22 - Ghost Beach (2 page)

Terri held me back. “Stay away. Bats can carry rabies, you know.”

“I’m not going to get that close,” I told her. “I just want to take a look.
I’ve never seen a real bat close up.” I guess you could say that my hobby is science, too. I love
studying about all kinds of animals.

“Here. Check it out,” I announced, scrambling over the smooth, gray boulders.

“Careful, Jerry,” warned Terri. “If you get rabies, you’ll get me in
trouble.”

“Thanks for your concern,” I muttered sarcastically.

I stopped about four feet from the bat. “Whoa! I don’t believe it!” I cried.

I heard Terri burst out laughing.

It wasn’t a bat. It was a kite.

I stared in disbelief. The two red eyes that had seemed so menacing were
painted on paper! One of the wings had been ripped to shreds when it crashed on
the rocks.

We both bent over to examine the wreckage.

“Look out! It bites!” a boy’s voice called from behind us.

Startled, Terri and I leaped back. I turned and saw a boy about our age,
standing on a tall rock. He had a ball of string in his hand.

“Ha-ha. Great joke,” Terri said sarcastically.

The boy grinned at us, but didn’t reply. He stepped closer. I could see that
he had freckles across his nose just like me, and brown hair the same shade as
mine. He turned back toward the rocks and called, “You can come out now.”

Two kids, a girl about our age and a little boy about five, clambered over
the rocks. The little boy had light blond hair and blue eyes, and his ears poked
out. The girl’s hair was auburn, and she wore it in braids. All three of them
had the same freckles across their noses.

“Are you all in the same family?” Terri asked them.

The tallest boy, the one who had come out first, nodded his head. “Yeah.
We’re all Sadlers. I’m Sam. That’s Louisa. That’s Nat.”

“Wow,” I said. “We’re Sadlers, too.” I introduced Terri and myself.

Sam didn’t seem impressed. “There’re lots of Sadlers around here,” he
muttered.

We stared at each other for a long moment. They didn’t seem very friendly.
But then Sam surprised me by asking if I wanted to skip rocks in the water.

We followed Sam to the water’s edge.

“Do you live around here?” Terri asked.

Louisa nodded. “What are
you
doing here?” she asked. She sounded
suspicious.

“We’re visiting our cousins for the month,” Terri told her. “They’re Sadlers,
too. They live in the little cottage just past the lighthouse. Do you know
them?”

“Sure,” said Louisa without smiling. “This is a small place. Everyone knows
everyone else.”

I found a smooth, flat stone and skipped it across the water. Three skips.
Not bad. “What do you do for fun around here?” I asked.

Louisa replied, staring out at the water. “We go blueberry picking, we play
games, we come down to the water.” She turned to me. “Why? What did you do
today?”

“Nothing yet. We just got here,” I told her. I grinned. “Except we were
attacked by a bat kite.”

They laughed.

“I’m going to do gravestone rubbings and collect wildflowers,” Terri said.

“There are some beautiful flower patches back in the woods,” Louisa told her.

I watched Sam skip a stone across the water. Seven skips.

He turned to me and grinned. “Practice makes perfect.”

“It’s hard to practice in an apartment building,” I muttered.

“Huh?” Sam said.

“We live in Hoboken,” I explained. “In New Jersey. There aren’t any ponds in
our building.”

Terri pointed back at the cave. “Do you ever go exploring in there?” she
asked.

Nat gasped. Sam and Louisa’s faces twisted in surprise. “Are you kidding?”
Louisa cried.

“We never go near there,” Sam said softly, eyeing his sister.

“Never?” Terri asked.

All three of them shook their heads.

“Why not?” Terri asked. “What’s the big deal?”

“Yeah,” I demanded. “Why won’t you go near the cave?”

Louisa’s eyes grew wide. “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked.

“Believe in ghosts? No way!” Terri told her.

I kept my mouth shut. I knew that ghosts weren’t supposed to be real. But
what if all the scientists were wrong?

There are so many ghost stories from all around the world, how can ghosts
not
be real?

Maybe that’s why I sometimes get scared when I am in strange places. I think
I
do
believe in ghosts. Of course, I would never admit this to Terri. She
is always so scientific. She’d laugh at me forever!

The three Sadler kids had clustered together.

“Come on. Do
you
guys really believe in ghosts?” Terri asked.

Louisa took a step forward. Sam tried to pull her back, but she brushed him
off. “If you go near that cave, you might change your mind,” she said, narrowing
her eyes.

“You mean there are ghosts in there?” I asked.

“What do they do? Come out at night or something?”

Louisa started to reply, but Sam interrupted. “We’ve got to go now,” he said,
scooting his brother and sister past us.

“Hey—wait!” I called. “We want to hear about the ghosts!”

They hurried on. I could see Sam yelling angrily at Louisa. I guess he was
upset because she mentioned the ghosts.

They disappeared down the beach.

Then, from inside the cave we heard that long, low whistle again.

Terri stared at me.

“It’s the wind,” I said. I really didn’t believe that. Terri didn’t believe
it, either.

“Why don’t we ask Brad and Agatha about the cave?” I suggested.

“Good idea,” Terri said. Even
she
looked a little scared now..

Brad and Agatha’s cottage was a short walk from the cave. It perched by
itself on the edge of the pine forest, looking out toward the lighthouse.

I ran up to the heavy wooden front door and pushed it open. I peered around
the tiny front parlor. The old house creaked and groaned as I walked over the
sagging floorboards. The ceiling hung so low, I could touch it when I stood on
tiptoe.

Terri came up beside me. “Are they here?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered, looking around.

We stepped past the old sofa and wide stone fireplace and into the cramped
kitchen. Off the kitchen stood an old storeroom where I was to sleep. Upstairs
was Brad and Agatha’s room with a “crawl-through” passage into the space above
the storeroom, which would be Terri’s room. A tiny back staircase led from
Terri’s room down to the yard.

Terri turned to the window. “There they are!” she said. “In the garden!”

I could see Brad bent over a tomato stalk. Agatha was hanging some clothes to
dry on the clothesline.

We raced out the kitchen door. “Where have you two been?” Agatha demanded.
She and Brad both had white, white hair, and their eyes seemed faded and tired.
They were so frail and light. Between them I don’t think they weighed more than
a hundred pounds.

“We explored the beach,” I told them.

I knelt down beside Brad. He was missing the top part of two of his fingers
on his left hand. He told us they got caught in a wolf trap when he was young.

“We found an old cave in some huge rocks. Have you ever seen it?” I asked.

He gave a little grunt and kept searching for ripe tomatoes.

“It’s right by the beach and the big rock jetty,” Terri added. “You can’t
miss it.”

Agatha’s sheets fluttered on the line. “It’s nearly suppertime,” she said,
ignoring our questions about the cave. “Why don’t you come inside and give me a
hand, Terri?”

Terri glanced at me and shrugged.

I turned back to Brad. I was about to ask him about the cave again when he
handed me the basket of ripe tomatoes. “Take these to Agatha, okay?”

“Sure,” I answered, following Terri inside. I set the basket on the small
counter. The kitchen was small and narrow. Counter and sink on one side. Stove
and refrigerator on the other. Agatha had already put Terri to work in the
corner of the living room, setting the table.

“Now Terri, dear,” Agatha called from the kitchen, “if it’s asters you’re
after, the best place to find those is in the big meadow down past the
lighthouse. Of course they’re just coming out about now, so you can take your
pick there. I believe that’s where you can find plenty of goldenrod, too.”

“Great!” Terri called back with her usual enthusiasm. I don’t know how she
could get so pumped about flowers.

Agatha noticed the basket of tomatoes on the counter. “Oh, gracious! All
those tomatoes!” She opened a rattley old drawer and pulled out a small knife.
“Why don’t you cut these up for a big green salad?”

I must have made a face.

“Don’t you like salad?” Agatha asked.

“Not really,” I said. “I mean, I’m not a rabbit!”

Agatha laughed. “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “Why ruin a homegrown
tomato with lettuce? We’ll have them plain, with maybe a little dressing.”

“Sounds good,” I grinned, picking up the knife.

I listened to Agatha and Terri discuss wildflowers for a few minutes to see
if the subject of the cave would come up again. It didn’t. I wondered why my two
old cousins didn’t want to talk about it.

After dinner Brad pulled out an old deck of playing cards and taught Terri
and me how to play whist. It’s an old-fashioned card game that I’d never heard
of before.

Brad got a kick out of teaching us the rules. He and I played against Terri
and Agatha. Every time I got mixed up, which was most of the time, he’d wag his
finger back and forth at me. I guess it saved him from having to say anything.

We went to bed after the card game. It was early, but I didn’t care. It had
been a long day, and I was glad to get some rest. The bed was hard, but I fell asleep as soon
as my head hit the scratchy feather pillow.

The next morning Terri and I made our way to the woods to collect plants and
wildflowers.

“What is it we’re looking for again?” I asked Terri as I kicked aside piles
of dead leaves.

“Indian pipe,” Terri replied. “It looks like small, pinkish-white bones
popping out of the ground. It’s also called corpse plant because it lives on the
remains of dead plants.”

“Yuck.” I suddenly remembered the popping hands in my cemetery dream.

Terri laughed. “You should like these plants,” she said. “They’re a
scientific puzzle. They’re white because they don’t have any chlorophyll. You
know. The stuff that makes plants turn green.”

“How interesting,” I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes.

Terri continued her lecture anyway. “Agatha said Indian pipe only grows in
very dark places. They look more like a fungus than a plant.”

She dug around for a few minutes. “The weirdest thing about them,” she
continued, “is if they dry out, they turn black. That’s why I want to try
pressing a few.”

I poked around in the leaves some more. I have to admit she had me hooked. I love freaks of nature.

I peered up at the heavy leaf canopy above us. “We’re definitely as deep into
the woods as we can be. Are you sure this is where Agatha said you can find
them?”

Terri nodded. She pointed to a huge fallen oak tree. “That’s our landmark.
Don’t lose it.”

I started toward the big tree. “Maybe I’ll take a closer look over there,” I
said. “There might be Indian pipe on that dead tree.”

I knelt down by the snakelike tree roots and began carefully pushing dead
leaves aside. No wildflowers. Just bugs and worms. It was really gross.

I glanced back at Terri. She didn’t seem to be having any luck, either.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something white sticking out of
the ground. I scurried over to examine it.

A short plant stem stuck up from the soft ground. The stem was covered with
rolled-up leaves. I tugged at the stem. It didn’t come up.

I pulled harder.

The stem rose up a little, bringing a clump of soft dirt with it.

It isn’t a stem, I realized. It’s some kind of root. A root with leaves.

Weird.

I pulled more of it up from the ground. It was very long, I discovered.

A hard tug. Then another.

Another hard tug of the strange root brought up a huge mound of dirt.

I glanced down into the large hole I had made—and uttered a sharp cry.

“Terri—come here!” I managed to choke out. “I found a skeleton!”

“Huh?” Terri raced to my side.

We both stood and stared down at it in silence.

The skeleton I had uncovered lay curled on its side, every bone neatly in
place. The empty eye socket in its gray skull gaped up at us.

“Is it a h-human?” Terri stammered in a low whisper.

“Not unless the human has four legs, genius!” I replied.

Terri stared down at it, her mouth open in an O of surprise. “Well, then,
what is it?”

“Some kind of large animal,” I told her. “Maybe a deer.”

I stooped to take a closer look. “No. Not a deer. It has toe bones, not
hooves.”

I studied the skull, which was fairly large and had sharp incisors or teeth.
When I was nine, I had a thing about skeletons. I must have read every book ever written about
skeletons.

“My guess is a dog,” I announced.

“A dog?” said Terri. “Oh, poor little doggy.” She stared at the skeleton.
“How do you think it died?”

“Maybe an animal attacked it.”

Terri knelt down beside me. “Why would anyone want to eat a dog?”

“They’re high in protein!” I joked.

She shoved me hard. “Jerry! I’m serious. What animal around here eats dogs?”

“A wolf maybe. Or a fox,” I replied thoughtfully.

“Wouldn’t a wolf or fox have crunched a few of the bones and left more of a
mess?” Terri asked. “This skeleton is in perfect shape.”

“Maybe it died of old age,” I suggested. “Or maybe someone buried it here
beneath that weird root plant.”