The Haunting (18 page)

“Did he tell the sheriff that?”

“As far as I know, he hasn’t told the sheriff anything. It’s just something we all know.”

“I supposed you know about Mr. Tavey, too.”

Jonathan nodded. “News travels fast around here.”

I suddenly remembered something. “I only told one person that Mom might be at Graymoss last night,” I said. “And that was
you.
”

Jonathan didn’t look apologetic or even embarrassed. He even chuckled as he answered, “I only told one person—my grandmother. If she passed it on, it’s not my fault.”

“It was private information, just between you and me.”

“You didn’t say so, Lia. That’s not my fault, either.”

He was right. I hadn’t asked him not to tell. I had just assumed that he wouldn’t.

“Don’t be mad at me,” Jonathan said. “I can’t ask you to go out with me if you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad,” I said.
Mad
wasn’t the word for what I felt.
Disappointed
, maybe, or … I perked up. Was Jonathan asking me for a date?

“You’re here with your grandmother. Does that mean you aren’t going back to Metairie today? Will you be staying with her in Baton Rouge?” Jonathan asked.

I couldn’t believe it. “Do you know everything about my family?”

“Just the facts I can put together,” he said. “But I’d like to know more about
you.
Some of the kids around here are getting together at Ronnie Trudeau’s house tonight. We’re going to eat pizza and
play CDs and dance. It’s casual, jeans or shorts. Want to come with me?”

“Sure, but I’ll have to ask Grandma.”

For a moment I closed my eyes and wished I were someplace—anyplace—far, far away. I had done it again—said what a five-year-old would say.

Grandma had been moving closer and closer as she read the copy of Charlotte’s diary. She stepped up and questioned, “What do you have to ask me?”

Bumbling and blushing, I managed to introduce Jonathan.

He told Grandma about the party, smoothly working in that his grandmother was Hannah Lord, the president of the Historical Society; that Ronnie Trudeau’s father was president of the Bogue City bank; and that both Mr. and Mrs. Trudeau would be on hand to chaperone the party.

Grandma melted at Jonathan’s charm. She gave him directions to her house, and he said he’d pick me up at seven.

On our drive back to Baton Rouge, Grandma said, “There’s something different about you, Lia. You aren’t such a quiet, timid little thing. I’m delighted that you seem to be … well, blossoming.”

I did my best to keep a straight face as she went on. “And I’m glad you are now more interested in socializing. Jonathan seems like a nice boy. He has lovely manners.”

Agreed
, I thought,
but he’s got a big mouth. I’m afraid to trust him.

“He’s very poised and polished for his age.”

Maybe so smoothly
, I thought,
that he’s slippery.

“And he’s quite good-looking.” Her eyes crinkled, and she smiled, as though we were girlfriends.

“Right,” I said.

“I hope you have a lovely time at the party,” Grandma said.

“Thank you.” I leaned back against the seat and smiled, totally satisfied at the way my life was going. I didn’t care about the party. I was pretty sure I wasn’t ever going to care very much about Jonathan. But I did care about getting into Graymoss after dark—with or without the gris-gris. Jonathan didn’t know it yet, but he was going to take me there.

I
took a quick shower and put on jeans and a pink cotton knit shirt. I had two hours to study my notes and look for a possible tie-in with one of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories.

I began to read and underline, and it was tough going. All I knew about Placide Blevins was that he was good and kind and wasn’t afraid of hard work. He had even helped to build Graymoss, and he’d constructed an herb garden for Charlotte. However, since he had grown older and no longer had the help of his son, he’d had to hire someone else—Morgan Slade.

Mr. Blevins liked to live well and eat well, and he enjoyed French wine. I smiled as I thought of his so-called fine wine cellar, comparing those three pitiful bottles to the huge racks that lined
the walls in some of the best restaurants in New Orleans.

He was a brave, courageous man, though. He fought to protect Charlotte from Slade.

I read over what he had said about the valuables Slade was stealing:
They are of no real importance.
What he obviously meant, but hadn’t said, was, “In comparison to your safety, Charlotte.” I liked Mr. Blevins’s priorities. I read again that Charlotte was told that the answers to her questions could be found in the pages of Poe’s
Tales.
And I studied Charlotte’s statement that her grandfather had told her to save the house.

Surprised, I spoke aloud. “No, he didn’t, Charlotte. You said that he whispered, ‘The house.’ That’s all.”

Charlotte had thought she knew what he’d wanted to say and had finished the sentence for him, but what if he really wanted to say something else? What was it? Something
about
the house? Something
inside
the house?

A bad feeling about Morgan Slade bothered me, too. Something about him was said … or wasn’t said. What was it? At the moment I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I opened my notebook to the pages with the one-sentence descriptions of the
Favorite Tales.
I crossed out “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Nobody in the Blevins household had been murdered and stuffed up a chimney, like the girl in that story. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was also what our American lit teacher called “a locked-room mystery,” where the victim is in a
locked room and the detective has to try to prove how someone else got in and murdered him and got out again. The story just didn’t fit.

After a lot of thought I returned the story “The Black Cat” to my list. I realized that the Blevinses didn’t have a black cat, but they did have a basement, and in the story the man murders his wife on the basement stairs. If Mr. Tavey had been pushed, as he claimed, his fall could have ended up as a murder, instead of just a broken leg. And with the black cat sitting there, watching … There was so much coincidence I had to keep considering the story for possible clues.

There was also a basement in “The Cask of Amontillado.” That was the location of the wine cellar.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” had a sealed casket instead of a wine cellar, and, again, there was a basement. This story also described a lot of the same type of strange winds and noises that had terrified Charlotte. I wondered if she hadn’t seen the similarity, too. Maybe she was too frightened to think about it clearly.

And how about you?
I asked myself.
Are you thinking clearly? You’re getting ready to go into a house that is haunted by evil, and you have nothing to protect you, now that you’ve lost the gris-gris.

I glanced into the mirror over the dresser, but I didn’t see my own reflection. Instead I could see Demetria and Jimmy and Delia looking back at me. I
had
to find the answer Charlotte couldn’t find. I
had
to confront the evil in the house and send it away. I
had
to.

Suddenly words in the diary began to stand out.
Things Mr. Blevins said and didn’t say shifted, shimmered, and took shape like puzzle pieces sliding together in my mind. I clutched the edge of the dresser, held my breath, and let it all happen. I was so scared that I shook. I knew now what I had to do. And I wasn’t going to like it.

The doorbell rang, and I jumped. With trembling fingers, I closed my notebook and stuffed it into my waist pack, made sure my flashlight was working, and zipped the pack shut before I hurried down the stairs to meet Jonathan.

Before we left I asked Grandma if I could borrow her cell phone. “Dad says when anyone’s out on the highway, especially at night—”

“He’s right,” Grandma said. She took the phone off its charger and handed it to me. It was small enough to stuff into my waist pack.

All the way out of Baton Rouge Jonathan talked about the party, and who would be there, and who was dating whom, and a lot of stuff I really didn’t care about. My mind was on Graymoss and what I needed to do.

When Jonathan finally began to wind down I said, “I don’t want to go to the party.”

He whirled toward me. “What?”

“If it’s all right with you, I’d rather go to Graymoss.”

“You’re kidding. Right?”

“No, I mean it. I hope you’ll take me to Graymoss.”

Jonathan threw me a couple of you’ve-got-to-be-crazy looks before he began thinking about what I’d said.

“It’ll be dark soon. Real soon.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

“I think I see what you mean. Nobody will be there,” he said. “Nobody but you, me, and the ghosts.” He actually leered.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” I said. “I need to go to Gray moss, and you’re the logical one to take me there.”

“Sure,” he said. “And if the ghosts don’t show up, you and I will have the place to ourselves.”

“I’m counting on the ghosts showing up,” I told him.

“What ghosts?”

“What do you mean, ‘what ghosts?’ You felt them yourself. You told us so.”

Jonathan threw back his head and laughed. “That story I told your mom about sneaking into the house when I was ten? Grandma got me to do that to help her cause. It came right out of that diary Grandma has plastered all over her museum. Sure, I climbed in that broken window and explored the house, but I did it as a dare when I was a kid, and it was in daylight. Charlie came around the corner and saw a bunch of us hanging around and chased us away.”

I was stunned. “What you told us wasn’t true?”

Jonathan looked smug. “No, but it made a good story for people who believe in ghosts.”

“You’re telling me that you don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Of course I don’t,” he said, “and neither do you. Your story was pretty good, too. I have to admit you threw me a curve about that book falling and hitting you. I thought at first that you
were making fun of my story because the book-throwing was my own, original touch.”

“My story was true,” I said.

He stopped grinning and gave me another searching look.

“I can’t figure you out,” he said. “What do you want?”

“I told you. I want to go to Graymoss.”

For a moment I wondered if Jonathan’s presence would hurt my plan to get rid of the evil that haunted Graymoss, but I realized that Jonathan meant nothing to the evil. The only problem might be Jonathan’s, if he fell under the full fury of the evil and got scared out of his skull.

We had reached Bogue City. I didn’t have much time to convince Jonathan to take me there. He wouldn’t believe the truth, so I appealed to his big ego. I said, “Look, it’s a dare. Okay? A friend expects me to stay in the house until midnight, and I hoped you’d like to be with me.”

Jonathan understood that. He smiled, and his car picked up speed. “We’ll be there in five minutes,” he said.

The gate was closed, but not locked, so I pushed it open, and we drove up to the house. Jonathan smiled again, and this time I smiled in return. If everything went as I thought it would, he’d be in for a huge surprise.

The sunset was a red and gold glow that spread from the horizon to tint the house, so the entire building seemed to gleam, and its western windows reflected flashes of fire. Even Jonathan seemed impressed.

We went up the back steps and walked as quietly as we could along the veranda to the window with the broken sash. As we reached it, the sun dropped behind the trees, and the glow vanished as suddenly as if a switch had been pulled.

We climbed in through the window. I handed Jonathan the flashlight he’d brought in from the car and took mine out of my pack. The light in the house was fading into purple and blue shadows, but we didn’t need our flashlights yet.

The basement door was no longer open, although the broken splinters and scraps of wood still lay on the floor. I wondered who had shut the door. Charlie had insisted he wouldn’t set foot inside the house. Had the sheriff shut it? I couldn’t remember anyone closing the door. I tried the handle, and—with the lock broken—it easily turned in my hand.

“What are you doing?” Jonathan asked.

“The basement. That’s where—”

“I know, where Homer Tavey fell down the stairs. Well, I don’t want to waste time seeing the basement when we have better things to do.”

I looked into Jonathan’s eyes and asked, “Who pushed Mr. Tavey down the stairs? Who shoved the summer kitchen down on Mr. Merle? You or your grandmother?”

Jonathan took a sharp breath, and I could see the lie forming. “Yesterday evening Grandma and I were together at her house making popcorn and watching TV,” he said, and laughed. “Solid alibis. Don’t give it another thought.”

“I won’t,” I assured him. “I’ll let the sheriff
work it out. Since you’re each others alibi, with no other witnesses—”

“Nobody’s gonna bother Grandma,” Jonathan insisted. “She’s a fixure in Bogue City, president of the Historical Society and all that. Sure, she’ll do anything to get her own way, but other than that she’s a nice, harmless, old lady. Right?”