On this particular evening, his mother was working late at the hardware store and his dad had taken Jake and Josh and Peter bowling.
“Sure you don’t want to come, Wally?” his dad had called.
“Nope,” said Wally.
He did not like to bowl. “Old Gutter Ball Wally,” Jake called him, because—more often than not—the ball rolled into the gutter without hitting any pins at all.
Wally couldn’t understand the attraction. Why would you want to spend an entire evening trying to knock down some pins? If that was so important to you, why not just walk to the end of the alley and kick them over with your foot? What was the point? What did you learn? He would far rather lie under a beech tree and watch a caterpillar dangle from a strand of silk.
But tonight it wasn’t a caterpillar he was going to watch for. It was something that scratched. Something that scraped. Something that thumped occasionally and clawed, and for all Wally knew, moaned when no one could hear it. Maybe even rattled its chains!
As soon as dusk settled in, as soon as Wally was sure that the bookstore had closed for the night, he put on a dark long-sleeved T-shirt and dark jeans and went outside, down College Avenue toward town. Never mind the heat; Wally wanted to be as invisible as he possibly could.
The streets were almost deserted now as, one after another, the stores began to close and lights went off in shop windows. Wally moved quickly along the sidewalk, hands in his pockets. He passed Ethel’ Bakery and the linen store, glad that the hardware store where his mother worked was on the far side of town, and that the bowling alley where his dad and brothers had gone was a mile in the other direction.
Mike Oldaker had just come out of his bookstore and was locking up. From a doorway two stores down, Wally watched him pause with his key still in his hand. He seemed to be thinking of something else. Then he unlocked the door again and went back inside.
Wally crept forward until he got to the display window. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered hard through the glass. He saw Mr. Oldaker bending over the trapdoor. He saw him lift the trapdoor. A square of light shone up out of the darkness for only a few seconds. Then, while Wally watched, Mr. Oldaker closed the door again.
Wally slipped back to his hiding place and stayed until Mike Oldaker had come out and left for good. Then Wally crept back to the doorway of the bookstore and waited.
The sky grew darker still. A breeze blew down Main Street, whipping up stray pages of newspapers, blowing them this way and that until they caught against a step or a lamppost. The linen store’ light went out. The owner of the thrift shop locked her door and went home. Even the light in Larkin’ Pharmacy went out.
Every few minutes, perspiring in his long-sleeved shirt, Wally turned around to face the window in the bookstore, cup his hands around his eyes, and peer inside. He could just make out a thin line of light coming around all four edges of the trapdoor.
If people weren’t looking for it, if they didn’t know that the trapdoor was there, they could walk right by the store and not give it a second look.
There was something down there. Something that needed light. What if Mike Oldaker was creating a monster in the cellar of his bookstore? He was a smart man. He read lots of books. What if he was making a Frankenstein’ monster? What if there was a horrible beast chained to a table down under the floor?
Goose bumps rose up on Wally’ arms. It wasn’t just bones, as Mike had said. It was something alive!
Half an hour went by. An hour. A police car moved slowly down the street. If an officer saw a boy standing in the doorway of a closed shop, he would surely stop. Wally flattened himself against the side of the doorway and turned his face away from the street. The policeman must not have seen him, because the cruiser went on toward the corner.
When Wally stepped out and looked in the bookstore window again, he saw that the thin lines of light in the floor had gone out. He pressed his face even closer to the glass. The store was dark, lit only by a dim night-light near the cash register. Wally could just make out the counters, the book racks.
And then, while he stood there still as a stone, the trapdoor opened—an inch … two inches. … Someone— or something—was pushing it open from underneath. Wally could barely see the hand that held it.
And suddenly, as quickly as the trapdoor had opened, it closed. There was no light at all around the edges. The someone—or something—must have seen Wally out there peering through the window and ducked back inside. Someone—or something—didn’t want Wally Hatford to know it was down there. Wally made a beeline for home.
He ran into his house and locked the door behind him. He ran up to his room and closed that door as well. He turned on every light, including the light in his closet, and sat against the headboard of his bed, holding a pillow close to his chest.
How did you decide when you shouldn’t keep a secret any longer? he wondered. When should you at least tell your mom and dad? What if there was a creature that crawled out at night and did horrible things before it returned to its hiding place in Oldakers’ cellar?
If I hear of anyone being murdered, I’ll tell, Wally decided. But that would be too late. If I hear of anyone getting beaten up, I’ll tell, he thought. Then, If I even hear of a cat or dog being hurt, I’l tell. And finally, If I hear of anybody or anything mysteriously missing, that’s when Ill tell my folks.
Downstairs there was a click. Wally stiffened, straining to hear. The soft shutting of a door. Silence. He swallowed, his heart pounding hard under his shirt.
Then there were faint footsteps on the floor below. Then creaking noises on the stairs. Wally clutched the pillow even more tightly.
His doorknob began to turn. The door began to open.
“Yaaaaaaah!” Wally cried out in terror.
Mrs. Hatford entered the room. “Wally, what on earth? I thought you were going bowling with your dad!”
“I didn’t want to go,” said Wally.
“So I see.”
“I decided to just stay home.”
“Uh-huh,” said his mother.
“I decided I don’t like to bowl that much.”
“So you’d rather stay home with a pillow over your stomach?” Mrs. Hatford crossed the floor and went over to the bed, studying him. “Are you sick?” she asked.
“Nope,” said Wally.
“You can tell me anything. You know that, don’t you?” she said.
“Yep,” said Wally.
“Do you want to talk?” she asked.
“Nope,” said Wally.
“Well, if you change your mind, I’m downstairs,” she said, and went out.
“Okay,” said Wally. And just knowing he could tell her if he wanted made him feel a little better. But he got up and pulled down his blinds, just in case.
Eighteen
Haunted House
The second issue of the Hatford Herald was almost ready to roll. Beth’s photo of the haunted house wasn’t as good as she had hoped, but if the sky had been brighter, the house wouldn’t have looked so spooky.
“You’ve got exactly an hour to finish your story,” Eddie told her. “I’ve got to know how much space to allow on the second page.”
“I’m hurrying! I’m hurrying!” Beth said, typing as fast as she could. “I found out some more about it at the library. There’s a picture of it in a book called Historic Houses of Buckman, and it says it was designed by a local architect who did seven other houses here.”
“Are you just copying things out of that book then, or what?” asked Eddie. “We need to be original, you know.”
“No, I’m writing a whole story,” said Beth. “This is the only one of those eight houses still standing. And I can say that in this house, someone really did see a ghost.”
Of course there had to be a retraction on the first page about Tessie Crane’s untimely death—no death at all, in fact. The Hatford Herald wishes to report that Ms. Tessie Crane is not deceased in the least, Eddie had written, and t
hat the reporter, Caroline Malloy, was in error when she mixed up the sisters. She is sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Jake had turned in a story about a high school baseball game in 1964, Josh had drawn a comic strip about the first cars to appear on Main Street, and Caroline’s story about the man who had fought in World War I was ready to go. Eddie herself had researched how much things had cost in years gone by, comparing them with what they cost now, and even Mrs. Malloy found that story interesting.
“Bread cost only two cents a loaf back in 1903?” she said. “And look! You could buy a whole house for a little over three thousand dollars!”
“Check out the cars, Mom. I didn’t even know they had cars in 1903. You could buy a Cadillac for seven hundred and fifty dollars!” Eddie said.
Caroline, looking over her mother’s shoulder, laughed. “Without a top, of course. Thirty dollars extra if you want a roof!”
“This is fascinating,” Mrs. Malloy said. “I think your readers are really going to enjoy this. Let’s send a copy to your dad.”
At last Beth finished her story. “Done!” she said, exchanging places with Eddie at the computer. Eddie, in turn, would put the copy into columns, just like in a regular newspaper. Beth’s story began:
A forlorn old house sits waiting at the corner of Hazel and Bennington Streets, but no one knows, waiting for what? It’s as though the family living there suddenly fled, leaving everything just the way it was—a saucepan on the stove, a shoe by the couch, a jacket thrown over a chair.
“I have never seen anyone go in or out,” said a neighbor. “I’ve never seen a light on in a window.”
The yard is mostly bare, and what grass there is has not been mowed. But one terrified Buckman resident claims to have seen the ghastly image of a ghostly girl looking out a darkened window.
“I fled in terror,” said this person, who asked that her name not be revealed. “I know what I saw, and I am not making this up.”
Things may be peaceful during the day, but at night, who knows what lurks in deserted houses? Who knows what walks those dusty floors? Who knows …?
While her sisters worked on the newspaper, Caroline curled up on a wicker couch on the front porch. The day was warm, the breeze gentle, the cushions inviting, and Caroline’s eyes began to close.
Once she had fallen asleep on this warm afternoon, it was hard to wake up. Drifting in and out of dreams, she was conscious of voices inside the house, footsteps now and then, or cars passing on the road. But her arms and legs felt like noodles, limp and lifeless, and it was so pleasant on the porch that she had the energy only to breathe.
She was dreaming about the day she had tried to make herself look like the actress Shirley Temple—the curly hair, the dimpled cheeks, the necklace, the smile …
And then, before she had even moved an inch, Caroline remembered something else. Every muscle in her body tensed. Every nerve in her scalp went on alert. The ghastly image of the ghostly girl she had seen in the window of the haunted house had been wearing that same necklace! That could only mean one thing: that what Caroline had seen in the window that evening at the haunted house, the image that had startled her so, was her own reflection. She had screamed and run at the sight of herself !
There had been no ghost! There had been no girl! Caroline bolted up, swinging her legs off the couch. She had to stop the presses!
“Eddie?” she called.
When Caroline rushed indoors, Mrs. Malloy was using her portable sewing machine on one side of the dining room table.
“She’s gone, Caroline. Wally came over to pick up the newspapers, and she and Beth helped carry them over to the bookstore.
“They went to Oldakers?” Caroline gasped. “You mean the paper’s out?”
“Sweetheart, you’ve been asleep!” her mother said. “Didn’t you hear Eddie ask if you wanted to go with them? They left about an hour ago. They probably stopped somewhere for ice cream on the way back.”
Caroline went up to her room and lay facedown on her bed. You have to get your facts straight! Eddie had scolded her when she made the mistake about Tessie Crane. Check and double-check! Now it was Beth who would be in big trouble. She had listened to Caroline and written what she’d said, and it was all Caroline’s fault.
Sooner or later she was going to have to tell Eddie and Beth and the whole Hatford tribe that she had seen no ghost. After that, she’d have to explain it to everyone. If anyone could see her aura now, it would be black, black, black, she was sure.
At dinner that evening, all Caroline could think about was leaving town. “If we move back to Ohio, how soon can we leave?” she asked.
“We’re not leaving until we’ve given our tenants thirty days’ notice,” Mrs. Malloy said. “We rented out our house to another family, remember?”
“Then if Dad stays in Ohio by himself all during August, where will he live till we get our house back?” Caroline asked.
“He’ll rent an apartment for a month,” said her mother.
“Maybe I should go cook for him,” said Caroline.
“What?” said Mrs. Malloy.
“And do his laundry,” said Caroline.
Her sisters laughed. “Caroline, you’ve got two pairs of socks and some underwear on the bathroom floor that have been there for three days, not to mention your towel,” said Beth. “You don’t even take care of your own laundry.”
“Besides, you always wanted to be famous, didn’t you?” said Eddie. “When people read Beth’s article about the haunted house, they’ll want to talk to the person who saw the ghastly ghost of a girl in the window, and all sorts of people will be calling.”
“I won’t be famous,” said Caroline plaintively. “I’ll be infamous, Eddie!” Her chin began to tremble. “I’ve done a terrible and awful thing.”
Mrs. Malloy stopped eating. “ What terrible and awful thing, Caroline?” And when Caroline didn’t answer, she said more sternly, “Caroline, now what have you done?”
“I thought I saw the ghost of a girl in the window, Mother, but it was only me. My reflection. I just realized.”
“How do you know it was you?” asked her mother.
“Because I just remembered she was wearing my necklace.”
“Oh, Caroline, for Pete’s sake!” said Eddie. “The paper’s already been printed. People are picking up copies at Oldakers’ this very minute!”
“I know! I know!” Caroline said miserably.
As though that weren’t enough to ruin their dinner, the phone rang just then. Wanting desperately to escape her sisters’ anger, Caroline pushed away from the table and ran to answer. It was Mr. Hatford.
“Caroline,” he said. “About that house over on Hazel Street, it belongs to the Parker family. They’re on a six-month trip to Europe, and I’ve been forwarding their mail. I don’t think they’re going to be very happy when they get back and discover that the Hatford Herald said their house is haunted.”
Nineteen
Bones!
Maybe we should quit while we can,” Jake said sullenly as the four Hatford boys and the three Malloy girls gathered on the Hatfords’ front steps. “Beth, you know those neighbors who said they’d never seen anyone go in or out? Who never saw lights in the windows?”
“They did tell me that!” Beth insisted.
“Well, Dad says they’ve only lived there a month. Of course they’ve never seen anyone go in or out! Of course they never saw any lights in the windows! They never even knew the Parkers. They never knew they were in Europe.”
Beth moaned and sank down even lower on the step. Caroline saw Eddie close her eyes in dismay.
“Sometimes you need more than facts!” said Josh. “You have to use your head. Dad’s mad at us because the sheriff feels he has to send out a car every so often to keep an eye on that house, now that we’ve announced to the world it’s been abandoned.”
“Buckman isn’t exactly the world,” Eddie put in.
“And anyone can
see that with newspapers and leaves blowing all around the yard, no one’s there to take care of it,” Caroline said, trying to defend her sisters. “A burglar would have figured that out by now. He didn’t need to read it in our newspaper.”
“We’ll make up for it,” Eddie said quickly. “We’ll make the last issue of our newspaper so spectacular that everyone will forgive us for this and the Tessie-Bessie mix-up.”
“Yeah? What do you suggest?” said Josh.
Nobody had an answer. About all they had left for the final issue was the story of Sara Phillips’s aunt Irene and her quilts. Who would buy a newspaper just for that? Wally’s mind raced ahead to the creature in the Oldakers’ cellar. Mike Oldaker simply had to come through with that scoop. Wally had almost decided that if Mike hadn’t kept his promise by the time the third issue came out, he would write a story about the noises coming from the cellar, and then wouldn’t Mike Oldaker be sorry!
“Has anybody been murdered lately?” Wally asked softly.
The others turned, staring at him.
“I mean, has anybody been bitten or attacked, or are any pets missing?” Wally added.
“What are you talking about?” said Jake. “Even if there were, we wouldn’t be the ones to report it. This is supposed to be historical. We’re not writing about what’s happening around here now. Everything we write has to be about old stuff.”
“I know!” said Peter brightly. “We could write about Grandpa!”
“What about Grandpa?” asked Wally
“He was old.”
“So?” said Jake.
“And he liked to study old things,” said Peter.
Peter was right, Wally thought. Grandpa Hatford studied people of long ago. But everybody had a grandpa who did something. Why not write about anybody’s grandpa?
“Yeah. Right,” said Jake. “Okay, Peter. You and Wally write a story about Grandpa.”