The Ghostly Hideaway

by Doris Hale Sanders

“Hey, Dad,” Andy was excited. “Is tomorrow really the Fourth of July?”

  “Yep, it sure is, Son. However, we can’t have much of a celebration. We won’t have any fireworks, firecrackers, or anything like that; and we won’t have hot dogs since we’ve already eaten all those. However, we’ll have a good time. We brought the grill, we had some charcoal and lighter, and we can look in the freezer and see if there’s any meat in there to grill. If I had a shotgun, I’d see about killing some wild rabbits to grill. I saw some the other day but I couldn’t get them without a gun. Anyway we’ll have a good time.”

  A week had gone by since the picture album magically appeared in Chrissy’s bedroom. Nothing had happened since that time that couldn’t be explained logically; but there sure wasn’t any simple answer to that riddle. It bothered Ed a lot to think that a person had been in his eighteen-year-old daughter’s bedroom without any of them being aware of it. He thought it might be easier to blame it on a ghost but he just couldn’t bring himself to accept the ghost theory.

  He wondered, too, exactly where they were. He had taken the atlas out of the car but he couldn’t be positive which exit they had taken off the U.S. 60 By-Pass and after that, the rain had made it a total blur. He wasn’t even sure he could find his way out to the main road, whatever that road was. It would be almost laughable if it weren’t so serious. He was going to have to take a nice long walk and see if they had any neighbors at all. They hadn’t seen anyone since they’d been here and that was almost three weeks. It had been over three weeks since Mr. Coy made the last entry in his journal. That meant no one had come around to see about him, either, for that long. Surely, they weren’t that isolated. At any rate, they needed to know. Maybe he’d do that right now. They had just had lunch and he knew several hours of daylight remained before dark.

  “Penny,” he called, where are you?”

  “I’m here in the pantry. I was checking to see if we had any meat left in the freezer to use for our Independence Day celebration. I can’t find a thing that looks to be meat. I guess we’ll just have to become vegetarians until we can go to a store. I know Mr. Coy was having the electric bill paid automatically from his bank account, but I’m almost afraid to put too much in the freezer when the electricity could be turned off at any time for non-payment. It seems that someone would have come looking for him by now, doesn’t it? It sure does worry me. This is a nice place, I enjoy living here and there doesn’t seem to be anyone who would tell us to get out; but it still makes me think, what if?”

  “I’ve been thinking along those lines myself and I came in to tell you that I’m going for a walk and see if we have any neighbors that I can find.”

  “That sounds like a good idea; but be careful and don’t get lost. I’ll expect you back long before dark.”

  “Okay." Ed picked up a good-sized stick from the fencerow to use as a walking stick and struck out across the field. The road they came in on had ended in front of the house. He had walked about a half-mile, he estimated, when his route suddenly became a steep hill through dense woods. The wooded area was crowded with trees and he had to turn sideways to get between some of them. When he finally reached the top of the hill, he could see a wagon trail that amounted to nothing more than a set of ruts running along the top of the hill. He began to follow the rutted trail that was a great deal easier than having to push himself through the trees. He looked behind him and tried to keep in mind the direction he was going in order to be able to retrace his steps. Only the tops of Coy’s house and barn were visible from here, but the road began a gradual descent at that point and they were soon completely out of sight. He estimated, but it was definitely a guess, that he had traveled almost a mile. If he didn’t find a house or some people soon, he would turn back. With the uphill climb and the dense woods, it had taken quite a long time to get this far.

  Finally, he did see a structure of some sort up ahead and as he got closer, it did seem habitable. It was a large house, three stories tall and when he knocked on the door an elderly lady in a dust cap and apron opened the door—but she wasn’t smiling.

  “Who in the world are you and where did you come from. I hope you don’t expect me to invite you in with all those burs on your clothes and the muddy shoes.”

  “Ma’am, my name is Ed Wroe and my wife, my three children and I are staying at the Coy’s place down under the hill. Do you know where that is?" He sure did hope she did; maybe she could tell him.

  “I don’t know anyone named Wroe or Coy,” she said crossly. “You look pretty tuckered out. I can get you a drink of water and you can set there on the front steps and rest if you want to. Oh, my name is Lydie Thorne. I live here with my grandson, Johnny. He ain’t to home right now. Prob’ly out huntin’. Wait here." She returned after a short time with a glass of water and offered it to Ed.

  “Thank you, Miz Thorne,” Ed said as he drank thirstily. “I wonder if you could tell me what the name of the nearest town is. We got lost getting to the Coys’ and I’m not sure which way to go to get some supplies.”

  “Why are you askin’ me? Why don’t you ask the Coys?" With that, she shut the door firmly in his face after she had grabbed the drinking glass from his hand.

  That wasn’t very friendly, he was thinking as he began to walk back along the muddy road. I guess it was a fairly reasonable question, though, come to think of it.

  On the long walk back, he did think of one other approach. They would look through the desk and the filing cabinets for invoices and bills. Some of them should have business addresses on them. That wouldn’t give them directions, but if they knew the name of the place, they could ask people how to get there.

  When he got back home, he was tired, muddy, hungry, and thirsty. And it took almost an hour to get all the burs and stick-me-tites off his clothes. He told the family about the unneighborly neighbor lady (he wasn’t sure ‘lady’ was an apt word, either) and they all laughed. Then he made the suggestion he had thought of on the way home about checking any bills and invoices they could find for the names of nearby towns and they got into it at once. They found several businesses with Fordsville addresses and a few from Hartford so that helped some. He got the atlas from the SUV and looked up these towns on the map of Kentucky. They didn’t appear to be too far apart and not that far from Owensboro.

  After a quick supper, they all retired. Chrissy went to sleep staring at her beautiful little bouquet. No matter the good care she gave them, they were still beginning to die and it upset her terribly.

  “You’re still beautiful to me, little forget-me-nots,” she said aloud. “I think when I can’t keep you alive any more, I’ll press you in a book and let you dry. That way I can still keep you.”

  Next morning two more incomprehensible events occurred. Two dressed rabbits were in a pan of water on the kitchen table and Chrissy had a new bouquet. These flowers were lilies of the valley, the little white bells on a slender green stalk with the long, green leaves. Whoever brought them had brought a cup of fresh water from the bathroom and set them again on her night table by her bed. A heavy book from the library downstairs was there also and the forget-me-nots were neatly pressed between the pages. That was just something so sweet that she simply could not ascribe it to any other than a wonderful, living person. “Thank you,” she whispered, breathlessly.

  “My goodness Edward, when did you do this?" Penny had found the rabbits when she came down to fix breakfast.

  “Do what, Penny?" Ed was coming in from milking the cow.

  “Where did you get this meat? It looks like rabbits or something. I didn’t know you had been out hunting; and where did you get a gun?”

  “I don’t have a gun and I didn’t do this." Ed was incredulous.

  “How did these get here, then? Oh, Edward, it’s happening again. This is so unfathomable; so totally unbelievable.”

  “It sure is mysterious. Andy asked me yesterday if today would be the fourth of July and I told him it would be but I didn’t know if we
would have any meat to grill or not. They must have heard me when I mentioned that if I had a gun, I’d kill some rabbits to grill. And here they are. It sure is wonderful, but it sure is a puzzle.”

  Penny was thoughtful for a moment. “Ed, I’m going to make another wish. I truly wish—“

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Penny? You may have been right when you cautioned the children about wishing for something frivolous.”

  “This isn’t frivolous, Ed. I wish whoever was doing these nice things would let us know who he is so that we may be properly grateful.”

  “I can certainly agree with that and yet if he prefers to remain anonymous, we shouldn’t force him to reveal himself, should we?”

  “I know we don’t any of us want to believe in the supernatural, either. But we still can’t begin to explain how things like the picture album materialized inside the house even with it locked. Or how the suitcases were taken out of the locked car. We can’t prove it wasn’t ghosts any more than we can prove it was. I just don’t know what to think any more.”

  That afternoon, they cooked the rabbit on the grill and added some barbeque sauce. It was absolutely delicious. They mentioned several times how much they appreciated their benefactor regardless of his ectoplasmic status.

  It was fully dark before they finished eating and they were about to go inside when they heard the first ‘blop-shoo’ of a fireworks display. They swiveled their heads until they saw the flash and heard the boom of the first thunder-ball explode in the sky somewhere in the general direction of the Thorne Place, Ed thought. In a few seconds, they heard the detonation of the second thunder-ball. After that, the sky was illuminated by a fireworks display as grand as almost any they had ever seen. The red pinwheels, the blue and gold stars, the scarlet wands that faded into green and ended in little bursts of light at the ends of each spoke, the golden rays that ignited into little twisting, twirling ‘worms’ hissing and sputtering until they faded into nothing. They were beautiful and the pyrotechnic show sure did finish off their Fourth of July picnic perfectly.

  The next evening they continued their routine of reading from the journal. They had completed the first two years of the journal and were starting on the third. The first entry they read began the tale of the illness of Lorraine. Three days after that they read about her death. Her grieving husband had written: