The Boys Return

  “No,” said Danny. “Maybe nobody heard the tapping.”

  “Great! So we —” Jake suddenly froze. “L-l-look!” he said.

  The boys turned around. There on the hill, on the Malloys' side of the bridge, stood the cougar, bathed in a spot of moonlight. It was standing very, very still. Only its tail was twitching.

  Eight

  A Small Suspicion

  “Caroline, just shut up and listen!” Eddie whispered. “Is it coming from inside the wall or not?”

  “It—it sounds like it's coming from the bathroom!” Caroline said shakily.

  “Maybe Annabelle likes to tap out a song while she's on the pot,” Beth suggested.

  “Turn on the light!” Caroline begged.

  “No!” Eddie was firm. “If Tony was right, and the ghost just comes around once a year, this is our only chance to find out what it's all about.”

  Tap…tap… tappity.

  Slowly Eddie got out of bed. One foot touched the floor, then the other. Nothing grabbed her feet.

  “Why don't you try talking to Annabelle, Caroline?” Beth suggested. “If she's coming for you, you'd better set her straight.”

  Caroline inched her way out from under the covers. Beth was right. If she could talk Annabelle out of coming back every March twenty-second—if she could talk to a ghost at all—she would be famous even before she became a great actress. She would be known far and wide as Caroline Lenore Malloy, the girl who talked to a ghost. Well, she'd be known around school, anyway.

  Tappity… tappity… tap, tap… tappity.

  Caroline threw off the covers suddenly and sat up.

  “Annabelle?” she said, her voice shaking. “The g-girl you're looking for isn't here. I'm C-Caroline, from Ohio, and I didn't have anything to do with your drowning in the river. Your sister really, really tried to save you, but she just couldn't reach you in time. In fact, I hate to tell you this, Annabelle, but the truth is …well, you're dead, and you really shouldn't be walking around like this.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Eddie, Beth, and Caroline grabbed each other in the dark. Now the tapping wasn't just in the wall any longer. It was on the bedroom door!

  “A-A-Annabelle?” whispered Beth.

  Creeeaak!

  The door swung open and there stood Mr. Malloy in his robe, holding a flashlight.

  “Caroline, are you having a nightmare, or just talking to yourself?” he asked.

  “I was just … just rehearsing for a play,” Caroline said. “I mean…a play I might possibly be in sometime in the distant future….”

  “Well, it's getting close to midnight, and time you girls were asleep, vacation or no vacation,” their father said. “If you're going to chatter all night, perhaps you should sleep downstairs.”

  “We're going to sleep right now,” Beth said, knowing she wouldn't sleep on the floor downstairs for anything in the world.

  “What woke you up, Dad?” Eddie asked. “We weren't talking that loud.”

  “Actually, I thought I heard a sort of knocking sound,” Mr. Malloy said.

  “You did?” Beth asked. “You mean you heard it too?”

  “Yes. It sounded as though it was coming from the bathroom. Could just be air in the pipes or something. Well, you girls pack it in now. Cut the chatter and get some shut-eye, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Eddie.

  The door closed again, and the girls could hear their father's footsteps going back down the hall.

  “He heard it too!” said Beth. “Whatever it was, he heard it, so we didn't just imagine things.”

  “But it's stopped. It must have heard Dad's voice and gone away,” said Caroline.

  “And it won't come back for a whole year,” said Beth, looking at her watch in the dark. “It's now March twenty-third.”

  “Oh, I wish we could have talked to her!” Caroline said. “How do we know she won't be back? Maybe she didn't come back before because she found a boy in her room. Maybe because it's me, she'll be here again tomorrow night.”

  “We'll see. I've got some thinking to do,” said Eddie.

  When Caroline woke up the next morning, there was only one sister in bed with her. Beth, snoring softly, was sprawled on her stomach, one leg over Caroline, but the other side of the bed was empty. Eddie was gone.

  Caroline blinked and looked at the clock. Two minutes after ten! She'd slept away half the morning!

  She carefully disentangled herself from Beth and padded downstairs in her pajamas and slippers. Mrs. Malloy was making pancakes.

  “I guess I'm making breakfast this morning in shifts,” she said. “First your father, then Eddie, now you….I suppose Beth's still sleeping?”

  “Yes. Where's Eddie?” Caroline asked.

  “She was up and out a half hour ago. Said something about going to the library. What are you girls going to do today? It's raining again, so I'm afraid you're going to be stuck inside. I have a meeting of the Faculty Wives' Club this morning.”

  “I don't know yet,” Caroline told her. “Did Eddie say when she'd be back?”

  “No. Do you want maple or raspberry syrup, Caroline?”

  “Raspberry,” said Caroline, and she sat with her head in her hands, trying to figure things out.

  Eddie came back around ten-thirty. By that time Beth was up, eating the last of the pancakes. Eddie motioned for her and Caroline to follow and took them both upstairs. When they were in Eddie's room, she closed the door and sat on the edge of her bed.

  “It's a fake,” she said.

  “Annabelle?” asked Beth.

  Eddie nodded. “The whole kit and caboodle. Fake! Fake! Fake!”

  “How do you know? What about the page from the diary and the tapping?”

  “I don't know how Tony got that page, but it's a fraud. And I don't know what made the tapping, but listen to this: The date of the diary entry was March twenty-third. Right? In 1867? And it said that Annabelle had drowned the day before, on March twenty-second. That her sister ran along the bank as far as the road bridge, okay? And then the sister heard Annabelle's ghost singing ‘I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.' Right?”

  “Right,” said Beth.

  “Fact number one: The song ‘I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen' wasn't written until 1876. I looked it up at the library.”

  Caroline and Beth sat as still as stones, listening.

  “Fact number two: There was no road bridge here in 1867.”

  Caroline's mouth dropped open, and Beth's eyes widened.

  “Fact number three,” continued Eddie. “This house wasn't here in 1867. Didn't Dad tell us it was ninety years old? Whoever wrote that page from a diary— Tony, I suspect, or maybe all the Benson boys—didn't have their facts straight.”

  Beth wanted to call the boys immediately and call their bluff, but Caroline was clearly disappointed. She had so wanted to believe in a ghost. What a wonderful report this would have made for school! “Then why did Tony go to all that work to make us believe this stuff?” she asked.

  “To see if we'd fall for it! Just to have something to tease us about if we did,” Eddie said.

  “Well, at least we didn't give them the satisfaction of getting hysterical and running out of the house screaming last night,” Beth said. “Oooh, I wish we could get back at them somehow.”

  “We will,” said Eddie.

  “How?” asked Caroline.

  “Well, the next time we see the guys, we've got to act quiet and thoughtful and scared. Got it?”

  “Got it,” said Beth.

  “But we were scared, and we did hear tapping!” said Caroline.

  “I'm coming to that,” said Eddie. “They found a way to get in the house last night. It's their house, remember, and they know it better than we do. But we're going to tell them that the ghost came back, all right, because around eleven o'clock, after we had all gone to bed, we heard her calling. We'll tell the guys we were all spending the night in your room, Caroline, waiting for the ghost to
show up. We heard a tapping, and saw a pale blue light coming through the wall, and heard a soft, wavery voice saying, ‘Where is he? Where is he?' And when we called out, ‘Who?' the ghost dropped this at our feet and disappeared.” Eddie reached into her pocket and pulled out a horseshoe key chain with several keys attached.

  “Where did you get that?” asked Caroline.

  “Whose is it?” asked Beth.

  “Tony's, I think,” said Eddie, with satisfaction. “Do you remember when we were all down in the basement playing table tennis? Tony was too warm and took off his jacket, and then he opened the window? Well, when he closed it again, he didn't lock it, just so he could get back inside. I went down this morning and checked, and found this on the floor below the window.”

  “Aha!” said Beth.

  “Soooo,” Eddie continued, “we're going to make the boys think we're really scared. Because the ghost came back and said she was looking for the owner of a key chain. And that's the one she's really after. We'll pretend we don't know what she's talking about.” Eddie began to grin, then Beth, then Caroline.

  “Those poor dumb boys,” said Beth, shaking her head. “They're up against the very best! Us! ”

  Nine

  Trouble

  The boys stood breathlessly at their end of the footbridge, staring at the spot on the hill where the cougar had been.

  “The sheriff said that if anyone sees the cougar, he's to call his office right away,” said Wally.

  “Are you nuts?” said Jake. “He'll want to know exactly where and when we saw it. What do we say? That we were outside the Malloys' basement window between eleven and twelve at night?”

  “Maybe we should just tell Dad,” Wally said nervously.

  Now both Jake and Josh turned on him.

  “That's even worse!” said Josh.

  “We were not only at the Malloys' basement window late at night, but we crawled out our bedroom window to get there!” Jake said.

  There seemed to be nothing left to do but go home and crawl back up the tree.

  “What happened after you started tapping on the water pipes?” asked Danny as they made their way up the path, looking over their shoulders from time to time. “Did you hear any footsteps above you?”

  “Not really,” said Tony. “Did you see any lights come on?”

  “No,” said the others.

  “Well, even if nobody heard the tapping, at least they didn't catch us,” said Steve disappointedly. “You closed the basement window again, didn't you, Tony?”

  “Sure.”

  “But you didn't lock it,” said Wally.

  “Of course not. How could I?”

  “Now, remember,” said Steve. “We're not going to say one word to the girls about this. Don't even mention March twenty-second. If they did hear something and suspect us, that'll really throw them. They'll be waiting to see if we say anything, which would prove us guilty for sure.”

  “Right!” said Jake. “Don't mention it to Peter or Doug, either. They'll spill the beans the first time they open their mouths.”

  Trying to get up the tree proved to be a lot more difficult than coming down.

  “Why don't we boost Wally up? He can unlock our bedroom door, sneak downstairs, and open the door for the rest of us,” Jake suggested. “He's the lightest.”

  Arrrggghhh! thought Wally. This always happened! No matter what wild scheme Jake or Josh thought up, it was always Wally who got suckered into doing the dirty work.

  “If this is so simple, how come you didn't all go out the door to begin with?” Wally asked.

  “Because they didn't want us to hear them, that's why. They didn't want us along,” said Bill.

  “Right!” said Danny. “They can just climb up the stupid tree and open the door themselves!”

  On the other hand, Wally thought, it was cold out here, and there was a cougar lurking about, and Wally was lighter than either Bill or Danny, and there was a half-eaten bowl of popcorn waiting back in Wally's room. If someone didn't crawl in the window and open the twins' door from the inside, his brothers would be out here all night.

  “Oh, I'll go,” he said. “Give me a boost.”

  Jake and Josh linked arms to form a step, and Wally climbed on top, grabbed the lowest limb of the maple, and shinnied his way to the third branch just outside the twins' window. He felt for the window ledge and then for the open window.

  “Hey!” he said. “The window's closed!”

  “You jerks!” Jake called up. “You guys must have closed it behind you when you followed us.”

  “We didn't come through your room!” cried Danny. “Your door was locked, remember? We came down the stairs!”

  “Then double duh!” said Steve. “This is a no-brainer. If you came out the front door, then that's the way we'll go back in.”

  Wally climbed back down the tree, and they walked around to the front of the house.

  “Now, remember,” said Jake. “When we get inside, the second stair from the bottom really squeaks. You have to step over it.”

  “If Mom gets up, we'll just say we got hungry and went down to get some crackers or something,” said Josh.

  The boys went softly onto the porch, and Wally reached for the door handle.

  “Wait a minute!” said Jake. “If the window was closed, that means somebody got in our room somehow and closed it after we left!”

  “But we locked our door!” said Josh.

  “Uh-oh,” said Tony.

  “Maybe the window slammed down all by itself,” said Steve, hugging himself with his arms. “Come on. I'm cold.”

  Wally tried the door. “It's locked!” he said, turning around.

  “You jerks!” Steve said, facing the younger boys. “You must have locked it behind you!”

  “We did not!” Wally insisted. “I made sure it wasn't latched. I'll bet Dad got up and locked it.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Tony. “I've got an old skeleton key. Maybe that will open it.” He put his hand in his jacket pocket, and then his jaw dropped. “It's gone!” he said. “My horseshoe key chain is gone!”

  “What do you mean, gone?” asked Steve.

  “Gone, as in G-O-N-E,” Tony said. “It had my bike-lock key on it too, and the key to our house down in Georgia.”

  “We are in deep, deep doo-doo,” said Bill.

  Suddenly the porch light came on, the front door opened, and there stood Mr. Hatford in his striped pajamas.

  “Well, well, well! How nice to see you!” he said. “Won't you come in? May I offer you something to eat?”

  One by one, the seven boys filed into the house, the Bensons with their eyes on the floor, the Hatfords wishing they were anywhere but there.

  “H-how did you know we were gone?” Josh asked.

  “How did I know you were gone? Well, first of all there was a crash from your room, and when I went to investigate, the door was locked. Nobody came when I knocked. Second, after I got the screwdriver from the basement and got inside, I found your window wide open. The wind had blown a poster down off the wall, and when it fell, it knocked over your soda-can pyramid. It doesn't take much of a brain to figure out just how you guys got out. Though what you did after you got out is something you'll have to tell me!”

  Wally actually felt relieved. Now that their father knew they'd been outside, there was no need to keep the cougar secret.

  “We just wanted to go out and horse around,” said Josh. “We didn't want to wake anyone.”

  “Horse around…at the Malloys' house, by chance?” asked his dad.

  “Well, sort of,” said Josh. “I mean, we walked across their yard.”

  “And did the Malloy girls sort of come outside and horse around with you?”

  Wally was surprised to see the older boys blush.

  “Of course not!” said Jake. “They didn't even know we were out there.”

  Wally saw his chance to change the subject. “But, Dad, we saw the cougar again! It came right over to us!?
??

  “Yeah!” said Jake. “It nuzzled my face. It bumped right into me!”

  “What?” cried Mr. Hatford.

  “It did!” said Jake, glad that the conversation had taken a new direction. “I thought the other guys were fooling around, bumping into me, and when I looked, it was the cougar.” His voice was still shaking. “It was like… like, sniffing me out or something, and when I yelled, it bolted and ran.”

  “Boys!” said Mr. Hatford. “You shouldn't have been out there! I'm going to call the sheriff in the morning. He figures it might have been somebody's pet that got away. And if that person didn't have a permit to keep a wild animal, he's not about to report it and get in trouble. That may be why it's hanging around so close to town. Either that or it's getting mighty hungry. You boys get to bed, and we'll have to go over the house rules tomorrow. No more sneaking out at night, or I'm going to ground you for the whole week. Understood?”

  Wally and Jake and Josh nodded.

  “And you Bensons too?” Mr. Hatford said.

  The Bensons nodded.

  “Good,” said Mr. Hatford.

  Gratefully the seven boys went upstairs. In the twins' bedroom, there were empty Coke and Sprite and Mountain Dew cans scattered all over the floor.

  “Well, at least we didn't get in big trouble,” said Josh. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Yeah? I'm in big trouble!” said Tony. “I lost my key chain, and I don't know where to look for it.”

  Ten

  A Ghostly Gathering

  As soon as Mrs. Malloy left for the meeting of the faculty wives, Eddie phoned the Hatfords. The girls had spent an hour up in Beth's room that morning rehearsing just what they were going to say and felt they were as ready as they'd ever be.

  There were three rings at the other end before someone answered, and Eddie held the phone away from her ear so that Beth could hear too.

  “Hello?” It was Josh's voice.

  “Hi, Josh. It's me, Eddie.”

  Caroline, who was listening in on the phone upstairs, had never heard Eddie talk like that. Her voice was low and soft and scared-sounding, and her words wavered a little at the end.