Ghost Fever Read online

  Elena looked at her father, her eyes wide. “I swear I heard it,” she said. “A pounding noise and footsteps.”

  Her father smiled gently. “You were dreaming,” he said. “It was just a bad dream.”

  But Elena insisted, “I was awake. How could I be dreaming? I wasn’t asleep.”

  Her father still didn’t believe her. He shook his head again and smiled. “Okay, okay,” he said. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll stay here with you for a while.” To himself he thought, Pretty soon she’ll calm back down.

  And in a little while Elena was calm enough to lie back down in the bed. She rested her head on the pillow and rolled her head to one side. Her eyes were still open, but she was quieter now. She’ll fall asleep in a minute, her father thought.

  Chapter 7

  The Ghost

  AT FIRST it looked as though Elena’s father was right. She gazed sleepily across the room and her eyes slowly opened and closed, staying shut a little longer each time. But then suddenly her eyes opened wide and focused on the window on the opposite wall. Something was coming in through the window.

  It was like a white mist, and it was coming in at the bottom of the window, where the old wooden sash met up with the frame. The boards were warped and there was a narrow crack between them. The white mist was slowly filtering inside through that crack.

  When the mist was inside, it began to take shape, until it looked like a girl about the same age as Elena, wearing a long, fancy white dress. Elena thought she could tell that the other girl was trying to talk to her. She remembered what her grandma had told her she should say. Elena tried to speak, but all that came out of her mouth was: “Ere…ere…ere…ere…ere.”

  And then she fainted. Her father saw her eyes close and her mouth close and her body go limp. He was so frightened that he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up beside him.

  The sudden jerk when her father pulled her upright startled Elena out of the faint. She opened her eyes again and looked across the room. She could see the shape clearly. It was a girl wearing a long white dress. It looked to Elena like the girl was dressed to go to a high school prom, or maybe because Elena would soon be celebrating her own fifteenth birthday, it looked even more like the other girl was dressed for a quinceañera.

  Elena’s gaze moved to the other girl’s face. She saw features on the face—a nose and lips and skin and all—but Elena could see the teeth and the bones behind them. She looked into the girl’s eyes, but instead of seeing eyes, she saw a blue glow way back in her head. And she saw that the girl’s mouth kept opening and closing, as though she was trying to speak.

  Elena felt her father’s arm still tight around her shoulder, and that made her braver. She took a deep breath. She swallowed hard. And even though her voice was hardly more than a whisper, she said exactly what her grandma had told her to: “E-n-n nombre d-d-de Dios…, ¿e-e-eres de este mundo…o-o-o del o-otro?”

  When the other girl answered, it sounded like a hollow wind was blowing through her voice: “O-o-otro-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.”

  And so Elena knew she was talking to a ghost. The girl had answered otro, the other one, the other world. El otro mundo.

  Elena took another deep breath and said, “En n-n-nombre de Dios…, ¿qué es lo que quieres?”

  The ghost girl answered, “Que-e-e me ayu-u-udes. Quiero que me ayu-u-udes. I want you to help me.”

  Elena heard herself say, “Te ayudo. I’ll help you.” And she watched as the ghost girl came on across the room, floating more than walking. She came right up next to Elena, so close that Elena could feel her breath blowing against her face. It was icy cold. It smelled damp and musty like the earth smells. Elena listened wide-eyed as the ghost girl told her story.

  Chapter 8

  The Ghost Girl’s Story

  THE GHOST GIRL told Elena that her name was Mariana Mendoza. She said that for one whole year she had been stealing money from her parents. She had planned on using the money to buy herself a dress for her quinceañera. Her family was very poor and her parents had told her they couldn’t afford to buy a dress for her to celebrate her fifteenth birthday. So she had started stealing from them, and she hid the money in a metal box that she kept buried in the vacant lot next to the house.

  But one week before her fifteenth birthday her father was up on the roof of the house doing some repairs. He saw that he was about to run out of nails and shouted down through one of the vent pipes in the roof to tell his daughter to bring him some more. She got the nails and climbed up the ladder to the roof. She almost got to where her father was working, over by the edge of the roof, but then she tripped. Her foot caught on a loose shingle, and she fell and rolled toward the edge.

  Her father came racing across the roof to catch her, but he was too late. She fell off the roof and landed on her head. Her neck was broken. And she was killed.

  Elena’s eyes filled with tears as she listened to the ghost girl’s story. She was hardly able to breathe. And then the ghost girl explained how she wanted Elena to help her.

  She begged Elena to find the box where she had buried it under the tree in the vacant lot next door. She told her exactly how much money would be in it: $47.36. And then she told Elena what to do with the money.

  She told her not to keep any of it for herself. “Dinero robado no trae nada bueno,” she warned her. “Stolen money can bring you no good.”

  She told Elena to use some of the money to pay for rosaries to be prayed for her and for her father and mother, who were also dead by this time. “Acuérdate que me llamo Mariana Mendoza,” she told Elena. “Remember that my name is Mariana Mendoza.” She said her parents were named Alejandro and Dolores Mendoza.

  She told Elena to talk to the priest and get the name of the last baby girl from across the tracks who had been baptized in the church. She should find out that baby’s birthday and open a savings account in the baby’s name at the First National Bank.

  She should put all the rest of the money in that account and set it up with the bank that none of the money and the interest it earned could be withdrawn until one week before that baby’s fifteenth birthday. And then the money could be used for just one purpose: to buy that girl a dress for her quinceañera.

  Elena shook her head yes to show she agreed to do all those things, and then she managed to stammer, “Y…y…entonces, ¿tú no vas a volver? And then you’re not going to come back again?”

  The ghost girl answered, “Nu-u-unca-a-a-a—Ne-e-ev-e-er.” And then she faded away and was gone.

  Elena talked to her father. “Did you see that?” she asked. “Did you see that girl? Did you hear what she said?”

  “No,” he answered kindly and patted her shoulder.

  Elena repeated everything the ghost girl had told her, but her father hadn’t seen or heard anything and he still didn’t believe it. But then he scratched his chin and chuckled and mused to himself, “Well…I guess I could use some money.”

  Chapter 9

  The Metal Box

  ELENA’S FATHER stayed there with her until she finally fell asleep. But she couldn’t sleep very well and when her dad looked in on her around six o’clock the next morning, she was already awake.

  “Come on,” he said. “Get dressed and we’ll go take a look in the vacant lot.” Of course, he didn’t expect to find anything there at all.

  When she was dressed, Elena and her father went to the empty lot next to the house. It was overgrown with tumbleweeds and there was a big, spreading salt cedar tree in the middle of the lot. Under the tree they saw a flat, smooth stone, which seemed to indicate the logical place to dig. Frank lifted the stone and set it aside. With a garden trowel he’d found behind the house, he dug into the soft earth underneath.

  He dug down about eight inches and then his trowel struck something hard. He dug faster and a metal box began to appear.

  He pulled the box out of the hole an
d saw that it was an old jewelry box. It had flower decorations stamped into the metal of the top, and on the front there was a button you pushed to the right to release the latch. Frank cleaned the dirt from around the button with his finger and popped the latch.

  The old jewelry box was full of fine, gray ashes. Frank was disgusted and a little embarrassed that he’d almost begun to believe he was going to find money inside. He slammed the lid shut on the box and threw it back into the hole. “Come on,” he said to Elena. “Let’s go get some breakfast.” Frank stood up and walked off toward Chino’s house.

  Elena followed him, but she took the time to put the dirt back on top of the box and to set the rock back in place.

  Chapter 10

  Ghost Fever

  ELENA KNEW her dad didn’t want her to say anything about what had happened the night before. She kept to herself all day long and didn’t say much of anything to anyone. She was so sleepy by that afternoon that she slept away a good part of the day. When night came, she went back to the old house with her father. She was almost hoping her father had been right and that everything had just been a dream.

  That night Elena actually tried to go to sleep quickly, but she wasn’t able to. And late in the night, the ghost girl appeared again. No noise announced her arrival, but Elena felt a strange chill come over her and when she opened her eyes she saw the white mist come filtering in at the bottom of the window. When it was inside it slowly took shape, and this time the ghost girl’s appearance was much more frightening. Her head was twisted around at a crazy, unnatural angle, like her neck was broken. And the flesh just seemed to be dripping away from the bones of her face.

  She shook a finger angrily at Elena, as if to tell her she hadn’t done the right thing. And then, before Elena could find her voice to offer an explanation, the ghost faded away and was gone.

  Elena jumped out of bed and grabbed her clothes. She didn’t even wake up her father. She dressed as fast as she could and pulled her shoes onto her feet and ran to Chino’s house. That’s where she spent the night.

  And when Frank came looking for his daughter in the morning, Elena had a fever of 103 degrees. She was deathly sick. They gave her aspirin and put cold compresses on her head and rubbed her down with alcohol, but nothing would bring the fever down. She was half delirious all day long, mumbling to herself and staring at the ceiling. She stayed that way for four days.

  Chino’s uncle was crazy with worry. He paced up and down in the living room. He didn’t know what to do. But Abuelita did. She snuck into the bedroom every chance she got to and sat beside Elena’s bed. She listened to what her granddaughter was saying when she seemed to be talking out of her head. Little by little the sick girl revealed to her grandma what had happened.

  Chapter 11

  The Box Again

  ON THE FOURTH NIGHT of Elena’s fever, when the rest of the family was asleep, her grandma went and woke her up. She wrapped Elena in a blanket, because the poor girl was still trembling with fever. She put shoes on the girl’s feet and together they crept out of the house.

  It was almost midnight, and the girl and her grandma shuffled along the empty streets of the town. They crossed Main Street and the railroad and then followed the dark streets across the tracks back to the vacant lot. They knelt down and set the rock aside again. With her hands, Abuelita dug into the soft dirt her granddaughter had put back into the hole. She pulled out the metal box.

  They heard coins rattling when they lifted the box from the hole, and this time when they popped the latch and they lifted the lid on the old jewelry box, it was full of money—a lot of crumpled-up dollar bills, a few five and ten dollar bills, and a big pile of quarters and nickels and dimes and pennies.

  Later, when Abuelita would tell us about this mysterious transformation of the box’s contents, she always explained that the reason there had been nothing in the metal box before was that Elena’s father hadn’t believed what his daughter had experienced and had no business going there with her. And even more importantly: his intentions for the money had not been right.

  With the box of money under her arm, Abuelita helped Elena walk home through the deserted streets, and then she put her granddaughter right back to bed. The first thing the next morning, the grandma went to the church and arranged for the prayers the ghost girl had requested to be prayed for herself and for her parents. The offering she gave came from the money in the metal box. When Abuelita got back home again, she went straight to her granddaughter’s room. Elena was sitting up in the bed. Her fever was gone!

  By noon that day, Elena was up and walking, and that afternoon she was able to go with her grandma back to the church to talk to the priest. The name of the last baby born across the tracks was Victoria Sandoval. They went on to the First National Bank and opened an account in the baby’s name, but with the strict condition that no money could be withdrawn until one week before Victoria turned 15.

  I’ve always wondered if she withdrew the money and bought the dress, but I had graduated from high school and left town before Victoria Sandoval would have turned 15, so I don’t know for sure. I do know, though, that by the time the sun went down that day, Elena was as healthy as ever.

  When the weekend came around, Chino’s Uncle Frank and his two daughters moved into the old house. They lived in it for a whole year, and they were never bothered by any more ghosts. And for the first six months they lived in the house, they weren’t bothered by that stingy old Cole Cash coming around to collect a penny of rent from them.

  That year gave Chino’s Uncle Frank a chance to put his life back together. He remarried and with his new wife and his daughters he moved away from Duston. He went back to work in the mines, where the pay was much better than anything that was available in our town.

  Chapter 12

  The Story that Stayed Behind

  ABUELITA KEPT the metal box that had been buried under the salt cedar tree. She didn’t get it out much when Frank was still living in town, and she would never get it out when he was around. He still would not tolerate any talk about ghosts or haunted houses. He told his daughters they were forbidden to say anything about it. Even after Frank moved away, Abuelita was a little cautious because Chino’s dad wasn’t too crazy about her “superstitious stories” either.

  But Chino and I loved the story and we wanted every kid in town to hear it. Every time we knew that his grandma was home by herself, we would get some new friend and bring him over to the house and ask Abuelita to tell him the story. Partly we did that so that we could hear it again ourselves. Abuelita would get out the metal box and show it to us, and then she’d tell us all about the ghost her granddaughter had seen in Cole Cash’s haunted house.

  You know, I had heard people always say that as you get older your memory gets weaker. Maybe that’s true for some people, but I didn’t think it was true for Chino’s abuelita. It always seemed to me that her memory kept getting better, because I noticed something: each time she told us the story of the ghost girl on the roof, she would remember some new little detail she’d never mentioned before. Abuelita’s story kept getting better and better each time she told it!

  But by the time we were in the eighth grade, Chino’s grandma was getting pretty weak. She wasn’t able to tell us stories any more. And in March of that year, Abuelita died.

  Of course we kept telling the story about the ghost girl on the roof. We couldn’t tell it anywhere near as well as Abuelita had, but every time some new kid would move to town, we’d take him by the house and tell all about it. But as time went by, I began to wonder if it was really true. I almost stopped believing it. And then when I was a junior in high school something very interesting happened.

  Chapter 13

  Proof in Print?

  IN ELEVENTH GRADE, our English teacher Mrs. Hughes taught us all about newspapers. She taught us how to interview someone and ask good questions and write a news story. She taught us that the first paragraph of the story has to answer the f
ive Ws and the H: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

  She taught us how a newspaper was put together and how it made its money from advertising. And she also taught us that every newspaper saves one copy of each edition that comes out. She told us that the room where the old newspapers are stored is called the morgue, because the news in them is “dead.”

  Mrs. Hughes gave me an assignment to go down to the newspaper office in our little town and look at old newspapers until I found an interesting story to report about to the class. Our small town paper only came out once a week, so there wouldn’t be huge quantities of newspapers to look at. I headed down to the newspaper office.

  I knew the man who ran the newspaper. His name was Sam Peters. Sam took me into a back room where the walls were covered with shelves stacked high with old newspapers. He turned me loose and went off to do his work.

  I started shuffling through the stacks of papers. There was the story about the passenger train that derailed out east of town and how local residents had taken the stranded people into their homes and treated them like family until the track was repaired and the folks could get on their way.

  Of course, there was the story about the big explosion at the Geronimo Powder Company, which was located about 10 miles from town and made dynamite for the copper mines up north. Those were interesting stories, but most of the kids had heard about them from their parents.

  And I found stories about football teams that went undefeated and severe summer storms that did thousands of dollars of damage. But nothing was all that interesting—until the headline on one old yellow newspaper caught my eye: GIRL DIES IN TRAGIC FALL. And under the headline was a subtitle: Parents Had Birthday Celebration Planned.