Chapter IV
"Fold," Stinkie sighed, laying his cards face-down on the table.
"Heh," Fatso grunted to his companion. "You gotta be real smart to play this game, Stinkie." He glowered fiercely at Stretch, their dealer, who glowered right back. "You don't even have a good poker face, like me."
Stinkie sighed again. "I'm just no good at this, you guys," he said. "I'm gonna go wait for the mailman."
Fatso and Stretch watched Stinkie fly off through the wall. Since the Harveys had been at Whipstaff, the mailman had been forced to wend his way up the hill to the old mansion to drop off the Harveys' mail (mostly bills from the Mayor's office). Scaring the manly-looking postman was one of the Trio's great joys at the present. Normally the other two would join Stinkie, but this poker game was much too intense. Fatso was determined to beat Stretch - who always won - just once.
"Uh, I'll see your clipboard and, uh...I'll raise you this pen." (They were using the good doctor's office as a gaming room again.) Fatso grinned hopefully at his adversary. "Whadd'ya got?"
"Royal flush."
Fatso sagged in disappointment, throwing his two pair down on the table in disgust. "It ain't no use playin' wit' you," grumbled the big ghost as Stretch counted his winnings.
Stretch rapped Fatso on the head with his knuckles. "So now which of you two is smarter?"
"Hey boys," Stinkie called, poking halfway in through the ceiling, "Look who's outside."
The three of them peered through the window to observe Viola Laslowe, who was standing on the walkway and rifling through her purse with a vengeance.
"What's she doin' here?" demanded Stretch angrily.
"Probably lookin' for the doc," answered Fatso, and got himself hit on the head again, this time for answering a rhetorical question.
"Well he ain't here, now is he?" replied Stretch smoothly, rubbing his chin. "So I guess we'll have to make her feel - at home...eh boys?"
Fatso and Stinkie smiled hopefully.
On the porch, Viola was cursing to herself. Where were those notes? She dug through her spacious purse furiously. They were right - aha! She pulled out a stack of photographs, taken of the pages of Dr. Harvey's notebook. She flipped through them until she found one titled Talking To Ghosts Part One: Get On Their Level. She read through it quickly.
Suddenly a huge spectral dragon with three heads popped out of the floor of the porch in front of her. Its red eyes burning with a demonic light, it roared horribly at Viola, who didn't flinch from her reading matter. Taken aback, it froze, the heads glancing at eachother in uncertainty.
Viola looked up. "Oh my," she murmered, and stuffed the photographs back inside her purse. She forced a smile. How exactly do you get on a level with a ghost?
The dragon split and morphed back into the Trio. "Yo, Dame Edna," snapped Stretch, losing all patience. "You wanna get off our property?"
"Yeah," agreed Fatso, almost as disappointed as Stretch at failing to scare the widow. "You're trespassin'."
Viola put her hands on her hips indigantly. Well! She'd never been treated so rudely in all her born days! This idea gave her a thought...get on their level, eh?
"Hey, bleached, bloated, and ugly," she yelled at Fatso, surprising all four of them. "Where'd you get that face, out of a can of Play-Doh?"
The Trio floated back a foot or two. They were used to bantering with Kat, but not being insulted straight-out by strangers.
"No wonder she's seein' the doc," Stinkie mumbled, mostly to himself. "She really does need help."
"And you," roared Viola, really getting into her stride - this was fun! "Are you the ghost of a man or a diseased skunk?" Stinkie ducked behind Fatso.
Viola beamed. She was pretty good at this psychology stuff after all. But - here she frowned - it didn't appear to be working: she really seemed to have hurt the ghosts' feelings. They were hanging back in a cluster, at a loss for words. "I guess what James wrote about you boys wasn't true, then," she muttered.
The Trio perked up, forgetting Viola's insults in a second. "What's that?" demanded Stretch, drifting forward. "The doc's been writin' about us?"
Viola looked at them in surprise. Forget about getting on their level, she thought, her heartbeat quickening. Slander gets them every time!
"Oh...only a little," she encouraged, grasping her hands behind her back. She frowned at Stretch. "Why, you must be Patient A..." She flashed the tall ghost a smile. "He said a lot about you."
Stretch was horrified. "What?" he shrilled. "What did he say?"
"Hmmm..." Viola was quite pleased with herself. "Well, I don't remember right off...but it's all in his brown notebook - " She broke off and waited expectantly.
"He said he was writin' about what he learned from us, not about us!" wailed Stinkie.
"Well I for one want to see this notebook," growled Fatso.
"Yeah," said Stretch, his fury rising. "And I know where he keeps it."
"I could show you all the good parts," offered Viola smugly, pleased. That last chapter was hers! Psychology, she decided, was easy.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Kat had seen the Wainwright estate before, while riding in the car with her dad, but she'd never been up close. Now, she could see all the gargoyles and things adorning the outside, and she guessed that the building may have been as old or even older than Whipstaff; only it, unlike Whipstaff, had been kept up over the years. Even Casper admitted that he'd never been real close to the estate before, preferring to visit the more suburban areas nearer the middle of town.
Wendy pulled a key out of her hat and opened the door, which was unlocked ("My uncle must be home after all," was the blonde girl's assumption) and led them into the front entry hall so she and Kat could hang their coats on the fancy hatstand located there.
"Let's go up to my room," suggested Wendy, then called out: "Uncle Peter, I'm home from school!"
"All right, love," a male voice drifted to them down the hall. "Nonono - that goes over there," the voice said, supposedly to someone else. There was a muffled clunking.
Kat frowned. "I thought you said only your uncle might be home," she said questioningly to Wendy. "Do you have servants?"
"No," answered Wendy, heading off down the hall towards the stairs. "Come on."
Kat and Casper glanced at eachother before following their new friend further into the house. Casper paused at the large entryway to the dining room and peered inside. He gasped in astonishment at what he saw.
"Kat! Kat!" he cried urgently, flying over to where to the two girls were about to ascend the stairs, "Come back and look at this!"
Wendy smiled and followed the other two back to the dining room.
Kat and Casper watched in wonder from their vantage point just outside the entryway. The dining room was crawling with household utensils, such as rags and dusters, but - everything was moving of its own accord, cleaning the room. On the table, a rag and a tube of grey paste polished the silverware.
"No wonder your house looks so new," whispered Kat to Wendy, keeping her voice low for fear of disturbing whatever spell was animating the utensils. She leaned a bit further into the room, not immediately noticing the man reading a newspaper and sitting in an armchair against the wall, the corner of which she was peeking around. Then Kat and the man noticed eachother out of the corners of their eyes, and turned their heads to look. They both yelled in surprise. The utensils, frightened, quickly shot off to hide in the kitchen, with the exception of a broom, which hung near the door as if uncertain what to do.
Kat stared in horror at the man, who returned her expression. It was that rotten lawyer Dibs! She was surprised to see him - alive, anyway.
"You!" she shrieked, lunging for Dibs, who threw his paper in the air and scrambled sideways out of the armchair in an attempt to escape the enraged teenager.
"Young lady - Kat, was it? - so nice to see you." Dibs scurried around the dining room table then to put some distance between himself and Kat, who was bent on throttling him with her bare hands. "How's the doctor?"
"You - you scum!" screeched Kat, chasing the frightened lawyer around the table. "I can't believe you survived - but we can fix that." She ran faster.
Casper and Wendy hung back in the doorway, a bit overwhelmed. Casper regained his mobility first and flew into the room to hover over Dibs.
"Do you know what you almost did?" Casper demanded of Dibs, who hardly glanced up at the ghost, so intent was he on defending himself with the napkin caddy. "If you had broken that vial, Dr. Harvey would have been a ghost forever!"
Dibs froze, confused. "Dr. Harvey? Was he a ghost too?"
"Yeah, and thanks to Casper, we used the Lazarus machine to bring him ba - Augh!" Kat screamed in surprise as she suddenly found herself being thrashed about the head with the bristle-end of the flying broomstick which had just joined the fray. "Get off!" Kat cried, covering her head with her arms. "Get away!"
At this Wendy finally rushed forward. "Broom! Stop it! Bad Broom!" she chided, trying to pull the broom away from Kat, who kept screaming.
"Broom, heel," commanded Dibs firmly, and at that, the broom immediately ceased its attack and lay down at the lawyer's feet like a trained hound.
Kat lowered her arms slowly and attempted to smooth down her disarrayed hair, picking out a few broomstraws. "Wow, thanks," she murmered breathlessly.
"Look, I really - " began Dibs.
"No, you look," interrupted Kat, regaining her anger and glancing at Casper for approval. "Just...stay away from us, okay?"
Casper floated forward. "Kat - "
"No!" Kat looked at Wendy. "I'm sorry, Wendy. Let's - let's just go upstairs?" she pleaded.
"Okay." Wendy nodded. Kat left the dining room.
Casper stared after her, and glanced back. Dibs, looking uncomfortable, sank back into his chair. The little ghost felt bad - he was mad at Dibs too, but he couldn't bring himself to show anger to someone so...passive. "Um...See you later, Mr. Dibs," he told the lawyer before Wendy crossed the room to usher him after Kat.
"Wait," said Dibs quickly before either of them could leave. "What...What happened to Carrigan?" Frankly, he had been bursting to know for two months, and the opportunity to find out now was too tempting to pass up, no matter how much tension was involved. If that woman had jaunted off with his half of the treasure he'd -
"She crossed over," Casper answered, interrupting Dibs' train of thought swiftly. " - And there wasn't any treasure," the ghost added, as efficient as any mind-reader.
Dibs was silent as his niece and her friends went upstairs. If that Carrigan wasn't already dead, he knew he would have killed her himself right then. No treasure indeed - of course, he wasn't all that interested in any treasure anymore, but it's the principle of the thing.
"All right, all right - teatime's over," Dibs called to the cleaning utensils, which he knew had been peeking around the corner the whole time. "Get back in here and finish up before the mistresses of the house get home. Nonono - the blue vase goes there...Bloody foreign feathermops."
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
"...Dad?"
"Hmm?"
Kat, wearing her nightshirt, walked into James' study,where the therapist was drafting up some new charts. "I'm going to bed now."
James looked up. "Goodnight, Bucket," he told her absently.
Kat hesitated, then walked over to sit in a chair next to her dad. "Do - do you think Wendy could come over sometime for dinner before we go?" she asked hopefully. She had regaled her father with the story of her day as soon as she had set foot inside the house late that afternoon.
"Well, of course she can, sweetheart," answered James, then, after a pause, he put down his t-square and turned to her. "You know, Kat, I'm really glad you made a friend like Wendy, but I don't want you to get too...well..."
"Attached?" supplied Kat.
"Well, yes."
Kat sighed. "It would be just my luck," she said, "to make the coolest friend ever just before I have to move. Well...at least Casper will have someone to hang out with."
James nodded.
"Uh...new charts, Dad?"
"Oh - yes. The guys were especially...hostile...this afternoon when I got home. I suspect they resent our leaving, although I'm sure they'd never admit it. How's Casper taking it lately?"
Kat shrugged. "Well...he'll be okay. Especially now, with Wendy." Then she shook her head. "God, I can't believe her aunt actually married that snake Dibs."
"I'm sure she had her reasons." James picked up an aluminum angle. "Why don't we drive out to Hughford Point tomorrow and - "
He was interrupted by three throats being cleared. James and Kat turned around to see the Trio, glaring down at them with their arms folded. Kat frowned - her dad wasn't kidding about the hostile thing. They looked livid.
"Good evening fellas," said James pleasantly. "Heading up to bed?"
"No," sneered Stretch, putting his face in James'. "We're goin' out. And what are you going to do about it?"
"Not a thing. Have a good time."
"Oh no you don't!" crowed Fatso. "We're wise to your psychobabble!"
"Yeah," agreed Stinkie. "You're sayin' that 'cause you don't want us to have a good time!"
"Or he's sayin' that 'cause he does want us to have a good time but he wants us to think that he doesn't," reasoned Fatso.
"Nah," said Stretch, glaring even more fiercely at James, who looked at Kat helplessly, "he doesn't. He wants us to think that he wants us to think he does but doesn't really, that's all. So we're goin' out anyways, right boys?"
Stinkie and Fatso nodded emphatically.
"So where are you guys going?" queried Kat politely.
"Where we goin'?" repeated Stinkie haughtily.
"...Where are we goin'?" asked Fatso. Both Stretch and Stinkie punched him in the arms.
"Who cares where we're goin'?" demanded Stretch. "The point is we're goin'. And we don't know when we're comin' back."
"Yeah!" said Fatso and Stinkie in unison.
"We're the masters of our own afterlives!" announced Stretch importantly.
"Yeah!" repeated the other two. And with that all three of them rocketed off through the ceiling, the rafters creaking horribly at their going.
"Um...yeah," said Kat after the dust had settled. "Are you sure charts are going to be enough, Dad?"
"Not anymore. I'd better make some subliminal tapes, too."