Ghost Story

By Brian Enke.

Illustrations by Michael Carroll.

 “Wake up, Mase! It’s midnight.”

“…hmmmrph – whaaat?” Mason rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

A hand shook his shoulder, followed by a muffled, “Movie time. Let’s go.”

“No movies tonight,” he pleaded to his best friend, Tregon. “We have a test in the morning.”

Tregon shook him again, harder this time. “It’s just an easy programming quiz. Come on, wake up!”

“Easy for you.”

Several shakes later, he sat up and wiped the sleep from his eyes. If he didn’t give in, Tregon would bother him all night. Either way, he wouldn’t get any sleep.

He reached for his hearing aids on a shelf next to the bed, finding them right away. That part of his wake-up routine never varied.

Now he could hear better, but he couldn’t see. “EMMA, raise lights to 10 percent.” The caretaker robot usually responded right away, but tonight, his bedroom remained dark.

“EMMA is sleeping.” Tregon chuckled. “I didn’t want any distractions.”

“How did, uh… you shouldn’t do that!” Mason hated having EMMA around all the time, watching what he did and where he went, but he would never even consider turning it off. Only Tregon would do something that crazy. EMMA units protected the Mars settlers from hazards, especially at night-time when they were asleep. Mason didn’t even know EMMA could be turned off. “Mom will crater us good when she finds out you messed with her EMMA,” he added. “And you know how she gets when Dad’s away on a mission.”

“You worry too much, Mase.”

Grumbling, Mason pulled a long-sleeved shirt over the faded St Louis Cardinals jersey he always slept in. Then he followed Tregon into the living room, feeling his way through the darkness toward the couch where Tregon should have been sleeping.

“This is going to be so mogul,” said Tregon, with the glee of someone half his 14 years of age. “I’ve worked on this movie for twenty sols.”

“Really?” Mason forgot about sleep entirely. Tregon could edit a simple movie in a few hours, maybe a sol or two at the most. But twenty sols? This movie had to be special.

He sat on the floor and crossed his legs, barely muffling a “Yipe!” when a wet tongue licked him on his left cheek. Sputnik had joined the party, announcing his presence with a kiss. Mason hugged the beagle-terrier, running his hands through Sputnik’s short, white fur the way his puppy liked best. Sputnik rewarded him with more kisses.

Tregon wrapped a blanket over his shoulders like a cape. Dramatically, he announced, “It’s show time!” Then he slipped a control-glove over his hand. Sensors in the thin, white glove would allow him to direct the movie using simple gestures.

He handed Mason a set of plastic goggles. “I’ve already linked them to the holo-viewer, bud. We’re good to go.”

As Mason took the goggles, he heard a pitter-patter of feet and caught a flash of movement near his bedroom door. It was only Apollo, his little sister’s cat. Apollo slept in Mariah’s room, and seeing the cat without her was unusual.

Unless…

“Can I watch too?” asked a soft voice from across the room.

Mason jumped again, dropping his goggles. Mariah was awake!

“Shhhh!! You’ll wake up Mom!” he whispered in the direction of Mariah’s voice.

Tregon added, “My movie is too scary for little kids. Little, bratty kids who ought’ta be asleep.”

“Little, bratty kids! Little, bratty kids!” The shrill parrot-voice of Little Dipper echoed through the room, followed by a rattling of her sleep-cage in the corner.

Mason glanced at Mom’s closed bedroom door, expecting it to burst open any second. She never slept well when Dad traveled, and all this commotion had to wake her. If she caught him staying up late on a school-night, he would never hear the end of it.

“I’m only three years younger than you,” said Mariah, louder than before. “And if you don’t let me watch, I’ll go wake up Mom. Right now.”

“Three years younger,” Little Dipper repeated.

“Geez, okay, okay…” Tregon grumbled. “You can watch. Just be quiet!”

With a happy yelp, Mariah scooted across the room. She already carried a pillow and a set of holo-goggles. “I promise I won’t say another word,” she said, as she sat on the floor by Sputnik. “Where’s the popcorn?”

Mason sighed. He knew exactly what would happen. Tregon and Mariah would never make it through the whole movie without getting into a loud argument. They were always fighting over something.

He found his holo-goggles on the floor near Sputnik’s front paws. “Sorry Nik,” he whispered in the dog’s ear. “You don’t get to watch the movie. But it looks like Mariah does.”

Tregon joined them on the floor and asked for complete silence. He probably didn’t want to spoil the mood of his masterpiece. After touching Mariah’s goggles with his control glove, linking her into the circuit, Tregon started the movie. The holograms in the goggles glowed to life, casting eerie shadows around the room.

Mason put on his goggles and adjusted the ear attachments. Soon, he heard haunting music - soft, wind-blown chords carrying sadness and despair. The mood reminded him of one of Tregon’s early movies, a cheesy one about Martian zombies that took place on the surface near the settlement.

“Tregon, will we be seeing the surface?” he asked.

“Shhh!”

With increased alarm, Mason repeated his question and got the same answer. Surely Tregon remembered Mariah’s intense fear of open spaces; he always teased her about it. His sister kept to the underground parts of the Mars settlement and avoided the largest windows. During school field-trips to the greenhouses, she would act brave in front of the younger kids… but afterwards, she always ran back to her room and hid for hours.

He reached over and felt for Mariah’s nearest arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’m right here, little sis. Remember, it’s just a movie. You can bail out any time.”

“I’m okay,” she replied. As the music faded into the first scene, a flat Martian plain lit by dim sunlight, Mariah’s return grip on his arm tightened.

Mason stood alone on a fake platform, hovering above the wide plain. Being out on the surface without a spacesuit felt strange, but most movies about Mars did the same thing, especially movies made on Earth. Sometimes the audience viewed the movie from inside a glass bubble, but that never felt right either.

He looked around the scene, admiring the artwork. Tregon had included many details. Reddish rock blended with brown or copper-colored sand in elaborate, wind-swept patterns. A dust-devil twirled in the distance, lit by flashes of lightning. The sky seemed about right for an early evening in Chandor Chasma, the deep valley on Mars that his family and the other settlers called home.

Yet this wasn’t Chandor Chasma. The walls stood too high. We must be somewhere else, thought Mason. Maybe a dry riverbed? Dad brought back pictures of dry river beds and canyon walls from his geology trips. This scene looked similar, but something was off.

Maybe Tregon shrank the size of the canyon because he wanted to contain the scene. 3-D movie-makers used that trick sometimes, so the audience would feel closed-in… trapped. The height of the cliffs also made the valley floor seem flatter. Some shallow crevices cut through, but the rest of the plain was flat, flat, flat.

Recalling the earlier movie, Mason waited for zombies to crawl out of some dusty crater. He looked around, but he couldn’t find any craters.

That’s odd. Mars has craters everywhere. Can’t go far without tripping over a crater rim.

Then he noticed a flashing star near the horizon. The star grew brighter until it became a flaming streak in the sky.

“Ohhh, pretty!” said Mariah, voicing the same words Mason was thinking. He couldn’t see her through his goggles, but he could tell she was doing better. Her grip on his arm had relaxed.

A computerized voice announced, “Two minutes until landing…”

So the fireball is a spacecraft, and it’s landing!

Mason had seen other videos of landing spacecraft, but this one was far more dramatic. Perhaps the music made the difference. A steady drumbeat grew louder as the craft approached his position, leading a parachute.

Perhaps the parachute would fail and the ship would crash? Tregon liked to put big explosions in his movies. Mason looked forward to poking through the wreckage. Maybe they would find some equipment still intact, or some treasures to salvage?

The craft grew steadily in the sky, slowing, until it broke into three pieces: the parachute, a fragile lander, and a glowing, disposable heat shield. Retro-rockets on the lander fired, easing the craft toward the surface. A flaming messenger from another world hovered in front of Mason, a few meters away. No crash landing today.

The spacecraft was big - much larger than the robotic toys that sometimes visited Mars. This one must carry supplies or people. From the size, Mason guessed it might hold at least a crew of ten.

His platform circled the landing spacecraft, giving him a better view of the markings on the side. One looked familiar – a red flag with a large gold star and four smaller stars, all in the upper left corner. The ship must belong to one of the important space-faring nations on the Earth… perhaps India or China? Or the Brazillian Alliance? He liked studying Earth-geography in school, though the knowledge wasn’t very useful on Mars. Mason knew the capital and location of every nation and followed the frequent updates due to wars and revolutions.

As Tregon finished directing the viewing platform around the ship, Mason noticed something odd about one of the nearby dust-devils. Wherever the whirling cyclone touched the ground, it dug a deep trench and kicked up far too much dust. He looked around again, and suddenly, the whole scene clicked into place.

The too-high valley walls were actually an inside rim of a huge crater! The layer of dust and sand on the floor of the crater could be a hundred meters deep.

Mason peered back at the landing spaceship. Retro-rockets eased it to the surface, yet it continued to drop. The flaming jets formed a deep pit, blasting huge clouds of dust from beneath the ship.

He fought a silly urge to jump off the platform and do something to warn the crew. Movies didn’t work that way. Every five-year-old knew you could never leave the platform and interact with the scene, just like the scene couldn’t affect you. The audience wasn’t part of the movie.

Powerless, he could only watch as the dust cloud thickened and he lost sight of the ship. Tregon backed their point-of-view away so they could watch the scene from a distance. When the dust stopped rising, Tregon zoomed in again. The craft had landed - safely - on a rocky surface, many tens of meters below ground level.

The brief moment of safety passed. Dust flowed along the walls of the pit, burying the bottom of the hull and rising ever higher upon the sides. Through some portholes, Mason saw people inside the ship scurrying about, doing busy-busy things that wouldn’t make any difference. The pit continued to collapse, dooming the ship.

An airlock door opened, and people streamed outside. Mason counted twelve red spacesuits jumping into the dust, trying to climb out of the pit. Each sank immediately out of sight. He found their actions disturbing. Real astronauts wouldn’t panic and abandon the ship so quickly. Yet what else could they do?

Soon, dust covered the whole ship. Tregon zoomed the platform right up to the nose cone so they had a perfect view of the final seconds.

Mason expected the movie to end, but dust continued sliding down the walls of the pit. Then the platform moved back and a monster dust-devil scoured the area. By the time things settled down, he couldn’t tell where the ship had landed. The smooth and unbroken crater floor hid all traces. Nothing of the ship or crew remained.

As if to emphasize the point, his platform approached the landing area and dropped until it nearly touched the dust. He wondered if Tregon would take them underground, but thankfully, the platform hovered a half-meter above the new surface.

Then the dust moved.

Off to his right, a red glove and arm reached out of the ground, clawing at the air above. The transparent limb glowed from within. Then another ghostly arm appeared, to the left. And another. All around the holo-platform, red gloves and arms reached upward.

Mason’s heart thudded in his chest, skipping a beat or two, as the improbable twist caught him off guard. The ghost zombies had arrived after all. Mariah’s grip tightened on his arm, but somehow, she remained quiet.

As fast as they appeared, the ghost-gloves sank beneath the surface. Mason waited for a few seconds, but nothing else happened. Realizing he was holding his breath, he let it out with a <whoosh>. Mariah eased her grip on his arm, too.

"That was mongo!" he said, a bit louder than intended.

“Mongo! Mongoooo!” cried Little Dipper from her cage. Because Mason still wore his goggles, it sounded like the parrot was somewhere in the crater with him.

"Then you liked that part?" asked Tregon.

"Yeah. But it wasn’t like your other movies. No explosions or wreckage. No Martian Easter-eggs to find."

Tregon laughed in a way that sent chills racing up his spine. Then he heard a <thump>. The noise sounded like it came from the floor beneath him. He looked down, just as a glowing red glove and arm reached onto the holo-platform. The scene wobbled as if the arm weighted down the side of the platform. Then a shoulder and helmet rose from the dust, and another arm reached over the edge. Reaching toward him.

His jaw dropped. He let out a strangled cry, but his whimper went unheard, drowned out by a blood-curdling scream from Mariah.

Mason whipped off his goggles. The glow from the movie equipment provided barely enough light for him to see Mariah pawing the floor wildly, struggling to rise. She tried to kick her feet, but Tregon held them in place, firmly gripping her ankles.

“Tregon – no!” Mason shouted, as Mariah screamed again, even louder. He leaned toward his sister and tore the goggles from her face - too late. No one could sleep through the commotion. Mom had to be awake now, along with most of the settlement.

“Tregon – no – no – nooooo!” added Little Dipper, mocking him.

Tregon finally let go of Mariah’s ankle and fell over backwards, laughing. Sputnik and Apollo leapt out of the way as Mariah crashed into Mason’s arms. A tear or two dampened his baseball jersey. Then she pushed him away and shot to her feet. “Tregon!” she shouted, with a stomp of her foot. “I hate you!”

Even in the dim light, Mason could see the fury on Mariah’s face. “Oh, craters,” he moaned, looking past her towards the door to Mom’s bedroom. Any second now, that door would explode open, and Mom would ground him for a Martian year. No, maybe just an Earth year, if he was very, very lucky.

Mason waited. And waited. Tregon rolled on the floor in more laughter… Mariah kicked him once in the leg… but Mom’s door remained closed.

Instead, the door to the outside hallway burst open, and the lights brightened to full intensity. One of their neighbors entered.

Only a t-shirt and pajama bottoms covered Mr. Treadway’s short, thin frame. Strands of hair spilled across his forehead in disarray. He studied the room with squinty eyes and demanded to know what was happening. His gaze finally settled upon Mason.

Gulping, Mason told him everything was fine. “We were watching a scary movie, and Tregon got carried away. I’m sorry we woke you, Mr. Treadway.”

He heard other voices in the hallway, repeating the same question. Mr. Treadway relayed Mason’s words, and the others soon went away, grumbling but apparently satisfied.

Then Mr. Treadway turned back to them. “And what about your EMMA unit?” he asked, waving his hand at the idle machine in the corner near Little Dipper’s cage. Its human-like body, slim and nearly Mason’s height, remained motionless. “EMMA should have told me that you were awake.”

“It’s not, uh… working right,” Mason said, with caution.

“I turned it off,” confessed Tregon. He was no longer laughing.

“You turned it OFF?” Mr. Treadway’s dark cheeks turned even darker.

“Well, not really,” clarified Tregon. “I just reprogrammed it to throw away all input. It’s sleeping.” Mason had seen the look of embarrassment on Tregon’s face often, whenever his friend carried a joke too far. Tregon was no stranger to trouble.

“How’d you do that arm thing, bud?” asked Mason, changing the subject. The movie scene bothered him. The ghost-arms shouldn’t have been able to reach onto the holo-platform. Movies just didn’t work that way.

Tregon mumbled a few words about rewriting some subroutine, words that Mason barely understood. When it came to programming computers, Tregon’s skills dwarfed his own.

Then Mason recalled something even more important – the closed bedroom door. He asked, “Mr. Treadway, why was EMMA supposed to alert you? Where’s Mom?”

Mr. Treadway hesitated. “She… got called away.”

“Where?”

“Uh… to the OPS Center.”

“To talk to Dad?” Mason tried to keep the relief out of his voice. Maybe Mom wouldn’t ground him after all. But it didn’t make any sense. Dad could call anytime and talk to them through the settlement’s communication network, even from his rover a hundred kilometers away.

A lump lodged in his throat. “Is something wrong?” he managed to ask.

“I’m sure everything’s okay,” said Mr. Treadway. “She’ll probably be back any minute.”

Mason looked at Tregon, who stared back with wide eyes. No words were needed. Dad’s team included Tregon’s mother and two other engineers. And something was wrong, most definitely.

Mariah sensed it too. “I want to talk to Dad,” she stated through tight lips. All signs of anger had left her now-pale face. She walked over to EMMA, pressed a button near the robot’s shoulder, and repeated her demand.

The EMMA unit remained silent.

Mariah looked confused for a moment. Then she turned and blasted Tregon with a cold stare. “Fix it, troll” she ordered. “Right now.”

Tregon traded places with Mariah. He pressed the same button and uttered some terse commands. Then he turned and said, “Uh, this is going to take some time. EMMA isn’t even hearing my manual-input commands.”

Shaking her head, Mariah launched herself toward the doorway. With her typical confidence, she announced, “I’m going to find Mom.” Mariah could always size up a situation and act quickly. Mason needed more time to think.

“Kids, kids…” said Mr. Treadway, sliding sideways to block Mariah’s path. “Your Mom will return soon. You should all go back to sleep. I won’t even tell her about the noise.”

Mason didn’t move, nor did the others. He couldn’t go back to sleep even if he wanted to. He had never felt more awake in his whole life.

Mr. Treadway finally gave in, promising to tell them everything he knew. Apparently, the rover team missed their evening check-in and couldn’t be reached. He spoke like it was no big deal. A hundred harmless reasons could explain the silence. They weren’t doing anything dangerous yesterday, just scouting some mineral deposits in a dry lakebed a short day’s drive from the settlement. They probably just forgot to call. The OPS Center would eventually contact them.

Mason shook his head, knowing that Dad would never, ever, ever forget the evening check-in. Dad always followed the safety rules. After parking the rover inside one of many bunkers scattered about the area, he would call home right away. Mason could recite the rover procedures forwards and backwards. He’d gone through them with Dad many times during driving lessons over the past six months. He hated some of the rules, like the silly one preventing him from traveling in a rover until he passed his driving test on a simulator, but no amount of pleading could get Dad to look the other way. Rules were what kept you alive on Mars, as Dad liked to say.

Mason sat on the couch and said nothing, nodding his head occasionally as Mr. Treadway talked, so as not to worry Tregon or Mariah. He tried to think brave thoughts, as Dad would expect… but his knees wouldn’t stop shaking, and the clammy lump in his throat grew bigger. The others asked questions, and he forced himself to smile even though his thoughts kept returning to the buried spaceship in the movie. Was Dad’s rover at the bottom of a crater, buried by dust until no trace remained?

As if sensing his mood, Sputnik jumped onto his lap and curled into a ball. Mason petted the dog and tried not to squeeze him too hard. Nik needed to breathe, too.

Mr. Treadway’s words and casual nature seemed to put Tregon and Mariah at greater ease. While Tregon continued fixing EMMA, the three started talking about something else. Mason didn’t pay any attention until his neighbor asked about the movie.

“It was a ghost story!” answered Tregon. “About Chinese astronaut zombies… my best movie ever!”

“I didn’t like it,” Mariah added. “It was too scary.”

Mr. Treadway laughed. During a moment of silence that followed, Mason felt his neighbor’s eyes drilling through him. “Scary?” Mr. Treadway finally said. “I’ll bet you kids don’t know what a scary story really is. Have you ever told ghost stories around a campfire, out in the deep woods, with wolves howling in the distance?” He quickly added, “No, of course you haven’t. Not on Mars.”

“What’s a campfire?” asked Mason, coaxing his voice back to life. Mom often talked about her camping trips to somewhere called Montana, back when she was Mason’s age. But she never said anything about setting the camp on fire. That did sound scary.

Mr. Treadway clapped his hands and promised to tell them a ‘real’ ghost story. “But I’m a little out of practice,” he said, “and we don’t have a fire, a forest, or any wolves.”

“The dining hall has some beautiful trees,” Mariah suggested.

Tregon added, “EMMA can probably make wolf noises. Whatever a wolf is.”

“Indeed. And for the campfire, I have a small candle in my room,” said Mr. Treadway. “But first, Tregon, you need to fix EMMA.”

Tregon nodded. “I’m doing a full system restore from a backup copy, but it’s going to take several minutes. All I can do now is wait for it to finish.  She’ll start back up, automatically.”

Mason noticed Mr. Treadway staring at him again. “Well, okay,” his neighbor said thoughtfully. “We can use my EMMA. Follow me!”        

Mr. Treadway led them out the door, into the hallway. Mason’s knees remained shaky, but curiosity had replaced some of his fear. Mr.Treadway went inside his quarters for a few seconds and came out holding a candle, followed by another EMMA.

With Sputnik at his side, Mason followed the others down a short corridor to the nearest dining hall. Trees lined both sides of the central seating area in this underground room, perhaps the tallest and widest room in the settlement. Three vaulted arches supported the ceiling, high above. Openings in the roof reflected sunlight to the trees during the daytime.

At night, the room was dark, cold, empty – and spooky. People rarely used this dining hall so late at night, nor the attached kitchen or exercise areas.

Mr. Treadway invited them to sit under the nearest grove of trees. He placed the candle in the middle of the group and stared at it. “Hmmm. Houston, we have a problem. My sister smuggled this candle to me, but I don’t have any way to light it.” He leaned closer to them and said softly, “Some settlers would be upset if they knew about my candle. Open flames burn precious oxygen, but the rules don’t forbid small candles.”

Mariah jumped up and ran into the kitchen. She returned with a box of matches. “Mom uses them sometimes. For melting cheese fondue.”

Mr. Treadway took the matches and lit the candle. Then he called his EMMA unit over to him and spoke with it until it produced the correct background sounds.

And what strange sounds they were! Ghostly wails, with little yips and cries. Mason had never heard anything like it. “Do animals on Earth really make these noises?” he asked.

“They sure do. Packs of wolves howl when they hunt for food.” Mr. Treadway’s voice turned low and sinister. “Sometimes they attack people – even sneaky children from Mars who are up past their bedtimes, hopelessly lost, way out here in the deep, dark woods of northern Minnesota. EMMA, lights off!”

Mason gasped as the room plunged into darkness. Light from the flickering candle reflected off the leaves of the nearby trees and the faces of his friends. The tiny flame hypnotized him. Mason had never seen any effect like this in the holo-movies. It felt… real.

Eerie shadows danced across Mr. Treadway’s face. In a slow, sad voice, he wove a tale about a boy named Johnny who used to live in a little cabin nearby, almost 30 years ago. Alone one dark, windy night, Johnny encountered the story’s villain, an insane killer named the Vindi-Viper.

Minutes into the story, Mr. Treadway looked up from the flame. Mason shivered as their eyes locked again. The pause thickened, and he snuck a sideways peek at Mariah and Tregon: they seemed just as captivated. Then Mr. Treadway continued the story, dropping his voice even deeper. As Mason concentrated on each word, Johnny’s safety was all that mattered.

Hiding in his basement, Johnny heard footsteps on the gravel outside. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Mason heard the same footsteps and felt Johnny’s desperation. Wait – he could hear footsteps. Someone was coming.

“What’s going on out here?” a new voice sliced through the darkness. Rather than a harsh, Vindi-Viper crazy-man voice, this one laughed and danced with musical tones, startling him only because it was so unexpected.

But Mason knew this voice well. “Mom!!” he cried. Jumping to his feet, he gave his mother a crushing hug, followed closely by Mariah.

Mr. Treadway raised the light level in the room and blew out his candle. “Ah, well, it looks like the rest of the story will have to wait.”

“Stories?” Mom asked, creasing her brow. “You should all be asleep! Cedric, why are you out here telling them a story in the middle of the night?”

Rather than answering, Mr. Treadway asked, “Have you heard from Drake and Carmen in the rover?”

The question lingered in the air, but Mason’s fears melted when Mom smiled. “I just talked to them,” she said. “Everyone’s fine. They drove late to reach a good shelter, and then they couldn’t contact the settlement. They’ve been calling us for hours.”

Mr. Treadway shot to his feet. “What do you mean, they couldn’t contact the settlement? We’d know right away if our communications were out. Satellite links would be lost, along with our connection to Earth.”

Mom shook her head. “The problem only affected direct, local communications. The OPS guys still don’t know what happened. They didn’t even fix it… the problem just went away by itself, a few minutes ago.

Mason looked over at Tregon. His friend’s face was pale. “Do you think we…”

“No,” Tregon answered right away. “Just a coincidence.”

“What coincidence?” asked Mom. She turned toward Tregon and held him by his shoulders, an arm’s length away. “Tregon?”

“Uh, well… Mrs. Callahan, I might have turned off your EMMA unit, sorta.”

“When?”

“Last night. Just before bed-time.”

Helping his friend, Mason tried to explain. “He didn’t want EMMA waking anyone during his midnight movie.”

Mom glared at him, and he wished he hadn’t said anything. Then she looked back at Mr. Treadway and shook her head again. “No. Just a coincidence.”

Mr. Treadway agreed. “The EMMA units are connected to the main computer, but they can’t affect the outside communications.” He winked at Tregon. “Don’t worry, son. Your little prank had nothing to do with this.”

Mason strained to hear him add, “I think.”

Mom grabbed Mr. Treadway’s arm and led him a short distance away, saying, “Cedric, you still didn’t answer my question. Why are you out here telling stories?”

Mason couldn’t hear Mr. Treadway’s whispered response, so he turned up the volume on his hearing aids. He caught a few more words, something about imaginary fears replacing real ones. Mom whispered something back that he couldn’t catch, but Mr. Treadway’s hasty response was clear. “Mason’s a bright lad – and he’s hard to distract. He knew exactly how serious things were. You have your hands full with that one, Adrianne.”

A brief smile crossed Mom’s face, but then she walked over to Tregon and scowled. “We’re marching to the OPS Center, Tregon,” she announced. “You will tell them exactly what you did to my EMMA, so they can make sure it never happens again.”

“And you, young man…” Mason cringed as Mom pointed a slender finger directly at him. “… you will take your little sister back home. If you both aren’t asleep by the time I return, you’ll be grounded for a month.”

Then she grabbed Tregon’s arm and led him away, towards the Ops Center.

Mason picked up the candle and started back to their apartment, followed by the others. As he handed the candle back to Mr. Treadway, he said, “Thank you for telling us a ‘real’ ghost story. But what happened to Johnny? Did the Vindi-Viper get him?”

Mr. Treadway winked at him. “Back when I was your age, the best stories had happy endings.” Then he glanced back the way Mom and Tregon had left, adding, “And I hope they still do.”

THE END