The Ghost at Dawn's House Read online

  “Hey, Jeff. Want to hear some really great stories?” I asked.

  Jeff looked skeptical. (At least by the light of the flashlight, he looked skeptical.) “What kind of stories?” he asked.

  “Ghost stories,” I whispered.

  “Aw …”

  “I know you don’t believe in ghosts, but try to get in the spirit of things,” I told him. “Get it? Spirit? Look. It’s a gloomy, rainy, spooky night. Besides, what else is there to do?”

  “Nothing,” replied Jeff.

  “Okay. Come on up to my room.”

  Ghosts and Spooks was waiting for us on my nightstand. We sat on my bed and I took the flashlight from Jeff and opened the book. First I read him “Things Unseen.” Then I read him the story about the phantom hitchhiker. Then I read him “The Haunting of Weatherstaff Moor.”

  Before I got to one of the new ones at the end of the book, Jeff turned to me and said, “Let’s stop now, Dawn.”

  “Had enough?” I asked.

  He nodded. I couldn’t tell if he was bored, scared, or sleepy.

  “Now what should we do?” he asked. From the way he sounded, I decided he was bored.

  “Let’s try to play a game by flashlight,” I suggested.

  We tried. It was next to impossible. There was never enough light, even after Jeff perched the flashlight in a sort of sling made from a dish towel that he suspended from the edge of a table.

  “I give up,” I said.

  Jeff yawned hugely. “What a waste of a Friday night,” he said. “Do you know all the great TV shows we’re missing?”

  “Wellll,” I said slowly. “There is something we could do, and all we need is a flashlight.”

  “What?” Jeff looked mildly interested.

  “Back to my room,” I ordered.

  I led Jeff up the stairs again and straight to the wall with the fancy molding.

  “Watch this,” I said. “Here, hold the light.”

  I pressed a corner of the molding (it hadn’t taken long to figure out how the catch worked), and the wall swung inward.

  Jeff gasped. “Hey! Hey, what …?”

  “I discovered this a couple of days ago,” I told him. “It’s a real, honest-to-goodness secret passage.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Jeff flatly.

  “Come on. Want to see it?”

  I’d taken the button and buckle and key out of the passage and hidden them in one of my bureau drawers. Somehow, without the evidence of the ghost, the ghost himself seemed less scary.

  “Come on,” I said again. I grabbed Jeff’s hand and pulled him into the passage. “I didn’t say anything because I — I just wanted a secret, I guess. But anyway, isn’t this great?”

  Wide-eyed, Jeff followed me through the passage to the rickety old steps. He had to walk behind me. The passage wasn’t wide enough for two.

  We were just about to start down the stairs when Jeff said, “Stop, Dawn. Look at that!”

  “What?” I cried.

  “Let me have the flashlight for a sec.”

  I handed it to him and he shined it against the wall near the top step. I could see something gleaming there. An image of the things I’d squirreled away in my bureau came to mind.

  Jeff brushed aside a dust bunny with his foot. Then he stooped down and picked up the object.

  “What is it?” I asked. I tried to sound calm, but if my heart was beating as loudly as I thought it was, my brother could probably hear it, too.

  Jeff examined the object in the light.

  “It’s a nickel,” he said, sounding puzzled. “At least, it says ‘five cents’ on it, but it doesn’t look like any nickel I’ve ever seen. There’s a picture of an Indian on one side and a buffalo on the other. Maybe it’s foreign…. No, it’s from the U.S.”

  “Indian-head nickels are real old,” I informed him. “They made those nickels before the ones they make now. Let’s see the date on that.”

  Jeff and I turned the nickel over and over and around and around, but it was rubbed so smooth we couldn’t find a date.

  “It must have worn off,” said Jeff.

  “Gosh, if it’s worn off, this nickel must be ancient. It takes forever for metal to wear down.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Jeff. “I wonder how it got here.”

  “Good question,” I muttered, but Jeff didn’t hear me.

  “Well, let’s go,” he said.

  Jeff was in front now and he led the way down the stairs. We had rounded the corner and were heading through the long tunnel to the barn when something crunched under my foot. I let out a cry. I was sure it was bones … part of a skeleton.

  “What was that?” cried Jeff.

  “Oh, I don’t want to know,” I moaned.

  Jeff played the flashlight beam around on the floor. A few inches from my left foot, it lit up a small brown mound. Jeff and I bent down.

  “I think it’s part of an ice-cream cone,” I said, although Jeff and I have eaten maybe two cones in our health-food lives.

  “Really?” Jeff replied. “I thought ice-cream cones were kind of yellow and, you know, airy looking. And they have flat bottoms. Don’t they? Remember that time Dad took us to Dairy Queen? What’s left of that thing,” he went on, touching the mound with the toe of his sneaker, “is brown and hard and has a pointed bottom.”

  “You know, I think this is an old-fashioned ice-cream cone,” I said. I felt scared, awed, and excited at the same time. I wondered how long the cone had been in the passage. More important, I wondered why I hadn’t seen either the cone or the nickel the other day. Can ghosts make things materialize? I was sure they hadn’t been there before.

  “Um, Jeff,” I managed to say, “I don’t want to scare you, but this passage is haunted — by an angry ghost. The ghost of someone who was locked up here to die a long time ago.”

  “Oh, for cripe’s sakes,” said Jeff. He gave me a really disgusted look. “You have got to be kidding.”

  “No, I’m not,” I replied in a hushed voice.

  “Okay,” said Jeff, “the passage is haunted…. Prove it.”

  “I don’t think I can prove it,” I told him, “but I have been hearing an awful lot of weird noises lately. Mom keeps saying things like ‘the house is settling.’”

  “She’s right,” said Jeff.

  “Houses moan when they settle?”

  Jeff looked startled. “Moan?”

  “Yeah. Like this.” I tried to imitate the moaning I’d heard.

  “It could have been the storm,” Jeff said, but he didn’t look convinced, especially when I added disdainfully, “I do know the difference between something howling outside and something moaning inside.”

  “Well …”

  “And,” I went on, “the cone and the nickel weren’t here the day I discovered the passage. I went looking pretty carefully, and I found a buckle and a button and a key. But these things weren’t here.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Jeff, looking nervous in the flickering light.

  “I’m saying that until right now, I didn’t tell anyone about the passage. So no one’s been in it except me, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So where did the cone and the nickel come from?”

  Jeff didn’t answer. His eyes were growing wide, and he couldn’t seem to close his mouth.

  “There’s only one answer,” I told him. “A ghost. And I’ll tell you something else. I don’t think I should have taken those other things out of the passage. I think the ghost is mad and wants them back. And we better not take these, either. Go put the nickel back where you found it.”

  “Me? I’m not putting it back. Not alone, anyway.” Jeff now looked truly terrified. His voice had risen to a squeak.

  “Well, I’m not coming with you. We’re much closer to the other end of the passage. I want to get out of here.”

  Jeff scowled at me. “Look at it this way,” he said. “I’ve got the flashlight. If I go, the light goes with me. You’ll be
left alone in the dark.”

  I paused. He had a point. “Okay,” I said. “Anyway, I just realized that we might as well both turn around now. We have to take the passage back to my room after all. It’s pouring outside.”

  “Where is the other end of the passage?” asked Jeff.

  “In the barn.”

  And at that moment we heard a creak, followed by a moan.

  “Aughhh!” we yelled. Without another word of discussion, we turned and ran headlong through the passage, up the stairs, and back to my room. Jeff dropped the nickel somewhere as we ran.

  Somehow Jeff and I had managed to forget about the power failure. We had burst out of the passage and into my room, and I had slammed the wall shut behind us before we realized we were still in total darkness. It wasn’t very comforting.

  We flopped down on my bed, breathing heavily.

  “It was the ghost!” I cried. “And he’s carrying a grudge that’s probably a hundred years old.”

  Cre-e-e-ak. Cre-e-e-ak.

  Jeff and I jumped a mile. “I think the ghost’s in the passage right now!” Jeff cried.

  I’m sure I turned pale. I felt my knees go weak. “I’m calling Mom!” I announced, wondering if I could stand up without collapsing.

  “Oh, good,” said Jeff. He grabbed me at the waist, and followed me out of my room and into Mom’s. We looked like two little kids playing choo-choo train.

  As I reached for the phone, Jeff said helpfully, “I hope the telephone is still working.”

  I drew my hand back. “What if it isn’t?” I whispered.

  For a moment, neither of us spoke. At last, I reached my hand out again. I picked up the receiver and brought it to my ear very slowly. Halfway there, I could hear the dial tone. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” I said to no one in particular.

  I figured Mom and her date would be at Granny and Pop-Pop’s by then, so I called their house. Pop-Pop answered the phone, and I got carried away and told him we were having an emergency.

  When Mom got to the phone, she sounded breathless and nervous. “Honey? Are you and Jeff all right?” she asked.

  “Mom!” I exclaimed. “The power’s off here, it’s all dark, and there’s this secret passage from my room to the barn — I know I should have told you about it, but I didn’t — and Jeff and I looked in it, and we have a ghost.”

  “We heard noises!” Jeff shouted into the receiver from behind me.

  “Dawn. Slow down. What are you saying?” asked my mother.

  “I found a secret passage in our house. A real one.” I paused. “Mom, the power’s off here. Jeff and I are in the dark, except for a flashlight.”

  “I understand that, honey. But we’ve had power failures before. Now what is this about a secret passage?”

  “You know how I’m always looking for one?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I found one the other day. I promise it’s not a figment of my imagination or anything. But I kept it a secret. I didn’t even tell Mary Anne.”

  “And where is this passage?”

  “It runs from under the barn — there’s a trapdoor in the floor — to my room. You know the wall with all the molding? It swings out into my room when you press a corner of the molding.”

  “Are you positive, Dawn?”

  “Yes. Cross my heart and hope to die. And tonight Jeff got bored, so I decided to show him the passage. We’d almost gotten to the other end when we heard these noises. It really did sound like —”

  Mom interrupted me before I could finish.

  “Trip and I will be right there. Sit tight, stay calm, and don’t go back in the passage.” She hung up.

  “So?” Jeff said as soon as I’d hung up the phone, too. We both felt a little more relaxed. “What’d she say?”

  “Mr. Gwynne’s name is Trip,” was all I could answer. “Trip. Can you believe it?”

  Jeff laughed. “Oh, yeah. Man, that is so cool,” he said sarcastically.

  “I bet he wears pink socks and alligator shirts and his friends call him, like, the Trip-Man or something.”

  “I bet he plays golf,” said Jeff, with a snort of laughter.

  “I bet his idea of an amusing afternoon is balancing his checkbook. And,” I added, “I bet he has real short hair, wears wire-rim glasses, and has gray eyes, but wears contacts to make them look blue.”

  Jeff laughed so hard that he collapsed on the floor. I joined him — but mid-collapse I let out a yelp.

  “What is it?” cried Jeff.

  “What are we laughing for? That ghost could be sneaking into my room this very second. We’ve got to go block the wall off!”

  “In the dark?”

  “Do you want the ghost in here with us?”

  “No.” Jeff flew out of Mom’s room and into mine before I’d even gotten up off the floor. “Shove something in front of the wall,” he commanded as soon as I ran in.

  We moved my dresser in front of the door to the passage. Then we put a chair on top of it, and, puffing hard, slid my bed against the front of the dresser.

  We were unloading books from my shelves and piling them on the chair and bed when two things happened at once: the power was restored, and Mom and Mr. Gwynne came home. When the lights flicked on, Mom found Jeff and me standing on my bed, stacking books onto a pile of furniture. And Jeff and I saw two people standing in a doorway that we thought was empty.

  Everyone screamed.

  “What are you doing?” cried Mom at the same time that I yelled, “When did you get here?”

  Then we answered each other at the same time, too. “Keeping the ghost out,” I replied as Mom said, “Just now.”

  “Whoa! Everybody calm down,” exclaimed Mom’s date.

  Jeff and I jumped to the floor.

  “Kids,” said my mother, who was trying to catch her breath. “This is Mr. Gwynne. Theodore Gwynne.”

  (My mother had no idea why Jeff and I looked at each other and began to laugh then.)

  “And,” she went on, ignoring us, “this is Dawn, and this is Jeff.”

  “Hi,” the three of us said uncomfortably.

  I have to admit that the Trip-Man didn’t look exactly as Jeff and I had imagined, but he was pretty close. He was wearing glasses, but not wire-rims. The frames were tortoise-shell and very round. His blond hair was short, but behind the glasses, his eyes were brown. He was wearing a suit and tie, so there were no alligators anywhere, and his socks weren’t pink but his shirt was.

  “Dawn,” said Mom, sounding exasperated, “what are you and Jeff doing?”

  “Blocking the entrance to the secret passage so no one can come in.”

  “You mean the ghost?” she asked with a smile.

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought ghosts could float right through walls.”

  “Um …” I said. (Why hadn’t I thought of that?) “Of course they can. But the passage is his home base.” What a stupid excuse.

  And now I had something new to worry about.

  “Well, let’s just see what we have here,” said the Trip-Man.

  He and Jeff and I moved the books and furniture away from the wall. Then I pressed the molding and the wall opened up.

  Mom gasped. I don’t think she’d really believed I’d found a secret passage until then.

  The Trip-Man held out his hand. “If you’ll let me have the flashlight, I’ll go take a look-see,” he said.

  A look-see?

  Jeff handed him the flashlight.

  “Oh, Trip, do you think you should?” asked Mom.

  (Jeff and I dissolved into giggles again.)

  My mother peered through the opening into the dark tunnel. She watched the Trip-Man disappear. “How did you discover this, Dawn?” I told her the whole story, explaining where the passage led.

  “I just can’t believe it,” said Mom. “I know this is an old house, but …” Her voice trailed off.

  When the Trip-Man returned, he looked dusty but was in one pi
ece. “There’s no one — and nothing —” he added, looking at me, “in the passage. If you heard noises, I’m sure they were just —”

  “The storm,” I supplied. “Or the house settling.”

  The Trip-Man cleared his throat. “Right,” he said. “By the way, I found this.” He opened one hand and extended the ghost’s Indian-head nickel toward me.

  I just barely managed not to scream as I took it.

  “I suggest,” the Trip-Man went on, talking to Mom, “that tomorrow morning you figure out some way to lock both entrances to the passage, or at least the entrance in the barn. I’m sure no one knows about the passage, but since it is another way into your home, you should lock it as you would any door.”

  “Definitely,” agreed Mom.

  “Well, that’ll keep people out,” I said, “but what about the ghost?”

  “Dawn,” Mom began warningly.

  “There is one,” I said. “The ghost of the secret passage.” I explained how I knew that the passage was haunted.

  My mother and the Trip-Man began to look incredibly impatient. They didn’t even let me tell them about the ice-cream cone and the meaning of the nickel. Mom waved me to a stop.

  A few minutes later, the Trip-Man left. Mom walked him out to his car.

  Jeff reluctantly went to bed.

  I looked around my room. No way was I going to sleep in there. I gathered up a blanket, a pillow, and Thrills and Chills. Before I took every thing down to the living room, though, I opened the molded wall a crack and tossed the Indian-head nickel back to the ghost in the passageway.

  Mom went upstairs to her bedroom. I thought she was crazy. After all, the secret passage ran between our rooms. Mom was as close to the ghost as I was.

  I was just settling down on the couch when I saw Mom’s purse on the floor in the dining room. She is so scatterbrained. I really should take it upstairs to her, I thought, heaving myself off the couch. But when I picked up the purse, I saw that it had been sitting on something, a tattered old book called A History of Stoneybrooke. It must have come from Granny. She never sends any of us home empty-handed. Sometimes she gives us food, but mostly little treasures and keepsakes. Mom says it’s Granny’s way of making sure she gives the things she loves best to the people she loves best before she dies. (As if she’s going to die any time soon. She’s only about sixty or sixty-three or something.)