A Haunting Collection

by Mary Downing Hahn

  Joseph shook his fist at the birds and swore loudly. “Get away from here!”

  The crows stayed where they were, cawing and hopping from branch to branch as if they were mocking him.

  Joseph flattened the earth over the graves. The sound echoed from the barn and the crows cawed louder. When he was done, he marked each grave with a small white stone. As he trudged away, his work done, the camera zoomed in on the stones: 27, 28, and 29. No name, no date—just a number. Slowly, the camera moved back and panned the scene. The stones stood in a row with many others, each marked with a number.

  The nameless dead of Fox Hill County Poor Farm lay buried in the very place that had puzzled Corey and me a few days ago.

  From the hedge’s shadow, the boys crept toward the graves and stared down at them, their faces as sorrowful as mourners at a loved one’s burial.

  Once more the picture dimmed and faded to black.

  13

  Ira looked down at us from the top of the bookcase. “Now you know how we came to be what we are,” he said.

  “The lovely bad ones,” Caleb added with a sad smile.

  “That’s us,” Seth boasted.

  And the shadow children echoed, “Bad ones, bad ones, lovely bad ones. Lovely, lovely, lovely!”

  Caleb wedged himself between Corey and me on the sofa. “We tormented those three from the day we died till the county came snooping around, asking questions they couldn’t answer.”

  “Joseph was the first to skedaddle,” Ira said. “We’d just about run him ragged with tricks and pranks. Soon as he heard rumors there’d be an inquiry, he took off.”

  “Mr. Jaggs was close behind, hugging the money box to his belly.” Caleb laughed. “I wish I could’ve seen his face when he opened it and found nothing inside but old newspapers and stones.”

  All three laughed. “That were one of our best pranks,” Seth said.

  “A true gentleman,” Ira said. “He left his own sister in the lurch.”

  Seth sighed. “Then she went and hanged herself and ruined all our fun by becoming a ghost herself.”

  Ira looked uneasily toward the dark windows. “Better not say more.”

  “Do you think she heard?” Seth asked in a low voice.

  By now, Corey and I were shivering with fear. What we’d seen on the TV screen had been bad enough, but the idea of Miss Ada outside in the dark was even worse. It was all too easy to picture her stalking toward the inn on soundless feet, her face grim, the cane in her hands.

  “Can she still hurt you?” Corey whispered.

  “Yes, but it’s different from before,” Caleb said. “In the old days, she beat us and spoke cruelly and starved us and worked us hard.”

  He hesitated as if he were looking for the right words. When he went on, his voice was so low we had to lean closer to hear him.

  “Now all she has to do is look at us,” he whispered. “There’s a darkness in her eyes that brings back all the hurt of being alive. We feel the grief we felt then, the hunger, the thirst, the cold. Every bad thing that happened to us happens over and over. Our folks die. Our little sisters and brothers die. We die.”

  “And she laughs,” Ira hissed in anger.

  “When she comes, there’s no one to help us,” Seth said. “And no place to hide, except in the cold, dark ground.”

  Neither Corey nor I knew what to say. We just sat there, taking in the awfulness of what we’d heard. The boys watched us. The wind blew harder and the rain pattered like tiny footsteps on the driveway.

  “When we go down into the earth,” Caleb said at last, “we sleep the way cats do, ready to wake at the least sound.”

  “If it hadn’t been for you,” Ira muttered, “we’d be sleeping right now—and so would she.”

  Seth yawned. “Sometimes it’s fun to wake up, but truth to tell, it wearies me. I wish I could close my eyes and never open them to this world again.”

  Ira went to the window and peered out. “Watching for her is the worst part. She could be anywhere, you know.”

  “Not anywhere,” Caleb said. “She can’t leave this place any more than we can.”

  Suddenly, the shadow children began to move, flitting this way and that, a child’s profile here, the outline of a hand there. Their whispering grew louder. “Run and hide, run and hide.”

  As Caleb, Seth, and Ira faded into the darkness with the others, a cold wind blew through the window.

  “There is no escape for you,” a voice cried. “There is no peace!”

  The shadow children twisted and turned. They rushed from one corner to another, but they couldn’t reach the window or the door. She was already ahead of them, blocking their way out.

  Corey leapt to her feet. “Stop,” she cried. “Leave them alone!”

  A tall shape spun toward us, and we saw Miss Ada’s white face, skin stretched tight over her skull, eyes sunk in blackness, hair tangled and coarse. The smell of earth clung to her. She wore the rags of a long dress, but her feet were bare.

  “You made a mockery of me,” she hissed. “You are as bad as they are. Just wait, you wicked, disrespectful children—you will be punished.”

  Miss Ada turned back to the shadow children. But they had drifted out the window like smoke, leaving only the echo of laughter behind.

  “I’ll see to you later!” she shrieked at us and vanished as suddenly as she’d appeared.

  Stunned, Corey and I ran to the window, but all we saw was the dark night and the falling rain. Lightning flickered and briefly lit the lawn. The grove crouched silent and still, hiding its secrets.

  Long after I went to bed, I lay awake. Miss Ada’s face seemed to hang in the dark over me. Her voice rang in my ears.

  “I’ll see to you later, I’ll see to you later, I’ll see to you later, later, later, later. . . .”

  It was almost light by the time I finally shut off her voice and fell asleep.

  Corey hadn’t slept any better than I had. We sat at the breakfast table and picked listlessly at our food. Lulled by the monotonous sound of the rain tapping on the windows, we were barely able to keep our eyes open.

  Grandmother peered at us. “What’s the matter with you two? You look like you didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

  “It’s the weather,” I mumbled. “This kind of rain makes me feel like staying in bed all day.”

  Corey yawned so widely I could see her tonsils. “When is it supposed to stop?”

  “Sometime this afternoon, the paper says.” Grandmother sipped her coffee. “How about a trip to Burlington? We could go shopping to replace the clothes that—” She broke off, her face troubled. “The clothes that were, um, somehow ruined the night those people . . .” Her voice trailed off without finishing the sentence.

  It wasn’t a night Grandmother liked thinking about. There had been too much she didn’t understand, couldn’t explain. Too much that didn’t fit into her rational view of the world.

  Corey and I wasted no time getting ready to go. We needed a break from the inn—and the bad ones—for at least a few hours.

  Grandmother had some errands to do on Church Street, so she turned us loose in the Marketplace. “I’ll meet you back here in an hour,” she said. “We’ll have lunch and then shop.”

  Marketplace was a pedestrian area, kind of like an open-air mall, with plenty of shops, including Gap and a bunch of other big-name stores as well as little-name stores, craft places, and tourist traps. There were fountains and benches and sculptures and lots of open-air eating places deserted because of the rain.

  The weather drove us in and out of stores where stuff was too expensive or we already had it or we didn’t like it.

  We ended up in the Dusty Jacket, a secondhand bookstore, mainly because we’d noticed a huge orange tabby sleeping in the window. Corey wanted to make sure he was real.

  “Indeed, he is real.” The man behind the counter had a bushy gray beard and thick gray hair. Perched on the end of his nose was a pair of old-fashioned gla
sses with gold rims. He wore a plaid shirt tucked into faded corduroy trousers. For some reason, I liked him right away.

  “A watch cat,” he added, “that’s what Mog is. He guards the place at night.”

  Corey poked her head around a display of books to get a better look at Mog. The cat opened one eye a slit, twitched an ear in Corey’s direction, and went back to sleep.

  “Resting up for his nocturnal rounds,” the man said.

  “Does he really chase burglars away?” Corey asked.

  He laughed. “Well, I’ve never been burgled, so I reckon he does.”

  “I bet it’s mice he chases,” Corey said. “Not burglars.”

  “Oh, yes, he chases a fair number of mice. Catches them, too. And then lines them up in a row on the counter for me to admire.”

  While Corey and the man talked, I prowled around the store. Like most used-book stores, there didn’t seem to be much order. No Dewey decimal system, for example. Just piles of nice old books with yellowing pages, going soft around the edges.

  “Are you looking for anything special?” the man asked.

  “Local history, I guess.”

  “I have lots of local history,” he said, “going all the way back to Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. Ethan was born here, you know. In fact, his brother started the University of Vermont.”

  He pulled a biography of Ethan Allen off a shelf and showed it to me. “Good read,” he said. “I recommend it highly. All yours for fifty cents.”

  “What we’d really like to find is a history of Fox Hill,” Corey said.

  “Are you staying at the inn?”

  “Our grandmother owns it,” I told him.

  “Elsie’s your grandmother? Well, I’ll be. She’s one of my regulars, a real nice woman. Comes in sometimes just to visit Mog.” He offered his hand. “My name’s Jack Pumphrey.”

  I shook his hand. “I’m Travis Donovan, and this is my sister, Corey.”

  “What’s going on at the inn these days?” Mr. Pumphrey asked. “There were a lot of strange stories before Elsie bought the place, but I haven’t heard much lately.”

  Corey and I exchanged a glance, unsure what to tell Mr. Pumphrey. Taking a deep breath, I decided to ask him what I really wanted to know—needed to know. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  Mr. Pumphrey hesitated a moment, as if he, too, wasn’t sure what to say. “I hope you won’t think I’m crazy for telling you this, but I once saw a ghost myself, right here in this store. Of course, I didn’t realize he was a ghost at first. He was standing by that shelf over there, looking at books. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him. But when he left, he walked out through the wall instead of the door. That gave me a turn.”

  Mr. Pumphrey laughed nervously and picked up his cat. “Scared poor Mog, too. He puffed up to twice his normal size and ran and hid. I didn’t see him for the rest of the day. He’s a real fraidy cat. Thunder and lightning scare him, too.”

  “Did the ghost ever come back?” Corey asked.

  “Not that I know of, but Vera Bartholomew, who runs the antique shop around the corner, claims she’s seen the same chap in her place. He’s particularly fond of one old armchair. She’s thinking it used to belong to him. Could be, I guess, could be.”

  Mog squirmed, and Mr. Pumphrey set him gently down. “Why are you two so interested in ghosts? Have they showed up at the inn again?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “They sure have.”

  Deep in thought, brow wrinkled, Mr. Pumphrey stroked his beard. “Ghosts have been seen there off and on for years,” he said. “Boys, mostly. And a woman. Hanged herself a long time ago.” He reached down to stroke Mog who was rubbing against his legs and purring. “You want your lunch, don’t you, sir?”

  He straightened up and grinned. “Just last week, some nut driving a hearse came in here with a hippy-dippy woman. They wanted books about Fox Hill, but I didn’t have anything that suited them. They both claimed they’d seen ghosts there.”

  “That was Chester Coakley and Eleanor Duvall,” Corey said. “They’re psychics. Grandmother accused them of faking the ghosts and threw them out.”

  Mr. Pumphrey laughed and went on stroking Mog. “That sounds like Elsie. She has her mind closed against any possibility of the supernatural. Won’t even discuss it.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “The truth,” he said. “I’ve always suspected that the previous owners milked the sightings for all they were worth. Maybe even faked them to get publicity for the inn.”

  “Believe me,” I said, “the ghosts at the inn are just as real as the man you saw walk through the wall of this store.”

  He gave both of us a long, considering look. “You’ve actually seen them?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Lots of times,” Corey put in. “Not just at night, either. We know their names and how they died and what the poor farm was really like.”

  “And you’re not scared?”

  “Just of Miss Ada,” Corey said. “She’s the woman who hanged herself.”

  “We’ve made friends with the boys,” I said, boasting a little. “They call themselves the bad ones, but they’re just ordinary boys.”

  “Ordinary boys who happen to be dead?” Mr. Pumphrey asked.

  “It’s not their fault they’re dead,” Corey said. “Miss Ada left them outside in the cold all night and they froze to death. She’s still mean to them—even now when they’re all dead, including her, she won’t leave them alone.”

  Mr. Pumphrey looked at us long and hard, as if we’d said something that worried him, maybe even scared him. “Let me give you some advice,” he said. “Stay away from those boys. The dead have their place. And the living have theirs. It’s dangerous to cross the line that separates them from us.”

  For a moment, he watched the raindrops race one another down the shop’s window, thinking of what to say next. “It’s one thing to watch a ghost walk through a wall,” he said slowly. “It’s something else to ask him how he did it.”

  “We couldn’t stay away from those boys even if we wanted to,” I told Mr. Pumphrey. “They follow us everywhere.”

  Just then the bell over the door jangled, and a rosy-faced woman rushed inside, struggling to close her umbrella. “Has the book I ordered come in?” she asked Mr. Pumphrey.

  “Excuse me, children.” He turned to the woman. “I was just about to call you, Abigail. The Murder at the Vicarage arrived in this morning’s mail. It’s in good condition—a little foxing, but on the whole it’s a fine first edition.”

  As Mr. Pumphrey handed the book to Abigail, Corey nudged me. “It’s past twelve. Grandmother’s going to be mad if we keep her waiting much longer.”

  “We have to go,” I told Mr. Pumphrey. “We’re supposed to meet our grandmother.”

  Abigail handed her credit card to Mr. Pumphrey. “Thanks so much for getting this for me. It’s the only Agatha Christie first edition I don’t have.”

  As he ran the card through his machine, Mr. Pumphrey watched us open the door. “Say hello to Elsie for me,” he said. “And remember, you can’t trust the dead. They go by different rules than the living.”

  Mog meowed as if he, too, wished to warn us. Then he hopped into the window and watched us run toward Church Street.

  Huddled under her umbrella, Grandmother frowned when she saw us. “I’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes. Where have you been?”

  “At the Dusty Jacket.” I pointed down the brick walkway to the little building squeezed between the Nearly New Emporium and the Vermont Crafts Shop. “Mr. Pumphrey said to say hello for him.”

  Grandmother’s frown turned to a smile. “Jack Pumphrey can talk the ear off a rabbit. Did you meet his cat?”

  “Mog’s huge,” Corey said, “and so sweet and pretty. I wish I had a cat just like him.”

  “He’s also a great mouse killer,” I said.

  “So I’ve heard.” Grandmother started walking down Church
Street, dodging puddles and other people’s umbrellas. “What would you like to eat?”

  “Pizza,” Corey and I said. It was the one thing Mrs. Brewster never fixed and probably never would.

  “I know just the place,” Grandmother said.

  The windows of Nel’s Pizzeria were steamed up, giving it a cozy, welcoming look. As soon as we stepped inside, we smelled tomato sauce and cheese and baking pie crust. Crowds of college kids occupied most of the tables, but the service was quick, and we soon had a pizza the size of the moon, gooey with cheese, runny with tomato sauce, and topped with meatballs the size of a baby’s fist.

  “How does it compare with New York pizza?” Grandmother asked.

  When Corey and I both gave thumbs up, she looked at our empty plates and laughed. “Foolish me. I thought we’d have enough left over for an after-dinner snack.”

  Stuffed with pizza, we headed for Wade’s of Vermont, where Grandmother bought us each a pair of jeans, two pairs of shorts, three T-shirts, and extra underwear and socks.

  “Let’s hope nothing happens to these,” she said. “I can’t afford to replace them.”

  “Don’t worry. The ghosts like us now,” Corey said. “Except for Miss Ada, of course. She hates—”

  Grandmother stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at Corey. Rain dripped off her umbrella and splashed into the puddles. “What are you talking about?”

  Corey’s face turned red with embarrassment. “Just because you don’t believe in ghosts doesn’t mean they aren’t real.”

  “Not that ghost nonsense again,” Grandmother said. “Sensible people simply do not subscribe to such foolishness.”

  “How about Mr. Pumphrey?” I asked. “Do you think he’s sensible?”

  “Jack’s a bit eccentric, but I suppose he’s fairly sensible.” She looked at me closely. “Are you saying Jack Pumphrey believes in ghosts?”

  “He’s seen one in his shop,” Corey said. “And so has the lady who runs the antique store.”

  “And so have you,” I said. “You just won’t admit it.”

  By now Grandmother was unlocking the truck. “Get in out of the rain,” she said crossly. As she edged out of her parking space, she said, “Not another word about ghosts!”