A Phantom Awaits You

Chapter Nine: Calamity Kim and Phantom Canyon

The skeleton wobbled right up to a coffin, knocked on it, and a few seconds later, another skeleton had risen. And before we knew it, the entire cave was full of trembling, laughing, disgusting skeletons!

I was whimpering like a baby. That's how scared I was!

The skeletons started to dance together, and out of nowhere, some ghostly music started playing from out of nowhere.

Oh my God. They're dancing. They're DANCING! Those skeletons are dancing and reveling as more restless bones etherialized.

You know, if this was something that I was watching on TV, I'd think that it was really cool. In real life, however…it's not.

I'm way too creeped out to even move. So are Lawrence, Nate, and Lotte. We're all just standing there, staring at those awful skeletons, who looked like they were laughing at us. Oh man, this is SCARY!

"We've got to get out of here." Lawrence said.

"How?" I croaked.

"Um, well…" He trailed off. "We could turn around and…RUN!"

All four of us turned quickly and sprinted really, really fast.

Oh my God. Oh my God. I'm running for my life! Again.

The skeletons around us kept on cackling and howling.

"Where are you going?" One of them leered.

"Just ignore them!" Lawrence advised.

A skeleton in decaying cowboy clothes with faded white hair popped in front of us.

We all screamed. Lotte jumped into Nate's arms. I started to hyperventilate again and started shaking and trembling. Oh man, I am not good with skeletons and zombies. Not good at all.

"Stay awhile!" The skeleton wheezed.

"No!" Lotte and Nate shouted.

Lawrence looked around nervously, reached forward, and grabbed the skeleton and threw it behind us.

"Whoa, great move, Ghost Boy!" Nate cheered.

"Be quiet, Mr. Nate! We have to get out of here!" Lawrence shouted.

We ran straight out of the cave, through Boot Hill, which was eerily silent, past the gates of Ravenswood Manor, and into Thunder Mesa. I was starting to feel like a contestant on Legends of the Hidden Temple during the final Temple race.

Nate, Lotte, Lawrence, and I found ourselves wandering through a really scary field-type area.

"Oh great." Lotte groaned. "We're lost again." The sky around us was a really weird shade of yellow. I've never seen the sky that color before…it's sort of a sickly shade of yellow that makes me want to throw up…The ground below us was dry and cracked, and in the distance we could hear what sounded like cowboys on their horses.

We followed a dirt pathway, at the end of which was this building with a giant sign screaming TICKETS on top of it. There was a skeleton dressed in old-fashioned ticket seller garb standing perfectly still inside of it. Uh oh…I don't trust that skeleton…

"Buy a ticket?" It shouted suddenly.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaah!" I screamed, jumping back. Nate made a sort of weird whining sound, Lotte's screamed sounded more like "eeeeeeeeeeeeeh!" and Lawrence just sort of gasped loudly.

"N-no thank you." Lawrence stumbled. He motioned for all of us to move on, but the skeleton ticket seller just went on offering us tickets and giggling at us.

Behind the ticket booth was a giant building that was labeled CITY HALL. On the building was a banner with the word WELCOME painted on it in red paint. Right in front of it was a portly man with a bushy beard in an expensive-looking old-fashioned suit and holding a key with a skull on it. He had a silvery-gray face, and this weird aura to him…I've never seen a gray-faced ghost before. Just ones that look like normal humans (sort of) and ones that look like skeletons.

Lawrence took in a sharp breath. "That's the mayor of Thunder Mesa from 1860! He was killed in the earthquake!"

"You mean he's a ghost?" Nate asked. "Whoa!"

"Is that surprising?" Lotte asked dryly. "Look at the key to the city. Gives new meaning to the term 'skeleton key'."

The mayor turned his gaze at us. "Ah! There you are! Welcome, foolish mortals." He spoke in a deep, slightly mockingly threatening voice.

"Well, sir, I'm not a mortal." Lawrence cut in politely. "I'm a ghost; like you."

The mayor continued. "There's no turning back now. Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding…or is it your imagination?"

Imagination? Pfft. I wish.

"Welcome to Thunder Mesa." The mayor went on. "We find it delightfully unlivable here in this ghostly retreat! Actually, we have 999 happy haunts here, but there's room for a thousand. Any volunteers, hmm?"

Oh God, no!

Nate, Lotte, and I shuddered.

"If you should decide to join us, final arrangements may be made at the end of the tour."

As if.

The mayor tipped his hat to us, only he didn't tip his hat. He took off his entire head!

I screamed and jumped back again. Nate shrieked, Lotte shuddered, and Lawrence just sort of winced.

We walked on and stepped into the main city.

Remember how cool I thought Thunder Mesa looked during the daytime? Well, um, it's not so charming under the moonlight, that's for sure. It's all decayed looking and dilapidated and scary.

"Ew." Lotte shuddered. "This place is really creepy at nighttime."

"Wow." Lawrence said. "I haven't been here since…wow, since the day of the wedding. It's changed so much. It used to be so…so…charming! So happy! So populous! So…alive! But now it's, it's…"

"A ghost town?" I suggested.

"Exactly." Lawrence said.

"And in more than one sense of the phrase too." Lotte said, pointing to something.

Now, I've seen TONS of freaky, odd, scary, creepy, disturbing, and just plain wrong things in the past year.

But this one just dwarfs them all. I can safely say that in my life, I've NEVER seen anything so freakishly weird.

The shops and saloons of Thunder Mesa were populated with even more gray-faced ghosts who were reveling and laughing and doing ghost stuff, all of them dressed in Old West attire.

"Oh my God." I said, as I spun around slowly and took in everything.

"This is like being a character in some weird Western." Lotte noted.

"Yeah." I agreed. "All we need now are corny cowboy and cowgirl names. Just call me Calamity Kim."

Lawrence snickered, but then looked around the small city and his expression went from being amused to being creeped out, because the ghosts seemed to be surrounding us.

"Oh wow." Lawrence said breathlessly. "This is…"

"Bad." Nate finished.

"Well, it might not be bad. They might not mean us harm." Lawrence reasoned.

A bullet whizzed through the air right in between Nate and Lawrence's heads.

"Oh yeah, they mean us harm!" Nate exclaimed. The gunshot had come from this howling bandit, who was grabbing onto a light post with one hand, and wielding a pistol in the other hand.

"Go inside one of the buildings!" Lotte advised.

"Yeah!" We all stumbled into a pharmacy. From inside, we could see that the bandit was firing at the town sheriff, who was hiding behind a lamppost. Stupid place to hide, if you ask me.

We turned around to face the gray-faced ghost of an apothecary. The apothecary didn't seem to notice us at all. He just kept on pouring glowing stuff into this goblet and then stirred it up. He drank it, and then faced us. He smiled, and his face became monstrously hideous for a moment.

I screamed. Lotte, Nate, and Lawrence winced and groaned. We dashed out of the pharmacy and into the neighboring saloon. A ghostly piano player was playing away in the back of the saloon. Coming out of the piano was a skeleton's arm, holding a candelabra much like the one Melanie's been holding inside the Manor. A dancer stood in one of the doorways, and a bartender kept on pouring drinks, some of which he stopped to quaff himself.

"Wonder if he was Barroom Benny." Lotte observed.

The entire building started to quiver, so we all ran out of it, and back into the streets of Thunder Mesa. The gunfire had stopped, the bandit was nowhere to be seen, and the town was eerily quiet. We kept on walking down the path, which led us up a hill. There was a giant canyon behind the city, out of which came an eerie blue glow. Atop the hill there was a gnarled dead oak tree. The sky was still that sickly yellow color, and the air smelled disgusting.

Oh man, now I REALLY feel like throwing up…

"I feel sick." I moaned.

"You're not alone." Nate said. "Oh man, I can feel my lunch coming back up, and I can even taste my digested sandwi-"

"Shut up, Nate!" Lotte shot out, annoyed. "Could you be more disgusting?"

"I could, actually." But before Nate could say anything more, his face froze and he stared forward.

"Ghost?" Lotte asked.

Nate nodded. "Ph-ph…"

"Phantom?" Lawrence finished.

Nate nodded again.

We all looked forward to see the Phantom rising out of a grave. Instead of being all skeleton-like, he was…well…rotting. His clothes were tattered and dirty, and he still laughed at us, and pointed to an open coffin next to his grave.

I shut my eyes and shivered. My throat hurt too much to scream. Plus I felt that if I opened my mouth, I'd throw up.

Lawrence, Lotte, and I started sprinting away downhill, but Nate stood there, staring.

"Nate, you idiot, come on!" Lotte shouted.

Nate blinked and caught up to us. We couldn't see the Phantom anymore, but we could see that the path led through Boot Hill and back up to Ravenswood Manor.

"Nate, why'd you take so much time back there?" Lotte asked.

"The Phantom was rising out of a grave with a headstone on it."

"And…" Lawrence prompted.

"So I looked to see what the name was."

"What was it?" I croaked.

"Derek Hawthorne."

"I knew it!" Lotte exclaimed. "I knew it!"

"So…we know who the Phantom is." Lawrence said. "What do we do now?"

For some odd strange reason, all three of them looked at me.

"What are you looking at me for?" I complained.

End Notes: Sorry this took much longer than I had envisioned it to. I cannot give a concrete date for the next update. It may or may not be next weekend. I'm saying maybe about two or three. I'm swamped at the moment!