The Ghost Road

by Charis Cotter

  “What is all this stuff?” I asked.

  “Aunt Doll’s clothes from when she worked in St. John’s,” said Ruby. “She let me go through them last summer. Great outfits. She never threw anything out.”

  “And the boxes?” I said, hauling one out and putting it on the floor between the beds.

  “Shoes,” said Ruby. “Purses, hats.”

  “Oh,” I said wistfully, laying my hand on the top of the box.

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Ruby. “We’ve got to find our way into this room.”

  She came up with a flashlight, also from the barn, and once the closet was empty we ran its beam along the walls, ceiling and floor. There were narrow fitted boards halfway up the walls, like we had in our bathroom back home. Wainscoting, that’s what Gwen told me it was called. We went over it all and there was no door.

  Ruby sat back on her heels, frowning. “It’s got to be here somewhere. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unless whoever boarded up the room didn’t want anyone to get in. Otherwise, why hide it?”

  “Ruby! Ruth!” called Aunt Doll.

  We jumped. Ruby scrambled to her feet and slipped out into the hall.

  “Yes?” she called out.

  “It’s stopped raining. I need you to do an errand for me.”

  “We’ll be right there,” hollered Ruby.

  “It’s okay,” she said in a lower voice to me. “She hardly ever comes to this side of the house. We’ll just shut the door and look again later.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE WITCH

  “But I just saw her yesterday!” wailed Ruby. “I don’t want to see her again!”

  “She called and told me she wants her tin back,” said Aunt Doll, tucking some muffins into a cookie tin that was covered with painted red cherries. “She sent me over some date squares last week and now she wants it back. And you never send back an empty tin, Ruth,” she said, smiling at me. “That’s considered very bad manners. Of course,” she said, turning back to Ruby, “what she really wants is to get a good look at Ruth.”

  “So why do I have to go if Ruth’s the one she wants to see?”

  “You know very well,” said Aunt Doll, closing the lid with a snap. “Ruth doesn’t know the house, and anyway, your Nan will never let on that she’s just plain curious about Ruthie. Take this and stop your complaining.”

  Ruby snatched the tin from Aunt Doll and headed to the front door.

  “Boots!” called Aunt Doll. “The grass is soaking wet.”

  We booted up and took along our rain jackets, because even though the rain had stopped for the moment, the clouds still hung heavy and dark over the far shore of the bay. Ruby stormed out the door and I scrambled to keep up.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “We don’t have to stay long.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” said Ruby, kicking along the gravel road. “Usually all I have to do is visit once a week, and this is twice in two days. She gives me the creeps. You’ll see,” she continued darkly. “She’s a witch.”

  I half-walked, half-trotted beside Ruby, trying to look in every direction at once. This was the first time I’d come this way and there was lots to see. The road curved along the shore, with a rocky drop of about fifteen feet to the water. It was a rough gravel road, with plenty of potholes filled with water from the rain. Ruby began a kind of a skipping hop, leaping over the potholes (and sometimes splashing down into the edge of one), with me trying to follow suit.

  There were seagulls calling and swooping down over the water. The sides of the road were speckled with wildflowers: the tiny white stars of three-toothed cinquefoil, the purplish brushes of red clover, and the slightly fuzzy flowers of what I now knew was Labrador tea. A few spruce trees that were smaller than me struggled to grow against the wind from the ocean. To our left was a meadow that rose gently up to a slope about a hundred yards away. On the right, I could see a rocky beach and a cement wharf a bit farther along that stretched about thirty feet out into the bay, with a few boats tied up on either side.

  We walked and hopped for about ten minutes till we got to the other houses. There were six or seven of them clustered around another road that ran up the hill toward the highway. Past the crossroads were other houses along the cliff above the beach, and more along the road curving away from the far side of the bay. Ruby led me along to a dark-brown, two-story house that stood glowering over the far end of the beach. It had a dark-red door with a big knocker in the shape of a lion’s head.

  Ruby picked it up and rapped on the door three times, making a face as she did so.

  “Everyone just walks in and out of each other’s back doors,” she said. “But Nan insists we knock at the front door. Like we were in town…” She broke off as the door creaked open.

  It was very dark in the hall beyond the door. All I could see were two eyes glittering in a pale face that seemed suspended in the darkness. As the door opened farther, a figure seemed to coalesce from shadows: a tall woman all dressed in black with a white face and dark eyes that drilled into mine. A delicious smell of fresh baking wafted out of the house.

  “Hi, Nan,” said Ruby, bouncing through the doorway and breaking the spell. I realized I’d been holding my breath.

  The woman’s eyebrows rose slightly in disapproval as she looked down her nose at Ruby.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your…cousin?” she said in a dry, creaking voice that sounded like it wasn’t used very often.

  Ruby turned.

  “Ruth, this is my Nan, Mrs. Peddle,” said Ruby, winking at me.

  I stuck out my hand and it was grasped tightly by a cold, bony hand.

  “How do you do?” I said politely.

  The witch (yes, she was definitely a witch!) hung on tight to my hand and gazed deep into my eyes. I wanted to pull away but I didn’t want to be rude. It felt like she was looking right inside to the back of my head where I kept all my secrets.

  “As I thought,” she murmured, finally letting go of my hand and standing back to usher me into the house. “Just as I thought. Humph.”

  When she closed the door, the hall was completely engulfed in darkness again, and I stumbled along, following Ruby’s voice.

  “I’ll just bring these into the kitchen, Nan,” she called, and a door opened, letting a shaft of light into the hall.

  I headed toward the light as fast as I could go, not liking the idea of the witch at my heels.

  The kitchen was very old-fashioned, with a big wood-burning stove with a steaming kettle on it against the far wall, a set of ancient yellow-and-brown cupboards, and a scrubbed wooden table and stiff chairs. A smallish window behind the sink looked out over the water and the back door was firmly bolted.

  Ruby plopped the tin on the table. “Aunt Doll sent you some muffins,” she said.

  The witch sniffed. “Now what did she do that for? What am I going to do with a tin full of muffins on my baking day?”

  She bent over, using a towel to take a hot tray of gingerbread men out of the oven. She laid them on the counter and gave me a sly glance.

  My breath had deserted me again. She reminded me so much of the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.” And why was she cooking…gingerbread men?

  “I thought you and Ruby would like these,” she said, as if she had read my mind. “George was always partial to them when he was a boy. Children always like my gingerbread.”

  I peered over the cookies: they had raisin eyes and chocolate-chip buttons.

  “Yummy,” said Ruby, reaching for them.

  “Too hot!” said the witch, slapping at her hand. “Sit down and have a glass of milk. And let me take a look at you two.”

  The kitchen chairs were as uncomfortable as they looked. The witch gave us each a glass of frothy milk and filled a plate with the still-warm gingerbread men.

  “There now,” she said, settling into a chair. “Eat up.”

  She was smiling a crooked li
ttle smile and looking from Ruby to me and then back again. She actually had a rather long nose and a sharp, well-defined chin, just like a witch. I shuddered. But the gingerbread man was delicious. Gingery, sweet and crisp. I wondered idly if it might be enchanted and put some kind of spell on us, then I shook my head to chase the fancy away. She laughed, watching me as though she knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “Well, look at you two,” she said with another laugh, which was dangerously close to a cackle. “A pair of true Finns, the two of you. Alike as two peas in a pod. Just like your mothers. You could be twins.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  WYNKEN, BLYNKEN AND NOD

  “Twins,” repeated the witch. “So many twins in your family. Strange.” Her eyes narrowed and her lips twitched in the ghost of a wicked grin.

  Ruby glugged down the last of her milk and glared at her grandmother. “So what’s wrong with twins?”

  “It’s unnatural,” replied the old woman. “Uncanny. Nobody trusts a twin.”

  Ruby started to sputter, but I put my hand on her arm to quiet her.

  “Why not?” I asked. “Why can’t you trust a twin?”

  “Because they’re the devil’s work,” hissed the witch. “It’s always the two of them against everyone else. I told George,” she said, her mouth tightening into a sneer. “I told him, time and time again, that those two girls were playing tricks on him, toying with him, but he wouldn’t listen. Oh no. He was in their thrall. He went through every day with nothing but them on his mind, and I knew no good would come of it.”

  “You’re talking about our mothers,” said Ruby angrily, rubbing her sleeve across her mouth, which was smeared with milk and gingerbread crumbs. “You’ve got no right—”

  “I’ve got every right,” spat Mrs. Peddle. “They stole my boy from me and laughed at him behind his back and had him turned every which way till he didn’t know if he was coming or going. The day they left to go to the mainland was the best day of my life. I thought they were gone for good and George was finally free.”

  Ruby jumped to her feet. Her face was red and her eyes were brimming with tears.

  “I won’t sit here and listen to this again,” she said. “You hated my mother, and you were glad when she died. Every time I come here, all you can talk about is how awful she was, and how much I look like her, and you have no right! My father loved my mother; she was a good person, he told me so, and—”

  A sob bubbled up and caught her words in her throat. She stumbled toward the door. “Come on, Ruth, let’s get out of here.”

  I stood up to follow her. A slow smile of satisfaction spread over the old woman’s face as she looked into my eyes.

  “You’re not afraid of the truth, now are you, me duckie? I can see that. And I know who you are. You’re the one who got it. I see it in your eyes. Just like the other one. The one who stayed away. Come back by yourself sometime, without Ruby, and I’ll tell you what you need to know about your mother. And about everything else. Some of it you’ll want to hear—” Her smile widened. “And some of it you won’t.”

  Her words sent chills up and down my spine, yet there was something so compelling about her eyes. I felt like she looked deep into me and understood me in some way that no one ever had. That she knew things about me that I hadn’t discovered yet.

  And despite her cruelty to Ruby, and the nasty things she said about our mothers, I was surprised to find that there was something that I liked about this fierce old lady in her big, empty house. Maybe it was the spark of mischief in her eyes. Or the feeling that I knew her just as well as she seemed to know me.

  I left her smiling to herself in her kitchen and headed out the front door. The bright light blinded me for a minute. At first, I didn’t see Ruby. The road back the way we had come was empty. But when I turned, I saw her, running in the opposite direction, her green jacket bobbing against the gray road. She was already a hundred yards away, following the road around the harbor, up the hill.

  I set off after her. It didn’t take me long to run out of breath. Half-running, half-walking, I made my way along the road. There were only a couple more houses, then some sheds by the water, and then nothing. Just the road and the meadows, and an ever-increasing view of Buckle Bay spreading out to my right. The road changed from gravel to dirt, from dirt to grass, and then Ruby ducked to the left and out of sight.

  When I got to where she left the road, I could see that there was a path winding off to the left, up and down over the uneven ground. I followed it for about ten minutes. It ended at a cemetery, bordered by trees. I caught a glimpse of Ruby’s green jacket and there she was, hunched beside a gravestone.

  I walked through the gate and approached her slowly. The cemetery was a mix of old and newer stones. Some of the older ones were dark gray, with the words barely legible. A few were broken off halfway, or leaning over at an impossible angle. And then there was one or two old stones made from bright white marble, and these shone out like beacons in the shadows. The grass wasn’t very high, and it was studded with orange hawk-weed, dark-purple columbine and buttercups.

  Ruby half-sat, half-knelt before a light-gray granite stone. Her face was hidden, but I could see her shoulders shaking. She was crying.

  I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t used to people crying. Dad never cried. When I cried I did it in my room, under the covers, or in the bathroom at school, where no one could see me.

  I stood there watching her for a moment and then without thinking about it, I knelt down beside her and laid my hand on her back. She turned to look at me, her face red, eyes swollen.

  “Ruth,” she said in a ragged voice. “Ruth, she’s so mean.”

  “Yes, she is,” I said softly. I kept my hand on her back, patting her gently while she cried some more. The wind had died down—the graveyard was in a sheltered spot, in a kind of dip between two hills. The sun was struggling to come out.

  Gradually, Ruby grew quieter, and finally stopped crying. She rummaged in her pocket and came up with a grimy handkerchief. She pulled away from me, blew her nose and then gave one last, shuddering sigh.

  “Sorry,” she said, a little embarrassed. “I just got so mad. And it’s the same every time I see her. She never stops criticizing Mom. And me. And Aunt Doll. And Dad’s no use. He just tells me I have to visit her, and she’s an old lady and I should be polite. I hate that.”

  She got up and started striding around.

  “You don’t know, Ruth, you just don’t know what it’s like for me. It’s awful. I hate living with Wynken, Blynken and Nod all year and only coming out here in the summer. Wendy just puts up with me; I know she doesn’t want me there. And Dad just wants to keep the peace, so he usually goes along with her and doesn’t stick up for me. And then when I get out here, where I want to be, where I belong, I have to visit that horrible old witch and hear her tell me what a wicked girl my mother was and how she never should have married Dad.”

  She started kicking at the grass. “I hate her!” Kick. “I wish she’d die.” Kick. “I wish they’d all die! Wendy.” Kick. “Wynken.” Kick. “Blynken.” Kick. “And Nod.” Kick. “Ow!”

  She had kicked a broken old gravestone instead of the grass.

  I couldn’t hold it in any longer and a big laugh came sputtering out.

  “What are you laughing at?” She looked so outraged, holding her sore foot and glaring at me, that I laughed some more, and then she started to smile just a little.

  I caught my breath and managed to speak. “I’m sorry, Ruby, I shouldn’t have laughed, but you looked so funny hopping around. And you gotta tell me,” I said, laughter still bubbling up. “You gotta tell me, who on earth are Wynken, Blynken and Nod?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  BUCKLE GRAVEYARD

  Ruby grinned and suddenly she looked like her usual, happy self again. “Oh. I never told you. That’s what I call my little brothers. They’re Wayne, Brian and Ned, but it drives them crazy when I call them Wynken, Bl
ynken and Nod.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She sat down beside me on the grass. “It started a while ago. Wendy had this book she would read to them when Ned was a baby, about Wynken, Blynken and Nod, these three little fishermen who went to sea in a shoe, and she started calling them that, and it was so cutesy and they were so pleased with themselves that…uh…well, I started calling them that too, but told them they were little babies and made fun of them, and…and…well, it started to make them really mad. Every time I called them Wynken or Blynken or Nod, they’d start hollering and screaming at me.” She grinned again, remembering.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Ruby looked at me. “Okay, so I was mean to them. Don’t say it. I know I was. Dad told me, and Wendy told me, again and again, but what would you do, Ruth? What would you do if you had to live in St. John’s with these three little kids and listen to their mother reading to them every night, and you were just lying in your bed next door listening to their stories night after night, and you didn’t have a mother to read to you, and your father was always away or busy, and when he was home, the boys were all over him and he never had time for you?”

  She was getting all worked up again, and the tears weren’t quite dried enough not to spill over again.

  “It’s okay, Ruby,” I said. “I understand. I don’t blame you.”

  She gave a big sigh. “Well, Dad and Wendy do. But those little rats suit their names. Every time Wayne and Brian do something bad and try to blame me for something, they stand there all innocent blinking their eyes, and Ned just agrees with everything, nodding his head up and down. He’s only three so he just goes along with his brothers with everything.”

  She stood up quickly, like she couldn’t bear to sit still for another minute, and started balancing along the top of a fallen gravestone, and then hopping from one to another, trying not to touch down on the grass.