The Boys Return (8 page)

“Horse around…at the Malloys' house, by chance?” asked his dad.

“Well, sort of,” said Josh. “I mean, we walked across their yard.”

“And did the Malloy girls sort of come outside and horse around with you?”

Wally was surprised to see the older boys blush.

“Of course not!” said Jake. “They didn't even know we were out there.”

Wally saw his chance to change the subject. “But, Dad, we saw the cougar again! It came right over to us!”

“Yeah!” said Jake. “It nuzzled my face. It bumped right into me!”

“What?” cried Mr. Hatford.

“It did!” said Jake, glad that the conversation had taken a new direction. “I thought the other guys were fooling around, bumping into me, and when I looked, it was the cougar.” His voice was still shaking. “It was like… like, sniffing me out or something, and when I yelled, it bolted and ran.”

“Boys!” said Mr. Hatford. “You shouldn't have been out there! I'm going to call the sheriff in the morning. He figures it might have been somebody's pet that got away. And if that person didn't have a permit to keep a wild animal, he's not about to report it and get in trouble. That may be why it's hanging around so close to town. Either that or it's getting mighty hungry. You boys get to bed, and we'll have to go over the house rules tomorrow. No more sneaking out at night, or
I'm going to ground you for the whole week. Understood?”

Wally and Jake and Josh nodded.

“And you Bensons too?” Mr. Hatford said.

The Bensons nodded.

“Good,” said Mr. Hatford.

Gratefully the seven boys went upstairs. In the twins' bedroom, there were empty Coke and Sprite and Mountain Dew cans scattered all over the floor.

“Well, at least we didn't get in big trouble,” said Josh. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Yeah?
I'm
in big trouble!” said Tony. “I lost my key chain, and I don't know where to look for it.”

Ten
A Ghostly Gathering

A
s soon as Mrs. Malloy left for the meeting of the faculty wives, Eddie phoned the Hatfords. The girls had spent an hour up in Beth's room that morning rehearsing just what they were going to say and felt they were as ready as they'd ever be.

There were three rings at the other end before someone answered, and Eddie held the phone away from her ear so that Beth could hear too.

“Hello?” It was Josh's voice.

“Hi, Josh. It's me, Eddie.”

Caroline, who was listening in on the phone upstairs, had never heard Eddie talk like that. Her voice was low and soft and scared-sounding, and her words wavered a little at the end.

“Oh. Hi,” said Josh.
He
sounded cocky. Confident.

“I just… just wanted to say that T-Tony was
right!” Eddie went on. “About March twenty-second, I mean. The house
is
haunted.”

Caroline heard muffled voices at the other end of the line, and then a click as though someone was picking up another phone somewhere in the Hatford house. Caroline thought she could hear another person breathing.

“Why? What happened?” Josh said at last, and Caroline could almost see him smiling as he said it.

“Oh, it's just too scary,” Eddie continued. “Dad's at the college and Mom's at the faculty wives' meeting, and to tell the truth, we're a little bit scared to be here alone. Do you suppose you guys could come over for a little while?”

Now there were excited whispers at the other end of the line, Caroline was sure of it. Even a muffled laugh. Then Tony took over the phone.

“Eddie? This is Tony. What happened? Did you hear something, or what?”

“Yeah, but
please
come over till Mom gets back. Okay?” Eddie pleaded convincingly.

“Sure. We'll be right there,” Tony said, and hung up.

Caroline ran downstairs to her sisters. Eddie, Beth, and Caroline bent over double, laughing.

In no time at all, it seemed, they saw nine boys coming up the hill from the footbridge.

“Look at them,” said Beth. “They even brought reinforcements. They've got Peter and Doug with them.”

“Okay, now. Get ready. Wipe those smiles off your faces,” Eddie said.

The three girls went to the door, looking frightened. It was like being in a play with her sisters, Caroline decided. She wondered if she had ever had so much fun. Well, yes, she had. When they had first moved to Buckman, for example, and they knew the boys were spying on them—when Caroline pretended to be dead, and her sisters had carried her to the river and dumped her body in. Or the time the Hatford boys had locked her in their toolshed, and when they opened the door at last, Caroline had pretended to be rabid. Oh, the stage was where she belonged, most definitely!

The boys, Caroline could see, were trying hard not to smile. All except Peter and Doug, who didn't have to try at all because, to them, there was nothing to laugh about. Obviously, they didn't have a clue.

Beth pulled them quickly inside. “We're
so
glad you're here!” she said. “It's been so scary!”

Tony and Steve were even nicer than they'd been the day before. Everyone sat down in the living room, Peter and Doug with wide eyes, wanting to hear what had happened, and Danny and Bill looking strangest of all because they were trying so hard to keep straight faces. Their mouths kept twisting into grotesque shapes.

“Tell us what happened,” said Steve.

“Well,” Eddie began, her voice trembling just a little. Caroline was terribly impressed. She'd had no idea
her sister was such a good actress. She was even a little envious. “Caroline was afraid to spend the night alone after what Tony told her, so Beth and I got in bed with her, just in case.”

Caroline saw Jake nudge Tony almost imperceptibly with his elbow.

Beth took up the story. “Everything was quiet until…oh… eleven o'clock. Maybe later. And then we heard it!”

“Heard what?” asked Tony. “Did you hear the tapping I told you about?”

“Yes! It was just like you said,” Eddie answered. “Sort of
tap, tappity, tap, tap.
It could have been the rhythm of a song.”

“It was Annabelle, I know it!” wailed Caroline. She saw Wally and Bill and Danny put their heads down so that no one could see their faces.

“And then,” Eddie went on, “it happened!”

The boys jerked to attention. “
What
happened?” asked Tony.

“We saw
her,
of course!” said Beth, wrapping her arms around her body as though to stop the shaking.

“Who?”
asked Steve and Josh together.

“Annabelle! It had to be her,” said Eddie.

“Huh?” said Tony.

“Well, we don't know that for sure,” said Beth, “but it had the shape of a young girl, and the—”

“
What
did?” the boys cried together. “The pale blue light,” said Eddie. “It was coming right through the wall where the—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” said Tony. “First you heard a tapping, and then…?”

Beth and Caroline nodded.

“But just before midnight,” Eddie went on, her eyes huge, “there was this light, this pale blue light.”

Caroline took over again. “We all sat up together to see where it was coming from, and right out of the wall, where the old panel had been, came this blue light— first her head, then her body, her arms and legs…”

“But it was her
voice
that I'll never forget as long as I live,” cried Beth, covering her face with her hands.

“What did she say?” gasped Peter.

“It was more like a wail,” said Caroline.

“No, like a…a moan,” Beth said.

“No, it wasn't. It was a screech! An angry screech,” Eddie insisted. “And she kept saying the same thing over and over: ‘
Oh
-nee!
Oh-
nee!' ”

“
Oh-
nee?” asked Steve. “What was she? An Indian?” The boys tried to laugh but didn't succeed.

“It was hard to make out
what
she was. But if I had to guess, I'd say a young girl. I couldn't tell anything else. A young girl in pain,” said Eddie.

“But she…the light…just kept looking all around and wailing, as though we weren't even there,” said Caroline.

Beth took up the story. “We kept asking her, ‘What do you want? Maybe we can help you,' but all she said was, ‘Where is he? Where is he?' ”

“Then what?” asked Wally, his eyes unblinking, his lips so dry they stuck together.

“Then the light moved all around the room, like… like she was looking for something,” said Eddie.

“Or somebody,” said Caroline.

“And then…
then
she cried, ‘
Oh
-nee!' and disappeared,” said Beth.

“But this is the spooky part,” Eddie told them. “As soon as the blue light faded away, we turned on the light….”

“We were so
scared
!” Caroline shivered.

“And right where the blue light had been, we found this,” said Eddie. She held out her hands and unfolded her fingers. There lay a horseshoe key chain with several keys attached.

Tony's mouth fell open. “It's—it's mine,” he said.

The girls looked at him in mock horror.

“Yours?”
said Caroline.

“She must have been saying ‘To-ny! To-ny!' ” said Wally softly.

The boys looked at each other, not quite believing, then at the girls.

And suddenly, from somewhere in the house, came a
thunka… thunka… thunka… thunka….

“The ghost!” yelled Peter, and he dived behind the couch.

Eleven
What Next?

W
hat were he and his brothers and friends doing over here? Wally wondered. Why did all their tricks on the girls seem to backfire? There probably
was
a girl named Annabelle who had once drowned in the Buckman River; there probably
was
a sister who had failed to save her and who lived in the Bensons' old house. So there probably was a
ghost,
too, and here it was, in that very house where the
thunka, thunka, thunka
came again.

“J-J-Jake,” he said, “maybe we should go home.”

“Don't leave us!” cried Caroline. “That was for
real
!”

“Caroline!” yelled Eddie.

“You mean this other stuff was all a joke?” asked Steve.

Thunka… thunka… thunka…
came from the
walls again, and then the sounds of soft footsteps coming around the side of the house.

Peter and Doug were both behind the sofa now.

Suddenly…
knock, knock, knock.

Caroline felt as though she had risen three inches off her chair.

“Wh-who's going to answer?” asked Tony.

Knock, knock, knock,
came the sound again.

Eddie slowly got up from the sofa. She moved noiselessly across the rug and out into the hallway. And finally, taking a deep breath, she grasped the doorknob and pulled open the door.

A deep voice said, “Malloy?” And as the Malloys and Hatfords and Bensons gathered behind her, Eddie found herself looking into the shadowed face of a man in a dark uniform and cap.

“Y-yes?” Eddie said.

“Upshur County Water and Sewer,” the man said. “Your dad called this morning about noise in the water pipes, and I just bled the air out of them at the meter. I think they'll be okay now. You can tell him.”

“Okay,” said Eddie, relief showing in her voice. She closed the door and turned to face the others.

“Of course! Air in the pipes.
We
knew that!” bragged Tony.

“We saw them do that once out in our yard,” said Steve.

“Well, if you knew that noise was just the utility company draining air from the pipes, why didn't you
say so?” Eddie demanded. “You were just as scared as we were. And
you
thought you could scare
us
!”

“What do you mean?” asked Tony.

“Ha!” said Beth. “‘I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,' my eye!”

“Huh?” said Steve.

“All that talk of a drowning in 1867, and somebody singing that song… the song wasn't even written till 1876. I checked,” said Eddie.

“And Annabelle's body was found near the road bridge, my foot!” said Caroline.