The Ghosts of Stone Hollow Read online

  After that one nerve-racking try, Amy decided she’d have to depend on a meeting at the eucalyptus grove. The grove was dangerous because it was very close to the Old Road and really wasn’t large or thick enough to be a very good hiding place. But it would have to do. Not daring to take anymore chances with conversation, Amy wrote a note and, slipping into the cloakroom, she put it in Jason’s lunch box.

  The note worked. When Amy approached the eucalyptus grove that afternoon on her way home from school, she checked up and down the road in both directions, and then veered quickly off the road and in among the trees. He was there all right, sitting on the ground, shaking rocks and dirt out of his shoe. He was grinning, and he didn’t stop grinning even after he saw Amy’s frown.

  “You dope,” she said.

  chapter twelve

  JASON DIDN’T STOP grinning even after Amy called him a dope. Instead he finished fooling around with his shoes, and then stood up and scratched his head. “Dope?” he said. “What does that mean?”

  “It means dumb,” Amy said. “Stupid. It means it was sure dumb to go on talking about us going to Stone Hollow in front of all those girls.”

  “Girls?” Jason said. “I guess I didn’t notice them. What did you want to see me about?”

  Amy sighed. “Don’t you know?” she said. “I’ve been trying to get a chance to talk to you ever since we went to the Hollow. I already told you what I wanted to know. Like, what were you staring at, up there by the Stone, when you wouldn’t talk to me?”

  “Oh,” he said. “That. Well—” His eyes got their strange, inward, shut-away look. “The Stone,” he said after a while. He looked questioningly at Amy. “You saw it, too, didn’t you? I mean, you felt the power?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure,” she said. “I felt something. I felt scared, for one thing.”

  ‘Oh,” Jason said suddenly, as if he’d just remembered something. “Do you know if the Ranzonis were dark? I mean, did they have dark hair and eyes?”

  “I don’t know,” Amy said impatiently, and then, with sudden suspicion, “Why?”

  “Oh, I just wondered.” Jason stared thoughtfully at the ground; while all kinds of incredible ideas began to form in Amy’s mind. Then he said, “Did you ever hear the name of the little girl? The one who died?”

  Wordlessly, Amy shook her head.

  “Do you know if it could have been Lucia?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it could have been. Why? What are you talking about? What do you know about them, besides what I told you?”

  “About lockjaw,” Jason said. “It’s the same as tetanus, isn’t it? Do you know what causes it?”

  “Sure,” Amy said. “You get it by getting germs in a place where you’ve hurt yourself. Especially if it’s deep like when you step on a nail. I know lots more about it, too. Like what happens to you after you get it, and everything. My mother knows all about things like that. When I stepped on a nail once, she made me soak my foot for two whole days in Epsom salts, so I wouldn’t get it. She told me all about it.”

  Jason nodded. “A cut on the foot,” he said. “That’s what happened to Lucia.”

  Amy put her hands on her hips. “Jason Fitzmaurice! What are you talking about? What have you found out about the Italians?”

  Jason looked at Amy for a moment with a thoughtful deciding expression. Then he sat down on the ground. Amy craned her neck around the clump of trees to be sure no one was coming up the road before she sat down in front of him.

  “Tell me!” she said firmly.

  “She was just a baby,” Jason said, “when the family first came to the Hollow. They were very poor, and they hadn’t been here, in this country, for very long. They probably got the land in the Hollow cheap because no one else wanted it, because it was so hard to reach, and maybe for other reasons. At first they were very happy there. The father built the house and the other buildings, and dammed the creek. But then they began to be afraid.”

  “Afraid?” Amy asked. “Who was? What were they afraid of?”

  Jason shook his head. “I’m not sure. It was the man, just the man, at first. He was looking for something. He went to the grotto all the time, and the woman didn’t want him to. Then he began to dig deep holes in the ground as if he was digging for treasure.”

  “Why?” Amy said. “What was he looking for?”

  “I’m not sure. I think he thought the Indians had buried something very valuable. But the woman was afraid all the time. She wanted to leave the Hollow, but the man wouldn’t go. Then the woman went to the village. She put a shawl over her head, and she went to the village by herself, to see a priest. She left the little girl at home with her father. And while she was gone, the little girl cut her foot.”

  “And they didn’t take her to the doctor,” Amy said. “My mother told me. She said no one in Taylor Springs even knew the child was sick until after she was dead.”

  “Yes,” Jason said. “The mother wanted to take her to the doctor, but the father wouldn’t. When she was dead, the father buried her under the tree, and then he told his wife that he had not taken the little girl to the doctor because he knew it wouldn’t do any good. He said he knew that she was going to die because he had seen her grave. Before she was even sick, he had seen the grave, and he had known that Lucia was going to die. And then the woman went out and walked in the Hills crying and wouldn’t come back. And the man went on digging until he died, too.”

  While Jason talked, Amy had begun to see exactly how it must have been. The woman crying—sitting at the table in the narrow lean-to kitchen. She could see how the woman’s head with its smooth dark hair rested on her arms on the table. Then the man came in and stood by the table. He had a shovel in his hands, and his face was stern and sad. He talked to the woman, and then she got up from the table and ran out of the room and into the Hills.

  Amy realized that she had been staring blindly at Jason. Her eyes felt dry from not blinking. She nodded. “That’s awful,” she said. “That’s the awfullest—” But then another idea occurred to her. “The father,” she said. “What happened to him? What made him die?”

  “I’m not positive,” Jason said. “But I think it was the Indians. I think the Indians killed him.”

  “The Indians? You mean real Indians or—”

  Jason thought for a while, shaking his head. “I didn’t see how it could have been the Indians at first,” he said. “Because when I’ve been there and there’ve been Indians, it’s as if they are there—but separate. It’s as if there’s something between. Not a solid thing, but a movement like a current, one you wouldn’t be able to cross over. It seemed as if you could be close but not touching. Not ever touching.”

  There was a long pause in which Amy didn’t say anything. There didn’t seem to be anything that she could say. Finally Jason went on.

  “But it was the Indians, though, who killed him. I—I saw them.”

  “Saw them!” Amy stared at Jason aghast. But then a thought occurred to her. “Jason,” she said, in what she hoped was a calm and reasonable voice, “how do you mean saw? Do you mean that you kind of pictured it in your imagination? Because, if that’s what you mean—well, I do that too. All the time. I remember how, when we were in the Hollow the first time, I kind of pictured how they would look. The Italian family. I pictured the mother and the little girl in the kitchen and at the spring. It was as if I could see them just as plain as anything. Is that what you mean? Is that what you mean about seeing?”

  “No,” Jason said slowly. “I don’t think so. I think it’s not the same as imagining. You can imagine anywhere, and the kind of seeing that I mean only happens there—at the Stone.”

  “You mean the only time you’ve seen them, the Indians and the Italians and everything, you’ve been in the grotto, near the Stone?”

  “Yes, only there.”

  Amy nodded slowly while her mind raced. “Ha!” she said finally. “Now I know you’ve been lying.”

  But
Jason hardly seemed to react—his eyes were blurry, the way they always were when he talked about the Stone. “Lying?” he said, at last.

  “Sure. Because you just got through saying all that stuff about seeing the man digging all over the Hollow, and the mother going to the village. How could you see that if you were way up by the Stone?”

  “At the Stone,” Jason said, “you can see things that happened in other places. When you’re near the Stone, you can see things that happened a long way away.”

  “Then how come you just see all that stuff that happened in the Hollow? How come you don’t see things that happened in Los Angeles—or Timbuktu?”

  “I’m not sure. But I think it has something to do with things that are near. Near the Stone, I mean. The grotto is full of Indian things, things the Indians brought there, and I’ve seen the Indians most of all.”

  “Indian things? What kinds of Indian things?”

  “Little things. Beads and prayer amulets carved out of bone or stone. I’ve found a lot of them. And the time I saw about the Ranzonis, I brought the doll to the grotto.”

  “The doll? You mean you took the doll from the shack up to the grotto?”

  Jason nodded. “And once I took a letter from my friend in Greece, and I saw something that happened in Greece, a long time ago.”

  “What?” Amy asked. “What happened in Greece?”

  But before Jason could answer, the sound of voices very close by made Amy jump to her feet. Jason followed her example, and together they sidled around the clump of eucalyptus, keeping it between themselves and the voices. By peering through a curtain of long slender eucalyptus leaves, Amy saw that the voices were coming from three boys who were approaching the grove on the Old Road. The boys varied in size from small to enormous, and it was immediately evident that the biggest one was Gordie Parks.

  The next biggest boy was Albert Hendricks, Gordie’s best friend, if a person like Gordie could be said to have a friend. It was really more as if Gordie had given him the choice of being slave and companion— or personal punching bag, and Albert had taken the first choice. The smallest boy was Bobby Parks, Gordie’s little brother and one of his favorite victims. As they approached the crossroads, it became evident that Gordie and Albert were playing a game with Bobby. The game seemed to be Keep Away, and Bobby was crying.

  As Albert and Gordie walked along they were tossing something back and forth, something that Bobby obviously wanted very badly. The big boys laughed and yelled as Bobby ran back and forth, jumping and grabbing hopelessly. “Here it is. Come and get it,” they kept yelling. Then, when Bobby gave up and started back toward town, sobbing and swearing, they yelled, “Come on back, Bobby. We’re sorry. You can have it now.” Bobby came running back, tearstained but smiling—and they went on throwing whatever it was, just like before, They disappeared around the curve with Bobby still jumping and crying.

  “Boy!” Amy said when the boys were safely out of earshot. “That Gordie Parks. I’d like to—” She noticed the look on Jason’s face then and stopped, intrigued out of her anger by his strange expression. More than anything else, he looked amazed, disbelieving.

  “Jason,” she said, “what are you thinking about?”

  “Gordie—about Gordie.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s just so—strange. I’ve never known anyone like Gordie before.”

  “You haven’t? He’s just an ordinary bully. Weren’t there any bullies at your other schools?”

  “I’ve never been to any other schools,” Jason said.

  “You haven’t? How’d you get to be in sixth grade, then, and so good at history and literature and everything?”

  “My parents taught me. In some of the places we’ve lived, I didn’t speak the language well enough to go to the schools, and sometimes we weren’t going to be there very long. So they just taught me.”

  “Oh,” Amy said, “I see.” She felt as if she were beginning to see a lot of things she’d never really understood before. There was one thing about Jason that she still didn’t understand, however, and that she’d never gotten up her nerve to ask about; but now she decided to try it.

  “You know what I don’t get? About you, I mean, and Gordie? What I don’t get is why you’re so scared of Gordie when you’re not afraid of haunted places or doing all kinds of dangerous things.” She watched carefully for Jason’s reaction, wondering if he was going to be hurt or angry. But he didn’t seem to be either.

  “I don’t know,” he said, thoughtfully, “Gordie is frightened. I think that’s why he scares me.”

  “Gordie frightened? Gordie frightened of you?” Amy laughed.

  “Not of me. Of something else. Of something that’s wrong with him. He knows something’s missing, and he has to hurt people to be sure he’s there at all.”

  Amy stared at Jason, wondering how he could say such really weird things and make them sound so much like the truth. “Gee, Jason,” she said finally. “You are the most—”

  Saying “Gee” was a mistake. “Gee,” according to Amy’s mother and the Reverend Dawson, meant “G.,” which was short for God and just a sneaky way of swearing. Amy didn’t say it very often, and when she did, she always felt a little guilty. And feeling guilty reminded her that it was getting late and she should be on her way home.

  “It’s late,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”

  “There were some other things,” Jason said. “Things I was going to tell you about. I’ve been back to the Hollow two times since you were there. There are some other things—”

  Amy hesitated, terribly torn. “No,” she said finally. “I’ll have to run all the way as it is.”

  Jason smiled. “You’d run anyway,” he said. “You always run, don’t you?”

  Amy looked at him sharply. “I like to run,” she said defensively. “I’m a good runner. I’m the fourth fastest in the whole school.”

  That really interested Jason, Amy could tell. His mouth opened to ask a question, but she didn’t wait to answer. Instead she whirled around and began to run toward home at top speed, her knees high and her feet pounding over crumbly macadam and dusty shoulders. She had gone only a few steps when she realized that she was hearing more footsteps than her own, and that the others were very close and getting closer. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed the fact that Jason was running after her.

  Then Amy really ran. Tucking her chin and clenching her fists, she forced herself to the very limits of her strength and skill. But Jason, running light and leggy as a half-grown colt, drew even and then, with unbelievable ease, pulled ahead. When he was several yards ahead, he turned aside and stopped. With her head high and her eyes straight ahead, Amy pounded past him and on toward the Hunter farm. She ran all the way to the front gate, while all kinds of strange ideas flowed through her mind as rapidly as the ground flowed beneath her flying feet.

  chapter thirteen

  SOMETIME DURING THAT night it began to rain, not just a sprinkle, but a long steady downpour that signaled the beginning of the fall rainy season. For several days huge gray clouds, bulging with moisture, drifted in from the west, to pile up against the Hills and drop their burden of water on the valley below. And for several mornings there was a discussion at breakfast about how Amy was going to get to school.

  Amy would have liked to walk. She had a perfectly good umbrella and raincoat, and she liked walking in the rain. Her father agreed with her, saying that walking in the rain was good for healthy kids like Amy. However, her last year’s rubbers were worn out and the new ones hadn’t arrived yet from Sears Roebuck, and Aunt Abigail didn’t think she should risk ruining perfectly good shoes. “Or pneumonia,” Amy’s mother said. According to Amy’s mother, wearing wet shoes all day was the surest way in the world to get pneumonia. So, for several days, Amy got driven to school every morning by Old Ike in the Model T.

  Amy had mixed feelings about riding to school. On the one hand, she rather welcomed the opportunity to
observe the mysterious and forbidding old man at close range. Such observation was not often possible, since Old Ike made it very plain that, if there was anything he resented more than anything else, it was curiosity. But trapped there beside Amy on the front seat, and kept busy with all the pumping, choking and coaxing it took to keep the old car running, he was fair game for Amy’s observations.

  On the other hand, riding to school ruled out the possibility of a chance meeting with Jason along the way, and that, of course, was of much greater importance at the moment.

  But no matter what Amy would have liked, the rain kept on falling for three days, and for three days Amy went on watching Old Ike out of the corner of her eye, all the way to school and back. All the way, that is, except for the few minutes it took to pass the turnoff to Bradley Lane. During those few minutes, of course, Amy was busy looking for Jason. The rain wouldn’t make any difference to Jason, she was sure of that.

  On the afternoon of the third day, Amy checked the turnoff to see if Jason might be there, and then she allowed her eyes to follow the Stone Hollow trail until it disappeared from view in the tree-filled canyon. From there she followed the canyon to where it lost itself in the confusion of cliffs and ridges in the general area of Stone Hollow. She turned away, at last, as the car rattled slowly around the turn, and found Old Ike looking at her. Even more surprising, he was getting ready to say something.

  “You been there,” he said, “to the Hollow.”

  Amy stared at him, trying to guess his meaning, trying to decide if he was asking a question or making a statement of fact.

  “I—I—Do you mean—” she stammered.