[The History Mystery 01.0] Time and Again

by Deborah Heal

  “They look delicious,” Abby said. “But, how are you?” Lifting his shirtsleeve, she gasped at the condition of his skinny arm. The bully’s punches had left red marks, but worse than that were the bruises, ranging from purple to a sickly green, indicating that persecution from his peers was a longtime sport in the neighborhood.

  In spite of the rule about picking on someone your own size, Abby felt a strong urge to take off down the road after the little thugs who had hurt Michael. Then a picture of herself sitting in a jail cell wearing an orange jumpsuit popped into her head, and she tamped down her rage. She smiled at Michael. “Well,” she said as calmly as she could manage. “We just finished with reading time and need a break.”

  Merrideth reached into her pocket and pulled out a Kit Kat bar. Handing it to him, she said, “Here. Sorry, it’s a little squishy.”

  “Thanks,” he said, quickly tearing the wrapper back. “It’s not too ‘quishy.”

  Abby laughed. “I’m ready to explore the attic, Michael, and since you’re so brave, would you like to come with me?”

  The little boy’s eyes sparkled. “Sure,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans.

  “Merrideth, are you coming?”

  “Oh, I guess,” she said with what seemed like feigned reluctance.

  “Okay, my intrepid explorers. Follow me. I know a shortcut.” They went into the house, and Abby led them to the door she’d found in the pantry. “Be careful. It’s steep. This is the staircase the maid would have used to get back and forth from her bedroom and the kitchen.”

  Kit Kat appeared beside them. “Look, Merrideth, she wants to be an explorer too,” Michael said, grinning.

  Merrideth smiled and picked up the cat.

  “Everyone hold onto the handrail,” Abby said.

  Merrideth chuckled. “Except you, Kit Kat.”

  They clomped up the dark stairs and assembled in the spare bedroom. Neither the cat nor Michael had any comments, but both looked excited by the adventure. Grinning, Abby went to the attic door and opened it.

  As before, dry, hot air rushed out of the black stairwell. Kit Kat began to struggle in Merrideth’s arms and let out a shriek that raised the hair on Abby’s neck. Even though she held her firmly, Merrideth couldn’t prevent the squirming cat from launching out of her arms. She landed with a thump that echoed around them and then padded quickly up the stairs. They couldn’t see her in the darkness until she turned and her eyes glowed back at them, as if to say, “Ha! I beat you to the top.”

  Abby went first, and then Merrideth, panting a little from the exertion. Michael brought up the rear.

  When Abby reached the top she ran her hand cautiously up and down the rough, unfinished wall. “There must be a light switch here somewhere.” Kit Kat purred and began winding herself around Abby’s legs. It wasn’t helping.

  “You should have brought your flashlight,” Merrideth said.

  “How about if you—?”

  “Don’t even think about it. I’m not going all the way back downstairs.”

  “Wait a minute. I bet there’s one of those pull chains.” Abby took a cautious step into the dark attic, then two more, her hands blindly batting the air. At the same time that her right hand finally found the chain, something spidery brushed against her face.

  “It’s in my hair!” Abby squeaked.

  Then the light was on, dim and yellow, from a bulb swinging crazily from the rafters, and she realized that she had been attacked by a mesh vegetable bag hanging overhead. Dry flakes fluttered down onto her face, and she brushed them away.

  “Onions.” Abby chuckled. “Your Aunt Ruth must have hung onions from her garden here to dry. My granddad does that.”

  “Maybe that’s to scare the ghosts away,” Merrideth said. “The way you screamed I thought you must have run into one.”

  “You’re thinking of garlic, and I’m pretty sure it only works with vampires.”

  The attic was disappointingly ordinary. There were no treasure chests, dead bodies, or ghosts. National Geographics filled a dozen large boxes in the center of the room, and stacks of Time Magazine leaned crookedly against the wall under the sloping roofline.

  “Some people just can’t bear to throw away anything with glossy pages.” Abby spotted a small, toppled mountain of brown grocery bags, each filled with yellowed Brighton Gazettes. “Or even newspapers—dusty, faded newspapers.”

  “I told you there wasn’t anything up here but junk. Mom already looked.” Merrideth wiped her hands on her shorts and sat down on an orange crate.

  “And here I thought we were going to have a Nancy Drew sort of summer.”

  “More like a bored-out-of-our-skulls sort of summer.”

  “I hate to admit it, but I guess you’re right. This really is a boring attic.”

  Merrideth sneezed twice and rubbed her eyes with the tail of her shirt. “You’d think that since we’re forced to live in this horrible house, we would at least get to have a ghost or two.”

  Michael laid aside the wooden cane he was brandishing like a sword and went to check out a large cardboard box. Inside was a jumble of old toys. He took out a scratched and dented metal dump truck and gave it a push, seeming to admire the tracks it made on the dusty floor.

  “See! You never know what you’ll find,” Abby said with a smile. Judging from Michael’s enthusiasm for the beat-up old truck, he probably had few toys of his own.

  “Where do you put the batteries?” Merrideth said, kneeling beside him.

  “I’m sure when that truck was made, little boys used their own power and imagination to run it.” Abby laughed to herself. She was starting to sound like her granddad. Obviously, there was nothing interesting here. Maybe they should go on down so Merrideth could get started on some math lessons.

  She noticed a thick black book sticking out from between two boxes of magazines, and when she tugged it out saw the words Macoupin County Historical Society imprinted on the cover. Fine slanted handwriting filled the ledger’s pages. She thumbed through it, scanning the words:

  Twelve members present…coffee and cake served…meeting opened with a reading of the minutes…a raffle will be held to raise money to repair the museum roof….

  “Let’s get out of here,” Merrideth said. “I’m hot.”

  Abby started to put the ledger back, and a sheet of paper slipped out and fluttered to the floor. She laughed. “I’m thinking Nancy Drew again.”

  Merrideth snorted. “Don’t tell me. It’s a secret treasure map, right?”

  Abby squinted to read what was written on the paper. “Actually, it is. Sort of. Let’s take it downstairs where the light is better and I’ll show you.”

  “It’s a plat map of Miles Station,” Abby explained, carefully spreading the brittle paper on the kitchen table. “And see the date?” She pointed to the print at the bottom of the map, Survey by Charles Bilbruck, 1859.

  Merrideth frowned. “What’s a plat map?”

  “Every county keeps plat books with maps of every square inch of land. The land is divided into townships, which are divided into sections, which are divided into lots.”

  “I don’t know how you can get so excited about a map,” Merrideth said.

  “I love maps. See. Here’s the railroad. And here’s Miles Station Road. These little black squares are buildings. Looks like there were lots of stores along Railroad Street. And see, Michael, here’s your house.” She pointed to the little building labeled Depot.

  Michael got up from where he had been busy building roads of his own with the dented red dump truck and came and looked over Abby’s shoulder.

  “So what about this house?” Merrideth asked.

  Abby rotated the map to the left and squinted. “There it is.” She pointed to the owner’s name under the little black square: Col. Jonathan Miles. “And guess what? The lane out in front of the house is labeled Maple Street. And see all these other streets—Walnut, Poplar, Chestnut, McPherson—and here’s Lincoln Street.” Mr
s. Arnold was right. Miles Station had been a thriving little town.

  Chapter 7

  The weather seemed uncommonly hot and humid for June, especially for seven in the morning, but Abby wondered if that was just because it was the first time she had ever lived without air conditioning. In any case, her hair was a frizzy mess, and Merrideth’s was positively limp and sticking to her sweaty face even though she had heard her tell her mom she had washed it—swore she had washed it.

  “You sure have a lot of makeup stuff,” Merrideth said, pointing to Abby’s cosmetic case on the vanity counter.

  “It takes a lot to get me so beautiful,” she joked. Leaning closer to the mirror to apply her mascara, she nearly missed the anguish that rose in Merrideth’s eyes and then was gone.

  “Okay,” she said briskly as she gathered up her things. “Before we get to our lessons, I thought we could take Mrs. Arnold’s plate back to her while it’s still cool—well, relatively cool.”

  “Anything to stall is okay with me,” Merrideth said. “Maybe she’d like to see the plat map.”

  “That’s a nice idea.”

  “Whatever.”

  The walk didn’t seem nearly as long now that they were a bit more familiar with the neighborhood. The pit bull recognized them and only gave a token bark or two before wagging his tail in friendship. The homes along the way, including Michael’s, were quiet. But then they got to Mrs. Arnold’s house and heard singing.

  Abby lifted the latch on the gate, and they followed the path around to the east side of the house. She stopped and turned to Merrideth. “Shh.” Bathed in the morning sun, Mrs. Arnold was tending her garden and singing, in a surprisingly clear and steady voice, an old hymn Abby vaguely recognized.

  Unaware of their presence, Mrs. Arnold sang joyously that Jesus was coming again on “some golden daybreak,” on which “sorrows would cease,” and “all will be peace.” On that “glorious morning” even school days would be over.

  Merrideth whispered a heartfelt “amen.”

  Suddenly seeming to sense them there, Mrs. Arnold stopped singing and straightened. “Oh, I’m so glad you came. Look!” She held out a small red tomato for them to see. “First ripe tomato and it’s not even July.”

  Abby smiled and said, “You sure are a good gardener.”

  “I know it’s a sin to be proud.” Mrs. Arnold did not look overly contrite. “But I surely do like to get the first red tomato in Miles Station.”

  There was no sense reminding her she was the only one in the neighborhood who grew tomatoes. “We’ve come to bring your plate back,” Abby said, “and to thank you for the cookies.” She held the pink plate out. “But I’m so sorry. There’s a chip on it.”

  A frown glimmered and was gone, and then Mrs. Arnold smiled. “Oh, that’s right. Michael told me how those little pirates stole the cookies. Don’t worry about that old plate, or the cookies either. Come on. I’ve got more in the kitchen.”

  Mrs. Arnold wrestled the warped back door open, and they followed her into a kitchen every bit as odd and beautiful as her garden.

  Abby’s senses went on overload. A green parakeet shrieked along with a cuckoo clock sounding the hour. The sweet vanilla smell of just-baked cookies was overlaid with the floral scent from perhaps a dozen vases of gladiolas adorning every flat surface. Every vertical space was covered with framed photographs, pictorial calendars—including one ten years old—newspaper clippings, and shelves of ceramic animals of every species known to man—and some not.

  Mrs. Arnold gestured toward the metal dinette table in the center of the room. “Sit down and make yourself at home. I’ll get the cookies.” Skirting Spooky’s food bowl and her work boots sitting on a newspaper, she went to the counter. She set the tomato on the windowsill above the sink, washed her hands, and then took out another pink plate from the cupboard.

  Merrideth sat down at the dinette table.

  “We can’t stay long, Merrideth. We’ve got to get back to our studies.”

  “Hey, I need to rest.”

  Abby sighed and sat down too.

  Mrs. Arnold filled the plate with pink sugar cookies from a cooling rack on the counter and took them to the table. “Help yourself. I’ll pour us some iced tea.”

  Abby had never had cookies and iced tea at eight o’clock in the morning, but then why not? She moved a vase of gladiolas a safer distance from the edge of the table and laid the plat map down. “We brought something to show you, Mrs. Arnold.”

  The old woman sank into her chair with a grunt and adjusted her glasses on her nose. “What have you got there?” She brought the map close to her face and squinted in concentration.

  “It’s a map of Miles Station. We found it in the attic.” Abby picked up a cookie and took a bite. “This is great.”

  “Yeah,” Merrideth mumbled around a mouthful of cookie.

  Mrs. Arnold handed the map back to Abby. “Tell me what it says.”

  “The print’s faded, and pretty small in the first place.”

  Mrs. Arnold looked embarrassed, and Abby experienced a moment of shock when she realized she couldn’t read.

  “Didn’t get to go to school much.”

  Abby put the map down in front of her and explained that the little squares represented houses and stores, and the lines were streets.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Arnold said excitedly, “there used to be houses and stores everywhere. Show me which one of those lines is Maple Street.”

  When Abby pointed it out on the map, Mrs. Arnold smiled. “There’s the colonel’s house and the blacksmith’s and depot. And there,” she said, cackling with delight, “that’s where my house is, right there on Maple Street.”

  “It says Miles’ Mercantile,” Abby said.

  “Yep, this here house is built where the Mercantile used to stand. My husband found all manner of antiquey-type stuff when they dug the basement for this house.”

  Mrs. Arnold leaned heavily on the table to stand and then went to a shelf by the back door and took down a globe-shaped glass jar on a battered black metal base. “Like this jelly bean machine.” She set it on the table before them. Jelly Beans was printed in a fancy script across the glass, and on the base, in smaller gold print, Wm. Shrafft & Sons, Boston.

  “It still works too. You just turn the crank and jellybeans come out. Well, they would if I hadn’t eaten them all. The colonel used to bring jellybeans home from the mercantile for Charlotte because she was so partial to ’em. She used to watch for him at the front window. She was the prettiest little thing. Of course the colonel also had two sons, but he always said—”

  “But Mrs. Arnold, you said…I’m confused,” Merrideth said. Mrs. Arnold was back to peering at the map in fascination and didn’t seem to hear her.

  “When was all that, Mrs. Arnold?” Abby asked. “When you were a little girl?”

  She looked up at them, eyes clouded with confusion. “No, that was the olden days.”

  “But how do you know so much about it?” Abby asked.

  “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just a mixed up old woman. Probably Ruth told me about the colonel.” Mrs. Arnold’s supply of hospitality had apparently run out. She rose from the table again, and so of course Abby and Merrideth did too.

  “Thanks for the cookies,” Abby said. “I’m sure you want to get back to your garden, and we need to get back to work too.”

  Mrs. Arnold’s smile was back. “You’re welcome, dears.”

  Merrideth took off down the road at a brisk pace. “That does it! You’ve got to look at it now.”

  “What it?”

  “That picture. I told you about it before. It’s my house when it was the colonel’s house in the olden days.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Never mind, I’ll show you when we get home.”

  Merrideth refused to say anything more about it all the way home, which Abby found annoying, even though it was nice to see the way excitement lit
up her eyes when she forgot to be bored. Her innate curiosity was coming out of dormancy at last.

  When they got home, Merrideth tore open the door and raced up the stairs. “Come on. You’ve got to show me how to work the program.”

  When Abby got to the computer room, Merrideth had already launched Beautiful Houses. This time, an ancient castle, complete with moat and turrets, lit up the computer screen with the usual title, Beautiful Houses: Take a Virtual Tour superimposed over it.

  “That’s really cool,” Abby said, sitting down next to Merrideth. “It’s a famous castle—I can’t remember its name. But it’s the one Disneyland is copied from. It’s French and dates from—”

  “That’s not the cool part,” Merrideth said impatiently. She placed her hand on the mouse and clicked, and the Beautiful Houses slide show began.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen that,” Abby said dryly. “A lot. I thought you said you didn’t play with this program.”

  “I don’t. But it keeps showing up all the time, almost as if it wants me to, you know, play with it.” Merrideth’s voice trailed off. “I know that’s impossible.”

  Abby had thought the same thing when the blue light kept waking her, but at least she had sense enough to know the silly idea had sprung from her over-active imagination. “No, of course that’s not possible.”

  Merrideth stabbed at the screen. “There it is! Look! Does that look familiar?”

  “Oh, that is cool. It looks just like your house. Well, almost—” Then the image was gone, replaced by a quaint seaside cottage beside a lighthouse, and then after a few seconds, a converted barn. The houses continued to roll by.

  “Do you know how to make it stop on that picture?”

  “I can try.” Merrideth got up from her chair, and Abby took her place before the computer.

  “When it comes back, I’ll be able to—”

  “If it comes back,” Merrideth said glumly. “The houses change every so often.”

  “There it is.” Abby double clicked the mouse on the image, and it enlarged to fill the whole screen. “It does look like this house.”