Rag Doll in the Attic

by Jan Fields

  “I meant that as a plural ‘you,’” he said.

  Alice muttered, “Sure you did.”

  Ian turned his bewildered gaze toward Alice. “Consider me an official escort for both of you.”

  “Well, I’m glad to have you along,” Annie said as the three of them began trudging up the hill again.

  “Exactly why are you battling a storm on a road bordered by a cliff?” Ian asked.

  “We’re collecting atmosphere,” Alice said.

  “Atmosphere?”

  “For Jim Parker’s book,” she explained. “That way he can include firsthand details about what this creepy walk is like.”

  “Why isn’t Mr. Parker here collecting his own details instead of sending you out here?” Ian asked, his voice heavy with disapproval. “He should at least walk along with you.”

  “Jim walks with two prosthetic legs,” Alice said her voice rising slightly with anger. “I suspect this road would be considerably more dangerous for him than for two perfectly capable women. And he didn’t send me, I volunteered.”

  “Please don’t fight,” Annie implored. She then paused, feeling a rush of déjà vu at her words. “This weather is miserable enough. We’re doing a favor for a friend who couldn’t do it for himself.”

  Ian didn’t respond for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I didn’t know about Mr. Parker’s condition. I was worried about both of you.”

  “You certainly take the job of protecting your constituency very seriously,” Alice said dryly. “And it was creepy out here.”

  “I especially noticed the trees when we started out,” Annie said. “You should mention that to Jim. The wind on this peninsula has twisted the trees until they look very menacing in the flashlight beam.” Annie found talking about the details made them seem a little less scary. Then she stopped and stared at her friend. “I thought you were supposed to be using a recorder to keep track of these spooky details.”

  “I was, but … ” Alice paused and grinned sheepishly as she pulled a small recorder from her pocket, “ … I forgot to buy batteries for it. Those things eat up batteries really fast. Besides, I can remember all the details. Scary trees, scary howling wind, scary mayor sneaking up behind you,” Alice said, ticking the items off on her fingers.

  Ian reached over and folded down one finger. “Not sneaking. I yelled for you the whole time.”

  “That’s true,” Annie said. “Alice suggested I was imagining things when I heard the wind call my name.”

  “Sorry about that,” Alice said.

  “Well, I did imagine the weeping willow in my yard looked like a swamp monster,” Annie said. “So you probably weren’t being totally unfair.”

  “Swamp monster?” Ian said, laughing.

  Annie gave him a playful shove. “You should look at one in the dark sometime.”

  “After you planted the swamp monster image?” Ian said. “I’ll never go near one again.”

  “Our brave hero,” Alice said, and Annie was glad to hear her friend’s normal warm teasing tone.

  The rain picked up again, and both women hurried to pull their hoods back over their heads before they were drenched. They walked in silence for a while, saving their breath for the steep road. Then suddenly, lightning split the sky, and Annie saw the hulking outline of buildings and knew they were almost to the top of the road.

  “I thought it wasn’t supposed to be an electrical storm,” she shouted to Alice.

  “Blame the weatherman,” Alice shouted back. “At least we made it.”

  They reached the small parking lot at the end of the road. Annie played her light over the raised flower bed and stone benches that had been so charming in the daylight. Now they mostly offered obstacles to fall over.

  “Jim!” Alice bellowed, but the howling wind blew the words back into her face.

  If Jim answered, it must have been snatched away by the gale that whistled through the buildings. They swept their flashlight beams over the parking lot and the strip of grassy lawn beside it, looking for any sign of him. They spotted his rental car at the edge of the parking lot. “He’s here somewhere,” Alice said, turning her flashlight toward the hulking buildings.

  “We’ll find him,” Annie said.

  “Maybe we should split up?” Ian suggested reluctantly. “We could find him quicker that way. If this is turning into an electrical storm, I don’t think we should be out in it any longer than we have to.”

  The women nodded and each picked their direction after a brief discussion. Ian headed toward the cliff’s edge in case Jim was shooting photos of the rocky shore in the storm. Alice headed in toward the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, in case Jim had finished shooting and was taking shelter. And Annie headed toward the lighthouse itself.

  She’d walked barely a few steps from her friends before she felt totally alone. The sound of the rain on her hood drowned out every other noise. And her flashlight beam struggled to push back the darkness worsened by the driving rain.

  As she walked, she imagined again the terrifying experience her mother must have had up here with her friends, especially when Jenny ran away from the others. It would be impossible to find anyone in the crushing darkness. Finally, Annie’s flashlight beam swept across the stone blocks of the lighthouse.

  She turned and began circling the lighthouse, keeping the wall on her right side so that she didn’t lose track of it and wander off. “Jim!” she shouted over and over until her throat felt dry and rough. She paused after each call to listen for a response, but with the drumming rain, Jim could be yelling to her from a few yards away, and she would never hear him.

  She stepped closer to the lighthouse and rested her hand on the rough, wet rock. That’s what Annie’s mother and her friends had come up here to do. They just wanted to touch the lighthouse and prove they were brave. A simple thing, and it may have killed little Jenny.

  Annie’s fingers probed the crevices of the rock. Had Jenny really died in whatever accident her mother’s journal hinted at? Annie didn’t know for sure. Certainly something bad had happened, but her mother didn’t say Jenny had died. It seemed likely, but she could have gotten badly hurt. Jenny’s big sister might have felt just as angry about a terrible injury. Annie decided that tomorrow she was definitely going to find out what happened and who Jenny was.

  The pounding rain on Annie’s hood stopped so suddenly that she wondered for a split second if she’d simply gone deaf. The rain was taking another break. Annie picked up her pace, eager to finish the circle of the lighthouse and find someone so she wasn’t alone in the dark anymore.

  The ground under her feet felt like sodden sponge, splashing with each step, and then clinging to her boot a moment before letting go with a wet sucking sound. The wet slurping reminded Annie again of monsters, and she missed the rain drowning out the other sounds. She shook her head ruefully. She was entirely too old to entertain quite so much imagination.

  Then she heard a giggle. Just up ahead someone had laughed. Someone young. Annie froze. Was her imagination working overtime again?

  16

  Annie shielded the beam of her flashlight with her hand, and then slowed down and crept forward, following the lighthouse wall. She heard another giggle and the definite sound of voices. If she was having some kind of hallucination, it certainly was persistent.

  As she rounded the curve, she spotted two teenage girls in sodden jeans and muddy sneakers. Each wore a dark hoodie that turned their faces into round pale circles as she turned the flashlight toward them. Both girls screamed. Annie recognized one of the round-eyed faces immediately. “Vanessa?” she said.

  “Mrs. Dawson?” Kate’s daughter shielded her eyes and tried to see past the flashlight. Annie lowered the beam and walked closer to the girls.

  “Busted!” the second girl said in a loud whisper.

  “I recognize you too, Mackenzie,” Annie said. Vanessa and Mackenzie went to high school together and had become good friends during a teen need
lework project the Hook and Needle Club had gotten involved in a month before. Clearly their interests had taken a turn toward ghost stories. In their matching sodden outfits with their long brown hair stuffed into hoodies, they looked like sisters.

  “We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Mackenzie protested. “We just wanted to touch the lighthouse, and then we were going straight home. I swear.”

  “So did you touch it?” Annie asked. “Because we’re definitely going to do the ‘straight home’ part.”

  “Not yet,” Vanessa said sheepishly. “We were working up to it. We thought we might have seen a ghost … maybe. And we ran and got a little lost next to the buildings. Then we only just found the lighthouse when your flashlight almost gave us heart attacks.”

  “It’s just a lighthouse, girls,” Annie said, reaching out and resting her hand on the rough stones again. “There’s no ghost or curse. It’s just a lighthouse on a dangerous road that you should not be walking on in a storm.”

  “Oh?” Mackenzie said with a grin. “How did you get up here?”

  Annie decided not to get into a discussion of her own poor decisions. “Have you two seen anyone else up here? An older man who walks with a limp?”

  “Yeah,” Vanessa said, breathlessly. She glanced nervously back the way of the other buildings. “He was tromping around the porch to the lighthouse keeper’s cottage. You mean he’s a real person?”

  “Of course he’s real,” Mackenzie said as she rolled her eyes. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “Don’t pretend you weren’t scared,” Vanessa said, putting her hands on her hips. “You thought he might be the lighthouse keeper’s ghost too. I wasn’t the only one running.”

  Annie suppressed a laugh. She looked forward to telling Jim Parker that he’d been mistaken for a ghost. “OK, touch the lighthouse quickly, and I’ll take you to meet the lighthouse keeper’s ghost. Maybe I can borrow his car and take you both home.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that, Mrs. Dawson,” Vanessa said earnestly. “We don’t mind walking.”

  “I mind,” Annie said. “That road is dangerous enough going up. Let’s go.”

  The two girls slapped hands against the side of the lighthouse and then tromped along beside Annie. “Do you have to tell my mom?” Vanessa asked. “She’s going to freak. She can be way overprotective sometimes.”

  “Mine too,” Mackenzie muttered. “I’ll be grounded until I’m old and feeble.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Annie said, weakening slightly. After all, her reason for walking to the lighthouse in a storm might have been more sensible, but it was still probably not a good idea. She certainly understood the lure of adventure, especially as a teenager. Her grandparents used to blame their graying hair on the stunts she and Alice pulled as teens.

  They walked without speaking; the only sounds were the squish of each step on the sodden ground. Then Annie heard more splashing and sloshing, only coming ahead of them. She smiled and picked up her pace, ready to rejoin her friends. The light of her flashlight met the glow coming around the side of the lighthouse, and she heard the mayor’s deep smooth voice. “Annie?”

  “I’m here,” she said, “and I’ve made a discovery!”

  The girls giggled at that, and Annie heard a questioning sound from Ian. Then they rounded the last bit of curve, and she could see the dark outline of her friend. “Vanessa and Mackenzie decided to brave the curse,” Annie said. “They said they saw Jim at the lighthouse keeper’s cottage. Is he still there?”

  “He is,” Ian said. “Alice is with him. I came to track you down.”

  “I thought I would ask to borrow his rental car and drive these ladies home,” Annie said.

  “That sounds like a job for the mayor,” Ian said. “We can have a talk about keeping my constituents safe. But you can definitely ride along too.” He added the last part with a grin, his white teeth flashing in the dim light.

  “Um, Mr. Mayor,” Mackenzie said. “If we promise to never do anything like this again … ”

  “Ever!” Vanessa added vehemently.

  “ … could you not tell on us?” Mackenzie finished.

  “That doesn’t sound very fair to your parents,” Ian said. “I expect they would want to know about this.”

  Both girls drooped like wilted roses, and Annie felt like a jailor leading two condemned prisoners as they trudged the rest of the way to the cottage. She was delighted to see the porch was now lit. The cozy glow warmed the night and helped chase away the last of the creepiness from the experience.

  She spotted Alice and Jim leaning against the porch rail with their heads together peering at the preview screen on the back of his camera. Jim looked up at the approaching group, and Annie saw him nudge Alice.

  “Looks like you picked up some extra adventurers,” Alice called. “Who are your soggy new friends?”

  “Oh, you’ll recognize this pair,” Annie said. The girls looked up then, and waved weakly.

  “Vanessa! Mackenzie! Hi,” Alice said. “Did you see any ghosts?”

  “Only him,” Mackenzie said, nodding at Jim.

  Jim laughed. “I’m not dead yet, young lady.”

  “This is Jim Parker,” Alice said. “He’s researching the lighthouse and the legend. So, did you two touch the lighthouse?”

  The girls nodded. Then Vanessa said, “Mrs. Dawson touched it first.”

  Alice and Jim raised their eyebrows and looked at Annie at the same moment, which made her laugh. “I was just showing them that nothing would happen,” she said.

  Ian spoke up, his voice a bit strained. “I was hoping we could borrow your car and take these girls home.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Jim said. He seemed totally oblivious to the mayor’s sudden change in mood. “We definitely won’t all fit in the car. While you’re gone, I can retake a few shots that didn’t come out like I’d like. I should be done by the time you get back.”

  “I’ll stay here with Jim,” Alice added.

  “Fine,” Ian said.

  Annie looked up at him curiously, noticing the strain in his jaw. She turned to Jim and said, “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” Jim said.

  But Annie could plainly see there was a problem. Had something happened while she was splashing around in the dark? Ian herded the girls toward the small lighthouse parking lot, and they climbed into Jim’s rental car. Annie saw he’d thrown towels over the seats, but she suspected they wouldn’t help much with the water dripping from all of them.

  Ian left his door open while he swept the hood from his head and pulled off the wet watch cap. He wrung it out over the gravel of the parking lot before laying it on the floor at Annie’s feet. She smiled at Ian’s hat hair. Small tufts of salt and pepper stood up in spots, giving him a rakish look. She considered mentioning it, but the stiffness in Ian’s jaw made her nervous. What was wrong?

  Annie sat quietly while Ian drove down the steep road, though the two girls whispered and occasionally giggled in the backseat. As they bumped gently out onto Ocean Drive, Ian finally spoke, “Now that I’ve walked up the lighthouse road in the rain, I know exactly how foolish it is. You risked getting seriously hurt or killed.”

  “We were really careful,” Vanessa said earnestly.

  “And we had flashlights,” Mackenzie added.

  “And you had a storm and loose gravel and the potential for being struck by lightning,” Ian said. “What would have happened if the flashlights had gone out, and you had wandered off the side of the road?”

  The girls didn’t answer and the silence in the car stretched. Finally Vanessa spoke in a near whisper. “We won’t do it again.”

  “I hope not,” Ian said, glancing sternly at them in the rearview mirror. “I’m glad you didn’t pay too high a price for doing it this time.”

  “Um,” Mackenzie said, “just how high is the price going to be this time? I mean, are you going to tell on us?”

  Ian sighed. “You
’re not children, so here’s what I’m going to do. If you will both volunteer to help with at least three community projects this summer, and if I don’t hear of any more bad decisions by the two of you, this can stay between us. You can start with helping out at the library. Valerie Duffy was in my office just last week looking for ideas to increase teen participation. It looks like you ladies will be providing a little boost.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vanessa said eagerly. “We can do that.”

  “Totally,” Mackenzie agreed.

  “And if I catch you two doing anything else foolish, all bets are off,” Ian said. “I’ll include this incident when I haul you in front of your parents for the next one.”

  “You won’t catch us again,” Mackenzie promised.

  Watching the girls in her visor mirror, Annie saw Vanessa nudge Mackenzie hard and give her a look. “Because we won’t do anything else stupid,” Vanessa said. “I promise.” Mackenzie grinned back and shrugged.

  “OK. Don’t make me sorry I agreed to it,” Ian said. “I expect to see the list of projects you’re going to take part in by the end of the week. You can drop it by my office.”

  “Yes, sir,” the girls said together, clearly relieved.

  The rest of the ride to their houses passed quickly. Ian waited at the curb until each of the girls was safely inside. Then he turned around to head back toward the lighthouse. “Do you want me to drop you at Grey Gables?” he asked.

  “Actually, I’d like you to tell me what you’re so angry about,” Annie said.

  Ian didn’t answer for a moment as he stared straight ahead into the night. Finally, he blew out a frustrated breath. “I don’t like Jim Parker talking you and Alice into something as foolish as walking that road in the rain,” he said. “It was irresponsible.”

  “Alice and I are grown women,” Annie said. “We made our own decisions.”

  “Then why were you on a loose gravel road in the pitch dark chasing some ridiculous legend like a kid?” he asked, his voice raising slightly.

  “We weren’t chasing a legend,” Annie said. “We were doing research.”