My Ghoul
October 9
“Okay. I think this is good,” Mart said with a slow nod toward the table. He’d spread out a white cloth, added two candles, sprinkled some dried herbs, and set six pendants down in the center. “I think we’re ready. Now comes the tricky part.” He looked up at his sister and friend. “We have to really concentrate. Focus our energies.”
“Dude,” Dan muttered. “I don’t even know what that means.”
Trixie frowned at the set-up. “It means we’re getting our witchy advice from the internet and we don’t know what we’re doing.” She picked up one candle and moved it and placed the pendants in a circle. After a slight hesitation, she scraped the herbs into a pile, then used her finger to draw a pattern through them.
“More gut instinct?” Mart asked curiously, studying the new arrangement. “What’s that symbol?”
“Ah… you’re not the only one who knows how to search ‘Witchcraft 101’ online,” Trixie replied, inwardly wincing. The small figure was one that symbolized “protection” and the warding off of evil spirits, according to Professor Lee. He’d sketched it on a scrap of paper for her when she’d visited him on campus, and encouraged her to memorize it. She had no idea if it would help or not, but she thought it probably couldn’t hurt to incorporate it into their attempts to turn their small metal pendants into powerful talismans.
Mart struck a match and used it to light the candles. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. “We need to visualize in our minds our energy flowing into the pendants and our purpose for charging them. We shoul-“ He cut himself off abruptly as a ringing cell phone interrupted his instructions.
“Oh! Crap!” Trixie exclaimed, scrambling for her backpack.
“Seriously, Sis? This is like going to the movies. You always turn it off!”
“Crap!” she said again, as she glanced at the caller ID. “I really better take this… Hi, Moms. Um, now’s not exactly a good time. Can I call you back later?”
“Trixie!” Helen Belden’s tone was tinged with noticeable frustration. “Where are you? And do you know where Mart is? He’s not answering my calls.”
“Uh… yeah. He’s right here with me, Moms. We’re in the clubhouse.” She shot her brother a helpless look. “He’s… tutoring me. For algebra. I’ve been really confused in class lately. Sorry! It’s just this is, uh, you know, hard and I’m trying to concentrate and he probably put his phone on silent so we wouldn’t be disturbed.” She only just resisted the urge to smack herself in the forehead as she stumbled through the excuse.
She heard her mother sigh before she responded. “All right, dear. I appreciate that you’re buckling down on your schoolwork and I’m glad to hear your brother is helping you, but you both need to remember to keep me apprised of your plans. You’ve hardly been home for the past week. Can I actually expect you for supper tonight?”
“Yeah! Yeah. We’ll be there. But, um… after dinner? We planned to go into town. Would that be all right?”
“To go where? Can’t you have one quiet night at home?”
Silently wishing her brother had been the one to take their mother’s call, Trixie scrambled for an acceptable answer. “It’s… uh… it’s the ghost walks!”
“Ghost walks?”
“Yeah. You know. With all this nutty ghost craze taking over everywhere? It’s something the city council came up with. You can take a walk around town with a guide who’ll tell you about all the supposedly haunted places and ghost sightings. We thought it would be a kick, since up until now, no one’s ever really claimed there were any haunted places in Sleepyside.”
Mart’s eyes were wide and he shook his head hard, waving one hand. “No,” he hissed. “Those are only on Fridays and Saturdays!”
“Ugh,” Helen murmured. “More ghost nonsense.”
“Uh, yeah,” Trixie hurriedly continued, “so, the walks are actually on the weekends, but… Mart was thinking of volunteering to work as one of the guides, since he’s so good at storytelling.”
Mart’s jaw fell open and he stared at his sister incredulously.
“Hmmm. We may have to discuss that. I don’t object to you two enjoying yourselves, but I’m not entirely comfortable with you participating in something that could be considered a scam, if you ask me.”
“No! I mean… it’s not like that, Moms. Everyone knows it’s not real.” She cringed as she said the words. “It’s just silly Halloween fun. It’s no different than going to the haunted house they do at the community center every year.”
“All right. I’ll think about it. You make sure you’re both here no later than 6:15. And whether you go out after or not, you will be cleaning up all the dishes. Bobby’s taken your turns so many times, you should consider paying him at least part of your allowances - if not all of it - for the week.”
“Moms is upset with us?” Mart guessed as Trixie ended the call.
She held down the power button on her phone to shut the device off. “This surprises you? We’re never there. We’ve totally blown off our chores. Yeah. I think it’s safe to say she’s upset with us. We should head home as soon as we’re done here. Right. So. Let’s get back to… channeling our energies.”
Mart nodded in agreement. “Okay. We should center ourselves. Focus all our attention-“
Suddenly, Dan laughed.
“Seriously, dude?” Mart demanded in exasperation at the additional interruption.
“Sorry, man. I was just thinking… Would you be a Hufflepuff ‘cause you’re all into growing things, or would you be a Ravenclaw ‘cause you are such a nerd?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Did I mention this is getting out-of-hand?” Mart asked as he, Dan, and Trixie stood outside Herman’s Ice Cream Parlor, finishing their cones.
“What makes you say that?” his sister responded, straight-faced. “Is it because we just got to choose from ‘sixteen brand new monstrous flavors’ or that kid who ran by in the purple cape shouting that he’s on the trail of the Sleepyside Phantom?”
“It’s everything!” Mart waved one hand around in an encompassing gesture. “The whole town is starting to look like the set of some cheesy Disney Halloween movie! They've never gone so overboard in all the decorating and preparations like this before.”
Dan made a disgusted face and lifted the chain of his talisman necklace. “Well, I for one am glad of the… uh, cover it provides us for these babies. I wouldn’t get caught dead in this thing otherwise.”
“Interesting choice of words,” Trixie said with a smirk. “And you wouldn’t even need it if you and Mart hadn’t set everything off in Sarah’s workshop. Everything happening here in town is a direct result of that, remember?” She crumpled up her napkin and tossed it into the already overflowing trashcan by the ice cream shop’s door, then brushed her hands off on her jeans and nodded her head toward the street. “If we’re gonna make it to the library before they close, we need to move it.”
“As long as we can get in there in time to check out the book I want, we’re fine,” Mart assured her. “I know exactly where it is, so it shouldn’t take too long.”
“If I were a dead man. Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum. All day long I’d biddy biddy bum, if I were a rotting corpse. Hey!”
Trixie titled her head to one side to study the man kneeling in front of them, arms held open wide as he belted out his tune. “Well, this is new.”
“People are strange, when you’re a specter. Faces look through you, when you’re dead.”
“Okay, Weirder Al,” she told the singing spirit. “Could you maybe get up now and tell us what you need, because we’ve got an elsewhere to be.”
He grinned and hopped up before performing an exaggerated bow. “Only havin’ a bit of fun with ya! I gotta say, you three aren’t what I was expecting. At all. You look too… normal.”
“Sorry. Our cloaks are at the cleaners and our brooms are parked out back. Also? I wasn’t kidding about how we’re pressed for time. So…point? Make it?”
“Sheesh. Aren’t you a regular barrel of laughs! What I need, is help with locating a certain item.”
“And that item would be?”
“My body. I need you to find it.”
Trixie opened her mouth to reply, found herself at a loss for words, and shut it again. For a long moment, silence reigned.
“Dude,” Dan said finally. “I don’t think we’re gonna make it to the library tonight after all.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan slowed his van and turned onto the narrow dirt road. The tires spun up gravel as he eased the vehicle forward and the high beams revealed an area of dense trees and undergrowth.
“Stop here,” Carl said sharply. “This is where you’re gonna need to go on foot.”
“You already said you don’t know exactly where you… uh, your body is,” Trixie pointed out. “What makes you so sure this is where we should start?”
“I was kinda in a daze when I first came to and wandered out of the woods. I stumbled around a bit, but I do know this is where I hit the road. See that tree? The one with the crooked trunk? I recognize that one.”
They clambered from the vehicle and Dan dug his flashlight out from under the driver’s seat. “If we don’t find you within half an hour, we’re calling it quits,” he said firmly. “It’s getting late and it’s dark, and frankly, I don’t even know how we’re going to explain to the authorities what we were doing out here when we happened across a dead body.”
“Yeah, that,” Trixie agreed. “And? It’s cold.”
Mart huffed out a breath and frowned thoughtfully. “If we find him, then tomorrow you two can go with Honey to meet Professor Lee after school. I’ll bring the police out here and tell them I was in the woods looking for specimens for my ecology project.”
“Moms and Dad will freak," she warned.
“Yeah. But what else can we do? You know if you report the body, they’ll think you’re up to your old tricks and involved in another one of your ‘mysteries,’ no matter what reason you give them.”
“True that.”
Dan took Trixie’s hand in his as he led them deeper into the woods. Ordinarily, she probably would’ve objected to any hint or implication that she was scared or needed protecting, but she was too thankful for the comfort the contact provided to complain.
“’You had a bad day. Your last one alive. You went for a walk and ya croaked around five…”
“Seriously, Carl. Is this all you do?” Trixie demanded, shaking her head. “Sing morbid, messed-up songs?”
“I guess, you’d say… what could make me be this way? My ghoul… Talkin’ ‘bout - my ghoul.”
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
“Hey. It makes me happy. Gotta keep my… spirits up, eh?” He grinned broadly at her as he spoke. “That’s right, folks. I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.”
“Well, I have to give you credit,” Mart told him. “For not letting your deadness get you down, I mean. I’d think most people would be upset dying as young as you did.”
“Eh. It happens. One minute I was strollin’ along, enjoying the evening and sunset, and the next, bam! Face plant into the ground. I’m thinking probably a heart attack. Or maybe a brain aneurism. But now we gotta find me and report it. It’s not so much that I care about the animals and insects feasting on my flesh, but until I’m listed as officially dead, my sister can’t file for my life insurance. She’s a single mom and barely makin’ ends meet. The money could really help her.”
They walked for about ten minutes, with Dan panning his flashlight along the ground. Although it was a clear, cloudless night, the almost new moon provided very little in the way of illumination, making their search all that more difficult.
“This is worse than a needle in a haystack,” Trixie grumbled. “We should come back tomorrow. During daylight hours. Honey and the professor could even help.”
“I was going to say the same…” Mart cut himself off. His brow furrowed, and he cautiously sniffed the air. “Hang on. Do you guys smell that?”
“Over here!” Carl called to them excitedly. “I’ve found me! Oh… man, that’s sick.”
Mart and Dan traded a look. “Stay here,” Mart said to Trixie. “With Dan. I’ll check it out and figure out how to mark the location so I can bring the cops back tomorrow, and then we’ll get out of here. Okay?”
Dan handed Mart his flashlight and they watched as he took several careful steps toward the area Carl indicated. He was only gone less than a minute before returning.
“You saw the body? It was him?” Dan asked.
“It was what was left of him,” Mart corrected weakly. “I am really regretting that double scoop of Spooky Sorbet right now. On the good news side, our primary mission is accomplished. Carl did the final vanishing act number.”
“Fantastic. Can we go now?” Trixie shivered and stepped closer to Dan. “I wanna go home.”
“Yeah, Sis. Let’s get out of here. But we’ll need to stop every so often and let me mark the trail, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed in a small voice.
“You know, if you want to take tomorrow off, I’m sure no one would mind. You could take the bus straight home from school and hole up in your bedroom for the evening. Honey and Dan can meet with the professor and I can take care of this.”
She considered his offer for a moment before shaking her head. “No. I’ll be better tomorrow. Thanks, though. I appreciate it.” As she turned to head back the way they’d come, she missed the way both boys were regarding her with obvious concern.
“Okay. I think this is good,” Mart said with a slow nod toward the table. He’d spread out a white cloth, added two candles, sprinkled some dried herbs, and set six pendants down in the center. “I think we’re ready. Now comes the tricky part.” He looked up at his sister and friend. “We have to really concentrate. Focus our energies.”
“Dude,” Dan muttered. “I don’t even know what that means.”
Trixie frowned at the set-up. “It means we’re getting our witchy advice from the internet and we don’t know what we’re doing.” She picked up one candle and moved it and placed the pendants in a circle. After a slight hesitation, she scraped the herbs into a pile, then used her finger to draw a pattern through them.
“More gut instinct?” Mart asked curiously, studying the new arrangement. “What’s that symbol?”
“Ah… you’re not the only one who knows how to search ‘Witchcraft 101’ online,” Trixie replied, inwardly wincing. The small figure was one that symbolized “protection” and the warding off of evil spirits, according to Professor Lee. He’d sketched it on a scrap of paper for her when she’d visited him on campus, and encouraged her to memorize it. She had no idea if it would help or not, but she thought it probably couldn’t hurt to incorporate it into their attempts to turn their small metal pendants into powerful talismans.
Mart struck a match and used it to light the candles. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. “We need to visualize in our minds our energy flowing into the pendants and our purpose for charging them. We shoul-“ He cut himself off abruptly as a ringing cell phone interrupted his instructions.
“Oh! Crap!” Trixie exclaimed, scrambling for her backpack.
“Seriously, Sis? This is like going to the movies. You always turn it off!”
“Crap!” she said again, as she glanced at the caller ID. “I really better take this… Hi, Moms. Um, now’s not exactly a good time. Can I call you back later?”
“Trixie!” Helen Belden’s tone was tinged with noticeable frustration. “Where are you? And do you know where Mart is? He’s not answering my calls.”
“Uh… yeah. He’s right here with me, Moms. We’re in the clubhouse.” She shot her brother a helpless look. “He’s… tutoring me. For algebra. I’ve been really confused in class lately. Sorry! It’s just this is, uh, you know, hard and I’m trying to concentrate and he probably put his phone on silent so we wouldn’t be disturbed.” She only just resisted the urge to smack herself in the forehead as she stumbled through the excuse.
She heard her mother sigh before she responded. “All right, dear. I appreciate that you’re buckling down on your schoolwork and I’m glad to hear your brother is helping you, but you both need to remember to keep me apprised of your plans. You’ve hardly been home for the past week. Can I actually expect you for supper tonight?”
“Yeah! Yeah. We’ll be there. But, um… after dinner? We planned to go into town. Would that be all right?”
“To go where? Can’t you have one quiet night at home?”
Silently wishing her brother had been the one to take their mother’s call, Trixie scrambled for an acceptable answer. “It’s… uh… it’s the ghost walks!”
“Ghost walks?”
“Yeah. You know. With all this nutty ghost craze taking over everywhere? It’s something the city council came up with. You can take a walk around town with a guide who’ll tell you about all the supposedly haunted places and ghost sightings. We thought it would be a kick, since up until now, no one’s ever really claimed there were any haunted places in Sleepyside.”
Mart’s eyes were wide and he shook his head hard, waving one hand. “No,” he hissed. “Those are only on Fridays and Saturdays!”
“Ugh,” Helen murmured. “More ghost nonsense.”
“Uh, yeah,” Trixie hurriedly continued, “so, the walks are actually on the weekends, but… Mart was thinking of volunteering to work as one of the guides, since he’s so good at storytelling.”
Mart’s jaw fell open and he stared at his sister incredulously.
“Hmmm. We may have to discuss that. I don’t object to you two enjoying yourselves, but I’m not entirely comfortable with you participating in something that could be considered a scam, if you ask me.”
“No! I mean… it’s not like that, Moms. Everyone knows it’s not real.” She cringed as she said the words. “It’s just silly Halloween fun. It’s no different than going to the haunted house they do at the community center every year.”
“All right. I’ll think about it. You make sure you’re both here no later than 6:15. And whether you go out after or not, you will be cleaning up all the dishes. Bobby’s taken your turns so many times, you should consider paying him at least part of your allowances - if not all of it - for the week.”
“Moms is upset with us?” Mart guessed as Trixie ended the call.
She held down the power button on her phone to shut the device off. “This surprises you? We’re never there. We’ve totally blown off our chores. Yeah. I think it’s safe to say she’s upset with us. We should head home as soon as we’re done here. Right. So. Let’s get back to… channeling our energies.”
Mart nodded in agreement. “Okay. We should center ourselves. Focus all our attention-“
Suddenly, Dan laughed.
“Seriously, dude?” Mart demanded in exasperation at the additional interruption.
“Sorry, man. I was just thinking… Would you be a Hufflepuff ‘cause you’re all into growing things, or would you be a Ravenclaw ‘cause you are such a nerd?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Did I mention this is getting out-of-hand?” Mart asked as he, Dan, and Trixie stood outside Herman’s Ice Cream Parlor, finishing their cones.
“What makes you say that?” his sister responded, straight-faced. “Is it because we just got to choose from ‘sixteen brand new monstrous flavors’ or that kid who ran by in the purple cape shouting that he’s on the trail of the Sleepyside Phantom?”
“It’s everything!” Mart waved one hand around in an encompassing gesture. “The whole town is starting to look like the set of some cheesy Disney Halloween movie! They've never gone so overboard in all the decorating and preparations like this before.”
Dan made a disgusted face and lifted the chain of his talisman necklace. “Well, I for one am glad of the… uh, cover it provides us for these babies. I wouldn’t get caught dead in this thing otherwise.”
“Interesting choice of words,” Trixie said with a smirk. “And you wouldn’t even need it if you and Mart hadn’t set everything off in Sarah’s workshop. Everything happening here in town is a direct result of that, remember?” She crumpled up her napkin and tossed it into the already overflowing trashcan by the ice cream shop’s door, then brushed her hands off on her jeans and nodded her head toward the street. “If we’re gonna make it to the library before they close, we need to move it.”
“As long as we can get in there in time to check out the book I want, we’re fine,” Mart assured her. “I know exactly where it is, so it shouldn’t take too long.”
“If I were a dead man. Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum. All day long I’d biddy biddy bum, if I were a rotting corpse. Hey!”
Trixie titled her head to one side to study the man kneeling in front of them, arms held open wide as he belted out his tune. “Well, this is new.”
“People are strange, when you’re a specter. Faces look through you, when you’re dead.”
“Okay, Weirder Al,” she told the singing spirit. “Could you maybe get up now and tell us what you need, because we’ve got an elsewhere to be.”
He grinned and hopped up before performing an exaggerated bow. “Only havin’ a bit of fun with ya! I gotta say, you three aren’t what I was expecting. At all. You look too… normal.”
“Sorry. Our cloaks are at the cleaners and our brooms are parked out back. Also? I wasn’t kidding about how we’re pressed for time. So…point? Make it?”
“Sheesh. Aren’t you a regular barrel of laughs! What I need, is help with locating a certain item.”
“And that item would be?”
“My body. I need you to find it.”
Trixie opened her mouth to reply, found herself at a loss for words, and shut it again. For a long moment, silence reigned.
“Dude,” Dan said finally. “I don’t think we’re gonna make it to the library tonight after all.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan slowed his van and turned onto the narrow dirt road. The tires spun up gravel as he eased the vehicle forward and the high beams revealed an area of dense trees and undergrowth.
“Stop here,” Carl said sharply. “This is where you’re gonna need to go on foot.”
“You already said you don’t know exactly where you… uh, your body is,” Trixie pointed out. “What makes you so sure this is where we should start?”
“I was kinda in a daze when I first came to and wandered out of the woods. I stumbled around a bit, but I do know this is where I hit the road. See that tree? The one with the crooked trunk? I recognize that one.”
They clambered from the vehicle and Dan dug his flashlight out from under the driver’s seat. “If we don’t find you within half an hour, we’re calling it quits,” he said firmly. “It’s getting late and it’s dark, and frankly, I don’t even know how we’re going to explain to the authorities what we were doing out here when we happened across a dead body.”
“Yeah, that,” Trixie agreed. “And? It’s cold.”
Mart huffed out a breath and frowned thoughtfully. “If we find him, then tomorrow you two can go with Honey to meet Professor Lee after school. I’ll bring the police out here and tell them I was in the woods looking for specimens for my ecology project.”
“Moms and Dad will freak," she warned.
“Yeah. But what else can we do? You know if you report the body, they’ll think you’re up to your old tricks and involved in another one of your ‘mysteries,’ no matter what reason you give them.”
“True that.”
Dan took Trixie’s hand in his as he led them deeper into the woods. Ordinarily, she probably would’ve objected to any hint or implication that she was scared or needed protecting, but she was too thankful for the comfort the contact provided to complain.
“’You had a bad day. Your last one alive. You went for a walk and ya croaked around five…”
“Seriously, Carl. Is this all you do?” Trixie demanded, shaking her head. “Sing morbid, messed-up songs?”
“I guess, you’d say… what could make me be this way? My ghoul… Talkin’ ‘bout - my ghoul.”
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
“Hey. It makes me happy. Gotta keep my… spirits up, eh?” He grinned broadly at her as he spoke. “That’s right, folks. I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.”
“Well, I have to give you credit,” Mart told him. “For not letting your deadness get you down, I mean. I’d think most people would be upset dying as young as you did.”
“Eh. It happens. One minute I was strollin’ along, enjoying the evening and sunset, and the next, bam! Face plant into the ground. I’m thinking probably a heart attack. Or maybe a brain aneurism. But now we gotta find me and report it. It’s not so much that I care about the animals and insects feasting on my flesh, but until I’m listed as officially dead, my sister can’t file for my life insurance. She’s a single mom and barely makin’ ends meet. The money could really help her.”
They walked for about ten minutes, with Dan panning his flashlight along the ground. Although it was a clear, cloudless night, the almost new moon provided very little in the way of illumination, making their search all that more difficult.
“This is worse than a needle in a haystack,” Trixie grumbled. “We should come back tomorrow. During daylight hours. Honey and the professor could even help.”
“I was going to say the same…” Mart cut himself off. His brow furrowed, and he cautiously sniffed the air. “Hang on. Do you guys smell that?”
“Over here!” Carl called to them excitedly. “I’ve found me! Oh… man, that’s sick.”
Mart and Dan traded a look. “Stay here,” Mart said to Trixie. “With Dan. I’ll check it out and figure out how to mark the location so I can bring the cops back tomorrow, and then we’ll get out of here. Okay?”
Dan handed Mart his flashlight and they watched as he took several careful steps toward the area Carl indicated. He was only gone less than a minute before returning.
“You saw the body? It was him?” Dan asked.
“It was what was left of him,” Mart corrected weakly. “I am really regretting that double scoop of Spooky Sorbet right now. On the good news side, our primary mission is accomplished. Carl did the final vanishing act number.”
“Fantastic. Can we go now?” Trixie shivered and stepped closer to Dan. “I wanna go home.”
“Yeah, Sis. Let’s get out of here. But we’ll need to stop every so often and let me mark the trail, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed in a small voice.
“You know, if you want to take tomorrow off, I’m sure no one would mind. You could take the bus straight home from school and hole up in your bedroom for the evening. Honey and Dan can meet with the professor and I can take care of this.”
She considered his offer for a moment before shaking her head. “No. I’ll be better tomorrow. Thanks, though. I appreciate it.” As she turned to head back the way they’d come, she missed the way both boys were regarding her with obvious concern.
