Ghosts Beneath Our Feet

by Betty Ren Wright

“I saw the shaft house at the top of the hill in the moonlight and just kept going.” Jay shrugged. “So that’s it, and you might as well call the sheriff. I don’t expect you to believe me, even though it’s true.”

  “I do believe you,” Katie said. Jay had lied to her in the past, but she was certain he was telling the truth this time. “Mom’ll believe you, too. When you weren’t in your room this morning, she felt really bad. She told Uncle Frank you were a good person, and she told the sheriff—” Katie thought of the sheriff’s cold eyes as he started toward the stairs to look for Jay. “What did you tell him?”

  “That I didn’t set the fire. That I’m not going to rat on anybody else, so it’s no use asking me questions.”

  “Then what’s going to happen?”

  “Who knows? He’s still looking for Skip.”

  They started back toward the house. “Aren’t you really going to tell him about the jeans?” Jay asked. “I wouldn’t blame you, I guess. After yesterday.”

  Katie rolled up the pieces of denim and threw them back into the woods. The last few hours had been so painful that she’d almost forgotten what had happened at the shaft house. “I guess I can take a joke,” she said slowly. “Or I could if Skip Poldeen wasn’t in on it.”

  “That’s all it was—a joke. I mean, who believes in knackers—except old Mrs. Trelawny?”

  “Not me,” Katie retorted. “Not Joan either. We just went back to the shaft house for the fun of it, and because—because—I don’t believe in knackers, but I do believe in ghosts,” she said defiantly. “I have reasons.”

  Jay scuffed his toes in the gravel and looked at Katie uneasily. “I saw her,” he said.

  “Saw who?”

  “The girl with the yellow hair. The one you said was in the shaft house the first time you went there. I saw her day before yesterday, after you kids ran away. That’s what I wanted to tell you yesterday.”

  Katie couldn’t believe her ears. “You saw her?”

  “In the corner next to the shaft. I was behind the ore car, and I balanced the tape recorder on the edge when I stood up. There was a noise behind me—sort of a sigh—and when I turned around, there she was.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  Jay snorted. “Do you think I stood around making conversation? I went through that window faster than you did. The tape player fell into the car, and I never even noticed it was gone till I got home.”

  Suddenly Katie felt almost lighthearted. Jay had seen May Nichols! And he hadn’t set the barn fire; he’d even tried to stop Skip Poldeen from starting it. The world wasn’t quite as dismal as it had looked a few minutes ago.

  Jay’s next words cut sharply through her rising mood. “If I get out of this barn-burning mess, I’m leaving,” he said. “I’ve got it all figured out. I can call that social worker I saw last winter, and I’m pretty sure he’ll find a place for me to stay in Milwaukee. A foster home. It’ll only be till I’m out of school, and then I’ll be on my own.”

  “A foster home?” Katie repeated. “But you have a home.”

  “That’s your home. Not mine. I was dumped on you and your mother, that’s all. What do you need me around for?”

  Katie struggled to keep her voice steady. “We’re a family,” she said. “We are, Jay. I know you heard what Mom was saying in the kitchen this morning. She loves you. She only gets mad because she’s worried.”

  “Well, when I leave, she won’t have to worry anymore.” Jay kicked a stone and sent it skittering into the brush. Almost at once, a graceful brown shape moved out ahead of them. Liquid eyes studied them, and the white tail twitched. After a few seconds, a dappled fawn appeared and stood behind its mother.

  Katie held her breath. “Oh, Jay, look,” she whispered. “Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

  “Neat,” Jay said, but he said it as if he was thinking about something else.

  Katie bit her lip. Newquay had offered them its loveliest sight, and it wasn’t enough. She had a strange, sad feeling that her stepbrother was already far away.

  Once again, the old house seemed to be waiting for something. Katie remembered thinking that the first time she’d stepped inside the front door, and tonight the tension was greater than ever.

  Jay had settled in the library with a science-fiction paperback he’d brought from home. Mrs. Blaine and Uncle Frank were on the front porch. Katie wandered from one room to another through air that was heavy with secrets. She stared long and hard into the mirror at the end of the upstairs hall, but May Nichols didn’t appear. In the parlor and kitchen Katie knelt and put her ear to the floor, but heard nothing. Still, the feeling of impending danger persisted.

  The telephone rang, and Mrs. Blaine hurried in from the porch to answer it. Jay listened from the library doorway. Maybe that’s it, Katie thought. We’re all expecting the sheriff to call or come back. It’s us, not the house, that’s waiting. But the caller was Joan, suggesting a hike to Tuesday Lake the next day. When Katie hung up, the ominous stillness settled in once more.

  At nine o’clock Uncle Frank came inside, his step firmer than usual as he marched down the hall. He passed Katie, who was working on a jigsaw puzzle at the dining room table, and went to the library door.

  “Got somethin’ to say to you, boy,” he announced. “I ’ad a boy once, y’know.”

  “I know.” Jay sounded startled; Uncle Frank seldom spoke to him directly.

  “’E was a good boy, but not so lucky as you,” the old man went on. “Died young, ’e did—thirty years ago tomorrow. You think of that, boy. You got lots to be glad for—most of all just bein’ alive. You remember that when you feel like the world’s goin’ against you, ’ear?”

  “Okay.” Jay must have offered Uncle Frank the big leather chair. The old man shook his head and backed away. “’Ave to go to bed,” he muttered. “Tired. Seems like I’m always tired. Wanted to tell you that, though. You’re not a bad young feller. I like ’avin’ a boy around again.”

  This time as Uncle Frank made his way back through the dining room, he laid a hand briefly on Katie’s head. “Good night, missy.”

  “Good night, Uncle Frank.”

  Later, when the long evening had ended and Katie was in bed, she wished she’d jumped up right then and given Uncle Frank a hug. The wild-looking, frightened old man who’d shouted at her the day they arrived in Newquay had turned into a different person. The real Uncle Frank was kind and caring, not at all the way he’d seemed.

  Died young, ’e did—thirty years ago tomorrow.… The anniversary of the mine accident had finally arrived, and tomorrow Gram Trelawny would be watching for knackers around every corner. Katie wondered if Joan had told her family about the voices in the shaft house. Probably not. Mrs. Trelawny would say Joan had imagined the whole thing, and Gram would be frightened out of her wits. I’ll have to tell Joan about Jay and the tape player tomorrow, she decided. When we go out to the lake.…

  Sleep was impossible. The old house creaked and groaned in a rising wind. The curtains danced at the windows, and the pages of a magazine lying on the dresser lifted and turned.

  The bed moved.

  For a second or two, Katie wasn’t sure. Then she heard a crash, and a door opened in the hall. She snatched up her flashlight and ran out, nearly crashing into Jay.

  “What the heck was that?” he demanded. “My lamp fell over. The whole darned house shook.”

  “Jay, look!” Katie pointed down the hall with the flashlight to where the mirror hung at a crazy angle. “There she is!”

  From out of the darkness the golden-haired girl limped into the beam of light. Her lips moved and her eyes were wide and frightened. One hand gestured frantically.

  “She—she’s saying something,” Jay muttered. “But I can’t—”

  The hallway filled with wind. The girl’s lips moved again, and now a thin, sweet whisper filled the hallway, like the voice of the wind itself.

  “Go,” it said. “Go now.
” And then, as Katie clutched Jay’s arm, the vision faded, the wind stopped blowing, and the mirror crashed to the floor.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Katie! Jay! What’s going on out here?”

  Mrs. Blaine stood silhouetted in her bedroom doorway. Katie threw herself into her mother’s arms.

  “Mom, something awful’s happening! The house moved—”

  “Oh, Katie, stop it!” Mrs. Blaine stepped back. “Stop screaming and tell me what this is all about.”

  “The house is—”

  “Look at the mirror,” Jay interrupted.

  Mrs. Blaine stared at the shattered glass. “How in the world did that happen?” she demanded. “What’s going on here? That mirror meant a great deal to Uncle Frank—he told me it was to have been a wedding present for his son. He’s going to feel just terrible when he finds out—”

  Katie and Jay exchanged a look. This was no time to mention May Nichols’s appearance in the mirror.

  “Mom, the house shook just now,” Katie repeated. “My bed moved, and Jay’s lamp fell over. And then the mirror slipped off the wall. Didn’t you feel anything?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Mrs. Blaine snapped. “I was sleeping, and that’s what you should have been doing, too. Come on, Katherine Jane, we don’t need play-acting in the middle of the night.”

  “We have to get out of here,” Jay said. “This old barn could fall down any minute.”

  “Now, you stop that!” Mrs. Blaine turned on her stepson. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble and heartache for one day? I don’t know what this is all about, and I don’t want to. A mirror doesn’t just jump off the wall—”

  “What’s ’appenin’ up there? What’s goin’ on?” Uncle Frank was at the foot of the stairs.

  In the half-light from the bedroom, Jay looked as if he’d been slapped. Katie went to the top of the stairwell on legs that threatened to fold under her. “We’ll be right down,” she called. “Just a minute, Uncle Frank.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere except to bed,” Mrs. Blaine said. “I’ll explain to Uncle Frank that there’s been an accident, though how I’ll explain it I can’t imagine.”

  “You can tell him the truth,” Jay suggested in a voice so coldly adult that Mrs. Blaine paused. “This place is collapsing, no matter what you think. Stuff is falling off the walls. We have to get out.”

  For the first time Mrs. Blaine seemed less certain. She looked from Jay to Katie, then turned back to the broken mirror. “You mean neither of you touched the mirror?”

  “No!” Katie exclaimed. “It fell by itself. And my bed moved, Mom. It really did. If you’d been awake, you’d have felt it, too.”

  Mrs. Blaine pursed her lips. “I suppose I can tell Frank the house is settling a little, and the mirror fell,” she said slowly. “We can have someone come and check the foundations.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Jay said. “We have to leave.”

  “What’s ’appenin’?” Uncle Frank was beginning to sound desperate. “Somebody come ’ere!”

  With a sigh, Mrs. Blaine went down the stairs, leaving Katie and Jay in the shadowy hall.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m leaving,” Jay said. “You heard what that—that thing in the mirror said.”

  “She’s not a thing,” Katie protested. “Her name is—was—May Nichols. She was going to marry Uncle Frank’s son, and when he was killed, she got sick and died, too. Joan’s Gram told me.”

  “Well, I don’t care what her name is,” Jay retorted. He glanced over his shoulder as if he expected the spirit to reappear at any moment. “She meant it when she said ‘Go,’ and I’m taking her advice. If you’re smart, you’ll come, too.”

  Dazed, Katie let him pull her down the stairs. Angry words from the parlor stopped them at the front door.

  “—Not so,” Uncle Frank shouted. “There’s nothin’ wrong with my ’ouse. You’ve been listenin’ to Nancy Trelawny an’ ’er wailin’ about them knackers.”

  Mrs. Blaine broke in with a soothing murmur.

  “No! Nobody’s goin’ to poke around ’ere and tell me my ’ouse is fallin’ down. I won’t ’ave it!”

  Katie shook off Jay’s hand and went into the parlor. Uncle Frank, in wrinkled pajamas, was sitting on the high-backed sofa. Mrs. Blaine was beside him. When Uncle Frank saw Katie, he smacked his knee with a gnarled fist. “You’re the one, missy,” he roared. “You’re the one listens to Nancy and brings back tales—”

  Katie realized that there was more than anger in Uncle Frank’s eyes. There was fear, too.

  “You felt the house move tonight, didn’t you, Uncle Frank?” She asked it hurriedly, not daring to look at her mother.

  “I never! There’s nothin’ wrong with this ’ouse, I tell ye!”

  Katie sat down at Uncle Frank’s other side. Jay watched and listened from the doorway.

  “I don’t believe in knackers, Uncle Frank,” she said. “Honestly I don’t. I know your son could never be changed into an evil spirit. I don’t think Gram Trelawny believes that either. It’s just a kind of game she plays. But there’s something else. Uncle Frank, there is a ghost—I’ve seen her, and Jay has seen her, too. We saw her tonight.”

  Mrs. Blaine gasped. “Katie, be still this minute.”

  “She has long yellow hair,” Katie continued. “And she limps when she walks. Tonight Jay and I both saw her in the mirror upstairs. She told us to get out of the house right away.”

  Uncle Frank fell backward against the cushions as if someone had pushed him. “May?” he whispered. “You seen my May?”

  “Katie, this is unforgivable!” Mrs. Blaine exclaimed. “Go upstairs at once.”

  “What did my May tell you?”

  “She told us to leave,” Katie repeated. “Uncle Frank, the house is in danger, and May Nichols is trying to save us. She’s trying to save us all, because she loves you so much. Mrs. Trelawny told me the ground above the mine has been shifting and sinking for a long time. I’ve heard it and felt it myself—once in the backyard, and once in the kitchen.”

  “Katie, please.” Mrs. Blaine sounded totally exasperated.

  Uncle Frank drew a long, shuddering breath. “May was like my own,” he said. “Lost a son and then a daughter, I did, all in a month. And now you tell me she’s come back.… If my May says go, you best go. I ain’t leavin’, but you go.”

  Mrs. Blaine jumped up. “This has gone far enough,” she said. “Uncle Frank, I’ll get you a nice cup of warm milk to calm you down, and then we’ll all go back to bed. We’ve had enough talk about ghosts and mysterious warnings for one night.”

  “I did feel the ’ouse move,” Uncle Frank admitted. “Felt it tonight and felt it lots of other times, I ’ave. But I’m not leavin’. This is my place.”

  “But you can’t stay here,” Katie protested. “Not if the house is going to collapse.”

  Uncle Frank stood up, looking dignified in spite of his pajamas and his ragged mane of hair. “I want you to go,” he told Mrs. Blaine. “Go right now.”

  “But we can’t leave you—”

  “I asked you to come an’ I’m askin’ you to go. I don’t want you ’ere anymore.”

  “Now look what you’ve done, Katie,” Mrs. Blaine stormed. “This is all your fault.”

  The house shuddered. Mrs. Blaine sat down hard as a vase danced over the edge of an end table, and the painting above the sofa slipped sideways. Out in the foyer, the long-silent grandfather clock chimed twice.

  “Let’s move.” Jay spoke from the doorway. “Talk it over outside if you want to.”

  Mrs. Blaine looked around the parlor unbelievingly. Her gaze settled on the fallen vase. “Maybe we’d better.…” She hesitated, then made up her mind. “Jay and Katie are right, Uncle Frank, we’d better leave. We’ll go down the hill for the rest of the night—I’m sure the Trelawnys will take us all in. And tomorrow we can get a builder to come up here and look—”

  The house moved again.


  Jay threw open the front door. Katie and her mother each took one of Uncle Frank’s arms and tried to pull him to his feet, but he shook them off. “Go along!” he shouted. “Get out!”

  Mrs. Blaine stepped back. “Katie, you and Jay go outside. Wait for us—Uncle Frank and I will be out in a few minutes.”

  “Go!” the old man bellowed, his face becoming dangerously red. “Go now. All of you!” He raised an arm as if he would drive them from the house.

  Mrs. Blaine gave up and let Katie pull her toward the door. “We’re going to wait for you right outside,” she called over her shoulder. “You know you can’t stay here alone.…”

  As soon as they were out on the porch, the door was slammed behind them. The key turned in the lock, and Uncle Frank looked out at them triumphantly through the glass.

  “We shouldn’t have given in to him,” Mrs. Blaine cried. “He’s so upset, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He could have another heart attack and die in there!”

  Jay pulled them down the steps and out onto the road. “You run for help,” he ordered Katie. “I’ll try to get him out.”

  “No, you won’t!” Mrs. Blaine panicked. “You can’t! Oh, this is crazy!”

  Katie dashed away, hardly aware that she was barefoot and wearing nothing but one of Tom Blaine’s extra-large T-shirts and the bottom half of her shortie pajamas. She hesitated only a moment at the woods, then plunged ahead, following the turns in the road from memory. At the other end, the gentle meadow wind seemed to speed her down the hill into the sleeping town. She flew past dark houses and empty fields until she recognized the Trelawnys’ rooftop against the sky.

  “Joan! Mrs. Trelawny!” She beat on the door, turned the knob and found it open. In the dark entryway she screamed again.

  Mr. Trelawny, in T-shirt and shorts, was the first one down the stairs. Joan and her mother were right behind him, followed by Edward and Lillian. Mrs. Trelawny threw her arms around Katie.

  “What is it, girl? What’s happened?”

  “The house—” Katie sobbed. “The house is moving—I think it’s going to fall down—and Uncle Frank won’t come out. He won’t listen.…”