A Haunting Collection

by Mary Downing Hahn

I could hear the fear in her voice, but Dave didn’t seem to notice. “Sure, honey,” he said. “I’ve got work to do in the carriage house, but I can spare you a few minutes before I get started.”

  I stood at the back door and watched them walk across the yard together, her face turned up to his, his bent down toward hers. Mom stood behind me, looking over my shoulder.

  “I don’t know why,” she said, “but Heather seems happier this morning. And last night she really surprised me. She actually let me hug her. Maybe your adventure together at Harper House was just what this family needed to pull it together.”

  I leaned against her, enjoying the feel of her arms around me. “Would you still love me no matter what I did?”

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked.

  “Well . . .” I watched a monarch butterfly fly toward the zinnias growing in a tub near the porch. “Suppose I did something really horrible and I told you about it a long time afterward? Would you hate me?” I pulled away from her so I could see her face.

  Mom smiled, but she seemed a little puzzled. “Are you about to confess to committing a heinous crime?” She made it sound as if she were joking. “You were the one who broke your grandmother’s priceless Ming vase all those years ago!” she laughed.

  “No, Mom. I’m serious.” I studied her eyes, trying to read the expression in them. “Suppose I caused somebody to die. I didn’t mean to; it was an accident. But I was scared to tell you. What would you do if I confessed?”

  Mom brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes, her hand touching me gently. “Molly, you’re not making any sense,” she said slowly.

  “Would you still love me? Would you forgive me?” I heard my voice rise like a child’s. “That’s all I want to know. Do parents love their children no matter what they do?”

  Mom put her arm around me and hugged me. “I’ll always love you, Molly, always—no matter what. You should know that by now.”

  “But how about Dave? Would he?”

  “Dave?” Mom hesitated as if she weren’t sure how Dave fit into all this.

  “Not me. Heather. If Heather did something awful, would he still love her?”

  “Molly,” Mom said, sucking her breath in hard, her eyes darkening with concern. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “The fire—Heather started it by accident, but she thinks it’s her fault her mother died.” The words flew out of me as if a dam had burst. “She’s afraid Dave will hate her if she tells him.”

  “Oh, my God.” Mom leaned against the door frame, her hands pressed to her mouth. “That poor little girl, that poor, poor child. To keep something like that bottled up inside all these years. No wonder she’s been so closed off and untouchable.”

  “She was playing with the stove,” I told Mom. “Somehow a fire started. She hid, and her mother died looking for her, I guess. She told me about it last night when we were trapped in the cellar. I thought she should tell Dave.”

  “Is that why she wanted to go for a walk?” Mom stepped out on the porch and gazed across the lawn. “I don’t see them anywhere,” she said.

  “I gave her the right advice, didn’t I?” I looked past Mom’s still figure toward the graveyard, imagining Heather and Dave sitting near Helen’s grave as she told him about the fire.

  Mom turned back to me, embracing me fiercely. “Of course you did, Molly. Dave will understand.”

  Releasing me, she shook her head. “I never even suspected,” she said, more to herself than to me. “She must have thought we’d all hate her if we knew.”

  “That’s exactly what she did think.”

  “And the ghost—it must have been a projection of her own guilt,” Mom said.

  Before I could think of a good answer, I saw Heather and Dave walking toward us. He was still holding her hand, and they were smiling at each other. When she saw us, Heather pulled away and ran to me, her eyes shining with tears. As Mom hurried to Dave’s side, Heather smiled at me.

  “I told him everything, Molly,” she whispered, “and he still loves me. He knows it was an accident.” Burying her head in my stomach, she knotted her skinny arms around me and squeezed till it hurt.

  A few days later, Plummer’s Funeral Parlor sent a hearse to Saint Swithin’s Graveyard. For the first time in almost forty years, the crows in the oak tree had a funeral to watch.

  Mr. Simmons himself had supervised the digging of the graves. The minister from the new church was there, Bible in hand, and a number of people from Holwell, including a reporter for the Journal. It was almost a festive occasion, I thought, as I listened to the conversations around me. Most of these people knew nothing of the terrible unhappiness that the burial was bringing to an end.

  At the conclusion of the service, everyone stepped forward, picked up a handful of earth and tossed it into the graves. I heard several of them comment on Heather’s tears.

  “What a sensitive child she must be,” a stout lady observed, adjusting the angle of her large straw hat.

  Her companion nodded. “You’d think she knew the poor souls personally.”

  “She’s probably too young to be exposed to something as tragic as a funeral,” the woman in the straw hat said. “I’ve never thought little children should be told about death. Why frighten them? Let them keep their innocence as long as they can.”

  The two of them walked to their car and drove off, leaving us alone, except for Mr. Simmons. “Glad to see this settled,” he said, heaping the earth over the graves. “She’ll rest in peace now, like them.” He waved the shovel toward the Berry Patch. “She’s with her own.”

  Heather gazed at the marble angel poised on his pedestal above the Berrys, his wings uplifted. “Daddy should make Helen one of those,” she said to me. “I think she’d like to have one, don’t you?”

  “It would look very pretty,” I said, watching Mr. Simmons pat the freshly-turned earth with his shovel.

  By September, a small marble angel guarded Helen’s grave, and two stones flanked hers. Her own name, not just her initials, marked her burial place, and English ivy softened the mounds of earth over her parents’ graves. The cemetery had lost its gloom, and I no longer feared it.

  One afternoon in early October, Michael, Heather, and I were sitting in a sunny spot not far from Helen’s grave. It was a warm, sweet-smelling day, more like spring than fall. Michael was watching a huge wood beetle crawling around in its glass-jar prison, and I was reading The Borrowers to Heather.

  “Do you want me to read the next chapter?” I was sure she wouldn’t want me to leave poor Stainless facing certain capture, but when I looked at her I realized she hadn’t been paying much attention to the story.

  She was lying on her back, chewing on a blade of grass and staring up at the clouds drifting slowly across the incredibly blue sky. “Do you think she can see us from where she is?” she asked dreamily, her mind apparently far from Stainless’ plight.

  “I don’t know,” I said, guessing that she was thinking of Helen. It was the first time in weeks that she had mentioned her. “Wherever she is, though, she’s happy,” I added. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Me too,” Heather agreed. She sat up and gazed at the angel under the oak tree. He gazed back serenely, seeming to return her smile. Suddenly she grasped my arm, her nails biting through the sleeve of my shirt. “Molly,” she whispered. “Look.”

  She got to her feet and ran toward the angel, and I ran after her, seeing what she saw. Something shiny dangled from the angel’s outstretched hand: a silver locket turning slightly in the breeze.

  Before I could stop her, Heather snatched the chain from the angel’s stiff fingers. As I watched, it seemed to pop open by itself in her outstretched palm. On one side was a picture of Helen. On the other was a folded piece of paper. With trembling fingers, Heather slipped it out of the frame and spread it flat. We both read the message, written in the same hand I had once seen scrawled on my bedroom wall: “With love from Helen,” it said. “Do not forget me.”
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  Heather and I looked at each other. The sun warmed our backs as it shone down through the oak’s reddening leaves. Bees buzzed in the goldenrod and a grasshopper bounded away from Michael as he approached us.

  “Where did you get that old thing?” he asked, looking at the locket. “I thought you lost it last summer.”

  “Helen gave it back to me,” Heather told him solemnly. “It’s all right for me to wear it now,” she added, looking at me. “Isn’t it?”

  I nodded, but Michael rolled his eyes skyward. “Not Helen again. I thought we’d heard the last of that ghost stuff.”

  “I think we have,” I said. “Now.”

  Silently Heather fastened the chain around her neck, smiling at me as she did so. Together we walked out of the graveyard. Behind us, Michael kicked at the grass.

  “I still don’t believe it,” I heard him yell at our backs, but it seemed to me that his voice quavered a tiny bit.

  To all the little children:—The happy ones; and sad ones;

  The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones;

  The good ones—Yes, the good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones.

  —James Whitcomb Riley,

  dedication to “Little Orphant Annie”

  1

  Grandmother met us at the Burlington airport, a big smile on her face and her arms open for a hug. With a squeal of delight, my sister rushed toward her, but I held back. Public displays of affection were okay for girls, I guessed, but not for guys. After all, I’d be thirteen soon—way too old for that kind of silly stuff.

  After giving Corey a big hug, Grandmother turned to me. “Just look at you, Travis. You’ve shot up since Christmas. How tall are you?”

  I shrugged. “About five six, maybe seven. Not all that tall. There’s a guy in my class who’s already six feet.”

  “I’m almost as tall as Travis,” Corey put in, never one to be left out. “And I’m a whole year younger.”

  While Corey chattered about the plane ride from New York, Grandmother led us to the baggage claim. We grabbed our suitcases and headed for the parking lot. The late-afternoon air was cool and the sky was blue, a change from the heat and humidity we’d left in the city.

  “Welcome to Vermont.” Grandmother opened the door of a shiny red pickup truck. “Toss your luggage in the back and climb aboard.”

  Corey jumped in beside Grandmother, and I squeezed in by the door.

  “So do you think you’ll be able to stand being away from your parents for a whole summer?” Grandmother asked.

  My sister and I looked at each other and grinned. “We’ll miss them a little,” Corey said, “but we’re used to summers away from home.”

  Grandmother smiled. “I’m glad you chose the inn instead of camp.”

  Corey and I didn’t look at each for fear we’d laugh and give ourselves away. We hadn’t had a choice, actually. Camp Willow Tree had made it very clear that neither Corey nor I was welcome to return. It seemed we’d failed to get into the true spirit of camp. We’d started food fights, played hooky from evening campfire, made up rude words to the camp song, overturned a canoe on purpose, and let the air out of a counselor’s bike tires the day we were supposed to ride twenty miles up a mountain in the pouring rain. Was it our fault the camp staff had no sense of humor?

  The truth of it was Corey and I tended to get in trouble wherever we went. Bad ones—that’s what we were. Well, not really bad. We preferred to think of ourselves as pranksters. But like the camp staff, adults (including Mom and Dad) didn’t find our antics as funny as we did.

  Our parents had made us promise to behave ourselves at the inn. One bad report from Grandmother and we’d spend the rest of our vacation taking pre-algebra in summer school—a fate even worse than camp craft projects involving Popsicle sticks and feathers.

  Just before the turnoff for Middlebury, we left Route 7 and took a winding road that rolled over hills, past farms and fields, red barns and sturdy farmhouses. Herds of black and white cows raised their heads to watch us go by. Beyond them, the mountains rose greenish blue against the sky.

  “Here we are.” Grandmother pointed to a neatly painted sign: THE INN AT FOX HILL—NEXT RIGHT. Under the words was a picture of a smiling fox. A VACANCY sign hung below.

  Grandmother swung into a long, straight driveway shaded by tall trees. At its end was a three-story pink brick building. The late-afternoon sun touched everything with gold—the lawn, flower beds, and wooden rocking chairs on the front porch. Behind the inn, clouds cast their shadows on the Green Mountains.

  Grandmother parked the truck, and Corey and I jumped out. I grabbed for my suitcase, but Grandmother said, “Leave your luggage for now. Henry can bring it in later. Martha’s promised to have a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade, freshly squeezed, and a plateful of chocolate-chip cookies, still warm from the oven.”

  We followed Grandmother down a stone path bordered with dense white flowers to a brick patio shaded by a huge wisteria climbing over a trellis. Nearby, a fountain splashed into a pool, and I glimpsed flashes of red fish swimming in its depths. Flowers bloomed everywhere, and bees hummed. Birds called back and forth in the trees.

  As we settled ourselves around a table, a woman strode toward us carrying a tray. Her gray hair was pulled back tightly into a knot, and her mouth seemed to have settled into a permanent frown. Without so much as a smile, she set the tray down and stepped back.

  “Thank you, Martha. It looks lovely.” Gesturing to Corey and me, Grandmother introduced us to the woman.

  “Pleased to meet you.” Still no smile, just a quick dip of the head.

  “Mrs. Brewster is our cook,” Grandmother told us. “People come to the inn year after year just to eat her famous blueberry pie.”

  Another dip of the head and Mrs. Brewster left us to enjoy the lemonade and cookies.

  “Martha’s a little standoffish,” Grandmother admitted, “but she and her husband more or less came with the inn. And she’s truly magnificent in the kitchen.”

  Corey jabbed my ankle with the toe of her shoe and whispered, “She looks like an old grump to me.”

  Grandmother leaned across the table to brush a strand of hair out of Corey’s eyes. “You’ll change your mind when you eat your first meal here.”

  Corey helped herself to a cookie. While she chewed, she looked around. “Is that a swimming pool?”

  Grandmother nodded. “You can use it any time you like—as long as someone’s with you. I don’t have a lifeguard.”

  She pointed past the pool to the wide grassy lawn, dotted with old-fashioned Adirondack chairs, turned to face the mountains. “If you like tennis, the court’s over there. I have bicycles for the guests. The state park just down the road has a great network of biking and hiking trails.”

  Grandmother ate a cookie. “If it rains,” she went on, “there’s a library, computer, TV, DVD player, and at least a dozen old-fashioned board games. Hopefully, you’ll find plenty to do.”

  Corey and I leaned back in our chairs and drank our lemonade, just as fresh and cold as Grandmother had promised. It looked as if it was going to be a good summer. No schedules. No organized activities. Nobody blowing whistles at us. No boring crafts. For once, we were free to do what we wanted to do. Including nothing. Nothing at all.

  Corey studied the inn. “Do you have many guests?”

  “There are six rooms,” Grandmother said. “Four on the second floor and two on the third. We can house twelve guests, but tonight we only have two—a couple of young men.”

  Corey looked around. “Where are they?”

  “They’ve gone out bicycling, but they’ll be back soon for dinner.”

  “You must usually have more people than that,” Corey said.

  Grandmother sighed. “That’s what I thought when I bought the place, but the inn’s kind of remote. Tourists like to be closer to Burlington or Middlebury, Stowe or Woodstock.” She shifted in her chair as if she were about to get up but then changed
her mind.

  “Actually, the inn’s location is only part of the problem,” she added slowly.

  Corey and I sat up straighter, as if we both sensed something exciting.

  For a moment, Grandmother stared at the inn, her gaze drifting from one window to the next as if she were admiring the flower boxes.

  “I wouldn’t bother telling you,” she said at last, “but you’re sure to hear the guests talking about it. Fox Hill is mentioned in Haunted Inns of Vermont.”

  Corey and I leaned closer, our eyes wide. A little shiver raced up and down my spine. A whole summer in a haunted inn—what could be more exciting than that?

  “Oooh,” Corey murmured. “I’ve always wanted to see a ghost.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I told her. “You can’t even watch a horror movie without having nightmares.”

  “Huh,” Corey said. “Just last week I watched one of the Scream movies, and I didn’t even close my eyes or cover my ears once!”

  “Don’t worry.” Grandmother patted Corey’s hand. “No one has seen a ghost since the Cornells sold the inn to me.”

  “Where do you think they went?” Corey asked.

  “To North Carolina, I think,” Grandmother said. “They wanted to open an inn at the beach.”

  “Not the Cornells,” I said. “The ghosts. Where did they go?”

  Grandmother shrugged. “In my opinion, they were never here in the first place.”

  “You don’t believe in ghosts?” Corey looked surprised.

  “Of course not.” Grandmother laughed. “But sometimes I find myself wishing they’d come back. Business might improve.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’d be surprised how many people come here because of that stupid book,” Grandmother said. “Then they leave in a huff because they didn’t see a ghost. Some even want their money back.”

  “Do you have the book?” I asked.

  “Of course.” Grandmother got up and led us into the inn, through the kitchen, and down a hall to a large room in the front of the house. “The library,” she said.