Crandalls' Castle (6 page)

I said, “Step down with this foot, Gene.” He didn't move, maybe because I hadn't said Simon Says, but more likely because he was too terrified to hear me. It didn't matter which it was.

“Hey, you won!” I said, as excited as I could manage. “You get the prize, Gene! Now just a few more steps—”

But he'd had enough. He crumpled against me so hard that we both started to fall. Lilly screamed and I threw one arm around his waist. For a moment we just hung there. Then I was going down, much too fast because his weight kept me off balance. I missed the last rung completely and sprawled in the driveway. He would have landed on top of me if Lilly hadn't grabbed him as we shot past her.

I was so glad to be back on the ground that I just lay there for a minute and enjoyed it, gravel and all. Lilly was hugging the kids and scolding them at the same time.

“Don't you ever do that again,” she said sternly. “Never ever! If Sophia hadn't noticed you were missing—”

“We weren't missing,” Terry said. “We were climbing a mountain.”

“And I went to the top,” Gene said. He was totally pleased with himself. “I was brave.”

“Sophia was the brave one, and don't you forget it, young man,” Lilly said. “You can thank her right now.”

Gene looked down at his shoes.

“Come on, say it,” Terry told him. “So we can have the ice cream.”

There was a wail from inside the house. “Mickey,” I said. “I'll get him.”

I ran inside, relieved to get away. If I stuck around, Lilly might ask why I had checked the sandbox when I did. I didn't want any questions.

The rest of the morning was messy and fun and very loud. I'll bet the other customers at Old King Cone were glad when we finished our ice cream and left, but we didn't care. I guess we all wanted to forget what had just happened—the more noise the better.

A couple of times, I caught Lilly looking at me in a special sort of way, smiling but sort of puzzled, too. Let it go, I thought, please let it go. We were like a family sitting there, and I wanted the feeling to last. A little while longer, at least.

Chapter Nine

CHARLI

“You think I'm fat,” Charli said. She tried to make a joke of it, but the words sounded whiny, even to herself.

Ray looked annoyed. “Now that's ridiculous,” he said. “You're not fat. I just asked if you wanted to go for a bike ride with me. Your mom won't be home for another hour, and I need some exercise. You can come along if you want to, or you can stay home.”

“I'll come,” Charli mumbled.

“You don't have to.”

“I want to—I guess.”

That was the way all their conversations went, she thought unhappily, as she wheeled her bike out of the garage and followed Ray down Lincoln Street. Ever since he moved in, she'd been saying things that irritated him. She had wanted a father. She had wanted
him
, Ray Franz. And now that it had happened, she felt as if he were judging her every minute. If he'd had a daughter of his own, she thought, she would be pretty and skinny and good at everything she tried, especially sports.

“Move, Charli!” He was skimming along ahead of her. “Work up a sweat.” As if she weren't already puffing after just a few hundred feet!

They swung around the corner at the end of the street and glided onto the gravel road. Ray gestured across the field toward the Castle. “Crandalls' Castle,” he chuckled over his shoulder. “I still can't believe—”

A pickup truck rattled by, drowning out the rest of the sentence, but Charli knew what he couldn't believe. She had heard him tell her mother that Will was making a terrible mistake and they should all try to talk him out of it. Her mother hadn't said much, but Charli could tell she was worried.

She slowed down a little so she wouldn't be expected to talk. She wanted to defend Uncle Will, but at the same time she, too, wished he would forget about Crandalls' Castle. The rocking shadow-cradle was never far from her thoughts. She had even dreamed about it. There had been something deeply menacing about that slow, unstoppable movement.

Ray turned onto the lake road and waited for her to catch up. Farther down, cottages lined the shore, but first came a wide strip of pale sand that stretched in a half-moon around the bay.

“Why would anyone want to go to a water park when they could swim in a beautiful place like this?” Ray wondered aloud. He stopped pedaling to stare across the water, and Charli braked next to him.

“We ought to come over here to swim once in a while,” he went on. “Do you know how to swim, Charli?”

“Sort of,” Charli said. “I paddle.”

“We can work on that,” he told her. “Everyone should know how to swim.”

Charli felt warmed by more than the late-afternoon sun, but then he spoiled the moment by saying, “Maybe that kid who moved in with Will and Lilly—what's her name, Sophie? Maybe she'd like to come with us.”

“Sophia,” Charli said. “I don't know if she likes swimming.”

Ray shrugged and got back on his bike. “Can't hurt to ask,” he said. “She's probably lonesome.”

“How can she be lonesome?” Charli demanded. “She's got a whole crowd of people around her all the time.”

Ray didn't answer, and they finished the ride in silence. Now he thinks I'm mean, she thought. He probably expected she and Sophia would become best friends just because they lived across the street from each other.

“Sophia doesn't like me,” she told him as they wheeled their bikes up the driveway.

Ray glanced at her. “How do you know that?”

“I just know. She thinks I have dumb ideas.”

She hurried into the house before he could ask any more questions, aware that the bicycle ride was ending as sourly as it had begun.

They had spaghetti with meatballs for dinner, Charli's favorite food. Rona told them about some Japanese tourists whose bus had stopped at the restaurant on their way to see the Mississippi River. The visitors had spoken Japanese among themselves, but they all knew English words for
hamburgers
and
french fries
because they ate at McDonald's at home. Then Ray described the bike ride and how beautiful the lake had looked. He seemed to be waiting for Charli to add something, but she kept her head down and ate steadily. Afterward, she rinsed off the plates, put them into the dishwasher, and escaped to the front porch.

Dan was in the middle of the street, rescuing a ball the twins had thrown there. When he saw Charli he told the boys to take the ball around to the backyard to play. Then he joined her on the front steps.

“You look pretty grumpy,” he commented. “Or is that just your real self shining through?”

Charli made a face at him. “You're pretty grumpy sometimes yourself,” she snapped. “I ought to know!”

“I told you I was sorry about the other day,” Dan said. “When I looked at that old barn up close and thought about all the money that was going to be spent on it—” He broke off and grinned at her. “At least I didn't leave the key on the floor,” he teased.

“Don't laugh,” Charli said hotly. “I had a good reason for not going back.”

“What reason?”

“You wouldn't believe me,” she said. “It's too weird.”

“Try me.” He leaned back and stretched out his long legs.

Charli hesitated. She had wanted very much to tell someone what she'd seen in the living room at the Castle, but so far she hadn't. The grown-ups in her family would just laugh and say she had a great imagination. Ray would probably think she was being silly.

“Promise not to tell Ray or my mom,” she said sternly. “
Really
promise.”

“Okay.”

Charli took a deep breath. “I went in the house and it was spooky, but I went into one of the rooms anyway.…” Then the words tumbled out. The shadow on the wall … the moment when the shadow started rocking as if someone were pushing it … the terror that had made her drop the key and run out of the house.

When she'd finished she looked at Dan to see if he was laughing. “It's true!” she told him fiercely. “You'd better believe me!”

Dan nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But for Pete's sake, don't tell any of that to my dad. He'll want the old wreck more than ever if he thinks it's haunted.”

“I know.” Charli remembered Uncle Will saying people would love to stay in a haunted house. “But I can't work there,” she went on miserably. “I just can't. So what am I going to say if he asks me again?”

“Tell him you're busy.”

“Who'd believe I'm busy! My mom will think I ought to help, and Ray will say I need the exercise.”

“You do,” Dan said crushingly and laughed as she tried to push him off the step. “Look.” He was suddenly serious. “If you want, I'll go over there with you when I get home from work tomorrow. Maybe I can figure out what you saw.”

Charli cringed.

“Oh, come on, goofy,” he urged. “If we don't go, you're going to keep right on worrying. For nothing!”

She thought it over. Dan was being a smart aleck, treating her as if she were a silly little kid. Still, it was nice of him to offer to go with her. She knew he didn't want anything to do with the Castle.

“Well?” When she continued to hesitate he grinned slyly. “I can ask Sophia the Silent to go with me if you won't. I bet she can find an answer for you.”

That did it! “I'll go,” Charli said with a shudder. “Just you and me.”

Chapter Ten

CHARLI

In twenty-four hours Charli changed her mind about going back to the Castle at least twenty-four times. She knew what she had seen there—why get scared to death again? Still, if Dan could find an explanation for the shadow, she would feel a lot more cheerful than she did now.

She was still arguing with herself when her tall cousin rounded the corner onto Lincoln Street, walking fast. “I'll see if Dad left the key,” he called across the street. “You wait here.”

She felt a surge of hope. Maybe Uncle Will had taken the key with him. Then she wouldn't have to go today, and Dan couldn't invite Sophia in her place. She stared at the Crandalls' front door, fingers crossed, until he appeared and signaled her to follow him around the side of the house.

“We'll go through the backyard and cut across the field,” he said when she caught up. “Nobody will notice. My mom's out, and Sophia has the kids down in the basement playing. Sounds like they're having a ball.”

They plunged into the patch of woods at the end of the yard. “What's your big hurry?” Charli demanded. “It won't be dark for hours.”

Dan stopped so suddenly that she almost crashed into him. “Look, I promised I'd do this, so I'm doing it,” he said impatiently. “But my mom left a note telling me to baby-sit the kids as soon as I got home from work. She doesn't want Sophia to think she has to take care of them full-time.”

Sophia again. Charli longed to tell him to forget the whole thing, but he strode off before she had a chance.

On the far side of the field they cut between two houses, ignoring the curious stare of a woman digging weeds in her yard. While Dan fitted the key into the Castle door, Charli peeked over her shoulder and saw that the woman had come around her house to watch them.

“She thinks we're breaking in,” she muttered.

Dan snorted. “So what? I bet she doesn't care one way or the other. She'd probably be grateful if we burned the place down. Who'd want to look out their front window at this dump all day?”

He pushed open the door and they stepped into the musty foyer.

“In there,” Charli whispered, pointing. They crossed to the archway and looked into the long narrow room.

“Right there.” She gestured at the bare wall opposite the windows. “In the middle.”

“Well, it's not there now,” Dan said. “And there's nothing across from it that could make a shadow. No way!”

Charli bit her lip. “Wait a minute. The shadow wasn't there the first time I looked in here. It just—came.”

“You imagined it,” Dan said. Now he sounded bored. “The trouble with you is, you
want
to see a ghost.”

“No, I don't!” Charli protested. “Maybe I did once, but I don't now. That chair next to the fireplace,” she added desperately. “It looks different.”

“Different how?”

“I don't know,” she admitted. “It's changed since I was here the first time, that's all.”

Dan groaned. “Cut it out, will you? This is a waste of time, Charli. Either you're trying to scare yourself, or”—he paused—“maybe you'd rather lie around and read all summer instead of helping out here.” His face reddened at her expression, but he kept on. “That won't work, and you'd better believe it. My dad would put out the welcome mat for a ghost, and your folks—Ray, especially—would tell you to quit goofing off and get busy.”

“But I don't want to goof off!” Charli was so angry she could hardly speak. “You think you know
everything
! I did see that shadow, I don't care what you say—”

She broke off. Someone else was talking.

“Hey!” Dan exclaimed. They went back into the foyer and stared up at the staircase. The soft murmuring continued. It was a woman's voice, speaking in a singsong rhythm that reminded Charli of the verses she used to chant when she jumped rope.

“Told you so!” She mouthed the words at Dan, but he shook his head impatiently.

“Don't be dumb, that's no ghost. Somebody's broken in—a homeless person—maybe a runaway. She's probably been hanging out here and nobody's noticed.”

“But why is she singing?”

“Thinks she's going to scare us off,” Dan muttered. He started up the stairs. “Well, it's not going to work.”