The Dead End (9 page)

That night, the wind blew in a storm. Rain lashed against Casey’s window, and outside the trees rustled and swayed. Every rattling windowpane or creak of the house sounded like the ghost coming for her.

The storm finally died out sometime around dawn. When the sun started to rise, Casey got out of bed, feeling tired and shaky. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, not bothering to comb her hair. She wrote her parents a note and left it on the kitchen table. Then she slipped out the back door.

Wispy clouds, red with dawn, trailed across the sky. The storm had broken the heat wave, and the air felt cool and clean.

Casey had been worried that she would have to wait around outside Erik’s house until someone woke up. So she was surprised to see him waiting for her on the front steps.

“You don’t look so great,” Erik greeted her.

Casey gave him a half smile. “Good morning to you, too.” She sat down next to him on the steps, and pulled Millie’s diary out of the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

“So what exactly are we looking for?” Erik asked.

“I thought we should start with the names of the kids from Millie’s party. Maybe you’ll recognize one of them,” Casey said. “If we can find them, they might be able to tell us something.”

She turned to Millie’s last entry, and began to read the list of names. “ ‘Edie Finney, Grace Evanston, Pearl Miller, the Avery girls —’”

“There’s a Mrs. Avery at my school,” Erik interrupted. “She teaches eighth grade English.”

“Is she old?” asked Casey.

“Pretty old,” Erik said. “At least forty.”

Casey rolled her eyes. “Erik, if she’s forty, she wouldn’t even have been born yet in 1939. We’re looking for someone your gran’s age, at least.”

“Oh,” said Erik. “Right.”

Casey went back to her list. “ ‘Baby Jackie’ — I guess he was an Avery, too — Nathan and Rose Hopkins, George Archer, Gretchen Forsyth, and the Henrikssons — Johan, Peter, Alf, Charles, and Anna.’ Oh, and then there’s this boy, Gunner Anderson. He was in her diary a lot.”

“Anderson,” Erik murmured. He had plucked a long piece of grass and was chewing the end thoughtfully. “There’s a Mr. Anderson who lives closer in toward town.”

“Is he old?”

Erik nodded. “Stingy, too. I mowed his lawn for him once. It took all afternoon, and he only paid me two dollars.”

Casey closed the diary and stood up. “Let’s try him. At least it’s a start.”

Mr. Anderson lived in a small white house, close to the end of Main Street. Casey and Erik left their bikes at the edge of the yard, and started up his walkway.

“I guess word got around that he doesn’t
pay for yard work,” Erik said, eyeing the overgrown lawn.

At the door, Casey reached for the doorbell, then hesitated. “Do you think it’s too early?” she asked Erik. It wasn’t even seven thirty yet.

“Doubt it,” said Erik. “If he’s anything like Gran, he was up at the crack of dawn.”

Casey took a deep breath and rang the bell.

They heard shuffling inside. After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened a crack. A man’s face peeked out around the door chain. “Yes? What is it?” he asked gruffly.

Casey stared. It was the man from the grocery store. The one who had seemed so frightened of her.

Erik stepped forward. “Hi, Mr. Anderson. You remember me? Erik Greer? I mowed your lawn once.”

Mr. Anderson didn’t reply. His gaze slid past Erik to Casey, and in his eyes Casey saw a flicker of fear.
Why does he seem so afraid of me?
she wondered.

“This is my friend Casey,” Erik continued. “Casey Slater. She just moved to town.”

Casey gave Mr. Anderson what she hoped was a
friendly, reassuring smile. “We were hoping we could talk to you.”

“About what?” he asked.

“Millie Hughes. She used to live in the house at the end of Drury Road. We wondered if you knew her.”

There was a pause; then the door closed in their faces.

Is that it?
Casey thought, her heart sinking. But a second later, she heard the scrape of the chain being undone. The door opened wide, revealing Mr. Anderson. He was dressed in pressed pants, a button-down sweater, and a pair of worn brown slippers.

“Your name’s Casey, is it?” he asked her. She nodded.

Mr. Anderson gave her a long look. “Well, Casey,” he said at last. “Why don’t you and Erik come in and tell me why you want to know about Millie.”

Despite its neglected lawn, the inside of Mr. Anderson’s house was neat and tidy. Casey and Erik sat on the couch, while Mr. Anderson poured them cups of tea from a chipped teapot.

“So you knew Millie?” Casey asked, sipping the hot liquid.

“Yes, I did.” Mr. Anderson sat back in an easy chair. “We lived near each other on Drury Road a long, long time ago. How do you know about Millie, may I ask?”

“I found her diary. And I read … some of it,” Casey fibbed. She wondered if he would think it was wrong. “She mentioned you.”

Mr. Anderson raised his eyebrows. “Did she?

What did she say?”

“Well …” Casey glanced at Erik. “… she said you thought too highly of yourself. But I think she liked you,” she added quickly.

The old man chuckled, but it sounded sad. “She was right. I
did
think too highly of myself. Millie was quite a girl,” he told them. “Sharp as a whip. You couldn’t get a thing past her.”

“Can you tell us what happened to her?” Erik asked.

Mr. Anderson was silent. Finally, he said, “Are you sure you want to know? It’s not a very nice story.”

“We want to know,” Erik said. Casey nodded.

“There was a party at Millie’s,” Mr. Anderson said. “Just about all the children we knew were invited. It was going to be the event of the summer.”

“Millie wrote about it in her diary,” Casey told him. “She was really excited. She couldn’t wait for it to start.”

Mr. Anderson nodded. “Everyone was excited. After the cake, there were lots of games planned. Tag and that sort of thing. But it was raining, so we couldn’t go outside. We decided to play a game of hide-and-seek instead,” he said.

At the words
hide-and-seek,
a small gasp escaped Casey’s lips. Was that why she’d been dreaming about the game?

“Are you all right?” Mr. Anderson glanced over at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

“Yes, sorry,” Casey said. “Please go on.”

“Millie wanted to be It,” Mr. Anderson told them. “But we wouldn’t let her.
I
wouldn’t let her. Millie had an uncanny way of knowing certain things that nobody else could know. I don’t know how. But that day I told the other kids that I thought it would be unfair. So we made Anna Henriksson It instead. She was only about six years old at the time.”

“Anna Henriksson is my grandmother,” Erik told him.

Mr. Anderson nodded and looked down at his hands. Casey and Erik waited for him to continue.

“Well, Anna counted to twenty and we all hid. Anna wasn’t much good at finding anyone, being so young, but eventually we all turned up — except Millie. We didn’t think much of it at first. We assumed she was just trying to win the game. She could be stubborn that way.

“But then it was getting on toward dark, and she was still missing. We walked all over the property, calling her name. By now her folks were real worried. They called the sheriff over in Lincoln, and he put together a search party with hound dogs and everything. They combed the woods, but they never found her.”

Casey tried to swallow and realized her mouth was dry. Her heart had started to beat faster.

“A week or so passed,” Mr. Anderson went on. “One day Millie’s mother went up in the attic to look for something. She opened a trunk … and there was Millie, all curled up like she was asleep. She’d hidden in there during our game. The lid closed tight
on her, and she suffocated. She probably died while we were all out looking for her.”

Casey covered her mouth with her hands. Erik looked down at his lap.

“Her funeral was the day before school started. She would have been in the eighth grade.” Mr. Anderson paused and cleared his throat before he went on. “After that, we didn’t see much of Millie’s parents. I heard Mr. Hughes wanted to go back to Manchester, where they’d come from. But Millie’s mother wouldn’t leave the house. She claimed Millie was still there, and she didn’t want to leave her behind. I suspect she was mad with grief.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine what it would do to a parent, finding your child like that.”

“Did you ever talk to them? Her parents?” Erik asked Mr. Anderson.

“We kids never spoke of it again to anyone,” the man replied. “I think we all felt somewhat responsible. Anna Henriksson took it especially hard. She was just a little girl when it happened. She looked up to Millie. I think she felt that if she’d looked harder, she could have found her.”

“But it wasn’t Gran’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Erik said. “It was just an accident.”

“I know. But …” Mr. Anderson spread his hands. “Sometimes things happen in your life that you wish you could go back and change. I can’t help but think, if only we hadn’t played hide-and-seek. If only I’d let her be It like she wanted, she might still be alive.”

Slumped in his easy chair, Mr. Anderson looked small and frail. It was hard for Casey to imagine him as the smug, confident boy Millie had described in her diary.

“She looked a lot like you, you know,” Mr. Anderson told her. “I’ll see if I can find our class picture.”

He got up stiffly and shuffled out of the room. After several minutes, he came back holding a black-and-white photograph. He handed it to Casey.

“This was taken the school year before she died,” he said. “Millie is in the first row. The third one from the left.”

The children were lined up in three rows. The girls wore dresses with little round collars, and the boys had on white shirts and ties, but otherwise they could have been Casey’s schoolmates. Casey
studied Millie’s smiling face. The photo was faded, but she could tell that they had the same wavy black hair, the same stubborn mouth, the same dark, curious eyes.

“The first time I saw you, I thought I was looking at a ghost,” Mr. Anderson said. “And then I heard you were living at the house on Drury Road….”

Casey nodded. So that was why he had seemed so surprised and frightened.

She gave the picture back to him. “I think I have something that belongs to you.” Reaching into her pocket, Casey pulled out the green-and-white marble. She placed it in his hand.

He looked at it for a long time. When he raised his eyes, Casey saw that they were damp. “She won this from me,” he told Casey. “At the time, I thought she cheated.”

“I know,” Casey said. “She wrote about that, too.”

The old man handed the marble back to her. “You keep it. I think Millie would want you to have it.”

“Thank you,” Casey said. “And thank you for telling us about Millie.”

“Did you find out what you wanted to know?” he asked.

“Yes,” Casey said. She had her answer, though she wasn’t sure she was glad.

“Good. Well, feel free to visit anytime,” he said. “I don’t get many visitors these days.”

“We will,” Erik promised.

Casey and Erik got up to leave. At the door, Casey remembered something. “One more thing,” she said to Mr. Anderson. “Do you know anything about a fire at Millie’s old house?”

Mr. Anderson frowned. “A fire? No, I would have remembered that. There’s never been a fire on Drury Road.”

Casey and Erik made their way home slowly, walking their bikes so that they could talk.

“Poor Gran,” Erik said. “That’s why she never wanted us to talk about that old house. She probably felt sad about Millie her whole life, but she never said a word about it.”

“Poor
Millie.
What a horrible way to die.” Casey shuddered. “She dreamed about it, you know,” she told Erik. “She dreamed she was in a dark place, calling for her parents. But she didn’t know what it meant.”

“That’s horrible,” Erik agreed. “But at least now you know you’re safe. What happened to Millie was
an accident. It won’t happen again. It won’t happen to
you.”

But how can I be sure of that?
Casey thought. Obviously, she wouldn’t go climbing into any old trunks — that was a no-brainer. But how did she know something else, something just as bad, wouldn’t happen to her? She could go skipping down the lane and cut her foot on a rusty nail. Or she could be eating a simple, healthy dinner and suddenly choke to death on a chicken bone.

It hadn’t been a ghost that killed Millie; it had been a simple game of hide-and-seek, and in a way that scared Casey even more. It didn’t matter whether you took chances or not, she thought. Nothing was safe. You could hardly
live
for the fear of dying.

Casey didn’t know how to explain all this to Erik. Instead, she said, “But that still doesn’t explain what’s been happening in the house — the broken vase and the cabinet that almost fell on me. Those weren’t just accidents.”

“Maybe it was Millie,” he suggested. “You heard what Mr. Anderson said. Millie’s mother thought she
still lived in the house. Maybe she really did — or her spirit did, anyway.”

Casey frowned. “But why would she do all those things? Why would she try to hurt us or scare us?”

“She could be angry,” Erik replied. “Maybe she’s jealous that you’re alive and she’s not.”

Casey wondered if that could be true. Had Millie been behind all the frightening things that had happened?

It’s hard to believe,
she thought.
She felt so much like my friend.

They had reached the dead-end sign. Casey and Erik both stopped and stared at the two words. They had suddenly taken on a new meaning.

Finally, Erik turned to Casey. She thought he was going to say good-bye. Instead, to her astonishment, he hugged her.

Casey was so surprised that it took her a moment to hug him back. When she finally did, she found she didn’t want to let go.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked when he released her.

“I don’t know … I — I think so,” Casey stuttered, feeling a little dazzled.

“I have to go home now,” Erik told her. “But maybe I could come by tomorrow? To hang out, and, you know, keep the ghosts away?”

Casey smiled, feeling pleased and shy all at once. “That would be great.”

Erik nodded. “Okay. See you then.”

“See you.”

He got on his bike and pedaled back down the road. Casey turned and walked slowly toward home, marveling at the strangeness of life. Sometimes, she thought, the things that started out frightening were the things that felt safest after all.