Kristy and the Haunted Mansion Read online

  Dorothy’s body had never been recovered, according to the articles, but through interviews and investigation, the detective had decided that Dorothy must have drowned as she tried to cross the swollen, raging creek to meet Will.

  “This is so sad,” said Patty. “Will was waiting for her, and she never came.”

  “Sad for her father, too,” said Bart. “He lost his daughter because he wouldn’t let her marry the man she loved. If he’d only let them get married, they wouldn’t have had to elope.”

  “That’s true,” I replied. “I feel sorry for him. After all, he didn’t want her to die.”

  “He sure didn’t,” said Bart. “It sounds like he never was the same after she disappeared.”

  “Look at this,” said Jackie. “It’s the last clipping in this book.” We stared over his shoulder at the clipping. It was an obituary for Owen Sawyer. He had died on December eighth.

  “That’s six months to the day after Dorothy disappeared,” said Charlie softly.

  A neighbor was quoted in the article as saying that Owen Sawyer had died “of a broken heart,” after his daughter had disappeared.

  “Wow,” said Karen. “That is just the saddest thing I ever heard about.”

  We all stood quietly for a moment, thinking about the tragedy that had taken place in that beautiful house. At least, I thought we were all standing there. Then I heard David Michael give a squeal. “Look what I found!” he shouted. He was standing by a big rolltop desk, shining a flashlight into an open drawer.

  “David Michael, you shouldn’t go snooping in people’s desks —” I began, but it was too late. He was running over to us with a small, leather-bound album in his hands.

  “It’s pictures,” he said. “Pictures of Dorothy, and Will, and Owen Sawyer —” He showed us the book.

  “Why is Will in here?” asked Bart. “I mean, he wasn’t part of the family.”

  “I bet I know,” I said. “I bet Owen Sawyer put this book together after Dorothy disappeared. By then he knew that she loved Will, and maybe this was his way of trying to make up for forbidding her to marry him. He made up this album with pictures of all of them, as if they were a family.”

  “Nice theory, Kristy,” said Charlie, grinning at me. “Who knows? You may be right.” He peered closely at a picture of Will. “Hey, he looks familiar, doesn’t he?”

  “I think so, too,” said Bart. “But how could he? I mean, he would be an old, old man by now.”

  I looked at the picture and agreed that Will did appear familiar. “He must look like somebody we all see in Stoneybrook,” I said. “Like a guy at the gas station, or a checkout clerk at the supermarket.”

  David Michael closed the book and yawned. I noticed a couple of the other kids yawning, too. “I think it’s about time to settle in for the night,” I said. “Maybe we can sleep in this room. Where did we leave all those —” I was about to say “blankets,” but just then I heard a loud bang.

  “It’s the ghost!” yelled Jackie.

  Several of the kids screamed.

  Charlie grabbed a flashlight and ran in the direction of the bang. He came back a few minutes later, grinning. “No ghost,” he said. “It was just the caretaker, checking to see how we’re doing.”

  “Why didn’t he come in?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Charlie. “He seems shy or something. As soon as I said we were fine, he disappeared without another word.”

  I looked around at the kids and saw more than one frightened face. Was Charlie right? Were we “fine”?

  The kids were scared all right, but they were also tired. Soon, Karen yawned and rubbed her eyes. Then the other kids started to yawn. Have you ever noticed that yawns are catching? They are. They spread really fast. I found myself yawning, even though I didn’t feel very sleepy.

  I should have been tired. It was almost ten o’clock, according to my watch, and I’d had a long, hard day. But I felt keyed up. I was full of questions about the Sawyer family. I was a little nervous — okay, more than a little — about the possibility of ghosts. And, on top of it all, I was trying to figure out where and how all of us were going to sleep.

  “I guess we should get out the blankets,” I said to Charlie and Bart. “The kids can sleep in here on the couches and chairs.”

  “Why?” asked Bart.

  “Why?” I repeated. “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why sleep all curled up on a chair when there are plenty of beds upstairs, all made up and ready to be slept in?”

  I stared at him. He was right, in a way. The beds upstairs were made up; the bedrooms had been taken care of as well as the rest of the house. There wasn’t a speck of dust on any of the bedroom furniture, and the sheets and blankets looked fresh and clean. But somehow the idea of sleeping in those rooms gave me the creeps. The rooms looked almost as if they were waiting for someone, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t me and a gang of three-foot-tall softball players. But how could I explain that feeling to Bart? It would sound silly. Still, there was another, more practical reason why we couldn’t sleep up there. “I don’t think the kids will want to be separated and put in different rooms,” I said. “And anyway, I don’t think that old man meant for us to sleep in the beds. Why would he have given us blankets?”

  Bart nodded. “I guess you’re right,” he said. He looked around the library. “But I don’t think there’s enough room for everyone in here. I think maybe we should go back to the living room and spread out on the floor in there. That carpet was really thick. And if everyone’s on the floor, we won’t hear any squabbling about who gets what chair or couch.”

  Bart knows a thing or two about kids. “Good point,” I said. “Okay,” I called out to the kids. “Time to get ready for bed. Let’s head for the living room.” I led the way with a flashlight, and Charlie brought up the rear with the lantern.

  Bart took another flashlight and looked for the blankets, which we had left in the front hall when we first came in.

  Soon we were gathered in the living room. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s spread out the blankets, and then we’ll take turns going to the bathroom.” The kids spread the blankets all over the floor, and I noticed that the Krushers and Bashers were mixed together now, instead of forming two different groups. I was glad to see that. Joey and David Michael were near one of the couches. Karen and Patty had decided to sleep near the fireplace, even though there was no fire in it. And Jerry, Chris, Buddy, and Jackie had laid out their blankets in a pinwheel shape, with their heads at the center.

  I put down a blanket near Karen and Patty for myself.

  “No more blankets left,” said Bart. “I guess I’ll just sleep on one of these chairs.”

  “Me, too,” said Charlie. “I don’t expect to get a lot of sleep tonight anyway.”

  I don’t think anyone got a lot of sleep. It was a rough night.

  First of all, the trips to the bathroom seemed to last forever. We took each kid in turn, lighting our way with a flashlight.

  David Michael was upset because he didn’t have a toothbrush with him. “But I’m supposed to brush every single night,” he said. “No exceptions. You know what Watson says.”

  “I do,” I said. “But tonight you just can’t. Think of it as a vacation from brushing.”

  “Will Watson be mad?” asked David Michael.

  “No, I promise he won’t,” I said, knowing that if — when — we were home again, Watson would be so happy to see us that toothbrushing would be the last thing on his mind.

  The next bathroom crisis was Patty’s. “I can’t wash my face without my Little Mermaid washcloth,” she said. “I just can’t.”

  “Well,” I said, “then you don’t have to wash it tonight.”

  Once the kids were settled on their blankets and I had turned off the lantern and the flashlights, I thought things would quiet down. But I was wrong. “Bart?” I heard Joey call softly. “I need a drink of water.” Bart got up, took the flashlight to the bathroom and
returned with a cup of water. About five minutes later, there was another soft whisper from Joey. “Bart? I need to go to the bathroom again.”

  I heard Bart sigh, but he got up and took Joey to the bathroom. Then there were four more trips to the bathroom, as Karen, Jerry, Patty, and Chris decided they had to go again, too.

  After the second round of bathroom trips, silence fell. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Then I heard a rustle near me. “Kristy?” It was Karen. She informed me that she couldn’t fall asleep without a pillow.

  “Take your sneakers and roll them up in your T-shirt or stuff them under your blanket,” called Charlie. “That’s what we used to do when we were at camp. It makes a good pillow.”

  There was a flurry of activity as six out of the eight kids made themselves pillows. I noticed that David Michael and Patty had already fallen asleep. “Two down, six to go,” I muttered to myself. And about five minutes later, I heard Karen’s breathing become deep and regular, and I knew she was asleep, too. “That makes three,” I thought, hoping the other five would soon join them.

  Then I heard smothered giggles and gasps coming from behind the couch where the four boys were sleeping in a circle. “Shhh!” I said. “Time to go to sleep now.” But the giggling continued.

  I stood up, walked over to them, and shone a flashlight down on them. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Jackie’s teaching us this funny song,” said Jerry. “It’s about —”

  “I don’t even want to hear what it’s about,” I interrupted. “I want you guys to settle down and get some rest.” All four boys immediately put their heads down on their pillows and pretended to snore. They snored loudly, with lots of snorts and whistles. Then they burst into giggles again.

  “Okay, that’s it,” said Bart, getting up from his chair. “The next person who makes any noise is going to have to sleep all by himself in the attic.”

  Absolute silence. I smiled to myself and headed back to my blanket. The silence continued, and I began to feel my body relax. It was quiet enough to hear the rain falling outside, and I realized that the storm must have moved away from us, since I hadn’t heard any thunder or lightning in awhile.

  I heard some new sounds, though. As the room grew quieter, I could hear creaks and pops all over the house. I knew it was just the house settling — Watson has told me that old houses do that — but the noises were scary anyway. There were times when they sounded exactly like footsteps on the stairs, or doors swinging shut. I closed my eyes tight and thought to myself, There are no ghosts, there are no ghosts. But then I thought of the portrait of Dorothy, and of the small, sad smile she wore. I couldn’t get her face out of my mind.

  Dorothy had been eighteen when she died, only five years older than me. She had left her father’s house, knowing that doing so would break his heart, and had gone to meet the man she would marry. And then she had drowned in that cold, rushing stream. It was horrible to picture how she must have tried to swim, and how the water must have carried her away. I shook my head, trying to clear away the awful images.

  I tried to think about something nice. I thought about Watson’s cabin up at Shadow Lake, where my friends and I had gone for vacation once. I thought about the morning sun shimmering on the water, and about walking around the lake together.

  Usually, calling up favorite memories makes me relaxed and puts me right to sleep, but this time it didn’t work. I was still seeing Dorothy’s face in my mind. I lay awake, listening to the breathing around me, until finally I drifted off into a light sleep.

  When I woke up again, it was still dark. I groped for the flashlight and checked my watch. It was after midnight. My back was stiff from sleeping on the floor, and I couldn’t find a comfortable position. Charlie, who had fallen asleep soon after the kids quieted down, was snoring loudly, and I heard David Michael muttering in his sleep. He often does that.

  I stood up and stretched. Then I picked up the flashlight and started to wander around the room, checking on the kids. They all seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

  I decided to go back to the library again, so I picked my way around the kids and headed down the hall. I’d become used to the noises in the house by then, and I felt pretty safe.

  I shone the flashlight around the library — on the pool table, the bookshelves, and the rolltop desk. Then I crossed to the desk and started to open drawers. I knew I shouldn’t. After all, hadn’t I told David Michael not to? But the story of Dorothy Sawyer had begun to fascinate me. I had to know more.

  In the last drawer I opened, I found another scrapbook full of newspaper clippings. These were more recent ones, from the 1940s. They seemed to be a series of stories, all by the same reporter, about the “ghost” of Sawyer Road. The stories were more funny than scary, as if the writer had a sense of humor, and didn’t really believe in ghosts. For example, he told a story about a man who had reported seeing a woman in a long, wet bridal gown, walking along the stream. The reporter suggested that the man had been out too late that Saturday night. Then he told stories about people seeing smoke rise from the chimney, but the reporter wondered whether the smoke was in the viewer’s eyes. It was all lightly done, and I would have thought it was funny, except that these were the same stories Jackie had told us. If there was really nothing to them, why had they been passed around for fifty years?

  I turned the page after reading the last article, and found what appeared to be a legal document of some kind. I was looking at it more closely, trying to figure out what it was, when I felt somebody — or something — standing next to me. The image of Dorothy came to me again, and I almost screamed.

  “What’s that?” whispered Bart, leaning over my shoulder to look at the document.

  “What — what are you doing here?” I asked, relieved and mad all at the same time.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. He was still looking at the document. “Hey, that’s a title to this house, made out to William Blackburn. I guess he bought it after Mr. Sawyer died. That’s funny. I wonder if he still owns it.”

  “I wonder if that’s why the house is kept up so perfectly,” I said, giving a little shiver. “It’s as if he expects her to come back to it.”

  I showed Bart the articles about the “Sawyer Road Ghost,” and we talked for awhile longer. Then I yawned, and he yawned, too. We decided to return to the living room and see if we could sleep a little more. After all, the kids would be waking up in a few hours, and who knew what the next day held in store for us?

  Dawn knew, of course, that Buddy was missing — along with me and the other Krashers. But she was planning to go to the Barretts’ anyway, just in case Mrs. Barrett still wanted a sitter. Then, about ten minutes before she was going to leave the house, Mrs. Barrett called.

  “Oh, Dawn,” she said. “I’m so glad I caught you before you left.”

  “Have you heard from Buddy?” Dawn asked eagerly.

  There was a pause. “No,” said Mrs. Barrett. “No, I haven’t.” Her voice was shaky.

  Dawn felt terrible. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was hoping you were calling with good news.”

  “I wish I were. But so far I’m just hoping that no news is good news. I know we’ll hear something soon. In the meantime, I’m going to cancel my plans for tonight. I don’t want to be away from the phone for a second.”

  “I can understand that,” said Dawn. “Would you like me to come over anyway, to help with Suzi and Marnie?” Dawn had been looking forward to keeping busy with baby-sitting that night, since being stuck at home made her feel helpless and left her with nothing to do but worry.

  “Thanks for offering, Dawn,” said Mrs. Barrett, “but I think we’ll be fine. The girls are pretty subdued, and they’ll probably fall asleep early. They’ve had a busy day.”

  After Dawn hung up, she wandered into the living room where her mom and Richard were reading the evening paper. “I can’t stand this,” Dawn said, throwing herself down on the couch. “The waiting is driving me c
razy.”

  “I know,” said her mother sympathetically. “Maybe it would help if you were busy with something.”

  “Like what?” asked Dawn. “My sitting job just got canceled.”

  “Well, you could always clean your room,” said her mom, with a smile.

  “I’m not that desperate,” replied Dawn. She and her mom laughed, and Dawn told me later that she was surprised at how good it felt. Then the phone rang, and Dawn jumped up to answer it.

  “Hello?” she said eagerly, again hoping to hear good news. But it was Mary Anne, calling from the Pikes’ house. There was no news, she said. She was just checking in. She told Dawn she’d be home soon.

  Dawn flopped onto the couch again. “This is so frustrating,” she said.

  Richard looked up from his newspaper. “I’m sure the police are doing everything they can,” he said.

  “Oh, I know,” said Dawn. “But my friend is out there somewhere, along with a bunch of kids that I happen to care about very much. Why can’t I just go out and find them?”

  Dawn’s mom patted her hand. “Soon the storm will be over, honey, and then the search will be a lot easier. I’m sure the police will have good news for us by tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning?” repeated Dawn. She jumped up and began to pace around. “I’ll never make it till tomorrow morning.”

  “Calm down, honey,” said Dawn’s mom. “Sit down, and let me get you some tea.”

  Dawn sat down, and she drank the tea her mother made for her, but she didn’t calm down much. When Mary Anne returned home, she found one very nervous stepsister waiting for her.

  “I can’t believe we still haven’t heard from Kristy,” said Dawn, pacing up and down by the living room sofa.

  “I know,” said Mary Anne, who was lying down with a pillow clutched to her chest. “This just isn’t like her. Something is very wrong if she’s not calling us.” A loud clap of thunder boomed outside, and the girls flinched. “If only the storm would end,” said Mary Anne.