ABSTRACT THE GHOST OF CARVER RANCH by Roy Clayton Davis Winnie may not believe in ghosts, but she does believe in her ghost-hunting club’s special kind of magic— its ability to help her forget the move, her mom’s divorce, and the way California kids look at her when she talks. But even this refuge is fleeting; the principal has come to shut down Club S.P.E.C.T.E.R., leaving time for just one last adventure. Now, trapped in 1891 and on the lookout for a ghost, a witch, and a murderer, Winnie and the rest of Club S.P.E.C.T.E.R. must embrace the very quirks and talents that made them pariahs back home. The Ghost of Carver Ranch, complete at 60,000 words, is a realistic mystery/ghost book for tween readers. It has a team of quirky characters involved in a dark mystery. Much of the story is set against a detailed, historical backdrop. THE GHOST OF CARVER RANCH A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of English By Roy Clayton Davis Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2006 Advisor __________________ Eric Goodman Reader __________________ Brian Roley Reader __________________ Mary Fuller BOOK I: THE LETTER 1. The Case of the Haunted Locker Locker 53 didn’t look haunted. It sat in the top row, painted an ugly dark green like all the other Richland Junior High School lockers. Winnie wasn’t sure what she expected—maybe spooky noises coming from inside, or cobwebs covering the front. It should at least be raining, she thought, like in horror movies. But instead the sky was bright blue and cloudless. Back in North Dakota, where she was from, a Thursday in December would be dark and cold and snowy. Here the weather stayed so nice and boring that they could even put student lockers on the outsides of buildings, like this group of lockers outside the gymnasium. Winnie waited, holding Scratchy the hamster, while the three other members of Club S.P.E.C.T.E.R. did their things. Kat drew a circle on the ground with white chalk. Every time she bent over, her tight, black pleather pants creaked like an old door, and all the charm necklaces she wore banged together like wind chimes. Kat swore the charms brought good luck. The luckiest was a five-inch tall silver penguin that, to Winnie, looked like it weighed a pound. When Kat finished the circle, she began drawing weird symbols, like letters from an alien alphabet, all around the outside. “Gotta steal more chalk from Walker’s class,” she muttered under her breath. Brewer paced back and forth along the lockers with one of those doctor heart- listening-thingies in his ears—Winnie thought it was called a stethoscope. Every once in a while he’d put it against a locker, listen, and nod his head. “Could be xenodwarfs,” he said, listening to locker 57. “Those are little aliens the government trains to live in houses and spy on people. But normally they don’t speak English.” 1 “Really?” Kat said, concentrating on her drawing. “I thought xenodwarfs were aliens that lived in washing machines and stole your socks.” “What? I’ve never heard of…” Brewer stopped and looked down at her. At five-ten, he was the tallest in the Club, and built like a stick figure. Today he was wearing his green army camouflage fatigues. Like everything else he wore, the outfit was too small for him. His black wrists and ankles stuck out of the cuffs. Brewer shook his head. “Okay, laugh all you want,” he said to Kat, “but when the government\alien\monster conspiracy takes over the world, we’ll see how funny you think it is.” “All right, you guys,” Eric said. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground, typing on is laptop computer. “We’ve only got thirty minutes ‘til the bell rings. You can argue about sock-stealing aliens later.” He stopped typing and closed his computer. “Kat, how’s the magic circle going?” “Almost finished,” she said, sticking out her tongue at Brewer when his back was turned. “I really should light some white candles, too,” she added, “but with my luck a lunch monitor would catch me, and I’d get another detention. Stupid no-candle rule.” “I’m sure it will be good enough,” Eric said, setting his computer carefully on the ground and then standing up. “Let’s get ready.” Winnie thought if anyone walked by right now, they’d pick out Eric as the one person who didn’t belong in Club S.P.E.C.T.E.R. Unlike the rest of them he fit in at school. In fact, he was actually popular. He played on the baseball team and was a star pitcher. He had friends outside the club, and lots of girls thought he was cute. And he even dressed normal—right now he wore a Lakers’ jersey and jeans. Not that Winnie dressed weird on purpose, but her mom didn’t have a lot of money for new clothes after the move and the divorce. On some days, like today, Winnie was stuck wearing her old farm overalls. And the hamster in her hands wasn’t exactly helping her blend in either. “Okay, Ashley,” Eric said, “Anything we need to watch out for?” Ashley, a sixth-grader, had come to the Club on Wednesday with her haunted locker problem. She told them that she was hearing a voice in her locker, and that sometimes the voice told her to do things, like go run around the school, or go sit down. Now Ashley stood at the end of the row of lockers. Eric had made her lookout, so 2 she could watch for nosey teachers who might ask too many questions. “Well,” Ashley said, biting her lip, “It only talks sometimes. It might not do it for you.” “Finished,” Kat said, standing up and dusting chalk off her hands. “As long as everyone’s in the circle, we should be safe from the ghost. Just don’t step outside or let anything touch the chalk line. If the circle breaks, the magic gets messed up.” Winnie held Scratchy the hamster against her chest and joined Brewer and Eric and Kat in the circle. It was a tight fit—Brewer’s elbow poked her in the ribs, and one of Kat’s charms caught on a button of her overalls. This is silly, she thought. Maybe she should just step across the circle to make more room. She didn’t believe in Kat’s magic anyway—she thought it was just for fun, like card tricks and sawing people in half. But before she could untangle herself and move, Eric twisted the combination lock and opened the locker door. Inside the dark cubbyhole, folders and textbooks fought for space. There were scrunchies and folded-up notes and pictures of boy bands and makeup cases and a pair of dirty socks that smelled like Winnie’s dog after he’d been playing in the rain. “You’re right, this is scary,” Kat said, laughing. Winnie was about to agree, when she gasped. There was a shape between the math books and gym shorts—in the darkness a disembodied head floated. Its pale face stared back at her. 3 Chapter 2: The Dream Winnie heard a high-pitched scream that at first she was afraid had come out of her, but then she saw Brewer backing up with his hands over his mouth. “The circle!” Kat hissed, but it was too late. Brewer put his size 11 boot right on the chalk line. “Run for your lives!” Brewer shouted, and took off along the back of the gym. As he ran by the corner of the building, he tripped over Ashley’s lunch cooler, and fell face first into one of the grass-and-palm-tree planters that dotted the concrete landscape of the school. “Calm down, everyone,” Eric said. “It’s just us.” Winnie first checked to make sure she hadn’t squeezed the hamster in her panic, and then looked in the locker again. A dirty mirror hung from the wall behind the books. The pale face she saw staring back at her was Kat’s—Kat normally had fair skin, and the dark lipstick and eye shadow that she wore made her look even paler. To the left of Kat was Eric’s reflection—short blonde hair, blue eyes. Behind them Winnie’s own face stared back at her, complete with glasses, freckles and curly brown hair. After a moment, Brewer’s thin, black face appeared in the mirror too. “Knew it…all along,” Brewer said, breathing hard. “Was…was just testing everyone’s reflexes.” Kat looked at him in the mirror. “Maybe you should go test your underwear. Might need changing.” “So-oh,” Winnie said, trying to stop another Brewer vs. Kat fight, “shouldn’t we move all this stuff so we can look around?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she silently cursed herself. When she was nervous or scared, her North Dakota accent would take over. It made some of her one-syllable words—“no,” “yeah”—sound like 4 two-syllable words—“no’oh,” “yeah’ah”. She hated it. Kids looked at her funny when she talked that way. So ever since the first week of school she’d been practicing hard to talk normal.