Karen's Ghost Read online

  The candy made me feel better. I could reach into the bag, find something small, like a root-beer barrel, and suck on it. The only problem was — then I wondered if I should get up to brush my teeth again.

  No, I decided. No way. It was not mid-night yet, but I was not going to take any chances. I would not want to run into a stray ghost. Who knew what time Ben’s friends would start to arrive for the party?

  I don’t know when it happened, but sometime I fell asleep.

  When I woke up, it was exactly midnight.

  I lay in bed as stiff as a board. I could smell a cake baking! I could hear people laughing and talking! I think I could even hear horns blowing and party favors popping!

  I was too scared to move or make any noise. I just lay in my bed. The next thing I knew, it was morning.

  I had lived through a haunted birthday party.

  I leaped out of bed. “Hurray!” I shouted. And that was when I saw it. Jeremy Brewer’s diary. It was lying right on my bureau. It had not been there the night before. When I came to the big house for Halloween, I had asked Daddy to put the diary back in Ben’s room. And now it was in my room.

  I peered at the diary. It was open. And it was open to some pages that were stuck together. Very carefully, I unstuck them. Kristy could not have read these pages.

  So I decided to.

  I sat on my bed. I read the cursive slowly. (I was getting better at it.) Guess what? Somehow, Jeremy had learned the whole story, the true story, about his father. And this is the story:

  When Ben was nine years old, he had had a fight with his best friend, Edward Porter. Porter? I thought. Was Edward someone in Morbidda Destiny’s family? Anyway, during the fight, Ben told Edward that he couldn’t come to his tenth birthday party. Right after the fight, Edward disappeared. He was never found. A lot of people thought he had drowned. That made sense, because Jeremy wrote that the ghost who haunted Ben was named Edward and he was always wet. (I had never heard that story.) Anyway, Edward haunted Ben because he was mad at him. He still wanted to go to the birthday party. And he told Ben that he would make Ben a ghost after he died.

  Finally Ben did die. And Edward kept his promise to Ben. He made him a ghost. And he made him throw a ghost birthday party so that he could go and have fun. Now he makes Ben do that every ten years.

  And that’s the whole story.

  I shivered. What an awful tale. I wanted that diary out of my room. Only this time I would get rid of it myself. I would put it back in Ben’s room where it belonged — and I would check for any signs of a ghostly birthday party.

  Ben Brewer’s Clock

  I was gigundo scared as I walked up the stairs to the third floor. Below me, I could hear people talking. Nannie and Emily were probably up. So were Daddy and Elizabeth. I wished I could be with them. Instead, I walked down the hall. I stood by Ben’s door.

  Slowly, I opened it.

  I expected to see balloons and cake crumbs and party favors.

  But Ben’s room looked just like it had when Kristy and I had explored it. (It felt damp, though.)

  I put the diary back in the secret drawer in the table. I was about to stop and check carefully for anything — even a little piece of confetti — when I noticed the horrible thing.

  The clock on the mantelpiece was gone!

  The clock! When I told my scary story to Ms. Colman’s class on Friday, I had made up the part about the clock that never worked, except on Ben’s birthday.

  And now the clock was gone.

  I screamed.

  Then I raced out of that haunted room and slammed the door behind me. I ran all the way downstairs to the first floor. I dashed into the kitchen. I was out of breath.

  Daddy and Elizabeth and Nannie and Emily were there. Emily was in her high chair, eating toast.

  “You guys! You guys! You won’t believe this!” I cried.

  “Karen, what’s the matter?” Daddy wanted to know. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Try to calm down.”

  “I didn’t see a ghost, Daddy,” I said, “but I heard them. They’ve been here. And they had their party last night.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Nannie. She sat me down. She put a bowl of cereal in front of me.

  “I’m talking about Ben Brewer’s haunted birthday,” I said. “I told you about that yesterday. Kristy knows about it, too.”

  “Oh, Karen,” said Daddy with a sigh. (Sometimes I make him sigh.)

  “But I smelled a cake baking at midnight last night,” I said.

  “Honey, that was me,” spoke up Elizabeth. “I couldn’t sleep, so I baked a cake. It’s in honor of Emily. She learned to count to ten.”

  Emily looked up and smiled. “One, two fee, four, five, sick, seben, eight, nine, ten!” she said proudly.

  “But I heard a lot of noise then, too,” I went on. “I heard laughing and talking and popping sounds.”

  “Those were some big kids in the neighborhood,” said Daddy. “They were out late making Halloween mischief.”

  “Oh.” I paused. “Well, there’s one more thing. Ben’s clock is missing. The one that was on his mantelpiece and didn’t work.”

  “It’s working now,” said Daddy with a smile. “And it isn’t missing. I had it fixed. It’s in the living room.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How did the diary get back in my room?” I told everyone how I had woken up and found the diary open to the story about Ben and Edward.

  Before anyone could say anything, Sam came into the kitchen. He was grinning.

  “You put the diary in my room last night!” I cried. “Didn’t you?”

  “What diary?” replied Sam. I could tell that he did not know what I was talking about. When Sam plays a joke on someone, he likes to brag about it.

  Okay, I thought. Maybe there was no party last night. But where did the diary come from?

  “Is There or Isn’t There?”

  That afternoon, Nancy’s mother drove her over to the big house. Then Nancy and I went to Hannie’s. The Three Musketeers were together.

  We all had our Halloween candy with us, but none of us ate much. We’d eaten a lot of candy the night before. Especially me.

  “Trick-or-treating was so, so fun, wasn’t it?” said Hannie.

  We were sitting on her back porch. Noodle the poodle was napping in the sun, and Myrtle the turtle was dozing in her box.

  “It was gigundo fun,” I said. “We should do the same thing next year. Only we should be characters from a different movie.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Nancy. “Maybe The Little Mermaid.”

  “How about One Hundred and One Dalmations?” said Hannie, giggling. “We would all be dalmations! … Except me. I think I will be a bride every Halloween. Or as long as Scott and I are married.”

  “I wonder how Pamela’s Halloween was,” I said. “I wonder if she is too grown-up to go trick-or-treating. Maybe she stays home and gives out the candy. If she does, I’m going to go to her house next year. And I will ring her bell and say, ‘Trick or treat. Smell my feet.’ And then I really will make her smell my feet!”

  Hannie and Nancy and I laughed so loudly that we woke up Noodle. He left the porch looking grouchy.

  “Well, I have some news,” I said. I reached into my goody bag and pulled out a piece of Bazooka bubble gum. I unwrapped it and began chewing.

  “What?” asked Hannie and Nancy together.

  “I found out the real story of Ben Brewer. All of it.”

  “You did?” Hannie looked frightened.

  I told my friends what had happened the night before. I told them about smelling the cake and hearing the noises. Then I told them about the clock. Of course, they were most interested in the diary and the story.

  “How do you think the diary got into your room?” asked Nancy.

  She asked it just as Hannie said, “I wonder if Morbidda Destiny is Edward Porter’s niece. Or maybe even his younger sister.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I d
on’t know about either thing. The diary scares me more, though. I know Daddy put it away. And even if he didn’t, I know it was not next to my bed when I went to sleep last night. Plus it was so weird. The diary was open to those stuck-together pages that told the story I’d been looking for. Even Kristy didn’t find the story. It was almost as if … as if Ben Brewer wanted me to know what happened to him.”

  “Ooh,” said Hannie and Nancy.

  (I was glad Natalie Springer was not there. If she had been, she would have started crying and snorting.)

  “I wonder if there really was a haunted party in your house last night,” said Nancy.

  “I wonder if there are really ghosts in my house,” I said.

  “I guess we’ll never know,” said Hannie.

  “Well, at least you won’t have to worry about a haunted birthday party for ten more years,” Nancy pointed out.

  “That’s true,” I replied. “And I’ll be seventeen then. We all will be. Gosh, that’s Charlie’s age! I’ll be a grown-up. Almost. Maybe I won’t even believe in ghosts anymore. Charlie doesn’t”

  “You just never know,” said Hannie again.

  About the Author

  ANN M. MARTIN is the acclaimed and bestselling author of a number of novels and series, including Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), A Dog’s Life, Here Today, P.S. Longer Letter Later (written with Paula Danziger), the Family Tree series, the Doll People series (written with Laura Godwin), the Main Street series, and the generation-defining series The Baby-sitters Club. She lives in New York.

  Copyright © 1990 by Ann M. Martin

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First edition, 1990

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-05582-5