Waiting Spirits

by Bruce Coville

  “Daddy! Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you had a vivid nightmare,” said her father. Her mother touched his arm. His face softened, and he put an arm around Lisa, drawing her close. “I’m sorry, Lisa. My temper is on a short fuse these days. I didn’t mean to be so harsh. Come on, I’ll sit in your room with you for a while. He gave her a little squeeze. “But I mean it about those films!”

  “But, Daddy…” Lisa stopped. It was no use. Nothing she could say would make her father believe what she had seen.

  But she knew someone believed her. The look on her grandmother’s face told Lisa that Dr. Alice Miles believed every word she had uttered.

  Chapter Seven

  The Silence of Dr. Miles

  Lisa’s father stayed with her until she dropped into a fitful sleep—though if Carrie had not been there, she doubted she would have slept at all. Again, she was surprised at how much it meant to have another person in the room, no matter how young or silly.

  On Sunday morning while they were still sitting in bed she told this to Carrie, who informed her—in no uncertain terms—that she was not silly at all.

  “I’m sorry,” replied Lisa. “Poor choice of words. I should have said ‘young and ridiculous.’”

  At this Carried leaned forward, pulled her pillow from behind her back, and gave Lisa a thump.

  Never one to submit to violence passively, Lisa grabbed her pillow and whacked back.

  Before they knew it, the two girls were chasing each other about the room, their hysterical laughter punctuated by the dull Thwack! Thwack! of pillow warfare.

  Lisa felt wonderful. She found herself laughing harder than she had in days as all the tensions that had been building up inside were being released in the wildness of the crazy pillow fight. She was on the verge of collapsing when the door swung open.

  It was remarkable. Their father didn’t have to say anything. He just stood there looking stern, and within seconds both girls had let their hands drop to their sides, the pillows fall to the bed.

  Mr. Burton stared at each of them in turn. Following his gaze to Carrie, Lisa had to choke back a giggle. Her little sister’s hair was flying in all directions. Her cheeks were red, her eyes were flashing, and she was panting like a marathon runner at the end of a race. The top of her nightgown had slid down over one shoulder.

  Lisa wondered what she looked like herself.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Lisa,” said her father, in a tone of voice that made it painfully clear she would be wise not to feel too much better.

  He turned and left the room.

  Lisa and Carrie looked at each other for a moment. Then Carrie began to giggle. Unable to control herself, she collapsed on the bed and pushed her face against her pillow. Lisa began to giggle, too. Soon both girls were lying on the bed, faces buried in their pillows, bodies shaking helplessly.

  “Lisa! Carrie! Are you all right?” It was their grandmother. She took each of them by a shoulder and shook them heartily.

  The girls rolled over, trying to control their laughter. Carrie’s face was red. She had her lips pressed together, but was giggling and sputtering anyway. That struck Lisa as indescribably funny; she rolled over and buried her face in her pillow again.

  For a moment their grandmother was silent. Then she began to laugh, too.

  The last few days had been hard on all three of them.

  Brian called just before noon, both to see how she was and to tell her that his family was going to visit some relatives that day, so he wouldn’t be able to see her. Lisa debated with herself about whether to tell him what had happened after he left the night before. Finally she decided to put it off till she could see him in person.

  Or maybe put it off altogether, she admitted to herself.

  She felt wistful about not being able to see him that day. On the other hand, she did need some time to herself just to think. She spent the day on the beach, working on her tan and soaking up sunlight as if it were an antidote to what was happening at night in the strange old house.

  Even so, she felt apprehensive when it came time to go to bed that night. She could tell Carrie felt the same way. Neither of them knew what manifestations the night might bring.

  “Do you smell smoke?” Carried asked, just as they were drifting off to sleep.

  Lisa sat up. She thought she could detect a hint of smoke. But after a thorough search that managed to annoy their parents considerably, they decided it must be nothing but faint traces of a campfire on the beach being carried to their open window by the ocean breeze.

  On Monday Brian returned with his father to work on the windows. He took advantage of his lunch break to go for a walk with Lisa.

  “Anything happen yesterday?” he asked anxiously as soon as they were alone.

  She shook her head. “No, it was pretty quiet.” She hesitated, then added, “But things sure got out of hand after you left Saturday night.” Speaking quickly, she told him the story of the mysterious piano playing and the attack of the weeping woman.

  Brian’s face was grim, and when she finished he told her again that he thought she should get out of the old house.

  “Wouldn’t I love to,” she answered bitterly. “I’ve been wanting to leave since the day we got here.” She gave Brian a quick smile. “At least, until last Friday, when you showed up. But I told you what my father said. He thinks I was just having a bad dream the other night. If I press it, he’ll probably figure I’m making things up because I want to go home. Like I said, he believes there’s a scientific explanation for everything. And my grandmother is just as bad. Hard as a rock. Of course, she was a geologist. Talk about dealing with reality!” Lisa giggled. “The kids on campus used to call her The Great Stone Face. They also called her Rocky.”

  Brian looked at her for a second, then began to smile. “Rocky Miles. Not bad!”

  “I figured it would appeal to your sick sense of humor,” said Lisa. “Gramma was such a tough grader they called her course the Rocky Miles Endurance Test.”

  Brian’s smiled broadened. “I bet no one took it for granite.”

  Lisa rolled her eyes but refused to groan. “But you want to know something weird?” she said. “I think Gramma does believe me—or at least some part of her does. You should have seen her face when I was telling Dad about the ghost.” She frowned, then added in frustration, “I don’t get it.”

  “Maybe she knows more than she’s telling,” suggested Brian.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you said she used to summer here, right?”

  Lisa nodded.

  Brian looked away, as if he were embarrassed. Then he looked directly into her eyes. “I’ve been doing a little asking around. My mother told me that there was an awful tragedy in your house once. She wouldn’t tell me exactly what happened, though. I couldn’t figure out if she didn’t know, or just didn’t want me to think she was gossiping. But I got the impression it’s part of the village folklore that something horrible happened here a long time ago.” He shrugged. “Terrible tragedy, haunted house. Every town has something like it. Only it seems like this one is the real thing!”

  “Great,” moaned Lisa. “Why me?”

  She grabbed a low-hanging branch and pulled down on it. It was hard to believe in ghosts on a sunny day like this. She looked down the road, a lovely country lane. The ocean air was sweet and clean, and the breeze rustled through Brian’s blond hair in a way she found fantastically attractive. She let the branch support her weight as she swayed back and forth, wondering what her grandmother was hiding.

  An hour later, Lisa was leaning against another tree, the old oak in the front yard, and watching her grandmother. Brian was back on his ladder, working away at the windows. He had made one more pun about their “spirited discussion,” then had withdrawn his hand from hers and given her a quick kiss before he ran up the driveway. His father had been standing by the house, looking at his watch and frowning. Lisa hoped she had
n’t gotten Brian into trouble.

  Her grandmother was sitting on the porch swing, reading. Lisa smiled. The older woman was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The shirt, a gift from one of her graduate students when she had retired, said “The Great Stone Face” in large black letters across the front. Dr. Miles sat cross-legged on the swing, the book perched between her knees. With her head down, it would be easy to look at her and think she was a college student studying for a summer exam. From this distance only her white hair, done up in an old-fashioned bun, gave her away.

  Brian had urged Lisa to talk to her grandmother, to see if she would open up about what had happened here so long ago.

  Lisa hesitated. Gramma Miles was a dear, as sweet as could be when no one was crossing her. But it was not wise to press her. She had developed a sharp tongue in the classroom. She claimed it was partly a result of being one of the first women in a very male-dominated field. Whatever the reason, that sharpness often strayed over into her everyday life.

  “Well, sticks and stones and all that,” muttered Lisa as she tried to convince herself that finding out what was going on in the old house was too important to let herself be intimidated by the fear of a few pointed comments.

  Trying to appear casual she started toward the porch.

  Dr. Miles looked up as Lisa climbed the steps. Setting down her book, the old woman peered at her granddaughter over the rim of her glasses.

  “Mind if I sit down?” asked Lisa, gesturing toward the swing.

  Mrs. Miles smiled. “Not at all. Glad to have you.”

  Lisa settled in next to her grandmother, then reached over and took the book from her lap. She grinned. Most of the women on the beach were reading whatever novel was on top of the current bestseller list. Not her grandmother. She was totally absorbed in Oil-Bearing Properties of Devonian Shale: A Research Analysis, by Dr. Edgar Martinson.

  “Looks fascinating,” said Lisa drily.

  Her grandmother chuckled. “It is, for an old rockhound like me.” She patted Lisa on the knee. “Now, I know you’re very fond of me. I also know that you almost never sit down just to talk.”

  When Lisa started to protest her grandmother said, “Oh, baloney. It doesn’t bother me that you came to sit with me for a reason. But don’t try to pretend it isn’t so. You’ve got other things on your mind, and so have I. Right now, I would guess that whatever you have on your mind is something you think I can help with. So out with it. What’s up?”

  Lisa looked at her grandmother and thought what an odd mix she was, sometimes brusque and sometimes tender, sometimes strictly business and sometimes very silly. She liked that about her.

  Steeling herself, trying not to let her voice quiver, she said abruptly, “I want to know what’s going on here. Tell me what you know.”

  It was as if a curtain had been pulled across her grandmother’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  Lisa got angry. “Don’t pretend you don’t know, Gramma. Ever since we started that automatic writing, things have been weird in this house. And it’s not coming from me!” she added defiantly, remembering what her grandmother had said about poltergeist activity.

  “Lisa, you will watch your tone of voice when you speak to me,” said Dr. Miles sharply.

  Lisa faltered. “I… I’m sorry. But that doesn’t change the question, Gramma. I want to know what’s going on.”

  Dr. Miles gave Lisa an icy glare. “What’s going on is this: Everyone here is under a great deal of pressure because I put us into a difficult situation. Your father has waited years to have this chance to write. Now that he does have it, he’s terribly worried about whether or not he can actually do it. Your mother is dealing with the fact that she is forty-some years old and has never developed a career. She sees Carrie becoming independent and knows she won’t really be needed much longer. Spending the summer in the same house with a pair of professors like your father and me only makes things that much harder on her. She doesn’t like being the only adult here without a paying occupation. Of course, that was her choice. I urged her to complete school. But she was as headstrong as I am. Sometimes I think she dropped out of college just to rebel against me.”

  Lisa stared. This kind of truth about the family was not at all what she had been after.

  “Of course, I’m slowly losing my mind because I can’t stand being retired,” continued Dr. Miles. “And you just plain don’t want to be here. Carrie’s the only one without a reason to be upset, and I imagine the rest of us are in such a state we’re making life miserable for her, too. So. You want to know what’s going on? There are five people in this house under a lot of strain and they’re starting to show some psychic manifestations of it. Or do you think we’re actually receiving visits from the spirit world?”

  The tone in which she asked the question made the possibility seem so utterly ridiculous that Lisa found herself wondering if that really was what she believed after all.

  “I don’t know,” she said at last. Then, gathering her courage, she added, “But I do know you had an awfully strange expression on your face the night that ghost chased me up the stairs.”

  Her grandmother’s eyes grew hard, and suddenly “The Great Stone Face” seemed a perfect description for her. “Lisa, I am a scientist. I don’t like to talk about nonsense!”

  That was it. End of conversation. Lisa knew there wasn’t a chance of getting anything else out of her grandmother. She sighed and rose from the swing. “Thanks, Gramma,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

  Dr. Miles had opened her book. “Not at all, dear. Come and talk to me anytime.”

  Lisa felt as if she were going to explode.

  Tuesday was much like Monday. Brian and his father finished the work on the house, and Brian asked Lisa if she would like to go out for a ride and get something to eat that night. They had a lovely evening, and avoided talking about the house at all.

  Her grandmother acted as if the previous day’s conversation had never taken place.

  Carrie, too, seemed to have forgotten that anything had happened. Lisa knew that wasn’t really so. She had learned over the last few years that Carrie would bury things inside, worry about them, chew them over, all the while acting as if they were of no concern at all—only to let them out in a sudden storm of anger or tears days later.

  Her father settled down. With the rain finally over and the work on the house completed, he began to make solid progress on his book. His mood seemed to improve with every page he finished.

  Mrs. Burton spent time on the beach, reading and sunning herself.

  All in all, it seemed as if everything had returned to normal. Lisa should have been very happy. With Brian’s arrival on the scene the summer had taken on a new glow, and she was no longer aching to go home.

  But she couldn’t easily forget being chased by a ghost. Uncomfortable memories lingered in her mind. She waited with dread for the next appearance, the next manifestation of whatever was haunting the old house.

  “Relax,” said Carrie as they went to bed Tuesday night. “I think it’s over.”

  Wednesday morning the puddles began to appear.

  Chapter Eight

  Where There’s Smoke

  Lisa woke with the vague awareness that something was wrong. Drifting up from the deepest sleep she had had in several nights, she finally realized that her father was bellowing somewhere downstairs.

  She rolled over. Carrie was next to her, her hair damp. Lisa frowned. She detected a strange odor in the air. She couldn’t quite place it. But it wasn’t right; it didn’t belong in the bedroom. She sniffed curiously, but the smell seemed to be drifting away.

  Downstairs her father’s voice was growing louder.

  Carrie sat up and stretched. “What’s going on?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

  “I don’t know. Daddy’s on the warpath about something.”

  “Boy, the cease-fire didn’t last long, did it? Do you think we should go see what’s wrong, or lie low u
ntil it blows over?”

  “I don’t know. It’s probably safer to stay here. But my curiosity is killing me!”

  “Mine, too!” said Carrie. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and grabbed her robe. “Let’s see what’s up.”

  Martin Burton was standing in the kitchen, clutching a sheaf of soggy papers and roaring like a wounded bear. “You tell me!” he cried, shaking the papers in his wife’s face. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  When the girls entered the room he turned to them and cried, “Do you two know anything about this?”

  “About what?” asked Lisa.

  “This! My notes for my next chapter! I spent all yesterday afternoon working on them. Now they’re soaking wet!”

  Lisa and Carrie looked at each other. “We never go near your office, Daddy,” said Carrie. “It’s not worth the risk.”

  Lisa saw her grandmother try to hide a smile behind her coffee cup. The dig went by Mr. Burton unnoticed.

  “Well, somebody did something in there,” he growled. “When I went in this morning I found a puddle on the desk. A puddle! And all the work I did yesterday was sitting in the middle of it, sopping wet. I would have blamed Smoky, but he was out all night. Besides, it was the wrong color.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lisa.

  “The water was green—almost as if it had algae in it. And it smelled like a pond.”

  Dr. Miles put down her coffee cup with a clatter.

  Lisa felt a little twist in her stomach. Pond water. That was what she had smelled when she first woke this morning. She looked at Carrie. Her head was still damp. Lisa had a terrible urge to bury her face in her sister’s hair and see if she could still smell that odd odor. Why did she even suspect it wasn’t perspiration that had dampened Carrie’s head? She restrained herself. Her parents would really think she was going off the deep end if she started sniffing her sister’s hair.

  “I’m awfully sorry, Daddy,” said Lisa with genuine sympathy. “I don’t have any idea what happened. But I’d be glad to type up some of the pages for you, if that would help. I could use the practice anyway.”