The Haunting

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  Next we looked over what remained of the summer kitchen—a kind of shed with open walls, set on a cement slab, with some of the supports and most of the roof missing.

  “Stay away from it, Lia,” Dad said, as if I’d had any intention of ever going inside it. “That place is an accident waiting to happen.”

  The privy was a hopeless mess of fallen walls and collapsed roof. I didn’t want to look at it.

  The barn was okay, I guess. At least, it wasn’t as beat up as the other outbuildings, and there weren’t more than a few gaps in the walls. But Dad said, “We don’t need a barn or stables. I suggest that we have the whole thing torn down and erect a good-sized toolshed and workshop in its place.”

  Mom nodded. “Keeping horses would be fun for the kids, but it’s way out of our price range.”

  So are all those kids, I wanted to tell her, but I kept my mouth shut.

  Mr. Boudreau shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against what remained of a dead oak, its top branches gone and its trunk nothing but splinters of wood pointing up to the sky. “Couple of these old trees could come out, while you’re at it, if you’re at it,” he said.

  “No ‘if’s,’ ” Mom told him. “We’ll talk to the structural engineers who are going to examine the house. As soon as we get their evaluation, we’ll begin work on modernizing the kitchen and adding bathrooms. Then you and I will have a long talk about expanding the vegetable garden and putting playground equipment in this open field ahead of us.” She turned to Dad and smiled. “Do you think we could fit a baseball diamond in that far corner?”

  Before Dad could answer, Mr. Boudreau shook his head and said, “I wouldn’t, if I was you. Kids playin’ and yellin’ back there might be a bother to your renter.”

  We all looked at him with surprise. “What renter?” Mom asked.

  “There’s an old cabin on y’all’s property, back in the trees. You can’t see it good from here, but it’s there. Where the overseers once lived, I’m guessin’. The old wooden slave quarters fell apart years ago, but that cabin was built a whole lot better, and Ava Phipps has been livin’ there for a good long while.”

  A tingle ran up my backbone when Mr. Boudreau mentioned the overseers. The last overseer had been Morgan Slade. That was where he had lived. The story in Charlotte’s diary was beginning to come more and more alive to me.

  “Does anyone else know about this Ava Phipps living on the property?” Mom asked.

  “You mean, like is Miz Phipps a squatter or is she livin’ there legal?” Mr. Boudreau asked.

  “Yes. That’s what I mean,” Mom said.

  “Your grandmother knew,” Mr. Boudreau said. “I guess you could say that at first Miz Phipps was a squatter. I mean, she come across this empty cabin, and she moved right in and stayed. I knew about it, but I wasn’t about to chase her off, considering her circumstances.

  “I told Mrs. Langley when she came here to check on how things were going, and she and Miz Phipps sat down and had them a long talk. They was both a lot younger then, but Miz Phipps … well, she never was quite right in the head. Mrs. Langley was a kind woman. She didn’t turn Miz Phipps out, ’cause where would the poor woman go? Mrs. Langley told Miz Phipps she could go on livin’ in that cabin and nobody would bother her.”

  He looked at Mom questioningly, and she came through. I knew she would.

  “Grandma was like that,” Mom said. “And I’ll be glad to carry out her wishes. Mrs. Phipps can live in the cabin, but I do want to talk to her. She needs to know what our plans are for the house.”

  Mr. Boudreau just shrugged, as if he were positive those plans would never take shape. “Y’all got on the right kind of shoes for walkin’ in the field,” he said. “When you get into the field, you’ll see a kind of path that runs along the edge of the woods under the trees. Take it and it’ll lead you right to the cabin.”

  We followed his directions to a narrow beaten path, and somehow I found myself leading a single file, with Mom behind me and Dad behind her. The path skirted the field and was shaded by the tall pines and thick vines and underbrush that were tangled together to create a wall of woods.

  As we walked more deeply into shadow a pair of gleaming eyes just over my head startled me. I stopped short, and Mom bumped into me. As we caught our balance a large, black, furry animal on an overhead branch hissed and spit, then leaped from the branch into the underbrush.

  “What in the world was that?” Mom asked.

  “Just a cat,” I said. “But it didn’t act like a cat. Maybe it was frightened. I don’t know if we scared it as much as it scared me.”

  “Some people dump kittens in lonely places, instead of taking them to animal shelters that will find them homes,” Dad said. “That cat may have learned to fend for itself when it was still a kitten so it has grown up wild.”

  “Poor thing,” I said. “Maybe we could bring food for it.”

  Even though I realized there’d be nothing for a cat to eat at the house, I automatically glanced back. There was no sign of the house. The woods had curved inward, shutting out the rest of the world. We were in a deep green silence, without even the caw of a grackle or the scold of a mockingbird. I was used to city sounds, so I felt as if we had landed in an alien country.

  I guess Mom and Dad felt the same because we walked on in silence, the beaten grass muffling the sound of our footsteps. I kept searching the depths of the underbrush, though, wary of once again coming across that unfriendly cat.

  Suddenly a large gray-striped cat shot across my path, racing from a clump of high grass, where it had been hidden, into a break in the bushes. I looked to see where it had disappeared and discovered a small clearing just the other side of the break. Within the clearing stood a cabin made of bricks.

  The cabin was square, with a chimney rising at each end. A wooden porch, which stretched the length of the cabin, was supported by five short piles of mortared bricks. Two posts, which were anchored on the porch, held up a steeply slanting, badly patched roof. There should have been three posts, but one at the far end was missing, and there the roof dipped and sagged. One door and one window opened onto the porch, and a rectangular window, covered by a sheet of plastic, filled the space at the side of the fireplace. Two cats rested on the porch, one sat in the window, and the gray-striped cat perched on the roof.

  “There it is,” I said. I forced my way through the low shrubbery, bending to push away branches, and stepped into the clearing. “There’s Morgan Slade’s house.”

  “Whose?” Dad asked as he came up behind me.

  “Morgan Slade is someone out of the past. The woman who lives here is Ava Phipps,” Mom said.

  The door creaked open, and a tiny woman peered out, as if she’d heard her name. She squinted, holding her head up as if it were hard for her to see, and called in a squeaky voice, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Anne Starling,” Mom said, “the new owner of Graymoss, and this is my husband, Derek, and my daughter, Lia. We came to meet you.”

  “New owner?” Mrs. Phipps looked a little frightened. “Better come on inside,” she said.

  Up close she was even smaller. She reminded me of a sparrow, with her little round head and tiny bones. She waved us to a lumpy, dark sofa with some of its springs and upholstery missing, and she perched on a ladder-back chair, her legs dangling. The black cat we’d seen earlier leaped onto her lap and lay there, watching us. He kept his nonblinking, gleaming eyes on us—a silent watchcat. The gray-striped cat climbed through an open window and settled on top of a cupboard.

  Mom told Mrs. Phipps about Sarah’s death. Then, for a while, the two of them talked about the good weather and Mrs. Phipps’s six cats. I looked around the room, wondering if it still contained traces of the horrible Morgan Slade, who had run off with the Blevinses’ valuables and threatened to run off with Charlotte, too. But the unpainted walls were bare, and the unsanded board shelves by the fireplace were piled with old cooking utensils, three dented metal teake
ttles, and a hodgepodge of odds and ends. Things that belong in a dump, I thought, until with a wave of guilt I realized that was probably where they had come from. The room had a damp, musty smell that mingled with the scents of strong coffee and stale grease. In spite of the uncurtained windows, it was a dark, gloomy box, cut off from the sun.

  Mom began telling Mrs. Phipps about the plans she and Dad had for making a home. Mrs. Phipps listened, her head tilted the way sparrows tilt their heads, until Mom paused. Then Mrs. Phipps said, “Too much noise. Workers, children. I don’t like it.”

  “You won’t hear the sounds of construction. The house is far enough away, and the woods will cut off any noise. As far as the children are concerned, we’ll teach them to respect your territory.”

  “Won’t do no good,” Mrs. Phipps said.

  Looking surprised, Mom answered, “Yes, it will. If we give the children love and security and a happy home—”

  Mrs. Phipps interrupted. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean you can’t live in that house, not with the evil in it.”

  Mom gave a discouraged sigh, but I leaned forward eagerly.

  “Tell us about the evil,” I said. “Have you seen it?”

  “What’s to tell?” Mrs. Phipps asked. “It’s there. Everybody around here knows so.”

  “It seems that everyone around here has been filled with the same wild stories,” Mom said. “But they don’t affect us. We don’t believe in ghosts, Mrs. Phipps.”

  “Don’t matter if you believe in them or not. If they’re there, they’re there,” Mrs. Phipps said.

  Dad chuckled. “Good point,” he said. “We just won’t let them bother us. Okay?”

  Mrs. Phipps leaned forward, clutching the sides of her chair for balance. “They’ll bother you whether you like it or not,” she said. “And they’ll keep on bothering you until they feel free to leave.”

  “They’re free to leave anytime they want,” Dad said.

  “It’s not that easy,” Mrs. Phipps said. She was leaning forward so far I was afraid she’d fall out of her chair. This time she twisted slightly to stare at me with her tiny bird eyes. “There’s only one way to set a ghost free, and that’s find out what’s making it hang around. Ghosts haunt a place because they’ve got a reason. When you find the reason, then you can set about putting the ghost’s mind at ease so it can leave.”

  The woman in the voodoo shop in New Orleans had said almost the same thing. “Mrs. Phipps,” I said, “Placide Blevins was shot before he could tell Charlotte what he had on his mind. Is that what you mean? That he still has something he needs to tell?”

  “Placide wasn’t evil. He isn’t the horror that lives in the house,” Mrs. Phipps answered. “Placide may have unfinished business, but he would never have frightened his loving granddaughter like that. And he wouldn’t have scared other people to death.”

  Mom got a determined gleam in her eye. “No one has been able to tell us the identities of the people who were supposedly frightened to death or the circumstances surrounding their deaths. Do you know the facts?”

  Mrs. Phipps nodded. “Just that it happened. That’s enough facts to suit me.” She glanced at the book in my hand. “I see Placide Blevins gave you that book.”

  I jumped with surprise and hoped Mom and Dad wouldn’t start asking questions. “Why did you say that?” I asked her.

  “Because once his spirit tried to give it to me,” she said. “It didn’t do no good because my eyes are too old and tired for reading now, so I give it back.”

  I had a dozen questions. “You’ve been in the house then? In the daytime? Or at night?”

  “Both,” Mrs. Phipps said. “In the daytime it’s mostly peaceful, but after dark things turn ugly. There’s scary faces and whispers and fingers that pull at you and—”

  Mom broke in. “Mrs. Phipps,” she said, “Mrs. Lord told me that she read Charlotte’s diary. You seem to be familiar with the contents, too. Did Mrs. Lord by any chance make a copy of the diary?”

  “She typed it word for word,” Mrs. Phipps said, “and it wasn’t by chance. It was on purpose. She’s got it up on display in that little historical museum in Bogue City.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Phipps said. “That’s what give me the idea to come here. I knew nobody was likely to want to live in the house. I looked around the property, and sure enough, here sat an empty cabin, ready for the moving in.”

  Mom wouldn’t give up. “The events you described in the house are the same as the events Charlotte described in her diary,” she said.

  Mrs. Phipps’s head bobbed in agreement. “The very same.”

  Mom looked flustered and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. “What I’m trying to say is that the diary influenced you.”

  “Probably did,” Mrs. Phipps said.

  Mom relaxed and smiled. “There. You see. The power of suggestion,” she said.

  “No, the power in that house wasn’t suggesting anything,” Mrs. Phipps answered. “With all those goings-on, it was saying flat out, ‘Get out of here, if you know what’s good for you.’ It influenced me right out of that house.”

  Mrs. Phipps pointed at a large oil lamp with tiny roses painted on the globe. “I’ll come straight out with it,” she said. “I went to the house just to look around ’cause I was curious. I found a broken window sash, so I decided to climb inside and see if there was anything I might use. I found that lamp and liked it. Nobody else was using it, so I didn’t think anybody would care if I borrowed it. I always meant to write to that nice Mrs. Langley and tell her I’d take good care of her lamp and give it back if she wanted it, but I’m not much of a one for writing letters. Anyway, I never got around to buying a stamp.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Phipps,” Mom said. “You can have the lamp.”

  Mrs. Phipps hunched her shoulders and narrowed her eyes. “I borrowed two pans and a kettle, too.”

  “You may keep them.”

  Mrs. Phipps smiled a broad, gap-toothed smile. “You’re a nice lady,” she said. “Nice as your grandmother. I’m sorry you won’t be around long.”

  “But I will be around,” Mom said. “Remember? I told you our plans for the house.”

  “I heard what you said,” Mrs. Phipps answered. “But maybe you didn’t hear what I said. I pointed out that there’d be no living in that house until you put the evil to rest.”

  I could see that Mom was having trouble keeping her cool. “Mrs. Phipps, I’m not about to—”

  Mrs. Phipps interrupted. “I never figured you would, Miz Starling. I can tell you right now that closing your mind off the way you do, you’d never be able to do it.” She turned her gaze on me. “But you can do it, girl. I can see that. You’re the one. Find the reason the evil is there, and maybe then you can send it away.”

  “Why me?” I asked. I held my breath, frightened of this strange woman, as I waited for her answer.

  Mom lost it. “I can’t imagine why we’re having this conversation!” she snapped. “As I told you, Mrs. Phipps, we don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Your girl does,” Mrs. Phipps said.

  “No, Lia doesn’t,” Mom insisted.

  Mrs. Phipps glanced at the neckline of my shirt, then back into my eyes. “I think you do believe,” she said to me. “Else why are you protecting yourself with gris-gris?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I quickly glanced down and saw that the bag on the string around my neck had shifted and had fallen outside the neckline of my shirt. It had probably happened while I was bending over, trying to get into the clearing. I was glad Mrs. Phipps was the only one who had looked at me. I dropped the little bag of gris-gris down inside my shirt again, thankful that my parents were still intent on Mrs. Phipps and not on me. I couldn’t think of an answer.

  It didn’t matter, because Mom stood up. “Mrs. Phipps, we’ve been hearing a great many silly ghost stories about Graymoss from everyone we’ve met here,” she said. H
er voice was controlled because she was trying to be polite, but I could tell she was steaming. “I don’t want Lia to be drawn into believing there is some kind of evil in the house. This business of protecting herself from ghosts with—well, whatever it was you were talking about …”

  I smothered a sigh of relief. Apparently Mom didn’t know about voodoo charms, and I supposed Dad didn’t, either, because he hadn’t reacted to the mention of gris-gris. He put an arm around Mom’s shoulders and nudged her toward the door.

  “We enjoyed meeting you, Mrs. Phipps,” he said.

  In the open doorway Mom collected herself enough to say, “As I promised, no one will disturb you, Mrs. Phipps. And if you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  The gray-striped cat leaped to the arm of the sofa and peered into my face as though asking why I was still sitting there like an open-mouthed statue. I jumped up and made a dash after my parents, who by this time had crossed the porch. “Goodbye, Mrs. Phipps,” I said.

  In spite of her small size she was as fast as I was. Suddenly she was at my side, clutching my arm with her little bird-bone fingers. “I don’t know how good that gris-gris you’ve got is gonna work or how long its power will last,” she said in a low voice. “Find the reason the evil is in that house. That’s the only way you’re ever going to get rid of it.”

  What made her think I wanted to get rid of it? Getting rid of the evil did not fit into my plans. I pulled away from Mrs. Phipps’s grip and caught up with my parents. I was careful this time to keep the gris-gris hidden.

  Mom strode back to our car double time. Dad and I could hardly keep up with her.

  “We all need something to eat,” Dad said. “Should we try that cafe we passed in Bogue City?”

  “No!” Mom boomed as she slid into the front passenger seat and slammed the car door. “I don’t want to talk to one more person around here. They’re all trying to get us to go away.” I heard her snuffle, and she rubbed hard at her nose. “We won’t go away! We’re going to make a home here.”