Haunted Island

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  Chris studied the beach. “People could come here for cookouts. It’s pretty. Aunt Jennie could get a dock built right about where we’re standing, and maybe she’d want to clear out a few trees.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Amy asked. “We just got scared to death by a ghost, and you talk about cookouts!”

  “I’m trying not to think about Amos,” Chris said.

  “He’s all I can think about.” Amy shivered again. “I wish the sun would come out. That would help.”

  Chris glanced at the sky. “It probably won’t. Look. The sky is overcast.”

  “More rain. That’s all we need,” Amy grumbled. “Why did Amos bring us here? What did he want?”

  “He told us it was time to put the ghosts to rest,” Chris said.

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It must have meant something to Amos. I guess we’ll have to figure it out.”

  “We don’t have to figure it out. We just have to get off this island.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  Amy thought a minute. “We can send a signal. Remember that Amos said he had hung a torn shirt where people in town could see it. We could hang up something.”

  “What?”

  “My sweater?” Amy sighed. “It wouldn’t be big enough to see, would it? No, it wouldn’t. It will have to be something bigger. But what? I don’t know.”

  “If you stop having a conversation with yourself and listen for a minute, I’ll tell you my idea,” Chris said. “We can build a bonfire.”

  “Do you know how?” Amy asked.

  “Of course I do,” he said. “Learning how was part of that wilderness expedition I went on. We can gather up some of the pine branches that have fallen from the trees and pine needles and whatever else we can find. We’ll make a huge bonfire.”

  Amy ran to the edge of the pines and picked up a small branch. “Look! There’s lots of stuff in here under the trees.”

  “Just one thing,” Chris said. “We’ll have to find something to light the fire with.”

  “Oh,” Amy said. “Like matches.” She sat on the damp ground and rested her chin in her hands. “We won’t find matches in a place like this.”

  “We might find something else,” Chris said. “Amos spoke about a lantern. They had to have oil or kerosene or something for the lantern, and they had to have something to light it.” He paused and looked at Amy. “We’ll just look through the Hanovers’ house and see what we come up with.”

  “Oh, no!” Amy said. “There’s no way I’m going inside the Hanovers’ house.”

  “It won’t be so bad,” Chris told her. “We could see part of a roof and chimney, so some of it must still be standing. It’s just a small house. We can look through it and get out quickly.”

  “No,” Amy said.

  “Then I’ll look through it and you can stay here.”

  “No!” she said. “I don’t want to stay by myself.”

  “Would you rather live here on the beach until someone just happens to look at the island with binoculars or thinks of searching for us on the island? No one knew we were coming here!”

  Amy looked as though she was going to cry. “We’ll be okay, Amy,” Chris said quickly. “Let’s build the stack for the bonfire first. Then we can talk about looking through the house.”

  He began to drag small dried logs and branches from under the trees to the open beach. He held one up to Amy. “Look at this one. It’s full of pitch.”

  “What’s pitch?”

  “It’s the sap from pine trees. It burns like kerosene. It will make a great fire.”

  “Do all the branches have it?”

  “No. Just some. Look for the ones with these brown and yellowish bumps on them. That’s what pitch looks like.”

  Amy and Chris worked hard, and the pile began to grow larger.

  In spite of being overcast, the day rapidly became warmer. Amy tossed her sweater on the ground and stood back, studying the growing mound of branches. “Is this big enough?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” Chris said. “We might have to keep the fire going for quite a while until someone notices it.”

  “Chris, I just thought of something,” she said. “No one’s going to spot the fire during the daylight.”

  “I know,” Chris said. “I’m going to light it tonight, after dark.”

  Amy looked nervously over her shoulder. “You mean we’ll have to be here all day?”

  “Have you got a better idea? Come on. Let’s keep this pile growing.” Chris led the way back into the woods.

  Inside the thick pine grove the light was murky, with a greenish cast, and the air was damp. The ground under their feet was soggy and spongy with layers of pine needles. They worked hard, building the mound for the bonfire higher and higher, but each trip led them further into the woods.

  “This pile of wood is as high as our heads,” Amy complained. “Isn’t this enough?”

  “One more trip,” Chris said, and headed back into the forest.

  “There’s a log over here,” Amy said, and she ran past him to reach it. “Help me carry it.” She bent to pick up one end of the log.

  Chris joined her, but didn’t stoop to help. “Look at that, Amy,” he whispered, as he stared through the trees at a small clearing.

  She stepped up behind him and clutched his arm. “Look at what?” She whispered, too, and her voice was trembling.

  “The house! The farm! There it is!”

  Pines had grown into the clearing around the house, but the pasture remained. It stretched up the hill, its long grasses, yellowed from the midday heat of summer, rippling in the breeze. At the foot of the pasture, near the house, lay a pile of weathered, rotting boards that must have once been part of the barn.

  Directly in front of them was the house itself, its front door hanging open as though beckoning them to come inside. It was a small frame house. Once it must have been painted, but now its boards were so streaked with dirt and black mildew that it was impossible to know what color the house had once been. The wood shingles on the roof were split and curled, and a large hole gaped at one side where a section of roof had fallen in.

  Something suddenly fluttered at one of the narrow windows, and Chris jumped. Amy gasped.

  “It’s okay,” Chris said, glad that Amy didn’t know how fast his heart was beating. “It’s just a faded old piece of a curtain. The breeze must have moved it.”

  “Let’s go back to the beach,” Amy whispered.

  Chris squared his shoulders. “Why are we whispering? There’s no one on the island to hear us.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” Amy said, “there’s nothing on this island, not even a bird! It’s so quiet it’s creepy!”

  “You’re right,” Chris said. “There’s nothing here but us, so we’re just scaring ourselves. The best thing we could do right now is to look inside that house and find something to set off our bonfire, so we’ll be ready to give our signal as soon as it’s dark.”

  “We’ll just look and come right out. Promise?”

  “You call it,” Chris said. “We’ll leave when you say so.”

  “Okay then,” Amy said, “but you go first.”

  Chris hesitated on the doorstep and looked inside the house. The room was dim, yet daylight entered through a large hole in the roof near the back of the main room. He could see the kitchen beyond the living room. There was probably a bedroom off to the side. The inside walls of the house had once been white, according to Amos, but now, they were streaked with rain and dirt. An overstuffed chair, its fabric deteriorated into shreds, stood by a large stone fireplace. Some squat wooden chairs and a table rested solidly on the floor, which was layered with dirt and pine needles. An oil lamp lay in jagged pieces under the window, and broken flowerpots littered the room.

  Chris stepped inside, stumbling over a square wooden box, which broke apart, spilling a small yellow bundle on the floor.

  Amy bent a
nd touched it with the tips of her fingers. “It’s slick. It feels funny,” she said. “What is this, Chris?”

  Chris picked it up. “It’s an oiled cloth,” he answered. “It’s wrapped around something.” As he spoke he unwrapped the cloth and pulled out a book. He dropped the cloth and opened the book. “It’s a diary, I think,” he said.

  “Amelia’s?” Amy eagerly pulled the book from his hands, and a page fluttered out. She stooped to pick it up. “A drawing!” she said.

  It was a small drawing of a young woman. It looked as though it had been done in pencil, and the paper was yellowed and fragile. The woman had large eyes, and a solemn expression. Her hair was pulled back tightly, and her dress was plain, with only a small collar. Around her neck a thin, twisted necklace had been drawn.

  “The gold chain!” Amy cried. “It has to be Amelia!” She handed the picture to Chris and looked through the book. “It’s like a journal,” she said. “Here—Amelia writes about her daily life in Boston before she married Joshua. Oh, Chris, I can’t wait to read this! I bet she had this by the door ready to take with her.”

  “You can read it later,” Chris said. “Let’s look for something we can use to light the bonfire.”

  Amy carefully tucked the picture back inside the journal. They walked across what must have been the main room, or living room, to the room that was probably the kitchen, and stopped to glance around at the crumbling wreckage inside the house.

  The terrible silence of the island seemed to wrap itself around them.

  “I don’t like being alone in here,” Amy murmured.

  “I don’t think we are alone,” Chris whispered. “I have this feeling that someone is watching us.”

  9

  “DON’T SAY THINGS LIKE THAT!” Amy took a step closer to Chris and clutched Amelia’s journal tightly.

  “Don’t you feel it?”

  They paused, and as they listened the silence was broken by the sound of something moving in the room they had left.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Amy cried.

  “We haven’t got what we need!” Chris said. He whirled back to the doorway between the two rooms, staring into the living room of the house. “There’s no one here, Amy. It must have been an animal that we heard.”

  “What kind of animal?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a—” Chris stopped.

  “Go on. Say it,” Amy demanded. “You were going to say ‘maybe a rat,’ weren’t you? Well, I don’t want to stay in a house with a rat any more than I want to stay in a house with a ghost! Let’s go!”

  “In a minute,” Chris said. There was a cupboard at one side of the room, and he threw open the doors. Inside was a jumble of pots and bowls, many of them broken. “Nothing here,” he said.

  “Then we haven’t got a reason for staying here.”

  Chris turned and examined the rest of the kitchen. Nearby stood a door. “The cellar’s down there,” he said.

  “You’re not going into the cellar,” Amy said.

  “Yes, I am,” Chris told her. “I have to find something.”

  “Joshua Hanover didn’t want anyone in his cellar!”

  “Don’t get so excited. He didn’t want anyone down there, because that’s where he kept his money. But the money isn’t there anymore.” He added, “For that matter, neither is Joshua Hanover.”

  Chris tugged at the door, which was warped and hard to budge.

  “I’m not going down there with you,” Amy said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  The door suddenly gave, flying open so suddenly that Chris staggered backward.

  “You haven’t got a flashlight. You won’t be able to see anything down there.”

  But Chris was already on the stairs. “There’s enough light from the room to see some of the cellar. It’s not very big.”

  Chris guessed that the cellar was about the size of the house. Much of it was in darkness, but he was able to see the section near the stairs. The room had been cut from the earth, with wooden cross supports against the walls. They were covered with mildew. Patches of damp, dark moss splattered the walls, and the cellar smelled sour and wet. The wooden stairs seemed to be still sturdy, although they wobbled a little when Chris tried them.

  “What’s in the cellar?” Amy asked.

  “Come and look.”

  “No,” Amy said, but Chris heard her move down a few stairs behind him.

  Near his feet he heard a rustling noise. He quickly looked toward the sound and saw two small bright eyes. In a flash they were gone. Rats! He hoped Amy hadn’t noticed.

  “There are some shelves on the wall near the stairs,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady, “but they’re empty. A lot of the stuff that was kept down here must have been knocked to the floor during the earthquakes. There’s broken stuff all over the floor.”

  “What are you looking for?” Amy asked.

  “A small metal box,” he said, and held his fingers apart just a few inches. “About so big.”

  “You mean like this one?”

  Chris quickly turned and looked at the spot to which Amy was pointing. At eye level, directly opposite the kitchen door, was a niche in the wall. Inside the niche was wedged a small, rectangular box. Chris eagerly rushed up the stairs, grabbed it, and opened it. “I found it!” he said.

  “You mean I found it,” Amy said. She stepped back into the kitchen, and Chris followed her. “You still haven’t told me what it is.”

  “It’s a tinder box,” he said.

  “What’s a tinder box?”

  “I read about them when I was working on my pioneer project. The museum even has one on exhibit. There’s a piece of flint and a piece of steel inside. People would rub the flint and steel together to make sparks, and the sparks would catch on kindling and start a fire.”

  “You’re smarter than I thought you were.” Amy grinned at Chris. “Now, can we get out of this awful house? You promised that when I said we should go, we’d go, and I’ve been saying it and saying it.”

  “I keep my promises,” Chris said. “We’ll go back to the beach right now.” He tucked the box into a pocket of his jeans.

  Amy ran to pick up the oiled paper and wrapped the journal tightly. “Poor Amelia,” she said. “I wonder what happened to you.”

  The house suddenly trembled as though caught in a rush of wind.

  Amy and Chris stared at each other, then scrambled to get out the front door.

  “Something heard us,” Amy whispered, looking back at the house.

  “It was just the wind,” Chris said.

  The air was still and damp. “What wind?” Amy asked.

  Before Chris could answer, a mournful cry drifted down from the top of the hill. “Shadow! Here, Shadow! Come!”

  “Joshua Hanover!” Chris said.

  “Run!” Amy yelled.

  Chris raced through the woods, stumbling and tripping and bouncing off the trees until he reached the beach. He flung himself down on the ground next to the pile of branches they had made.

  “Maybe we won’t have to wait until tonight to light this,” he said. “Maybe we should set it off right now.”

  Amy didn’t answer, so he said, “What do you think? Will they see the bonfire back at the inn?”

  He turned to look at Amy. “Well?”

  But Amy wasn’t there.

  Chris jumped to his feet. “Amy? Where are you? Amy!”

  He hurried back to the route they’d taken through the woods, retracing his steps toward the Hanovers’ house. “Amy,” he called. He shuddered. What had happened to Amy?

  He made his way between two trees, and skirted a fallen tree. “Amy!”

  “Chris!” The hiss came from behind the large log. “Over here! Be quiet!”

  Chris stretched to look over the log and saw his sister huddled against the fallen branches.

  “What are you doing there?” he asked.

  “Get back here with me! Quick!” she whispered again,
adding, “And be quiet!”

  Chris crawled over the log, dropping beside her. “Why didn’t you run to the beach with me?”

  “You were faster than I was. I thought I’d better hide.”

  “From what? Joshua Hanover? We heard him up at the top of the hill.”

  Amy shook her head. “I don’t know from what. There was something close behind us. It was catching up.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “No. But I knew it was there.”

  The close-growing pines seemed to cut out much of the morning light. “I didn’t see anything,” Chris said. “And I’d feel safer in the open than I do in this forest.”

  “But what about whatever was chasing us?”

  “I didn’t see anything, and I was yelling for you and making a lot of noise. If something were trying to catch us, it would have found me in a hurry.” Chris stood up and held out a hand to Amy. “Come on. I’d rather be on the beach.”

  “And I’d rather be back at the inn,” Amy said, but she took his hand and got to her feet. She brushed pine needles from her shirt and jeans and looked around cautiously.

  “Want to race back?” Chris asked. The damp silence in the woods made him edgy.

  “No. I want to walk quietly and carefully.”

  “It will take longer.”

  “I’m not kidding, Chris.” Amy’s expression was solemn. “I want to be able to hear whatever might be near us.”

  “I’m sorry—” Chris started to say, for the first time feeling guilty that he had been so eager to come to the island that he had talked Amy into it.

  “Shhhh,” Amy said, interrupting him. “Don’t talk. Just listen.”

  She held the journal tightly, and together they carefully walked through the forest on their way to the beach.

  Chris let out a huge sigh of relief as they broke through the trees onto the strip of beach, and Amy said, “We made it!” But she suddenly grabbed Chris’s hand so tightly that it hurt. “Chris! What happened to our pile of wood for the bonfire?”

  The wood, which had been so carefully stacked and made ready for the fire, had been scattered.

  Chris ran forward and kicked at the nearest pine branch. “Who did this?” he shouted.