The Ghosts of Stone Hollow Read online

  When the sermon was finally over, Amy hoped that God had noticed that she had listened carefully to the last part of the sermon, even though it hadn’t been easy. She hoped that that would do some good. She tried not to notice, so that God wouldn’t, that at the very back of her mind her resolution to visit Stone Hollow with the crazy boy was still there, although she was trying to pretend that it wasn’t.

  chapter seven

  HAVING MADE A DECISION, Amy liked to act on it as soon as possible. She hated waiting, and besides Sunday afternoon was almost the only time she could get away unobserved. So she decided to find Jason and get him to go with her to Stone Hollow that very afternoon. The only difficulty was that she did not know where he would be.

  She had to wait until after Sunday dinner, of course, which in Taylor Springs was eaten in the middle of the day. Then she would ask permission to take Caesar for a walk, and she would start looking for Jason. After that she would just see what happened.

  “Caesar really needs a walk,” she told her mother when dinner was almost over. “Old Ike doesn’t take him walking very often anymore. Could I take him for a nice long walk this afternoon?”

  Amy’s mother sighed, and the crease deepened between her eyes. “Aunt Abigail and I were planning to visit the Gerhardt sisters this afternoon. I planned on your staying home with your father.”

  “Let her go,” Amy’s father said. “I don’t need a keeper.” He pushed his chair back from the table and wheeled it out of the room.

  Holding back another sigh with her fingers, Amy’s mother watched him go. “Well, all right, dear,” she said. “You may as well go. But don’t be gone long, and be careful.”

  Amy never went anywhere without her mother’s warning about being careful. She knew all the things she was supposed to be careful of by heart. When they lived in the city, the warnings had been mostly about traffic and people, but in Taylor Springs there were many other things to keep in mind. In the country, one had to be careful about such things as rattlesnakes and black widow spiders and rabid skunks and flash floods and heatstroke and poison oak—and of course people, too, even in Taylor Springs, but not as much, because there were not nearly so many strangers.

  “I’ll be careful,” Amy promised. She jumped up from the table and began to clear off so fast that Aunt Abigail had to warn her twice about the good china. The moment the last dish was off the table, she was out the back door and running toward the barn.

  She found Caesar where she thought she would, sleeping just inside the door of the hay barn. There he was, spread out on his side, flat and dead-looking, his shaggy gray hide draped saggily over his bony ribs. When he heard Amy’s running feet, he lifted his head and grinned, letting his tongue escape and flop from the side of his mouth. His tail thumped twice, weakly, before he collapsed, as flat and dead as before.

  “You lazy thing,” Amy said. “The vultures are going to find you someday and eat you half up before they notice you’re alive.” She began to walk slowly around the motionless form. “Poor dead dog,” she said. “Poor old dead dog. I am the fairy princess, and I am going to take pity on the poor dead dog and say the magic word. I am going to say—walk! You want to go for a walk, Caesar?”

  As soon as he heard “walk,” Caesar sprang to his feet, shedding dust and hay and, judging by appearances, about a dozen years, too. He pranced around Amy, head high, tail waving, panting in anticipation.

  “Okay,” Amy laughed, as he bounced against her. “Just a minute ‘til we ask Old Ike if you can go.”

  They found the old man in the tack room mending a harness. Amy approached him quietly and waited for him to notice her and speak first. Nobody rushed Old Ike, particularly children. Amy had found that out a long time ago. He turned slowly and looked at Amy and the prancing dog, his frown deepening. Old Ike always frowned, but for special occasions, like having to talk to people, he made the frown even more impressive, by making his eyebrows come clear together over the bridge of his long, hooked nose.

  “All right,” he said. “Take him. Take the devil dog. He don’t belong to me nohow. Don’t even pretend to since my knee give out and I can’t walk much no more.”

  He turned his back, still muttering to himself, and as Amy backed away she heard him saying “—not my dog and never was.” A few steps outside the door, she turned and ran.

  Passing the windows of the house, she dropped to a running walk, but once she was safely out on the Old Road, she shifted back to top speed, with Caesar running and leaping beside her. She didn’t slow down again until her side began to ache and her lungs felt stretched and burny. When she neared the turnoff to Bradley Lane, she began to whistle and talk loudly to Caesar so that Jason would be sure to hear her if he were somewhere in the area.

  “Come here, Caesar,” she called. “Stop that. Come back here and walk with me.”

  Caesar, who was busy with his version of a walk, coursing back and forth across the road, investigating interesting smells, seemed to know she was only talking to make a noise. Acknowledging her commands with a wave of his tail, he went right on with his explorations. And Amy went on calling and whistling.

  Of course, the obvious thing to do would be to go to the Bradley house and knock on the door and ask for Jason, but there were a lot of reasons why that wasn’t possible. For one thing, one of Jason’s parents might answer the door. Amy had never met heathens before, or people who wrote books, and she felt sure she wouldn’t know how to talk to them. It would be almost like trying to talk to Grandpa Simmons, who was always saying something that made so little sense there was absolutely no way to answer sensibly. The most important reason, though, was simply that girls didn’t go calling on boys—it just wasn’t one of the things you did in Taylor Springs.

  There was no sign of Jason near the clump of eucalyptus, so she went on up the lane until she came to the first good climbing tree. She shinnied up the trunk to the first branch and then scrambled higher, stopping now and then to look around. She was about as high as she dared go when, looking down, she saw a figure coming around the bend in the lane. It was Jason all right, and he was walking fast and looking around, as if he were hunting for something or someone in particular. As Amy watched unseen in her treetop perch, Jason and Caesar saw each other at the same moment. Jason walked toward Caesar, holding out his hand. Amy couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could see that Caesar was behaving in a very unusual manner.

  As a rule Caesar, who was only sedately enthusiastic even with old friends—except, of course when a walk was mentioned—was shy and sometimes even threatening with strangers. But now, as Jason approached, he cocked his head and bounded forward. Sinking down onto his belly at Jason’s feet, he wagged his tail frantically and licked eagerly at the boy’s hand. Jason bent over the dog, petting and talking to him for a long time before he stood up and looked around.

  “Amy,” he called. “Where are you?”

  Amy climbed down from the tree. Still shinnying down the trunk, she yelled at Jason accusingly, “Have you been hanging around my house?”

  She didn’t hear any answer, and when she reached the ground and had finished brushing the tree ants and itchy pieces of bark off her arms and legs, she faced him, jutting her jaw.

  “Have you?” she demanded.

  “Why do you think I’ve been hanging around your house?” Jason asked.

  “Because you knew Caesar was our dog. How’d you know I was here because Caesar was?”

  Jason looked at the dog. “Caesar?” he said. “Who named him that?”

  Amy shrugged. “I don’t know. Old Ike, I guess. He really belongs to Old Ike, this hired man who works for my aunt. Ike used to take long walks a lot before his leg got bad. Years ago he came back from a walk in the Hills, and he had Caesar with him, and he’s had him ever since. Only he always says that Caesar isn’t his.”

  Jason nodded. “Did you want to go now?” he asked. “To the Hollow?”

  Amy stared. She had been trying to
think of an unembarrassing way to bring up the subject, since the last time they’d talked about it she’d said that she would never, ever go there. But now all she had to do was agree, and it would all be settled. “Yes,” she said, trying to sound casual. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I would like to go there, for just a little while. Just to kind of look around.”

  “All right,” Jason said, smiling his crazy smile. “Let’s go.”

  As they started down the lane, Jason asked, “Why are people afraid to go there—to Stone Hollow? Why do they think it’s haunted?”

  “Lots of reasons. There was this family who lived there once and built the house, and they all died except the mother, and she went crazy.” She told him everything she could remember ever having heard about the Italians, and even added a few facts that she hadn’t exactly heard, but that just seemed likely—and particularly intriguing. Like, how the poor madwoman, when she was found wandering and raving, had said something about a curse. Then she told Jason all about the bootleggers and how they had been found dead, near where they had been building a still for making whiskey. And how they had been dead for a long time when they were found, so it was hard to tell what had killed them, but everybody made guesses. Most people guessed that they had died of fright, except for a few like Aunt Abigail who thought they had killed each other, and the Reverend Dawson who thought they’d been “sacrificed on an altar.”

  Jason stopped and stood still. “An altar. What kind of altar?” he said.

  “The altar of Demon Rum,” Amy said.

  “Oh.” Jason started off, but then he stopped again and stayed stopped for a long time with a faraway look on his face, as Amy began to tell him about the Indians. She mentioned that some people said the Hollow had been haunted even before the Ranzonis died, and that way back in the olden days, the Indians had held ceremonies there to their heathen gods.

  “What did they do there, the Indians?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know,” Amy said. “Dances, I guess, and sacrifices, and bowing down to graven images, all sorts of heathen things like that.”

  “Visions,” Jason said, and his eyes looked so strange and inward that for a moment Amy wondered if he meant he was seeing one himself, but then he went on. “Some Indian tribes had sacred places where they went to see visions.”

  Amy shrugged. “Did they? Well, they probably did that in Stone Hollow, too. All that kind of stuff.”

  Just past the place where Bradley Lane started uphill, they came to the beginning of the old road that had once led to Stone Hollow. It had never been much more than a trail, and now that it was weed-grown and rock-strewn, there were many places where it was barely visible. Before very long it was so steep that conversation was a little breathless, but there were some things that still needed to be discussed.

  “Look,” Amy said. “You won’t tell anybody about this, will you? Like at school or anyplace?”

  “You don’t want them to know?” Jason asked.

  Amy shook her head exasperatedly. “Of course not,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t they like it? Wouldn’t they like for you to go to the Hollow?”

  “They’d think it was funny because I went with you. They’d tease us.”

  “Why?”

  “Good heavens,” Amy said. “You’re really hopeless. You know why. Didn’t your friends in other places tease each other about boys and girls? You know, about a boy liking a girl, or something?”

  But Jason only looked at her with wide, questioning eyes, as if she hadn’t made it clear.

  “Or didn’t you have any friends?” Amy said.

  “I had some friends,” Jason said. “I had a very good friend in Greece.”

  “Well, didn’t he ever tease you about girls? Like if you talked to a girl a lot in school, or something?”

  “No,” Jason said. “My friend didn’t go to school. He was a hermit.”

  “A hermit. How old was he, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Old? I don’t know exactly, but he was a very old man.”

  “An old man!” Amy said. “That’s not—” But then she gave up. “Anyway,” she said, “just don’t tell anyone that we came up here together. Okay?”

  “All right,” Jason said. “Look, there’s the place where the bridge used to be. We have to climb down the cliff here and up the other side.”

  The climbing became too hard then to allow for much conversation. They climbed down and up and then followed the faint indentation where the old road had narrowed and dwindled to little more than a path. It had been dug into the canyon wall above the creek, and slides and rockfalls had made it almost impassable in several places. Trees grew thick and tall in the canyon, and in several places had fallen across the road so that it was necessary to climb over a trunk or scramble through branches. Finally they came to a place where the canyon became very steep and narrow, and the road turned very steeply up toward the crest of the range of hills.

  Amy remembered the spot. They were very close to the Hollow, now. From the crest just above them, you could look directly down into the narrow oval valley on the other side that was known as Stone Hollow. As they zigzagged up the face of the hill, she noticed that Caesar was not exploring smells and running in circles as he usually did. Instead he was running ahead of them, his head up and high and his ears pointed straight forward. Amy’s heart was thundering as they reached the top of the hill, and she knew it was not just from the strain of the climbing.

  Below them the narrow canyon that had been formed by the water of Stone Hollow Creek spread out into a small valley surrounded by steep hills. At the downward side of the valley, the creek disappeared into a deep and narrow ravine, so that the valley looked like an oblong bowl marred at one end by a narrow crack. Part of the valley floor had been cleared of trees, but near the center a few huge oaks remained, and it was there that the Italian family had built their little house.

  The shack stood in the deep shade of the old trees, its roof sagging crazily and its doors and windows gaping like the eyes and mouth of a frightened face. Amy had thought of that when she saw the house before—that it looked as if it were crying out in fear.

  “Look,” she whispered to Jason. “Even the house looks frightened.”

  But Jason didn’t answer. He was standing stiffly, staring down into the valley, with his head slightly turned as if he were listening to something from below. Beside him, Caesar was doing the same thing, his head cocked and his ears cupped forward. Amy moved closer and as she put her hand on Caesar’s back, she could feel that he was trembling.

  chapter eight

  SILENCE. ONE OF the first things that Amy noticed as they started down into the Hollow was the silence, a kind of quietness that made even the slightest sound echo and throb like the whistle of a train. Amy found herself listening avidly to a single faint bird call and then, as they neared the oak trees, to the occasional rasping whisper of an invisible breeze.

  Ahead of her, Jason walked light and quick, looking around eagerly; and not far away, Caesar trotted purposefully, stopping now and then to listen and sniff the air. Once or twice he whined softly deep in his throat.

  Hurrying, Amy caught up with Jason and grabbed his arm. “Look,” she whispered. “Look at Caesar. He looks as if he’s searching for something.”

  Jason nodded. “Or someone,” he said.

  They had reached the oak grove now, and just ahead of them, in the deep shade, was the old shack. Its roof and porch sagged, and its glassless windows stared out at them as blankly as the empty eyes of a skull.

  Amy hung back. “Let’s not go in,” she said, and then as Jason glanced at her without stopping, “Did you really go inside before? I mean, have you really been in there?”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s not the house.”

  “What do you mean? What’s not the house?”

  “I mean that it doesn’t come from inside the house. You can feel it in there sometimes, but it comes from somep
lace else.”

  “What does?” Exasperation, mixed with fear, made her voice come out in a breathy squeak. “What are you talking about?”

  The squeak was embarrassing, but it did accomplish something, because Jason stopped and really looked at her for the first time since they started down into the Hollow. “I don’t know,” he said. “Not really. Whatever it is that makes it different here. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.”

  “Right now?” Amy asked. “Can you feel it right now?”

  Jason stopped and seemed to be listening. His face tilted upward, and his strange wide eyes seemed to grow larger and flicker with points of dancing light, like the eyes of a playful cat. After a moment he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I can feel it. Can’t you?”

  Amy tried, standing as he had done with her face turned up. She felt as hard as she could—and after a moment a strange prickle tingled up her back and into the roots of her hair.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “But I’m frightened. I’m sure about that.”

  Jason took her hand and pulled. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the house.”

  It had never been much more than a shack, and now, after years of emptiness, it was only a broken rotten shell. The splintery floorboards sagged and creaked with every step, and the air was heavy with the smell of dust and mildew. Just inside the gaping doorway, the cracked and broken door lay on the floor, its hinges crusted with rust.

  “Look at that,” Jason said, pointing.

  “At what?” Amy whispered.

  “At that piece of wood the hinges tore out of the Wall. And the way the door is cracked, there, as if something hit it hard. It looks as if someone broke it down.”