Phantoms Read online

  Laurel turned in her seat to face the kids. Her auburn hair had been tied into a tight bun that day, and it gave a severe pinch to her otherwise pretty features. “Our research team dug up a little more about this one than usual. Her name was Esmae Givens—”

  “It still is,” said Cordelia.

  “—and she was only nine when she died. I won’t get into details, but let’s just say it was the kind of death that leaves an impression. She’s not just a regular ghost. She’s a phantom.”

  Between coughs, Benji said, “You told us we’d never have to . . . catch one of those,” he managed.

  “That was my intention,” Laurel said, still searching through her phone. “But you’re doing so much better than I expected. It’s like you’ve been around ghosts for years! Besides, Esmae’s not so bad for a phantom. Look.”

  She turned her phone so they could all see the screen.

  It was one of those boring birthday videos that parents posted on social media and no one actually watched. A homemade banner attached to the wall proclaimed Happy 8th Birthday, Caroline! Friends and family in pointy hats sat around a dining room table as a cake was placed in front of the birthday girl.

  Everyone sang. Caroline closed her eyes, presumably making a wish.

  The candles went out.

  Caroline turned to the boy next to her—same eyes, same nose, probably her older brother—and blamed him for blowing out the candles. The boy protested his innocence, but no one seemed to believe him. Caroline’s mom came to the rescue and relit the candles. The whole routine started over again.

  This time they only made it through a single “Happy birthday to you” before the candles blew out on their own.

  The guests exchanged nervous glances. An older man leaning against the wall started to clap his hands—“Trick candles! Good one!”—but stopped immediately when the mother gave a quick shake of her head. One of Caroline’s friends removed her birthday hat and placed it neatly on the paper plate in front of her, as if hoping not to be associated with the whole strange affair.

  The mother lit a single candle. It blew out. She stubbornly lit it again—and the cake catapulted across the room, slamming into the wall. A round layer of pink icing hung suspended for a moment before beginning a slow slide to the floor.

  The video ended just as the screaming began.

  “She’s a poltergeist,” Agnes said.

  “No more, no less,” said Laurel. “This is not Seamus Gideon raising animals from the dead. This is a little girl who’s angry she’s never going to have another birthday party. Still, I want you to be more cautious than usual. Locate Esmae, quickly and quietly, and show us where she is. After that, get out of the house. Let the grown-ups worry about the dangerous part.”

  Benji was struck by another coughing fit. Everyone stared at him as he reached for a bottle of water.

  “Quietly, huh?” Agnes asked.

  Laurel frowned. “I think you need to sit this one out, Benji.”

  “I’m”—cough, cough—“fine! I just”—cough, cough—“need”—cough—“a minute.”

  “I can do it without him,” Cordelia said. “Don’t worry. I’m sneaky.”

  Laurel tapped the back of the chair with her fingers, considering. “You sure you’re not scared?”

  “Please. In Shadow School I once saw this”—Benji’s coughing suddenly got louder, warning Cordelia to watch her words—“giant rat in the cafeteria. That was scary. I can handle one little phantom.”

  With that settled, Cordelia slid out of the van and entered the house. The foyer had a cathedral ceiling with a glittering chandelier and a staircase branching off in two directions. A giant fish tank that looked like it had been stolen from an aquarium sat against the wall. The filter made a bubbling sound.

  Cordelia walked into the dining room.

  Caroline’s birthday banner was still there, though the tape on the right side had peeled away, causing it to hang askew on the wall. Paper plates and overturned plastic cups littered the table. Someone had cleaned the cake off the wall, but they hadn’t done a very good job. Sticky strings of icing clung to the wall like sweet worms.

  Cordelia found a comfortable place on the couch and slid the spectercles over her eyes. After the world finally stabilized, she rose to her feet—a little unsteadily at first—and searched the first and second floors. It took a long time. There were rooms within rooms and closets big enough to be studio apartments. Cordelia actually had trouble finding her way back to the foyer. She wondered if she should have brought bread crumbs.

  There was no sign of Esmae.

  With a sigh of resignation, Cordelia returned to the first-floor hallway and opened the door she had been saving until last, hoping she wouldn’t need it. Wooden steps led down into a dimly lit basement.

  “Of course you’re down there,” she muttered.

  Cordelia descended. As she did, a series of thumping noises seemed to follow her down the stairs, echoing her footfalls. She tried not to think about it. The whole basement was basically a giant playroom. Toys, sleeping bags, and stuffed animals covered the floor. Apparently a sleepover had been part of Caroline’s birthday plans. The few windows, set high in the walls, were covered by thick curtains, leaving barely enough light to see by. Cordelia nearly stepped on a board game that had been stopped in progress. The last person had rolled a four.

  Cordelia navigated the minefield of toys and found Esmae staring at a shelf of dolls. For the most part, she looked like a regular nine-year-old girl. Her blond hair was short—except for the bangs, which covered her entire forehead—and her eyes were a pretty shade of blue.

  A tiny flame flickered from each finger of her right hand, giving it the appearance of a candelabra.

  Esmae held her hand out in order to illuminate the dolls, which she studied with disquieting intensity. Only four fingers of her other hand were lit. Cordelia remembered that Esmae had died when she was nine and wondered if there was a connection.

  Keeping her eyes on the ghost, Cordelia slowly reached for her phone. She texted Laurel—found her downstairs—and watched as Esmae tried to pick up a plastic doll wearing an equestrian uniform. Her fingers passed right through it, leaving a trail of blue smoke. She stomped her feet in a ghostly tantrum and let loose with what surely would have been a doozy of a scream, had she been alive.

  Cordelia took an instinctual step backward and knocked a tower of Jenga blocks to the floor.

  Esmae extended her hands in Cordelia’s direction, bathing her in a glow of otherworldly blue light. A smile stretched across her ghostly lips. She looked as though a friend had just come over for an unexpected playdate.

  “Hi,” Cordelia said with a hesitant wave.

  Esmae blew out a single flame of her candled fingers. The Jenga blocks rose into the air. Cordelia dove to the floor as they shot across the room, barely missing her. She looked up in time to see Esmae blow out a second flame, causing a tower of board games to topple in her direction. The corner of a wooden box stung her ankle.

  She backed away from Esmae, who teasingly raised the flame of her index finger to her pursed lips—and then the world went blurry, as though someone had run their fingers across a wet painting and smeared all the colors together. The spectercles, Cordelia thought. Not now. She tried to find the exit but went the wrong way and heard the crunch of toys beneath her feet. Something hard rammed into her knee.

  There was no time to wait for the blurriness to get better on its own. Cordelia removed the spectercles.

  Her vision of the real world instantly cleared, but she could no longer see Esmae. Cordelia took two steps toward the basement stairs, and a leather couch flipped across the room, blocking her path. A TV bolted to the wall began shaking like crazy, eager to escape its moorings and take its shot at the intruder.

  “Cordelia,” Laurel whispered from the top of the stairs. “You down there?”

  “Yes! Help!”

  Laurel rushed down the stairs and shoved the co
uch out of the way. Kyle was right behind her. He began unpacking equipment, pausing to give the TV a nervous glance. It was shaking harder than ever.

  “Where is she?” Laurel asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Cordelia shrieked. She had felt five tiny flames brush against the back of her neck.

  “What’s wrong?” Laurel asked.

  “We should go.”

  “Not until we’ve done what we came here to do.” Laurel extended the rod. The portable screen unfolded into place. “This job needs to be completed tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Just point me in the right direction. I’ll take it from there.”

  At that moment, the TV broke free with an explosion of anchor screws and drywall dust. It shot across the room like a missile. Laurel ducked in time, but Kyle wasn’t so lucky. The TV clipped him in the head before crash-landing in an overstuffed toy chest.

  Kyle went down and didn’t move.

  “Kyle?” Cordelia asked. She started toward him, but Laurel grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Where’s the phantom? Tell me!”

  “I don’t know!” Cordelia exclaimed. Tears stung her eyes. “I can’t see her!”

  Laurel shoved her away. “I’ll do it myself!” she exclaimed, tapping her watch. An old commercial began playing on the screen. A smiling girl with pigtails whispered in a doll’s ear while a voiceover narrator said, “Who’s the only friend you can trust? Secret Sally!” Laurel swung the screen rod around the room, hoping to snag Esmae’s attention.

  Cordelia rushed over to Kyle. His eyes were open but dazed, and his left temple was matted with blood.

  “Kyle’s hurt,” Cordelia said. “We have to go!”

  “Not without the ghost!” Laurel hissed.

  At that moment, Benji stumbled down the stairs, followed by Agnes. “Behind you!” he screamed to Laurel, who spun around and thrust the screen forward as though it were a crucifix warding off a vampire. The commercial changed. A girl pushed a doll on a swing while singing, “Playful Patty, Playful Patty . . .”

  “You got her,” Benji said. “She’s totally hypnotized by that . . . extraordinarily creepy doll video.” He coughed into his arm and then squinted. “Does that ghost have flames coming out of her fingers?”

  Kyle touched his wounded head. “A TV hit me,” he said.

  “Are you okay?” Cordelia asked.

  “I’ll live. Let me set up this ghost tent so we can get out of here.”

  He tried to sit up. It didn’t go well. Cordelia slid her coat beneath his head and helped him back down again.

  “I’ll get some ice,” Benji called down.

  “You rest,” Agnes told Kyle, patting him gently on the shoulder. “I can set up the tent on my own.”

  “I’ll help,” said Cordelia, rising to her feet.

  “No,” Laurel said. Her cold eyes bored into Cordelia. “You wait upstairs. I think you’ve done quite enough for today.”

  12

  The Legacy of Leland Knox

  No one spoke during the return trip to Shady Rest. When they reached the main office, Kyle headed home, and Laurel told the kids to wait in the conference room while she took Esmae’s boo-tube to the freezer. Cordelia felt like she had just been sent to the principal’s office. She found a seat and put her head on the table.

  “What happened in there, Cord?” Benji asked. His cough had gotten a lot better. Cordelia had found him some cold medicine in one of the medicine cabinets, along with a first-aid kit that Laurel had used to clean and bandage Kyle’s wound.

  “The spectercles glitched,” Cordelia said. “I couldn’t even look through them without getting dizzy. I had to take them off.”

  Benji asked, “Like at the house with the toothpick ghost?”

  “This was a lot worse—but same idea.”

  “This happened before?” Agnes asked. Cordelia couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or concerned. Probably a little of both. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s already so lame that I need the spectercles to begin with,” Cordelia said in a small voice. “And now they don’t even work right? It’s embarrassing.”

  “Were those the only two times the spectercles glitched?” Agnes asked.

  “Yes. Except for all the other times.”

  “How many other times are we talking about?”

  “Two. Maybe five. Probably twelve.”

  Benji and Agnes exchanged a harried look, like the parents of a particularly problematic child. “You should have told us,” Benji said.

  “It was never an issue before! We only dealt with nice ghosts! If I got a little dizzy every now and then, it wasn’t a big deal. But today . . . ugh! I feel so bad. What happened to Kyle was my fault.”

  No one disagreed. They had been friends too long, and gone through too much, to give false words of consolation.

  “He’ll be okay” was all Agnes could offer.

  They waited in silence. Laurel would return at any moment, and they didn’t want to risk being overheard. Cordelia yawned. The horrors of Esmae’s house had drained her, and she thought she could have easily sprawled out on the table and taken a nap.

  After a few minutes, Agnes asked, “What’s taking Laurel so long? The freezer’s in the basement, isn’t it?”

  “For the regular ghosts,” Cordelia said. “Maybe there’s a different one for phantoms. I know I wouldn’t keep them in the main office. What if there was a power outage?”

  “Good point.”

  “How are we playing this when she gets back?” Benji asked. “Laurel’s going to want to know why Cordelia freaked out. Should we tell her about the spectercles?”

  “No way,” Agnes said. “We’d have to tell her about Shadow School too. I still don’t trust her enough for that.”

  Cordelia heard footsteps approaching the conference room. She resisted the urge to hide underneath the table.

  “What do I say?” she asked.

  Benji smiled. “You’ll think of something. You always do.”

  Laurel entered the room and shut the door behind her. There were quite a few open seats, but she chose to sit on the edge of the table instead. “Benji, Agnes. You mind leaving me and Cordelia alone for a minute?”

  “Yes,” said Agnes.

  “Whatever you have to say to her, you can say to us too,” added Benji.

  “Fine,” Laurel said. She was trying to play it cool, but Cordelia could tell their refusal to leave bugged her. “What happened?”

  Cordelia could think of only one lie that fit. “I guess I just got scared.”

  “Scared? You said you couldn’t even see the ghost.”

  “I panicked, okay? It was so dark down there. I could barely see!”

  Laurel crossed her legs and gave Cordelia a dubious look. “You never struck me as the panicking sort. You’ve been around plenty of ghosts.”

  “Esmae wasn’t a ghost. She was a phantom. And she was way scarier than Seamus Gideon.”

  Benji rolled right with it: “I was scared too. That girl was freaky.”

  Laurel seemed to find their explanation reasonable enough, even if she didn’t look happy about it. “I appreciate your honesty, Cordelia, but what happened today is completely unacceptable. Kyle may need stitches. That’s on you.”

  “I know,” Cordelia said, looking down at the table.

  “If you can’t handle more intense hauntings, then maybe—”

  Agnes rocketed from her seat and pointed an accusing finger at Laurel. “None of this is Cordelia’s fault. It’s yours. You’re the one who sent a kid alone into a house with a dangerous phantom! Cordelia’s lucky she’s still alive!”

  A range of emotions passed across Laurel’s face. First, wide-eyed astonishment, then anger, and finally a sort of reluctant acceptance. Laurel nodded to herself, leaving Cordelia with the feeling that some sort of decision had been made.

  “You’re right,” she s
aid in a defeated voice. “I never should have sent you into that house alone. I was in a rush to capture Esmae, and it clouded my thinking. I’m sorry.”

  Laurel hopped down from the table and fell into the nearest seat. Cordelia and her friends exchanged uncertain looks. The conversation had taken an unexpected twist, and they didn’t know how to proceed.

  “Why the hurry?” Agnes asked. “We could have just come back another day.”

  Laurel poured herself a glass of water from a pitcher on the table. She took a long sip before speaking. “A while ago, I mentioned that we sometimes get paid to catch troublesome spirits. Esmae was one of those. The Connollys hired Shady Rest to get rid of her. And they’re the type of people with more money than time, so they promised to pay twice as much if we could finish the job today.”

  “You risked Cordelia’s life for money?” Agnes asked.

  “I don’t care about the money!” Laurel exclaimed, insulted by the implication. “I care about Shady Rest! The business needs more income if it’s going to survive. I already let half the staff go, and I stopped building those fancy houses that Grandpa loved. From now on, every ghost gets the same dinky ranch.”

  “Like Mr. DeWitt’s,” Benji said.

  “Yeah. Grandpa would roll over in his grave, but that’s all we can afford. Which is why I need to charge for our services. If Shady Rest goes bankrupt, all those ghosts we’ve supposedly rescued are going to be at risk. Their haunts will either get sold or destroyed. I can’t let that happen. Shady Rest is my grandfather’s legacy. It’s my responsibility to protect it.”

  “You really loved him,” Cordelia said.

  “Everyone loved him,” Laurel said. “The man was a saint. But yes—me most of all.” She sniffled and wiped her eyes. “Can I be honest? I worry about what he’d think, if he were here. Grandpa never accepted money for anything involving the ghosts. He viewed helping them as a moral responsibility.”

  “Why can’t it be both?” Benji asked. “You can help people and still get paid. Besides, these Connolly people seemed like they could afford it.”

  He gave Cordelia a nervous glance, expecting an argument. She understood why. Given her past actions, it was a fair presumption that she would agree with Mr. Knox’s view on “moral responsibility” and might have an issue with being paid for their services. Now that she knew the whole story, however, Cordelia found it hard to argue with Laurel’s way of doing things. By capturing a phantom, Shady Rest was keeping homeowners safe from the dead. The money earned was then used to help the dead exist among the living. The entire system possessed an appealing balance.