The Elevator Ghost Read online

  The

  Elevator

  Ghost

  Glen Huser

  Illustrations by Stacy Innerst

  GROUNDWOOD BOOKS

  HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS

  TORONTO / BERKELEY

  Thank you to my editor, Shelley Tanaka.

  If anyone knows how to sort out the bones of a story, she does.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Glen Huser

  Published in Canada and the USA in 2014 by Groundwood Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the author’s rights.

  Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press

  110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801

  Toronto, Ontario M5V 2K4

  or c/o Publishers Group West

  1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the ­Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Ontario Arts Council.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Huser, Glen, author

  The elevator ghost / by Glen Huser.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55498-425-1 (bound).—ISBN 978-1-55498-426-8 (pbk.).—

  ISBN 978-1-55498-427-5 (html)

  I. Title.

  PS8565.U823E44 2014 jC813'.54 C2014-900900-3

  C2014-900901-1

  Cover illustration by Stacy Innerst

  Design by Michael Solomon

  For

  Story

  Xander

  Kasey

  Maggie

  Isla

  Aislyn

  Beau

  Laila

  ONE

  Halloween Night

  Blatchford was scary any night of the year, not just on Halloween. It was a very old part of town with crooked streets and bad lighting. Cats yowled and scrapped in the alleys. Teenagers with tattoos were known to hang out under the bridges by the park.

  In the middle of it all, a huge apartment building loomed like a castle, darkened with age. The Blatchford Arms poked up above all the buildings around. When there was a full moon, it looked as though the building’s two towers were nibbling at it.

  Some said the place was haunted.

  October 31st, while there were very few children wandering around the streets in Blatchford, things were different inside the apartment building. Children (and a few dogs) raced along the hallways. The costumed kids rang doorbells and shouted, “Halloween apples!” They clattered up and down the staircases. Some rode the elevator, which squealed and groaned like a creature in pain.

  “Quit playing with that elevator,” Herman Spiegelman, the caretaker, growled at the ­Lubinitsky girls. There were always move-outs on the last day of the month. Herman had a big job ahead of him, getting Apartment 713 cleaned and ready for a new tenant.

  “Don’t you be drawing nothing on these walls.” He shook a mop handle at the smallest Lubinitsky, who did in fact have a black crayon clutched in her free hand. “One mark and a monster with sharp teeth’ll come and gobble you up while you’re sleeping.”

  Three floors down, the Bellini sisters tried to coax their little brother, Angelo, away from a basket of cookies old Mrs. Floss had left on a stand outside her door.

  “No! Mine!” he shrieked. He began to jump up and down, trying to grab more cookies even though his hands were already full.

  Amanita Bellini yanked at his Dracula cape while Corrina rescued the basket and held it out of reach.

  “The sign says ‘Help yourself to a cookie!’” She tried to make herself heard over his howls. “That means one. One cookie.”

  By this time Mrs. Floss had opened her door. She waved her cane at Angelo. She was very old and had a creaky voice, but the girls managed to hear her say, “That boy should be locked up in a cage in the basement.”

  Meanwhile, the Hooper kids had worked their way from the top of the building down to the second floor. Benjamin, dressed as a spaceship, was having some trouble with the narrow halls. His sisters, one on each side, helped to steer him. They had just spent half an hour fixing a display he had bumped into. Six plastic skeletons and a full-size Frankenstein outside the Murplestein apartment had toppled and scattered along the hallway.

  “Why can’t you dress like something normal,” Lucy Hooper grumbled. “Like Batman or Raggedy Andy.”

  “Or a peanut,” Emma Hooper added.

  Hubert and Hetty Croop, costumed as salt and pepper shakers, had only managed to get down to the end of their own hall when everything went dark. They would have grabbed onto each other for support, but that was not especially easy for salt and pepper shakers to do. Hubert tripped over Hetty’s feet, fell and began to roll this way and that. Hetty tried to get down on her knees to help, but the stiff cardboard of her costume made that difficult. Some eerie shrieks sent them scrambling back along the hall.

  By the time the lights came on, they were both huddled against their apartment door, whimpering.

  The door opened.

  Mrs. Croop gasped. “Come here, Sylvester,” she called to her husband. “Our children have been attacked!”

  The Fergus twins, Dwayne and Dwight, were faster than any other children in the building. They had already visited all the floors of the Blatchford Arms. Their pillowcases were half-filled with treats when they burst out the front doors.

  Nothing — rats in the alleys, teens pierced like pincushions, loose dogs or whiskered bin-divers — was going to stop them from filling their stash-bags with candy.

  In Blatchford, there weren’t a lot of houses with their porch lights on to welcome roving ghouls and goblins, but the twins knew exactly where to find them.

  After what seemed like hours combing the streets, Dwight lifted up his rubber Scream mask to get a breath of air.

  “What time is it?”

  “Who cares?” Dwayne poked his brother with the long spiky fingernails on his Freddy Krueger glove.

  Dwight scooped up a half-eaten apple someone had dropped on the sidewalk and chucked it at Dwayne. It fell into his bag of treats.

  “Hey!” Dwayne yanked Dwight’s mask until it stretched out to nearly twice its size. Then he let it snap back.

  If the boys hadn’t been so busy arguing, they might have noticed a car creeping along the street beside them.

  Inside the car, Carolina Giddle sighed and shook her head so that the crystal globes dangling from her ears spun around.

  The truth was, she was lost. As she tried to look at a street map and steer, she wasn’t moving much faster than the boys. The streets in Blatchford always confounded visitors, leading them to dead ends along the park or onto bridges that spanned the very place a person wanted to be.

  When Carolina Giddle had last been in Blatchford, many years ago, she hadn’t owned a car. She had taken a rickety old bus to visit her great-aunt Beulah in the Blatchford seniors’ home.

  Since then, Aunt Beulah, at 102, had passed on. Shortly before she died, she wrote her niece a letter. Carol
ina Giddle kept it tucked in her back pocket like a good-luck charm. She knew it by heart.

  Dear Niece Carolina,

  Hope you are well and, as they say, the hens are all laying and the creek ain’t run dry. I wanted to let you know that I was able to visit the Arms where I used to live before I was married. I’d been having a strong notion to go there so Gertie wheeled me over in my chair.

  You remember me telling you about my friend Grace who died from the consumption? When Gertie went to get herself a coffee, Grace came and sat with me in the sunroom. I told her about how you were on the prowl to find a place these days. Grace was looking good, I thought, for someone who’s been dead for 83 years. Anyway, she said, “You tell your niece to come on here soon as there’s a vacancy. The rent’s cheap.” She said she can always use a friend with a good sense of the spirit world, and there’s a passel of families that’d shuck out good money for someone to mind the children when there’s a need. So I’m passing on her message.

  I’d ask you to come and live with me at the home, but the rooms are about the size of a tea bag. At the Arms, though, you’ll be close by for visits.

  With love,

  Aunt Beulah

  That had been the last letter from Aunt Beulah. And now there would be someone else living in her tiny room at the seniors’ home.

  Carolina Giddle came to a full stop. She sighed again and dabbed at a tear. Then she patted something about the size of a shoebox on the seat beside her. It was covered with a red bandana.

  “Are you awake, Chiquita?” Carolina ­Giddle whispered. “Saints preserve us, will you look at that. I’ve been holding the map upside down. Why, we just need to turn left at this next corner.”

  The parking lot outside the Blatchford Arms was calm and quiet. Moonlight washed over the cars, trucks and motorcycles. It added some sly glitter to the eyes of a black cat exploring garbage that had spilled from the dumpsters at the edge of the lot.

  Dwight and Dwayne were back now. Dwight pulled off his Scream mask and poured a boxful of Smarties into his mouth. Dwayne poked a toothbrush a dentist’s family had been handing out into his brother’s ear, nearly making him choke.

  “Cut it out, scumbag!” Dwight coughed up a couple of Smarties to spit at his twin.

  They had been told by their parents to be back at eight-thirty at the latest. Being two and a half hours late already, they weren’t ­especially anxious to get home.

  “Maybe Ma and Pa have gone over to the Murplesteins.” Dwayne plunged his hand into his pillowcase, searching for chocolate bars.

  “Don’t count on it. The old man’s going to be waiting there with his belt off.” Dwight gave his brother a knowing look. They had both taken the precaution of padding their backsides with all the underwear they owned.

  Their dad had never actually used his belt on them, but he’d threatened often.

  It didn’t hurt to be prepared. Just in case.

  “Long as he don’t snatch our treats,” Dwayne muttered.

  The boys were about ready to move on when their attention was caught by something large and lumpy easing its way past them. It was quite unlike anything they had ever seen before.

  It looked like a huge pile of furniture that was moving mysteriously by itself. Somewhere, from its core, was the sound of an engine sputtering. As it wheezed past, it became evident that beneath the heap of chair legs, a bureau without any drawers, a rolled-up ­mattress, a coffee table, some plant-holders and cardboard boxes of different sizes — all tied together with bits of colored cloth and rope — there was in fact a car. A Volkswagen bug.

  But not just an ordinary VW.

  It was a bug whose surface — at least any bits showing beneath the mountain of furniture and boxes — was entirely covered with small objects. It looked to the boys like there were tiny figurines and Tinkertoys, fridge magnets, bits of jewelry, Christmas decorations and spoons with fancy handles.

  Every square inch was covered with knickknacks.

  The car was moving so slowly that the boys had no trouble following it to the Blatchford Arms’ front entrance, where it stopped in the No Parking zone.

  Without saying a word, they donned their masks. Dwayne was once again a small Freddy Krueger. Dwight pulled the black hood of his jacket up tight to show off his Scream mask.

  After all, it was still Halloween. Anyone creeping around a parking lot in a scabbed-up bug groaning under a heap of furniture should have a proper welcome.

  Dwayne gave Dwight a friendly poke with his elbow, and both boys snickered.

  The VW’s door creaked open, and someone got out. Hiding behind Mr. Spiegelman’s truck, the twins found it hard to see clearly with their masks in place. They could only make out the person’s back.

  Was it a man or a woman?

  They heard the car door close. The person turned around.

  It was a woman. Not exactly an old woman, but not a young one, either. A mess of hair ­escaped from beneath a straw hat, making her look a bit like a scarecrow the twins had seen on a class trip to a farm. A scarecrow with bright red lipstick and a red bandana around her neck. Peeking out at the bottom of her overalls were feet clad in tennis shoes with sequins glittering across their toes. It looked like she had crystal marbles hanging from her ears.

  The boys had been planning to jump out from behind the truck making terrible yelling noises. But it took them a minute to drink in the strangeness of the woman by the Volks­wagen.

  In that minute, she turned and looked right where they were hiding. Her mouth widened in a huge smile.

  “When you’re ready to come out, I would be mighty obliged if you’d hold the door open while I move in my possessions.” The woman had a voice with a sound to it that Dwight and Dwayne had only ever heard on TV. A voice from somewhere in the South, where there were maybe cotton fields and big trees dripping with Spanish moss.

  Dwayne rose up from behind the truck’s fender.

  How did this woman know they were hiding?

  Dwight let out a kind of pitiful yelp. He sounded like his dog Barkus getting his tail stepped on. Not like a monster about to attack.

  “Oh, my!” The woman clasped a hand to the bib of her overalls and chuckled. She wore red fingernail polish that matched her lipstick. “Y’all are a most frightful sight.”

  Dwight pulled off his mask and dropped it on top of the treats in his pillowcase.

  “You moving in?”

  “I surely am.” The scarecrow woman reached in and pulled something from the passenger seat. It was a mesh cage partly covered by a bandana like the one she was wearing.

  She handed it to Dwight.

  “Would you mind? This is Chiquita. If you’re steady and very gentle, I think we can get her inside without waking her.”

  “Chiquita?” Dwayne had abandoned his mask now, too.

  “My pet tarantula,” the woman said.

  When Dwight and Dwayne finally got to their apartment on the fifth floor, Mr. Fergus was waiting with his belt off.

  Dwight gulped. Dwayne dropped his ­pillowcase of goodies behind the umbrella stand.

  “Do you have anything to say before I whup the living daylights out of you?” Mr. Fergus gave his belt a couple of light practice smacks against the palm of his hand.

  “Don’t take too long, dear,” Mrs. Fergus called from the kitchen. “If we go right away, we can still catch the tail end of the ­Murplesteins’ party.”

  “What have you got to say for yourselves?” Mr. Fergus growled.

  “Well, sir…” Dwayne took a deep breath. “We would have been home almost on time but there was this poor little old lady getting ready to move in just when we got to the downstairs door.”

  “She asked us would we give her some help.” Dwight suddenly found his voice. “I think we must’ve made about a hundred trips up to her apartment.”


  “You know the one.” Dwight mopped a hand over his brow, hoping that there was at least a little bit of sweat there. “Where Billy Crimpey used to live.”

  The truth was that the twins had only made one trip up to Apartment 713, carrying the tarantula cage and something weird and glassy with lumps of color burping around in it. Carolina Giddle called it a lava lamp. It was all they could manage and still hang onto their pillowcases of Halloween loot.

  That’s when the scarecrow lady met Mr. Spiegelman.

  “The suite’s not ready until November 1st,” the caretaker grumbled, standing in the middle of a small pile of what looked like pink stone chips, but Dwight recognized as a petrified form of Billy Crimpey’s favorite bubblegum.

  “Well…” The scarecrow lady checked her watch and smiled at Mr. Spiegelman. “It’ll be November 1st in about thirty-eight minutes. The apartment’s looking pretty spic and span to me, but I could give you a hand if there’s any last-minute scrubbing to do.”

  Both Dwight and Dwayne were ready to see how the standoff between the building’s super and the scarecrow lady would go, but Mr. Spiegelman waved his chisel at them and shooed them away.

  “Thank you kindly, boys,” the lady said. “You give your papa and mama one of my cards if you don’t mind.” She reached into a huge handbag she was carrying and pulled out a business card.

  Now Dwight fished around for the card and found it stuck to a piece of toffee.

  “Here. She said to give you this.” He pinched off the toffee and gazed up at his father with a practiced look of innocence.

  “Are you finished, dear?” Mrs. Fergus emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Gladys Murplestein just phoned and said there’s no way they can serve my vampire cake unless we’re there to cut it. First cut, right through the count’s heart.”

  “The boys were helping an old lady move.” Mr. Fergus didn’t sound very convinced, but he threaded his belt back through the loops on his pants. “Here, she gave you this.”

  “Hmm…” Mrs. Fergus held up the card to the hall light. “Carolina Giddle. Experienced babysitter, mah-jong instructor and vegetarian caterer. Will do light housekeeping and séances upon request. Fancy that.”