The next weekend morning, Norman went downstairs to talk to his dad. Mr. Babcock and Courtney were already there eating, but the Ghostly Trio wasn't...apparently they already ate.
"Hey dad, hey sis." He said, chipper.
Mr. Babcock gave a bit of a jolt, spilling a little coffee, but Courtney looked up with a smile.
"Morning bro." She said.
"Dad I was wondering if I could borrow your credit card." Norman said. "I want to buy a costume for the dance."
"Didn't you always make your costume?" Mr. Babcock said.
"No...mom did." Norman said awkwardly.
"Oh...right..." Mr. Babcock now remembered sheepishly. "Well I think I could whip up something pretty good... How about you go as a leftover? We could wrap you in tinfoil."
"Dad, no offense but that's lame." Courtney winced.
"Er... Well no matter what you always look cute." Mr. Babcock tried to reassure Norman.
"Um, I'm afraid I'm kinda too old to look 'cute'." Norman said awkwardly. "I...want to look nice for the dance. You know, handsome...?"
Mr. Babcock remembered that his son was gonna be a teenager soon, and so got what he was saying.
"Oh...I think we'd better have that talk." He said.
"It's kinda late for that." Norman admitted.
"How late?" Mr. Babcock started to look stern.
"Oh don't worry...not that late." Norman chuckled a little embarrassedly. "Uh, I meant I already learned it in health class."
"Oh good." Mr. Babcock said with relief. "Well, I would love to buy you the best costume money can buy...but unfortunately we don't have any."
"Mrs. Crittenden hasn't actually paid you yet has she?" Norman winced.
"Nope." Courtney chimed in. "Found out myself just a couple minutes before you came in when I asked for money for a costume as well."
"Ah...figures." Norman rolled his eyes. "Betcha she'll pay up after the ghosts are gone."
"Wouldn't be surprised." Mr. Babcock sighed.
"Well, don't worry I'll try to find something." Norman shrugged. "Maybe there's something in the attic."
"Considering how old this place is I'd bet on it...but I'd also bet that anything we fine will be dusty and worn out." Courtney winced.
"Maybe, but with a little imagination we both might find something great for the party."
"It's my party and I'll die if I want to! Die if I want to!" The Ghostly Trio's voices suddenly sang before cackling.
Norman and Courtney glanced towards the direction of the voices with annoyed expressions.
"You will die too when it happens to you!" The Ghostly Trio finished before laughing.
"Come on, let's get to work." Courtney sighed, getting up from the table.
She and Norman left the room as Dr. Babcock started to pour himself more coffee.
"Big finish!" Fatso (Prenderghast) said.
The flow of coffee suddenly went sideways, missing the mug and going over the table.
"Scream or sugar?" Stinkie (Hardwick) joked.
Dr. Babcock just rolled his eyes.
"Norman, please make sure those three clowns of the underworld don't ruin the party." Courtney sighed on the way to the attic.
"Don't worry, they'll listen to me." Norman reassured her.
"So...you're the real cause behind dad's past success huh?" Courtney realized.
"Took you long enough to figure it out." Norman chuckled.
"For the record I figured it out the day you admitted that you're a Medium." Courtney retorted. "I just didn't want to bring it up in front of anyone else...especially not dad."
"Oh...yeah we'd best not tell him. I don't want him to start doubting himself." Norman nodded. "He's going to need his real skills for when he gets back to doing therapy for the living."
"Yeah, or else we'll starve to death and become the new Ghostly Trio." Courtney remarked.
Norman actually laughed.
Inside the attic they started looking around, but so far they couldn't find any clothing. Instead it was mostly furniture and outdoor toys like bikes. Then Norman spotted something strange.
"Hey Courtney, take a look at this." He said.
"What is it-" Courtney stopped upon seeing what he found.
A child-sized door right there at the other end of the attic. They opened it and saw a bunch of boxes and cloth-covered items, plus abstract colorful windows. They took a couple of the cloths to remove the dust off the windows so that they could see better, and then Courtney took the lid off a box.
"What is all this stuff?" She asked.
Norman beamed upon seeing what was inside the box.
"I think I know..." He said.
Meanwhile, finally done with breakfast, Dr. Babcock went into the library. The Ghostly Trio were already there pretending to be psychiatrists.
"Vell vell vell, ze patient has finally arrived." Stretch (Hopkins) said.
"Late again I see." Stinkie (Hardwick) noted.
"Could this be an expression of hostility Doc?" Stretch (Hopkins) joked.
The Ghostly Trio laughed.
Unknown to the four of them, Carrigan and Dibs were spying on them through the window.
"It's your hour Freud." Fatso (Prenderghast) remarked.
The Ghostly Trio laughed again. Dr. Babcock didn't say anything.
"What, so silent? No pearls of wisdom today Doc?" Stretch (Hopkins) asked.
"Come on Doc, stay tough don't stop." Stinkie (Hardwick) said.
Dr. Babcock just went to his box.
"Come on Doc, hang with us homeboys-" Stretch (Hopkins) said.
Dr. Babcock started packing up, shocking the Ghostly Trio.
"Hey, wait a second, you aren't thinking about packing it in now are ya?" Stretch (Hopkins) asked, trying to take the box away.
"We were just starting to have fun." Stinkie (Hardwick) said.
"It isn't often we meet a Bone-Bag as amusing as you." Fatso (Prenderghast) admitted.
Dr. Babcock pulled his box back without a word and continued packing. See unknown to anyone else Dr. Babcock had just realized that all his past successes were thanks to Norman. So he realized that he'll never be able to succeed with the Ghostly Trio, especially since they were related to Aggie. And because Norman befriended her there was no way he was going to help her crossover, and if he won't help her crossover then he won't help the Ghostly Trio crossover either. Dr. Babcock knew that Norman would never want to separate family members if they were both dead or both alive.
"Boys this is serious." Stretch (Hopkins) for once was solemn. "I think the doc is having one of them fleshy breakdowns."
"Time for drastic measures." Stinkie (Hardwick) noted.
"Think we should break into a song?" Fatso (Prenderghast) suggested.
"No!" Stretch (Hopkins) said, backhanding Fatso (Prenderghast) in the face. "I think it's time we gave the doc our own prescription."
"But what about the party?" Fatso (Prenderghast) asked.
See they actually had planned on crashing the party for the most epic scare they had ever done, but...
"The party will have to wait." Stretch (Hopkins) said.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Stinkie (Hardwick) suddenly smiled.
"Gentlemen?" Stretch (Hopkins) smiled knowingly.
"Happy Hour." Stinkie (Hardwick) said.
"Happy Hour." Fatso (Prenderghast) said.
"Happy Hour." Stretch (Hopkins) confirmed.
Stretch (Hopkins) and Stinkie (Hardwick) suddenly grabbed Dr. Babcock by the arms and flew him out the window (relax, they opened it first)...just missing seeing Carrigan and Dibs.
"Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer!" The Ghostly Trio sang.
"Just the dead guys!" Fatso (Prenderghast) added.
"You take one down, pass 'em around..." The Ghostly Trio continued singing as they flew away.
"This is an outrage! This is appalling!" Dibs protested. "You pay a man to get the ghosts out of a house and what does he do?"
"He gets the ghosts out of the house." Carrigan deadpanned.
"Exactly-!" Dibs agreed before realizing what she just said.
Around the same time, Aggie floated through the floor of the attic. She had been wandering around the manor for much of the morning, still trying to sort through her 'I'm dead yet I still love Norman' dilemma, when she realized that she hadn't seen Norman or even Courtney all morning. She searched everywhere until the attic was left.
"It's about time." Norman grinned from the other side of the small door.
Surprised, Aggie floated inside and saw a whole bunch of old mechanical toys performing. There were extra non-mechanical toys lined up in shelves in the wall. Courtney was in the room too, leaning against a wall.
"Surprise." Courtney grinned. "Any of this look familiar?"
"This is..." Aggie started looking at some of the toys. "This is... And... I know this..."
She then saw a small clay handprint hanging up on the wall with her name written underneath. She put her hand into the handprint and smiled.
"I remember!" She said before hearing a train whistle. "Hoonie!"
She floated up to where a toy train was rolling along a track hanging from the ceiling.
"This is great...how did you find my stuff anyway?" Aggie beamed.
"We were up here looking for costumes when Norman spotted the door." Courtney explained.
"Thank you Norman..." Aggie smiled.
Norman lightly blushed as he smiled back.
"Wait...costumes...I've got just the things!" Aggie then suddenly flew out of the room and into a trunk.
It opened and Aggie flew out a beautiful white lacy dress and a small elegant suit.
"Wow...it's beautiful." Courtney smiled upon seeing the dress.
"It was my mom's...and that suit belonged to my dad when he was a kid." Aggie explained. "Dad wanted to keep it in case he ever had a son." She chuckled before becoming sad. "Mom died before that could happen."
"Oh...I'm sorry." Courtney's smile faded. "I-I shouldn't..."
"It's all right." Aggie reassured her. "I wouldn't have brought it out if I wasn't okay with you wearing it."
"Well...all right." Courtney took the dress and slipped it over her regular clothes to see if it would fit; it did.
"Um...I'll be right back." Norman took the suit and rushed out of the room.
Courtney and Aggie giggled.
"Too bad he couldn't slip it over his regular clothes like I could." Courtney chuckled.
"Hey, you try putting a pair of pants over another pair of pants." Norman retorted as he re-entered the attic.
Aggie felt as if she was blushing again, even though she actually wasn't, because Norman looked very handsome in the tux.
"Looking good bro." Courtney smiled.
"Thanks...maybe I could use this as the foundation for a vampire costume." Norman considered. "Just need to find a cape and fake fangs."
"I think I have enough of my allowance leftover for the fangs, but we'll have to improvise on the cape." Courtney offered.
"Thanks...what about you? What do you think that dress could make you?"
"Um...well there's a bride but I don't want to have to worry about a veil." Courtney said. "How about I just go as a ghost?" She chuckled.
"That could work...what do you think Aggie?" Norman asked.
Aggie, it turns out, wasn't there anymore. Instead she had spotted a sled and flew over to it. When Norman and Courtney found her she was sitting on it looking solemn.
"I begged and begged my dad to get me this sled." She said. "And he acted like I couldn't have it because I didn't know how to ride it. And then one morning I came down for breakfast and there is was just for me, for no reason at all. I took it out, went sledding all day... My dad said 'that's enough' but I couldn't stop I was having so much fun. It got late...it got dark...it got cold...and I got sick...my dad got sad..."
Aggie now looked even sadder, and Courtney and Norman were really sad too. They realized that that was how Aggie had died.
"What's it like to die?" Courtney asked.
"It's like...being born, only backwards." Aggie explained. "I remember, I didn't go where I was supposed to go. I just stayed behind so my dad wouldn't be lonely...especially since mom had already died by that time." She then got a sad look of recognition. "And because...my parents were my only friends back then...that's why my unfinished business is to make a friend."
"I can empathize...before I met Neil and Salma dad and Courtney were my only living friends." Norman admitted. "My love of the undead and my eyes have a tendency to put off most people."
"In my case, people were put off by my dad being an eccentric scientist." Aggie said.
"This really does stink...neither of you deserve a life without friends." Courtney said. "And you never deserved to die like that." She then said to Aggie.
"Thanks..." Aggie smiled sadly. "Anyway, a long while after that my uncles died and became ghosts so that they could say goodbye to my dad, but they stayed ghosts because dad asked them to look after me for him. Even though they are creeps they still care about each other and my dad deep down, so they honored his request. Especially since dad died not long after that. My uncles then took me back here to live, and my memories slowly started to fade away after that."
They then spotted newspapers on the ground that headlined Aggie's death, the haunting of Prenderghast Manor, and Aggie's dad apparently inventing a machine to bring Aggie back to life. Another one showed a picture of a handsome young man with a mustache, the article title revealing that Aggie's dad had been declared legally insane.
"Is that your dad?" Norman asked.
"Yeah." Aggie said.
Courtney picked up the article and started to read it:
"Prenderghast claimed that he was being haunted by the ghost of his dead daughter, and that he had invented a machine to bring him back to life."
"The Lazarus." Aggie finished with Courtney.
Aggie suddenly grabbed Courtney and Norman by the arms and flew towards the wall...which they bumped into, causing them to fall down. Aggie floated back through sheepishly.
"Uh, sorry." She apologized. "I guess we'll have to take the long way."
She helped them up and led them out the attic door.
"Hurry up come on!" She said excitedly.
They followed her downstairs.
"My dad hid it so no one could find it, but I remember where it is!" Aggie continued. "Oh wait'll you see it!"
Inside a hallway they passed, Carrigan and Dibs overheard what Aggie had said. Thinking that she was talking about the treasure, they made silent expressions of excited joy towards each other...and then Carrigan kissed Dibs before running off after Aggie, Courtney, and Norman. Dibs just stood their stunned for a few minutes before snapping out of it and catching up with Carrigan.
Meanwhile Courtney and Norman were still running after Aggie.
"Don't you know a shortcut?" Courtney asked.
"You got it!" Aggie grabbed them and directed them towards a wall.
"Aggie no! Wall, humans-!" Norman quickly said...
...Only for them to suddenly go through the wall and wind up in the second floor of the library.
"Over here." Aggie smiled, gesturing to a chair. "Go ahead, sit down."
Courtney sat down first, then Norman sat down in her lap. It was the only way they could both sit on the chair.
"Well this is awkward." Courtney muttered.
"Oh, and I'm enjoying this?" Norman retorted.
"I would hold on." Aggie chuckled.
"Why?" Norman asked.
Aggie just smiled suddenly pulled one of the tassels of the lamp that was next to the chair, and the next thing Courtney and Norman knew the chair was moving backwards...and, unknown to them, Carrigan and Dibs was watching this happen. The chair then stopped and turned around at the stairs, which suddenly flattened into a twisty ramp. The chair then went down the ramp.
"Aggie?" Courtney called nervously.
She then screamed as a trapdoor opened and they went through it into darkness.
"Whooaa!" Norman cried, startled.
They then moved through a tunnel that kept flashing lights and making spooky noises. They then came upon some weird machines that came to life. One patted them with face powder, another attempted to brush their teeth (only to miss because they leaned back), one squirted out white goop, and the last one tried shaving them (again, fortunately they leaned back). Then they got sprayed with water, blow dried, combed, and a bow-tie was placed around Courtney's neck. After that they went down a ramp into a strange laboratory that was obviously far underneath the manor. They stopped at a desk, where Aggie was waiting for them.
"Well?" She smiled.
"Pretty cool, but could've done without those weird machines at the end." Norman said.
"Yeah what was that?" Courtney asked.
"The Up-And-At-Em machine." Aggie said proudly. "My dad was a great inventor...but he had a little trouble getting going in the mornings."
"Didn't he ever hear of caffeine?" Courtney snarked before ripping off the bow-tie.
Now it was Carrigan and Dibs turn through the Up-And-At-Em machine thanks to an extra chair...and Dibs was victim to almost all of them. They also freaked out upon coming across the shavers.
"What is this place?" Norman asked, looking around the laboratory.
"My dad's lab." Aggie grinned.
"Kinda a slob wasn't he?" Courtney noted.
"Down here he could do whatever he wanted, but no matter how busy he was he would drop everything and play pirates with me." Aggie smiled, not hearing Courtney.
"Wait, pirates?" Courtney raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you live decades ago, before women started to gain equal roles in society?"
"Yeah but my parents encouraged me to not limit myself to what society expected of me." Aggie explained. "And I got into pirates through the stories dad would tell me at bedtime."
"Oh."
"Man we had so much fun." Aggie smiled nostalgically before morphing into a pirate. "Ay mateys, buccaneers and buried gold, Prenderghast doth a treasure hold."
Carrigan and Dibs overheard and realized that she knew something about the treasure.
"So where's this Lazarus thing?" Courtney asked.
"You're looking at it." Aggie said.
Courtney and Norman looked down and realized that the Lazarus was buried underneath the water...or whatever that strange liquid was.
"Down there? That's useful." Courtney said sarcastically.
"I know there's a way to get it going, I just can't..." Aggie said frustratedly.
"What about that?" Norman pointed past her.
"That?" Aggie turned around and saw the small door Norman was pointing at. "Nah, that's the vault."
Carrigan and Dibs realized that that was where the treasure was, and so snuck around to it to try to open it.
"Wait, it's gotta be this!" Aggie noticed a platform with some levers.
She tried moving the levers, but none of them would budge.
Meanwhile Norman and Courtney were exploring the desk, looking for a clue, when they saw the book Frankenstein. Curious, Norman opened it and discovered that it was a fake book with three buttons inside. Norman and Courtney glanced at each other.
"Which one?" Courtney asked.
"Try the big one first." Norman suggested.
Courtney pushed it...and it turned out to be the correct button. The entire place started shaking as the liquid started foaming even more. The Lazarus started to rise out of it as the platform neared itself to it.
"Hey I did it!" Aggie said happily.
Norman just casually closed the fake book.
"The Lazarus." Aggie smiled breathlessly.
Meanwhile, Dibs couldn't open the vault, so Carrigan tried. She couldn't open it either.
Courtney and Norman had reached the top of the platform by this point and Courtney noticed three vials, one filled with red stuff.
"What's this?" She took it out.
"Careful!" Aggie panicked, taking the vial. "That's what makes the whole thing work, kind of an instant primordial soup mix. It's what brings ghosts back to life. Just enough for one..." She gained a look of realization, then a smile of determination before putting the vial into the machine; she then turn it around, starting it up. "Pull the lever."
"Which one?" Norman asked.
"I dunno, try one." Aggie shrugged.
Norman did and fortunately it was the one that opened the door. Aggie floated towards it.
"Aggie?" Norman hesitated, worried that it might not work.
"I'm gonna be alive." Aggie smiled determinedly before flying inside.
The door closed on her.
"So...I guess we're gonna bring Aggie back to life?" Courtney said.
"I guess...that is I hope so..." Norman then winced. "But I don't know how, I'm not good with machines."
"Well, there's only two levers left to try, so one is bound to get it working." Courtney pointed out.
"All right..." Norman tried one lever, which sent the chair back up; Norman then tried the last lever, which started the machine.
Unfortunately, unknown to Norman or Courtney, Carrigan snuck the primordial soup mix out of the machine, causing it to stop early. Surprised that it stopped so soon, Norman pulled the lever that opened the door and he and Courtney neared it.
"Aggie?" Norman said concernedly.
After some steam cleared up Courtney and Norman saw that Aggie was now a sunny-side-up egg.
"Am I alive?" Aggie smiled hopefully.
It didn't take long for her to realize that she wasn't. Not sure of what else to do, Norman left to get a bellows to blow Aggie back into shape with. Fortunately not long after he started pumping her up it looked like the idea was going to work.