The Ghost and Mrs. Hobbs (14 page)

“Do you mean Dub?” Allie asked, surprised. She glanced at Dub, who looked terrified.

Mrs. Hobbs didn't answer, appearing to lose interest.

Allie needed to get Mrs. Hobbs's attention. She decided to ask the question that was foremost in her mind. “Mrs. Hobbs, do you believe in ghosts?”

It was an outlandish question, one that under most circumstances would be met with laughter or scorn. But Mrs. Hobbs answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Of course.” After a long pause she added wearily, “And you know why.”

Allie's heart began jumping around in her chest. Carefully she said, “I've—met—John Walker.”

Mrs. Hobbs seemed unsurprised.

“Do you know why he—John Walker, I mean—would appear to my little brother, Michael, and bring him to your house, and leave him alone under there?” Allie gestured toward the unfinished side of the house. “That's where I found him this morning. Mike's only four,” she added. “And he was scared.”

For the first time, Mrs. Hobbs's face showed a glimmer of feeling. “Four?” she murmured. “Poor child.”

Allie looked at Dub, who was clearly as flabbergasted as she was. Was Mrs. Hobbs, the
Snapping Turtle
, showing what sounded like sympathy for a child?

“I don't know what John Walker wants from me, Mrs. Hobbs,” Allie went on. “But I really don't like him scaring Mike. What does he want with Mike?”

Mrs. Hobbs seemed to have to gather her strength to respond, and when she did, the answer came slowly and painfully. “I imagine it's another way of trying to hurt me.”

Confused, Allie asked, “How?”

Mrs. Hobbs waved this away with a flutter of her hand. “Don't you see? All I have left is my job. He can't stand that I've been promoted. He doesn't want me to have even that tiny little bit of happiness. Ms. Gillespie phoned yesterday to say that your father called her to complain about me. If you hadn't found
your brother and he was discovered, or harmed, at my house, I don't think I'd have my job at the school much longer, do you?”

Allie was stunned. She didn't know what she had expected Mrs. Hobbs to say, but certainly not that. “Why doesn't he want you to be happy?” she whispered. “And what does he want with
me
?”

“Why don't you ask him,” Mrs. Hobbs said, sounding exhausted. “He's right behind you.”

“Yikes!” Dub shouted. Allie, also startled, whirled around.

“I don't see anything,” Dub said. He sounded really spooked, and his eyes were just about bugging out of his head.

Allie said quietly, “I do.”

She'd known for several weeks that ghosts truly did exist. But she'd never before seen one, not a whole one, anyway, if “whole” was a word that could be used to describe a ghost. For the first time she was looking at John Walker, and not just his face but his entire body—his entire ghost body. He wasn't solid, like a real person, because sometimes Allie could see right through him to the wall behind.

He turned his dark eyes on her and pleaded, “
Listen to me, Allie. Don't believe her! She's the one who ruined my life. All I ever wanted was a home and a family, and look at me. She did this to me
.”

“She set the fire?” Allie asked. “The one that killed you and her husband and her baby? The reason I ask is because I know you burned down your business for the insurance money.”

There was a silence, during which John Walker's face went through a series of contortions. Outrage, wounded innocence, and frustration passed over his features, ending with what appeared to Allie to be an angry pout.

Mrs. Hobbs asked quietly, “What's your answer, John?”

While Allie waited for Walker to answer, she sneaked a look at Dub. When she saw his face, she realized that he couldn't see
or hear
John Walker, and he was dying to know what was going on. But there was no time to fill him in.

Walker burst out furiously,
“It was your fault, and you know it!”

“That's true in a way, John,” said Mrs. Hobbs thoughtfully. “It's my own fault I got mixed up with you in the first place. I was young and foolish. And I've had the rest of my life to regret it.”

“No,”
Walker said angrily.
“We were happy. Then you ruined everything. I'll never be able to forget what you did to me!”
Walker's voice was high now, and trembling with emotion.

“I did nothing except come to my senses before I
married you. How could you think I'd want you after you bragged about burning down your own business for the money?”

“I did it for us! You said you loved me—and then you jilted me! You married him. You had a baby, and a happy life, and I had nothing!”

Compared to Walker's near-hysteria, Mrs. Hobbs sounded calm, almost detached. “Poor John. You're always the victim, aren't you?”

“You deserted me! I needed you! You had no right!”
Turning to Allie, he said,
“She made me do it. You see that, don't you?”

“You set fire to her house and killed her husband and baby because she broke up with you?” Allie asked incredulously.

Hearing that, Dub, apparently unable to contain himself any longer, shouted, “But
he
died in that fire, too! It doesn't make sense!”

“It does if you know John Walker,” said Mrs. Hobbs. “He's careless. Thoughtless enough and careless enough to die in the fire he set with his own hand. I only wish I'd died then, too.”

“Don't say that!” Allie protested.

“It's true. Ever since I broke our engagement and married Clifford, he's done everything he could to make my life miserable. Then he got you to help him do his dirty work. Now you say he's using your little brother, too. It's got to stop.” Turning to Walker, she
said, “No more children are going to be hurt. You win, John. I give up.”

“No!”
Allie cried. “He can't win. We can't let him.”

“I hope you'll be able to appreciate the irony, John,” Mrs. Hobbs went on, as if Allie hadn't spoken. “When I die—”

“You're not going to die!” Allie insisted.

“Nobody's dying!” Dub shouted, sounding—and looking—scared.

“When I die,” Mrs. Hobbs continued, “it's over for you, too. Without me to torment, you've got no reason to exist. Without me, you have no target for your pathetic jealousy and revenge. I don't mind dying, John, to put an end to you.”

Allie couldn't bear to listen. She turned to Walker and shouted angrily, “Why don't you just go away and leave her alone! Leave us all alone!”

“No, Allie,”
he said soothingly.
“I can't do that. She's got to pay for what she did.”

“For what
I
did, John?” Mrs. Hobbs shook her head sadly.

“It was your fault,”
Walker repeated.
“You made me do it.”
To Allie he said cajolingly,
“You believe me, don't you? It's the truth.”

“The truth!” Mrs. Hobbs said scornfully. “What would you know about the truth?”

Walker glared at Mrs. Hobbs, and Allie thought she had never seen such malice.

“You couldn't bear to hear the truth,” Mrs. Hobbs said bitterly. “And I've lived alone with it for far too long.”

Allie couldn't stand any longer to hear Mrs. Hobbs talk about dying. It wasn't right—it was all backward! Walker had to give up, not Mrs. Hobbs. Allie moved between Mrs. Hobbs and John Walker's ghost. She needed to engage Mrs. Hobbs's full attention. “Mrs. Hobbs,” she said loudly and, she hoped, firmly. “You're not going to die to stop him. There's got to be some other way.”

“There's
got
to be,” Dub repeated urgently.

Mrs. Hobbs looked at Allie, really looked at her, for the first time that day. Slowly, she gazed at Dub, then back at Allie. “You seem to mean well, children, but there's more to this story”—she stopped and sighed deeply—“than you can possibly know.” She added sadly, “More than you two youngsters should have to know.”

Allie didn't have any idea what Mrs. Hobbs was talking about. But she couldn't let Mrs. Hobbs die to put an end to Walker's ghost. There had to be another way to lay him to rest. There
had
to be.

Looking at Mrs. Hobbs sitting forlornly in the shabby living room, Allie had a sudden, clear glimpse into what Mrs. Hobbs's life was like outside school. Allie had told the class that was what she wanted to find out, and now she knew. Mrs. Hobbs lived a sad
and solitary life, tortured by the memories of her husband and child and the vindictive ghost of John Walker. It was almost more than Allie could bear.

She whispered, “Mrs. Hobbs, we”—she pointed to Dub, including him as she continued to speak slowly—“we didn't know you before, but now we do. A little, anyway. So it's not like you have to be—alone—anymore.”

Mrs. Hobbs listened, and an odd expression came over her face. Allie sneaked a glance at Walker, and wished she hadn't. He was looking right at her, and the fury on his face almost took her breath, and her courage, away. She could actually feel the heat of his anger.

Trying to ignore him, Allie said desperately, “We'll help you get rid of him. What can we do?”

His voice shaking with anger and disbelief, Walker said,
“Not you, too! I counted on you. You said I could trust you. Don't you betray me, too.”

Allie put her hands over her ears to block out Walker's ranting. The room was growing hot, and Allie felt a stab of real fear at the power of his rage.

“Tell her, Evelyn,”
Walker was saying.
“Tell her how sorry she'll be if she betrays me.”

“Don't listen to him,” Allie cried, grasping Mrs. Hobbs's shoulder to keep her attention. “Think! How can we stop him?”

At Allie's touch, Mrs. Hobbs appeared to rouse
herself from her stupor. Her eyes lost their dullness as they focused on Allie's face. She nodded, seeming to make a decision. When she spoke, her voice was no longer sluggish and detached but steady and firm. “You know, John,” she said, “there's a part to our story you've never known. I never told you, partly because I was afraid of what you'd do with the knowledge. I was afraid if the truth got out, I'd lose my job at the school.”

“What are you talking about?
” Walker said impatiently.

“And, strange as it sounds, part of me didn't want to tell you because, well, I thought I loved you once. And even though you won't believe it, I never wanted to hurt you.”

Walker snorted with disgust, but Mrs. Hobbs's eyes never wavered as she continued talking. “Clifford Hobbs taught me what real love is.”

Walker's face darkened with fury.
“I can't understand how you could have preferred that pathetic old fossil to me.”

“Of course you can't. Because all you know is your own petty jealousy. You don't know what it means to be decent and kind and forgiving. Clifford did.”

“Don't talk to me about Clifford!”
Walker screamed.

“But I have to, John, if you're going to know the
truth. You see, when you and I were engaged, I discovered that I was going to have a baby. But then I found out what kind of man you were and knew I could never marry you. I was prepared to take the consequences and raise my baby alone. Then I met Clifford, and he asked me to marry him. I told him I was going to have a baby, and he said he'd be proud to marry me and give that baby a home and a name. And he did.” Mrs. Hobbs was weeping as she said, “Clifford loved Tommy as if he were his own son.”

There was a terrible silence then. Allie was trying hard to understand everything Mrs. Hobbs had been saying, but she was distracted by the look of horror that had slowly taken over John Walker's face.

Mrs. Hobbs put her face in her hands. “Tommy was
your
son, John. And you—you—” She stopped, and began to sob.

Allie stiffened with shock as her mind filled in the words Mrs. Hobbs had been unable to say.

The room had been growing hotter and hotter, and a bellow of anguish unlike anything Allie had ever heard resounded from the walls:
“Noooo!”
It rang in Allie's ears and pierced her heart.

At the same time, she was aware of Dub shouting frantically, “Allie, what the heck is going on?”

She wanted to answer, but was unable to speak as, before her disbelieving eyes, the paint on the wall behind Mrs. Hobbs's couch began to bubble and blister
and peel. Then the squares of linoleum beneath Allie's feet began to curl. The lampshade on the table seemed to be melting, and next to it, the leaves of a potted plant withered and turned brown. Sweat ran down Allie's face and into her eyes as she watched a plastic cup ooze into a puddle on the windowsill. The heat was so intense that each breath she took seared her throat and lungs.

Gasping for air, she turned to the ghost of John Walker and saw to her amazement that he had begun slowly to disintegrate.

His hands and feet became blurry and indistinct, then disappeared altogether. His body contorted, and he continued to moan,
“No, no, no, no . . .”
His face hung suspended in midair, his expression one of unspeakable agony. Finally, only his dark, tortured eyes remained, burning into Allie's for what seemed a long, long time, before flickering, at last, into oblivion.

Allie, Mrs. Hobbs, and Dub remained frozen in stunned silence as the room slowly cooled around them.

Dub was the first one to speak. In a shaking voice he whispered, “What happened? Is he gone?”

Allie looked into his ashen face and nodded. They both turned to the quiet form of Mrs. Hobbs, who was staring with disbelief at the place where John Walker's ghost had been. “Gone?” she repeated. Then again, wonderingly, “He's gone . . .”