Phantoms Page 3

  “There’s still a few kids down there. We can’t just abandon them. We’re the only ones who can—you’re the only one who can see the ghost.”

  Benji gave a reluctant nod. Most students had already escaped, but not all. A few kids were trapped in the gift shop, a polar bear pawing at the glass door. Others hunkered down behind trash bins or benches, afraid to risk coming out into the open.

  There was no sign of Agnes.

  “This is probably a long shot,” Benji said as they hustled down the ramp. “But any idea what Gideon’s Brightkey might be?”

  “Easy. It’s the toy ark that lady showed us—the one Gideon loved so much when he was a kid. But it won’t work. Brights are just a Shadow School thing, remember? That’s why Elijah had to create those model houses to trap ghosts out in the wild.”

  “It might distract him, at least. Give you a chance to get everyone out of here.”

  “Worth a shot,” Cordelia said.

  They split up at the bottom of the ramp: Benji to grab the ark, Cordelia to usher the remaining students to safety. Most of the kids were frozen in place, too scared to move, so she had to guide them to the ramp—pushing, kicking, or dodging past one animal or another. Outside of minor scrapes, no one seemed hurt.

  Cordelia kept an eye out for Agnes, but she was nowhere to be found—which was worrisome. Agnes would never abandon them. Something must have happened.

  “Cordelia!” Benji exclaimed.

  He was standing on a long display case entitled THE MIRACLE OF TAXIDERMY. A dozen animals milled beneath him. Of particular concern was a gargantuan gorilla attempting to scale the display with its one remaining arm.

  “I got the ark,” Benji said, leaning over the side to show her. “But then I made the mistake of looking right at Gideon again. He really doesn’t like that. All the animals started chasing me.”

  A baby rhino thrust its head upward in an attempt to impale Benji with its horn. He danced away just in time.

  “I’ll give it to Gideon,” Cordelia said.

  Benji tossed the toy high in the air and she caught it with two hands. Cordelia doubted the little ark would send Gideon into his Bright, but she could at least give it to him and see what happened. It wasn’t like they had any other ideas.

  One problem. She couldn’t see the ghost.

  “You have to guide me,” Cordelia said. When Benji didn’t respond, she saw he had bigger concerns: the gorilla had succeeded in pulling itself atop the case and was closing the distance between them, the knuckles of its single hand grazing the wood.

  Benji leaped from the display and took off. A dozen animals licked his heels.

  Cordelia was on her own.

  “Gideon?” she asked, blindly offering the ark in various directions. “This belongs to you. Don’t you want it?”

  Something slid into her foot. Cordelia turned with the ark held high over her head, ready to pummel the snarling goat or spitting llama or whatever else was attacking her.

  It wasn’t an animal. It was her bookbag.

  “Mr. Derleth thought you might need that!” Agnes exclaimed. She had just reentered the ark through the main entrance and looked out of breath, as though she had run the entire way.

  “Thanks,” Cordelia said, relieved to see that her friend was okay.

  She dumped her bag and let the contents clatter to the floor: phone, thermos, sketchbook, pencil case, tube of half-melted lip balm, and three pairs of spectercles (though Benji, she now knew, would never require their assistance). Cordelia tossed the case with the platypus sticker to Agnes, who was standing over her now, and opened the next one.

  It was empty.

  “Where are the spectercles?” Cordelia asked.

  “They’re there—just invisible,” Agnes said. “We’re not in Shadow School, remember? Your Sight doesn’t work here.”

  “How could I forget?” Cordelia asked, feeling inside the case. There was something smooth and cold in there. Lenses. She slipped her fingers beneath them and felt a band in the back, as thin and rubbery as a jellyfish tentacle.

  Cordelia closed her eyes and pulled the spectercles over her head.

  They seemed to tighten on their own, and she shuddered as a sudden idea occurred to her. They had no idea how the spectercles worked, or where they had been made. What if she was looking through the eyes of a creature capable of seeing the ghosts? A creature that might—in some way, shape, or form—still be alive?

  It doesn’t matter, she thought, as long as they work.

  Cordelia opened her eyes.

  Two worlds spun around her. The first, moving clockwise, was the world she knew. Walls, floor, lights. Reality. The second world turned in the opposite direction. It danced with smoky shadows and colors she had never seen before.

  Cordelia started to fall. A steadying hand grasped her arm.

  “Give it a second,” Agnes said. “It’ll pass.”

  The twin worlds slowed, like opposing carousels nearing the ends of their rides, and finally merged. The ark was still once more. Cordelia blinked her teary eyes. She could now see that Agnes was wearing her spectercles. They were dark with concave lenses, like goggles intended to shield a swimmer from the glare of bioluminescent fish.

  “Do you see the ghost?” Agnes asked.

  Cordelia examined the hall and spotted a tall man wearing a vest and bow tie. Seamus Gideon. His appearance was blurred, like a photo taken out of focus.

  “He’s right there!” Cordelia exclaimed, thrilled that her Sight was working again.

  “Where?” Agnes asked.

  “There!” Cordelia said, jabbing her finger in the ghost’s direction. “Can’t you see him?”

  “No!” Agnes sighed with frustration and yanked off her spectercles. “These are useless here!”

  “But mine work. How can that be?”

  “We’ll figure it out later. Benji needs our help!”

  Agnes was right. Benji was in his element, sprinting and juking as though he was playing the most important soccer match of his life, but he was also looking a little winded. Cordelia knew he couldn’t keep dodging the animals for much longer.

  “Hey!” she screamed. “Over here!”

  Gideon regarded her with glass eyes that bulged from their sockets like oversized marbles. His lips curled into a snarl. Benji was right, Cordelia thought. He doesn’t like it when you look at him. A three-legged snow leopard abandoned its pursuit of Benji and took a few jerky strides in her direction.

  Cordelia laid the ark at Gideon’s feet. The phantom dismissed it with a glance.

  “What’s happening?” Agnes asked. “Did he go into his Bright yet?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Gideon pointed at Cordelia, and all the animals swiveled their heads in her direction. They started toward the kids, slowly and steadily, closing their ranks to cut off any possible escape route.

  Benji rejoined his friends. He was out of breath and had collected a few rips in his pants and a long scratch on his cheek. “Anyone have any ideas?” he asked.

  “Puppy Snuggling Centers,” Agnes offered. “You pay an hourly fee, and you can snuggle with all the puppies you want.”

  “Ideas about our current situation,” Benji clarified.

  “I got nothing,” Agnes said.

  The taxidermied animals drew closer, their movements as jerky as zombies. One goat had nearly lost its head. It dangled by a few strands of black thread and watched them with yellow, upside-down eyes.

  “Don’t worry, kids,” said an unfamiliar voice. “We got this.”

  The speaker was the young woman Cordelia had seen earlier. She was standing just beyond the circle of animals with the burly man by her side. He held a long duffel bag in one hand.

  “Where’s the ghost?” the woman asked.

  Cordelia and Benji, too dumbfounded to speak, simply pointed. The man swung his duffel bag and cleared a path through the animals, allowing his partner to slip inside the circle and unsheathe a long rod from
behind her back. At first, Cordelia thought it was some type of weapon, but then the woman pressed a button and a telescopic rod shot out like an umbrella and unfolded into a flat screen.

  “Here,” she said, handing the device to Benji. The entire contraption, now complete, looked like a TV on a stick. “Make sure this is turned in Gideon’s direction. He needs to see.”

  She tapped her watch and a series of short videos jumped to life on the screen. Bacon sizzling in a frying pan. Children kicking a ball in the street. Ocean waves crashing across a beach. The images were crisp and clear, the sound sharp. Gideon was mesmerized. One by one, the animals toppled over. Their master was too distracted to keep them alive.

  “Keep it still,” the woman told Benji. The man joined them and withdrew three black poles from his duffel bag. With practiced ease, he extended the first one to well over six feet and placed its base on the floor near Gideon. The phantom’s attention remained riveted to the screen, where a newborn baby was crying.

  “What’s with the movies?” Agnes asked. She couldn’t see the ghost’s reaction, so they must have seemed particularly strange.

  “They’re distracting Gideon,” Cordelia said. “He can’t stop watching them.”

  “Why?” Agnes asked.

  “Because it’s life,” the woman said. “Sounds. Sights. Sensations. Everything ghosts miss the most. Everything they crave in death.”

  On the screen, a woman took a sip of coffee.

  “Who are you?” Cordelia asked.

  “My name’s Laurel. That’s Kyle. He’s not much of a talker. We got a call last night saying there had been some unusual activity here and we should come check it out first thing in the morning. Good thing we did.” She took a moment to examine each of the kids. “Can you all see the ghosts?”

  Cordelia hesitated before responding. Dr. Roqueni had trained them to hide their Sight from others. But after what these two had witnessed, was there any point denying it?

  “Benji and I can see them,” Cordelia said, self-consciously touching the spectercles. “My name’s Cordelia. That’s Agnes. She can’t see the ghosts, but she can do lots of other things.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Laurel.

  Kyle finished extending the second rod and leaned it against the first one. The two ends snapped together with a magnetic click.

  “What’s he doing?” Agnes asked.

  Laurel lifted a sleek machine the size of a car battery from the duffel bag and gently placed it on the floor. “Building an SCU,” she replied. “Spectral Containment Unit. Kyle calls it a ghost tent, but I think that sounds silly.”

  Kyle snapped the third rod into place while Laurel removed a brass tube from a carrying case on her belt. She pushed the open end of the tube onto a nozzle at the top of the machine, securing the connection with two iron clamps.

  “We good?” she asked Kyle. He finished connecting a wire to the pyramid’s vertex and gave her a thumbs-up. Laurel flicked a few switches on the machine and a loud humming noise reverberated throughout the hall. Indigo bolts of lightning snapped between the rods. Cordelia saw flashes of light reflected in Gideon’s glass eyes.

  And then he vanished.

  “Whoa!” Benji exclaimed.

  “Where’d he go?” Cordelia asked.

  “Right there,” Laurel said, pointing to the top of the machine.

  Cordelia fell to her knees for a closer look. Through a tiny window in the brass tube, she saw swirling blue mist that hadn’t been there before.

  “That’s Gideon?” Cordelia asked.

  Laurel nodded. “Cool, right?”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Totally. We just made his spirit a little more travel-sized.”

  Laurel checked an indicator, which dinged pleasantly as it flashed from red to green, and removed the clamps holding the tube in place. With one smooth motion, she yanked the tube off the nozzle; a new rubber cork had been inserted, presumably to keep the ghost inside. Laurel deftly slipped the tube back into its padded case and buckled it shut. Meanwhile, Kyle disassembled the ghost tent and returned the pieces to the duffel bag.

  “I have so many questions,” Cordelia said. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  Laurel smiled. “Another time. Kyle and I need to go. Drop me a line and we’ll chat about your future.”

  She handed Cordelia a cream-colored business card. Above a handwritten phone number were two words printed in a stylish font:

  SHADY REST

  “What’s Shady Rest?” Cordelia asked, but Laurel and Kyle were already headed out the door.

  5

  Dr. Roqueni’s Announcement

  The moment school ended, Cordelia, Benji, and Agnes headed straight to the basement. Elijah Shadow’s office lay beneath a hidden trapdoor. Shelves packed with leather-bound volumes lined the walls, and a drafting table sat in the center of the room, surrounded by long cabinets stuffed with blueprints. The air was as musty as a seaside library. Cordelia had tried adding a few different species of plants to liven things up, but they never survived for long.

  In the corner where Elijah’s bones had lain for nearly a century (before being properly interred this summer), Darius Shadow was chatting with Mr. Derleth.

  The old man saw them and chuckled.

  “There they are,” he said. “You kids can’t even go on a boring old field trip without stirring up trouble! So now you can see ghosts outside of Shadow School too?”

  “Benji can,” Cordelia said, managing a weak smile. “I need to use the spectercles.”

  “So what? I wear glasses when I sit down with the newspaper each morning. Doesn’t mean I can’t read.” He scratched the gray stubble on his chin. “I’m sorely tempted to pop into a few haunted houses and give my own spectercles a go. See what I can see.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Shadow,” Agnes said. “Mine didn’t work today, so I’m fairly certain that will be the case for yours as well. I have a theory—”

  Mr. Shadow grinned. “Of course you do.”

  “—that the spectercles are like magnifying glasses. They can augment someone’s preexisting ability to see the ghosts. But if there’s no Sight to begin with, they’re not going to do you any good.”

  Cordelia said, “But if that were the case, they wouldn’t work in Shadow School, either.”

  “Shadow School’s special. Maybe the archimancy is so powerful that it gives everyone a little Sight to work with.” She noticed Cordelia’s dismayed reaction and quickly added, “But you’re the real thing! Otherwise your spectercles wouldn’t have worked outside the school at all! Your Sight is just . . . you know . . .”

  “Weak,” Cordelia said.

  She noticed that Benji had moved away from the others. He had barely spoken since their return.

  “I see Benji isn’t too keen on this latest development,” Mr. Shadow said. “I’m not surprised. That boy’s a good egg, but he’s never embraced his gift. He reminds me of Aria in that way.”

  “He’ll come around. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Leave him be, Cordelia. He’s got his way of thinking; you’ve got yours. Don’t make the same mistake I made by trying to change him.”

  Mr. Shadow was referring to his niece, Dr. Roqueni. He had forced her to spend day after day among the spirits of Shadow School when she was little, even though she wanted nothing to do with them. Eventually, she came to hate him for it. Mr. Shadow was trying to make amends for these earlier misdeeds, but Dr. Roqueni hadn’t completely forgiven him. Cordelia hoped it wasn’t too late.

  The trapdoor opened and Dr. Roqueni entered the office.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, taking a seat at the drafting table. “I had to finish writing an email to the parents about today’s incident.”

  “That’s a tough one,” Mr. Derleth said. “How’d you spin it?”

  Dr. Roqueni read from her phone.

  “‘It has come to my attention that during today’s field trip to a local landmark, some eighth graders
claim to have been attacked by animals that magically came to life. Obviously, this is not true. After an in-depth investigation, the school has come to the conclusion that this incident was some kind of elaborate student prank.’”

  The kids burst into laughter.

  “Glad I could provide you with some amusement after such a trying experience,” Dr. Roqueni said.

  “Sorry,” Cordelia said, “but is anyone actually going to believe that?”

  “The kids won’t. But I’ve found that adults will latch on to any explanation, however unlikely, as long as the world can continue to turn in the same predictable fashion they know and understand.” She slipped the phone back into her pocket. “I never should have sent you there in the first place. I knew the ark was haunted. What was I thinking?”

  “Gideon’s ghost was supposed to be nice,” Cordelia said in a consoling voice. “The website says he once guided a lost child back to her parents.”

  “He wasn’t so nice today,” muttered Benji.

  “It’s not his fault he turned into a phantom. And no one actually got hurt, so he wasn’t that bad—”

  “Cordelia,” Benji said, clamping his head between his hands. “Today is not the day for your ‘all ghosts are precious and wonderful’ routine.”

  “I understand how you must be feeling—”

  Benji scoffed. “You’re literally the last person on earth who could possibly understand how I’m feeling right now. You probably think I’m lucky I can see the ghosts. Don’t you?”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “I wish that were true. If it were a gift, I could return it. But I can’t. I’m stuck seeing ghosts everywhere I go for the rest of my life.”

  He flicked his hoodie over his head and slunk out of the room. As the trapdoor settled back into place, Dr. Roqueni shared a long look with Mr. Derleth. “That poor boy. Are you sure he’ll be okay while I’m gone?”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Mr. Derleth said.

  “‘While I’m gone’?” Cordelia asked. “What’s that mean?”

  Dr. Roqueni fiddled with her glasses. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft and uncertain. “I’m taking a leave of absence. Last year was . . . difficult. I need some time. I’ve been the principal here for nearly twenty years, without a vacation. Now that the dehaunter is up and running, it seems like the perfect opportunity.”