A Haunting Collection

by Mary Downing Hahn

  While Grandmother’s attention was focused on Miss Baynes and Miss Edwards, Corey and I made a quick retreat to the lounge to watch television. We had no idea what the bad ones would do next, but we didn’t want Grandmother to blame us for it.

  11

  Wielding the TV remote, I clicked through horror movies, nature shows, sitcom reruns, and dozens of commercials until I found a dumb comedy on HBO. We’d seen it before, but it was just the thing to take our minds off the ghosts. And to delay going to bed.

  Just as we were getting interested in the movie, the scene suddenly changed. One minute, a bunch of rowdy teenagers were laughing it up at a party; the next minute, a pair of horses was pulling an old farm wagon along a muddy road in the country. It was almost dark. Rain poured down. The trees were bare. Mountains loomed against the sky, their tops hidden in clouds. There wasn’t a house or a barn in sight. No livestock. No people. Just woods and fields and mud.

  “Did you switch channels?” Corey grabbed the remote from me and clicked the number for HBO, but the scene didn’t change. She tried TMC, MTV, CNN, ABC, PBS, even HTV. The horse and wagon was on every channel.

  “Something must be wrong with the satellite dish,” I said. “Maybe the wind or—”

  I took the remote back and turned the TV off, but the movie stayed on. The driver hunched over the reins, soaked through. Behind him, a family huddled in the open wagon, heads down, wet, cold, miserable. The camera zoomed in on a sign clumsily lettered “County Poor Farm.”

  “Oh, my gosh!” Corey grabbed my arm. “It’s Fox Hill!”

  The camera shifted to the inn’s front porch. A short, plump man stood there, watching the wagon approach. His face was round, but there was nothing jolly about his expression.

  Beside him was a woman. Her face was pale and hard, her eyes small and close set under straight dark brows. She wore a long black dress, buttoned to her chin. She, too, stared at the wagon.

  The man pulled out a pocket watch. “It’s John Avery with the Perkins family, right on schedule.” His voice was nasal, harsh, and unpleasant. “Four of ’em. Man and wife, baby girl, boy.”

  The woman frowned. “More shiftless folks for us to feed and shelter,” she said with a sniff.

  “I hear the boy’s ill mannered,” the man said. “No respect for his betters. Ungrateful. Surly. A bad one.”

  The woman’s thin lips twitched up at the corners. “Once he’s in my care, he’ll change his ways.”

  The man glanced at her with approval. “You have never failed to break the spirit of the most rebellious child.”

  The wagon pulled up beside the porch. “All right, you lot,” the driver said. “Ride’s over.”

  Hauling their rain-soaked belongings in a couple of small sacks, the Perkins family climbed out of the wagon. The woman looked weak and frail, and the baby clung to her, its tiny hands gripping its mother’s shawl. The man helped his wife to the muddy ground, but he was almost as sickly as she was.

  The camera zoomed in on the boy, showing every feature clearly—freckles, chipped front tooth, shaggy blond hair.

  “Caleb,” I whispered. “It’s Caleb.”

  The short, plump man peered at Mr. Perkins. “You fit to work?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Jaggs.” A deep, hard-edged cough interrupted Mr. Perkins’s answer. Somehow he controlled it and went on. “I’m fit. I’d still be working my own land if—”

  “No excuses,” Mr. Jaggs snapped. “I’ve heard so many pitiful stories it’s a wonder I can sleep at night.”

  The family stood in a crooked row, soaked by the rain, all heads down save Caleb’s.

  Miss Ada turned to him. “You, boy,” she said. “I don’t care for the look in your eye.”

  Caleb shrugged. “There’s much in this world I myself don’t care for, ma’am. This place, to name one.”

  “How dare you speak to me with such insolence.” Miss Ada struck Caleb across the face with her open hand.

  He flinched, but I swear his eyes dared her to strike him again.

  Mrs. Perkins gasped and stepped forward as if to shield Caleb. “I told you to mind your tongue, son.”

  Mr. Jaggs signaled to a burly man lurking near the steps. “Joseph, take the boy away.”

  “No,” Mrs. Perkins said. “He’s just a child, he didn’t mean to be impudent.”

  Joseph ignored the woman. Grabbing Caleb’s arm, he dragged him away.

  At the same time, Mr. Jaggs summoned an old woman from the house. Gesturing to Caleb’s mother, he said, “Show Mrs. Perkins to the women’s quarters, Sadie. I’ll see to Mr. Perkins.”

  “Please,” Mrs. Perkins said, “let me stay with my husband.”

  Miss Ada raised an eyebrow and turned to Mr. Jaggs. “Mrs. Perkins must think she’s a guest at a grand hotel. Perhaps she’d like a nice soft bed and a warm fire.”

  The old woman tugged at Mrs. Perkins’s arm. “’Tis best you do as they say,” she whispered. “The men’s quarters are separate from the women’s. You won’t see much of your husband whilst you’re here.”

  Pressing the baby close to her heart, Mrs. Perkins allowed the old woman to lead her away.

  Head hanging, Mr. Perkins trudged off behind Mr. Jaggs. Even after he was out of sight, we heard him coughing.

  The camera shifted to Joseph and Caleb. The man dragged the boy into a building behind the inn—the carriage house, I thought—and took him down a steep flight of stairs into a dark basement. Opening a heavy wooden door, he thrust Caleb into a small cell.

  “Mebbe the rats will teach you to keep a civil tongue in your head.” With that, he slammed the door shut and locked Caleb into a room that was smaller than a closet, maybe three feet by three feet. No way to lie down unless you curled yourself into a ball. Dirt floor. No window. No light. No heat. Not even a blanket.

  Caleb hurled himself against the door and beat on it with his fists. He yelled, shouted, kicked. Exhausted, he finally gave up and sank down on his haunches.

  The camera moved away from Caleb, out of the cell, out of the building, farther and farther until it seemed to be high in the sky looking down on Fox Hill and the farmland rolling away to the mountains. The scene slowly dimmed, and the screen went dark.

  Alone in the silent room, Corey and I stared at the TV as if we were waiting for part two to begin. When nothing happened, Corey turned to me. “How did they do that?”

  She meant the bad ones, of course. I shook my head. Too much had happened too fast for me to understand any of it.

  While we sat there puzzled and scared, we heard Grandmother’s footsteps in the hall. “What are you two doing, sitting in the dark?” she asked. “Is the TV broken?”

  I got to my feet, aching with exhaustion. “We were just going to bed.”

  “Good,” Grandmother said. “I was coming to tell you to do just that.”

  Corey yawned and followed me out of the guest lounge. At her bedroom door, she paused to whisper, “I don’t want to see any more about the poor farm.”

  Then, without another word, she closed her door and left me in the dark hall.

  I’d seen enough myself, but I had a feeling there was more, and, like it or not, we were going to watch it.

  12

  I hadn’t been asleep long when I woke up freezing cold. Seth had yanked my covers off. He perched at the foot of my bed, laughing. Caleb bounced a ball against the wall over my head, and Ira rocked back and forth in the rocking chair.

  “What?” I mumbled, still half asleep.

  Seth giggled. “We ain’t done with you yet.”

  I pulled the blankets toward me, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to deal with mischievous ghosts.

  “Travis is cold,” Ira observed.

  “Cold—I scarcely ’member what that’s like,” Seth said.

  “Being dead has its advantages.” Caleb jumped to his feet and raised an arm in a theatrical gesture. “‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,’” he proclaimed. “‘Nor the furio
us winter’s rages.’”

  “‘Thou thy worldly task hast done,’” Ira added. “‘Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.’”

  “Shakespeare,” Caleb said. “We had to memorize it in school, back before we came here.”

  “Little did we know then,” Ira said, his face suddenly sad, “how soon we’d ‘come to dust.’”

  “But we ain’t cold and we ain’t hot and we ain’t hungry,” Seth reminded them. “We done been put out of our misery, boys.”

  Caleb yanked my covers off again. “There’s still much for you to learn.”

  Pulling a sweatshirt over my pajamas, I followed the bad ones to the door.

  My sister stood in the hall with the shadow children. “They woke me up, too,” she said glumly.

  The TV was already on in the lounge. On the screen, a deep snow covered the ground, and a fierce wind roared in the trees. The camera led us to a brick building, gone now. Inside, the ceilings were low, the rooms small and cold and dark. The only heat rose through floor vents from a stove on the first floor. Wrapped in a thin blanket, Caleb’s mother huddled on a narrow cot. She held the baby to her breast, rocking it gently. Two women sat nearby, as if trying to share the warmth of their bodies with her.

  “She’s dead,” one woman whispered. “Let her go, there’s naught more you can do.”

  “Poor little baby,” the other whispered. “It’s a cruel world, a wicked world with no mercy.”

  Caleb’s mother didn’t answer, nor did she give up the baby.

  “Please, Sarah,” the first woman begged. “Lay her aside. We’ll see she has a proper burial.”

  “The good Lord has taken her,” the second said, “to spare her suffering.”

  At last, Caleb’s mother let the women have the baby. “He should have taken me,” she whispered, “not her.”

  “He’ll take us all soon enough,” the first woman said.

  The scene slowly faded, and a new image appeared. The men’s quarters this time, as cold and bleak as the women’s. Two men stood over a bed where a dead man lay. Caleb’s father. Without a word, they moved the body to a board and covered it with a cloth. Picking it up, they carried it down the stairs and to the barn. The morning was gray, and the ground was muddy. The maples had begun to bud, and a blackbird sang a few notes.

  “First his little daughter, then his wife,” one man said. “All he had left was the boy.”

  The other man coughed. “And him none too well from the looks of him.”

  “No worse’n the rest of us.”

  Mr. Jaggs appeared at the barn door, and the man who had just spoken spat into the mud. “Should be him we’re burying.”

  “And her, too,” the other said as Miss Ada joined Mr. Jaggs.

  Again the picture faded.

  Corey and I looked at Caleb. “Your whole family died here?” I asked.

  “And me, as well,” he said.

  “All of us.” Seth waved his hand at Ira and the shadow children watching us from the corners.

  “And many more,” Ira added.

  Images appeared on the TV, silent this time. Gaunt, ragged people lined up for watery soup and hard bread. They worked outside in pouring rain and wind, in the cold of winter and the heat of summer. They shivered in dark, cold rooms. They went coatless and barefoot in the snow. They coughed and wheezed and sickened and died.

  And all the while, Mr. Jaggs and Miss Ada passed their days in warmth and comfort and dined on fine food. They ordered beatings and whippings for the farm inhabitants and then slept soundly under feather quilts. They went to church in Sunday finery. They entertained guests. They complained of the detestable poor in their care and the county money wasted upon them.

  “Truth to tell,” Ira said, “the county’s money went to them, not us. They ate beef, and we ate gruel.”

  A new picture appeared on the TV. Miss Ada sat at a desk, writing in an account book.

  “That’s the one she showed the county inspector,” Caleb told us. “It was all lies.”

  The camera shifted to Miss Ada’s bedroom. She was writing in another account book. When she finished, she put the book in a metal box and locked it.

  “That’s the true account book,” Caleb explained, “for her and Mr. Jaggs, so they’d know how much money they’d hidden away.”

  “They also wrote the names of those who died and what they died of,” Ira added.

  “Even the ones they said ran away,” Caleb said. “All the names of the dead are in that book.”

  As he spoke, a new picture formed on the TV screen. Miss Ada was beating Caleb’s back with a cane. His shirt was off, and you could count his ribs.

  “I’ll teach you to steal food!” she yelled as she brought the cane down again and again.

  When Caleb’s back was bleeding, she thrust him aside and grabbed Ira. “Thief! Liar!” she cried as she beat him.

  Last of all, she turned her attention to Seth. “With whom did you share the cheese?” she asked softly. “Tell me, and save yourself a beating.”

  Seth stared up at the woman, his small face clenched with hatred. “I didn’t share it with nobody. I et it all myself.”

  Miss Ada caressed the cane with her long, slender fingers. “Those children knew the cheese was stolen from my pantry. They must be punished, too.”

  “I ain’t telling you nothing,” Seth said.

  “Maybe this will change your mind.” Miss Ada brought the cane down across his back with a loud whack. She paused and looked at him. “Well?”

  “You can beat me till you bust your cane,” Seth said, wincing from the blow. “I won’t tell you nothing.”

  In horror, Corey and I watched her take the cane to Seth again. When she was through, she called Joseph. “Take these boys outside and leave them there till morning. I want the name of every child who ate that cheese. Perhaps a night in the cold will loosen their lips.”

  Joseph grabbed the boys as if they were no more than unwanted kittens and dragged them outside. Without a word, he turned and went back into the house. The door slammed. The bolt slid home.

  The boys huddled together on the snowy ground, barefoot and coatless. The wind roared in the trees, and icicles shone in the moon’s cold light. Slowly, the picture dimmed.

  “In the morning, we knew something had changed,” Caleb said. “We weren’t cold. And we weren’t hungry.”

  “And our backs didn’t hurt none from the beating,” Seth put in.

  “That was almost the strangest part of all,” Ira said.

  “So we just lay in the snow,” Caleb said, “thinking all three of us must be dreaming the same dream.”

  “Then the back door opened,” Ira said, “and Mr. Jaggs saw us lying on the ground. ‘Get up, boys,’ he hollered, ‘I’m not finished with you!’”

  “We rose up to face him,” Caleb said, “but our bodies stayed on the ground. That puzzled us greatly.”

  “We grabbed each other’s hands because we felt too light to stay on earth,” Ira added. “I reckon that’s when we figured out what had happened to us.”

  Caleb nodded. “The trouble was, we weren’t ready to be dead.”

  Seth sighed. “It weren’t fair.”

  On the screen, Mr. Jaggs strode angrily across the frozen ground toward the boys’ huddled bodies. “Get up!” he yelled.

  When no one moved, he nudged Seth with his boot. The boy’s body rolled over. His sightless eyes stared up at Mr. Jaggs.

  The man recoiled. “Dead.” He stared at Ira and Seth. “All three.”

  Frightened, he retreated to the steps and opened the door. “Joseph,” he called in a high voice. “Ada. Come quickly.”

  “What is it?” Miss Ada called from inside. “I’ve scarcely touched my breakfast.”

  Joseph appeared in the doorway, looked at the boys, and called to Miss Ada. “Come quickly, Miss.”

  Holding a dainty teacup, Miss Ada peered over her brother’s shoulder. “What’s the matter with them?” she asked cross
ly. “Why don’t they get up?”

  “Good Lord, Ada, can’t you see?” Mr. Jaggs stared at her, his voice shaking. “They’re dead.”

  Miss Ada choked on her tea. “Dead? How can they be dead?”

  Joseph stared down at the boys. “It was cold last night, miss, below freezing.”

  “How do we explain their deaths?” Mr. Jaggs asked.

  Miss Ada gripped her teacup, her face pale. “Why, we say what we always say when there’s a mishap,” she stammered. “They died of fever. Or they ran away.”

  “But the county inspector is visiting this afternoon,” Mr. Jaggs said. “He’ll see the bodies. He’ll know they froze to death.”

  Miss Ada seemed to recover her wits. “For heaven’s sake, Cornelius. We’ll bury them before he arrives and report them as runaways.”

  “We done similar many times afore,” Joseph put in.

  “But not on the inspector’s visiting day.” Mr. Jaggs looked uneasily at the men and women’s quarters. “They’ll be coming out any moment. They mustn’t see the bodies.”

  The picture dimmed, and a new one slowly formed. Wrapped in sacks, three bodies lay on the ground, screened from the house by a tall, shaggy row of bushes. Near them, Joseph struggled to dig three graves in the cold earth. Neither Mr. Jaggs nor Miss Ada was there to help. The only sound was the thunk of the pickax and the rustle of the wind in the bushes. A bunch of crows streamed past, cawing as they flew. Far away, a dog barked.

  Gradually, Corey and I made out the ghostly shapes of the boys standing in the hedge’s shadow. They watched Joseph and murmured among themselves.

  Every now and then, the man raised his head and looked around, as if he expected to see someone. The boys were invisible to him, but he seemed to sense they were there. He dug faster, cursing to himself, perspiring despite the cold wind.

  When the graves were ready, he dumped each boy into the earth and began shoveling dirt on top of their bodies. From a nearby tree, the crows cawed to each other, taking in the scene with their beady eyes.