Wicked Cruel (18 page)

The door finally gave way, and they scrambled into the yard. Owen replaced the cinder blocks and they backed toward the barn.

“That hatch was barely closed when we went upstairs,” Owen said.

Sophie squeezed Owen’s forearm. “Something messed with it. I told you the place was haunted.”

Owen nudged her. “You didn’t have to tell me, remember? I lived it last night.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think that girl would try to trap us like that, do you?”

“No. She was nice. I hope she doesn’t have to cope with evil ghosts all the time in there.”

As they passed the side of the tavern, Owen saw a glimmer in an upstairs window. “Look,” he said. Something appeared to move behind the glass.

“It’s because all the panes are different,” Sophie said. “Some are very old and others are newer, so they catch the light differently. It gives the appearance that something’s there.”

Owen kept staring. Something faint but substantive seemed to be in that upstairs room, looking out. It shifted to the right, then the left.

And then Charity’s face appeared. She was there for the briefest instant, and then she was gone.

“Did you see her?” Owen asked.

“See who?”

“It was Charity. I’m sure of it.”

“Well,” Sophie said, “I’m not going back in to find out.”

Owen watched for movement but couldn’t see anything
else behind the glass. A car drove by on Main Street, and he saw that the light was reflected differently from every pane.

So maybe he hadn’t seen Charity tonight. But he did want to see her again soon.

What about those other four barns?

Owen couldn’t help but wonder. There was no sign of them on the tavern property, but he knew that it had once been a much larger farm. He’d asked Sophie, but she’d never heard of the other barns or the Gilman murders.

Had Charity been murdered by her father? If she had, then which barn had she been buried in? He had no way of knowing; the single paragraph he’d read on the Internet hadn’t provided those details. And how could you trust a flimsy report like that?

Early Saturday morning he cut through the college grounds to a spot behind the tavern. He was in direct sight of a dormitory but in a half-acre patch that was overgrown with brush and trees. It appeared that it had never been developed in any way.

There were a few empty bottles and some other trash, but no signs of recent activity. Owen walked slowly through the brush, looking for stones or bricks that might have been part of a foundation.

And then he found them. Several large stones that formed a low triangle, apparently the corner of an old building. They were shielded by thick weeds. He could see the existing barn through the slats of the tavern’s wooden fence, and this corner lined up precisely with the barn.

So, if the five barns had been in a straight row, this was the only one that could still have a trace. The other spots would have been cleared for the dormitory’s lawn long ago.

Owen stepped off what might have been the rest of the barn’s footprint, but he saw no other signs of it. Just these stones. Was there a body buried a few feet away? Were there three more right out there under the lawn?

He sat on the stones and felt the breeze on his face. A late maple leaf drifted down.

Such a peaceful place
, he thought.
At least in daylight
. But what had happened here a century and a half before? Could he ever know?

Would Charity’s ghost know that she’d been murdered? If she was his age now, then had she stayed that same age for all these decades? If you’re thirteen when you die, do you stay that way forever?

*   *   *

*   *   *

His mom was spending the afternoon putting the jumpers through some preseason drills. She’d left Owen a note and a ten-dollar bill, telling him to get something to eat downtown.

The previous Saturday, Main Street had been mobbed with people for the Cheshire Notch Pumpkin Fest. Today was much quieter. The sounds of televised football games poured out of the bars, but the ice cream place was closed for the season and the coffee shops were nearly empty.

Owen sat on a bench outside the Colonial Theater and tried to decide what to eat. A hamburger from Local Burger? Chicken fried rice? A couple of slices of pizza? Main Street was loaded with places to eat, and plenty of the spots were inexpensive, to draw in the college students.

Sophie liked him? How would Mason know that? He’d been so wrong about so many things for so long that the only way he could know that was if Sophie had told him directly. Two days ago Mason said
Emma
liked him, and that had obviously been untrue. Mason just wanted Owen to play along to help him advance his cause with Darla.

A hamburger sounded good. With hand-cut fries. He crossed Main Street and went in. They made everything to order, so he had to wait ten minutes, looking out at Main Street from a table at the front.

Lots of guys his age had girlfriends, but Owen hadn’t given it much thought until school started this year.

Four girls from his grade walked past with makeup and highlighted hair and pierced ears and cool clothing, looking like they were in high school. Three guys his age trailed behind in backward baseball caps and ragged sweatshirts and untied sneakers. They didn’t notice Owen.

His order came and he started on the huge mound of fries, dipping them one by one in a little paper cup of ketchup. Then he stacked several fries on his hamburger and finished that before it got cold.

Sophie was very nice to him. She believed that he’d been dancing with Charity. She knew the Chase Tavern was haunted, too. And she’d hung back with him last night while trick-or-treating, letting the others get away.

He’d forgotten to get a drink. He wanted Sprite; his mother would be thrilled if he got an orange juice instead. He was thirsty enough to get both and had just enough money, so he did.

Maybe Sophie did actually like him as more than a friend. In some ways, that was scarier than meeting up with a ghost.

The music in the background was a Frank Sinatra CD. “The Way You Look Tonight” had just ended and “Fly Me to the Moon” was starting. In the evenings this place played classic rock, but what was on now was mostly for the cooks.

He drank half of the bottle of juice, then carefully poured in the Sprite and shook it up gently.

What was wrong with just being friends anyway?

Ida Gilman stood next to the horses, unable to step into the carriage.

“We must be on our way,” Henry said sternly. “It’s over now.”

But Ida pleaded for one last visit to the fifth barn. It was the only one that wasn’t sealed by bricks. She’d stood outside each of the other four for several minutes that morning, saying good-bye to her children.

“Just one more minute,” Ida said. “Please come with me.”

The coach held only a few of their possessions; the rest had been sold or left in the house. The trip to Winchendon would
take three hours, and Henry was eager to leave Cheshire Notch behind. He shook his head but stepped down.

The ground in the barn had been smoothed and tamped down, showing no sign that a young girl had been buried there. Ida dropped to her knees and prayed.

Henry stood in the doorway. Ida looked up and asked him to come say good-bye. “She was so precious,” she whispered.

Henry reluctantly walked over and stood a few feet from the spot. He took off his hat and grunted.

Ida stepped to the front of the barn, reached toward something on the wall, and kept her eyes fixed on Henry’s back.

Mason showed up with two chocolate bars, a peanut-butter cup, and a roll of Lifesavers. Owen had already eaten a Mounds bar and a large helping of candy corn, so he went out empty-handed, except for a flashlight.

“How late can you stay?” Owen asked.

“Eleven. You?”

“The same.” It was already after nine, but Owen figured the later the better with a haunted house.

He was wearing black jeans, black sneakers, a dark-blue sweatshirt, and a black Windbreaker. Mason had dressed in similar colors, at Owen’s urging.

“The barn is the key,” Owen said as they walked toward Main Street. “Someone is buried there.”

He told Mason the rumors and about the partial foundation of another barn. “I think there are at least two ghosts in the tavern, and one of them’s evil. Maybe they spend most of their time in the barn.”

“Why would any ghost stay in a barn when they could be in the tavern?” Mason asked.

“Maybe because that’s where their bodies are.”

The tavern’s grounds were very dark tonight, but Owen didn’t flick on his light until they were inside the barn. He shined it briefly toward the far wall, identifying a wooden ladder that led straight up to the loft.

“Come on,” he said. “Up there.”

The loft was a flat wooden platform that covered about a third of the barn. It had no rails, so Mason and Owen sat with their legs hanging over the edge, nine feet above the floor. An old metal bucket and a shovel handle with no blade were the only items up there.

“Just wait,” Owen whispered.

They waited a long time. The barn was dusty and the cold air was damp, but Owen kept his eyes fixed on the floor. Even in the pitch dark, his vision adjusted enough that he could see the contours of the barn, but it was too dark to see any details.

Owen nudged Mason hard when he crinkled a candy bar wrapper.

“I’m hungry,” Mason said.

“Too bad.”

Owen’s mind drifted. What if Charity hadn’t been killed? She would have died of old age long ago, probably in the 1940s or ’50s. Her great-grandchildren would be older than Owen, maybe even older than his parents.

A very faint glow seemed to be coming from the floor toward the back of the barn. It was shapeless and small. Owen felt his muscles tense. He held his breath.

A feeble sound, something like a sob, came from the area of the glow. It was a woman, hunched on all fours, her head bowed. They could see the floor through her; she was like a cloud of steam.

“What do we do?” Mason whispered as softly as he could.

“Just watch,” Owen said.

A second presence entered the barn, drifting to a spot behind the woman. There was a brief flash of light as she touched the woman’s shoulder. It was Charity.

She was not solid, like the last time, but as milky and transparent as the first ghost. She did not speak, but it was obvious that she was trying to comfort the woman, patting her and then kneeling next to her.

Owen put his hand over his mouth, which was dry and hanging open. He didn’t dare blink.

Charity stood and gently tried to coax the woman to come with her. Was it her mother? Owen thought that it must be.

“Charity?” he said softly.

There was no indication that she’d heard him, although he’d said it loud enough that she would.

The woman stayed there. Charity faded and disappeared. The glow gradually grew softer, and then it, too, was gone.

Owen licked his lips. “Wow,” he whispered.

“Ghosts,” Mason said.

“No kidding.”

Mason was nervously drumming his fingers on the floor of the loft. “My legs are shaking,” he said. “I don’t think I can climb down.”

“Just wait,” Owen said. “I don’t think they’d hurt us.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve studied up on ghosts, you know. A lot. If there’s an evil spirit around here, it sure wasn’t them.”

They sat without talking for ten more minutes, staring at that space on the floor.

“She was cute,” Mason said eventually.

Owen shook his head. “Don’t be a jerk. She’s dead. Long ago.”

“Still cute. Was that her?”

Owen nodded, though he knew Mason couldn’t see him. “Yeah,” he said. “That was her.”

“Call her name again,” Mason said. “Maybe she’ll come back.”

But Owen knew that wouldn’t work. The girl he’d danced with had been as real as a live one. What they’d seen tonight was more like a film, an impression of energy that had lingered for so many years.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Carefully.”

The ladder was sturdy but hard to negotiate on the way down, especially in the dark. Owen took a chance and left the flashlight on until they’d both reached the floor.

Owen walked quickly up the dirt pathway toward the street, but a blast of cold air knocked him back. He stumbled and caught himself before he fell. Something like sleet stung his face.

“What was
that
?” Mason said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

Owen looked around. Everything was calm. There was very little breeze, nothing natural that could have caused that.

“Henry Gilman,” Owen said. “Let’s get out of here.”

They ran to the street and were a block away before Owen even knew where they were going. He cut across a lawn and onto a walkway that led to the middle of the college.

Ten minutes later they were sprawled on a couch in the student center.

“I don’t get it,” Mason said. “How can she be two ghosts at once?”

“That’s not quite what I’m saying.”

The place was quiet; on Saturday nights most students were either out partying or had gone home for the weekend. But the snack bar stayed open until midnight, and Owen and Mason had hustled over here for hot chocolate and cookies.

“Here’s how I see it,” Owen said. He set his paper cup on a low glass table and leaned forward. He was still shaking, but the hot chocolate was settling him down. “Two types of ghosts. Let’s call them
conscious
ghosts and … not unconscious, but
unaware
ghosts. I’ve read enough about these things to figure this out. You’ve got ghosts that are little more than a memory, like a wisp of energy that repeats itself over and over. Probably because of some trauma, or some moment of great impact that was so strong it got captured by the air or something.”