Dial M For Morna

Evan Munday

Description

October Schwartz and her five deadest friends are back. The holiday season has descended upon the town of Sticksville like an eggnog rainstorm, but October has no time for candy canes or mistletoe. She's busy dealing with an oddly pleasant new history teacher, her living friends' new roles as high-school radio DJs and two new mysteries that need solving before the new year.

Sujets

• Children's

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770904187
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Dial M for Morna
EVAN MUNDAY
ECW


Call me, maybe.
– Carly Rae Jepsen



Radio-Free Sticksville
Nobody could replace Mr. O’Shea. Until someone did.
October Schwartz encountered said history replacement, Ms. Fenstermacher, in Sticksville’s public library one Sunday afternoon, while October was doing some prep work in advance of raising her five dead friends.
October knew why she was spending the day in the library, but she couldn’t fathom why Ms. Fenstermacher was spending her Sunday with hundreds of books and dozens of severely outdated computer terminals. Wasn’t that like a police officer spending his day off fingerprinting his loved ones?
“October!” Ms. Fenstermacher called as loudly as the regulations of the library would allow and waved both hands at chest level like she was treading water.
October had really wanted to hate Ms. Fenstermacher: it would have been so much easier for her cognitive processes if this new teacher had been someone despicable or even someone forgettable and bland. That Mr. O’Shea was replaced wasn’t overly surprising in itself. With a French teacher suddenly dead and a history teacher imprisoned, Sticksville was the place to be for the ambitious yet unemployed high school teacher that November. (Spoilers follow if you haven’t read the first book.) See, after October Schwartz’s history teacher, Mr. Page, accidentally (but heinously) killed her French teacher, Mr. O’Shea, Sticksville Central High School was scrambling to find non-murderous replacements for both teachers. The instructor they found to replace Mr. O’Shea, victim of the fall’s most horrible crime (so far), had made little impression on October. Mr. Martz was an older gentleman, about the age Mr. O’Shea used to be, who was neither significantly endearing nor unsettling.
Her new history teacher, however, was another story. And though Mr. Martz had replaced Mr. O’Shea in job title, Ms. Fenstermacher seemed like she might one day replace Mr. O’Shea (if such a thing could be done) as the teacher who could be considered some sort of friend.
But October had been burned by pleasant teachers before; after all, the last one turned out to be homicidal, even threatening October with an antique bayonet. The trouble was, October couldn’t help but find Ms. Fenstermacher anything but . . . well . . . kind of awesome. Still, October couldn’t shake the thought that some dark twist hid behind this awesomeness: there was a distinct possibility Ms. F. was a teen-detective-killing robot sent from the future only posing as a history teacher.
Okay, so it’s a recognized fact that teachers, as a rule, are never going to win any Teen Choice Awards. But check this evidence: (a) Ms. Fenstermacher’s hair was dyed nearly as black as October’s, (b) she wore thick-framed glasses like she was Rivers Cuomo or Buddy Holly or someone, and (c) she referenced Battlestar Galactica in October’s class three times in her first week of teaching.
In short, Ms. Fenstermacher certainly wasn’t going to be mistaken for Mr. Santuzzi, October’s less-than-awesome math teacher who ran classes like a boot camp, any time soon. October looked up from the historical atlas of Sticksville spread across the study group table and returned the wave as noncommittally as possible. Unfortunately, October’s half-hearted gesture was encouragement enough: in moments, Ms. Fenstermacher was standing at her shoulder.
“What brings you to Sticksville Public Library this dazzling Sunday afternoon?”
Let’s assume that was an ironic usage of the word dazzling. Though the weather forecasts had called for overcast skies, chilly temperatures, and light rain on that November Sunday, the Weather Gods had exceeded all expectations and whipped up a truly miserable afternoon. Outside the floor-to-ceiling library windows, it looked like sewer water was being hosed down from the rooftops (which was probably not the case).
“Oh, stuff,” October answered.
Of course, by “stuff,” she meant “some last-minute research on Sticksville in the early twentieth century and the MacIsaac family in particular because I’ve slacked off all month and I’m raising a few friends from the dead tomorrow night so we can figure out who killed one of them.”
Y’know, stuff .
“Don’t let me keep you from your stuff,” Fenstermacher said, eyeing the historical atlas with curiosity. Finally, a teacher in Sticksville with a sense of personal space. “I’ve got movies to borrow. I just wanted to say hello.”
With that, Ms. Fenstermacher — clearly vying for cool grownup status, and in a much more ham-fisted way than Mr. O’Shea ever had — departed for the DVD section, leaving October to her historical cartography. And not a moment too soon: the instant her new history teacher had left, October Schwartz uncovered what she’d been searching for the past hour: the address of the boarding house where the living version of Morna MacIsaac had done that living over a hundred years ago.
October hadn’t dedicated as much of her free time over the past month to historical research as she’d originally planned. As you may recall, the whole mystery of Mr. O’Shea’s death was solved by thirteen-year-old October Schwartz with the help of five dead Sticksville children. Those five dead children were from five different, far-flung eras of Canada’s past, and each of them had no idea how they died. In fact, they all had significant gaps in memory around the days leading up to their mysterious (and, let’s assume, tragic) deaths. After the dead kids helped October figure out the mystery behind Mr. O’Shea’s death, she agreed to help them solve the mysteries of their own deaths in return. She had decided to start with Morna MacIsaac, the dead girl whose family immigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1910.
October hadn’t seen or heard from the dead kids since Hallowe’en. The basic rule (and yes , dead kids are stuck with rules, too) was that they could only be raised during a full moon and would only remain among the living until the next full moon. Now, the full moon was here (at least, it would be when it got dark), and so was the narrow window during which she could raise her dead partners again. She was glad to have at least one shred of valuable information she could present to Morna when she resurrected her, alongside her ghostly compatriots, Cyril Cooper, Tabetha Scott, Kirby LaFlamme, and Derek Running Water. She didn’t want to look like a total slacker.
Returning the atlas to its spot on the dusty shelves, October wondered if there was a way she could bring even more evidence to the dead kids — get a little extra credit, for lack of a better term.
“Ms. Fenstermacher,” she called, making — against her better judgement — that same treading water motion. “Ms. Fenstermacher, would you mind helping me?”
A stack of DVD cases under her arm, Ms. Fenstermacher strolled across the library and sat down beside the wide-eyed girl dressed all in black.
“You need help with something?”
“Do you know where I’d find old newspapers? From 1914, say?”
“I’m not sure. This is my first trip to the Sticksville library, but there’s probably a microfilm station where you can look at old newspapers.”
“Microfilm?”
“Let’s find a librarian.”

Ms. Fenstermacher yanked open a metal filing cabinet. Inside, rows upon rows of small paper boxes rested like little white chipmunk coffins. (Actually, it’s probably better if you don’t visualize dead chipmunks.) Faded stickers were affixed to each one, printed with dates and The Sticksville Loon .
“If a newspaper page hasn’t been digitized,” Fenstermacher explained, “it’s likely you can find it on microfilm: small photos of some of the oldest newspapers that can be blown up in a projector. What date are you looking for?”
“Uh, December 1914,” October answered, remembering the end date on Morna’s grave marker. “I’m making a family tree for my dad. Y’know, as a birthday present.” October smiled at her effortless deception. Gullible Ms. Fenstermacher didn’t realize her dad’s birthday wasn’t until March.
“You’re in luck then. Looks like you’ll just need this one film,” Ms. Fenstermacher said, collecting a little white box from the cabinet. She walked over to what looked like an ancient television/microscope hybrid. “It’s just like loading film into a projector. Or like threading a needle.”
Ms. Fenstermacher extracted the shiny snakelike black coil from its container, and October nodded at her teacher’s comparison to two things she’d never done in her life. Seriously, Ms. Fenstermacher might as well have said it was just like churning butter. Luckily she was more than pleased to spool the microfilm herself.

“It’s all loaded now,” she declared, turning the machine on. The front page of a Sticksville Loon from 1914 glowed wanly from the viewer. “You can advance through the pages with this knob, and use these dials to zoom and focus. Give it a spin.”
October sat cautiously in front of the monolithic device and began to advance through the ancient reproductions of Sticksville Loon pages, her eyes roaming the screen for any mention of the MacIsaacs. Ideally, Ms. Fenstermacher would have returned to her DVD search at this point, just so October didn’t seem like a complete ghoul, trolling the library for tales of murdered children, but, as the terrible weather outside acknowledged, this was not an ideal situation. Apparently, October’s history teacher wanted to make sure she got the hang of the microfilm reader first.
“You know, if your dad’s family is from Sticksville, you might want to drop by the Sticksville Museum,” Ms. Fenstermacher suggested, leaning on the desktop. “I volunteer there in my spare time; it has loads of records and photographs. The museum is in the old Cooper House.”
“Cooper House?” Ms. Fenstermacher couldn’t be talking about the former