The Crossroads

by Chris Grabenstein

  Judy slowly opened the booklet and the pages began to flick forward—all by themselves! The flipping paper came to a sudden stop when it reached a page where certain words, down near the bottom, seemed to glow with an eerie light.

  Mr. Eberhart loved to flirt with thefactory girls, often inviting them to join him for makeout sessions in anabandoned machine shop behind the factory.

  The machine shop. Behind the factory.

  That’s where they took Zack!

  “Come on, Zipper. We have to hurry!”

  Judy looked up to thank Mr. Spratling.

  She saw his ghostly body swinging at the noosed end of a tasseled rope.

  Judy and Zipper raced out of the library and were blinded by a brilliant white light.

  “Davy?”

  Clint Eberhart stumbled into the dusty beam. “That hillbilly beaned me with his slingshot!”

  While Eberhart rubbed his ear, Judy and Zipper took off.

  They both knew the way to the front door because they had been up and down this corridor all night long. Now they needed to outrun the limping hellion and go rescue Zack at the abandoned Spratling Clockworks Factory.

  But how are you going to get there?

  The factory was a good fifteen-minute drive from Spratling Manor.

  You don’t have a car. Remember? You came over here with Sheriff Hargrove.

  “You think you can run away, dolly?”

  Eberhart was gaining on them.

  Judy would ponder her transportation problems later. Right now she needed to run. She followed Zipper around a corner and saw moonlight leaking in around the front doorjamb. If they could make it outside, they might have a chance.

  “Thought I’d have to settle for killing your boy. Now I get to kill you and his dog, too!”

  “Faster, Zipper!” They raced to the front door, yanked it open, and then slammed it shut behind them. Judy couldn’t tell who was panting louder: her or the dog.

  “Hey there.”

  She turned around. Billy O’Claire was standing on the porch. He looked paler than usual.

  “That toilet upstairs still giving you trouble?”

  “N-no,” Judy stammered, and tried not to stare at the ghost she had actually known when he was alive. “Our house burned down.”

  “Well, that’s one way to fix your plumbing problems. Oh, I’m supposed to tell you to borrow the old lady’s car. It’s around back. A Caddy. The keys are in the ignition.”

  “Noooo!” It was Eberhart, wailing on the other side of the front door.

  “You better hurry before my grandfather figures out he can walk through walls.”

  “Thanks,” said Judy.

  “Hey, your son’s taking care of my son. I figure it’s the least I can do.”

  Judy and Zipper took off running and saw the Cadillac parked in the side driveway.

  Zipper jumped through the open window and bounded over to the passenger seat, where he yapped at Judy to hurry up and drive! She pulled open the heavy door, climbed behind the steering wheel, and twisted the ignition. The antique auto, meticulously maintained by the chauffeur for five decades, started right up.

  “Hang on,” Judy said. She slipped the car into gear and pointed it toward the winding driveway that would lead them down to the front gates. Zipper stuck his head out the window and barked goodbye to Billy O’Claire as the plumber faded into the night.

  Judy pressed down on the gas pedal.

  Zipper cocked an ear.

  Then Judy heard it, too: another car, revving its engine.

  She checked the rearview mirror and saw Clint Eberhart behind the wheel of a 1958 Thunderbird convertible.

  Great, she thought. The car’s a ghost, too!

  It was a standoff: Spratling had the knife; Zack had the baby.

  The chauffeur stood trembling between them.

  Miss Spratling stepped into a pool of cold moonlight. She rotated the knife in her gnarled fist. Its sharp edge glistened.

  “Clint’s coming,” she hissed. “Do you hear him? Listen! He’s riding here on the wind.”

  Zack heard the wind whistling through a broken-out windowpane.

  “That’s Clint,” Miss Spratling insisted. “He’s coming back to kill you and Mr. Willoughby.”

  Frightened, Willoughby braced himself against the pole.

  “You should go, son,” he said, nearly breathless. “Take the baby. Run away. Hurry! Before Mr. Eberhart returns.”

  “Don’t worry, sir,” said Zack. “Eberhart can’t hurt us. He’s a ghost. He can’t do anything except try to scare us into hurting ourselves or giving her what she needs.”

  “Really?” said Miss Spratling. “Are you sure about that, Mr. Jennings? Clint is different. He was trapped inside that tree so long, he has acquired certain special powers.”

  Zack heard another window rattling behind him.

  He whipped around to see if it was Eberhart launching some kind of sneak attack.

  No. It was just a scraggly tree branch, buffeted by the wind, tapping its fingers against the dingy glass.

  The old lady cackled. “What’s the matter, boy? Afraid of trees?”

  Zack spun back around. “No,” he said. “Not anymore.”

  The Cadillac had an old-fashioned cell phone the size of a bread loaf. The chauffeur had probably installed it sometime in the late eighties, but it still worked. Judy called 911.

  “Tell Sheriff Hargrove that Zack Jennings is being held at Spratling Clockworks. Out back in the machine shop.”

  She knew that the 911 operator would immediately send all available units screaming to the abandoned old factory. She didn’t, however, mention the phantom convertible chasing after her as she and Zipper sped down Route 13 in Gerda Spratling’s 1952 Cadillac Coupe DeVille.

  Now Zack heard something else behind him: police sirens! The cavalry was coming!

  Miss Spratling heard them, too.

  “Back here!” Zack screamed. “Back here!”

  “Zack?” yelled a voice, far off in the distance.

  Zack, clutching that baby carrier, hurried over to the door.

  “We’re back here!”

  He heard something metal hit the floor. He twirled around.

  The old lady had dropped the knife and was getting away through the back door.

  Zack wanted to chase after her, but he still had the baby and Mr. Willoughby to worry about.

  “Back here!” he screamed. “Hurry!”

  “She got away!” Zack said when the police arrived two minutes later.

  “Don’t worry, Zack,” said Sheriff Hargrove. “You did the right thing. Thanks to you, the baby is safe.”

  “She’s in a silver Hyundai. The car that followed her to the crossroads every Monday! I saw her drive away!”

  “Well, she won’t get far. We’ll catch her.”

  “Where’s Judy?”

  “We don’t know, son.”

  “Is she safe?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “We don’t know that, either.”

  Gerda Spratling had learned to drive when she was sixteen.

  However, with Mr. Willoughby constantly at her beck and call, she had not driven much in the intervening fifty-six years. Now she was hunched behind the wheel of Sharon’s silver Hyundai, moving slowly. She was headed home to the manor because she sensed Clint would be there waiting for her.

  Clint will know what to do!

  Clint Eberhart’s Thunderbird was gaining on Judy, so she gunned the Cadillac, jammed the accelerator all the way to the floor.

  “Come on, ghost boy! Show me what you’ve got!”

  She bounded up a knoll, left the pavement, and landed with a rocking thud that sent Zipper’s head bobbling like a dashboard dachshund.

  There was a slow-moving vehicle blocking the road in front of them.

  A silver Hyundai doing thirty-five miles per hour.

  The Cadillac pulled up alongside the Hyundai.

  Gerda Spratling saw Mrs. Jennings
behind the wheel. “How dare she! That woman stole my automobile!”

  The old lady stomped on the gas pedal with all the strength her surging hate could provide.

  Judy saw the blinking red light where 13 crossed 31 and decided to barrel through the intersection to make Miss Spratling and Clint Eberhart chase after her. She’d lead them both away from the factory and Zack and out into the Connecticut countryside.

  Maybe all the way to New Hampshire.

  She looked both ways when she hit the crossroads but didn’t even think about stopping.

  Gerda Spratling squeezed the steering wheel, leaned forward, and willed the whining Hyundai to move faster.

  Faster!

  Then she saw a familiar figure standing at the edge of the crossroads and forgot all about catching up with George Jennings’s wife.

  It was Mary O’Claire.

  The girl who told Sheriff Jennings all those lies!

  Claimed Clint was her husband. Hah!

  The young woman stretched out her arms and beckoned Miss Spratling into the crossroads.

  “Dirty, stinking, stupid liar!” Spratling aimed the car straight at the ghostly apparition.

  Mary drifted to the right.

  Spratling matched her move, cut her wheels sharply.

  The little car was doing sixty miles per hour when it entered the crossroads. That sudden twist of the steering wheel caused it to flip over and tumble down the asphalt. When it finally stopped rolling, when the roof caved in and the gas tank ruptured, when it looked like a rusty beer can flattened under a truck tire—the car exploded.

  Judy looked up at her rearview mirror and saw Miss Spratling swerve off the road.

  Then she heard the explosion.

  She eased onto her brakes, executed a U-turn, and drove back to where the small car had erupted into a fireball.

  No way could Miss Spratling still be alive.

  Zipper stood up in the passenger seat, his front paws planted firmly on the headrest so he could look out the rear window. He yipped and wagged his tail. The bad man was gone. The Thunderbird was nowhere to be seen.

  Judy dialed 911 to report the accident.

  “Your name?” the operator asked.

  “Judy Magruder Jennings.”

  “Mrs. Jennings? Sheriff Hargrove said if you called, I should tell you Zack is fine. Apparently, he was also very brave.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That’s what Ben told me. Said your son is a hero, saved a baby’s and an elderly gentleman’s lives tonight.”

  The operator informed Judy that a fire truck and an ambulance were on their way to the crossroads. Judy hung up, climbed out of the car, and hurried toward the flaming wreck. She moved as close as she could until the heat forced her to step back. The fire department would have to handle the blazing wreck.

  Judy needed to go see her son.

  Zack and Judy spent the rest of the night at a Holiday Inn.

  First thing the next morning, Judy called Mandica and Son Tree Service and asked them to “Please go rip out what’s left of that stupid stump in our backyard.”

  Mr. Mandica thought it was an odd request—worrying about tidying up your yard when you didn’t even really have much of a house anymore.

  Judy offered to pay him double his usual price if he took care of the job, as she put it, “today!”

  Sheriff Hargrove suggested that Judy keep the Cadillac for a little while since her own car had been badly damaged when the garage around it had burned down.

  “This car is kind of creepy, hunh?” Judy said as they drove up Route 13.

  “Yeah.”

  They were coming from dinner at Burger King. Judy had bought Zipper his own Double Whopper, no onions. She figured the dog had earned it, going up against the ghost of Clint Eberhart the way he had.

  Now Zack and Zipper shared the front passenger seat. The dog burrowed in Zack’s lap, enjoying his after-dinner nap.

  “Don’t worry,” said Judy. “We’ll buy a new car. We’ll build a new house. Those kinds of things are easy to replace.”

  After waiting all day, Zack popped the big question: “So, any idea what I should tell Dad about the fire?”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll think of something.”

  “We?”

  “I should’ve listened to Bud and had that tree chopped down. So in a way the fire is my fault, too. I know—we’ll tell your dad I was attempting to make toast again.”

  Zack laughed and it felt good.

  “You know,” said Judy, “I never really liked that house.”

  “What?”

  “Seriously. Sure, it was huge, but it only had a breakfast nook. Where were we supposed to eat lunch? Our next house will definitely have that lunchroom.”

  “What about a detention hall in the hallway?”

  “Nope.” She tousled Zack’s hair. “We don’t need one. Nobody I know ever does anything really, really bad.”

  They reached the blinking light. Judy signaled for a left turn.

  “I thought we were going back to the Holiday Inn.”

  “We are. I just want to check something.”

  She parked the Cadillac on the shoulder of the road in the same spot where Miss Spratling always parked it on Mondays.

  “I want to make sure Mr. Mandica did a good job. Come on.”

  They left Zipper sleeping peacefully in the car and headed up into the trees.

  In the darkness they could make out two new paths of raw clay cut through the underbrush: the result of a backhoe’s heavy tank treads trampling down everything in their way. A huge crater was scooped into the rocky soil where the oak tree had once stood. The stump was gone.

  “Wow,” Zack said, staring into the gaping pit. “It must’ve had a ton of roots.”

  The hole was at least a dozen feet deep, twenty feet wide. Its sides were scraped clean.

  “I think this tree was evil,” Judy said. “I really do.”

  Zack nodded his agreement. “Yeah. Me too.”

  “Shoot.” Judy saw something on the far side of the trench.

  “What?”

  “A root. See? Near the top? Call me crazy, but I want that thing outta here!”

  Judy slid down the stony slope. Zack slid after her. They worked their way around to what had to be the last remnant of the towering tree. Judy grabbed hold of the muddy runner and yanked. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Let me help you.” Zack scraped away dirt until he exposed enough root to give them good handgrips.

  “On three,” Zack said. He and Judy anchored their feet against the bank. “Ready? One, two—”

  “What do you two think you’re doing?”

  They whipped around.

  Eberhart.

  He looked sickly. Feeble. But he was still there, teetering at the edge of the giant hole.

  “Pull, Zack!” Judy shouted.

  Eberhart schussed down the far side of the pit.

  “Pull hard!” They yanked. The root was a long, craggy rope.

  “Let go!” Eberhart moaned. “Leave me alone!”

  The root started popping up through the topsoil.

  “Keep pulling!” They leaned back, wrenched harder. The root kept snapping up, cutting a narrow furrow nine feet long.

  “I’ll kill you both!”

  Finally, the last sinewy strands sprang free. Zack and Judy flew backward, slammed against the hard dirt wall behind them.

  All they could hear was their own hard, steady breathing. Zack smelled something foul. Rotten eggs.

  “P.U.”

  “Yeah,” Judy said. “Sulphur. What they used to call brimstone.”

  “Look!” Zack pointed to a puddle of murky sewer water sizzling in the bottom of the pit. It looked like some kind of oily acid bath bubbling in a six-inch circle of sludge. Only the bubbles weren’t popping up; they were being sucked down into the ground.

  Judy and Zack crabbed up the slope as fast as they could. Their skittering feet sent pebbles and dirt sh
owering down into the hole. When they made it to the crater’s rim, Judy, her adrenaline pumping, flopped backward and stared up at the stars. She took in a deep breath and tried to stop her heart from leaping out of her chest.

  “Wow,” she said. “Okay. That was exciting. I think, you know, he’s gone. Finally. For good. This is officially over. Mr. Eberhart won’t be coming back. You know, I read this article once about how in olden days they used to bury their criminals near a crossroads so the ghosts of the damned wouldn’t be able to find their way back into town, in case, you know, they ever rose up to seek revenge like Mr. Eberhart obviously—”

  Zack nudged Judy. “Uh, Judy? I don’t think it’s over.”

  “Howdy, pardner! Mrs. J.”

  Davy Wilcox stood, hands on his hips, at the far side of the crater.

  “Hey,” Zack said.

  “Hello, Davy,” Judy said. “Good to see you again.”

  There was a noise behind Davy. A rustle of leaves. Three nuns stepped out from the shadows, their black habits fluttering in the breeze.

  “You done good, Zack,” Davy said. “Ripped out every inch of that galdern tree.”

  “Well, Judy helped.”

  “Bless you both,” said Sister Elizabeth.

  “Thanks, son,” said a handsome man in what looked like an air force uniform.

  “Davy?” Zack asked. “Who are all these people?”

  “Well, them there are some real swell nuns. And that feller in the snazzy uniform, that’s Bud. He’s the bus driver.”

  “That’s the gentleman who helped me change my flat tire.” Judy waved at Bud. Bud snapped her back a salute.

  “We’re behind schedule, folks,” Bud said. “Time to board up.”

  Zack saw a pale blond girl dressed all in white.

  “Davy?” Zack whispered. “That girl. She’s a ghost, right?”

  “Yep, but don’t say nothin’. She don’t even know she’s dead—keeps trying to hitch a ride into town so she can go to a summer social!”