The Haunting of Henry Davis

by Kathryn Siebel

  I know we should have been braver. There were four of us: Death (in the lead), then a witch, a vampire, and Alice in Wonderland. But we just stood there, mesmerized, as Zack stared at the house. We were waiting to see who—or what—would emerge from that dark, awful place. We held our breath. And then a loud, metallic CLANG broke the silence, followed by a heavy thud.

  “Run!” Henry shouted.

  And we did.

  As soon as Halloween was over, Biniam was straight back to business. I mean, she started piling on the homework. All the teachers were doing it. It was like they had some rule book that told them to be sure we never had fun two days in a row. And Biniam’s torture was the worst one of all. We had to write an artifact paper, which is where you take something old, like an object or a photo, and you explain in detail about the time it came from.

  Our class was in the library at school. We were supposed to be working on it, but we were having trouble getting started. Biniam even had this box of old junk and photos you could pick from if you wanted, but none of it looked interesting. Mixed in were some random objects like a lightbulb, this weird white hat with a cross stitched into it, and a small wooden box with marbles inside.

  “It’s not the object that matters so much,” Biniam tried to tell us. “Once you choose, you have a mystery to solve, a story to tell. Think of yourself as a detective!”

  We kept digging through the box. Then Zack grabbed the hat and put it on his head. Once it was unfolded, we could see that it hung down in back, like a veil.

  “Here comes the bride,” Henry said.

  Zack flung that thing off his head so fast you would have thought it was on fire. It was too late, of course. Kids were already starting to laugh, and Zack suddenly looked furious. “If you weren’t my friend!” he yelled at Henry. Zack’s face was bright red.

  “Zack,” said Ms. Biniam. “Take a breath.”

  Everything stopped for a minute then, and the whole class watched to see if Zack was going to explode. But Biniam walked over to him and quietly suggested that he go get a drink of water. After he left, she launched into an immediate lecture on taking the project more seriously.

  It made me feel sort of guilty, so I picked up the cap Zack left behind and looked at it. “Ms. Biniam,” I asked. “Did this belong to a nurse?”

  “It did, Barbara Anne.”

  “Well, I get the lightbulb,” Renee told Ms. Biniam.

  “Bright idea,” Alonzo said. Nobody laughed. People were staring. But Alonzo just couldn’t leave it alone. “Bright idea? Get it?”

  “This is the worst project ever,” Henry whispered. “What am I supposed to use? There’s nothing left to pick.”

  “You can have this if you want,” Alonzo said, and he handed the wooden box with the marbles to Henry.

  “I don’t want that; it’s a silly kids’ game,” Henry said. “Maybe my mom will have an idea the next time I talk to her. Or maybe I can call Uncle Marty. I don’t know what to choose. I guess I’m just tired.”

  But it seemed like more than that. I was studying his face, and it seemed like much more. And eventually Henry told me—about the dream he had the night before.

  * * *

  —

  “I woke up,” Henry said. “Or, I thought I woke up. And there was this smell in the room. And I felt someone’s hand on my forehead. Then when my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see it was a woman, sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at me. I don’t know why, but she had this mask on her face.”

  “Like a Halloween mask?” I asked.

  “No. Like the kind a doctor wears.”

  “A surgical mask?”

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “I guess so. It was so strange. It seemed so…real.”

  “Wow,” I said, “so there’s two of them! Two ghosts. Well, some places are like that, Henry. I saw this show once about a haunted hotel, and—”

  “My house is not a haunted hotel, Barbara Anne!”

  Biniam looked over at us, and I was afraid she might start listening, so I whispered. “At least tell me this. What was the smell?”

  “Lilacs,” Henry answered. “It smelled like lilacs.”

  * * *

  —

  We didn’t get anything done after that. I put the nurse hat back, Henry spent his time doodling in his sketchbook, and I was extremely busy watching the clock. I was going to ask Biniam what time our class was over, but I had noticed that teachers get all insulted whenever somebody brings it up. Anyway, gym was next—rope climbing—and I didn’t really want to think about that either.

  “Too bad we can’t use the stuff from the trunk,” I said.

  “Sure,” Henry said. “Great idea. ‘Found this in my house, which, by the way, is haunted.’ ”

  “You’d probably get an A. It’s way more interesting than a lightbulb.”

  Henry ignored me.

  “I’m just saying…”

  The clock ticked. I’d never noticed before how loud it was. Then I raised my hand—to ask for a drink of water. But of course I wasn’t really thirsty. I was going to get the only artifacts that really interested me. The ones from the trunk.

  * * *

  —

  Henry was not too happy when he saw the pile of stuff in my hands.

  “So, what?” Henry asked. “You just walk around the hallway carrying that stuff now? You don’t even try to hide it?”

  “If you act like it’s not a big deal, nobody will know it’s a big deal.”

  “You’re gonna end up in jail someday,” Henry said. “And I’m not going to visit you.”

  Henry had a lot more to say. Sometimes he gets more talkative when he’s mad. Either that or he stops speaking completely. It can go either way. I just let him finish, but I wasn’t really listening closely.

  “…you think nobody knows what you’re doing, but eventually someone’s going to ask!” He was staring at me. “Are you wearing the locket?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “It looks good on me.” And, really, nobody could argue with that.

  * * *

  —

  Now, here’s the weird part. Henry and I were sitting off by ourselves, at a table far away from the windows. But during Henry’s big lecture about the need for secrecy, we suddenly felt a gust of air or wind. It was so strong that it pushed the scrapbook/yearbook right off the table, smack onto the floor. It popped open, and an old, yellowish piece of paper fell out—a newspaper article.

  Henry and I looked at each other, too surprised to say anything. Then I raced to grab the article. “What does it say?” Henry asked. He was reading over my shoulder.

  WASHINGTON STATE, May 21, 1925

  Memorial Day Poppy Sale

  A special Memorial Day service will be celebrated this year at the Legion Post on Main Street. In preparation, the poppy sale will begin a few days before. Everyone will want to have a poppy to wear to the ceremony in remembrance of Flanders fields.

  After the flag ceremony, we will take flowers to the Mountain View Cemetery to decorate the old soldiers’ graves.

  “Think it has anything to do with Edgar?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Henry said. “But stick it back in the book before anyone sees it.”

  So I opened the book to slip the article back inside, and that’s when I saw it. The photo. He was older, but it still looked like him. I stared at his face.

  “What?” Henry asked.

  “This guy in the yearbook,” I said, pointing. “Phillip Winterson. He looks like the kid in the trunk photo. The one who’s standing in front of a piano with his music teacher.”

  “You’re right,” Henry said. “He does.”

  “Henry, do you think this guy could be Edgar’s older brother?”

  “Maybe,” Henry said. “It’s hard to say.”


  “I mean, why else would his picture be in your house? Henry, you haven’t ever…seen him, have you?”

  “What? Like, floating around my room? No, Barbara Anne. I haven’t. And I don’t want to either. Two ghosts are more than enough.”

  “Wait!” I said. “Phillip Winterson? That’s P. Winterson. The yearbook belongs to him. He has to be Edgar’s brother. Bring the photo to school tomorrow. So we can compare. Then we’ll know a hundred percent for sure.”

  Then the bell rang, and we headed off to gym.

  * * *

  —

  I was so busy running errands after school with my mom that I almost forgot about the article. But when we got home, I took it out again and reread it.

  “Dinner’s in twenty minutes!” my mom shouted.

  But I didn’t wait that long to join my parents. I had too many questions. My parents were in the kitchen, cooking. When I walked in, Rachel was in her high chair, flinging blueberries all over the floor.

  “What are Flanders fields?” I asked.

  “World War One,” my dad said. “They’re famous battlefields in Belgium.” Then he turned to my mom and asked, “There’s a poem too, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “ ‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row.’ ”

  “Why?” my dad asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “School project.”

  “World War One?” my dad asked my mom. “Aren’t they a little young for that?”

  “Your baby’s growing up,” my mom said.

  And I went back to my room. I kept trying to figure out what it all meant, what it had to do with Edgar. All I really had, though, were a few clues that weren’t exactly adding up. So I took out a sheet of paper and tried to make notes.

  1925 = World War I

  Then I crossed that out. They were remembering the war in 1925, so it must have started earlier. I went to my dad’s office to look up the dates on the computer.

  July 28, 1914, to November 11, 1918.

  Then I looked up “Flanders fields,” and that’s when I found out how famous the poem is. It was written by this Canadian guy named John McCrae. And it’s basically a poem written by ghosts. The whole thing is like a story told by dead guys from World War I. Well, I mean, McCrae wrote it, so I guess he was just saying what the dead guys would have said. He looked like a nice man, from the picture. He wasn’t smiling or anything, of course, but his face looked kind.

  My parents were yelling from the kitchen then—that it was time for dinner. So I didn’t get much further. I started to skim. But I did find out this: John McCrae wasn’t just a poet. He was a soldier and a doctor too. He worked in the medical corps in France. And he died of pneumonia.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, at recess, Henry and I compared the photos, the large one of the boy and older man in front of the piano, and the yearbook photo of Phillip Winterson. The yearbook photo did look like a slightly older version of the same boy. Whoever he was, he’d gone to school with Constance Leary. Someday, if we were brave enough to ask, she might be able to identify him.

  “Phillip probably is Edgar’s brother, or his friend,” Henry said. “That makes sense. But who do you think Thomas was?”

  “Thomas?”

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “The letter. It’s addressed to Thomas.”

  “I don’t understand the letter at all,” I admitted. “The same stuff keeps coming up, though. France and the army and pneumonia.”

  Three clues.

  * * *

  —

  Later that night, I went into my dad’s office again and I typed in “France army pneumonia.” And this popped up.

  The U.S. Military and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919

  I clicked on the black-and-white photo above the first entry, and there they were, men in long gowns and masks and women in white hats with crosses, like the one in Ms. Biniam’s artifact box. They were staring back at me like they’d been waiting for me to find them. It took me a second to realize they were doctors and nurses, that the long, ghostly white shapes behind them were just sheets suspended around the metal beds of patients with pneumonia.

  Henry and I sat together at lunch every day now, whether we were required to or not. Some days we talked the whole time. Some days Henry read his comic book and ignored everyone—even though I told him it was rude to read at the table. What he didn’t usually do was sit there saying nothing, staring off into space, and then coughing into his elbow.

  “You feeling okay, Henry?”

  “What?”

  “Earth to Henry,” I said.

  Even Rodney laughed at him, but that didn’t seem to register with Henry either. “Are you almost finished eating?” he asked. “I need to ask you something.”

  “Ask away,” I said, still chewing on my sandwich.

  “Not here,” he said. And he looked serious, so serious that I tossed the last of my lunch in the garbage and headed out to the playground.

  “No one ever tells me anything!” Rodney yelled as we left him behind.

  As soon as we were out the door, Henry said, “I found something weird. This morning, at the foot of my bed, by the window.”

  “What?” I asked.

  I knew that was Edgar’s spot—one of his spots, anyway. So I expected something stranger than what Henry said next.

  “Circles,” he told me.

  “Circles?”

  He stopped walking then and took out his sketchbook. “Yeah,” he said. “Circles. Like this. Drawn on the floor in chalk. What do you think it means?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I stared at his drawing—a circle, within a circle, within a circle—each one larger, the way water ripples outward when you drop a stone in a lake.

  “I mean, I know it has to be him. Edgar. But why? What does he want?” Henry asked.

  “Maybe he’s trying to hypnotize you somehow,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You know, like put you into some sort of a trance.”

  “I know what ‘hypnotize’ means, Barbara Anne!”

  “Well, they use circles for that, you know. Especially spinning ones.”

  “Never mind,” Henry said. “I’m sorry I asked.”

  It was ungrateful of him, really. Unreasonable. I was trying my best to understand what it all meant, and Henry wasn’t giving me any credit at all. I might have stopped speaking to him, except that I felt kind of bad that he didn’t feel well. Also, I had something I wanted to ask him. I kept thinking about those pictures, the ones of the masked doctors that I’d seen on my father’s computer. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to forget them—their look-right-through-you stares and their folded arms. The nurses wore white caps just like the one in Ms. Biniam’s artifact box. I know it sounds crazy, but it felt like they wanted something from me, like they expected it. So I had to keep going.

  First, I had to convince Henry that we needed to take another look at both photos from the trunk. There was the one with Edgar and the others standing on the porch of Henry’s house, and the second one, which didn’t even have Edgar in it, of the tall boy and the older man in front of a piano.

  “You know what I think?” I asked Henry as we walked home together.

  “Is there any way you won’t tell me?” Henry asked.

  “Good point,” I said. “I think we need a magnifying glass. You know, so we can really inspect the photos.”

  “In case there’s a ghost in the background?” Henry asked.

  “Exactly!” I said.

  Henry was being a sarcastic brat, but I knew I could convince him because I’d been doing some reading, and I had a mountain of evidence. Not to brag.

  Henry sighed a great big Here it comes sort of sigh, but I said
, “Just listen.” And then I told him all about Arthur Conan Doyle and the Crewe Circle and all this other cool stuff I’d been reading about. Obviously, Arthur Conan Doyle is famous for creating Sherlock Holmes, but he also wrote this unusual book that is partly about World War I and partly a collection of poetry and partly a bunch of photographs. It’s the photographs that are the most interesting because they have ghosts in them.

  “So what are you saying, Barbara Anne? It’s like a ghost yearbook?”

  “No,” I said. “Say you were dead and I was still alive and—”

  “How come I have to be the dead one?”

  “It doesn’t matter who the dead one is!” I said. “Okay, I’ll be the dead one. So, after I die, you go to this photography studio run by the Crewe Circle to get your picture taken. And it’s just you posing for the picture, but then, when you get it back, I’m there in the background. Like, a faint ghostly image of me.”

  “You photobomb my portrait?” Henry asked.

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  “You come back from the afterlife to wreck my picture?” Henry asked. “To distract from me and get all the attention for yourself?”

  “No!” I said. “It doesn’t ruin the picture. It makes it more interesting, more special. The background image was always somebody they knew, like a friend or a relative, somebody who had died that they missed. And they were glad to know the person was still there somehow.”

  “Really?” Henry asked. He didn’t seem convinced.

  “Or,” I said, “sometimes they found the person’s handwriting on the picture. And that was part of how they proved that the ghostly background person really was their dead friend.”

  “What?”

  “Because the handwriting matched. Like, say you had a note from me. From before I died, obviously. And then you see a message in the background of your portrait. And it’s in my handwriting. But how can it be? Because now I’m dead. And then you take the photo and the old note, and you look at them, and they match. Perfectly. So it’s like I’m still talking to you even though I’m dead.”