Wicked Cruel

by Rich Wallace

  Mason was in the doorway with a red bandanna around his head, tied at the side like a pirate, and a black eye patch. “Avast, matey!” he said.

  “Yeah, right. Avast,” Owen mumbled.

  “Hi, Owen,” said Sophie, who was standing on the front steps. Darla and Emma waved and said the same thing. They all had tiaras and bright red lipstick.

  “Come with us,” Sophie said. She shook her duffel bag. “Lots of candy!”

  Mom put her hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Go ahead,” she said. She even gave him a little push. “I can handle the kids alone.”

  Owen frowned. “Give me a minute,” he said. “I don’t have a costume.”

  “Just put on a funny hat,” Mason said. He raised his eyebrows and jutted his head slightly toward the girls.

  Owen had left his tricornered hat on the ground outside the tavern last night.

  Mom was opening a closet in the front hall. She took out an orange-and-black knit cap with long ear flaps. “Try this,” she said. “It looks goofy enough.”

  They hit the other houses on Owen’s street, then circled along the back streets near the river. They joked about some of their teachers and other kids in class. No one mentioned the dancing.

  Coming down a flight of steps, Sophie dropped a bag of M&M’s. The others kept walking.

  “Hold up, Owen,” she said.

  Owen waited.

  “I think we’ve got plenty of candy,” Sophie said. She walked very slowly, letting the others get ahead. “So … what happened last night?” she asked.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.” Sophie stopped at the corner. “Believe me, I know all about that place. I’ve seen a ghost there.”

  “A girl about our age?”

  “No. Just a wispy thing that didn’t have a lot of shape. But it was definitely a presence. It knew I was there.”

  “Was it trying to scare you?” Owen asked.

  “I think so. I do. It didn’t say ‘boo’ or anything clichéd like that, but I was sure it wanted me to leave.”

  Mason, Darla, and Emma were more than a block ahead now. Owen had no desire to catch up. “Were you alone?”

  Sophie shook her head. She started walking again, up toward Main Street. “I was there with my grandmother. We were straightening things up after giving a tour, so it was pretty late and everyone else had left. She was in the kitchen and I went upstairs. I’m not sure why I did, but I felt very curious. So I went to the front bedroom—to the right when you get up there—and I sat on a chair. And I felt this ice-cold draft, as if a window was open, but I checked and none were. But when I’d checked the last window, I felt like I was trapped, like there was something between me and the stairs. And then this mist started taking shape and it just hung there, all grayish and slightly shiny.”

  “The girl last night wasn’t like that at all,” Owen said. “She was like a real human until the end. Then she faded away, but even then you could tell she was a person.”

  “Wow,” Sophie said. “I’ve never heard of such a clear image there.”

  “It was way more than an image,” Owen said. “We were dancing. She was solid. We talked.”

  Sophie whistled. “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Now? It’s open?”

  “No … But I know how to get in.”

  * * *

  Ida Gilman could find no relief from her sadness. Five children, all of them dead, and a husband who offered no sympathy or remorse.

  A cousin in Massachusetts offered to take her in, to get her away from the scene of her everlasting grief.

  Henry wanted no part of it. But rumors of murder persisted, and he was shunned by the neighbors. When talk of an investigation mounted, he abruptly sold the farm. He and Ida packed up the possessions they wished to keep and told almost no one where they’d be heading. His plan was to slip out of town and disappear.

  Privately, Ida confided that she wished she could go to her cousin’s without Henry, to leave him behind. Who needed a constant reminder of the horrible things she’d always known he’d done? He’d ruined everything that had ever given her joy.

  But he ruled, and he said he was going with her. She knew there was no sense in arguing. She knew that he would kill her if she objected.

  The overcast sky made things even darker than the night before as Owen and Sophie approached Chase Tavern. Every light was out.

  “The kitchen door?” Owen whispered.

  Sophie shook her head. “The cellar.”

  Toward the far back corner of the tavern was a hatch-type cellar door, the kind that lies at an angle and opens up to reveal a set of steps. This one was rusted and was held in place with a couple of cinder blocks.

  “It’s just a crawl space,” Sophie said. “You have to squat, but we can make it to the inside door and get upstairs. The lock is rusted out, so all we have to do is remove the cinder blocks.”

  Owen did that, then lifted the rickety hatch. He could feel cobwebs and smell the dampness of the basement. It was pitch-black down there. He tried to remember where the door from the kitchen to the cellar was. He figured if they stayed close to the back wall, they’d get to it.

  “What’s the floor like?” he asked. His heart was beginning to race.

  “Hard-packed dirt,” Sophie said. “There are some support poles, but not much else to trip over. Just go slowly.”

  Owen let her lead the way. “Should I leave this open?” he asked, pointing to the hatch.

  “Close it,” she said, “so no animals come in. Just don’t let it slam.”

  Owen carefully lowered the hatch, then tested it to make sure it didn’t stick. He touched the wall and scuffled along in a squat.

  There were four wooden steps in the corner, and they led to a door that opened into the kitchen. The small amount of light from outside offered much more visibility after those minutes in the cellar.

  “Careful,” Sophie whispered. “There are breakable things all over. Pitchers and vases and things.”

  Owen put his hands close to his sides. They stood in the kitchen for a minute, listening. But there were no sounds inside the house.

  “She was in there,” Owen said, gesturing toward the door to the parlor.

  “Was she?” Sophie said with a light laugh.

  “She was,” Owen said.

  Sophie touched Owen’s arm. “I believe you, remember?”

  They sat on the sofa and Owen tried to steady himself. After five minutes, he said “Charity?”

  There was no indication that she or any other ghosts were present.

  “Do we dare go upstairs?” Sophie asked.

  Owen thought for a moment, then said okay.

  The stairs had one tight turn. Owen thought he smelled talcum powder.

  “I love this room,” Sophie said as they entered the biggest of the four upstairs rooms—the one where she’d seen the mist. “It was the main sleeping area for travelers way back then.”

  They checked all of the rooms, but it was too dark to see much. Every shadow seemed ghostly.

  “Let’s just sit here,” Sophie said. “Real quiet.”

  Owen slid to the floor with his back against the wall. Sophie sat next to him. “Are you scared?” she whispered.

  Owen thought about how to answer. “Yes, but I don’t want to leave,” he said. “It feels like something’s going to happen, you know?”

  He had tried all day to rationalize what he’d seen, wondering if he’d somehow been dancing with a real girl and that she’d run off out of shyness when Mason and the others came by, and had spoken to him in the tavern yard but hadn’t really faded away, but just appeared to because the moonlight and the wind were playing tricks with his eyes.

  But he knew better than that. He knew what he’d seen.

  And here he was, with an actual, live girl, who seemed to get it and was cool and very brave to be sitting in a haunted tavern at night when she wasn’t supposed to be in here.

  So if Charity
did come floating into the room, he wouldn’t be alone. He would know he wasn’t crazy.

  They sat there for half an hour. Every tiny creak or flash of light from the street made Owen’s heart jump, but nothing suspicious happened.

  Sophie said they’d better get going.

  “Can we go out a real door?” Owen asked.

  “No,” she said. “We can’t risk being seen going out the front. And the kitchen door only locks from inside. We have to use the cellar again.”

  They made their way through the taproom and the kitchen and onto the cellar steps. As Owen reached behind to close the door, it slammed shut on its own.

  “Quiet,” Sophie hissed.

  “That wasn’t me,” Owen said. “I didn’t touch it.”

  They stared toward the door, though it was too dark to see anything down here. Owen listened hard for footsteps. There was nothing.

  He started shaking. “Must have been the wind,” he said.

  “Not in the building!”

  “Well, something slammed the door.”

  “Don’t panic, but let’s get out of here.”

  They made their way back along the wall. Owen pushed up on the hatch. It wouldn’t budge. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he said.

  “Push harder,” Sophie said.

  Owen did. The door was tight and heavy. “Man,” he said. “I don’t want to go back upstairs.”

  “Me neither.” Sophie laughed nervously. “Whatever slammed that door wouldn’t be too happy to see us.”

  Owen didn’t think that was funny. He pushed at the hatch again, then smacked it with his fist.

  “Ow.”

  “Let me try.” Sophie put both hands on the door and tried to shake it. “Help me here, Owen.”

  The door finally gave way, and they scrambled into the yard. Owen replaced the cinder blocks and they backed toward the barn.

  “That hatch was barely closed when we went upstairs,” Owen said.

  Sophie squeezed Owen’s forearm. “Something messed with it. I told you the place was haunted.”

  Owen nudged her. “You didn’t have to tell me, remember? I lived it last night.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think that girl would try to trap us like that, do you?”

  “No. She was nice. I hope she doesn’t have to cope with evil ghosts all the time in there.”

  As they passed the side of the tavern, Owen saw a glimmer in an upstairs window. “Look,” he said. Something appeared to move behind the glass.

  “It’s because all the panes are different,” Sophie said. “Some are very old and others are newer, so they catch the light differently. It gives the appearance that something’s there.”

  Owen kept staring. Something faint but substantive seemed to be in that upstairs room, looking out. It shifted to the right, then the left.

  And then Charity’s face appeared. She was there for the briefest instant, and then she was gone.

  “Did you see her?” Owen asked.

  “See who?”

  “It was Charity. I’m sure of it.”

  “Well,” Sophie said, “I’m not going back in to find out.”

  Owen watched for movement but couldn’t see anything else behind the glass. A car drove by on Main Street, and he saw that the light was reflected differently from every pane.

  So maybe he hadn’t seen Charity tonight. But he did want to see her again soon.

  What about those other four barns?

  Owen couldn’t help but wonder. There was no sign of them on the tavern property, but he knew that it had once been a much larger farm. He’d asked Sophie, but she’d never heard of the other barns or the Gilman murders.

  Had Charity been murdered by her father? If she had, then which barn had she been buried in? He had no way of knowing; the single paragraph he’d read on the Internet hadn’t provided those details. And how could you trust a flimsy report like that?

  Early Saturday morning he cut through the college grounds to a spot behind the tavern. He was in direct sight of a dormitory but in a half-acre patch that was overgrown with brush and trees. It appeared that it had never been developed in any way.

  There were a few empty bottles and some other trash, but no signs of recent activity. Owen walked slowly through the brush, looking for stones or bricks that might have been part of a foundation.

  And then he found them. Several large stones that formed a low triangle, apparently the corner of an old building. They were shielded by thick weeds. He could see the existing barn through the slats of the tavern’s wooden fence, and this corner lined up precisely with the barn.

  So, if the five barns had been in a straight row, this was the only one that could still have a trace. The other spots would have been cleared for the dormitory’s lawn long ago.

  Owen stepped off what might have been the rest of the barn’s footprint, but he saw no other signs of it. Just these stones. Was there a body buried a few feet away? Were there three more right out there under the lawn?

  He sat on the stones and felt the breeze on his face. A late maple leaf drifted down.

  Such a peaceful place, he thought. At least in daylight. But what had happened here a century and a half before? Could he ever know?

  Would Charity’s ghost know that she’d been murdered? If she was his age now, then had she stayed that same age for all these decades? If you’re thirteen when you die, do you stay that way forever?

  * * *

  mason347: hang out later?

  owen^B: ok

  mason347: you spooked?

  owen^B: not

  mason347: herd your seeing ghosts

  owen^B: who said?

  mason347: who you think?

  owen^B: whatd she say?

  mason347: you saw a dead girl in the window

  owen^B: might have

  mason347: go there tonite?

  owen^B: maybe to the barn.

  mason347: ok but shift your focus to a LIVE girl, man. she likes you.

  owen^B: emma?

  mason347: no stupid. open your eyes

  * * *

  His mom was spending the afternoon putting the jumpers through some preseason drills. She’d left Owen a note and a ten-dollar bill, telling him to get something to eat downtown.

  The previous Saturday, Main Street had been mobbed with people for the Cheshire Notch Pumpkin Fest. Today was much quieter. The sounds of televised football games poured out of the bars, but the ice cream place was closed for the season and the coffee shops were nearly empty.

  Owen sat on a bench outside the Colonial Theater and tried to decide what to eat. A hamburger from Local Burger? Chicken fried rice? A couple of slices of pizza? Main Street was loaded with places to eat, and plenty of the spots were inexpensive, to draw in the college students.

  Sophie liked him? How would Mason know that? He’d been so wrong about so many things for so long that the only way he could know that was if Sophie had told him directly. Two days ago Mason said Emma liked him, and that had obviously been untrue. Mason just wanted Owen to play along to help him advance his cause with Darla.

  A hamburger sounded good. With hand-cut fries. He crossed Main Street and went in. They made everything to order, so he had to wait ten minutes, looking out at Main Street from a table at the front.

  Lots of guys his age had girlfriends, but Owen hadn’t given it much thought until school started this year.

  Four girls from his grade walked past with makeup and highlighted hair and pierced ears and cool clothing, looking like they were in high school. Three guys his age trailed behind in backward baseball caps and ragged sweatshirts and untied sneakers. They didn’t notice Owen.

  His order came and he started on the huge mound of fries, dipping them one by one in a little paper cup of ketchup. Then he stacked several fries on his hamburger and finished that before it got cold.

  Sophie was very nice to him. She believed that he’d been dancing with Charity. She knew the Chase Tavern was haunted, too. And
she’d hung back with him last night while trick-or-treating, letting the others get away.

  He’d forgotten to get a drink. He wanted Sprite; his mother would be thrilled if he got an orange juice instead. He was thirsty enough to get both and had just enough money, so he did.

  Maybe Sophie did actually like him as more than a friend. In some ways, that was scarier than meeting up with a ghost.

  The music in the background was a Frank Sinatra CD. “The Way You Look Tonight” had just ended and “Fly Me to the Moon” was starting. In the evenings this place played classic rock, but what was on now was mostly for the cooks.

  He drank half of the bottle of juice, then carefully poured in the Sprite and shook it up gently.

  What was wrong with just being friends anyway?

  Ida Gilman stood next to the horses, unable to step into the carriage.

  “We must be on our way,” Henry said sternly. “It’s over now.”

  But Ida pleaded for one last visit to the fifth barn. It was the only one that wasn’t sealed by bricks. She’d stood outside each of the other four for several minutes that morning, saying good-bye to her children.

  “Just one more minute,” Ida said. “Please come with me.”

  The coach held only a few of their possessions; the rest had been sold or left in the house. The trip to Winchendon would take three hours, and Henry was eager to leave Cheshire Notch behind. He shook his head but stepped down.

  The ground in the barn had been smoothed and tamped down, showing no sign that a young girl had been buried there. Ida dropped to her knees and prayed.

  Henry stood in the doorway. Ida looked up and asked him to come say good-bye. “She was so precious,” she whispered.

  Henry reluctantly walked over and stood a few feet from the spot. He took off his hat and grunted.

  Ida stepped to the front of the barn, reached toward something on the wall, and kept her eyes fixed on Henry’s back.

  Mason showed up with two chocolate bars, a peanut-butter cup, and a roll of Lifesavers. Owen had already eaten a Mounds bar and a large helping of candy corn, so he went out empty-handed, except for a flashlight.