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“Listen, I told your father it was a bad idea to take you to that pirate ship,” Mom said with a weary sigh. “But we thought you were old enough to handle it.”
“Mom, I swear…Captain Hook’s ghost is haunting me,” Barrie pleaded. “You have to believe me. And he’s mad at me….He wants to hurt me.”
But she just shook her head and grabbed his hand. “Come on, sweetie, let’s get you home for bed. Wow, I’m sure glad we didn’t let you go to that concert! Clearly, you’re not old enough for that if you can’t even handle a trip to the children’s museum.”
Barrie wanted to protest further. He wanted to argue that he wasn’t seeing things. That Captain Hook’s ghost was really haunting him. Maybe he could show her the hook and the note that he stole from the ship? But then he caught himself. He couldn’t show those things to his mom—then she’d know he was a thief on top of everything else.
As they drove toward home, taking the familiar route by the sea, Barrie started to feel even worse. His phone kept vibrating with new texts from his friends, but he switched it off. He knew they were having the best time of their lives—and he was missing it. FOMO had never felt so strong. It stung at him like needles poking at his brain.
He stared out at the black waves, replaying everything from the last few days in his head. At first, not growing up had seemed so great, but it was quickly turning into a nightmare. Not getting to go to the concert was bad enough, but now Hook’s ghost was after him, too.
How could he make it stop?
They pulled up to the house, got out of the car, and were heading for the front door when Barrie skidded to a halt in his tracks.
“Oh no!” he gasped, flinching back from the door. “Watch out!”
The front door had been slashed. Deep gouges scoured the wood. Paint flecks and splinters littered the doorstep. Two words had been hacked into the wood in jagged letters, but they were unmistakable.
His mother eyed him, confused. “What’s wrong?”
“Uh, can’t you see it?” he said, aiming one shaky finger at the message. “It’s like right there.”
Mom squinted at the door.
“Oh, this?” She bent down to scoop up a pamphlet that had been shoved into the doorframe. It was an ad for a local tree-trimming service. “Just those solicitors who keep pestering us. Nothing to worry about.”
She crumpled up the pamphlet, slid her key into the lock, and unbolted it. Then, she thrust the front door wide open and swept inside as if nothing were amiss.
Why couldn’t his mother see it?
Barrie just stared at the door in shock. The message—SCURVY BRAT—stared back at him. It was clearly there, plain as day. Another terrible thought occurred to him.
Was his family in danger, too? What was he going to do?
* * *
“Jeez, you’re awful jumpy today,” Michael said as they walked into school on Friday morning. He shot Barrie a concerned look. “What’s gotten into you? I mean, you’re usually a total weirdo, but this is worse than normal.”
Barrie had dark circles under his eyes and could barely keep them open. He had tried to stay up all night for the last two days. Every time he fell asleep, terrible nightmares haunted him—nightmares that might have been real. Swords slashed out of the darkness at him. He’d wake up with his heart pounding, often to new gashes on the ceiling or in the headboard of his bed. Every shadow made him jump. He was growing increasingly jittery with every day that passed.
Hook’s ghost wasn’t letting up.
Barrie was sure it was the captain’s ghost now, even if that sounded crazy. The encounter at the children’s museum had confirmed it. If he didn’t find a way to make it stop, he was going to lose his mind.
“Yeah, has Rita been even more freaky than normal?” John asked with a snort.
“Uh, yeah,” Barrie said, distracted. Part of him wanted to tell Michael and John what was going on, but a bigger part of him feared that his friends wouldn’t believe him. “My sister’s a total freak and a half.”
He scanned the shadows in the corners of the hallway, half expecting a sword to lash out at him, or that voice to boom out. He couldn’t get it out of his head.
“Did you hear they’re going to release the concert from the other night on streaming?” Michael said, making Barrie jump. He broke into an air guitar solo, dropping to his knees. “Now you’ll get to see the whole thing.”
“Oh, yeah?” Barrie said vacantly.
“Yeah, it was so lame you couldn’t go,” John said. “But I saw your sister making out with that loser Todd.” He made a grossed-out face like he was sucking a lemon. “So at least you didn’t have to witness that crime against humanity.”
Barrie started toward their classroom, but Michael shot him a weird look.
