The Ghosts of Stone Hollow Read online

  She knew, of course, who they were—the people in the storeroom. Somehow she felt certain that she would have known who they were even if she had not seen their pictures so many times in the old albums. The man was the Reverend Fairchild, her grandfather, the woman was her grandmother, and the two little girls were her mother and Aunt Abigail. That much was certain. But how had she seen them—and why? She had gone to the storeroom with the piece of the Stone, hoping to find out something more about Stone Hollow, and instead she had seen them—the Fairchilds.

  It was then that she remembered something that Jason had said about the Stone—that what it brought back was affected by the things that were near—things like the Indian beads, the old doll that had belonged to Lucia, and the metal cashbox. And the storeroom, of course, was full of things that had belonged to the Fairchilds. But that didn’t explain their strange behavior—or what had happened, almost happened, when the Reverend Fairchild had looked right at Amy and had started toward her across the room.

  Shrinking down farther in the bed, Amy pulled up the covers until only her eyes peered out above them. Although the moon had moved higher in the sky, and its beams no longer shone directly in through the windows, the room was still full of soft shadowed light. Only Amy’s eyes moved, searching every corner over and over, while in the back of her mind a word pulsed—“dangerous,” it said. “It might be dangerous.”

  Jason had said that it might be dangerous to—to try to control the power of the Stone for your own purposes. Had she done that? Had she done that when she had grasped the Stone and—

  The Stone! It wasn’t until that moment that Amy realized she had left it in the storeroom. She would have to go back, she told herself, and get the Stone. She would have to go back into the storeroom. She would have to go now, before morning.

  Amy went on lying flat on her back with the covers pulled up to her eyes. She would get up soon and go back for the Stone—as soon as she had a little more time to think about it, and to get up her courage. She would go very quickly and quietly, and in just a minute she would be back safely in her own bed. She was still planning to go, waiting for just the right moment, when her eyes began to feel warm and heavy. She let them close, only for an instant, to rest them—and when she opened them again, the light streaming in through the windows came from a bright morning sun. The clock on the bedside table said eight-thirty. Amy leaped out of bed, staggering a little from sleepiness and started down the hall. She was almost to the door of the storeroom before she realized that it was open, and that there were voices coming from inside the room.

  Fully awake in an instant, Amy tiptoed cautiously to the door and peeked around it into the room, expecting to see almost anything. But all she saw was her mother and Aunt Abigail taking old clothes and linens out of the steamer trunk and putting them in boxes.

  “Amy,” her mother said, “what are you doing peeping around the corner like that?” She smiled as Amy came out from behind the door. “Are you awake or sleepwalking?” she asked. “Just look at yourself.” She pointed to the mirror over the rosewood dresser, and Amy looked, catching a glimpse of tousled hair, flushed cheeks and a rumpled nightgown.

  “What are you doing?” Amy said. “What are you doing?”

  Amy’s dismay must have sounded in her voice because both her mother and aunt stopped working and turned to look at her.

  “We’re cleaning out this old trunk,” Aunt Abigail said, “so your mother can use it for your trip.”

  “Isn’t it nice of Aunt Abigail to let us use her trunk?” Amy’s mother said. “See what a nice one it is with all these drawers and a place for hanging clothes, like a little closet. It’ll come in so handy until we get settled down in a permanent place.”

  “Might as well serve a useful purpose,” Aunt Abigail said. “Never’s been used for anything except for storage space.” She turned to Amy. “I bought this trunk with the first money I ever earned. Right after I got out of school. Had some romantic notion about getting away on a long trip, but it just never happened. Then when Luther and I got married, I thought we might use it someday for our honeymoon, but we never were able to get away. Been sitting right here in this very room for over thirty years. Might as well be used for its intended purpose, for once.”

  “Abigail,” Amy’s mother said, “I do wish you’d think about getting away, too. Perhaps if you only came to the city on a visit first, to see how you like it. Perhaps—”

  “Amy Abigail,” Aunt Abigail interrupted, “what are you doing down there? Did you drop something?”

  Amy had been down on her knees looking under the dresser and highboy. “No,” she said. “No, I didn’t drop anything. Not just now I didn’t. Did you see—” She stopped, realizing that there would be no way to explain the question she had been about to ask.

  “What, dear? Did we see what?” her mother asked.

  “Nothing. Nothing, Mama.” Amy backed toward the door. “I better hurry up and get dressed.”

  “There’s oatmeal on the back of the stove,” Aunt Abigail called after her. “Your mother and I ate hours ago.”

  Amy dressed quickly, ate her breakfast, and plunged into an enormously busy day. There was a washing to do, clothes to be folded away in the steamer trunk, and all the other possessions of the Polonskis to be wrapped and packed away in crates and boxes. But whether she was cranking the handle of the wringer, hanging out clothes on the backyard line, or wrapping dishes in old newspapers, Amy’s mind kept returning to the same question. Several times during the day, she managed a few private minutes, and each time she hurried to the storeroom, but although she looked under and behind every box and trunk and piece of furniture, she did not find the Stone.

  The next morning Amy sat with her face pressed against the train window and watched the Hills fade farther and farther away into a gray-blue haze. At the far end of the car three men, members of the train’s crew, sat around a table playing cards and drinking coffee. Across from Amy, her parents were talking to a Mr. Randolph. Mr. Randolph was the only other passenger on the milk train that went through the town of Lambertville very early in the morning. Amy’s parents and Mr. Randolph were talking about the inconvenience of having to ride on a train that stopped at practically every farm all the way across the valley, and about how nice it had been when, for a short while just before the Depression, a real passenger train had gone through Lambertville and the other foothill towns. Now and then Amy listened for a moment, particularly when her father talked about the train trestles that he had helped build all across the state. But most of the time she had other things on her mind. Most of the time, with her face pressed hard against the window, Amy looked back and thought about the past—the past few days, and other pasts, more distant and mysterious. There was so much that was mysterious, and so much to wonder about.

  There was, for instance, the Stone. Some time between the moment when Amy had dropped it as she jumped up to run, and eight-thirty the next morning, the Stone had disappeared as completely as if it had dissolved into thin air. At times Amy thought perhaps it had. But at other times she thought that perhaps Aunt Abigail had found it and thrown it away. Knowing Aunt Abigail, it was hard to believe that she would have found a large rough rock on her storeroom floor and not even have mentioned it to the person most likely to be guilty of leaving it there. Knowing Aunt Abigail, it was almost easier to believe that a Stone could dissolve in thin air.

  Wondering about the Stone was only a part of wondering about everything that had happened in the storeroom on Thursday night. Over and over again Amy wondered about what she had seen, picturing every detail as clearly and distinctly as she could.

  It had all seemed so clear and close at the time, not vague and uncertain like the images in a dream. But looking back now, from the train—from Saturday morning, it was already beginning to fade. It was becoming hard to recall exactly how the faces had looked, and how terribly frightened she had felt when the man started toward her across the room.


  Would it keep on fading? Amy wondered. Would a day come when she might not be sure anymore that the whole thing had not been just an ordinary dream?

  But whatever it had been, it seemed to Amy that there was something about it that was very important, if she could just understand exactly what it meant. What did it mean about her grandfather and grandmother and the two little girls who had grown up, to be her mother and aunt?

  Going back into her farthest memories, Amy began to try to remember everything she had ever heard her mother and aunt say about their parents. There had been so much—so many stories. And yet nothing that explained the things that Amy had seen in the storeroom.

  In her mother’s stories, her grandfather had always been almost like God, strong and perfect—and Taylor Springs had been the most wonderful place in the world to grow up. But Aunt Abigail said different things. Aunt Abigail said that she had always hated Taylor Springs—and when she talked about their father, which was not very often, it was almost as if she were talking about a different person entirely.

  It seemed strange to Amy now, thinking back, that she had not wondered about the differences before. It was as if she had heard all the differences, and accepted them, without ever noticing that they did not seem to fit together. She would have to ask about a lot of things again, she decided, and listen more carefully to the answers. Even if she didn’t hear anything new, she felt certain she could find out a lot by listening more carefully and noticing the way things were said.

  She remembered, then, some things that had been said in just the last few days—things that she had not really listened to at the time because her mind had been so busy with other problems. She remembered how Aunt Abigail, who had always said she hated Taylor Springs, had said that she couldn’t leave now—she had said now, but it had somehow sounded like not ever.

  And Amy’s mother, who had always made Taylor Springs sound like a kind of fairyland, had seemed really happy to be leaving. Of course, she might have been pretending to be happy because of Amy’s father and the new job. But it hadn’t sounded like pretending. It had sounded as if she herself, Helen Fairchild Polonski, was really glad to be getting away from Taylor Springs.

  What did it mean? What did people mean by the things they said, and why did it seem so different sometimes from what was really happening? It was not that they were lying—that much was certain. Neither Amy’s mother nor Aunt Abigail would ever tell a lie on purpose. It could only be that they saw things differently.

  “Something that one person would say is true, someone else would say wasn’t.” It was Jason who had said that.

  And Amy had said, “Then one of them is lying,” because she had always thought the truth was certain and final and for sure. But maybe Jason had been right about the truth. And after what had happened in the storeroom, it seemed as if he might have been right about time, too—about the way the past is a lot closer than most people think, and there can be times and places where it flows close enough to see and almost touch.

  It seemed as if that part of what Jason had said might be true, but Amy still didn’t know about the rest of it. There were a lot of things she still had to decide about. But that was all right, because there were probably some kinds of things—like Stone Hollow—that everyone had to decide about for himself. It was beginning to seem as if the world was full of things to find out about and decide for yourself.

  The Hills had become a faint cloudy haze in the far distance when Amy sighed deeply and rubbed her nose where it felt flat and cold from the window glass. She got up, stretching, and crossed to the other side of the car. Through the windows on that side she could see the valley reaching on and on to the horizon. And beyond the horizon was the coast range, and San Francisco, and the ocean, and on and on and on. Amy sighed again.

  The train seemed to be moving so slowly—hardly as fast as a good runner could run. Amy began to imagine herself running, skimming over the ground beside the tracks. Watching the boulders and bushes drift by, she pictured herself bounding over them—flying over the earth with streaming hair and flashing feet.

  For a long time she imagined herself running—up a steep incline and across a trestle bridge, leaping lightly from tie to tie, and then down a long slope to the valley floor.

  “Amy,” her father’s voice said, and she turned to find him watching her. “What are you doing? You’ve been hunching your shoulders and twitching your arms back and forth.”

  Amy smiled sheepishly. “I was running,” she said. “I was pretending I was running along by the tracks.”

  “Still running,” her father grinned. He lowered his voice with exaggerated caution. “Don’t let your mother hear about that.”

  To Amy’s surprise her mother went along with the teasing. “What’s this?” she said pretending dismay. “You haven’t skinned another knee?”

  “No, Mama,” Amy laughed. “This time it was different.”

  The train clattered on. Amy rested her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes, still feeling the running in the muscles of her arms and legs, and seeing the land flying back—back into the distance.

  Still running, she thought. Maybe she always would be. But it had been different this time, and not just that she had been imagining. That wasn’t important. The important difference was that before she had never known why she was running. And this time she knew. This time she had just been hurrying to get to San Francisco—and whatever came after that.

  A Biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Zilpha Keatley Snyder (b. 1927) is the three-time Newbery Honor–winning author of classic children’s novels such as The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm. Her adventure and fantasy stories are beloved by many generations.

  Snyder was born in Lemoore, California, in 1927. Her father, William Keatley, worked for Shell Oil, but as a would-be rancher he and his family always lived on a small farm. Snyder’s parents were both storytellers, and their tales often kept their children entertained during quiet evenings at home.

  Snyder began reading and telling stories of her own at an early age. By the time she was four years old she was able to read novels and newspapers intended for adults. When she wasn’t reading, she was making up and embellishing stories. When she was eight, Snyder decided that she would be a writer—a profession in which embellishment and imagination were accepted and rewarded.

  Snyder’s adolescent years were made more difficult by her studious country upbringing and by the fact that she had been advanced a grade when she started school. As other girls were going to dances and discovering boys, Snyder retreated into books. The stories transported her from her small room to a larger, remarkable universe.

  At Whittier College, Zilpha Keatley Snyder met her future husband, Larry Snyder. After graduation, she began teaching upper-level elementary classes. Snyder taught for nine years, including three years as a master teacher for the University of California, Berkeley. The classroom experience gave Snyder a fresh appreciation of the interests and capabilities of preteens.

  As she continued her teaching career, Snyder gained more free time. She began writing at night, after teaching during the day; her husband helped by typing out her manuscripts. After finishing her first novel, she sent it to a publisher. It was accepted on her first try. That book, Season of Ponies, was published in 1964.

  In 1967, her fourth novel, The Egypt Game, won the Newbery Honor for excellence in children’s literature. Snyder went on to win that honor two more times, for her novels The Headless Cupid and The Witches of Worm. The Headless Cupid introduced the Stanley family, a clan she revisited three more times over her career.

  Snyder’s The Changeling (1970), in which two young girls invent a fantasy world dominated by trees, became the inspiration for her 1974 fantasy series, the Green Sky Trilogy. Snyder completed that series by writing a computer game sequel called Below the Root. The game went on to earn cult classic status.

  Over the almost fifty ye
ars of her career, Snyder has written about topics as diverse as time-traveling ghosts, serenading gargoyles, and adoption at the turn of the twentieth century. Today, she lives with her husband in Mill Valley, California. When not writing, Snyder enjoys reading and traveling.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1974 by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  978-1-4532-7200-8

  This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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  New York, NY 10014

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  EBOOKS BY ZILPHA KEATLEY SNYDER

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