Horror at the Haunted House (7 page)

But when she stepped out the parlor door, she nearly bumped into Agnes.

“Where are you going?” Agnes asked.

“To check on Corey,” Ellen said. “Mighty Mike wasn’t here yet when we arrived so I thought I’d better make sure their scene is ready.”

“Mike’s here,” Agnes replied. “It’s a good thing, too. You should see the crowd outside. If we can get everyone in place, we’re going to open the doors early. Come on, I’ll get your scene started.”

Reluctantly, Ellen climbed up the steps to the platform and waited for Agnes to tie her to the stake. Agnes worked quickly, pulling the rope tighter than usual. She flipped the switches, said, “See you later,” and left.

So much for coming early to look at the Wedgwood, Ellen thought. Maybe she would be able to sneak over to the dining room for a few minutes afterward.

The haunted house ran overtime. It seemed like half of King County decided to come that Saturday night. Instead of closing the doors at ten, it was 10:20 when the last visitors finally shuffled out. The time passed quickly for Ellen as she listened to what people viewing the scene said about it. Parents sometimes explained to children who Joan of Arc was and many people shrieked in horror at the idea of someone being burned alive.

That night was especially fun because Caitlin and some of Ellen’s other school friends came. Although Ellen could not distinguish faces in the dim light, she recognized their voices. It took willpower not to smile when she heard Caitlin squeal, “Look! Ellen’s on fire! Oh, I can’t watch!”

Usually, Ellen could slip out of the rope at closing time, whether it was tied or not. That night, the rope was too tight. She had to wait for Agnes to come and untie her. She tapped her foot impatiently. Why had Agnes been so careless when she tied the rope?

An uncomfortable thought struck Ellen. Had Agnes tied her this tight on purpose, so she couldn’t leave the room without Agnes knowing it? Was this Agnes’s way of guaranteeing that Ellen didn’t go back in the dining room? Why would she care whether Ellen got scared or not? Certainly not because she was fond of Ellen.

Mrs. Whittacker made an announcement on the loudspeaker: “Everyone please leave as quickly as possible tonight.”

I’d love to, Ellen thought. She heard other actors talking and hurrying past the door to the parlor. She didn’t call to them to untie her because she expected Agnes to arrive any second. When Agnes didn’t appear, Ellen wished she had asked someone else to help her but by then the hall outside the parlor was empty. Where was Corey? He could untie her. You would think her brother would come to look for her.

When Agnes finally came, she looked surprised to see Ellen.

“I thought you’d be on your way home by now,” she said.

“I can’t get loose. The rope is too tight.”

“Oh, my,” Agnes said. “I’m so sorry. I certainly did not intend to tie the rope that tight.” She quickly untied Ellen and apologized again. Ellen felt guilty for suspecting that Agnes had done it on purpose.

Agnes walked out of the room with Ellen and accompanied her down the stairs to the great hall. Corey was waiting for her there.

“I wondered where you were,” he said.

“I couldn’t get untied.”

“Oh. I thought you were probably looking in the mirror again.”

Don’t say it, Ellen thought. Don’t mention the ghost in front of Agnes.

“There’s Grandpa and Grandma,” Ellen said. “Good-night, Agnes.”

On the way home, Grandpa and Grandma told them about the new restaurant they’d been to and Corey told more Mighty Mike stories. When Grandma asked Ellen how her scene had gone, she said merely, “OK.”

“Ellen’s mad,” Corey said. “She wanted to go early to look at the fairy dishes some more.”

“After the haunted house ends and the museum officially opens,” Grandma said, “we’ll go some Saturday and spend as much time as you like.”

“Thanks,” Ellen said. Usually, Grandma knew just how to make her feel better. This time, she had mixed feelings. She did want to study the Wedgwood but she wanted to do it now, not some vague time in the future. Once the haunted house was over, she would not want to come back to Clayton House, even to see the Fairylustre.

Corey was more excited than usual on the way home because his teacher and some of his third grade classmates had come that night. Nicholas and his parents were there, too.

“I waved at Miss Thorson,” Corey said, “just before I got my head chopped off.”

ELLEN
went right to bed. Most nights, she read for half an hour but that night she quit after only two pages, even though she was in a good part of her book. She didn’t know why it was such hard work just to stand and pretend she was being burned alive, but she felt totally worn out.

The dream partially awakened her. As Ellen struggled to open her eyes, she was aware that she had dreamed of the ghost. Usually, Ellen had a hard time remembering her dreams. It always irritated her when Corey sat at the breakfast table and related a long and involved story that he said he had dreamed. She often wondered if his dreams were really so vivid that he could remember all the details, or whether he merely invented stories as
he lay in bed at night and then, the next morning, he thought he had dreamed them.

This time, she knew she had dreamed and the dream was so realistic that she could not pry herself loose from it. In her sleep, she had grown suddenly cold. Now, in her half-sleep, she shivered and pulled the blankets tight under her chin. The cold continued. An icy fog surrounded her bed, swirling around her face and seeping down under the covers.

Ellen turned on her stomach and burrowed her face in her pillow but the bone-chilling air swept across the back of her neck. As she moved her head, trying to get away from it, she felt a hand on the back of her neck. The fingers lay like five slender icicles across her skin.

Ellen tried to open her eyes, wanting the dream to end, but her eyelids felt glued together. She was sinking, swirling, drowning in a sea of ice water. Her teeth chattered and she began to shake uncontrollably.

Someone moaned, a low, groaning whisper in her ear. “Ohhhh.” The moan slowly formed a single word: “Ohh . . . end.” The word was spoken laboriously, as if it were a great effort for the person to speak at all. When she heard the voice, Ellen was finally able to snap out of the sleep state.

She raised her head and blinked into the darkness, still shivering.

“Ooohhh . . . end,” the voice said again, and Ellen realized that it hadn’t been a dream at all. She rolled over, fully awake now, her eyes staring wide into the black bedroom. When she sat up, the cold hand slid from her neck to her shoulder. The icy air still surrounded her; the ghostly voice echoed loudly in her ears.

“Are you Lydia?” Ellen whispered.

Silence.

“What do you want?”

Silence.

“I don’t know what you want. Why did you come here? Why are you haunting me?”

The hand left her shoulder. The cold air now seemed concentrated directly in front of her.

“Aaahhh . . . end.”

End, what? Ellen wondered. End of me? End of my life? Was the ghost threatening her? Why?

Ellen forced herself to move. She lifted her hand out from under the covers and reached the lamp that sat beside her bed. As soon as she clicked it on, the voice stopped. The cold air vanished.

Ellen looked around her room. She saw nothing unusual. Her jeans and sweatshirt were still draped across the chair, where she had left them. Her poster of the Woodland Park Zoo hung on the wall next to the window. Her radio still sat on her desk; her library book lay on the floor beside the bed, where she had sleepily put it last night, just before she fell asleep.

And her bedroom door was still shut. Tight. The ghost had materialized in Ellen’s bedroom without opening or closing the door.

End. End. What could “end” mean?

Even though she no longer felt the icy hand on her neck or the cold air around her, Ellen continued to shiver. It was partly from cold, partly from fear, and partly from relief that the ghost had left.

It was bad enough to see ghostly hands or an image in a mirror when she was at the Clayton mansion. It was far worse
to have the ghost materialize in Ellen’s bedroom, while she was sound asleep. For the first time in her life, Ellen felt unsafe in her own home.

The mansion was a spooky old house and even without all the sinister scenes being acted out, stories of Lydia’s ghost had been reported there for years. But Ellen knew of no record of the ghost ever straying beyond the Clayton property.

As she lay there, trembling and wondering what to do about this strange midnight visitor, there was a soft knock on her door. Ellen tensed and clutched the blanket even tighter under her chin.

“Ellen? Are you awake?”

“Yes, Mom. Come in.”

Her mother opened the door. “Is anything wrong? I got up to go to the bathroom and saw light under your door.”

Ellen hesitated. Should she tell her mother about Lydia? She was tempted to pour out the whole story but she stopped herself. Not yet, she thought. Mom can’t do anything to keep the ghost from coming, so why worry her?

“Nothing’s wrong. I just couldn’t sleep.”

“Do you feel all right? You look pale.” Mrs. Streater walked to the bed and put her hand on Ellen’s forehead. “No fever,” she said. “Your face is cool.”

“I had a bad dream,” Ellen said.

“Want to tell me about it?”

“I—I dreamed there was a ghost in my room. She touched my neck and she tried to tell me something but all I could make out was the word, ‘end’.”

It didn’t seem quite so scary, now that she was telling Mom about it. Especially when she pretended that it had only been a dream.

“What did the ghost look like?”

“I couldn’t see her. I just felt her hand and heard her voice. And I could feel cold air all around me.”

“That’s the funny thing about dreams,” Mom said. “Even though you didn’t
see
the ghost, you knew it was a woman. If it had really happened, you wouldn’t know if it was a man or woman unless you saw the person.”

Ellen didn’t say she knew it was a woman because it was not her first encounter with the ghost. She didn’t want to mention the ghost’s reflection in a mirror.

“I’ve worried that this haunted house would give Corey nightmares,” Mrs. Streater said. “Usually he’s the one who has such realistic dreams. Maybe I should have worried about you instead. Not that my worrying ever makes any difference, anyway.”

She patted Ellen’s shoulder. “You don’t have to finish at the haunted house, you know,” she said. “If all those horrible scenes start to bother your sleep, I’ll just tell Mrs. Whittacker that you can’t do it any longer.”

“Don’t do that,” Ellen said. “I want to finish.” If she didn’t, Grandma and Grandpa would be disappointed, to say nothing of Mrs. Whittacker. And Corey would be furious.

No, she would finish out the week. With the light on and Mom beside her, her courage returned. So did her curiosity. In spite of her fear, she was fascinated by the ghost, and puzzled. Why could she see Lydia and feel the ghost’s presence when no one else could? Why did the ghost follow her home? What was Lydia trying to say, with her strange-sounding
ooohheenndd?

Ellen was determined to find some answers and the place to do it was at the haunted house. She would manage to elude
Agnes and study the Wedgwood. One way or another, she would figure out what Lydia wanted her to see.

After Mrs. Streater left, Ellen turned off the light and lay still for a long time, unable to go back to sleep. She kept expecting the ghost to appear again.

When she finally fell asleep, she slept uneasily, waking often.

The ghost did not return.

T
rue Ghost Stories.

The Streaters were browsing in a book store when Ellen saw the title in a special display of Halloween books. She opened it at random and began to read.

“Sometimes,” she read, “a haunting is determined by what happened on the site years before.” Like Lydia, she thought, who first appeared because Samuel’s second wife tried to sell all the Wedgwood.

She continued to read, flipping from one chapter to the next and reading a sentence here, a paragraph there. When her parents were ready to pay for their purchase, Ellen asked if they would also buy the ghost book.

“Haven’t you had enough of ghosts?” Mrs. Streater said. “I should think that is the last thing you would want to read right now.”

Ellen was glad Mom didn’t say anything about a bad dream.

“The book looks really good,” Ellen said, “and I don’t have anything to do when we get home.” She had learned long ago that, while her parents usually said
no
to requests for new games or faddish clothes, they often said
yes
if she or Corey wanted to buy a book. It annoyed Corey, who could never sit still long enough to read more than a few pages, but even when Ellen was small, she had preferred book stores to toy stores. She had memorized the fairy books when she was three and then, with Grandma’s help, she had learned to read before she started school. She still loved to read and often read her favorite books more than once.

When her parents looked uncertain about
True Ghost Stories
, Ellen added, “I suppose I can always watch television.” Mrs. Streater agreed to buy the ghost book.

As soon as they got home, Ellen settled into a comfortable chair and, with great anticipation, began to read. She was glad the haunted house wasn’t open on Sunday. The afternoon and evening stretched lazily before her like the first day of summer vacation.

Knowledge. The best way to fight fear is with knowledge. She had learned about Lydia Clayton’s life from the biography. Now she would learn about ghosts. If she collected enough separate bits of knowledge maybe they would somehow fit together, like pieces of a puzzle.

She read straight through until dinner. The book was fascinating. Still, Ellen did not feel that she understood Lydia yet. Every ghost, it seems, is different and has its own reasons for doing what it does. She wished she knew what Lydia’s reasons were.