Ghosts Beneath Our Feet

by Betty Ren Wright

  “Looks nice ’ere,” he said. “Your ma’s a good worker. You’re fair-to-middlin’, too.”

  Katie smiled, hiding her surprise. “I don’t mind dusting books,” she said. “The trouble is, I spend more time reading than dusting.”

  Uncle Frank pulled out a book and put it back again. He had something on his mind. “That boy, now,” he said. “’E’s not such a bad ’un either. Thought ’e was at first. Saucy enough, I’m sure. But I been watchin’ ’im, and I see that ’e’s like me—like I was a long time ago. ’E’s lost ’is pa, and ’e can’t get over it. I lost me family, and I acted the same way. I was all alone, and I was scared. It’s a wicked feelin’—mad at the world, like, an’ lookin’ for someone to thump.”

  Katie felt her eyes fill with tears. This was the longest—and friendliest—speech Uncle Frank had made since the day they’d come to stay with him. Long after he’d tottered off to his chair on the front porch, she was still turning over his words in her mind.

  Poor Jay—feeling alone and scared—mad at the world and looking for someone to thump. In spite of herself, she felt sorry for her stepbrother again.

  “He’s not such a bad ’un,” she whispered to herself. “Uncle Frank is right. And Uncle Frank’s a good ’un, too. Just like a real uncle.” She smiled at the thought and ran the feather duster briskly across a whole row of bindings.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Jay didn’t want to go with us, huh?” Joan sat on the curb in front of her house, long legs extended, head thrown back. She looked the way she had that first day when Katie and Jay wandered down the hill, except that now her smile carried a welcome. “I told you he wouldn’t.”

  “He’s swimming at Tuesday Lake,” Katie explained, dropping down beside her. “I said he could still go along if he got back by four o’clock, but—” She glanced at the Poldeens’ house and asked casually, “Is Skip around?”

  “He’s been gone all day, too.”

  Katie sighed. Jay had announced at breakfast that he was going to hike out to the lake and would take sandwiches and a thermos along. He’d been so open about his plans that Mrs. Blaine hadn’t asked questions, though she looked as if she was biting her tongue. When he dropped a paperback and his tape player into the knapsack with his lunch, however, she’d seemed reassured. She’d even called, “Have a good time,” when he clattered downstairs and out the front door soon after breakfast.

  “I hope he’s going alone,” Mrs. Blaine said as she started to gather up the dishes. Katie was silent, and Uncle Frank had muttered, “That Poldeen is a bad ’un,” putting all their thoughts into words.

  Still, just because Skip was away from home didn’t mean he and Jay were together. Katie turned away from the Poldeen house and concentrated on the afternoon’s adventure. “Every time we go to the shaft house it rains,” she said. “Look at that sky.”

  “Good weather for ghost-hunting,” Joan agreed. “Or knacker-trapping,” she added, rolling her eyes. “Come on inside a minute. I have to tell my ma we’re ready to go.”

  They found Mrs. Trelawny in front of the television set, a heap of unmatched socks on the sofa beside her. She greeted Katie without her usual smile. “I’ve told Joan and now I’m tellin’ you,” she said. “I don’t want you girls goin’ inside that old shaft house again. Joan let it slip you went in there a while back, and I don’t like it a bit.”

  “Ma, every kid in Newquay’s been in there some time or other,” Joan said, pouting. “It isn’t dangerous.”

  “You heard me, missy.”

  “But how are we going to see ghosts or knackers if we don’t go inside—”

  “Ghosts! Knackers! I’m sick of hearin’ about ’em. If you like ghosts so much, listen to your gram’s tales. You’ll hear more about ghosts and knackers right here in your own house than you’ll learn in that rickety old shaft house.”

  “We’re just going to look around, Mrs. Trelawny,” Katie said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Katie saw a ghost the last time we were at the shaft house,” Joan teased. “Didn’t you, Katie? A girl with long blond hair and a pale face.”

  Katie nodded reluctantly. “I really did see her. She had beautiful golden hair, and when she walked she sort of limped.”

  “Oh, Katie! You’re gettin’ as bad as Gram.”

  “Gram ain’t so bad,” said a pert voice. The old lady peered at them from the doorway. “That’s May Nichols you’re talkin’ of, missy, come back to warn of the danger. I ain’t a bit surprised to hear it.”

  “Who’s May Nichols?” Katie ignored Mrs. Trelawny’s tight-lipped expression. If Gram knew something about the ghost-girl, Katie wanted to hear it.

  “You ask old Frank an’ he’ll tell you,” Gram said. She settled herself in an armchair. “Thirty years ago May Nichols was goin’ to marry Frank’s boy Kenny. Lovely girl, she was. Treated Frank like he was her own father.”

  “What happened to her?” Joan asked.

  “When word came of the mine accident, she went to the shaft house to wait for news, same as ’undreds of others,” Gram said. “Stayed there all night and the next day, too. They couldn’t get ’er to leave, even after the rescue teams gave up. It was Frank finally made ’er go—told ’er ’e needed a daughter to look after ’im, now that ’is son was gone. But it was too late by then. Caught the pneumonia, she did, waitin’ and waitin’. Not three weeks after Frank lost ’is boy, ’e lost ’is May as well.”

  “Was she lame, Gram?”

  “That she was. Broke ’er leg when she was a little mite, an’ it never did ’eal right. No matter. She were a beauty.”

  Joan smacked her hands over her head. “You really did see a ghost then, Katie!” she exclaimed. “Now what do you say, Ma?”

  “I say keep out of that shaft house. I say be home in time for supper. And that’s all I say.” Mrs. Trelawny scooped up the socks and marched out of the room.

  “She doesn’t want to talk about it ’cause she can’t explain it,” Joan whispered. “Come on, Katie, let’s see if we can find poor May again. This is exciting! ’Bye, Gram.”

  The old lady caught Katie’s wrist as the girls headed for the door. “If May Nichols’s come back, it’s because of them knackers,” she warned. “She knows the danger same as I do. You listen to what she tells you.”

  “I will,” Katie promised. If only I could make other people listen, too, she thought.

  “How are we going to see a ghost if we can’t go inside?” Joan grumbled as they walked across the meadows toward the slag heaps. Now that Gram had told them about May Nichols, Joan was a serious ghost-hunter. She’d chattered excitedly all the way up the hill.

  “We’ll have to climb up to the window and look in, that’s all.”

  Joan pointed at the thickening clouds. “It was raining when you saw her before, and now it’s going to rain again. Maybe she only appears in storms.”

  Katie decided to share her secret. “I saw her one other time, too,” she admitted. “I saw her in a mirror at Uncle Frank’s house.”

  Joan was outraged. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You would have laughed.” When Joan couldn’t deny it, Katie hurried on. “Everybody would laugh. Or say I was making it up. Or say I’m flaky. Oh, Joan, she looked so sad—and so worried. It was like she was trying to tell me an important, terrible secret. And I think I know what it is. Something’s going to happen to Uncle Frank’s house, and May knows it. She’s come back to warn us.”

  Joan’s freckled face was somber as they pressed into the rising wind. “It makes me feel kind of weird,” she said. “I mean, if your ghost is real, then maybe Gram’s stories are true, too. Maybe there really are knackers—”

  “No!” Katie exclaimed. “May Nichols is nothing like a knacker. She’s good and she’s beautiful. I think knackers are just something people dreamed up a long time ago to scare each other. Like Halloween spooks. May was a real person, and she’s come back to help us, not to make trouble.
”

  Joan looked as if she might argue the point, but just then lightning stitched a blue line across the clouds, and thunder rumbled close by.

  “Let’s run,” Katie suggested. “We’re going to get soaked.”

  They hurried across the yard that fronted the mine buildings and darted around to the back of the shaft house.

  “We’ll need two crates this time,” Joan decided. “We can pile them under the window and look in together.” She whirled on one toe like a ballerina and dropped to a crouch. “Here’s the one we used last time. Let’s push it up against the wall and then get a narrow one to go on top of it. Like steps.”

  The big crate was quickly moved into position, but they hunted in vain for a smaller box. Finally Joan led the way to a long, shedlike building she called the blacksmith shop. Behind it was a tumble of rotting railroad ties.

  “The old tracks are over there.” She pointed. “That’s how they used to carry away the iron ore. I guess these ties were kept here for repairs. We can take a couple of them and stack ’em up.…”

  It was heavy work, and the girls were soon hot and sticky in spite of the wind that was bringing the storm closer every minute. At last they maneuvered two ties into position, and Joan stepped back to admire their work.

  “You can go first, Katie,” she offered. “It’s your ghost.”

  Katie scrambled up on the crate and then, less confidently, onto the ancient ties. She pushed open the window.

  “See anything?” Joan scrambled up next to her, causing the wooden platform to tremble.

  “Not yet.”

  Both girls leaned through the opening. “It’s almost too dark to see,” Katie whispered. She shivered as the dank breath of the mine filled her nostrils.

  “Something’s different in here,” Joan said. “What is it?”

  Katie caught her breath. “The ore car!” she exclaimed. “It was in the center of the room when we were here before. Now it’s closer to the gate across the shaft. As if—”

  “As if it’s waiting to pick something up.” Joan giggled nervously. “Or someone. Just like Gram said. Those old knackers are coming out of the shaft at night and running around Newquay making trouble—”

  “Stop it!” Katie ordered. “Let’s be quiet and wait. And keep looking over in that corner next to the shaft. That’s where I saw May Nichols before.”

  For long minutes the girls hung, silent, on their teetering perch. The rain began to fall, gently at first and then harder. Drops ran down Katie’s legs and into her sneakers.

  “Do you see anything?” Joan whispered. “My left foot’s falling asleep and my neck’s getting stiff.”

  Katie strained her eyes to pierce the shadows in the far corner. “I don’t think she’s here. Oh, I wish—” She stopped to listen. “Did you hear something then?”

  “Rain on the roof.”

  “Not the rain,” Katie said. “It was a voice! Listen!”

  “Help us! Save us! Get us out of here!” The girls clutched each other as one strangled cry after another rang through the shaft house. The anguished shrieks rattled against the walls.

  “The ore car!” Katie gasped. “Look at it!”

  The car had jolted into motion. It rolled a few feet and clanged heavily against the gate across the shaft.

  “It’s the knackers for sure! Oh, Katie, they are coming! Just like Gram said!” Joan leaped to the ground as the desperate cries from the shaft house were drowned by a mighty crack of thunder.

  “Wait for me!” Katie screamed. She crouched and half jumped, half fell, turning her ankle as she landed. “I can’t walk,” she wailed. “What’ll I do?”

  The rain was sharp enough to sting bare arms and legs. “Hang on to my arm and hop!” Joan shouted. “Come on, Katie! I want to get away from here!”

  Around the shaft house they hobbled, splashing through newly formed puddles and looking over their shoulders at every other step.

  “We’d better go to my house,” Katie panted. “I can’t hop all the way down the hill.”

  “And I don’t want my ma to see you,” Joan said. “She’d just say ‘I told you so.’ And she’d never believe we heard the knackers.”

  In the shelter of the woods, Katie moved her ankle cautiously and discovered the pain was less severe than it had been.

  “I guess it isn’t broken.” She looked at Joan, who was biting her lip. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess so.” Joan’s face was chalky under its sprinkling of freckles, and she seemed close to tears. “Oh, Katie, I was so scared!”

  “Me, too.” But now that they’d left the mine behind them, Katie realized Joan’s fear was more intense than her own. Maybe it’s because I’ve actually seen a ghost, she thought. Or maybe she’s remembering all the scary stories Gram ever told her.

  “Let’s keep going,” Katie said. “You can call home from our house, and maybe Ed will come to meet you.”

  Uncle Frank was watching from the front porch as the girls made their slow way across the yard. He opened the screen door when they came up the steps and moved back to let them in.

  “’Ere’s two drowned rats,” he announced. “Never saw a worse-lookin’ pair.”

  Mrs. Blaine was in the kitchen. After a first flurry of concern about Katie’s ankle, she grinned at Uncle Frank and nodded agreement. “You’ve described them perfectly, Uncle Frank. We ought to wring them out and hang them up to dry.” She spilled chipped ice into a plastic bag and gave it to Katie to hold against the swelling. “That certainly looks sore.”

  “It is.”

  “Two drowned rats,” Uncle Frank repeated. “You’ll catch your death if you ain’t careful.”

  Katie shuddered as trickles of water raced down her back. She kicked off her soggy shoes.

  “Where did you go, anyway?” Mrs. Blaine asked. “You’re as grubby as you are wet.”

  Katie kept busy with the icebag. “Just around. I fell down.”

  “But how did it happen? Did you stumble over something?”

  Joan backed toward the door. “I better go home now,” she said. “My ma’s going to wonder where I am.”

  “Don’t you want to call Ed?” Katie asked.

  Joan shook her head. Clearly she’d rather face the walk alone than answer any of Mrs. Blaine’s questions. “No problem. I’ll run all the way.”

  Katie waved, and Mrs. Blaine went to the front door to watch Joan out of sight.

  “You two been up to somethin’?” Uncle Frank asked. He looked disappointed when Katie said no. She hoped he wasn’t going to start questions, too.

  The thing to remember was that there was no such thing as a knacker. There just couldn’t be. But those voices had come from the shaft; Katie was almost sure of it. If they weren’t the voices of knackers, whose were they?

  After twenty minutes with the ice pack, Mrs. Blaine helped Katie up the stairs and into bed. Soon afterward Katie heard Jay come home. She’d finished her tray of hamburger patty, mashed potatoes, peas, and milk, when he came upstairs and stopped at her partly opened door.

  “You okay?” He sounded gruff, but Katie was pleased that he’d bothered to ask.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I fell down, and my ankle puffed up, but it looks pretty good now. Did you have fun at the lake?”

  “Fair. The water’s too warm for swimming, and there’s lots of green stuff on the surface.”

  “Ugh.”

  He went on to his bedroom, and the house was still. For the first time Katie found herself missing a television set; she longed for something to distract her from thinking about the afternoon. There had to be an explanation for the voices—a believable one—but she couldn’t find it. I’ll never believe in knackers, she told herself. Not unless I see one as clearly as I saw May Nichols.

  Moonlight streamed through the open windows, and the crickets began their nightly song as Katie burrowed deeper into her pillows. She didn’t want to go to sleep. She’d probably dream about knackers pourin
g out of the mine shaft, with the ghost of May Nichols trying to hold them back. Or they might burst through the kitchen floor.…

  Stop thinking, she ordered herself. But she knew she’d go on imagining terrible things until … until she went back to the shaft house to find out what was going on.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I feel a lot better.” Katie showed her mother how well she could walk. There was a little stiffness, but the swelling had disappeared overnight. The ankle was definitely strong enough to carry her to the mine.

  “Do you need help today?” Katie almost wished her mother would say yes, but Mrs. Blaine shook her head.

  “No, thanks. Uncle Frank asked me to sort through some old trunks in the attic, and I think I’ll tackle that this morning.”

  “Then I’m going out for a while. To pick some wild-flowers.”

  It wasn’t a real lie. The meadows were full of daisies and Queen Anne’s lace, and Katie would remember to gather some on the way back from the shaft house.

  “What about you, Jay?” Mrs. Blaine asked. “I could use help pulling the trunks out to the center of the attic where I can get at them.”

  “I can help—for a while at least.”

  “Good. Uncle Frank mentioned that there’s a stamp collection up there. He said if you want it, it’s yours. He said it isn’t particularly valuable, but it’s a good collection to build on.”

  “He did?” Jay looked pleased.

  Mrs. Blaine grinned. “Well, what he actually said was, ‘It’ll give the young feller somethin’ safe to do. Can’t break ’is neck ridin’ up and down ’ills on a stamp collection.’”

  Jay laughed in spite of himself, and Katie and her mother exchanged a quick glance.

  It’s wonderful to see them having fun together, Katie thought. Maybe Jay’s beginning to believe we need him in this family—and not just to move trunks in the attic. Maybe he’s beginning to see that we really love him.…

  The meadow was at its liveliest, spangled with color and dancing in the wind. The mine buildings looked sleepy in the sun, and not at all scary. A yellow butterfly darted in front of Katie as she crossed the mine yard and went around to the back of the shaft house.