The Haunted (4 page)

There was no answer.

I tried again, but this time I moved closer to the trees when I said his name. The result was the same.

Gathering up all of my courage, I pushed my way through the foliage and ended up in someone else’s yard. A door slammed, and Mr. Travertine waved to me. He started wheeling his lawn mower out of his garage, and I waved back, glancing around. There was nothing but houses and empty yards as far as I could see.

But I could have sworn I saw him.…

Casually changing direction, I went back through the trees and started walking to the mailbox. Making a great show of
acting like I was checking it, I reached in, expecting to come up empty. To my surprise, and somewhat relief, there were a couple of envelopes in there, and I grabbed them to take with me.

I walked back to the house, stopping by the kitchen to deposit the mail on the table. Mom turned to me. “I thought that was you, Abbey. Why did you go stampeding out the front door like that?”

Because I saw the person I’m not supposed to be seeing, who wasn’t really there anyway?
Yeah, that wouldn’t work. “I, uh, saw a little boy out there chasing his dog. Thought I could help him catch it.” Then I remembered the mail in my hands and held it up. “And I brought this in.”

She smiled at me. “That’s good. Want to set the table for me?”

“Okay.” Anything to make things seem normal again.

After I set the table, Mom called Dad in from the living room, and we all sat down for dinner. I kept my replies to Mom’s never-ending conversation light and happy, all the while silently longing for the safe haven of my room. Nothing even remotely close to the topic of my recent “away time” came up, and it was just like any other boring family dinner.

So then why did I want to
scream
?

Luckily, dinner ended quickly, and I only had to make it through one bowl of cookie-dough ice cream—“because I know
it’s your favorite,” Mom said—before I begged off and told them good night.

As I climbed the stairs to my room, I was struck with that out-of-place feeling again. When I went to bed, I was afraid to go to sleep. Afraid that the feeling of not quite belonging would never go away. Afraid that everyone in town would find out where I’d been and what was wrong with me. Afraid of what I’d see and who I’d talk to. But mostly… afraid of what I’d dream.

Hard snow crunched under my feet, packed and icy, and I stepped carefully. The sensation of walking on frozen water struck me as absurdly funny, but I stifled my laughter. Something told me this wasn’t the time or place for giggles.

A single grave was in front of me. My destination. And it felt familiar, yet I knew I’d never seen it before. The perfectly carved stone angel resting on top of it had delicate features and arching wings. One side of her face was cast in shadows, and there was a red cloak draped over her shoulders.

My lips made the sound before my voice caught up to it. “Kristen.”

Reaching out a hand, I touched her face. Her hair. Her wings. The likeness was stunning. She was caught forever in stone and dust. Etched out of hard lines and impossible granite. “Are you
waiting for me?” I whispered. “You said you’d always be here.”

Suddenly the statue turned cold. Freezing. As harsh as any winter wind, and I feared my fingers would be stuck in place. “No!” I cried out. “Please…”

Her wings cracked. The stone sighed. And from her eyes a tear fell.

I rolled over and punched my pillow, knowing that I’d have a hard time getting back to sleep again after that dream. I hadn’t dreamt about Kristen at all at Aunt Marjorie’s. Now I knew I was
really
home.

After bringing me a snack (ten minutes after lunch) and finding half a dozen other reasons to come check on me, Mom interrupted me yet again the next afternoon.

I sighed and pushed my chair away from the computer screen, trying to hide my irritation as she knocked on the door frame. “Abbey, there’s a call for you.”

Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting
that
. “Who is it?”

She had one hand on the phone receiver and held it out to me. “It’s Ben. He called here while you were” —she lowered her voice—“
away
, and I told him that you’d call him back as soon as you had a chance. I think you should talk to him now.”

My stomach dropped to my toes, and I shook my head vehemently.
He’d called the house,
too
? “I’m really not up to it, Mom.” I forced my tone to stay calm and even.

She thrust the phone at me again. “Just talk to the poor boy, Abbey. He won’t bite.”

“No, I—”

“Ben?” Mom took the phone back and spoke into it. “Here she is, just one second.” She placed it forcefully into my hand, then turned to leave the room and shut the door behind her.

Partly to soothe my nerves and partly to give Mom enough time to move away so she wouldn’t hear me, I counted to five before I answered. “Hello?” I closed my eyes and waited in horrified suspense for his voice.

“Hey, Abbey? It’s, uh, it’s Ben. Ben Bennett.”

“Hi, Ben… Um, how are you?” My fist unclenched, and I flexed my aching fingers. I’d been holding them closed so tightly that all the color had leached out of my digits.

“I’m good. It sounds like you’re doing a lot better too.”

That put me instantly back on alert.
What does he know?

“Yeah, I guess I am…” I let that statement trail off, and an awkward silence filled the space between us.

“My cousin got mono once. It wrecked him for like four months straight,” he said.

Mono? He thinks I had mono?

“It’s too bad you missed the science fair, though. We took second place.”

“Ben, that’s great!” I said. “I’m so happy for you.” And I was surprised to realize that I actually
was
happy for him. “I’m sorry I had to miss out too. But you know… mono and all that.” I gave a weak cough. Did people who had mono cough? I had no clue.

“Paul Jamison and Ronald Howers took first place. They built a conversion kit that turned compost into an energy source. They actually managed to power a lightbulb with it.”

“I bet it was rigged,” I offered up.

He laughed. “Or they’re just geeks with way too much time on their hands.”

I laughed with him, and it was nice. It reminded me of the afternoons we’d spent together at school working on stuff for the science fair. Ben always could make me laugh.

“I called before,” he suddenly admitted. “And your cell phone, too. I wanted to, you know, stop by and show you the trophy we won. But your mom told me you were sleeping a lot.”

“Yeah… sorry about that. The… mono sure did a number on me. But at least I got to catch up on all my beauty sleep. Which I needed,” I joked.

But the remark seemed to fall flat, and another moment of
uncomfortable silence stretched out between us. I tried to think up something else to talk about.

Ben came to the rescue on that one. “Are you going to be at that bridge thing?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be saying something about Kristen.”

More silence.

“You know, I really miss her,” he said quietly.

“Me too.” I sighed. “I’m kind of nervous about the whole thing. Like, what if I mess up? Or say something stupid? Or…” I didn’t want to say break down, so instead I said, “Forget her name, or something completely idiotic like that. Plus, I
hate
crowds.”

“I’ll be there to cheer you on,” he said. “And you can always do the whole picturing-them-in-their-underwear trick. Except me. Don’t picture me in my underwear, or that will just be awkward.”

I laughed again, glad he couldn’t see my reddening face. “You won’t let me forget her name, will you?” I asked.

“Nope. I’ll bring a cue card and hold it up for you in the back.”

A couple of minutes later I was hanging up the phone with a smile on my face. At least some things hadn’t changed.

Returning to my desk, I sat down and tried to get back into
what I was doing before the phone call had interrupted me. But I wasn’t in the mood to be on the computer anymore. Deleting Spam e-mails and catching up on celebrity gossip could wait.

I wandered over to my new cabinet and briefly thought about transferring over all of my perfume stuff, but I didn’t feel like doing that, either. Cataloging and labeling bottle after bottle of essential oils was a task better left for a day when I wasn’t so distracted. I halfheartedly hung up a couple of shirts from my still-packed suitcase and then put away a pair of shoes.

Ben had brought up Kristen.…

I hadn’t gone to see her yet since I’d been home. What kind of best friend was I?

I left my room and went downstairs to tell Mom that I was going for a walk. She made me promise to keep my cell phone on me and wouldn’t let me leave until I told her that I’d “stay safe.”

Enduring another one of her smothering hugs, I tried not to squirm out of her embrace.
This won’t last long,
I told myself.
This is all because you’ve just come back home. It’ll die down eventually. Hopefully.

Finally, I headed outside. Even though I hadn’t walked these streets for months, my feet knew where they were going. When I came to the big iron gates that marked the main entrance to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, I didn’t allow myself to hesitate.
If I stopped now, I might not go in. This was the place where I’d played with Kristen, met Nikolas and Katy, spent time with Caspian…

Walking slowly, I followed the pathways as they bled into one another. There were a lot of people in the cemetery today. More than I’d ever seen before, and it made me uncomfortable. Were they watching me? Were any of them going to start whispering about the weird pale girl wandering among the tombstones? What if one of them tried to talk to me?

The cemetery was different. It didn’t feel like my safe haven anymore.

I passed the empty wrought-iron chair where I’d sat the day of Kristen’s funeral. It was still resting beside its plot, the grass now fully grown in and freshly mowed. Casting a glance over my shoulder, I paused and whispered hello to it. But I didn’t say anything more than that, and I didn’t stay.

The next place I stopped was Washington Irving’s burial spot. There were fewer people on this side of the cemetery, and no one was in sight when I finally reached it. I knelt down, digging my fingers into the neatly trimmed grass along the bottom edges of his headstone.

“I’m back,” I said. “Just like I promised.” The marker looked like it had been freshly scrubbed: All previous bits of moss and
dirt were gone, and a small American flag had been planted next to it.

“My… trip… went well,” I said. I’d once felt comfortable speaking to him here like this, but things were different now. “It was nice to get away from everything, and just take some time to deal with it all.”

I tugged a blade of grass out of the ground and rolled it between my fingertips. “Aunt Marjorie’s house was great. She lives on a farm, and it’s really nice there. She took me up in her plane, too, and let me fly it.”

Voices echoed in the distance, and I scrambled to my feet. People were coming, and the last thing I needed was to be caught talking out loud to a tombstone. “I’ll try to stop by again soon,” I said. I touched the stone briefly and then turned to walk down the steps, away from his family plot. A small group of people came around the corner and waited for me to pass.

I went in the direction of Kristen’s grave, but ran into two more groups on the way there. One of them stopped at the stone right next to Kristen’s, and I tried to hang back to give them enough time so they’d move on and I could be alone. But they didn’t seem to be moving on.

After what felt like at least twenty minutes, I finally stepped up to her stone.

The first thing I noticed was that the area immediately surrounding her headstone looked well manicured. Although the grass in the cemetery was usually kept short, a lot of the graves had scraggly weeds that grew up close to them. Kristen’s plot was obviously being taken care of.

The second thing I noticed was a freshly plucked four-leaf clover sitting at the bottom of the stone. It was the first time I’d ever
seen
a four-leaf clover in real life, and I touched it, counting all four petals to make sure it wasn’t just a trick of the light or something.

I glanced down at the grass surrounding the tombstone and then scanned the area around it. There weren’t any patches of clover nearby. In fact there weren’t any patches of clover
anywhere
. It must have been found somewhere else and placed here.

Goose bumps stood up along my arms, and I whispered a good-bye to Kristen. Leaving the cemetery behind, I wondered what that four-leaf clover meant.

And who had put it there.…

D
EDICATION

To pass this bridge was the severest trial.

—“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

I couldn’t sleep at all the next night. I was too hot, then too cold. The mattress too lumpy, then too firm. I scrunched up my covers one minute and cast them aside the next. At 6:54 I finally gave up and crawled out of bed to go downstairs. Today felt like a coffee kind of day.