Pioneer Poltergeist. H. Mel Malton

downstairs hallway looked pale in comparison. Picasso, who could see just fine in the dark, glided ahead of him, heading towards the kitchen. If someone was up, maybe there was food available.

      If I was in pioneer times right now, he thought, I wouldn’t have a flashlight, and you couldn’t just turn on the light if you needed to. You’d have to strike a match. I wonder if they had matches back then.

      In the kitchen, he found two plates on the counter, covered with plastic wrap. One was his mother’s half-finished piece of pie, and the other was a whole, kind-of-large piece. He cut a tiny sliver off the big one, and decided, heroically, that he would let his mom have the rest.

      The light from the fridge, when he opened it to get some milk, spoiled the sneaking-around feeling he’d been enjoying. He might as well eat his snack in real, twenty-first century light, and that meant the study. It was a small room opposite the living room, where the computer was, and all the reference books were. He usually did his homework in his room, but he and his mother shared the computer, so he did a lot of it down there, too. It was a good room for writing essays in, and they had started doing serious essays in school last year. I’ll have to set things up better in there before school starts, he thought.

      He shut the door and turned the light on beside the computer. Might as well google Tom Sawyer while I’m up.

      Alan and his mother had an ongoing “conversation”, she called it, about internet use. He knew that most kids and parents did, and generally he wasn’t glued to the machine—he wasn’t a computer nerd, and he wasn’t interested (yet, anyway) in surfing to places he wasn’t supposed to go. His mom had a filter put on, even so. He liked looking things up, though, and he had his own email. The arrangement was that his mother had access to his email, and in return, he had access to hers. They had exchanged passwords and sometimes shared emails back and forth.

      About half an hour later, after Alan had bookmarked some stuff about Tom Sawyer (he thought his mom would probably have a copy of the book) and checked his email (a link from Ziggy, sent before bedtime, to a site that identified handguns. He couldn’t get to it, though. The filter, probably). Then he checked his mom’s inbox to see if there was something from Candace. At least, that’s what he told himself.

      He wondered if his mom ever snooped though his email. Probably not. She trusted him. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t trust his mother, either. It was just that, well, she had been distracted that day, and if there was something going on with his sister, she might have decided not to tell him for some reason. Which could mean it might be a really bad thing. As the only working man in the family, he wanted to know about it.

      There were two emails still in the inbox, and he read them both, feeling like a sneak while he did so, but gritting his teeth and telling himself he had to.

      The first was from Candace, and she was fine. Everything was perfect. She had won an award (he knew it!) and was having “a splendiferous time” and didn’t want to come home, ever (but she put a smiley face beside that, so she was only kidding).

      The second email was from somebody called Emile Joseph. The problem was, it was in French. Now, Alan was doing okay in French class at school, but no way he could read this.

      The subject line read “votre prière,” which meant “your prayer” or something close. The letter opened with “chère Madame,” which was easy, but then launched into a long and complicated sentence that he couldn’t manage. There were words he knew, though. “Prison”, which meant the same thing in English and French. “Amnesty Internationale”, which he’d heard about somewhere, and most importantly, “votre mari,” which meant your husband. Someone was writing to his mom about his father!