Beware of the Basement

Book 3 in the Willy and Tommy Series

BACKGROUND

Wilhelmina Snodgrass has a great life. She lives in Watusi, Texas with her Mom, Dad, and little brother Wendell. Willy, as she prefers to be called, also has a best friend, Tomasina (a.k.a. Tommy) Andretti and a date to the movies with seventh grade heartthrob, Jamie Armstrong.

Willy was lying on her bed thinking about all the strange twists and turns her life had taken in the last four months since her family moved to Watusi from Illinois. She left Mason, kicking and screaming, convinced that her life would never be the same. Well, she was right. Her life would certainly never be the same, but so far, all the changes seemed to be for the better, with the small exception of Tiffany Petersen, but that’s another story.

Over the summer, Willy met her best friend Tommy, who introduced her to a wonderful old lady by the name of Georgianna Carbunkle. Through a convoluted array of events, she learned that she and Mrs. Carbunkle were in fact related. She also learned that her family’s move to Texas was orchestrated by three of her dead ancestors! Willy was convinced that there wasn’t a normally named person in her entire family tree as the ghost’s were named Bella, Aurelia, and Athena. Those were certainly not names you heard everyday.

Bella was the oldest of the three and also Aunt Georgie’s Great Grandmother. Aurelia was her Grandmother, and Athena her Mother. Whenever the girls saw their other worldly friends, they each appeared at the age they were when they began working at the family business, “The Watusi Wig Factory.” Bella was thirty-six at the time and Aurelia and Athena, both twelve. It took a while for the girls to think of Athena, who looked their age, as the Mother of their eighty-three year old friend. But, they supposed stranger things could happen, and did, to them.

Willy never believed in ghosts until she moved to Texas and now they were just an everyday part of her life. Over the summer she and Tommy seemed to meet and talk with them on a regular basis. But being that their initial mission to reopen the wig factory was successfully completed, they started communicating with them in their dreams. Actually, they weren’t dreams at all being that Tommy would remember having the very same experiences and conversations as Willy. So now, not only did Willy and Tommy see each other everyday at school and at their jobs working at the coffee bar in the factory, they also saw each other in their sleep when meeting with Willy’s dead ancestors.

Four months ago, if anyone told her that she would have a friendship with ghosts she would have laughed right in their faces. Two weeks ago, if anyone told her that she would be time traveling on a regular basis, she would have called the loony bin to come get them. But that is exactly what happened.

Once the wig factory was open, Willy and Tommy discovered that one of the employees, Harvey Stingle, could also communicate with her dead ancestors. In fact, Bella told them that if they ever needed her in a hurry they should tell Harvey. He would pass along the message. So this is how the first adventure of opening the wig factory led to the second adventure of finding out who the heck Harvey Stingle was.

It was the second adventure they just completed not even a week ago. It was that same quest that included the time travel and resulted in the discovery of the buried treasure. Willy thought she should start writing all this in a diary. There was no way anyone other than Tommy would ever believe it. One day she might write a series of books about all the adventures she had in Watusi. Of course, she would have to write the books under the guise of fiction. There would be no use in trying to explain to people that these exploits really happened.

As Willy dozed off a little, she continued to think about the last two weeks. Finding out the truth about Harvey Stingle was beyond shocking. And then she and Tommy learned about the other Harvey during their time travels…Really, she had to write these stories down someday.

The long and the short of it was that the Harvey Stingle they knew in their own time was in fact another guardian angel who was sent to Watusi on a mission. His mission was to get the girls to discover the treasure that had been hidden in the secret panel in Bella’s house during the other Harvey’s time.

The girls were barely able to retrieve the treasure without getting caught, as Bella’s house had become ‘The Watusi Public Library.” Once they accomplished the task, they were granted one final ‘awake’ visit with Bella, where she asked them to take the gold along with the letter she wrote over a hundred years earlier to Aunt Georgie. The note was addressed to her “Dearest Family Member” and requested that the gold be used for the good of the town of Watusi.

The girls asked Bella how they were going to explain to Aunt Georgie how they found the treasure. Bella told them to simply inform her that they discovered the cache in the basement of the wig factory. She told the girls that her family rarely went into the lower level so Georgie would have never known it was down there. Willy and Tommy asked why no one went into the basement and were told that they didn’t want to know. They were warned not to go down there themselves.

Willy was curious about what was in the basement, but after their last two adventures, she wasn’t interested enough to actually venture down to find out for herself. After all, having experienced ghosts and time travel in the last few months, she really wasn’t that anxious to encounter what was next. Willy was absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, NOT going to set foot in the wig factory basement. Or so she thought…