The Ghosts of Stone Hollow (11 page)

“Okay,” Amy said bravely. “Let’s go in just for a minute to see if anything’s changed.” This time she intended to walk right in without feeling frightened, and look at everything calmly and carefully.

As they were going up the stairs to the sagging porch, Caesar rushed past them on his way out of the house. They turned to watch him sniffing his way back and forth across the weed-grown yard.

“He keeps on looking,” Jason said.

“What for? What do you think he’s looking for?”

Jason only shook his head.

“Probably just rabbits,” Amy said. “He gets all excited like that about rabbits sometimes. That’s probably all it is.”

They went in, then, around the fallen door, and walked through the rooms quite calmly, as Amy had planned. Except for their own faint footprints in the dustier places, they saw nothing they hadn’t noticed before. They saw nothing, that is, in the large room or in the kitchen, where the broken stove and heaps of mildewed trash seemed entirely unchanged. But when they came to the tiny bedroom, they both immediately noticed something they had not seen before.

Lying on the floor near the small bed frame was what seemed at first to be a little pile of rags; but when Jason picked it up, it became apparent that it was the faded and dirty remains of a homemade rag doll.

Staring, Amy backed away until she reached the door. “Put it down, Jason. Put it down,” she whispered. “It must be hers, the dead girl’s.”

Jason put the doll back carefully, in exactly the place it had been when he picked it up. He looked at the doll, and then at Amy, and then back at the doll again. He looked strange—tense and glittery-eyed —but it was hard to tell if he was frightened or only excited. Amy was sure about herself, however. She knew that she was frightened. “Come on,” she begged, “let’s go.”

Jason came slowly. At the door he stopped and looked back again. “It wasn’t there when we came last week,” he said.

“I know,” Amy said. She grabbed his sleeve and tugged him toward the outer door. He came at last, glancing backward. She went on tugging until they were out the door and down the sagging steps. Then she maneuvered to make Jason look at her—right in the eyes.

“Have you been here since last Sunday?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Twice. But not in the house. I didn’t go in the house either time.”

“Why not? What were you doing here?”

“Just looking,” he said. “Just walking around and watching. I didn’t go in the house at all.” He said it firmly, and his eyes didn’t move down or away, though something flickered deep inside them like the fire in an opal. She just couldn’t tell.

“It could have been Caesar,” she said. “He ran in first, He could have pulled it out of one of the piles of trash and dropped it there.”

Jason nodded. “It could have been,” he said. Suddenly he grabbed Amy’s arm. “Shh. Listen,” he said, pulling her to a stop.

“What? What is it? I don’t hear anything.”

“The wind. It’s doing it again. It’s blowing in circles.”

She saw then that it was true. Or at least it was true that the air, which had been hushed and still as they entered the valley, was now suddenly in motion. Dry grass on the hillsides bent and quivered, and the stiff prickly leaves of the oak trees scraped together with a breathy rasping sound.

“The wind’s blowing,” Amy said. “But what makes you think it’s—”

“Come on,” Jason interrupted, “we’ve got to hurry.” And he began to run toward the creek and the path that led to the waterfall.

“Wait,” Amy called, running after him. “Wait for me.”

Although she hurried as fast as she could, Amy never quite caught up with Jason on the way up the creek bed. Once, scrambling over a boulder, she caught sight of him, and called again for him to wait, but he seemed not to hear. He was so intent, and in so much of a hurry, that Amy wondered if he would remember to wait and help her when she reached the cliff. She wasn’t at all sure she could make it to the top by herself.

When, at last, out of breath and exhausted, she reached the waterfall, Jason was just disappearing over the top of the cliff. But before she could catch her breath enough to call to him, he had reappeared, lying on his stomach and reaching down for her hand. He turned loose, though, the moment Amy scrambled high enough to fall forward on the flat rocky ledge. By the time she had scooted forward until her legs were up too, and then scrambled to her feet, Jason had left her again. A few feet away he was moving silently and slowly through the tree ferns and willows, toward the bare rocky area directly in front of the grotto.

He stopped, then, and Amy finally caught up, but it hardly mattered, because he seemed unaware of her existence. Standing at the edge of the clear dark water of the pool, Jason was staring toward the grotto and the large dark Stone that stood like a monument in the center of the rocky island. Following his gaze, Amy stared, too.

The Stone rose straight up from the flat floor of the island like a huge thumbless hand. It varied in color, from light to dark and from gray to brown. The greenness that Amy had remembered seemed now more shadowy and uncertain, as if only a reflection of greenish light. The upper part of the Stone was creased by several deep crevices, and its entire surface was so rough and irregular that it almost seemed to be covered with carvings. Carvings that had once been elaborate and detailed but now were so faded and eroded that no single shape was distinct and certain. What once might have been shapes and figures were so blurred and vague that the slightest change of light or angle made them seem to melt and change. Green-lit, monumental in shape, and swarming with shadowy shapes, the Stone seemed so strange and awesome that Amy could not understand how, seeing it before, she had noticed and remembered so little.

The rest of the grotto was just as she remembered it. At the back of the shallow cave, the mossy rock wall seeped tiny trickles of water that fell down into the pool below and spread out on both sides of the island. Beyond the grotto, the rocky floor gave way in places to damp earth and heavy growths of fern and willow. Above the cave, and on both sides of the canyon, almost sheer rocky cliffs rose up into the eastern wall of hills. Except for the soft trickling sound of water, everything was very, very still.

Silently, Amy moved to where Jason was standing and took hold of his arm, just as he sank down to a crouching position, pulling her down beside him.

“What is it?” Amy hissed frantically. “What are you looking at?” But Jason only shook his head and went on staring in the direction of the grotto. Suddenly he leaned forward, his face tensing, and just at that moment, Amy heard a new sound. It was a rushing breathy noise, like a high wind, and almost immediately the willow trees began to bend and toss, and the fern fronds whipped wildly from side to side.

“What is it?” she begged. “What’s happening?”

But Jason didn’t answer. In fact he seemed not to have heard at all. He was sitting very still, though his eyes were moving rapidly, as if he were watching a great many things at once, or some one thing that was in constant motion.

“Jason,” Amy grabbed his arm and shook it. “Don’t do that. Don’t sit there like that. It scares me.”

He looked at her then, and smiling briefly and distractedly, he said, “Shh. It’s all right.” Then he went back to silent staring.

So there was nothing for Amy to do but stare, too. Crouching beside Jason in the clump of ferns, she watched and listened as the wind, funneling up through the narrow canyon, made hollow sobbing noises and set swarms of dark, wind-driven shadows into motion in every direction. Changing patterns of light and shadow flickered like phantom dancers under the thrashing willow trees and back into the dark recess of the grotto. A dozen times, as she watched and listened, Amy was almost sure she heard voices mingling with the wind sounds, and more than once a shadow became, for an instant, more than a shadow—a glimpse of a half-hidden face, or the split-second sensing of a disappearing figure.

Amy’s thoughts, like a broken record, went in useless circles, coming back again and again to the thought that if she got out of there alive, without something terrible happening, she would never, never come back again. “Please, God,” she started once, “if you get me out of here I’ll—”

But then she stopped, realizing suddenly that it might be a mistake to call God’s attention to her predicament, since she had brought it on herself by being deceitful and disobedient.

When, at last, something touched her shoulder, Amy’s heart almost exploded in an awful thump of fear—but it was only Jason. He still looked strange, wild-eyed, and intensely excited, but at least he was really looking at Amy—and speaking to her.

“Come on,” he was saying. “We’d better go now.” Silently they climbed back down the cliff and started down the narrow boulder-strewn creek bed. Partway down the canyon, Amy noticed that Caesar was with them, but she couldn’t remember if he had been waiting at the waterfall or had joined them someplace along the trail. It wasn’t until they were out of the creek bed and had started across the valley floor, skirting around the oak trees and the house, that she began to ask questions.

“Jason,” she said, pulling at his jacket to make him slow down and listen, “what was it? What happened? Did you see something?”

He stared at her blankly for a moment before his eyes seemed to focus and he began to look as if he knew that she was there.

“Didn’t
you?”
he asked. “What did you see?”

She shook her head impatiently. “Nothing,” she said. “At least not for sure. But I kept feeling as if I were going to. And sometimes I thought I did for a minute. But what did you see? What were you staring at like that?”

“It was—” he began, but then he stopped and shook his head like someone trying to wake up and clear away the dark edges of a dream. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll tell you later. I—I have to think about it.” He turned away and started swiftly up the slope.

Amy scrambled after him. “Jason! You come back here. You can’t go off like that without telling me. I’ve
got
to know about it.”

Jason smiled and nodded, but he didn’t stop climbing and he didn’t say anything more, even though Amy kept demanding that he tell her everything—right that minute—before she went a step further. They were nearly back to Bradley Lane before she remembered the apples in her coat pocket.

“Hey,” she said. “I thought we were going to have a picnic.”

He stopped then, finally, but only to take a small bag out of his jacket pocket and hand it to her.

“Here,” he said. “You take it. I don’t feel like eating right now.”

And that was all he said, except just as they parted at the intersection he said again, “I’ll tell you—later. The next time I see you, I’ll tell you all about it.”

All the way home Amy teeter-tottered between anger and curiosity. Part of the time she walked very slowly—wondering, lost in curiosity. But when she was angry she ran. And finally she remembered that it was almost time for her mother and aunt to be getting back from Lambertville, so she ran the rest of the way home.

A
MY HAD BEEN
home only a few minutes—her breathing was almost back to normal, but her cheeks were still hot and flushed—when the sound of an automobile engine announced the return of her aunt and mother from the missionary meeting. Running to the kitchen she splashed cold water on her hot face and rubbed it hard with a towel. Then, smoothing down her hair with both hands, she hurried to the parlor window. Outside the front gate, her mother and Aunt Abigail were climbing out of the Paulsens’ Model A. Then Mrs. Paulsen got out, too, and, pulling the lunch basket out of Amy’s mother’s hands, started carrying it to the house. But, of course, she had to stop first to admire the garden.

Aunt Abigail’s flower garden was looking especially nice, with asters and pompons blooming between the bushes where a few late roses were still as beautiful as ever. Mrs. Paulsen bustled up and down the rows oohing and aahing and talking about God. Of course, Amy couldn’t actually hear her from the parlor, but she could tell about the oohing and aahing by the rounded mouth and rolled-up eyes—the talking about God she only guessed because that was what Mrs. Paulsen always did.

The Paulsens were, for the most part, a very religious family. The younger Paulsen children said grace over their lunch boxes at school and got saved or sanctified every time an evangelist came to town. But some of the older children were backsliders, and Mrs. Paulsen talked about them a lot when she testified in church. Whenever Mrs. Paulsen testified, she talked about “crosses to bear”—her own and everyone else’s. Next to God, Mrs. Paulsen talked more about people’s crosses to bear than anything else.

Amy hoped Aunt Abigail wasn’t going to ask Mrs. Paulsen to come in. Mrs. Paulsen always made her feel guilty. She felt guilty because she knew it was wrong to hate someone who was obviously such an extra-good person, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She didn’t like Mrs. Paulsen, and she hadn’t liked her much even before she had heard one conversation with Aunt Abigail about crosses people had to bear that made it pretty plain she thought Amy’s father was one.

Aunt Abigail didn’t ask Mrs. Paulsen to come in, but she did look up and see Amy in the window, and motioned for her to come out.

“Come here, Amy Abigail, and help us get all this paraphernalia into the house,” Aunt Abigail said, when Amy came out on the porch. Amy started for the lunch basket, but Mrs. Paulsen held on to it with one hand and put the other one on Amy’s head. Amy had known it was going to happen. Mrs. Paulsen always did that to any kid who got close enough for her to reach.

“Such a blessing to know that this sweet child was here to look after her poor father this afternoon so you could get away to do God’s work,” Mrs. Paulsen said.

Amy’s mother looked uncomfortable, but she didn’t say anything. Aunt Abigail, however, took hold of Amy’s shoulders and moved her out from under Mrs. Paulsen’s blessing.

“There’s no doubt about Amy’s being a blessing, at least most of the time,” she said in a very crisp tone of voice, “but to call that Lambertville gossip party God’s work is stretching things just a bit, Clara.”