It flew out of her hand, skimmed across the kitchen like a Frisbee, and smashed into the wall.
Frowning at the shattered pieces on the floor, Katie grasped the second plate. It shot away from her and smashed into the opposite wall.
Sally watched it all happen, smiling her secret smile.
“I don’t understand this,” Katie said, staring at the broken crockery. “I’ve never been such a klutz.”
“Why don’t you sit down with Sally,” I suggested. “I’ll get the food. It’s just about ready anyway.”
Moving like a sleepwalker, Katie got the broom and began sweeping up the broken plates. “It was weird,” she said in a quiet, puzzled voice. “It was like they came alive in my hand.”
Holding everything very tightly and moving very carefully, I got the plates and our dinner to the table. Nothing wiggled in my hand or tried to get away.
My stomach was growling fiercely. I heaped spaghetti on my plate and dumped on some sauce.
Just as I was putting the bowl of sauce down, the lights went out.
The kitchen was plunged into pitch blackness.
“What’s that?” Katie whispered in the dark.
I heard a plate slither across the table. Then another.
It was starting. The house was coming alive.
8
A glass crashed to the floor.
It was pitch black—I couldn’t see a thing. Plates clattered. Then there was another noise, a squishy splat kind of noise and someone screamed.
“STOP IT. Stop it, please.”
Katie.
I started up out of my seat. I don’t know what I was going to do—something, anything except just sit there—but just then the light came back on.
The first thing I saw was Katie, covered from head to foot in red gore. Gobs dripped down from her hair onto her cheeks. Her yellow blouse had turned the color of blood. She was breathing in little gasps and her blazing eyes were fixed on me.
“You!” she sputtered, sending red drops flying. “You!”
Just then I noticed the bowl in her lap. The sauce bowl. That was the source of all the gory, bloody-looking stuff. It had been emptied over her head, then dumped in her lap.
“You did this, Jason!” she said, pointing a finger at me.
“It wasn’t me,” I insisted. “I swear I didn’t do it.”
“Yeah, sure,” Katie said disgustedly. “It was a ghost, right?”
“Bobby’s a bad boy,” said Sally sadly.
Katie gritted her teeth and glared. “Jason’s the only bad boy around here,” she said.
It was no use trying to talk sense to her. First, it was easier to blame me, and second, she looked so funny covered in spaghetti sauce, I was afraid I might burst out laughing.
We finally managed to eat our supper without anything else happening.
Katie calmed down a bit, but she still didn’t trust me. When I offered to clean up the mess she said, “No way. You’ll break every dish in the house and blame it on ghosts.”
I got a couple of ice pops out of the freezer and took Sally out on the porch. Maybe with my sister outside, the house would leave us alone for a while.
We were on the porch for only a couple of minutes when a voice boomed out of the dark. “Jayysssonnnnnn!”
I recognized the voice right away. Steve, trying to sound spooky.
“Knock it off,” I said. “The last thing we need around here is a practical joker.”
Steve came up on the porch, grinning that big grin of his. He slapped me five and said, “This house must be getting to you, bud.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.
Just then the porch stair creaked. It was Lucy, who lived a couple of houses over. Lucy was twelve, like me and Steve, but while Steve was husky and solid, Lucy was tall and long-legged. She wore her dark ponytail pulled through the back of her baseball cap.
“Is it Bobby again?” she asked.
Lucy knew about the things that had been happening in the house and took the haunting seriously. She and Steve sat on the porch steps while I told them what had happened when Katie tried to make dinner.
“That sounds creepy,” said Lucy, frowning thoughtfully at the top of her sandal. “What would Bobby have against her? What’s she like?”
I shrugged. “She’s okay. In fact, she’s pretty nice. Except she’s blaming everything on me.”
“Maybe the ghost has something against teenage girls,” Lucy suggested. “Or baby-sitters.”
“Smart ghost,” put in Steve, blowing a fart noise into his fist.
I was still laughing when a strange expression came over Lucy’s face. “Hi,” she said loudly, jumping up.
I turned and there was Katie in the doorway, freshly showered and changed. Her thick red hair was combed and even her freckles looked fresh-scrubbed.
But the look on her face was anything but sweet. She knew we’d been talking about her. She squinted her eyes at me and I felt a chill.
Suddenly I knew that crossing Katie could be dangerous.
9
Katie went out of her way to be nice to Steve and Lucy. She brought them ice pops and insisted they tell her all about themselves. Lucy’s not much of a talker, but Steve made up for it by going on and on about what a good ballplayer he was, and how he was going to play pro ball when he grew up.
“The only thing I’m not sure about,” Steve said, “is whether to sign with the American League or the National League.”
“Depends on how well you bat,” said Katie.
“What?”
“American League has the designated hitter, but in the National League the pitcher gets to hit, right?”
Steve whistled and looked impressed. A babysitter who knew about the DH rule!
“What about you, Lucy?” Katie asked. “What do you want to be?”
Lucy smiled shyly. “Maybe a scientist,” she said. “I’d like to investigate unexplained phenomena.”
Katie just stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. “You mean like poltergeists and ghosts, I suppose?” She glanced over at me and shook her
