The Ghost in my iPad 4:44

By E L Russell

Their worst fear comes true when the Holiday Snatcher escapes and kidnaps their friend Candy. Sixth grader, Jengo Allbright, with his best buddy, Billy, means to get her back. He enlists the help of his previously kidnapped sister and his friendly ghost, but his efforts are thwarted by the inexplicable absences of his ghost, the restraints of being grounded, indecipherable clues, and very bad food. Will Jengo and his crew be able to leap the hurdles and find Candy in time?

• Language: English
• Publisher: E L Russell
• Release date: Oct 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301729173

E L Russell

Editorial Reviews About the Authors Enid and Enos Russell hail from Houston and sincw 2010 have published 15+ high-concept science fiction and techno-thriller novels, as well as 10+ Short Stories. Our first question is always, "What could go wrong?" Educated in mathematics and research, I have spent ten years writing White Papers advising corporations on emerging technologies. My latest research has resulted in a series of novels and short stories about the ability to re-program inheritable genetic code, curing disease through self-healing, waging war, and acquiring immortality. Our protagonists, powerful women scientists, medical researchers, are members of the next human species, Homo Evolutis. We publish through Entanglement Publishing. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

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The Ghost in my iPad 4:44

E C Russell

E L Russell

Published by the authors at Smashwords

Copyright 2013

ISBN: 1493563076

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION

To our grandchildren, Gus, Chloe, Tobin, and Jengo.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To our sister Lee.

Prologue

Halloween night

Rats. Candy put her bag of Halloween loot down and took off her shoe to shake out the tiny pebble that had hopped in when she walked down that last gravel driveway. Her mother, who warned her constantly to stay close, had walked on without her. Jeez, I’m thirteen years old, not a baby. You’d think I could go trick or treating without my mother.

Candy! Keep up.

If it were so important, you’d think she’d wait. Candy had trouble seeing through her rubber mask and the tattered hem of her long zombie dress kept tangling in her shoelaces as she tried to retie them.

Candy! Get up here!

Up here. Down here. Her mom was always telling her what to do these days. She’d wanted to go trick or treating with her friends, but her mom has said, No. When she had tried to change her mom’s mind, it was a no-go.

Honestly, Mother, she’d complained, I’ll be just as safe with them. Why do I have to go with you?

You’ll come with me and that’s the end of it.

What logic was in that? So here she was, alone, frantically messing with shoelaces. Heaving a resigned sigh, she rolled her rubber zombie face to the back of her head. When her mom called again from down the street, Candy mumbled, Catch up, ketchup, ketchup, and switched to retie the laces on her other shoe, grumbling, mustard, mustard, mustard.

Even when they ran into Jengo and Billy at the third house, she wasn’t allowed to stay with them. They were no fun anyway. They were in their ‘no-girls-allowed’ mode.

Jengo’s sister, Maddy, was there, but that was only because their mother couldn’t be in two places at once. She said, "It’s a parent’s smother-ween rather than a fun Hallo-ween because they’re so worried about the Holiday Snatcher. We won’t be able to go anywhere alone until they catch her."

Catch her, Candy thought. That’d be really good. She is terrorizing the town with her kidnapping. Jengo, who could be a really great friend when they were having an adventure, had taken off after Billy, who was already knocking at the house next door.

See ya later, he’d shouted over his shoulder, as he darted off to join his friend.

Venting her frustration, Candy shouted at Billy. I see you don’t hang back when there’s food involved. It was like she couldn’t help it when she saw him. She taunted Billy whenever the opportunity presented itself. "You only hang back when there might be something scary around."

Yeah… well… I bet I have more candy than you, Billy said, not sounding particularly pleased with his comeback.

Yeah, more cavities, too, I bet. Her mother tweaked her ear and gave her a meaningful shove to get her moving.

Rats. She wanted to stay with them, but when Jengo, Billy, and Maddy veered off in one direction, her mom and Mrs. McAllister, her mom’s friend, took off in the other direction, yakking and laughing… ignoring her.

Candy called to them to stop a moment, but Mrs. Mac, that’s what they called her, had her mom’s arm and was no doubt telling her some boring thing of ‘great importance.’ She watched them get farther away through the eye-slits of the zombie mask she’d yanked back in place.

The sound of her own breathing rattling around the inside of her rubber mask transformed her world into a dark and sinister place. While it was nice on one hand, to get some distance from her mother, she felt a prick of unease in her isolation. The night seemed scary from inside her mask.

She heard a noise behind her and quickly turned to check her back. Nothing… She tripped on her shoelace. Again! She bent down with a snort of disgust to retie the sorry-excuse-for-wouldn’t-stay-tied-laces. What was that? She heard a rustle of leaves.

A small twig snapped. A cat dashed in front of her. She jerked her head toward the dark shadows cast by a pathetic front porch light up the driveway. Is someone in the shadows? With a sudden explosion of sound, a gust of wind spun leaves from the corner of the nearby house.

Silly. Nothing. Her fingers fumbled with the laces. A footstep? She stopped breathing and listened. Nobody… I think… I hope... Thoroughly spooked, Candy left her shoe untied and raced ahead.

Mom? Where’d you go? Mom? She reached the intersection and darted in one direction, but managed only two long strides before stepping on her untied shoelace. Catapulting face down, she barely caught herself. Quickly, she pushed to her knees.

Grr-rr.

Growling! She heard the unmistakable sound of growling, snarling dogs.

Her face turned as white as her zombie dress. She opened her mouth to scream, but a large hand covered her mouth and nose with a sickly-sweet-smelling cloth.

No sound escaped.

Chapter 1 – The Ghost of a plan

The next night

Jarred awake by he-had-no-idea-what, Jengo brushed a hand across his now wide-open eyes. The large red numbers of his digital clock read 4:44. It’s always 4:44, he thought. Two blue eyes floated up from the floor and stopped inches from his face.

Lily! he gasped, searching for his scattered wits and hanging on to his pounding chest. His heart thumped so hard it shook the bed and he managed speech in only breathy wisps. Maybe… you could hover… a little… farther away. You know, like when you first show up. His ghost’s sudden appearance so close in his face always made his heart thump like thunder. He loved his ghost, but jeez, sometimes she scared the pants of him.

Lily laughed. Just a small chime-like noise, really, but he loved the sound. She didn’t do it often and it always made him smile.

The two blue eyes drifted lower and the semi-transparent body of a young girl emerged around them. She sat cross-legged on the floor with Jengo’s’ iPad in her lap. He figured she was eleven or twelve, but she was small and, maybe because he could see mostly right through her, she seemed younger.

As Jengo climbed down from his bunk bed, he heard the music from his iPad and shook his head. Lily, when did you start playing Angry Birds? I like the Zelda music better.

She didn’t respond. She rarely did, but he had grown comfortable with that. Comfortable with her, for that matter, now that he had grown used to her.

Lily, however, was not the issue. Candy had been taken. That was the business at hand. He knew it had to be by the Holiday Snatcher. That’s what they called the kidnapper because she only took girls on holidays.

That crazy lunatic is out for revenge because we saved Maddy and those other girls from her last summer, Lily. She practically said as much, in that letter to Candy’s mom, didn’t she?

Making his voice deep and raspy, like the kidnapper’s, he said, If those bratty kids cause any more trouble, I’m snatching your daughter, mark my words.

That didn’t even a look from his Ghost. She just kept pulling back the slingshot to launch more stupid birds.

Jeez, The Snatcher is one terrifying broad. Jengo shook himself, then yawned and stretched. But this business of not being allowed out of the house without supervision because of her, is driving me and Maddy stark raving mad.

His ghost gave a small gurgle of laughter as bird feathers flew.

Lily, why you waking me up every night at 4:44 if you don’t even talk to me. It’s killing me for school. I can’t stay awake. He thought for a moment and frowned. We have to find the Kidnapper. That’s where Candy will be. He smacked his thigh with his hand. We had her, Lily. With your help, Candy, Billy, and I caught her. How could she have gotten away from the FBI?

His ghost looked up at him and tilted her head.

"Do you think you could find