“How long are you going to be gone again?” Sam asked, as the taxi driver slammed the green colored trunk shut with a bang.
“Just six days,” replied his dad. “You’re going to be okay, buddy. Mom’s lined up a lot of fun things for you guys to do with Meghan and your friends while we’re gone. We’ll be home before you know it.”
“I don’t know why you have to go to Paris in the first place. Can’t you just look at pictures on the Internet? It’s almost the same thing.”
“Sure,” laughed his dad. “And you can just look at pictures of Yankees Stadium. I’m sure it would be exactly the same as sitting in the front row and catching a ball.”
Sam grinned. His dad made a good point. As much as he loved reading about things in books and looking at pictures, he supposed there wasn’t really anything like being someplace in person. “I guess,” he conceded. “I just wish that we could come with you.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to travel abroad when you’re older,” his dad assured him. “Besides, you guys always have so much fun exploring things around here. I have no doubt you’ll stay busy. Just take it easy on Meghan, okay?”
Sam looked toward the house as his mom, Derek, and Meghan came out the door with a few small bags. He wasn’t so sure about the whole Meghan thing. Maybe Mr. Haskins wouldn’t be such a bad choice after all…
“Okay, Sam?” his dad repeated. “Promise me that you and your brother will behave and listen to Meghan.”
“I will, Dad, I will,” sighed Sam. “You should be telling that to Derek though. He’s always the one causing trouble.”
“Don’t worry, I told him the same thing. Just do your part.”
Sam’s mom joined them at the end of the driveway. “Okay, I think this is everything,” she announced. “Meghan, here is the extra set of keys for the house and the minivan. You have all our trip information on the paper by the refrigerator. And you can call Bill’s brother, Drew, if you have any problems too. They’re only just outside of town.”
“I’ve got it, Aunt Ali. Don’t worry. You guys just enjoy yourself. We’ll be fine.” She shot a sweet smile over to the boys. Too sweet, Sam couldn’t help but think.
“Mom, we’ll be great. Don’t worry,” said Derek. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Ha!” their mom laughed nervously.
Derek flashed an innocent smile. “Now get going before you guys miss your flight.”
“He’s right, honey, we have to go,” agreed their dad.
“Okay. Well, come here and give me hugs.”
The boys each wrapped their arms around their mom and then their dad. It looked like their mom might be fighting back a tear as she climbed into the back seat of the taxi.
“Don’t forget my snow globe of the Eiffel Tower!” called Derek as the driver started the engine.
Their dad waved his hand out the window.
“Bon Voyage!” called Meghan.
As the taxi pulled away, Sam, Derek, and Meghan stood alone at the top of the driveway.
“So…” said Sam, not knowing what to say.
“What are we going to do now?” asked Derek.
“Well,” said Meghan. “Your mom said there’s a pizza in the freezer for dinner tonight. And in the morning, you guys are going to go ride bikes on Belle Island, wherever that is. You do know how to ride bikes on your own, right? I don’t have to push you or anything, do I?” The sweet smile had disappeared from Meghan’s face.
“Uh, yeah, we know how to ride bikes,” answered Derek.
Jeez, thought Sam, how old did she think they were, five? “Aren’t you going to come with us?”
“Actually, I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend, Paul, tomorrow morning, so I thought I could drop you off. Think you can handle that?”
A song erupted suddenly from Meghan’s pocket. “That’s him now!” She pulled her cell phone out, excitedly tapping the screen. She turned up the driveway to the house, speaking into the phone. “I’m here. Can’t wait to see you! You wouldn’t believe all the things that they have lined up for me to do with these two—”
Sam looked over at Derek as Meghan’s voice trailed off into the house. “I don’t have a good feeling about her. Do you think she should leave us at Belle Isle alone? Mom and Dad would never do that.”
“Are you kidding me?” hooted Derek. “This is going to be great! It’s like a week of roaming free without Mom and Dad telling us what to do. You saw how Meghan acted as soon as they left. I think she’s going to be more interested in talking to her boyfriend than watching us. It’s perfect!”
FOUR
After dinner, Sam almost managed to keep Mr. Haskins' offer to himself. Once he told Derek there was a ghost story to be heard, there would be no stopping. Derek would be desperate to hear the story. But Sam’s curiosity eventually won out, and he filled Derek in on Mr. Haskins’ invitation.
Meghan didn’t seem to mind them going over to the neighbor’s house for a little while. She was eagerly awaiting another call from Paul, even though they’d just talked before dinner. Sam knew girls were hard to understand, but he started to think that maybe college age girls were even harder.
Once they had cleared away the dinner plates, the boys tumbled out of the house and ran up to Mr. Haskins’ front porch.
“Come on, push the button!” ordered Derek, staring at the doorbell.
“I did push it, nothing happened.”
“Well, do it again.”
“You do it again,” answered Sam, backing up onto the top step of the porch. “I don’t want to keep ringing it and make him mad.”
“Are you sure he invited us over?”
“Yes, I’m sure. He said—,” Sam made his voice as deep and crusty as he could manage, ‘—You boys come on over, and I’ll tell you a tale.’”
Derek cracked up at Sam’s imitation.
“Maybe he’s sleeping,” said Sam. “Or maybe he’s going to the bathroom.”
“For all this time?” said Derek.
“I don’t know, he’s old. Things take longer. Try knocking. Maybe the bell doesn’t work.”
Derek opened the screen and rapped on the wooden door with his knuckles. The peeling paint around the doorframe seemed like it might all fall off if he banged too hard. As he knocked, a loud creak echoed onto the porch, the door falling open a few inches.
Derek jumped back at the unexpected movement. He turned questioningly to his brother.
“Don’t look at me. You opened it,” said Sam.
“I didn’t. It opened by itself,” Derek explained. He hesitated then leaned toward the opening. “Hello? Mr. Haskins?”
“I don’t think he’s here. Look, there’s not even a car in the driveway,” Sam pointed behind the house.
“Of course there’s not a car, Sam. He doesn’t drive anymore ‘cause he’s like 80 or 90 years old. I think his son comes once a week and gives him groceries. Come on, let’s go in.”
“But what if he sees us?” said Sam. “He won’t like us walking around in his house uninvited.”
“You said he invited us,” reminded Derek. “Why would he mind?” He pushed the door open further and stepped into the room.
The boys had only been inside their neighbor’s house a couple times since they’d moved in two summers ago. It looked old from the outside, but even more so on the inside. It was hard to explain, but everything—the furniture, the curtains— just seemed old. Sam felt like he had stepped into a black and white movie.
A musty smell hung in the air like a mixture of old socks and cough medicine. The floorboards creaked under every footstep. Dark wooden picture frames with black and white photographs lined the walls. It reminded Sam of being at the Haunted Mansion at Disney World where the faces in the pictures changed and watched you. It gave him the creeps.
“Anybody home?” Derek called again.
“Mr. Haskins?” called Sam. “It’s Sam and Derek Jackson…from next door…you told us to come over?”
“Maybe he’s in the shower,” said Derek. “I hope he’s not naked.”
“You think he’d shower with his clothes on?”
Derek laughed. “No! I hope he’s not showering at all.”
Sam tried not to picture Mr. Haskins in the shower. It was almost worse than thinking about ghosts.
“Get out of my house!” a voice hollered.
Sam froze in his steps, his heart racing.
“Come back here on the deck so I can talk to you!”
Sam could breathe again.
The boys pushed through an old screen, stepping out onto the wooden deck as the door slammed behind them. Mr. Haskins was relaxing on a chair, sipping a glass of something. He’d changed out of his robe but was still wearing the old civil war hat.
“I’d offer you some sweet tea, but I just finished it off,” he explained. “I’d offer you something else, but I don’t think your parents would like you drinking any of the hard stuff.” He motioned to a couple Adirondack chairs beside him. A small table held a flickering mosquito repellent candle.
Sam felt a pinch in his skin and smacked his neck a second too late. He ducked into the chair quickly before he got attacked by any more bugs. The thought of anything sucking his blood made him squeamish.
For a minute, they all sat in the dusk in silence, staring into the candle flame. Sam couldn't relax. He hated small talk, and he never knew what was about to come out of Derek’s mouth in situations like this.
Mr. Haskins finally broke the silence. “So…you’re going to Belle Isle, are ya?”
“Yep, we’re going tomorrow to ride our bikes,” said Derek.
“Have you been there?” asked Sam.
“Me?” the old man cackled. “Of course I’ve been there, boy. I’ve lived here my whole life.” He slid back in his chair and narrowed his eyes. “The more important question is have you?”
“No, this will be our first time,” answered Sam.
Mr. Haskins took a slow sip of his drink. He leaned his head back against his chair, staring at the sky. “The first time I went to Belle Isle was back in 1947. I wasn’t much older than you two. I wasn’t riding bikes, mind you. Me and my best friend, Jimmy Howser, were camping out on the north side of the island.”
“I didn’t know you could camp there,” said Sam.
“Don’t think you can, today,” answered Mr. Haskins. “But back in ’47, there weren’t all the regulations and whatnot like there are today. Kids could roam around and do all kinds of exploring. Jimmy had an older sister with a place right near Belle Isle, so one night we snuck out with a knapsack and my BB gun to sleep under the stars.”
“Did it rain?” asked Derek. “It almost always rains when we go camping.”
“Quiet, boy,” shushed Mr. Haskins, slapping Derek’s knee. “Let me tell the story.” He eased further back into his chair with a few more creaks and continued. “Back during the Civil War, Belle Isle was a prisoner-of-war camp for Union soldiers.”
Sam raised his eyebrows in surprise. “It was?” He’d never heard that before.
“Yes, sir. Terrible place, it was. Of course, I guess most prisons back then were pretty awful, but this one especially so. It’s said that when some of the prisoners were released back to the Union army, the doctors found them in such terrible shape, they were nearly dead.” He paused, looking out into the woods. “They were like walking ghosts.”
“Whoa,” muttered Derek.
The evening was still, but a slight breeze blew across the deck, just enough to ruffle Sam’s hair, sending chills down his spine. He didn’t like where this story was going, but he kept listening.
Mr. Haskins nodded, as if assuring them he spoke the truth, and then continued. “Now, unlike most prisons, the camp on Belle Isle didn’t have walls, just tents lined up in an open field.”
“Wouldn’t the prisoners just escape?” asked Sam. That didn’t make any sense.
Mr. Haskins chuckled and folded his hands on his lap. “Well, tent walls made of canvas and rope don’t sound like much until you consider that there were a hundred Confederate soldiers guarding the place. That and a row of cannons on the hill. They staked out a line on the ground called the dead zone. Any prisoner who crossed the line was shot on sight.”
Yikes, thought Sam.
“Think that would be enough to make you stay?” asked Mr. Haskins.
“I think so,” answered Sam.
“I bet I could've taken them,” Derek boasted.
“Sure you could, tough guy,” laughed Mr. Haskins. He took another long sip on his tea. “The island was a terrible place during the war. Afterwards, they built a factory there where they made nails and things like that.”
“I thought you said there were ghosts,” said Derek, starting to fidget in his seat.
“Be patient, boy. I’m getting to it.” Mr. Haskins shifted his weight with a groan. “For years after the war, men working in the factory reported hearing noises, and at night they’d see things out on the water.”
Sam could feel his heart beating faster.
“What did they see?” asked Derek, leaning in closer.
The old man’s voice grew quieter. “Lights. Floating out on the water. Some folks claimed that they looked like the faces of Union soldiers—the ones that died in the prison camp but never received a proper burial.”
“Why didn’t they bury them?” asked Sam.
“Well, they may have dumped them in a shallow grave, but not with any kind of proper ceremony or stone markers. Nothing like Hollywood Cemetery, across the river. Over eighteen thousand Confederate soldiers are buried over there.”
“Whoa,” whistled Sam. “That’s a lot of graves.” He couldn’t imagine that many people dying.
“So that’s all people saw? Lights on the water?” asked Derek, sounding unimpressed.
“Well, there’s more to my story, but I can tell that you boys aren’t interested,” Mr. Haskins said, placing his drink on the table. “Maybe another time.”
Sam and Derek bolted upright in their chairs. “No!” they shouted in unison. “We want to hear.”
“You do, huh?” Mr. Haskins smiled. “Well, it’s common knowledge that the rapids on the James get particularly stirred at night. Nobody knows why, but they grow fierce and wild. Then, each night, exactly at midnight, the ghosts of the Union and Confederate soldiers rise from their graves to battle on the rapids between the island and the cemetery. Flashes of light burst all around as their swords clash and the gunpowder fires from their rifles.”
“Give me a break,” said Derek. “If that’s true, how come no one’s ever taken a picture or a video of it?”
“Trust me, boy, many have tried, but the ghosts sense when folks are watching. Just like the Sasquatch. It’s never been captured.”
“Maybe because it isn’t real, Mr. Haskins,” said Sam, working to convince himself that the tale was fiction.
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” answered Mr. Haskins. “Just don’t try to tell that to my friend Jimmy.”
“Why not?” asked Derek. “Is he dead?”
“Yep.”
“What?” exclaimed Sam, gripping the arms of his chair tightly.
“But because he was old, right?” said Derek.
Mr. Haskins’ eyes narrowed. “Weren’t natural causes that killed old Jimmy Howser, boys. In fact, that night camping on Belle Isle was the last time I ever saw him.”
Sam let out a deep breath. This was getting to be too much. Mr. Haskins was just trying to scare him now. Sam looked over toward his house, wishing that his mom and dad were there and not just Meghan.
“What happened?” asked Derek.
“Well, Jimmy and I saw the lights on the water that night.”
“You did?” said Sam.
“Yep. Now I’ll be honest with you boys, I couldn’t be quite sure exactly what it was, but there was definitely something out there. I’ll swear to it. We didn’t sleep a wink that night, just kept thinking about th
ose soldiers from the war lying underneath us in the ground. Just before dawn, we packed up our camp and high tailed it home.”
“But what happened to Jimmy?” asked Sam.
“Well, Jimmy wouldn’t give up on the idea that something was out there. He couldn’t get what we saw on the water out of his mind. So a few nights later, he went back. He called me on the telephone asking me to go with him too, but I said no. I’d had enough of that island at night. But Jimmy went anyway. Alone. And he never came back.”
The boys sat frozen in their chairs, hanging on Mr. Haskins’ words. “Never?” asked Sam. “What happened to him?”
“Dunno. Next day his pap called the police. I told them where Jimmy said he was going, and they searched the island top to bottom. Even dragged the river from boats, but they never found a body. It was like he vanished into the night. People started saying it must have been the ghosts that took him for nosing around in their business.”
“Was it the ghosts?” asked Sam, eyes bugging out of his head.
“I don’t know, boy. But I can tell you what I saw that first night, when I was hiding behind a rock on the shore of the James. There was an eerie light floating over the water where no light should have been. And I can tell you that I lost a good friend. That’s what I do know.”
Everyone sat silently, Mr. Haskins’ words hanging in the air. Sam didn’t know what to believe.
A loud bang smacked the table, sending Sam and Derek out of their chairs with a start.
“Gotcha, mosquito!” Mr. Haskins cackled. He looked up at the boys. “I didn’t scare you two did I?”
Sam stood up and moved to the steps. It was definitely time to go.
“Sure, I guess you boys ought to be getting home. That cousin of yours is probably wondering where you’ve run off to.”
“Thanks for the story,” Derek managed to say, looking as nervous as Sam felt.
“Don’t mention it,” grinned Mr. Haskins. “You two have fun on Belle Isle tomorrow, ya hear?”
The Virginia Mysteries Collection: Books 1-3 Page 18