Chapter Two
After the incident with Chief Floating Cloud, Emily ran to the house as fast as she could go. Mom discovered the open door and asked her if she had been in the garage. Emily admitted she was curious about what was in there.
Mom sighed. "I really need to go through all that old junk and clean that place up. But until then, I don't want you in there going through it. You'll get all dirty."
Mom decided to lock the door, and Emily was glad about that. She wasn’t sure if the ghost could get through walls, but it made her feel safer knowing the door was locked.
Emily avoided the garage for the rest of the summer. In fact, she pretty much avoided the back yard. She was sure the Chief would not come out of the garage during the day since the sunlight had "melted" him, but she was not so sure about after dark.
One day, just a week before school started back up, Emily’s friend, Shayna, came over to play. They were outside in the driveway riding Emily's bike. There was only one bike, so Emily and Shayna had to trade off riding it. Then mom came outside and saw them.
"Emily,” Mom said. “There’s another bike in the old garage so you can both ride at the same time."
Since Shayna was waiting for Emily to finish her turn with the bike, she thought this was a great idea. Emily stopped the bike and glanced over to the garage. “That’s OK, Mom. We don’t need another bike.”
“Nonsense,” Mom said. She pulled a shiny key from her pocket and handing it to Shayna. “The bike is parked right inside the door.” She started back to the house. “You can go help her with that, Emily.”
Shayna grabbed Emily’s arm. “Let’s go get the bike, Emily.”
Emily was frozen. She glanced at the darkened window of the garage. Shayna tugged at her arm, but Emily refused to move.
“Come on, Emily,” Shayna said.
“No way.”
“What’s the matter?”
Emily grabbed Shayna’s arm. She leaned close and whispered, “It’s haunted!”
Shayna gazed back at Emily’s very serious face. Then she started laughing.
“Shhhhhh,” Emily said.
“Haunted?” Shayna said. “Why do you think it's haunted?”
“I saw the ghost that lives in there,” Emily said. “It’s an Indian ghost.”
“Yeah, right,” Shayna said. “There is no such things as ghosts!”
“There is so,” Emily said. “I saw it.”
Shayna looked at Emily, the smile disappeared from her face and her eyes grew wide. “Really? You telling the truth?”
Emily nodded her head.
Shayna grabbed Emily’s arm and pulled her in the direction of the garage. “Let’s go look.”
“No,” Emily said. She yanked her arm from Shayna's grasp. “I’m never going in there again.”
“Fine,” Shayna turned and walked to the garage, the key in her hand.
“Don’t go in there,” Emily said.
“I want to see it, and if you're not too chicken, you can come too,” Shayna said.
Emily gazed at the dark window of the garage. It stared back like a big, black square eye. Shayna was at the door of the garage and fumbling with the key.
“Wait,” Emily yelled and ran towards the garage.
Shayna unlocked the door, opened it, and disappeared inside. Emily stopped in front of the door. Her eyes wide, she held her hands over her mouth. Suddenly, Shayna screamed and Emily heard a crash. Emily ran into the garage.
The bicycle was lying on its side, and Shayna was standing on the couch staring at the floor.
“What happened?” Emily asked.
“There was a big spider on the bike,” Shayna said.
Emily searched the floor. There was a great deal of dust floating in the air from the falling bike. She spotted a big, black, nasty spider crawling through the dust and coming directly at her. Emily screamed. Shayna screamed. The garage echoed with their screams. The spider scrambled towards Emily’s foot. Then it flattened out and green liquid squirted out over the floor.
The girls stopped screaming and stared at the squished body of the spider. Shayna hopped off the couch.
“Wow,” she said. “I can’t believe you squished it like that. That’s gross!”
“I didn’t do it,” Emily said.
“Of course you did,” Shayna said. “How else did it get squished?”
“It was the ghost,” Emily said as she gazed about at the swirling dust.
“Oh, whatever,” Shayna said. She pointed to the bike on the floor. “The tires are flat anyhow. Let’s go play on the scooters.” She ran from the garage.
Emily gazed down at the squished spider. In the dust on the floor of the garage was the outline of a very large foot around the body of the spider.
“Wait for me!” Emily yelled and ran out of the garage, pulling the door closed behind her.
Emily thought about the incident with the spider for many days. She just knew it was Chief Floating Cloud that killed the spider. She tried to think of reasons why he might have done that. The spider scared her more than anything, and the ghost killed it. Perhaps, she thought, he was not a ‘scary’ ghost. Maybe he was a friendly ghost?
She wanted to test this, but the thought of going back into the garage still terrified her. It was also possible that the Chief liked to kill things. After all, if he would kill a spider, then what else would he do? And maybe he created the spider to scare her and Shayna. But she also remembered how he spoke to her the first time. Emily always imagined ghosts to be horrible, shrieking terrors that despised people and loved to scare them. But the chief laughed, he spoke in a gentle tone, and he even smiled at her. This did not seem to be the behavior of any ghosts she ever heard about. But then, she never saw a ghost before and didn’t know anyone who had.