The Ghost of Ernie P. (6 page)

By the time it was his turn to talk, Jeff had begun to pick out people he knew from the blur of faces in front of him. The rest of Mrs. Vogel's homeroom were seated right down in front because it was their classmate who was being honored. Across from them he saw Mrs. Barber, looking very solemn. She nodded sorrowfully to Jeff and whispered to the man next to her, a big, round-faced fellow who had to be Ernie's father. Jeff remembered seeing him at the cemetery. Jeff supposed she was telling him that this was Jeffrey Keppel, the boy Ernie had been tutoring.

“And now,” Mr. Morgensen announced, “we will hear from Ernest's classmate and closest friend Jeffrey Keppel.”

Jeff stood up. His mouth was dry as dust, but when he walked to the microphone his knees no longer wobbled. Now they were stiff and unbending, as if they were carved of wood. What if he opened his mouth to talk and nothing came out? What if he'd lost his voice in the last half hour?
You can't lose your voice on such a solemn occasion
, Mr. Morgensen would say.
Try again, Jeffrey. Remember, we're all your friends here
.

Jeff cleared his throat. “Ernie Barber was an interesting person,” he began. “He had lots of interesting ideas.”

Now it seemed to Jeff that there were two Jeff Keppels. One of them clutched the speech and read it slowly, the way he'd practiced at home. The other one stood a little way off, listening as if he'd never heard any of this before. It sounded pretty good, he decided, especially when he came to the part about friendship.

“Having a friend is very important. You can talk to your friend about your problems, and you can do stuff together, like camping out. You can go places and tell jokes. You can even fight once in a while. That doesn't matter if you are really good friends.…”

One more paragraph to go. Jeff turned the final page, and it was then that the two Jeff Keppels became one again—one stammering, sweating, red-faced
nothing
. Because the last page of the speech was gone. In its place was the newspaper clipping about Margo Muggin.

Frantically, Jeff shuffled the pages, trying to make the final paragraph reappear. He closed his eyes for a second and opened them again. The newspaper story was still there. What was worse, he realized that he wanted to tell the audience about the clipping.
He wanted to read it to them and tell everyone whose picture it was
.

“Suburban witch accused by—” he began, then stopped, horrified. He was actually reading the headline of the article, and he didn't know why. He just felt as if he was supposed to do it. The way his mother had felt she was supposed to make sauerkraut rye and send Jeff to the Muggins' house with the recipe. The way Coach Peretti had suddenly remembered that Ernie's gym locker had to be emptied, and had asked Jeff to take care of it. Now Jeff was getting a ghostly command of his own. Instead of hiding the Top Secret Project, he was supposed to tell everyone in Lakeview School about the witch named Margo Muggin.

With a smothered groan, Jeff hunched over the podium. He knew Mrs. Vogel, Mr. Morgensen and the minister were watching him with concern.

If only he could remember how he had ended the essay on friendship! All he could think of was the newspaper article lying there in front of him. With every bit of strength he had, he fought to keep from reading it aloud. Slowly, the urge faded.

“Thank you, Jeffrey.” Mr. Morgensen was beside him, gently elbowing him away from the microphone. “That was a fine tribute to your friend. We all know how hard it is to talk about our deepest emotions.”

Jeff looked around helplessly. There was no way he could explain what had almost happened, or how he actually felt. He stumbled to his chair, grateful for the chance to escape. Of course, now his classmates were going to be more sure than ever that Ernie had been his best friend, but he couldn't help that. The lie just kept getting bigger.

Mr. Morgensen announced that the memorial service was over, and, since this was the last day of school, he wished everyone a pleasant summer and suggested they read a book a week during vacation. Jeff listened numbly. On the last afternoon of school you were supposed to feel great, but he didn't feel anything. Ernie's ghost was ruining his life.

The numbness lasted through the final hour in Mrs. Vogel's homeroom. His classmates told him he'd given a good speech, but he knew they thought it was weird the way he'd stopped so suddenly. He didn't care. He didn't even wince when Mrs. Vogel walked to the classroom door with him and said she hoped he'd feel better soon.

When he reached his locker, the halls were almost empty. He opened the locker and took out his notebooks and his jacket. There was something else he ought to take home with him, but what was it? Something he'd brought to school this morning. Something important.… Then he knew what it was he'd forgotten. He didn't have his speech. He'd left it, with the clipping about Margo Muggin, on the auditorium stage.

Jeff leaned against his locker. He didn't want to go back to the empty auditorium, but he'd have to do it. Ernie's ghost had whisked the clippings from the Keppels' fruit cellar to the folder containing Jeff's speech, and Jeff had carried the folder to school. Now the clipping was lying around for anyone to read. That might please Ernie's ghost, but it wouldn't please Margo Muggin one bit. Jeff shuddered at the thought of what she might do to him if she found out. Which was worse, he wondered, an angry ghost or an angry witch?

The auditorium was at the far end of the building. Jeff skidded to a stop in front of the big curtained doors in the lobby and looked around. There was no one to see him. He opened one of the doors a few inches and slipped in sideways.

It was like stepping into a cave. All at once, the brightly lit hallway seemed miles away. He slid his hand along the wall, looking for a light switch, and almost panicked before he found one. Tiny lights flicked on above the doors and around the walls. They only made the rest of the auditorium seem darker. He could barely see the stage.

Walking down the long center aisle was just about the hardest thing Jeff had ever done. He tried to picture the auditorium the way it had been less than an hour ago, filled with people and conversation, but that only made the emptiness more scary. When he'd gone halfway, he realized that the stage curtains had been closed. If he wanted to find his speech, he'd have to go behind them to look for the podium.

No way
, he thought.
I can't do it
. But he kept on walking. This was the only chance he'd have to find the clipping. After today, the school would be locked up for the summer. He'd have weeks and months to worry about what might have happened to Ernie's “evidence.”

He reached the front of the auditorium and tiptoed up the little flight of stairs on the left of the stage. The velvet curtains swayed as he made his way toward the center. Something rustled on the other side, and Jeff froze.

It's just a mouse
, he told himself.
A big mouse
.

He tugged at the folds of the curtain, searching for the opening. It had to be just about—here! He held the heavy folds back with one hand and leaned into the shadows to look for the podium.

A moment later he was racing up the aisle, his feet hardly touching the floor. He hadn't seen the podium beyond the curtain, but he'd seen something else that had sent him flying off the stage in one wild leap. Margo Muggin was standing there, as if she'd been waiting for him. Her face was milk-white, and her eyes—witch's eyes, for sure—glittered in the dark.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

“Hey, watch it!” Mr. Lang, the head maintenance man, shouted in surprise as Jeff barreled through the auditorium doorway. “Wait a minute there, Buster!” He seized Jeff's shoulder. “What are you doing in the auditorium? You kids are supposed to be out of the building by now.”

Jeff tried in vain to pull away. He could picture Margo Muggin stalking up the aisle toward them, her terrible eyes gleaming. “I was l-looking for something,” he puffed. “Some papers. I—I left them up on the stage.”

Mr. Lang scowled. “In the dark? You were looking in the dark? Or did you switch on the stage lights?” he demanded, outraged at the thought. “Nobody's supposed to fool with those lights.”

Jeff tried again to get away. “I didn't turn on the stage lights. Honest! I don't even know where they are. I just”—he looked fearfully at the auditorium doors—“I just wanted to find my speech. But it was too dark.”

Mr. Lang's grip relaxed. “Well, you should have come to me in the first place,” he grumbled. “We cleaned up in there as soon as the kids cleared out. There were some papers left on the podium, and I took 'em to the principal's office.”

Jeff leaned against a wall. “Wh-what did he say?”

“Didn't say anything,” Mr. Lang snapped. “He wasn't there.” He started down the hall, shooting his wide mop to one side and then the other. Jeff trailed anxiously behind. “Nobody was around, so I just left the stuff on the counter. Figured somebody'd be smart enough to ask in there before they went poking around backstage in the dark. Know what I mean?… Hey, where are you going now?”

“To the office,” Jeff shouted over his shoulder. “Thanks a lot.”

Hardly daring to hope, he tore down the hall and around the corner to Mr. Morgensen's office. Miss Kemper, the school secretary, was gone, but a light was still on in the inner office. Jeff tiptoed inside. The counter was end-of-semester clean, except for some papers near the door. He snatched them up. The clipping was there, under the rest of his speech.

He was tiptoeing back to the hall, the papers safely in his pocket, when the door of the inner office started to open. “Who's there?” Mr. Morgensen called. “Did you want to see me?”

No way
! Jeff thought. He dashed across the hall to the front door and down the walk to the bike rack. First he'd been running away from Margo Muggin. Then he'd escaped from Mr. Lang. Now he was running from Mr. Morgensen. He felt as if he'd been pursued by someone—or something—ever since the day of Ernie Barber's funeral.

A wind had come up and dark clouds scudded across the sky as he sped away from school. Other years, he and Art Patterson had always left together on the last afternoon, full of plans for vacation. Jeff pedaled faster, reminding himself it was probably just as well that Art was out of town. If he were here, Jeff would be tempted to tell him all about the Top Secret Project, and that wouldn't be fair. If Art knew, Margo Muggin would be after him, too.

A hard gust of wind almost made him lose his balance as he swung into his driveway. The house was dark, and he remembered with dismay that his mother had said she had some shopping to do after her work at the hospital gift shop. She might not be home until nearly six. That meant he'd be alone again for a couple of hours. He thought of Margo Muggin lurking in the auditorium, and of Ernie's ghost, furious because Jeff hadn't read the “evidence” out loud at the memorial service. It definitely wasn't a good time to be alone.

He was almost relieved to discover that he'd forgotten to put his key in his pocket. He'd rather wait in the tent, anyway; there were no dark corners or closets where a ghost—or a witch—could hide. Leaning into the wind, he hurried across the backyard.

It was warm, almost stuffy, inside the tent. Jeff threw himself down on the grass and stretched out, his hands behind his head. For the first time since he'd turned to the last page of his speech and discovered the clipping, he relaxed. It was funny how safe he felt in the tent, even in a gale. Maybe his mother was right. Maybe some part of his brain did remember those long-ago times when he and his father had gone camping together.

He wished his father were here now to help him make sense out of this strange afternoon. Three things seemed certain. First, Margo Muggin knew about the clippings. That probably meant Ernie had told her he had had them and had threatened her with them before his death. Second, Ernie had told Margo that Jeff Keppel was going to play a part in the blackmail scheme. That was why she was following him, keeping track of what he was doing. And today she'd heard him start to read aloud the clipping that would reveal her secret!

Maybe he should just put all the clippings in an envelope and mail them to her. His spirits rose, briefly, at the thought of being rid of Ernie's “evidence,” even though he knew the answer couldn't be that simple. Ernie's ghost would be angrier than ever if Jeff betrayed him. And having the clippings might not satisfy Margo Muggin either. She'd know that Jeff could have made copies. Or she might think he could tell people she was a witch, even if he didn't have the evidence to prove it.

From now on, he'd have to watch his step every minute. He thought of all the spells Margo was supposed to have cast when she lived in California. Maybe they were coincidences, and maybe not. He didn't want to find out by becoming a “coincidence” himself!

The third thing Jeff had learned this afternoon was the reason why the Top Secret Project hadn't ended with Ernie's death. At least, he was pretty certain he knew the reason now. When Ernie was alive, he'd wanted to learn black magic, and Margo Muggin had refused to teach him; now Ernie's ghost was intent on revenge. Why else would the ghost try to force Jeff to read the clipping aloud at the memorial service?

Getting even had always been important to Ernie Barber. He hated not getting his way. Since a ghost can't do much but try to scare people, Ernie was trying to make Jeff get his revenge for him.

There was a lull in the wind, and in the sudden silence Jeff heard a soft
swish
. The sound could have been a car or a bike on the driveway, or it could have been—his hand flew to his pocket. The speech and the clipping were still there, folded tightly together.

He sat up straight, straining to hear. If the garage door opened, he'd know his mother was home earlier than she'd planned. It didn't, but now he thought he could hear someone moving around outside the tent.