by Lois Ruby
FOR THE CHILDREN, TEACHERS, AND LIBRARIANS IN GEORGIA WHO HAVE MADE THE PEACH STATE MY SECOND HOME
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
About the Author
Preview
Hauntings: You’re in for the Fright of Your Life!
Copyright
Lots of people don’t realize that some nightshade plants are poisonous. I mean, deadly poisonous. But that has nothing to do with why our house is called Nightshade. Autumn Splendor is its real name. Could there possibly be a more boring name for a fabulous old mansion that’s been sprawling here on Thornbury Trace for a hundred and twenty years? The house is three stories tall with fourteen rooms and one of those wraparound porches just made for stargazing and sipping lemonade. The house went on the market last year, and my sweet, sentimental dad snapped it up because his grandparents had lived in Autumn Splendor a long time ago, just after World War II, but they only stayed about a year. I wonder why. Well, I wonder why a lot of things.
We moved in last winter when it was cold enough for the water leaking from most of the faucets to freeze midstream. People up north think it’s always hot here in Georgia, but they’re wrong. It can get deadly cold. The house creaked and groaned, and some stairs dipped from the pounding of millions of footsteps. When you least expected it, the hardwood floors slanted east. The wind rattled windows, and don’t get me started on the drafts that crept in under doors that refused to shut tight. No wonder it was vacant for six months!
“It’s a delightfully quirky house,” Mom said that first day as she flipped on the light switch and blew a circuit that plunged all seven of us into darkness.
Gracie, who’s almost three, wailed and buried her head in Mom’s sweatshirt.
“It’s a nightmare. All these shadows make me crazy,” my older sister Franny grumbled. Grumbling is her most cheerful way of talking.
The boys, Scooter and Trick, huddled with me on the steps as if we were waiting for the morning sunrise at three in the afternoon.
“Hey, Hannah, don’t you think it would be cool if the electricity never came back on?” Scooter asked me. He was already sneezing and wheezing because of all the dust that had settled in a house empty for months and months. What if we can’t get Scooter’s humidifier or breathing machine going? I wondered. I’m the big worrier in the family.
Trick reminded us, “No lights, no TV, no WiFi, no microwave, no hot pizza. Doomsday.”
Franny groaned piteously. “I’m getting a twelve-aspirin headache.”
“Not me. I’m getting a brilliant idea!” Dad said, feeling his way to the breaker box under the stairs. “Ages ago, when my grandparents bought this house, the owners said it was called Nightshade. My grandma didn’t like the name and went back to Autumn Splendor, the original name. That’s fine for a stodgy, ordinary place. But this house is spectacular. It’s dark and mysterious, and now that it’s ours, I move that we go back to the perfect name for our shadowy house. Nightshade.”
“Second the motion!” we all cried, except Franny, of course. Now that the lights were back on, we started hauling personal treasures and sports equipment and Gracie’s toys and groceries into the house before the two moving vans arrived with our furniture.
It’s weird that we call the house by name like it’s the eighth member of our family. Say we’re heading home from a day at the county fair, all cotton-candy sticky, and Gracie’s asleep on Dad’s shoulder. He’ll say, “Well, kiddos, let’s hotfoot it back to Nightshade.”
An old house with a name that cool and creepy has to have ghosts, right? I’m always listening for creaky footsteps in the dark and doors slamming in empty rooms and water gurgling through the pipes when everyone else is asleep. Ghostly signs. Not that I believe in ghosts.
But if the real thing doesn’t turn up, all eerie and spooky and Halloweenish, why don’t I just appoint myself, me, Hannah Eileen Flynn, the official Ghost of Nightshade?
One of the best things about our house is its huge attic, and the only way to get to the attic is by pulling down a ladder in my bedroom. Did I choose the right room, or what? Next to my room is Dad’s studio, with a balcony that seems to just hang off the edge of the house. We don’t dare step foot on that balcony until Dad can get a carpenter out here to check it out and make sure we won’t fall to our deaths. We couldn’t even if we wanted to, anyway, because the door is painted shut, which raises lots of questions.
A bunch of the house’s front windows, like big eager eyes, look out over grass and shrubs and nothing else for a half a mile on either side of us. Best of all, Nightshade backs up to a forest. Big old houses with woods for backyards have got to harbor ghosts, and ghosts probably hibernate in the winter, like bears and bats. But now that it’s June and school is out, I’m dying to know what surprises the woods and Nightshade have in store for us this summer.
Something eerie and shivery, I hope.
“Hannah Flynn, you are the only person whose birthday cake is a raspberry pie,” Luisa says, while Mom yanks twelve candles and the good-luck one out of a warm pie the size of a truck’s hubcap. It’s a jumbo pie because my family is huge, but Dad’s taken my siblings to McDonald’s so I can have a peaceful birthday with my two best friends. I’m the only one in the Flynn zoo who craves quiet and order. Sometimes I think I was switched at birth with an alien bot-baby.
Probably not. I do have an actual human mother, who looks just like me and who writes an advice column called “Dear Bettina.” Her column is syndicated in hundreds of small-town newspapers under a glamorous picture of her. If only her readers could see her now, in her baggy red sweats with GO GEORGIA BULLDOGS down the leg stripe. She plops a scoop of ice cream on each of our plates. Chocolate melting and drizzling down the sides of the warm pie, yum! When I die and get to heaven, I’m ordering hot raspberry pie with chocolate ice cream for dessert every day. Wait, do you get a menu in heaven?
A mouthful of pie mooshes Sara’s words: “Don’t forget, next month’s my birthday.”
Like we could forget, since she reminds us twenty times a day. Luisa and Sara and I have been friends forever, but Sara can’t get over the fact that I turn a year older before she does.
Mom smiles at Sara, who says, “I promise y’all a real birthday cake, gooey yellow roses, curlic
ue writing, the whole beautiful mess.”
“And tomorrow I leave for Woodmont,” Luisa says. She’s crazy-excited about winning a camp scholarship from the Shriners. “Wish you two were coming with me. Three awesome weeks with all those new friends I haven’t met yet. Well, just summer friends,” she adds quickly. “Y’all are my real friends.”
“Luck-ee,” Sara moans, scraping up every bit of pie on her plate. “I’m out of here Saturday, too, but it’s just to my grandma’s in Iowa. Iowa is so Midwest.”
My brother Trick would give his right eyeball to go to that Kevin Costner Field of Dreams place in Iowa where they built a baseball diamond out in the middle of a cornfield.
Sara’s still talking. “I’ll be swimming in a stinky pond with my bratty cousins until I’m a prune. And there’ll be corn, corn, corn wherever you look.”
“Don’t forget that boy Joey you met last summer,” Luisa reminds her.
“If he totally ignores me like he did last year, I’ve still got London to look forward to after Iowa. Me, at Buckingham Palace with Kate and William and their two adorable prince and princess kids!”
Luisa says, “It’s not like they’re going to invite you in for pizza, if the royal cooks even know how to make a deep-dish pepperoni. Best you’ll get from the royal family is a wave from the balcony.”
“I hope I see Kate up close. Her hair is so gorgeous,” Sara adds.
“William’s kind of cute, too, even if he’s practically bald.”
They’re so psyched about their summer plans that they don’t even notice me shriveling into my own freckly skin while ice cream melts into a bloody-looking puddle on my plate.
This summer I’m going exactly nowhere.
Sara thrusts a gift bag toward me. “Open it!”
I know what it is. Luisa and Sara always give me T-shirts with wacky messages, and then they borrow them back, and they look way better in them than I do.
They’re both tall and limby, and I’m short and stumpy, without much neck to brag about. A turtleneck reaches past my chin to my lower lip. Adorable.
“Oh, good one!” I chirp. The black shirt says WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN SELDOM MAKE HISTORY. I slip it on over my tank top.
“The minute we saw it on Facebook, Luisa and I knew it was you, since you’re already historically famous at school for being the first one to smell the kitchen fire.”
Big deal. Well, the disaster in our cafeteria did make the front page of the Dalton Daily Citizen, but I toss off the compliment with fake humility. “You can’t miss the aroma of three hundred burning grilled cheese sandwiches.”
“Ewww! I will never eat a grilled cheese again. We’ll probably have ’em, like, three times a week at camp.”
“Nobody in London would be caught dead eating grilled cheese,” Sara boasts.
I jump up to get the milk so she won’t see me roll my eyes. Three gallon jugs fight one another for space on the top shelf of the fridge, since all five of us kids are guzzlers.
Sara carries her smeared plate to the sink. “Thanks for the pie, Mrs. Flynn. I gotta go home to do some laundry for my trip. I’m going to London, or did I mention that already?” she asks with a crinkly grin.
Luisa’s chair squeaks as she stands up. “I’m outta here, too.”
Of course. If Sara goes, Luisa follows. Sometimes I feel like the third wheel on a bike.
“Happy birthday, Hannah. I’ll text you later,” Luisa promises. The kitchen screen door slams behind them, and I still haven’t taken a bite of my pie. I will shrivel up like an overripe peach before they come back. It’s going to be a hot, lonely, boring summer.
Before the whole family bombards our kitchen and digs into the raspberry pie, I slip away to the peaceful forest behind our house. We aren’t supposed to wander past the first row of pine trees. This spring a tree fell across the path when it was struck by lightning. I guess that’s nature’s way of saying KIDS, KEEP OUT! It doesn’t apply to me, of course. Well-behaved women seldom make history. I swing my legs over the giant log, and my sneakers squish a bed of leaves that’s decaying after yesterday’s typical Georgia summer downpour.
It’s that part of the early evening when everything looks gray and hazy and your eyes deceive you. I wander deeper into the woods over a narrow path that someone has tamped down. I never noticed that before, and who could have done it, since nobody ever comes here but my brother Scooter and me? Through a clearing I see the fading sun glint off Moonlight Lake, which Scooter calls Pukey Pond. Dad has warned us a zillion times to stay away from it. He says it’s surrounded by sinkholes and snakes, those disgusting creatures whose only claim to fame is that they swallow mice whole. Snakes are not my favorite animals. People are. My favorite animals, I mean.
The last slice of sun is setting into the water in circles of blue and pink light. Suddenly the sun drops to the depths of the lake, and the forest is darker—too dark to spot a treacherous sinkhole, much less a lurking snake. A shiver squiggles up my spine and prickles my ears. I glance over my shoulder to see if I’d be able to sprint out of the woods if I got bitten, before the venom could stampede through my body.
Nothing behind me looks familiar. It’s as though the trees have clumped together to block my path. My skin begins to crawl, and my heart thumps a loud drumbeat in this silent forest. I feel totally alone, and though I’m usually the one who craves alone time, right now it feels menacing.
I don’t dare walk forward, but I can’t see my way out of the woods, either. My feet move on their own as my eyes dart from tree to tree. Two, three, four more steps back. Where am I? What if I never find my way out? I could end up a skinless bundle of sunburnt bones, all the rest of me munched up by opossums and raccoons. Are raccoons carnivores? Deer aren’t, but there aren’t any Bambis in this forest, are there? No bears, right?
I keep backing up, hoping my feet will automatically retrace their steps—and I nearly land in the lap of a girl perched on a stone bench! I’m sure I’ve never seen that bench in all the times I’ve wandered in the woods.
“You scared me to death!”
She chuckles. “I’m glad to see you’re still kicking.” Her voice is as thin as ribbon, and she’s not at all surprised to see me.
“Who are you?” I demand.
Faded blue eyes stare into mine until I look away. “My name is Cady.”
“Cady who?”
“Just Cady. That’s who I am,” she says as if she wishes she were somebody else.
“How did you get here without me hearing or seeing you?”
Her warm smile promises no answer. Brown hair twisted into a loose knot at the top of her head is held in place with two sticks that look like tree twigs. Wispy curls frame her face, coiled at her pasty-looking cheeks. This girl needs some sunshine! The collar of her long flowery dress is tight around her swan neck. Pointed sleeves nearly cover small hands with half-moon fingernails. She’s got to be sweating like a pig in all those clothes.
“Did you just move into the neighborhood?” I ask, even though there aren’t any houses for half a mile.
“No, I’ve been here a long time,” she says.
“I know everybody in Dalton. Everybody my age.” Wouldn’t I have noticed a girl dressed like she’s from another century? I mean, that kind of getup stands out at school. “I don’t remember seeing you at Brookwood or Dalton Middle.”
“Maybe you weren’t looking in the right places.”
What an annoying answer. And it makes me even more suspicious. “What do your parents do?”
“Do you always treat new friends like they’re criminals?”
I step back, stung by her comment. I guess I have been interrogating her. “I’m a nosy person.”
“I know.” Those faded eyes sharpen again, drilling into my own. “You’re Hannah-in-the-Middle, right? I’m so happy to meet you, finally. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Waiting for me? What do you mean? And how do you know what my family calls me?”
“Y
our family’s noisy. Voices carry.”
“All this distance?”
“If you’re a good listener.” Cady pats the bench beside her. It looks inviting, the stone cool and curved to fit my rear. “We know some of the same people.”
“At school?”
“Yeah, there. I see you around. I’m very observant. It’s easy when you’re on your own.”
She says it so sadly that I make a snap decision to squeeze her in at our lunch table the first day back to school. Luisa and Sara and the others will just have to get used to her. Maybe I can give her some gentle pointers on what to wear. I glance down at my T-shirt and faded cut-offs. I’m not exactly a fashion queen, but at least my clothes don’t look like I inherited them from my grandmother.
Something rustles behind me. “What’s that?” I turn, hoping it’s just a tree frog or a night loon. Whatever it is, it’s quiet now, as if it knows I’m hunting for it. When I turn back, Cady is gone! Did I offend her with too many questions?
And now it’s as if the trees have parted like curtains on a stage, and I can clearly see my way out of the woods. I feel like Alice in Wonderland, or maybe Ella, Enchanted. Someone trapped in a world where nothing makes sense. Am I imagining a girl called Cady who comes and goes on silent feet?
A dash through the tall pines gets me to the felled log at the mouth of the forest. Relief washes through me when I swing my legs over the log to the safe side and the flickering lights of my house welcome me. Everyone should be home by now, wondering where I am. I’ve got to get Scooter alone. He’s the only one I can tell what I saw in the woods.
If it actually happened—Cady, the bench, our strange conversation. It was so real and yet so unbelievable, as if a bright light switched on in the night in the woods, which reminds me of a poem we had to memorize in English class last semester:
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night.”
I guess the dead white guy who wrote that poem didn’t know how to spell tiger. Breathless, I open the screen door.
Mom’s alone in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher to make room for our pie plates. “Where have you been for the last hour, Hannah?”