Ghosts I Have Been

  From Blossom herself:

  I tell you, the world is so full of ghosts, a person wonders if there’s a soul to be found on the Other Side, or anybody snug in a quiet grave. I’ve seen several haunts, and I’ve been one myself.

  You’ve probably heard about me already. For a time I was the most famous girl in two countries. I’ve been called Ghost Girl and Fantastic Faker by turns. Numerous people have commented on my adventures in this world and others, but none could explain my Powers entirely, and many are liars outright.

  My first glimpses into Worlds Unseen come as quite a surprise to me, among others. . . .

  PUFFIN BOOKS BY RICHARD PECK

  Are You in the House Alone?

  The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp

  Dreamland Lake

  Father Figure

  The Great Interactive Dream Machine

  The Ghost Belonged to Me

  Ghosts I Have Been

  A Long Way from Chicago

  Lost in Cyberspace

  Strays Like Us

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin Inc., 1977

  Published by Puffin Books,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2001

  Copyright © Richard Peck, 1977

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Peck, Richard. Ghosts I have been.

  Summary: Blossom Culp’s gift of second sight, which she discovers gradually, leads her into some unusual adventures.

  [1. Supernatural—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P338G [Fic] 77-9469

  ISBN: 978-1-101-66435-3

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  THIS BOOK IS FOR

  Amy and Joanna Ploeger

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Prologue

  I TELL YOU, the world is so full of ghosts, a person wonders if there’s a soul to be found on the Other Side. Or anybody snug in a quiet grave. I’ve seen several haunts, and been one myself.

  You’ve probably heard about me already. For a time I was the most famous girl in two countries. I’ve been called Ghost Girl and Fantastic Faker by turns. Numerous people have commented on my adventures in this world and others, but none could explain my Powers entirely, and many are liars outright.

  I lived a full fourteen years without thought to having any extra talents of my own. Psychic Gifts were to me the advantages certain other people had, like good looks or regular meals. So my first glimpses into Worlds Unseen come as quite a surprise to me, among others.

  Whether you be born with the Gift or attain it is often debated. As you’ll see, my Gift tended to creep up on me and would often pop out under pressure. Practice makes perfect, as the poet says. I seemed to refine my Powers as I went, much like learning to write a clear hand or driving one of the new automobiles.

  All this was leading in a direction. At the start I was no more than a plain American girl with nothing going for me but spunk. Little did I know where my new-found talents would lead me—across tossing seas and into lives of high and low degree. I little knew the wickedness of this world until I saw beyond it.

  Two fates were entwined: mine and the tormented ghost of a boy—a perfect stranger to me—who died a death I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

  As I pen these words to leave a lasting record, I wonder myself where it all began. We start up in the mists of mystery, and there we all end. And Souls drift like ground fog across a hundred worlds and far frontiers.

  Many’s the ignorant person who claims that spirits and haunts have forsaken the modern age in this new twentieth century. But what they do not know would fill a book. And this is the book.

  1

  THERE ARE GIRLS in this town who pass their time up on their porches doing fancywork on embroidery hoops. You can also see them going about in surreys or on the back seats of autos with their mothers, paying calls in white gloves. They’re all as alike as gingerbread figures in skirts. I was never one of them. My name is Blossom Culp, and I’ve always lived by my wits.

  My mama and me live hard by the streetcar right of way, on the down side. Ours is a two-room dwelling which we have rent free, it being abandoned. We had always lived off a hard clay garden and put by what we could against the winter. For extras, I’ve been on my own since I was knee-high.

  My mama picked up a certain amount of loose change in palm reading, herb cures, and other occupations I will mention. But until I became famous, she never made her skills known. And in this modern age, if you don’t advertise, the world doesn’t beat a path to your door. Remember this. It bears on the story later on.

  Since various people—newspaper reporters and suchlike—have asked me about my paw or if I have one, I’ll just mention that Paw’s a traveling man. We don’t hear tell of him for long stretches. He doesn’t figure in this present account, since to my recollection he didn’t turn up at our place any time during 1913 or 1914. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to come in at any time now and find Paw stretched out insensible before the stove. As the poet says,

  Not drunk is he who from the floor

  Can rise alone and still drink more;

  But drunk is he, who prostrate lies,

  Without the power to drink or rise.

  At intervals we get picture postcards from Paw, who lives his life answering the call of the open road. The name and address on the cards, merely “The Culps, Bluff City,” are written in by a series of unknown hands. The spaces for messages are blank. Neither my paw nor my mama can read or write, though they have their talents like anybody else.

  Here I have shown progress, for I am a quick study as to reading and other matters. My penmanship, as you can see from this page, is first-rate. My grammar is not perfect, but then whose is? As to spelling, I could cover my middy blouse with medals won at various bees.

  None of these accomplishments will take you far, of course, if you lack what the world calls advantages. I consider that I was always well off without such advantages, as they tend to kill your initiative. As the poet says, necessity is what makes the mule plow. And I for one would not care to pass my life up on a porch, gazing into an embroidery hoop.

  Naming no names, there are some people here in Bluff City who still say I do not know my place. How wrong they are. I know it well and always did. But I have always meant to better myself, and when you are on your own in this life, it is uphill work. />
  As the poet says, vanity has done more in this world than modesty. Now I am not vain when it comes to looks. If I was, a trip to the mirror would cure me. My eyes are very nearly black, particularly if I am roused to anger or action. My hair needs more attention than I have time to give it. And my legs, being thin, do not show to good advantage, as being fourteen, I am still in short skirts.

  But I am vain about my resourcefulness. There is more to be learned about a town from the wrong side of the tracks than from the right. I made a study of this town long before I had the power to see beyond it. Bluff City is mainly divided into two camps: those who have already arrived and those who never will. So I am something of a misfit. But the advantage of a small town is that the rich and the poor live cheek by jowl. Just over the streetcar tracks lives a well-to-do family, name of Armsworth. They have a son, Alexander, who’s in my same grade at school. He is getting to the lanky stage. However, being a boy, he’s not as mature for his age as I am. Boys never are, which is a scientific fact.

  Between his house and mine on the Armsworth property is a large outbuilding known locally as the Ghost Barn. You may have read about it in all the papers here and elsewhere last spring. Though the barn was haunted, it no longer is, thanks to me and Alexander Armsworth.

  He had the Gift of seeing the ghost as plain as day. I had the talent for involving myself in other people’s business. Between us, we got the ghost out of the barn and into a quiet grave. The whole business embarrassed Alexander considerably, though it did not faze me.

  My name didn’t figure in the local write-up. The reporter on the story was spooning at the time with Alexander’s big sister, Lucille, so he featured the Armsworths strongly, leaving me out. His name is Lowell Seaforth, and I don’t hold it against him. He’s since married Lucille Armsworth, so I have no doubt he’s paying for all his past sins.

  The ghost which got such a big play last spring came to light entirely due to my mama. She was the first to perceive its presence. Gypsy blood runs in her veins, giving her the Second Sight and the Gift of seeing the Unseen, like Alexander but better. She’s such a great hand at dealing in the supernatural that we were run out of Sikeston, Missouri, where we originated. They won’t burn you for a witch in Sikeston, but they can make it hot for you.

  The blood is running thin, though, and I doubted that I’d inherited any mystical gifts. At least they had not shown up yet. So here again, the only advantage I might have had seemed to pass me by. Anybody with a drop of gypsy blood in her veins would gladly lay some claim to mystical powers. But what’s not inherited can sometimes be manufactured.

  * * *

  Halloween in Bluff City as elsewhere is a marvelous time of year for boys to play the fool. Nothing inflames them like an excuse to disturb the peace and a harvest moon to light their way. Mama and me were never troubled by pranksters. They paid us no mind generally, but on Halloween they went out of their way to shun us. Even now, no one is sure of the extent of my mama’s Gift and how she might use it against you.

  But I made it my business that Halloween of the year 1913 to be out and about myself. Boys will repeat the same tricks, never tiring of them. If there’s anything more predictable than a boy, I haven’t met it. I decided to give a certain gang of them something to think about. Indeed, I meant to scare them out of a year’s growth.

  My motive was not spotless. It involved Alexander Armsworth. Me and him had been drawn together over that ghost business. Directly after we’d settled it, though, he kept his distance. I was not sweet on Alexander. Still, a person does not like to be picked up and then dropped. I decided to let him know I was still a girl to be reckoned with.

  Besides, he’d fallen in with a gang of rough types. Bub Timmons was one of them, and so was Champ Ferguson. The chief troublemaker was Les Dawson, a bully of more brawn than brain. Nobody cared to lock horns with him. I was shortly to do just that.

  They were all older than Alexander, though Les Dawson was in our grade, being left back several semesters. It was entirely like Alexander to mix with an older crowd and be drawn into their doings.

  Out in the Horace Mann schoolyard it was hard work not to overhear the gang’s plans for Halloween mischief. They whispered about it every recess, boxing each other about the head and ears as boys do. Their Halloween plan was nothing more than to turn over people’s outhouses. Progress in Bluff City is spotty. Only the chosen few have indoor plumbing. Much of the town on my side of the tracks is still dotted with privies. I had little trouble plotting the gang’s course.

  Since ghosts were still on the minds of many people, I planned a costume to feature myself as one. By dark on Halloween night, I had ready a garment made out of old bed linens. One ragged sheet provided me with a full skirt and trailing train. I devised two batwing sleeves from a pair of pillowslips. I shook a full cup of cake flour over my face and hair and worked it in. To complete my disguise as the shade of a dead girl, I draped a mosquito bar over my head as a veil. And I carried a candle in my hand and a box of safety matches in my shoe top to light up my frightful face when the moment was right.

  As I stepped out into the evening, the town was alive with young children trick-or-treating from house to house. Half scared of themselves and each other, they kept to the roads and front walks. I flitted through backyards, not wanting to give the little ones a turn. Though it was a clear night, there were wisps of fog. I moved with small quick steps, and my white skirts billowed behind me for all the world like floating. Listen, I wouldn’t have liked to meet me in a dark alley.

  Glowing a ghastly white, I glided down garden rows and past woven-wire fences, lingering behind woodpiles to observe how my drapings settled. There was a nip in the air, but I was warmed by my plans.

  They were to figure out which of the outhouses Alexander’s gang would push over first. I reflected on what a lot of trouble this gave innocent people and considered I was doing the property owners a favor. I might cure the gang of vandalism permanently.

  The first privy I come to was on the back of Old Man Leverette’s place. He’s a retired farmer moved to town, but he keeps to his country ways and is not the type to invest in an indoor toilet. His outhouse stood like a sentry box against the rising moon. Here was a temptation the boys could not resist. I waited like a terrible statue for a time, seeming to hear the gang’s stealthy footsteps in the distance. For the practice I sighed and moaned a little.

  My intention was to step just inside the privy and pull the door shut. Then when the gang approached to tip it over, I planned to step out, with the lighted candle, and moan eerily. If this wouldn’t strike them half dead with horror, what would? I grinned under my mosquito bar at my plans. Alas, I grinned too soon.

  As there was no breeze that night, I fished the matches out of my shoe top and lit my candle as I stepped up to Old Man Leverette’s privy door.

  At this point, things went seriously wrong. I had one foot inside when I come face to face with Old Man Leverette himself. He was in his privy, using it. His nightshirt was hitched up about his hips. My candle threw dreadful shadows in the tiny room, and light fell on Old Man Leverette’s startled face and on the torn pages of the Montgomery Ward catalogue in his aged hands.

  Near enough to the grave himself, he let out a kind of Indian war whoop. He rose up, thought better of it, and flopped back down on the seat. I was as startled as he was, and the wind from his gasping breath set the candle flame bobbing.

  “Whoooo, whoooo, whooo in the Sam Hill are you?” Old Man Leverette howled.

  “I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” I said, not wanting to identify myself. I took a step backwards, but his hand snaked out and grabbed my wrist. Pages from the catalogue fluttered away like moths. My presence of mind failed me and I said, “I just happened to be passing.”

  “So was I!” Old Man Leverette roared.

  He could tell by grasping my wrist that I was human. Giving it a painful wrenching, he pushed me out the door, which closed between us. As I lifte
d my sheets to take flight, I heard his voice from inside still roaring, “Don’t light out, missy! I got business with you!”

  As near fear as I’d ever been, I waited until Old Man Leverette stepped out into the yard. Lit by the moon, we seemed a pair of ghosts, what with his white nightshirt and a shock of flowing white hair above his lion’s face.

  “If you’re trick-or-treatin’,” he said, still gasping, “you can go around to the front door of the house and take your chances like anybody else!”

  My candle had gone out by then, and I’d thrown my veil back from my face. He fixed me with a watery eye, but couldn’t place me. “And just who do you happen to be?” he said, and waited for an answer.

  “Letty Shambaugh,” I replied, naming a stuck-up girl in my grade whose name occurred to me.

  “Explain yourself before I cut a switch and stripe your legs!”

  It wasn’t easy to explain to Old Man Leverette that I had his best interests at heart and only meant to save his outhouse from a tipping over. And how would he like to be tipped over in it? I nearly added this, but didn’t.

  He is one of these people who don’t like being convinced. But when I mentioned a gang of boys planning to knock over every outhouse between here and the city limits, he began to nod. I didn’t name these boys, but I made it clear that I meant to teach them a lesson. If not in the Leverette privy, then in another.

  My words began to work. Old Man Leverette worried the stubble on his chin with a gnarled hand. Presently he said, “There’s sense to your plan, Letty. But I don’t know but what I can improve on it. You can scare hell out of them in the privy, and I’ll send ’em on their way with a plan of my own. Don’t move. I’ll be back directly.” Then he stalked off to the house. His nightshirt strained around his big white legs.

  He returned, marching down his punkin patch with a shotgun on his shoulder. “Now then,” he said, taking over, “you can get yourself into the privy, and I’ll hunker down over there behind my compost heap. I got a notion we won’t have long to wait. Do your best, and I’ll do the rest.