The Ghosts of Stone Hollow Read online

  “What? What is it? I don’t hear anything.”

  “The wind. It’s doing it again. It’s blowing in circles.”

  She saw then that it was true. Or at least it was true that the air, which had been hushed and still as they entered the valley, was now suddenly in motion. Dry grass on the hillsides bent and quivered, and the stiff prickly leaves of the oak trees scraped together with a breathy rasping sound.

  “The wind’s blowing,” Amy said. “But what makes you think it’s—”

  “Come on,” Jason interrupted, “we’ve got to hurry.” And he began to run toward the creek and the path that led to the waterfall.

  “Wait,” Amy called, running after him. “Wait for me.”

  Although she hurried as fast as she could, Amy never quite caught up with Jason on the way up the creek bed. Once, scrambling over a boulder, she caught sight of him, and called again for him to wait, but he seemed not to hear. He was so intent, and in so much of a hurry, that Amy wondered if he would remember to wait and help her when she reached the cliff. She wasn’t at all sure she could make it to the top by herself.

  When, at last, out of breath and exhausted, she reached the waterfall, Jason was just disappearing over the top of the cliff. But before she could catch her breath enough to call to him, he had reappeared, lying on his stomach and reaching down for her hand. He turned loose, though, the moment Amy scrambled high enough to fall forward on the flat rocky ledge. By the time she had scooted forward until her legs were up too, and then scrambled to her feet, Jason had left her again. A few feet away he was moving silently and slowly through the tree ferns and willows, toward the bare rocky area directly in front of the grotto.

  He stopped, then, and Amy finally caught up, but it hardly mattered, because he seemed unaware of her existence. Standing at the edge of the clear dark water of the pool, Jason was staring toward the grotto and the large dark Stone that stood like a monument in the center of the rocky island. Following his gaze, Amy stared, too.

  The Stone rose straight up from the flat floor of the island like a huge thumbless hand. It varied in color, from light to dark and from gray to brown. The greenness that Amy had remembered seemed now more shadowy and uncertain, as if only a reflection of greenish light. The upper part of the Stone was creased by several deep crevices, and its entire surface was so rough and irregular that it almost seemed to be covered with carvings. Carvings that had once been elaborate and detailed but now were so faded and eroded that no single shape was distinct and certain. What once might have been shapes and figures were so blurred and vague that the slightest change of light or angle made them seem to melt and change. Green-lit, monumental in shape, and swarming with shadowy shapes, the Stone seemed so strange and awesome that Amy could not understand how, seeing it before, she had noticed and remembered so little.

  The rest of the grotto was just as she remembered it. At the back of the shallow cave, the mossy rock wall seeped tiny trickles of water that fell down into the pool below and spread out on both sides of the island. Beyond the grotto, the rocky floor gave way in places to damp earth and heavy growths of fern and willow. Above the cave, and on both sides of the canyon, almost sheer rocky cliffs rose up into the eastern wall of hills. Except for the soft trickling sound of water, everything was very, very still.

  Silently, Amy moved to where Jason was standing and took hold of his arm, just as he sank down to a crouching position, pulling her down beside him.

  “What is it?” Amy hissed frantically. “What are you looking at?” But Jason only shook his head and went on staring in the direction of the grotto. Suddenly he leaned forward, his face tensing, and just at that moment, Amy heard a new sound. It was a rushing breathy noise, like a high wind, and almost immediately the willow trees began to bend and toss, and the fern fronds whipped wildly from side to side.

  “What is it?” she begged. “What’s happening?”

  But Jason didn’t answer. In fact he seemed not to have heard at all. He was sitting very still, though his eyes were moving rapidly, as if he were watching a great many things at once, or some one thing that was in constant motion.

  “Jason,” Amy grabbed his arm and shook it. “Don’t do that. Don’t sit there like that. It scares me.”

  He looked at her then, and smiling briefly and distractedly, he said, “Shh. It’s all right.” Then he went back to silent staring.

  So there was nothing for Amy to do but stare, too. Crouching beside Jason in the clump of ferns, she watched and listened as the wind, funneling up through the narrow canyon, made hollow sobbing noises and set swarms of dark, wind-driven shadows into motion in every direction. Changing patterns of light and shadow flickered like phantom dancers under the thrashing willow trees and back into the dark recess of the grotto. A dozen times, as she watched and listened, Amy was almost sure she heard voices mingling with the wind sounds, and more than once a shadow became, for an instant, more than a shadow—a glimpse of a half-hidden face, or the split-second sensing of a disappearing figure.

  Amy’s thoughts, like a broken record, went in useless circles, coming back again and again to the thought that if she got out of there alive, without something terrible happening, she would never, never come back again. “Please, God,” she started once, “if you get me out of here I’ll—”

  But then she stopped, realizing suddenly that it might be a mistake to call God’s attention to her predicament, since she had brought it on herself by being deceitful and disobedient.

  When, at last, something touched her shoulder, Amy’s heart almost exploded in an awful thump of fear—but it was only Jason. He still looked strange, wild-eyed, and intensely excited, but at least he was really looking at Amy—and speaking to her.

  “Come on,” he was saying. “We’d better go now.” Silently they climbed back down the cliff and started down the narrow boulder-strewn creek bed. Partway down the canyon, Amy noticed that Caesar was with them, but she couldn’t remember if he had been waiting at the waterfall or had joined them someplace along the trail. It wasn’t until they were out of the creek bed and had started across the valley floor, skirting around the oak trees and the house, that she began to ask questions.

  “Jason,” she said, pulling at his jacket to make him slow down and listen, “what was it? What happened? Did you see something?”

  He stared at her blankly for a moment before his eyes seemed to focus and he began to look as if he knew that she was there.

  “Didn’t you?” he asked. “What did you see?”

  She shook her head impatiently. “Nothing,” she said. “At least not for sure. But I kept feeling as if I were going to. And sometimes I thought I did for a minute. But what did you see? What were you staring at like that?”

  “It was—” he began, but then he stopped and shook his head like someone trying to wake up and clear away the dark edges of a dream. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll tell you later. I—I have to think about it.” He turned away and started swiftly up the slope.

  Amy scrambled after him. “Jason! You come back here. You can’t go off like that without telling me. I’ve got to know about it.”

  Jason smiled and nodded, but he didn’t stop climbing and he didn’t say anything more, even though Amy kept demanding that he tell her everything—right that minute—before she went a step further. They were nearly back to Bradley Lane before she remembered the apples in her coat pocket.

  “Hey,” she said. “I thought we were going to have a picnic.”

  He stopped then, finally, but only to take a small bag out of his jacket pocket and hand it to her.

  “Here,” he said. “You take it. I don’t feel like eating right now.”

  And that was all he said, except just as they parted at the intersection he said again, “I’ll tell you—later. The next time I see you, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  All the way home Amy teeter-tottered between anger and curiosity. Part of the time she walked very slowly—wondering, lost
in curiosity. But when she was angry she ran. And finally she remembered that it was almost time for her mother and aunt to be getting back from Lambertville, so she ran the rest of the way home.

  chapter eleven

  AMY HAD BEEN home only a few minutes—her breathing was almost back to normal, but her cheeks were still hot and flushed—when the sound of an automobile engine announced the return of her aunt and mother from the missionary meeting. Running to the kitchen she splashed cold water on her hot face and rubbed it hard with a towel. Then, smoothing down her hair with both hands, she hurried to the parlor window. Outside the front gate, her mother and Aunt Abigail were climbing out of the Paulsens’ Model A. Then Mrs. Paulsen got out, too, and, pulling the lunch basket out of Amy’s mother’s hands, started carrying it to the house. But, of course, she had to stop first to admire the garden.

  Aunt Abigail’s flower garden was looking especially nice, with asters and pompons blooming between the bushes where a few late roses were still as beautiful as ever. Mrs. Paulsen bustled up and down the rows oohing and aahing and talking about God. Of course, Amy couldn’t actually hear her from the parlor, but she could tell about the oohing and aahing by the rounded mouth and rolled-up eyes—the talking about God she only guessed because that was what Mrs. Paulsen always did.

  The Paulsens were, for the most part, a very religious family. The younger Paulsen children said grace over their lunch boxes at school and got saved or sanctified every time an evangelist came to town. But some of the older children were backsliders, and Mrs. Paulsen talked about them a lot when she testified in church. Whenever Mrs. Paulsen testified, she talked about “crosses to bear”—her own and everyone else’s. Next to God, Mrs. Paulsen talked more about people’s crosses to bear than anything else.

  Amy hoped Aunt Abigail wasn’t going to ask Mrs. Paulsen to come in. Mrs. Paulsen always made her feel guilty. She felt guilty because she knew it was wrong to hate someone who was obviously such an extra-good person, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She didn’t like Mrs. Paulsen, and she hadn’t liked her much even before she had heard one conversation with Aunt Abigail about crosses people had to bear that made it pretty plain she thought Amy’s father was one.

  Aunt Abigail didn’t ask Mrs. Paulsen to come in, but she did look up and see Amy in the window, and motioned for her to come out.

  “Come here, Amy Abigail, and help us get all this paraphernalia into the house,” Aunt Abigail said, when Amy came out on the porch. Amy started for the lunch basket, but Mrs. Paulsen held on to it with one hand and put the other one on Amy’s head. Amy had known it was going to happen. Mrs. Paulsen always did that to any kid who got close enough for her to reach.

  “Such a blessing to know that this sweet child was here to look after her poor father this afternoon so you could get away to do God’s work,” Mrs. Paulsen said.

  Amy’s mother looked uncomfortable, but she didn’t say anything. Aunt Abigail, however, took hold of Amy’s shoulders and moved her out from under Mrs. Paulsen’s blessing.

  “There’s no doubt about Amy’s being a blessing, at least most of the time,” she said in a very crisp tone of voice, “but to call that Lambertville gossip party God’s work is stretching things just a bit, Clara.”

  She pushed the basket into Amy’s hands and shoved her toward the house, and in a few minutes the Paulsens’ Model A had turned around and chugged off down the road.

  So everyone was home, again, and no one even knew that Amy had been away except, of course, her father. Because she had not been there to help him back into his wheelchair, he had had to spend the whole afternoon in bed. Amy knew he must have been awake and ready to get up a long time before she got home, but he hadn’t said so. Someday when no one else was around, he might ask her where she had been that afternoon, but he would never mention it to anyone else. Amy knew that. So with that worry out of the way, she was free to concentrate on Jason and Stone Hollow.

  At first she tried to figure it out logically and reasonably. She went over in her mind all the things she had seen and heard for sure, without allowing any imagining or exaggeration. But the more she tried to think about it that way, the more difficulty she had keeping it straight. It seemed almost impossible to keep the things that had happened for sure separate from the things that might have happened or that seemed about to happen.

  Finally she didn’t even try. It was really much more interesting just to let it all drift through her mind, picking up all kinds of fascinating possibilities as it went along, until the whole thing grew into an unbelievably exciting and fantastical adventure. An adventure that Amy had shared with a person named Jason, who was surely something a lot more mysterious and extraordinary than just plain crazy.

  During the next few days at school, Amy found herself spending even more time watching Jason and wondering about him. Compared to the way he was when they were in Stone Hollow, he seemed quite ordinary and commonplace in the classroom. Not that he wasn’t strange—there were still differences in the way he talked and dressed and acted. But these were unimportant differences that could be called “crazy” and forgotten about. The differences that didn’t show in the classroom were the ones that Amy had to find out more about.

  For several days Amy stopped on the way home from school near the start of Bradley Lane and waited as long as she dared, but Jason never came. Finally she decided to tell him to meet her there. By watching carefully for a time when no one else was around, she finally managed a brief meeting in the hall.

  “Jason,” she said, “I’ve got to talk to you. Meet me behind the eucalyptus trees at the turnoff after school today. Okay?”

  “All right,” he said, smiling his quick, eager smile. “What do you want to do? I’ve been going—”

  But Amy was already walking away. “I don’t want to do anything,” she said. “I won’t have time. I just have to talk to you.”

  Although she ran most of the way, Jason was already there when she reached the clump of old trees that afternoon.

  “How’d you get here so soon?” she demanded.

  “I flew,” Jason said, “on the back of the North Wind.”

  Amy put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “If you’re going to start talking like that, I might as well go on home. I came here to find out some things —some true things, not just a bunch of let’s pretend.”

  Jason stared back. He wasn’t grinning, but something about his eyes made Amy wonder if he wasn’t thinking about it. “What kind of things did you want to find out about?” he asked.

  “What I want to know is—the truth!” Amy said.

  Jason’s eyes widened. “The truth?” he said. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can tell you that.”

  “Why not? Why can’t you tell me the truth?”

  “Because I don’t know it. Maybe nobody does.”

  “That’s silly. Everybody knows what’s true and what isn’t, unless—” She stopped, deciding against saying, “—unless they’re crazy.”

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

  “Then one of them is lying.”

  “No,” Jason said. “It’s just that the truth is something you have to find out for yourself. Nobody can tell you what it is.”

  “But what if you can’t find out for sure by yourself? What if you can’t decide?”

  “What’s wrong with not deciding for sure?” Jason said.

  “Ooh!” Amy said exasperatedly. “Jason Fitzmaurice, you’re driving me crazy. I didn’t come here to talk about—whatever it is we’re talking about. I came here to talk about Stone Hollow and what was happening and what made you act so strange and—”

  Suddenly Amy hushed and, putting her finger to her lips, she ducked back behind the largest clump of trees. Jason followed her and, when they were safely hidden, they peered out toward the sound of voices that were approaching along the Old Road. It was Alice Harris and Marybeth Paulsen. Alice and Marybeth
had told Amy that morning that they were going to come over to play real soon, but she hadn’t known they meant that very day.

  Amy sighed. Why did they have to pick a day when there was something much more important to attend to. Amy didn’t want to hurry home. For one thing, the last few times Alice and Marybeth had come over, they hadn’t wanted to do anything except sit around and talk about boys. Even on a day when there was nothing better to do, Amy wasn’t crazy about sitting around and talking about who Bert Miller liked and who he didn’t like. But she would have to hurry home now, whether she wanted to or not, because if Alice and Marybeth got there before she did, her mother would be sure to start worrying.

  “Look,” she said, grabbing Jason by the arm. “I’ve got to go. But I’ve got to talk to you. You’ve got to meet me somewhere where we can talk.”

  “All right,” Jason said. “Where?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t meet you tomorrow. I promised Miss McMillan to stay after to help her clean cupboards. I’ll let you know when I think of a place.”

  But a time and place were not easy to find. Finally, in desperation, Amy considered trying to talk to Jason at school. It might be all right, even if people saw them talking together. She had seen other people talking to Jason lately, now that everyone was a little more used to him. Jed Lewis and some of his friends had begun to let Jason eat lunch in their special place behind the backstop, and even Gordie was letting up, spreading his attention around to some of his old victims. A conversation with Jason, then, might not be quite so dangerous as it once would have been.

  So she gave it a try—and immediately discovered that school was still not the place to bring up a topic like Stone Hollow with Jason Fitzmaurice. It was not the place because, once you got him started, it was too hard to get him stopped.

  He was alone when Amy approached, sitting on the top step of the playground stairs; but she had no more than mentioned the words Stone Hollow when a bunch of fifth-grade girls came around the corner and started up the stairs. As the girls got nearer, Jason just went right on talking about how he’d been back to the Hollow twice since Amy had been, and how he thought they both should go again on the next Sunday. Amy tried to drown him out by loudly asking to borrow his history book; and when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to take the hint, she simply walked away and left him—still talking.