We were climbing
around in the attic and our folks were downstairs, going through boxes of crumbly
historical documents, when a delegation from the village came in to speak with them.
They wanted a progress report on what they had found after only one full day of
investigating. I heard the door creak-bang open and signaled Harry to be quiet.
He was in the middle of leaping from one rafter support beam to the next. Kind of
hard to land on the next beam without making noise, but he managed.
He didn't
land square, though, and started to fall backwards. Not a problem if this was an
ordinary attic, built by sensible people, with plywood sheets stretching from one
rafter to another, to provide a solid platform for storage. Keep in mind, Harry
and I had to jump from one rafter to another because there was nothing solid
between them. A layer of fluffy gray stuff that was more likely to be dust than
insulation was all that lay between Harry's backside and the thin sheet of plaster
and paint that made up the ceiling of the room below us.
Fortunately
for Harry, his big sister had telekinetic power. Unfortunately for said big sister—moi—it
isn't that easy to catch a husky nine-year-old going through a growth spurt, either
with hands or with mental powers. Something gets strained, muscles or brain. Harry
yelped. I snagged him so he metaphorically skidded to a halt in mid-air, with his
bottom about three inches from breaking through. I let out a muffled yelp-argh.
Sorry, but that's the only way to describe the involuntary sound that came from
the sensation of a spike going through my left temple and out my right eye. Fortunately,
only a temporary sensation. We froze in that position until I could regain my breath,
while my stomach settled back into place after trying to come out my nose.
Down below,
the five people with Mum and Pop all froze and looked upward at the ceiling. Mum
knew what had happened, because she had seen us in action about twenty minutes before,
when she came upstairs for the last crate of historical records. Don't even get
me started on her fury over the deplorable state of those records. Mum froze, and
Pop took his cue from her, even though he didn't know what was going on. He didn't
notice the delegation at first, immersed in deciphering a document that later turned
out to be over three hundred years old.
Mum said everyone
just stood there, looking up at the ceiling, waiting for something to come through.
She waited a few seconds, then asked them what was wrong. Mrs. Guttersnatch declared
that was proof the building was haunted by the spirits of children who had died
there when it was a pauper's prison. Mr. Wimbly said it was the spirit of a schoolteacher
who had been driven insane by the imbeciles he had to pound learning into, and who
had committed suicide. Note: she was an advocate for prison reform and believed
in communication from the Great Beyond. He was a teacher who had been forced to
retire after a nervous breakdown. Miss Wilson-Smythe countered that the rats had
come back, despite the promises of the rat catcher.
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