The Ghost of Graylock (9 page)

E
VERY MONTH, THE AUNTS AND THEIR FRIENDS GOT TOGETHER
to drink and eat and watch their favorite “Best Bad Movies.” With the arrival of their niece and nephew that week, Claire and Anna had forgotten that the movie night was upon them. And worse, it was their turn to host. A group of at least eight adults would be showing up around seven thirty that evening, expecting hors d’oeuvres.

After a stop at the grocery store, Neil felt a chill as he walked through the aunts’ front door. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to meet their friends. What if they asked him why he was staying in Hedston for the summer?

Claire followed Neil into the house, calling out, “Anna, turn on the oven! We found some frozen snacks.”

Anna peeked her head out from the kitchen. “Frozen?” She screwed up her face.

Neil stood at the bottom of the foyer staircase, holding a paper grocery bag. His cheeks burned with embarrassment. “Easy there,” said Claire, lugging the rest of the load down the hall. “Neil picked out the menu. And I have complete trust in him.” He couldn’t help but smile at that. Claire was actually pretty cool. He decided then that he needed to start giving her more of a chance.

A
bang
sounded upstairs, followed by a frightened scream.

Neil grabbed the banister, steadying himself. Claire and Anna raced from the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling.

“Bree?” Claire called. “Everything okay?”

Bree careened to the top of the staircase and dashed halfway down before realizing that everyone was there staring at her. “I — I,” she stammered, trembling, unable to continue.

Anna raced to the bottom of the steps, nearly knocking Neil out of the way. She climbed the stairs, meeting Bree where she stood. She grabbed her shoulders and gave a brief hug. “Honey,” she said calmly, “what’s wrong?”

Bree took a deep breath. “I was in the bathroom. I lifted the toilet seat.” Neil wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the rest of this. “And inside …” Bree shuddered. “Snakes!”

That was
not
what Neil was expecting her to say.

“Oh my god,” said Claire.

“Like, tons and tons of long green snakes!” Bree seemed to become aware of herself. She held her palms in front of her face, rubbing at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m acting like a kid.”

Anna steadied herself, glancing up the stairs with shoulders squared, as if she had to deal with this kind of thing every day.

“I’m not going back in there,” said Bree, wriggling away from Anna, descending the rest of the steps to stand by Neil. But now Neil was curious.

“I’ll go,” he said, following Anna up the stairs.

Bree had managed to close the bathroom door in her desperate scramble to escape the alleged toilet snakes. Anna and Neil stood in the hallway, staring at the knob, worried together what might happen when they pushed the door open. Would a mass of wriggling green serpents spill forth, mouths open wide, fangs dripping with venom, ready to chomp their ankles? Would they make a good snake-stomping duo? Anna certainly looked as if she was ready to destroy something. She pressed her ear to the door, then shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.” She glanced at Neil. “Feeling brave, kiddo?”

Neil nodded, even though he wasn’t sure. He reached out, turned the knob, and pushed.

A lightbulb glowed dimly from the ceiling above, Bree obviously having forgotten to turn it off. The toilet sat beside a purple porcelain claw-foot bathtub. Of course, the lid was down.

Anna crept forward, reaching for the bowl scrubber perched just behind the pipes next to the tub. A weapon. Neil stayed behind her now, happy that Anna had decided to become the brave one here. He heard a rustling sound from the hall, and he turned to find Claire watching from just outside the door. Standing several feet from the toilet, Anna used the scrubber handle as a prop, slowly raising both the lid and the seat. They clinked against the water tank behind the bowl.

From where he stood, Neil could not see over the lip. He looked at Anna’s face to get a clue what was inside. She looked disgusted and confused, but not afraid.

“What the …,” Anna whispered. Stepping closer, she used the scrubber to reach inside the bowl. When she lifted it, tentatively, slowly, something long, green, and slightly fuzzy hung from the scrubber’s plastic bristles. “Lake weed.”

“How the heck did
that
get in there?” said Claire, stepping into the bathroom.

Neil’s mouth went dry. He clenched his fingers against his palms, trying to stop them from going numb. He leaned forward to get a better view. He needed to see exactly what his sister had seen.

The toilet bowl was filled with long strands of the noxious-looking grass bunched up in clumps. They looked almost alive in the water, serpent-like.

The weed was the same type he’d seen one day earlier, swirling just below the surface of the lake out by Graylock Hall.

“S
TRANGE THINGS HAPPEN OUT HERE IN THE COUNTRY
,” said Anna, arranging small quiches on a baking tray next to the open oven door. Neil and Bree worked near the sink, mixing a packet of ranch dip with a carton of sour cream. “A long time ago, when I told my family I was moving to New York City from Nowheresville, Pennsylvania, they asked me if I was scared. I guess I was, but the city is a particular kind of scary, where you have several simple rules to stay safe. Watch your back. Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t ride the subway alone late at night. I even carried around a can of pepper spray, which thankfully, I never used.

“When I left New York to move up here with Claire, my friends had the same reaction that my family’d had when I’d gone to the city:
Are you scared?
” Anna slid the tray into the oven and closed the door. “To be honest, I find the country to be much more frightening. Up here, you never know what you’re going to get, so it’s nearly impossible to prepare the way you can in the city. Mysterious sounds in the woods at night. Strange lights in the sky.”

“Lake weed in the pipes,” said Bree, blushing again. She’d cleaned the stringy grass out of the toilet bowl herself, embarrassed that she’d caused such a scene.

“
And no one can hear you scream
,” said Claire in a low, dramatic voice. She opened a cupboard and pulled down a stack of mismatched china plates. “I know people who are scared by the sound of nighttime crickets.” She laughed. “We got used to it fairly quickly. You find ways to feel less alone. Mostly by maintaining the few friendships you have … by getting together with people who understand you.”

“Seems to me that you guys have plenty of friends,” said Bree, popping a piece of celery into her mouth.

“Speaking of which,” Anna said, glancing at the clock above the refrigerator, “those friends will be here soon. Television’s working, right?”

“It was working this morning,” said Bree.

“That’s right!” said Claire. “Are you two planning on getting up at the crack of dawn again tomorrow?”

Neil blinked, thinking to himself,
Hopefully, we won’t have a reason to
. He watched his sister out of the corner of his eye — she wore a blank smile, appearing to have recovered entirely from The Great Toilet Snake Incident. He wondered if she’d be so cool when he and Wesley told her everything that had happened that day.

The doorbell rang. The first of the guests had arrived. Others quickly followed. Neil recognized a few of them from the pie shop. Soon, a small din rose from the living room, where the adults sat and ate and drank and laughed. Claire and Anna introduced Neil and Bree to everyone, and thankfully, no one asked about their mother or father. The guests all seemed genuinely pleased to meet them. There was a young couple, Barry and Libba, who had driven forty-five minutes from outside of Albany; an older woman, Gladys, whose black dress was covered with white cat hair; a few other shop owners from downtown Hedston; a quiet man, named Olivier, who sometimes helped Anna in her studio.

Last but not least was Andy — the man who had come upon the battered, bloody group the day before. Today he was dressed in a black polo shirt, dark jeans, and work boots — cleaned up from the plaid-shirted, woodsman look he’d worn when they met him. He smiled mischievously at Neil and Bree when they realized why they recognized him.

“How’s that leg feeling?” Andy asked.

“It’s better,” said Neil, his heart racing. He didn’t feel like telling the story of his injury to this group of strangers. But Andy was kind enough to drop it.

“What movie are you all watching?” Bree asked, boldly sitting beside Gladys, risking a staticky cat-hair transfer.

“Aren’t you going to watch it too?” Gladys asked.

“Depends on what it is.”

“It’s the hosts’ choice,” said Andy, waving for Claire and Anna to answer.

Sitting on the arm of the couch, Claire turned toward Bree. “We have some ground rules. This is ‘Best Bad Movie Night,’ remember. The film has to be campy, trashy, scary, over-the-top. It has to be at least as old as any of us. We try to weed out anything
too
gory or nasty.”

“Sometimes unsuccessfully,” said Andy, laughing.

“All that being said,” Claire continued, “I’ve pulled a classic from our personal catalogue that, for some reason, this group has not experienced together.” Everyone leaned forward, as if Claire was about to spill a life-changing secret. “
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
”

The room filled with oohs and aahs. And a couple groans.

“Now, now,” said Gladys. “Hosts get final say.”

“We didn’t have a lot of time to plan,” Anna muttered, almost to herself.

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Neil.

“Never heard of
Baby Jane
?” Anna’s mouth dropped open. She continued excitedly, “Bette Davis plays a psychotic former child actress who locks up her paralyzed sister, played by Joan Crawford, in a decaying Hollywood mansion.” When Neil and Bree stared back, blankly, she went on, “Oh, come on! You must have seen the dead-rat-on-a-dinner-plate scene somewhere on the Internet. What else is YouTube good for but silly little things like that?”

“Stop, Anna! You’ll spoil it for them!” said Claire.

Dead rats on dinner plates? Neil cringed. The word
psychotic
made him nervous.

“Are you convinced to watch with us now, Bree?” said Gladys, smirking.

There was a knock at the door. Wesley! Finally. Neil leapt up from his chair. “I’ll get it.”

When Neil opened the door, he was surprised to find Eric standing beside his brother. “Hey, Neil,” Eric said. “Looking good. Better than last time I saw you.”

Wesley looked a little embarrassed. “He borrowed Mom’s car to drive me. Is it all right if he stays?”

Neil glanced into the living room. Bree’s antennae were up. She craned her neck to see who he was talking to. Neil forced a smile. “Sure,” he said to the brothers. “Come on in.”

N
EIL LED
W
ESLEY AND
E
RIC INTO THE KITCHEN
, offering them something to drink. Curious, Bree snuck in behind them.

Accepting a glass of Coke from Neil, Eric glanced into the living room. “This is weird,” he said, then took a swig.

“I can get you something else instead,” said Neil.

“Not the Coke,” said Eric. “Them.” He nodded at the small group of adults. “What are they all doing here?”

“Having fun,” said Bree, crossing her arms. “What are
you
doing here?”

Wesley took a step toward Neil, as if bracing himself for an explosion.

Eric frowned. Placing the glass on the counter, he said, “I’m sorry. Did I do something to you?”

Bree shrugged. “Besides leaving us alone in an abandoned mental hospital?”

“I didn’t leave you alone.”

“You went off by yourself. Neil got hurt. We’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“You’re right,” said Eric. “It
could
have been worse. But it wasn’t. So what’s your problem?”

“I don’t understand why you’d come to someone’s house for a party and then call everyone weird. That’s all. Maybe this is why your band kicked you out? You seem a little bit … insensitive.”

“They didn’t kick me out,” Eric said, exasperated. “I
quit
.”

“Guys!” said Neil, waving them quiet.

But Eric went on, “To answer your question, Wesley asked me to come inside. That’s why I’m here. I wasn’t planning on staying.”

Wesley finally spoke up. “We need to talk. All of us. Together.”

Bree and Eric paused, and then looked at Wesley as if he’d poked them with a stick.

“Something happened today,” said Neil nervously. “Something really weird.” He told Eric about the ghostly visitor the night before, about the puddle of water at the end of his and Bree’s beds. He explained that an invisible hand had pushed him on the playground swing, that a woman dressed in white had vanished while watching them from Bennett Street. He described the pictures that had disappeared from the camera, and the weeds that had come through the pipes into the upstairs bathroom.

When Neil was done, an uncomfortable silence hung in the kitchen. “What if something happened when we went to Graylock yesterday?” Neil added, lowering his voice. “Is it crazy to think that whatever appeared in room 13 followed us home?”

“Nurse Janet?” said Eric, as if considering the possibility for the first time.

“I can’t stop thinking about the legend,” said Neil. “That her ghost drowns kids out in the lake.” Bree held her hand up to her mouth. Eric dropped the cocky mask he’d worn since he’d arrived. They both looked truly frightened.

Neil felt oddly pleased with their reaction. At the very least, it made his theory seem reasonable.

“You think she’s toying with you?” asked Eric.

Neil’s pleasure was brief. If they were being haunted, then he wasn’t imagining things; however, Nurse Janet wasn’t exactly the kind of spirit Neil wanted lurking around his bedroom late at night.

“There’s got to be something we can do to stop her,” said Wesley.

“Oh really?” said Bree. “How exactly do we stop a ghost?”

“A ghost?” said a voice from the doorway. “How exciting!” The four of them spun around. Gladys, the cat-hair lady, stood there smiling at them, holding an empty wine glass. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.” She took up the bottle from the kitchen table. “Oh, your aunts wanted me to tell you that they’re starting the movie.” Looking directly into Neil’s eyes, she said, “I think you’re going to like this one.”

Neil sat on the couch next to Wesley. Halfway through, he was fairly certain that old actress’s pale face would haunt his dreams. And that voice! If he ever heard her muttering in the dark of his bedroom, he knew he’d scream to wake the neighbors, no matter how far away they lived out here in the country.

Near the end of the movie, Neil went to the kitchen for a drink and stayed there until it was over. While the adults talked about the film, Wesley came and found him. “Let’s take a walk,” he whispered. They snuck out the front door with Eric and Bree.

On the porch, Eric stood close to Bree and said, “We need a plan.”

“I have a suggestion!” said Bree, feigning excitement. “We could go to the store and just buy some ghost repellant.” She dropped her smile and crossed her arms, glaring at Eric.

“I hear it’s cheaper if we just order online,” he answered with a smirk.

Bree clenched her fists.

“We do have a ghost expert here,” said Wesley, stepping between them. “Neil knows what to do. Right, Neil?”

Put on the spot, Neil suddenly felt his throat start to close up. His mind went blank. “I’ll check the
Ghostly Investigators
’ website. I’m sure they’ll have a few good suggestions.”

“I have one,” said Eric. “First, how about we confirm that we’re actually dealing with something supernatural.”

Neil flinched. “What do you mean? Ghosts
are
supernatural.”

“Yeah. But you’re the only one who’s seen it. How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“I’m telling the truth,” Neil said, unable to keep from sounding annoyed.

“You
think
you are, at least.”

The ground started to feel wobbly. Neil grabbed hold of the porch railing.

“Eric!” Wesley whispered, horrified.

“Look,” said Bree, stepping closer to Eric. “If my brother says he saw a ghost, he saw a ghost. We didn’t ask for your help.”

Eric’s mouth dropped open. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m only saying —”

“It doesn’t matter what you’re saying,” said Bree. “Because we’re no longer listening.”