The Ghost of Lizard's Rock (9 page)

“I always walk this way
home,” answered Jacob quietly. “I like the
peacefulness.”

I stopped for a moment and
looked around. The sounds of birds seemed to be the only sound
around them. “You’re right.”

“I don’t like the bus and
can get home almost as fast,” Jacob kicked a branch on the trail
out of the way.

I knew it was all about
the teasing. That was why he walked to and from school.

“You know Kati.” He paused
and looked at me with sad eyes. “At least when everyone is looking
at you in your underwear they think you’re hot. No ones really
laughing at you.” He appeared embarrassed and looked
away.

I blushed too and looked
the opposite direction for a moment.

We continued to walk side
by side for several minutes more without saying a word.

A glint across the meadow
caught my attention just inside the wooded area.

“Do you see that?” I asked
pointing to where I had seen the flicker of light.

“Yeah,” answered Jacob
curiously, “What is it?”

“Maybe it’s the ghost of
Lizard’s Rock,” I looked at Jacob and actually laughed. “Let’s
see.”

Jacob just stared at me as
if he was trying to decide if I was serious.

I grabbed his shirt and
yanked in the direction of the light. “Come on.” I teased him, “You
afraid of a little ol’ ghost?”

We left the trail and
started walking across the meadow.

My mind went back to
something Jacob had said, “At least when everyone is looking at you
in your underwear they think you’re hot. No one’s really laughing
at you.”

Although I didn’t feel any
better about everyone seeing me in my underwear, the thought of
being ‘hot’ made me blush again.

We stopped for a moment at
the far edge of the meadow, staring into the woods in front of us.
The light seemed to be coming from a cluster of bushes against a
gigantic rock wall that rose high into the air above the tops of
the trees. Our eyes looked upward to the top of the rock, which was
so big that it would take a person at least a half hour just to
walk around it.

“I am always amazed how
big Lizard’s Rock is,” said Jacob as he continued to stare high
above them. “It takes nearly an hour just to walk around
it.”

“G.G. told me that it was
called Lizard’s Rock even when she was a little girl,” I stared at
the sheer cliff in front of us. “Supposedly, over a hundred years
ago, a young girl about our age was being picked on by three boys,
who forcibly took her up there. They tried to scare the girl by
pushing her toward the edge of the cliff.”

Jacob was listening
intently to my story even though he heard it many times
before.

“The girl kept backing up
closer and closer to the edge - until…”

“She fell and died,” added
Jacob as he pointed toward the area where they had seen the light.
“Right there!”

We must have both jumped
back at that moment as the flicker of light happened exactly where
Jacob was pointing.

I went on, “Now, her
spirit walks the forest each night in search of her
bullies.”

A shiver went up and down
my spine. Goosebumps were all over the tops of my arms. I couldn’t
believe it – I had actually spooked myself!

We turned toward the
flickering light at the same time and then it
disappeared.

I looked up into Jacob’s
face. My eyes must have been huge. Neither of us made a sound for
several seconds and then we began to laugh hysterically. We had
done a great job of scaring the ‘you know what’ out of each
other.

Jacob stepped forward and
pushed back the branches to make a path towards where the light had
come from.

The sunlight was almost
entirely blocked by the high branches above us and the temperature
seemed to be getting cooler as we moved closer to the steep rock
wall.

I looked down at my feet.
The ground was actually damp and covered with dark green moss. It
reminded me of spring in the forest just after the snow had
melted.

“This makes no sense,” I
said softly. “It’s late summer. Everything should be dried
up!”

Jacob looked down at his
feet, “You’re right.”

“
There,” I said pointing
just ahead of us. “The light is coming from those bushes over
there.”

I started to move by
Jacob, but he politely blocked me with his massive body.

“Stay behind me!” His
voice was both determined and protective.

“Sure,” I started to step
back behind Jacob when a gentle breeze of cool air suddenly touched
my face. “Where did that come from?”

The breeze disappeared
just as fast as it had appeared. Our eyes gazed upward into the
branches of the trees above. They were absolutely still.

My mind went immediately
back to the story of the ghost. “No way,” I thought. “Sunset is at
least another three hours away.”

I continued to scan the
area around us just to make sure I was right. It was my way to
convince myself that if there really were a ghost, she wouldn’t
come out until sunset.

Suddenly the branches
above us began to move ever so slightly as the cool breeze began to
pick up again.

“That’s weird,” said Jacob
quietly. His body seemed to be frozen as he stared toward the
bushes by the rock wall where the light had come from. “Look at the
bushes.”

I stepped forward to get a
better look.

“The bushes are moving as
if the wind is coming from behind them!” said Jacob.

The air was cool and damp
as it reached my face.

The cool breeze continued
to grow in strength. The bushes seemed to lay flat on the ground
with its force.

At that very moment, Jacob
and I saw a light move from the dark area behind the bushes against
the rocky wall. We stared at it for several seconds without moving
one way or the other.

A moment later - the
breeze disappeared, the bushes slowly stood up again, and the light
disappeared.

“
How can that be?” said
Jacob somewhat bewildered.

I looked back up into the
tree branches above us. They were still again. I instinctively
moved closer to Jacob, “Let’s see what’s back there.” I tried to
sound confident and self-assured.

Jacob pushed his way
through the brush to where the light had come from with me right
behind him. A moment later, we were both standing in front of the
rocky wall and the entrance to a huge dark cave.

“
Wait here.” Jacob looked
to me, “I’ll be back in a moment.” He said it with a un-Jacob-like
authority and pulled a tiny flashlight from his key
chain.

“No way,” I said
unwaveringly. “You’re not going in there by yourself.”

I am sure Jacob was
thinking that I was just being brave, but in fact, I wasn’t about
to stand out there all by myself if there was a possibility of a
ghost wandering by.

Jacob flipped on the
flashlight and moved slowly into the cave. He didn’t seem to notice
that my hand was barely touching his shirt. I was going to make
sure at all costs that Jacob stayed close!

My mind began to think of
all kinds of strange things that made no sense at this very
moment.

“I need to head home
pretty soon,” my voice seemed to be shaking. “I don’t want my mom
to worry about me.”

“It’s okay,” said Jacob in
a comforting voice as he turned toward me, “There are no such
things as ghosts!”

“You sure?” My voice
cracked slightly.

Jacob chuckled as he
stepped further into the cave with me hanging on tightly to the
back of his shirt.

I thought, “How did you
know exactly what I was thinking?”

Jacob smiled and aimed his
flashlight even deeper into the darkness of the cave. The light
bounced off the back wall of the cave. He flashed the light all
around us. We were standing in the middle of a large room in the
cave. Tiny trickles of water were coming out of the cracks in the
walls.

“It’s just one big room,”
said Jacob. “The cave doesn’t go anywhere.” He looked more closely
at the trickles of water seeping out through the rocks. “I’ll bet
that water is coming from James Creek and works its way underground
to here.”

“Great,” I said
skeptically, “Now explain the light and the wind.”

Jacob had a puzzled look
on his face. “I don’t know.” He continued to aim his flashlight
here and there to spot another tunnel he had missed.

Both Jacob and I knew the
wind came up every evening during the summer and fall months. By
midnight the wind would calm down to a gentle breeze. It had
something to do with the land heating up during the day and then
cooling down quickly in the evening. But nowhere had we ever heard
of wind coming from a dead end cave. This was definitely in the
‘strange’ category!

“Here it comes again.” I
grabbed onto Jacob’s arm with a tight grip.

The wind seemed to be
circling the outside edges of the cave before departing out the
entrance. The intensity seemed so much greater standing in the
middle of the room. I tightened up my grip and accidently pinched
Jacob’s forearm.

“Ouch!” Jacob winced at my
grip.

I reluctantly pulled my
hand back, “Sorry.”

Suddenly, something on the
far wall of the cave caught my attention. It was a tiny wisp of
dust.

“Did you see that?” I
tried to refocus my eyes on the place where the dust had been, but
my eyes were watering in the wind.

Jacob had been looking at
the pinch marks on his arm and didn’t see anything.

“Aim your light over
there,” I pointed to the place I had seen the puff of dust. “That’s
where I saw something move.”

Jacob lit up that part of
the cave and moved closer. I stood in the center of the cave
watching.

“The wind is actually
stronger over here,” shouted Jacob. “It seems to be coming
from…”

My eyes grew larger as
Jacob suddenly disappeared from my sight into the rocks of the
wall.

I stood frozen in the
center of the cave wondering what had just happened. Everything
around me had suddenly become dark and scary. The only light came
from the entrance of the cave.

The wind started to die
down again.

“Jacob,” I said nervously,
“Are you there?”

“Sure,” answered Jacob as
he reappeared in front of me.

I took a deep breath of
air and moved toward him.

“Look,” said Jacob as I
drew close to him. “There’s another part of the cave hidden from
view.” He turned his flashlight to the side of us.

A large rock that looked
like part of the wall blocked us from seeing the hidden
tunnel.

I said, “This is where the
wind must be coming from.”

The tunnel was much
smaller with barely enough room for Jacob to walk with his head
bent over.

I noticed the ground at my
feet was actually dry and dusty and that the air was no longer cool
and damp.

Jacob led us through the
tunnel for nearly ten minutes, until we entered a very large
cavern.

The two of us stood
speechless as our eyes looked ahead.

“Oh my gosh!” was the only
words that escaped from my mouth.

In the middle of the
opening there was some old furniture, blankets, and a trunk. Other
things were strewn around the ground. It looked oddly like a club
house but everything was dust covered and worn looking. These
things were old - very old!

We walked side by side to
the center of the room. “Look,” I said pointing to another tunnel
on the far side of the cave.

Jacob picked up a really
old leather bound book in his hands and began to read the first
page with his tiny flashlight.

“It’s a journal,” Jacob
looked up from the page, “of some people called the Cow Pie Gang.”
He looked back down at the old worn pages. “It even tells us who
they were - Josephine Grace Jones, Wesley Price, Rufus Redpath, and
Maggie Wilson.”

“Look at the date,” I said
peeking over his arm. “June 28, 1918.”

“Look at their
penmanship,” said Jacob. “It looks like something you’d see in our
history books or at the museum.”

Jacob closed the book and
placed it in my hands. His eyes looked toward the other tunnel. A
distant sound coming from that direction seemed to be growing
louder and louder with every passing second.

We stood frozen as a
thunderous noise filled the cave. The sounds vibrated off the walls
of the cave all around us.

The warm dry wind was
starting to pick up again. Tiny specks of sand began hitting our
faces. It was amazing the force of the wind coming through the
tunnel.

“Turn your back to the
wind,” said Jacob. “When the wind stops again, we’re going back out
through the tunnel we came in.”