Ghosts Beneath Our Feet

by Betty Ren Wright

  “Oh, gosh, my hair.” The girl raised a hand and touched the lopsided curls. “I was trying something new,” she said, her face flaming. “I bet I look—”

  She didn’t finish. Jay’s expression told her quite clearly how she looked.

  “Your hair is really pretty,” Katie said. “I love red hair.” But the girl’s lips tightened, and she didn’t answer. Jay started up the hill, and Mrs. Blaine followed with a wan smile. Katie hesitated, longing to patch things up.

  “That lady in the kitchen—”

  “My grandma.” The girl sounded hostile.

  “She knew we were going to Frank Pendarra’s house. I guess in a small town everybody knows what’s going on.” The words sounded critical, as if Katie were accusing the townspeople of being nosy. “What I mean is, what did your grandma mean for me to tell him? What was she talking about?”

  “I don’t know.” The girl turned her back and stalked up the narrow walk to the house. “She says things sometimes. Just forget it.” She went into the house and slammed the door behind her.

  Katie bit her lip. They hadn’t even gotten around to introducing themselves. She sighed and started walking. Darn that Jay, anyway. He could make trouble without saying a word. It was too hot and she was too uncomfortable to tell him what she thought right now, but she promised herself she’d do it later. He’d spoiled her chance to make a friend.

  As they neared the top of the hill, the houses were farther apart. At the crest, both the town and the sidewalk ended. The red gravel road, deeply rutted and edged with dandelions, stretched ahead of them across a meadow and into a wide stand of trees.

  Jay dropped the suitcases and sat on one of them. Mrs. Blaine huddled on the other. “This is the dumbest thing I ever heard of!” he exclaimed. “An empty field. That woman in the post office must be laughing—”

  “That’s enough.” Mrs. Blaine wiped her face. “We’re all in danger of heatstroke, and complaining won’t help. You go along the road a way, Katie, and see if there are more houses beyond those trees. We’ll wait here.”

  With a worried glance at her mother, Katie trotted away. Small white butterflies rose in front of her, lifted like flower petals by the warm wind. Far off to the left, pointed red hills marched in a line and vanished beyond the woods.

  At the edge of the woods, Katie hesitated. The road ahead was like a tunnel edged with pines and clusters of bone-white birch. Bears could be lurking among those trees. Or wolves! The leafy walls seemed to close around her as she forced herself to go on.

  She rounded a turn, just in time to catch a movement on the path. A deer bounded in front of her. It came and went so swiftly that she had only a glimpse of its flowing grace. Then she was alone again, breathless with pleasure.

  She’d seen a deer! Even Jay would have to be impressed when he heard that.

  Two more curves, and the little wood ended as abruptly as it had begun. Another meadow lay beyond it, this one dotted with willows that hung limp in the heat like sagging umbrellas. Partly hidden by the trees was a tall gray house with a porch around its front and one side. Shutters hung at angles next to the windows, and bushes crowded around the porch. Except for a sturdy stone chimney, the whole place looked as if it might cave in at any minute.

  Someone was sitting in a chair close to the front door. As Katie stared, the figure rose, and she saw that it was an old man. He tottered to the edge of the porch steps and raised a hand over his head. She couldn’t tell whether he was waving a greeting or shaking his fist.

  “You, girl!” The old voice was harsh. “You come ’ere. Come ’ere, I say!”

  Katie stepped back into the deepening shadows. She couldn’t stop herself from retreating. Not that house, she thought. Not that man, with ragged, shoulder-length hair and an angry bark of a voice. This couldn’t be the end of their long journey.

  Katie turned and raced back through the woods, trying to think what she’d say to her tired mother.

  I found the house.

  I saw Uncle Frank.

  And then perhaps the words that had been pounding through her head from the first moment she’d looked out the bus window at Newquay’s main street. Jay’s right. We shouldn’t have come, to this place. Let’s go back to Milwaukee right now.

  Chapter Three

  “An old feller could starve ’ere by ’imself, ’e could!” Settled again in his rocking chair on the porch, Uncle Frank had hardly stopped talking since the Blaines arrived. “Yesterday I called down to the town for a bit of bread and some soup, and they ’aven’t brung it yet. That’s why I ’ollered at you, girlie. Wanted you to take word. Tell ’em to ’urry up.”

  Katie sat on the front steps, obeying her mother’s suggestion that she “keep Uncle Frank company while I look around.” Keeping him company, Katie decided, meant keeping still. The long white hair grew increasingly unruly as Uncle Frank combed it with gnarled fingers, his thin frame trembling. It was surprising that someone who looked so fragile could complain so loudly.

  In spite of the stream of words tumbling around her, Katie was lonely in the fading light. The woods loomed dark beyond the meadow, and the willows close to the house formed great tents of shadow. Milwaukee and her friends seemed ten thousand miles away.

  Her thoughts went back to the dark, shrunken grandmother in the house halfway down the hill. What was it she’d said? You tell Frank they’re goin’ to get out, no matter what. You can’t stop ’em.… Nobody can. Katie wished Uncle Frank would calm down a little so she could ask him if he knew what the message meant.

  “You’ll ’ave to go down ’ill to the store, girlie. There’s nothing to eat in this ’ouse.” The old man slapped the arm of his chair, and Katie jumped. “What’s your name, then?”

  “Katie. Katherine Jane Carson Blaine.”

  “Well, you and that boy can go—what’s ’is name again?”

  “Jay. He’s my stepbrother, Uncle Frank. He’s upstairs—lying down, I guess. He’s sort of tired.” She wanted to apologize for the cool way Jay had acknowledged Mrs. Blaine’s introductions. “He’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  “Don’t care about that.” Skinny arms flailed the air. “You two ’ave to go back down the ’ill and get food. Better start right now.”

  The front door opened, and Katie sighed with relief as her mother came out onto the porch. Mrs. Blaine looked cheerful. This was what they’d come to Newquay for, Katie realized—for a job that would keep her mother too busy to grieve. The worse things looked at Uncle Frank’s house, the better her mother was going to like it.

  “No one has to go to the store tonight,” Mrs. Blaine said. “There are several cans on the cupboard shelves, Uncle Frank. We can make do until tomorrow.”

  Katie thought Uncle Frank looked disappointed. “Delivery boy from the store ’id ’em, then,” he muttered. “I looked, but I couldn’t find anything to eat. Not a bite.”

  “He probably thought he was being helpful.” Mrs. Blaine stood at the top of the steps and looked out over the yard. If she found the view depressing, her smile didn’t waver. “It’s nearly five,” she said. “We’ll have supper in a little while. You run along, Katie. I want to talk to Uncle Frank.”

  Katie jumped up. “I’m going to unpack my stuff,” she said.

  The paneled foyer was bigger than her cozy bedroom at home. A grandfather clock six feet tall towered against one wall, its pendulum stilled. Beyond it a stairway rose into shadows, and on the opposite wall double doors led into a long parlor that looked as if no one had sat in it for years.

  On tiptoe, Katie followed a hallway that opened into a dining room. Beyond that was the kitchen, with a wide table covered with oilcloth, painted cupboards, a pantry, a gas range, and—wonder of wonders—an old-fashioned wood-burning stove. Katie unlatched the oven door and stared into a sooty cavern, feeling like the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

  The kitchen shades were drawn, and the air was hot and musty. Katie closed the oven and went back to the dining room, th
en turned off through partially opened French doors into a small library. At least I’ll have plenty to read, she told herself and ran a finger across rows of bindings. But the books did little to cheer her. The house felt neglected, unloved—and what else? She had a strange feeling that something was about to happen. Here in the middle of a meadow on the edge of a forgotten town, the house seemed to be full of secrets.

  Upstairs, a dim corridor divided the second floor in half. Katie turned toward the first open door, then stopped, startled by a movement at the end of the hall. Someone was there! Someone short and-dark-haired, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Katie took a quivery breath. What a place for a full-length mirror! She’d have to remember it was there, or she’d scare herself every time she came upstairs.

  Her mother’s suitcase stood, unopened, in the large front bedroom. Katie’s bag was in the smaller room next to it. There was a lumpy-looking bed, a dresser with a wavy mirror, and a bedside stand. The blue rug was furred with dust, and the rosebud wallpaper was peeling at the corners. Katie opened the two windows and pushed back graying curtains to let in some air.

  Jay appeared in the doorway. “There’s no TV in this dump,” he announced. “How’re you going to like being stuck in the middle of nowhere without a television set?”

  Katie’s heart sank. She’d miss television a lot, but not as much as Jay would.

  “Listen.” He threw himself on the bed and groaned at the unyielding mattress. “Could you talk to her—to your mother?” Katie saw that he was very serious. “This whole thing isn’t going to work. We don’t belong here—anybody can see that. The old guy doesn’t seem so sick to me, and besides, he isn’t even related to your mother. Why does she think she has to come running when he says he needs a nurse? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Katie sat carefully in a rocker with a split in its cane seat.

  “Frank was just like a real uncle to Mom a long time ago,” she said. “And he’s not supposed to live by himself anymore. The doctors told him—”

  “He must have a family of his own somewhere.”

  Katie shook her head. They’d been over all this when Uncle Frank’s letter arrived. “He had a son who was killed in an accident when Mom was a little girl. And his wife died a long time before that. After the son was killed, Uncle Frank changed a lot, Mom said. I guess he was really bitter. He wrote a few times, but he never came to Milwaukee again.”

  Jay sat up. “He could go to a nursing home. Lots of people do.”

  “Maybe he will, later on,” Katie said. “But he’d like to stay in his own house as long as he can. And you know Mom wanted to get away from Milwaukee this summer—”

  “Well, I didn’t!” Jay punched a pillow and then sneezed as dust rose around him. “We were going to fix up Doug Krocker’s motorbike and do a lot of other good stuff.” He looked at Katie intently. “You don’t want to stay here, do you? Tell the truth.”

  Katie turned away. “I—I don’t know,” she said finally. “It isn’t the way I thought it would be, but I don’t see how we can leave Uncle Frank now.”

  She smiled, willing him to smile, too. “Maybe you’ll have fun here,” she coaxed. “You don’t know yet. We might as well find out what it’s like, now that we’re here.”

  “No way.” Jay clenched his fists. “I just may go home by myself.”

  “You can’t!”

  “Want to bet? Stay here and suffocate if you want, kiddo. I’ll make my own plans!”

  The conversation was over. No more brother-and-sister talk. Katie leaned back in the rocking chair as he stomped out of the room. She winced as the door slammed behind him with a bang that shook the walls.

  Chapter Four

  After all his concern about starving, Uncle Frank barely touched the soup and fruit Katie’s mother served for supper. He was like a sad old scarecrow, sitting there half asleep. Even Jay must see that he was sick.

  Mrs. Blaine had a notepad next to her plate. “The first thing we have to do is clean house,” she said. “You two can do your own rooms tomorrow and then give me some help downstairs. The whole place needs an airing.”

  “Housework, ugh!” Katie looked sideways at Jay, who ignored her. “Not all day, Mom! I want to find out if there are any kids living near here.” There was one, she knew—the girl they’d met on the hill—though she probably wasn’t interested in becoming a friend.

  “You’ll have time for that, too,” Mrs. Blaine assured her. “After you do a little cleaning.” She looked at Jay. “Come on, Jay, why so grim? What’s on your mind?”

  Jay stared at his plate. Katie squirmed.

  “I’m not asking you to work all the time, you know,” Mrs. Blaine continued. “I want you to have fun this summer. Get outside—explore—enjoy yourself. A new place can be exciting.”

  Jay nodded and sipped his soup.

  Uncle Frank’s spoon clattered to his plate.

  “He’s asleep,” Katie whispered. “Mom, he hardly ate anything at all.”

  Mrs. Blaine touched Uncle Frank’s arm, and the shaggy white head jerked. “Would you like to go to bed now?” she asked gently. “If you aren’t hungry, I can fix you a snack later on.”

  He looked around the table as if he’d forgotten who they were. “Tired,” he mumbled. He pushed back his chair, and Mrs. Blaine hurried to help him up.

  What would it be like to be old, tired, confused, to be always on the outside of what was happening? Suddenly Katie remembered the question she’d wanted to ask Uncle Frank earlier. Here was something interesting that only he could tell her.

  “Uncle Frank, we met a friend of yours when we were on our way up here. She’s a teeny-tiny old lady, and she lives partway up the hill.”

  The old man grunted. “Nancy Trelawny. Came over from Cornwall with ’er folks same year as me. Been in that ’ouse ever since, she ’as.”

  “Well, she sent you a message,” Katie hurried on. “She said to tell you ‘They’re going to get out,’ and she said, ‘You can’t stop them.’ What did she mean, Uncle Frank?”

  The old man straightened, and the deep-set brown eyes blazed with anger and disgust.

  “Lot of Old Country nonsense, that’s what,” he snapped. “I won’t listen to such talk, you ’ear me?” Then his shoulders sagged. “She’s a crazy woman, that Nancy,” he said. “Talks foolishness—always did. Don’t pay her any mind.” He shuffled out of the kitchen with Mrs. Blaine close behind him, her face stiff with disapproval at Katie’s probing.

  “What do you think of that?” Katie demanded as soon as they were out of earshot. “Did you see how excited he got when I told him what that old lady said?”

  Jay looked bored. “So he’s right—she’s a crazy woman.”

  “But he knew what she meant!” Katie exclaimed. She brushed a strand of dark hair from her face. “Didn’t you even notice that? He knew what Mrs. Trelawny was talking about, and it really got to him. He didn’t like it one bit.”

  “So?”

  “So this is the only exciting thing that’s happened since we got off that bus,” Katie retorted. “It’s a real mystery!” She leaned back and considered. “Maybe Uncle Frank and Nancy Trelawny were lovers when they were young. Maybe they quarreled and married other people, but she never stopped loving him, and now she wants to warn him that something bad is going to happen.”

  “And maybe you’re crazy, too,” Jay said. “That doesn’t sound like a love message to me—more like a threat.” He looked at her with amusement and disdain. “What a dreamer! Never a dull moment with you around!”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, I guess.” Jay grinned, and for a while they sat quietly in the dusk. Then Jay shrugged. “The thing is, you make up problems for the fun of it,” he said. “You don’t have any real ones.”

  His tone suggested that he had worries she knew nothing about. Katie waited, hoping he’d say more, but he pushed back his chair and stood up. “See you,” he muttered.

  Katie fini
shed her canned pears, spooning the sweet syrup slowly to make it last. A mystery, she thought. Jay could tease all he wanted, but a mystery would make up for having to spend the summer in this dreary place.

  She checked to see if there was one last pear half in the can, then crossed the kitchen to the open back door. This was the right setting for a mystery, no question about that. A small porch extended from the house like a raft afloat on a sea of meadow grass. Katie went down the steps, stopping on the last one to gaze into the twilight. There were probably rabbits and mice and all kinds of wild creatures living in this field. Even snakes! She pulled her foot back hastily, and as she did, her toe caught in a rotting board and she lost her balance. One moment she’d been looking out over the meadow. The next, she was stretched full-length on the ground. Her chest ached with the force of her fall.

  She started to get up, then froze. There was a groaning beneath her, a somber sound that began and ended in seconds. She lifted her head to look around, then pressed her ear to the ground once more. Silence. But as she lay there, not moving, the earth shuddered beneath her hands.

  Katie scrambled to her feet and flew up the porch steps. She hurtled through the door just as Mrs. Blaine returned to the kitchen.

  “Katie, for heaven’s sake! Uncle Frank’s trying to sleep.” She sank into a chair. “You really disturbed him just now,” she went on, without noticing her daughter’s flushed face. “I don’t want any more questions about mysterious messages, okay? Uncle Frank’s heart is weak. He needs rest and quiet and no stress.”

  Katie peeked over her shoulder at the open door. She half expected to see something horrible hulking there.

  “And where’s Jay?” Mrs. Blaine asked. “He’s going to have to watch his tongue, too.”

  “He went upstairs.” Katie took a deep breath to steady herself. “I’ll wash the dishes.”