Baby-Sitters' Haunted House

  “Couldn’t be,” Elton said. “The door to the stairway leading up there is locked. I’ve heard tell there were strange goings-on up there some years ago. That’s probably when it was closed off.”

  “What kind of goings-on?” Claud asked.

  Margaret Cooper rapped the kitchen counter with a wooden spoon and shook her head no. I had a feeling she didn’t want her husband to tell us what they knew about the top floor.

  “It’s nothing for your young ears to hear,” he said. “Besides, that was then and this is now.”

  Margaret put her right arm out straight in front of herself and moved it in a circle.

  “My wife thinks maybe it was the lighthouse light reflecting off the windows that you saw,” Elton explained.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”

  * * *

  After we put our charges to sleep, the Reese contingent of the BSC met in Mary Anne’s room. Andrew was already asleep in mine. My friends and I were seriously frightened.

  Claud went to the window and looked out over the sea. “There’s no way the beam from the lighthouse could have reflected on that window,” she told us. “We were looking at the back of the house. It’s the front of the house that faces the ocean and the lighthouse.”

  “Maybe Lionel did it,” Mary Anne said. “He was inside. Maybe he was checking out the fourth floor. It is his house.”

  It sounded as if Mary Anne was hoping with all her heart that Lionel was responsible for the light on the top floor. But I had to remind her, “Elton said the door to the staircase is locked and no one has a key.”

  “I know you guys don’t want to admit this,” Dawn said, “but the house could be haunted by ghosts. A ghost in the hall last night. And one on the fourth floor tonight.”

  “Please, Dawn, don’t say that,” Mary Anne said. “There has to be an explanation.”

  “We did see that wax on the rug,” Claud said.

  “Who says a ghost can’t use real candles?” Dawn asked.

  Nobody had an answer for that. And since we weren’t making any progress, we decided to head for our rooms. Dawn, Claudia, and I had already stood up. Then we heard it again. “Ohh-hh. Ohh-hh.” This time it was a high-pitched and eerie voice. I leaned over and turned off Mary Anne’s bedside lamp. We all stared at the slit under the door. Candlelight flickered there. My heart pounded. Maybe Dawn was right, and this house was haunted.

  Then I had a hunch. There was no time to discuss it with the others. I drew in a deep breath, and tiptoed to the door. I almost turned back when I heard that “ohh-hh, ohh-hh,” again. But even though my heart was pounding practically out of my chest by then, I reached over, grabbed the knob and threw the door open.

  My terrified friends gasped. I screeched. But a minute later, we were laughing. Because in the doorway stood a very startled “ghost” — Lionel.

  “Oops,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to do that. It wasn’t in the script.”

  We were so relieved to have solved the mystery of the hallway ghost that we couldn’t stop laughing. Even Lionel loosened up and laughed with us. By then we were standing in the hall.

  “Very, very funny,” Dawn said. “And the lights on the fourth floor tonight, Lionel. That was really good. You deserve the special effects Academy Award.”

  “What lights on the fourth floor?” Lionel asked.

  “Lionel, we know you were up there turning the lights on and off,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t go up there alone,” he protested. “I’d be too afraid. Besides, the door’s locked.”

  I didn’t believe him. After all, he was an actor. Dawn didn’t believe him either. “Lionel,” she said, “if you don’t confess right now, I’ll never, ever tell you another thing about Hollywood, not even the tiniest bit of gossip.”

  “That’s not fair,” Lionel said. “You guys — gals — are all crazy.”

  Just then I heard footsteps. Coming from upstairs. The others must have heard them, too, because everybody was looking up. And I had a feeling they were all thinking what I was thinking — upstairs is the fourth floor. The floor nobody can reach because the door is locked.

  As good an actor as Lionel was, he couldn’t have pretended the fear that drained the color from his face. Claud, Mary Anne, and I huddled close to one another. They looked as pale as Lionel. I was feeling a little faint and weak in the knees myself.

  “Wha-at’s tha-at?” Mary Anne managed to stutter.

  I put my fears aside. “That’s just Spooky thumping around,” I said. I pretended a loud yawn and talked loudly and cheerfully to cover up any more sounds from above. “So,” I said, “it’s time to get to our rooms. It was fun fooling around with you about all this ghost stuff, Lionel.” I gave him a little push in the direction of his room. “Let’s go, everyone. Nighty-night.”

  I shot Claud a meaningful glance that said, Help me here. Good old Claud caught right on. “We had you really going there, didn’t we, Lionel?” she said, attempting a laugh.

  Lionel looked a little confused. “Yeah,” he said. “You win. I’ll never play a trick on you again.” He walked off toward his room, mumbling something about “hysterical females.”

  As soon as he was gone we heard the footsteps again. We ran into Mary Anne’s room and closed the door.

  “You guys,” I said, “no matter how frightened we are, we have to protect the kids, even Lionel, from what’s going on in the mansion.”

  “But Kristy,” Dawn protested, “maybe he’s the one who’s doing all this stuff. He did try to scare us by pretending to be a ghost.”

  “But how could he make those noises upstairs?” Claud asked. “He was with us.”

  “Maybe he has an accomplice,” Dawn said.

  We talked about that for awhile. But in the end we agreed that Lionel probably wasn’t responsible for the lights on the fourth floor. Then, I wondered, who — or what — was?

  “Mary Anne,” I said, “do you want to sleep in my room tonight?”

  “Yes,” she said in a quavering voice. “Yes I do.” Dawn and Claud said they were going to double up, too.

  Mary Anne fell asleep with a pillow over her head. Andrew was sound asleep in his little bed. But I lay wide-awake for hours, waiting for more ghostly sounds and thinking about all the scary things that had happened since we’d arrived at the Randolph mansion. I don’t know what was more frightening, remembering what had already happened, or worrying about what would happen next.

  “Come on, Claud. Wake up. We need to do some major detective work today, and this might be the only chance we have to talk privately.”

  Dawn was leaning over me from the side of her bed. I looked up at her from the nest of blankets I’d made for myself on the floor. “Ghosts,” I said sleepily. “I dreamed about ghosts.”

  “That wasn’t a dream,” Dawn said. “We heard one again last night. Remember?”

  It all came back in a rush. The footsteps above our heads. The blood-curdling scream in the night. Dawn was right. We did have some major detective work to do. I just hoped I was brave enough to do it.

  By the time Jill came knocking on our door to find out what Dawn was going to wear, we had a plan for the day that included sleuthing.

  “I’m going to wear a sundress and sandals,” Dawn told Jill. Then she added, “Claud and I thought you girls might like to go to the library today. We’ll help you sign up for cards and check out some books.”

  “And I’m going to do some research while we’re there,” I added, “for a composition I have to write.”

  Now Karen and Martha were in Dawn’s bedroom, too. “What are you going to do research on?” Karen asked.

  “I’m going to see if I can find out about the history of the Randolph estate,” I said. “So let’s all get dressed, eat breakfast, and head to town.”

  I decided to wear my floral-print mini-sundress (the pink and red flower pattern is big and sort of abstract). To that I added a pink baseball cap, dangling yellow glass earrings,
and my red high-top sneakers.

  After breakfast Dawn and I were ready to take the girls to the library. As we walked around the side of the mansion toward the driveway Karen grabbed my hand and tugged on it. “Claudia,” she said. “That guy is here again.”

  I looked around and, sure enough, there was Georgio running across the lawn toward us. There was no way to avoid him.

  “Hi,” he said when he reached us. “How’s it going?”

  “Okay,” Dawn answered.

  Just as he had done the day before, Georgio checked out my clothes. When you dress the way I do you have to expect people to notice. But when Georgio looked at me I felt uncomfortable. Did he think I was too wild and colorful?

  “We are going to the library,” Karen told him. “To check out some books for us. And Claudia is going to —”

  “— choose some books, too,” I said, completing Karen’s sentence. Suddenly, I didn’t want Karen to tell Georgio that I was going to research the Randolph mansion. I was suspicious of him, and when you’re suspicious of someone, you’re careful about what you tell him. (I learned that from all the Nancy Drew mysteries I’ve read.) To keep the conversation off me, I asked Georgio, “How’s it going?”

  “Great,” Georgio said. “Except I need some advice. I was hoping you could help me.”

  I didn’t even know the guy and he wanted my advice!? Advice about what? School? Family problems? Girls? How to menace a houseful of kids?

  “Advice about what?” Dawn asked.

  “I’ve noticed that Claudia has terrific taste in clothes,” he said. “And puts colors together in a great way.” He was looking me right in the eye. “I’m putting in some new rosebushes and I can’t decide which colors to plant where. I wondered if you could help me, Claudia.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I replied. “I guess.”

  “I’ll go ahead with the kids,” Dawn said. “We’ll meet you at the library.” She flashed me one of those we’ll-leave-you-two-alone grins.

  When they’d gone, Georgio told me, “The rose garden’s on the other side of the house.”

  Part of me wanted to call out to Dawn, “Wait up. I’m coming with you guys.” But another part of me was happy to follow Georgio. Well, I thought, this is a day devoted to detection and since Georgio is sort of a suspect, I’d better follow him. Besides, I can never resist an artistic challenge.

  Twenty-five rosebushes were waiting to be planted. Five each of five shades of red and pink. Georgio told me that Mr. Randolph had ordered them from a nursery before he died. “He loved roses,” Georgio said. “This will be like a memorial garden for him.”

  “That’s really nice,” I replied. I studied the rosebushes for a few minutes, then I asked, “Can we take one rose petal from each bush?”

  “Whatever helps,” he answered.

  When we’d collected the twenty-five rose petals, I sat on a stone bench in the middle of the garden and moved the petals around until I was happy with the arrangement. While I worked with the colors, Georgio turned over soil.

  After about ten minutes I called to him. We looked at the rows of petals I’d arranged on the bench. “This is the layout I would use,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s perfect,” he replied. “But could you wait until I have the bushes placed around the garden before you go? That way I’ll be sure to follow your plan exactly.”

  I walked around the paths of the garden and helped him place the bushes where he’d later plant them. “How are you going to find an outlet for your artistic talent around here?” he asked.

  “I’m always doing art projects with the kids I sit for,” I told him. I was thinking of the float we were planning for the Founders’ Day parade, but decided not to mention it to Georgio.

  “You should make a float with the kids for the Founders’ Day parade,” he said. Could he read my mind?

  “Maybe I will,” I told him. “Being in a town parade would be a nice way to end our vacation here.”

  “I thought you were going to be here all summer,” he said. He sounded disappointed. But then he added, with that hard to read grin of his, “Well, Claudia, let’s make the most of the time you have.”

  What did he mean by that?

  “I could help you make that float,” he said. “I can build props and you can use my pickup truck.”

  His pickup truck? I wondered how old you had to be to get a driver’s license in Maine. Was he sixteen plus or eighteen plus? I didn’t tell Georgio that if we borrowed his pickup truck for the float we’d have to borrow him to drive it, too.

  “Um, I better get going,” I said. “Baby-sitting, you know.”

  “First let me show you a picture of the float some friends and I made last year,” he said. “It’s in the shed. Come on. It’ll only take a minute.”

  “All the way to the pond?” I said. “It’ll take a lot more than a minute.”

  “You’re thinking of the gardener’s cottage,” he said. “Where my grandparents used to live. The shed’s just around by the garage. That’s where I keep my tools.”

  As we walked to the shed, Georgio told me he used to stay in the gardener’s cottage by the pond with his grandparents during the summer. “Since no one else is using it,” he said, “I still sleep there sometimes.”

  The shed was small and dark. All my fears about Georgio came flooding back. I wished I hadn’t followed him there. I bumped into a big lumpy something and let out a shriek of terror. Was it a dead body?

  “What happened?” Georgio asked.

  In the half light I made out that the “corpse” was a big bag of sand or something.

  “I just bumped into this — stuff,” I told Georgio.

  “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling at me or smirking when he said that. Finally he pulled a cord that switched on an overhead lightbulb. We were facing a wall of neatly arranged tools. There were saws, knives, hammers, and weapon-like instruments. Georgio reached toward the ax. I was about to make a run for it when his hand landed on a photo that was pinned between the ax and a hammer. He took the photo down and showed it to me. I studied it. Georgio and six other kids were posed in the back of his pickup truck. Their theme was the sixties, so they were dressed like hippies. The pickup truck was painted in psychedelic colors.

  “Does your truck still look like that?” I asked.

  He laughed. “We used washable paint. Otherwise, I would have been the laughingstock on campus this year.”

  I practically choked on the next question. “Are you in college?”

  “University of Maine,” he said. “Some of these guys on the float were a year ahead of me in high school. And a couple were in tenth grade. I don’t make a big deal about age. Some of my friends are a couple of years older than me. Some are a couple of years younger. Like you. You’re sixteen, am I right?”

  I just nodded. Why didn’t I tell him right then that I was thirteen? Maybe I was afraid he’d be mad at me for not having told him sooner. Or maybe I was just keeping to the detective’s rule: Don’t give information to the suspect without a good reason. Or maybe I thought he’d think twice about talking to me so much if he knew how young I was. And the truth was that I wasn’t so spooked by him anymore. I was kind of enjoying becoming friends with Georgio Trono.

  “Anyway,” he said. “That was our float.”

  “It’s great,” I said. Something else in the shed caught my eye. A candle. An orange candle. A wave of fear coursed through my body. I stepped back from Georgio. Suddenly I wasn’t feeling so good about being with him.

  “I really have to go,” I said. “ ‘Bye.”

  I burst through the doorway and into the daylight. Then I ran all the way down the long driveway. Lionel had been our “ghost” last night, I knew. Had Georgio been the “ghost” in the hallway the night before that? Just how involved was he?

  When I reached the Reese public library my heart was still pounding. I found Dawn in the ch
ildren’s room. She was simultaneously helping Jill pick out a book and attempting to stop Karen from introducing Martha to every kid there. This wasn’t the time for me to report to Dawn about the incriminating evidence I had found in the gardener’s shed.

  I edged Karen away from a bunch of five-year-olds and their day camp counselor. Somehow I convinced her that we should go to the pillow corner for some quiet reading time. As we passed Dawn and Jill, Dawn handed me a book. “It’s a history of Reese,” she said. “The librarian found it for us.”

  I took the book to the pillow corner and plopped down with Karen and Martha. “A Historical Tour of Reese,” the title read, “by Millicent Ellsworth.” I turned to the index in the back of the book and found two references to the Randolph mansion: Randolph, Mary Sears, p. 108, and Randolph, Reginald, p. 69.

  On page 69 I read that Reginald Randolph had been a wealthy landholder and fisherman. He had owned a big fleet of fishing boats, and dozens of fishermen had worked for him. He often captained one of the boats himself. On one of those fishing trips, in 1859, Reginald Randolph and a crew of thirteen had been lost at sea.

  Turning to page 108 I learned that Reginald’s wife, Mary, mourned her husband for the remaining twenty years of her life. From ten o’clock until eleven o’clock every night, Mary, dressed in white, stood on the widow’s walk of the mansion and stared out at the sea. The townspeople of that time reported seeing her standing there even in the foulest weather. During a fierce storm in 1879, she was hurled to her death by the winds.

  I wrote down names and dates in my notebook. Mary Sears Randolph was an obvious candidate for our fourth-floor ghost. I couldn’t wait to tell the others.

  When we returned to the mansion everyone was gathering on the veranda for lunch. The Coopers carried out platters of sandwiches, salad, cookies, and fruit. Lisa suggested that the BSC members might enjoy a break from the kids during lunch. “Thanks,” Kristy said.

  “That’s a great idea,” I added.

  So the Reese contingent of the BSC took our lunches to a picnic table under a big oak tree. (I was relieved to see that Mrs. Menders was making certain that Jill didn’t trail after us.)