Pleasing the Ghost Read online

  Dedication

  For the TASIS Lower School’s young authors

  Contents

  Dedication

  1. With the Wind

  2. The Ghost

  3. First Please

  4. Deester in the Wig Pasta

  5. Second Please

  6. Hammering the Needle

  7. Beany Booger

  8. Nod Mailer

  9. Needle for Heartfoot

  10. Third Please

  11. Dundering Trampolink

  12. Boodling Chinkapink

  13. Mailer, Mailer

  14. A Wish

  Excerpt from The Boy on the Porch

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  About the Author

  Back Ad

  Also by Sharon Creech

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  WITH THE WIND

  I’m Dennis, your basic, ordinary nine-year-old boy, and usually I live a basic, ordinary life. I go to school, I take care of my dog, I eat, I sleep. Sometimes, though, my life is not so ordinary. This is because of the ghosts.

  Another one arrived last week. It came on the wind, like the others. It’s not an ordinary wind that brings these ghosts—it’s a bare whisper of wind that tickles the curtains. No one feels or hears this wind except me and my dog, Bo.

  The first ghost came a month after my father died. It was my great gran, but I didn’t know she was a ghost. She seemed real enough to me. When I mentioned Great Gran’s visit to my mother, she said, “Dennis, Great Gran’s in heaven.”

  “Not last night she wasn’t,” I said.

  A month later my old cat, Choo, flew in my bedroom window. I could see him plain as anything, but he felt as light as a leaf. When I held his puckered old face up to my mother, she pressed her hand against my forehead. “Oh Dennis,” she said. “Not feeling well? Choo’s been dead for six months.”

  There have been other ghosts since Choo and Great Gran. There was an old man who used to live next door, a woman who said she had lived two hundred years ago, and a policeman. A constant parade of ghosts, but never the one I really want.

  I asked the policeman ghost, “Why do ghosts visit me? Why don’t they visit anyone else I know?”

  “You didn’t send for us? Sometimes we’re sent for.”

  “I didn’t send for you,” I said. I hadn’t sent for Choo or Great Gran either, though it was nice to see them. And I certainly hadn’t sent for the dead old man or woman. “But if I did send for a specific ghost, would he come?”

  “Hard to say,” he said. “Can’t always go where we aim! I was just out riding on the wind, and this is where it brought me. Thought maybe you sent for me.”

  Imagine! To ride on the wind and whiz into people’s windows like that!

  Last Friday, as I climbed into bed, I heard one of the whispering winds. When my mother came in to say good night, I asked her if a storm was coming.

  “Storm? I don’t think so. Look how calm it is. Not even a breeze out there.”

  So I knew that this was another ghost wind. Soon it would be followed by a faint whistle, and then the wind would swirl and roll and twist in through the room trailing a cloud of blue smoke. Out of that blue smoke would step a ghost. That’s how it happens. It doesn’t matter if the window is open or not. The wind and the ghost will come right through it.

  I’ve tried to tell my friends and teachers about these ghosts, but they just laugh. “What an imagination!” my teachers say. One boy at school, Billy Baker, punched me in the chest. “You don’t see no ghosts, you stupid liar,” he said.

  Billy was new at our school. My teacher sat him next to me. She whispered, “You and Billy have something in common. I know you’ll be nice to him.”

  Nice to him! I tried, but he was the grumpiest crab I’d ever met. After he punched me for no good reason, I decided someone else could be nice to him. And as for having something in common—hah! The only things we seemed to have in common were that we were both boys and we were in the same class.

  Bo whimpered in his sleep. Did he sense what was coming? The wind whistled, and the curtains curled in the air. Bo’s yellow fur stood on end.

  The ghosts had never hurt me, but still I was afraid. What if it was a wicked, horrible ghost? But I also wanted to know who it would be. Maybe it would be the one ghost I wanted, the one ghost I prayed for, the one ghost I’d sent for.

  I had an odd, quivery feeling as that wind blew harder, reeling and rolling through the window, twisting the curtains high into the air. Bo crawled up beside me and covered his ears with his paws.

  “Get ready, Bo. Here comes the ghost.”

  Whish! blew the wind. Whew! The curtains flew this way and that, knocking a book off my desk. Whisk! My socks lifted off the floor and danced in the air.

  Bo scooted around in a circle, trying to get his head under the covers.

  Whish! Whisk! The curtains flipped into the air and sank down again, wrapping their ends around the chair. Suddenly the wind calmed. In came a quiet stream of air and a wisp of blue smoke, which swirled and floated across the room.

  “Here it comes, Bo. We’re about to have a visitor.”

  The blue smoke twisted and twirled, floating down to the floor and forming itself into a pair of green boots.

  “It’s here, Bo!”

  The smoke formed a sturdy pair of legs in blue trousers. Next appeared a purple sweater across a big chest and arms. The smoke wiggled and wobbled and formed into a head topped by a red cowboy hat.

  The ghost had arrived.

  2

  THE GHOST

  I recognized him immediately. “Uncle Arvie! It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Riggle!” said the ghost, brushing himself off and rushing to hug me. His hug felt like tickling cobwebs.

  It was Uncle Arvie, all right. That’s just the way Uncle Arvie talks—or used to talk, when he was alive. Most people couldn’t understand a word he said. Only his wife—Aunt Julia—and I could piece together what he was saying. But it wasn’t easy.

  Bo poked his nose out from under the blanket, sniffed the air, and barked. He tilted his head from side to side, staring at Uncle Arvie.

  “Don’t be scared, Bo. It’s Uncle Arvie!”

  “Yip,” Bo squeaked.

  “Elephant?” Uncle Arvie asked.

  “No, it’s my dog.”

  “Elephant!” Uncle Arvie insisted.

  This was not going to be an easy ghost to have around.

  When I was little, Uncle Arvie spoke just like everyone else, saying normal words at the normal time. But one day—when Uncle Arvie was still alive—he woke up speaking this way.

  Uncle Arvie had had a stroke, and words were twisted in his brain. He knew what he wanted to say, but the words that came out of his mouth were not the words he chose. Sometimes they weren’t even words at all—or at least not words that most people knew—like riggle and fraggle.

  “You’re supposed to be in heaven now,” I said.

  “Railroad, yin.”

  “Heaven—up there.”

  Uncle Arvie waved his arms as if he were flying. “Railroad!”

  He strolled around my room, looking at things. He picked up the book that had fallen on the floor. “Pasta,” he said. “Wig pasta.” Next he examined the pictures on my bookshelf, picking up one of me and my mother. “Macaroni and Dinosaur!” he said.

  “It’s my mother and me—Dennis,” I said.

  “Macaroni and Dinosaur! Macaroni and Dinosaur!”

  Uncle Arvie examined a photograph of my father and kissed the picture. “Dinosaur’s pepperoni,” he said. Uncle Arvie pointed toward the door. “Pepperoni?”

  “My f
ather isn’t here.”

  “Nod pepperoni?”

  “He’s gone. He—”

  Uncle Arvie tilted his head just like Bo, waiting for me to finish.

  “He’s in heaven,” I said.

  “Nod!” Uncle Arvie put his hands over his mouth. “Nod railroad? Nod pepperoni railroad? Nod, nod.” He was very upset. My father and Uncle Arvie were brothers.

  “I was hoping maybe you’d seen him there—in heaven.”

  “Nod, nod,” Uncle Arvie cried. “Nod, nod pepperoni.”

  I gave him a tissue. “Last year,” I said. “Right after you. He was very sick.”

  Uncle Arvie blew his nose.

  “We miss him,” I said.

  Uncle Arvie held the picture to his chest.

  “We miss you, too,” I said.

  Uncle Arvie put the picture back on the bookshelf and lifted another photograph. It was one of Uncle Arvie and his wife, Julia.

  “Oh, Heartfoot,” he said. “Oh, oh, Heartfoot.” He hugged the picture and kissed it.

  “She’s not in heaven,” I was glad to report. “Aunt Julia’s fine!”

  “Oh, Heartfoot.” He put the picture back and turned suddenly. “Please,” he begged. “Three pleases.”

  “What?”

  Uncle Arvie held up four fingers, looked at them, and then pushed one back down. Three fingers wiggled.

  “Three what?” I asked. It looked as if Uncle Arvie wanted three things, but I had no idea what he might want. “Food?”

  “Nod—”

  “Money?”

  “Nod, nod—”

  “Clothes?”

  “Nod, nod, nod—” He waggled his fingers in my face.

  “Nail clippers?”

  “Nod!” Uncle Arvie glanced pitifully at his fingers.

  “Maybe I’ll understand in the morning,” I said. “You’ll be here in the morning, won’t you?” Some ghosts stay; some don’t.

  “Yin!” he said.

  “Good. Then maybe we should get some sleep—”

  “Stamp!” Uncle Arvie agreed. He lay down on my desk, with his long legs sticking straight out in the air over the edge, as if they were held up by something invisible. Soon he was snoring. Bo wiggled out from beneath the blanket, sniffed the air, and whimpered.

  “Well, Bo, we have a new ghost! Try to be brave.” I patted Bo’s head until he closed his eyes.

  There was no more wind. All was quiet except for the snoring of Uncle Arvie and Bo. The curtains hung straight against the window, and outside I could see the black sky and bright stars.

  I found a star, and on it I wished: “Uncle Arvie is a great ghost, don’t get me wrong. But still, I wish for—” I thought about what Uncle Arvie had called my father. “I wish for—for my pepperoni.”

  Uncle Arvie was thrashing this way and that in his sleep. He was still wearing his boots, clothes, and red hat. I was surprised that ghosts slept with their clothes on. I had thought maybe they had special white robes to sleep in.

  Maybe tomorrow I could figure out what Uncle Arvie meant by “three pleases.” Maybe I should tell my mother that his ghost was visiting. No. She would say that Uncle Arvie was in heaven. That there was no such thing as a ghost.

  3

  FIRST PLEASE

  I was so scared. I was running down a railroad track, faster and faster, and there was a terrible noise behind me. I turned, expecting to see a train barreling down on me, but it wasn’t a train. It was a gigantic Tyrannosaurus rex wearing a wig made of spaghetti. Someone was shouting, “Dinosaur! Dinosaur!”

  I sat straight up in bed. What a nightmare. What a relief to be safe—

  “Dinosaur! Dinosaur!”

  Floating up near the ceiling was Uncle Arvie, calling me. Bo quivered underneath the blanket.

  “Dinosaur!”

  “I’m awake,” I said.

  “Good carpet!”

  I looked down at the old, soiled carpet on my floor. It was not a good carpet at all.

  Uncle Arvie stretched his arms wide and breathed deeply. “Good carpet, Dinosaur!”

  “Good morning?” I guessed.

  “Good carpet!”

  Bo thumped his tail, and the blanket flopped up and down. There was a knock at my door. “Dennis? You awake?”

  My heart wobbled. Would my mother be able to see Uncle Arvie? What would she say? Should I warn her?

  “You’re up early for a Saturday, aren’t you?” she said. Bo bounded out of the bed and leaped up against her, wagging his tail and barking. “Easy, Bo, easy,” my mother said. “Looks like he’s ready for a walk, Dennis. Guess you’ll have to get up.”

  Uncle Arvie was standing behind my mother, smiling at her. “Macaroni,” Uncle Arvie said. “Feather macaroni.”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked her.

  “Hear what?”

  “Do you see anything over there?”

  “Sure do.”

  “You do? You actually, really and truly do?” I asked.

  “Yes—I see books on the floor, socks in a heap. It’s kind of a mess, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t see Uncle Arvie. And yet, to me, Uncle Arvie was as clear as could be. The only difference between Uncle Arvie and my mother was that Uncle Arvie looked a little blurry around the edges.

  The edges of Uncle Arvie’s red cowboy hat wobbled, as if the hat were alive. His purple sweater was slightly shimmery, almost as if it were breathing. The same was true of his trousers and boots—they shimmered at the sides, growing brighter, then dimmer.

  My mother sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”

  Could she smell the ghost?

  She picked up my socks. “These should go in the wash,” she said. “And there’s some other smell—what is it?” She glanced around the room. “It reminds me of—of someone. I can’t think who it is.”

  Uncle Arvie was waving his arms all around. “Pin!” Uncle Arvie said. “Pin!”

  My mother dropped the socks on my bed. “Bring these down with your other dirty clothes,” she said as she left.

  “I don’t understand it,” I said to Uncle Arvie. “She can’t see you or hear you, and yet I can see and hear you as clear as anything.”

  Uncle Arvie zoomed up to the ceiling, flipped twice, and landed on my bed. “Three pleases? Three pleases?”

  I had forgotten about that, and now that I was reminded, I was a little worried. “Let’s take Bo out, and you can explain as we walk,” I suggested, hurrying into my clothes.

  “Pin mailer,” Uncle Arvie said, flapping his arms. “Pin mailer, mailer, mailer!” He flapped his arms, lifted into the air, and sailed smoothly through the closed window.

  Bo barked and jumped against the window ledge. His long tail whacked my legs. “No, Bo,” I said, “you can’t go through the window.”

  Uncle Arvie floated across the road, circled a tree, and skimmed lightly to the ground. Good thing he was wearing his green boots, because he had landed in a puddle. He stood there grinning up at us.

  Bo bounded down the stairs, out the door, and stopped at the curb, wagging his tail. I led him across the street, and he leaped toward Uncle Arvie, barking and wiggling his back end. He tumbled right through Uncle Arvie and collapsed on the ground. “Yip!” he squeaked.

  “One please?” Uncle Arvie said.

  “I’ll try,” I said. “What is it?”

  “Fraggle pin Heartfoot a wig pasta—”

  “Wait a minute! I didn’t exactly get that. Could you repeat it?”

  Uncle Arvie put his hands to his eyes and formed two circles, as if he were looking through binoculars. “Fraggle pin Heartfoot—”

  “Heartfoot—that’s your wife, right? Aunt Julia? You want me to see her?”

  “Yin!” He held his hands out, palms up, and pushed them at me.

  “What? You want me to show her something?”

  “Yin, yin, yin! Fraggle pin Heartfoot a wig pasta—”

  For a minute there, I imagined a head covered in spaghetti, but t
hen realized that wig pasta sounded familiar. Uncle Arvie had said it last night. When? What was he looking at? “My socks?” I guessed.

  “Nod, nod.”

  I thought again. “The book?”

  “Wig pasta! Wig pasta! Yin!”

  “You want me to show Aunt Julia my book?”

  “Nod Dinosaur wig pasta. Pin wig pasta,” Uncle Arvie said.

  “You want me to show her your book?”

  “Yin! Pin wig pasta!”

  “Well, okay. Is the book at your house?”

  “Yin!”

  That sounded easy enough. I’d take Uncle Arvie to see Aunt Julia, and we’d find the book and show it to her. I could not imagine why this was so important to Uncle Arvie. Was there something special about the book? Would Aunt Julia be able to see her husband?

  4

  DEESTER IN THE WIG PASTA

  On the way to Aunt Julia’s, I asked Uncle Arvie why he didn’t go to his house last night to see her. He spread out his arms and turned around and around and tripped and fell to the ground. “Pailandplop!”

  “You couldn’t steer? But how did you end up at my house?”

  He tapped my nose with his finger. It felt as if a fly were flapping its wings at me. “Dinosaur foodle a doodle.” Then he tapped his chest. “Pin foodle a Dinosaur.”

  I couldn’t make any sense out of that. “Will Aunt Julia be able to see you?”

  “Nod.” Uncle Arvie sniffed. “Nod fraggle.”

  “Why not?”

  “Creppit.”

  “Too old, huh? You think only kids can see ghosts?”

  “Yin! Foodle a doodle.”

  “But not all kids, right? Why just some kids?”

  “Foodle a doodle—”

  I still couldn’t figure out what that meant, so I said, “Couldn’t you show her the wig pasta—the book?”

  “Nod.” Uncle Arvie shook all over. “Heartfoot twiggle a twiggle!” He trembled and looked afraid. He opened his mouth and screamed.

  Bo barked and hid behind me. “Oh, it would frighten her.”

  “Yin, twiggle, twiggle,” Uncle Arvie agreed.

  When we arrived at Aunt Julia’s, Uncle Arvie leaped onto the porch. “Pin box,” he said. “Pin and Heartfoot box.”