Home for the Haunting(7)

Stan made a point to encourage women to join and learn as well. He checked them out on the power tools, demonstrated how to read simple drawings, and helped them lay out the project. At the moment, a newly empowered group of three men and three women was sawing equal lengths for the treads and screwing them onto the assembled frame. Stan was careful not to hover, allowing the volunteers to make mistakes and learn from them. He kept a close watch out of the corner of his eye, though, prepared to intervene when necessary to avoid ruining expensive tools and materials, and to correct poor workmanship.

Speaking of seeing things out of the corner of one’s eye . . . now that I knew a bit about the history of the house next door, I couldn’t seem to keep from glancing over at it. The house had obviously been vacant for some time. But . . . there was vacant, as in uninhabited, and then there was vacant, as in inhabited by those not of this time and space.

My ability to see and interact with ghosts had manifested itself not long ago out of the blue, and took me by surprise. At the time, my knowledge of all things ghostly had been shaped by popular fiction and cable television shows, neither of which offered much that proved useful. Since the ghosts gave no sign that they intended to leave me alone anytime soon, I thought it wise to learn more about them, and I signed up for Ghost Busting 101, a course offered by my ghost-hunting friend Olivier at his new ghost-hunting store. The very idea of taking “ghost-busting” lessons was embarrassing—I was an established business owner with a local reputation to maintain—but I was determined. So far, most of the spirits I’d encountered had been harmless or well intentioned. A few had been more threatening but incapable of inflicting serious harm. Still, I knew so little about ghosts and what they were capable of. The thought of going up against something malevolent while armed only with a courage born of stupidity and stubbornness seemed like a Very Bad Idea.

Fortunately, ghost-busting class met tomorrow night. I might just run a few specific questions by our intrepid instructor.

I noticed the blond fraternity volunteer, Jefferson, looking through the windows of the house again. What was with this guy? The place was vacant, but still. Did he go around peeping into everyone’s windows?

Out in the car, Dog began barking frantically.

Could Jefferson be seeing something . . . more?

“Mel, check out the sorority,” said Luz, distracting me from my thoughts. “Or, as I like to call them, Team Amoeba.”

“Are they biology majors?”

She shook her head. “Watch them for a moment. They won’t move. They stand in the same spot, the whole gang crowded together, not reloading their paintbrushes or anything.”

She was right. The girls were talking nonstop, but otherwise not accomplishing much as they flicked their paintbrushes over the rough stucco. The fact that they were using brushes instead of rollers was crazy. Done properly, brushes would access the divots in the stucco better than rollers, but that required a level of skill these young women did not have.

“Watch this,” Luz said as she grabbed the girl on the left by the shoulders, and marched her down the wall ten feet. The other young women shuffled down to join her, and without losing a beat picked up the story about some boy’s inability to commit emotionally.

“More paint on those brushes, girls,” Luz said, and held up the bucket of paint. Again, without a pause in the story, each girl dipped her brush in the paint can and listlessly stroked the paint onto the wall.

Luz joined me at the tool blanket. “Team Amoeba: They change shape but ultimately come back together.”

“That’s brilliant,” I said, laughing.

“I know.”

I headed down the alley between the two houses, shimmying around both the ladder leaning against the side and the stacks of asphalt roofing tiles. I tried not to look, but . . . there it was again: a flash in my peripheral vision.

Monty rolled out onto the corner of the wrap-around porch.

“Hey, Mel, that’s not the right shed,” he said. “They’re supposed to clean out the one at the back of the yard, not that one—”

There was a crash and I saw someone had managed to shove a length of new copper pipe through a basement window. Better add a new pane of glass to the Home Depot shopping list.

“Hey, Mel!” Monty called again. “They’re cleaning out the wrong shed.”

“What?”

From the backyard, I heard a scream.





Chapter Three




No one who works construction sites is a stranger to on-the-job injuries, whether painful blisters, bloody cuts, or broken bones. Without pausing to think, I grabbed a nearby first-aid kit and ran in the direction of the cry. Stephen was hot on my heels, a bright orange bottle of sunscreen in one hand and a box of Garfield Band-Aids in the other.