Peeled (3 page)

“Who’s putting those signs up?” I asked. No one in town knew.

“What should be done?” I demanded.

“Why isn’t someone tearing them down?”

When people have had a few bad years, they tend to let things go.

A few weird-looking characters were coming to town, too. One woman I saw had a shaved head and was wearing skeleton earrings. The guy she was with had a deathly white face.

“Where’s the ghost house?” they asked drearily.

“Up on the hill,” I told them.

Then, in August the high school auditorium roof collapsed without warning. School hadn’t started yet, thank God; no one was hurt.

It felt like something bad was seeping into the atmosphere—until, that is, you looked at our fields, which were finally bringing forth an abundant harvest. It’s hard to
think dark thoughts when you’re biting into a juicy peach, tough to focus on ghostly gloom when you’re gobbling sweet corn slathered with salted butter and finishing the meal off with blueberry shortcake with mounds of fresh whipped cream. By late August the tables at the Banesville Farmers Market were heavy with heirloom tomatoes, sweet nectarines, heavenly plums, summer squash, and peppers. The early apples were rolling off the trucks—crisp, sweet, and filled with the promise that so much more was coming.

There were a few stories in
The Bee
about the Ludlow place and how there’d been ghost sightings. Some unnamed businessperson who claimed to have seen old man Ludlow’s ghost was quoted: “I think Banesville better brace itself for trouble.”

“Do you think that place is haunted?” Tanisha asked me.

I wasn’t sure. I just wanted that house to go away.

Everyone was talking about it.

My father always told me, “When a story keeps coming at you day and night, pay attention.” Dad was a reporter, too.

The phone call came in early September.

I’m here to tell you, I paid attention.

DATELINE: September 9. Banesville, New York.

I fumbled for the ringing phone.

“Hildy.” It was Darrell Jennings. “Look, I know it’s early.”

It took a minute for my eyes to focus on the alarm clock: 5:23
A.M.
“It’s extremely early, Darrell; it’s inappropriately early—”

“Not when you hear what happened.”

“What?” I pulled my comforter higher.

“There was an attempted break-in at the Ludlow house, the guy’s in jail, and there’s another sign.”

I was sitting up now, fumbling for the light.

“I want you on this, Hildy. This is a big, emerging story. And need I mention how much
The Core
needs a big, emerging story…?”

All last year
The Core
had been struggling for advertisers, struggling for readership.

“You’re the best reporter,” Darrell half cooed.

I sighed. Flattery has power.

“The sheriff is at the Ludlow house,” he added. “Neighbors have gathered outside, and the house just made the top-ten list of most haunted places in Upstate New York.”

“I heard about the list yesterday.” I was looking for my shoes. “How do you know about the break-in?” I asked, and then I remembered. Last week Darrell bought a police radio receiver on closeout, vowing that high school journalism at Banesville High would never be the same.

“I called Tanisha, Hildy. She’s got her camera and is coming to pick you up.”

“
When
is she coming?” I demanded.

“In ten minutes.”

“I can’t believe this!”

“Ask tons of questions, Hildy, and be unendingly pushy. You’re great at that.”

I know.

A siren in the distance; a hand-scrawled sign.

It hung from the torn screen door of the old Ludlow place. Dawn was just beginning. A tangerine glow inched across the dark sky. I wrote the message down on my notepad.

Tanisha, a committed morning person, said, “Are we scared yet?”

“Nervous, possibly.”

She studied me. “You got dressed fast.”

“Right.”

“Really fast.” She pointed at my shoes. I was wearing one black and one tan sandal.

I groaned as Tanisha snapped shots of the house. She always looked put together—her jeans fit perfectly, her red shirt slimmed at the waist, her boots weren’t scuffed.

But a reporter can’t let bad footwear stop her.

I marched to the rusty front gate.

Details, I thought. Get the details.

I wrote,

garbage inside fence

dilapidated porch swing creaking

iron fence rusted, paint peeling, porch missing steps

clusters of neighbors on street

Sheriff Metcalf was putting up yellow tape around the fence that read,
POLICE
LINE
—
DO
NOT
CROSS
. I walked over to him.

“Hi, Sheriff.”

“What are you doing here, Hildy?”

Not everyone is glad to see you when you’re a reporter. “I’m covering this for
The Core.”

“Good God,” he muttered.

“I understand there was a break-in, Sheriff. Could you tell me—”

“We’ll be issuing a statement.” He looked up and down the street and shouted, “Nothing to see here, folks. We’ve got everything under control.”

“Were things out of control?” I asked him.

“We’ll be issuing a statement.”

I wrote,
“we’ll be issuing a statement” x 2—sheriff crabby.

“If you ask me,” a man said behind me, “old man Ludlow’s ghost is making his presence known.”

I turned to him. “Why do you say that, sir?”

“You got two mysterious deaths that happened here thirty years ago. Everyone figures the old man did it, even though he was never convicted. The ghosts in this place aren’t happy, not one bit.”

“Don’t forget poor little Sallie Miner,” a woman in a bathrobe added.

Five years ago, Sallie Miner, a local girl, was riding her bike in front of this house. A tree branch crashed in front of her and hurled her into the street in front of an SUV that couldn’t stop in time. Sallie died three days later. But before she died, she told people what she’d seen when the tree branch fell—the ghostly face of an old man laughing in the Ludlow house window.

No one was living there at the time, either.

The house had been abandoned for years, although it was owned by old man Ludlow’s sister. She didn’t do anything to maintain it. Garbage bags lay on the lawn next to Styrofoam cups, beer cans, banana peels.

“People are coming here at night to see the ghost and leaving their refuse,” Pinky Sandusky, a Farnsworth Road neighbor, complained to me. “This place is becoming a circus. We need to stop this before it gets worse.”

“Have you ever seen any signs of a ghost?” I asked her.

Pinky was a friend of Nan’s.

“There’s places on the street that are hot and cold,” she mentioned. “That’s a sure sign.”

“A sure sign of what?”

“Menopause,” a middle-aged woman joked, and a few older women laughed.

I wrote,
menopause—hot and cold.

“It’s a sure sign of a ghostly presence,” Pinky asserted. “I’ve lived in Banesville for seventy-three years. Things are changing and not for the better!”

Tanisha was sneaking around, taking photos of the people. She stood on a tree stump, climbed up on her car hood.

It was then that Pen Piedmont, the editor and publisher of
The Bee
, our local newspaper, strutted onto the scene, thumbs in his suspenders, slicked-back hair gleaming. He sauntered up, looking briefly at my mismatched sandals.

“Big goings-on, folks.” He had a game show host’s voice. “How are you dealing with this growing menace?”

“Ever since those signs appeared, I can’t sleep at night.”

“I’m calling the mayor—something needs to be done!”

“Some of the folks congregating here are scaring my kids.”

“That house of horrors is going to bring this town down!”

Piedmont didn’t take any notes as people talked. I was writing so much, I was almost out of paper. A man said that at 5:00
A.M.
he’d heard men’s voices on the property and called the police.

“And one man was arrested?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “The sheriff’s not talking.”

I’d noticed that.

“This isn’t helping property values,” Mr. Hardine, another neighbor, snarled. He looked next door to his freshly painted blue house; a
FOR
SALE
sign was on the lawn. “You think people are going to want to buy a place next to all
that?”

A tap on my shoulder. I turned to see Eaton Ebbers. He’s close to a legend in Banesville, having gone eight full days on
Jeopardy!

“I’ve lived on this street for fifty-nine years,” he told me. “And I’ll tell you something. Fear changes people.”

I studied the collection of neighbors surrounding Pen Piedmont, giving him an earful. The new sign on the Ludlow front door was hard to ignore:
You Didn’t Think It Was Safe, Did You?

Eaton Ebbers shook his gray head. “When people are scared, they look for something to blame.”

I turned to him. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“You will,” he said, and walked away.

Banesville High.

Room 67B.
The Core’s
official office, although “office” was pushing it; “windowless closet” came closer. I did an Internet search and found the website for Top Haunted Houses in Upstate New York.

CLICK here for our bloodcurdling scream audio.

I’ll pass, thanks.

The Top Ten Most Haunted list was front and center. I pressed print; the paper whirred out.

I was sitting at the desk along the wall. The
VERITAS
sign hung crooked in front of me—
veritas
is the Latin word for “truth.” I grabbed some Doritos from the food heap as Royko, this week’s fly, buzzed overhead—he was named for Mike Royko, a Chicago columnist who won the Pulitzer Prize. Last spring we had an ant named Mencken, named for H. L. Mencken, a famous journalist of the forties. We try our best to honor the greats.

My mess of notes spread before me, I typed,
An early morning break-in at the old Ludlow house on Farnsworth Road was stopped Friday when a neighbor heard voices on the property
and called the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Metcalf said he would be issuing a statement about the incident; it appears that at least one man was arrested.

I checked my notes. What else did I know for sure?

On Thursday, the house was named #6 on the Internet site Top Ten Haunted Houses in Upstate New York. Ghost stories about the house and Mr. Ludlow are not new, but concern in town is growing as strangers begin to congregate at the Ludlow property, disturbing the neighborhood and frightening the children.

How do I put this?

Many neighbors wonder about the safety of the house; some say they have heard ghostly noises. Others expressed concern about declining property values on Farnsworth Road. Words of wisdom and caution came from our own
Jeopardy!
master, Eaton Ebbers, a Farnsworth Road resident: “Fear changes people,” he said. “When people are scared, they look for something to blame.”