The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

have to push hard; I’d definitely seen enough! I turned and together we raced to the end of the hall.
    As we ran, the sobs intensified, until the wretched sound of crying was louder than the noise of the gonging grandfather clock. When we reached the bottom of the staircase, the clock finally stopped making noise. That was when I noticed lights flickering in the living room and strange wisps of white rolling through the door. Seymour saw it, too.
    “Holy smoke!” he said. “Is that a fire?”
    “No. There’s no smell, no heat.”
    Taking a deep breath, I pulled away from Seymour and moved through the doorway to the living room. Seymour had left two lamps on, but as soon as I moved over the threshold, they went off. I continued forward in the dark.
    The sobbing suddenly ceased. I stopped dead.
    “Miss Todd?” I called and waited. But everything in the house remained silent and still. I took another step forward—and gasped. A shroud of frigid air suddenly enveloped me.
    “Pen?” Seymour’s voice sounded shaky. I turned to see his flashlight beam at the door.
    “Over here,” I called.
    Seymour’s flashlight moved closer. The chilly curtain of air still lingered, but now I could see my breath forming little condensation clouds in front of my face. I looked down and realized I was standing in the exact spot where I’d found Miss Todd’s corpse.
    “The cold spot’s back,” I whispered.
    “Great,” Seymour said.
    The lamps in the room suddenly snapped on, and the cool air began to dissipate, along with all traces of the mysterious smoke. Seymour turned off his flashlight and scanned the living room.
    “Maybe it’s over,” he said, setting the flashlight down on a table.
    I took a deep breath. “Maybe.”
    Then the lights went out again, and the room felt darker than a graveyard on a moonless night. Seymour must have lunged for the flashlight and missed because I heard the heavy object clatter to the floor and Seymour shout a curse. A few seconds later, the flashlight beam was on again—and shining right in my eyes!
    “Ahhh! Watch it, Seymour! You did it again!”
    Between the alcohol and the second flash of that Maglite, my night vision was now pretty much shot. So it was Seymour who observed the phenomenon first.
    “The room’s filling up!” he cried.
    “With what? I can’t see!”
    “With some kind of ectoplasmic fog!”
    I rubbed my eyes till the white spots faded, and finally saw the strange fog. It rolled like the odorless smoke, but it was much thicker. Like an early-morning mist, it felt cool and wet as it descended on us.
    That’s when we saw it: the apparition.
    Shimmering and semitransparent, the image of a corpulent middle-aged man drifted silently across the living room. The specter’s broad, jowly face appeared waxy; his longish black hair was swept back off his face; and his large, dark eyes were glassy. His clothes were old-fashioned—a three-piece, pinstriped banker’s suit with a handkerchief blooming from a breast pocket and a silver watch chain hanging from his bulging vest.
    The spirit looked familiar for some reason, but I was in too much shock to place it. For a moment, Seymour and I stood transfixed. Finally, I called out.
    “Hello! Can you hear me?”
    But the specter didn’t answer. It simply continued on its path across the room, until it faded away. A few seconds later, the sobbing began again.
    “That’s it!” Seymour cried. “We’re getting the hell out of here!” Then my mailman grabbed my arm, dragged me through the front doors, and delivered me to the purple dawn.

CHAPTER 19
     
    Light of Day
     
    I looked over to the left and saw ghosts . . . They looked like ghosts at any rate.
    —“Brother Murder,” T. T. Flynn, December 2, 1939, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly
     
     
     
     
    “PEN? WHAT ARE you doing here?” The whispering voice slipped into my sleep but failed to rouse me. It was the sharp knocking against the glass that did it. “Pen! Wake up!”
    My slumping body came to upright attention. By now, the sun was fully up, too, and glaring at me through the wide windshield. I squinted, glanced around, and realized I’d dozed off in the front seat of Seymour’s ice cream truck.
    The last few hours had felt close to surreal. After fleeing the haunted mansion, Seymour and I had stood on the damp lawn in the murky light debating what to do. Since I’d left my keys in Miss Todd’s bedroom, he piled us into his only set of working