The Red Ghost Read online

  When she came through the door to her room, Jenna threw the doll. Hard. She couldn’t help it. She had to be rid of the thing.

  The doll landed on her bed, leaning crookedly against the headboard.

  Jenna stepped back. Her breath stuttered and gasped. Had she heard Miss Tate’s doll speak? Really?

  If the doll had spoken, though, she said nothing now. She just sat there. Her round baby cheeks glowed, reflecting the red of the bonnet. Her blue eyes looked deep and knowing. They stared right at Jenna.

  Suddenly a throaty wail pierced the air.

  Jenna’s hands flew to cover her ears. She stepped back, away from the doll, away from the noise.

  But the noise only got louder.

  Then she saw. The sound wasn’t coming from the doll this time. It was coming from her cat. Rocco stood at the foot of the bed, howling!

  Until that moment, Jenna hadn’t noticed him curled in his usual place on her bed. But if his reaction had been strong when he saw the package that held the doll, it was even more violent now.

  He didn’t bother with hissing and spitting this time. Instead, a moaning growl came from his throat. His legs stiffened. His body went rigid. If he had been all black, he would have looked exactly like a Halloween cat. His head was low, his spine arched. He arched his tail, too, and laid back his ears.

  He approached the doll sideways, crablike.

  “Don’t, Rocco!” Quinn cried. She reached for the cat.

  “Don’t touch him!” Jenna warned. And in the same instant, Rocco’s growl rose to a scream.

  Row-w-w-w!

  Quinn jerked her hand back.

  They all stepped away from the bed, their gaze glued to the cat. Jenna put her arms around her little sister and held her close.

  Rocco’s yellow eyes were slits. Jenna had never seen her sweet cat look so mean.

  Just when she couldn’t stand the suspense for another instant, Rocco sprang!

  He swiped at the doll’s face. His claws caught in the lace edge of the bonnet. They caught and held.

  Rocco spat and hissed. He pulled his paw back. The doll tumbled toward him.

  Rocco jerked harder. He yowled. He pulled the bonnet free. The doll rolled off the bed and hit the wooden floor with a loud thwack !

  Rocco backed up. He shook his paw, dropping the bonnet onto the bed.

  Once Rocco was free of the doll’s bonnet, he stopped yowling. He crept back across the bed. Crouching, he peered over the side.

  Jenna, Dallas, and Quinn moved around the bed to look, too. They all stood, staring at the fallen doll. A crack had opened across the top of her head. It ran from ear to ear.

  “Oh,” Quinn cried. “Look!”

  Jenna looked. Something red was drifting through the crack in the doll’s head. It seemed like red smoke.

  At first the smoke had no shape. It was just a wisp, a curl. Then it began to take form. What was it?

  Rocco yowled again.

  “It’s her!” Dallas cried.

  Jenna didn’t have to ask who Dallas meant by “her.” Now she could see, too.

  The red smoke had shaped itself into a girl. She wore a red-velvet dress, a red-velvet bonnet. Even her face was flushed red. And her hair was a bright coppery orange.

  The red girl stayed joined to the broken doll at first. She didn’t seem to know where to go. Then slowly, slowly she broke free. She rose into the air. She floated toward the open window.

  Rocco leapt to the floor and followed, moaning and keening the whole way.

  “Shut the window!” Dallas cried.

  But Quinn said, “No. Let her go!”

  Jenna didn’t move. She didn’t think she could have stopped the gauzy figure if she had tried. And she didn’t want to try.

  Rocco had no such hesitation. As the wisp of a girl rose toward the open window, he leapt. His outstretched paw passed through the red mist. Then he was back on the floor, still howling.

  And just like that … the red ghost was gone.

  9

  Hazel

  Jenna stood in the doorway of Quinn’s room, watching her play. Miss Tate’s doll had joined Raggedy Ann and Barbie.

  “Do you like your birthday present now?” Jenna asked.

  Quinn picked up Miss Tate’s old doll and hugged her. “I love her,” she said. “Raggedy Ann and Barbie love her, too.”

  “So what have you named her?” Jenna asked. And then—she didn’t know why exactly—she held her breath.

  “Shannon,” Quinn replied. She held the doll out in front of her, smiling at it. “Her name is Shannon.”

  The breath Jenna had been holding leaked away. “Oh,” she said. Was she disappointed? No, of course not. What was there to be disappointed about? Shannon was a perfectly good name. Perhaps it was even too good for an old doll with a cracked-and-glued head.

  Still, she couldn’t help saying it. “Are you sure it’s Shannon? Not something more … well, old-fashioned?”

  Quinn shook her head. She walked Shannon over to Barbie and sat her down at the tiny doll’s side. “No,” she said. “She’s Shannon now. Hazel is gone.”

  Jenna drew in her breath. She had never said anything to Quinn about Hazel. “Who told you that?” she asked. “About the girl? About Hazel?”

  Now Quinn walked Raggedy Ann over to join the others. “Hazel did.” She said it in a voice that implied, Of course! or even, Who do you think, dummy?

  Jenna wanted to ask more questions. All kinds of questions. But she didn’t know where to begin. So she just stood there, watching Quinn play.

  “She said, ‘Thank you,’” Quinn said finally.

  What are you talking about? Jenna thought. But she asked, “Do you mean Hazel?” She said the name lightly. She tried to make it sound perfectly ordinary for little girls to get messages from other little girls who were long dead.

  “Hazel,” Quinn agreed. “She wanted out. For a long, long time, she wanted out. So she said, ‘Thank you.’”

  “Who was she thanking?” Jenna asked.

  “You,” Quinn said. “Maybe Rocco, too. She was just happy. Happy to go, you know?”

  Jenna nodded. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Dallas was waiting for her. They were going to ride bikes this morning. But she had another question, just one more. She had to know.

  “Where did Hazel go?” she asked.

  “Away,” Quinn answered. She looked up from her dolls for the first time as she said it and smiled at Jenna. “She went away.” Somehow, she made “away” sound like a very pleasant place.

  Jenna sighed. She didn’t know why she was relieved, but she was. She didn’t know why she trusted Quinn’s answer, either, but she did.

  What she did know for certain was that she was happy for Hazel.

  Very happy.

  Should she tell Miss Tate?

  No, she didn’t think so. There were some things it was probably better for grown-ups not to know.

  “Well,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Say goodbye to the dolls,” ordered Quinn.

  So Jenna did. “Bye, Raggedy Ann. Bye, Barbie. Bye, Shannon.” And she wiggled her fingers at them in a tiny wave.

  Bye, Hazel, she added, though only in her thoughts.

  Still, she couldn’t help but be relieved, all over again, when the doll in the red-velvet dress didn’t reply.

  About the Author

  Marion Dane Bauer is the author of more than sixty books for children, including the Newbery Honor–winning On My Honor. She has also won the Kerlan Award for her collected work. Marion’s first Stepping Stone book, The Blue Ghost, was named to the Texas Bluebonnet Award 2007–2008 Master List. Marion teaches writing and is on the faculty of the Vermont College Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program.

  Marion has two grown children and seven grandchildren and lives in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

  About the Illustrator

  Peter Ferguson has illustrated such books as t
he Sisters Grimm series, the Lucy Rose series, and The Anybodies and its sequels, and he has painted the covers for many others. He lives in Montreal with his wife, Eriko, and cat, Yoda.

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

  Text copyright © 2008 by Marion Dane Bauer

  Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Peter Ferguson

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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  Book and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bauer, Marion Dane.

  The red ghost / by Marion Dane Bauer; illustrated by Peter Ferguson. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Stepping Stone book.”

  Summary: When Jenna gives her little sister an old doll in red velvet as a birthday present, some very disturbing instances occur and Jenna begins to suspect that the doll might be haunted.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-49751-2

  [1. Dolls—Fiction. 2. Spirit possession—Fiction. 3. Supernatural—Fiction.

  4. Sisters—Fiction.] I. Ferguson, Peter, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.B3262Re 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007010354

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