Crandalls' Castle (3 page)

Through the open window she could hear Ray out in the driveway, emptying the last of the luggage from the car so there would be room for three people to ride. She tiptoed down the hall, past the open door to her mother's bedroom and back to the living room. Across the street the Crandalls' house was quiet.

“Let's go,” she called to her mother. “Let's go right now.”

“Oh, Charli,” her mother called back, “calm down. The restaurant will wait for us.”

Charli kept her eyes on the house across the street while Ray backed the car out of the driveway and she and her mother climbed in. There was only one thing that could spoil this moment and it didn't happen. Not a single Crandall appeared to see them leave. Charli was glad. She didn't want Uncle Will and Aunt Lilly and the cousins to know they weren't invited to the family dinner.

Three hours later, a taxi made a U-turn and stopped in front of the Crandalls' house just as Charli and her parents turned onto Lincoln Street.

“The new kid!” Charli exclaimed. In the excitement of the beautiful restaurant, the lake with the yachts skimming by, the cloth napkins as big as hand towels, too many forks, too much chicken and not enough shrimp, and the perfect slice of chocolate peanut butter pie, she had forgotten about the girl who was coming to live with the Crandalls. Now she watched curiously as a dark figure stepped out of the cab, dragging a big suitcase and then a smaller one behind her.

The girl stood uncertainly at the curb until the taxi pulled away. Then she started up the walk, wobbling a little under the weight of her bags.

“Poor child,” Charli's mother said. “Lilly didn't know whether she was coming tonight or tomorrow. She was supposed to call as soon as she got in, so they could pick her up downtown.”

Ray swung into the driveway just as the Crandalls' front door opened and Aunt Lilly came out onto the porch. Charli unfastened her seatbelt and opened the car door before Ray turned off the motor.

“I'm going over there,” she said excitedly. “I want to see what she's like.”

“Oh, Charli,” her mother protested. “It's so late. Why don't you wait until morning? The girl must be tired and you're tired—”

“I'm not tired,” Charli said.

She was halfway back to the street when Ray said, “Hey!” in a way that made her skid to a stop. “Think about what it must be like to come to a strange house all by yourself, not knowing anybody, Charli. She doesn't need another stranger staring at her, checking out whether she's pretty and fun.” His voice softened. “Your mother's right. There'll be plenty of time tomorrow to get to know her.”

Charli's cheeks burned. He was
bossing
her! And how had he guessed exactly what she'd wanted to find out? Slowly she walked back down the driveway and followed the grown-ups into the house. I was just going to say hi, she thought angrily. The new girl couldn't be too tired for that.

Later, when she was in bed, she heard Ray's low voice and then her mother's down the hall.

“—don't see why Will and Lilly would do it,” Ray said. “They have more kids than they can handle without taking on another one.”

“It'll work out,” Charli's mother said. “Will may be a little impulsive and Lilly may be a little disorganized but—”

“A little?” Ray chuckled. “A little! I feel sorry for the new arrival. She has a lot to get used to over there.”

Charli punched her pillow and dived farther under the sheet, covering her ears. It was just what she'd dreaded—Ray didn't understand the Crandalls at all.

I don't feel one bit sorry for the new girl, she thought furiously. Anyone who lives with Uncle Will and Aunt Lilly is lucky!

Chapter Four

SOPHIA'S JOURNAL

Tonight when I stepped off the bus in Mount Pleasant, I felt as if I was landing on the moon. I wished I could stay on the bus, if you can believe that.

“Over there,” the driver called after me. He pointed across the street. “That's the only cab in town, and you'd better grab it. This is his last stop before he goes home.”

I had a telephone number I was supposed to call, but I carried my suitcases over to the cab instead. I guess I wanted to put off meeting Lilly Crandall as long as possible. When I gave the old driver the address, he said, “Yup, the Crandalls,” and grinned. I wondered if he knew the address of everyone in town.

The Crandalls' house is old, with a wide front porch big enough for chairs and a swing. A tall blond woman in jeans and a man's shirt opened the screen door almost the moment I knocked.

“Oh, Sophia, for goodness' sake!” she said, as if we'd known each other forever. “Why didn't you call when you got in? We would have come to pick you up. Well, never mind, you're here now, and that's all that matters. I'm Lilly Crandall and this is our son Dan.”

“Hi,” the boy said. He's tall and thin, and he sort of
unfolded
from the couch where he'd been lying with his head on a paunchy gorilla's stomach. Lilly swept some blocks off a chair so I could sit down.

I never saw a room as messy as that one. I don't mean it was dirty, just a mess. There were toy trucks and cars everywhere, and parts of puzzles and some torn coloring books. Broken crayons were scattered across the carpet.

I started to say “Thanks for letting me come,” but Lilly was talking again a mile a minute.

“We've got a bed ready for you in the catchall room upstairs, Sophia. It's kind of cluttered now, but we'll clean it out, and then you can fix it up the way you like it. Our baby Mickey has been sleeping in there, but I've moved him into the twins' room. You'll meet them tomorrow—after you've had a good night's sleep.” She chuckled as if a good night's sleep was important before meeting the twins.

I said, quickly, before she started talking again, “Thanks for saying it was all right for me to come.” It sounded stiff and standoffish, but it was the best I could do.

Lilly said, “Well, of course it's all right. Your great-grandpa was one of my favorite people when I was a little girl. I miss him! I never did get to know your great-grandma very well, but I'm glad she remembered me.”

I sat still and let her words flow around me. They warmed up that numb place inside of me.

“I'll take your stuff upstairs,” Dan offered. But before he could move, a tall gray-haired man appeared, clutching a cardboard box stacked high with papers. When he saw me, he set the box on the floor and hurried across the room to shake hands. “Welcome aboard, Susie.”

Lilly said, “It's not Susie. Sophia Weyer, this is my husband, Will. He's the one who makes things happen around here.” When she said that, the overflowing stack of papers in the box slid sideways and spread across the floor, adding to the mess.

“That's my filing system, Su-Sophia,” Will said. He gathered the papers into a pile and dropped them on top of the other papers that remained in the box. By the time he stood up again, his hair was standing up straight and his horn-rimmed glasses were at an angle on his nose.

“Don't look so concerned, Sophia,” he said. “Lilly and Dan will tell you, we don't let little things bother us in this family.”

“Will teaches history at the high school,” Lilly told me proudly. “You might have him for a teacher this fall.”

“I doubt it,” Will said. “How old are you, Sophia?”

I said, “Fourteen.”

“Well, then, no,” he said. “I teach juniors and seniors, and by the time you're that old …”

What was he going to say? By the time I'm a junior I won't be living in Mount Pleasant? Probably. It doesn't really matter, because the moment I saw him I wanted to run out the door and never come back.

Will Crandall means trouble. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. I know it, as sure as I know his glasses were on crooked and he needs a haircut. He's a dangerous person, not cruel or wicked, but dangerous just the same.

I felt as if I should warn somebody right then, maybe warn
him
, but of course I didn't. I just stood there looking stupid and wondering where I can go when the Crandalls find out how weird I am. Where else is there?

Chapter Five

CHARLI

“What's she like?” Charli demanded. She had rushed through breakfast so she could be outside when Dan left for his shift at The Best Yet Burger. Now she was running to keep up with his long strides. His expression, closed off and grim, was so different from his usual look that she guessed the new girl must be awful.

“Tell me,” she repeated. “I won't tell anyone what you say. I just want to know.”

Dan walked faster. “She's okay,” he said gruffly. “Her name is Sophia Weyer and she doesn't talk much. She went to bed almost as soon as she got here. That's all.”

“No, it isn't,” Charli insisted. “I can tell by your face. Something's wrong!”

They had reached the corner when, unexpectedly, Dan stopped. “Okay, so something's wrong,” he admitted. “You'll hear about it soon enough. My dad's heading to your house as soon as he finishes breakfast. And believe me, it has nothing to do with Sophia the Silent.” With that, he strode off down the street.

“What's ‘it'?” she called after him forlornly, but he didn't answer.

When she turned back, Uncle Will and Aunt Lilly were climbing the front steps of her house. Without the kids, Charli marveled. That was odd. Aunt Lilly never went anywhere without the twins and Mickey if Dan wasn't there to look after them. Sophia Weyer must be the baby-sitter this morning. She walked faster at the thought that whatever the Crandalls wanted to talk about was important enough to make them leave the children with an almost-stranger.

“You're just in time, Charli!” Uncle Will called from the kitchen when she opened the front door. “You know, I told you yesterday I couldn't talk about my big surprise for a while? Well, I got it all straightened out in my head last night and set up the paperwork. We're ready to go.” He smiled at Aunt Lilly, who smiled back. “I told the boys about it at breakfast this morning.”

Charli pulled the tall kitchen stool up to the table and helped herself to a doughnut.

“I've just made the biggest decision of my life,” Uncle Will said grandly. “
Our
lives. You know the new water park that's going to be built on the lake road next year?”

Charli nodded. Everyone in Mount Pleasant had heard about the water park.

“Well, there's going to be a lot of people coming to town for vacations once that's built,” Uncle Will went on. “And they're going to need rooms to stay in. That's where we come in. I'm grabbing the one perfect place in town to fix up for a bed-and-breakfast. It's beautiful and it's close to where the park will be, and we're going to make a fortune with it!”

“A bed-and-breakfast?” Charli's mother repeated. “You, Will?”

“All of us.” Uncle Will waved his arms. “I know Lilly has too much to do at home to be the housekeeper, but she'll be able to help out once in a while, and we can always hire a couple of women from town to do the cleaning. What I was hoping, Rona,” he said to Charli's mother, “is that you'll be our hostess and cook. You'd like that—never having to wait on tables at the diner again. Am I right?” He leaned back, smiling expectantly.

They stared at him. “Where is this ‘perfect place,' Will?” Ray asked slowly. “I know where the park's going to be, but I can't think of any house near it that could possibly become a bed-and-breakfast.”

“Yes, you can!” Uncle Will insisted. “Sure you can! You can see it from our backyard—about two blocks away as the crow flies.”

“
I
know,” Charli's mom said, looking at Aunt Lilly. “It's that place they call the Castle.”

Charli knew it, too. “But it's haunted!” she exclaimed. “Everybody says it's haunted.”

“Haunted by rats and termites,” Ray said sharply. “You're not serious, Will. You can't be talking about buying that old wreck.”

“Sure am,” Uncle Will said. “It's not a wreck, folks, it's a beautiful
mansion
. All it needs is a little fixing up—well, a lot of fixing up. And, Charli, if it's haunted, so much the better. There's people who'd pay good money to sleep in a genuine haunted house.”

Ray fired more questions at Uncle Will, but Charli hardly heard the answers. The Castle! She had walked past it a hundred times, always with a little shiver of excitement. It just had to be haunted! Once she'd even tried the locked front door, though she never would have gone inside alone. Now Uncle Will was going to own it, and he would probably be there most of the time, so she could go in whenever she wanted.

Her thoughts flew, imagining what it would be like. She might discover a real ghost and get her picture in the paper. Every kid in school would want to get inside to look around, but they would have to ask her first. It was her uncle's house, so she would decide who could come in and who couldn't.

“What do
you
think, Lilly?” Ray demanded suddenly. “You're not going along with this, are you?”

Aunt Lilly laid a hand on Uncle Will's arm. “I want what Will wants,” she said. “If he says it'll work, I'm sure he's right.”

“Ray just means we hope it's a wise thing to do, Will,” Charli's mother said anxiously. “It would be terrible to take money out of your savings and then lose it.”

“But I won't lose it,” Uncle Will told them confidently. “You'll see, Rona. This will be the best move I've ever made. I know the place looks pretty bad now, but I'm going to spend the summer fixing it up. Before you know it, people will be banging at the door, wanting to invest. Then there'll be enough money to furnish the house in style.” He turned to Charli and said, “What do
you
think, young lady?”