Katie O' Grady And The House At Gloom Corner

By Kathryn A Allen

Katie with the help of her mom, sister, and some very unusual friends, solve a mystery that's been bothering her as long as she can remember. Join her adventures from the very beginning, you never know where they will take you

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katie O'Grady
• Release date: Sep 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781087896274

Book preview

1

Gifted Girls

My name is Katie O'Grady and I see dead people. Oh, Sure, seeing ghosts can be scary sometimes but I can handle it. I've been doing it all my life. Twelve years of living with ghosts. Well, I only really live with one. And she's not scary at all. She's beautiful.

It's snowing outside. I mean like really, really snowing. So much white it actually hurts my eyes to look at it. So I'm hiding out. Warm and safe in my lumpy bed wrapped in my favorite soft purple blanket while my Mom stinks up the house making cabbage and my little sister holds her nose and cries. There are only three of us, well four if you count our friend Vanessa, who’s a ghost, which I totally do. Vanessa is my friend and she died a

long time ago. Like VERY very long time ago. She has the purest soul I've ever seen. Oh yeah, I can do that too. See whether someone's good or bad... um, inside I guess you'd say.

My sister's super good at finding things and Mom sees stuff that might happen. Actually it's more like stuff that will happen if things don't change, if we don't change them. So sometimes Mom goes still and a minute later we're all running around like crazy people because we have a job to do. That's what we do. Fix things. Sometimes it’s simple, like we knew where Janie's lost puppy was and helped her find it. But sometimes it's tricky, like when we had to make two people fall in love so their child could save someone important.

Everything's connected like a giant spider web, pluck one strand and the whole thing shakes. So in case you’re worried? We're very careful. We know what we're doing. After all, I'm going to be thirteen soon and I know tons and tons of stuff about this kind of thing. Tons and tons and tons. Mom says we never stop learning and the more we know the more squiggles our brains get. My brain must be extra squiggly cause I'm the smartest person I know.

So when Mom lost her job as that mean guys secretary this became her full time job. Fixing all kinds of stuff for people, even though they don't always know something’s broken. So that means we don't always get paid either, which can be a real bummer. I work very hard

and I'm a huge help too. Mom’s always saying she can't do things without me. She says that to my sister, too, but I am very important, I know. I'm almost thirteen and Sadie's only eight. She's really good at finding things but she's still a child. She’s not nearly as mature and grown up as me.

We were helping lots and lots of people in our town but couldn't even keep the cable on at our own house so all the townspeople started helping us back. Mom says we're a non-profit organization and they're donating to the cause, whatever that is. All I know is we went from nothing to Wi-Fi. Then she bought me this laptop and my life is now complete. Hello YouTube! Hello Google! I love you!

I'm not allowed on facebook cause Mom's afraid of people outside our town knowing what we can do. We have to keep ourselves safe, you know. We're not witches or anything but people are, in general, pretty darn stupid. We, like, don't have big pots of smoking bubbly green stuff... or cut the ears off bats for a love potion... or fly or...well, anything really.

But I think that would be cool, especially the love potion. If I was a witch like that then Bobby would smile at me in World Cultures instead of dumb, stupid, green-eyed Brittany. NO one should be allowed to have hair that color! Why would a guy look at someone as dull as I am with a flame haired girl named Brittany to look at? I like to think my eyes are green. Maybe it’s one of my special abilities but I just don't know how to use it yet?

At least that’s what I’m hoping, I usually look in the mirror and concentrate really hard on imagining the brown slowly fading and a glorious grass green would take its place and hope someday brownie poop will turn into green goddess. But so far no good, isn't that what grownups say? So-far-no-good Yeah that's it. I figure I'm pretty grown up right now. I mean, like a long time ago before there was TV and iPhones and everything that makes people smart, kids my age were probably lots stupider. I mean how do you learn anything if you can't Google it? No one would