5

It was hard to look for one's daughter when her one and only friend lived in the basement. Justin then had the idea to try to pull any memories out that Harper might have had during the possession. He placed a spell on her resembling a trance and then had her relive the previous day. She woke up from bed, ambled toward the bathroom down there and recalled brushing her teeth as something she described as a wall of ice coming up behind her. She recalled seeing her breath turning to mist, her mind drifting away and then fainting away to find herself not on the basement floor but back at the school where Zeke had found her. From there, Jerry and Justin headed to the school and walked around it before mystically entering the side entrance and wandering the empty halls looking for Alex. On the way home, they checked out Alex's favorite coffee place and Lafferty's one more time. Harper called her current classmates and old classmates. Max ran down to Battery Park and back asking his friends if they had seen Alex anywhere. No one recalled seeing her anywhere. Against Jerry's wishes, Theresa called the police to report Alex missing, but fearing a connection to their mystical legacy, Jerry called them back a few hours later claiming that Alex had come back home. To quell Theresa's heartbreak, Jerry then called Professor Victorious Crumbs, the kids' old magic teacher at Mecklenburg Academy in Germany to get the word out to the magic and paranormal communities that Alex was missing and a powerful presence was involved. By Monday morning, there was no response.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but it feels weird to get here on time without Alex." Justin told his father.

"I know…" Jerry choked back the fear and uncertainty as he stood with Justin in the front hall of the school. "But the only clue we have to locating her is the cockamamie Civil War gold story that the spirit told when it was passing itself off as you. Your principal ought to be able to shed some light on that."

"Yeah…" Justin looked around the office with the employees and teachers than down the hallway toward his office. He turned round twice trying to get them to spot him, and his father looked down the Senior Classmen hallway before stopping and asking a passing student. Over their heads, Herschel Laritate was ambling his heavy big feet down the stairs from the second story. He was in his Texas jacket, his bolo tie with the ends dancing on his belly and his bloated thick neck covering all traces of his collar. His boots tapped against each step as he came down toward Jerry.

"Mr. Laritate…" Jerry reached to greet him. The huge Texan lifted his hand out of courtesy with his eyes peering over his glasses. "Hi, Jerry Russo, Alex's father…."

"Yes, Mister Russo, we've met several… several… several times…" Laritate sighed aggravatedly over his daughter. "Is there a problem with Alex? I noticed she wasn't here to terrorize the audio-visual squad or make fun of the chess team."

"Alex has this really bad cough…" Jerry set up to cover her absence. Justin stood by him nodding his head. "I mean, when I left the house this morning, she was coughing up all this stuff…"

"Buckets… buckets full…." Justin added.

"Sounds bad…" Laritate had no reason to not believe a story coming from a father who was also a local businessman.

"She could be out for the week." Jerry added. "Maybe two weeks…"

"Could be three." Justin replied.

"Yeah," Jerry prodded Justin to pull back on the excuse. "Anyway, I just wanted you to know that Alex is being taken care of and is in no way missing or skipping school." He paused to look at Justin. "So…." He looked around. "You know, I never noticed just how big this place was. I bet this used to be an old Civil War Hospital…"

"No…" Laritate continued distractedly through the office with Jerry and Justin following behind. "The school was built in 1965. I'm the fifth of five Principals to serve my duty here after Mr. McGovern."

"Oh…" Jerry stayed close on him and passed the front counter in the school office to follow Laritate to the inner door of his office. "But I heard the school was built over an existing foundation?"

"Nope, it was an empty field…" Laritate seemed perturbed. "Now, Mr. Russo, I don't mean to be short, but I somehow blacked out on an entire week, and during that week, I somehow balanced the school budget, made a bunch of promises I don't remember making and tossed out all my old Western relics."

Jerry and Justin looked at each other. They were not expecting that, but it meant they were following the right path.

"There was nothing here?" Jerry asked.

"Nothing…" Herschel confessed. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to figure out why I decided to let Mrs. Watson the librarian hire another librarian." He turned into his office and closed the door. The letters on it came back into Jerry's face as he turned round to face Justin in the outer office. Jerry's mind was racing a mile a minute. Whatever was going on, it started with the kid's principal, not Justin.

"So let's see…" Justin stood and postulated. "Whoever this spirit was, it jumped from Mr. Laritate, to me and then to Harper before entering Alex."

"Yeah…" Jerry followed his son back out to the school foyer. "Plus…" His head shook confusingly in short movements. "This doesn't sound like an evil spirit. It fixed the problems in the school; as you, it befriended your mother…" He paused. "What did it want with Alex?" For instances like this, Jerry wished he had his magic powers back. "Justin," He placed his hand on his son's shoulder. "After school, I want you to go to the haunted church and talk to the ghosts. Maybe they know something." He referred to the old Presbyterian Church over in McCarthy Street with the old historical cemetery spanning the block. Max had often called it Ghost World because it was one of several locations on Manhattan where spirits existed in large numbers. In the past, Justin had had run-ins with a poltergeist named Mantooth there, and Alex often hired the spirits of the dead from there to highlight their Halloween haunted attractions.

"Ghost World?" Justin cringed. "What if I run into Mantooth?" The deceased Vaudeville comic loved to scare Justin into screaming like a girl.

"Say hello to him for me." Jerry turned to head home. "Justin, do it for your sister."

"What did she ever do for me?" Justin turned away and saw Max running to meet him. With him was Freddie the janitor, a former child actor from the Thirties and the Forties who had worked with the Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello, but then he grew up and no one wanted to hire him as a teenager. In the Seventies, he got a bit of publicity by claiming to be a former Little Rascal, but as many people agreed, two roles as an extra did not make him a former Our Gang star. Today, he was just a seventy-year old custodian whose greatest joy was telling the stories of his youth to young boys like Max.

"Dad…" Max introduced the former child star to his father. "This is Freddie. He knows all about this school."

"Good to meet you, Mister Russo…" Freddie spoke with a raspy voice and looked up with two big blue eyes and a head of snowy white formerly blonde hair. He shook Jerry's hand. "You've got a great boy here. Max is always telling me these crazy stories about stuff coming to life in your home, fire-breathing dogs and his sister swimming in a chocolate river."

Jerry and Justin looked to Max. Just what else was he talking about?

"Thank you…" Jerry shook the old-timer's hand. "Uh, Fred…" He gestured Freddie to come stand out of the way in the corner out of the way of the kids. "Could you tell me something? Has anything ever rested here where Tribeca sits now? Something like an old Civil War Hospital?"

"Nope…" Freddie's eyes turned back as he recalled those days. "The area was a vacant lot. Nothing was here."

"Great…" Jerry sighed defeatedly then looked back to his sons.

"You see, Mister Russo…" The janitor continued. "Back then, this was known as the old Frost Plantation. They had a big house back a few dozen feet from the road, but it burned down in the 1860s. Rumor has it Old Man Frost helped finance the Confederate Army, and when the locals found out, they burned it straight to the ground. Well, that's what everyone said…"

"But you know otherwise…" Jerry wanted to hear more.

"The truth of the matter, Mr. Russo…" Freddie looked around as the first school bell rang, and the students started slowing milling toward their early morning class. "The Frost family was a bunch of witches! Sorcerers, mystics, magicians… Whatever you call them…"

Jerry reacted to that part of the story.

"They were highly successful; they owned a lot of land, but a lot of people were scared of them." Freddie continued. "That lie about them financing the Confederates was just an excuse to burn the house down over their heads." He paused as if he had been there. "Parents, five kids, ten servants… all gone, and no one was ever convicted. The only survivor was the eldest son, and he had been away serving the Union as a soldier in Tennessee. He never came home, and the property stayed in the family until his daughter passed away in 1965."

"When the school was built…" Justin commented.

"What kind of people were they?" Jerry asked.

"I hear when they were alive they donated money to charity, shared food with the poor and threw parties for elected officials." Freddie recalled stories he had heard from his grandfather. "They helped get Abraham Lincoln elected as President."

"It's hard to believe anyone could think they were Confederate sympathizers." Justin added. Max just stood humbled by the story and finally understood why it was important to keep their wizardry a secret. It wasn't just to keep magic secret; it was to protect themselves from prejudice and those people who would be afraid of them to create violence.

"Yep," Freddie turned in his blue shirt and dark gray trousers. "Well, I've got bathrooms to clean and grounds to police." He stopped by Max. "Hey, Max, did you hear…" Freddie leaned toward the boy. "Three football players went missing from the team, and the school is serving meatloaf. I don't think that's a coincidence…"

"Aw, man…" Max groaned as the warning bell sounded then dashed for math class. Justin lagged behind. His clean reputation in this school allowed him a lot of leeway with his teachers. He watched Freddie heading toward the janitor's closet and turned to his father.

"The Frost family…" Jerry whispered to him. "I forgot all about them! I thought they had lived out on Staten Island. Your grandfather told me all about them."

"They were wizards?"

"Some of the most powerful…" Jerry grieved a bit for them. "I would have loved to meet any of them. Justin, they created half the spells in the Wizard textbook. They were like celebrities! Everyone loved them."

"Who do you think is in Alex?"

"I don't know."