Twenty-two
WHAT DID IT MEAN? What did a trunk full of old-fashioned hats and dresses mean? Maybe not much, except that it was exactly the kind of clothing the ghost of Rathburn Park had been described as wearing; and that he’d seen Amelia wear too. And then there was the fact that the key Amelia had carried on a chain around her neck opened the padlock on the trunk. And another thing to consider was what Brett Hardacre had said about there not being any kid named Amelia Rathburn who went to school in Timber City. And what Brett’s grandmother, who ought to know, said about who lived, and who didn’t live, in the Palace.
Matt found himself wondering if Amelia was just a kid who liked to pretend to be a ghost. Maybe even who only pretended to be a Rathburn. That could mean she didn’t really live in the Palace, but there was the fact that she had taken Matt there, and obviously knew all about the old mansion and everything in it.
For a while, for quite a long time actually, Matt went on standing in the same spot in the middle of Old Tom’s cabin. And then for another long spell, he sat in Old Tom’s rocking chair, still thinking and wondering. He didn’t remember actually sitting down, and he hadn’t realized how long he’d been there, when he happened to glance at his watch. He jumped to his feet, whispering, “Wow, I got to get going.”
A minute or two later he was hurriedly pushing his bike down the trail, while reminding himself to check to see if there was anyone close enough to notice, before he ducked out under the No Trespassing sign. Fortunately, nobody was anywhere near.
As a matter of fact, there was no one in sight at all. Even the two cars that had been on the far side of the parking lot were gone. Matt was swinging his leg up over the bicycle seat when he stopped in midswing, paralyzed with amazement.
Only a few yards away from where he was still standing on one leg, a small, cloud-colored dog trotted out of the forest and started across the parking lot. Trotted, and then stopped to look back, as if inviting Matt to follow him. Dropping his bike, stumbling over it and struggling to regain his balance, Matt ran after the dog. But although he ran his fastest, the dog was still several yards ahead of him when it disappeared among the trees at the other edge of the parking lot. Matt ran into the park, and stopped. No dog. No dog anywhere. He went on more slowly then, looking frantically from side to side as he went, looking everywhere.
He had passed the playground, and then several barbecue pits surrounded by tables, and there was still no dog. But this time he wasn’t going to give up so easily. Hurrying on, he was almost to where a service road formed the boundary between the park and the open forest when he saw it. Saw not a small dog, but a large pickup truck.
Way down under the trees, a beat-up old pickup that had once been painted purple was parked on the shoulder of the road. Matt stopped and stared in a state of confused alarm that quickly turned into a scary premonition. A feeling that something awful was happening, or was about to. Trying to grin, he made an effort to shake it off.
What’s wrong with you? he asked himself. It’s just an old pickup. Might be anybody’s. Except that it probably wasn’t just anybody’s, and who it really belonged to was almost certain to be a kid named Lance Layton.
Matt’s next impulse was to run back to the parking lot, jump on his bike and get out of there as fast as he could, but something kept him nailed to the spot while questions started chasing each other through his mind. Questions, for instance, like what was Lance Layton’s truck doing on a deserted service road on the Saturday afternoon when he was supposedly leaving to drive to the coast on the trip that Matt’s brother had insisted he was going on, even though Mom and Dad said he couldn’t? And then an even more urgent question, was Justin Hamilton in that truck, right then? At that very moment?
Without wanting to do it, in fact with one part of his mind definitely warning him not to, Matt started toward the truck. One more question did occur to him while he was on the way there. A question that went What do you think you’re doing, Matt Hamilton? If Justin is there with Lance, what do you think you can do about it?
He certainly didn’t have the answer to that one. Even after he got to the truck, and was standing there right beside it, the only answer he’d come up with was But he’s my brother. Which under the circumstances didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The pickup was empty. No one was in the cab and except for a lot of junk, like bulgy garbage bags and oily car parts, the truck’s bed was empty too. Matt was still staring over the tailgate when he began to hear voices. He couldn’t see anyone at first because the chimney of a barbecue pit was blocking his view. But he recognized one of the voices. He ought to. It was his brother’s. Matt’s premonition had been right. Justin had come to the park in Lance Layton’s truck.
All right, that wasn’t so bad. Justin had gone out in Lance’s truck, all right, but at least they hadn’t started off to drive to the beach party. Matt was ready to hurry back to his bike when he realized the voices were getting louder. And suddenly there they were, coming around the barbecue pit and heading right for the truck—and for Matt.
There were three of them and one of them was Justin. One of the other guys was Lance Layton, and the third, the one Matt had never seen before, was a tall, broad-shouldered guy with tattooed arms and a partly shaved head. The tattooed guy was carrying what looked like a can of beer.
“Hey, Matt,” Lance was shouting. “Hey, get away from that truck.”
Matt backed away, calling, “That’s all right. I’m going. I didn’t touch anything.”
Lance said something to the guy with the shaved head, who immediately threw down the beer can and started running. Even though Matt ran too he’d only managed a few steps when he was grabbed from behind, spun around and thrown to the ground. And then he was lying flat on his back on the road while the three of them stood over him. When he tried to sit up, the guy with the shaved head shoved him back down with his big black-booted foot. “So what’s up, kid?” he said. “You spying on your big brother so you can rat and get everybody into a whole lot of trouble?”
Matt sat up again. He was saying, “No, I wasn’t spying. I didn’t even know—” when Lance stuck one of his feet out too and shoved Matt, kicked him actually, back down. And then Matt was lying there, trying to get his breath while the two big feet were pressing harder and harder on his chest.
But Justin was there too. Matt looked at his brother, stared at him, trying to ask him for help without putting it into words. But at first Justin’s grin only seemed to say that he thought the whole thing was pretty funny. “So tell us, Hamster,” Justin said, “how did you know where to find me? You been listening to my phone calls?”
“No. I didn’t listen to your phone calls,” Matt said, trying to keep his voice steady with no gurgling, tearful sounds. “I wasn’t trying to find you either. I just happened to be following this dog and I just happened to notice the truck and—”
“Dog? What dog was that?” Justin’s tone was sarcastic but at the same time he was pushing Lance out of the way and putting out his hand to pull Matt to his feet. But as soon as Matt was on his feet, the guy with the shaved head grabbed him away from Justin, spun him around and threw him down again, this time very hard.
Matt landed with a thud, whacking his head on the pavement so that there was a kind of explosion inside it, like fireworks on a dark night. And then for a moment nothing but darkness. But only for a moment and then he was coming back, beginning to be dimly aware of what had happened, and was still happening. Aware of the pain at the back of his head and—voices. Loud voices.
“Hey!” Justin was shouting. “Cut it out! Leave him alone. I can take care of him.”
And then someone yelled, “Get your hands off me, Hamilton!” And there were other sounds, scuffling noises and thuds, and more thuds. And when Matt’s eyes started working again, he saw his brother and the other guy fighting, throwing punches. Hard punches and kicks. The spinning darkness closed in again and when it lifted there was only his brother. Onl
y Justin reaching down and pulling Matt to his feet and out of the way while the old purple pickup roared past them and down the road.
“You all right?” Justin asked.
“Yeah. I think so.” Matt was still feeling a little woozy as he twisted his arm to look at his elbow, which was pretty raw, and then reached up to feel the back of his head. There was a lump and when he took his hand away there was blood on his fingers.
“Damn,” Justin was muttering. “Goddamn goon.” Matt knew that this time his brother wasn’t swearing at him.
Twenty-three
MOM WAS ALREADY HOME when Matt and Justin rode up the driveway on Matt’s bicycle. Matt was on the seat hanging on to Justin, who had ridden all the way standing up. If Matt was supposed to be at home, grounded, which he actually was, Mom forgot to mention it when he walked into the kitchen with blood still smeared down his arm and all over the back of his shirt.
Grabbing him by his shoulders, she led him to a chair as if she thought he might be about to collapse. “What happened, darling?” she kept saying. “What on earth happened to you?”
But Matt only said, “Hey, I’m all right. It’s not as bad as it looks. But you better turn me loose, Mom, or things are really going to get messy. I need to go to the bathroom, real bad.”
It worked. Mom let him go, which left it up to Justin to fill in the details before Matt came back from the bathroom. Came back after a quick detour to his room, where he hid Amelia’s locket and key at the back of his underwear drawer. He didn’t hear Justin’s explanation, but when he got back to the kitchen Mom was on the phone to Mrs. Nelson, who lived next door and who happened to be a registered nurse.
Dad got home just as Mrs. Nelson was arriving and for a while a lot of people were talking at once and looking at the back of Matt’s head. And then the nurse was telling Mom and Dad a lot of stuff about what Matt should and shouldn’t do for the next few hours, like not going to sleep and being sure to say so if he started feeling dizzy. Everybody kept asking him how he felt, but no one asked him how it had happened, which was a good thing because he wouldn’t have known what to say. At least he wouldn’t have until he heard Mom explaining that Matt had taken a bad fall on his bike and Justin had rescued him and brought him home.
Justin got a lot of attention that night at the dinner table. Good attention. Like he was some kind of hero. Of course Matt got some attention too, but who wouldn’t if they were wrapped up in more bandages than an Egyptian mummy, not to mention the limp that he’d thrown in as an added special effect? But the attention Matt got was more like he was some kind of world-class victim who was lucky to be alive, and especially lucky to have a lifesaving big brother to come to his rescue. Matt didn’t mention Lance Layton and his pickup and neither did anyone else. In fact the whole “What Exactly Happened to the Hamster” mystery story didn’t get nearly as much attention as Matt had been afraid it might.
The other reason that Matt’s so-called accident didn’t get as much attention as he might have expected was that Courtney kept changing the subject to the results of her latest allergy test and what they meant, which was that she wasn’t nearly as allergic as she used to be.
“Isn’t that frustrating?” Courtney said to Dad and anyone else she could get to listen. “I probably outgrew a lot of my allergies years ago and that doctor in Six Palms just didn’t bother to retest me. And, Dad—listen, Dad. Dr. Rogers said I’m not allergic to dogs anymore, and, Dad… Listen, Dad, and Mom, too. I’m not. I know I’m not.”
And when Mom started saying they shouldn’t rush it and maybe they ought to wait to be sure, Courtney interrupted her.
“But I am sure,” Courtney said. “I did my own test this afternoon. I spent the whole afternoon playing with Brittany’s Taffy and her new puppies and look at me.” Courtney breathed deeply. “See, no wheezing. No coughing.”
The next topic of conversation was, of course, whether Courtney could have one of Taffy’s puppies, a topic that the whole family got into and finally put to a kind of vote. A vote that wound up with a split decision. Three yesses, a no, and a not now but maybe later. You might think that, in a democracy, that would mean the yesses won, but not in a Hamilton-type democracy in which some votes counted more than others. After it became apparent that the no votes had won, Courtney started crying and left the table.
Later when Matt was waiting in the hall for Courtney to come out of the bathroom, Justin went past and said, “Hey, Hamster. Thanks a lot.”
“Me? Thank me?” Matt made it into a question. “For…?”
Justin grinned. “For keeping your mouth shut.”
“Oh, that,” Matt said. “I thought you meant for letting you save my life.”
“Oh, that.” Justin’s grin was pretty uncomplicated for once. “Anytime, kid.”
Matt spent a pretty lousy night, what with having a real doozy of a headache and having to be awakened several times by his mom and dad to be sure he was just asleep and not in some kind of coma. He was still in bed the next morning and not in a very good mood when Justin barged into the room.
Just one loud thud and Justin came on in, the way he always did. But he didn’t look the way he always did. There was something about the way Justin looked that made Matt forget all about his bad mood and sit straight up in bed. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
For a long moment Justin just stared at him, and then he turned away toward the window, shaking his head and making strange meaningless gestures with both hands.
“Justin, tell me.” Matt jumped out of bed and hurried across the room. “What’s the matter?”
Justin shook his head hard and went on shaking it for a long time before he started to talk. “They’re in the hospital, both of them. Dead maybe, the paper didn’t say exactly.”
“Dead? Wh-who? Who’s dead?” Matt stammered.
“Lance. And Rocky. They went off a cliff. Last night on their way to the party.”
“Off—off a cliff?” Matt’s voice wavered and then almost disappeared. “How…? Who…?”
Justin collapsed on the window seat and Matt did too. For a long time neither of them said anything. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, Justin stared at the floor, and Matt stared at Justin. It wasn’t until a kind of eternity had passed that Matt asked, “How did it happen? Did anybody see it happen?”
Justin shook his head. “Nobody knows. They’re still unconscious.” Shaking his head again, he said, “Lance is a good driver. It must have been the beer.”
“The beer?”
“Yeah. That’s what they…” He paused, blinked and swallowed hard before he went on. “That’s what we were doing at the park. Rocky showed up with three six-packs, and Lance didn’t want to take the stuff to the coast in the truck because the cops know him and they’re always stopping him, and if they found the beer cans…” Justin shrugged. “So he decided we’d stop off at the park and—get rid of it before we left.”
“Get rid of the beer?” Matt said. “Oh yeah, I get it. Get rid of it—that way.”
Then came another long spell of silence before Justin got up slowly and went to the door. He turned then and looked back at Matt. He was trying to do his cool one-sided grin, only both sides of his mouth looked kind of sick.
“Thanks again, Hamster,” he said. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“Anytime, kid,” Matt said.
Twenty-four
THE NEXT FEW DAYS were kind of up and down. Some good moments and some others that were pretty awful. Like Sunday, for instance.
On Sunday the whole family was talking about the accident, or in the case of Matt and Justin, mostly listening while other people talked about it. Both Mom and Dad had a lot to say to Justin on the subject, some of it where Matt could hear the conversation and some of it where he couldn’t. But the part he did hear made Matt feel really bad for Justin.
What Mom actually was saying to Justin was a lot of stuff about how sorry she was about what h
ad happened to his friends, but how glad she and Dad were that Justin had had the good sense to change his mind about going with them that night. Matt was watching his brother’s face while Mom was talking and he could tell how miserable Justin was feeling. Mom must have seen it too, but she must have thought it was just because he was worried about Lance.
Sometime during the morning Mom called the Laytons to say how sorry they all were about what had happened, and how Lance and his friend were in their thoughts and prayers. And then during lunch she told everybody what Mrs. Layton had told her.
The news was that Lance was improving but that Rocky was still in a coma, and the doctors were afraid he might be paralyzed. Both of the boys had been tested for alcohol consumption, Mrs. Layton said. The results hadn’t been established yet, but she was worried about it because Lance was the one who had been driving.
When Mom told about the alcohol tests, Justin looked at Matt and went on looking. But what Matt saw in his brother’s face wasn’t a threat, or even a signal that he was asking Matt to go on keeping his mouth shut. The only thing Justin’s eyes seemed to be saying was how sick he was feeling, and a minute later he left the table without finishing his lunch. By the next day the news from the hospital was that Lance and Rocky were doing a little better, but that Lance was in serious trouble with the police because of the results of the alcohol tests.
The other thing Matt kept thinking about during the next few days was Amelia, wondering where she was and if he was ever going to see her again. And what would happen when he did? It didn’t really make a whole lot of difference where she was at the moment, however, because he knew without asking that he wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near his bicycle until…Well, until he got rid of the bandages, at least. It was too bad, though.
Ghosts of Rathburn Park Page 12