Ghostlight

by Sonia Gensler

  She studied me for a moment, and I just studied her right back without blinking.

  “Will sixty watts do?” she finally asked.

  Once I’d changed the bulb, I reached down to pull several sheets of drawing paper from the Kingdom box. Then I grabbed the colored pencils and made myself comfortable on the quilt.

  Did I know what I was doing? Not really. I couldn’t imagine what this movie with Blake would look like when it was finished. I just needed a plan for the next day. Otherwise, he and I would waste too much time arguing.

  Weasley watched from the edge of the bed as I divided my first sheet of paper into eight squares, each one representing an individual shot. When Julian first told me about shots and angles, he’d called this kind of thing a storyboard. With a regular pencil I sketched out how each shot would look. It wasn’t the best drawing I could do—just outlines and stick figures so I had an idea of what should go where within the frame.

  The opening scene would be a wide shot of the cemetery, panning from left to right to get a sense of the trees that surrounded it, and coming to a stop on me standing next to the Clearview Cemetery sign. I knew from studying those films with Julian that I couldn’t just stand there talking for a long time. He would have called that a static shot because not enough was happening and the audience would get bored. Maybe it’d be better if I walked toward Joshua Hilliard’s grave? I wrote some introductory words in the space left over. That way I could practice it a little before we actually shot the scene.

  The next shot had to be the gravestone of Elizabeth and Margaret Anne Hilliard. A close-up first, but then pulling back to include me. This was where I would introduce the story question—why was Joshua Hilliard buried separately from his wife and daughter? Did it have something to do with his daughter’s tragic early death?

  After that I made a list of short clips we could use to break up long scenes. I had no clue how to edit them in, but Blake and I could figure that out later. I listed all the close-up shots I could think of: the lettering on headstones, drooping grave flowers, carvings, photographs. Maybe even an angel statue.

  Weasley attempted several stealth landings on my stack of papers—he just couldn’t resist the crinkle of paper under his paws—so eventually I had to shut him out of the attic. I worked until nearly midnight and only stopped because my eyes were dry and gritty. When I finally turned out the light, I slept hard. Too hard for any dreams to creep in.

  “Zoom in on that carving of the cross.”

  Blake looked up from the headstone. “Avery, there’s no zoom on this phone.”

  “Can’t you do that two-finger thing?”

  “I tried, but the picture goes out of focus.”

  “Well, just walk closer to it while the camera’s rolling, I guess.”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing.”

  A bead of sweat plopped into my right eye, so I backed away to rub at it. Something moved in the distance, but when I focused both eyes in that direction, everything was still. Just trees and graves.

  My stomach gave a hideous growl.

  “Tell me about it,” muttered Blake.

  It was all taking a lot longer than I’d planned. Even though I’d scripted out what to say, we’d needed eleven takes to get the intro segment even close to right, and fifteen to get the bit by Margaret Anne’s grave. I knew this because Blake had numbered each take, his voice growing snarkier each time. On the last take, he’d muttered, “Action. Take one billion.”

  Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded Julian stepping in at that point. He was selfish and took advantage of people, but he knew what he wanted and got the job done. If we didn’t finish this day’s filming soon, Blake would mutiny on me, and then I’d be up a creek with no cameraman.

  “Did you see that?”

  I shaded my eyes to look where Blake was pointing but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “What?”

  “I could have sworn I saw somebody.”

  “This heat could make a person hallucinate.” I wiped my forehead on my sleeve. “Look, we just need some shots of grave flowers, the more droopy and tattered, the better, and then we can go back for lunch.”

  Most of the flowers were fake—silk carnations and roses on knobby plastic stems—but we did find a grave with a built-in vase full of lilies with browning, crinkled edges. I knew from listening to Julian that the contrast of the white petals against the dark gray stone would look even better in black and white. I just had to somehow figure out how to make that change later.

  Deeper into the cemetery Blake found a grave with a vase of freshly picked daisies tipped over on its side. Without me even asking he took some footage of the fallen vase, so I stood back and studied the gravestone. It was very similar to Grandpa’s—a man’s name with birth and death dates at the left, and his wife’s name at the right with the death date still blank. It made my heart ache a little to think of old Aileen Forney Shelton bringing fresh wildflowers every week to her husband Clarence only to have the wind blow them over.

  Wait…Aileen?

  Her birthday was June 8, 1930.

  I ran back to Margaret Anne’s grave to check. She was born in 1930, just as I’d thought. My face flushed hot and tingly, and this time it wasn’t the sun’s fault.

  “Are we done with this one?” Blake called.

  I walked toward him and set the daisy vase upright again. Then I pointed at the gravestone. “This woman—I’m almost positive she was Margaret Anne’s friend. We found a framed photo of Margaret Anne with another girl, and the names written on the back were Margaret Anne and Aileen.”

  “How do you know it’s the same Aileen?”

  “Same birth year. And how many Aileens have you seen in the cemetery? It’s not an everyday sort of name.” I took a breath to calm my thumping heart. “We have to talk to her. We could even get her on camera. Someone who knew Margaret Anne? That would make this film into something real. Well, it’s real now, but it would be so much cooler.”

  “You know, Avery, she’s probably dead.”

  “Nice one, brainiac. If she were dead, she’d be here. With a death date on her grave.”

  “Right. Duh.” Blake looked away. “But still, she’s over eighty years old. She may have lost her mind already.” He shivered. “Old people…they weird me out.”

  “Grandma’s old and you like her just fine.”

  “She’s different. She’s not that old, and she’s only a little batty.”

  “Well, this lady brings fresh flowers to her husband’s grave, so she must be pretty neat.” I imagined a lady knitting in a rocking chair, her soft white hair in a bun and a lace collar around her neck. She’d look so quaint on camera. And that was just the sort of thing this film needed.

  —

  By the time we got back to the house, Grandma had already settled into her afternoon nap, so Mom made us grilled cheese sandwiches with apples and brown sugar toasted inside.

  “How’d your meeting go?” I asked between chews.

  “Try swallowing before you speak,” Mom said. “The closing is set for three weeks from tomorrow, pending the outcome of the inspection. Mama settled on a lower price in lieu of making repairs, so unless there’s something horribly wrong that the buyers didn’t find, I think everything will work out fine.”

  A sliver of apple stuck in my throat. In all the craziness of the past couple of days, I’d forgotten about the Hilliard House inspection. The whole point of such a thing was to look for damage. Had Julian left water in the tub upstairs? There could be water on the floor, too.

  “How was your filming at the cemetery?” Mom smiled and shook her head. “Now that’s a question I never expected to ask my children.”

  I looked at Blake.

  He shrugged.

  “Actually, we found something interesting.” I pointed at the folder I’d set on the china cabinet. “Can you hand me that?”

  Mom reached for the red folder and set it next to me. I wiped my hands and pulled the ph
otograph of Margaret Anne and Aileen out of the left pocket.

  When I held it out to her, she stared at the photo for a moment, her mouth dropping open. “I remember this,” she said, wiping her hands before taking it. “Mr. Hilliard showed it to me. But I think it was in a silver frame back then.”

  “Turn it over, Mom. The other girl is named Aileen, which is a spelling I’d never seen before. At least not until today at the cemetery when I saw the name—spelled exactly the same way—on a gravestone. It was for a man and his wife, but the wife hasn’t died yet. Her name is Aileen Forney Shelton, and she was born in 1930, just like Margaret Anne. There’s someone alive who knew her!”

  “My goodness,” Mom said. “The name sounds familiar—I probably met her at one of the cemetery gatherings.”

  “Do you think she’d be part of our film? That she might talk to us about Margaret Anne?”

  Mom took a sip of tea and carefully set the glass down. “Avery, you realize it’s been over seventy-five years since Margaret Anne died? Think of all that’s happened to Mrs. Shelton in the meantime. She may not remember very much.”

  “But Grandma always says she remembers things from her childhood better than what she did yesterday. We have to try, don’t we?”

  Mom smiled. “I suppose we could give her a call.”

  I sank in my chair. “If we just had Internet on this hill we could do a search on her and maybe find her email address or something.”

  “If we had Internet,” Blake said, “we could use satellites to find the exact location of her house.”

  “I have an even better idea.” Mom stood up, taking her plate to the sink, and walked out of the kitchen. She returned with a skinny yellow book in her hand. “Here’s some technology that’ll blow your mind. How about we look her up in the phone book?”

  I raised an eyebrow at Blake.

  Mom sat and paged through the book. “Okay, here’s Sheerin, Shehan, Shelsey…well, there’s no Aileen, but here’s a Mrs. Clarence Shelton.”

  “That’s it! Her husband was named Clarence.”

  “Get a pen and write this number down, Avery.”

  “And then you’ll call her?” I asked.

  “Not a chance, my girl.”

  I gulped.

  “This is your project,” Mom said. “You make the call.”

  It took me a while to work up the nerve. Calling someone on the phone was something people did on TV reruns. I kept Mom’s old flip phone in my pocket during the school year, but that was only so she and I could reach each other in an emergency. It didn’t have a texting plan, and since I kept up with my friends online I never called anyone else on it.

  I was so jittery that I ended up writing a script for the conversation, and I asked Mom to look it over.

  “I’m not sure why you’re so nervous about this,” she said.

  “I never talk to old people except for Grandma. And talking on the phone is just…stressful.”

  Mom’s eyes got that faraway look. “My friends and I used to talk for hours on the phone after school. Daddy would get so annoyed. ‘Can’t you get all that out of your system at school?’ But we never ran out of things to talk about. And when a boy would call? Sometimes I’d be up past midnight talking on the phone, but I had to be secret about it.”

  “Okay, Mom. Enough about the golden olden days.” I glanced over my script again. “I have to do this in private.”

  She smiled. “Why don’t you use the phone in the sewing room? That way you can close the door. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

  Once I’d shut the door and settled in the rolling chair, I punched in the numbers. The phone rang and rang. Just when I was about to hang up, it finally connected and a rough voice said, “Hello?”

  “Um, hello. Is this Mrs. Shelton?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Could I speak with Mrs. Shelton, please?”

  There was a pause. “Who is this?”

  It took my last ounce of courage not to hang up. “This is Avery May Hilliard. My grandma is Ava Hilliard.”

  “Miss Ava, huh? Church of Christ?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why do you need to speak with my aunt?”

  I glanced at my script, which had been written as if I was talking to Mrs. Shelton, not some niece who didn’t even give her name. “Well, um, I was hoping to talk to Mrs. Shelton about…what I mean is, I’m doing a project on local history, and I need to talk to some old folks.” I cringed. “Er, I need people who have been in the area for a while and know the history. People who knew my family. I think your aunt was friends with one of my relatives when they were little girls.”

  The woman sighed. “Aunt Aileen doesn’t talk on the phone much. She doesn’t do much of anything anymore, because she tires easily.”

  “But I really need to ask her some questions. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  She didn’t answer, and the silence dragged on for at least a century.

  “Are you still there, ma’am?”

  “You’d have to come here,” she finally said. “How old are you, anyway?”

  “I’m twelve. But I promise I’m serious about this project, ma’am. I can get my mom to bring me, and I won’t be loud or track in dirt or anything.”

  There was another awkward pause before she spoke.

  “You could come by tomorrow morning. She’s at her best before noon. I suppose any time between nine and eleven would work. It’s not like she has anywhere to go or any other appointments to keep.”

  Relief made my knees wobbly. “That sounds great. I’ll just check with my mom.”

  “You be sure to call if you can’t make it. I don’t want to waste time getting her ready for a no-show.”

  “I promise I’ll be there. Thank you.”

  After I’d put the phone back on the charger, I went to the kitchen. Mom had her computer open on the kitchen table, and she looked up when I stood next to her.

  “Everything all right?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Shelton’s niece answered the phone. She sounded a little cranky, but she told me to come tomorrow morning. You’ll drive me, right?”

  “I’d be happy to. Well done, honey.”

  I lay my cheek on her head. “There’s one thing. What exactly is typhoid? I probably should know, since that’s how Margaret Anne died.”

  “Well…it’s an infection, I think. You get it from contaminated food or water.” She started to type, but then shook her head. “I can’t check the Internet, so if you want to know more, you’ll have to look it up in Grandma’s World Book Encyclopedia. She got that set in the eighties, but it’s not like typhoid has changed that much in the last thirty years.”

  I went to the living room and pulled the T volume off the shelf. The pages were thick and shiny with a sickly sweet smell that made my nose twitch. The entry for “typhoid” was long and I had to read it a few times before I got the gist. Turns out that typhoid is a bacterial disease you get from eating food or drinking water that has feces in it.

  Feces? How in the world did anyone manage to eat or drink something with poo in it?

  Actually, there were lots of ways. One way was not to wash your hands after going to the bathroom. Flies feeding on poo was another—if those flies landed on your food they could give you the disease. Or if your water supply got mixed up with sewage, the water could get contaminated. Back in Margaret Anne’s day, the water wasn’t even chlorinated, so there was a bigger risk. Mom had said that flooding could help spread typhoid. It made me gag a little to think about it, but I could see how sewage and drinking water might get mixed up if water was overflowing everywhere.

  The symptoms of typhoid were high fever, stomach pain, headache, and tiredness. Sometimes the bacteria could get to your intestines and then leak into your abdominal cavity, and that could lead to death.

  No wonder Joshua Hilliard had been maudlin. It must have been torture to watch his little girl suffer like that. And since his wife was out
of town, he was the only one around to take care of Margaret Anne. But why didn’t he call the doctor before it was too late? Did the flooding have something to do with it?

  Maybe Aileen Shelton would know.

  “This is it,” Mom said.

  I leaned toward the window and saw SHELTON stenciled on the mailbox when she turned off the main road. The tires kicked up gravel as we crept along the driveway toward a little white house with green shutters and a front porch. The siding was dusty and the gutter sagged a little, but Grandma would have called the house “respectable enough.”

  I got out of the car and gathered my notebook to my chest for comfort. Blake messed with his hair, pushing it forward in that way that nearly covered his eyes. Mom waited by the front of the car.

  We all stared at one another for a moment.

  “Go on, Mom,” I said. “We’ll follow.”

  She shook her head. “You need to ring the doorbell, Avery.”

  It was no use giving her the pitiful look, so I dragged myself up the porch steps and took a deep breath. The doorbell was cracked, but I heard it chime from inside when I pressed it. After a moment, the door opened to reveal a dark-haired lady with half an inch of gray roots and no makeup. She wore a blue velour tracksuit and didn’t look old enough to be Mrs. Shelton.

  “You must be Avery May.” She peered closer. “You’ve got your grandma’s pointy chin, all right.”

  Her face drooped in a frown, and she smelled like cigarettes.

  “Are you gonna come in or what?” the woman said. “Aunt Aileen is in her bedroom. You did know she’s bedridden, didn’t you?”

  My shoulders tensed up. “I’ve never interviewed anyone from their bed before.”

  “You just have to pull up a chair. For some reason she’s eager to see you.” She looked past me. “Who’d you bring with you?”

  “Just my mom and brother.”

  The woman shrugged. “Well, all of y’all had better come in.”

  She led us toward the back of the house to a flowery-walled room with lots of light coming in through the windows. A small lady lay in the bed with quilts pulled up to her chest. She wasn’t propped up very much, and I wondered if she was even able to sit upright anymore. Her cheeks were wrinkled and kind of sunken, and you could see the pink of her scalp through thinning white hair.