The Return of Skeleton Man

by Joseph Bruchac

  More than just confusing, I think. But I am not going to mention to Mom how freaked out I was before I ran into Corazón…or how I almost ran over her.

  Mom had asked Corazón if she could stay and listen to the music with us, but Corazón shook her head and said something in Spanish that I didn’t catch. But my mother, who speaks not just Mohawk and English—like my dad and me—but also three or four other languages, nodded and answered something back to her in Spanish that made Corazón put her hand over her mouth and giggle.

  I wait until Corazón is out of sight and turn to my mom.

  “What did she say?” I demand. Typical Molly. I always have to know everything that is going on.

  “Just a proverb, honey. I’ll tell you later. The music’s about to start. I think you’re going to like this.”

  By the time the evening concert is over, an hour later, I’m in total agreement with my mother. In fact, I didn’t just like it, I loved it. I even danced with my mom to a couple of the square dance tunes they played. Contrary to what she and Dad had told me, there were not lots of kids my age at the dance. But that was okay. Also, one member of Quickstep was a cute guy who probably wasn’t much older than me. He looked shy, but I am sure he smiled at me once or twice. It made me feel like he was playing just for me. He had a very cool name, too—Cedar, just like the tree.

  “I hope we can see that group again sometime,” I say to Mom as we walk toward the movie. I am totally at ease now and there is nothing at all scary about the corridor that was so creepy when I was walking it on my own.

  “Did you see that boy who was playing the fiddle?” she says.

  “Mom!” I hate it when she seems to read my mind like this. I stop and stare at her. “I was talking about the group, not just that one guy. What do you mean?”

  “I just meant,” she says, a little smile on her lips, “that he seemed very talented, even though he was so young.”

  “Oh,” I say, my face reddening. “Yes, I guess so.”

  Then I smile like my mom is smiling. Maybe everything is going to be all right after all. We meet up with my dad and I manage to keep thinking that way all through the movie. But as we are walking back, I find myself a few steps behind my parents. I stop to look at one of the old photos on the wall, and suddenly I get that feeling again. I’m being watched. I spin around to look down the hall behind me. For just a second I think I see someone, a tall, thin person with a pale face fading back into a doorway. I take one step in that direction, then another.

  “Molly.”

  My mom’s voice brings me out of my trance. I turn around and realize that I have walked back the whole length of the hall. My hand is holding the knob of the door through which I thought I saw that tall, pale shape disappear.

  I jerk my hand back like it’s been burned. I don’t want to open this door. A shiver goes down my spine as I turn and head back toward my mother, who’s holding out her hand to me, a questioning look on her face. I force myself to walk to her, even though I want to run. I manage to force a smile back onto my face.

  There’s nothing wrong, I tell myself.

  But the knot in my stomach is as hard as a fist. Was my imagination going crazy on me or had I really seen someone disappear through that door? I am afraid to think that I know the answer—and who might be waiting on the other side.

  8

  The Lookout

  The next morning it is sunny when I wake up. At first that seems strange, because I feel as if I was just in a very dark, unpleasant place, and this room is the opposite of that. I feel as if there are cobwebs on my face, and I wipe my eyes. I know I was having a bad dream, but this time I can’t quite remember what it was. Or maybe I just don’t want to remember.

  I get up and let the sunshine touch my face. A little breeze is coming through the open window. There’s still that taste in the air that you get in fall when the light outside is so clear that it seems to vibrate and it is as warm as some summer days. I can tell it’s a fragile warmth. It might blow away as quickly as the seeds on a dandelion, but it makes me want to go outside and walk. I need to do something like stroll through a garden and this is the best place to do that.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I say, looking into my parents’ room after getting ready.

  “Want me to come along?” my mom asks.

  There’s a breakfast tray with coffee and juice and pastries in front of her and my father. I know she’s not ready yet to go out. She’d probably like to have some time alone with Dad, who doesn’t have to leave for his next seminar for another two hours. But she’s ready to come with me if I need company. The thought of the two of them sitting together and having breakfast makes me feel warm and secure. It’s like sunshine on my face.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’d just like to walk by myself and check out the summerhouses. I am going to try to sit in every single one. “

  That makes my dad laugh. He knows I’ll try to do it, even though there are over a hundred summerhouses here at Mohonk. They even sell a little booklet in the gift shop called The Summerhouses of Mohonk. They aren’t like gaze-bos, which are intricate and planned. The summerhouses of Mohonk are rustic. Some are nothing more than a bench with a roof, and every one is different. A lot of them are made of dark, old, twisting cedar logs with the bark still on them. They’re like grandparents, just waiting for you to climb up onto their laps.

  And that’s what I do. I sit in each one that I find, lean back, feel how it is to be there, look out at the view it commands, give a contented sigh, and then head to the next one.

  Every single summerhouse is placed so it has a different scenic view. I said there were over a hundred, but no one knows for sure how many there are. The earliest inventory was done in 1917 when they listed 155 summerhouses. Nowadays they claim there are 125. Most have a brass tag with a four-digit number that is entered into the Mohonk computer base. But there may still be forgotten ones tucked off in the woods. Some of them are way down winding paths and others are perched up on the edges of cliffs, with wooden bridges and stairs leading to them. The one on Sentinel Rock overlooks the lake and the whole Mountain House. The best ones, though, as far as I’m concerned, overlook the flower gardens. Although most of the flowers are gone now, you can see how beautiful this place must be when they are in bloom.

  “House number twenty-eight,” I say to myself.

  The sun is still shining in my face as I settle down on the cedar bench. A bent wood roof with rough shingles hangs over it, covered by a vine of some kind that has been trained over the top. At its base that vine is as thick as my waist, and I wonder how old it is. My eyes follow it as it climbs from the ground toward the roof, then something in the distance catches my eye.

  I’m looking out at one of the wooded ridges that rise above the gardens. It is at least two hundred yards away and a hundred feet higher in elevation than me. There’s another summerhouse there, one that I hadn’t noticed before. Even with the leaves off the trees, it is hard to see it, tucked away up there on the lookout. But it’s not the summerhouse that has caught my eye—rather, a flash of light from inside it. It’s the kind of flash of light when the sun hits a mirror or something made of glass.

  I raise up my hand to shade my eyes. Another flash of light comes from inside that summerhouse on the highest slope. And even though it is so far away, I am certain about what I’m seeing. It’s a pair of binoculars and they are pointing right at me. I can just barely make out the pale head and gloved hands of the person holding them. That person is wearing a hat, and he’s so far away I can’t really see his face, but something tells me that it’s a man. While I’m staring, those binoculars are slowly pulled back. All I can see now is the shadowy opening of the summerhouse.

  I wait. For some reason, my heart is thumping in my chest, even though there’s no reason to get upset about somebody with binoculars. People carry them around here all the time. It’s the season when hawks migrate. Just yesterday there was a whole gaggle of bird-wa
tchers on the ridge, all staring up through their spotting scopes and binoculars at a huge flock of broad-winged hawks sweeping by, following the Shawangunk Ridge toward the south.

  Staring up. That’s it. You don’t look down to see hawks, you look up into the sky. There’s still no motion from the summerhouse on the ridge. The way the trees grow around it I can see only the front from where I’m sitting. I have to go there. Half of my brain says I’m being foolish, that there’s nothing to be afraid of. The other half says I’m being foolhardy. Why am I taking the path that leads up to that lookout? How do I know there’s not something dangerous up there just waiting for me?

  I’m breathing hard by the time I reach the summerhouse on the ridge. I can see now that it is balanced right on top of a huge, flat boulder. There’s no one here. I look around. No sign of anyone on the gravel path leading down in either direction. Was I just imagining that I saw someone?

  I sit down on the bench and look down. There’s a perfect view of not just the garden but also the Mountain House itself. I spot the summerhouse where I had been sitting. I have to lean out and to the right to get a clear view of it. As I do so, I put my hand on the bench. My palm finds something small and round, something that I hadn’t noticed when I sat down. When I see what it is, a chill shivers down my back and I almost drop what I’m holding—a small, perfectly molded white candy skull.

  9

  Skulls

  I still have the candy skull in my hand. But now I’m feeling like a jerk. I sprinted all the way back to the Mountain House in a panic, thumped up the steps, burst through the door of the Lake Lounge and what did I see? The tables are awash with marigolds and chrysanthemums. And in the midst of those flowers are bowls half-filled with candy skulls just like mine. The candy skulls are just part of the whole Day of the Dead theme. Some of them look like human skulls and some are like the skulls of animals. Boys and girls are wandering around with their parents, candy skulls in their hands—or their mouths. Some kid was probably walking on that path, sat down in the summerhouse, and just left the skull up there by accident. Nothing sinister. Just kids and candy.

  The one I have in my hand has gotten sticky from the sweat in my palm. It’s starting to dissolve, just like the panic that had gripped me so hard that I felt as if I had been hit in the stomach.

  Get a grip, girl, I tell myself. I pick up a paper napkin, wrap my no longer ominous piece of candy in it, and drop it into a waste-basket. Then I wipe my hand clean. I won’t mention this to my parents. I’ll just let them think I had a great walk. No attack of absolute gut-wrenching terror. It was just a carefree afternoon for me, sitting in one summerhouse after another, enjoying the quiet beauty and feeling that all was right with the world.

  I head back to my room, say hi to my parents, and then slump into the chair by the window and pick up my book for a bit of leisurely reading. Only I can’t concentrate on anything. I can’t shake this eerie feeling that something just isn’t right.

  No. Everything is fine. Just fine.

  “Time for dinner, honey,” Mom announces after a while. “Are you ready?”

  My parents and I get a table near the windows in the big semi-circular dining room with the high ceiling and wooden beams. Our table would normally be a great place to sit because you can look way out over the valleys and see the far-off lights of houses and the shadowy hills in the twilight. But this evening all I can see is mist. I can’t even see the trees and bushes on the lawn right below. I’m feeling closed in, trapped. I wish I could see through that mist, and see if anything was out there. Then I start thinking about what I might see, what I don’t want to see. I squirm in my seat.

  “Molly,” Dad says, “are you okay?”

  He and Mom are looking right at me. I almost give them one of those “Oh, I’m fine” replies. I don’t want to worry them needlessly, after everything we’ve gone through. But my mouth reacts before my brain can stop it.

  “No,” I say. “I’m not.” For some reason, that actually makes me feel a little better.

  “Why, honey?” Mom asks. But something about the way she asks it tells me that she already has a good idea.

  “I feel,” I say, balling my napkin up between my palms, “like I’m being watched by…somebody.”

  I wait for them to reassure me, to tell me I am being foolish. But they don’t. Instead, my mother and father exchange a long look, and finally my father nods.

  “I know,” Dad says. “I’ve been feeling the same way. There’s something not quite right lately. I keep telling myself that I’m being foolish, but I still have bad dreams about what happened to us. I don’t see…him…in my dreams, but I can feel him watching us. Then, the next thing I know, my hands are tied and you and Mom are in danger and I can’t get free to save you.”

  My mouth drops open and I stare at my father. I’ve never thought about how he and Mom were affected by what happened to us. All I’ve been able to think about are my own feelings. But they were in just as much danger as I was. And my dad, who I used to think was big and strong and smart enough to defeat any monster in the world, had been helpless.

  “They never found his body,” I say. I’m amazed at how calm and logical my voice sounds.

  “I know,” Dad replies.

  “Why would he come after us?”

  My mom is the one who answers that. “Because we got away,” she says. “Because we got away.”

  “I feel,” I say, pausing for a moment and then just saying it, “I feel as if he’s here somewhere. Am I crazy?”

  I look at my parents closely. I think what I really want is for them to tell me there is nothing to fear, that we are totally safe now and forever. But that is not what they do.

  “You’re not crazy,” Mom says.

  “No, you are not,” Dad agrees, his voice slow and careful. “I feel as if…he…is here, too.”

  “Sk…Sk…,” I say, trying to speak the name that none of us have wanted to ever hear again.

  “Skeleton Man,” Mom says.

  10

  Walking the Field

  One thing that scary movies never really focus on is all the times when nothing happens. They make it seem as if one frightening thing always happens right after another without any letup. But life isn’t like that. Sometimes, for long stretches of time, nothing at all happens. You just find yourself waiting, and waiting, and not really knowing what is going to happen or when.

  And that is how it has been for the rest of the day, after Mom and Dad and I had our conversation about Skeleton Man. We talked it over and came to what we thought were good decisions.

  “Should we call the police?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Mom said.

  Dad nodded. “All we have are suspicions, Molly girl. You think you saw something. And Mom and I both have that kind of sixth-sense tingle at the back of our neck. The kind of feeling which my gramma said meant something was looking your way that you didn’t want to meet. And you’ve got your dreams. But it doesn’t mean as much as a hill of beans to the authorities. We’d have to have some solid evidence. Something you could sink your teeth into.”

  “More than a candy skull?” I said.

  It wasn’t that funny, but I giggled as I said it and then both Dad and Mom were laughing. It released the tension we were all sensing and made us feel so much better. We could still laugh and be together. Everything could still turn out all right.

  We came up with sort of a plan. A big part of it was to all be on our guard. I would stay close to either Mom or Dad the rest of the time we were here. We wouldn’t leave Mohonk until the conference was over, because we couldn’t be sure that we really were in danger. No foolish risks, though. No shopping trip down to New Paltz. No more of my solo hikes along the trails or down darkened corridors.

  But we wouldn’t act like timid little mice who suspect they are being stalked by a cat. If we just cut and ran every time we got worried, our lives wouldn’t belong to us anymore. We’d never be at
peace if all we did was try to escape. And besides, we would be here only two more days. Not only that, this was such a special, beautiful place. If we let our fear of something that might or might not happen prevent us from enjoying it, then Skeleton Man really would have won.

  One thing that is different now is that I have a cell phone. After all that happened, when it was over, Dad gave me one to keep with me wherever I go.

  “Indian telepathy is okay,” he said, “but this way I can hear your voice when you need to talk to me.”

  We both chuckled about that reference to my sixth sense. In the old, old days, some of our elders say, people could really communicate with each other mind-to-mind. A cell phone is a pretty good substitute for that legendary kind of communication.

  Having my little phone in my pocket all the time has made me feel more secure. Mom has one, too. So we can make an emergency call to one another or to the authorities at any time. And that is part of our plan, too. If anyone sees or experiences anything out of the ordinary, anything threatening, we can just flip out our phone, hit the button, and communicate. If we learn something tangible, if we really do see Skeleton Man, then we can call the police.

  There is another side to our plan. If we don’t act all spooked and if Skeleton Man is really here, really watching us, maybe he’ll make some kind of mistake. He has underestimated us before, and he might again. So we planned to do fun things—especially things where there would be a lot of people around, like concerts or the afternoon tea, or the Day of the Dead party planned for the next night.

  The rest of that evening after dinner the three of us felt so much better, because we had a plan, that the time just whizzed by. We went to bed, and even though we had concluded there was a real chance that our lives were in danger, we had a good night’s sleep. We got up and ate breakfast. Dad went to his meetings while Mom and I took a walk together. Then we sat around and read. I did my reading in the window seat where I could look out at the lake and the cliffs across the way and I finished Briar Rose. Mom tried to get through the latest historical novel she was reading, but every time I looked up she would either just be staring off into space or be looking over at me. She didn’t really relax until we met Dad for lunch.