Creepers (3 page)

“It's just as well. We would have to cancel with this weather anyway,” Mr. Geyer replied pleasantly. Despite his coke-bottle lenses, he was squinting up at the sky, looking for a sign.

“Daddy, while we are here, can we show Courtney Prudence's grave?” Margaret asked sweetly. It was the first
time she even looked like she was pleading. Her green eyes were wide and hopeful.

The wind was gusting now and the big trees in the cemetery were shaking their branches like castanets. Even the ivy appeared intimidated as it clung to the stones and shoots of the grass.

Mr. Geyer took a last look over his shoulder at the weather before he answered. “Yes, Margaret, but we had better hurry or we will be soaked.”

Margaret surprised me by taking my hand. It felt smooth and cool.

“I'll show you,” she whispered.

No one spoke as we followed a thin gravel path toward the center of the cemetery.The wind blew furiously, whipping the end of my ponytail across my cheeks. I looked toward my house and thought how tiny it appeared, cowering beneath the glower of the bilious black cloud hanging over the chimney. Its sides looked damp already, but I realized that it was the ivy that darkened its walls. Despite my dad's valiant efforts, it kept growing back.

“Here it is,” declared Margaret, yanking my hand as we stopped in front of a thin gray tombstone that was tilted backward.The tombstone looked tired, as if we had caught it in the act of reclining.

I couldn't help but gasp as I looked at its face. On the
top of the stone in the dome was an hourglass with a bone leaning against each side. Beneath the hourglass was a smiling skeleton, with a laurel wreath around his skull. In one hand he held a beaming sun with squiggly rays of light. The other hand held what looked like an apple. The skeleton was in a circle made up of a snake that was swallowing its own tail.Two bats fluttered at the bottom of the snake circle, like bugs trying to reach the light. At the top were two angels with angry smiles.The bottom half of the stone surrounding the inscription was carved with swirling ivy.

 

Margaret read the inscription aloud. Her voice was soft and sad.

I looked at them both, trying to see what sort of reaction they were expecting, but neither of them was looking at me.They were staring at the tombstone.

“Was Prudence a relative of yours?” I asked. I knew it sounded stupid. “I mean, she has your last name.”

“Prudence is an ancestor of ours, Courtney, although we are not direct descendants. She lived here perhaps eleven generations before us.” He said it wistfully, like he was sorry he had not had the chance to get to know her. The wind was blowing his gray hair so that it seemed to be standing on top of his head.

“Tell her about Prudence, Dad. I want Courtney to know.” Margaret slipped her hand into Mr. Geyer's. Her green eyes were serious as her gaze locked onto his face. Neither of them seemed to pay any attention to the far-away rumbling of thunder.

“What about Prudence?” I asked, a little too nervously. The ever-darkening clouds were making a fast approach.

Mr. Geyer took off his glasses and wiped the lenses against his shirt. His brown eyes, unmasked for the first time, looked sad and young. “You don't mind, do you Courtney? I'll be quick.” He glanced at the sky. “Margaret doesn't let me share this story with most people.” It was then that Margaret looked away from both of us.

For some reason, I felt suddenly important because Margaret deemed me worthy of such a secret.

“Of course I'd love to hear about Prudence,” I said curiously.

“She lived in your house, Courtney. Well, in the house that shared the same foundations as yours,” he amended when he saw the look of surprise on my face. “The original caretaker's house burned in 1712. Prudence's father, who was also named Christian, was a stonecutter and carved many of the tombstones in this cemetery. He lived in that house until his death.”

I could feel Margaret studying my face as I quickly scanned a few gravestones. “Do you mean he cut the stones?” I asked.

Mr. Geyer nodded. “Yes, that's right. He cut the stones and also carved the inscriptions and the symbols that you see on their faces. Death was extremely important, as it still is in our lives.” He sort of laughed. “What I mean is, the stonecutters, like the first Christian, took it as their most important job to tell the life story of a person on the tombstone, giving comfort to the people left behind.”

“Did he carve his daughter's stone?” I asked. I tried to imagine my father drawing a skeleton head as a sign of his love. Margaret must have seen the look on my face.

The growl of thunder was longer and lower this time. Only black clouds now hung over the cornfields' horizon but Margaret and Mr. Geyer were undeterred.

“Explain the symbols,” Margaret instructed. “They
are
morbid unless you understand their meaning.” I looked at
Margaret, a girl who used such grown-up words. She stood beside her father, oblivious of the wind that seemed to be shaking the trees to their foundations.

“A quick summary of the symbols for you, Courtney, before we, too, are blown away.” He was louder now. The wind refused to be ignored.

He pointed at Prudence's tombstone. “The hourglass symbolizes the flight of time and the crossbones are for mortality. The skeleton is simply the head of Death, and you'll notice that he is crowned with a laurel, denoting his victory.” Margaret squatted beside the tombstone now, peering at it as if it were the first time that she was examining it.

Mr. Geyer continued, “He holds in his hands the sun and the moon, which, according to the Bible, represent the new heaven and the new earth.” He scowled for a moment while catching his breath. “Beneath him are two bats, which symbolize the evil of the world that death has conquered. And thank goodness for the smiling cherubs, which are meant to soften the otherwise gruesome effect of the engravings. The mourner is supposed to remember, above all else, that Death as the champion transforms us into happier and innocent beings once again.”

“And the ivy?” I asked, truly interested now. “Is the ivy on the stone because it is everywhere? Sort of like a reminder of home?”

Mr. Geyer shook his head. “No, the ivy is different. . . .”

“Let me tell Courtney,” Margaret interrupted. There was a weird urgency to her voice. Her eyes were bright although her face was pale and calm.

“Christian was heartbroken by his daughter's death, and even though he dealt with death every day of his life, he wasn't ready for it to take Prudence away from him. Isn't that right, Dad?” Margaret asked, more to add emphasis than for his confirmation, it seemed.

“Yes,” Mr. Geyer agreed. His glasses were back on his face. His eyes, truly like saucers again, suddenly looked concerned.

“When Christian was carving Prudence's stone, he was approached by a woman from the town. She was rumored to be a witch, but Christian didn't care.” Margaret's voice had dropped to a whisper. I no longer cared about the coming storm.

“She told Christian to carve ivy around the stone's border. It represented life, of course, as ivy is an evergreen, a plant that survives all seasons.The ivy was to bring Prudence back.”

I was afraid to ask the question, but I did anyway. “Of course it didn't work, right?”

Margaret suddenly smiled sadly. “No, it didn't work. But soon the ivy was all over the cemetery. At least, that's
what Christian's journals claimed. My dad read them all as a part of his research.”

A crack of lightning made us jump. A moment later I felt the cold rain hitting my shoulders like pebbles.

“Let's go, girls. The tour is over for today,” Mr. Geyer yelled, sounding relieved.

We were trotting now, down a gravel path toward the main entrance. I noticed that the ivy was everywhere.

“Is that why it's still here? The ivy, I mean?” I asked.

“We don't know,” Margaret said simply. She was glistening now under a sheen of water. “That is part of the
mystery
we're looking to solve.”

Lightning was cracking across the sky and Mr. Geyer said that it wasn't a good idea for us to be standing outside. They left me at the end of my driveway without explaining the mystery.

I was soaked and cold. My T-shirt was glued to my body and my jeans felt as if they weighed a ton. I watched Mr. Geyer grab Margaret's elbow as he shuffled her down the road, away from the cemetery. They looked so vulnerable, jogging gingerly along the grassy swale, which
already had a little river of water racing along its path. The cornstalks on the other side of the road were leaning menacingly toward them, pressed by the wind. I thought of the cranky trees in
The Wizard of Oz
pitching their apples at Dorothy and her buddies.

“Do you want a ride?” I screamed after them. “I can ask my dad!” The thunder and wind working together were deafening.

Mr. Geyer waved off my offer. He pointed toward something farther down the road. If he had a car, why wouldn't he have parked it by the cemetery gate?

Another explosion of lightning jolted my body and I sprinted for our front door. The massive oak trees along our driveway seemed angry as they quaked in the wind, desperately shaking off the deluge like a wet dog. As I lunged for the door, it suddenly swung open. My dad stood in the foyer with a towel in his hand.

“Courtney, you're soaked!” He laughed despite himself. He had trouble being a tough guy with me. “Do you always have to wait until the last minute?” he asked, dropping the towel on my head and rubbing vigorously.

“Whoa, Dad. I can do it!” I didn't mean to sound annoyed as I pushed his hands away. It was just that I was still preoccupied by the story of Prudence, the witch, and the ivy.

“Okay, okay, sorry!” he shot back, raising his hands in the air. Even though he was thirty-six years old, he can suddenly look like a kid to me, with his red hair and freckle-covered face. He looked just like the kid in all the photographs taken of him when he was my age. This thought made me smile.

“It's okay,” I said, chucking the towel at him. “I thought you were going to yank my head off.”

He caught the towel and cocked his head. “You're still wet, Courtney. Go upstairs and change right now. Your mom will blame
me
if you catch a cold.”

“I will. I just need to ask you a question first. Did you know that this house was built on the foundations of a house that burned down a long time ago?” I crossed my arms because I was shivering now, but I did not want Dad to know it.

“Where did you hear that?” he asked. He went to sit on the finished wood stairway, choosing the fourth step up so he could stretch his legs out. Since I crossed my arms, he must have thought that I was mad about something. “Your mom knows the most about the history of this house, but I don't remember the realtor mentioning it. It doesn't bother you, does it?”

“No, not really. I don't think so.” I was unsure if it bothered me. I sat beside him on the stair.The stairway was
wide enough for four people to sit across. “Mr. Geyer and Margaret told me. We live in the house of a girl who is buried in the cemetery. Prudence is one of their ancestors. Well, we live on the first house's foundations anyway.”

“Really?” My dad looked at me in surprise, like he was interested, too. “We'll have to ask your mom when she gets home. I was so tied up with the office move that your mom took charge of a lot of the research for our new house.”

He leaned toward me and placed his hand on my knee. “Are you sure you're not worried about something, Courtney? You seem a little shook up.” He smiled sympathetically. “On a dark and stormy night, ghost stories can really creep a person out.”

“I'm okay, Dad.” I smiled back to prove it. “It's just that the house seems a little different now. I'll ask Mom when she gets home.”

He nodded. “A house this old is bound to have some interesting history, and we're a part of it now.”

“What part are the foundations? Is that the basement?” I could not get Prudence out of my mind.

My dad stood up, pulling me up by the hand. “Yep. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire basement was the original. The slate floor and the stone walls would probably have survived a fire.” He handed the towel back to me. “Now go on up and put some dry clothes on while I pull
something out of the refrigerator for dinner. Mom said she wouldn't make it home in time to join us.”

“Okay.” I wrapped the towel into a ball. I could not wait to change. I wanted to go into the basement—a room that Prudence once knew.

I could hear something sizzling on the stove as I crept down the basement steps. It was funny how I recognized that smell. Our basement back in Philadelphia, which was not half as old as this one, always felt cool and smelled of damp earth with a tinge of laundry detergent. My mom loved the smell. She said the musty aroma reminded her of museums and archives. She was weird that way.

I let my hand run along the smooth, cool stone of the wall. It was covered by a fine layer of dust but otherwise seemed clean. There were no spiderwebs or bugs. The single bulbs that hung from the ceiling seemed to glow against the dark instead of shine, but I could see fairly well. Not much was down here. A bunch of boxes were stacked in the far corner, and a faded sofa and a rocking chair were pushed against the front wall. Dad had insisted that it would be okay to store our winter stuff and knickknacks
down here for a couple of weeks, even though Mom was worried about mold. Our washer, dryer, and utility sink were lined along the wall opposite me.The shadow of the heater and water tank seemed to lurk not far from the boxes.