Phantoms Read online

  “. . . at the size of this place,” he said. “It looks like a castle! This is a prime choice, Ms. Knox. A prime choice.”

  “Has Kenny run background yet?”

  “Yup. A maid died on the premises back in 1972.”

  “That sounds promising. But only if—”

  “Dozens of sightings throughout the years. That’s more than enough to establish . . .”

  The man noticed Cordelia standing at the door.

  “Hey!” he barked. “Get out of here, kid!”

  “Carl,” Laurel said with a warning tone in her voice. “This is Cordelia Liu. She’s one of the new Victors.”

  Carl looked immediately repentant.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. Welcome to Shady Rest.”

  “Thanks,” Cordelia said. “I couldn’t help but overhear. Are we going to help the ghost of that maid?”

  “Not today,” Laurel said. “Come on. We’ve got a long drive in front of us.”

  They headed back into the lobby. On the way out the front door, Laurel gave Trish a withering look. Cordelia suspected the receptionist’s cell-phone usage during work hours would be addressed sometime soon.

  “Every Saturday, you’ll be doing one of two things,” Laurel said, wrapping a beautiful cashmere scarf around her neck. “The first is going from house to house and checking on the ghosts. Victor called it ‘visiting hours.’”

  “Why would we need to check on them?” Benji asked.

  “We’ll get to that next week,” Laurel said. “Today we’re going out into the field—which is your second responsibility. We have a long backlog of ghosts we need to capture. A lot of their haunts are due to be demolished in the next few weeks, so these are literal rescue missions.”

  “Sounds like fun!” Cordelia said.

  They followed Laurel along a narrow driveway that ran behind the main office. Kyle was loading equipment from a large shed into a white van with PDO Contractors emblazoned on the side. The van was already running, chugging gray puffs of smoke into the air.

  Kyle opened the side door. “In you go,” he said, gesturing for the children to enter. “Don’t get me killed, and we should all get along fine.”

  The kids slid into the back seat while Kyle and Laurel got in front. Cordelia took a peek at the cargo bay, where all sorts of equipment were secured with thick rope: the long duffel bag from the ark, a cooler, several toolboxes, a canister that looked like something a scuba diver might wear, and a rather large—and hence somewhat ominous—first-aid kit. The majority of the space, however, was taken up by a stainless-steel machine that had been bolted to the floor. It hummed like a refrigerator.

  Kyle drove them past the guardhouse and onto the main road.

  “Why does the van say ‘PDO Contractors’?” Agnes asked.

  “My old business,” Kyle said with a nostalgic look in his eyes. “We were making a pretty good run of it until my partner starting stealing stuff from the houses we were supposed to be fixing.” Kyle kept one hand on the steering wheel and used the other to turn the knob of the radio, navigating an ocean of white noise. “After he got arrested, I tried to run things by myself for a while, but it didn’t work out. Lost everything except the van.”

  “What’s the ‘PDO’ stand for?” Cordelia asked.

  Kyle hesitated. “Something stupid. I don’t even remember.”

  This brief exchange included more words, in total, than Kyle had spoken since they’d met. Perhaps thinking that this constituted some sort of breakthrough in their relationship, Benji leaned forward and offered Kyle his phone. “Come on, dude. No one uses the radio anymore. You can play anything you want through this.”

  Kyle gave the phone a look of disgust and continued to fiddle with the tuning knob.

  “Static’s cool too,” Benji said.

  “This first job’s a layup,” said Laurel. “Ancient farmhouse out by Pawtuckaway Lake. The current owner is a developer who wants to knock the entire thing to the ground and use the land to build something he can turn a profit on. He wasn’t going to let us come at first—why should he care if the house is haunted when he’s going to demolish it anyway? But then we warned him that if we didn’t capture the ghost, it was going to stick around and haunt the new house he built—which would definitely hurt his chances of selling it.”

  “But that’s not true,” Agnes said.

  “I think it’s okay to bend the truth if it’s for a good cause.”

  “Me too,” said Cordelia. She had often used the same logic to justify lying to her parents, so it was gratifying to hear an actual grown-up voice her agreement.

  Agnes asked, “How did the owner know the house was haunted to begin with?”

  “The usual clues,” Laurel said. “Lights flashing, doors slamming. A sudden, inexplicable drop in temperature. A ghost can definitely make its presence felt, even to those without the Sight. Kyle and I have experienced things that would make your spine twist into a knot. In some ways, it’s probably even scarier because we can’t see them.” Her gaze passed between Cordelia and Benji. “Though that must be hard for you two to imagine.”

  Cordelia remembered those early moments in the ark before she put on the spectercles. “Not so hard,” she said.

  After a long stretch of empty country roads, they pulled up to a farmhouse set against the withered stalks of an abandoned cornfield. The house was a faded shade of red with a decapitated chimney and stone-shattered windows. Black liquid dripped from the gutters and collected in a dank stream that ran across the front yard like a polluted moat.

  The three kids piled out of the van.

  “Sweet pad,” Benji said.

  “You two head inside and do reconnaissance,” Laurel said, opening the back doors of the van so they could unload the equipment. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  “What do we do if we find the ghost?” Benji asked.

  “Nothing. Just wait until we get there.”

  The inside of the house wasn’t any nicer than the outside. Most of the furniture had been left to rot like organs inside a decomposing corpse. A potted fern had gone feral, stretching its leafy arms across half the living room.

  Cordelia put the spectercles on and the room instantly began to spin. She leaned against the wall, closing her eyes until it passed.

  “What’s the name of that ride?” Cordelia asked. “Where you stick to the walls because it’s spinning so fast?”

  “The Gravitron! I love that one!”

  “I used to.”

  The farmhouse wasn’t large, and after a quick search of the first floor, they went up a set of rickety stairs. A dark hallway offered them three options. Cordelia started to open the closest door when she was struck by a wave of dizziness, as though she had just been spinning around in circles and was now trying to walk straight. A flat surface was approaching fast—either the floor or a wall; it was impossible to tell—and Cordelia would have struck it hard were it not for Benji’s amazing reflexes. She felt his arms around her shoulders, holding her still.

  “Whoa!” he said. “You okay?”

  Cordelia nodded. The dizziness had passed, at least for now, leaving her free to realize how close Benji was standing. She could feel his warm breath against her cheek.

  “Thanks,” she said, stepping away. “I guess my eyes needed a little more time to adjust to the spectercles.”

  “Has something like that happened before?”

  It hadn’t. After the initial period of adjustment, the spectercles had always worked fine. This random bout of dizziness was a new twist, and Cordelia didn’t like it. She wasn’t about to let Benji know that, however. Benji with his stupid, flawless Sight.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” she said.

  Cordelia tried opening the door again, this time without any ill effects, and entered a small office. There was a metal desk with an old, boxy computer on it, a bookcase packed with paperback westerns, and a scarecrow holding a Kramer Farm’s World-Famous Corn
Maze sign. Behind the scarecrow, an array of hand-drawn maps had been displayed to commemorate twenty-five years of mazes. Each design was a unique work of art, a testament to its creator’s passion and care.

  The ghost was on the couch. He was a man in his sixties wearing a flannel shirt, his chin perched on folded hands as he regarded a set of toothpicks that had been arranged like a maze in front of him. There was an intense look of concentration on his face, like a chess player planning his next move.

  “Guess this must be Mr. Kramer,” Benji said. “Still thinking about his mazes. That’s dedication.” The ghost tilted his head, as though hearing an interesting sound in the distance, and the smile vanished from Benji’s face. “Let’s keep our distance. After what happened in the ark—”

  Cordelia took a seat on the couch.

  “Or you could just . . . sit next to him,” Benji said.

  “He looks sad.”

  “He’s dead. That’s got to affect your mood some. Come on, Cord—let’s go downstairs.”

  “In a minute. I want to explain what’s going on so he doesn’t get scared.” Cordelia folded her legs beneath her and turned to face the ghost. “Sorry to intrude, Mr. Kramer, but this place isn’t safe for you anymore. We’re going to use a special machine to take you somewhere new. It won’t hurt”—Cordelia hoped that was true—“and when you wake up you’ll be in a brand-new house where you’ll get to see your loved ones again. Sort of.”

  Cordelia searched Mr. Kramer’s face for any reaction. His unblinking gaze didn’t move from the toothpicks, but she thought his features had softened a bit, as though he were more at peace than before. That was probably just wishful thinking on her part, however. More than likely, the ghost hadn’t registered a single thing she said.

  Laurel and Agnes entered the room. Kyle dropped the duffel bag to the floor, shattering the calm with a rude clang.

  “You find the ghost yet?” Laurel asked.

  “I’m sitting next to him.”

  Laurel gave Cordelia a curious look. “You’re really not scared of them at all, are you?”

  Benji said, “Yet put a centipede next to her and she screams her head off.”

  “Nothing should have that many legs,” Cordelia muttered.

  “What’s it doing?” Kyle asked, looking in the ghost’s general vicinity.

  “Nothing,” Cordelia said. “Just staring at the table, like he’s in a daze.”

  Laurel and Kyle exchanged a smile.

  “Our favorite type of ghost,” Laurel explained. “Some of them never stop moving. That’s why we have to use the video screens to mesmerize them. But others just sit there like they’re in a coma or something. Makes catching them a breeze. Victor used to call them ‘roses.’”

  Kyle chuckled and added, “‘A beautiful flower that we can replant somewhere new, where it can grow safe and strong again.’” It was a higher-pitched voice than his own, no doubt an imitation of Victor’s, with an edge of mockery that made both Laurel and Kyle burst into laughter.

  “Sounds like Victor really liked the ghosts,” Agnes said.

  “Oh, he loved them,” said Kyle, still chuckling. “He could go on and on for—”

  “But you said he quit because he was tired of them,” Agnes said.

  The laughter stopped. Laurel gave Agnes an annoyed look, like a teacher corrected by a student.

  “Well . . . he did love the ghosts at first,” Laurel said. “Then he changed his mind.”

  “Did something happen?” Cordelia asked.

  “Nothing in particular. Guess he’d just had enough.”

  Kyle started to add something, but Cordelia saw Laurel shoot him a quick warning glance: Don’t open your mouth. He knelt down and unzipped the duffel bag instead. Laurel was clearly afraid that Kyle might reveal some secret she wanted to keep from the children. Cordelia’s paranoia kicked into full gear for a moment—What are they hiding about Victor? We have to find out!—before she reminded herself that grown-ups kept perfectly innocuous secrets from children all the time, usually “for their own good.” If Laurel didn’t want to tell them something, she probably had a good reason. She had saved them from a phantom. She ran a whole business dedicated to helping ghosts.

  Cordelia could trust her.

  While Agnes helped set up the equipment, Cordelia and Benji waited in the living room. Without a task to distract them, they found themselves awkward in each other’s company, their conversation stuttering and stalling like an old engine in need of repair. Those moments in the ark where he had, more or less, confessed his feelings, and she had, more or less, blown him off, colored every look between them. Part of her wished it had never happened. Part of her wanted him to ask her out again.

  “I know you don’t want to be here,” Cordelia finally said. “But I think it’s really sweet that you’re doing this for your family.”

  “Yeah, thanks. This pays a lot more than bagging groceries.” Benji gave her a shy smile. “And I guess spending every Saturday with you isn’t totally awful. Even if you do kind of look like a praying mantis.”

  “What?” Cordelia asked, then realized that she was still wearing the spectercles. She yanked them off, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, just as Laurel came downstairs holding a brass tube identical to the one she had used in the ark. The only difference was the mist swirling within it. Mr. Kramer’s essence was not ocean blue, as Gideon’s had been, but the rich brown of freshly tilled soil.

  They returned to the van. Laurel opened the back doors and pressed a button on the stainless-steel machine bolted to the floor. The front of it slid open like something out of a sci-fi movie. Plumes of thick mist rose from the interior.

  “Is that a liquid-nitrogen freezer?” Agnes asked, with the same tone of delighted disbelief another girl might have used upon spotting her celebrity crush walking down the street.

  Laurel nodded. “Have you ever seen one up close before?”

  “Only in my dreams.”

  “This one’s just a baby. I’ll have to show you our main unit back at the village. That one will knock your socks off.”

  “Better not,” Benji said. “Agnes might pass out from excitement.”

  “What do you use it for?” Cordelia asked.

  “Hold this,” Laurel said, handing her the tube. Cordelia gasped in surprise. Even through her thick gloves, she could feel its heat.

  “It’s warm,” Cordelia said, handing it to Agnes.

  “For now,” replied Laurel. She removed a pair of elbow-length rubber gloves from a side compartment and started to pull them on. “In ten minutes, the boo-tube will be too scalding to hold. In thirty minutes, it’ll burn the flesh from your fingers. In an hour, the glass window will shatter, and the ghost will be free again.”

  For a moment, the kids stared at Laurel in disbelief. Then Benji burst into laughter.

  “Boo-tube?” he asked.

  “Its technical name is long and difficult to pronounce.”

  “So you went with boo-tube instead?”

  “You’re missing the point! After we capture the ghosts, they start heating up. If we don’t reduce their temperature, the entire tube will start melting in about an hour. And then they’re back out in the world again.”

  “Makes sense,” Agnes said. “Ghosts are pure energy, right? How else would they be able to do things like make lights flicker and slam doors? That isn’t a problem in a house, where those excited molecules have plenty of room to spread out. But compressing all that energy into an area of, what”—Agnes took stock of the boo-tube—“fifteen hundred cubic centimeters? That’s like trying to stuff a bonfire into a fireplace.”

  Laurel looked impressed. “You’re pretty smart for a kid.”

  “I can bake too.”

  After Laurel had finished securing the boo-tube inside the freezer, they all climbed into the van.

  “That didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” Benji said. “We’ll be back home by lunch!”

  Laurel turned i
n her seat and gave him a smile. “You didn’t think we were done, did you?”

  10

  Visiting Hours

  They captured two more ghosts after leaving Mr. Kramer’s house. The first was a salesman type wearing a canary-yellow sports jacket, who kept mouthing words into an invisible phone while pacing the floor. The second ghost was a “rose” making knitting motions with her hands. The boo-mists of the two ghosts were as different as could be. The man’s mist polluted the tube, like exhaust fumes from an old car, while the woman’s resembled the steam from a teakettle.

  “I wish I could see the mists for myself,” Agnes said that Monday as they ate lunch. “But from what you’ve told me, I think the color reveals the essence of each person. Gideon’s was blue because he dreamed of sailing the ocean in his ark, and Mr. Kramer’s was brown because he was a farmer.”

  Benji said, “It’s different for each ghost. Like the Brights.”

  Cordelia nodded. She was quieter than usual, content to listen. This is the way it’s supposed to be, she thought, unable to keep the grin off her face. The three of us, helping the ghosts. Together.

  There had clearly been something bothering Agnes all day, however, and as they gathered their things to go to fifth period, she finally aired it. “Saturday was fun, but I’m still a little iffy about this whole deal. I think they’re hiding something from us.”

  Benji scoffed. “Hiding something? They literally gave us a tour, Ag! We know what they’re doing, who’s doing it, why they’re doing it, and how they’re doing it!”

  Cordelia agreed with Benji, though she was surprised to hear him come to the defense of Shady Rest so quickly.