by Lois Ruby
“Mortals,” Cady scoffs. “Afraid of everything.”
She is so irritating, even now!
“I wish I hadn’t said that stuff about you and your sister when she leaves home. Or about Scooter being a faker and a pest.”
That’s the closest someone like Cady comes to saying I’m sorry. “I forgive you for the things you said.” Long pause, then, “I’m not sure I’m ready to forgive you for trying to drown me.”
“I would have rescued you at the last minute,” she says, but I’m not convinced it’s true.
The sun is creeping higher in the sky, and I’m squinting in the intense rays. I could turn my back to the sun, but I don’t want to move, don’t want to interfere with our conversation.
“You’re a really nice girl, Hannah,” Cady says. “I would have rescued you at the last minute. That’s the truth. Believe me, because I’m way out of practice being nice. I was probably a decent kid the first year or two of my life.”
“Until Nanny Bridget the Lion Tamer trained you. Oh, and I guess it’s a long shot, but I have to ask. Did you know my great-grandparents a long time ago?”
“Just because I’ve lived forever doesn’t mean I’ve known everybody on earth.”
“You’ve known everybody who ever lived in Nightshade. You seem to know everything that goes on there. You slip in and out of the house quickly. What do you do, slide under the door? Walk through walls?”
Cady laughs—that body-shaking laugh is what I like best about her. “We don’t slither under doors or walk through walls, not when an open door is so much easier.”
“However you did it, you took my nail polish and my music box and moved the cameo from my closet shelf. I know why you did those things.”
“Why is that?” she asks sharply, and yeah, she’s still got that sharp edge to her, but I can give her a dose of her own medicine.
“Scooter says even a cockroach wants to be noticed.”
“That’s insulting!”
“That’s why Vivienne does the mischievous things she does—just so we know she’s there. And by the way, you owe me a music box.”
She sings, “Georgia named her, Georgia claimed her, Sweet Georgia Brown!”
“So about my great-grandparents,” I try again. “It would have been around 1946, so they were pretty young. My Nana Fiona was just a baby. Cecil and Moira Flynn, does that ring a bell?”
Her eyes are focused far away. “I sort of remember a baby toddling around the Nightshade yard. Her mother, was that Moira? I remember her because she was the one who did all the wood chopping. The woman could really handle an axe.”
“Yes, that sounds like my great-grandmother!”
“She came outside and found her baby playing with me and asked who I was. I panicked and vanished right before her eyes.”
“That’s what you’re famous for. So maybe you’re part of the reason why Cecil and Moira only lived in the house for a year. Between Vivienne’s doings and you, they thought the house was cursed.”
“Isn’t it?” Cady’s chuckle is sinister. She is a ghost, after all. “You’ll get older, and I won’t. When you’re eighteen, and I’m still a nasty-tempered child, you’ll think I’m deadly boring.”
“You’ll never be boring!” We both shake with laughter, and it’s a tremendous release of all the feelings that have been piling up like a load of bricks on my shoulders. I can start to shrug them off.
With a big goofy smile, Cady says, “I can’t promise that I won’t get snarky from time to time. I have a long history of snarkiness.”
“Me too, though mine isn’t as long as yours. I’m only twelve.”
“I’m always twelve. Remember, sometimes I won’t look like this, with skin and meat on my bones and this beautiful hair.” She tries to tuck it behind her ears, the way I do, but her helmet-hair won’t stay tucked. “It’s sure hard doing this whole-body thing. Think of it this way. It’s as if you’ve been riding your bike up a mountain for thirty minutes, and when you get to the crest, you collapse. I’m close to that point.” She shudders and wavers, a sail in the wind. “Whatever you’re going to say, better say it fast.”
I look at her, so tired and so hopeful. “Here’s my promise, Cady. I will always come back to see you, even if I can’t see you. Kind of the way Vivienne will see you. Sometimes I’ll bring Scooter. Oh, and Luisa and Sara.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Scooter, yeah. Those others, not too often. I’d like to meet Nana Fiona, though.”
Cady’s hand in mine begins to fade away, like a shadow when the sun slides behind a mountain. Suddenly, she’s gone, and her absence carves a chunk right out of my heart, because it’s deep-down lonely among these graves.
A warm comfort streams through my mind, a wave of light and thought. Is that Cady, lingering with me? I hope so, because it’s something that I can roll around in my imagination and knead like Nana Fiona’s bread dough into a beautiful shape, and I believe it’s the thought that Cady wants me to tuck away in my heart and mind forever:
I always knew you were an honest and true friend.
Lois Ruby is the author of several books for middle graders and teens, including The Doll Graveyard, Rebel Spirits, Steal Away Home, The Secret of Laurel Oaks, and Strike! Mother Jones and the Colorado Coal Field War. She and her husband live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the foothills of the awesome Sandia Mountains. While traveling, Lois explores ghostly locations in Kansas, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and even a few spots in Australia, Spain, and Thailand. No spirits have tapped her on the shoulder yet, but she’s ready for that to happen any time now. Please visit Lois at www.loisruby.com.
Read on to sample another chilling ghost story by Lois Ruby,
The Doll Graveyard!
“A six-burner stove!” Mom’s still wigging out on kitchen appliances. “A side-by-side freezer/fridge, and enough granite-slab counter space to do surgery.”
Wow, you could get your appendix out while you wait for a baked potato. Personally, I don’t care about kitchens. I’m moving right into the upstairs bathroom, since my own room is all red flocked wallpaper and a spindly, narrow bed with sagging springs that squeal every time you move an inch. Was this Emily Smythe’s bedroom?
It must have been Emily’s family who had the good sense to update the prehistoric bathrooms and kitchen in this creepy old house. Gram would have said they’re to die for. Every muscle in my whole body is achy from pushing furniture around and hauling boxes up the stairs, not to mention hefting that kidney pie, so I lock myself and Chester in the bathroom and fill up the huge triangular tub with hot water and about a quart of bubble bath. It nearly overflows when I sink into the water up to my shoulders and let my hands and feet float like they’re weightless ghosts riding the bubbles and gentle waves. I can just feel stings of anger seeping out of me into the warm water.
Chester’s chomping to jump into the tub with me, but then it would overflow, and chocolate-brown dog hair would clog the fancy new plumbing, so I tell him, “Hang on, pup. I’ll take you out for a run later, okay?”
He whips his tail around, then coils onto the bath mat and snoozes patiently.
Not Brian. He’s banging on the bathroom door. “I gotta go. It’s an emergency!”
What a colossal pest. “There’s a bathroom downstairs, Brian. It’s the little room with the weird wallpaper that looks like old Sunday funnies. Oh, and it has a toilet. You can’t miss it.” Finally I hear his footsteps stomping down the creaky stairs, but in two minutes he’s back pounding on the door.
“Come on, Shelby. Mom says to take boxes up to the attic.”
“Go ahead,” I say lazily.
“Hunh-uh, not alone!”
“Okaaaay. Give me ten minutes, and we’ll do the attic thing.” Chester raises one ear in agreement that we’ll just keep the pest waiting a lot longer.
I’ve never lived in a house with an attic, and this one is the kind you have to move a rickety ladder up to, then slide the ceiling trapdoor aside an
d hoist yourself up onto the attic floor. Now I wish I hadn’t. It’s dark and smells like soured milk up here. I try to scramble to my feet till my head hits the ceiling. You’d have to be about the size of a shrunken Pygmy to stand up. That pink insulation fluff stuff sticks out between the wall slats. There’s a small round window like the porthole on a ship, which gives a circle of light to the big, dark space that spans the whole length of the second floor of the house. Somehow that little bit of sunshine makes everything seem spookier, lighting up dust motes that swirl, though there’s not a breath of a breeze. I think the air up here’s stood still for about a hundred years.
Brian hands a bunch of flattened cartons up to me, and I slide them across the bare plank floor. The attic seems to be totally empty, but then one of the cartons sails across the floor and thuds into something with a peaked roof jutting up in the shadow. A dollhouse.
“Come up here, Brian.” He scuttles up behind me, and we crawl over and push the little house across the floor toward the porthole for a better look.
I ask, “Does this look familiar to you?”
“Kind of.”
“Look here. Two windows with pale green lace curtains on each side of the front door. Four steps up, then a flat landing, then six more steps to the blue door. It’s just like our house, even down to the goat-shaped knocker on the blue door.”
“Same furniture inside, too. Cool.”
Now I see the three green velvet couches circling the beveled glass-top table in the front parlor. Somebody built this dollhouse as an exact copy of the big house. Probably Mr. Thornewood built it for Sadie, the Tasmanian she-devil Mariah told me about.
The little house looks so lonely and abandoned. I wonder why Emily, or any of the other tenants, didn’t take it with them when they moved.
Brian asks, “Where are the people?”
Good question. There’s a mess on the floor, and the sink’s full of those teeny dishes and pots and pans. It looks like everybody took off in a hurry. My eyes roam around the two stories of the house. “At least they didn’t forget to take the baby, see? The crib’s empty.”
Brian chuckles. “Old-time toilet with the thing you pull instead of flush!”
“Not like our bathrooms, thank goodness. This dollhouse was probably built way back in the last century, and no one bothered to remodel it.”
“Bathtub has claws, see?” Brian reaches in and pulls out the old-fashioned oval tub, then shoves it back in the dollhouse with a gasp.
“What? WHAT?” I yell.
He points to the bathtub. A tiny doll is floating facedown in a small puddle of water. Brian whispers, “They didn’t take the baby.”
“Let’s get out of here.” We both slide across the floor and scamper down the ladder super quick, then glide down the smooth banister to the ground floor, landing on a Persian rug that covers the hardwood. Chester’s waiting for us. “Outside, both of you,” I command. “It was stifling up there; we need fresh air.” Brian tears out the front door, Chester right behind him, and I walk slowly, wondering if Sadie loved her dollhouse. I’m also wondering what kind of a kid would drown a baby in the bathtub. Crazy Emily?
Outside, I look up at dark thunderclouds rolling in. “We won’t have much time out here before the rain starts. So enjoy it while it lasts.”
The yard seems to be acres wide, but not much deeper than the house, and most of it is overgrown with weeds and tall grass. The only thing that saves it from being flat, ugly land are the twin mountains, the Spanish Peaks, dotting the horizon off in the distance. I’ll bet they look really pretty dusted with snow. Something to look forward to, since we seem to be trapped here forever.
We pass a small fishing hole on the north side where no fish could survive in the mustard-yellow algae, and I think about fishing with Dad at Horsetooth Reservoir. Don’t go there, I remind myself. You’re here, now … where lots of weeping willow branches sag from the trees and brush the ground. The air is usually hot and still in late August, but those storm clouds are rolling in. There’s a grassy clearing between two trees where someone seems to have chopped off the low-hanging branches. It looks strange in the middle of all that growth of weeds and grass and weeping willows. Chester sniffs the ground and whimpers. Maybe there’s a juicy bone buried under there that he hasn’t got the heart to go for right now, which is shocking, because Chester’s a great digger. So Brian and I move in closer to see what’s stopped him. Chills ripple up and down my spine.
It’s a graveyard, a miniature cemetery with five tiny wooden markers close together in a horseshoe shape, and one larger one set way apart, as if someone didn’t want that body buried with the rest.
Whatever’s buried here has to be really small, maybe goldfish or pet mice or hamsters, because the whole horseshoe space is only about two feet for the five graves. Someone scribbled messy names on those wooden sticks with a Sharpie, like they were in a huge hurry to get these dead things underground. Same as the doll people who were in a hurry to get out of the house in the attic. What’s everybody’s rush?
A huge question hits me: Who-what-where-when-why? Oops, that’s five questions, the biggie being, What’s buried here?
Five of the wooden grave markers look like those tongue depressors you gag on when doctors look down your throat. One says Dotty Woman, with C.B. nestled between Betsy Anne and Baby Daisy. I’m startled to see a marker for Miss Amelia. It can’t be a coincidence.
“Aunt Amelia?” Brian asks, wide-eyed.
“Hardly. She’s buried in Denver, and besides, even if they shrink-wrapped her, she wouldn’t fit in this grave.” Who are these creatures, Betsy Anne and C.B. and all? They don’t sound like names for goldfish or hamsters.
Brian manages a breathless, “Wow.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
The sixth grave has a larger marker about a foot high and rounded on top like a more traditional gravestone. It says LADY R.I.P. Lady sounds like a good name for a dog, but why is this grave separated from the others?
Now Chester begins rooting around in the little cemetery.
“Don’t, pup,” I command, pulling him away by his collar, but he goes right back to the Miss Amelia marker and frantically pulls at the grass and dirt with one front paw after the other, like he’s pedaling a bike, until his claws click against something. He tosses out dirt and clamps his teeth around a small doll, only about five inches tall. Chester drops her at my feet. Miss Amelia. Matted hair sticks out of her head in black clumps, and she has hard, dark eyes too big for her delicate face. And no eyelids.
So, they’re dolls, Baby Daisy and the rest? Like the one under the glass-top table, only bigger? Brian’s holding Miss Amelia upside down by one black high-laced shoe. Her thick black wool dress hangs over her hair, but old-fashioned muslin pantaloons modestly cover her. I grab her away from Brian and turn her right side up. Her face is cracked and dotted with black flecks and pinholes. Her lips twist in a zigzag, as if the doll maker molded a grotesque mouth when the clay was soft.
“She’s weird,” Brian murmurs as Chester sniffs at the doll.
“I think she was made to be a witch doll.” She gives me the shivers, or is it that the temperature has dropped ten degrees in an instant? “Let’s rebury this ugly thing quick, before the storm.” A streak of lightning signals the urgency, and I drop the doll back in the hole.
Brian squats to the ground and gently lifts her out of her grave. He’s such a softy, that brother of mine. “I’m gonna see if she’ll fit in one of my baseball-card boxes. Then bury her.”
Seems silly to me, but there’s no time to argue as the rain makes small plinking dimples in the dirt pile and soon turns into a thunderous torrent that floods the small grave. We dash to the house, kicking our wet shoes off onto the floor of the mudroom. We’re soaked to the skin, but Miss Amelia is bone-dry, locked in Brian’s hand—which is dripping wet.
Well! That Miss Amelia is a mysterious little doll-person. That’s three dolls we’ve found tod
ay, and not one of them seems very playful.
“Gimme the doll, Brian.”
He flings his hand behind his back, out of my reach. “You’ll toss her in the garbage.”
“I will not!” I reply, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Let her roll around in coffee grounds and bacon grease. “I’m going up to the attic to put her in the dollhouse, which is probably where she came from in the first place.”
“Think she’s hungry? I’d be.”
“You’re always hungry. Anyway, you’re real. She’s not. Face it: Dolls don’t eat or drink.” Or die and get buried.
Brian looks me squarely in the eye. “She is real, Shelby. Maybe I heard her say something.”
“Ridiculous!” I huff as I head for the attic. Emily heard things.…
I seat Miss Amelia on the bottom step in the front hall of the dollhouse. She topples over onto the floor, her stiff legs letting out a quiet squeal, like they need oiling. Or is it her voice? So I limber up her legs with a few hearty bends and seat her again on the step, more securely this time. Immediately she falls over again and lands facedown on the fringed Persian rug at the bottom of the staircase. Curious. Twice? It’s almost like she’s trying to show me something. Patting the floor under her, I feel a bump, maybe a dead bug under there. I peel back the carpeting and—surprise!—there’s a small O-ring nailed to the wood, and it’s just big enough for me to jam my pinkie into it and give it a pull. A tiny trapdoor pops straight up, revealing a secret compartment under the floor! It’s dark inside; I can’t see anything, so I reach in and feel around and just miss getting my fingers snapped into a mousetrap. I toss the mousetrap aside (no mouse in it; I’d die on the spot if there were) and probe around in that little hole again until my fingers find a small rectangular thing, which turns out to be a tiny speckled book no larger than a Jolly Rancher candy. Inside are a few blank pages, yellowed with age.