Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5 Lydia, Daniel, and Barkley had been wandering the upper floors for the past hour and weren't any closer to finding the source. Back in the kitchen, Abbi was starting to get a little motion sick from watching through her friends' cameras the whole time. "Don't you think the sound was louder near Wallis's room?" Daniel asked. "No, it was for sure louder near our rooms!" Lydia said. The twins visited so often that they had their own bedrooms. Most of the time, they just slept on the floor of Abbi's room, but Wallis always

said there was no reason to have such a big house if no one was using it! "But we were just down our hallway!" Daniel said. Abbi rested her head on her fist. She was getting frustrated again. Even if she could see the waves on the graph, there would be no way to pinpoint the location from down here in the kitchen. If only she could be up there with them! "Dang elevator," she mumbled.

Wallis walked in for another refill. "What was that, honey?" "Oh, nothing, Mom!" Abbi sighed. She didn't want her mom to feel bad about the elevator not working. It wasn't her fault the thing was ancient! On the tablet, Daniel and Lydia were still debating which way to go next. Wallis leaned over and waved at them through the screen. "How's the search going? Find Emory's ghost yet?"

Abbi muted her microphone, then poked her mom's arm. "Stop teasing! Lydia's still scared." "Who's teasing? I've been wanting to find a ghost here ever since I moved in!" she said. "What's the point of living in an old castle if it's not haunted, right?" Wallis ruffled her daughter's hair before grabbing a cookie from the counter and heading back to her office. "Hey! Hey, Abbi!" Daniel said. "I think we've got something!" She unmuted her tablet and sat forward. "What did you find?" The twins started running. The hallway's wood paneling and floral wallpaper blurred around them. Abbi felt queasy again, but she didn't want to look away and miss seeing whatever they were chasing. "Technically we didn't find anything," Lydia clarified. "Barkley did! He just took off all of a sudden!"

That was strange! Barkley liked chewing and getting his belly scratched way more than running. "Barkley, wait up!" Lydia called. They both slammed to a stop once they reached Barkley. Abbi tried to get her bearings through the screen. Both Lydia and Daniel were leaning over, trying to catch their breath, so their cameras were pointed at the ground.

"What is it?" she asked, unable to wait. "What did he find?" Daniel stood up first. Abbi focused on his side of the screen. "Nothing," he said. "He just led us to the end of the hall. See? We're just at the elevator." Abbi's shoulders drooped. "A dead end." She could see through Lydia's camera that Barkley was still on alert, though! His tail was wagging, and his ears were pricked up. He looked ready to play. But why would he have run here for that?