The Ghost Road

by Charis Cotter

  I could hear Ruby yelling something, and then she grabbed my hand and pulled me off to the left, into the shelter of a funny-shaped little hill that seemed to pop up from the ground. There were flat rocks piled up around the side, and then the next thing I knew, she was wrenching open a wooden door in the hill and hauling me down a tunnel into the dark.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  THE ROOT CELLAR

  It smelled of damp rock, but it was dry and I could no longer feel the wind, although I could hear it roaring outside like a freight train.

  “What is this?” I asked, once I got my breath back. My words sounded muffled in the thick darkness.

  Ruby had let go of my hand and I could hear her rummaging through her knapsack.

  “Aha!” she cried in triumph and with a click, there was light.

  “Is it…a cave?” I whispered, looking at the stone walls around us.

  Ruby’s laugh was loud and normal, and it made me feel a little better. “No, silly, it’s a root cellar. The root cellar, I’d guess.” She turned the flashlight around the space.

  “But it looked like a hill,” I said. “You brought me inside a hill.” The root cellars I’d seen in Buckle looked like little sheds.

  “Some of the old cellars have grass growing all over them,” said Ruby. “Look at the ceiling!”

  The roof was made of flat rock, each piece overlapping the one beneath it, till it gradually formed a peak at the top.

  “Like a cathedral,” Ruby breathed. “Just like in the story. I’ve never seen one like this before. All the root cellars I’ve been in have ceilings made with wood, not flat rock.” She shone the light on the perfectly formed triangular arch of the roof.

  “Wow,” I said. “I wonder how they made it?”

  “Eldred would know,” she replied, and turned the light over the packed earth floor and into the corners. “Look, it’s perfectly dry. Hey, the back of it is actually part of the hill.”

  The back wall was solid rock.

  “So…so you think this is where the twins were found?” I said. “Fiona and Fenella?”

  “Yes,” said Ruby. “It’s gotta be. It’s up on the side of the hill, away from the stream, so it wasn’t washed away with all the houses below.”

  I eased my knapsack off my shoulders and took off my wet raincoat. “Maybe we can dry out a bit here and wait for the rain to stop,” I said, and sat down to undo my shoes and peel off my soaking socks. The floor of the cellar was hard-packed earth, but quite dry.

  Ruby sat down beside me and started undoing her shoes. I found some dry socks in my knapsack and handed her a pair. I could just make out her grin in the faint light.

  “You think of everything, don’t you, Twin?” she said.

  We spread our socks out in a corner to dry. Ruth flicked the flashlight around the corners of the cellar. It was quite empty.

  “Imagine those two little girls being here all by themselves in the storm,” she said. “Poor kids.”

  “And for two days,” I said. “Isn’t that how long it took to find them?”

  “That’s what Eldred said.”

  Ruby turned off the flashlight to save the batteries and we sat in the dark, listening to the storm outside. I pictured the little girls, hardly more than babies, huddled together, all alone, not understanding what was happening, hour after hour.

  “The wind is getting worse,” said Ruby after a while.

  She was right. The humming was building into a howl.

  I shivered. “It almost sounds like screaming, doesn’t it?”

  “The Old Hollies,” said Ruby. “Eldred told me about them. He says that when the wind begins to scream, it’s the death cries of all the poor people who’ve died in shipwrecks over the years in Conception Bay.”

  I listened. It did sound like people wailing.

  “And the people who died in floods,” I murmured, thinking of the Finns and the others who had died here when the brook overflowed and washed them out to sea.

  Ruby stood up abruptly. “I’m going to see how bad the rain is.” I saw her flashlight zigzagging over the stone walls as she walked through the tunnel to the entrance. She opened the door and a fierce gust of wind blew in.

  “It’s getting really dark,” she called back to me. “It can’t be that late, but the rain is just bucketing down.”

  She came back.

  “I hate to say this, Rue, but I think we’re stuck here for the night. It looks like a bad storm. And Aunt Doll is going to kill us, that’s for sure.”

  My heart sank. I didn’t like it here.

  “Don’t you think it might let up enough for us to get home later?”

  “It doesn’t look like it’s stopping any time soon. And we’d never find our way home in the dark.”

  I shivered. “Aunt Doll’s going to be worried.”

  Ruby sighed. “I know. But there’s nothing we can do. We might as well make the best of it.” She knelt down and started hauling stuff out of her knapsack.

  “Here,” she said, tossing me a turtleneck sweater. “Put that on under your big sweater.” She did the same and then started looking through what was left of lunch.

  “Half a chicken sandwich, one muffin and an apple,” she said. “And some water. What have you got?”

  I had a whole sandwich and a muffin and an apple.

  “We can save the muffins and apples for breakfast,” said Ruby.

  We settled into a corner with our backs against the cool stone and slowly ate the sandwiches. Now that we were out of the wind, and dry, I wasn’t cold anymore. But the ground was hard. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fall asleep, with the wind howling outside and the rain beating against the rocks.

  “How do you think they ended up here?” I asked.

  “Who? The little girls?” asked Ruby.

  “Yes. I mean, there was a storm, like today, with wind and rain. Somebody must have brought them up here to keep them safe. But why would they leave them by themselves? And why wouldn’t they save themselves if they knew a flood was coming?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ruby. She crumpled up the wax paper from the sandwiches and stuffed it into the knapsack. “It was always a mystery. But they were saved, somehow, and that’s why we’re sitting here today, Rue, in the dark, and going to get in the worst trouble you can think of when we get back.”

  I laughed. “What will she do to us, do you think?”

  Ruby groaned. “Cleaning duty. Probably for a week. She’ll make us scrub the barn, or Buckle Beach, or some impossible thing.”

  I laughed again. “You know, Ruby, there must be some good luck in our family as well as this curse. It can’t all be hopeless. You and I found each other, and that’s a good thing, right?”

  “Right,” she said, and gave a huge yawn. She snuggled down beside me and leaned her head against my shoulder. “A very good thing,” she said sleepily.

  “And Fiona and Fenella were saved,” I said, catching her yawn. “Or we wouldn’t be here. We’d be someone else.”

  “If we were anybody,” murmured Ruby.

  “I’m just saying, there’s something good working for our family as well as something bad, and maybe it will be okay. Maybe we’ll break the curse and live to be little old ladies with white hair and lots of grandchildren and big purses full of sweets and crumpled tissues.”

  “I hope so,” said Ruby.

  I was tired too. The fresh air, the exercise, the chicken sandwiches. My eyes closed.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  THE ANGEL

  I drifted in and out of sleep. At some point I curled into a ball to be more comfortable, with my head on my knapsack for a pillow and Ruby close beside me.

  The storm raged on, and I was aware of it even as I slept. The wind roared and the rain swooshed down. The cellar felt solid around us, which was some comfort, but I began to feel uneasy in my sleep, as if we were encased in a tomb made of stone, floating between the present and the past. I felt the distant presence of a
ll the twins that came before us, stretching out their arms to me, pulling me back into their reality and away from mine. I shook myself awake and reached out to Ruby, clutching the rough wool of her sweater. I could hear her soft breathing. She was warm and real. I fell into a deep sleep.

  A long time later I woke up. Or at least, I thought I woke up. A yellow glow illuminated the entrance to the root cellar. Someone was coming in, carrying a lantern.

  In the faint light that filtered up over her face, I could see it was a young woman with fair hair, who looked a bit like my mother in the photograph beside my bed. She was wearing a long skirt and had a small child by the hand. Behind her came her twin, leading another small child.

  “Now just sit down here in the corner on these quilts with Fiona,” said the first woman, as they settled the children in one corner, spreading quilts on the floor. There were wooden crates of potatoes and carrots piled up against the walls of the root cellar. “Your Aunt Caitlin and I have to go back for more food, but you’ll be quite safe here.” Her accent had a distinct lilt to it, much more Irish than the accents I’d heard in Buckle.

  The women’s clothes and hair were wet, but they must have been carrying the children wrapped in quilts because the little girls looked quite dry. I could hear the rain rattling against the rocks outside and the wind screaming.

  “Don’t go, Mama,” said one of the little girls, reaching out her arms to her mother.

  “Now, don’t start, Fiona,” said the first woman. “You and Fenella need to be brave girls in the storm and we’ll be back before you know it.” She bent and gave each of the children a swift hug and kiss.

  Caitlin put down a sack she had been carrying. “Catriona, maybe I should stay,” she said to her sister.

  “No, I need you to help me get more food and blankets up here. And we need to persuade the others to leave.”

  “Peter thinks they can reroute the brook if they just keep digging—”

  “No,” said Catriona firmly. “He can’t. We’ve got to get them to leave. Now.”

  The two women took the lantern with them and ducked their heads as they entered the tunnel that led to the door.

  “Mama,” cried the twins, and Catriona turned back to them.

  “You’ll be safe,” she said, but there was a tremor in her voice. Then she looked directly at me and said, “Ruth. Look after my dear ones.” And in that moment, as clear as anything, I could see it was my mother, Meg, looking out of Catriona’s eyes at me.

  I caught my breath, and then she turned and left us in the darkness.

  The twins were whimpering. I crawled over to them and spoke softly.

  “Fiona, Fenella. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” I reached out to them and I could feel their little hands grasping mine. They huddled in to me, one on each side, and I encircled them with my arms and bent my head down. Their hair smelled sweet.

  “Are you an angel?” came an unsteady voice from under one of my arms.

  “No,” I said. “Just a friend.”

  As we sat there in the dark, with the storm raging outside, I slowly became aware of another sound, coming from somewhere inside the cellar—a soft hissing whisper. The girls heard it too, and stiffened beside me.

  “What’s that?” asked one, terror in her voice.

  I tried to calm them but the whispering just grew louder, and soon I could make out the words, in that familiar cracked voice hissing, “By water! By water! By water!” It grew louder and louder, until he was shouting, and as it grew, the storm outside seemed to rise to a crescendo, and then everything began to shake and a roaring filled the air. It went on and on, like a subway train when it first comes thundering into the station. I held the girls tight. Somehow the horrendous noise made the darkness deeper.

  Finally it stopped. A deep, ominous silence followed. I knew what it meant. All the people, all the houses—everything had been swept away in the flood.

  “I want my mama,” said one of the twins, starting to cry.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  TRAPPED

  “Ruth?” said Ruby in a sleepy voice. “Are you okay?”

  I opened my eyes. The wavering light from the flashlight was in my eyes. I turned my head away from it and sat up.

  The wind was still howling round the cellar. If anything it sounded louder than before.

  “Ruth?” said Ruby again.

  “I’m okay,” I said, rubbing my eyes. My head hurt.

  “You were crying out in your sleep. Did you have a bad dream?”

  “I…um…I’m not sure. I guess it was a dream. I was back in the flood, Ruby, with Fiona and Fenella when their mother left them here.”

  Ruby switched off the light and sat back against the wall.

  “What happened?”

  I felt an emptiness around me, where the little girls had been tucked under my arms. It had all been so real. I almost felt like if I turned on the flashlight I would find them still there, clinging to each other and calling for their mother, with boxes of vegetables piled high to the ceiling. I tried to pull myself together into the present, but the feeling of emptiness kept growing inside me, until a huge well of loneliness spread out from the root cellar and filled all of Slippers Cove, out there in the rain.

  “They’re all gone,” I said softly.

  “Tell me,” said Ruby, squeezing my hand.

  I did. When I had finished she said, “So that’s how they came to be here, all by themselves. And there wasn’t time for the rest of them to get away.”

  “And Catriona could see it coming,” I said. “She had the Sight. I could tell by looking at her. Meg has the same look, kind of a shadow behind her eyes, like she sees farther into things than other people.”

  “But you say it was Meg at the end, telling you to look after the twins?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I’m sure of it.”

  “Weird. I don’t understand. How could she be there? She wasn’t born yet.”

  “I don’t know. I just feel like we’re all connected, like we’re all the same people and it’s happening over and over again.”

  “But what about the little girls? Do you think they really saw you in this root cellar, a hundred years ago?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d like to think there was someone here with them. Maybe the spirits of their grandmothers or their great-grandmothers keeping them safe, looking out for them.”

  “Poor little things,” said Ruby.

  We sat in silence for a moment. She slipped her hand into mine.

  “We’re all motherless twins, aren’t we?” said Ruby softly.

  “Yes,” I said. And then something rose in me, a wave of fierce determination. “It’s going to stop. It’s going to stop now, Ruby. We have to stop it. Our kids are not going to grow up without their mothers.”

  And then suddenly the noise of the storm changed, and a wild roaring filled the air. For a minute I thought I was back in the flood with the little girls, but Ruby grabbed my hand.

  “What’s that?” she cried.

  The wind was howling like a hundred wolves and then the root cellar began to shake, and a rumbling began, deep in the earth below us. Just like in my dream.

  Ruby’s fingers dug into mine till they hurt. “What’s happening, Ruth?”

  An earthquake, I thought. I had been in a mild one with my dad in New Zealand and it had felt something like this. A couple of rocks crashed down from the ceiling of the root cellar, just missing Ruby and me. We clung together. I’d never been this scared before in my life. I thought we were going to die.

  And then it got worse.

  The whispering began, swelling up from the corners of the cellar, swirling around us, a hissing sound like a swarm of snakes was circling us, hemming us in. It got louder and louder and the voice rose into a shriek. Now I could make out the words.

  “By fire! By water! By sudden death!” And then a wall of noise filled the air, and I could hear rocks rolling and thumping against the root cellar as
they careened down the hill.

  “Ruth!” screamed Ruby as more rocks fell from the ceiling. We clung together and the whispering grew more hysterical and then the rocks and rain and wind were hammering the root cellar from outside and the voice was screeching inside and there was a tremendous crash and it seemed like rocks were falling all around us and something smacked into my head and I fell headlong into a black endless hole.

  * * *

  When I came to, I was lying in the dark with a splitting headache, and there was something heavy on top of me. I heaved myself up and a few rocks that had fallen on me fell away.

  I could feel Ruby lying beside me, still.

  “Ruby? Ruby?”

  She didn’t answer. I felt along her arm to her shoulder, and then her face, and it was wet. Blood? Frantically I felt around for the flashlight, and finally my hands closed around it. I switched it on.

  Bright red blood glistened on Ruby’s face. A rock must have hit her in the head. She was pale, but when I leaned over her I could hear her breath, soft and fluttery.

  “Ruby,” I said, shaking her gently. She made no sound.

  I took a deep breath and tried to remember what I’d learned in the St. John Ambulance course I’d taken last winter. Head wounds bleed a lot. Sometimes people went into shock and you had to keep them warm. I found the knapsacks and took out the extra sweaters and tucked them around her. Then I used a little of the water on a paper napkin to wash the blood away.

  She had a gash on her forehead, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore. Surely that was a good sign?

  The light from the flashlight was growing dimmer. Outside I could still hear the rain driving down and the wind howling. I turned the light to see what damage had been done to the root cellar.

  My heart nearly stopped.

  There was a huge pile of rocks blocking the entranceway. It looked like the whole tunnel had collapsed. We couldn’t get out.