Time for Andrew: A Ghost Story

  She looked sad and tired, older too, worn down by worry. Contrite, I leaned against her side. "I'm sorry I upset him."

  "Don't worry." Aunt Blythe patted my hand to show me she understood. "Father's probably forgotten about it already."

  Mom was waiting for us on the porch. The worst of the storm had passed, but the rain still fell steadily. It gurgled in the downspouts and flowed over the edges of the gutter, creating a curtain of falling water. The wisteria's purple petals speckled the floor like confetti and clung to an old wooden swing. On the walls, ivy rustled as if the house were telling itself secrets.

  My parents hugged and kissed me again, but they made it clear they were really leaving this time. Tears wouldn't keep them. Neither would arguments. Trying to be brave, I stood on the porch and watched the car splash downhill through the puddles in the driveway.

  Aunt Blythe touched my shoulder gently. "Let's go inside, Drew. I'll take you to your room. While I fix dinner, you can unpack and make yourself at home."

  Reluctantly, I followed my aunt into the shadowy hall. Now that Mom and Dad were gone, the house seemed bigger, darker, scarier. The wind and rain made sad, searching sounds. Branches tapped the windows like homeless souls begging to come in from the cold.

  Overhead the floor creaked as if someone were tiptoeing from room to empty room. Startled by the noise, I glanced at my aunt, but she was striding up the steps ahead of me, talking cheerfully about the things we'd do when the rain stopped. If she sensed the presence of unseen beings, she gave no sign of it.

  Down the hall behind a closed door, Great-grandfather coughed. Thinking he might emerge from his lair, I raced upstairs after Aunt Blythe. Nothing, not even a ghost, could frighten me more than that old man.

  Chapter 3

  Aunt Blythe led me to a small room at the top of the steps. Before she went downstairs, she gave me a hug. "I'm so glad you're here, Drew. As you can guess, Father's not much company. Most of the time, Binky and I rattle around the old place like two marbles in an empty coffee can."

  Alone in the room, I did nothing for a few minutes but stand at the window. Rain poured down the glass like tears, blurring the fields and woods into a sea of ripply green. Near the house, trees tossed and swayed. At the bottom of the hill, the highway stretched northward, leading to Illinois and Iowa, and southward to St. Louis. It was a lonely view, just right for a lonely person.

  "Make yourself at home," Aunt Blythe had said, but I didn't think that was possible. Home to me was a modern apartment in Chicago, furnished with sleek Scandinavian imports. The only old things were Dad's artifacts displayed in brightly lit glass cases.

  In my aunt's house, I was surrounded by antiques. A tall, carved headboard leaned ominously over the bed I was supposed to sleep in. A spooky wardrobe with mirrored doors lurked in a corner. Bureau, rocking chair, desk, bookcase _ everything in the room had been owned by other people. Dead people. The thought made me shiver.

  To chase the ghosts away, I turned on the lamp, but its light made the shadows bigger and darker. I was tempted to run down to the kitchen, but the memory of Dad's words stopped me. "Fearful, nervous, insecure"—wasn't that what he'd told Aunt Blythe? She'd already seen me behave like a baby once today. I didn't want to give a repeat performance.

  I'd unpack, I'd put my things away, I'd try to make myself at home.

  For the next twenty or thirty minutes, I kept myself busy. I filled the bureau with a jumble of socks, underwear, T-shirts, and jeans. I made room in the bookcase for the paperbacks I'd brought with me. I found a place on the desk for a picture of Mom and Dad and me. I taped posters to the walls—a surfer riding a huge wave, the Chicago skyline, a sailboat on Lake Michigan, the stone lions in front of the Art Institute.

  Left with a pair of shoes and a windbreaker, I opened the door opposite my bed. Instead of finding a closet, I was surprised to see a flight of steps. Almost blocked by piles of magazines and boxes of old clothes, they led up to a dark attic.

  Cold, damp air blew down into my face, tickling my nose with the smell of dust. At the same moment, the floor creaked right over my head.

  The first thing I thought of was the flash of white I'd seen at the attic window. Was someone hiding up there? Had it been his footsteps I'd heard earlier? His eyes I'd felt? Slamming the door shut, I pressed my ear against the wood and listened. Except for the pounding of my own heart, I heard nothing. The attic was silent.

  Backing away from the door, I let my breath out in a long sigh. No one was hiding in the attic. Or anywhere else. In old houses, floors creaked all the time. Why did I always let my imagination run wild? It seemed to me I'd been born with eyes and ears that saw and heard things nobody else noticed—monsters in the shadows, footsteps in the dark.

  Downstairs, the hall clock struck six. Maybe it was dinnertime. Surely I smelled roast chicken. Taking the steps two at a time, I followed my nose straight to the kitchen.

  Aunt Blythe was standing at the stove, her back to me. When I entered the room, she turned around, a spoon in her hand, and smiled. "I hope you like spaghetti, Drew."

  I stared at the bubbling tomato sauce. "Where's the chicken?"

  Aunt Blythe looked at me. "Chicken?"

  Steam rose from boiling water and misted the kitchen windows. The scent of oregano filled my nose.

  "When I was upstairs, I smelled roast chicken," I said. "I know I did."

  "Your nose was playing tricks on you, Drew." Aunt Blythe smiled and picked up a box. Dumping long straws of pasta into the pot, she said, "I'll fix chicken tomorrow night."

  Great-grandfather joined us for dinner. Before he appeared, I heard the squeak of his wheelchair in the hall. I glanced at my aunt, but she just smiled.

  "Brace yourself," she said. "We'll probably have to introduce you all over again."

  Great-grandfather wheeled himself into position at the head of the dining room table. Aunt Blythe fastened a large plastic bib around his neck, the land you sometimes get in a seafood restaurant. When she was finished, he fingered his silverware. His hands were bent and twisted, the backs roped with blue veins, the skin discolored.

  Finally, he raised his head and looked at me. "Andrew," he mumbled. "Andrew."

  Aunt Blythe smiled, obviously pleased that he'd remembered my name. "That's right, Father. Isn't it nice to have him here?"

  Great-grandfather scowled. "No," he muttered, "not nice at all. Told you I don't want him in the house. Hasn't changed a bit, just as bad as ever, can't fool me."

  He shot me a look of such pure hatred that I froze, fork halfway to my mouth, and stared at him. Backing away from the table like an angry child, he turned his wheelchair and propelled himself toward his room.

  Aunt Blythe scurried after him. "Father," she said, "for heaven's sake, come eat your dinner!"

  I sat at the table alone, staring at my spaghetti. Outside, the rain fell steadily. The wind blew and the house creaked like an old sailing ship caught in a storm far from port.

  When Aunt Blythe returned, she apologized. "I don't understand why Father's so hateful to you. He won't listen to a word I say."

  I watched her put Great-grandfather's dinner on a tray. "I think it might be best to let him eat in his room tonight. Go ahead, Drew. I'll join you as soon as I can."

  The minutes crept by, marked by the slow ticktock, tick-tock of the hall clock. Bushes tapped on the windows, an icy draft eddied around my ankles, the house continued to murmur and groan. Under the table, Binky shivered and crept close to me. Laying his head on my feet, he whimpered.

  By the time my aunt returned, her spaghetti sauce had congealed in a cold puddle. She apologized again and ate quickly.

  After dinner, Aunt Blythe lit a fire to drive off the storm's chill. While I read a paperback I'd brought from home, she worked on a patchwork quilt. Binky snoozed on a cushion by the hearth. In his room, behind a closed door, Great-grandfather slept.

  Looking up from my book, I watched Aunt Blythe's needle flash in and out. Almo
st finished, the quilt spread across her lap and fell to the floor in a heap of bright calico.

  When my aunt noticed I was studying the design, she told me the pattern was called Tumbling Blocks. "It's an optical illusion, Drew. You can't tell the tops of the blocks from the bottoms. When you look at them, they seem to shift back and forth."

  I stared at the quilt. Aunt Blythe was right. The pattern changed directions, teased my eyes. "It's like the one on my bed," I said. "Only mine's older."

  Aunt Blythe nodded. "Great-aunt Mildred made that quilt almost a hundred years ago."

  The fire hissed and popped and sent a shower of sparks flying up the chimney. I leaned closer to my aunt. "Do you ever wonder about the people who used to live in this house?"

  "What do you mean, Drew?"

  "Well, so many of their belongings are still here—things they touched, things they made. It just seems strange...." While I spoke, I looked around the room, finding faded photographs on the mantel, a pair of china dolls sharing a child-sized rocking chair, shelves of old books. My voice trailed off. I wasn't sure what I was trying to say.

  Aunt Blythe ran one finger over the row of stitches she'd just finished. "Things last longer than people," she said softly.

  That was true, but it wasn't what I meant. "The people, our ancestors—do you think they're still here somehow?"

  "Are we talking about ghosts?"

  "Do you believe in them?"

  Unlike some adults, Aunt Blythe took my question seriously. Leaning her head back, she stared into the fire and thought about her answer. "In an old house, the past is all around you," she said slowly. "You hear sounds sometimes, even smell things."

  "Like roast chicken?"

  She nodded. "Superstitious people might call it the work of ghosts, but I think of them as echoes, little traces of the folks who once called this house home. Nothing to be scared of."

  A gust of wind spattered raindrops against the window. Binky twitched and whimpered in his sleep. Suddenly raising his head, he stared at the doorway as if he saw something in the dark hall.

  At the same moment, the clock whirred and began to chime. Startled by the sound, I jumped.

  "Goodness," Aunt Blythe said, "why are we talking about things like this at bedtime? Don't listen to me, Drew. I'm just being fanciful. I've never seen a ghost in this house. Or anywhere else for that matter."

  Shaking her head at her own silliness, my aunt shifted the quilt and began to outline the next block with small, neat stitches. "Run along, Drew. I'll be up in a few minutes."

  At the foot of the steps, I hesitated. The second floor was dark. Above it and even darker was the attic. While I hesitated, a draft fluttered the curtains at the window on the landing. They moved as silently as ghosts, I thought, pale and filmy, almost transparent.

  Aunt Blythe pressed a switch and flooded the stairs with light. Giving me a little swat on the rear end, she said, "Sleep tight, Drew."

  I used the bathroom as quickly as I could and raced down the hall past one, two, three closed doors. Pulling my quilt over my head, I curled up with a flashlight and read until I heard Aunt Blythe coming up the steps.

  Hours later, something woke me—a faint sound above my head. The attic door opened a crack, and cold air swirled through the room. The house moved and creaked and groaned like an old person stirring in his sleep.

  Almost too scared to breathe, I watched the door. Minutes passed. When I was sure nothing was hiding behind it, I eased out of bed, closed the door, and shoved the rocking chair in front of it.

  Still frightened, I tiptoed into the hall and leaned over the bannister. "Binky," I whispered, "Binky, come here."

  In a few seconds, the dog trotted up the steps, grinning lopsidedly at me.

  "Good boy." Holding him tight, I got into bed and patted the quilt beside me. "Stay," I begged, "stay."

  Binky licked my nose, wagged his tail, turned around a couple of times, and made himself comfortable. Hoping I was safe, I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning, it was still raining, the gray, steady kind that can last for days, maybe even weeks. To give us something to do, Aunt Blythe offered to take me on a tour of the house. Since I'd already seen most of it, the first floor didn't take long—living room, dining room, sewing room, kitchen, pantry, and Great-grandfather's bedroom.

  Tiptoeing past his closed door, Aunt Blythe said, "No sense disturbing Father. He woke early, I gave him breakfast, now he's napping."

  Upstairs, there were five bedrooms—mine, Aunt Blythe's, and three others, all empty. Dust lay thick on the bare floors, and cobwebs filmed the windows. The furniture was gone, sold long ago to an antique dealer in St. Louis.

  When Aunt Blythe saw the rocker in front of the attic door, I said, "The wind kept rattling it. I couldn't sleep, so I..." Too embarrassed to continue, I shoved the rocker back to its corner.

  Aunt Blythe opened the door. "Goodness, I haven't been in the attic for years." Shoving a pile of National Geographies out of her way, she scrambled up the steps.

  At the top, she paused and looked down at me. "Come on, Drew. Junk, trash, treasure—you name it, it's here."

  I hesitated. Even in the daytime the attic was spooky. I didn't like its musty smell or the sound of the wind and rain on the roof. Spiders, mice—who knew what was hiding up there?

  Binky whimpered to get my attention, then backed away and wagged his tail. His big brown eyes seemed to say, "Don't go. You'll be sorry if you do."

  "Silly old dog," Aunt Blythe said. "For some reason, the attic spooks him. Whenever I open the door, he runs in the opposite direction."

  Ashamed to admit I was every bit as scared as Binky, I forced myself to climb the stairs. The attic was cold and damp, as silent as an undisturbed tomb and just as unwelcoming. Furniture draped in sheets rose up like ghosts. A glimpse of my reflection in a huge gilt mirror startled me. A headless dressmaker's dummy lurked in the shadows. It was hard to move without stumbling over something—boxes, stacks of books and records, moldy heaps of magazines and newspapers, broken appliances, ice skates, shoes, toys.

  "Be careful," Aunt Blythe said. "The floor's riddled with dry rot."

  Forgetting her own warning, she plunged ahead, opening trunks and boxes, poking and pawing through things, reminiscing. She'd worn this dress to her first dance, she'd knitted that scarf. The sled in the corner had belonged to her brother, the bicycle beside it was hers. There was her doll-house. Here was her high-school diploma.

  Cobwebs stuck to my face, spiders scurried across my feet. In the walls, something rustled. The wind made a moaning sound and I shivered. "It's cold up here."

  Aunt Blythe was too busy rummaging through the contents of an old trunk to listen to me. "I've been looking for these." She held up a handful of old photographs. "I can't imagine what they're doing here. They belong in the family album."

  Curious in spite of myself, I watched my aunt fan the pictures out like a pack of playing cards. Studying the old-fashioned, fading faces, I picked one to ask about. "Who is she?"

  Aunt Blythe stared at the picture. Head tilted to one side, a girl smiled into the camera lens. She wore a lace-trimmed dress and her dark hair was piled loosely on top of her head. Her eyes sparkled as if the photographer had said something funny.

  "That's Hannah," Aunt Blythe said, "my first cousin once removed."

  Pleased to have such a beautiful relative, I watched my aunt touch the girl's face lovingly. "I adored her when I was a child, Drew, but she and Father never got along. Every time they saw each other, they quarreled about something. Politics usually."

  "Is she still alive?"

  Aunt Blythe thought a moment. "I really don't know," she said slowly. "Goodness, Hannah would be well over ninety by now, but she had ten times the energy of the average person. It's hard to imagine her slowing down long enough to die."

  Bending her head over the photograph, she smiled at Hannah. "I wouldn't be a bit
surprised to hear she's still alive and just as feisty as ever."

  Shuffling the pictures, Aunt Blythe found another one of Hannah sitting in a porch swing beside a younger boy. A man and woman stood behind them. All four looked solemn.

  "Theo," Aunt Blythe said. "According to Father, he was a no-good rascal, but just look at that angelic little face. He couldn't have been all bad."

  "I guess Great-grandfather didn't like him either."

  "No, indeed." Aunt Blythe laughed. "If anything, Father disliked Theo even more than Hannah. The feeling was mutual, I'm afraid. I haven't seen either one of them since their mother died. Lord, that was more than fifty years ago."

  I looked closely at the swing in the picture. "Was this taken on your porch?"

  Aunt Blythe nodded. "Hannah used to live here. Father bought the house after her mother died." She pointed to the sweet-faced woman and the stern man beside her. "Great-aunt Mildred and Great-uncle Henry."

  I leaned against my aunt's shoulder. "Let me guess," I said. "Great-grandfather didn't like them either."

  "What a perceptive boy you are." Aunt Blythe sighed. "Poor Father. Sometimes I think he hates the whole world, including himself."

  We looked at the rest of the pictures. Hannah and Theo grew older, and so did their parents. The last one had been taken on Hannah's wedding day.

  Aunt Blythe tapped the groom's face. "John Larkin," she said. "If I'd met a man like him, I might have gotten married myself."

  Laughing at her foolishness, she stacked the photographs in a neat pile. "I have half a mind to put these back in the album where they belong," she said. "Father must have taken them out and stashed them up here. He doesn't like to be reminded this was once his uncle's house."

  While Aunt Blythe was talking, I noticed a photograph lying on the floor. I bent to pick it up and found I was staring at a faded likeness of my own face—my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my hair, even my glum expression. Only the boy's clothes were different. He wore a white shirt with a stiff collar, a tie, knee-length trousers, dark stockings, and ankle-high lace-up shoes, brand new from the stiff, shiny look of them. With his hands in his pockets, my twin stared at me across the years that separated us. My double, my other self. Looking at him gave me goose bumps.