Ghostlight

by Sonia Gensler

  I nodded. “When is Lily coming?”

  “Very soon,” he said. “So what’d you think of that movie I told you to watch?”

  I swallowed a gulp of water. “Actually, I fell asleep. It started out kind of slow, and I was really tired.”

  “Can you watch it tonight? I promise the story picks up once they move into the house.”

  “It’s a lot easier when we watch during the day on your big screen.”

  “Fine,” he said. “But it’ll put us a day behind. Did you at least get the key?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  As soon as we’d put away the lunch stuff, I took him to Grandma and Grandpa’s plot. I’d never taken the time to find all the Hilliard graves before, but this seemed like the best place to start. It was a wide headstone inscribed with a verse from the book of John:

  I AM THE RESURRECTION, AND THE LIFE; HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE LIVE.

  “ ‘Samuel Hilliard,’ ” Julian read. “ ‘Born March 26, 1935, died August 7, 2002.’ ”

  “My grandpa.”

  “He wasn’t that old, was he?”

  “Heart disease. Grandma said he hated going to the doctor.” I swatted at a buzzing bee. “She still talks to him whenever we come by to tidy the grave. She likes to fill him in on the latest news.”

  Julian pointed at the headstone where Grandma’s name—Ava Louise—was already etched in along with her birth date. “Does everyone do that?” he asked. “Put their name on the stone before they’ve even died?”

  “A lot of them do. I mean, if you’re married, you go ahead and buy the plot for two people.” I shivered. “I wouldn’t want to see my name on a gravestone, though.”

  Julian traced Grandma’s birth year with his finger. “Can you imagine your grandmother visiting this grave and seeing a death date chiseled on her side? And that’s when she realizes she’s a ghost? That would be a cool scene in a movie.” He pulled a small notebook and pen out of his pocket and scribbled.

  After that we wandered around the headstones, looking for more Hilliards. Near a knotty tree I found a collection of old headstones, thinner and lower to the ground than the newer ones. Julian stood at my side as I bent down to peer at the inscriptions.

  “This green mold makes it harder to read the words,” I said.

  “It’s lichen, actually.” He reached for his camera. “And it looks great on film, but I’m not sure how it will translate to black and white…”

  He was totally absorbed in taking close-up shots of the moldy lettering, so I studied the other Hilliard headstones. “Hey, this Ephraim guy was the one who settled Grandma’s land.” I stepped toward the neighboring headstone. “And this must be his son Josiah—the one who actually built Hilliard House. Grandma couldn’t remember his name the other day, but the dates look right.”

  Julian had already moved on to study the next row of headstones. “Who was it that outlived his family?” he asked. “You know, the last Hilliard to live in that house?”

  “Joshua. But he died in the eighties—he’s probably farther back in the cemetery.”

  “I think I’ve found him. Come here.”

  He stood midway between two headstones and pointed to the one on his right. “This is him, right?”

  JOSHUA EVERETT HILLIARD

  AUGUST 23, 1899–FEBRUARY 5, 1985

  It was the plainest of headstones, thick but not very wide. No carvings or quotations from the Bible. Just his name and dates engraved in stark lettering.

  “There’s another stone over there,” Julian said. “It’s what I really wanted you to see.”

  I followed him to a wide stone of thick, expensive granite. It had two names on it.

  ELIZABETH ANNE CUNNINGHAM HILLIARD

  NOVEMBER 10, 1905–APRIL 10, 1955

  MARGARET ANNE HILLIARD

  JANUARY 5, 1930–FEBRUARY 12, 1937

  Julian glanced at me. “It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Mother and daughter?”

  “Yeah, and I bet Elizabeth was Joshua’s wife. Can you check with your grandma?”

  I nodded slowly. “Poor little Margaret. Only seven years old when she died. And when they buried her, they left room for the mom but not the dad. What’s up with that?”

  “It is a bit peculiar.” Julian took several close-up shots of the headstone. “Yesterday I checked that shelf of local history books at your grandma’s cottage. I found an old paperback about the Carver County floods of 1937. The big flood in February was the worst—houses were swept away and people died.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Avery, look at the death date on Margaret Anne’s grave.” His eyes gleamed as he pointed at the stone. “1937. February 1937. I bet she drowned in the flood. And you know what that means?”

  I shook my head.

  “Our film has its ghost.”

  I stared at the ceiling for quite a while that night, thinking about this so-called ghost Julian had in mind for our movie. To say I didn’t feel so great about the idea was what Blake would call a “massive understatement.” But had I said anything to Julian?

  Of course not.

  He’d had that lively look in his eyes again—that creative spark that seemed to light me up, too. Truth was, while I was sitting next to him, I almost thought I could handle a spooky movie with a ghost. Even at Hilliard House. As Julian said, we were just telling stories. It was all pretend, right?

  But in the darkness of the attic, with only the faint yellow glow of my night-light to keep me company, it wasn’t so simple. I just didn’t know how to explain that to Julian.

  He answered the door the next day, and once again there wasn’t a whiff of baking in the air. I hoped Curtis Wayne might say “hey” from the living room, but he didn’t even look up from his guitar. The tune he was strumming sounded angry, and I couldn’t help noticing the patchy gray scruff on his cheeks and the way his hair was mashed on one side of his head.

  “The desperate and unshowered phase,” Julian murmured.

  Once we were settled in his room, he queued up the movie I’d started two nights before.

  “Lily was supposed to come last night,” he said, “but the driver is bringing her tonight instead. So we’re not as much behind schedule as I thought. Are you going to bring my tablet back?”

  “Yeah. I just forgot.” I flinched as the opening credits blared. “That music is freaking annoying.”

  “This is the last one we’re watching,” he said. “It’s also the oldest of the three and the most traditional haunted house story. That’s why I wanted you to see it.”

  I watched again as the brother and sister explored the house that overlooked the sea—a house that turned out to be haunted, of course. But their story ended a little different from the others because the characters actually tried to communicate with the ghost through a séance. For a movie that started out kind of silly, that scene made my scalp prickle. And when the ghost actually appeared? The prickles snaked all the way down my spine. By the time the siblings figured everything out and saved the day, I decided the movie wasn’t half bad.

  “So…” Julian stretched his shoulders. “I’m not going to ask if you liked it. I just want to know what you found interesting from a filmmaking perspective.”

  My chest swelled a little at the idea of myself as a filmmaker. “Well, it was another movie about a big old house that’s haunted. And we got to see the ghost.”

  “What else?”

  “Um, since everyone saw the ghost, you knew it was really there. You couldn’t say, ‘That’s the main character’s imagination.’ ” I knew that was right, and it made my heart beat a little faster. “The ghost was pretty cool, too. It wasn’t a person in a sheet, or wearing spooky makeup. It was just a wisp floating around, but it gave me chills.” I thought for a moment. “Can you create something like that on your computer?”

  Julian pursed his mouth before answering. “Maybe. And I agree that the subtle
special effects were good in this movie. But was it the wispy thing that scared you or something else?”

  “I guess it was the character’s reactions.”

  He slapped his hand on the desk, making me jump.

  “That’s what I’m talking about. We may not be able to create special effects, but we can show our ‘ghost’ in a different way.”

  “We can show how scary it is by our reaction to it.”

  He smiled. “I think we’ll be ready to start making this movie soon. But you know what we need first?”

  “I know, I know.” Panic knotted in my stomach. “We need the key to Hilliard House.”

  —

  Grandma kept the keys to her properties in her bedroom—not an easy place to sneak in and out of. Good thing she kept her shrine to Grandpa there, too. The shelves opposite her and Grandpa’s twin beds were filled with his favorite books, including the albums that held family photos dating back to when cameras were first invented. I’d already told Grandma I wanted to look at old photos, so I hoped she wouldn’t be too suspicious when I asked to hang out in her room and flip through them.

  “Those albums were your grandpa’s final achievement,” she said. “He wasn’t as spry as he’d once been, but he was determined to get those boxes of old photos properly arranged in albums before he…” Grandma swallowed the rest of the sentence and reached out to stroke the gold-stamped design on one of the album spines. “You’ll be careful, won’t you? Only take down one album at a time.”

  “I know, Grandma.”

  Weasley announced his arrival with a low trill, halfway between a meow and a purr, and leapt into the middle of Grandpa’s bed. He was the only creature other than Mom allowed that privilege, and he rubbed it in by rolling on his back and noisily grooming his belly.

  I pulled the first album from the shelf and carried it with two hands to Grandma’s bed. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

  She nodded. “I’ll be watching TV in the living room if you need me.”

  I sat there holding the album until I heard the first notes of the Little House on the Prairie theme song. Then I set the album on the bed and tiptoed to her key drawer.

  I eased it open as quietly as possible. Inside was a plastic tray divided into sections for organizing small things. Grandma put all her keys in there—ones for the houses, the car, the old tractor, the outbuildings, and even a small one for a bank vault. I picked through the round, metal-edged tags until I found the one for Hilliard House. I’d kind of expected an old-timey key, something heavy with a fancy handle, but it was just a plain dead-bolt key.

  I slipped it into my pocket and put one of the extra outbuilding keys in its spot. If you didn’t look too hard, you might think it was the Hilliard House key. I closed the drawer without making a sound.

  “What are you doing, Avery?”

  My heart lurched in my chest. I whipped my head around to see Blake in the doorway.

  He stepped just inside the door. “Why are you messing with Grandma’s keys? She’d probably want to know. Should I call her in here?”

  Blake’s eyes gleamed. I guess catching me in the act of stealing was enough to finally wipe that bored look off his face.

  I stared him down. “Go ahead, jerkface.”

  “All right, then.” He grinned and turned to go.

  “No, wait.” I sighed. “What do I have to do?”

  “First tell me why you took that key.”

  Various lies flashed through my brain, but they were all pretty weak. Blake could be a tool, but he wasn’t stupid, so my best option was to keep it simple and honest. “Julian and I are making a movie, and he wants to film inside the old Hilliard House.”

  He blinked. “You’re making a movie?” After staring at me for a moment, he shook his head. “Grandma told you never to go in that house again, and I don’t blame her. Something spooky was going on there.”

  “I don’t remember any of that. I just want to make this movie.” I crossed my arms. “What do I have to do to keep you from telling?”

  He pretended to consider this carefully, but I knew what was coming.

  “You have to do the crappy garden stuff this summer. Weeding. Okra picking. Potatoes. I’ll do beans, lettuce, cantaloupes, and watermelon.”

  “Fine,” I said quickly.

  “Hold up! Did you think that was it?” He leaned against the doorframe. “You also have to shell all the peas. I’ll snap the beans.”

  “That’s not fair,” I blurted. “Shelling is a lot harder. And we always split the chores down the middle.”

  “That was before you took up a life of crime.” He gestured toward the living room. “Confess to her right now and you’re free. You’ll just have to deal with her punishment. Mom’s, too, when she gets here. You may not get to do the movie at all.”

  I stared back at him, feeling like the biggest dope on the planet. Blake hadn’t used his brain more than twice since we got here, but at the first whiff of a blackmail scheme he’d morphed into a freaking mastermind.

  “Is it a deal, Avery?”

  I sighed. “Deal.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “I’m supposed to ask if you want some watermelon.”

  “Leave me a couple of slices on the kitchen table.”

  As soon as Blake hauled his smug face out of Grandma’s bedroom, I shot a dirty look at Weasley. “You could have warned me he was coming.”

  The cat blinked. Then his mouth opened wide in a yawn.

  “Yeah, I see whose side you’re on.”

  I glanced back at the album lying on Grandma’s bed. If I put it away and left now, she would know I hadn’t spent much time with Grandpa’s precious photographs. So I sat down and pulled the heavy thing back in my lap. The album was the old-fashioned kind with sticky pages and a plastic sheet for protecting the photos. The pages were starting to yellow, and some of the photos had already shifted a little.

  The first few pages held photographs that were really, truly old, and some of them looked like they were made of glass or metal. The people in them seemed tired and thin, with weathered skin and lips pressed into thin lines. Their eyes stared.

  Grandpa had labeled all the photographs, so it looked like I would have a face for each of the Hilliard men Grandma had mentioned last Sunday. In one faded photo, Ephraim Hilliard sat in front of the house, and he must have been pretty old because his hair was nearly gone and his face looked like a shriveled nut. His son Josiah stood behind him. They both wore their church clothes—jackets with handkerchiefs in the pockets, vests buttoned up all the way with dark ties tucked inside. They looked uncomfortable, and I bet they changed into their farming clothes as soon as the camera was packed away.

  The women had hair parted in the middle and slicked back in tight buns. As time went on, the hair of the Hilliard ladies got rounder and poofier. In one photo from the early 1900s, my great-great-grandma Clemie stared from beneath a head of hair about as wide as a pumpkin. Her grim face told me she’d lived through at least thirty years of hardship, but according to Grandpa’s note she was only fourteen.

  My heart thumped a little faster when I found Joshua Hilliard, the last person to live in Hilliard House. He appeared in a couple of group photographs as a small child, sulky-looking with long hair and wearing a white gown instead of shirt and pants. A couple of pages later I found a portrait of him all grown up and in uniform. Grandma had said the Hilliard boys always went to war, and Joshua was no different. I’d seen a TV show about the First World War, so I knew he’d probably spent a lot of time sitting in a rat-infested trench, watching the skies for artillery and mustard gas. All while waiting for the call to climb out and get shot at.

  But he survived, of course, and married Elizabeth Anne Cunningham. In their wedding portrait he looked pretty slick in a pin-striped suit, and Elizabeth Anne was sweet with her curly golden bob. She didn’t wear a veil, but her ankle-length white dress had pearls sewn all over it. I studie
d that photograph for quite a while. They seemed so happy. It made me sad to think of them buried under different headstones, separated forever in death.

  After that, the photos shifted to Grandpa’s father and mother, and I thought maybe he never had any photos of Joshua Hilliard’s daughter. Then I came across another group shot taken in front of Hilliard House, probably at Thanksgiving because the trees were looking bare and the women wore shawls and light coats. The men stood, the women sat in chairs before them, and the children sat on the ground. I found Elizabeth Anne first. She was still bright-eyed and beautiful. Nestled at her feet was a very slight girl with white-blond hair that fluffed around her head like a dandelion about to blow its seeds. The other kids looked at the camera, as they’d likely been told, but her head was turned as if she was distracted by something in the distance.

  Grandpa had dated the photograph 1935. Margaret Anne was five years old.

  In about fourteen months she would be dead.

  I shook my head and reached for the next album, which mostly had photos of Grandpa when he was a little boy. The album after that had photos of Grandpa and Grandma sitting together and smiling, holding hands—what Grandma called “courting”—and then getting married, working the farm. Once Grandpa took over the farm, he stopped smiling.

  Finally, in the last few pages, there were photos of Mom.

  I giggled at the baby pictures of her toothless grin and bald head. I’d seen copies of them in Mom’s scrapbooks. Once she was walking, the photos turned to color: Mom on her first day of school, wearing a patchwork dress that flared out around her knees, her hair in bushy pigtails; Mom in skirts with kneesocks; Mom in church clothes with a bow on her head, standing next to Grandma. I stared at that last photo, wondering if there were other kids at Sycamore Road Church of Christ in those days. Mom didn’t talk much about that time except to complain about her loneliness and Grandpa’s strict rules.

  There was one shot of Mom in a plaid shirt and overalls, sitting with Grandpa on the tractor, but otherwise it was all dresses and skirts. Mom told me she fought the family dress code once she got to high school, and I guess Grandma lost the battle. The later photos were inserted just as carefully as all of the others, but I could feel Grandpa’s disapproval clinging to the shots of Mom in jeans, Mom wearing eye shadow and lipstick.