Ghosts, a little voice told her. Which made it the perfect place for the ghost club to gather.

She thought she heard something, faint footsteps, a tinkling sound like glass breaking.

“Hello?” she called, her voice timid and lost sounding in the clutter. “Mr. Barns?”

She pictured him watching from the shadows, his gun trained on her.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be in here,” Mike said. He was about two inches behind her. She could feel his breath on her neck. She waved him back impatiently.

“It’s a store, Mike. Of course we’re supposed to be in here.”

There was another sound from upstairs. A dragging sound.

Mike grabbed her hand, squeezing hard, his fingers warm and sweaty. “Let’s go, Olive. Please?”

She pulled her hand away and moved through the narrow aisles, between dusty tables covered with old postcards and towers of stacked plastic buckets, and came to a massive, curving staircase on the left. The banister was loose, hanging from the staircase at a funny angle, like a broken limb.

Had her mother really come here? Had she climbed these stairs, wary of the broken banister?

“Hello?” she called again, slightly louder this time. She heard a noise from the floor above her, that dragging sort of sound again. Furniture being moved, maybe. Or something shuffling, dragging a limp limb (or entire body) across the floor.

“Sometimes a vivid imagination is a curse,” her mama used to tell her.

“For real, though. Let’s get out of here,” Mike pleaded, voice low, desperate.

Olive crept up the stairs, staying to the left, next to the wall and away from the failing banister.

“Olive, don’t!” Mike called from the bottom. “What’re you doing?” But she kept going.

There was a loud thump from up above them.

Mike bolted back to the entry. Olive heard the jingling bells of the front door.

“Chickenshit,” she muttered.

She hoped the stairs were not rotten like the boards on the porch floor. It made her so sad, to see all this beautiful wood in such terrible shape. If she lived here, she’d fix it up. Turn it into something special. Maybe a fancy hotel again. Something that would really draw people to Hartsboro. And Aunt Riley could help her fix it up, find all kinds of vintage materials for it. Her dad would have something to renovate besides their little house. And Mama, Mama would definitely come back then, if she learned Olive had a whole hotel…

Sometimes a vivid imagination truly was a curse.

She got to the second floor. The wall-to-wall burgundy carpeting was stained, worn through in places, exposing floorboards. She held still, listening. “Mr. Barns?” she called again. “Are you here?”

This seemed like a bad idea. Maybe Mike had been right to run. But if her mother had been here, if Dicky knew something that might help, she had to find out.