The Folcroft Ghosts

by Coates, Darcy

  “No—” Tara hesitated then spread her hands helplessly. “There’s someone pacing outside my window.”

  May’s smile dropped a fraction, then she pulled it back into place. “Oh, that would be Peter. I’ll go and talk to him.”

  “I don’t think it is.” Tara rubbed her hands over the goose bumps on her arms. “It didn’t look like him.”

  “Don’t you worry, honey. It’s him. Go back to sleep.” May gave Tara’s shoulder a gentle squeeze on the way past, then she disappeared down the stairs. A moment later, the front door creaked open. May’s muffled words drifted through the cold night air.

  Tara returned to her room and crept back into the tent. Kyle had rolled over but continued to sleep. Tara huddled at his side as she listened to the muted conversation, then the front door clicked as May returned to the house. The footsteps resumed, moving past the window and towards the forest. Tara squeezed her eyes shut and listened as they faded into the rustling leaves and scraping branches. A wild animal howled, followed by a flurry of wings and a screeching bat. Tara stayed awake for a long time, listening for the footsteps, but they didn’t return.

  5

  Library

  Tara slouched in her chair, her nose close to her computer screen as she read magic_chihuahua’s exposé on the local bakery that allegedly had ties to the mob. It was the fourth in an epic six-part series detailing their shady doings, and Tara was pretty far down the rabbit hole.

  At the back of her mind, she knew she would get in trouble if she didn’t shut the computer down soon. She had badly neglected homework and was supposed to water the houseplants before her mother got home. But the blog post was too juicy to ignore, even for a moment, and there were already twenty-eight comments…

  A sharp knock echoed from the door. Tara startled, thinking that her mother had come home early. But Chris had her own key; she never knocked. Did a neighbour need something? Tara rose and crossed to the door. She passed Kyle lounging on the couch with a book propped above his head, and muttered, “Lazybones.”

  Something wasn’t right, though. She could taste the wrongness before she even reached for the door handle. Unease prickled over her skin, making her hair stand on end. A dull warning in the back of her mind told her not to turn the handle. But she already had. Then the door was opening, and the red-haired police officer was leaning forward and saying, “Tara Kendall?”

  Tara gasped as she woke. Sweat coated her, and nausea cramped her stomach. The patterned quilt above her head muted the morning sunlight and served as a reminder that she was no longer at home.

  She looked to her side. Kyle was still sleeping, though he’d sprawled out farther. Tara sat up, waited for the frightened nausea to pass, then retrieved her towel from where she’d packed it in the wardrobe. It was early. She hoped she could shower and wash off the cold sweat before anyone else in the family woke.

  By the time she’d left the bathroom, the house was busy with noise. Tara followed the sound of voices and clattering utensils into the kitchen, where May was serving up breakfast.

  “Good morning, Tara!” The older woman beamed and nodded to a seat. “I hope you like pancakes as much as your brother does.”

  There weren’t just pancakes, Tara saw, but bacon, eggs, sausages, and fried tomatoes. She laughed as she took her seat. “You shouldn’t cook so much. You’ll spoil us.”

  May ran a warm hand over Tara’s hair as she passed. “Maybe you two need a little spoiling. And you definitely need some feeding. I refuse to have hungry children in my house.”

  Tara grinned and served herself a big plate. Kyle was already halfway through his, and May hummed as she poured drinks and brought them napkins.

  Peter, savouring a mug of coffee, raised his eyebrows at Tara. “I hear I gave you a fright last night.”

  “Oh.” Tara hurried to swallow her mouthful. “So that was you. I thought a stranger might have wandered onto the property.”

  “No, we’re not close enough to any other house to be bothered by neighbours. I get arthritis at night and find walking helps it more than anything else.”

  “Right. Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  He waved away the apology. “You did nothing wrong.”

  Tara returned to her meal, trying to dismiss the lingering anxiety, but the memory of the twisted, shuffling man was hard to erase. It seemed impossible that Peter could be so straight and relaxed during day and so badly contorted at night.

  May chatted through breakfast, talking about how nice the day was, but warning that the forecast said storms were coming. Tara tried to listen, but her mind kept turning to the phone in the sitting room. As soon as May rose to clear away plates, she asked if she could call the hospital.

  “Of course, you must be so worried. Go on, I’ll take care of this.”

  Tara dialled the now-familiar number and went through the process of being transferred to the right ward then waiting for the nurse to be paged.

  “No change yet,” Nurse Mann said. Her voice was slow, deep, and placid, but no matter how soothing the tone, the news wasn’t easy to take. “We’ll have a different neurosurgeon in today who’ll have a look at her. Call back in the evening, if you like, and we should have an update.”

  As Tara hung up, she sensed movement behind her. May waited, her eyebrows pulling together in concern. “Is it bad news?”

  “It’s… not good.”

  May seemed to understand that Tara didn’t want to talk any more than that. She wrapped Tara in a hug then stepped back, cupping Tara’s cheek in a wrinkled palm.

  “How about we head to town this morning? You can spend time on the computer in the library while I do some shopping.”

  “Yeah.” Tara tried to smile. “I’d like that.”

  “Can I come?” Kyle hovered in the doorway, his eyes wide.

  “I’m afraid the library only has one computer, dear, but if you don’t mind sharing—”

  “Nah, she can be the nerd. I want to borrow some books.”

  Tara snickered and poked Kyle’s shoulder. “Books are nerdier than blogs.”

  “No way. Nothing beats blogs.”

  May nudged them both towards the kitchen. “Come on, chatterboxes, get your jackets. We can finish this argument in the car.”

  The Folcrofts owned a beaten Jeep that looked older than Tara was. She and Kyle sat in the back while May, dressed up in a hat and floral dress, navigated the vehicle down the narrow, potholed lane and towards the main road. The Jeep might have been older than Mrs. Jennings’ car by at least a decade, but it handled the drive much better.

  Tara peered into the shrubs and trees as they passed. “Peter said you don’t have close neighbours. Does that mean there’s no one else in this area?”

  “Not for a few kilometres. Most of this part of the mountains is reserve, which means it can’t be developed. Only very old properties such as ours are allowed to stay.”

  “Any bears?” Kyle asked. He was warming up to May, Tara was happy to see.

  May laughed. “Not near us. We have cougars, foxes, and snakes, though.”

  The Jeep sped up as it reached the main road and turned towards town. Tara leaned forward in her seat. “We could hear animals last night. They sounded like screams. That would be the cougars, right?”

  “Probably—though foxes scream, as well.” May’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “The longer you spend here, the better you’ll grow at telling them apart.”

  True to form, Kyle had brought a book with him. It was May’s gift, and Tara saw that even though it was a doorstop of a tome, he was making solid progress. She suspected he would finish it that day. The trip to the library had come at a good time.

  She watched as wooded areas gradually gave way to properties, then they crossed a bridge and entered a small patch of homes and businesses that probably constituted the town. Tara knew they must have passed it on the drive to the Folcrofts’, but it had gone by so fast that she didn’t remember it.

&nb
sp; May parked in front of a general store and climbed out of the car with surprising agility. She placed a hand on both Tara’s and Kyle’s shoulders and led them down the strip mall. “I’ll show you to the library first, so you can spend some time there while I shop. How long would you like? An hour?”

  Kyle’s eyes were wide. “As long as you can give us.”

  She chuckled as they entered a small sandstone building. “All right. An hour and a half, perhaps. I’ll come and pick you up.”

  The building was small, but the library owner had clearly put work into making it a comfortable place. An assortment of mismatched chairs were scattered amongst equally mismatched shelves, and Tara saw a small discoloured computer at the back of the room.

  “Afternoon,” the lady behind the desk said, and May bobbed her head.

  “Good afternoon, Sandy. These are my grandchildren. Would you be kind enough to look after them while I do some shopping?”

  Sandy didn’t look particularly enthusiastic about that, but she nodded, and May waved as she hitched her purse onto her shoulder and returned to the main street.

  Tara and Kyle both made a beeline towards their goals. Kyle disappeared into the fiction section while Tara settled into the ancient wooden seat in front of the computer and woke it up. It was a seriously outdated model that made clunking noises when Tara opened the browser, but that didn’t bother her. The blog circle she dominated was text-only and didn’t need Java or Flash, so it only took a minute to log in.

  Plenty had happened during the last couple of days. Tara chewed on her thumb, trying to prioritise what to start with. Scanning through the new blog posts, she saw the next part of magic_chihuahua’s series on her local bakery had been posted. Her stomach twisted, and she scrolled past it.

  She didn’t know how long it would be before she saw another computer, so she replied to comments directed to her then started a new blog post of her own. That way, if it took her a week or more to log back on, at least her friends would know what was happening.

  I hope you like lemonade, because life just gave me a metric butt-ton of lemons.

  Tara paused, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. Blogs were about sharing life experiences. In her circle, nothing was off the table—she’d read secrets that could ruin people, confessions that would never be whispered in public, and thoughts that would make a journal blush. And yet, it didn’t feel right to write about her mother, limp and covered in mottled bruises, laid out on the crisp white bed sheets.

  She sat back, her excitement at returning to her native home squashed, then bit her lip and leaned forward again. It’s been a weird couple of days, but the crux of the matter is that my brother and I are now staying at our grandparents’. We’ve never met them before, and I honestly didn’t know much about them until we rocked up at their doorstep yesterday.

  Tara typed freely, the words flowing as she wrote about sweet May and gruff-but-friendly Peter, the yowling cougars, the food, and the presents. It was easier to process things in a blog post, she found. Maybe one day she would write about what had happened to her mother. But it was still too soon and too private to share, even with people close to her.

  She finished with a promise to post as soon as she could and a caution that it might take a few days. She went back to catching up on her friends’ news while she waited to see if she got any comments. It was morning on a weekday, so most of her circle would be in school, but she knew a couple of her friends were stay-at-home mums who liked to chat in the comments section.

  “Excuse me.”

  Tara jumped at the voice behind her. A middle-aged woman with curly blond hair stood a few feet back, a frown creasing her eyes. Tara quickly rose.

  “Sorry—sorry—you can have the computer now.”

  “No, that’s okay. Didn’t mean to startle you.” The woman looked towards the library door then back at Tara, her frown deepening a fraction. “You’re staying with May and Peter Folcroft, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. I’m her granddaughter.”

  “Gee.” The woman bit her lip, apparently trying to think something through. “Sorry, this is phenomenally rude. I’m Pattie—I run the bakery. They told me you were coming to visit, but I didn’t think you’d actually… Anyway. Are things… okay? I mean, are you all ri—”

  “Tara!” May’s sharp call cut off the disjointed question. Tara looked over Pattie’s shoulder and saw May in the library doorway, looking faintly flustered and breathing heavily. She smiled and beckoned to Tara. “We need to leave now.”

  6

  Polaroid

  “Oh—okay.” Tara glanced from May and back to Pattie. The woman’s expression hardened. She looked like she wanted to say something else but bit her lip and turned towards the shelves.

  Tara quickly logged out of her blog account and crossed to where May waited in the doorway. The woman beamed at her then called, “Kyle, are you ready to go?”

  He staggered towards them, arms weighted down with nearly a dozen tomes. “Can I get these?”

  May laughed. “My, you do like reading, don’t you? You’ll grow up to be a smart young man. Sandy, he can borrow these books, can’t he?”

  “He’ll need a library card,” Sandy said.

  May gave the librarian a pleading sort of look. “We’re in a bit of a hurry. You know me, Sandy. I’ll make sure they all come back.”

  Sandy sighed and shrugged, and Kyle grinned as Tara took half of his stack. They stepped into the warmer outdoors and followed May back to the Jeep. She waited until they were buckled then turned on the vehicle and began driving back up the twisting road. “I’m sorry I had to take you away early. I realised I left a roast in the oven and need to be back before it burns.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Tara said.

  May beamed. “We can come back again later. Just… I don’t want that woman bothering you.”

  Tara frowned. “Pattie? Who was she?”

  “Oh, no one important. She runs the bakery. I beat her in a pound cake competition a long time ago, and she’s disliked me ever since.” The creases around May’s eyes scrunched up as she smiled. “One of those silly, petty hatreds that silly, petty people fall into. Knowing Pattie, she’d either try to interrogate you to dig up dirt on me or try to poison the well by telling you lies. She isn’t a kind woman.”

  “Huh.” May had looked breathless and dishevelled when she’d interrupted Pattie—almost as though she’d run back to the library. Is Pattie really so malicious that May doesn’t want her around us?

  “Did you find enough books, Kyle?” May asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Your library isn’t as big as ours, but it’s got a bunch of super-obscure books. I haven’t even heard of most of these.”

  Tara peeked at one of the volumes he carried. It looked like a pulp book and was so old that the pages were coming loose. She doubted they would be really good books, based on how mass-market they seemed, but that rarely fazed Kyle. She sometimes believed that he would read a phone book if nothing else was left.

  They turned in to the shadowed driveway. For someone who seemed so gentle, May was an aggressive driver. The Jeep rocked as it raced over tree roots and potholes before it finally pulled up in the turning bay. Tara glanced up at the house. One of the upstairs curtains fluttered, either from Peter watching them come home or from a breeze.

  “It must be time for lunch,” May decided, even though it was barely past eleven. “Are sandwiches all right? Or would you like something warmer, like a stew or a soup?”

  “Sandwiches are great.” Tara slid out of the backseat, wondering what had happened to the roast May had said was in the oven, then picked up an armful of Kyle’s books to help him carry them inside.

  “I think Peter promised to show you the lake this afternoon.” May opened the house’s door and stood back to let them in. “Will you be all right amusing yourselves for a bit while I prepare lunch?”

  “Definitely.” The books were heavy, so Tara made for the staircase while
May flitted into the kitchen and shook out her apron. Kyle, still revelling in his books, murmured as he followed her, “What a haul. This will last me at least until next week.”

  “Ha!” Tara nudged Kyle’s bedroom door open with her back and dumped her books onto the bed. “How do you even remember which ones you’ve read? Don’t they blend together after a while?”

  “Sure. But what does it matter if I forget a story after a month as long as I enjoy it while I’m reading it?”

  “You could be a philosopher. A nerdy philosopher who only knows how to turn pages.”

  “Better than a nerdy writer who lives in the internet.”

  “That’s fair.” Tara snickered as she stretched then glanced through the door to make sure both May and Peter were still downstairs. “Did you see that lady in the library? Pattie?”

  “Didn’t see her. Heard her, though. What did she want?”

  “I don’t know. That’s just it. May made it sound like she was trying to extract gossip from me, but it didn’t seem that way. She looked kind of worried. Like she’d seen something that upset her.”

  Kyle flopped onto his bed and opened the nearest book. Tara, assuming he’d disengaged from the conversation, turned towards the door, but he stopped her on the threshold.

  “If she runs the bakery, what was she doing in the library on a weekday? Wouldn’t she be busy cleaning up from breakfast and getting ready for lunch?”

  Tara bit her lip. “Could’ve been her day off.”

  “Tom from school has an older brother who owns a bakery. He says they don’t take days off.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear at school. I speak from experience—at least eighty per cent of it is boldfaced lies.”

  Kyle snickered, but she could see him sinking into the book, so Tara left and followed the narrow hallway back to her own room.