The Pike River Phantom (13 page)

“So what are we waiting for?” John demanded. He loosened the string around his wrist and handed the balloon to a little boy sitting on the curb. “We'll use Dad's car—I have keys. It's right near the entrance to the park.”

They were running down the street before Charlie was fully aware that a miracle had happened. Someone believed him. Someone was going to help.

The trip out of town was agonizingly slow. Parade goers had double-parked, making some streets impassable. Twice, they had to back up and look for another route. Once a small girl erupted into the street waving a flag. Charlie nearly hit the windshield, in spite of the seat belt he was wearing.

“Sorry about that.” His father kept glancing sideways at Charlie, his eyes full of questions.

“Why did you go to that house in the first place? I don't get it. And why did you go back?”

“I wanted to sell more candy bars than anyone else,” Charlie said. “It was just one more place to try. And the house didn't look so bad the first time I saw it—I mean, it looked the same as it does now, I guess, but I just didn't notice. She—Katya—opened the door right away. She said I reminded her of someone, and it turned out to be Grandpa Will. I guess I look the way he did when he was a kid—the way Rachel looks like Grandma. And Katya liked him.”

John nodded. “I suppose
everybody
liked him when he was a kid, same as they do now.” John sounded wistful, as if Grandpa's popularity made him a little sad. Charlie guessed it must be hard being the son of the best-liked man in town, if you weren't anything like him.

“I went back the second time,” Charlie explained, “because nobody believed me about the first time. Katya stole a chocolate bar from me, and Rachel said I must have eaten it myself. And Grandpa said there was no one living in the house. I wanted to take a picture of the old lady to prove she was there.” He hesitated. “She was a lot younger by then.”

“Where's the picture?”

“She wasn't in it. Just the chair she was sitting in.”

John rolled his eyes. “Mysteriouser and mysteriouser,” he muttered.

They crossed the Pike River bridge and left the town behind them. “You'd better slow down now,” Charlie warned, “the road through the woods is right—there!” He pointed at the sagging mailbox.

John guided the car into the narrow lane. It was always dark under the trees, and today's overcast sky had turned the road into a tunnel.

“Maybe we're wrong about Rachel coming out here,” John said doubtfully. “I don't think
I'd
come in on my bike, all alone. Especially if I thought there was a ghost waiting down the road.”

Charlie clenched his fists. Rachel would. He was sure of it. Besides, where else was there to look?

The car struggled out of the rutted lane and into the clearing. John stopped close to the gate and switched off the lights.

“Good lord, no!”

“It's so foggy,” Charlie said. “Why—”

But his father was already out of the car. “That's not fog, it's smoke!” he shouted. “Look at the house!”

Charlie looked. Red-orange flames leaped behind a living-room window. Smoke curls wreathed the window frames and the front door.

“You go for help, Charlie! Stop a car out on the highway and tell them to call the fire department! I'm going around to the back and look for a way in.”

Charlie couldn't move. As he stared in horror at the house, a window exploded from the heat. The flames danced higher.

His father was running along the side of the house. Charlie raced after him. Before he reached the backyard he heard the sound of more breaking glass, and he turned the corner in time to see John disappearing through the shattered window. The back door must be locked. Glass littered the ground, and puffs of smoke drifted from the window.

“Wait for me!” Charlie shouted. He climbed up on the wooden crate his father had used to enter. A ragged curtain blew in the hot wind, and he used it to pull himself up and over the sill.

He was in the back hall, facing the smoke-filled kitchen. From the front of the house came an ominous crackling. He couldn't see his father.

“Dad!” Charlie dropped to his knees, struggling for breath. Footsteps clattered across the kitchen, and his father appeared through the smoke. He was red-faced, coughing.

“I told you to go for help, Charlie! Now beat it!”

“I'm going with you,” Charlie gasped. “We have to find Rachel!”
And I don't want to leave you here!

“No!” John looked angry and scared. “If she's here,
I'll
find her. I don't have time to argue with you—the house is going to be one big bonfire in a few minutes. Go, Charlie!”

Charlie crawled backward toward the window. If only he'd never seen this place, never tried to sell those stupid candy bars! Who cared whether the Middle School band went to Madison next fall? From the first day this house had brought him nothing but trouble—and now it was going to kill the people he loved.

“Hey, Rachel!” he shouted desperately. “Rachel, are you in here?”

From somewhere far off—upstairs—came a thud and a faint scream.

“That's it!” John turned and started back toward the front of the house. He was halfway across the dining room when there was a terrifying
crack
, and a beam fell in front of him. He staggered back, arms raised to protect his face from a wall of flame.

“Dad, there's another stairway!” Charlie threw open the nearest door, revealing the narrow staircase he'd seen on his second visit to the house.

John crouched low and raced up the steps, two at a time. At the top he turned and looked down at Charlie.

“Get
out
, kid!” he roared. “Fire department!” Then he was gone.

Charlie climbed over the sill of the broken window and dropped heavily to the crate below. As he ran around the side of the house, he could feel heat from inside the walls, an ugly pulsing like the beat of a huge heart. It was the worst sound he'd ever heard.

A gleam of metal caught his eye as he dashed across the clearing. Rachel's bicycle, half-hidden by underbrush, leaned against a tree. He dragged it to the road, and a moment later he was flying toward the highway.

It was a rough ride. The ruts were deep, and he kept bouncing in and out of them. When the road ended at last, he wasn't ready, and he catapulted out onto the highway. Brakes screeched as a truck swerved to miss him.

Charlie shouted, but the bearded driver was already out of his cab.

“You crazy kid! Why don't you look where you're going? Don't you know enough to—” Charlie's expression cut off the scolding. “You in trouble?”

He listened, combing his beard with his fingers, while Charlie told him about the fire. “I know the place,” he said. “Probably some tramp moved in, built a fire to heat food. You say your dad's back there? Not in the house, I hope.”

Charlie looked away, “He said to get the fire department!”

“I'll do that.” The man climbed back into his truck. “At least, I'll try. But that old firetrap will be long gone when the trucks get out here. They're in the parade, you know—it'll take time to round 'em up. You want to drive into town with me?”

Charlie shook his head. He turned the bike back toward the wooded road, and the truck pulled away. Briefly, he watched it go, wishing the man would drive faster. Much faster! He felt as if he were caught in a time warp, where everything moved slowly except the fire. The fire would be racing through the house, eating it up.
A bonfire
, his father had said.

The smell of smoke filled his nostrils and started him coughing before he reached the clearing. As he burst out of the woods, a scorching wind blew across the garden. Hot, dry air blinded him for a moment, but not before he saw that the house had become an inferno. The walls still stood, but every window framed a curtain of fire. Orange tongues licked at the eaves.

“Dad! Rachel!” Charlie started to run toward the burning shell, but another blast of hot wind drove him back. There was nothing he or anyone could do. He stumbled against the fence and clung there, coughing and crying.

When he looked up again, his father and Rachel were coming toward him through the smoke.

Ghosts
, he thought,
I'm seeing ghosts again
. He closed his eyes, and opened them quickly. The two figures were still there.

Their scared, soot-stained faces looked wonderfully real.

CHAPTER 17

Thunder growled, barely heard above the crackling of the fire. Charlie crouched in tall grass between his father and Rachel, looking from one to the other. His father's shirt was torn; he held his left arm carefully against his chest. Rachel sat cross-legged, her long brown gown spread around her. The sunbonnet in her lap had a crease in its brim, and the ruffle was grimy. Except for that, and the soot on her cheeks and nose, she looked almost untouched by whatever it was that had happened to her.

“Uncle John hurt his arm breaking down the closet door,” she told Charlie. “He saved my life!” Her tone said more:
I think he's wonderful, even if you don't
.

Charlie's father pretended to puff out his chest. “It was nothing, dear girl, nothing at all. A few minutes rest …” His eyes were on the burning house as sparks burst through the roof in a spectacular shower. “Will you look at that!” he said wonderingly. “Just look at that!”

“What were you doing in a closet, for pete's sake?” Charlie demanded. “Why'd you come out here in the first place?”

Rachel fingered the bow on the back of her sunbonnet. “I just wanted to talk to Katya,” she said. “I wanted to tell her I was sorry she'd had such a terrible life. I thought I could make her understand that
her
contest was over a long time ago, and she ought to stop thinking about it. And I had plenty of time between the picture taking and the start of the parade …”

“That was dumb!” As happy as he was to have them both back, Charlie disliked his cousin at that moment. She really believed she could do anything, and she'd almost gotten his father and herself killed trying to prove it.

“Rachel wanted to put the poor old ghost to rest,” John said tolerantly. “Or the poor young ghost. Whichever.”

“I
know
it was dumb,” Rachel retorted, “but it seemed like a good idea this morning. Anyway, Katya was waiting in the front hall when I went into the house. It was almost as if she was expecting me.” Her eyes widened. “Do you think she
was
expecting me? Maybe that's why it seemed so logical to go to see her. Maybe she was willing me to come.” She brushed the thought away. “Oh, it was awful! She grabbed me and pulled me up the stairs. She'd gotten younger again. She didn't look any older than I am now—but so strong! She dragged me into that room where we saw her dancing, and then into the closet. I tried to fight her off, but I just couldn't. She kept screaming that she was going to be the queen, and no one was going to stop her!”

“Even if it meant burning down the house with you in it,” Charlie's father said. “Well, you did the right thing, kid. You made so much noise I didn't have to waste any time searching for you.” He turned to Charlie. “I got the door open, and we took those back stairs in one—well, maybe two leaps. Didn't stop until we collapsed out there in the yard behind the house. Whoosh!” He lay back in the grass and stared up at the lead-colored sky. “Clouds look good to me,” he said. “Everything looks good to me now. I never was so scared in my life.”

“Katya rode on the queen's float in your place,” Charlie told his cousin. “I saw her.”

Rachel stared at him in amazement. “How could she do that?” she demanded. “Couldn't people see it wasn't me?”

“Not with a sunbonnet covering her face. I didn't know, myself, until I got up close to take a picture.”

John sat up, clutching his bruised arm. He looked at this watch. “Listen, gang, we have to get back to the park. As I remember it, the parade stops at First and Clark for each band to do its stuff and show off a little. There'll be a reviewing stand set up, and the mayor will stop the action a few times to give awards to the best floats as they pass by. It's a slow business, but we're still going to have to hurry. There'll be a real commotion when the parade ends and people see they've been cheering the wrong queen.” He clapped his hand to his forehead. “And the folks! Your grandmother's going to be waiting to see you, Rachel. What are we doing here when—”

Charlie grabbed his father's good arm. “Look!” he whispered hoarsely. “Over there—on the road!”

A slim figure in a brown gown and sunbonnet stood at the entrance to the clearing. Charlie heard Rachel's gasp and his father's exclamation. If he was dreaming, they were dreaming, too.

“She's back!” Rachel sounded as if she were going to scream. “Oh, Uncle John, what'll we do?”

“Sit still. Just sit still. It'll be all right.”

Charlie wondered how his father could be so sure. They were looking at a ghost, an angry ghost who had tried to kill Rachel. Katya Torin had been insane for years. Her spirit might be capable of destroying them all.

The figure moved into the clearing, seeming to glide rather than walk. Charlie remembered that the ghost-girl had danced in the upstairs bedroom without leaving a mark on the dusty floor. There would be no footprints here, either, he thought, not even a bent grass blade.

Thunder rattled across the sky, nearer this time. Rachel stirred as if she was getting ready to run. John put out a steadying hand.

“Wait,” he whispered, “don't move.”

The girl was close now. When she was a few feet away, she halted and faced the burning house. Then, very deliberately, she turned toward the watchers in the grass.

The face under the sunbonnet was young and quite beautiful. Charlie recognized the strong features, the olive skin, the curling dark hair. But the eyes had changed. When he'd seen Katya as an old lady, as a middle-aged woman, as a furious younger one, and as the queen looking down from her float, her eyes had been hard and glittering. Now they were serene.