The Penny Parker Megapack: 15 Complete Novels (259 page)

“We’ll not have many more glorious skiing nights like this one,” she said regretfully. “Anytime now, the weather is due to turn warm.”

Jerry, a reporter at the
Riverview Star
, nodded as his gaze swept the snowy hillside, unmarked save for the herring-bone tracks made by their own skis.

Tall and muscular, he was several years older than Penny, who attended high school. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly, giving him the appearance of a semi-amused spectator of the world’s goings-on.

“Jerry, it’s getting late,” she reminded him. “This will have to be our last run tonight. Ready?”

“Okay, I’ll race you to the valley!” the reporter challenged. “Let’s go!”

Digging in their poles, they flashed off down the hillside. Though they started together, Penny soon forged ahead, descending the steep slope in graceful, curving Christiania turns.

Beneath the mellow moon, snow crystals were brilliant with light. Every pine bristled with glowing icicles. Penny, feeling the rush of wind on her cheek, drew in her breath and was glad to be alive.

With effortless ease, she swung her hips for the sharp turns between the trees. Finally reaching the clearing, she brought up with a spectacular jump-turn and waited for Jerry who was close behind.

“You’re getting faster every trip!” he praised. “I haven’t a chance any more!”

Penny laughed, and with her arm linked in his, glided on to the fire where a group of noisy young people were roasting wieners and boiling coffee.

“Time you’re getting back!” declared Louise Sidell, a dark-haired girl in heavy red woolen snowsuit. She was on her knees in the snow, feeding hickory chips to the cherry red fire.

Louise considered Penny her dearest friend. Though she would not have admitted it, she was slightly green-eyed whenever another person claimed any of her chum’s attention.

“M—m! That coffee smells delicious!” Penny cried, sniffing the fragrant aroma. “I’m starved too!”

She and Jerry made their own sandwiches and poured the steaming beverage. After they had finished eating, the reporter suggested one last climb to Knob Hill.

“It’s nearly midnight,” said Louise, before Penny could accept. “Oughtn’t we to be starting home?”

Immediately a loud chorus of protest arose from other members of the party. Penny looked at her wristwatch regretfully.

“I hate to break up the party,” she said. “But I promised Dad I would be in fairly early tonight. Lou and I will run along, and the rest of you stay.”

“I’ll take you home if you must leave,” Jerry offered.

“Oh, Penny has her car,” said Louise quickly. “It’s parked on the roadside just over the hill.”

“Yes,” Penny added, “we’ll ski down there and be home in a few minutes.”

“You’re not afraid to go alone?” Jerry asked teasingly.

“Afraid?” The question caught Penny by surprise. “Why should we be?”

“You’ll have to pass the old deserted Abbington Monastery to reach your car. It’s a spooky place at night!”

Penny arose and slipped her wrists through the loops of her ski poles. “Now don’t put ideas into our heads!” she chuckled. “It’s just another building.”

“Sure you don’t want me to go along?” urged Jerry.

“Of course not! Louise and I can handle any ghost we’ll meet tonight!”

The girls glided away, pausing at the top of the slope to wave goodbye to their friends. Then they shot down the hill on a trail which skirted a dense grove of pine.

Ahead loomed the gloomy old Abbington Monastery, a structure of moldy stone enclosed by a high brick wall. To the right, inside the enclosure, was an ancient graveyard, many of its white stones at rakish angles.

Penny studied the building with keen interest as she waited for Louise to catch up with her. Built generations earlier, the property first had been used by an order of Black Friars bound to the vows of poverty and obedience.

Later, the monastery had been taken over by an order of nuns, but as the buildings deteriorated, the property had been abandoned. For ten years now, it had stood unoccupied.

“Ugly old place!” puffed Louise, pausing beside her chum to catch her breath. “All the windows broken—why, that’s funny!”

“What is?” demanded Penny.

“The windows aren’t broken! They’ve been replaced!”

“Probably the owner did it to save his property from going completely to wreck and ruin. Wonder who owns the place anyhow?”

“The last I heard, it was sold at public auction for taxes. I think a real estate man bought it for a song.”

“Then maybe he intends to fix it up for rent or sale,” Penny remarked. “But who would want to live in that ancient shell? Somehow, the place gives me the creeps!”

Louise was staring hard at an upstairs window of the distant building.

“Penny!” she exclaimed. “I saw a moving light just then!”

“Where?”

Louise pointed to the window high on the stone wall of the monastery.

“I don’t see anything,” replied Penny. “You must have imagined it.”

“I did not! The light is gone now. But I saw it plainly. It may have been from a lantern. Someone was moving from room to room!”

“Maybe it was a reflection of moonlight then.”Undisturbed, Penny removed her skis. Carefully placing the running surfaces together, she threw them over her left shoulder.

Far away, in the city of Riverview, a tower clock began to chime the hour of midnight.

“Penny!” insisted Louise in a half-whisper. “I did see a light! Maybe the old monastery is haunted—”

“Now hush!” Penny silenced her. “What are you trying to do? Work up a case of nerves?”

“But—”

“Just climb out of those skis and come on, my pet.”Penny moved briskly away. “We’re late now.”

“Wait for me!” Frantically, Louise fumbled with her ski irons. “Don’t leave me here alone!”

“Then not another word about ghosts!” Penny chided.

However, she waited patiently until her chum had removed the skis. The two girls then walked rapidly toward the roadside where the car had been parked. No longer could they see the friendly campfire in the valley. As they drew closer to the monastery, towering pines blotted out the moonlight.

Like a powerful magnet, the old stone building drew their gaze.

Deep snow, glittering with an eerie blue lustre, lay heavy on the high boundary wall. In the deserted garden beyond the gatehouse, several statues also were covered with soft white shrouds.

Louise clutched her chum’s hand and urged her to a faster pace.

Then suddenly, with one accord, the girls halted.

Directly ahead, at the front entrance to the monastery, a big rusty gate stood slightly ajar!

“It’s open!” whispered Louise. “Why, never before have I seen that gate unlocked!”

For an instant, Penny too was slightly unnerved. But she replied steadily: “What of it? Perhaps someone has moved in.”

While Louise watched uneasily, she walked to the gate, fingering the rusty chain which dangled in the snow.

Then boldly, she pushed the gate farther open.

“Don’t go in there!” Louise warned, her voice sharp with anxiety. “Please come on.”

Penny’s ears were deaf to the plea. She stared intently at a trail of footprints which led from where she stood to a circular stone gatehouse only a few yards away. The marks were very large and had been made by a man’s heavy boot.

“Lou—” she began, but the words froze on her lips.

From inside the monastery came a shrill, piercing scream. As the girls huddled together, the sound died slowly away.

Then a silence, even more terrifying, fell upon the grounds.

CHAPTER 2

“NO TRESPASSING”

“Someone
is
inside that building!” Penny exclaimed, recovering from startled surprise.

Tensely, the girls waited, but the sound was not repeated.

“It was a woman’s scream,” Louise whispered after a moment. Nervously, she clung to her chum’s hand as they stood in the shadow of the big iron gate. “What can be happening in there?”

Penny stared at the dark monastery, uncertain what to do. Nowhere was a light visible, yet she felt that not only was the building occupied, but also that alert eyes were watching them from somewhere in the gloomy interior.

“Someone may be in trouble and need help,” she said in an unsteady voice. “Let’s rap on the door and ask.”

“At this time of night?” Louise tugged at her chum’s hand, trying to pull her away. “Let’s go, Penny! It’s really none of our affair what goes on here.”

“But someone may be ill and in need of a doctor.”

“It wasn’t that type of scream,” Louise replied with a shiver. “That cry gave me the creeps!”

Penny allowed herself to be pulled from the gate, only to pause and gaze again at the darkened windows of the ancient monastery.

The only daughter of a newspaper owner, she had been trained to inquire the who, when, why, where, and how of anything unusual. Penny never willingly passed up an opportunity to obtain a good news story for the
Riverview Star
. She knew that if the old monastery were occupied after standing deserted so many years, the readers of her father’s paper would be interested.

Furthermore, she reasoned, a scream from a darkened house, always called for investigation.

“Louise,” she said with sudden decision. “We can’t leave without trying to find out what’s wrong here! I’m going inside!”

“Oh, Penny—please don’t! This place is so far from other houses. If anything should happen—”

“Something
has
happened,” replied Penny grimly. “You wait here, Lou. I’ll be right back.”

Despite her chum’s protest, she returned to the big iron gate, and pushing it farther open, stepped inside the grounds.

Intuition warned Penny to proceed cautiously. She sensed rather than saw a dark figure crouching in the arched doorway of the circular stone gatehouse to the right of the snow-banked driveway.

Before she could decide whether the form was real or a product of her imagination, a large, savage dog darted from inside the gatehouse. His low growl warned her it might be dangerous to attempt to pass.

“Come back!” Louise called anxiously. “He’ll tear you apart!”

Though no coward, a second glance at the dog convinced Penny that the animal had been trained to guard the property. Rapidly, she backed away.

Her hand was on the latch of the gate, when in the gatehouse doorway, she beheld a grotesque, deformed human figure.

The sight so startled Penny that for an instant she forgot the dog.

Plainly silhouetted against the gray stone was a hulk of a man with large head and twisted back made unsightly by a hump.

Though his eyes were full upon the girl, he remained motionless, speaking no word.

“Call off your dog!” Penny said sharply.

Only then did the figure move from the doorway into the moonlight.

“Quiet, Bruno!” he ordered in a rasping voice. “Lie down!”

As the dog obeyed, Penny caught her first plain glimpse of the deformed man’s face. His skin was heavily lined and fell in deep folds at his stocky neck. But it was the dark, intent eyes which sent a shiver down her spine.

“Good evening,” she said uneasily.

The gateman did not respond to the greeting. Instead, he demanded gruffly:

“What you doin’ on this property?”

“Why, I was only investigating because the gate was unlocked,” replied Penny. “I didn’t know the house was occupied.”

“You know it now. See that sign!” The gateman turned on his flashlight, focusing it upon a freshly painted placard tacked to a nearby tree.

The sign read, “No Trespassing.”

“I’m sorry,” Penny apologized, but stood her ground. “Are you the new owner of this place?”

“No, I ain’t. I’m the gateman.”

“Then who has taken over the building?”

“What’s it to you?” the hunchback demanded unpleasantly.

“I’m interested, that’s all.”

“This place is being turned into an institution,” the hunchback informed her. “The new owner moved in yesterday. Now git along, so I can lock the gate.”

The gateman’s eagerness to be rid of her made Penny all the more determined to remain until her curiosity was satisfied.

“Perhaps I fancied it,” she remarked, “but a moment ago, I thought I heard a shrill scream from inside the building.”

“You may have heard the howl of the wind.”

“What wind?” Penny inquired pointedly. “It’s a comparatively quiet night. I distinctly heard a scream.”

“Then you got better ears than I have,” the gateman muttered. “Will you go now, or do you want me to call the master?”

“I wish you would!”

Grumbling to himself, the hunchback stepped into the gatehouse and pressed a button which rang a bell inside the building.