Well, at least you saw something. Maybe it’s
going to take some practice.”

Staring at the wiggling air for a few more moments, Clarissa
nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. “It took me a really long time to learn Double
Dutch.”

“And the books floating in the air is pretty scary,” Maggie
said. “Maybe you could tell that story.”

“The books were cool,” Clarissa agreed, turning her eyes to
look at her friend. “But I want something even better.”

“I’ll see if my mom can bring us back here tomorrow after
school,” Maggie said. “Then we can practice again.”

“Thanks, Maggie,” Clarissa said. “You’re my best friend
ever.”