The Ghost in the Third Row Part 11

"No," I said quietly. "The cooking's fine." It was, too. Except for the nights when he gets too adventurous, my father's really good in the kitchen.

"Well, if it's not the food, it must be the company," he said. "Sorry I'm boring you."

"Oh, it's not that," I said.

He put down his fork. "OK, Nine. What's up?"

"Nothing."

He tightened the corners of his mouth. "I've seen rocks with more enthusiasm for life than you're showing at the moment."

"Are you going to be very busy while we're at this inn?" I asked.

"Of course," he said. "It's a big project for me."

"Oh. Well, will I see much of you?"

"I expect so," he said, although he sounded a little less certain of himself.

"Will there be many kids there?"

He started to answer me, then stopped. "I'm not sure."

"That's OK," I said. "I was just wondering. Can I be excused? I have to start packing."

I walked slowly away from the table. Then I went in my room, closed the door, and looked at the clock. Six-thirty. I wondered how long it would take. I remembered Cute Edgar, the director of The Woman in White, telling me that one of the great secrets of acting was planting a seed in the audience's mind and then letting it grow by itself.

"Your problem, Nine," he added "is that once you plant the seed, you go overboard with the fertilizer."

Except he didn't say fertilizer.

At seven forty-three my father came through. "Listen, Nine," he said, poking his head into my room, "I've been thinking. I'm going to be awfully busy while we're at the Quackadoodle. Do you suppose Chris might like to come along to keep you company?"

I jumped off my bed with a whoop and gave him a hug. When he left I grabbed my phone and called Chris. "Start packing!" I yelled. "We leave at eight-thirty Wednesday morning!"

About ten minutes later Dad poked his head into the room again. "You know," he said, "you could have just asked." Sometimes I wonder who's fooling who around here.

CHAPTER THREE.

How to Pack "OK, Sidney," I said, "time to move."

I scooped our cat off my underwear and dumped him onto the floor. Sidney gave my leg a halfhearted whack with his paw, made his cranky sound, and stalked out of my room, twitching his tail angrily.

"That," said Chris, "is one weird cat." She was sitting at the head of my bed, helping me pack, which in this case meant rolling her eyes whenever she considered a piece of clothing too hideous for words.

"Ten minutes!" yelled my father from the living room.

"Ten minutes," I muttered. "I can't possibly be ready in ten minutes!"

"You had all last week," Chris said quietly.

"Don't you start on me," I snapped.

What Chris had said was true, of course. But I was already feeling sorry for myself because I had realized that while my father is good at a whole lot of things a mother usually does, helping me get ready for a trip is not one of them. I was also feeling a little silly, because I realized it was no big deal, and guilty, because I knew I was going to make us late. Also cranky, because I really didn't want Chris to watch me pack.

"I think I'll go talk to Sidney," said Chris. "He's in a better mood."

I waited until she was gone, then sighed in relief. Now I could get started! Using what I call the grab-and-stuff method, I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pile of underwear and threw it in the suitcase. Socks, s.h.i.+rts, jeans, and T-s.h.i.+rts came next. A couple of sweaters, a few good skirts and blouses, and I was just about finished.

It's a very efficient system, but not the kind of thing you particularly want someone else to watch. I almost made it, too. I was just trying to close the lid when Chris came back into the room. "Good grief," she said, when she saw the stack of clothes being squashed into the suitcase.

"Be quiet and help me push," I said. She got on the other corner of the suitcase. Between the two of us we managed to get it closed and fastened.

"Uh-oh," said Chris.

The cuff of a red sweater was sticking out on the right side.

"Forget it," I said. "Getting it in now would be more trouble than it's worth."

"The Golden Chariot awaits," called my father. The Golden Chariot is what Dad likes to call his car, which is this ancient 1964 Cadillac he bought when I was a little kid. It's yellow and white. It has huge fins. And it's longer than almost every parking s.p.a.ce in town. It also breaks down at least once a month, but Dad claims the repair bills are no worse than the car payments most people make. He says its worth it to have a car with cla.s.s.

I think it makes sense for a preservation architect to have a car like that. It's like the buildings he loves-big, old, and kind of funky.

Chris had ridden in the Chariot several times. But she still wasn't prepared for how much room we had in the trunk. After Dad opened it, she stood looking inside for a moment then said, with awe in her voice, "You know, if you put in plumbing, you could rent that out as an apartment."

Like I said, it's a big car.

Since I believe in first things first, my box of books was already in the trunk. Dad's tennis racket and golf clubs lay next to them.

"Hey, Mr. T," said Chris, "I thought this was a working trip."

"It's an experiment," I said. "He hasn't played golf in seven years."

"I am ignoring you both," said my father, throwing in the last of the suitcases. He went back into the house. A minute later he came out with the cat carrier. Sidney was inside, complaining mightily.

"Is he coming with us?" asked Chris.

"He's staying with my grandmother," I said.

"Lucky Gramma," said Chris, climbing into the backseat of the Chariot. I climbed in next to her.

Dad started the car.

"Are we almost there?" I teased when we got to the end of the block.

"Did I tell you I found a kennel that takes kids?" replied Dad.

I decided to be quiet for a while. It was four hours before I asked that same question again, and this time I was serious. I was sick of riding. Dad glanced at his watch, and at the map beside him. "Another hour and a half," he said, "a.s.suming Baltimore's directions are accurate."

"Baltimore?" asked Chris.

"Baltimore Cleveland," said Dad. "The man who owns the Quackadoodle."

"You really know a human being named Baltimore Cleveland?" I asked.

He glanced over his shoulder. "Not only do I know him, but he's going to be our host for the next three weeks. And he's going to be paying me a lot of money."

"It's a wonderful name," I said. "Just wonderful. I think I'll look at the scenery for a while."

The scenery was worth looking at. Steep, rocky hills covered with pines stretched up to our right. Little streams splashed and bounced down these same hills, then disappeared under the road, only to pop up on the other side, where they meandered off through the more gentle territory that sloped away in that direction. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of England.

"It won't be that much farther now," announced my father as he turned the Golden Chariot onto a narrow, winding road. Dad's idea of not much farther is different from my own, but eventually we saw a sign that said "Quackadoodle Inn-3 miles."

Eventually we saw the inn itself.

Dad stopped the car. He stared at the inn with a kind of glazed expression on his face. I couldn't tell if he was struck with a vision of what the place could be-or appalled by what it looked like right then.

"Well, Mr. Tanleven," said Chris cheerfully, "it looks like you've got your work cut out for you."

Dad's dream project was a rambling old three-story building, surrounded by a wide porch cluttered with big wooden chairs. The top of the inn was a strange jumble of towers, turrets, dormers, and cupolas.

It was fascinating. But it was also a mess. The porch was sagging, the roof was mossy, and the walls were marked by dark spots where s.h.i.+ngles had fallen away.

I s.h.i.+vered. I had never seen a place that looked more likely to be haunted.

Buy The Ghost Wore Gray Now!

A Personal History by Bruce Coville I arrived in the world on May 16, 1950. Though I was born in the city of Syracuse, New York, I grew up as a country boy. This was because my family lived about twenty miles outside the city, and even three miles outside the little village of Phoenix, where I went to school from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Our house was around the corner from my grandparents' dairy farm, where I spent a great deal of time playing when I was young, then helping with ch.o.r.es when I was older. Yep, I was a tractor-ridin', hay-bale-haulin', garden-weedin' kid.

I was also a reader.

It started with my parents, who read to me (which is the best way to make a reader)-a gift for which I am eternally grateful. In particular it was my father reading me Tom Swift in the City of Gold that turned me on to "big" books. I was particularly a fan of the Doctor Dolittle books, and I can remember getting up ahead of everyone else in the family so that I could huddle in a chair and read The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.

I also read lots of things that people consider junk: Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and zillions of comic books. In regard to the comics, I had a great deal going for me. My uncle ran a country store just up the road, and one of the things he sold was coverless comic books. (The covers had been stripped off and sent back to the publishers for credit. After that, the coverless books were sent to little country stores, where they were sold for a nickel apiece.) I was allowed to borrow them in stacks of thirty, read them, buy the ones I wanted to keep, and put the rest back in the bins for someone else to buy. It was heaven for a ten-year-old!

My only real regret from those years is the time I spent watching television, when I could have been reading instead. After all, the mind is a terrible thing to waste!

The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher, Mrs. Crandall, gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I had been doing poorly at writing all year long because we always had to write on a topic Mrs. Crandall chose. But this time, when I was free to write whatever I wanted, I loved doing it.

Of course, you think about doing many different things when you're a kid, but I kept coming back to the thought of being a writer. For a long time my dream job was to write for Marvel Comics.

I began working seriously at writing when I was seventeen and started what became my first novel. It was a terrible book, but I had a good time writing it and learned a great deal in the process.

In 1969, when I was nineteen, I married Katherine Dietz, who lived around the corner from me. Kathy was (and is) a wonderful artist, and we began trying to create books together, me writing and Kathy doing the art.

Like most people, I was not able to start selling my stories right away. So I had many other jobs along the way, including toymaker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, and a.s.sembly line worker. Eventually I became an elementary school teacher and worked with second and fourth graders, which I loved.

It was not until 1977 that Kathy and I sold our first work, a picture book called The Foolish Giant. We have done many books together since, including Goblins in the Castle, Aliens Ate My Homework, and The World's Worst Fairy G.o.dmother, all novels for which Kathy provided ill.u.s.trations.

Along the way we also managed to have three children: a son, Orion, born in 1970; a daughter, Cara, born in 1975; and another son, Adam, born in 1981. They are all grown and on their own now, leaving us to share the house with a varying a.s.sortment of cats.

A surprising side effect of becoming a successful writer was that I began to be called on to make presentations at schools and conferences. Though I had no intention of becoming a public speaker, I now spend a few months out of every year traveling to make speeches and have presented in almost every state, as well as such far-flung places as Brazil, China, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh.

Having discovered that I love performing and also that I love audiobooks, in 1990 I started my own audiobook company, Full Cast Audio, where we record books using multiple actors (sometimes as many as fifty in one book!) rather than a single voice artist. We have recorded over one hundred books, by such notable authors as Tamora Pierce, Shannon Hale, and James Howe. In addition to being the producer, I often direct and usually perform in the recordings.

So there you go. I consider myself a very lucky person. From the time I was young, I had a dream of becoming a writer. With a lot of hard work, that dream has come true, and I am blessed to be able to make my living doing something that I really love.

Hey, baby! You looking at me? I was born on May 16, 1950, in Syracuse, New York. In this picture I'm one year old.

As a farm boy, I learned to drive a tractor when I was quite young.

Reading was always important to me-anytime, anywhere.

I planned to be a cowboy ...

But I ended up a boy scout. (From the look on my face, I think I just got away with something ... ) In 1969 I married Kathy. She lived right around the corner from me. She's an artist and has ill.u.s.trated twenty of my books. We have three children-Orion, Cara, and Adam.

Here's me at Buckshot Lake. Apparently no one told me I was supposed to sit in the boat.

As a young father, I often functioned as a piece of furniture.

Here's me with my daughter. I swear I did not steal her candy!

A rare sighting of my half-mad brother Igor (on the right), star of Goblins in the Castle. When I was an elementary school teacher, Igor would visit my cla.s.sroom every Halloween to celebrate his birthday. For some reason the two of us were never seen together. It was a puzzling mystery. This is a picture of Igor posing with my wife's little brother.

Something has clearly gone very, very right!

Often I give speeches about reading and writing. But sometimes I get a little carried away.

No, seriously, I meant it when I said I get carried away ...

I not only write books, I read them aloud, too. Here I am recording an audiobook for my company, Full Cast Audio. Whatever I just read has clearly surprised me!

I love my books ... they make me happy! I hope they do the same for you. Photo courtesy of Charles Wainwright.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

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

Copyright 1987 by Bruce Coville.