Cleaning the auditorium was one of the Aldens’ final volunteer tasks. They were impressed by the way the school was shaping up. Cobwebs had been brushed out of corners and crooks. Even tiny holes had been patched. And the walls were now painted a pristine white. Doorknobs were dusted and polished. Henry had even helped fix the flagpole. Now the flag waved and rippled in the wind, greeting everyone each day. Of course, some major work still needed to be done. The lockers had to be removed, and not all of the electrical work was finished. Even so, the school looked brighter and cleaner than ever.
But above and beyond the excitement around the renovations, the Aldens were looking forward to the grand opening party… and then participating in all of the programs the new art center offered!
Benny crouched down to hold the dustpan while Henry swept a heap of dirt into it.
“For being so old, the auditorium is in great shape,” Henry said. He looked around and was impressed.
“Ansel made a good point,” Violet said from the stage. “Trying to keep the school’s history alive in the renovation was a great idea. This building is so cool. It didn’t need to be torn down!”
Behind Violet, Jessie bent down to wipe a smudge off the stage floor. She shook her head as she noticed muddy footprints leading offstage. Jessie wiped up the dirty tracks one by one.
The Alden children were so focused on their tasks that they didn’t notice someone else was in the auditorium. But then they heard a voice.
“I can assure you,” the woman said, “I am the first antique dealer to visit this school.”
Jessie looked around and didn’t see anyone. But she recognized the voice right away…It was Martha! Violet and Benny also looked around. Henry just shrugged.
“I bet the sound acoustics are really good in here,” he explained. “After all, it is an auditorium, and the audience needs to be able to hear actors and musicians well.”
“Where is she?” Benny asked.
“She’s probably off in the wings somewhere,” Jessie replied. “It sounds like she’s talking on her cell phone.”
Everyone went back to sweeping and wiping the floor. But they still heard Martha’s conversation.
“I even scouted out the best pieces before the renovation started,” Martha continued.
There was a long pause before she spoke again.
“No,” she said firmly. “I’ve changed my mind about trying any more tricks to snap up the best pieces.”
Another pause. Martha was listening to the person on the other end of the line.
“There’s weird energy here,” she finally said with a shaky voice. “I’ll do my best to get good pieces, but from now on, I’m doing business fairly.”
Martha said good-bye to her customer and ended the call. When she pulled back the curtain to the stage, she was startled to see the Aldens working.
“I didn’t realize anyone was here!” she said.
“We’re just finishing,” Henry replied.
“Yes,” Martha said as she looked around. “You all have done a really nice job here. The new art center will be ready in no time!”
Jessie raised her eyebrows as a thought occurred to her.
“We heard you talking,” she started. She pointed to the cell phone in Martha’s hand. “And you said that you checked out the place before you started working here. When was that?”
Martha hesitated for a moment, as if not sure whether to tell the children the truth. Finally, she spoke. “It was the same night you were here. The night you met Bob,” she admitted. “I found a flyer about the renovation project and came to the school to have a look.”
Martha rummaged through her bag and pulled out a yellow piece of paper. She handed it to Henry. It was the same flyer Grandfather had found that led the Aldens to the Hawthorne School renovation.
“So,” Henry said. He thought back to the first time they met Bob. “You knew who we were before we officially met on the first day of work. And you knew Watch too!”
Martha nodded and smiled.
“I was upstairs while you were walking through the classrooms,” she said. “After you left for the playground, I slipped out the front door.”
It all made sense now. Watch had been so jumpy that night because he sensed Martha’s presence. And it also explained why the Aldens had the eerie feeling that someone was watching them. Someone was…Martha!
“Why did you keep it a secret?” Benny asked.
“I didn’t want any other dealers to find out about all of the great antiques here,” Martha replied.
Violet perked up as Martha explained her story. She remembered the rumor about furniture being moved in the school. Several volunteers thought the Hawthorne School ghost was responsible for desks and chairs that had been found in odd places. Now Violet thought that Martha could have done it.
“Did you move any of the furniture?” Violet asked.
“I did move some,” Martha admitted. “I was hoping to save some of the best pieces, so I could be the first to bid on them at the auction. If someone else found them, they would be eager to bid before me.”
The Aldens followed Martha to the edge of the stage. They all sat down and swung their legs over the ledge. Martha seemed less mysterious now. Over the past few weeks, she had simply been trying to find antique furniture. Jessie looked at a page in her notebook. Everything that Martha said seemed to add up. But she still had one last question.
“Martha, did you write the spooky message on the chalkboard in Room 214?” Jessie asked her.
Martha’s eyes grew wide. “No!” she said. “I didn’t write that message. I wish I knew who did though. It gives me the creeps.” She crossed her arms and shivered.
The Aldens looked at one another. Martha had definitely acted strangely in the past. But now they knew her reasons. And something about the frightened look on her face made Jessie think that Martha was telling the truth when she said she hadn’t written the spooky message. Jessie crossed her name off the list of suspects.
“We believe you,” Jessie told Martha.
Henry and Jessie stood up and grabbed the brooms they had propped up against the wall. To their surprise, Martha also reached for a broom.
“It’s time I started helping,” she said, swishing the broom across the floor. Once she had a neat pile of dirt, Benny crouched down with his dustpan. In no time, they were nearly done cleaning the auditorium’s floor.
“Thanks for your help,” Violet told Martha.
Martha then grabbed a cloth and helped Jessie wipe scuffs and scrapes off the floor. They were busily cleaning when the auditorium door opened. They saw Mrs. Koslowski walking down the aisle. She was eyeing their progress, but she seemed like she had other things on her mind.
“Hi, Mrs. K,” Henry said. “Can we help you with anything?”
“Hello,” she replied. She waved quickly to the children. “No, I don’t need any help.”
Martha handed Jessie her dust cloth.
“I think we’re done here,” Martha said, looking at the spotless floor. “I’ll take a walk with Hyacinth.”
“Hyacinth?” Jessie asked. “Mrs. K’s first name is…Hyacinth?”
“Hyacinth,” Benny repeated. “Like the flower!”
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Martha replied, smiling. “Her family owned Silver City’s oldest florist. Have you seen Weaver’s Flower Shop on Main Street? And Benny’s right, she was named after her father’s favorite flower.”
Martha stepped off the stage and made her way to Mrs. Koslowski. The two of them walked out of the auditorium.
Jessie spun around to face her brothers and sister.
“Did you hear that?” she asked.
“Mrs. K is the girl from that newspaper article!” Henry exclaimed.
“The one who had her tonsils out and missed the last week of school!” Violet said.
“Wait a second…” Jessie flipped through her notebook, running her finger down each page as she scanned her notes. “That last we
ek of school that she missed? It was also the last week that Hawthorne School was ever open!”
“That’s true,” Violet said. “All of the students had to go to Greenfield School that fall. I bet she missed her chance to say good-bye to her old classrooms. That might be why she’s been wandering through the halls.”
“Benny’s right,” Henry said. “The last week of school is always the best.”
Jessie nodded. She remembered last June, when she and her friends had cleaned out their lockers. On the last day of school, they’d gathered their belongings to take home. That way, the school was clean and empty, ready for the next year.
“She didn’t get to take her things home,” Henry said. “They’ve been locked up here all these years.”
Suddenly, Jessie looked up from her notebook. Her eyes lit up, as if she’d figured something out.
“Follow me,” she said.
They followed Jessie back into the main school building. She raced up the stairs to the second floor. When she finally reached Room 214, she abruptly stopped.
As they entered the room, they saw the mysterious message still written on the chalkboard.
Stay away! Whoever dares unlock my secret will be sorry…
“Do you see?” Jessie asked. She excitedly pointed to the chalkboard.
“Yes!” Henry said. “Mrs. K must be trying to find her old locker. Her things have been locked away for sixty years!”
“So,” Violet said. “Now we know.”
Benny nodded. “Mrs. K wrote the mystery message!”
CHAPTER 9
Unlocking the Past
“It all makes sense!” Jessie exclaimed.
The Aldens continued to stare at the message Mrs. Koslowski had written on the chalkboard. The curvy, elegant handwritten letters spelled out the spooky words in the warning to stay away.
“Mrs. K must have wanted to find her things before someone else did,” Violet said. “She was probably worried they would go into the trash. Then they would be gone forever.”
Everyone agreed with Violet. Mrs. K wasn’t absentminded; she was just very focused on finding the things she had left in her locker all those years ago.
“She did a great job copying the writing we found on the chalkboard in Room 108,” Henry said. He remembered that Mrs. K said the writing resembled her mother’s penmanship. She must have used it as a guide when writing the note.
“We could just ask Mrs. K about it,” Jessie suggested.
“We could help her find her things,” Benny said.
Henry walked over to the old wooden table sitting in the middle of the room. He pulled out a chair and sat down.
“But every time we’ve seen her wandering the halls and ask her if she’s looking for something, she’s denied it,” Henry said.
Jessie sat down at the table next to him.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to bother anyone,” Jessie said.
Violet and Benny also sat down at the table.
“If she doesn’t find her things fast,” Violet said, “it might be too late.”
Henry nodded. “You’re right,” he said.
“And the renovation is in the final stage,” Jessie added. “All the lockers will be torn out to allow room for the new gallery hall. All of the lockers will be thrown out…and everything in them!”
“We have to help Mrs. K,” Violet said. “But how?”
“That’s easy,” Benny replied. “All we have to do is find the locked locker!”
They took turns high-fiving Benny for his clever idea. If they found the locker that had not been opened since the last day of school in 1955, they would surely find Mrs. Koslowski’s hidden belongings.
“OK,” Henry said. “Here’s the plan.”
He drew an outline of the school on a piece of loose-leaf paper.
“We’ll have to divide into teams to tackle all of the lockers,” he continued. “Jessie and Violet will take the first floor. Benny and I will take the lockers on the second floor. We’ll meet here in an hour.”
Henry pointed to a spot on the map directly in front of Room 108.
“Let’s go,” Jessie said, standing. “Let’s find Mrs. K’s long-lost things!”
Jessie and Violet headed downstairs to the lockers on the first floor. The red lockers looked old and dingy.
“Let’s start with the top ones,” Jessie suggested. The lockers were arranged in two rows, one on top of the other.
The sisters pulled the handle of each locker door. Every one opened easily.
“Now for the bottom row,” Violet said.
After opening and closing each locker, the Alden sisters determined that Mrs. Koslowski’s locker was not on the first floor.
Upstairs, Henry and Benny were not having much luck either. Each locker pulled open right away.
“It’s getting late,” Henry said. “We should head to Room 108.”
Benny looked down the hallway at the unopened lockers. The second floor held several more rows than the first floor. Henry and Benny had not yet finished checking them.
“What if we never find Mrs. K’s locker?” Benny asked as they walked down the flight of stairs to the first floor.
“We’ll just have to keep trying,” Henry replied.
As they turned the corner, they saw Jessie and Violet standing in front of Room 108. They were talking to Ansel.
“Look who we ran into,” Jessie said.
“Ansel was just leaving the darkroom for the day,” Violet added.
Henry asked Ansel about his project. Everyone wanted to know if he had found more interesting scenes to photograph.
“I’ve been playing more with the lighting and shadows from the open lockers,” Ansel replied.
“Open lockers?” Jessie asked. “Did all of the lockers open?”
“As a matter of fact,” Ansel replied, “One of them was locked.”
“Mrs. K’s locker!” Benny cheered.
The Alden children excitedly told Ansel about the old newspaper story and how they thought the locked locker was Mrs. Koslowski’s.
“Where is the locker?” Henry asked.
Ansel explained that there was a short hallway on the second floor, off to the side of the main hall. It could be easily missed, if someone didn’t know about it. The locked locker was in this nook.
“We must have missed it,” Henry said. “We’ll go check it out right now.”
“And I’ll find Mrs. K and bring her upstairs,” Ansel said. “We’ll all meet in front of the locker.”
“Mrs. K will be so surprised!” Violet said.
Ansel went around the corner while the Aldens went up to the second floor, following Ansel’s directions to the locker. Sure enough, there was a small hallway off the main hall. A few lockers lined the walls. Jessie took a deep breath and tried to open the very last one. It was locked!
“We found it!” Benny cried with delight.
“Now we wait,” Jessie said.
A few minutes passed, but there was no sign of Ansel and Mrs. K. It was now late in the afternoon. They could see the sun dipping below the horizon out the window, and the light in the hallway was growing dim and shadowy. Jessie flipped on the light switch, but only a few bulbs glowed in the murky darkness. The other bulbs were cracked and broken. Henry had brought a battery-powered lantern to help look inside the lockers, and he held it up to give them some light, but it only helped a little bit. All around them in the gloomy hallway they could recognize the dark shapes and shadows from Ansel’s photographs.
Violet shivered. “I can see why Ansel likes to photograph here,” she said. “It sure is spooky.”
Jessie nodded and hugged her arms to her chest.
“What if we’re wrong about Mrs. K playing pranks?” Violet asked.
“What if there really is a ghost?” Benny continued.
Henry was about to tell Benny there was no such thing as a ghost at Hawthorne School. But then the Aldens heard the sound of a shut door rattling.
&
nbsp; “What was that?” Violet asked.
A few moments passed. The door rattled again.
Jessie pointed to a dark doorway at the end of the hall. “It’s coming from there,” she said, her voice shaking a little.
The four of them were all thinking the same thing.
What if the legend of the Hawthorne School ghost was true after all?
CHAPTER 10
A Grand Opening
Just then, Benny stepped away from the lockers and stood in the center of the hallway. He crossed his arms.
“We can’t be scared. We have to find Mrs. K,” he said. “She’s looking for something important.”
“Benny’s right,” Henry said. “We have to see what’s going on.”
He led the way down the hallway, taking a second to peek into the open door of each classroom. All the rooms were empty. Finally, they reached the dark end of the hall…and the closed door.
Henry hesitated in front of the door.
“We have to open it!” Benny said. He stepped forward and placed his hand on the doorknob.
“For being so small, you sure are brave!” Violet told him.
Benny turned the knob and pulled it open, squeezing his eyes closed as he did. If there was a ghost, he didn’t want to see it!
“Thank goodness!” cried Mrs. K, who stood with Ansel and Bob behind the door. “We came up the back stairs, but this door wouldn’t open!”
Jessie let out a sigh of relief as the adults came into the hallway.
“I understand you have something to show me?” Mrs. K asked.
“Yes!” Benny exclaimed. “Come on!”
“Wait a moment,” said Mrs. K. “Let me sit down for a moment. I need to tell you all something.”
Bob found a chair from one of the classrooms and brought it over to Mrs. K. She gently sat down. She removed her glasses and blinked a few times. Then she pulled a tissue out of her pocket and nervously began cleaning the lenses of her glasses.
“I’m terribly sorry,” she started. “I had no idea my little message would get this out of hand. Everybody was talking about the Hawthorne ghost, and I thought the warning might buy me a little time to find my things.”