Out of the Wild Night

by Blue Balliett

  Boards and pieces of trim from other old houses seem to be appearing on their own. The pile grows daily. All are used and a few are the valuable, really wide kind, obviously cut a long time ago from giant trees. None are rotten. It’s as if someone picked through the old lumber being discarded and passed along the very best pieces.

  Sal has had people offer him useful odds and ends, but never sneak them unseen into the Folger yard.

  Meanwhile, workers have begun to report dumpsters filled with old wood being emptied overnight, plus a few unexplained bumps and bangs at the “renovation” sites that are the source. Angry footsteps and loud thumps have been heard with no one nearby, ladders have wobbled, tools been dropped, lifted, or thrown. Carpenters, painters, electricians, and plumbers have sworn they were pushed or tripped, and complain of minor injuries. Sal, as one known to settle ghosts, is surprised no contractor has stopped him on the street to ask what he thinks.

  He wonders if the more aggressive builders, those like Eddy Nold, have been told there is no such thing as ghosts. Truth is, Sal isn’t sure how anyone can stop Eddy. He didn’t want to say that either to the Gang or to Mrs. Rebimbas, but he can admit it to himself.

  Outrage is powerful, as are the island’s spirits, but mixing the two won’t guarantee change.

  Troubled, Sal paces at home while the Gang visits Lydia Lyon’s house. Bam, bam! Someone knocks on the kitchen door. Sal throws it open.

  It’s Gabe’s dad, Herbie Pinkham. He and Flossie were friends when the two were children, and Sal is pleased to see him.

  “Here in official capacity, Sal,” Herbie says.

  “Ah.” Sal rocks back on his heels, suddenly fearful for the kids. He doubts Herbie knew they were headed out to observe dangerous work sites, and on their own.

  Herbie, sensing Sal’s discomfort, says quickly, “It’s about the boards out back.”

  “Oh, well! Come on in.” Sal throws open the door. “Something bigger than us is at work, Herbie.” Sal is now striding toward the back-porch door. “Glad to show you.”

  “Happy to hear it.” The officer is right behind him. “Whoa!” Herbie backs up at the sight of all that lumber. “Got some wood here! That’s a lotta hauling. And it’s making a mess of trouble for me.”

  “Me, too.” Sal nods. “Don’t know what to do with it. So I guess word is out.”

  “And you didn’t take it?” Herbie looks puzzled. “People are saying it means you’re on the sites with all the accidents.”

  “And that I’m the problem?” Sal snorts and throws his arms wide, bumping a chair nearby, which then rocks angrily on its own. Herbie’s eyes move with it, slowly widening.

  “The next thing you know, they’ll be confusing the living with the dead!” Sal says, his eyes twinkling.

  “Hmph,” Herbie mumbles. Surprising himself, he wishes suddenly that he and his grandmother could have a heart-to-heart chat about ghosts. One his wife and son knew nothing about.

  As if reading his mind, Sal says, “Your granny Pinkham.”

  Herbie’s head snaps up and he studies Sal’s face. “Just thinking of her,” he says gruffly.

  Sal is now pacing again. “She’d say, ‘There’s someone wants to be noticed. So give ’em what they want.’”

  Herbie looks around the old kitchen but says nothing. He sighs.

  “Herbie,” Sal says gently, “be who you are.”

  “You okay? What happened? Who did you see?” The voices chime and tumble around him.

  At first Gabe is speechless, but he’s soon filling in the Gang, who huddle close, mouths open like so many fish.

  Here is what he tells them:

  When he stepped inside the Lyon house, leaving his buddies in a nervous group outside, he called softly, “Helloooo? You guys still here? So what can we do? I’m back! Here to help.”

  Taking a couple of steps into the front parlor, he placed a hand on what was left of the fireplace mantel.

  For a moment the house was quiet and then he heard a sudden shrump-scuffle, as if someone were squeezing through a tight space. The boy and girl again appeared on the second floor, peeking down through splintered walls.

  Gabe had been prepared to be frightened but instead felt that same flush of excitement he’d had on the beach. A connection—I am here, and so are they!

  The girl was Maddie’s age, and held up her doll to show Gabe. She danced it up and down, making its china slippers clack. Still wearing his hat, the boy took a step closer, pulling the girl, then turned away and looked around at the house.

  Next, he spun back toward Gabe as if impatient for him to understand.

  “What?” Gabe asked. The stairs to the second floor were gone. “I can’t fly up there.”

  Wheee! Gabe had the odd sensation of being blown sideways toward a wall, but gently. Soon his shoulder was against what remained of a bare corner post, and he saw what was left of the keeping room, the main living space in a very old house, filling up with life.

  Like foam at the tide line, one scene after another shimmered and then popped around him. He watched a grandma mending a sock by the fire, an old dog at her feet. A toddler sat nearby, playing with spoons and a kettle. Pop! Suddenly they were replaced by another scene, one with holly on the mantel, stockings hanging by a fire, and a row of kids standing nearby, their eyes dizzy with Christmas. Pop! Now Gabe saw a young woman washing the floor with a rag and singing, at the same time, to a baby in a cradle. Pop! He saw the boy and his sister. They were younger, watching as a woman who looked like their mother rolled out pie dough on the kitchen table. Nearby was a bowl filled with sugared cranberries. Smiling, she pulled off a chunk of dough for each of them, and they busily flattened and shaped it with small fingers, then reached toward the berries. Pop! Gabe realized he was alone again, the house silent and cold.

  He looked back at where the boy and girl had first appeared, on the second floor. Although they seemed to be gone, he whispered, “Thanks. I know you’re with me, and—”

  Just then, Gabe felt a push and stumbled out the front door. He knew in a flash that he’d said the wrong thing.

  After all, he hadn’t yet given what these ghost kids wanted from him. Was he right to think they liked the Gang’s plan?

  Outside in the cold, surrounded by his friends, Gabe sorts through an odd mix of discomfort at having assumed too much, relief at being back in the everyday world, and excitement about getting to the next house.

  At the moment, I can tell he is no longer afraid, but I am.

  Like a kid who swims on a calm day and imagines the waters are always kind, he’s not wary.

  I think of my house, standing intact near Lydia Lyon’s, innocent of what may come. Hope of a rescue is colored by fear.

  I shiver, both for my home and for this boy.

  Maybe some of this is my fault for waking and then ringing and hollering. For spreading the news.

  The Gang’s plan is to visit as many houses that are “under attack” as they can, dangling Gabe as the lure.

  No adults, including Sal, are to know.

  But, of course, I know. Do I count, even if no one knows I’m here?

  November 15, and still no wind.

  While the Gang plan their next visit, the rest of the island shifts uneasily. No one living remembers a full two weeks with not even the whisper of a breeze. People’s thoughts are loud in their heads.

  Many aren’t sleeping well. They startle awake, thinking they’ve heard an odd footstep or a rustling outside their windows. During the day, they drop dishes, spill food, make mistakes at work.

  Islanders find odd questions coming to mind, such as: How do you best use a splintered lifesaving oar that’s washed up on the beach? Is there a favorite island recipe for cooking and eating boat shell snails, also known as slipper shells? Those are the little shells that look like a tiny rowboat, or perhaps a shoe. Or Should I be out lane-ing—an old phrase that means wandering in the narrow streets in town—during the next full moon?


  If they’re adults, they laugh and push these thoughts away.

  Not the kids. They are listening.

  Lately, a flood tide of old Nantucket names floats incessantly through their heads, names of people they don’t know.

  Math goes undone. Chores are neglected at home. The kids seem to be carried along on an unseen current. A source of some kind is at work, one that is filling young minds and hearts with an insistence that can’t be ignored.

  Irritated parents and teachers realize, after several tries, that the kids are not ignoring them. Rather, they are busy, paying attention to details that matter, even if they don’t yet know why or how.

  Today, Gabe thinks about Peleg Hussey, Hepsabeth Gardner, and Josiah Turner. Maria and Markus are stuck at the moment on Hezekiah and Tristram Starbuck, and as Maria had thought of one name, and Markus the other, they wonder if the Starbucks are also twins.

  At school, the kids scribble a name or two on the covers of their notebooks, on the edges of workbook pages, even on the palms of their hands. The names change hourly, with the new displacing the old as if that were natural, like shells shifting at the tide line.

  Oh my! I’ve just heard Markus muttering the name of my late husband, Daniel B. Chase. He was not a great companion, but I do believe I’m starting to forgive him. The more I ring my bell and blow my horn, the more I realize he must have done the best he could. He was wounded in the Civil War, lost a leg, and died decades later, at age seventy-nine, in our house, peacefully, on a day when the wind banged and whistled so hard that he thought it was distant cannons.

  My Daniel must be pleased he’s here in the story. That, and surprised to see me as the Crier.

  One curious teacher decides to stop at the Historical Association library after school with a long list of these names. She soon discovers that they all belong to Nantucketers from the past, mostly everyday people who didn’t make it into the history books. All are buried here.

  Leaning back in her chair, she lets the import of this news sink in. There’s a missing link, she thinks to herself. If these were plain old people, how did the kids get their names?

  She looks around the Historical Association library and then glances at the librarian, on his computer in the corner. Better not to ask, she warns herself. Not yet.

  Walking out the door, she runs across Sal, a font of information for all things Nantucket. She begins to understand … or so she thinks.

  Cyrus Coffin finds himself thinking about Shubael Brock and Benjamin Whippey, his brother Paul about Lucy Coffin and Enoch Gardner. When the boys ask their sister, Maddie, if she has any names in her head, she answers promptly, “Lydia Barker. Woof!”

  Phoebe Antoine has been hearing Walter Folger, Walter Folger over and over. She knows this is a famous name in her family.

  “Who is Walter Folger?” she asks Sal. “I forgot.”

  “There’ve been a few, but the most famous one was an island cousin who lived on Pleasant Street a long time ago, a self-taught inventor and mathematician,” her grandfather replies. “Also an astronomer, lawyer, and congressman. He was a genius, truth to tell. Built an astronomical clock in 1790 that still keeps perfect time, and no one has been able to reproduce it. One of his relatives, Abaiah Folger, was Benjamin Franklin’s mother.” I smile, thinking of old Ben’s great-niece, the one who once lived in my home.

  “Mmm,” Phee says, fiddling with her sneaker lace. “But why does Walter Folger keep popping into my head? I can’t concentrate. It’s like he wants me to do something.”

  Sal, never one to be surprised at the way the past dies slowly on his island—if at all—glances sideways at his granddaughter.

  “Perhaps he wants you to notice something …” Sal hesitates.

  “Something wrong,” Phee suggests, reading his face.

  She feels a sharp tap on the shoulder, but it isn’t her grandfather. He’s across the room.

  “Something heartless,” she blurts. The words pop out as if someone else had said them. Even Phee looks surprised.

  “Exactly. An injustice.” Sal’s mouth is a grim line.

  Phee has this on her mind the next day as she meets with the Gang.

  I have it on my mind as well.

  “Hurry up, you guys!” Phee calls as she trots ahead.

  What’s left of Mrs. Lyon’s home is still quiet a day later, as Eddy has been unable to coax the crew to return. The kids know better than to count this as a victory, but it’s a pause.

  They decide to head toward their next house, which is at the end of Pine Street. The kids know it’s one of Eddy’s prime projects. He recently bought the place for nothing, and few improvements have been made in the last half century. He claims a gut job is the only remedy.

  The Gang lines up across the street. A worker marches around the side of the house with a sign he pounds into the front garden: Nold, not Mold! Call Eddy and enjoy a flavor of Old with the best of New!

  “Pah,” Phee says and spits in the dirt.

  Gabe squints at a first-floor window. “Hold on,” he says.

  First, a plump little hand flattens itself on the glass. Next, the face of an older kid, a girl who grins with no front teeth, then a serious boy with freckles. Now a head bounces into view, then vanishes. Bonk, bonk! Here, now gone. Gabe realizes that the kid is jumping, leaping up to catch glimpses of him.

  The three have curly hair and sunburned skin. “See them?” he breathes. No one else does.

  Now Gabe steps quietly toward the front door.

  Eddy Nold’s voice drifts around the side of the building.

  “Come on,” Phee whispers to the others. “Let’s distract Eddy and his crew while Gabe’s inside.”

  The Gang hurry behind the house and gather by a huge dumpster. Paul leans on the side. To their surprise, the crew and contractor ignore them.

  Suddenly, Gabe’s face appears upstairs and he gives a thumbs-up sign to his friends.

  As the Nold crew step toward the back door, hammers and saws in hand, Phee squeals.

  “Quick!” She grabs a stone and hurls it toward the rear wall. Whang! It thumps on the shingles. As soon as the adults turn, the kids freeze. The crew look back at the house and another stone flies.

  And then something else takes over. As the Gang watch, mouths open, stones pelt the back of the building, rolling down the roof and bouncing off drainpipes and framing. The workers back away in a stumbly group, and the Gang stand quietly to one side, trying not to smile.

  “What a pity,” Maria says loudly.

  “A mystery,” Markus adds.

  Now Eddy Nold, as if not wanting to look cowardly, steps boldly toward the house, a clipboard shielding his face. Stones thump on the back of his jacket, his work boots, and his legs. “Ow,” he mutters as the back door swings closed behind him.

  Outside, no one moves.

  Suddenly a man-sized shout: “Yeooow!” The handle to the door rattles and turns, but it doesn’t open. A curtain covering the window in the door ruffles madly, as if there’s a struggle inside.

  The Gang is surprised that the Nold crew members exchange panicky looks but don’t move to help their boss.

  It’s Cyrus who steps boldly toward the door and flings it open. He then hurries back to the group of kids, and the adults nearby stare at the ground, looking stunned.

  Just as Phee says to them, “No worries! He’s quick,” meaning Cyrus, Eddy flies out the back door. The contractor’s feet do not touch the steps.

  His arms are spread at a weird angle like wings. He lands on one knee and then, with a groan, tips slowly onto his face.

  As the crew help him to his truck, the Gang hear Eddy mutter, “Little fingers. Pinching! Nose, ears, neck—every bit of bare skin. Not wasps, no people inside. Impossible!”

  The kids shrug quietly to each other as the last of the workers leave the site. Looking up at the second floor, they spot Gabe zipping by one window and then another, followed by three unfamiliar heads of hair.

  “T
here he is!”

  “Ohhh! Plus three ghosts!” The exclamations flow. The Gang sees the same thing I do, but … they don’t see me.

  The four are moving fast.

  Phee’s face is now hard to read. I imagine she’s wondering if Gabe joined the ghosts in attacking Eddy Nold. Who is leading whom?

  I wonder, too. Gabe’s never been a mean or rough kid—was he forced to do it? Or is he being chased by the same group that went after Eddy? By kids who are now confused and think this boy who walked inside might be a bad guy, like the contractor?

  Phee must be thinking the same thing. Her voice quavers as she calls out, “Gabe?”

  Soon there’s a chorus of nervous voices shouting to Gabe from outside.

  No answer.

  The kids in the Gang exchange glances and, moving shoulder to shoulder, step inside. The house smells sad. Sad and bad.

  Phee rushes to the bottom of the stairs, calling, “You okay?”

  “Be right down,” Gabe gasps, clearly out of breath. “Stay there.”

  Eyes are wide as the Gang follows the overhead running. Bam, bam, bam, bump! Small feet dash back and forth, bodies bouncing wildly off walls as if they’re playing a game of tag.

  “Can we help?” Maria calls up. “We saw them. I mean, their heads!”

  No answer, but sounds of—what? Murmuring? Mice in the walls?

  “GABE PINKHAM!” Phee cups her hands around her mouth. Then she slaps her ear with one hand, her neck with the other, squealing, “Quit it! Cut it out!”

  Flinging open the door, she rushes back outside, the rest of the Gang after her.

  “Holy moly,” Markus pants. “Not nice.”

  “GABE!” Phee shouts at the top of her lungs from outside. “I’m calling your dad if you don’t come out NOW!”

  A moment later, Gabe bursts outside and collapses in a pile. “Whew, this is harder than I thought,” he gasps. “Wait—catch my breath—tell you in a minute—”

  As soon as he’s able, they start back toward the Old North Cemetery. No one speaks until Gabe is ready.