“We won’t tell anyone we saw you,” I told him.
His smile grew wider. “Me?” he repeated. He leaned forward on the large chunk of driftwood. “I’m not a ghost!” he cried. “Your three friends are!”
21
“Huh?” I gaped at the old ghost in disbelief.
His smile faded. “I’m telling you the truth,” he said softly, rubbing his pale cheek with a bony hand.
“You’re trying to trick us,” Terri replied. “Those three kids —”
“They’re not kids,” the old man interrupted sharply. “They’re over three hundred and fifty years old!”
Terri and I exchanged glances. The blood was pounding so hard at my temples, I couldn’t think clearly.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” the old man said, lowering himself onto the table edge. His lined face flickered in the shifting candlelight. “I’m Harrison Sadler.”
“Another Sadler?” I blurted out.
“We’re Sadlers, too!” Terri cried.
“I know,” he said softly. He coughed, a dry, hacking cough. “I came here from England quite a while ago,” he told us.
“In 1641?” I demanded.
He is a ghost, I realized with a shudder.
My question seemed to amuse him. “I haven’t been here that long,” he replied dryly. “After college, I traced my ancestors here. I study ghosts and the occult.” He sighed. “It turned out there was plenty to study here.”
I stared hard at him, studying him. Could he possibly be telling the truth? Was he human — not a ghost?
Or was this an evil trick?
His black sunken eyes didn’t reveal anything to me.
“Why did you drag us in here?” I demanded, climbing to my knees.
“To warn you,” Harrison Sadler replied. “To warn you about the ghosts. You are in great danger here. I have studied them. I have seen their evil.”
Terri let out a low cry. I couldn’t tell if she believed the old man or not.
I realized that I didn’t believe him at all. His story didn’t make any sense.
I climbed to my feet. “If you are a scientist studying the occult,” I said, “why are you shut up here in this weird cave?”
He slowly raised his hand and motioned toward the shadowy ceiling. “This cave is a sanctuary,” he murmured.
Sanctuary? That was the word that Louisa had used.
“Once inside this cave,” Harrison explained, “ghosts cannot escape through the rocks.”
“So that means you are trapped in here,” I insisted.
His eyes narrowed at me. “My plan is to trap the ghosts in here,” he replied softly. “That is why I stacked the rocks above the entrance. I hope some day to trap them in here forever.”
I turned to my sister. She stared thoughtfully at Harrison.
“But why are you living here?” I demanded.
“I am safe here,” he replied. “The sanctuary keeps me safe. The ghosts cannot surprise me by coming through the rocks. Didn’t you wonder why they sent you up here instead of coming up themselves?”
“They sent us up here because they’re terrified of you!” I shouted, forgetting my fear. “They sent us up here because you’re the ghost!”
His expression changed. He pushed himself away from the driftwood table and moved quickly toward Terri and me. His deep sunken eyes glowed like dark coals.
“What are you going to do?” I cried.
22
Harrison took another menacing step toward us. “You don’t believe me, do you?” he accused.
Terri and I were too frightened to answer.
“Wh-what are you going to do?” I repeated, my voice tiny and shrill.
He glared at us for a long moment, the candlelight flickering over his pale face. “I’m going to let you go,” he said finally.
Terri let out a cry of surprise.
I edged back toward the tunnel.
“I’m going to let you go,” Harrison Sadler repeated. “So that you can examine the east corner of the old graveyard.” He waved a bony hand. “Go. Go now. To the graveyard.”
“You — you’re really letting us go?” I stammered.
“Once you’ve seen the east corner, you’ll come back,” Harrison replied mysteriously. “You’ll come back.”
No way, I thought, my heart pounding.
No way I’ll ever come near this frightening cave again.
“Go!” the old ghost cried. Terri and I spun around and scrambled out of his chamber. Neither of us looked back.
As we hurried out of the cave and down the rocks, I couldn’t get Harrison’s face out of my mind. I kept picturing his glowing evil eyes, his long, stringy hair, his yellow teeth when he flashed us that eerie smile. With a shudder, I remembered the inhuman strength of his grip as he dragged Terri and me into his chamber.
I also couldn’t stop thinking about Sam, Louisa, and Nat. There was no way they were ghosts. They were our friends. They had tried to warn Terri and me that the ghost was sneaking up behind us.
They said they’d been terrified of Harrison their whole lives. And I remembered Nat’s sad face as he told us how much he was scared of ghosts.
Harrison Sadler is a liar, I thought bitterly. A 350-year-old ghost of a liar. Down on the beach, Terri and I stopped to catch our breath. “He — he’s so scary!” Terri gasped.
“I couldn’t believe he let us go,” I replied, bending over, pressing my hands against my knees, waiting for the sharp pain in my side to fade.
I searched for our three friends. But they were nowhere to be seen.
“Are we going to the graveyard?” I asked.
“I know what he wants us to see,” Terri replied, gazing back up at the dark cave. “I know why he wants us to check out the east corner. That’s where we found the gravestones for Louisa, Nat, and Sam.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Harrison is just trying to scare us. He thinks if we see the old graves, it will prove to us that Louisa, Nat, and Sam are ghosts.”
“But we already know the truth about those old graves,” I said.
We stepped off the beach and into the trees. The air grew cooler. Moonlight trickling through the branches overhead made strange shadows stretch across our path.
We reached the cemetery entrance and stopped.
“Might as well check it out,” Terri murmured. I followed her through the graveyard, stepping over footstones and loose brush as we made our way to the east corner.
A pale beam of moonlight played over the three old Sadler kids’ graves. “See anything strange?” Terri whispered.
My eyes roamed the area. “Nope.”
We stepped up to the Sadler kids’ graves.
“These look the same as yesterday,” I said. “Neat, square … whoa!”
Something caught my eye in the corner.
“What’s your problem?” Terri demanded.
My eyes struggled to see in the pale light. “I think there’s something …”
“Huh? Do you see something?” Terri cried.
“Some fresh dirt,” I said. “In the corner. On the other side of that fallen tree. It looks like a fresh grave.”
“No way,” said Terri. “I’ve checked out all these gravestones. No one’s been buried in here for the last fifty years.”
We took a couple of steps toward the fallen tree.
“Jerry! You’re right! It is a grave,” Terri whispered. “A fresh grave.”
We stepped over the fallen tree trunk, keeping close together. A narrow shaft of moonlight lit up the freshly dug ground.
“It’s two graves!” I gasped. “Two fresh graves with little markers on them.”
I squatted down to try to read them. Terri moved behind me. “What do they say, Jerry?”
My mouth went dry. I couldn’t answer her.
“Jerry? Can you read them?”
“Yes,” I finally choked out. “It’s us, Terri. The names on these markers read, ‘Jerry Sadler and Terri Sa
dler.’”
23
“Wh-what does this mean?” I stammered.
“Who dug these graves?” Terri asked. “Who put up these markers?”
“Let’s get out of here,” I urged, grabbing her arm. “Let’s go tell Agatha and Brad.”
Terri hesitated.
“We have to,” I insisted. “We have to tell them everything. We should have told them a long time ago.”
“Okay,” Terri agreed.
I turned to leave — and gasped when I saw the three figures staring at us from the shadows.
Sam stepped quickly over the fallen tree. “Where are you going?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”
Louisa and Nat followed close behind him.
“We — we’re going back to the cottage,” I told them. “It’s late, and —” “Did you kill the ghost?” Nat demanded. His eyes peered up at me hopefully.
I patted his hair. It felt real. His head was warm. He didn’t feel ghostlike at all. He was a real little boy.
Harrison Sadler is a total liar, I thought.
“Did you kill the old ghost?” Nat repeated eagerly.
“No. We couldn’t,” I told him. Nat let out a disappointed sigh.
“Then how did you get away?” Sam demanded suspiciously.
“We ran away,” Terri told him.
It was almost the truth.
“Where were you guys?” I demanded.
“Yeah. You didn’t do a very good job of distracting him,” Terri added sharply.
“We — we tried to warn you,” Louisa replied, tugging nervously at a strand of long auburn hair. “Then we got scared. We ran into the woods and hid.”
“When we didn’t hear the rocks fall, we got even more scared,” Sam added. “We were afraid the ghost got you. We were afraid we would never see you again.”
Nat uttered a frightened sob and took Louisa’s hand. “We have to kill the ghost,” the little guy whimpered. “We have to.”
Sam and Louisa tried to comfort their little brother. I gazed down at the two fresh graves. A cool wind made the trees whisper and shake.
I started to ask Sam about the two graves. But he spoke before I had a chance. “Let’s try again,” he said, staring hard at Terri, then me, with pleading eyes.
Louisa rested her hands on Nat’s tiny shoulders. “Yes,” she agreed softly. “Let’s go back and try again.”
“No way!” I cried. “Terri and I got away from there once. I’m not going back and —”
“But it’s the perfect time!” Louisa insisted. “He’ll never expect you to come back tonight. We’ll catch him completely off guard. It will be a total surprise.”
“Please!” Nat begged in a tiny voice.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I couldn’t believe they were asking us to do this.
Terri and I had risked our lives by climbing up there. We could have been killed by that lying old ghost. We could look like that horrible dog skeleton right now.
And here they were, asking us to climb right back up and try again.
It was a ridiculous idea. No way I would agree to it. No way!
“Okay,” I heard my sister say. “We’ll do it.” Louisa and her brothers burst into happy cheers.
Terri had done it to me again.
24
Terri led the way to the beach. I scrambled to catch up with her. The three Sadlers, talking excitedly among themselves, trailed behind.
The night suddenly seemed darker, as if someone had dimmed the lights. I raised my eyes, searching for the full moon. But it had disappeared behind heavy clouds.
I felt a large raindrop on my shoulder, then another on the top of my head. The wind picked up as we neared the ocean.
“Are you totally crazy?” I whispered to my sister as we made our way over the pebbly sand toward the cave. “How could you agree to do this?”
“We have to solve the mystery,” Terri replied, glancing up at the cave. It sat darkly above the rocks. No flickering light. No sign of the old ghost.
“This isn’t one of your dumb mystery books,” I told her angrily. “This is real life. We could be in terrible danger.”
“We already are,” she replied mysteriously. She said something else, but the strong wind off the ocean carried her words away.
The raindrops started to come down faster. Large, heavy drops.
“Stop, Terri,” I demanded. “Let’s turn back. Let’s tell the kids we changed our minds.
She shook her head.
“Let’s at least go back to the cottage and tell Agatha and Brad,” I pleaded. “We can trap the ghost tomorrow. During the day, maybe …”
Terri kept walking. She picked up the pace. “We have to solve the mystery, Jerry,” she said again. “Those two fresh graves — they really scared me. I have to find out the truth.”
“But, Terri — the truth is, we might get killed!” I cried.
She didn’t seem to hear me. I brushed raindrops from my eyebrows. The gusting winds were swirling the rain around us. The rain pattered against the rocks, sounding like sharp drumbeats.
We stopped at the bottom of the rocks. Up above, the cave stood over us, still completely dark.
“We’ll wait down here,” Sam said. His eyes kept darting up to the cave. I could tell he was really frightened. “This time we’ll do a better job of distracting the ghost if he comes out.”
“He better not come out,” I muttered, lowering my head against the falling rain.
A jagged bolt of white lightning crackled across the sky.
I shivered.
“Come up with us,” Terri told the three of them. “You can’t help us way down here.”
They hung back. I could see the fear on their faces.
“Come up to the cave entrance,” Terri urged. “You can always run down the rocks if the ghost appears.”
Louisa shook her head. “We’re too afraid,” she confessed.
“We need your help,” Terri insisted. “We don’t want the ghost to know we’re on top of the cave. Come stand on the ledge in front of the cave. Then —”
“No! He’ll hurt us! He’ll eat us up!” Nat cried.
“Jerry and I can’t go up there again unless you come up to help us,” Terri insisted firmly.
Louisa and Sam exchanged frightened glances. Nat clung to Louisa, trembling. The rain swept down harder.
Finally, Sam nodded. “Okay. We’ll wait for you at the cave mouth.”
“We don’t mean to be so frightened,” Louisa added. “It’s just that we’ve been afraid of him our whole lives. He — he —” Her voice trailed off.
We turned and started our climb. It was much harder this time. It was so much darker without the moon. Rain kept blowing into my eyes. And the rocks were slippery and wet.
I stumbled twice, fell forward, scraping my knees and elbows. The wet rocks kept sliding under my sneakers, rolling down toward the beach.
Another jagged bolt of lightning stretched across the sky, making the cave glow white above us.
We stopped at the ledge in front of the dark cave mouth. My entire body trembled. From the rain. From the cold. From fear.
“Let’s just warm up inside for a moment,” Terri suggested.
The three Sadlers clung together. “No, we can’t. We’re too scared,” Louisa replied.
“Just for a second,” Terri insisted. “Just to wipe the rain from our eyes. Look — it’s coming down in sheets.”
She practically shoved Louisa and her brothers into the cave. Nat began to cry. He held on tightly to his sister.
A roar of thunder made us all jump.
This is the dumbest thing I have ever done, I thought, shivering.
I will never forgive Terri for this. Never.
And then a yellow light flared in front of us at the mouth of the cave.
And under the yellow light, the old ghost flickered into view. He carried a flaming torch in one hand. A strange smile played over his pale face.
“Well, well,” he uttered in a voice just loud enough to be heard over the rain. “Here we all are.”
25
“Nooo!” Nat let out a terrified wail and tried to bury his head in his sister’s wet T-shirt. Sam and Louisa froze like statues. The flickering light of the torch revealed expressions of horror on their faces.
Harrison Sadler stood in the cave entrance blocking our escape. His dark sunken eyes peered from one of us to the next.
Behind him, the rain crashed down, glowing eerily from flashes of bright lightning.
He turned his attention to Terri and me. “You brought the ghosts to me,” he said.
“You’re the ghost!” Sam cried.
Nat wailed, his arms wrapped tightly around Louisa’s waist.
“You have terrified people long enough,” the old man told the three trembling kids. “More than three hundred years. It is time for you to leave this place. Time for you to rest.”
“He’s crazy!” Louisa cried to me. “Don’t listen to him!”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Sam added with emotion. “Look at him! Look at his eyes! Look where he lives — all alone in this dark cave! He’s the three-hundred-year-old ghost. And he’s lying to you!”
“Don’t hurt us!” Nat wailed, clinging to Louisa. “Please don’t hurt us!”
The rain suddenly slowed. Water splattered off the rocks outside and dripped steadily from the top of the cave. Thunder rumbled but in the distance. The storm was moving out to sea.
I turned and caught the strangest expression on my sister’s face. To my surprise, Terri was actually smiling.
She caught me staring at her. “The solution,” she whispered.
And I suddenly realized why she had agreed to come back to this frightening cave, to face the frightening old man again.
Terri wanted to solve the mystery. She needed to solve it.
Who was the ghost?
Was it Harrison Sadler? Or was Harrison telling us the truth? Were our three friends the ghosts?
My sister is really crazy, I thought, shaking my head. She risked our lives because she had to solve the mystery.
“Let us go,” Sam told the old man, breaking into my thoughts. “Let us go, and we won’t tell anyone we saw the ghost.”