The Ghost of Gruesome High (2 page)

Suddenly Jennifer grabbed my shoulders so tight I almost yelled out in pain. Her eyes still had a slightly crazed look to them, and she was staring more deeply into my eyes than anyone had ever done before in my whole life. “We’ve got to tell someone, Patsy,” she said, deadly earnest. “The police! No, the President! No! The army! That’s right, we’ve got to tell the army. They have guns and stuff. They can kill it. Yeah. We’ve got to tell army, Patsy. Come on!”

Jennifer grabbed my hand and almost pulled me over, but I managed to keep my footing and held on tight to her hand. I pulled her toward me, trying to get her eyes focused on mine again, the way you do with a little kid to make them pay attention to what you’re saying. But her eyes kept darting around like May Flies.
 

I shook her again. The fact that she wasn’t snapping out of it was beginning to make me scared all over again. “Stop it, Jennifer!” I yelled. “Just stop it! Get a hold of yourself! What are we gonna tell the army? That five high school kids were creeping around the school at midnight and saw a ghost? Everyone in town’s heard of the ghost and no one cares. No one’s gonna believe us. Now get a grip! Take a deep breath.”

Slowly the May Flies disappeared and Jennifer’s eyes began to look normal again. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That’s right,” I said. “Now another.” She took another deep breath and by then she seemed pretty normal again. I let out a sigh of relief and let go of her shoulders. “Come on,” I said, “let’s walk home.”

Suddenly Jennifer frowned and looked all around. “What happened to the guys?” she asked. She suddenly spun around and grabbed my arm, a look of panic on her face. “The ghost didn’t—”

“No!” I said quickly. “They ran away. Our big, strong heroes ran away and left us out here.”

“No,” she said as if that thought were so foreign she could barely comprehend it. “They left me?”

“No,” I sighed as we began to walk along Sycamore Street toward her house about a mile away. “They left us. Not you. Us.”

“That’s what I meant,” she said absently.

Suddenly Wesley’s old VW turned the corner about a block away and rattled up Sycamore Street toward us. We both stopped walking and waited for it. Jason stuck his head out the passenger-side window. “You ladies need a lift?” he asked as if nothing had happened.
 

I reached out and grabbed a handful of his straw-blonde hair. “What makes you think we might need a lift?” I slowly began pulling his hair. He tried to reach his hand up to stop me, but the way he was twisted in the window there wasn’t room for his arm to get through.
 

“O.K., O.K.,” he yelled. “I give. I’m sorry. Now let go. Come on, let go, that hurts!”

“It’s supposed to hurt,” I said as I gave it one last yank and let go. He pulled his head back in the car and rubbed his scalp as he opened the door and got out. I got into the back seat and pulled Jennifer in after me. There was no way I’d sit in the back seat with Jason after what he’d done.

He got the point. He frowned, but got into the front seat without saying another word. The car was silent as Wesley put it in gear, did a U-turn, and drove toward Jennifer’s house.

Even Alan, all scrunched up in the back seat next to me, had nothing to say, and whenever I looked at him he darted his gaze away quickly, afraid to look me in the eye! Boy! What a bunch of wimps!

Chapter 3

Mass hysteria

The next morning I made it a point to walk to school by myself. Normally I wait near the Wansor’s hedge until Jason shows up and we walk together. But not this morning. In fact, after a whole night to think about it, I’d decided never to speak to Jason again. I mean, how could he have left me like that? What kind of a best friend is that? The more I thought about it, the madder I got!

Everything was different as I walked up the hill in broad daylight. There was no chill wind scampering down my spine, there were no murmuring voices, there wasn’t even a dog barking. Just lots of kids, walking, talking, laughing, making their way to school as if nothing in the world had happened last night.

As if the Ghost of Gruesome High didn’t exist at all!

Just as I was walking into my first period Science Lab I saw Jason, half way across the quad. He was looking all over the place, frantically. I think he was looking for me, because when he spotted me he waved and began to run toward me as if he had something important to tell me.
 

But I didn’t care. If he had something to say to me he could wait until lunch. Or maybe even wait all day until after school. Yeah. That would serve him right. I had no intention of making this easy for him. Let him sweat a little. Let him see how he liked it!

As I turned away from Jason and stepped into the classroom, I almost ran right into Mr. Greenwald, our Lab teacher. He gave me a strange look and said: “Well, Miss Hoyle, I hear you had a little run-in with the ghost last night. Perhaps you’d care to tell the class about your experience.”

I could feel every eye in the room on me as I walked to my chair and sat down. My face felt hot and I knew my cheeks had to be as red as two ripe tomatoes. I stared at the floor as I said: “I’d rather not, Mr. Greenwald.”

“Excuse me,” Mr. Greenwald said as he closed the classroom door and walked toward the front of the class. “I didn’t hear what you said, Miss Hoyle.”

I took a deep breath and tried to calm my beating heart. I hated being the center of attention. Slowly I looked up. Everyone was staring at me, most were smirking. I looked at Mr. Greenwald, who was now seated on the corner of his desk. A part of my brain wondered how he’d found out about last night. “I’d rather not talk about it, Mr. Greenwald.”

“That’s too bad, Miss Hoyle,” he said, smiling and crossing to the blackboard. He picked up a piece of chalk and scratched the words: MASS HYSTERIA on the blackboard. “Who can tell me what Mass Hysteria is?” he asked, turning back and surveying the class.

Hardly anyone was looking at me now. Everyone was focused on Mr. Greenwald. A kid named Andy, who I barely knew, raised his hand from the front row. “I know, Mr. Greenwald.” The teacher nodded at him and Andy continued. “It’s when more than one person sees or hears something that’s not really there.”

“That’s right, Mr. Wozinski,” Mr. Greenwald said as he began pacing back and forth in front of the class. “An important aspect of Mass Hysteria, or Mass Delusion, is how absolutely real the experience seems to those involved. But it’s not real, of course. It’s all just in the minds of the people involved. It’s what we call a delusion.”

I could feel my face turning red once again. Mr. Greenwald thought I was crazy! And now everyone would think I was crazy!

I don’t think I have ever been so mad in my whole life! I wanted to yell, I wanted to make him stop smirking and assuming he knew what happened when he wasn’t even there! How dare he think I was crazy! How dare he!

Well, he could think what he wanted. They could all think what they wanted. I knew I wasn’t crazy. Whatever we saw last night was real—and now I was determined that no force on Earth would stop me from finding out the truth and making that smirking teacher and everyone else eat their words! I’d show them! I’d show all of them!

Chapter 4

The aluminum man

Now I could hardly wait for the lunch break so I could find Jason. I wasn’t mad at him any more. Now I needed his help.
 

As I stepped out of the gym door on my way to lunch I was suddenly grabbed from behind and a hand was placed over my mouth. “Don’t scream, just—”

But that was all I heard before I slashed back with my elbow and felt the sharp, bony part of my arm sink six inches into my attacker’s bread basket. The hand instantly fell away from my mouth and I twirled around to find Jason bent over, unable to catch his breath. He was staggering around in little circles, gasping.

“Jason!” I tried to hold him but he waved me aside, still gasping for air. A crowd of kids gathered around. About half of them thought it was some kind of joke and began clapping as Jason stumbled into a trash can, almost knocking it over. Finally he managed to catch a breath and wipe the tears from his eyes. Still bent over he croaked: “O.K., now we’re even for last night.”

I ignored the crowd of now-pointing and laughing kids and helped Jason to a bench under one of the big elm trees that dotted the campus. It took him a few more minutes to catch his breath. I tried not to smirk, but as much as I hated the idea of hurting Jason like that, part of me was rather pleased that my self-defense training had worked so well. If Jason had been a mugger or something I guess I could have taken pretty good care of myself. Score one for me!

“Why. . . .” Jason tried, stopped, and then tried again. “Why did you do that?”

“Don’t be a jerk,” I said lightly. “Someone grabbed me from behind. I did exactly what I was supposed to do. You should be proud of me.”

Jason rolled his eyeballs up to look at me with his head still bent. “I’ve never been more proud in my life. In fact, I’m so proud I think I’ll throw up.”

“Quit being such a baby,” I said, hoping I hadn’t really hurt him too bad. I was starting to feel guilty even though I didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. “What’d you grab me like that for, anyway?”

“I need to talk and I wasn’t sure you’d listen,” he said, finally sitting up straight. He rubbed his stomach tenderly. “Man, you’ve got bony elbows.”

“Forget about my elbows. Go ahead and talk. I’ll listen.”

“O.K. I did some research on our ghost.”

“Research? When did you have time to do any research? We just saw the thing last night.”

Jason looked around, making sure no one could hear him. He motioned for me to lean in closer. “I was on the Internet all night. Or all morning. Whatever.”

“The Internet? I didn’t know you—”

“Shhhhhhh!” he said suddenly, looking around to make sure no one had overheard us. “It’s not something I want everyone to know about.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want people thinking I’m some sort of computer freakoid. O.K.?”

Frankly I was shocked. And a little hurt he’d kept this side of him away from me so completely, but I tried to put that behind me—at least for now. “Well, what did you find, CompuNerdo?”
 

He didn’t laugh.

“Come on,” I said teasingly. “Lighten up. It’s me, remember? Your best friend? So what’d you find out about the ghost?”

He frowned, then tried to smile. “This,” he said suddenly, holding out a piece of computer paper. “It’s an article about the very first guy to ever see the ghost!”

I grabbed the paper and began to scan it. This was getting exciting. “What’s it say?”

“It was some night watchman guy working for the contractor who built the school. Look. Here. He says the ghost only had one red eye. Our ghost had two.”

I thought for a moment. “So, what does that prove?”

“It doesn’t prove anything. But I thought it was interesting. And besides, the guy still lives right here in town. We could go talk to him.”

I thought about it some more. I wasn’t quite sure why we wanted to talk to this guy—but I didn’t have any other ideas at the moment and I was determined to prove to Mr. Greenwald that I hadn’t been seeing things! “O.K. Right after school. Let’s get Jennifer and Weenie, and Alan to come, too. We’re all in this together!”

“It’s a date,” Jason said, trying to leer—but he just ended up wincing in pain and holding his stomach.

* * *

According to the article, the man’s name was William Bell. Fortunately there was only one William Bell listed in the phone book.
 

The address was way on the edge of town. It took us a good half hour to find the unmarked driveway once we had the street and general area pinned down. The driveway was a rutted dirt road that ran for about half a mile back into a forested area. It was sort of spooky even though it was still broad daylight, with thick trees and brush growing tall all along the road; in places the growth squeezed the road from both sides, like pictures I’d seen in biology class of constricted arteries. Leaves and branches scraped at the sides and windows of Wesley’s bug and he threatened more than once to turn around at the next opportunity.
 

I guess it was a good thing that no opportunity to turn around presented itself, because suddenly the road seemed to widen and the trees and brush disappeared to the edges of a rather large and totally bizarre clearing.
 

In the middle of the clearing was a house.

Well, it was sort of a house.

But it wasn’t like any house I’d ever seen before!
 

“Look out!” I yelled.

Wesley slammed on the brakes but not before his front bumper touched one of the-the things! They were all over the yard. Hundreds of them. They looked like balls of aluminum foil, with the centers pounded down in the shape of a weird-looking satellite dish. Each aluminum foil satellite dish was maybe a foot or a foot and a half across and they were everywhere!

There were probably a hundred of them on the ground in front of the small house, several dozen in the trees around the house, and it looked like at least a hundred more were stuck all over the small house itself.