The Haunting (19 page)

Harmless? I didn’t think so. I didn’t think the sheriff would think she was so harmless, either, when I told him to check the windowsill and basement door for her fingerprints—Jonathan’s, too. I was also counting on Jonathan’s big mouth. Eventually, with his oversized ego, he’d want to brag, and he’d blab the whole story.

Jonathan took my hand from the doorknob and pulled me in his wake until we came to the parlor. “We don’t want to stand around arguing, Lia. Let’s make ourselves comfortable,” he said.

As he flopped down on a sofa, yanking me down beside him, he slipped an arm around my shoulders, hugging me close. “This is nice,” he murmured. “Too bad we didn’t bring something to eat or a portable CD player.”

I pushed against him and sat upright. “Sorry, Jonathan, but this isn’t part of the plan.”

“I’ve got plans, too,” he said. He reached for me again, but I jumped to my feet.

A light breeze brushed my cheek, lifting tendrils of my hair. I was so scared, I wanted to run straight out of the house and never come back, but I couldn’t. I took a deep breath and said, “Listen, Jonathan. Be quiet and listen.”

“I don’t hear anything,” he said.

But I did.

“Come upstairs with me,” I told him. Dusk was quickly dissolving into darkness, so I turned on my flashlight.

“That’s more like it,” Jonathan said. He turned on his flashlight and tried to catch up with me as I ran through the entry hall, up the stairs, and into Placide Blevins’s bedroom. When we were inside the room I shut the door and faced Jonathan.

“It’s stronger here,” I said, “The whispers have come. Do you hear them? Do you feel them pulling and pushing us, wrapping around our heads and poking at our minds?”

Jonathan took a step backward, bumping into the closed door. He looked pale. “Don’t do that, Lia!” he said.

I could hear it clearly now, the whispered word repeated over and over, tumbling against itself, beating against my ears. And I knew what the voice was saying: “Below, below, below.”

“Look at the ceiling, Jonathan,” I said. “Look at the tiny faces and their mean, hard eyes. You can see their sharp teeth and their split little serpent tongues.”

He looked upward and let out a yelp of terror. “What are they doing? What are they saying?” he cried.

A cold wind rushed through the room, lifting the curtains at the blank-eyed windows, and wrapped itself around us.

“You’re not going to frighten me out of the house,” I called out to the invisible one. “I know who you are and how to send you away from Graymoss.”

Jonathan’s eyes rolled up in his head. He slumped against the door, and I thought he would faint.

I reached out and shook his shoulder. “Get a grip on yourself,” I shouted at him over the wind and the voices. “Come down to the basement with me. I need your help.”

I reached for the doorknob, but Jonathan was faster. He shoved me aside and raced into the hall. I could hear him clattering down the stairs and into the kitchen. As I walked carefully down the stairs, gripping the handrail, I heard Jonathan’s car driving away.

I was all alone. It was better that way.

The wind pushed against me. The whispers turned to shouts, and invisible fingers pulled through my hair and along my face. I had trouble breathing, and my feet became heavy, as though I were walking through thick mud.
Leave this horrible place!
a voice in my head kept saying.
Get out of here! Run!

But I couldn’t. I had to finish the task I’d come for. I struggled into the kitchen, where I tugged and jerked at the closed basement door. The winds had caught it and wouldn’t let go. “You can’t stop me!” I shouted. “I’m going to win!”

The door suddenly flew open, knocking me off balance. Carefully I crawled down the stairs, clinging to the railing. The beam from my flashlight made a path through the darkness, and I followed it.

With the wind and voices howling around me, I struggled to the back of the basement. I laid my flashlight on a shelf so that its beam hit the brick
wall between the arches. Then I picked up the wooden mallet and the short iron bar with the point on one end. Placing the point against the mortar between a row of bricks, I began to pound.

As chips of mortar and bricks flew, I cried out, “Mr. Blevins, I got your message. You never did say that Slade had left. You only told Charlotte that Slade wouldn’t harm her. Now I know how you kept him from doing that.”

A brick wobbled and fell out. I attacked the ones above and next to it.

Over the roaring in my ears I shouted, “You thought you were protecting Charlotte. You didn’t know you were imprisoning Slade’s evil in Graymoss.”

Suddenly something soft and furry brushed against my legs, and I leaped back with a scream, dropping my iron bar.

I looked down to see the large black cat staring up at me. “Oh, it’s you,” I said, but I was breathing hard, and it took me a few moments to recover.

The cat patted at the iron bar, then hunched over it, glaring at me with his gleaming, yellow eyes.

“Move,” I said, and bent to pick up the bar, but the cat snarled and hissed.

Was this a real cat or was it a visible part of the evil in Graymoss? I didn’t want to find out, so I quit trying to retrieve the iron bar and reached for the flat iron tool with a handle instead. I hammered with all my strength at the mortar. The cat yowled and vanished into the darkness.

As I worked I shouted, “Morgan Slade, Mr.
Blevins had to stop you from harming his granddaughter. And I’m going to stop you from harming Graymoss. You are the evil that haunts the house, but your power is gone! You’re leaving! Now!”

With a final slam against the bricks, a section about two feet wide broke off and fell through. I picked up my flashlight and swept its beam through the hidden room on the other side of the wall.

The small room was dank and cobwebby, but there before me was the fine wine cellar, with rows and rows of bottles covered in a thick layer of dust. On the floor was spread the remnants of a deteriorated canvas sack, its contents of silver plate and jewelry spilled onto the ground. And next to the sack, facedown, with a bashed-in skull, lay the partly clothed skeleton of a man.

I remembered what the woman in the French Quarter had told me. Hoping I had the words right, I cleared my throat, made my voice as stern and loud as I could, and said, “Go away, Morgan Slade. Go to whatever awaits you.”

The cold winds abruptly stopped, and the whispers stilled. The house was suddenly so quiet that I staggered back against the shelves. “I did it!” I said aloud. “I really did it!”

But I remembered there hadn’t been just one ghost. Softly I added, “You can go, too, Mr. Blevins. Your house is now in good hands.”

Graymoss would be inhabited by our family and a bunch of kids who might be a little noisy at times and might be a real pain in the neck at other times, but who needed to be part of a family. I was pretty sure Placide Blevins would approve.
And he’d approve of what I’d done to save Graymoss.

So would Mom and Dad. I’d tell them everything, and Mom would try to make it all seem logical so that I wouldn’t be traumatized by ghosts or messages or anything she couldn’t explain. But she’d be happy—ecstatically happy—because clearing the house of evil spirits would mean Mom and Dad’s dream could come true.

And Grandma, who’d been totally spooked by this house? She’d be proud of me, too.

I climbed out of the house through the kitchen window, shut it carefully, and sat on the steps of the front veranda. Pulling Grandma’s cell phone from my pack, I dialed the Bogue City operator and asked to speak to the sheriff.

While I waited, I mentally hung the
WOMEN WHO ARE EXCEPTIONALLY BRAVE
banner over the front door. Bigger and brighter than before, the golden names glittered, and I grinned with delight as I looked at them. There, down at the bottom—along with all the rest—was written
LIA MARIE STARLING
.

“Sheriff Fuller speaking,” the sheriff said into my ear.

“Hello, Sheriff Fuller,” I answered. “This is Lia Starling. I’d like to report a murder.”

JOAN LOWERY NIXON has been called the grande dame of young adult mysteries. She is the author of more than 130 books for young readers and is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Novel. She received the award for
The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore
,
The Séance
,
The Name of the Game Is Murder
, and
The Other Side of Dark
, which also won the California Young Reader Medal.