Ghosts of Rathburn Park

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Three

  WHEN MATT STARTED OUT to look for the Palace, he’d had to circle around to avoid the ball field, where a bunch of the picnickers were choosing up sides for a game. The baseball game was another good reason to take a quick hike. There’d be plenty of time for the people who’d hired Dad to find out that while the big good-looking Hamilton kid was practically a world-class athlete, the other one, the skinny one named Matthew, was the type that always got chosen last when sides were being picked for any physical activity.

  At the far edge of the parking area Matt found a well-defined trail between two big trees and started up it at a run. He’d been planning to go far enough to see the old house and then come right back. But it was then that the Robin Hood thing had happened, and he’d pretty much forgotten all about looking for the so-called Palace.

  It was just like him, letting his crazy imagination get him into embarrassing situations. Like the time when he had been doing David’s fight with Goliath and wound up slingshotting a rock through the neighbor’s picture window. When that happened, Justin had come up with a lot of new comments about bonehead tricks, and Matt could just imagine what he’d have to say about this one.

  “Just like the Hamster, getting himself lost on an important day like this.” Matthew pictured Justin’s face as he said it. And he could see other family faces too, his dad’s and mom’s and Courtney’s. Unhappy, embarrassed faces that showed how they agreed with Justin, even though they wouldn’t exactly say so. At least not in front of a bunch of strangers. Matt groaned just thinking about it.

  So here he was deep in the forest, leaning on his walking stick and cringing as he thought about what might happen next. Shaking his head, he lurched into a run and went on running until, wobbly-legged and breathless, he staggered to a stop. What was the point of running when he might very well be going in the wrong direction? Which would mean that the farther he went, the harder it would be for them to find him.

  He started imagining another scene then. The search party. Dozens of frantic-looking Timber City citizens trudging through the forest, searching for the bonehead son of their new city manager.

  In a way it was a slightly comforting thought, because with all those searchers in the woods, someone, perhaps someone with a bloodhound, would be sure to find him. For a moment he imagined an interesting bloodhound scene. An apparently lifeless Matt was lying on the ground while an enormous slobbery bloodhound sniffed at his poor unconscious face. It was better than dying of thirst and starvation, but only a little bit better actually, when you considered how embarrassing it was going to be.

  What it would mean was that everyone in town would know, right off the bat, what a loser Matt Hamilton was—and probably always would be. Clenching his jaw determinedly, he started to run again, slowed to a hesitant, uncertain walk, and collapsed in a heap with his face buried in his hands.

  It felt very late now, maybe three or even four o’clock. It had been right after lunch when he’d started out, drifting away from the picnic table where his dad was still talking to a bunch of people. He hadn’t exactly snuck away but, on the other hand, he couldn’t remember telling anyone he was going. And now that he thought about it, he realized that nobody had seemed to notice.

  So what should he do? Go on running, probably in the wrong direction? Or stay right where he was and wait to be rescued—and scolded or laughed at? Probably a lot of both.

  Afterward Matt couldn’t remember deciding whether to go on or to stay put. At least not for long enough to do anything about it. Sitting there on the prickly needles, he made up his mind at least a dozen times to get up and start walking. But then, before he could act on his decision, he changed his mind and did nothing at all. Nothing except for some crying and a little praying, but not much of either one. Not much crying, because he really had outgrown that sort of thing. And not much praying, because the whole mess was so much like all his other stupid mistakes that he was kind of embarrassed to call it to God’s attention.

  Time passed and the rays of sunshine sifting down through the gigantic trees became dimmer and more slanted. Obviously the sun was moving toward the west, and if Matthew Hamilton had been anything like his brother or, for that matter, like anyone else in his family, he would undoubtedly have known whether walking west would take him back to the picnic grounds. But that wasn’t the kind of thing he’d ever studied up on. He squirmed, imagining a voice, a sarcastic voice, saying, Oh no. Not Hamster Hamilton. Sure, he can tell you what happened at Waterloo, and how old Alexander the Great was when he died. That is, if anyone ever wanted to know. But don’t bother asking him anything useful, like how to get in out of the rain. Or, in this case, out of the forest.

  With his face still buried in his hands, Matt suddenly stopped squirming. He was imagining again. But this time it wasn’t about evil kings or wolf packs, but something almost as crazy. Crazier, really. What he was imagining now was that something was coming toward him. Moving very near and getting nearer. No, not imagining. Really hearing. Something was rustling the undergrowth right behind him. And then, even before he could turn to look, he felt the air stir as it went past. Panicking, thinking wolf, or even grizzly bear, Matt jerked his hands away from his face just in time to see something—a small animal—trotting down the trail. To see a small, hairy creature move past him and…

  “Hey,” he gasped. “Hey, dog.” He wasn’t sure, but he hoped that was what it was. “Come back here, dog.”

  It stopped a few feet away, and Matthew could see it pretty clearly. It really was, it had to be, a dog. Not a wolf—too little. And not the right size or color to be a coyote. What it seemed to be was a small, dirty-white mutt, with shaggy hair and pointed ears. When Matthew called, it stopped and turned to look at him. It was panting, a red tongue lolling out of its mouth, its tail wagging gently. It seemed friendly enough, but when Matt staggered to his feet it moved away, on down the trail, and without knowing why, Matt followed it.

  It wasn’t until later that he asked himself why he’d chosen to follow the dog. There was no reason to think it would lead him back toward the park. Maybe it was true that he knew how to speak Dog, as his old friend, Mrs. McDougall, always said, and the little dog had in some mysterious way invited him to follow. Not that he’d noticed anything particularly inviting about its behavior. But for whatever reason, he hurried after the dog as it trotted away, and even though it wouldn’t let him catch up, it stopped when he tripped and fell and waited for him.

  They went on and on, zigging and zagging down the narrow trail. It seemed a long way, and yet somehow, an amazingly short time before the trees began to thin, the light increased, and there in the distance he saw the broken steeple of the burned-out church.

  Matt stopped, staring in joyful surprise, and then started to run. It wasn’t until he burst out into the meadow where the baseball game was still going on that he remembered the dog. Remembered, stopped to look, and found that it was gone. The dog had disappeared.

  Four

  THE DOG HAD BEEN there, only a few yards away, and then it had been gone. Matt was surprised at the suddenness of its disappearance, but he was almost more amazed when he walked out to the edge of the baseball diamond and nothing happened. Nobody seemed surprised to see him, and there was no special attention paid, not even by Justin, who was pitching, as usual.

  The players of all ages, three or four men and lots of boys and girls, went right on playing ball. Walking past first base, Matt got a few waves and “Hi”s but that was all. Nobody said anything like “Thank God! He wasn’t lost after all.” Or even “Look! He’s back.”

  In the picnic area some of the people, women mostly, were cleaning up while some others, mostly men, were playing horseshoes. A few others were still sitting around the tables, talking and drinking coffee.

  Matt made his way through the crowd feeling—he hardly knew what. Relieved at first, and then confused, and finally a little bit angry. Apparently nobody had even noticed that he was missin
g.

  “Oh, there you are,” his mother said as he made his way past the barbecue pit, where the women were packing away the remaining food. “Is the game over?”

  Matt said, “I guess not,” and went on past. His father was still sitting at the head table, surrounded by some of the other important citizens. He was talking, and his thinnish, bearded face was wearing the solemn expression that Justin called Dad’s Public Countenance—solemn, but not worried or angry. When he finally did notice his younger son, all he did was motion for him to come over, and go on talking.

  “So, it seems to me that we need to ask ourselves how to apply that approach to the Timber City civic environment,” Matt’s dad was saying. His listeners all nodded and smiled. It wasn’t until then that some of them began to notice Matt.

  A big man with a kind of waterfall of double chins that spilled down over his collar said, “Well then, young man. I take it the Hardacre tour group has finally returned.”

  Matt didn’t understand. “The Hardacre…?” he was starting to ask, when another man, this one wearing a striped shirt and red suspenders, who turned out to be Mr. Hardacre, said, “Yes, sir. Mrs. Hardacre’s famous local history tour. Tells people all they’d ever want to know about the town of Rathburn and the Great Fire. Mighty interesting, she tells me. Hope you didn’t miss it.”

  Matt smiled uneasily. “Guess I did,” he said. “I was just…” He motioned vaguely and then, noticing that they’d all pretty much stopped listening, he eased off, sat down at the end of the table, and thought about what had happened. After a while he figured it out. If anyone had noticed that he was missing, they must have thought he was either on the tour or playing baseball. He guessed he was pretty lucky—but he couldn’t help wondering how long it would have been before anyone had noticed that he wasn’t doing either one.

  So the way it turned out, he hadn’t been the family bonehead this time. This time he’d just been…He shrugged. Just kind of unnoticeable. A little better than being a bonehead, but not a whole lot.

  So anyway, that explained it. The only part he couldn’t even start to explain was the dog, and on the way home he decided not to try. He did think about it, though, without meaning to. About the dog he’d seen in the forest, and then about dogs in general. And of course that led back to Mrs. McDougall.

  Old Mrs. McDougall had been a kind of neighborhood character back in Six Palms. Or, as some people put it, a neighborhood weirdo. Actually she was just a fierce-looking old lady who lived with a lot of dogs way out at the end of Bank Street. She’d had this rundown old house with a high fence around it and, inside the fence, every kind of dog you could possibly imagine. Everyone said Mrs. McDougall trained the dogs to be killers, because a lot of them ran around throwing themselves at the fence, snarling and howling, when anyone came near. When anyone came near, that is, except Matthew Hamilton.

  Matt had been a little kid when he found out that most of Mrs. McDougall’s dogs liked him and the few that didn’t pretty much ignored him. Maybe it was because he didn’t tease them by throwing things at them through the fence the way a lot of other kids did. Anyway, after a while, Mrs. McDougall started ignoring him too instead of yelling at him to go away. And finally, after he’d been visiting with his special friends through the fence for a year or so, she began to let him inside. But it wasn’t until his last visit with the dogs, just before the Hamiltons left Six Palms, that Mrs. McDougall told Matt about her theory that he was a kindred spirit and what that meant. She’d also said he mustn’t grieve about leaving Shadow, his all-time favorite McDougall dog, because she was sure he would have other dog friends before long.

  Even when he told her about Courtney’s allergies, she said that wouldn’t keep him from having dog friends in the future, any more than it had stopped him in Six Palms. Leaving Mrs. McDougall and her dogs had been one of the worst things about moving to Timber City.

  Thinking about Mrs. McDougall’s dogs had always been a good way to take his mind off stuff he didn’t want to think about, and it still seemed to be working. Several hours had passed and Matt had pretty much put the whole getting-lost episode out of his mind before the subject came up again. The Hamiltons were all back home at the time, sitting around the table having soup and toast. Nobody was very hungry because they’d had so much to eat at the picnic, but Mom decided that what they wanted was a bowl of soup and they all should sit down and have it together.

  That was when Courtney, who had gone on the tour of the ruins of Rathburn, started talking about what Mrs. Hardacre had told the people who went with her. “You know people aren’t ever supposed to go there except with her tour because the land the town is on still belongs to the Rathburn family and they don’t want anyone to go there except on the tour. There are No Trespassing signs all over the place. It’s a really terrible story,” Courtney said, “and Mrs. Hardacre knows all about it. Like who lived in the houses that burned down, and how many people died.”

  “Yes, dear. I think we’ve all heard about it,” Mom said. Matthew could tell that Mom was thinking that what happened in the old town was not going to be good dinner-table conversation. Mom was very strict about dinner-table topics that were what she called unappetizing. But Matt couldn’t help being curious. Except for what Lance had said about the ruins being haunted, he hadn’t heard much at all. And what he’d seen from a distance, the roofless walls and ruined tower of an old stone church, didn’t seem particularly unappetizing. But when he tried to question Courtney, Mom interrupted him.

  “That’s enough, Matthew. You shouldn’t have brought it up, Courtney.” She turned back to Matt. “So, Justin says you weren’t playing ball.” Her eyebrow went up questioningly. “And you weren’t with your sister on Mrs. Hardacre’s tour?”

  “Yeah.” Justin was suddenly interested. “Where were you all that time, kid?”

  Matt didn’t want to answer. At least he certainly didn’t want to admit that because he’d let his imagination run away with him again he had, for a while at least, been seriously lost. Pointing to his mouth, he pretended to be chewing—chewing and then swallowing—which gave him time to think before he had to answer. Time to come up with something that would sound sensible and not be an actual lie. At last he said, “I went for a walk. On that path that goes right by the old Rathburn house. You know, Justin, the one that guy told us about in the parking lot.”

  Justin shook his head. “I don’t remember Lance saying anything about the Rathburn house.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess you weren’t listening. Anyway, he told me where the path started so I…” He paused and thought for a second before he went on. “So I went up it for a little way. But I didn’t see the house, so I came back.”

  “Must have gone quite a way.” Justin was looking suspicious. “You must have been gone, like, about two hours?”

  Suddenly, without planning to at all, Matthew heard himself asking, “Did you see the dog? Did any of you see a little dog?”

  “Dog? What dog?” Justin said.

  Courtney, who seemed to be about to go tragic about not being allowed to talk about the burned-up town, suddenly came to life. “Was there a dog at the picnic? I didn’t see it.” Courtney had always been absolutely crazy over all the animals she was allergic to, particularly dogs.

  But Matt was biting his tongue, wondering why he’d mentioned the dog and wishing he hadn’t. Now he was stuck with trying to explain the whole thing to the family, when he was still a long way from being able to explain it to himself.

  Just then Dad—who as usual had been thinking about more important things—suddenly joined the conversation. “Yes,” he said to Courtney. “I believe there was a dog. I think Dr. Martin’s family brought their dog. A Pomeranian, I think Mrs. Martin said it was.”

  “Oh, was there? I didn’t see it.” Courtney sounded absolutely devastated. Courtney was like that. She could get amazingly tragic about a lot of things, particularly dogs. Dogs had been one of the biggest disappointments in Courtney�
�s life because she’d always been dying to have one, and she couldn’t because of her allergies. Matt understood his sister’s dog tragedy better than some of the other things she could get worked up about because he’d always been a little bit nuts about dogs too. But at least he’d been able to have fun with the ones at Mrs. McDougall’s, and Courtney couldn’t even do that.

  “Yeah?” Justin asked. “I didn’t see any dog. Where was it?”

  “I didn’t see it either,” Dad said. “I only heard about it from Mrs. Martin. At great length, I might add. I think it was in their car most of the time, and she kept reminding her husband to move the car to keep it in the shade. Mrs. Martin says it isn’t allowed to run around outdoors because of burrs. It gets burrs in its long hair and it bites when they try to comb them out. Yes, indeed, at this point I’m quite an authority on the Martins’ Pomeranian.”

  So then Courtney started asking questions about Pomeranians, and Mom said they were the kind of dog that fashionable ladies used to have sitting on their laps when they had their pictures painted. So Courtney insisted on getting the D volume of the encyclopedia and finding the pages that had pictures of all types of dogs. Then she started having a fit about how a Pomeranian was exactly the kind of dog she had always wanted. And by the time she stopped talking, the soup was finished and Justin had forgotten, at least for the time being, to quiz Matt any more about what he had been doing at the picnic.

  So mentioning the dog hadn’t turned out to be such a bad idea after all. In fact, it was almost as if a fuzzy little dog had gotten Matt out of trouble for a second time that day.

  Five

  THAT EVENING MATT WAITED until Mom and Dad and Justin were busy in Dad’s office before he went looking for Courtney. He was hoping she’d tell him some more about the things she’d learned on the tour. Particularly the things that couldn’t be mentioned at the dinner table. On his way to Courtney’s room he stopped by the office to listen to Mom and Justin argue about what was making the computer say Error Type Eleven every time they tried to get it to send something to the printer. They seemed to have very different ideas about what the problem was, and what they ought to do about it, so the disagreement kept getting louder.