Wicked Cruel (17 page)

He let out his breath. Then he grabbed his tricornered hat and tossed it aside and kicked it. He was gentler with the tie, since it didn’t belong to him, but he took it off and pushed it into his pocket.

And then he heard footsteps.

“Owen?”

“Charity.”

She was on the dirt path, about ten feet away. “Thank you for the dance, Owen,” she said.

“Where’d you go?” he demanded. “You left me looking like a jerk when my friends came in. They thought I was dancing by myself.”

At least he could save face if she’d return to the taproom with him. Mason and the others would see who he’d been dancing with.

“I couldn’t face them,” she said.

“Why not? Come inside with me.”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot,” she said.

“Charity—” he began, but the girl was fading away. He could see the barn behind her—he could see it right through her!

“I must be leaving,” she said. And within seconds she was gone.

Owen wanted to run, but he was too afraid to move. He stared at the spot where Charity had been. How could a ghost have been so solid, so real? How had he held her and spun her around and smelled her hair and her skin?

He stared at the spot for what seemed like an hour. Then he backed away, keeping his gaze there. When he reached the tavern, he turned to the street and kept walking.

He was sweating. His skin felt feverish, but inside he was chilled to the bone.

Owen nodded off a few times that night, but he never slept for more than a solid minute. Each time he fell asleep he felt Charity’s touch, then jolted awake as he watched her fade away. He turned on a light in the hallway and kept his door open.

He begged off school the next morning, partly because he felt awful and partly because he was too embarrassed to face Mason and Sophie and the others.

“I’ll stop back on my lunch hour,” Mom said. “Stay in the house. Eat something besides potato chips.”

“No problem.”

“And don’t touch those candy bars. They’re for the trick-or-treaters.”

“Right.” Owen had forgotten that it was Halloween.

He was able to sleep a little better now that it was daylight. He got up at ten thirty and had a bowl of cereal, then watched TV and ignored a few texts from Mason.

So Mason’s plan had seemed to pay off, at least for him. They hadn’t been trick-or-treating since fourth grade, but now it was apparently cool again, as long as you had girls along. Owen wasn’t about to give them something more to laugh at. He was certain everyone at school had heard by now that he’d been dancing by himself in the dark.

An Internet search for “Chase Tavern ghosts” came up empty, but Owen tried to dig deeper. “Cheshire Notch ghosts” yielded stories about an unhappy spirit in a dilapidated old chapel at Woodlawn Cemetery, the haunted dorm at the college, and the famous Horses of Brickyard Pond.

Scrolling down, he found some vague recollections of sightings at the Chase Tavern. And then a link to “Gilman Murders.”

The entry was brief but chilling.

“Charity Gilman,” Owen said aloud. He stared at the screen, then read the entry again. He typed Charity’s name into his search engine. Nothing that was the least bit relevant came up.

He sent a text to Mason.

The reply came almost two hours later:

There was a steady stream of trick-or-treaters after six o’clock, and Owen handed out candy bars to little kids in costumes for an hour. When he saw Mason and the girls coming up the block, he ducked inside and told his mother he was going to take a shower.

“I’ll take over,” she said. But no sooner had Owen got to his bedroom than she called up to tell him that his friends were out front.

“Tell them I don’t feel good!”

“Come and tell them yourself.”

Owen looked into his mirror and let out a sigh. He wiped his hair away from his forehead and checked his shirt for food stains. Then he went back downstairs.

Mason was in the doorway with a red bandanna around his head, tied at the side like a pirate, and a black eye patch. “Avast, matey!” he said.

“Yeah, right. Avast,” Owen mumbled.

“Hi, Owen,” said Sophie, who was standing on the front steps. Darla and Emma waved and said the same thing. They all had tiaras and bright red lipstick.

“Come with us,” Sophie said. She shook her duffel bag. “Lots of candy!”

Mom put her hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Go ahead,” she said. She even gave him a little push. “I can handle the kids alone.”

Owen frowned. “Give me a minute,” he said. “I don’t have a costume.”

“Just put on a funny hat,” Mason said. He raised his eyebrows and jutted his head slightly toward the girls.

Owen had left his tricornered hat on the ground outside the tavern last night.

Mom was opening a closet in the front hall. She took out an orange-and-black knit cap with long ear flaps. “Try this,” she said. “It looks goofy enough.”

They hit the other houses on Owen’s street, then circled along the back streets near the river. They joked about some of their teachers and other kids in class. No one mentioned the dancing.

Coming down a flight of steps, Sophie dropped a bag of M&M’s. The others kept walking.

“Hold up, Owen,” she said.

Owen waited.

“I think we’ve got plenty of candy,” Sophie said. She walked very slowly, letting the others get ahead. “So … what happened last night?” she asked.

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.” Sophie stopped at the corner. “Believe me, I know all about that place. I’ve seen a ghost there.”

“A girl about our age?”

“No. Just a wispy thing that didn’t have a lot of shape. But it was definitely a presence. It knew I was there.”

“Was it trying to scare you?” Owen asked.

“I think so. I do. It didn’t say ‘boo’ or anything clichéd like that, but I was sure it wanted me to leave.”

Mason, Darla, and Emma were more than a block ahead now. Owen had no desire to catch up. “Were you alone?”

Sophie shook her head. She started walking again, up toward Main Street. “I was there with my grandmother. We were straightening things up after giving a tour, so it was pretty late and everyone else had left. She was in the kitchen and I went upstairs. I’m not sure why I did, but I felt very curious. So I went to the front bedroom—to the right when you get up there—and I sat on a chair. And I felt this ice-cold draft, as if a window was open, but I checked and none were. But when I’d checked the last window, I felt like I was trapped, like there was something between me and the stairs. And then this mist started taking shape and it just hung there, all grayish and slightly shiny.”

“The girl last night wasn’t like that at all,” Owen said. “She was like a real human until the end. Then she faded away, but even then you could tell she was a person.”

“Wow,” Sophie said. “I’ve never heard of such a clear image there.”

“It was way more than an image,” Owen said. “We were dancing. She was solid. We
talked
.”

Sophie whistled. “Let’s go,” she said.

“Now? It’s open?”

“No … But I know how to get in.”

*   *   *

Ida Gilman could find no relief from her sadness. Five children, all of them dead, and a husband who offered no sympathy or remorse.

A cousin in Massachusetts offered to take her in, to get her away from the scene of her everlasting grief.

Henry wanted no part of it. But rumors of murder persisted, and he was shunned by the neighbors. When talk of an investigation mounted, he abruptly sold the farm. He and Ida packed up the possessions they wished to keep and told almost no one where they’d be heading. His plan was to slip out of town and disappear.

Privately, Ida confided that she wished she could go to her cousin’s without Henry, to leave him behind. Who needed a constant reminder of the horrible things she’d always known he’d done? He’d ruined everything that had ever given her joy.

But he ruled, and he said he was going with her. She knew there was no sense in arguing. She knew that he would kill her if she objected.

The overcast sky made things even darker than the night before as Owen and Sophie approached Chase Tavern. Every light was out.

“The kitchen door?” Owen whispered.

Sophie shook her head. “The cellar.”

Toward the far back corner of the tavern was a hatch-type cellar door, the kind that lies at an angle and opens up to reveal a set of steps. This one was rusted and was held in place with a couple of cinder blocks.

“It’s just a crawl space,” Sophie said. “You have to squat, but we can make it to the inside door and get upstairs. The lock is rusted out, so all we have to do is remove the cinder blocks.”

Owen did that, then lifted the rickety hatch. He could feel cobwebs and smell the dampness of the basement. It was pitch-black down there. He tried to remember where the door from the kitchen to the cellar was. He figured if they stayed close to the back wall, they’d get to it.

“What’s the floor like?” he asked. His heart was beginning to race.

“Hard-packed dirt,” Sophie said. “There are some support poles, but not much else to trip over. Just go slowly.”

Owen let her lead the way. “Should I leave this open?” he asked, pointing to the hatch.

“Close it,” she said, “so no animals come in. Just don’t let it slam.”

Owen carefully lowered the hatch, then tested it to make sure it didn’t stick. He touched the wall and scuffled along in a squat.

There were four wooden steps in the corner, and they led to a door that opened into the kitchen. The small amount of light from outside offered much more visibility after those minutes in the cellar.

“Careful,” Sophie whispered. “There are breakable things all over. Pitchers and vases and things.”

Owen put his hands close to his sides. They stood in the kitchen for a minute, listening. But there were no sounds inside the house.

“She was in there,” Owen said, gesturing toward the door to the parlor.

“Was she?” Sophie said with a light laugh.

“She was,” Owen said.

Sophie touched Owen’s arm. “I believe you, remember?”

They sat on the sofa and Owen tried to steady himself. After five minutes, he said “Charity?”

There was no indication that she or any other ghosts were present.

“Do we dare go upstairs?” Sophie asked.

Owen thought for a moment, then said okay.

The stairs had one tight turn. Owen thought he smelled talcum powder.

“I love this room,” Sophie said as they entered the biggest of the four upstairs rooms—the one where she’d seen the mist. “It was the main sleeping area for travelers way back then.”

They checked all of the rooms, but it was too dark to see much. Every shadow seemed ghostly.

“Let’s just sit here,” Sophie said. “Real quiet.”

Owen slid to the floor with his back against the wall. Sophie sat next to him. “Are you scared?” she whispered.

Owen thought about how to answer. “Yes, but I don’t want to leave,” he said. “It feels like something’s going to happen, you know?”

He had tried all day to rationalize what he’d seen, wondering if he’d somehow been dancing with a real girl and that she’d run off out of shyness when Mason and the others came by, and had spoken to him in the tavern yard but hadn’t really faded away, but just appeared to because the moonlight and the wind were playing tricks with his eyes.

But he knew better than that. He knew what he’d seen.

And here he was, with an actual, live girl, who seemed to get it and was cool and very brave to be sitting in a haunted tavern at night when she wasn’t supposed to be in here.

So if Charity did come floating into the room, he wouldn’t be alone. He would know he wasn’t crazy.

They sat there for half an hour. Every tiny creak or flash of light from the street made Owen’s heart jump, but nothing suspicious happened.

Sophie said they’d better get going.

“Can we go out a real door?” Owen asked.

“No,” she said. “We can’t risk being seen going out the front. And the kitchen door only locks from inside. We have to use the cellar again.”

They made their way through the taproom and the kitchen and onto the cellar steps. As Owen reached behind to close the door, it slammed shut on its own.

“Quiet,” Sophie hissed.

“That wasn’t me,” Owen said. “I didn’t touch it.”

They stared toward the door, though it was too dark to see anything down here. Owen listened hard for footsteps. There was nothing.

He started shaking. “Must have been the wind,” he said.

“Not in the building!”

“Well, something slammed the door.”

“Don’t panic, but let’s get out of here.”

They made their way back along the wall. Owen pushed up on the hatch. It wouldn’t budge. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he said.

“Push harder,” Sophie said.

Owen did. The door was tight and heavy. “Man,” he said. “I don’t want to go back upstairs.”

“Me neither.” Sophie laughed nervously. “Whatever slammed that door wouldn’t be too happy to see us.”

Owen didn’t think that was funny. He pushed at the hatch again, then smacked it with his fist.

“Ow.”

“Let me try.” Sophie put both hands on the door and tried to shake it. “Help me here, Owen.”