There's a Dead Person Following My Sister Around (10 page)

"But she didn't do anything once you actually got the book?" Jackie asked.

"No," I admitted. "What do you think it all means?"

"I think it means we have a crazy ghost on our hands," Jackie said. "That's why Marella is afraid of her."

"You mean dying made Adah crazy?"

"Or being not-quite-dead all these years."

"Not-quite-dead sounds suspiciously like vampires," I said. I found my hand straying to my neck.

Jackie sighed loudly. "Forget the vampires. Look, when you die, you're supposed to kind of ... move on ... to heaven, right?"

"Or not," I pointed out.

Jackie gave me a dirty look. "Anyway, obviously Adah and Marella didn't move on anywhere. Maybe because they died violently or because they were never properly buried. Whatever the reason, the two of them are obviously stuck somewhere between being alive and
being dead. Just the two of them, because, obviously, one of the rules of being a ghost must be you have to stay near where you died. Obviously, Adah and Marella are both lonely. But the difference is, every time there's a little girl about her age in this house, Marella tries to contact her to play with her."

"Ahhh," I said, suddenly getting it.

"But, obviously,"—Jackie could use the word
obviously
about things that weren't at all obvious more often than anybody else in the world—"the mother is jealous and doesn't want Marella talking to anybody but her."

"Because," I said, and Jackie joined in so we both finished together, "she's crazy."

It fit better than any theory I had. "So what do we do?"

"Obviously, an exorcism."

"Call in a priest?" I asked. Somehow I couldn't picture myself picking up the phone and inviting over Father D., our sixty-year-old pastor. "Oh, and by the way," I'd have to tell him, "don't mention this to my parents."

But Jackie was shaking her head. "Oh, Ted," she said, "you always make everything so complicated. One of us came prepared." She got off the couch, which woke up Cinnamon, who began bounding around the family room while Jackie fetched her backpack. Jackie held up a tiny bottle.

"Perfume?" I guessed.

Obviously not. "Souvenir holy water," she said with a sigh. "Don't you remember when Aunt Len went with that church group to Lourdes?"

I didn't bother to point out that Len is her mother's sister and therefore no relation to me at all; and, no, I did not remember when she went to Lourdes.

Cinnamon was so eager to see what Jackie was doing, she tried to stick her head in the backpack, and Jackie had to push her away.

"Ghost-repelling music," Jackie said, pulling out a cassette tape.

"What's ghost-repelling music?" I asked. "Do you mean religious songs?"

"Opera," she said.

"How about Christmas carols?" I said. "We've got John Denver and the Muppets singing 'Silent Night.' Maybe that'd do better?"

"Opera," Jackie repeated, forcing me to take her tape. "Opera will drive
anybody
out of the house. Don't put it on till the last minute."

The next thing she pulled out was a mirror, the small round kind with a handle. The next thing after that was another mirror, one with a little metal stand. After that, she pulled out yet another mirror, this one set in the middle of a stained-glass daisy pattern, which I recognized to be the one that normally hung on her bedroom wall. She also had two tiny mirrors in cases, the kind girls carry in their purses. Jackie set the mirrors faceup
in a semicircle around her. "We need to complete the circle with more mirrors," she said.

"How come?"

"To form a barrier around us, which the ghosts can't cross."

"This is getting to sound like vampires again," I muttered.

"Just get some," she said. She picked up the backpack and dumped the rest of the contents onto the floor. Candles. Lots and lots of candles. Ever since the ice storm that left the entire city of Rochester without electricity for a week, everyone always has candles.

I got the mirror from the vanity brush-and-comb set Zach and I bought Mom for Christmas last year, and the mirror from by the front door in the living room, which has a sunset painted on it. That wasn't enough to close the circle—and meanwhile Jackie had gotten dishes from the kitchen cupboard and was busy setting lit candles on them, making an outer circle beyond the one with the mirrors, which made me nervous with Cinnamon sniffing and poking around—so I hurriedly pulled the entire medicine cabinet Zach had made in shop off its hook in the powder room.

"There," I said.

"Good," Jackie said. Apparently it was the first thing I'd done right. "Now put on the tape."

Mercifully, the stereo was in the living room. But Jackie called, "Louder." And, "Louder." And again,
"LOUDER." Till I could feel the bass rumbling in my bones.

Back in the family room, Jackie had opened all the windows and the sliding glass door.

"Jeez," I said, hugging myself for warmth and shouting to be heard over Luciano Pavarotti, "it's only March, you know. It's forty degrees out there." Dad hadn't even put in the screens yet.

"We have to leave an exit route for the ghosts. Cinnamon, get away from there."

I grabbed Cinnamon by the collar before she could make it outside, and slid the door till it was open only a couple inches. I didn't use the screen panel because Cinnamon is just dumb enough that I was afraid she'd jump through it. "Here," I said, knowing we had to make a diversion for Cinnamon and knowing that she had a thing for socks. I pulled off my sock, tied a knot in it, and tossed it into the kitchen.

She went skittering after it, her nails clicking on the floor.

Jackie put the back of her hand to her forehead, like one of those old-time actresses in a black-and-white movie. "That's disgusting," she said.

"Yeah, well, let's get going before she comes back."

"Come into the circle," Jackie said, "and sit back-to-back with me."

But just as I was shifting balance to step over the double circle of candles and mirrors, she said, "Bible."

"'Bible' ?" I repeated.

"One of us will sit on the journal," she said, indicating it on the floor next to her, "the other on the Bible. That way, we and the journal will all be safe. You
do
have a Bible, don't you?"

"Sure." I considered. "Somewhere."

Jackie sighed. "Never mind, then."

"No, hold on." I ran to the kitchen desk, where the mail, and grocery-store coupons, and all sorts of papers accumulate. I brought back a stack of church bulletins. "Is this close enough?" I asked.

Jackie sighed, but she took them to sit on, because they were less lumpy than the journal.

As soon as I sat down, she stood up, holding the bottle from Lourdes. She reached over the mirrors and the candles, then dribbled the liquid out in a third circle.

Holy water better not leave a stain,
I thought,
or Mom's going to kill you.

Jackie sat down again and reached behind, for my hands. "Close your eyes and concentrate," she said, but she didn't say what to concentrate on.

"Aren't we supposed to be sitting around a table?" I asked. "So that the ghosts can bang out messages on the wood?"

"Don't be more of an idiot than is absolutely necessary, Ted. This is an exorcism, not a seance." Then she called out in a loud voice, "Oh, spirits that haunt this house, we call you by name, Adah and Marella, and we say unto you, get thee hence."

"
'Hence'?
" I said.

Jackie dug her fingernails into my hand.

I squirmed but she wouldn't let me go.

"And again, we say it unto you," she repeated, shouting for dramatic effect, I guess, or maybe just to drown out Pavarotti, "Adah and Marella, get thee hence. Three times we name you, Adah and Marella, and three times we command you, GET ... THEE ... HENCE!"

By chance or design, her last words coincided with the last notes of the aria that was currently playing on the tape. Good timing. Because if it hadn't been for that moment of silence, we never would have heard the sound of banging.

THE NEXT BIT OF
operatic dish-rattling began, but by then we were listening for it: a definite knocking on wood. I tightened my grip on Jackie's suddenly sweaty hand. The sound seemed to be coming from the living room and, for the moment at least, it didn't seem to be moving closer to us in the family room.

"Now what?" I asked, my throat so dry I was surprised I was able to get the words out.

I could feel that Jackie was shaking, but she kept her voice steady. "That depends on what she's saying."

"She's angry," I said, which was obvious enough from the loudness and speed at which the banging occurred, and the fact that it kept on and on.

"What else?" she asked.

"What do you mean, 'What else'? How am I supposed to know?"

"Isn't it Morse code?" she asked as though that were the next logical question.

"I don't know," I stammered. "I don't know Morse code."

"Oh, well, that's great," she said, like it was all my fault. "I thought all boys knew Morse code—dot-dot-dash and all that nonsense."

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," I said. "And even if I knew Morse code, what makes you think ghosts automatically know it, too? And, besides, this doesn't sound like Morse code; it just sounds like a lot of angry banging."

"Well, now we'll never know, will we?" Then, as I tried to pull my hand out of hers, she hurriedly said, "Don't let go. You'll break the protection spell."

"I take it back," I said. "
That's
the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." But I didn't pull away. "Maybe she's angry about the music. That would explain why she's in there and hasn't come in here. If she knocks down the shelf with the tape player, my dad is going to go through the roof."

"Ted," Jackie said, "from the sound of her, if she wanted to knock down the tape player, it'd be down by now."

True. "So what do
you
think she's doing?"

"Maybe she's banging on the walls, trying to get out," Jackie said. "Maybe she doesn't know we've got the door and windows open in here."

"She's never had trouble going through walls before," I pointed out.

Jackie ignored me. "Once the tape ends, maybe she'll come in here."

"How long's the tape?"

"Sixty minutes," Jackie said.

"Forget it." Our hands were so slick with sweat, I slipped loose of her grip. "By then we'll either be dead of fear or totally deaf."

"Ted, don't break the circle!" she cried, trying to keep me from standing. "I don't have any more holy water."

"Then you stay in here." I tucked the journal in my belt and stepped over the ring of mirrors, and then over the ring of candles. My one sockless foot landed right in the ring of holy water.

Jackie sighed. "Once the circle's broken, it's useless."

All in all, she must have decided it'd be best to know what was coming, for she followed me to the living room.

I took one hesitant step in, but two real quick ones back, which of course landed me on Jackie's feet. But she'd seen it, too, I could tell, and she moved back without complaining or making snide remarks. There was a big black shadow, human-sized and vaguely human-shaped, hovering on the frosted glass of the front door.

"She's trying to get in, not out," Jackie hissed at me. "And you broke the circle!" She pinched my arm.

But that wasn't it. Now that we were in the living room, with Luciano Pavarotti battering our eardrums and the banging turning our knees to Jell-O, I could hear something else.

I could hear Zach shouting from the wrong side of the door, "Ted, you stupid little toad! Once I get inside, I'm going to flush you down the toilet!"

Which was probably not the most convincing argument he could have used to get me to let him in.

Still, I couldn't see that delaying would do anything to improve the situation.

"It's Zach," I said, shoving Jackie in front of me. "You let him in. He's less likely to hit you."

To my amazement, she actually did what I told her.

Not that it helped. As soon as she'd unlocked the door, Zach gave a great shove, which flung the door entirely open and pinned Jackie behind it smack up against the closet door.

Which left me facing Zach, alone.

"You little..." he started. But it wasn't brotherly compassion that stopped him. "
What,
" he demanded, "are you listening to?"

From behind the door, Jackie said, "
Luciano Pavarotti—Live on Stage.
"

Zach pulled the door back so he could see her. "You're both crazy," he said. "You've got bad taste
and
you're crazy. And you're going to blow the speakers." He hit the stereo's eject button, cutting Pavarotti off
midsyllable. "What could you possibly have been thinking of?"

"Ghost-repelling music," I said.

"
What?
"

"Ghost-repelling music," I repeated. "Tell him, Jackie."

Jackie just shrugged, as though it had all been my idea.

So I went on without her. "Listen, Zach—"

"I don't want to hear it."

I pulled Winifred's journal out from under my belt and waved it in Zach's face.

He took a step back and smacked my hand away from him. "Ah, that stinks. What is that?"

"Great-Great-Grandmother Winifred's diary," I said. "And it proves that Vicki and I haven't been making things up. Winifred was helping runaway slaves, and one of them was a little girl named Marella who died in the canal just behind our house. And her mother died there, too."

"I didn't even know we had a great-great-grandmother Winifred," Zach said.

Leave it to Zach to pick up the one least important thing that I'd said. "Wake-up call for Zach Beatson," I said, waving the book under his nose again. "Don't you think it's a coincidence that Vicki chose for her so-called imaginary friend the same name as that of another five-year-old who just happened to die here almost a hundred fifty years ago?"

"Maybe she read the book and that's where she got the name."