Five Days of the Ghost

by William Bell

  “Okay, okay,” John said, sounding a little hurt. “Here’s the straight stuff.”

  He cleared his throat as he sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees and started in with his Lecturing Voice.

  “Our house was built around a century and a half ago by a rich bachelor named Bond who got his money from the lumber and sawmill business, lawyering, and some inheritance.”

  “Not what you’d call poor,” Noah added. He had sat up, too. His wet hair was slicked straight back and the two studs and cross in his ear winked in the light.

  “No, and from what we could gather, he wasn’t Mister Nice Guy either. He turned up in the newspapers once in a while.”

  “Like when he built his house—your house—on the shore of the lake on property he cheated away from an old lady whose financial affairs he was handling.”

  “Right,” John said. “Anyway, he was loaded, and he had three servants who lived in the attic. An old manservant named Oliver, a cook named McCullough, and her eighteen-year-old daughter, who did the housecleaning.”

  “You forgot the drinking,” Noah said.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Bond was a drinker. Famous for it. A real prize winner. Anyway, he got in trouble for beating up the manservant one time. Broke the poor old guy’s nose. According to the paper, the old guy refused to press charges, plus he kept working for Bond.

  “But the juicy gossip was that he got engaged to the young woman. We read the wedding announcement in the paper.”

  “Sounds romantic, right?” Noah held up his hand and moved it across in front of his face. Writing on the air with his finger. “Rich snobby lawyer marries servant. Nice headline.”

  “Except he didn’t,” John cut in.

  “Nope. But he did get her pregnant, from what we can figure. The paper just hinted about that. Anyway, she hanged herself.”

  I sat up quickly. “In our house?” Pain shot through my head.

  “No, no, her mother and her quit and moved out. She hanged herself in a boardinghouse.”

  “The mother left town soon after,” John continued.

  I wondered when they were going to get to the point. All that stuff sounded like a soap opera. I mean, it was a terrible tragedy for the woman and her mother and I was sure the rich lawyer-drunk was a creep, but it had happened about a hundred and fifty years ago and right then I had other things on my mind.

  “Then,” Noah said, “the lawyer beat up the manservant again. Real bad. But he still didn’t press charges.”

  “Oh?” I said when Noah paused. I knew I was supposed to say something. “Why not?”

  “Because,” John announced, “a few days later, the lawyer was found dead.”

  “By a neighbor,” Noah said. “In your house.”

  “In the hall outside your bedroom,” John added.

  “In a big pool of blood.”

  “With a long knife in his chest.”

  “He had been dead for days,” John added, “so he—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get the point,” I cut in.

  I twisted my body and looked at our house. The back wall was shadowed and the windows reflected the sky so I couldn’t see in. The windows looked like cold blank eyes. Behind me I heard the wind sighing in the willow and the wavelets lapping the shore and the crib of the dock.

  It wasn’t exactly good news to find out that somebody had murdered a nasty rich creep in the house I lived in. I imagined the dead lawyer dressed in one of those long black coats with a high white stiff collar and a diamond pin in his tie, lying in the hall upstairs with a knife handle sticking out of his chest, thick red blood leaking onto the hardwood, staining it. I suddenly felt chilly.

  I looked at John. He was hooked. The sparkle in his blue eyes told me that. And Noah kept sweeping his wet hair back, trying to look calm.

  “So what do we do now?” I asked. “How can we keep living in a house where a dead guy is marching up and down the hall all night and making strange noises and pounding on doors? Should we phone Vancouver and tell Mom and Dad and ask them to come home? They won’t believe us, will they?”

  “Nope,” John answered. “Remember a couple of years ago when you went kind of nutty and—”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “There’s one thing you guys haven’t thought about,” Noah cut in.

  I sat up and pulled my knees to my chest to keep warm. I turned to face the weeping willow. The long branches trailed in the water and the long thin leaves moved gently in the breeze. I didn’t want to look at our house anymore. And no way did I want to look out over the lake.

  “What’s that?” John asked.

  “Well, we’ve been assuming the ghost is the lawyer. It could be the young woman he got in trouble, the one who hanged herself. Or it’s even possible it’s the old manservant.”

  I barely listened to Noah. I was staring at the willow, remembering the times Kenny and I played in it, climbing up, scraping our hands and arms on the rough bark. We built a tree house there once. And whenever one of us felt bad or got into trouble, we’d go there and the other one would know where to look.

  “Yeah, right!” John exclaimed. “It could be. Or maybe all three of them! Maybe—Karen! What’s the matter?”

  I was crying. I tried to stop it, tried to dam up the tears, but I couldn’t. They flowed harder and harder and I began to sob. I felt my face get hot and twisted. The willow tree blurred and sank away.

  “Why can’t it be the way it used to be?” I sobbed. “Why did everything have to change?”

  Then I lost control and cried and spluttered and sniffed. I tried to hide my hot face with my hands.

  I stood up. My brother and Noah watched me silently. It was one of those times nobody could say anything and they knew that.

  I walked to where the dock met the grassy shore, then stepped into the water. I waded crying into the lake.

  Late Monday

  Afternoon

  Our family didn’t go to church. Both my parents were good people, with very strong morals. I mean, they knew what was right and wrong and when John or I even looked like we might do something wrong, they got on our case fast. And they were kind—always doing things for our neighbors or other members of the family. They even had a foster kid in the Dominican Republic or somewhere. But church was no part of my growing up. My dad told me one time a church was just like a club and he didn’t want to be a member.

  I was thinking about that as I walked up Neywash Street. I was thinking, maybe if we did belong to a religion like a lot of kids in my class, maybe I wouldn’t be so mixed up. Maybe all this horrible stuff wouldn’t be happening to me.

  It was about five o’clock and the bells in the tower of the big Presbyterian church were playing some kind of hymn. The loud heavy notes rolled out of the tower like waves.

  I wasn’t sure when I had decided to try to talk with Noah’s father. I guess it was when I was standing up to my neck in the lake with Noah and John watching me like hawks from the dock and I realized no matter where I looked I couldn’t escape the bad feelings that seemed to own my mind. If I looked toward our house I thought of a horrible puffed-up corpse in the hall outside my room. If I looked out over the lake I saw Chiefs’ Island and thought about the ghost of Chief Copegog stuck in that depressing graveyard when he could have been … wherever ghosts are supposed to be. He didn’t look too happy the two times I saw him. I felt sorry for him now—when I wasn’t scared to death by him. And if Noah was right, it had been his medicine bag that had started all that poltergeist stuff.

  When I looked toward the willow tree or the boathouse, all I could think about was Kenny and the good times we used to have, playing there. The big hole inside me that had been there since Kenny went away, the big empty space filled with pain—that was worse than the scary stuff. And I didn’t know how to get rid of the hurt. I felt trapped.

  So I was walking up Neywash, going to see a minister. Maybe he could help. Maybe Mom and Dad wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t know wh
at else to do. Besides, they were in Vancouver.

  I rang the doorbell of the big brick house. No answer. I rang it again. Nothing.

  Then I heard music. There was a flagstone walk that went around the side of the house. I followed it and found myself in a big back yard. It was mostly grass but there was a huge flower garden with a riot of colours and odours from dozens of kinds of flowers I didn’t know the names of. The drone of slow dull hymns came from a portable radio on top of a picnic table.

  In the middle of the garden, on his hands and knees, was Noah’s father. He was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt with the collar open and long tan coloured pants. He had on those black rubber boots with the red band around the top that your mother makes you wear on rainy days. He was scratching at the dirt around some yellow flowers with one of those claw tools. His hands were dirty. I waited and after a moment he looked up and saw me.

  His forehead wrinkled and his thick dark eyebrows jumped toward each other.

  “Good afternoon, dear.” He raised himself to his knees. “You’re Noah’s friend, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, sort of. We just met.”

  “Ah.”

  I looked at the toes of my shoes, thinking, maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. He waited.

  “Um, could I talk to you for a second, sir? If you’re not too busy,” I added.

  “Not at all, dear, not at all.” He smiled again. “If you don’t mind my working while we talk. That’ll be all right, won’t it? I don’t get much chance to keep the weeds at bay.”

  “Sure, sure. That’s fine.”

  He dropped to all fours and started scratching again.

  The sinking sun shone on his bald head. The head was beaded with sweat and it bobbed up and down as he worked.

  “How can I help you, dear?” he said to the ground.

  It was hard to talk to the top of his head. “Um, I wanted to ask you, sir—”

  “People call me Reverend Webster, dear, not Sir.”

  “Oh, sorry, sir—I mean Reverend Webster.”

  He kept digging and scratching, moving slowly from one bunch of flowers to another. He moved to some white ones with lots of blooms on them.

  “Um,” I started again. “Do you … are there … ”

  He raised himself to his knees again. “Yes, dear, go ahead.”

  “Ghosts?”

  His brow wrinkled. “I beg your pardon. Ghosts? What do you mean?”

  “Are there ghosts? Do they exist?”

  His eyebrows jumped again. “Of course not.”

  He dropped down and scratched furiously. Maybe I got him mad, I thought.

  He started talking to the freshly dug earth. “The Bible speaks of an afterlife, of course, and all Godfearing people believe in Heaven and Hell. When we die, our sins are weighed in the balance, and if we have lived by the precepts of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and if we have accepted Him as our Saviour, we will live for eternity in the presence of Almighty God.”

  He grunted and crushed a clod of black earth.

  “If we follow the ways of the Devil, we will live forever alienated from God’s presence. That’s what hell is—not being with God. But ghosts—that’s just nonsense, dear.”

  He looked up at me. There was a smudge of dirt on his forehead.

  “And it’s dangerously sacrilegious.”

  I took a deep breath and said to the top of his head, “Do we … in heaven, do we meet our family? See, I had this brother—”

  “Yes, in a way. They are there, if they have lived as I just described. But our souls belong to God, not our family, and it is to Him that we give our attention.”

  “But, I mean, will I ever see him again, that’s what I want to know.”

  He looked up. “I’m sure you will, dear.” But he didn’t sound like he meant it.

  I tried again. “What if … what if you think you’ve seen a ghost? Aren’t there lots of people who have?”

  “Now you’re sounding like Noah. Those stories are the record of poor, ignorant, misguided people. They’re not true.”

  “But, if there’s an afterlife, how come there can’t be ghosts? Isn’t it possible—”

  He rose to his knees again and pointed the claw tool at me.

  “My dear girl, you must stop this. Ghosts are folklore. Entertaining, perhaps, at parties and in books. You must not confuse them with the living reality of the revealed word of God. What church do you attend?”

  “Well, my family doesn’t go to church.”

  “Ah.” He said that little word as if it explained everything. “Perhaps if your parents brought you to our church … Yes, you ask them to do that, dear. This Sunday. Then we can talk further.”

  He dropped down and started in on the plants.

  “Well, um, thanks, Reverend.”

  “You’re welcome, dear. Come back any time.”

  On my way home I felt stupid and embarrassed and mad. I was mad at myself because I had probably sounded like a winkie, blabbering on about ghosts and heaven in one sentence and about Kenny in the next. My face burned, I felt so stupid.

  Then I got really mad at him—Noah’s father. What good was he, anyway? And how come it was okay to believe in a place where you sat around on a cloud all day and plucked a harp but it was wrong and dangerous to believe in Chief Copegog—who I had seen with my own eyes?

  And that was when I decided who I had to talk to. The only one who could help. Who do you talk to if you want to know about ghosts?

  A ghost, that’s who.

  Monday Evening

  Minnie cooked us baked spaghetti for supper and left it in the oven. By the time we got to it the pasta was dry and hard and tasteless. On the table was a note telling us she had gone to Barrie with some friends and she’d be back later.

  After supper John went to call on Noah. They were going to work in the library until it closed, to find out more about the murder in our house.

  I went into John’s room and got his pack. I knew it would be hanging on the back of his closet door like it always was. When I opened it I saw that he had all the stuff in there—flashlights, knife, bug lotion—ready for another trip to Chiefs’ Island. I stuffed my wool sweater into it, strapped it up and headed for the boathouse. I had decided not to take any of Noah’s stuff—the camera or voice recorder or the big wooden cross. I had no use for all that.

  I had a couple of hours of light left, so I might be able to get back before dark. I knew everybody would wonder where I had gone and that I’d get into a hassle when John and Noah found out I’d gone without them, but I didn’t care too much about that.

  I was lucky there was no wind. I made it across to the island pretty easily. I’m not too strong but I’m a pretty good rower. I had trouble hauling the boat up onto the shore, though, so I just tied it to a tree and let it float. I was in a hurry.

  I stopped to rub on some bug dope and threw the pack onto my back and cut into the bush. I didn’t know how to use a compass like John did, so I tried to walk in a straight line from the shore. I guessed I’d run across the clearing sooner or later. And I couldn’t really get lost because it was an island.

  It took about twenty minutes to get to the graveyard. When I stepped out of the trees I knew Chief Copegog was there because it was cold. I yanked my sweater out of the pack and pulled it on. The graveyard looked almost peaceful—not scary at all. There were bars of sunlight slanting across the long grass and the birch saplings looked as if they were lit up. A lot of white butterflies were fluttering around and birds were chirping in the trees.

  I looked around, holding the pack in my hand. Chief Copegog was in his usual place, perched up on the headstone, smoking a cigar. In that bright clearing, washed in sunlight, he looked pretty relaxed, like one of the old guys we see on the main street in town resting on benches at the bus stop. But there was something else. He looked sad slumped over and staring into the trees like that. I wondered if ghosts could feel loneliness and decided they must, be
cause Chief Copegog looked the way I felt a lot of the time. I felt alone because I didn’t have Kenny anymore to hang around with or to talk to. I tried to imagine how Chief Copegog must have felt, surrounded by the graves of friends and relatives.

  And that’s when I knew that, no matter how scary he looked, he couldn’t be evil. He couldn’t be like the horrible murdering ghosts in the movies who tear people to pieces or frighten them to death. I decided Noah must be right—a ghost was somebody sad, not bad.

  So, hardly believing I could do it, I walked right up to him and said hello.

  He turned to face me and blew out a big lungful of blue smoke. The red pin-point lights glowed fiercely in his black eyes’ hollows.

  “Figured you’d be back pretty soon,” he said in his rough, faraway voice.

  Then he smiled.

  When he smiled, wrinkles creased the skin at the comers of his eyes and mouth. His cheekbones lifted and his eyes practically closed. And with those spooky eyes almost closed, he looked almost human. He had yellowy teeth and a few of them were missing, making black squares in his smile. He was ugly, to tell the truth, but only in a magazine way—if you compared him to the hunks in the TV Guide and the fashion mags. His eyes still threw me off a little—not even a smile could warm up those deep black pits. But, in that sunny clearing, he wasn’t terrifying. I wondered, could this be the same ghost that scared the life out of me last Friday night?

  “Hi,” I said again. “Hi, Chief Copegog.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I asked,

  “How do you like the cigars?”

  “Pretty good, I guess.” He looked at the glowing red end of the cigar, then at me. “This cigar, she’s the last one.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then I got his point. “I’d be glad to get you some more.”

  He nodded. He took a long drag on the cigar, pulled it out of his mouth, and blew the smoke in a thin stream up into the cold air.

  “You’re pretty small girl, but you got big problems.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Been around long time, I guess. Seen lotta sad little girls.”

  I decided there was no point in trying to lead up to what I wanted to say to him.