Ghosts of Rathburn Park (3 page)

“So, it seems to me that we need to ask ourselves how to apply that approach to the Timber City civic environment,” Matt’s dad was saying. His listeners all nodded and smiled. It wasn’t until then that some of them began to notice Matt.

A big man with a kind of waterfall of double chins that spilled down over his collar said, “Well then, young man. I take it the Hardacre tour group has finally returned.”

Matt didn’t understand. “The Hardacre…?” he was starting to ask, when another man, this one wearing a striped shirt and red suspenders, who turned out to be Mr. Hardacre, said, “Yes, sir. Mrs. Hardacre’s famous local history tour. Tells people all they’d ever want to know about the town of Rathburn and the Great Fire. Mighty interesting, she tells me. Hope you didn’t miss it.”

Matt smiled uneasily. “Guess I did,” he said. “I was just…” He motioned vaguely and then, noticing that they’d all pretty much stopped listening, he eased off, sat down at the end of the table, and thought about what had happened. After a while he figured it out. If anyone had noticed that he was missing, they must have thought he was either on the tour or playing baseball. He guessed he was pretty lucky—but he couldn’t help wondering how long it would have been before anyone had noticed that he wasn’t doing either one.

So the way it turned out, he hadn’t been the family bonehead this time. This time he’d just been…He shrugged. Just kind of unnoticeable. A little better than being a bonehead, but not a whole lot.

So anyway, that explained it. The only part he couldn’t even start to explain was the dog, and on the way home he decided not to try. He did think about it, though, without meaning to. About the dog he’d seen in the forest, and then about dogs in general. And of course that led back to Mrs. McDougall.

Old Mrs. McDougall had been a kind of neighborhood character back in Six Palms. Or, as some people put it, a neighborhood weirdo. Actually she was just a fierce-looking old lady who lived with a lot of dogs way out at the end of Bank Street. She’d had this rundown old house with a high fence around it and, inside the fence, every kind of dog you could possibly imagine. Everyone said Mrs. McDougall trained the dogs to be killers, because a lot of them ran around throwing themselves at the fence, snarling and howling, when anyone came near. When anyone came near, that is, except Matthew Hamilton.

Matt had been a little kid when he found out that most of Mrs. McDougall’s dogs liked him and the few that didn’t pretty much ignored him. Maybe it was because he didn’t tease them by throwing things at them through the fence the way a lot of other kids did. Anyway, after a while, Mrs. McDougall started ignoring him too instead of yelling at him to go away. And finally, after he’d been visiting with his special friends through the fence for a year or so, she began to let him inside. But it wasn’t until his last visit with the dogs, just before the Hamiltons left Six Palms, that Mrs. McDougall told Matt about her theory that he was a kindred spirit and what that meant. She’d also said he mustn’t grieve about leaving Shadow, his all-time favorite McDougall dog, because she was sure he would have other dog friends before long.

Even when he told her about Courtney’s allergies, she said that wouldn’t keep him from having dog friends in the future, any more than it had stopped him in Six Palms. Leaving Mrs. McDougall and her dogs had been one of the worst things about moving to Timber City.

Thinking about Mrs. McDougall’s dogs had always been a good way to take his mind off stuff he didn’t want to think about, and it still seemed to be working. Several hours had passed and Matt had pretty much put the whole getting-lost episode out of his mind before the subject came up again. The Hamiltons were all back home at the time, sitting around the table having soup and toast. Nobody was very hungry because they’d had so much to eat at the picnic, but Mom decided that what they wanted was a bowl of soup and they all should sit down and have it together.

That was when Courtney, who had gone on the tour of the ruins of Rathburn, started talking about what Mrs. Hardacre had told the people who went with her. “You know people aren’t ever supposed to go there except with her tour because the land the town is on still belongs to the Rathburn family and they don’t want anyone to go there except on the tour. There are No Trespassing signs all over the place. It’s a really terrible story,” Courtney said, “and Mrs. Hardacre knows all about it. Like who lived in the houses that burned down, and how many people died.”

“Yes, dear. I think we’ve all heard about it,” Mom said. Matthew could tell that Mom was thinking that what happened in the old town was not going to be good dinner-table conversation. Mom was very strict about dinner-table topics that were what she called unappetizing. But Matt couldn’t help being curious. Except for what Lance had said about the ruins being haunted, he hadn’t heard much at all. And what he’d seen from a distance, the roofless walls and ruined tower of an old stone church, didn’t seem particularly unappetizing. But when he tried to question Courtney, Mom interrupted him.

“That’s enough, Matthew. You shouldn’t have brought it up, Courtney.” She turned back to Matt. “So, Justin says you weren’t playing ball.” Her eyebrow went up questioningly. “And you weren’t with your sister on Mrs. Hardacre’s tour?”

“Yeah.” Justin was suddenly interested. “Where were you all that time, kid?”

Matt didn’t want to answer. At least he certainly didn’t want to admit that because he’d let his imagination run away with him again he had, for a while at least, been seriously lost. Pointing to his mouth, he pretended to be chewing—chewing and then swallowing—which gave him time to think before he had to answer. Time to come up with something that would sound sensible and not be an actual lie. At last he said, “I went for a walk. On that path that goes right by the old Rathburn house. You know, Justin, the one that guy told us about in the parking lot.”

Justin shook his head. “I don’t remember Lance saying anything about the Rathburn house.”

“Oh. Well, I guess you weren’t listening. Anyway, he told me where the path started so I…” He paused and thought for a second before he went on. “So I went up it for a little way. But I didn’t see the house, so I came back.”

“Must have gone quite a way.” Justin was looking suspicious. “You must have been gone, like, about two hours?”

Suddenly, without planning to at all, Matthew heard himself asking, “Did you see the dog? Did any of you see a little dog?”

“Dog? What dog?” Justin said.

Courtney, who seemed to be about to go tragic about not being allowed to talk about the burned-up town, suddenly came to life. “Was there a dog at the picnic? I didn’t see it.” Courtney had always been absolutely crazy over all the animals she was allergic to, particularly dogs.

But Matt was biting his tongue, wondering why he’d mentioned the dog and wishing he hadn’t. Now he was stuck with trying to explain the whole thing to the family, when he was still a long way from being able to explain it to himself.

Just then Dad—who as usual had been thinking about more important things—suddenly joined the conversation. “Yes,” he said to Courtney. “I believe there was a dog. I think Dr. Martin’s family brought their dog. A Pomeranian, I think Mrs. Martin said it was.”

“Oh, was there? I didn’t see it.” Courtney sounded absolutely devastated. Courtney was like that. She could get amazingly tragic about a lot of things, particularly dogs. Dogs had been one of the biggest disappointments in Courtney’s life because she’d always been dying to have one, and she couldn’t because of her allergies. Matt understood his sister’s dog tragedy better than some of the other things she could get worked up about because he’d always been a little bit nuts about dogs too. But at least he’d been able to have fun with the ones at Mrs. McDougall’s, and Courtney couldn’t even do that.

“Yeah?” Justin asked. “I didn’t see any dog. Where was it?”

“I didn’t
see
it either,” Dad said. “I only heard about it from Mrs. Martin. At great length, I might add. I think it was in their car most of the time, and she kept reminding her husband to move the car to keep it in the shade. Mrs. Martin says it isn’t allowed to run around outdoors because of burrs. It gets burrs in its long hair and it bites when they try to comb them out. Yes, indeed, at this point I’m quite an authority on the Martins’ Pomeranian.”

So then Courtney started asking questions about Pomeranians, and Mom said they were the kind of dog that fashionable ladies used to have sitting on their laps when they had their pictures painted. So Courtney insisted on getting the
D
volume of the encyclopedia and finding the pages that had pictures of all types of dogs. Then she started having a fit about how a Pomeranian was exactly the kind of dog she had always wanted. And by the time she stopped talking, the soup was finished and Justin had forgotten, at least for the time being, to quiz Matt any more about what he had been doing at the picnic.

So mentioning the dog hadn’t turned out to be such a bad idea after all. In fact, it was almost as if a fuzzy little dog had gotten Matt out of trouble for a second time that day.

T
HAT EVENING MATT WAITED
until Mom and Dad and Justin were busy in Dad’s office before he went looking for Courtney. He was hoping she’d tell him some more about the things she’d learned on the tour. Particularly the things that couldn’t be mentioned at the dinner table. On his way to Courtney’s room he stopped by the office to listen to Mom and Justin argue about what was making the computer say Error Type Eleven every time they tried to get it to send something to the printer. They seemed to have very different ideas about what the problem was, and what they ought to do about it, so the disagreement kept getting louder.

Listening to arguments always made Matt nervous, so he backed quietly out of the room and went on down the hall. Courtney was unpacking her animal collection, taking them out of the box and unwrapping the tissue paper very carefully before she put each one up on a high shelf. Matt watched with interest. He was very familiar with Courtney’s collection. Ages ago he and Courtney had played a game called Breath of Life in which they did a secret ritual and pretended that it made the animals come to life and have all kinds of adventures.

They hadn’t played the Breath of Life game since Courtney had decided they were too old for that kind of thing. Matt was sure she was right, but at that particular moment, watching the familiar little animals come out of their tissue paper wraps, he kind of liked remembering how it had been before he and Courtney got too old. He watched Courtney unwrap a unicorn made of blown glass, and then a plastic English bulldog, before he said, “Hi.”

Courtney jumped. “Oh. You scared me. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Sorry,” Matt said. “I just wanted to ask what else you found out this afternoon. You know, from that Mrs. Hardapple.”

“Not apple,” Courtney said, “acre. Mrs. Hardacre.”

“Whatever,” Matt said. “What did she tell you about Rathburn and the fire?”

“Oh yes, that awful fire,” Courtney began, but then she glanced toward the door and frowned nervously. “I think I’m not supposed to tell you about it.” Courtney hated to do things she wasn’t supposed to. She did them quite a lot, but she always hated it.

“Well, not at the table, anyway,” Matt said. “I think Mom just thought it wasn’t good dinner-table conversation.”

Courtney unwrapped a polar bear made of plaster. “Oh yes,” she said, nodding thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right.”

Matt really liked it when somebody in the family thought he was right, even if it was just a maybe. He grinned at Courtney and decided to help her unpack her animal collection. “Here, I’ll help,” he said. As he unwrapped a shaggy Welsh terrier made of white porcelain that had been one of his favorites, he said, “Okay, what did Mrs. Hardacre say?”

“It was pretty horrible.” Courtney raised her shoulders in a dramatic shudder. “It started in a house in the old town of Rathburn, but it was a dry, windy day and it turned into a firestorm and spread through the whole town and all of it, even the church, burned down. And some people died too. An old lady and some little kids, and a woman who ran into a house trying to save the little kids. There were rumors that the fire had been started on purpose, because the house where it started belonged to a man who had been a troublemaker, and two or three different people were accused of starting the fire. But Mrs. Hardacre says she thinks it was just an accident. Afterwards all the people who didn’t die moved and started another town on land that didn’t belong to the Rathburn family, and it was called New Town for a while, but then the name got changed to Timber City. And after that, nobody lived where Rathburn used to be, except for one old crazy man who lived in what was left of the church. When Mrs. Hardacre was a little girl everyone had forgotten his real name and just called him Old Tom. But then he died too and nobody lives there now.”

“A man lived in the church?” Matt asked. “I wonder how he did that. I don’t think it has any roof. Did you go into the church?”

Courtney shook her head. “Oh no. Mrs. Hardacre says it’s too dangerous in there. We only went in as far as the narthex. That’s what Mrs. Hardacre called the kind of little entry hall at the front.”

“Oh yeah,” Matt said. “I know about narthexes. In cathedrals and like that.”

Courtney laughed. “I’m sure you do,” she said. “That’s the kind of stuff you always know about. Anyway, we just walked around the outside of the church and on down what used to be the main street of the town. And you’re not even supposed to do that unless you’re with Mrs. Hardacre. The land where the town was is still Rathburn private property but Mrs. Hardacre knows one of the Rathburns, the only one that’s left I guess, and she has special permission for her tours.”

“Dangerous?” Matt asked. “Did Mrs.—Mrs. Hardacre say what makes it dangerous?”

“Not exactly. Something about falling rocks and deep holes where things like wells used to be, I think.”

“Not ghosts? She didn’t mention ghosts?”

Courtney stopped unwrapping a large plastic buffalo and stared at Matt. “Who told you there were ghosts?”