Eli and I went to check out Uncle Gregor’s basement and make a plan after school.

Eli peered down the dark steps into Uncle Gregor’s crowded, gloomy basement and shivered. “Creepy.”

I flipped the light switch on, but one bare bulb didn’t light it all up. “It’s just a basement full of stuff. We wouldn’t be nervous at all if we hadn’t watched so many monster movies last weekend.”

“I bet there’s a chain-saw murderer over there,” Eli said, pointing. “Look, he even left his chain saw where he can grab it when he jumps out at us.”

“That’s Uncle Gregor’s old chain saw,” I told Eli. “It probably ran out of gas years ago. Besides, if anyone was down here, he wouldn’t be standing around while we argued.”

Eli crossed his arms. “Then what are you waiting for?”

The hair on my arms was standing up by then, but I wasn’t going to tell Eli that. I took a step down the narrow stairs, and then another.

No one jumped out from the shadows.

I hopped down the last few steps and yanked on the string attached to the main light. It came on. No monsters, no murderers, just lots of boxes of Grandma Schenk’s stuff. “See? No one’s here,” I said. I opened the lid of the first box, lifted a big brown pottery jar out of it, and set it down on Uncle Gregor’s workbench. I blew off the dust, and sneezed.

“Who are you?” said a voice right next to my ear.

A voice that was not Eli, because he was still standing at the top of the basement stairs.

A voice that told me someone else actually was in the basement with us.

If I always ran as fast as I did up those stairs, I would be the new middle school track champion, for sure.

Eli ran, but I glanced back through the basement door. Whoever was there had been right next to me. But I couldn’t see anyone. Only…was the air…moving?

We ran through Uncle Gregor’s front door and out into the sun, gasping.

“Did you see who was down there?” I asked, breathing hard.

“I saw you freak out and run up the stairs yelling!” Eli said.

“But you heard it, right?” Maybe Eli would know what to do next. I hadn’t seen as many horror movies as him.

“All I heard was you screaming!” Eli said, frowning.

“Before all that—you didn’t hear anyone else?” I asked.

He shook his head.

It didn’t make sense. That question was loud, and Eli has very good hearing. “I thought I heard something,” I said.

Eli stared at me. “You ran screaming up the stairs because you thought you heard something? You said you weren’t even scared to go down there and I was just making stuff up!” Then he took a step back. “I didn’t make stuff up. You did. You tried to fool me, to scare me.”

Then he picked up his helmet and got on his bike without another word.

“Did not!” I said. I know Eli really hates it when people try to prank him. I thought he knew I’d never do that to him. And definitely not like this.

“I didn’t hear anyone. You weren’t that far away, and I didn’t see anyone there.”

“There’s something freaky down there!” I said. “Really!”

Eli didn’t look scared anymore. He looked mad. “Tell someone else. I’m going home.” He started pedaling.

I looked at my bike. There was no point in following him. Eli wasn’t going to talk about it anymore without proof I wasn’t pranking him.

I could have gone home too, I guess. I could have come back later with my mom and dad. But now I was starting to doubt myself. Maybe there actually wasn’t anyone there at all?

---

I stood in Uncle Gregor’s hallway for a long time, and I listened very carefully. I wasn’t stupid. I was ready to run if someone was down there.

But I didn’t hear anything at all.

So I peeked through the basement door. I didn’t see anyone. Both lights were still on, and everything looked the same as before.

But I couldn’t make my foot take the first step down the stairs.

And then I saw the air move again. It was like a cloud of thick air was hovering over the big brown pottery jar. I stared. What could it be?

As I stared, I heard the question again. “Who are you?” It was coming from the thick air.

I already know that when people find out that the world is bigger and more complicated than they thought—like when they meet an alien for the first time, or discover they have a superpower—they have to make a choice. Are they going to let fear make them do stupid stuff and turn them into a supervillain, like Lex Luthor? Or are they going to figure out what’s really going on first, so they can act appropriately, like Kamala Khan and the Men in Black?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff. If you asked me yesterday, I would have told you, sure, I was ready to deal with whatever came my way.

But today something weird happened, and instead of dealing with it, I freaked out and ran, even though I know better.

So I was still scared, but I was also determined: that’s not who I want to be. Okay. Think. What did I observe?

I still couldn’t see any other people down there, only that thick air. The thick air that was moving very slowly toward me now, and growing larger, and larger.

“Who are you?” it asked again.

This time, I paid attention. The voice was definitely coming from the thick air. And the voice didn’t sound like a chain-saw murderer or a scary clown.

Actually, it sounded kind of like my Grandma Schenk.

I hadn’t seen my Grandma Schenk since I was a little kid. And I have to admit, when I used to play Black Panther, and ask my ancestors to help me out, I never thought any of the Schenks would show up. But ancestors are ancestors, and besides, my parents raised me to be polite.

So, I answered. “I’m Hans Dieter Schenk, but everyone calls me HD. Who—or what—are you?”

The thick air was coming up the stairs. I wondered if I should run now and try again later.

But what if I was the only person in the world who had ever met someone like this? What if the world depended on me hearing what it had to say? That stuff happens in comics all the time. I stared at the thick air and reminded myself that sometimes superheroes look just as strange to us as supervillains do.

The thick air rushed up the stairs and swirled around me, so close it brushed my locs. It stopped and said, “Hans Dieter. Are you Hans Gerhard’s son?”

“No, I’m Hans Peter’s son,” I told it. “Hans Gerhard was my granddad. Who are you?”

“Hans Gerhard is my grandson,” the thick air replied.

Whoa. Definitely an ancestor.

It whooshed forward.

I flinched, but the thick air didn’t hurt me. It—well—it kind of kissed me on the cheek, I think.

“He died before I was born,” I told it.

The thick air made a funny noise, kind of like a cough, or someone about to cry. It whooshed back down the stairs, curled around that brown jar, and flowed inside.

“Are you okay?” I thought ancestors were supposed to already know who else had passed on.

But nothing came out of the jar, and nobody answered.

“I’m sorry if you’re sad,” I told the jar. I watched it for a minute longer, to make sure it wasn’t going to explode or have a lot more ancestors come out of it or anything. It didn’t. “Uh, bye for now,” I said.

Then I stepped back into the hallway, shut the door, and sat down with my back against it while I decided a few things:

1. I really had talked to some thick air that said my grandfather was its grandson. Since it sounded like a lady, it was probably my great-great-grandmother. And since my great-great-grandmothers had been dead a long time, and I wasn’t actually the Black Panther, she was probably a ghost.

2. I wasn’t making things up, and I probably wasn’t crazy. If I was going to make up a ghost, it would look much cooler than that. And I already know that there’s no point wasting a lot of time wondering if things are real just when they start getting interesting. If real life starts to seem weird, it’s probably because sometimes real life is weird.

3. I needed to find someone I could talk to about this. Like Agent J has Agent K, and Elastigirl has that lady who hates capes. Someone who helps them learn what they need to know, and focus on what needs to be done. Grandpop Davis always says that most of the world’s problems would be solved if people would take time to hear each other and work together to solve things. So I just needed to figure out who might believe me.

Eli is my best friend, and he’s good at figuring things out. But he was mad at me. My parents were at work, and I wasn’t sure whether a ghost who didn’t seem to be hurting anyone counted as an emergency. So I decided to go talk to Mr. Ziedrich, since it was time to take the goats to visit him anyway.

I got up, walked very quickly out of Uncle Gregor’s house, locked the front door, and rode my bike home to get the goats.