The Ghosts of Stone Hollow Read online

  Once, when the teacher asked about a picture in the history book, Jason raised his hand and told all about it. Miss McMillan had only wanted to know that the building in the picture was called the Parthenon, but Jason also told what goddess it had been built for, and when it was built, and the kind of columns it had, and then he started telling how much bigger it was when you saw it up close than it looked in the picture. That was when everyone in the class really started exchanging glances.

  Suddenly Amy raised her hand, and if Miss McMillan had called on her right away, she would have done something terribly stupid. She would have told the whole class that he wasn’t lying, and that he had been to Greece, and not only there but to Ireland and.... But fortunately she came to her senses and took her hand down before Miss McMillan got around to calling on her.

  Watching Jason on the playground turned out to be even more dangerous. That was because the playground was a dangerous place for Jason, and the danger just naturally spilled over onto anyone dumb enough to get involved. Which is exactly what Amy found herself doing.

  It was Jason’s own fault that he got into so much trouble—much more trouble than other new kids. More even than new kids who were also different, like the Mexican kids who didn’t even speak very much American. What Jason did wrong was to act as if he didn’t know he was in danger. No matter how many times he was teased or made a fool of, or even beaten up, he went right on acting as if he didn’t think it would happen again. Instead of keeping very quiet and out of sight, which was the only thing to do unless you were good at defending yourself, either with words or your fists, Jason went right on acting as if everybody were his friend.

  There wasn’t a whole lot that Amy could do about it, but once when Shirley Anderson and some other girls were pretending to be friendly and asking questions to get Jason to say something weird, Amy strolled up and asked Shirley if she knew there was a spider in her hair. That worked fine because by the time Shirley had stopped running and swatting at her head, everyone had forgotten all about teasing Jason.

  But another time Amy got her shin kicked and was very lucky to get off with just that. That time Gordie asked Jason if he wanted to play dodge ball. When Jason was dumb enough to say yes, Gordie started chasing him and bouncing a hard basketball off his head and back. Jason backed away slowly with his arms up to protect his head, and Gordie kept hitting him with the ball and yelling, “Why don’t you dodge? This is dodge ball, why don’t you dodge?”

  When the ball bounced off the side of Jason’s head and rolled near the bench where Amy was sitting, she got ready, and when Gordie dashed after it, she stuck out her foot. Gordie fell down so hard that he lay there moaning and swearing for several minutes before he got up and kicked Amy in the shins. If he’d had any idea she’d done it on purpose, he would have done a lot worse than that.

  Sometimes Amy got really mad at Jason for being so dumb about stupid people like Shirley and Gordie, and for getting himself into so much trouble. But at least he didn’t tell about Amy and Stone Hollow. A whole week went by, and as far as she could tell not a single person knew that she had gone to Stone Hollow with him. But then on Saturday he did something almost as bad as telling. On Saturday, Jason came to see Amy at the Hunter farm.

  Fortunately Amy happened to be out in the yard at the time. She had been sent out to burn trash, and she was making a game of it, setting up little cities of boxes and cartons and watching to see how they burned, and by what route the people of the city could flee, to escape the flames. She was squatting in front of the incinerator peering in at the flames when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Caesar running across the yard. She looked around, expecting to see a stray cat or another dog, and there was Jason coming in the gate. He was headed right for the front door, as if he intended to go right up and knock and ask for Amy. She managed to head him off just outside of the rose garden.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I came to see you,” Jason said, smiling his dumb gosling smile.

  Even though there wasn’t anybody around to hear, Amy blushed. Everybody in school teased Marjorie Evans because Bert Miller came to her house sometimes, and he, at least, had enough sense to say he’d come to see her brother, or to ask if the Evanses wanted to buy some eggs.

  Amy huffed angrily and stamped her foot. “Well, you can’t,” she said. “So go away.”

  Jason didn’t exactly smile, but his eyes looked as if he thought something was funny. “I can’t see you?” he asked.

  “I mean you can’t stay,” Amy said. “Come on, Caesar.” She grabbed the dog’s collar to keep him from following Jason, and pushed open the gate.

  “All right,” Jason said, “But I wanted to tell you that I’m going to bring some food tomorrow, so we won’t get so hungry and tired.”

  “Hungry?” Amy said. “Tired? What are you talking about? I never said I was going back there again.”

  She hadn’t said so, and until that moment she wasn’t sure that she’d even considered it. But perhaps she had, because all of a sudden she nodded, tightening her lips against a burst of excitement, that threatened to become a laugh.

  “Maybe I could, though,” she said sternly. “I’ll bring some apples.”

  As soon as the gate closed behind Jason, Amy hurried back to the burning; but as she rounded the corner of the house, she saw Old Ike standing near the corn bin with a bucket in his hand. If he had been standing there very long, he had probably seen Amy and Jason at the front gate.

  Old Ike ignored Amy as she walked past, but there was nothing significant about that. He never noticed children unless he had to. But before she got out of earshot, she heard him begin to mutter under his breath. She stopped to listen, but all she could make out were the words “devil dog” and then something that sounded a little like “Stone Hollow.”

  chapter ten

  BECAUSE OF BEING LATE the Sunday before, Amy might not have been allowed to go walking again so soon, except for a strange coincidence. It happened that that particular Sunday afternoon there was a special countywide meeting of ladies who belonged to missionary circles, and Amy’s aunt and mother were both planning to go. The meeting was to be held in the town of Lambertville, almost forty miles away. With the coming and going, it would take almost all afternoon. Amy knew that she would be expected to keep her father company, but in the rush to get ready—the milk strained and bottled, the eggs gathered, and Sunday dinner ready so Amy would only have to warm it up—no one got around to saying so. No one actually mentioned that Amy was supposed to stay at home—no one had to.

  After church Amy waved good-bye to her mother and Aunt Abigail as they climbed into one of the two cars that were going to Lambertville, carrying eight or nine missionary circle ladies, all with basket lunches to be eaten at the big Lambertville church’s social hall As soon as the cars were out of sight, Amy ran for home.

  When she pounded up the porch stairs and banged through the front door, her father looked around and smiled and went on reading the Sunday paper. He was sitting in the bay window in the parlor with his back to Amy, and he didn’t turn his wheelchair around and ask for a kiss the way he usually did when Amy came home from anywhere. She should have guessed then, perhaps, but she didn’t really. It didn’t occur to her until they were at the table, and she happened to lean close to her father to put a hot pad under the corn bread. Then for the first time she knew that he had had a visitor while everyone was away at church. It was at that moment she smelled it, the same sweet-sour smell that was always present after Old Ike’s visits on Thursday afternoons.

  For a few worried minutes Amy wondered if Ike was going to start visiting every Sunday, as well as every Thursday, but then she understood. After the Thursday visits there was always time for her father to take a long nap, while on most Sunday mornings, church was followed by Sunday dinner with the whole family together at the dining room table. This Sunday was different in a way that did not happen often, so a Sunday visit f
rom Old Ike probably wouldn’t happen again for a long time.

  Amy smiled with relief and, looking up, caught her father’s eye. He grinned back and winked the way he always did when she helped him out of his chair and onto his bed for his Thursday afternoon nap. The wink said that he knew that she knew, and he also knew that she would never tell. She looked away quickly and went on eating her warmed-up fried chicken and cold potato salad. The next time she looked up, her father was looking at her in a different way. The angry twist was gone from his smile, and his dark eyes looked warm and watery. When he saw her surprise, he looked away, shaking his head.

  “You put me in mind of your mother sometimes. The way she was when I first came to Taylor Springs.”

  “Me?” Amy said. She leaned to look at her dark face with its frame of curly brown hair in the mirror above the sideboard. “Me? You mean I look like Mama?”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “You didn’t get her blue eyes and blond hair, but the shape of your face and hands is the same, and that dimple near your mouth.”

  Amy touched the dimple. “Does Mama have a dimple—” she began, but then she remembered. “Oh yes, I knew she did. I’d just forgotten. I guess she doesn’t smile much—I mean, I guess it doesn’t show as much anymore.” Knowing it wasn’t a good thing to have said, she hurried on. “But I’m not pretty like Mama. I’m not as pretty as Mama wa—is.”

  “Sure you are. You’re going to be a real beauty if they don’t slick you down and bundle you up ’til nobody could ever tell.” He laughed, but just from the sound of it, without looking up, Amy knew that the angry look was back in his eyes and the corners of his mouth. Not knowing what to say, Amy ate quickly and then hurried to clear off the table and do the dishes.

  She meant to ask her father if she could go for a walk. Knowing that he would probably say yes, there was no reason for her not to ask. But when she helped him out of his wheelchair onto his bed, he went immediately to sleep. She knew from experience that he would sleep for a long time without moving or waking up, so there was no one to know if she went or stayed. Not even Old Ike would know because he always took turns drinking from the bottle in the brown paper bag, and he’d most likely be asleep now, too. So there was no one at all to know that she was going, or to wonder where.

  Amy put two apples in her coat pocket and got Caesar out of his dusty bed and began to run. She ran out of the yard and down the Old Road and partway up Bradley Lane before she dropped to the ground to catch her breath. She was still sitting there, gasping, when Jason appeared.

  “What are we going to do today?” Amy asked as they started off. “Are we going back up to the spring?”

  “To the Stone,” Jason said. “Yes, I want to go back to see the Stone again.”

  “What is it—the Stone?” Amy asked. “You said you were going to think about it. What do you think it is?”

  Jason stopped and looked at Amy, but not as if he were seeing her. His strangely wide-apart eyes seemed to be looking toward her, and on through, to something way beyond. “The Stone is where it all came from,” he said. “Why the Indians came here, and all the other things happened.”

  Amy gave him a scornful look. “Pooh,” she said. “I don’t believe that. You’re just making it up because it sounds mysterious and scary. Why would a plain old stone have anything to do with anything?”

  “Stones have all kinds of powers,” Jason said. “Other things do too, but the power of stones lasts longer and is stronger. Stones are very powerful.” He looked at Amy’s scornful face and smiled a quick flick of a smile. “It’s even called Stone Hollow,” he said.

  Amy shrugged. “It’s full of stones. The whole valley is full of those big, rough-looking boulders. Why should that one Stone be any different?”

  “I don’t know why,” Jason said. “But it is. I think it does something to time. It’s like time moves in loops, big loops that go out and back, and sometimes the loops are very near each other. And there are places, only a few places, where there is a power that makes them pull together and touch, so that they run together for a little while. It’s something like that. I’ve heard about places like that before. I knew someone in Greece who had been to one.” He smiled at Amy and then went on walking, as if he’d said something perfectly sensible and made it all very clear.

  “Jason Fitzmaurice,” Amy said, “that doesn’t make any sense, and you know it. What do you mean, it goes together for a while? What goes together?”

  “The loops of time,” Jason said. “The power of the Stone draws the loops together, so for a little while it could be right now, 1938, and maybe a hundred years ago, all at the same time.”

  “Oh,” Amy said, and for just a moment it seemed quite possible. It seemed almost sensible to believe that time could loop around so that the past could return—which could mean that the Indians Jason had seen could have been Indians who had lived in Taylor Valley a long long time ago and.... But then common sense came back, and Amy realized how silly it was to think there could be any truth in such a crazy idea.

  “That’s nonsense,” she said. “You’re just making that up. This is 1938, and that’s the only time it is. And besides, Jason Fitzmaurice, if there are really places like that where the time runs together, how come other people don’t know about them? How come you’re the only one who knows about them?” Amy put her hands on her hips and looked at Jason triumphantly.

  “People do know about them,” Jason said. “Lots of people. Only they call them different things. Some of them are called shrines or holy places.”

  “Oh,” Amy said. “I know what you mean. Well, we don’t believe in things like that.”

  “We?” Jason asked. “Who is ‘we’?”

  “My family, and the people who go to our church.”

  “How do they know that they don’t believe in things like that?”

  “Because our church says we don’t,” Amy said.

  “Oh,” Jason said. He nodded and went on walking, but after a moment he stopped again and said, “I don’t see how that can be.”

  “Why not?” Amy said.

  “Because believing is not something you can be told to do. Believing is something you have to find out for yourself. I don’t see how other people can tell you what you believe.”

  “Well, they can,” Amy said. “They do it all the time.”

  Either Jason couldn’t find any way to argue about that, or else, since they’d reached the steepest part of the climb, he had no breath left for arguing. They climbed hard and fast on the zigzag trail, and in only a few minutes they had reached the crest and were looking down again into Stone Hollow. Just as he had the week before, Caesar whined and trembled and then rushed ahead of them down the steep slope. By the time they reached the valley floor, he had disappeared into the old house.

  “Do you want to go in?” Jason asked.

  “Okay,” Amy said bravely. “Let’s go in just for a minute to see if anything’s changed.” This time she intended to walk right in without feeling frightened, and look at everything calmly and carefully.

  As they were going up the stairs to the sagging porch, Caesar rushed past them on his way out of the house. They turned to watch him sniffing his way back and forth across the weed-grown yard.

  “He keeps on looking,” Jason said.

  “What for? What do you think he’s looking for?”

  Jason only shook his head.

  “Probably just rabbits,” Amy said. “He gets all excited like that about rabbits sometimes. That’s probably all it is.”

  They went in, then, around the fallen door, and walked through the rooms quite calmly, as Amy had planned. Except for their own faint footprints in the dustier places, they saw nothing they hadn’t noticed before. They saw nothing, that is, in the large room or in the kitchen, where the broken stove and heaps of mildewed trash seemed entirely unchanged. But when they came to the tiny bedroom, they both immediately noticed something they had not seen before.

  Lyi
ng on the floor near the small bed frame was what seemed at first to be a little pile of rags; but when Jason picked it up, it became apparent that it was the faded and dirty remains of a homemade rag doll.

  Staring, Amy backed away until she reached the door. “Put it down, Jason. Put it down,” she whispered. “It must be hers, the dead girl’s.”

  Jason put the doll back carefully, in exactly the place it had been when he picked it up. He looked at the doll, and then at Amy, and then back at the doll again. He looked strange—tense and glittery-eyed —but it was hard to tell if he was frightened or only excited. Amy was sure about herself, however. She knew that she was frightened. “Come on,” she begged, “let’s go.”

  Jason came slowly. At the door he stopped and looked back again. “It wasn’t there when we came last week,” he said.

  “I know,” Amy said. She grabbed his sleeve and tugged him toward the outer door. He came at last, glancing backward. She went on tugging until they were out the door and down the sagging steps. Then she maneuvered to make Jason look at her—right in the eyes.

  “Have you been here since last Sunday?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Twice. But not in the house. I didn’t go in the house either time.”

  “Why not? What were you doing here?”

  “Just looking,” he said. “Just walking around and watching. I didn’t go in the house at all.” He said it firmly, and his eyes didn’t move down or away, though something flickered deep inside them like the fire in an opal. She just couldn’t tell.

  “It could have been Caesar,” she said. “He ran in first, He could have pulled it out of one of the piles of trash and dropped it there.”

  Jason nodded. “It could have been,” he said. Suddenly he grabbed Amy’s arm. “Shh. Listen,” he said, pulling her to a stop.