Crandalls' Castle

by Betty Ren Wright

  “Sort of,” Charli said. “I paddle.”

  “We can work on that,” he told her. “Everyone should know how to swim.”

  Charli felt warmed by more than the late-afternoon sun, but then he spoiled the moment by saying, “Maybe that kid who moved in with Will and Lilly—what’s her name, Sophie? Maybe she’d like to come with us.”

  “Sophia,” Charli said. “I don’t know if she likes swimming.”

  Ray shrugged and got back on his bike. “Can’t hurt to ask,” he said. “She’s probably lonesome.”

  “How can she be lonesome?” Charli demanded. “She’s got a whole crowd of people around her all the time.”

  Ray didn’t answer, and they finished the ride in silence. Now he thinks I’m mean, she thought. He probably expected she and Sophia would become best friends just because they lived across the street from each other.

  “Sophia doesn’t like me,” she told him as they wheeled their bikes up the driveway.

  Ray glanced at her. “How do you know that?”

  “I just know. She thinks I have dumb ideas.”

  She hurried into the house before he could ask any more questions, aware that the bicycle ride was ending as sourly as it had begun.

  They had spaghetti with meatballs for dinner, Charli’s favorite food. Rona told them about some Japanese tourists whose bus had stopped at the restaurant on their way to see the Mississippi River. The visitors had spoken Japanese among themselves, but they all knew English words for hamburgers and french fries because they ate at McDonald’s at home. Then Ray described the bike ride and how beautiful the lake had looked. He seemed to be waiting for Charli to add something, but she kept her head down and ate steadily. Afterward, she rinsed off the plates, put them into the dishwasher, and escaped to the front porch.

  Dan was in the middle of the street, rescuing a ball the twins had thrown there. When he saw Charli he told the boys to take the ball around to the backyard to play. Then he joined her on the front steps.

  “You look pretty grumpy,” he commented. “Or is that just your real self shining through?”

  Charli made a face at him. “You’re pretty grumpy sometimes yourself,” she snapped. “I ought to know!”

  “I told you I was sorry about the other day,” Dan said. “When I looked at that old barn up close and thought about all the money that was going to be spent on it—” He broke off and grinned at her. “At least I didn’t leave the key on the floor,” he teased.

  “Don’t laugh,” Charli said hotly. “I had a good reason for not going back.”

  “What reason?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me,” she said. “It’s too weird.”

  “Try me.” He leaned back and stretched out his long legs.

  Charli hesitated. She had wanted very much to tell someone what she’d seen in the living room at the Castle, but so far she hadn’t. The grown-ups in her family would just laugh and say she had a great imagination. Ray would probably think she was being silly.

  “Promise not to tell Ray or my mom,” she said sternly. “Really promise.”

  “Okay.”

  Charli took a deep breath. “I went in the house and it was spooky, but I went into one of the rooms anyway.…” Then the words tumbled out. The shadow on the wall … the moment when the shadow started rocking as if someone were pushing it … the terror that had made her drop the key and run out of the house.

  When she’d finished she looked at Dan to see if he was laughing. “It’s true!” she told him fiercely. “You’d better believe me!”

  Dan nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But for Pete’s sake, don’t tell any of that to my dad. He’ll want the old wreck more than ever if he thinks it’s haunted.”

  “I know.” Charli remembered Uncle Will saying people would love to stay in a haunted house. “But I can’t work there,” she went on miserably. “I just can’t. So what am I going to say if he asks me again?”

  “Tell him you’re busy.”

  “Who’d believe I’m busy! My mom will think I ought to help, and Ray will say I need the exercise.”

  “You do,” Dan said crushingly and laughed as she tried to push him off the step. “Look.” He was suddenly serious. “If you want, I’ll go over there with you when I get home from work tomorrow. Maybe I can figure out what you saw.”

  Charli cringed.

  “Oh, come on, goofy,” he urged. “If we don’t go, you’re going to keep right on worrying. For nothing!”

  She thought it over. Dan was being a smart aleck, treating her as if she were a silly little kid. Still, it was nice of him to offer to go with her. She knew he didn’t want anything to do with the Castle.

  “Well?” When she continued to hesitate he grinned slyly. “I can ask Sophia the Silent to go with me if you won’t. I bet she can find an answer for you.”

  That did it! “I’ll go,” Charli said with a shudder. “Just you and me.”

  Chapter Ten

  CHARLI

  In twenty-four hours Charli changed her mind about going back to the Castle at least twenty-four times. She knew what she had seen there—why get scared to death again? Still, if Dan could find an explanation for the shadow, she would feel a lot more cheerful than she did now.

  She was still arguing with herself when her tall cousin rounded the corner onto Lincoln Street, walking fast. “I’ll see if Dad left the key,” he called across the street. “You wait here.”

  She felt a surge of hope. Maybe Uncle Will had taken the key with him. Then she wouldn’t have to go today, and Dan couldn’t invite Sophia in her place. She stared at the Crandalls’ front door, fingers crossed, until he appeared and signaled her to follow him around the side of the house.

  “We’ll go through the backyard and cut across the field,” he said when she caught up. “Nobody will notice. My mom’s out, and Sophia has the kids down in the basement playing. Sounds like they’re having a ball.”

  They plunged into the patch of woods at the end of the yard. “What’s your big hurry?” Charli demanded. “It won’t be dark for hours.”

  Dan stopped so suddenly that she almost crashed into him. “Look, I promised I’d do this, so I’m doing it,” he said impatiently. “But my mom left a note telling me to baby-sit the kids as soon as I got home from work. She doesn’t want Sophia to think she has to take care of them full-time.”

  Sophia again. Charli longed to tell him to forget the whole thing, but he strode off before she had a chance.

  On the far side of the field they cut between two houses, ignoring the curious stare of a woman digging weeds in her yard. While Dan fitted the key into the Castle door, Charli peeked over her shoulder and saw that the woman had come around her house to watch them.

  “She thinks we’re breaking in,” she muttered.

  Dan snorted. “So what? I bet she doesn’t care one way or the other. She’d probably be grateful if we burned the place down. Who’d want to look out their front window at this dump all day?”

  He pushed open the door and they stepped into the musty foyer.

  “In there,” Charli whispered, pointing. They crossed to the archway and looked into the long narrow room.

  “Right there.” She gestured at the bare wall opposite the windows. “In the middle.”

  “Well, it’s not there now,” Dan said. “And there’s nothing across from it that could make a shadow. No way!”

  Charli bit her lip. “Wait a minute. The shadow wasn’t there the first time I looked in here. It just—came.”

  “You imagined it,” Dan said. Now he sounded bored. “The trouble with you is, you want to see a ghost.”

  “No, I don’t!” Charli protested. “Maybe I did once, but I don’t now. That chair next to the fireplace,” she added desperately. “It looks different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s changed since I was here the first time, that’s all.”

  Dan groaned. “Cut it out, wil
l you? This is a waste of time, Charli. Either you’re trying to scare yourself, or”—he paused—“maybe you’d rather lie around and read all summer instead of helping out here.” His face reddened at her expression, but he kept on. “That won’t work, and you’d better believe it. My dad would put out the welcome mat for a ghost, and your folks—Ray, especially—would tell you to quit goofing off and get busy.”

  “But I don’t want to goof off!” Charli was so angry she could hardly speak. “You think you know everything! I did see that shadow, I don’t care what you say—”

  She broke off. Someone else was talking.

  “Hey!” Dan exclaimed. They went back into the foyer and stared up at the staircase. The soft murmuring continued. It was a woman’s voice, speaking in a singsong rhythm that reminded Charli of the verses she used to chant when she jumped rope.

  “Told you so!” She mouthed the words at Dan, but he shook his head impatiently.

  “Don’t be dumb, that’s no ghost. Somebody’s broken in—a homeless person—maybe a runaway. She’s probably been hanging out here and nobody’s noticed.”

  “But why is she singing?”

  “Thinks she’s going to scare us off,” Dan muttered. He started up the stairs. “Well, it’s not going to work.”

  “It works for me,” Charli protested. “Whoever she is, she sounds really strange. What if she has a gun or a knife? Let’s go! We can call the police from your house.” She tugged at Dan’s sleeve, but he shook her off.

  “Go if you want to,” he said. “She might get away before the police come, and then we’ll never know whether …”

  Whether she’s real or not, Charli thought. Dan wasn’t as sure of the truth as he pretended to be.

  At the top of the stairs they stopped to listen. The landing was deep enough to be used as a small sitting room. On either side of it extended a hallway lined with doors, some open, some closed.

  The voice was louder up here. “That way,” Charli whispered, wondering if she was the only one who thought the song sounded unreal, more like an echo than a real voice. She glanced at Dan and saw his eyes widen in alarm.

  They started down the hallway, stopping to peek into each room. Except for an old chest in one room and a chair with a broken rocker in another, there was little to see but dusty floors and stained, peeling wallpaper. The bathroom held a huge, grimy-looking tub, and there was a partly closed door that turned out to be a linen cabinet. At each doorway, Charli’s heart beat faster and the singing grew louder.

  “In there,” Dan said. He nodded at a closed door at the end of the hall. “Has to be.”

  Another sound began then, a soft gurgling.

  “Hey, that’s a baby!” Charli whispered. “She has a baby with her.” Maybe Dan was right; a homeless person had sneaked into the Castle … a mother who needed help … no one to be afraid of.…

  The singing stopped, and laughter took its place. Mothers laugh with their babies, Charli reminded herself; mothers sing and laugh—only not like this. The laughter swirled around them like the shriek of a bird. Charli gasped as the baby began to scream.

  The last door was open a crack. Dan kicked it hard and as it swung back the laughter and the screams stopped.

  Charli peered around his shoulder. “Where are they?” she whispered. “Where’s the baby?”

  He gave the door another shove, and now they could see the entire room. It was empty except for a bed. In the middle of the sagging mattress was a faded quilt, oddly bunched.

  “Nobody” Dan said, breathing hard. “There’s nobody here at all!”

  Charli turned and ran, half-falling down the staircase and out the big front door. She didn’t know if Dan was behind her until she heard the door close and the key turn in the lock.

  When she slowed to walk, at last, she was halfway across the field. Dan caught up to her, his hands shoved in his pockets.

  “I said I didn’t want to stay long, and we sure didn’t,” he said dryly. “I never saw you move so fast.”

  She glared at him. “I suppose you aren’t as scared as I am,” she snapped. “I suppose you think there was a real woman and a real baby in that room. Hiding in the closet or something!”

  “There aren’t any closets,” Dan said. “Didn’t you notice? That house was built when people hung their clothes in wardrobes. Which is another great thing for my dad to keep in mind when he thinks about furnishing all those bedrooms.”

  “But he won’t furnish them,” Charli said, shocked. “Not when we tell him—”

  “We’re not going to tell him,” Dan said flatly. “At least, I’m not going to. What’s the point? If there’s one thing that would make him even more determined to go ahead it would be to hear that the Castle is haunted. He’d put an ad in the papers, for Pete’s sake: ‘Spend the night in a genuine haunted house. Ghost guaranteed, one to a customer!’”

  Charli groaned. “But he wants me to help,” she wailed. “I can’t work there!”

  Dan walked faster.

  “Could they have been behind the door?” she demanded desperately. “A lady and her baby? Is that possible?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Dan said gruffly. “Maybe someone was playing a trick on us—who knows?” Then, as if he were reading her mind, he closed off the only escape route she had. “If you’re smart you won’t tell Aunt Rona about this either,” he said. “She’d probably try to help—tell my dad she’s decided you shouldn’t work this summer or something—but she’d tell Ray about it, too. And I can guess what he’d say about people who believe in ghosts.”

  Chapter Eleven

  SOPHIA’S JOURNAL

  Dan calls the twins’ mountain-climbing adventure a Crandall Moment. That’s how his family lives, he says, one near-disaster after another, especially his dad. If that’s so, then I guess they already understand that Will is a dangerous person. But they don’t know how dangerous, and neither do I. I keep waiting for a sign.

  I’ve had some Crandall Moments of my own, but they aren’t disasters—just neat memories I’ll take with me if I have to leave here next week or next month. Whenever. Yesterday, when I called Mickey and held out my arms, he took three or four steps before he toppled over! And last night I discovered Lilly had put her mother’s hand-stitched spread on my bed. I could hardly believe it. If I had something my mother made, I’d keep it locked up in a safe.

  And then today. For some reason I slept through all the morning clatter, and when I finally went downstairs Lilly and Will and the kids were nearly through eating breakfast. I smelled warm cinnamon rolls and—this is strange—it made me think again of my mother. Actually, I don’t remember her at all, but for a few seconds I felt as if I did.

  I must have looked happy, because Will said, “Hey, Sophia’s smiling,” as if that was a big deal. Dan pushed the rolls toward my chair and said, “You’d better grab one while you have a chance. You’re lucky the monsters left any for you.”

  “Not a monster,” Gene shouted. “I only had two. Terry had three and a half.”

  Terry yelled, “Didn’t,” and a battle began. Mickey cried.

  Will said, “Shame on you kids, you’ve scared the baby,” but Lilly laughed. “He needs a clean diaper, poor dear,” she said. “I’ll take him.” She stood up and looked at her noisy kids as if all that racket was music to her.

  Dan rolled his eyes and said, “Time to go to work, thank goodness!” And Lilly laughed some more. As they walked down the hall together, I heard her say, “You were just as bad when you were their age, and look at you now.” You could tell he’s absolutely perfect in her eyes—they all are.

  With no one but Will and me left to listen, the twins quieted down. Then Terry smiled, which really does make him look like an angel, and said, “Let’s play hide-and-seek. That would be fun.”

  I said, “Okay, soon as I have my breakfast,” and the smile disappeared.

  “Not you, Sophia—Daddy,” he said. “We want Daddy.”

  Will looked pleased.
“Okay,” he said. “Ten minutes, no more. You go out in the backyard and wait until Sophia calls you to come in.” He winked at me as if he liked hide-and-seek as much as they did.

  The twins dashed out the back door, and—well, you won’t believe what happened after that. Will kicked off his shoes and went into the pantry, which is a long, narrow closet-room with cupboards and a counter, and shelves that go nearly to the ceiling. For a second or two he stared at the shelves, and then he climbed onto the counter in his stocking feet. He began taking canisters and boxes and jars from the top shelf, his long arms swooping down to the counter, up and down, up and down, like a robot’s.

  “Been thinking about this ever since the last time we played,” he panted. “You’ll see—it’ll drive the kids crazy!”

  It drove me crazy, just watching him. In no time, he’d made a total mess of the pantry, piling boxes in teetery stacks and shoving cans to the back of the counter with his feet. I thought, What will Lilly say? What would my great-grandmother say if she saw him, or Mrs. Wagner? Why was he doing it, anyway?

  I found out why, soon enough. When the top shelf was empty, he stepped onto a big box labeled cookbooks and climbed from there to the edge of the first shelf. Then he sort of chinned himself on the top shelf and swung upward. It sounds impossible, but the next thing I knew he was stretched out almost full length on the highest shelf. Only his blue-jeaned knees stuck out over the edge.

  “Okay, Sophia,” he called. “Tell them they can come in.”

  Lilly came back to the kitchen with Mickey just as the twins threw open the screen door and raced around. They looked under the table and in the broom closet and then tore into the dining room and up the stairs, making enough noise for ten.

  Lilly said, “Uh-oh, hide-and-seek,” as if she’d seen this before. “Where …?”

  Now comes the explosion, I thought. I nodded toward the pantry and held my breath.

  Her big eyes widened when she saw the clutter of boxes and jars and cans on the counter. “Oh, Will,” she groaned, and Will peeked over the edge of the top shelf. He looked really pleased with himself.