The Ghostly Hideaway (14 page)

“Come outside and I’ll show you and take you through
it. Will Candy and Andy be all right on the couch? I’m sure they
will, we can hear them clearly if they wake up.”

Ed, Penny, and Chrissy followed Johnny outside and
he took them around the house on the side next to the henhouse. “If
you’ve noticed, there aren’t any windows on this side of the house
and that’s because of the passageway. Right here at the end of the
porch, there’s an indentation on the side of the wall that looks
more like a dent but when you stick your fingers into the dent, it
opens the door. You can’t see the hinges and the opening is narrow
and completely disguised." Johnny shined his light inside to reveal
the steeply slanted floor of a passageway about thirty inches wide.
When they had followed it upwards, they saw what looked to be a
regular door in front of them. When Johnny pushed it open, they
went through the doorway and found themselves in the Coy’s
bedroom.

“You really crossed me up when you cleaned this room
and put the rocking chair back in this corner. I almost fell on my
face when I opened the door and bumped straight into it. I was
afraid you had decided to start using it and that would have messed
up my entryway. I mussed it up some hoping you might change your
minds."

“Over in this closet at the western end, there’s
another secret door to a passageway that leads to the third floor."
He opened this door and once again, they followed the upward
slanting hall that opened into the third floor bathroom right at
the top landing where the third floor stairway door was situated.
“And that’s it,” Johnny finished.

“Well, that does explain a lot of it but definitely
not all of it,” Penny sighed. “Ed, I think we need to close this
off completely. There could be other people who know of the secret
entryway and I don’t think we need anybody else having access to
our home. When Johnny wants in, he can come through a regular door,
now. And while we appreciate what Johnny has done for us, there’s
no need for that any more.”

“I think we can all agree on that, Mrs. Wroe. I
wouldn’t want to take the chance that someone could get in and
maybe harm my Chrissy or the twins while they were asleep. Oh, I
need to show you exactly where the root cellar is, too. There are
some potatoes and other things in there that you can use. However,
that can wait until morning. Well, actually, I guess it is morning
but we all need to get some rest, I suppose.”

“Yes, since this is the Friday after Thanksgiving,
we hadn’t been scheduled to work so maybe we can sleep in a little
while. Nevertheless, the cow will need to be milked fairly
early.”

“That’s true and so will mine. I’d better be heading
home. Chrissy, will you walk me out, please?" Johnny took her hand
and they walked out the kitchen door while Penny and Ed went up the
stairs and to bed.

“Honey, you’re not mad at me are you?”

“How could I be mad at you, Baby? You saved my life
at grave danger to your own. For all you knew, Mr. Jones could have
had a gun, too, and would use it to keep himself from being caught.
I’m still almost in a state of shock but I’m certainly not mad at
you. Oh, by the way, thank you for all my flowers. Some way I must
have sensed they were from you because my first thought each time I
found fresh ones was of you. I love you, Johnny." They kissed and
were both suddenly not cold any more even though they looked up and
realized it was snowing.

“I want you, Chrissy, and I love you, too. There’s a
theater in Hartford. I have no idea what’s playing but would you
like to go to the movies tomorrow night?”

“Yes, that would be great.”

“I’ll pick you up about six o’clock tomorrow night."
Johnny kissed her lingeringly and took off for Thorne Hill. Neither
of them realized how hard it was snowing.

Chrissy went upstairs and climbed into bed pulling
the covers over her head. She didn't even turn the lights on and as
she got warm she was asleep almost immediately.

She dreamed. In her dream, someone was calling to
her. “Christina! Christina! Where are you, Christina?" As she awoke
in her dream, she could hear the voice calling and it seemed to be
coming from far away. When the voice swam closer, she could see the
colorless eyes as they came through layers of fog-like cotton. Then
she could see the rest of the apparition, as it appeared to seep
through the wall of her room and continued to swim toward her. It
seemed she was sleeping in the Coy’s bedroom and the door in the
corner from the secret passageway suddenly burst open and Johnny
was there, wild-eyed and disheveled. His clothes were smoking and
his eyes looked like coals of fire. He reached for her and the
apparition appeared to knock Johnny back against the passageway
door. Suddenly she was floating high in the air and the apparition
was wrapped around her like a cloak of protection. Johnny was
screaming her name and jumping up toward her as she floated near
the ceiling. The apparition pulled her out of reach and Johnny
couldn’t seem to grasp onto her. She began to struggle. She loved
Johnny and she wanted to be with him. As she struggled, the warm
cocoon that was the apparition released her and she began falling
toward the floor and when she actually awoke, she had kicked off
all the covers and she was shivering with cold and fright.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and remembered
everything that had happened in the night: the shotgun blast that
woke her, the smell of kerosene that assaulted her nostrils, the
accusations by Norman Jones, the sheriff taking him away, Johnny’s
admissions, and the tour of the secret passageway. No wonder she
had had a nightmare. She looked at the clock on her nightstand and
it said it was almost eight o’clock. There beside the clock was a
small pot of begonias the same color as the beautiful one on the
windowsill at Johnny’s Grandmother’s house. Now, wait a minute. How
did that get there? Surely, Johnny hadn’t come through the secret
passageway again. Not after last night.

Chrissy yawned, stretched, and went to the bathroom.
She showered hastily, put her pajamas in the clothes hamper, put on
her robe, and went back to her room to get dressed. She didn’t know
what she wanted to wear; she had no idea what the weather was
doing. She didn’t have any outside windows. She knew now it was
because of the secret passageway. However, she did know it had to
be cold because of the temperature in her room.

When she got downstairs, she was amazed to find that
snow covered everything. Snow was piled up on the tops of the fence
posts and even under the veranda roof, snow was piled up on the
porch swing several inches deep. Her dad came in with a load of
wood and the snow had pushed its way over the tops of his boots. He
estimated a snowfall of about twelve inches with drifts up to two
feet high—maybe more in spots. He said the temperature was only
thirteen degrees, and that meant it wouldn’t be melting very
fast.

Chrissy suddenly remembered that she and Johnny had
had a date to go to the movies tonight. She was extremely
disappointed that wouldn’t be happening. She didn’t know whether to
expect him even to be able to come to see her today. When the phone
rang, Chrissy wasn’t even interested in answering it. But she was
sure glad she did.

“Hi, Sweetheart. Are you snowed in?"

“Where are you, Johnny?”

“At home. Surprise! Grandmother had told me to order
a telephone and they just got it turned on this morning. They
installed it the day before Thanksgiving but I didn’t tell you. I
wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, you sure did. And, yes, I’m figuring we’re
both snowed in. I’d say it means we’ll have to cancel our date,
too.”

“Yeah, we’ll have to at least postpone it. I’m
afraid I can’t get up your lane even though the main roads will
probably have been plowed by this afternoon. I could, more than
likely, manage to slide down my hill in the car, but your road
would be a problem. I thought, though, that I’d maybe put on my
snow shoes and walk down to your house in a few minutes if that’s
alright.”

“Oh, absolutely, Honey. That would be fantastic.
We’ll probably end up playing board games with the twins, but at
least we’ll be together.”

“Right! I’ll see you in a little while. I love
you.”

“I love you, too. Bye.”

When Johnny arrived about a half hour later, she
asked the question that had been bothering her since she got up.
“Honey, where did the potted plant come from that I found in my
room this morning?”

“You had flowers again this morning? I guess you
must have more than one secret admirer, huh?" Johnny was teasing
and Chrissy knew it but she blushed anyway.

“Johnny, come on!”

“Come on and what? Kiss you? Okay, with pleasure. Or
maybe I shouldn’t be kissing you. Maybe you’d rather have your
other
admirer kiss you.”

“Johnny! I want to know how those flowers got
there!”

“Okay. Grandmother wanted you to have them and we
brought them down in the car. Once, when I pretended to go to the
bathroom, I went and got them out of the car and took them up to
your room. I’m sure you were too tired to notice them last night
when you went to bed—or rather this morning, when you went to bed.
Do you like them?”

“Oh, I love them! It was so sweet of Grandmother to
fix them for me. But I won’t be able to leave them up there.
There’s no light. I’ll bring them down here and put them on the
table in front of the window next to the piano in the living room.
There it’ll get plenty of light and I’ll remember to water it and
take care of it. Thank you, Johnny, and thank Grandmother for me,
too! Now, you may kiss me.”

They spent a while, as Chrissy had expected, playing
games with Candy and Andy. About one o’clock, though, after they
had finished their chili and grilled cheese sandwiches, they
decided it was warm enough to go outside and build a snowman. The
whole bunch went out to the front yard and played in the snow.
Penny showed the twins how to make ‘snow angels’ by lying on her
back and moving her arms and legs to the side and upwards. The part
of North Carolina where they had lived had very little snowfall so
the kids had never seen this much snow on the ground. They also
built fortresses of snow—the men on one side and the girls on the
other side—and they had a brutally hilarious snowball fight.

Then they built their snowman. They started a small
ball of snow and rolled it across the yard until they had a huge
snowball. They did the same thing again only left it somewhat
smaller and stacked it on top of the first large one. One more
still smaller ball of snow was set on top to serve as its head.
They found two small walnuts to serve as the snowman’s eyes, put a
carrot in the middle for its nose and inserted some small pebbles
in a nice curved line to serve as a smiling mouth. A couple of
sticks served as his arms. Penny went into the house, ran upstairs
into Uncle Cliff’s room, and found an old hat for the snowman’s
head and a scarf to wind around its neck and their snowman was
complete. Or so they thought.

Johnny went on home soon after that. He wanted to
get home before dark and he still needed to carry in some extra
wood for Grandmother. He called Chrissy before he went to bed to
tell her ‘goodnight’ and to tell her he loved her.

Next morning was Monday and Ed called Johnny to tell
him that they wouldn’t try to go in to work at the school that day
because of the slick roads. The kids wanted to go out and play in
the snow again and they went out to the front yard to check on
their snowman and see if he had started to melt yet. A short minute
later, they came running back into the house.

“Mom, guess what?" The twins were talking almost in
unison.

“I don’t have to guess,” Mom said a little crossly.
“I know two kids who are not going to run in and out of the house
tracking in snow and fanning the doors and letting out the
heat.”

“Okay, we won’t. But we had to tell you. Come on
into the family room and look out the window and look close at the
snowman. Please, Mom. Hurry!" Penny could tell they were extremely
excited about something, so she went to look.

“What in the world is that sticking out of the
snowman’s face right below his nose?" She could see it but she
couldn’t tell what it was.

“It’s a pipe, Mom! Did you or Dad put it there? I
don’t think Johnny would have come all the way back down here last
night to do that, do you?”

“Oh, I can see, now. It’s a corncob pipe. I seem to
remember seeing something similar to that in the storage shed one
time, but I sure don’t know how it got stuck in the snowman’s
mouth." Ed was puzzled, too. “And, no, I didn’t do it and I’m with
you; I don’t think Johnny would have come all the way back last
night nor would he have come back down here this early this
morning. I guess we’ll have to blame it on the ghosts again.”

When Johnny came later around noon, he confirmed
that it had been too cold to make that trip last night or that
morning. It was just one more inexplicable event to wonder
about.

The next morning, Ed decided it should be possible
to get the SUV out and make it to town. The first stop Ed and
Johnny made was at the sheriff’s office.

“How’s the prisoner this morning Sheriff Lampton?
We’d have been here sooner, but we got snowed in for a couple of
days." Ed thought surely he would still be in jail.

“Well, he’s not too happy, right now. We received
notification a few minutes ago that North Carolina plans to
extradite him to stand trial there for rape, perjury, grand theft,
and fleeing the jurisdiction among other things. Anyway, it appears
he will stand trial there first. When they’re through with him,
we’ll bring Mr. Jones back to stand trial here for attempted arson
and attempted homicide. Therefore, as I said, he isn’t too happy.
Do you want to see him?”