Free The Elevator Ghost by Glen Huser

said to ­Bedelia.
    â€œMaybe he does.”
    Bedelia and Maroo followed Muffin.
    They had been walking for about a quarter of a mile when they noticed flashing lights. Something was happening up ahead.
    They came to the crest of another gully. When she looked down, Bedelia could see some army jeeps from the base nearby and a couple of ambulances.
    The vehicles were at the edge of a wreck of some sort. There was a mass of twisted metal. It was strange metal like a cross between aluminum and fish skin. The lights from the army vehicles gave the wreck a silvery glow. Bedelia noticed what appeared to be rows of small windows in a part of the craft that hadn’t been so badly damaged — windows that scattered the light back at the soldiers and the medics milling around.
    She heard a gasping sound from Maroo. Medics were carrying something out on a stretcher.
    It was a creature that looked exactly like ­Maroo. Its eyes were closed. Black liquid seeped from a wound in the side of its head. She saw Maroo’s hand go up to the side of his own face as if he expected to find the same liquid oozing there.
    Somehow Bedelia knew that the slight figure on the stretcher, so completely motionless, was dead. Muffin whimpered.
    Then they noticed another stretcher being carried out of the wreckage. On it was a figure similar in shape and appearance to Maroo but quite a bit larger. There was a gash across this creature’s chest and more of the black liquid. But the creature’s eyes were open. One of its hands moved to touch the wound.
    Maroo uttered a strange cry, like something caught in a machine.
    Although it was hard to tell from that distance, Bedelia was certain the creature looked up to where they stood at the crest of the gully. Then its eyes closed, and its arm and hand fell limply to the side of the stretcher.
    At the same instant, it seemed to Bedelia that something soft and glowing rose from the stretcher. The misty glow moved toward them. As it ­ascended the walls of the gully and moved farther and farther away from the activity around the wreck, it took on definition. It became a ­duplicate of Maroo only larger. Glowing as Maroo did. White, luminescent.
    Maroo ran down to meet the figure. They clasped each other in a ghostly hug. By Bedelia’s side, Muffin wagged his tail and sighed softly. They watched as the two figures moved away from the crash site, as if they were being drawn by some unseen force. In minutes they were no more than two flickering lights in the distance, like a couple of fireflies in the night.
    Oddly, without Maroo at her side, Bedelia felt suddenly frightened. She turned and hurried for home with Muffin scurrying along behind her.
    â€œWhere have you been?” her mother said crossly when she got home. “I’ve told you not to be running around outside after dark.”
    â€œMuffin got lost,” Bedelia said, “but I found him.”
    Something kept her from telling her parents what really happened that night.
    She knew they would just think she was making up stories. And in the morning, she half ­wondered if it was something she’d dreamed.
    When she and Muffin trekked out to the site the next day, there was no trace of the crash. The sand was oddly smooth and devoid of plants, as if it had all been carefully swept.
    As they headed back, Muffin stopped at the crest of the gully where Maroo had stood with them and watched his father pass away on the stretcher below.
    Muffin whimpered. He nudged Bedelia toward a jimson weed with something caught in its underbranches. It was the small tubelike object Maroo had been carrying. In the daylight, Bedelia could see exactly what it was — a model of a spaceship.
    â€œDoes your aunt still have the model?” Benjamin asked, his eyes transfixed.
    â€œNo, she doesn’t.” Carolina Giddle shook her head. The dragonfly clip in her hair winked at them in the flickering light from the tea