“Hey!” Katie cried out. “Hey, what are you doing?”
Sally was punching and kicking and scratching like a fierce little animal, and the poor baby-sitter didn’t know what to do.
I had to save her—and Sally, too. I ran up the porch steps and grabbed my little sister from behind. Not so rough that I hurt her, but strong enough to pin her arms.
See, I didn’t want to hurt her. After all, Sally was just a little kid. So I just tried to stop her from hitting the baby-sitter.
That’s when she turned around and smacked me, hard, right in the stomach.
Ooof, the air went out of me and I sat down, holding my stomach. Sally ran off, disappearing inside the house.
“Hey, are you okay?” Katie knelt down, checking me out.
I nodded, struggling to get my breath back.
“What’s wrong with your sister?” she asked.
“You don’t want to know,” I panted.
“Of course I do,” she said. “I’m supposed to be in charge of you two until your parents get back.”
Just then I heard Sally’s little feet running across the kitchen floor. She was heading for the back door!
“Hurry!” I said. “We’ve got to stop her!”
I started running. Horrible thoughts exploded in my brain. What if Bobby did something terrible? What if he made my sister run into the lake, or out in front of a car?
Then she’d be like him forever. Another little ghost haunting this big creepy house.
I made myself run faster. “No, Sally! Stop!” I cried desperately.
I reached the kitchen just as Sally whipped the back door open.
She was too fast for me. In a second she’d be gone.
4
Sally bolted out the back door and disappeared around the side of the house.
My heart was in my throat as I pounded after her.
She was so fast! Faster than Sally should be. But somehow I had to catch her.
I whipped around the side of the house and saw her instantly. She had leaped up somehow and caught the lowest branch of the cherry tree. Her little legs wiggled as she struggled to pull herself up.
The cherry tree was Bobby’s favorite place. He’d gotten Sally up into it once before.
I clenched my teeth against the memory and ran harder. Sally had been up so high, teetering on a skinny branch. And then she’d fallen.
Somehow I’d caught her. I still wasn’t sure how, though I’d always thought Bobby helped. The way I figured it Bobby had wanted her to fall, to be his little friend forever. But at the last second, he saved her.
Now he was going to try again.
My lungs were bursting but I managed to shout. “Sally,” I yelled. “Stop!”
Her head turned and her hand slipped from the branch. She tumbled to the ground and lay still.
“Sally!” My breath was rasping in my throat. I skidded to a stop and dropped down beside her.
“Ow,” said Sally. She started to push herself up. “I’m bleeding,” she said in a stricken voice.
Sally’s voice! The eyes that looked back at me belonged to Sally, not the ghost. My little sister was back! Relief flooded me and I grabbed her and gave her a big hug.
“Are you okay?” I said, inspecting her knee, where she’d scraped it on the tree.
“What’s going on? Is Sally all right?”
I turned around to see Katie approaching with a worried look, like she thought my four-year-old sister might leap up and attack her again.
“She skinned her knee,” I said. “But she’s back to being herself at least, right, Sally?”
I rose and picked Sally up to head back to the house.
Kate gave us a very weird look. She probably figured the whole family was crazy.
The truth was going to be even harder to believe.
Back in the kitchen I put Sally down in a chair at the table.
“We’d better wash off that knee and get you a Band-Aid,” said Katie, obviously glad to have something to do.
Sally looked up at me. “Bobby was scared,” she said. Then she looked at Katie who was hovering with a wet towel. “I guess Bobby doesn’t like baby-sitters.”
“Who’s Bobby?” Katie asked brightly.
“He’s my friend,” said Sally.
Here we go, I thought.
I took a deep breath. “Bobby’s a ghost,” I said.
5
“A ghost,” Katie repeated slowly. “And now he’s possessed your little sister. Like The Exorcist, right?”
I remembered that movie. Something about a little girl who gets taken over by devils who make green vomit shoot out of her mouth while her head spins around in a circle.
“No, no,” I said. “Bobby’s not evil. He’s a little boy who died here a long time ago. Sally’s made friends with him but as soon as my parents left, he took over her body. See, it was really Bobby who attacked you like that.”
Katie stared at me, water from the wet towel dripping down her arm.
“He’s never done anything like that before,” I said. “It scared me.”
“I was sharing,” Sally explained, frowning.
Katie made a face. “Is this a joke or what? I’m still waiting for the punch line, Jason.”
“No joke. Really. Last night I thought we might be killed. Or sucked into another dimension. It was horrible.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. And today your parents go off on some emergency job on the other side of the state—”
“A firehouse,” I said.
“What?” said Katie.
“My parents designed a firehouse in Mayfield. They’re architects. That’s why we’re here. They’re designing a town complex for Hartsville. But they got this call from Mayfield that some changes need to be made in the firehouse design—” I stopped.
This wasn’t going right at all.
I tried again. “My mom and dad can’t see the ghost, or hear him, either. Sally sees him and I can see him sometimes. At night I hear him crying. And there’s this skeleton thing in a black cloak with glowing eyes. I think it may be the ghost of an old witch who died here. They never found the body.”
Katie sighed. “Your parents were right,” she said. You do have an
