Ghosts Don't Wear Glasses Read online

  “Come on, Teej,” I said. “Help us.”

  “Snap!” Roger exclaimed, staring at the cupboard. “I don’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  “Darth Billings has been beaten once more.”

  “Huh?”

  “Right there, just above T. J.’s head. Look!”

  I followed his finger. He was pointing at one of the dusty shelves. T. J. reached up and pulled down a long black pole spotted with rust with a point on the end.

  “The harpoon!”

  WOO-HOO!

  After we finished whooping, I said, “That’s great, but we still need to find a way out. So get over here, Teej!”

  “I’m running out of energy,” he said, propping the harpoon against the wall. “You guys want a piece of lemon gum?”

  Roger and I shifted another box. He could climb up now, but the window really was pretty small. Hmm. Maybe if he took off his big baggy shorts, he could fit.

  “Darn!” said T. J. “I dropped the pack.”

  “T. J., how can you think about gum at a time like this?” I said. “We need to find a way out before—”

  “Whoa!”

  “Teej, c’mon,” I said.

  “G-uh-ys,” said T. J.

  Roger and I looked around. “What?”

  T. J. was on his hands and knees on the floor, his head under the cupboard. He slid back out, cobwebs sticking all over him. “There’s a door in the floor.”

  WHAT???!!!

  Roger jumped down. It took all three of us to move the cupboard. T. J. was right. Underneath was a door. A trapdoor, like the kind that leads up to the attic in my house.

  It was fastened with two rusty iron bolts. I pulled on them as hard as I could, but they were pretty jammed. I pushed and pulled some more, and so did Roger and T. J. Finally, the bolts slid back.

  We looked at one another. My heart started beating faster. Who knew what we were going to find beyond that door?

  “Do you think there are skeletons in there?” whispered T. J. “Old bones from the bodies that got run through by the bloody harpoon?”

  Roger’s eyes went wide. “Maybe we should . . . wait . . . for . . .”

  “This could be our only way out,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. I wasn’t afraid of ghosts, but I kept thinking about rats and giant spiders and other slimy creatures that like dark places.

  “Fish is right,” said T. J. as Roger nodded.

  “Here goes nothing.” I pulled on the door.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  “Come on, guys, help me.”

  “Hey, I know.” T. J. brought over the harpoon.

  “Good idea, Teej,” I said. “Leverage.”

  I slipped the point of the harpoon under the handle. Then I pushed down on the metal pole. No go. Roger put his hands over mine and T. J. put his hands over Roger’s.

  “On the count of three,” I said. “One . . . two . . . three!”

  We all pushed on the harpoon as hard as we could.

  SKKRREEEEAAAKKKK! The door flew open.

  THWOMP! The three of us fell backward as a great cloud of dust puffed out. We started coughing. I got up on my knees and shined my light inside. There was a flight of steps, but nothing like the basement steps. There were five of them and they were cut right into the bare rock.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “In there?” said Roger.

  “Oh, jeepo!” said T. J.

  “It’s a tunnel,” I said. “It’s got to be the way out. I bet it’s how the runaway slaves made their way to freedom. Come on.”

  “Okay, Great Brain,” said Roger. “After you.”

  I trained the light on the crude stone steps. Then I headed down. The bottom of the tunnel was dirt. The ceiling was pretty low, so we had to duck our heads. At least we didn’t have to crawl, like adults would probably have to.

  We inched along. Me first, then Roger, then T. J. holding the harpoon. There were no skeletons or bones, that we could see, anyway. I wondered if we were going south toward the water or north toward the road or east toward the woods around the property by the edge of the cornfield. My sense of direction was all mixed up.

  Just then the floor began to slope up, and I could make out some crude stone steps just ahead. A way out! When we reached the steps, I shined the light up.

  “Another trapdoor!” said Roger.

  I pushed up hard on the door with my hands. It didn’t move. There was no bolt or lock or anything to open.

  “Help me push,” I said.

  Roger and T. J. squeezed themselves next to me. The three of us pushed up as hard as we could, T. J. pushing with the harpoon.

  SKKREEEAKKK! The door slammed open.

  We blinked to get used to the light, but it wasn’t the bright sunlight I had expected. It was green and shadowy, almost as if we were underwater. It wasn’t water, though. We were under a massive bush that had grown over and around the trapdoor. The leaves and branches were woven so close together over my head, I could barely move.

  “Hurry up, Fish!” said Roger.

  I scrambled to my knees and crawled away from the door.

  “What the heck?!” Roger emerged.

  “Ouch!” said T. J., lugging the harpoon.

  Thorns and prickers and sharp vines jabbed at me. I could hear Roger and T. J. behind me. Finally, I pushed my way clear of the monster bush.

  I stood up and took a deep breath. We were in a clearing, or what I figured was once a clearing. It was so overgrown, it was hard to tell. The grass was long and wild, and there were bushes growing all around. In the tangle of thorns and branches, a few of them still had some wilted blooms.

  Yellow blooms. They were yellow rosebushes.

  “The secret cemetery!”

  We hacked our way through the tangle with our hands. All of us got pricked by thorns and branches. But we didn’t care. We had to find the tombstone.

  T. J. was the one who did. It was under one of the bushes with a few yellow roses still growing on it. The small gray stone had fallen over and was green with moss. We almost missed it under all the branches.

  There was an angel carved on it, just like Great-Grandma O had said. We couldn’t make out the whole inscription, but we could see the letters MAT A ROY and the date 1847 and then some words.

  “What’s that say?” said Roger.

  I scrubbed off the moss and dirt with my T-shirt.

  “Wif and moth,” said T. J.

  “Huh?” said Roger.

  I squinted down at the letters. “Wife and mother!”

  Roger and T. J. jumped and whooped. So Hannibal had married Matilda. She was real. And they had had a child. If they hadn’t, her tombstone wouldn’t have said wife and mother. Here was proof set in stone.

  I stared at the old, long-forgotten stone. A flash of light suddenly hovered right over it. I blinked, but it was still there. I followed it with my eyes as it floated over our heads, up through the branches, and then it was gone.

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Was that . . . no, it couldn’t be. I shook my head. All of T. J.’s ghost talk was getting to me. It was only a trick of the light.

  It had to be, because there were no such things as ghosts . . . were there?

  A WHALE OF AN ENDING

  The phone rang just as we were getting in the car.

  “I’ll get it,” said Feenie, scampering into the kitchen before anyone could stop her.

  I slid into the backseat as my dad got behind the wheel.

  “I wish they’d hurry,” I said. “I don’t want to be late.”

  “You mean you don’t want to miss the chicken wings.” My dad laughed as he looked in the rearview mirror to fix the collar of his volunteer firefighter shirt.

  We were on our way to the Whooping Hollow Fire Department’s 100th Anniversary Barbecue. A lot sure had happened in the past week. After we told the Captain about Matilda Royce’s grave and the secret cemetery, he called the mayor and the town zon
ing board. Benedict Billings had bulldozers at the house ready to knock it down, but he couldn’t. Boy, was he mad. There was a hearing at the courthouse. The Captain and Wallace went. Wallace’s middle name did turn out to be Welcome, by the way.

  Roger, T. J., and I weren’t allowed inside the courtroom, but we got to wait outside. After all, we were the ones who found the cemetery and the whaling log and ship’s diary. There was also what Ms. Valen discovered after she started digging through some old papers and books that Two O’s mom found in Great-Grandma O’s attic. One happened to be a copy of the birth records book. It turned out there was an entry missing in the library’s copy for December 31, 1847, for Matilda St. Clair Royce, daughter of Matilda St. Clair Royce of Brittany, France, and Hannibal Welcome Royce of Whooping Hollow. BINGO!

  Ms. Valen called a French librarian, who did some research about families in Bayonne. She found out that baby Matilda was sent to live with her grandparents in France, who changed her last name to St. Clair, like theirs. She thinks it was probably because Hannibal was away at sea too much of the time to raise a child alone.

  It was pretty boring sitting out in the hall, until the Captain started yelling. “I tell you, this documentation is shipshape. The cat is out of the bag, Billings. Or, as we used to say in the Navy, your ship has sailed.”

  Mr. Billings started yelling, too. Something about trespassing and the rules of probate. Then the judge had to bang the gavel for a while. Roger, T. J., and I finally got called in to tell how we found the whaling log and the gravestone and stuff. There was actually an entry at the very end of the log dated December 1847 that read: Have to get home to Matilda. The baby is sure to be born any day now. If only this leg would heal! So, Matilda and their baby were the family he had to get home to, just like I had read in the Whaling Masters book. It was also how come Admiral Royce wanted the log kept safe and given to the right authorities, since it proved there was a whole ’nother branch of the Royce family.

  My mom and Feenie got in the car.

  “Who was on the phone?”

  “Oh, some gardening company calling about—”

  “Gophers,” said Feenie, buckling herself into her car seat. “It was somebody called Mister Gopher Gone. I told him it was time to go to the barbecue.”

  “Oh, brother,” I said.

  There were lots of cars already parked at the firehouse when we got there. People were milling around with plates of food or sitting at the long picnic tables that had been set up in the back near the grills. The fire engines were parked out front, all shiny, even the oldest one from the first year the department opened in 1915. That didn’t seem so long ago to me anymore, when I thought about Hannibal Royce.

  “Dude!”

  Roger and T. J. were heading my way, holding paper plates loaded with chicken wings.

  “Wing?” said T. J.

  I grabbed one and took a bite. Spicy barbecue sauce dripped down my chin.

  “Whoa!” said Roger. “Check it out!”

  “What?” I turned.

  A long dark limousine pulled up. A man wearing a black suit and mirrored sunglasses got out.

  T. J. dropped his paper plate. Chicken wings and barbecue sauce splattered all over us.

  “What the heck?!” I said.

  T. J. didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were on the man in the black suit. “It’s Dr. Ghost B. Gone. I can’t believe he’s here. . . .”

  He wasn’t the only one. Everyone was staring in surprise except Wallace. He was so pale, he looked as if he might hurl at any second. Maybe the chicken wings didn’t agree with him.

  “I’m here about the haunting,” said Dr. Ghost B. Gone.

  “He didn’t just answer our call—he came,” said T. J. “Wow!”

  “How did he know where to find us?” said Roger.

  All of a sudden, it hit me. Mister Gopher Gone was none other than Dr. Ghost B. Gone. “Feenie told him!”

  Dr. Ghost B. Gone moved toward us with a smile on his face.

  “Oh, jeepo!” said T. J. “Is he coming to talk to . . . to . . . us?”

  “Well, we are the ghost hunters in this town,” said Roger, puffing out his chest.

  “He doesn’t want to talk to—” I began.

  “Wallace!” called Dr. Ghost B. Gone, moving past us to where Wallace stood with the Captain. “How are you? How’s the house? What level haunting are we looking at here?”

  “I’m not sure, sir,” said Wallace. “I wasn’t here on business—I mean, not Dr. Ghost B. Gone business. I was . . . that is . . .”

  “You’re looking at the great-great-great-grandson of Hannibal Royce, the famous whaler, who is now the owner of the old Royce house,” boomed the Captain, wearing his Navy blue and gold, as he always did for a special occasion. He patted Wallace so hard on the back, his glasses fell off. “Tell everyone what you plan to do with the house, my boy,” said the Captain.

  “I want to fix it up and turn it into—”

  “—a whaling museum of all the ridiculous things this town doesn’t need,” said Benedict Billings. “There’s no money in museums. Condos and golf courses are what this town needs. That’s progress.” He held his card out to Dr. Ghost B. Gone. “I can help you find the perfect relaxation retreat after a hard day’s work . . . um . . . ghost hunting.”

  “What about the ghost?” said Dr. Ghost B. Gone.

  Roger, T. J., and I looked at one another.

  “That ghost be gone,” said Roger, and everyone started laughing, even Dr. Ghost B. Gone.

  “Thanks to these boys,” said Wallace, grinning at us.

  “I’m pretty sure it was an orb,” said T. J. all of a sudden. “At first we thought it might be an elemental, which is why we called you.”

  Dr. Ghost B. Gone smiled and handed T. J. his card. “Excellent paranormal investigating, boys!”

  Everyone clapped except Bryce. He was straddling his yellow scooter next to Clementine.

  Just then Mi and Si came running up to us holding a newspaper. “You’re famous,” said Si, reading the headline. “ ‘A WHALE OF AN ENDING FOR AN OLD WHALER . . . Thanks to the sleuthing skills of three of our local boys—’ ”

  “Wow!” said Two O. “You guys were really brave to go into that house and face the ghost and everything.”

  “Yeah,” said Clementine, smiling at me.

  “Big deal,” said Bryce. “Since there was no ghost.”

  “Was so,” said Roger, pulling his camera out of his pocket. “I’ll sell you a peek for ten cents.”

  All week Roger had been selling peeks of the footage that was shot when he’d left his camera in the house. There were a few shadowy shots that might have been Wallace, and a few shots of what did look like a floating light. I kept saying it was just a trick of the moonlight or dust, but I couldn’t help thinking about the light at the cemetery.

  “It’ll take a hundred kids for you to make a measly ten dollars,” said Mi. “That’s no get-rich-quick scheme.”

  “I can do the math, Mi,” said Roger. “This is just the beginning. I view it as advertising for the haunted house museum tour we’ll be offering when the Whaling Museum opens. That will really rake in the bucks—or should I say clams?”

  Bryce rolled his eyes at Trippy and True. “So, no ghost, and you never got the harpoon, either.”

  “We did find the harpoon,” I said.

  “In the basement near the secret tunnel,” said T. J.

  “You can read all about it in the newspaper, Billings,” said Roger, pointing to the paper Mi was holding.

  “You’ll be able to see the harpoon as soon as the Whaling Museum opens,” I said.

  “You’re still a loser,” said Bryce, climbing on top of his cool scooter.

  “Yeah, loser,” echoed Trippy and True, who were standing beside him.

  I opened my mouth to tell him to leave me alone when he revved his scooter engine with a vroom. All of a sudden it sputtered to a stop and the chain fell off. I watched as he wheeled it ove
r to where Mr. Billings was deep in conversation with Dr. Ghost B. Gone.

  “Um, Dad, can you . . . um . . . show me how to fix the chain, like you said you would yester—”

  Mr. Billings shook his head with a frown. “Not now. Can’t you see I’m working?” He waved Bryce away, and I heard him start telling Dr. Ghost B. Gone something about an ocean vista and a marble Jacuzzi tub.

  Bryce just stood there with the saddest look on his face. The next thing I knew, my dad was standing next to him.

  “The chain just needs to be centered so it doesn’t pull to one side.” My dad bent and pointed to the rear wheel. “All you have to do is align the rear wheel sprocket with the motor sprocket. I’ll show you.” He tugged gently on the chain. “There should be a quarter-inch play when the chain is properly tensioned. Here, you do it.”

  I watched as Bryce did what my father said. “Um . . . thanks . . . Mr. Finelli.” He smiled.

  “You’re very welcome,” said my dad, winking at Bryce. “You have a question, just ask. That’s what I always tell my son.”

  Clementine met my gaze with an “I told you so” expression in her dark eyes. Now I knew what she meant. Bryce really was jealous. You would never know it, the way he talked about my dad. Feelings sure were complicated. It wasn’t that they weren’t real. They were just hard to see.

  Kind of like ghosts, if you know what I mean. . . .

  PRAISE FOR THE FISH FINELLI SERIES

  “A funny gem of a middle-grade mystery . . . a great boys’ counterpart to such stellar girls’ series as Ivy + Bean.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This light adventure novel’s winning humor shines bright, brimming with nautical and pirate-themed wordplay and wisecracks.”

  —School Library Journal

  “Heavy on the yuks . . . Farber laces Fish’s dialogue with scientific and historic tidbits.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A pleasurable read for the boy in all of us.”

  —Library Media Connection

  “A feel-good chapter book perfect for reluctant readers, particularly boys.”

  —Common Sense Media