Apparition (25 page)

“I’m thinking about putting in a call to Emily Telford. It’s time we talked about that barn coming down. Also, I’m thinking we should call Dorothy Ross again. Now that there are a few new questions to ask.” He riffles through some of the papers in front of him, looking for her phone number. “I thought I’d call her while you guys are here. But first, Amelia, did anything else happen yesterday that you didn’t have a chance to tell us about? And what was that about Ethan showing up, by the way? Jesus, what timing! Anything we should know?”

“About Ethan? Not much. He’s just a natural-born snoop who’s always trying to figure out what everyone else is up to. But I did want to tell you about something I saw after the rope fell and we’d
got it off Kip’s neck. You know when you started climbing up the side of the stall? I saw him. The same one I saw before, hanging from the rafters. This time he was up there looking down at us, and one side of his head and face was covered with blood. It was like there was a hole blown in his head. It was like … well, it was like the injury I imagine Willy had, when he shot himself. That’s what it looked like to me, anyway. That was when I screamed at you, Morris, and you stopped and jumped back down, thank God.”

“Your scream scared the hell out of me. But I guess that explains it.”

“Yeah. And when I spoke with Willy, he seemed to know the killer ghost personally—back when he was alive, I mean. He seemed really freaked by him. He called him Jimmy.”

“Jimmy? So now he has a name.”

“Oh, and by the way, Willy said there’s no girl ghost in the barn.”

“Well, I think that’s because our mystery girl isn’t a ghost. It’s Mrs. Ross.” Morris closes his eyes for a moment, then turns to me. “I’m afraid your grandmother is right: the barn is completely off limits. The Telfords need to take it down, and the sooner the better. I’ll tell them whatever I have to, to get them to move on it.”

I’ve been trying not to think about this, but I knew it might come up eventually. My heart sinks. What happens to Matthew if the barn is destroyed? I’m not ready to face that.

My worry must show on my face, because Morris adds, “I’m sorry, Amelia.” Kip is looking at me with a strange expression, but he doesn’t say anything.

Morris continues, “I don’t think we can stand by while some unsuspecting family buys that property, knowing what we know. I’d like to see the barn torn down immediately.”

“With a wrecking ball,” Kip mutters.

I turn to Kip. “I don’t blame you for feeling that way, but let’s just
think about this. Is the problem really the barn, or is it the location? Morris, I thought your research pointed to lines in the landscape where ghosts tend to appear. Ley lines.”

“Right,” Morris says, sounding cautious, like he doesn’t trust where I’m going with this.

“So maybe getting rid of the barn wouldn’t make any difference. Maybe the ghosts would just hang out in the field.”

“Or maybe they’d get back on course, crossing over to some afterworld.” Kip must be paying more attention to his dad’s theories than he lets on. “Maybe this barn is what’s holding them up.”

Morris cuts in. “Well, we don’t know for sure if getting rid of the barn would solve anything, true. But there’s a long tradition of destroying haunted houses, and maybe that’s because it works. Maybe a building becomes transformed by the presence of ghosts, becomes like hallowed ground.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t that something religious?”

“Well, the expression ‘hallowed ground’ used to mean the ground was holy or blessed. Like at a sacred site. But maybe the true meaning of ‘hallowed’ is closer to Halloween, as in ‘spirit-ridden.’ It could be that a haunted place loses its innocence—becomes hallowed in a bad way, in other words—and the damage can’t be undone. The place can’t be saved. And it becomes part of the problem.”

“But what if there was a way to get rid of Jimmy and leave the barn as it is? I mean, if the other ghosts aren’t hurting anybody, can’t we leave them in peace? Shouldn’t we be thinking about how to do that?”

“Okay, so there are only friendly ghosts holed up in the barn. Then what?” says Kip. He’s starting to sound irritated.

“Well, what if—I’m just saying—what if a ghost could actually, maybe, get used to his situation, and start to feel comfortable, even? Being a ghost among living people. Couldn’t that happen?” Both
Morris and Kip are looking at me strangely now, like they don’t know what to think. “I’m just wondering.” They must know I’m talking about Matthew. They’re not stupid.

“Then there’s that other mystery,” says Kip, his eyes steady on me. “Why does Amelia care more about the dead than the living?”

I’m speechless. Morris shoots a concerned look at Kip, like something’s just occurred to him. Then he turns to me.

“Let’s forget about the barn for a bit and focus on Mrs. Ross.” He gets off the couch and moves to his desk to make the phone call. He says he’s going to have to be a little more honest with her this time about what we’re really up to.

While he’s dialing the number, Kip takes a seat beside me on the couch and his arm goes up along the back, behind my head. He leans over to me and in a low voice, so he won’t interrupt the phone call, he asks where my “boyfriend” was during that “magic rope trick” yesterday. “I’m curious,” he says. “Was he rooting for me, do you think? Or maybe just enjoying the show?” His face is very close to mine, making me nervous.

I try to stay cool. “Once everything went crazy, I was pretty focused on you and the rope,” I say. “I didn’t see anyone after that, except Jimmy with half his head blown off. But you know, maybe Matthew did help. Because he says he was the one who let loose the rope when Jack was going to hang himself with it. He probably saved Jack’s life, so it’s possible he saved yours too.”

“So still your superhero, then?” Why is Kip acting so hostile?

“Well, I can’t just abandon him to a wrecking ball.”

“Why not? Because he might get hurt? He’s dead, Amelia.”

Looking into his angry blue eyes, I’m lost for words. I turn away to watch Morris on the phone, talking in a low, intense voice. Kip taps lightly on my chin to get my attention again.

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe ghosthood can change a person’s character? Bring out his dark side?”

“Matthew doesn’t have a dark side.”

“Ah, I see. Well, the rest of us mortals tend to.” I resist responding. It’s not his fault if he doesn’t know the real Matthew. “Amelia, you are going to stay out of the barn from now on, right? Will you promise me? You know yourself, I could have died in there yesterday.”

“I know, Kip. Believe me, it’s all I’ve been thinking about. But I don’t know if I can promise.”

“Well, sometimes you’ve got to make a decision even when you don’t know for sure. I’m serious. I’ll burn the barn down myself tomorrow if you can’t stay out of it.” He pulls his arm away and straightens up. I didn’t think he could be this aggressive.

I get up and walk over to one of Morris’s bookshelves and start checking out the titles. I don’t want to feel angry at him, but I do. I glance back at him on the couch. He’s looking away and seems upset.

“Well, that’s not good.” Morris puts down the phone. “She just hung up on me.”

“What? Are you sure she hung up?” I ask. “Maybe it was an accident.”

“Preceded by the words ‘Please don’t ever call me again’? No, she was seriously pissed off.”

“What was it that upset her?”

“Well, I told her that more than a few young men have died in that barn, not just her brother. She didn’t seem to want to hear that. But when I asked if she’d ever been called Dot, that’s when I really hit a nerve. She got angry and cut me off. Said she had to go and told me never to call her back. I doubt we’ll get anything more from her.”

“That’s awful! I can’t believe Mrs. Ross would act like that.”

Kip finally speaks up. “Maybe we don’t need Mrs. Ross. I mean, we found out a lot about the other deaths through our own research. Maybe there’s a ‘Jimmy’ buried in the death records too.”

Morris nods slowly. “This trouble started before Willy’s death, that’s for sure. And Mrs. Ross is caught up in it somehow. She’s afraid of something.”

“Afraid?” says Kip. “Or feeling guilty?”

A short while later Kip takes me home, but he barely says a word during the drive. He’s angry with me, and I know it’s because he doesn’t want me going back into the barn. But if the barn is coming down soon, I’ve got to go in one more time, by myself. If only to say goodbye.

He pulls into my driveway and stops the car.

“Kip?” I reach over to touch his arm but he stiffens, so I pull back. “Kip, why are you so angry? I’m sorry if—”

“Don’t be,” he says, cutting me off. “This whole ghost world of yours … I guess I just don’t get it. I mean, you’re a psychic sixteen-year-old with a dead superhero boyfriend, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with you. I can’t handle it.” He seems to relax a bit, then looks at me with a sad smile. “It’s just that I can’t compete with a ghost. That’s all.”

“I don’t know what you mean. You don’t have to compete with Matthew.” I’m feeling panicky. “Besides, he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Really? Does he know that?”

“There’s no competition, Kip. Matthew’s different … so different from you.”

He rolls his eyes and I hear him take a deep breath. “You should go now,” he says softly.

I get out of the car and walk into the house like a zombie. Joyce
is yelling from the kitchen, asking if anyone’s seen her new cigarette lighter. That’s the second one to disappear lately, she complains.

“Maybe you should check under Ethan’s pillow,” I mutter as I head upstairs.

She shoots me this look, like it’s going to be my fault if Ethan’s acting any weirder than usual. I’d like to remind her that he’s always weird, all by himself, but I take one look at her face and decide to keep my mouth shut. I head for my bedroom and shut the door behind me.

I don’t know what to do about Kip. But I can’t worry about that right now. I’ve got to see Matthew. I’ve got to warn him that the barn may be destroyed, and I don’t know what effect that will have on him. I can’t just stand by, not caring what happens to him. He still means too much to me.

W
hen I woke up this morning, tired after lying awake for hours last night, I found a short e-mail from Kip in my inbox, sent after midnight. He’d spent some time in the archives yesterday, he wrote, and found a death notice, dated September
1941
, for James Wallace, a seventeen-year-old farmhand from Saskatchewan. Wallace was found in a barn on 12th Line in Grey County. Cause of death was listed as suicide. Hanging.

He added that he was thinking of going on a last-minute vacation to Mexico with some Chicago friends, flying out Boxing Day. Then he said he was sorry about being in such a bad mood yesterday, and told me to forget what he’d said. What did he mean? Which part? Was that supposed to make me feel better? It didn’t.

I can’t believe I actually have to go to school this week. Only a few more days before the Christmas break, thank God, but what a waste of time. My head feels a million miles away from the classroom. When I’m not thinking about Kip or Matthew, I’m thinking about James Wallace. What was up with him? Did some ghost make him kill himself,
just like the others? Or was he the very first, the one who started it all?

After school I decide to run down to the archives office before it closes. I know I may find Kip, but that isn’t the only reason I want to go. I have some new research to do.

A quick scan from the entrance and I immediately catch sight of Kip’s thick, dark blond hair bent over a file, hanging down long enough to hide his face. He looks up briefly as I walk toward him, my heart picking up speed, but he doesn’t say hi. His supervisor is nearby, and he treats me like I’m just another person dropping in to look something up.

He seems tired, and he acts cool and distant. “Can I help you?” he asks politely. I can’t tell what he’s feeling. I try to smile but I’m embarrassed, feeling my face go warm. I decide to go along with his professional tone.

“I’m just wondering if I could do a search, a newspaper search, on a young man who died about seventy years ago near here. Just wondering if any reporter from a Grey County paper wrote an article about him. The name was James Wallace.”

“Ah.” He lifts his eyebrows. “Well, let’s see.” I follow him to another part of the office and he shows me a chair in front of an old microfilm machine.

“No search engine I can just plug his name into?” I ask innocently.

“Afraid not. But you have a date to work with, right?” Strange, I think, pretending we don’t know each other. I can’t help it—I search his face for some kind of sign, and our eyes meet. The corners of his mouth twitch, almost into a smile, then he looks away. “You know how this works, right?” he asks, pointing to the machine.

“I don’t know how anything works,” I tell him.

He smirks. “You’ll figure it out. Call me if it gives you trouble.” He walks back to the front desk. I watch him cross the floor until he’s out of sight.

My hunch pays off. There’s a whole article written by a Mrs. Ruth Berger about the short, tragic life of Jimmy Wallace. He was taken into foster care by a family in Meaford at the age of twelve, transferred by the Children’s Aid Society from somewhere in Manitoba. “What many never knew about,” the article reads, “was the notorious case that had stunned a rural community and filled the town papers out west.” Turns out he was the victim of brutal abuse as a child. His stepfather used to tie him up and beat him in the back shed, leaving him locked up in there, sometimes for days on end, without food. The stepfather also beat a dog to death, and that was the last straw for the neighbours. They called in the police, who discovered the full extent of his crimes against the boy, and the stepfather was thrown in jail. “The tragedy,” wrote Mrs. Berger, “was that all the good Christian kindness of the Meaford family who took that child into their home couldn’t undo the damage of years of abject cruelty. In the end, in spite of five years of loving support, the boy took his own life, as if to finish the work of the devil he’d called his father.”