The Golden Ghost
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Marion Dane Bauer
Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Peter Ferguson
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bauer, Marion Dane.
The golden ghost / Marion Dane Bauer ; illustrated by Peter Ferguson. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Stepping Stone book.”
Summary: On a bike outing to the abandoned houses by the old cement mill, Delsie and her friend Todd discover one of the houses is not empty—and a ghost dog haunts the area.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89818-1
[1. Dogs—Fiction. 2. Ghosts—Fiction. 3. Homeless persons—Fiction.] I. Ferguson, Peter, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.B3262Go 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010004116
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
To Polly and Daisy, my favorite dinner guests
—M.D.B.
For Robbie and Hannah
—P.F.
he big dog was pacing, pacing. She moved in a steady loping trot around the small house. She made one circle with her nose to the ground. She made another testing the air
.
From time to time she ran onto the front porch of the house and checked up there
.
Then she went back to circling again
.
She ran without pause. She seemed to run without effort, too. She didn’t pant. She didn’t
slow her pace. The big dog just kept running
.
Her silky reddish-gold fur rippled with each step. Her eyes were dark with knowing. She had been alone and lonely for so long. She had been waiting for so long
.
When would someone see her?
At last, she stopped in front of the house. She sat, pointed her soft muzzle at the summer sky, and howled. The cry drifted out and out
.
Away from the empty house
.
Away from the empty cement mill that stood like a sentinel over the scene
.
Into the empty blue sky
.
The big dog cocked her head, waiting for some kind of reply
.
When no response came, she went back to pacing
.
Pacing
.
Pacing
.
Delsie and Todd sat on the curb in front of the grocery store.
Delsie scuffed her feet in the gravel that had gathered in the gutter. She scooped some into her hand and let it trickle between her fingers.
Panning for gold
, she thought.
We could pan for gold
.
But when she looked over at Todd, she didn’t say it.
He seemed to have run out of patience with her ideas. And maybe she had run out of good ideas, too.
Just as they had run out of summer.
Here it was Labor Day weekend. School started in three days. And they had nothing better to do than sit on the curb in front of her parents’ grocery store.
Bug, Todd’s small black and tan dog, lay at their feet, panting. Apparently, he didn’t have any good ideas, either.
Delsie lifted the little dog onto her lap. “Why did they name you Bug?” she asked him. “You’re too cute to be called Bug.”
It was an old complaint. When Bug was a new pup, Delsie had wanted to call him Shadow. That was what he looked like, a glossy black shadow with sunlight peeking out. His reddish-brown paws, his reddish-brown muzzle, and his sweet reddish-brown eyebrows were the sunlight. Mostly, though, he was shadow.
“Because his eyes are buggy,” Todd answered, though she’d been talking to Bug, not to him. “Anyway, Ryan named him.” Ryan was one of Todd’s brothers.
Todd had three older brothers. He had
everything, really. Three older brothers. A dog. Two cats. He even had hamsters that kept making new hamsters until Todd and his brothers had to go all over town begging people to adopt them.
Delsie didn’t have any brothers or sisters. She didn’t have any pets, either. She didn’t even have a hamster. “No dogs,” Delsie’s dad said. “No cats. No hamsters. No guinea pigs. No bunny rabbits. No little white mice. No groundhogs. I’m allergic.”
Delsie’s dad liked making jokes, though Delsie didn’t think that one was very funny.
She had never asked for a groundhog.
Delsie rubbed inside one of Bug’s floppy ears. He leaned into her hand and groaned with pleasure.
Bug was an odd-looking dog. His long, fringed tail was elegant. His snub nose was
comical. They seemed like ends that belonged on two different dogs.
“Maybe he should have been called Prince,” she said. “Or Clown. Just about anything would have been better than Bug.”
Behind them, Delsie’s father emerged from the store with a broom.
“Waiting for a taxi?” he asked.
That was a joke, too. Milton was a very small town. It had one grocery store, one school, and one old cement mill on the edge of town. The mill had shut down before Delsie and Todd were born. There were two churches and two taverns, too. (“One tavern for each church,” Delsie’s dad always said.)
No taxis.
Todd laughed, but Delsie didn’t. She just said, “We’re bored. We need something to do. Something spectacular.”
“You could sweep the walk,” her dad offered, holding out the broom. “A clean walk is always spectacular.”
Delsie usually liked helping out around her parents’ store. But not today, with the sun shining so brightly and the summer almost gone.
She kissed the top of Bug’s head and ignored the broom.
Todd jumped up and took it. He would have stood on his head for Delsie’s dad if he’d asked him to. Todd’s father had moved to another state and rarely called.
“I wish I could have a dog,” Delsie said. She said it loudly enough for her father to hear as he headed back inside the store.
Her father didn’t slow his stride as he said over his shoulder, “No dogs. No cats. No hamsters—”
Delsie interrupted. “I know. No groundhogs, either. You’re allergic.”