The
Ghost Box
By
Jan Kozlowski
“AMANDA! AMANDAAAAAA! I need your help!”
Amanda Wakefield opened her bedroom window and looked down
at the short, dark-haired girl waving and shouting in her driveway.
“Hold on Cammie, I’ll be right down.”
Amanda turned off her computer, wrapped a purple scrunchy
around her long, blond hair and ran down to see what her friend was so upset
about this time. Cammie’s whole life was an emergency, so it could be anything
from aliens landing out in the woods to misplacing one of her pet grasshoppers.
“Amanda, you’ve got to help me. I was down at the pond and I
went to get my treasure box and the branch broke and I fell in the water and
Penny Randall’s ghost tried to grab me and pull me under.”
Penny Randall was a local legend. About forty years ago, a
bunch of kids were swimming down at the pond. The older boys started fooling
around, pushing the little kids under, splashing and making a lot of noise. By
the time anyone noticed a ten year old girl named Penny was missing, it was too
late, she had already drowned.
The NO SWIMMING signs were posted not long after that. Some
people said it was a legal thing. Other people said it was because Penny
Randall’s ghost was lonely and if she caught you, you’d keep her company…forever.
“Cammie, take a breath. Calm down.” Amanda noticed that her
friend was dripping wet and had a couple of fresh scratches on her legs above
her socks. “Tell me what happened.”
“I just TOLD you. You know that dead tree that reaches out
over the pond?”
Amanda nodded. Lightening hit it last summer and no one had
gotten around to cutting it down yet.
“I hid my treasure box about half way up, in that old
squirrel hole. I wanted to finish the grass bracelet I’m weaving for Grandma,
so I went up to get it. I was climbing down when the branch broke and I fell
into the pond. I held onto the box and started dog paddling back to the shore.
All of a sudden, this hand came up and grabbed me and tried to pull me under.”
“Cammie, come on. It was probably just a branch or
something.”
“No Amanda, I swear. It was this long, bony hand with really
sharp nails. Look at my leg. She scratched me. I started kicking, but she was
dragging me down deeper. I got really scared. I let go of the box and just
started swimming like crazy. Next thing I knew I was back on the bank and the
box was gone.”
“Are you okay? Do you think we should tell your mom or
grandma what happened?”
“They won’t believe that Penny Randall took my treasure box.
They’ll just tell us to stay away from the pond from now on and then I’ll never
get my box back.”
“Cammie, your box either sank to the bottom of the pond or
the current took it downstream. It could be in Middletown by now.”
“I’m telling you, Penny Randall’s ghost has it. I’ll bet
she’s sitting down there right now pawing through my stuff.”
There was no arguing with Cammie when she got stubborn like
this.
“Okay Cammie, I give up. Say Penny Randall does have your
treasure box. How you gonna get it back then?”
“I’ve got a plan, but I need you to get some stuff together
and meet me back down at the pond in a half hour.”
It took Amanda more than a half hour to find the things that
Cammie wanted. Just explaining to her mother why she needed a rubber bathing
cap and a cigar box took longer than that.
“Lunch in an hour,” her mother called as Amanda tossed the
shopping bag of stuff into her bike basket and got ready to take off.
“I’ll be on time, I promise.”
Amanda turned right out of her driveway, hopping her bike
over the place where the pavement stopped and the dirt road started. The pond
was down a short hill, on the other side of an old wooden bridge. Cammie’s bike
was already lying on its side near the dead end sign.
“Bout time you got here,” Cammie called out from her perch
on one of the lower branches of the dead tree. Even though she had fallen off
that very tree earlier, she was back up in it again.
“Excuse me, but some of the things you asked me to bring
WERE a little bit weird. What are you going to do with all this stuff?”
“You’ll see.”
Amanda stood back and watched as her friend put her project
together. An old cigar box, a
bright yellow bathing cap with red, blue and green floppy rubber flowers on it,
four donuts with rainbow sprinkles, an old hair ribbon, a 1958 penny with wheat
marks on the back, a plastic spider ring, a set of fake vampire teeth and a
button from Cammie’s old army jacket.
“I think we’re ready.”
“Ready to do what?”
“You’ll see, just follow along.”
Cammie put everything but the bathing cap and the donuts
into the cigar box and tied it shut with the hair ribbon.
“PENNY RANDALL, COME OUT TODAY! PENNY RANDALL COME OUT AND
PLAY!” Cammie yelled this three times, then settled into her normal talking
voice.
“Penny Randall, my name is Cammie and this is my friend
Amanda. My treasure box fell into the pond this morning. I know finders
keepers, but I’d like to trade you back for it.
First, since you’ve been down there for so long, I thought
you’d be hungry so I brought some donuts. These are my favorites, chocolate
cream filled with rainbow sprinkles, I hope you like them too.” Cammie tossed
them one at a time, making little sprinkle showers rain down over the pond as
they hit the water.
“I also thought you’d be sick of having wet hair all the
time, so I brought you a really nice bathing cap.”
Amanda thought “really nice” was stretching the truth a
little, but it did look kind of cool as it landed in the water next to the
sinking donuts.
“And last, I brought you a treasure box that you can have
for your own. I put some stuff in it, just in case you didn’t have anything for
it yet. I’d really like it if you’d take it as a flat-out trade for mine.
Thanks.”
Cammie carefully tossed the box into the same area where the
donuts and bathing cap had disappeared.
“So now what do we do?” Amanda asked as they got their bikes
and headed backto their houses for lunch.
“We wait and see if Penny Randall wants to trade.”
Amanda was helping her mother finish up the lunch dishes
when they heard Cammie come screaming down the driveway for that second time
that day.
“AMANDAAAAAAAA! AMANDAAAAAAA!”
“What’s the matter? What happened?”
“Look! I went down to the pond and this was just sitting on
the bank next to the tree, right where we were standing.” Cammie held her wooden
box out to Amanda. No question, it was the missing chest. Cammie’s name was
engraved right across the top.
“Have you opened it yet?”
“No, I got so excited, I came straight here.”
“Well, go ahead!”
Cammie’s hands shook as she unlatched the metal hasp and
raised the lid to examine her collection. “My Indian head penny, the bracelet
for Grandma, my shells and beads and bottle caps, everything’s here.”
“What’s that red thing under the bottle caps?”
Cammie carefully picked up the wet object and held it up for
Amanda to see. It was a bright red, floppy rubber flower.
