Story so far: Shalu knows she’ll lose her brother once he gets his phone back. Can she do anything to stop this?
T he noise burst on Amma the minute she opened the door. She hurried to the playroom and found the children there.
“What happened?” she asked. Both burst into speech, eager to tell her. They had come home to find that someone had broken the castle. “But who did it?” Amma asked, quite bewildered.
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“Ghosts!”
“Nonsense,” Amma snapped. “Ghosts don’t sneak into houses to destroy children’s toys!”
“Then who broke the castle?” Samit demanded. “It was in the playroom all night and today it’s broken. The only person who can creep into a locked house is...”
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“Nitin?” Amma guessed.
“Ghosts!” Samit corrected her. But Amma would not accept that. “The castle must have fallen over and broken,” she suggested. Papa agreed with her.
To catch a ghost
Later, out of hearing of their parents, he told Shalu, “I don’t care what they say. A ghost did this and we are going to catch it! We’ll sit up tonight and watch for it.”
Shalu stared in astonishment at her brother. How were they going to catch a ghost? She could not concentrate on her homework because her mind kept replaying the astonishing plan Samit had made. She was certain she would never be able to fall asleep.
To her surprise, she did manage to drop off. When Samit shook her awake, she was confused. Why was her brother waking her up in the middle of the night? Then he hissed, “Come on, we have a ghost to catch!” and she was suddenly awake.
They sat in the dark playroom, saying nothing. A faint light came in through the window, showing them the outlines of the tiny walls of the castle. Samit had worked furiously at it all evening. At that time, Shalu had thought it was because he was angry. But now he whispered, “Now we’ll know when the ghost comes to destroy our castle!”
Shalu felt a thrill of pleasure to hear Samit say “our castle!” But what would happen once the castle was built? Would Samit remember all the fun he had had with her? He would probably go back to spending hours on his phone.
For a minute she was sad. Then she remembered that she was awake in the middle of the night, hiding out in the playroom, waiting to catch a ghost. And the best part was that she was with Samit!
“What an adventure!” she breathed and Samit nodded. They settled down to catch the ghost who had destroyed their lovely castle.
To be continued...