Ghost Boy of Mackenzie House

by Patti Larsen

  “That was awesome!” He jumped up and down, fists pumping the air. “Not only did we pull one over on the old crank, I got to see a ghost!” He high-fived Chloe. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he told her.

  Chloe laughed at him. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  They parted ways at the grass border of her backyard.

  “We’ll do some research tomorrow and see what we can find out about him,” Marsh said. “I’ll be over in the morning, okay? Wait for me!” He trotted off into the night, waving at her.

  Chloe waited until she couldn’t see him anymore before sneaking back into the house.

  Chloe sagged against her bedroom door. She had made it back to her room without alerting Aunt Larry. She was concerned about the smell of her clothes and hair from the bug spray, but knew she couldn’t risk a shower that late at night without waking her aunt.

  Instead, she went right to her desk and the journal.

  “I found you,” she said. “Joshua. I know who you are now. I’m so glad I went. Marsh was right.” She giggled. “We could have found out somehow, but this was way more fun.” She sat back in her chair. “Now we just have to figure out what we can do to help you move on.”

  Chloe turned at the glimmer of light. Joshua was standing by her door. He gestured toward it before floating right through it. Chloe was speechless. He wanted her to follow him, that much was obvious. She went to her door and peeked out. Joshua was at the bottom of the stairs. He pointed toward the interior of the house.

  Unable to resist, she followed. She was almost to the stairs when the bathroom door opened and Aunt Larry stepped out. She shrieked at the sight of Chloe standing there. Chloe glanced down the staircase and saw Joshua disappear.

  “Chloe!” Aunt Larry let out a big breath. “You scared the daylights out of me.”

  Chloe muttered an apology. She knew how she looked, fully dressed, jeans still wet and stinking of bug spray. She saw her aunt taking it all in and witnessed the astonishment turn to concern.

  “Where have you been?” Aunt Larry switched on the hall light to get a better look. Chloe was torn between being embarrassed and wanting to follow Joshua.

  “Nowhere,” she lied, knowing it was obvious she was lying but unable to come up with anything else right then.

  For the first time ever, Chloe saw Aunt Larry get mad.

  “Chloe Olivia Sutton,” her aunt said, using the dreaded three names while crossing her arms over her chest and scowling, “I want to know where you were and what you were doing. It’s after midnight!” Larry threw her hands up in the air.

  “I was outside in the garden,” Chloe mumbled.

  “Alone?” Aunt Larry stressed the word.

  “Yes,” Chloe said.

  “I see. And why were you in the garden?”

  “Um… ” Chloe couldn’t think of an excuse. “Because.”

  “So you weren’t with Marsh doing something you shouldn’t be doing?” Aunt Larry was still mad, but the edge of anger had left her voice. Still, Chloe didn’t want to get her friend in trouble.

  “No,” she said.

  “Since there isn’t a can of bug spray to be found in this house,” her aunt said, “I’m going to assume you’re still lying to me. Chloe, just tell me.” Larry took a step toward her. “It’s okay, really. I’m not mad. I… I want you to be safe and that cliff can be dangerous this time of night. Tell me you didn’t go to the beach.”

  Chloe shook her head, miserable. She didn’t want to worry her aunt, but she wasn’t going to tell her the truth, either.

  “Do I have to call the MacKenzies?”

  Chloe looked up at her, horrified. “No!” This was all Marsh’s fault, the whole stupid graveyard thing, but she still wanted to keep him out of it. After all, she had no idea how much he would spill if confronted.

  “Then tell me.” Aunt Larry was in a no-nonsense mood, but Chloe couldn’t.

  “No,” she said.

  Her aunt looked startled. “Chloe!” Larry took a deep breath before saying anything else. “You answer me when I ask you a question, young lady.”

  Chloe shook her head. “No,” she said.

  Larry was flabbergasted. “I am not ready for this,” she said in a low voice, to herself, before speaking to Chloe again. “Fine. Go to your room. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  Chloe almost rebelled. She needed to find out what Joshua wanted! But the look on Aunt Larry’s face turned her around and sent her marching to her room. Chloe closed and locked her door and ran to her bed, tears rising in her eyes. She felt terrible lying to Aunt Larry. Sophie would be so ashamed of her. But she couldn’t share the story of the ghost boy. It was hers. Aunt Larry would find some way to stop her from helping Joshua, she knew it. She imagined telling a therapist that there was a ghost in her house who wanted her to help him. She’d be off to the mental ward before she could turn around.

  As she bundled her smelly self under the covers, Chloe admitted there was another more private and resounding reason. As long as she focused on Joshua, she didn’t think about her parents quite so much and the hurt of losing them was less.

  Chloe managed to avoid Aunt Larry the next morning, rising late for a thorough shower before helping herself to some cereal that she took with her into the living room. She could hear her aunt moving around from kitchen to office, but kept her head down over her computer so she wouldn’t have to confront her. The longer she went without talking to her aunt, the worse she felt about the whole thing, but it was still easier not to. Instead, Chloe did her best to be patient as the Internet search engine ground out answers to her questions.

  An hour older but no wiser, Chloe snapped the lid shut. Dial-up was going to be the end of her social life, she knew it, not to mention making it impossible for her to research anything. Bummed, she headed for the kitchen in time to see Marsh raising his hand to knock.

  One look at his beaming face made her cringe inside. She was not in the sharing mood. Her friendship with Joshua had become so personal that the last thing she wanted was to have Marsh bumbling about in it, ruining everything. Chloe paused, frozen by indecision. Marsh was bouncing on the other side of the door, watching her with those sad-puppy eyes. Try as she might, Chloe couldn’t say no.

  “Hi, Marsh,” she said as she opened the door. He bounded inside.

  “Ready?”

  “For what?” Chloe was feeling cranky and out of sorts, not the best mood to be dealing with Marsh.

  “Research!” He didn’t seem to notice.

  “I tried,” she complained. She hated the whine in her own voice but couldn’t help it. “Stupid dial-up takes forever.”

  Marsh nodded in sympathy. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “High-speed any day now. But that’s not what I mean. Mom’s going to town and she said we could come.”

  “And that helps us how?” Chloe wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up. She slumped on a stool with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “We’ll go to the archives,” he said.

  “What’s that?” she asked

  “Kind of like a library, except they have old stuff,” he told her.

  “Great, Marsh,” Chloe answered with some bitterness. “Just the place I want to go in the summer.” She scowled out the kitchen door at the sun. Stupid nice day, she thought.

  He remained undaunted. “Last year my class went to the archives in Charlottetown. We had to do historical research for a particular day of a particular year. Our teacher gave us assignments.”

  “So?” Chloe demanded.

  “They showed us how to use microfiche,” he said.

  “We’re going fishing?” Chloe knew she was being mean but didn’t care.

  Marsh made a face at her. “No, silly. Microfiche. It’s a little film roll they use to store old newspapers.”r />
  Chloe perked at that. He was getting somewhere.

  “So you think if we go and look at the newspapers we can find out what happened to Joshua?” When she said it she felt better. This was progress!

  Marsh, meanwhile, was nodding so hard she thought his freckles might pop off. “And if we can narrow down the date using the diary and the tombstone, we can figure out where to look.”

  Chloe hopped down from the stool. “July 14, 1941,” she said. “That was the date of the last entry and the date he died.”

  “Then we look from July 14 to July 16 or so and we find it,” he said. “Easy as pie.”

  “When do we go?” Chloe’s excitement ebbed as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She wasn’t even sure she could go after the whole scene with Aunt Larry. Marsh must have seen her expression change.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I saw him again last night,” she admitted in a whisper. “After I snuck back in. I tried to follow him but Aunt Larry caught me. She knew we’d been out. I had to lie to her. Don’t worry,” she told him as his face fell, “I told her I was alone.”

  Marsh thought about it for a moment then shrugged. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “I’d have to stay home,” Chloe said.

  “But I could look for us,” he said. “Besides, if she was that mad, my mom would have heard about it by now.”

  Chloe admitted that was true. Biting the bullet and with Marsh close behind her, she knocked on Aunt Larry’s office door. She and Marsh both peeked their heads in when Larry called for them to enter.

  “Hi, Larry,” Marsh said.

  Aunt Larry leaned back from her computer and smiled at him.

  “What are you two up to today?” Her eyes fixed on Chloe. She wasn’t grounded after all.

  “Mom and I are going to town,” he told her. “Can Chloe come?”

  “Sure,” Larry said. “Will you be back for lunch?”

  “Probably,” he said. “She has errands.”

  “Have fun,” she waved at them as she turned back to her monitor. Marsh poked Chloe and grinned before dashing off. Chloe turned, pausing when she heard her name.

  “I’d like to talk about last night,” Aunt Larry said. “Not right this minute, but sometime today. Okay, Chloe?”

  “Okay,” she agreed. “Aunt Larry… ” She paused, worried if she said anything she would spill everything.

  “Have a good time,” her aunt said. “Oh, here, wait a minute.” She fished through a jar next to her and slid a twenty-dollar bill across the desk. “Just in case you see something you like. And I’m not opposed to treats,” she finished with a wink.

  Chloe smiled, grateful yet again that she had Aunt Larry. When she picked up the bill, she leaned over and hugged her aunt around the neck.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You can tell me anything, Chloe,” Larry said. “Anything. Okay?”

  Chloe nodded as a car horn honked twice from the front door.

  “See you,” she said.

  Chloe found Marsh in the back seat of the MacKenzies’ dark blue minivan. Chloe climbed in beside him to Mary’s smiling face.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Ready,” Marsh and Chloe replied in unison.

  The drive to Charlottetown was informative as Marsh, leaning over to her despite his mother’s repeated requests for him to sit back and tighten his seatbelt, filled her in on who owned what field or barn or house for the first ten kilometres or so, then flooded the silence with weird facts about PEI that she didn’t know and never wanted to. Mary laughed out loud at him, though, so it was fun even with his endless chatter.

  Chloe was unimpressed by Charlottetown, not because it wasn’t pretty (it was), but because to her a city was something the size of Ottawa. When they drove over the four-lane bridge across the Hillsborough River, she was surprised they had arrived. The skyline was so much lower than she was used to, houses and condominiums lining the street that ran along the water’s edge toward the heart of the capital. Sailboats bobbed in the harbour, bright colours shining in the morning sun.

  Marsh pointed out Great George Street and proudly proclaimed that it was the road that the founding fathers walked on their way to the Charlottetown Conference in 1864 when Canada was on the way to becoming a nation. Chloe was impressed by that and tried to muster up more enthusiasm.

  The old brick and stone buildings at least felt familiar, but in miniature to what she was used to. When Mary pulled up in front of Province House to let them out, and Marsh told her what it was, she was surprised. Parliament Hill dominated the centre of Ottawa. This was a single squat building, grey with age, the stones appearing lopsided and ancient. Promising to give her a tour someday, Marsh led her across the way to the archives, Mary calling after that she would be back in an hour.

  Chloe followed Marsh past the flower-bordered fountain to the tall red brick building next to Province House. Here at least the old trees spread their canopy in a more familiar way, blocking out most of the sun. Despite that fact, however, the day was bright and warm, so the cool quiet of the archive building was a shock. When Chloe climbed the last wide step and walked through the big glass doors, she felt like an intruder. There was something very imposing about the place. Marsh told her it used to be the old courthouse. Chloe felt guilty right away. It was so still and silent inside. Even normal sounds were muffled, like they were wrapped in cotton and happening far away. On the fourth floor, she followed Marsh with some hesitation to the counter, trying not to touch anything.

  A young woman with a blonde ponytail and bright red glasses smiled at them from behind the desk.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to see some microfiche, please.” Chloe thought Marsh sounded very official, like he knew what he was doing after all.

  She seemed taken aback by his request and laughed. “Doing some research?” She was examining them both. Chloe had a moment of panic. What if she said no? Maybe they were too young, or they were in the wrong place.

  Marsh, however, knew what to say.

  “I was here in May,” he said, “with my class. It was awesome!”

  The woman laughed, adjusting her glasses. “It was, was it? And you’re back for more?” Marsh bobbed a quick nod. She hesitated one more moment before sliding a piece of paper to him. “Good for you. You know what to do?”

  Marsh took the pen and filled out the form. Chloe tried to stay quiet and out of the way. When he was done, the woman checked the card. Her eyebrows raised.

  “World War II, is it? I’ll be right back.”

  Chloe exhaled, not realizing until then she had been holding her breath. Marsh grinned at her.

  “No sweat,” he said.

  It took the young woman a minute to return with a black box. “Here you are, then, July 1 to September 30, 1941.” She came out from behind the desk. “Right this way.”

  They followed her to a small desk with a box-like reader attached. She removed the two reels of thin film from the case and inserted them into the reader.

  “This button goes forward, this one back,” she showed them. Marsh was nodding. “Please be careful with the machine, and good luck.”

  Chloe waited for her to leave before pulling up a spare chair beside Marsh. He shot her an excited grin and started scanning.

  It didn’t take long for Marsh to find what they were looking for.

  “Here it is!” he said. Chloe leaned in for a closer look while he read aloud.

  “Joshua Robert MacKenzie, 10. Late of Point Prim, beloved son of Robert William MacKenzie and Margaret Jane MacKenzie (ne. Johnson). Leaves behind sister Mary Margaret, brother Albert Owen, brother Harold Curtis, (twin) brother Joseph Jonathan, sister Emily Anne, sister Emma Pearl.” The rest told where he was buried and where he died, but not how.

>   “Guess it won’t be as easy as I thought,” Marsh admitted. He scrolled back through the paper to the news section and started scanning.

  Chloe, meanwhile, was making connections. “Joseph,” she whispered. “Is it the same Joseph, do you think?”

  Marsh shrugged, concentrating, then turned to her in shock as he realized what she said. “I bet it is!” He slumped into his seat. “Wow, imagine. His twin.” He shook his head and went back to work. “We need to find out what happened.”

  Finding nothing about it in that day’s paper, Marsh went back two more days. “Day for a wake, then the funeral,” he told her. “And… here we go! Oh no.” Marsh’s face fell. “This is awful, Chloe.”

  She agreed. It was a small story, one brief paragraph. The headline stared at her in bold at the bottom corner of the third page.

  TEN-YEAR-OLD FALLS TO DEATH

  Joshua MacKenzie died late yesterday afternoon when he fell from the loft of his father’s barn, striking his head on a support beam. The only witness, his twin brother, Joseph, said they were playing by jumping into the fresh hay when his brother slipped. Authorities have ruled the death an accident.

  Chloe’s heart constricted. A horrible fear was growing inside her.

  “They had a fight,” she hissed at Marsh. “The brothers. Joshua wrote about it in his journal. The same day, Marsh. Something about a missing yo-yo. Joshua said that his brother was mad at him.”

  “What are you saying?” he hissed back. “This says the police thought it was an accident.”

  “Joseph was the only witness,” she told him as his eyes widened. “What do you think he would have said? ‘Oops, I pushed my brother, sorry’?” Chloe felt anger begin to rise for Joshua. She was sure she was right. “That’s why he’s still hanging around,” she said. “His murderer is free and alive and he’s dead. All because of a stupid toy.”

  “We don’t know that,” Marsh said, trying to calm her down. “Maybe it was an accident.”