ELEVEN
Two hundred fifty dollars?! That man is insane,” Myah blusters over her chicken sandwich in the print shop as Robby uses her computer to do research. “I’d need a one hundred percent guarantee that stuff is going to work before giving him that kind of money, even if I did have it, which I don’t.”
I bite my lip, thinking. How am I going to come up with that money without raising any red flags? If I ask Dad, he’ll probably say something to Lena, who will freak out and dead this whole operation altogether.
“Maybe we don’t have to rent everything Maverick showed us. Just one or two things,” I suggest. Even though I still can’t imagine that man cutting us a deal. He seems overpriced and real full of himself. “Y’all don’t got any money at all?” I ask Myah.
She shakes her head. “You see me working in this store for free! There’s gotta be some child labor laws against this.”
“Most of my competition money goes into buying new parts for my robots or Mama puts it in a savings account for college,” Robby adds.
Wait! I have a savings account! My grandma set one up for me with some birthday money I got when I was ten. I’ll ask Dad for it. Tell him I’m buying new camera equipment, which isn’t a total lie. I’ve been telling him I want to do this photo stuff for real. He’ll get it. He’ll understand!
“Find anything yet?”
Myah’s voice snatches me out of my thinking, and I glance down at the Google page open on my phone. Even with the ghost equipment, we still need to follow all the tips Maverick gave us. That means learning everything we can about that house.
“No. Nothing in any newspapers,” I say. “But this archive I found only goes back to the late 1850s. Maybe the house is older than that? The only things I see are other hauntings that happened in Calhoun Square. But nothing at the house itself. No mention of the Myers.” I click on another website and read it.
“It says here that Calhoun Square was laid out in 1851. It’s the only square in Savannah with all of its original buildings still around it.
It also served as a burial ground for slaves. ”
The ancestors won’t let anyone have peace after being wronged, I think to myself and shiver. If something happened to Tim Truman there, he would be one of many ghosts haunting that square. He might be stuck there, forever.
Myah stares far off at nothing.
“Hey, you good?”
Her mouth twitches. “I’m just … thinking about Jabari. I feel so bad for his mom and brother. My daddy printed more flyers for them this morning. I hate that I can’t help them. If we can reach Mr. Truman, maybe he can tell us what happened and we can help them find Jabari and bring him home.”
I reach a hand out to touch hers. “We’re gonna get some answers, Myah. Trust me.”
She sniffs with a nod, then picks up her sandwich again.
Without thinking, I grab my camera and take a photo of her to cheer her up. All my friends back home love it when I take candid shots. But I left the camera setting on automatic. The flash pops, and it’s like a strike of lightning blinding us all. Myah reels back with a yelp.
“Oops! You okay?” I ask.
“All I’m seeing is white,” she squeaks.
“My bad. The flash is kind of bright.”
“That thing is a weapon,” she says, rubbing her eyes.
“Hey, look what I found,” Robby says. “It’s a blueprint of the house.”
On the computer screen is a black-and-white copy of the house layout.
“Whoa. Where did you get this?” I ask, leaning close.
“The internet is a vast and marvelous place,” Robby says. “It was on some builder site. I guess they were trying to renovate before giving up on the project.”
“Are the Myers listed as a previous owner?” I ask excitedly.
“Nope. Not that I can see.”
I don’t get it. I know I heard Asher tell the story right. Are we spelling their names wrong or something?
Myah clicks a few buttons and prints the blueprint out on a giant sheet of paper, almost the size of Robby.
“The builder says the place is uninhabitable,” Robby says. “No electricity, no running water, no plumbing.”
“Which means no leaking pipes to make noises or static to get in the way of equipment,” I say. “Whatever sounds we hear or things we see in there, it’s definitely a ghost.”
“Definitely is a strong word,” Robby shoots back, and I roll my eyes.
Myah spreads the sheet out on a cutting table and we gather around. All I see are a bunch of lines and scribble scrabble.
“I … don’t know what I’m looking at here,” I say.
“Me either,” Robby admits. “And I build things for a living.”
Myah begins pointing at the different lines on the page. “The house has two floors and a basement, which is the width of the house. Here’s the front door, and here’s the back door. The first floor makes an I shape. Kitchen, bathroom, sitting area.”
Robby raises a skeptical eyebrow.
She shrugs. “Architects come by here all the time printing these things. I know how to read them. See this? These double lines mean doors. These lines mean windows. It means that the ghost you captured in your photo was in this room. Closest to the front door. Since the front steps are gone, we’d have to go through the back, up the basement stairs, and down this hall. ”
I nod, pointing to the room. “Then we set up in there?”
“Set up what?” Robby asks.
“The equipment! We’ll use the EMF reader to track the ghost. Myah will use those rods to talk to them, and I’ll take a bunch of photos,” I explain.
“Nah, I think we should cover the whole house,” Myah says. “Not just that room.”
“That’s gonna be a problem,” I say. “Remember Asher said the wood is really old and kind of dangerous to walk on.”
“Hmmm.” Robby stares at the sheet, tapping his chin. “Maybe we don’t have to walk in every room. I can build a robot that could go around the house, fit it with a camera and maybe even that thermal meter.”
“Wait, you can do that?” I ask, impressed.
He nods excitedly. “I can program it to read the temperature and snap pictures too. Then we’ll know which rooms we have to go in and which ones we don’t.”
I grin. “That’s actually a dope idea! But do you think you can make a robot in a day?”
“Pfft. I didn’t win back-to-back competitions for nothing.”
I laugh. “Whatever, I’m still gonna help you,” I say. “We can work on it tomorrow.”
Robby brightens. “Really? Okay! I already got all the parts we need!”
“Yeahhhh,” Myah says skeptically. “But robots can’t feel energy. That’s how I know spirits are with us, I have to feel them.”
“Oh brother,” Robby mutters.
Before Myah can snap at him, I jump in.
“How about we do both?” I suggest. “Go inside and feel around, but also get Robby’s robot to go places that aren’t safe.”
“If you don’t believe, just say that and get out the way!” Myah yells at Robby.
“I’m just trying to help you not die falling through the floor of some house ’cause you THINK there’s a ghost and THINK it’s Mr. Truman.
What if he doesn’t want to talk to us? What if doesn’t know who murdered him, or what happened to Jabari?
What if Jabari just ran off and joined the circus or something? ”
Myah rolls up the blueprint. “And his uncle just ended up getting killed? You make no sense!”
I sigh. “Okay. Robby’s got a point.”
Myah whirls around. “Oh, so now you don’t believe either?”
“No! I mean, yes. I just … it would make more sense for it to be the Myers House ghost.”
“Or it’s Mr. Truman,” she shoots back.
“Or it’s neither of them and you two are chasing nothing,” Robby groans.
We both look at him this time, and he backs away, hands up in surrender.
“Okay, real talk,” I say with a sigh. “The one thing I don’t understand, the one thing that keeps bothering me, is why Tim Truman’s ghost wants to stay in Calhoun Square. What was so special about that house?”
Myah thinks on it. “Maybe … it’s the spot he was murdered? Maybe he was chased there by the murderer?”
“Maybe he was taking a ghost tour,” Robby says with a chuckle.
Myah snorts. “Ain’t no Black people around here gonna go on no ghost tours.”
“No. But … didn’t he used to run his own tour?” I ask, remembering what Lena and others at the memorial had said.
Myah eyes widen. “Quick! Google Tim Truman’s Tours.”
Robby returns to the computer and pulls up the tour website. On the About page is a picture of Tim Truman, standing in front of a large white passenger van, cheesing hard.
Robby reads out loud: “ ‘Welcome! My name is Tim Truman, and I’m happy to take you on a Heritage Tour, where you’ll learn about the African American history here in Savannah. We start our tour at the First African Baptist Church.’ ”
“That’s around the corner,” Myah shouts. “It’s the oldest Black church in the country. Wait.” Myah hurries away for a minute and comes back with a rolled-up scroll. She unravels and spreads it out on the cutting table. It’s a map of Savannah.
“Daddy used to print these tourist maps a long time ago for some of the hotels,” Myah explains and points on the map. “This is where we are. The church is here. And Calhoun Square is here.”
Robby keeps reading. “ ‘On this tour we’ll stop by places like the African-American Monument, the Civil Rights Museum, and the Beach Institute.’ ”
“That last one’s the first school for newly freed slaves,” Myah says, dragging her finger across the map and circling the area. “The Beach Institute is only a few blocks from Calhoun Square.”
I grab my camera bag and head for the door. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“What? Where?”
“All those places must know Tim Truman. Maybe they know why he was obsessed with that house in Calhoun Square.”