The Crossroads (25 page)

Gerda Spratling
was on her knees, ferociously praying to revive Eberhart's wounded soul.

The baby kicked and screamed.

“Miss Spratling?” Willoughby held his head. “The baby?”

Miss Spratling kept mumbling prayers.

“They're going to arrest you, too,” Zack said to Willoughby. He was chained to the pipe again. “Accessory to murder, I figure.”

“Be quiet!”

“They'll probably give you one of those lethal-injection deals.”

“Miss Spratling?”

“You know how they do that? Well, they have this
huge
needle,” Zack said. “I hear it's like three or four feet long.”

“Miss Spratling?”

“They stick that needle in your butt.”

“Miss Spratling!”

The baby screeched.

“And that needle's full of rat poison.”

“Miss Spratling?”

The baby sent his bottle skidding across the floor and let loose a squeal. Willoughby lunged toward Spratling and shook her.

“Miss Spratling!”

“How dare you interrupt my prayers!”

“I can't do this! I can't!”

“Pray with me, Mr. Willoughby.” Her right hand disappeared under the folds of her gown.

“I don't want to die from a lethal injection!” He shambled over to the pole, fumbled in his pocket for the keys.

“Rodman?”

The old chauffeur undid the lock behind Zack's back.

“What do you think you're doing?”

“What I should have done ages ago: say no to one of you miserable Spratlings!”

“Mr. Willoughby? Are you forgetting certain documents I keep locked in Father's safe?”

“I don't give two hoots about it anymore! I'm old! I have no children! Who cares if you blackmail me?”

While the old folks argued, Zack slowly slid across the floor…easing over to…the baby…the portable car seat….

“Why, you ungrateful, insolent old man!”

Miss Spratling reared up. The knife blade came out from under her wedding gown and glinted over her head.

“Don't do it!” yelled Zack. He grabbed the handle on the baby seat. “Leave Mr. Willoughby alone or I swear I'll take this baby so far away, you and your boyfriend will never find him!”

“Hah! You wouldn't get far! I'd catch you!”

“Really? And just how fast can you run in that wedding dress?”

The old lady slowly lowered the knife but kept it aimed at Mr. Willoughby's heart. “Fine. We'll simply wait for Clint to return. He'll deal with you,” she sneered. “He'll deal with you both!”

Judy and
Zipper raced back into the mansion's library.

Davy had disappeared again and so had Eberhart. But it seemed some other tormented spirit was in the room with them because Judy heard ghostly moaning from somewhere up near the ceiling.

Zipper ran over to the rolling ladder attached to the towering bookcases.

“Hello?” Judy called out. She saw the faint outline of a man standing near the top of the ladder. “Who are you?”

The man held a sputtering candle. He turned slowly and looked down.

Judy recognized the man because she had seen his face in the old newspaper clippings: Julius Spratling. Gerda's dead father. He was dressed in a dark blue business suit. There was an anguished look on his waxy face.

He blew out the candle and something fluttered through the air: a glowing square of soft light, a phantom sheet of paper. It drifted down lazily like a tumbling leaf. When it finally hit the library floor, it bounced up half an inch and slid underneath one of the massive bookcases.

Judy hurried over to where the thin rectangle of light had disappeared. She bent down and saw an ancient binder. It was covered by almost an inch of dust.

Was it the report from the safe-deposit box?

She reached in. Grabbed the slender book. Read its cover.

 

The Greyhound Bus Incident

A Search for Justice

 

Yes!
It was the same report. Only this wasn't a carbon copy. This had to be the original Grandpa Jennings had presented to Julius Spratling on the night he committed suicide. The pages were yellowed. The plastic spine had faded. It had, apparently, been hidden under the bookcase for the past twenty-five years.

Judy slowly opened the booklet and the pages began to flick forward—all by themselves! The flipping paper came to a sudden stop when it reached a page where certain words, down near the bottom, seemed to glow with an eerie light.

 

Mr. Eberhart loved to flirt with thefactory girls, often inviting them to join him for makeout sessions in anabandoned machine shop behind the factory.

 

The machine shop. Behind the factory.

That's where they took Zack!

“Come on, Zipper. We have to hurry!”

Judy looked up to thank Mr. Spratling.

She saw his ghostly body swinging at the noosed end of a tasseled rope.

 

Judy and
Zipper raced out of the library and were blinded by a brilliant white light.

“Davy?”

Clint Eberhart stumbled into the dusty beam. “That hillbilly beaned me with his slingshot!”

While Eberhart rubbed his ear, Judy and Zipper took off.

They both knew the way to the front door because they had been up and down this corridor all night long. Now they needed to outrun the limping hellion and go rescue Zack at the abandoned Spratling Clockworks Factory.

But how are you going to get there?

The factory was a good fifteen-minute drive from Spratling Manor.

You don't have a car. Remember? You came over here with Sheriff Hargrove.

“You think you can run away, dolly?”

Eberhart was gaining on them.

Judy would ponder her transportation problems later. Right now she needed to run. She followed Zipper around a corner and saw moonlight leaking in around the front doorjamb. If they could make it outside, they might have a chance.

“Thought I'd have to settle for killing your boy. Now I get to kill you and his dog, too!”

“Faster, Zipper!” They raced to the front door, yanked it open, and then slammed it shut behind them. Judy couldn't tell who was panting louder: her or the dog.

“Hey there.”

She turned around. Billy O'Claire was standing on the porch. He looked paler than usual.

“That toilet upstairs still giving you trouble?”

“N-no,” Judy stammered, and tried not to stare at the ghost she had actually known when he was alive. “Our house burned down.”

“Well, that's one way to fix your plumbing problems. Oh, I'm supposed to tell you to borrow the old lady's car. It's around back. A Caddy. The keys are in the ignition.”

“Noooo!” It was Eberhart, wailing on the other side of the front door.

“You better hurry before my grandfather figures out he can walk through walls.”

“Thanks,” said Judy.

“Hey, your son's taking care of my son. I figure it's the least I can do.”

Judy and Zipper took off running and saw the Cadillac parked in the side driveway.

Zipper jumped through the open window and bounded over to the passenger seat, where he yapped at Judy to hurry up and drive! She pulled open the heavy door, climbed behind the steering wheel, and twisted the ignition. The antique auto, meticulously maintained by the chauffeur for five decades, started right up.

“Hang on,” Judy said. She slipped the car into gear and pointed it toward the winding driveway that would lead them down to the front gates. Zipper stuck his head out the window and barked goodbye to Billy O'Claire as the plumber faded into the night.

Judy pressed down on the gas pedal.

Zipper cocked an ear.

Then Judy heard it, too: another car, revving its engine.

She checked the rearview mirror and saw Clint Eberhart behind the wheel of a 1958 Thunderbird convertible.

Great,
she thought.
The car's a ghost, too!

It was
a standoff: Spratling had the knife; Zack had the baby.

The chauffeur stood trembling between them.

Miss Spratling stepped into a pool of cold moonlight. She rotated the knife in her gnarled fist. Its sharp edge glistened.

“Clint's coming,” she hissed. “Do you hear him? Listen! He's riding here on the wind.”

Zack heard the wind whistling through a broken-out windowpane.

“That's Clint,” Miss Spratling insisted. “He's coming back to kill you and Mr. Willoughby.”

Frightened, Willoughby braced himself against the pole.

“You should go, son,” he said, nearly breathless. “Take the baby. Run away. Hurry! Before Mr. Eberhart returns.”

“Don't worry, sir,” said Zack. “Eberhart can't hurt us. He's a ghost. He can't do anything except try to scare us into hurting ourselves or giving
her
what she needs.”

“Really?” said Miss Spratling. “Are you sure about that, Mr. Jennings? Clint is different. He was trapped inside that tree so long, he has acquired certain special powers.”

Zack heard another window rattling behind him.

He whipped around to see if it was Eberhart launching some kind of sneak attack.

No. It was just a scraggly tree branch, buffeted by the wind, tapping its fingers against the dingy glass.

The old lady cackled. “What's the matter, boy? Afraid of trees?”

Zack spun back around. “No,” he said. “Not anymore.”

The Cadillac
had an old-fashioned cell phone the size of a bread loaf. The chauffeur had probably installed it sometime in the late eighties, but it still worked. Judy called 911.

“Tell Sheriff Hargrove that Zack Jennings is being held at Spratling Clockworks. Out back in the machine shop.”

She knew that the 911 operator would immediately send all available units screaming to the abandoned old factory. She didn't, however, mention the phantom convertible chasing after her as she and Zipper sped down Route 13 in Gerda Spratling's 1952 Cadillac Coupe DeVille.