Whispers From the Grave

by Leslie Rule

  As primitive as Rita’s time was, I was strangely drawn to it. What would it have been like to live back then? I eagerly began reading again, anxious to hear more about Rita’s life.

  Anyway, as I was saying about that witch, Mrs. Addison. I just hope she doesn’t start in on Chuck now that Greg’s gone. Chuck’s only nine, and he’s kind of a cute kid. He’s got a mop of blond hair and a freckled face. Sometimes when his mom locks him out, he comes into our house when we’re not home. (We never lock our door because we don’t have a key!) Chuck climbs everything. Mom couldn’t believe it when she came home from pottery class yesterday and found him on our roof. He’d climbed up the maple tree just like a little monkey. She thought he’d fall and was going to call the fire department to get him down, but he shinnied down the tree before she could pick up the phone.

  She called Mrs. Addison and told her that Chuck could have broken his neck and that she should have a talk with him. But Mrs. Addison said he was a resilient kid and hadn’t broken anything yet!

  Mom was shocked. Of course, Mom thinks she’s the perfect mother. Right now she seems more like a jailer than a mother! I’m still on restrictions. “Indefinitely,” she said. Ben is allowed to call but not come over! The only time I can see him is at school.

  Mom is a hypocrite just like everyone else in her generation. She has a glass of wine every night, and of course that’s fine because SHE does it. But just because I had a few beers that went down wrong—OKAY SO I GOT DRUNK! Just because I got a little drunk, she thinks she can ruin my life.

  I miss my nightly walks on the beach, but at least I can see the sunset from my bedroom window. I’m sitting on my window seat and a sweet breeze is ruffling the curtains. The sun just went down and the sky is bright red. The water looks like strawberry pop. It’s so beautiful, I want to leap from the window and fly into the sky. I can imagine melting into the sunset and becoming those colors. I wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore. I’d just blend with the sky and exist on the colors of the sunset.

  “I know how you feel,” I said aloud. I closed the diary and leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the windowpane. The sun was setting and the sky was smeared in red.

  It was an evening just like this Rita had written about.

  It’s funny, but I almost felt she was my friend. I looked forward to reading her diary entries. Though I could have read the whole diary in one sitting, I found myself trying to make it last. I’d read just a page at a time. It was almost like having someone to talk to.

  Rita was so familiar. It wasn’t because she looked like me. It was more the way she wrote. It was like she was talking to me.

  She sat right here, I realized. She looked out this window through eyes like mine and watched a sunset like this one.

  For a fleeting moment, I felt as if I was Rita. Sitting here on her window seat with her face watching her sunset.

  I suddenly remembered what Suki had said about reincarnation. Was it possible? Could I be Rita, living her life all over again?

  Don’t be silly! For all I knew she could still be alive. I did some quick calculating. She’d be 117. A lot of people lived to be that old these days. A century ago, you were considered old if you lived to be ninety. But that was before cancer vaccinations and infallible artificial organs.

  Excited, I turned on my computer and accessed the newspaper files at the Banbury Library. If Rita had died in Banbury, I’d find the obituary. If she was still alive, maybe I could look her up. It would be fun to see how her life had turned out.

  As I scanned the computer files, I was interrupted by a rap on my bedroom door. It creaked opened, and Suki’s pale face peered in at me. “Hi. Your mom said I could come up. I heard about Mr. Edwards. Isn’t it awful?”

  “Come on in,” I sighed. “Kyle saw him fall. He was on his way here.”

  “Kyle really likes you,” she said generously. “I can tell by the way he was sitting so close to you today. You make a really cute couple.” A benign smile lit her face. She didn’t look at all jealous.

  “Well, we’re not really a couple.”

  “Has he kissed you yet?” she asked, perched on the edge of my bed, eager to lap up the details. She could never have Kyle, but apparently the vicarious thrill was good enough for her.

  “You’ll be the first to know!” I laughed. “How far back do The Banbury Times files go?”

  “Forever I guess. What are you looking for?”

  “I want to see what happened to Rita Mills.”

  “The girl with your face! She’s got to be dead by now. She’d be like a hundred years old.”

  “One hundred seventeen,” I corrected her and typed in “Mills, Rita,” and pushed the search button. Within seconds, the computer had located an article and it filled my computer screen. It was the front page of The Banbury Times from 1970. My stomach lurched when I read the headline in tall black letters: local girl’s boyfriend executed for her murder.

  Benjamin Grand, 18, was executed Thursday for the murder of his girlfriend, 17-year-old Rita Mills. She was found dead of a head wound at Banbury Point last March.

  A jury found Grand guilty of battering Mills, causing her death. Prosecutors maintain he committed the murder in a drunken jealous rage.

  A wave of nausea swept through me and I leapt from the chair and bolted to the hallway. I made it to the bathroom just in time to be sick. Afterward I splashed cold water on my face and stared at my reflection in the mirror. My face was gray. My face. Her face. I could picture that face bruised and lifeless, pressed against the sand.

  How could he do that to her? She loved him!

  Trembling, I went back to my room. Suki had turned off the computer. “I read it,” she said quietly. “It’s really sad. Maybe you better lie down for a while.”

  I lay on my bed, and Suki covered me with the puff-square, pulling it up around my chin and patting my arm in a motherly fashion.

  “How could he have killed her?” I said numbly.

  “He was drunk.” Her brow furrowed in concern. “Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “He murdered her!” I spat. “Drunk or not! He murdered her in cold blood.”

  “It was a long time ago,” she said softly.

  “I want to be alone now.”

  “I could make you some hot chocolate,” she offered hopefully.

  I rolled away from her and buried my head under my pillow.

  “It would make you feel better,” Suki prodded.

  “No!” I said sharply. “I don’t want any hot chocolate. I want to be alone.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll go then.” Her voice was flat.

  A moment later, I peeked out from under the pillow. Suki was gone, her feelings bruised again. I suppose I could have been a little more tactful, but my mind was so full of awful things to sort out. Mr. Edwards’s accident. Rita’s murder.

  Two tragedies on the same day!

  Of course, Rita had died a century ago. But in my mind it had just happened. I felt I’d lost a friend. A friend and a neighbor.

  Mr. Edwards was sweet, even if he was crazy.

  Crazy.

  Everyone said he was crazy because he rambled on about a murder. I sat up straight, knocking the puff-square from my legs in a flash of realization. He was telling the truth!

  A girl was murdered on the beach. Rita! He was talking about Rita! He wasn't crazy!

  If Mr. Edwards wasn’t crazy, then why did he step off Windy Cliff?

  7

  When I finally slept, I dreamed of hands. Angry hands. Murderous hands. They shoved Mr. Edwards hard from behind, sending his frail body sailing through the sky. When he crashed against the rocks, the hands brushed against each other as if to dust off any trace of murder.

  Like a thick fog, the dream clung to my mind all day long. Vague wisps of a nightmare that refused to evaporate. I felt like I was wading through thick pea soup the rest of the weekend.

  “You’re sure acting strange,” Suki s
aid as we trudged uphill toward the school Monday morning. Banbury High was a mile from my house. Banbury Bay doesn’t have moving sidewalks like they do in Salem. When developers proposed installing them, the residents fought it. Tourism is big business in Banbury Bay because it’s a historical town. The people here want to keep the whole town looking old-fashioned for the tourists.

  Walking to school usually cleared my mind, making it easier to concentrate on the teachers’ lectures. But this morning I didn’t think it was going to help.

  “Mars to Jenna!” Suki shouted. She wore a tasteless bright orange sweater, stretched taut around her thick middle. “What’s with you today?”

  “I’m just thinking,” I mumbled.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Mr. Edwards.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Poor old man. Poor, crazy old man.”

  “I’m not so sure he was crazy.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked, cocking her head and stumbling to a stop.

  “He was right about the murder. He wasn’t making it up.”

  “Oh. You mean Rita. I hadn’t thought about that. But he had to be crazy, Jenna. He committed suicide! That’s nuts!”

  “I don’t think he stepped off the cliff on purpose.”

  “I guess he could have fallen,” she conceded. “He couldn’t see. He might not have known he was at the edge of the cliff.”

  “I don’t think he fell.”

  “He didn’t fall? He didn’t jump? What did he do? Fly?”

  “He could have been pushed.”

  Suki’s mouth popped into a startled “O.” “Why would anyone want to kill an old man?”

  “I don’t know. But I keep thinking it might have something to do with Rita’s murder. He was always talking about it. Maybe someone wanted to shut him up.”

  “That’s kind of farfetched, don’t you think? Rita was murdered a century ago! Why would it matter if he talked about it now?”

  I was sorry I’d confided in her. Knowing Suki, she would embarrass me again by telling everyone what I’d said.

  Beep! Beep! I nearly leapt from my shoes when the sleek green car pulled up beside us, horn honking. Kyle leaned from the window, grinning mischievously. “Wake up, lady!” he teased. “You looked like you were sleepwalking.”

  Suddenly I felt the clouds in my mind clear. I smiled back at him, drinking in his handsome face. “I’m wide-awake now.” I laughed.

  He punched in a command on his steering wheel computer, and the passenger door popped open. I scrambled in beside him. Suki was right behind me, but Kyle roared off before she could get in. Glancing into the rearview mirror, I watched her grow small as we sped away. Soon she was an orange dot in the distance.

  “You should have waited for her to get in,” I said.

  “The exercise will be good for her,” Kyle said.

  “I feel sorry for her.” I sighed. “She’s always following me around. She’s a nice girl, but she wants to spend every minute with me.”

  “Pathetic.”

  “It is. I hate to hurt her feelings.”

  “What else can you do? She’s the type who doesn’t get the message unless you hit her over the head.”

  He’s right, I thought. Yet I couldn’t shake the prickling guilt.

  Kyle turned into a parking space in front of the school. Suddenly, his big warm hand was closing over mine. “You look great today, Jenna,” he said huskily. “That sweater matches your eyes.”

  I shivered inwardly with the compliment. The fuzzy gray sweater fit me snugly, and his emerald eyes swept appreciatively over my curves.

  “You’re here to study reading, writing, and arithmetic,” I joked, feeling flustered.

  “I’d rather study you!”

  I ducked out of the car before he could see me blush. The crisp autumn air cooled my warm cheeks. “Aren’t the trees beautiful this time of the year?” I said. Ancient maples with reaching gnarled limbs lined the paved parking lot. A sudden breeze rustled the papery red and orange leaves, sending some swirling down around us.

  “I’m not looking at the trees,” Kyle said pointedly.

  “Would you stop!” I said with a nervous giggle.

  “You stop,” he said, touching my shoulder. He turned me to face him. “You’re a pretty girl. You must have guys like me telling you that all the time.”

  Before I could respond, he tucked his thumb under my chin and gently tipped my face toward his. His lips were soft and sensuous on mine. The kiss was short and sweet and sent my stomach into a spinning somersault. It left me breathless.

  Kyle hooked his arm in mine and we strolled toward the building as leaves blew around our ankles. I noticed several girls watching us enviously. We’re becoming a couple! I thought excitedly.

  He walked me to my homeroom and gave me a quick peck on the cheek before he bounded off to his class. I practically floated to my desk, lost in the memory of his kisses, until I felt someone staring at me. I turned to see Suki, glaring at me from the desk across from mine.

  “Oh, Suki,” I stammered. “I guess you’re mad because Kyle didn’t give you a ride.”

  “I guess you two wanted to be alone,” she said crisply.

  Obviously, she’d seen us in the doorway—seen Kyle kiss my cheek. Had she watched the other kiss too? I’d never seen her mad before. She was always so cheery, going along with whatever I wanted. This was a new side of her.

  I regarded her intently and she stared back at me. For the first time, I noticed something odd about her eyes. Her pupils had jagged edges, like chocolate cookies that had been nibbled all the way around.

  “You’re looking at my eyes,” she accused.

  “Well, yes. Your pupils are a little unusual.”

  “Uncle Terry says it’s genetic, probably inherited from one of my relatives—though I’ll never know who. I guess my strange eyes are one more reason for you to think I’m weird.”

  “I don’t think that,” I said, but I knew it sounded like the lie it was.

  “We’re more alike than you know, Jenna,” she said hollowly. She no longer sounded mad. Only sad. “Neither of us fits in. Neither of us belongs here.”

  I stared at her, confused.

  “We’ve both got it, Jenna.”

  “Got what?”

  “PK,” she said. “I knew you had it when that diary popped open by itself.”

  “Huh?”

  “Remember when you found the diary in the attic? You opened it with your mind.”

  “The lock was rusty and it broke.”

  “You broke it,” she said, a knowing smile twitching on her lips.

  “Maybe I did,” I said slowly. “You have PK too? Could you control the dice?”

  Suki shrugged. “Sort of. But not like Uncle Terry’s star pupil. I’m glad I couldn’t control those dice the way you could.”

  “Suki, you make PK sound like a disease! I think it’s totally frazzin to have this skill.”

  She shook her head, her eyes watery in her waiflike face.

  It occurred to me she might have some answers for me. After all, she was Grady’s niece. She probably knew more than I did about what was going on. “Did you inherit your PK from your parents, Suki?”

  “From my mother. She had it, but my father didn’t have it.”

  “What do you mean, had it? Doesn’t she anymore?”

  “She’s dead. They’re all dead. All of my family is dead!”

  I gasped, shocked. So that’s why she lives with her uncle! “I-I didn’t know. Was it an accident?”

  Suki regarded me blankly. “No. They died of old age.”

  It was a sarcastic reply. Obviously, she didn’t want to talk about how her family had really died. It was insensitive of me to ask. I vowed to be nicer to her in the future.

  Before I could think of something consoling to say, Peter Froyder, our frizzy-haired homeroom teacher, had called the class to order and begun the computer roll call.

  Pressing my
thumb to the computer screen built into the corner of my desk, I was automatically entered into the school’s central computer. When my parents were in school they typed their names into their desk computers for the attendance count. It was too easy to skip school. Mom once admitted she sometimes covered for her friends, typing their names in when they ditched.

  Too bad it wasn’t easy to skip anymore. The computer reads our thumbprints and instantly knows whose is whose and who is where!

  I drifted through the morning, my mind brimming with everything that had transpired the last three days. There was absolutely no room for the facts my teachers tried to fit into my brain.

  Kyle and I ate lunch together. Or rather, he ate. My stomach was too full of butterflies to digest my peanut butter sandwich. It was exciting sitting close to him— though it wasn’t the most romantic of settings. We were squeezed together at the end of a crowded cafeteria table with a bunch of loud, disgusting athletes.

  “If you’re not going to eat that, I will,” Kyle said, reaching for my sandwich. He devoured it in three bites. “I’ve been hungry all weekend. It must be the fall air. I always get hungry when it starts to get cold.”

  “I’m surprised you ate at all this weekend. I didn’t have an appetite after Mr. Edwards’s accident,” I said.

  He gulped down half his milk and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I never lose my appetite. That wasn’t the first time I saw someone die.”

  “Really?”

  “I was with my grandfather when he died. He was old and sick and he hung on for a long time, slowly wasting away.”

  “How sad!”

  “I got to really know him those last days. On his deathbed, my grandfather told me how he’d made our family what it is.”

  “Rich?” I said and instantly regretted it when Kyle’s eyes clouded.

  “The Mettleys are about more than money!” he snapped. “My grandfather worked hard to get where he got. It was a struggle for him. I never realized what he went through before. Things were much more complicated than I thought.” He suddenly smiled sheepishly, embarrassed by his outburst.