Ghosts of Rathburn Park Read online

  For a minute the two of them stood side by side looking out at the lawn and hedge, and above and beyond the hedge, the tree-covered hills stretching away, one ridge after the other. And then, without even knowing he was going to, Matt asked, “Dad, who lives in the old Rathburn house now? You know, the big old house people call the Palace?”

  Without turning away from the window, Dad said, “Well, according to Mrs. Hardacre, one elderly woman is all that’s left of the original family.”

  “Does she live there all alone?” Matt asked.

  Dad shook his head. “Not entirely. I believe Mrs. Hardacre said that she has a small staff of servants.”

  “But she’s the only Rathburn?”

  “That’s what I understand.”

  “And she’s an old lady?”

  As Dad turned away from the window he said, “Very old, nearly one hundred, I believe Mrs. Hardacre said.”

  “Wow,” Matt said. “That is old. And her name is…? Is her name Amelia Rathburn?”

  “Why, yes,” Dad said. “I think it is. I’ve certainly seen that name on some of the account books. I believe she gives money to the city to maintain the park and the graveyard. They’re both on land that used to belong to the Rathburns.”

  They were still standing at the window looking out at the lawn and trees, and after a while Matt asked why they were doing it. “Were you looking for something in particular?”

  Dad was smiling when he turned away from the window. “No, not really. I thought I heard a dog barking in the yard but I guess I imagined it.” He glanced at his watch. “Uh-oh. Where did the time go? I’m going to be late. Are you coming, son?”

  Looking down at his T-shirt and baggy cargo pants, Matt said, “Well, I’d need to change first, I guess. Maybe I’d better wait till next time. Okay?”

  Dad patted him on the shoulder. “Good thinking, son,” he said. “Well, you have a nice afternoon. Okay?”

  Matt stayed at the window a minute longer, but nothing moved in the yard and there was no sound except for a slight wind-blown rustle and the soft chirping of birds. A few minutes later he was on his bike pedaling toward Rathburn Park.

  Nine

  IT WAS A VERY warm afternoon, and Matt was sweating and puffing by the time he got off his bike and pushed it down the narrow path that led to the ruins of the old church. It wasn’t until he was inside the narthex that he stopped and checked his watch. Five minutes past one. She should be here if she was going to show up, which he wasn’t at all sure was going to happen. Actually there had been times, late last night when he was half-asleep, when he’d almost convinced himself that the whole thing about the Rathburn girl had been one of his crazy imagining games. Like the Robin Hood thing, for instance. On the one hand, he was absolutely positive it had really happened, but on the other—there was definitely something unreal about the whole thing, and he had lots of questions that didn’t have any answers.

  Questions like where had the girl come from, and how did she happen to appear in the deserted church? And why was she wearing such weird clothing? And what was there about her face and the quick, light-footed way she moved that was definitely strange, or at least kind of out of the ordinary? And another question that he definitely didn’t have an answer to was why he’d gone to so much trouble to be here at one o’clock, when he should have known that she wouldn’t show up.

  Matt checked his watch again—ten past one now. He kicked down the stand, put the lock on the bike’s hind wheel and gave the combination dial a spin. He looked around carefully again before he went on as far as the broken arch that separated the narthex from the main room of the church. Stopping there, he leaned forward, peering into the tangled jungle of trees and vines. No one. At least not where they could be seen. He waited several more minutes, standing right there in the doorway, before he took a few careful steps into the main part of the church.

  Nothing. No sign of life anywhere. Outside the church there had been the leafy rustle of wind in the trees. But inside—not even that. Inside the tall, jagged walls the stillness was so deep it seemed to be a solid material, as if you could reach out and touch it. But Matt didn’t want to reach out. Instead he stood perfectly still, wishing he knew if the sound of a footstep or a spoken word could reach his ears, or if it would only be swallowed up by the soft green silence.

  For what seemed like a long time he went on listening—and looking. Trying, without moving his feet forward, to see if he could lean far enough to look through or around the undergrowth to where the roof of Old Tom’s cabin might be visible. Somehow it seemed terribly important to catch a glimpse of the shack’s rusted tin roof and mossy green wall. After a while he discovered that by standing on tiptoe and leaning to his left, he was able to see through a clump of saplings and on down almost to the corner, where…He was stretching out, leaning even farther, when a loud noise right behind him made him jump, stumble forward and wind up on his hands and knees. Somebody laughed.

  Matt’s brain registered the laugh before he jumped to his feet—and there she was. The Rathburn girl was standing right behind him.

  “Wow,” he said as he got up and brushed off his knees. “What was that noise?”

  “I did it,” she said. She clapped her hands loudly to demonstrate. Smack! Frowning now, she put her hands on her hips as she said, “Didn’t I tell you it was dangerous to come in here?”

  “Wow,” Matt said again, shaking his head. “I wasn’t in here. At least not very far.” Then he grinned and added, “I wasn’t in any danger until you scared my feet out from under me.”

  She didn’t think it was funny. She was staring at Matt with angry eyes, but as he went on smiling she suddenly turned her face away. When she looked back her expression had changed—not exactly smiling, but pretty close to it.

  The rest of her looked about the same as it had the day before except that her long dress was blue now, and the collar was square and not as lacy. The hat was smaller, too, and trimmed with braid instead of ribbons. But like the other hat, it was covered with white veiling that seemed to be wrapped around her face and tied under her chin.

  Back in the entryway she stopped to stare at Matt’s bike. “Okay,” he said, thinking, Oh no, not that again. “Okay. When do we start?”

  Turning slowly away from the bike, she said, “Start where?” She was narrow-eyed again, frowning suspiciously.

  “You remember,” Matt said. “To see the Palace. You said you’d show me a better way to get there.”

  “Oh yeah.” She thought for a moment. Making it sound like a question, she said, “I guess you really want to see that crummy old place?”

  “Yes, I do,” Matt said, grinning again. “Really.”

  “Why?” she asked, slit-eyed and surly.

  Surprised, Matt had to think for a minute. “Because, well, I guess it’s because I’ve always had this thing about history. You know, historical people and places. People like Robin Hood and Napoleon. And places where historical things happened. Like Sherwood Forest—and the Alamo. I already saw the Alamo. My whole family went to see it. Seeing the Alamo was really cool.”

  The halfway snarl was still on the girl’s face. “Well, sure,” she said, “famous places like that. But the Palace is just a big old ugly house in the country. What’s historical about that?”

  Matt was surprised. “Ugly?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I think it’s ugly. And haunted. It’s haunted, too. Did you know that?”

  Puzzled and more than a little suspicious, Matt said, “But you said—you said you live there?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, I live there. That’s how I know it’s haunted.”

  Matt was speechless for a minute before he started to grin again. He asked, “Does that mean you’re a ghost?”

  Her frown deepened, turning her big eyes into long, narrow slits. “No. Of course not. It just means—that’s how I know it’s haunted.”

  Before Matt could decide what to say next she added, “And my name is—A
melia. I told you that. Remember?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, okay. And your name is Matt.” Suddenly her frown had changed to the strange almost-smile. “So come on, Matt,” she said. “Let’s go see the Palace.”

  She started off across the parking lot, but not in the direction Matt was expecting her to take. Not toward the start of the Palace trail that Lance had pointed out. Instead, she turned to the right, straight across the baseball outfield, moving so lightly and quickly it wasn’t easy to keep up.

  Almost running, Matt called after her, “Hey! Wait a minute.” When she finally stopped to look back, he pointed toward the parking lot. “Isn’t that where the path starts? Why are you going out here? That isn’t the way to the Palace. What I heard was that the trail that leads to the Palace starts way over there at the edge of the parking lot.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s the hill route. It’s the way people go who shouldn’t even be on Rathburn land. All they get is a far-off glimpse of the house. And the trail is, like, more than a mile long, and hard to follow.”

  Matt nodded. Remembering his previous visit, he could agree with that. Long and hard to follow it certainly had been.

  But Amelia was still talking. “It only gets you to where you can look down and see the house from way up on the side of a hill,” she said. “But you’re not very close to it and there’s this high iron fence that keeps you from getting any closer. This way is a lot quicker and it winds up right near the gate.” She went on then, walking even faster.

  Way out beyond center field the ground became rough and overgrown by berry vines and patches of heavy brush. When Amelia finally slowed down, it was at the edge of a flat open area where nothing seemed to be growing except some clusters of reedy-looking plants. Reedy plants, coarse green grass and, farther out, patches where the sunlight glistened on what seemed to be pools of greenish gray water.

  “It looks kind of—kind of swampy,” Matt said.

  She nodded, “Yeah, you guessed it. That’s exactly what it is. A swamp.” She turned to look at Matt sharply. “You’ve heard about the swamp, haven’t you?”

  “Well, yes,” Matt said. “This guy told me about a swamp but I kind of thought he was just trying to scare me.

  “Well, it’s a swamp, all right,” she said. “I thought all the kids in Timber City knew about it.” She turned to face Matt. “What they get told is that the public property ends at the edge of the ball field and the swamp is on Rathburn land, so they shouldn’t be there in the first place. And they also hear that if they do try to cross it, they’ll end up like Frankie.”

  “Frankie. Frankie who?”

  “I don’t know. He died a long time before I was born, I guess. But I certainly heard about him. What I heard is he tried to cross the swamp and drowned.” She shook her finger, imitating a scolding adult. “And if you try to cross the swamp you’ll drown too. But it isn’t true. I do it all the time. Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute,” Matt said. “Wait a minute.”

  She was already moving forward, picking her way from one clump of reeds to another. “Wait!” Matt yelled. “Hey, Amelia. Wait up!”

  It was only then that she stopped, turned, and a moment later was back on solid ground. She was smiling. “Good,” she said. “You remembered my name.” But the frown returned as she went on, “What’s wrong? Why didn’t you follow me?”

  “Well…” Matt hesitated. “For one thing…” He grinned sheepishly. “I’m not a very good swimmer.”

  She shrugged. “So what? If you fell in you’d probably drown even if you were. Nobody can swim in that stuff. You get tangled up in the roots of the reeds and they pull you down. It’s kind of like quicksand.”

  “Oh yeah,” Matt said, “I heard about the quicksand.”

  “But it’s not at all dangerous if you’re with me,” Amelia insisted. “I go this way all the time and I know how to do it. So come on. Follow me and step right where I step.”

  If Matt had had a different kind of personality, he probably would have ignored Amelia’s order and stayed right where he was. But being the youngest person in a family where everyone else had more or less alpha-type personalities, he’d had a lot of practice at doing what he was told. So in the end, he took a deep breath and followed Amelia out into the swamp.

  Ten

  CROSSING THE SWAMP WAS just about the scariest thing Matt had ever done. He didn’t want to do it to begin with, and after the first couple of steps, he hated it even more. The only thing that kept him from turning around was that he was more scared of trying to go back alone than he was of going on behind Amelia. So he kept going, leaping to one tiny reedy island and then, as the one he was on began to squash and sink, on to the next.

  “Come on. Keep moving,” Amelia called back to him. “If you stand still, you start to sink,” which was exactly what he’d been noticing. Thinking, Now she tells me, he jumped and went on jumping. At one point, far out in the middle of the swamp, he lost his balance and went down on his knees on a soggy clump of reeds. Frantically pushing himself back to his feet, he sloshed on and on until at last the landing spots began to get larger and drier. And then finally, still following Amelia, he was scrambling up a low bank and onto solid ground.

  Without stopping at all, not even long enough to congratulate himself on still being alive, he followed Amelia as she scrambled up a long slope. At the top of the slope they arrived at a high iron fence, and beside the fence a faint trail led off to the right. A trail that soon led to a grand entrance where the wrought-iron letters RATHBURN formed an arch over a huge front gate. Opening a smaller pedestrian gate, Amelia led the way onto the estate grounds.

  It wasn’t until then that Matt looked up and saw a tower rising above the trees. A huge squarish tower, elaborately decorated with carvings, railings and strangely shaped windows.

  “Hey,” he gasped. “Is that it? Is that the Palace?”

  Amelia stopped and turned back to him. “Yeah,” she said without even looking toward where Matt was pointing. “Yeah, that’s it. What do you think?”

  “What do I think? Well, I think it’s…,” Matt was beginning to say, but Amelia hadn’t stopped to listen, so he shut up and hurried on, stumbling now and then as he continued to stare up to where a cluster of smaller towers was beginning to show above the tops of the trees. A whole forest of towers, reaching up three or four stories into the sky. Some of them were roundish, some triangular, some more or less square. And all of them were decorated with pillars and railings and fancy wooden trim. Matt was amazed, and very impressed.

  “Well, what do you think?” Amelia finally waited for him to catch up. “A real mess, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t seem to be kidding. “It’s, it’s really…,” Matt was stammering as she began to move forward between bushy clumps of underbrush. They were fairly close to the house itself before their pace slowed enough to give him time to notice that they were in what must have once been an elaborate garden. But what had been carefully planned and plotted lawns and flower beds was overgrown now and full of weeds. And he could see that the house itself was in need of repair. Paint was peeling off the bulgy pillars that supported the roof of the veranda, and here and there bits of fancy wooden trim were damaged or missing.

  Matt’s shiver was unintentional but not entirely unpleasant. For some reason the fact that the grand old house was shabby and run-down made it seem even more exciting, giving it the atmosphere of an ancient castle, or maybe a scene from a Halloween ghost story. He had started forward, heading toward the grand flight of stairs that led to the front door, when Amelia grabbed his arm and dragged him back into the bushes.

  “Hey. Where do you think you’re going?” she said. “You can’t go up there.”

  Matt stopped. “I can’t? Why not? I thought that was why you brought me here. So I could see the house.”

  For a moment she didn’t answer. Staring at Matt, or at least in his general dir
ection, her eyes went cloudy and unfocused. It was several seconds before she went on, speaking slowly and with long pauses between each word. “Well,” she said. “It’s like this.” She paused, bit her lip, took a deep breath, and continued, “It’s because…the rest of the Rathburns don’t like me to bring people to the house.” She was speaking faster now, sounding more like she knew what she was going to say next. “See, the Rathburns are the kind of people who don’t let ordinary people come into their house.”

  Matt was disappointed. Still looking up at the fantastic mansion, he couldn’t help sighing. He was thinking that any house with such a grand bunch of decorations on the outside just naturally would have to be incredibly interesting on the inside. Grand and elegant and full of unexpected rooms and hallways and mysterious nooks and crannies like the weird houses that sometimes appeared in his dreams.

  He was still trying to imagine what sorts of rooms a house that big might have, and what they could possibly be used for, when he noticed that Amelia was watching him. Staring at him, actually, with that strange, halfway angry-looking smile on her face.

  “Well, look,” she said. “Maybe we could go inside—if you promise to be very quiet and do exactly what I say.”

  “Sure,” Matt said. “Why not? It’s your house.”

  She sighed. “Okay. Come with me. But be very quiet.”

  As Amelia moved toward the house she wasn’t exactly going on tiptoe, but the quick, quiet way she walked had the same effect. At least Matt, following right behind her, found himself tiptoeing as they ducked in and out behind bushes, passed the end of the grand veranda and reached a long foundation wall made of brick that had once been painted white.

  Amelia kept moving along the foundation until she came to an opening covered by an iron grill. Grabbing the grill in both hands, she lifted it out of the window and set it down on the ground. Just inside was a window made of many panes of glass. As Matt watched in astonishment, Amelia seemed to put her arm, clear up to the elbow, right through one of the small panes. By the time he realized that there was no glass in that particular frame she had finished unlatching the window and swung it open.