The Ghost of Fossil Glen

by Cynthia DeFelice

  “Twin Airheads?” Dub looked at Allie unbelievingly. “Tell me you don’t watch that junk.” Putting on a falsetto voice, he imitated one of the twins: “Oh, my hair got mussed! Whatever shall I do? My life is ruined!” He pretended to sob hysterically, then peeked at Allie.

  She couldn’t help laughing. “I only watched five minutes,” she said. “It did seem pretty stupid. But Karen and Pam like it a lot. Maybe it takes a while to get into it.”

  Dub gave Allie a look she couldn’t quite fathom. She didn’t want to talk about Karen and Pam with Dub, so she went to work on the first gravestone in the row along the fence. The stone lay flat on the ground. Allie swept the leaves away and read aloud, “Walter Oswald Emmons, Beloved husband.”

  “Look,” said Dub. “Here’s his wife, Irma, right next to him.”

  “That’s nice, the way they’re buried side by side, don’t you think?” asked Allie as she scraped away the moss and grass that had grown over the stone.

  “I guess so,” said Dub. “I mean, if you have to be here.”

  They moved down the row, clearing off each headstone, trying their best to straighten those that had heaved in the winter frost, removing trash and forgotten offerings of dead flowers and tattered flags.

  Allie heard Dub hoot with laughter. “Listen to this,” he called. “‘Here lies Orvin Killigrew, a wretched, poor, and lowly worm.’”

  “No way!” said Allie. She walked over to read the headstone herself.

  “How would you like that on your gravestone?” Dub asked.

  “Geez,” said Allie, with a giggle. “Poor guy.”

  They moved on to the next tombstone and began brushing the leaves away. It was fun working with Dub. The sun felt warm on her shoulders and she was enjoying the glimpses that the headstone carvings offered into the lives of those long-gone people.

  She walked over to a small stone that stood upright in the ground. While most of the graves sat in family groupings, this one was off by itself, spaced farther away from the others than was usual. And while many of the others were decorated with angels or flowers or comforting words, this one appeared stark and bare by comparison. Drawing closer, Allie felt a chill again, despite the sun.

  She read the simple inscription: “Lucy Stiles, 1983–1994.” Doing some quick subtraction in her head, she gasped. “Dub, look! This girl was only eleven when she died. Our age.”

  Dub came over to see, and it was then that the significance of the name struck Allie. “Lucy Stiles, Dub! Stiles.” To emphasize her meaning, she pointed across the field to the deserted house.

  “Hmmm,” said Dub, examining the carved dates. “1994. That’s only four years ago.”

  Figuring quickly, Allie said, “When we were in second grade. I wonder how she died.”

  Dub assumed the deep voice and macho stance of a TV cop. “I’m afraid we suspect foul play, ma’am,” he said.

  Allie began to laugh. She stopped abruptly at the sound of a low voice, not quite a whisper.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked Dub.

  “What?”

  “That voice.”

  “You mean Joey? How can you miss him? It’s like his mouth is hooked up to speakers.”

  “No, not Joey. It was the voice. It sounded as if somebody was right here.”

  Dub made an exaggerated show of looking all around, over his shoulder, behind his back, behind Allie’s back. “Ah, yes,” he agreed. “I see who you mean. It’s Orvin Killigrew, the poor, wretched worm, standing right behind you.”

  “Dub, I’m serious. I heard the voice again. And this morning, in the classroom, I felt cold hands on my shoulders.” She stopped, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Right after you said something about ghosts.” She looked at Dub, wide-eyed.

  “Al,” he said. “You’re sounding kind of whacked, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Dub, this is so weird.”

  “You got that right,” said Dub.

  “And there’s something else,” said Allie. “You know my journal?”

  “That book you told me about? Did you use it?”

  “Yes. And remember I looked through it and told you all the pages were blank?”

  Dub nodded.

  “Well, last night I found writing in it.”

  “So you missed it when you looked,” Dub said matter-of-factly.

  Allie tried to keep the impatience out of her voice as she said, “I’m sure I didn’t. The page was blank when I left the room, I know it was. I closed the book, went to get a pen, and when I came back it was open to the first page, and—there it was.”

  “What?”

  “Writing. Just the words, ‘I am,’ and then the letter ‘L.’ Capital L. Like the beginning of a name. Only it sort of broke off, as if the person who wrote it had stopped suddenly.”

  “Michael?” Dub suggested.

  Allie shook her head. “He wasn’t around. I looked. Besides, he can’t write, especially in cursive. He’s only four.”

  There was a moment of silence, during which Dub appeared to be deep in thought. “So who’s ‘L’?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” answered Allie quietly.

  “Have you told anybody else about this?” asked Dub.

  “My parents,” said Allie. “And they didn’t believe me. They said the writing had to have been there all along and that the rest of it was just my imagination running away with me.” She sighed in exasperation. “So I wrote about it in my journal last night.”

  “You told Mr. Henry you were hearing voices?” asked Dub.

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to write about.”

  “You’d better hope he keeps his promise not to show anyone,” said Dub. “Like the little men in white coats.”

  “Very funny,” said Allie. “Dub, you don’t think I’m making this up, do you?”

  “No,” said Dub. “Maybe Karen can’t tell when you’re fooling around and when you’re serious, but I can.”

  “And I’m not crazy,” she declared.

  Dub’s face gathered in a sarcastic leer, as if he was about to crack a joke. Then he must have caught the worried look on Allie’s face. “No way,” he said.

  Allie felt relieved. She glanced again at the stone near their feet. “‘L’ could stand for Lucy.”

  “Except for one small problem,” said Dub.

  “What?”

  “Duh, Al. She’s dead, remember?”

  Allie giggled nervously. “That would be a problem.”

  Nine

  The sound of the twelve o’clock whistle carried from the fire station to the cemetery. The class gathered their bag lunches and walked over to the glen to picnic by the creek. When Allie saw Karen and Pam sitting close together and sharing their lunches, she sat down near Mr. Henry. Dub joined her.

  “Joey, you remembered your lunch?” Mr. Henry asked with a grin.

  “When it comes to food,” said Joey, “I don’t forget.”

  From their flat, sunny picnic spot at the edge of the meadow, they could look down into the steep ravine that formed Fossil Glen. The silver stream of water rushed by, tumbling around corners and over rocks and fallen trees.

  Allie nibbled on her peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, trying to concentrate on the flowing stream and the warmth of the sun on her back, instead of on Karen and Pam, who were looking her way and whispering. About half a mile downstream, Allie knew, the waters of Fossil Creek emptied into the wide, deep bowl of Seneca Lake.

  Swollen with the spring rains, the creek seemed to be hurrying recklessly toward the lake. Later on, when summer came, the stream would slow down and warm up. It was as if it suddenly realized it didn’t want to lose itself in the large, cold waters of the lake, Allie thought, and she smiled to herself.

  Dub reached over and took a handful of potato chips from Allie’s bag. “The stream looks so small from up here,” he said.

  “It sure does,” Mr. Henry agreed. “It’s hard to believe that little creek carved out
this entire glen. These cliffs are over two hundred feet high.”

  “Wait a second,” said Julie. “Do you mean the creek used to be up here, where we are?”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Henry. “Slowly, slowly, it cut its way down through the dirt and rock to form the glen.”

  “Wow. It must have taken a long time.”

  “Where did all the fossils come from?” asked Joey.

  “They’re from the time when this whole area was under a warm, tropical ocean,” Mr. Henry told them.

  “And then, millions of years later, it was covered by glaciers, right?” said Dub.

  “Right,” said Mr. Henry.

  “I don’t believe it,” declared Karen.

  “It’s true,” said Mr. Henry. “Where we’re sitting right now used to be the bottom of the sea.” Everyone was quiet for a minute, trying to picture it.

  “That’s awesome,” said Joey.

  “We could spend the rest of the year just studying the history and ecology of the glen,” said Mr. Henry. “After all, here it is, right in our own back yard. And, as you’re all noticing, it’s really a very interesting place.”

  “And pretty,” said Julie.

  To her surprise, Allie heard her own voice add, “But it’s haunted.”

  A shiver seized her, and she dropped her bag of chips. Fumbling to stuff the chips back in the bag, she heard the same faint whisper she had described to Dub. She felt his eyes on her and glanced up. He looked worried.

  “What do you mean, haunted?” asked Karen scornfully.

  “I—I don’t—” Allie shrugged and looked down at her lap, embarrassed. She didn’t know why she’d said that.

  “Oh, I get it,” said Dub. “It’s haunted by the ghosts of the Indians who used to live here. The Senecas.”

  Allie knew Dub was trying to help her out. Opening her mouth to answer, she heard the whisper again, and the back of her neck felt prickly and cold. Again, to her surprise, she heard her own voice speak. “No,” it said. “Someone else.”

  Karen made a disgusted face. “Here we go,” she muttered, but softly, so Mr. Henry wouldn’t hear. “This ought to be good.”

  Dub glared angrily at Karen. Mr. Henry, unaware of the tension, laughed. “Allie must be thinking of the spirits of all those little critters who died and became fossilized in these cliffs.”

  Allie forced herself to smile and nod, unable to open her mouth again for fear of what might come out.

  “Those are two subjects we might pursue,” Mr. Henry continued. “The creatures and the native people who lived here before us. And, speaking of people who lived before us, I guess we’d better get back to the cemetery and go to work.”

  Everyone rose, picked up the picnic clutter, and started walking back to the cemetery. Allie could feel Dub eyeing her warily.

  “Don’t ask me what happened,” she said, “because I don’t know. I didn’t mean to say anything. It was as if someone else was talking, not me.”

  Dub was quiet.

  “Say something,” Allie pleaded. “You think I’m a nut case, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Dub slowly. “But I think we’d better figure out what the heck is going on.”

  Allie was relieved to hear Dub say “we.”

  “What are you doing after school?” Dub asked.

  Allie thought for a minute. Then she remembered. “I’m supposed to go down to Mom’s shop to look at a desk.”

  “Oh,” said Dub, “okay.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought maybe you could come over and we could fool around on the computer. Maybe do some searches.”

  Allie was puzzled. “Searches? For what?”

  Dub shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff about ghosts.”

  Allie stared at him. “Ghosts? Dub, you don’t really think—” She stopped. She could see that Dub was serious. And, the truth was, it was exactly what she’d been thinking, but she’d been afraid to say it out loud. She hadn’t even wanted to think about the possibility…

  Ghosts.

  For as long as she could remember, she’d been hoping for something really exciting to happen. She’d believed in the unbelievable, expected the unexpected. She’d wanted it to be true that there was more to life than the everyday world people saw. But now that something totally inexplicable seemed to be happening, and happening to her, she felt partly thrilled and partly afraid.

  “I know,” said Allie. “Come with me to the shop. It won’t take long to look at a desk. Then we can go to your house.”

  “Okay,” agreed Dub.

  They reached the cemetery and began working where they had left off. Soon they met the other members of the team near the middle. When they had straightened and cleaned the last headstone, they all stood together and stretched their tired backs. Most of the other teams were finishing up, too, and were looking around at the results of their work.

  “Hey, this place looks great,” said Brad.

  Mr. Henry joined them. “It sure does.” He called the rest of the class over and said, “The buses will be at school soon, so we need to get back to the room quickly to get ready for dismissal.”

  He looked around again and smiled. “You should all feel proud of what you accomplished here today. I’ve been thinking: what if we turned Earth Day into Earth Week or even Earth Month? We still have our composting project to do, and we seem to have lots and lots of questions about Fossil Creek and Fossil Glen.”

  The kids nodded enthusiastically.

  “Of course,” said Mr. Henry with a smile, “that means we’ll have to come back here for lots of field trips. Maybe you’d rather stay in the classroom all spring?”

  “No way!”

  “Field trips, all right!”

  Somebody cheered, and Joey gave an ear-splitting whistle of approval.

  Karen raised her hand. “Do we have any homework tonight?”

  “No homework.”

  “Yes!”

  “Excellent!”

  “But I’ll probably be up half the night doing mine,” added Mr. Henry.

  The class looked at him quizzically.

  “I’ll be reading your journals,” he said. “And knowing you all, I’m sure I have a fascinating evening ahead of me.”

  Dub and Allie exchanged a glance. “Little does he know,” said Dub with a mischievous grin.

  Ten

  “Hi, Mom,” Allie called as she and Dub walked through the door of Mrs. Nichols’s shop.

  “Hi, Al. Back here,” a muffled voice replied.

  Allie and Dub walked through the main part of the store, past tastefully arranged groupings of furniture, paintings, china, glassware, quilts, and books to a small room that seemed to be overflowing with clutter. Papers, folders, empty packing boxes, crumpled newspapers, and an odd assortment of antiques and framed pictures were piled haphazardly on every available surface.

  Mrs. Nichols was bending over a carton, poking through the contents. She looked up, brushing her hair from her face, leaving a streak of dirt across her forehead. She looked hot and sweaty, and her clothing was covered with dust. “Hi, you two.”

  “Gee, Mom,” said Allie, looking around, “if my room looked like this, you’d have a fit.”

  “It is a mess, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Nichols cheerfully. “It’s all this new stock I’ve gotten in the past two days. I’m trying to unpack, clean, and price everything, and, wouldn’t you know, customers keep coming in and distracting me!”

  She turned to Dub. “You didn’t know how glamorous this job was, did you?”

  Dub laughed. “We could help,” he said.

  “That’s nice of you, Dub. And I’d take you up on it, except that right now everything is so disorganized I wouldn’t know where to tell you to start.”

  “Where’d you get all this stuff, Mom?” Allie asked.

  “I told you about the man in the van, didn’t I?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Remember this morning when we passed the Stile
s house and I said I thought I recognized the van in the driveway? Well, I was right. It was the same one. That’s where all these new items came from.”

  Allie lifted her eyebrows. “All this is from the Stiles house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is someone new moving in?” Dub asked.

  “I don’t know. But I’d certainly be glad to see someone living in that beautiful old house. It’s a shame for it to stand vacant like that.” Mrs. Nichols’s face brightened as she remembered something. “You came to see the desk, didn’t you? Come on. It’s right out here.”

  Allie and Dub followed Mrs. Nichols to the front of the shop. “What do you think?”

  By the window were an old-fashioned wooden desk and a matching chair. The desk had a high back with lots of little drawers and pigeonholes. Allie lifted the lid of the slanted writing surface. Inside were more drawers and cubbyholes. Larger drawers on both sides reached to the floor.

  The wood seemed to glow in the warm afternoon light that streamed through the window. Allie breathed deeply, catching the scent of lemon polish. “It’s so beautiful,” she said, rubbing her hand along the polished surface. Turning to her mother, she asked, “May I really have it?”

  Mrs. Nichols nodded. “If you like it, it’s yours.”

  “I love it,” said Allie.

  “Tell you what,” said Mrs. Nichols. “Why don’t you two remove all the drawers to make it lighter. Then the three of us should have no problem carrying it. I’ll bring the car around to the front door, and we’ll see if we can fit it in.”

  Working together, they managed to wrestle the desk into the back seat of the car, and the drawers and the chair into the trunk.

  “There,” said Mrs. Nichols. “But there’s no room for you two now.”

  “That’s okay,” said Allie. “We were thinking about going to Dub’s to look up some stuff on his computer, anyway.”

  “All right. But be home by six for dinner.”

  “Okay. After dinner, can we put the desk in my room?”

  “Of course.”

  “Bye, Mrs. Nichols,” said Dub.

  “Nice to see you, Dub.”