by Peter Swift
12.
After the bell rang, a number of students stuck around to talk to Mr. Stark. Mostly girls, none were asking him about history, so Angie shooed them from the room. Some shot her nasty looks, but Angie didn't seem to mind, and she closed the door quickly in their faces.
"Nicely played," Mr. Stark said, sitting on the corner of his desk with an amused smile on his face. He gestured to a couple of chairs in the front row. "Your lack of etiquette has an air of urgency to it. What's up?"
Stevie swallowed and got right to it. "We were wondering if you knew anything about The Grove. Especially the old house."
Mr. Stark sucked in a deep breath and smiled. He looked cautious, and then a little sinister. "Oh, the murder house?"
"The murder house?!" Stevie and Angie said in unison, their jaws dropping open.
Mr. Stark nodded and winked. "Just wanted to get your attention. Yes, I know a bit about it. Why do you ask?"
Stevie said, "Well, I found it yesterday, and—"
"You didn't go inside, did you?" Mr. Stark asked, concern spreading a dark shadow across his face.
"No way!" Stevie pushed back in his chair. It scraped across the tile floor. "I was just wondering about it. Looks like it used to be a pretty nice place."
"Oh it was," Mr. Stark said. "Finest in town. Belonged to a wealthy man with business on Wall Street."
"So, what happened?" Stevie asked. "Why did you call it the murder house?"
"Because of the murder, of course!" Mr. Stark said, smiling a little at his joke. "The real name is Harcourt Manor, but you looked like you need some drama.
"It happened on Halloween night, back in 1942," Mr. Stark began.
"Halloween night!" Angie exclaimed. "How perfect is that?"
Mr. Stark nodded and continued. "Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt. Tragic incident. Mother and father slain with a sledgehammer while they slept. Beat to a pulp. Brains and blood and splinters of broken bone all over the walls and bed. Well, the whole room, really. I mean, they weren't just murdered. They were mutilated. Their eighteen year old daughter was in the house at the time."
Stevie thought about the broken, deformed creature he'd seen in his driveway. Was that one of the Harcourts? He remembered with horror the way it stood with its limbs out of place, jutting out in all weird directions. The way its torso twisted opposite—wrong—compared to the legs and neck. Was it a person pulverized with a sledgehammer?
"The girl," Stevie began. He tried to sound calm, but his voice came out a rough, high-pitched squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again. "What about their daughter? Was she murdered, too?" Stevie swallowed. "With the sledgehammer?"
Mr. Stark took off his glasses and wiped them with a cloth from his coat pocket. He shook his head. "No. She said she hadn't heard a thing. Of course, she would say that."
"She would?" Angie asked. "Why?"
"Well, she killed them!" Mr. Stark said, returning his glasses to his face. "At least, that's what most people believed at the time."
"She did it?" Angie asked, her jaw dropping. "She killed her parents?"
"Well, I shouldn't say that. There was never any conclusive proof, but she did stand trial. After the murder, the townspeople had done all they could to help the poor girl, believing she was a victim, but then one day the police began to question her. There were a number of—oddities—about the case that pointed them in her direction."
"Oddities?" Stevie asked. "Like what?"
"Well, first off, they found that the mother and father had both been drugged with massive amounts of a mild sedative to make them sleep heavily. The drug was purchased at the local pharmacy by Virginia—"
"That's the daughter?" Angie asked, riveted to the story.
Mr. Stark nodded. "Right. She claimed that her father asked her to pick it up, but the family doctor denied them taking any such medication.
"Secondly," he continued. "She was seen by the maid later carrying something wrapped in a stained cloth to an oil barrel the groundskeeper used to burn leaves. She doused whatever it was in gasoline, and then lit it on fire." He paused, and then asked Stevie, "Ever been behind that place?"
Stevie shook his head.
"There's a cliff behind the house formed by a glacier that cut through the mountain. A hundred feet of black, jagged rock straight down to the river below. Beside the river the police discovered the metal part of an old sledgehammer. The shaft, or handle, had been burned away, and the metal scrubbed clean."
"So she did it!" Stevie said. "They had her dead to rights!"
"Except she denied it," Mr. Stark said. He stood and started to erase the blackboard of the notes he'd made in class. "Well, at first she didn't comment, but soon Virginia pointed at the servant girl, accusing her of murdering her parents."
Mr. Stark shook his head. "In the end, the jury was not sufficiently convinced, and all charges were dropped. The population, however, was not so forgiving. Some even went so far as to accuse her of killing her baby sister two years earlier. Even though the family doctor swore that it was sudden-infant-death-syndrome, some say she smothered it while it slept!"
"Is she still alive?" Stevie asked, but he suspected he already knew the answer.
"She was murdered, too!" Mr. Stark said. He put the eraser down and slapped his hands together a few times to get rid of the chalk. "She lived alone in the house after the not guilty verdict. On the third night after her release, her uncle—in a drunken insane rage fueled by the loss of his dear sister—choked her and beat her with a baseball bat, and then threw her from the cliff behind the house. He said Virginia Harcourt wasn't his niece anymore."
"Disgusto!" Angie exclaimed, but she was obviously caught up and enjoying the thrilling story. Angie had a morbid side. "I've never heard any of this!"
"Well, America had just entered World War II, and everyone had bigger things to worry about. On top of that, the townsfolk wanted to keep it quiet. I'm a historian. It's my job to know. My father is the real expert, though. Local history is his gig."
Stevie thought about the girl he'd seen on his driveway, and shivered. It was Virginia Harcourt, mangled by the beating and the fall from the cliff! He knew it. But, what did she want? The toy? Why? Or was there something else? If she was innocent, maybe she wanted something that would clear her name! So that her broken spirit could rest in peace!
RETURN THAT WHICH WAS STOLEN! she'd said. Maybe the person that murdered her parents stole something from the house. Or maybe she simply meant her stolen good name, her innocence.
"Stevie, let's go!" Angie said excitedly. "I know what you're thinking. You have to find out if it's her or not!"
"Whoa!" Mr. Stark said, putting up his hands as if to physically stop them. "I don't want you kids going there. That place is dangerous. And who are you talking about?"
With Angie's prodding, Stevie retold a condensed version of his terrifying tale.
Mr. Stark shook his head and smiled. "Listen, kids, I don't go in for all this haunted house, ghosts and ghouls mumbo-jumbo. Don't get me wrong. I love a good spooky story as much as the next guy, but they're just that. Stories. History is full of ghosts, but not in a literal sense. I've never seen one, or read any scientifically verified data."
"But Mr. Stark," Stevie began.
"But!" Mr. Stark interrupted. "I make it a point to go out to that place every year or two anyway and see how it's holding up. While the town is willing to let it waste away forgotten, I have a professional interest. I'd like to see the structure maintained for its historical value. So far, however, I'm the only one."
"What about your dad?" Angie asked. "Doesn't he want to see it preserved?"
Mr. Stark's face went blank. "My father and I have conflicting opinions."
"So you'll go out with us?" Stevie asked hopefully. The more the merrier, he thought. Especially after what I've seen. And heard!
In fact, he didn't even want to go. Not in the least. But if this thing was going to pay midnight visits to
his house on a regular basis, he'd rather take care of the problem as soon as possible.
Before it took care of him!
"Yeah, I'll go," Mr. Stark said. He thought for a moment and then must have made a decision. "You know, you really should talk to my father. He has some... unique ideas. Spirits and demons in the forest. Ghosts. Just don't take him too seriously." He laughed and slapped his desk. "Enough! Now beat it and let me eat some lunch, will ya? Let's meet at the Harcourt Manor driveway tomorrow around three. And bring some flashlights. There's no power in that house."
Stevie and Angie turned to go. As they left the classroom, Mr. Stark called after them. "Who knows? Maybe we'll see the ghost of Virginia Harcourt and her family. After all, tomorrow is Halloween!"
13.
"Let's go through The Grove," Angie said. "I wanna see what all the fuss is about."
Stevie stopped in his tracks. Angie went a few steps before she noticed he wasn't beside her, and then turned around.
The two friends were on their way home from school. Stevie's mom and dad both worked second shift at the hospital tonight, and Emily had a lacrosse game until late. Stevie had asked Em if Angie could hang out with him until she got home, and Emily said sure. She probably thought he was scared to be alone.
She thought right.
Unfortunately, they couldn't hang at Angie's house. It was off-limits to guests. Her mother was hosting the monthly Girl's Night, when her friends from high school all came over to talk.
"They're seriously lame," Angie said. "All they yap about is kids and soap operas and work. Occasionally someone from high school they saw at the grocery store that got fat. Boring with a capital BORE. Even my dad knows to clear out during their clambakes."
So when the subject of The Grove popped up, Stevie first thought she was joking, and then thought she was nuts.
"No way!" he said. He shivered and made a shivering noise, just to make it extra clear for Angie. "No way, no how, am I going back there today. I don't even want to go tomorrow with Mr. Stark, but I guess I have to."
"Come on," Angie said. "What's the big deal? We don't have to go down to the house. Let's just walk through, and you can point to it from the trail."
"You can't see it from the trail," Stevie countered. "It's hidden in the forest."
"Well, just point in the general direction."
"Look," Stevie said. "I know you're excited, but you didn't see that thing! It's evil! Anything that ugly has to be evil. Like Victor Plotts, but worse!"
"Oh, come on. Now I know you're exaggerating. Nothing is uglier than Victor Plotts!" She punched him on the shoulder.
"Forget it!" Stevie said, his voice somewhere between angry and panicked.
Angie studied him for a moment and then shrugged. "Okay. Chill. No need to have a conniption."
They went to the library and Stevie returned some of the books he'd checked out. They looked at magazines together for a while. Stevie thought about picking up the scary Peter Swift book he had started reading yesterday, but he wasn't at all in the mood for anything like that.
Angie finished reading the ZombieRox interview that she had started when her mother's phone call interrupted her. She highlighted the interesting parts to Stevie.
"Listen to this," she'd say, and then rattle off a fact like, "Did you know that Sissy Zombie was a cheerleader in high school, you know, before the accident that killed them at the secret military chemical plant?"
"That's just a story," Stevie said. "Part of their show."
"Duh!" She smacked him on the head with the magazine. "It's still way cool."
"Yeah," Stevie agreed, pushing aside his issue of Mystery Monthly and scooting up beside her. "Show me the pictures."
"Look," Angie said, pointing to a huge pool of dramatically lit noxious-looking green, bubbling ooze. A hazmat—hazardous materials—sticker was clearly visible on the side. "That's the vat of radioactive sludge they were pushed into."
Much of the info Stevie and Angie already knew. ZombieRox was their favorite band, after all. There were some interesting new tidbits, though.
When they were finished, they stepped out of the dark library and back into the sunlight. Stevie squinted his eyes as they adjusted to the bright light. A beautiful October day. The air was cool and dry, and the sky was clear blue and filled with big fluffy white clouds.
"Okay," Angie said. "Fun times at the library. I did what you wanted, now you have to do something for me." She smiled slyly and batted her big eyes at Stevie.
"No way, Anj," he said, knowing exactly what she was going to ask. "Seriously. Let's just go tomorrow. Besides, you heard Mr. Stark. That place is dangerous."
"We don't have to go inside the house," Angie said, looking away from him as she spoke. "I just want to cut through the forest. It's quicker, anyway."
"Yeah, right, ya big liar." Stevie shook his head. "Even if we aren't horribly mutilated by evil spirits, we might run into Victor Plotts again. After your help this morning," Stevie used his fingers to air-quote help, "he's just as dangerous as any ghost."
"You worry too much! You can hear those motorcycles coming a mile away. We'll just hide off the path until they pass."
"Forget it," Stevie said.
"Then I'm going home," Angie threatened. "For the pleasure of my company, those are my terms. Besides, if the thing came to your house anyway, what's the big deal of walking through The Grove? It obviously knows where to find you."
Stevie really didn't like the way she put that. While he didn't want to go through the forest, he didn't want to be at home alone tonight, either. Maybe Virginia Harcourt would come again, and if Angie wasn't there, he'd be alone! He couldn't even go to the high-school to watch his sister's lacrosse game. It was an away match out of town at their rival's school.
Stevie raised his face to the sky and exhaled loudly. The bright sun and blue skies with happy white clouds put his mind somewhat at ease. Besides, since his talk with Mr. Stark at lunchtime, he was still thinking about what the broken girl really wanted. Was she evil, or just a spirit that couldn't rest? Maybe she was asking him for help.
"Okay," he finally said. "As long as we stay on the trail."