Baby-Sitters' Haunted House

by Ann M. Martin

“Mal,” Jessi said with a gasp, “call him. Quick.”

  Mal tried calling the Rosebud, but kept getting a busy signal. How could she know that my boss takes the phone off the hook when things are really busy? And believe me, that afternoon we were really busy.

  “I better go over there,” Mal said. “It’s already six-twenty-five.”

  “Six-twenty-five?” Jessi said. “Oh no! I told Becca I’d teach her how to Rollerblade at six o’clock. Dinner’s at six-thirty and then I’m sitting for Becca and Squirt. My parents and Aunt Cecelia are going to that auction for the Ambulance Squad.”

  “If there is an auction,” Mal cried. “I better find Logan fast.”

  Mal and Jessi had already dashed down the stairs when Jessi remembered the answering machine and ran back to turn it on. By then Mal was jogging toward the Rosebud Cafe.

  “But I can’t sit tonight, Mal,” I said, when she’d finished her tale of woe. I was filling water glasses at the busboy station. “When this shift is over, I’m picking up the night shift. As a favor for a friend.”

  “How could you?” Mal practically shouted. “Tonight’s the night you said you could baby-sit.”

  “When you guys didn’t call with a job, I figured I was free.” (Now I was slicing French bread.) “So I told this guy, Carlos, I’d take his shift. You’ll have to find someone else to sit.”

  “There is no one else!” Mal shrieked. She was getting so panicky her face was as red as her hair, and she was moving around like a Mexican jumping bean.

  “Mal, quiet down,” I said. I picked up another loaf of bread to slice. “Get a grip.”

  She grabbed the bread from my hand and shook it violently. “You get a grip,” she said between clenched teeth. The loaf of bread folded like a rag doll. She continued to shake it at me anyway. “This is important,” she hissed. “Mrs. Arnold is running the auction for the ambulance squad. If people die because there’s no ambulance, it’ll be your fault.”

  My boss, who was showing customers to a table, looked over to see what the ruckus was about. The other busboy (busperson) on the Monday afternoon shift was Geraldine Breslin. She stood in front of Mal so our boss wouldn’t see that Mal was mangling his French bread.

  When Mal finally stopped to catch her breath, Geraldine whispered, “What’s going on here?”

  I asked Geraldine if she could do me the humongous favor of taking the shift I’d said I would take for Carlos.

  “Please, oh please, please,” Mal begged Geraldine. By then Mal was wringing the bread like a handkerchief.

  “I guess I better,” Geraldine said, “before all we have left to serve the customers are bread crumbs.”

  “But I don’t want to meet any other kids,” Jill protested. “And I don’t want to play with Karen and Martha. They’re too young. I want to play — I mean hang around — with you, Dawn.”

  It was Monday afternoon. Kristy, Jason, and Andrew were at the playground. Mary Anne had taken Martha and Karen shopping. That left Claudia, Jill, and me, swinging in the hammock under the pine trees. Jill and I were watching Claud sketch the mansion, which was mostly a drawing of the widow’s walk. I was desperate to talk to Claudia about Mary Randolph and Georgio Trono. But Jill was glued to me, as usual. And she had no intention of “playing” with anyone else.

  “Where’s Spooky?” I asked Jill. “Why don’t you play with your cat?”

  “Spooky disappeared,” she said.

  “When did you last see him?” Claudia asked.

  “Last night. Before I went to bed. He was in the hall and I said, ‘Come on, Spooky, you can sleep in here.’ But he ran away from me.”

  Claudia and I exchanged a look behind Jill’s back. We both thought that Spooky was . . . spooky.

  “So what have you planned for my entertainment this afternoon?” a booming voice asked. Lionel had snuck up on us. Again.

  I jumped so high I almost fell out of the hammock. “Lionel!” I shouted. “Stop sneaking up on us.”

  “You scare easily,” he said. He sat on the ground near us and gave the hammock little pushes.

  “So,” he said, “what’s the plan? Or are the baby-sitters just going to sit around all day?”

  “You know what might be fun?” Claudia asked. “We could eat in the dining room tonight. And dress up for dinner.”

  “Wow! Great! I mean, if you think so, Dawn,” said Jill.

  “I think that would be great fun,” I replied.

  “We’ll set the table with all the fancy dinnerware that’s in the dining room cabinet,” Claud continued. “It’s probably been in your family for a zillion years, Lionel.”

  “Some of Uncle Edward’s suits are sixty or seventy years old. I saw them in a closet,” Lionel said. “Maybe I’ll wear his tuxedo.”

  Yes! We’d finally hit on an idea that Lionel liked.

  I wished there were some antique women’s clothes around, too. We’d have to put together outfits from the clothes we brought. I knew Claud would help us figure out that part. But first we had to get permission from Lionel’s parents, and talk to the Coopers.

  Mr. and Mrs. Menders thought having a formal dinner was a terrific idea and said they’d be back from their afternoon of research in plenty of time to “dress for dinner.”

  Claud, Lionel, Jill, and I went to the kitchen to talk to the Coopers. Elton said they’d be glad to make a special dinner. They’d been hoping for an opportunity to serve on the good china. Margaret beamed her big smile and rubbed her hands together as if she couldn’t wait to start cooking something fancy.

  “You see to setting the table and we’ll see to the cooking,” Elton told us.

  “And of course we’ll help clean up after dinner,” Claud said.

  In the dining room we set out the fancy dishes, silverware, and crystal that we’d seen in the cabinet. Lionel opened the French doors to the veranda to air the room out, and we set to work. I read the directions on the silver polish bottle and showed Jill what to do. Claud and Lionel went to the kitchen to wash and dry the crystal glasses.

  “Everyone gets two glasses,” Claud said when she returned with a tray of sparkling glasses.

  “Two forks and three spoons,” I added.

  Mrs. Cooper brought us a linen tablecloth and napkins. Finally, we were ready to set the table. On the dishes was a delicate, hand-painted rose pattern.

  “Some of the roses that Georgio planted look just like these,” Claud said. (She looked pretty dreamy when she said that.) Then she had a very Claud idea. “Let’s make placecards,” she said. “I can copy the rose pattern from the dishes.”

  That’s when Lionel announced that he’d had his fill of our afternoon project and went off to his room.

  When we’d finished setting the table I stepped back to take a look. “You know what we’re missing?” I said. “A candelabra.”

  “There’s one,” Jill said. She was pointing to the top shelf in the cabinet. I found a stool in the kitchen and climbed up to check out the candelabra.

  As I took it down I could see that it needed a good cleaning. It wasn’t dusty, but whoever used it last hadn’t cleaned off the wax drippings.

  I handed it to Claudia before I stepped off the stool. “That’s interesting,” Claud said. “The wax on here is orange.”

  “Why is that interesting?” Jill asked.

  I gave Claud a Look over Jill’s head. “Because people don’t use orange candles that much,” I said.

  “I saw some pink candles in a drawer in the cabinet,” Claud said. “We’ll use those.”

  While I cleaned and polished the candelabra, Jill and Claud made placecards.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if we could have some of the roses from the garden for the table?” Claud said.

  The moment she said that, Georgio walked through the french doors. He was carrying the most beautiful bouquet of roses I’d ever seen. “I thought you might like these for your dinner party,” he said as he handed them to Claudia. “There’s one rose from each of th
e bushes I planted this morning.”

  I could tell Claudia was rattled. I was, too. First of all, the instant Claudia said she wanted roses, Georgio appeared with them. Secondly, he knew we were having a dinner party and we hadn’t told him. Maybe Elton had told him, but still it felt weird.

  Georgio admired the way we’d set the table. “If you need candles,” he said, “I have some in the shed. They’re orange, though. Maybe they wouldn’t go.”

  “We don’t want orange candles,” Jill said. “We’re using pink.”

  “Whatever Claudia thinks will look best, will definitely look best,” Georgio said. “She has great taste.” Then he left the way he had come. Through the french doors.

  Hmmm. If Georgio was our “ghost” the first night, he sure wasn’t trying to keep his orange candles a secret.

  By the way, I was right about Claud helping us with clothes. She had brought two long skirts. So I wore one with my pink tank top and Claud’s long rope of fake pearls. Jill wore a skirt of mine, which was long on her. (“I want to dress just like you, Dawn.”) I fixed my hair — and Jill’s — in french braids. Kristy and Mary Anne, who might not ordinarily be too excited about dressing for dinner, got in the mood when they saw all the work we’d done in the dining room.

  “It’s so elegant!” Mary Anne said.

  “This is great,” Kristy added.

  “Oh goody, goody, triple goody,” Karen exclaimed. “We can be Lovely Ladies! Come on, Martha. We have to look through my mother’s clothes. And your mother’s. And we can wear makeup and jewelry and high heels.” She grabbed Martha’s hand, and they ran from the room.

  “Uh-oh,” Kristy said as she headed after them.

  By seven o’clock we were sipping fizzy punch “cocktails” in the parlor. Lionel and Claudia were helping the Coopers in the kitchen and dining room with last-minute details. A bell rang. The doors between the parlor and dining room opened, and Lionel and Claud appeared, Lionel looking spiffy in his great-uncle’s tux, Claud looking amazing in a full-length black gauze skirt over a black leotard. She was wearing dangling glass earrings that she’d made from an old chandelier. Her long black hair was held back on one side with a single red rose.

  Lionel bowed like a butler. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “dinner is served.”

  The dinner was delicious. We started with an appetizer of fancy bite-sized pizzas. Then we had a green salad followed by a main course of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. While we were eating our elegant dessert (ice cream with caramel sauce and wafer-thin cookies), Mr. Menders tapped his glass. “I’d like to make a toast,” he said.

  We lifted our glasses. “First, I want to thank you all for this lovely party. Second, I want to say that our plan to set up a business here is coming along well. We have a lot more research to do, but things are looking good. We may very well be able to move to Reese permanently.”

  “DAD!” Lionel shouted (in his own voice). “How can you say that, when you promised us we’d have a say in the decision? That it was our decision too? Reese is the most boring place in the world! I won’t be able to pursue my acting career here. I for one do not want to move to Reese. Period. The end.”

  “I don’t like it either,” Jason said. “The kids are stuck-up.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Menders looked discouraged. “What about you, Martha?” Mrs. Menders asked.

  “I want to go back to Boston.” Martha had to say it twice before her mother could hear her. But I heard it the first time.

  “And I want to move to Stoneybrook in the house right next to Dawn’s,” said Jill.

  Kristy, Claud, Mary Anne, and I looked helplessly at one another. We were supposed to be helping the kids adjust. So far we hadn’t done a very good job.

  That night the parents said they’d put their own kids to bed while my friends and I helped in the kitchen. There were a lot of dishes to do, and we had to be extremely careful because everything was antique, and some of it was fragile.

  While Kristy and Mary Anne cleared the table, Claud and I washed the dishes from the first course and Mr. and Mrs. Cooper put away their cooking utensils and generally cleaned up.

  “So,” Mr. Cooper said, “are you girls still thinking about the lights you saw on the fourth floor?”

  “Yes,” Claud admitted. “But there’s something else.”

  She told the Coopers what we had learned about Reginald and Mary Randolph at the library. Then she asked, “Was that the story you didn’t want to tell us last night?”

  “No,” Elton said. “Though of course I knew about Mary Randolph’s terrible grief and tragic end. I was thinking of —”

  Mrs. Cooper banged her hand on the table and shook her head no. Mr. Cooper said, “Now, Margaret, these girls are mature enough to handle a little history. They’re interested in the mansion, and Lydia is part of the story.”

  “Who’s Lydia?” I asked.

  By then Mary Anne and Kristy had returned with trays of dirty dishes. So all four of us were there when Elton told us about Lydia Randolph.

  “Lydia Randolph was the grandaughter of Reginald and Mary Randolph,” he began. “I hear tell that Lydia was a beautiful dark-haired young woman who was having a romance with the gardener’s son. He was a handsome youth named George, who worked on the estate as a groom in the stables. Lydia’s paternal grandparents were dead by then. It was her parents who found out about the romance and forbade her to see George again. To that end, they fired both George and his father and forced the entire family to leave the estate. But George secretly returned. Lydia’s parents found her with him in the gardener’s cottage.

  “Her parents locked Lydia in one of the back bedrooms on the fourth floor. She was a prisoner in her own home. The seasons passed. Then a year passed. And another. And another. Until five years had passed and that poor girl was still imprisoned.

  “During those years George had made a career for himself and a small fortune. It was all done so that he might convince the Randolphs that he was worthy of their daughter. But when George returned to Reese as a successful businessman, the Randolphs would not receive him and repeatedly ordered him turned away. Where, George wondered, was Lydia? Had she married another? Had she died? Finally a servant told George that his beloved was imprisoned on the fourth floor.

  “George could not rest until he found a way to free Lydia. Finally he managed to make his way to the fourth floor. Some say he built a secret passage, but I’ve not seen one. Anyway, he did get up there. But he couldn’t find Lydia. There was only one person on the fourth floor, a white-haired old woman living in one of the back rooms.

  “ ‘Where’s my Lydia?’ he asked the old woman.

  “ ‘I am Lydia,’ she answered.”

  I gasped. So did Claud. Mary Anne turned so pale I was afraid she’d faint.

  “Tragic,” Elton said. “Terribly tragic.”

  “What happened next?” I asked him in a whisper.

  “I don’t know. But strange things happened on these old estates. So don’t let it scare you.”

  “But this happened here,” Claud murmured fearfully.

  “Well, that’s all very interesting,” Kristy told Elton. Then she said to us, “Let’s finish up in here. I’m calling an emergency BSC meeting. Since Andrew is sleeping in my room we’ll meet in Mary Anne’s room in half an hour.”

  I couldn’t wait to be alone with my friends to talk about Lydia Randolph. Which is exactly what Claudia and I were doing when we walked into Mary Anne’s room for the meeting thirty minutes later.

  I sat on the bed next to Mary Anne. “It was so creepy,” I said with a shudder.

  Kristy came in right behind me and announced, “I call this emergency meeting of the Baby-sitters Club to order.”

  When everyone was quiet I said, “You guys, did you notice that Lydia’s boyfriend’s name was George and he was the gardener’s son? And her name was Lydia which sounds a lot like Claudia.”

  “It’s all too weird,” Claudia said.r />
  But Kristy didn’t want to hear anything about mysteries or ghosts. “I repeat,” she said sternly, “I call this emergency meeting of the Baby-sitters Club to order.”

  “Isn’t the meeting about what Elton just told us?” I asked.

  “It certainly is not,” Kristy answered. “We’re having this meeting to talk about the kids. We’re not doing a very good job. It’s our responsibility to help the kids adjust, and clearly they are not adjusting. Did you hear what they said at dinner? None of them is happy here. Not one of them.”

  Kristy was right. So for the rest of the meeting we talked about the kids. My main concern was how to persuade Jill to spend time with someone besides me. “If only she’d play with Martha,” I said. “I have to find something that they both love to do and make them do it together.”

  Claudia had an idea about how we might help Lionel. “Wednesday is our night off,” she said. “Let’s invite Lionel to go out for pizza with us, and then we’ll go to the summer stock play. It’ll be our treat.”

  “And while we’re at the play, we’ll make sure he meets some of the people who work there,” I added. “Especially kids his age.”

  “You mean we’re going to see Dracula?” Mary Anne asked. “I don’t know.” She shivered.

  But we all knew it was the best thing we could do for Lionel. And what was best for the Menders kids had to be our main concern.

  At the end of the meeting we returned to our rooms. Since Claud hadn’t slept very well on my floor the night before, she decided to sleep in her own room that night. If we were going to be first-rate sitters the next day, we needed our sleep.

  Even when I heard the footsteps above me, I stayed in my room. And when I heard that eerie cry in the wall, I stayed in my room, too. I was so terrified, so petrified, that I probably couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to.

  I tried writing in the BSC Reese notebook for awhile. But I couldn’t write about the kids. All I could think about was ghosts. Finally I worked up the nerve to turn off the light. I lay there, staring into the dark.

  Then my heart stopped. Absolutely stopped. I heard the very last thing I wanted to hear: the sound of my door creaking open. I reached for the light, but before I could find the switch, something landed on my legs. I screamed. I turned on the light. It was Spooky. The cat sat on my stomach and stared into my eyes. I could barely breathe. When I looked away from him I saw a white-robed figure standing in my doorway. Who — or what — was coming toward me? I tried to scream again but, just the way it happens in nightmares, no sound came out.