I began to read and underline, and it was tough going. All I knew about Placide Blevins was that he was good and kind and wasn’t afraid of hard work. He had even helped to build Graymoss, and he’d constructed an herb garden for Charlotte. However, since he had grown older and no longer had the help of his son, he’d had to hire someone else—Morgan Slade.
Mr. Blevins liked to live well and eat well, and he enjoyed French wine. I smiled as I thought of his so-called fine wine cellar, comparing those three pitiful bottles to the huge racks that lined the walls in some of the best restaurants in New Orleans.
He was a brave, courageous man, though. He fought to protect Charlotte from Slade.
I read over what he had said about the valuables Slade was stealing: They are of no real importance. What he obviously meant, but hadn’t said, was, “In comparison to your safety, Charlotte.” I liked Mr. Blevins’s priorities. I read again that Charlotte was told that the answers to her questions could be found in the pages of Poe’s Tales. And I studied Charlotte’s statement that her grandfather had told her to save the house.
Surprised, I spoke aloud. “No, he didn’t, Charlotte. You said that he whispered, ‘The house.’ That’s all.”
Charlotte had thought she knew what he’d wanted to say and had finished the sentence for him, but what if he really wanted to say something else? What was it? Something about the house? Something inside the house?
A bad feeling about Morgan Slade bothered me, too. Something about him was said … or wasn’t said. What was it? At the moment I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I opened my notebook to the pages with the one-sentence descriptions of the Favorite Tales. I crossed out “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Nobody in the Blevins household had been murdered and stuffed up a chimney, like the girl in that story. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was also what our American lit teacher called “a locked-room mystery,” where the victim is in a locked room and the detective has to try to prove how someone else got in and murdered him and got out again. The story just didn’t fit.
After a lot of thought I returned the story “The Black Cat” to my list. I realized that the Blevinses didn’t have a black cat, but they did have a basement, and in the story the man murders his wife on the basement stairs. If Mr. Tavey had been pushed, as he claimed, his fall could have ended up as a murder, instead of just a broken leg. And with the black cat sitting there, watching … There was so much coincidence I had to keep considering the story for possible clues.
There was also a basement in “The Cask of Amontillado.” That was the location of the wine cellar.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” had a sealed casket instead of a wine cellar, and, again, there was a basement. This story also described a lot of the same type of strange winds and noises that had terrified Charlotte. I wondered if she hadn’t seen the similarity, too. Maybe she was too frightened to think about it clearly.
And how about you? I asked myself. Are you thinking clearly? You’re getting ready to go into a house that is haunted by evil, and you have nothing to protect you, now that you’ve lost the gris-gris.
I glanced into the mirror over the dresser, but I didn’t see my own reflection. Instead I could see Demetria and Jimmy and Delia looking back at me. I had to find the answer Charlotte couldn’t find. I had to confront the evil in the house and send it away. I had to.
Suddenly words in the diary began to stand out. Things Mr. Blevins said and didn’t say shifted, shimmered, and took shape like puzzle pieces sliding together in my mind. I clutched the edge of the dresser, held my breath, and let it all happen. I was so scared that I shook. I knew now what I had to do. And I wasn’t going to like it.
The doorbell rang, and I jumped. With trembling fingers, I closed my notebook and stuffed it into my waist pack, made sure my flashlight was working, and zipped the pack shut before I hurried down the stairs to meet Jonathan.
Before we left I asked Grandma if I could borrow her cell phone. “Dad says when anyone’s out on the highway, especially at night—”
“He’s right,” Grandma said. She took the phone off its charger and handed it to me. It was small enough to stuff into my waist pack.
All the way out of Baton Rouge Jonathan talked about the party, and who would be there, and who was dating whom, and a lot of stuff I really didn’t care about. My mind was on Graymoss and what I needed to do.
When Jonathan finally began to wind down I said, “I don’t want to go to the party.”
He whirled toward me. “What?”
“If it’s all right with you, I’d rather go to Graymoss.”
“You’re kidding. Right?”
“No, I mean it. I hope you’ll take me to Graymoss.”
Jonathan threw me a couple of you’ve-got-to-be-crazy looks before he began thinking about what I’d said.
“It’ll be dark soon. Real soon.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
“I think I see what you mean. Nobody will be there,” he said. “Nobody but you, me, and the ghosts.” He actually leered.
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” I said. “I need to go to Gray moss, and you’re the logical one to take me there.”
“Sure,” he said. “And if the ghosts don’t show up, you and I will have the place to ourselves.”
“I’m counting on the ghosts showing up,” I told him.
“What ghosts?”
“What do you mean, ‘what ghosts?’ You felt them yourself. You told us so.”
Jonathan threw back his head and laughed. “That story I told your mom about sneaking into the house when I was ten? Grandma got me to do that to help her cause. It came right out of that diary Grandma has plastered all over her museum. Sure, I climbed in that broken window and explored the house, but I did it as a dare when I was a kid, and it was in daylight. Charlie came around the corner and saw a bunch of us hanging around and chased us away.”
I was stunned. “What you told us wasn’t true?”
Jonathan looked smug. “No, but it made a good story for people who believe in ghosts.”
“You’re telling me that you don’t believe in ghosts?”
“Of course I don’t,” he said, “and neither do you. Your story was pretty good, too. I have to admit you threw me a curve about that book falling and hitting you. I thought at first that you were making fun of my story because the book-throwing was my own, original touch.”
“My story was true,” I said.
He stopped grinning and gave me another searching look.
“I can’t figure you out,” he said. “What do you want?”
“I told you. I want to go to Graymoss.”
For a moment I wondered if Jonathan’s presence would hurt my plan to get rid of the evil that haunted Graymoss, but I realized that Jonathan meant nothing to the evil. The only problem might be Jonathan’s, if he fell under the full fury of the evil and got scared out of his skull.
We had reached Bogue City. I didn’t have much time to convince Jonathan to take me there. He wouldn’t believe the truth, so I appealed to his big ego. I said, “Look, it’s a dare. Okay? A friend expects me to stay in the house until midnight, and I hoped you’d like to be with me.”
Jonathan understood that. He smiled, and his car picked up speed. “We’ll be there in five minutes,” he said.
The gate was closed, but not locked, so I pushed it open, and we drove up to the house. Jonathan smiled again, and this time I smiled in return. If everything went as I thought it would, he’d be in for a huge surprise.
The sunset was a red and gold glow that spread from the horizon to tint the house, so the entire building seemed to gleam, and its western windows reflected flashes of fire. Even Jonathan seemed impressed.
We went up the back steps and walked as quietly as we could along the veranda to the window with the broken sash. As we reached it, the sun dropped behind the trees, and the glow vanished as suddenly as if a switch had been pulled.
We climbed in through the window. I handed Jonathan the flashlight he’d brought in from the car and took mine out of my pack. The light in the house was fading into purple and blue shadows, but we didn’t need our flashlights yet.
The basement door was no longer open, although the broken splinters and scraps of wood still lay on the floor. I wondered who had shut the door. Charlie had insisted he wouldn’t set foot inside the house. Had the sheriff shut it? I couldn’t remember anyone closing the door. I tried the handle, and—with the lock broken—it easily turned in my hand.
“What are you doing?” Jonathan asked.
“The basement. That’s where—”
“I know, where Homer Tavey fell down the stairs. Well, I don’t want to waste time seeing the basement when we have better things to do.”
I looked into Jonathan’s eyes and asked, “Who pushed Mr. Tavey down the stairs? Who shoved the summer kitchen down on Mr. Merle? You or your grandmother?”
Jonathan took a sharp breath, and I could see the lie forming. “Yesterday evening Grandma and I were together at her house making popcorn and watching TV,” he said, and laughed. “Solid alibis. Don’t give it another thought.”
“I won’t,” I assured him. “I’ll let the sheriff work it out. Since you’re each others alibi, with no other witnesses—”
“Nobody’s gonna bother Grandma,” Jonathan insisted. “She’s a fixure in Bogue City, president of the Historical Society and all that. Sure, she’ll do anything to get her own way, but other than that she’s a nice, harmless, old lady. Right?”
Harmless? I didn’t think so. I didn’t think the sheriff would think she was so harmless, either, when I told him to check the windowsill and basement door for her fingerprints—Jonathan’s, too. I was also counting on Jonathan’s big mouth. Eventually, with his oversized ego, he’d want to brag, and he’d blab the whole story.
Jonathan took my hand from the doorknob and pulled me in his wake until we came to the parlor. “We don’t want to stand around arguing, Lia. Let’s make ourselves comfortable,” he said.
As he flopped down on a sofa, yanking me down beside him, he slipped an arm around my shoulders, hugging me close. “This is nice,” he murmured. “Too bad we didn’t bring something to eat or a portable CD player.”
I pushed against him and sat upright. “Sorry, Jonathan, but this isn’t part of the plan.”
“I’ve got plans, too,” he said. He reached for me again, but I jumped to my feet.
A light breeze brushed my cheek, lifting tendrils of my hair. I was so scared, I wanted to run straight out of the house and never come back, but I couldn’t. I took a deep breath and said, “Listen, Jonathan. Be quiet and listen.”
“I don’t hear anything,” he said.
But I did.
“Come upstairs with me,” I told him. Dusk was quickly dissolving into darkness, so I turned on my flashlight.
“That’s more like it,” Jonathan said. He turned on his flashlight and tried to catch up with me as I ran through the entry hall, up the stairs, and into Placide Blevins’s bedroom. When we were inside the room I shut the door and faced Jonathan.
“It’s stronger here,” I said, “The whispers have come. Do you hear them? Do you feel them pulling and pushing us, wrapping around our heads and poking at our minds?”
Jonathan took a step backward, bumping into the closed door. He looked pale. “Don’t do that, Lia!” he said.
I could hear it clearly now, the whispered word repeated over and over, tumbling against itself, beating against my ears. And I knew what the voice was saying: “Below, below, below.”
“Look at the ceiling, Jonathan,” I said. “Look at the tiny faces and their mean, hard eyes. You can see their sharp teeth and their split little serpent tongues.”
He looked upward and let out a yelp of terror. “What are they doing? What are they saying?” he cried.
A cold wind rushed through the room, lifting the curtains at the blank-eyed windows, and wrapped itself around us.
“You’re not going to frighten me out of the house,” I called out to the invisible one. “I know who you are and how to send you away from Graymoss.”
Jonathan’s eyes rolled up in his head. He slumped against the door, and I thought he would faint.
I reached out and shook his shoulder. “Get a grip on yourself,” I shouted at him over the wind and the voices. “Come down to the basement with me. I need your help.”
I reached for the doorknob, but Jonathan was faster. He shoved me aside and raced into the hall. I could hear him clattering down the stairs and into the kitchen. As I walked carefully down the stairs, gripping the handrail, I heard Jonathan’s car driving away.
I was all alone. It was better that way.
The wind pushed against me. The whispers turned to shouts, and invisible fingers pulled through my hair and along my face. I had trouble breathing, and my feet became heavy, as though I were walking through thick mud. Leave this horrible place! a voice in my head kept saying. Get out of here! Run!
But I couldn’t. I had to finish the task I’d come for. I struggled into the kitchen, where I tugged and jerked at the closed basement door. The winds had caught it and wouldn’t let go. “You can’t stop me!” I shouted. “I’m going to win!”
The door suddenly flew open, knocking me off balance. Carefully I crawled down the stairs, clinging to the railing. The beam from my flashlight made a path through the darkness, and I followed it.
With the wind and voices howling around me, I struggled to the back of the basement. I laid my flashlight on a shelf so that its beam hit the brick wall between the arches. Then I picked up the wooden mallet and the short iron bar with the point on one end. Placing the point against the mortar between a row of bricks, I began to pound.
As chips of mortar and bricks flew, I cried out, “Mr. Blevins, I got your message. You never did say that Slade had left. You only told Charlotte that Slade wouldn’t harm her. Now I know how you kept him from doing that.”
A brick wobbled and fell out. I attacked the ones above and next to it.
Over the roaring in my ears I shouted, “You thought you were protecting Charlotte. You didn’t know you were imprisoning Slade’s evil in Graymoss.”
Suddenly something soft and furry brushed against my legs, and I leaped back with a scream, dropping my iron bar.
I looked down to see the large black cat staring up at me. “Oh, it’s you,” I said, but I was breathing hard, and it took me a few moments to recover.
The cat patted at the iron bar, then hunched over it, glaring at me with his gleaming, yellow eyes.
“Move,” I said, and bent to pick up the bar, but the cat snarled and hissed.
Was this a real cat or was it a visible part of the evil in Graymoss? I didn’t want to find out, so I quit trying to retrieve the iron bar and reached for the flat iron tool with a handle instead. I hammered with all my strength at the mortar. The cat yowled and vanished into the darkness.
As I worked I shouted, “Morgan Slade, Mr. Blevins had to stop you from harming his granddaughter. And I’m going to stop you from harming Graymoss. You are the evil that haunts the house, but your power is gone! You’re leaving! Now!”
With a final slam against the bricks, a section about two feet wide broke off and fell through. I picked up my flashlight and swept its beam through the hidden room on the other side of the wall.
The small room was dank and cobwebby, but there before me was the fine wine cellar, with rows and rows of bottles covered in a thick layer of dust. On the floor was spread the remnants of a deteriorated canvas sack, its contents of silver plate and jewelry spilled onto the ground. And next to the sack, facedown, with a bashed-in skull, lay the partly clothed skeleton of a man.
I remembered what the woman in the French Quarter had told me. Hoping I had the words right, I cleared my throat, made my voice as stern and loud as I could, and said, “Go away, Morgan Slade. Go to whatever awaits you.”
The cold winds abruptly stopped, and the whispers stilled. The house was suddenly so quiet that I staggered back against the shelves. “I did it!” I said aloud. “I really did it!”
But I remembered there hadn’t been just one ghost. Softly I added, “You can go, too, Mr. Blevins. Your house is now in good hands.”
Graymoss would be inhabited by our family and a bunch of kids who might be a little noisy at times and might be a real pain in the neck at other times, but who needed to be part of a family. I was pretty sure Placide Blevins would approve. And he’d approve of what I’d done to save Graymoss.
So would Mom and Dad. I’d tell them everything, and Mom would try to make it all seem logical so that I wouldn’t be traumatized by ghosts or messages or anything she couldn’t explain. But she’d be happy—ecstatically happy—because clearing the house of evil spirits would mean Mom and Dad’s dream could come true.
And Grandma, who’d been totally spooked by this house? She’d be proud of me, too.
I climbed out of the house through the kitchen window, shut it carefully, and sat on the steps of the front veranda. Pulling Grandma’s cell phone from my pack, I dialed the Bogue City operator and asked to speak to the sheriff.
While I waited, I mentally hung the WOMEN WHO ARE EXCEPTIONALLY BRAVE banner over the front door. Bigger and brighter than before, the golden names glittered, and I grinned with delight as I looked at them. There, down at the bottom—along with all the rest—was written LIA MARIE STARLING.
“Sheriff Fuller speaking,” the sheriff said into my ear.
“Hello, Sheriff Fuller,” I answered. “This is Lia Starling. I’d like to report a murder.”
JOAN LOWERY NIXON has been called the grande dame of young adult mysteries. She is the author of more than 130 books for young readers and is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Novel. She received the award for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Is Murder, and The Other Side of Dark, which also won the California Young Reader Medal.
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