The Ghost's Grave

  “What made her think the tree house was haunted?”

  “Lawsy, child, Florence was full of fanciful ideas. She’d take a notion into her head, and there was no changing her mind, whether it made sense or not.”

  Kind of like deciding your dead sister came back as a peacock, I thought. Gramma always said people believe what they want to be true, regardless of the facts. Aunt Ethel’s peacock seemed to prove Gramma’s theory.

  This morning Aunt Ethel didn’t look wild-eyed, as she had when she chased the bat. She looked weary, and I realized my presence for two months was probably as difficult for her as it was for me. I wondered how early she had gotten up to cook spaghetti sauce.

  When I offered to wash the breakfast dishes, Aunt Ethel gratefully accepted. “I overdid it last night,” she said. “I’m not used to climbing ladders or scrubbing the floor on my knees. Usually I only need to sweep. My muscles ache today.”

  I was glad to hear last night’s bat episode had not been business as usual.

  Aunt Ethel didn’t have a dishwasher—no surprise—so I filled the sink with warm sudsy water and began swishing our plates around while my thoughts drifted back home. With the two-hour time difference, the summer league team was probably practicing right then. I wondered who was playing right field.

  Minneapolis seemed far, far away, not only in miles but also in lifestyle. Mall of America sells all the latest fashions and electronic equipment, none of which seemed necessary here. When I got off the bus in Carbon City, it was as if I’d stepped back in time fifty years.

  When I finished the dishes, I wrote another letter.

  June 16

  Dear Mom and Steven,

  I woke up early today because I heard screaming from the front porch. I thought for sure Aunt Ethel was being murdered, but it turned out to be a peacock. If you’ve never heard the noise a peacock makes, consider yourself lucky. I won’t need an alarm clock this summer; the peacock wakes half the county.

  Now here’s the eerie part: Aunt Ethel thinks the peacock is Aunt Florence! She truly believes her dead sister has come back as a peacock. She calls the bird Florence and talks to it as if it knew all the family history. It gives me the creeps.

  Your anxious son,

  Josh

  As I reread my two letters, I hoped my language-arts teacher next fall would ask us to write a paper about “What I Did On My Summer Vacation.” Between the dead bat and the screaming peacock, I’d get an A for sure, even if I did nothing else for the rest of the summer.

  As it turned out, what I did next was even more weird than watching a bat get shot indoors or meeting a peacock who’s supposed to be my dead great-aunt, and those were hard acts to follow.

  I soon found out Florence had been right about the tree house being haunted. That’s when my summer really got exciting—and dangerous.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Which direction is the tree house?” I asked when I had finished writing my second letter.

  Aunt Ethel pointed. “There used to be a path,” she said, “but it’s overgrown now. Wear long pants in the woods; the berry vines grab your legs. There’s a compass hanging on the back porch. Take it along. It’s easy to get turned around in the trees until you learn your way.”

  I changed into jeans, then went out the kitchen door. A small compass on a shoelace dangled from a nail. I put the looped shoelace over my head, wondering who had worn it last and how long ago.

  Mom had worried about me being in the woods alone this summer and had suggested buying me a cell phone. Steven had said, “It would be a waste of money; there’s no cell service out there.”

  At the time, I’d thought it was an excuse not to get me a phone, but as I looked around at the unspoiled forest, I knew he was right. There was no point building a cellular tower in a place where hardly anyone lived. Add cellular phone service to the long list of things Carbon City doesn’t have.

  I headed into the grove of trees behind Aunt Ethel’s house. Steven had told me Aunt Ethel owned about fifty acres, which sounded like a lot. Maybe I’d see deer or squirrels. I planned to search for the old tree house. If I found it, I intended to carry some of my books out there. A tree house would be the perfect place to read—far from Aunt Florence’s screams.

  I glanced back at the house. It had seemed so gloomy last night, but now the sunshine gave it a cheerful look, despite its peeling paint. Bright yellow daisies bloomed along the foundation, and white petals drifted down from a large flowering tree near the back door.

  As the woods closed behind me, I noted I was headed east. No matter how peaceful the woods were, or how much wildlife I spotted, I wanted to be sure I could find my way out.

  I picked my way through the undergrowth, inhaling the smell of fir and cedar. I wished Aunt Ethel had a dog. This would be the perfect place for a dog to run, sniffing at the fallen trees, searching out rabbits or mice to chase.

  Charlie would have loved it here. In my imagination, I saw Charlie’s short dachshund legs scrambling through the bushes, his nose leading the way to adventure.

  You were a good dog, Charlie, I thought, the best dog ever. I miss you.

  Why did Charlie have to get mouth cancer when he was only nine years old? Why did . . .

  I snipped off the thought before it could grow. Mom had said, “Remember the happy times with Charlie, and forget the end of the story. The only way to survive the loss of someone you love is to remember the good times.”

  With my thoughts on Charlie, I forgot to watch for deer. The sudden snap of a branch breaking startled me, and I glanced toward the sound.

  A beautiful doe stood about ten yards away, watching me. We looked at each other for a few seconds, then the deer bounded off, flashing her black tail.

  Ten minutes later, I spotted the tree house. I had expected a rickety platform balanced in the branches of a large tree, but I found a sturdy wooden structure, enclosed on all four sides, with a sloping roof of corrugated tin.

  It wasn’t literally a tree house, because it wasn’t attached to a tree. It rested on four unpeeled logs, each about eight inches in diameter, set in concrete. The building stood ten feet off the ground, completely surrounded by huge fir trees. A wooden ladder leaned against the narrow platform outside the tree-house door.

  I stood on the bottom rung of the ladder, testing it. Then I climbed quickly to the platform and pushed open the door. The tree house was eight feet square with windows on three sides—not glass windows, but rectangles cut from the walls, with shutters that closed to keep the rain out. I imagined a young Aunt Ethel and her sister silently gazing out the windows while they waited for deer.

  Dry leaves crunched underfoot on the floor, and cobwebs crisscrossed the window openings. A small makeshift table built of four pieces of log and a plank squatted in one corner.

  I liked the tree house. After I gave it a thorough sweeping and brought out a chair, it would be a perfect spot to read and listen to music. Maybe I would bring lunch here, too, or at least a snack to eat while I watched for wildlife.

  I hurried back to the house for a broom and a damp rag to clean the table. Aunt Ethel, pleased I had found the tree house, gave me an oversized pillow to take there for the summer. “It’s the same pillow Steven used in the tree house,” she said.

  I swept and scrubbed, then went back for some cheese and crackers and my box of books. With all three windows open, the tree house had plenty of light to read by. I sank onto the pillow and opened a book.

  I was deep into a mystery novel when a faint sound caught my attention. Another deer? I put down my book, moved quietly to the window, and peered out. I waited, listening, my eyes scanning the trees for movement.

  “Meow.”

  I looked toward the sound. A scrawny cat sat in the woods, its brown-and-tan-striped fur blending into the background.

  “Hello, kitty.”

  The startled cat hurried away.

  I broke off a piece of cheese and dropped it out the window. I wai
ted.

  Soon the cat returned, moving cautiously. He sniffed the cheese, then gulped it down.

  I tossed out another piece. The cat backed away from the tree house, looking up at the window. When I remained still, the cat edged forward again and gobbled up the cheese.

  The poor thing is starving, I thought. I broke the rest of my cheese into pieces and dropped them to the ground. The cat ate it all, then looked up as if hoping for more, but he didn’t meow again. I wondered why the cat had meowed in the first place. Had he smelled the cheese from so far away? Or had he smelled me and taken a chance that I would feed him?

  When the cheese was gone, the cat washed his whiskers, then turned and went into the woods. He walked slowly and looked back once before he vanished into the undergrowth.

  I put a bookmark in my book and laid the book on the floor beside the pillow. I closed the shutters on the windows, climbed down the ladder, and hurried home.

  The house smelled like chocolate. Aunt Ethel stood in the kitchen, frosting a layer cake.

  “That smells wonderful,” I said.

  “It’s your new Welcome cake. Did you see any deer?”

  “Yes, and I saw a starving cat.”

  “Fleas and mosquitoes! Not another stray.”

  “I fed him some of my cheese.”

  “Oh, don’t do that again. Feed a stray cat, and it’ll hang around forever.”

  “He was hungry.”

  “Plenty of mice in the woods.”

  “He acted scared, and he didn’t have a collar on. Do you have anything I can feed him, like a can of tuna?”

  “No. I don’t cotton much to cats. Florence was the one with the soft heart for critters—always feeding some stray cat or taking in a lost dog. People dump animals out here, you know. Put them right at the end of my driveway and hope they’ll live in the woods.”

  I wondered if someone had dumped a peacock.

  “Would you drive me to Carbon City?” I asked. “The Market might sell cat food.”

  Aunt Ethel swirled her knife through the frosting, smoothing it across the cake’s top. “Feeding that cat is not a good idea.”

  “Mom says we should be kind to all creatures and help them when we can.”

  “It wouldn’t be a kindness to make a cat dependent on you for its food. You’ll leave at summer’s end, and the cat will starve.”

  “By then maybe I can find someone who wants to adopt him.”

  “I don’t want a cat coming around, bothering Florence.”

  I realized Aunt Ethel didn’t want to help the cat because she feared it would hurt the peacock.

  “I could feed it out by the tree house,” I said.

  “It would follow you home.”

  I looked away, annoyed by her lack of caring. First she killed an innocent bat, and now she refused to help a starving cat. The Welcome cake looked delicious, but I couldn’t enjoy cake when the cat needed food. There had to be some way to help. “Is there a humane society or other group that rescues strays?” I asked.

  “We tried to build an animal shelter once,” Aunt Ethel said, “so there’d be a good place to take the unwanted dogs and cats. Everyone got together—all the small towns around here—and we had a big auction. It was the most exciting event we ever had in these parts, let me tell you. Businesses donated expensive items for the auction—trips, and a new car, even two tickets to the World Series.”

  “Wow! I’d like to win that.”

  “Children held bake sales and car washes and put decorated collection cans in all the stores. Lots of folks contributed. Florence and I gave five hundred dollars, in memory of our parents. Altogether, the community raised one hundred thirty thousand dollars for the shelter. It should have been built by now, but it isn’t going to happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Someone stole all the money.”

  “Stole it! How?”

  “The day of the auction, all the coins were put in one of those coin-counting machines and then exchanged for large bills, which were taken to the auction. It was called “Cash for Critters,” and those who attended the auction were asked to pay in cash. It was a gimmick, to see how high the pile of money would be, and it worked. One of the TV stations from Seattle even sent a reporter to film it. People got all fired up when they saw that heap of money grow bigger, and some even threw bills on the pile without bidding. After the auction, the county treasurer and the auction chairman counted the money. Then they put it in bags and took it to the bank’s night deposit.”

  Tears sprang to Aunt Ethel’s eyes. “Before the money could be deposited, an armed robber stole it all.”

  “No! How? What happened?”

  “As the two men walked from their car to the night deposit, a man wearing a ski mask and dark clothing jumped around the corner of the bank with a gun pointed at them. He grabbed the bags of money and fled. His car was parked out of sight, and he was in it and gone before they could get a license plate number.”

  “He never got caught?”

  Aunt Ethel shook her head, no. “Mr. Turlep, the bank manager, posted a reward for information leading to an arrest, but it didn’t help. The money was never found.”

  “Doesn’t the bank have insurance?”

  “Not for money that was never deposited. For a long time we hoped the robber would be caught and the money would be recovered. When we realized it wasn’t going to happen, there was talk of starting over and doing the auction again, but most folks had run out of steam by then. We’d given generously already; it was hard to get excited about doing it over again, and many folks couldn’t afford to give twice.”

  The story made me angry. Aunt Ethel would have to bake a lot of cakes to earn five hundred dollars. She’d given a donation out of love, as a way to honor her parents, and some scumbag had stolen it.

  “So we never got our animal shelter,” she said, “and people still dump unwanted cats and dogs in the woods.”

  “Maybe if I feed the stray cat, I can tame it and then we can find a home for it. There may not be a shelter to help all the animals, but we could help this one.”

  “No. Cats kill birds.”

  “The peacock—Florence—is way bigger than the cat.”

  “Florence.” She paused, then smiled. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Ever since you asked what I did as a child, my mind’s brimmed with memories. Florence and I used to ride our bicycles down to Carbon City to buy penny candy. We had a big tire that we hung from the chestnut tree with a rope; it made a fine swing. We played marbles, too, and hopscotch, and in the evening when our brothers finished dinner, we all played kick-the-can.”

  She had a faraway look, as if she saw her sister and brothers still hiding behind trees, waiting to dash out to kick the tin can. She’d forgotten all about the stolen money and the stray cat.

  “I think that big tire is still in the barn,” she said. “Maybe you’d like to hang it in the tree this summer.”

  “I’ll go look for it,” I said, not because I cared about the swing but because I was upset that Aunt Ethel wouldn’t let me feed the cat. Right then, I wanted to get away from her. I felt sorry about the shelter money and sorry all her family had died, but I also felt sorry for the dead bat and the hungry stray cat.

  I walked across the yard to the barn, then lifted the wooden bar that held the door shut. The air inside smelled like stale bread. Dust motes drifted in the shaft of sunlight that followed me through the door. A small, unseen critter scuttled away.

  Old rakes, shovels, and other garden implements lined up beside the door. I’d seen similar tools in Vermont, when Mom and I browsed in antiques shops.

  I didn’t see the tire, but I spotted two old bicycles, one blue and one red, leaning against the far wall. The blue bike had two flat tires. The red bike’s tires still held air. I grabbed the handlebars and walked the red bike out of the barn. I mounted it and pushed off, pedaling across the grass.

  At home I had a ten-speed bike with narrow tires
and hand brakes. These tires were much wider, and I had to practice braking with my feet. After I had the hang of it, I went inside.

  “I found a bike in the barn,” I said. “Is it OK if I go for a bike ride?” I hoped she wouldn’t ask where I planned to go.

  “Watch for cars,” Aunt Ethel said.

  I promised to be careful.

  Before I left, I went up to my room and took a ten-dollar bill from the money Mom and Steven had given me. “You’ll need spending money,” Steven had said, “in case you go to town. If there’s nothing else you want, you can always buy ice-cream bars at the Carbon City Market.”

  Or cat food, I thought, as I stuffed the money into my pocket. If Aunt Ethel used to ride a bike to Carbon City and back, I could do it, too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Clutching the handlebars, I flew down the hill. The road had no bike lane, but it didn’t matter because there weren’t any cars, either. I stayed on the edge of the road, listening for approaching vehicles. I coasted much of the time, braking when the bike started going too fast.

  I rolled into Carbon City and stopped where the bus had dropped me off. At home, I always put a chain and padlock on my bike when I left it. Here I put the kickstand down and walked into the Carbon City Market.

  An elderly man sat behind the small counter, reading a magazine. He looked up when I entered, nodded, and returned to his reading.

  Shelves lined both side walls of the Market, with two rows of merchandise in the middle. A cooler for milk and soft drinks and a small freezer faced forward from the back wall. With no produce or meat, people wouldn’t do a weekly grocery shopping here, but the locals could stop by to pick up what they forgot in town or to buy snack items such as candy and popcorn.

  One area in the front looked like a mini-hardware store, with tools, electrical cords, and a bin of nails.