Christina's Ghost

by Betty Ren Wright

  What could she do this evening while Uncle Ralph read? She wouldn’t mind reading some comic books—they didn’t count as real books—but they were in Russell’s room upstairs. And she certainly wasn’t going up there to get one. She hadn’t been upstairs all day, except for a fast early-morning trip, with Uncle Ralph at her side, to get clean underwear, her toothbrush, and a comb.

  There was one comic book downstairs, she remembered—the one she’d picked up the first day after they arrived. She’d seen it somewhere, perhaps on the dining-room sideboard. She gave the sink a final wipe and went down the hall. But the sideboard was bare, except for a huge enameled bowl.

  For a moment Chris stood there, wondering what else she could do this evening. Then she bent down and looked underneath the sideboard. The comic book was there, behind one of the heavy wooden legs and curled up against the molding.

  She carried the book to the parlor. She’d read all the riddles that first day, but she could try them on Uncle Ralph. If she made him laugh, maybe Russell Charles would appear again. And maybe not. It hadn’t been the friendly gaze of a little boy that she’d felt while they searched the study.

  “Uncle Ralph, why is a mouse like hay?”

  He looked up. “You tell me.” He sounded impatient.

  “Because the cat’ll eat it.” Chris waited. “See, ‘cat’ll’ sounds the same as ‘cattle’—”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times,” Uncle Ralph said. “Don’t explain.”

  “What did one candle say to the other candle?”

  Uncle Ralph gave up. He closed his book on one finger and pretended to concentrate. “You light up my world?”

  Chris giggled. “That’s pretty good,” she admitted. “But it’s the wrong answer. The right answer is ‘Are you going out tonight?’ ”

  Uncle Ralph shrugged. “I like mine better. Or how about ‘I think you’re really wick-ed, dearie’?”

  It was Chris’s turn to groan. She read him the last riddle on the page. “What goes ‘Ho-ho-ho-thunk’?”

  “I’ve heard that one before,” Uncle Ralph said, but now the playfulness was gone from his voice. “It’s a man laughing his head off.”

  Chris looked up from the comic book. Uncle Ralph was staring at a corner of the parlor. There was the slightest of movements, and suddenly Russell Charles was standing there.

  “He came back,” Chris breathed. “Oh, I’m glad.”

  But this time Russell wasn’t smiling. The small face seemed frozen in panic. As Chris and Uncle Ralph watched, he raised a hand and pointed at Chris. Then, as silently as he’d come, he was gone.

  “Something’s wrong,” Chris cried. “He never looked like that before. Oh, Uncle Ralph—”

  She stopped as a loud scraping sound cut through the quiet house. It came from upstairs.

  “The chest,” Uncle Ralph said. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. “That was the chest being pushed away from the attic door.”

  “No,” Chris whimpered. “No, no, no!”

  But even as she said it, she heard the attic door open, and heavy steps started down the upstairs hall.

  15.

  “Let’s Get Out of Here!”

  Uncle Ralph crossed the parlor in one long leap. He snatched the comic book from Chris’s hands and flipped the pages.

  “He’s coming!” Chris shrieked. “Listen!”

  The footsteps reached the top of the stairs. “He’s going to come down,” Chris said. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “And do you know why he’s coming down?” Uncle Ralph demanded hoarsely. “We’re getting too close to his secret, that’s why. Russell Charles was trying to tell us something.” He shook the comic book hard. A glassine envelope, long and narrow like a bookmark, fell to the floor.

  “There it is!” he shouted.

  The footsteps started down the stairs.

  Uncle Ralph dived for the envelope, but before he could pick it up, an icy wind swept the room. The envelope skittered across the carpet.

  “I’ll get it,” Chris squealed. She snatched up the envelope and looked around for an escape route. Not the front door. That would mean facing the thing that was on the stairs. She ran to a window. The nearest one was painted shut. She struggled with the second until Uncle Ralph pushed her aside and jerked it open.

  “Out you go!” he shouted. “Quick!”

  The cold wind roared around Chris, and the footsteps on the stairs were as loud as thunder. She tumbled through the window out onto the porch. Uncle Ralph was right behind her. At the top of the steps he grabbed her hand, and they jumped off the porch together.

  “Around the back,” Uncle Ralph panted. “Head for the car.”

  Chris felt as if she were running through a swamp that sucked at her feet and held her back. “Can’t—can’t run!” she gasped.

  Uncle Ralph pulled her along. “Yes you can,” he said. “Just make sure you hang on to that envelope, sport.”

  They reached the car. Uncle Ralph swung open the door on the driver’s side and threw Chris across the seat. Then he jumped in after her and slammed the door. The keys were in the ignition. There was a heart-stopping moment when the motor stuttered, quit, then roared to life.

  “That’s my good old baby,” Uncle Ralph muttered. “That’s my girl!”

  He swung the car around so that the headlights rested full on the house. Curtains and draperies billowed furiously at every window. Lights flicked on and off, all over the house. Then the back door flew open, and the towering figure of the attic ghost was silhouetted in the headlights’ beam.

  “He’s coming!” Chris screamed. “He’s coming after us!”

  Uncle Ralph pulled hard on the wheel, and the car shot into the narrow, winding road that led to the highway. The trees formed a tunnel around them, and as the car bounced through it, the branches ahead seemed to bend down. Something struck the roof a sharp blow.

  “He’s trying to stop us,” Chris cried. “What are we going to do?”

  Uncle Ralph clutched the steering wheel like a race-car driver. “Hang on, sport,” he said through clenched teeth. “This is still Dixon’s territory. Do you have that envelope?”

  Chris held up the strip of glassine.

  “Good. Don’t wrinkle it.”

  “Wrinkle it!” Chris exclaimed. “I can hardly hold it, I’m shaking so hard.”

  “Then put it in the glove compartment, and go ahead and shake,” Uncle Ralph snapped. He winced as a branch scraped across the windshield. “We’re almost back to civilization.”

  As he said it, they shot out onto the highway. A semitrailer truck swerved around them with startled blasts of the horn.

  “Cool it, bub,” Uncle Ralph said. He raced after the truck. Other cars were coming toward them now, their lights reassuring in the forest dark. Far ahead, the lights of a woodland motel twinkled.

  “We’re okay!” Uncle Ralph said. “We’ve made it!” But Chris noticed that he didn’t slow down. Not until the gas stations, bait shops, and small shingled houses of Clearwater began flying past did he take his foot off the gas.

  “There’s a little coffee shop right smack in the middle of town,” he said. “We’ll go there.”

  Good, Chris thought. Ghosts didn’t show themselves in coffee shops, did they?

  When they parked in front of the little restaurant, Chris discovered that her knees were still trembling. She shook as she removed the envelope from the glove compartment, followed Uncle Ralph into the restaurant and settled in a high-backed booth. She laid the glassine envelope in the middle of the table and stared at it.

  Across from her, Uncle Ralph wiped his face with his handkerchief. He took deep breaths, like a swimmer coming up for air. “You want to open that thing, Christina?” he asked. “You deserve to. You’re the one who got it away from—from him.”

  Chris shuddered. She glanced out at the street, where tourists strolled, eating ice-cream cones and enjoying the soft summer night. She would have liked to be one of
them. Walking down Clearwater’s main street eating an ice-cream cone was all the adventure she’d ever want again.

  “We’ll do that tomorrow,” Uncle Ralph said, once again seeming to read her mind. “Open that envelope, will you?”

  Chris worked a grubby fingernail under the envelope’s flap. Two strips of stamps slipped out on the table. There were four silver-gray ones with a picture of George Washington. The other strip was made up of five stamps printed in reddish-brown.

  “Who’s that?” Chris asked.

  Uncle Ralph stared at the stamps in awe. “That’s Benjamin Franklin,” he said. He touched the strips with a cautious finger. “I don’t know much about stamps,” he said slowly, “but I’ve seen pictures of both of these. And I’ve read about them. They’re part of the very first stamp-issue printed by the United States Government.”

  “The very first?” And she’d carried them around in a comic book! “They don’t have those little holes to help you tear them apart,” she pointed out. “Maybe they’re fakes.”

  Uncle Ralph shook his head. “In 1847, when these were printed, the government didn’t use perforations. That came later. The fact that these are in such perfect condition and haven’t been cut apart makes them especially valuable, I’m sure.”

  Chris was thrilled. She thought of the millions of stamps on millions of letters on their way to people all over the country. Finding these first ones was like . . . like uncovering a national treasure.

  The waitress brought Uncle Ralph coffee and the cinnamon-apple pie he’d ordered. Chris had a chocolate milkshake and a cheese sandwich. She discovered she was starving, and Uncle Ralph seemed just as hungry. They ate without talking, but Chris realized that this silence was nothing like the gloomy silence of their first meals together.

  A couple of times, Uncle Ralph patted the pocket where he’d put the stamps for safekeeping. When the pie was gone and his cup had been filled for the second time, he leaned back with a sigh.

  “Now let’s take another look,” he said. He laid the stamps on the table again. “Do you realize how close we came to missing these?” he said. “If you weren’t a comic-book fan, for example. . . . ”

  “And if I hadn’t left the right book in the dining room,” Chris said. She was remembering an afternoon when she’d taken a couple of the comics out to the end of the pier. One of them had blown into the water while she sunbathed.

  “And if it weren’t for Russell Charles,” Uncle Ralph added. “Poor little kid—caught up in a mystery he didn’t want any part of.”

  “I wonder what he’ll do now,” Chris said. “And what’s going to happen to that awful Dixon? Do you think he’s going to go thumping and raging around the house forever and ever?”

  Uncle Ralph slid the stamps back into their envelope. “All I’m sure of,” he said, “is that we’re not going back tonight to find out.” Then he leaned across the table and raised an eyebrow at Chris. “Unless, of course, you insist on it, Christina. I’ll go if you want to. We aim to please.”

  16.

  Two of a Kind

  They checked and found that the only motel on Clearwater’s main street was filled with tourists.

  “We could go back to that motel we passed on the highway,” Uncle Ralph said. “Or we can sleep in the car. What do you think?”

  “The car,” Chris said at once. She didn’t want to leave the lights of town.

  Uncle Ralph looked relieved. “The car it is,” he said. “This is going to be a short night, anyway.”

  He parked just off the main street, and after making sure Chris was comfortable in back, he settled down in the driver’s seat. His shock of grey hair, silvered by the street light, was the last thing Chris saw before she slept. Good old Uncle Ralph, she thought. He understood how she felt about staying in Clearwater tonight. He felt the same way.

  They woke early when a little boy tapped on the windshield and grinned at them. Uncle Ralph drove to the sheriff’s office.

  “I’ll be glad to get rid of these,” he said, touching the pocket that held the stamps. “I’ve never been in charge of a fortune before.”

  Chris waited in the car and almost fell asleep again before he returned, looking pleased with himself.

  “The sheriff was pretty surprised,” he told Chris as they headed back to the coffee shop for breakfast. “It isn’t every day that evidence turns up to explain a thirty-year-old crime.”

  “Did you tell him about the ghosts?”

  “Now, that’s a silly question,” Uncle Ralph said. “I told him we found some valuable stamps. In a comic book. Accidentally. I did not tell them about Russell Charles or about Thomas Dixon, or about cold winds blowing through the house or footsteps going thunk in the night. I have my reputation to think of, you know.”

  “But it did happen,” Chris said, a little doubtfully. In the bright light of morning, with good smells of breakfast toast and bacon around them, last night’s adventure was beginning to seem unreal.

  “It did happen,” Uncle Ralph assured her. “You know it, and I know it. But there’s no reason why anyone else has to hear about it. Agreed?”

  “Except Mom and Dad,” Chris said.

  “If you must.”

  They left it at that. An hour later, they were on their way back to the house, and Chris was struggling to ignore a whole flock of butterflies in her stomach. Not butterflies, she thought. Eagles!

  “We have to go back at least once, sport,” Uncle Ralph had insisted. “Or at least I do. My notes are there and my typewriter—to say nothing of our clothes. You can wait in town if you’d rather.”

  “Oh, no!” It wouldn’t be fair to make him go back to that house alone.

  “Good girl,” Uncle Ralph said. “If there’s anything strange going on, we’ll just grab our stuff and get out. Permanently.”

  “Right,” Chris had agreed. Now she held her breath as the car made its final turn into the yard behind the house.

  A blue sedan was parked near the back steps. As Chris and Uncle Ralph stared at it in astonishment, Aunt Grace climbed out on one side and Jenny on the other.

  “Good grief!” Uncle Ralph groaned. “Not now!”

  But Aunt Grace was waving a greeting, and Jenny came flying across the grass to meet them, her blond hair shining in the sun.

  “Where were you?” she shouted. “Grandma’s coming home today, Chrissy. We’re going to get her.”

  “Hi, Jenny.” Chris gave her little sister a hug, but her eyes were on the house. All the windows were open. The curtains hung straight and still.

  “Where in the world have you two been?” Aunt Grace demanded. “Going off and leaving this place open to anyone who wandered by. Really, Ralph!”

  “We had to go to town,” Uncle Ralph said. “And no one wanders by here—except you, Grace.” He scowled. “You didn’t go in, did you?”

  “Of course I didn’t go in,” Aunt Grace snapped. “I don’t walk uninvited into other people’s houses. I wasn’t even sure this was the right place. But the car was gone, and I thought surely if it was the right place, you’d be back soon. I mean, with all the windows open and the door open. . . .” Her voice trailed off as Uncle Ralph marched past her up the steps and disappeared inside the house.

  For just one moment, Chris hesitated. She felt so safe out here with Aunt Grace and Jenny. Birds sang in the woods, and the air buzzed with insects. Then she ran up the steps after Uncle Ralph.

  “Well, honestly,” Aunt Grace said, and followed with Jenny.

  The kitchen was warm and full of light. The worn brick floor gave back a ruddy glow, and the white-painted cabinets shone in the sun.

  “Why, this is really quite nice,” Aunt Grace said, sounding surprised. “These old houses can be so damp and musty.”

  That was what was different, Chris thought. The musty smell was gone, and the gloom had gone with it.

  They followed Uncle Ralph as he led the way down the hall, into the parlor, through the dining room and study,
and back to the front hall. Aunt Grace and Jenny thought they were being given a tour, but Chris knew Uncle Ralph wanted to look around. Except for the books piled on the floor of the study, there was no trace of the terrifying events of the night before. The rooms were bright and still.

  “Christina, you take Jenny upstairs and show her your bedroom,” Aunt Grace ordered. “I want to talk to Ralph for a while. We have to make plans now that your grandmother’s coming home.”

  Chris looked at Uncle Ralph, wide-eyed. Upstairs?

  “You don’t have to,” Uncle Ralph said quickly. “We can all go up and look around later.”

  Chris gulped. “That’s okay,” she said. “I think everything’s all right now.”

  “So do I,” Uncle Ralph replied. “Or I wouldn’t let you go.”

  Aunt Grace frowned. “What in the world—”

  “Come on, Grace,” Uncle Ralph said. “I’ll make coffee. Tell me about Ma.”

  Jenny crowded close to Chris as they climbed the stairs. “It’s awful at Aunt Grace’s,” she whispered. “I have to eat liver and peas. And she boils the chicken. And I can’t watch any good television shows.” She poked Chris in the ribs. “I bet it was awful staying with Uncle Ralph, too.”

  They had reached the top of the stairs. All the doors except that of Chris’s bedroom were closed. The chest was against the wall at the end of the corridor. And the air was fresh and sweet, with a lake breeze blowing through Chris’s bedroom window.

  “It wasn’t so bad here,” said Chris.

  Jenny peeked briefly into Chris’s room and then turned to the door next to it. “What’s in here?” she demanded, and threw the door open. “Hey, it’s a little kid’s room! Oh, I wish I’d stayed here instead of with Aunt Grace. This would have been my room for sure.” She darted around, admiring the posters and running her fingers over the game boxes on the shelves.

  Chris stood in the doorway. The room had changed.