1
W ITH THE W IND
I âm Dennis, your basic, ordinary nine-year-old boy, and usually I live a basic, ordinary life. I go to school, I take care of my dog, I eat, I sleep. Sometimes, though, my life is not so ordinary. This is because of the ghosts.
Another one arrived last week. It came on the wind, like the others. Itâs not an ordinary wind that brings these ghostsâitâs a bare whisper of wind that tickles the curtains. No one feels or hears this wind except me and my dog, Bo.
The first ghost came a month after my father died. It was my great gran, but I didnât know she was a ghost. She seemed real enough to me. When I mentioned Great Granâs visit to my mother, she said, âDennis, Great Granâs in heaven.â
âNot last night she wasnât,â I said.
A month later my old cat, Choo, flew in my bedroom window. I could see him plain as anything, but he felt as light as a leaf. When I held his puckered old face up to my mother, she pressed her hand against my forehead. âOh Dennis,â she said. âNot feeling well? Chooâs been dead for six months.â
There have been other ghosts since Choo and Great Gran. There was an old man who used to live next door, a woman who said she had lived two hundred years ago, and a policeman. A constant parade of ghosts, but never the one I really want.
I asked the policeman ghost, âWhy do ghosts visit me? Why donât they visit anyone else I know?â
âYou didnât send for us? Sometimes weâre sent for.â
âI didnât send for you,â I said. I hadnât sent for Choo or Great Gran either, though it was nice to see them. And I certainly hadnât sent for the dead old man or woman. âBut if I did send for a specific ghost, would he come?â
âHard to say,â he said. âCanât always go where we aim! I was just out riding on the wind, and this is where it brought me. Thought maybe you sent for me.â
Imagine! To ride on the wind and whiz into peopleâs windows like that!
Last Friday, as I climbed into bed, I heard one of the whispering winds. When my mother came in to say good night, I asked her if a storm was coming.
âStorm? I donât think so. Look how calm it is. Not even a breeze out there.â
So I knew that this was another ghost wind. Soon it would be followed by a faint whistle, and then the wind would swirl and roll and twist in through the room trailing a cloud of blue smoke. Out of that blue smoke would step a ghost. Thatâs how it happens. It doesnât matter if the window is open or not. The wind and the ghost will come right through it.
Iâve tried to tell my friends and teachers about these ghosts, but they just laugh. âWhat an imagination!â my teachers say. One boy at school, Billy Baker, punched me in the chest. âYou donât see no ghosts, you stupid liar,â he said.
Billy was new at our school. My teacher sat him next to me. She whispered, âYou and Billy have something in common. I know youâll be nice to him.â
Nice to him! I tried, but he was the grumpiest crab Iâd ever met. After he punched me for no good reason, I decided someone else could be nice to him. And as for having something in commonâhah! The only things we seemed to have in common were that we were both boys and we were in the same class.
Bo whimpered in his sleep. Did he sense what was coming? The wind whistled, and the curtains curled in the air. Boâs yellow fur stood on end.
The ghosts had never hurt me, but still I was afraid. What if it was a wicked, horrible ghost? But I also wanted to know who it would be. Maybe it would be the one ghost I wanted, the one ghost I prayed for, the one ghost Iâd sent for.
I had an odd, quivery feeling as that wind blew harder, reeling and rolling through the window, twisting the curtains high into the air. Bo crawled up beside me and covered his ears
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