Chapter 32
Taaaaap. Tap. Tap.
Tap.
Tap. Taaaaap.
Taaaap. Tap. Tap.
Something was tapping inside my head.
After dinner with Jack, followed by T.V. time watching silly comedies, I had gone up to my room and laid down on my bed to stare out at Possibly. I must have drifted off into a heavy slumber because when I heard the tapping, I was startled to the point that I nearly fell out of bed.
What was inside my head?
Taaaaap. Tap. Tap.
Tap.
Tap. Taaaaap.
Taaaap. Tap. Tap.
Roused from my sleep, I sat up in bed and shook my head to chase away the tapping noise coming from inside my skull.
When the tapping continued even after I had shaken off my sleep, I jerked my head around, looking for the source of incessant clatter.
Nearly coming out of my skin, I jumped when my eyes landed on the dormer windows and the shadowy figure just beyond, perched on the roof outside of my bedroom.
Then my eyes locked with the figure’s and I smiled.
Auggie.
Auggie was crouched on the roof outside of my window, smiling in at me.
Thank God I hadn’t stripped down to my boxers for my second nap.
“Hey,” I said.
Mindlessly, I hadn’t thought that he might not be able to hear me through the closed window, so I leaned over my bed and raised the window.
“Hey,” I repeated.
“Is baby boy sleepyheaded?” he asked with a grin.
“Shut up,” I said. “What are you doing on the roof?”
“It’s time to go ghost hunting, friend!” He crowed up at the night sky.
I looked up at the starlit sky through the window, that velvety, speckled sheet blanketing the sky above us.
“That doesn’t explain why you’re on the roof and peeking through my window.”
Auggie seemed to blush, but without light, I wasn’t certain.
“You have to leave through the window,” Auggie said, glancing away for a moment. “You can’t go out through the front door.”
“Sure,” I nodded, “that makes sense.”
“It’ll jinx seeing the ghosts,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “If you leave through the front door, you bring the living energy with you. Because only living people exit through doors. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” I gave him an overly enthusiastic nod.
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t make me yank you through the window.”
I laughed and sat up on my knees.
“Should I tell Jack that—”
“He’s already in bed,” Auggie waved me off. “I’ve already been by his window.”
“Oh.”
Auggie jerked his head. “Come on.”
Before I could respond, Auggie had scooted to the side of the roof, swung his legs over, and disappeared over the edge.
I gasped, wondering how he was making his way to the ground.
I was on the third floor. He couldn’t have just dropped to the yard below; the fall would have broken his ankles in a best-case scenario.
Quickly, more to check on how Auggie was, I scurried out the window and slid to the edge of the roof.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that he was skittering down the old rose trellis under my window like a monkey.
Auggie was a peculiar fellow. He favored tutus and pearl necklaces and fingernail polish at times, but he could climb and run and get dirty as well as anyone else.
Of course, it was stupid of me to equate or not equate one thing with the other.
One was his fashion sense; one was athletic ability. They were not mutually exclusive traits.
As soon as Auggie hopped from the trellis and landed safely in the yard below, he looked up at me with a wide grin as I hung over the side of the roof.
“Come on,” he stage-whispered up to me.
“Hold your horses,” I said, mostly to myself.
Carefully, and with less prowess than Auggie, I swung my legs over the edge of the roof and wiggled them around until they found purchase on the trellis.
Inch by inch, I slipped off of the roof and lowered myself down to the trellis.
Slowly at first, then quickly picking up speed once I realized the trellis was sturdy, I made my way down to Auggie.
Moments later, I was leaping from the bottom of the trellis and landing next to Auggie in the yard.
He grinned at me.
“We’re officially in ghost world now,” he said.
“Yeah. That makes total sense, too.”
He nudged me. “Come on. We want to get to the graveyard and get a good spot before midnight.”
“Okay.”
“We don’t want to miss them, do we?”
“That would ruin this entire day, I suppose.”
Auggie started to step away, then turned back to me.
“You starting to believe yet?” he asked.
“No,” I said with a wide grin.
Auggie laughed lowly.
He said nothing more but punched me in the arm lightly before he turned away once again and sauntered from the side of Jack’s house.
I watched him for a moment, decked out in cargo pants, a black, flowy skirt worn over them, Chucks, and a tank top completing his outfit.
The moon seemed to find his pale skin in the night and make him glow as he walked through the darkness.
He had almost gotten to the edge of the yard before I realized I hadn’t taken a single step.
Finally, I urged my feet into motion and chased after him.
Silently, Auggie and I left the yard and stepped out onto the road, turning left towards Bend of the Road Graveyard.
Like every other night, Possibly was utterly dark.
Only the moon and stars provided any light by which to see, though they seemed brighter than anywhere else in the world.
The light pollution in Possibly was basically nonexistent, so any bit of moonlight made traveling through downtown Possibly a piece of cake.
Auggie and I walked side by side, our arms brushing against each other lightly here and there as we made our way down the road.
Pebbles were kicked by the toes of our shoes, sometimes playfully at each other as we traveled.
The graveyard was only twenty yards or so away from Jack’s place, so there wasn’t much time to fill with talk.
Before I knew it, we were standing at the junction in the road where we could turn right to go into downtown Possibly, or take the roads that went up and around or down and around the graveyard.
No decision was left up to me. I was just along for the experience of ghost hunting in Possibly.
Auggie had a plan in mind. He motioned for me to follow him as he dashed off to the copse that was in the center of the “O” junction between Jack’s place and the graveyard.
Together, we scampered behind the tree closest to the road and knelt down, facing the graveyard.
Looking across the road, I was surprised at how visible the headstones were under the moon.
I’d never really noticed on other nightly walks or when staring out my window at Possibly during the dark hours.
However, they were like beacons there on the north side of town.
More than likely, the type of stone the markers had been carved from was the reason for their brilliance in the dark.
However, squatting there, in the dark, waiting to see ghosts, it was eerie more than fascinating.
“Shhhhh,” Auggie whispered.
“Are we going to scare the ghosts?” It was mostly a joke, but my voice cracked, which I hoped Auggie didn’t notice.
“Maybe they’re as scared of us as we are of them?” Auggie turned his head to give me a quick wink. “We don’t want to scare the dead.”
“Right.”
“You never know.”
“What do we do now?” I whispered.
Auggie shrugged. “We wait. See if they show up.”
“Why do they show up here?” I asked. “What if they decide they want to show up at Molly’s? Or Windchime Hollow? Or—”
“We started our thirteen circles here and ended them here,” Auggie stopped me. “They’ll show up here.”
“If they show up.”
Auggie turned to me, an expression between a frustrated frown and an amused grin plastered across his face.
“You really have to find something to believe in.”
“You keep saying that,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
Auggie jabbed a finger at the ground.
“Park it. Shush. We’re going to see ghosts.”
Grumbling, though not unamused, I dropped to my rear in the grass under the shadow of the tree and did as I was told.
I shushed. And I waited. Auggie turned his attention back to the graveyard, ignoring me completely.
With wide eyes and his whole body tense with anticipation, Auggie moved so that he was no longer crouching, but sitting on his knees and waiting.
With no idea how long we’d be waiting, comfort was paramount, I supposed.
Bringing my knees up to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them and rested my chin atop them.
Though I wanted to ask a million questions of Auggie, I forced myself to keep my eyes on the graveyard, watching for any sign of movement.
For a bit, as minutes ticked by, my whole body felt tense, as though a spring was compressed, ready to pop and send me into the branches above.
As time passed, I felt less and less concerned with the fact that we were actually waiting to see if ghosts showed up in a graveyard.
My eyes were becoming more accustomed to the low-level light of the moon and the shadows became less ominous around us.
Auggie stayed kneeling in the grass, half of his body hidden by the trunk of the tree.
The Possibilian breeze whistled through town softly, ruffling our hair with its cool breath, but nothing else stirred.
No other citizen of town came walking down the road on their way to…
wherever one might go in the middle of the night.
Birds weren’t chirping, critters weren’t scurrying, and Auggie and I stayed stock still as we waited to see if our ghost hunting experiment had been worth the effort put forth.
Though nothing stirred but the breeze, downtown Possibly wasn’t completely silent.
I could hear Susurrus Creek in the distance—water slapping against the shore as the creek slipped through town on its way to wherever creeks go.