Phantom in the Pond

by Dorothy Bodoin

  I pulled it out and tried again—and again.

  Meanwhile, Misty was watching some invisible activity at the base of the cupola porch. Perhaps a dandelion moving in the breeze.

  Annica said, “What’s that you used to say? The house doesn’t want us here?”

  Trust Annica to remember everything I said if it related to a ghostly endeavor.

  “There! I have it!”

  “That was strange,” she said. “You expect things to be off kilter in an old house, but Brent had the locks changed.”

  I shrugged. “I must have had the key in the wrong way.”

  We were inside, breathing stale air. I tried to open one of the front windows but they didn’t budge, obviously having been painted over too many times. I reminded myself that Brent would have new windows installed.

  Annica sneezed. “Darned dust motes.”

  I had let go of Misty’s leash, but she was dragging it behind her and would be easy to catch if she elected to go on an adventure.

  “This is the most unfriendly house I’ve ever been in,” Annica said.

  “You’ll feel different when it’s furnished.”

  “Where did Lucy sense the fear?” she asked.

  “In the kitchen and on the landing.”

  The aroma of coffee drifted out of the kitchen, blended with a faint scent of cinnamon. Misty was already there, barking at something. I followed the sound and saw what had excited her. Someone had opened the package of doughnuts and eaten half of them, scattering crumbs on the counter.

  “Brent must have been here,” Annica said.

  “Brent or someone.”

  Brent wasn’t one to leave a mess for somebody else to clean, especially when that somebody else didn’t exist yet. Which led to a troubling thought. The house issued a silent invitation to a vagrant. But if I had trouble gaining entrance with a key, how was a home invasion possible? Just in case, we’d better make sure no windows had been broken.

  Annica ran her hand over the walls. “Lucy says the terror was absorbed into the walls? I don’t feel anything. They’re just walls. Cold and dusty.”

  “We don’t have Lucy’s talents,” I pointed out.

  “I wish I knew what happened.”

  “I’m going to the library tomorrow and check out Miss Eidt’s vertical file,” I said. “The Banner used to run true ghost stories every Halloween. Some had local settings. Maybe I can learn something about this house.”

  “I hope so, but like I said before, this is a low-level haunting. A face in the pool, a feeling of terror. All I feel is desolation, but when we have canisters of dog food on the counter and soup simmering on the stove…”

  “Soup?”

  “Made with marrow bones. For the dogs,” she added.

  I frowned, becoming aware of a far-away scratching sound, the kind my collies make as they rake their nails over a rug in hope of turning it into a nest.

  There shouldn’t be any sound at all in the house. Unless Misty…

  “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  “Hear what?”

  “That scratching.”

  “Yikes. Rats?”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions. Do you hear anything at all?”

  “Not even Misty. Where did she go?”

  I had my answer. The haunting was playing for me alone.

  Eleven

  How could Annica not hear the scratching sound? It might have been in the next room or upstairs—or in another dimension, as we were in a haunted house.

  From the second floor, Misty gave a high-pitched collie yelp. Come see what I found!

  “Upstairs,” I said and hurried to the staircase, not waiting to see if Annica was following me.

  Misty’s yelp turned into a fury of frustrated barking. She met me at the top of the stairs, tail sweeping back and forth, eyes bright with some secret discovery.

  The scratching had ceased. Had it been Misty after all?

  She ran to the furnished room and stopped at the doorway, looking over her shoulder as if to make certain I’d deciphered her message. Which I hadn’t.

  Annica caught up to me. “What’s all the commotion about?”

  “Misty knows,” I said. “She sensed something.”

  “Well, Misty. What’s wrong, pup?”

  Annica’s question elicited another yelp as Misty padded into the room. I didn’t know what I expected to find, but Annica, Misty, and I were the only ones inside. The scratching began again, but out in the hall or in another room. If it had more than one source, that wasn’t good.

  “Do you think you heard a rat?” Annica asked.

  “I hope not. No, I think it’s our ghost trying to cross over onto our plane.”

  “What?”

  “The ghost dog, not the frightened woman. The phantom from the pond.”

  “I told you so,” Annica said. “The collie moved to the house. But where did he go?”

  I watched Misty leap up onto the mattress as if were her property. Instead of lying down, she stood a bit unsteadily, sniffing at it and running her nails along the sagging top.

  “That isn’t the sound I heard,” I said.

  “Well, no, you heard a ghost sound.” Annica strolled over to the dresser and opened drawers, one by one. “Nothing.” She turned to the nightstand. “This is empty, too. The ghost wasn’t considerate enough to leave us any clues.”

  I opened the closet door. All that remained inside, besides about a dozen hangers, all pushed together, was a shelf lined with brittle old paper. Whoever left the furniture in the house had moved everything out first. Every little trace of her existence. Yes, her.

  I imagined the frightened woman had slept in this room. Again, one of the house’s minor mysteries tugged at me. Why was this bedroom suite left behind when the other rooms had been stripped of their furnishings? If no one wanted it, it could have been sold or donated to a charity.

  “I’m not exactly sensing fear or evil,” Annica said, “but this bedroom gives me the creeps. Let’s move on.”

  “Yes, there’s nothing here.”

  I called Misty, who took her time about jumping off the mattress. As I reached for her leash, something dropped down from my shoulder and fell on the floor to lie glistening on the bare hardwood.

  Dropped down from where? And when had I acquired it?

  “What’s that?” Annica asked.

  I picked it up. It was a tiny gold sticker, the kind once used to attach photographs to album pages. It would have been one of four. They been called—what? Reinforcements? Where was the picture?

  “Where did that come from?” Annica asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. It may have fallen from the shelf when I was looking in the closet.” I slipped it into my pocket. “This may be the only thing we find today.”

  Out in the hall, the sound of scratching insinuated itself into the heavy stillness again. It seemed to originate downstairs. Or maybe in the attic. I couldn’t tell. Misty tilted her head and growled. She, too, was confused.

  “Do you hear it now?” I asked.

  “Hear what? Misty growling?”

  “That scratching noise.”

  “Now you’re reminding me of that Poe story where they buried a woman alive and she scratched her way out of her coffin.”

  Madeline in The Fall of the House of Usher. Good grief. I wished Annica hadn’t remembered that story. Not here. Not now. Well, it was better than imagining rats.

  “To answer your question, I don’t hear anything,” she said. “I wish I did. Let’s check out the other rooms.”

  By then the noise had died away. Silence wrapped its arms tightly around me. I breathed deeply and tried to form my flyaway feelings into coherent thoughts. The air in the room was toxic, giving rise to unhealthy fancies. Like a person being walled in alive.

  That couldn’t happen in this day and age.

  No doubt about it, Brent had purchased a strange house, but negative feelings aside, it was an evocative place
, one with an irresistible pull.

  All the other rooms on that floor proved to be vast empty spaces, coated in the ever-present dust and festooned with cobwebs. The windows were intact and impossible to move as were the ones on the ground floor. No one could have broken into the house through a window.

  It appeared that the little gold reinforcement was going to be our only find of the day. For all the good it would do.

  “Let’s finish our tour,” Annica said, apparently unaffected by the house’s miasma.

  ~ * ~

  “What on earth?”

  I stared at the kitchen counter, not ready to believe what I was seeing. Only two doughnuts remained in the package, whereas there had been four when we’d left the kitchen.

  “It looks like we have a hungry ghost,” Annica said. “Or a hungry collie.”

  Misty placed her paws on the counter, nudged the box, and licked her chops.

  “Not Misty,” I said. “She left the kitchen before we did and was with us every minute.”

  “Who then?”

  Who indeed?

  I shrugged.

  “Oh, well, since everybody’s doing it…” Annica broke a doughnut in two and ate it. “It’s fresh,” she added. “Is that a clue?”

  “It didn’t come from the Hometown Bakery. I don’t recognize the brand.”

  “I know,” she said. “Brent came by when we were upstairs. He didn’t know we were here. He ate a couple of doughnuts and left.”

  I shook my head. “Misty would have let us know.”

  “Then we’re back to our ghost,” she said. “Either the phantom in the pond or the frightened woman. Do you want the last doughnut?”

  “You have it.”

  Quickly she scooped it up. “We’ll give Brent something to wonder about. Who ate his doughnuts?”

  Noticing Misty’s hopeful stare, Annica broke off a small piece for her. “Your psychic collie isn’t very helpful today.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. She reacted to the scratching sound.”

  “By barking and growling? What does that tell us?”

  “That we’re not alone in the house,” I said.

  “I never thought we were.”

  Ghostly noises forgotten, Misty yanked the empty package down to the floor and began to lick the crumbs left inside. Whatever powers she possessed, when food was concerned, she was like any other dog.

  ~ * ~

  Outside the house, the air had a lightly spiced floral scent. Carnations, I thought, mixed with the smell of freshly mowed grass, although no one had come near the lawn with a mower and the only flowers I saw were the pink loosestrife. They were beautiful but not fragrant.

  We made our way to the pond and the wide gap where the pickets had broken away. I tapped the ‘camera’ icon on my phone. “Before we leave, I want to take some pictures of the pond.”

  “Why? It’s seen better days.”

  She gazed into its depths, at the crumpled leaf bits and twig pieces and the incongruous candy wrapper. “If I look long enough, I may see the dog,” she said.

  Misty must have had the same idea. She stepped over the rock border and lowered her head to the surface.

  To drink? Quickly I tugged her back to my side. Some dogs lack even a shred of common sense. But she must be thirsty. I knew I was.

  Annica couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from the water.

  “Do you see anything?” I asked.

  “Just an unsightly mess.” She paused, finding her phone and taking a picture of her own. “I can see how the wind could rearrange the debris into a picture that resembled a dog’s face.”

  “That isn’t what happened,” I said and took another picture, coming as close to the edge of the pond as I dared.

  For just a moment, a wave of vertigo distorted my vision. Was it possible for a person, a child, perhaps, to fall into the pond and drown? Or to be blown off his feet by a high wind?

  Unlikely. The pond water wasn’t that deep. Anyone with legs and arms could easily climb out of it.

  So forget that grim theory.

  Unless the person hit his head and lost consciousness.

  “I’m going to make a copy of these for Brent’s before and after file,” I said, not adding what I was thinking.

  Maybe my clever little phone had captured the face of the phantom collie.

  But when I clicked on ‘Photo,’ all I saw was an expanse of befouled water.

  Twelve

  Six of the noisiest children in creation were playing on slides in the rustic park across from the Foxglove Corners Public Library. Their happy squeals and screeches competed with the barking of the two small brown dogs that circled the swings. Oh, to have such energy in this beastly heat.

  I walked up to the porch of the library, tossing a greeting to Blackberry, Miss Eidt’s cat who lay on a wicker chair regarding me with cold jewel-bright eyes and no welcome whatsoever in her aspect.

  The old white Victorian had once been the Eidt family home. Years ago, before I came to Foxglove Corners, Miss Elizabeth Eidt had donated it to the town to use as a library. She had also donated many of her own books and stayed on as the town’s only librarian, living in a compact and picturesque ranch house not far from the Corners.

  Miss Eidt was a bona fide institution in our town, a kind and generous person I counted among my close friends. Even on hot, humid summer days, she presented a crisp, professional appearance to her patrons, wearing stylish pastel suits and a pearl necklace or sometimes a colorful silk scarf.

  As I set a box of pastries from the Hometown Bakery on her desk, she looked up from the book she was reading with a bright, albeit slightly distracted, smile.

  “I have assorted Danish,” I said. “A couple of them are your favorite, apricot. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “As it happens, I skipped breakfast. So yes, I’m ravenous. What brings you to the library on this scorching day?”

  “I’d like to look through your Supernatural file,” I said.

  One of the charms of our hometown library was the smooth blend of old time features and modern conveniences like computers and WiFi. I often wondered if we had the only vertical file left in the state.

  “This can only mean you have a new mystery,” Miss Eidt said.

  “I do. It’s a haunted house, courtesy of Brent Fowler.”

  “How exciting! Tell me about it.”

  I described the house on Loosestrife Lane and its peculiarities, then told her about the fishpond.

  As I showed her the pictures I’d taken, she murmured, “How lovely. That’s a magnificent willow.”

  I wished I’d been able to capture the phantom collie with my camera.

  “The pond is part of the haunting. I saw a collie’s face reflected in the water when Misty was looking in the pond.” As she looked puzzled, I added, “It was a sable and white collie, not Misty’s reflection.”

  “Only that?”

  I guess I hadn’t adequately conveyed the mystifying feeling I associated with seeing the phantom in the pond.

  She scrolled through the camera roll again. “Is the collie still there?”

  “I only saw it for a few seconds when it vanished.”

  Mmm. A swim-by ghost dog. How odd.” She handed my phone back to me. “Is Brent moving into the new place?”

  “No, he intends to open it up to geriatric collies who have little chance of finding forever homes. He’s looking for a caretaker or maybe two.”

  “Imagine thinking of that,” she said. “Brent is one man in a billion.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me.”

  Miss Eidt placed a bookmark in her book and rose to open the door to her homey office. “I’ll put the kettle on. You know your way around the vertical file, and you might want to check the Supernatural section. We have a new book titled Haunted Northland. It has a lot of material on Michigan ghosts and even a chapter on Foxglove Corners.”

  There could be a whole book on our ghosts. I often thought
that Foxglove Corners was a hotbed of psychic activity. In truth, it was.

  She brewed tea, opened the bakery box, and left me alone to conduct my research. I found what I was looking for immediately, a thick manila folder titled ‘Haunted Places in Foxglove Corners,’ and spilled the contents on the table.

  I separated the Banner’s Halloween features from the other material, mostly articles about inexplicable events and troubled spirits. Before long, I was reading stories that caught my interest even though they weren’t remotely connected to haunted houses. Like an illustrated account of the Eloise insane asylum by a ghost hunter who had toured the facility before it was redeveloped. How I would have loved to have been one of that company.

  Two major stories were missing from the files, but only I or perhaps Brent or Annica could remedy that. First were the oddities of Huron Court, the time twisting road. I could attest to the fact that a traveler, whether on foot or behind the wheel of a car, could find himself transported without warning to another season in another time.

  Then, there was the wildflower garden that Brent and Annica had planted on the ground where a magnificent pink Victorian had once stood. Also on Huron Court. Violet-like flowers that nobody had planted had sprung up from the soil, along with blossoming plants that grew taller and healthier than their relatives and seemed to have a life of their own, trapping people who stepped inside their territory with tenacious vines.

  These true stories were missing because only a few people were aware of them. By mutual agreement, we rarely discussed Huron Court or the time we’d fallen victim to its spell.

  “How are you doing, Jennet? Are you ready for more tea?”

  My heart skipped a beat as Miss Eidt opened the door. I’d been so lost in my research that I was unaware of other people in the library. I glanced at my cup—half full and certainly cooling.

  “And you didn’t eat a Danish. How unlike you.”

  I smiled, knowing she hadn’t intended to comment adversely on my passion for all things sweet.

  “I’d better check out the new book,” I said. “Later, when I find it, you and Debbie can join me.”

  Debbie was Miss Eidt’s young assistant who aspired to be a librarian when she graduated from the university.