by Alice Duncan
“Right over here,” I whispered, leading him through the opening in the low rock wall. “Look at this.”
He pointed the flashlight at the stone marked “Little Girl.”
“Yeah,” he said. “So? You think there’s something sinister about that headstone?”
“Well . . .” I felt kind of silly, but then I bucked up my spirits. Darn it, if Julia Gilbert was buried under that stone, her parents ought to know about it. They’d been mourning for a long time, and they deserved to have their child back, if it was only her bones to bury. “Yes.” I said it firmly, too.
Phil shook his head. “I don’t know, Annabelle. Still seems like quite a stretch to me.”
“Hmmm. I don’t know how to prove it one way or the other,” I mused. I didn’t suppose I could talk Sheriff Greene into exhuming the remains buried under “Little Girl’s” headstone on the basis of a hunch. Men. They lack imagination.
We stood there, staring at the stone, for several moments. I don’t know how long it was. I was lost in what the novelists call a brown study. I don’t know what Phil was thinking, although I suspect it had something to do with how to get me to back off from my Julia Gilbert theory.
The silence surrounding us was as complete as silences ever got out there. You could hear coyotes yipping at each other in the distance, and creatures rustled and scampered here and there. There were probably field mice skittering about–and maybe scorpions and tarantulas, neither one of which was as poisonous and folks claimed, not that I wanted to have one climbing up my leg or anything.
The thunder growled again, giving me a chilly feeling on the back of my neck. Every now and then you could hear a rodent squeal when an eagle or a hawk nabbed it. There are little burrowing owls out on the desert, but you never heard them unless you got too close to a nest, in which case they’d screech at you to stay away. If you didn’t obey the command, they’d swoop you, claws bared, and they could pack quite a wallop.
When we got closer to Mr. Burgess’s shack, his dogs began to bark. We stood perfectly still for a second.
And then, out of the blackness, came, “‘Evening, you two.”
Phil and I both nearly jumped out of our skins. Phil dropped the flashlight.
Chapter Four
“Mr. Burgess!” I regret to say that my voice squeaked. I reminded myself of one of those poor field mice who’d just felt the sickening stab of an owl’s talons and knows its life is about to end in a painful and unpleasant manner.
Phil muttered, “Damn!” and bent to pick up the flashlight, which had gone out. He shook it, and it flickered and went out again. I wanted to shake Phil for concentrating on stuff that didn’t matter. I mean, here we were, discovered by a crazed, murdering maniac, and he was fussing over a stupid flashlight.
I must admit, however, that when Phil smacked the wretched thing against his palm and the beam of light reappeared, I felt better. Until I saw Mr. Burgess and realized he was holding his shotgun. Oh, Lord, he was going to shoot the both of us and claim he’d thought we were trespassers!
Terrified, I began to babble. “Oh, hi there, Mr. Burgess.” I’m ashamed to admit that I giggled. “We were looking for . . .” Oh, Lord, what were we looking for? We couldn’t tell the truth. “ . . . for my locket!” I blurted out in a rush. “I dropped it here this morning. I mean this afternoon.” Good Lord in heaven, if that wasn’t the feeblest excuse I’d ever heard issue from human lips, I didn’t know what was.
Mr. Burgess said, “Huh.”
“Sorry we disturbed you, sir.” Phil sounded absolutely sincere and not at all worried. He sounded friendly, even. “Annabelle didn’t want to come here alone at night.”
I wished he hadn’t said that. It sounded as though he was casting aspersions on Mr. Burgess. Not that the man didn’t deserve them, the murdering swine. Still, I didn’t want to upset him into pulling the trigger.
“S’dark,” Mr. Burgess said unnecessarily. Then he nodded and tipped his head back to look at the sky. “Stars comin’ out. Be brighter soon.”
“Right, sir.”
“‘Less it rains.”
“It does look like rain,” Phil admitted.
“Thought you was coyotes. Chickens,” he added by way of explanation. I hope he didn’t hear my loud sigh of relief when he shifted his shotgun so that it no longer pointed at us.
“We’re really sorry, Mr. Burgess. We’ll be going along now.” That was me, and I still sounded squeaky, like one of those phonograph records when it’s playing too fast.
Phil elbowed me, I presume to make me shut up. While I resented him for doing it, I also agreed with him that I was making a hash of things. I shut up.
“We didn’t find the locket,” Phil said in his pleasant baritone voice. “She probably lost it on the road.” This, disparagingly. I considered elbowing him but thought better of it. “Or she might not have been wearing it at all, which is more likely.” This time I did elbow him. He didn’t seem to notice. “But if you find it, would you please take it to Mrs. Blue’s?”
Mr. Burgess’s one good eye fastened on me. I felt like a butterfly who’d just been pinned to a piece of cork. “Sure,” he said in that strange, raspy, damaged voice of his.
“Thank you,” I warbled, giving the old man a little wave.
“Thanks, Mr. Burgess,” said Phil. He grabbed my arm and yanked me around, and I realized I’d been standing there, grinning like an idiot out of sheer terror.
We followed the beam of the flashlight back to the road, neither of us speaking. I don’t know about Phil, but I was alert for any strange sounds behind us . . . the ratcheting of a shotgun shell into a chamber, for instance. Only the usual night-time noises assaulted my jumping nerves.
It wasn’t until we were around the curve in the road that the relative silence was broken by human speech. Phil’s to be precise. “For the love of God, Annabelle Blue, what’s the matter with you? Couldn’t you have just said you wanted to show me his garden or something? Why’d you make up that stupid excuse. You’re the damnedest lousiest liar I’ve ever heard. Nobody’d believe that stupid lie. A locket?” He kicked a rock that skidded across the road and into some bushes, frightening a jackrabbit into flight. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
My senses already felt as if they’d been thrashed; I didn’t need Phil’s unwarranted criticism on top of everything else. Or . . . okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely unwarranted, but darn it, I’d been absolutely panic-stricken back there. Stopping dead in the road–not a wise thing to do, actually, since Phil still had a firm grip on my arm, and I stumbled forward–I spat out, “Darn you, Phil Gunderson, that’s not fair!”
Phil whirled around, slammed his fists on his lean hips, thereby making the light beam fly every which way, and scowled down at me. “What’s not fair? Why didn’t you just tell him the truth, Annabelle? It would make more sense than telling him we’d gone back there to look for a locket you don’t own.”
“I should have told him I wanted you to see the grave site of Julia Gilbert? How much sense does that make?”
“None at all.” I hadn’t seen Phil angry very often because he was a very easy-going sort of fellow. Truth to tell, I couldn’t see him that night, either, since the flashlight beam was aimed at our feet, but I could tell he was furious. His mood sort of daunted me. He didn’t let the subject drop but went on. “None of your stupid theory makes any sense at all. Poor Mr. Burgess has enough burdens to bear without some idiot girl pegging him as a child-killer!”
To my utter horror, tears welled up in my eyes. Phil made it sound as if I was no better than those kids in town who tormented Mr. Burgess every time he showed his damaged face in the daylight. I didn’t care for the comparison. What’s worse, I had a niggling sensation Phil might be right.
I’d never admit it. “I’m not an idiot,” I said sullenly. Afraid I’d start to blubber and unwilling to let Phil know how much his words had stung, I said no more, but only commenced stamping along a
t his side, feeling miserable.
When we got back to Aunt Minnie’s house, I had myself under control again, although I was still mad at Phil. And feeling culpable, as well, although I tried to hide it. Phil said a pleasant good-night to the ladies, a curt good-bye to me, and drove off in his father’s Model-T truck. You could hear the thing rattling over the ruts in the road long after he’d left.
Still feeling low, I was about to go upstairs and lose myself in a book–I hadn’t quite finished The Sheik yet, and I was looking forward to re-reading it as soon as it ended–when Minnie put the kibosh on that delightful plan.
“We need to communicate with Joe, Annabelle. I’ll get the Ouija board.”
My foot wavered above the first stair. I almost lost my balance when I spun around. “What?”
“Don’t be rude, girl,” Libby snapped.
How come everybody was picking on me tonight? I frowned at Miss Libby, a silly thing to do, but I was upset. “I’m not being rude!”
“Sounded mighty rude to me, you saying what like that to your auntie,” said Libby, who had a much more formidable frown than I could ever hope to achieve. “Your aunt Minnie needs you, girl, and you’d just better help her out, you hear? You young things only think about yourselves these days. It’s a disgrace is what it is.”
Aw, nuts. There was no way to win an argument with the miserable old woman, so why even try? Turning to Aunt Minnie, who might be crazy, but at least didn’t browbeat me all the time, I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and said, “I didn’t mean to be rude, Minnie. But I’ve never . . . um . . . communicated with spirits before. I don’t know what to do.”
She waved a hand in the air. “There’s nothing to it, Annabelle. You just come on in here.” She headed for the kitchen.
Without looking at Libby, whom I truly hated at that moment, I followed Aunt Minnie, feeling unhappy, abused and mistreated. Darn it, how come I had to be the one to do all the unpleasant tasks in the family? How come Jack couldn’t make himself useful every once in a while? Why couldn’t he be the one here in this hateful house communicating with spirits?
Nonsensical questions, all of them. I was a female. Therefore, I had to do all the stuff nobody else wanted to do. It was a law of nature or something.
It turned out that communicating with poor old Uncle Joe wasn’t really very much trouble after all. The only thing I had to do was rest my pinkies on the little wooden thing that Aunt Minnie sent sliding all over the Ouija board. She claimed she wasn’t moving it on purpose, but I knew I wasn’t, and I don’t believe in ghosts, so . . . well, you figure it out.
To the rumble of distant thunder, which added a certain eerie quality to the experience, Aunt Minnie sure had a long and intense conversation with Uncle Joe. They were going at it great guns, Uncle Joe claiming Minnie had to figure out what happened to Julia Gilbert or he’d never rest easy on the Other Side (whatever that is), until the planchette (that’s what Minnie called the wooden thing) began behaving erratically. I swear I didn’t move it. Minnie got upset.
She pinned me with her crazy hazel eyes. “You see?” she cried after the planchette carried our fingers off the edge of the board. “I told you that evil spirit is interfering with Joe’s messages!”
“Um . . .” I hadn’t a clue what to say.
Libby, sitting like a monument and observing us, probably to make sure I didn’t do anything mean to my aunt, tutted.
“Let’s try this again,” Minnie muttered, picking up the planchette, which had landed on Jeepers and bounced onto the braided rug, and plunking it on the board. She said, “What is that, Joe? Is that the spirit interfering again?”
The planchette shot to the “Yes” in the upper left corner of the board. I heaved an internal sigh of relief which turned out to be premature, since the silly thing then zoomed across the board and fell off the other side.
By the time I was finally allowed to go to bed, I had a creepy feeling in my chest, images of Miss Libby’s scowls and mean words flickering in my brain, and Aunt Minnie’s version of Uncle Joe’s so-called communications from beyond the grave ricocheting throughout my entire being. The thunder growing closer by the minute, adding to the impression that I’d somehow gotten myself stuck in a Gothic novel. I hate to admit it, but I locked my door.
Shoot, it might be Libby who was the villain here. She was spiteful enough to commit any number of murders. Maybe she’d gone crazy after so many years’ exposure to Minnie.
Okay, so I was a little confused that evening. It had been a trying day.
I only had energy enough for two pages of The Sheik before I fell asleep with the open book spread over my tummy and the kerosene light beside my bed still burning.
When the noises started, I was grateful for the light. I was also scared out of my wits, and so startled that my entire body jerked, sending The Sheik tumbling to the floor. Rats. The librarian, Mrs. Whitesmith, was a stickler for keeping the pages of “her” books pristine.
Those noises didn’t have anything to do with thunder.
I think I whimpered as I lay there, my book on the floor, my heart pounding, my brain in a fog, trying to connect the sounds I was hearing to the possibility of bats in Aunt Minnie’s attic. I couldn’t do it. Attics were abovestairs. These sounds were coming–doggone it, anyhow! –from the cellar. Damn and blast.
Or . . . maybe they weren’t coming from the cellar. I listened harder. Wherever they were coming from, they were strange, scraping sounds. I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on. They might be coyotes trying to get into Aunt Minnie’s chicken coop, although I doubted it. Aunt Minnie’s chicken coop, built by Uncle Joe in the Dark Ages (about the time Minnie had hired Libby) had been proved impenetrable by so many generations of coyotes that they never even tried to conquer it anymore.
A short, sharp cry pierced the air. My own short, sharp gasp of breath followed instantly, and I found myself sitting up, clutching my pillow to my bosom. Darn it, that wasn’t any coyote. And it wasn’t an owl. And it wasn’t a field mouse or vole getting scooped up by a nighthawk. It sure as heck hadn’t been Jeepers, who had a bark like an old rusty gate hinge. It had sounded human. For the first time in my entire life, I wished Minnie and Libby were in the same room with me.
I don’t know how long I sat there, frightened out of my skin, hugging my pillow and praying, but it seemed like forever. All sorts of crazy ideas filled my head. Could it be Mr. Burgess, come to kill us all in our beds? Could it be a band of crazy-eyed bootleggers, come to invade the house and hold us hostage because the coppers were after them? Could it be–I can’t believe I entertained this notion for a single second–Julie Gilbert, come back from beyond to haunt us?
The longer I sat there, scared, the more nothing happened. Finally, even my wild imagination began to falter for lack of stimulation. I mean, there had been that cry, which had scared me, but after that there had been absolutely nothing. Well, and before the cry, there had been noises like those made by people dragging heavy things–coffins came to mind–out there on the rocky desert. Or maybe people, or anything else, for that matter walking around on it. Scraping sounds. Walking sounds. Maybe it was antelopes, come to see what they could snack on in the way of spinach or okra. Or jackrabbits. Or . . . oh, nuts.
I finally gave it up, straightened the pages of The Sheik, fluffed my pillow, and went to sleep.
When you live on a ranch, even a no-longer-productive one like Aunt Minnie’s, you have to get up at the crack of doom. I mean dawn.
There are chores to be done before breakfast, mainly because you can’t eat any eggs before you gather them from under the chickens in the coop. Since Miss Libby was in the kitchen rolling out dough for cinnamon buns and Aunt Minnie was outside milking Clementine, the cow who lived out back by the windmill, it fell to me to gather the eggs. I didn’t mind. I generally gathered them at home, too, albeit not quite so early in the morning since town folks were slightly more civilized than ranch folks.
So, a
fter washing up (out of a wash basin in my room and in cold water, this being a ranch house with no modern conveniences) I dressed in an old skirt and shirtwaist and put on heavy shoes and socks since the ground was rough out there. I didn’t know if it had rained last night, but the heavy shoes would keep the mud off me, too.
I tripped down to the kitchen and said a cheerful hello to Libby in spite of her being an insufferable shrew and a bigot (against me, darn it). Before she could say anything nasty to me, I grabbed the egg basket and headed out the kitchen door.
“Mind you don’t drop any of them eggs,” Libby called after me. It was as if she had to say something mean in order to keep in practice, even if there was no need. I certainly didn’t need the warning. I never dropped the eggs.
“I won’t!” I called back, restraining myself from adding any bitter words. What I’d like to have done was gather the eggs and thrown them, one by one, at Libby.
I didn’t drop any eggs. Rather, I dropped the entire basket before any eggs had been gathered. I also screamed so loudly that even Libby and Jeepers, both of whom are stone deaf, heard me.
Jeepers, who had been lounging on the front porch, sat us and said “woof” in a questioning sort of way.
The screen door banged open. “What in the name of Glory is the matter with you, girl?” That, naturally, was Libby who didn’t possess Jeepers’ kind disposition and, therefore, didn’t ask questions before she cast blame.
Aunt Minnie, clucking like one of the chickens, puffed around the corner of the house a couple of seconds later, having left Clementine half-milked. Later I found out that my scream had startled poor old Clem into kicking over the milk bucket. I was sorry about that, but dang, how many times does a girl find a dead body in her aunt’s yard, anyhow? Such a terrible occurrence is worth at least one scream.
