Ghost Invasion (6 page)

Aurora looked surprised. “Back out? No. Why should we do that? Let’s go.”

“Okay, let’s.” Kate took a deep breath and led the way with Aurora right behind her.

They had tiptoed halfway across the Andersons’ front yard when, from right behind them, a voice said, “Well, hello there, girls. Don’t you look lovely. Come on up and get some cookies.”

Kate gasped and whirled around and there was Mrs. Anderson, coming down the front steps.

“Well, aren’t I lucky,” she said. “I was just coming out to put a new candle in the jack-o’-lantern and I happen to meet—let me see. Who is it? A gypsy, no doubt, and a Greek goddess?”

Kate stood still, frozen by shock and guilt—but Aurora turned back and ran to meet Mrs. A. “Yes,” she said, “a Greek maiden and a gypsy. And I would like a cookie, thank you.” And without even looking back to see if Kate was coming, too, she went up the front steps.

Still feeling stiff with shock, Kate followed, and a minute later she and Aurora were in the Andersons’ old-fashioned living room and Mrs. A. was asking the kinds of questions she had been dreading. “Well, Aurora. And Kate, isn’t it? How do you girls happen to be all by yourselves? I heard that all the cul-de-sac children were trick-or-treating as a group this year.”

Kate was still trying to think of a good answer when Aurora said easily, “Oh, we got left behind. I guess we were just a little too slow.”

Mrs. A. chuckled. “I see. Well, Henry’s away this evening but the Buick is out back. If you like we could jump in the car and catch up with the others. Would you like to do that?”

Kate opened her mouth to say yes, feeling disappointed and relieved all at once. It crossed her mind that maybe being caught by Mrs. A. was a sign. A sign that visiting a haunted barn on Halloween night wasn’t such a great idea after all. “Yeah. Sure. I’d like—” she was beginning when Aurora interrupted.

“Thanks anyway, but I don’t think we really want to catch up with the others. Maybe we could just stay here a few minutes and then go on home. Would that be all right?”

Mrs. A. looked surprised. “Why, of course, dear. I’ll be glad for the company. I’ve just been sitting here looking over some old photo albums and thinking about the years when our own children were all here at home on Halloween. And feeling just a bit lonely, I must admit. I’d really like to have someone to talk to. So you girls sit down for a minute while I go get us some cider and cookies.”

A few seconds later Kate and Aurora were sitting side by side on the old-fashioned velvet sofa and Mrs. A. was disappearing toward the kitchen.

Kate whirled to face Aurora. “Now look what you’ve done,” she whispered. “If we couldn’t go to the barn we could at least have caught up with the others and had a little fun. We could at least have—”

But then, right in midsentence, she broke off. Aurora’s face had the cloudy-eyed, faraway look that always meant just one thing—a mysterious feeling. “Aurora?” she said. “Aurora? What is it?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Aurora said. “It’s just a feeling I have that there’s something right here that …” She paused and looked around the room. “There’s something here that we have to find. Something we have to … see.” She looked around again, at the walls, covered with lots of old-fashioned paintings, at the heavy, dark-colored furniture, at the scuffed and worn carpet, and then at the coffee table right in front of where they were sitting.
And
at a stack of old photo albums that sat on the table. Aurora stared at the albums for a long time.

A
T FIRST WHEN AURORA
said there was something in the Andersons’ living room that they had to see, Kate couldn’t imagine what on earth she was talking about. It wasn’t until she noticed the strange way Aurora was staring at the photo albums that she began to understand.

Suddenly Kate felt very excited. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it? There would probably be some old photographs of Addie and the bandit boyfriend. Or of Addie, at least. Not of her ghost, of course, but of Addie herself when she was a young woman.

Kate was reaching for the nearest photo album when Aurora grabbed her hand and pulled it back. “No,” she said. “Not yet. Here she comes.” And a second later Mrs. A. came back into the room carrying a tray.

“Here we are,” she said. “Now if you’d just push those albums over a bit, Aurora, I’ll put the tray down right here where we can all reach it.”

As Kate watched, Aurora reached out quickly and moved the stack of heavy leather-covered books to one side of the coffee table. After she moved them she took her hands and eyes away very slowly, as if she were trying to get a message right through the leather covers. And later while Mrs. A. was passing around cookies and cider and chattering away about the things her kids used to do on Halloween, Aurora’s eyes kept going back to the albums.

Kate sipped her apple cider and nibbled a cookie, listening to Mrs. A. and watching Aurora. Finally Mrs. A. seemed to notice too.

“Aurora,” she said, “you seem to be interested in my albums. Do you like to look at family photographs?”

Aurora’s enormous gray eyes turned toward Mrs. A. and her solemn face glowed into a smile. “Oh yes,” she said. “I do. I love to look at photographs. Especially old ones. We both love to look at old photos. Don’t we, Kate?”

“Yes. Yes. We really do,” Kate said eagerly. “Looking at old photos is one of our favorite hobbies.”

Mrs. A. put down her glass of cider and reached for one of the albums. “Well, in that case,” she said, “you might enjoy seeing this. There are some very old pictures in this album. Anderson family pictures that date back past the turn of the century. Even a few old tintypes. Here we are. Perhaps if you’d move over just a bit, so I could sit between you …”

So Mrs. A. sat between Kate and Aurora and turned the pages of the album, and they looked at old pictures. Lots of them. At first Kate was very interested, but there were an awful lot of people in the pictures who couldn’t possibly have been Addie, and after a while they all began to look alike.

There were lots of pictures of wives in long, high-necked dresses standing stiffly beside stiffly seated husbands. Also lots of pictures of stiff-looking babies in long white dresses. Not to mention dozens of big family groups where rows of people of all ages posed stiffly in long straight lines. Looking at so many pictures began to give Kate a stiff neck.

There were a few interesting possibilities—portrait-type pictures of young women. But none of them were named Addie. Kate knew they weren’t because all the pictures were carefully labeled. There were Marys and Ediths and Bridgets and Augustas and lots of others, but not a single Addie among them.

In between looking at all the pictures, Kate watched Aurora because she was sure Aurora would know if something important turned up. But, for a long time, Aurora didn’t say or do anything special. She did look at one photograph for a long time, but it was just a picture of a little girl about ten or twelve years old sitting on a big horse. And her name was Liza. “Liza on Champion” it said under the picture.

“Who is Liza?” Aurora said.

“Who was Liza?” Mrs. A. asked. “Oh yes. I believe she would have been my husband’s aunt, but I don’t think he even remembers her. She died quite young, as I recall.”

“But she loved horses?” Aurora asked.

“Loved horses?” Mrs. A. looked at the picture of the little girl on the big horse. “Why, yes, I suppose she did. If I remember correctly she had a serious illness as a young child and lost her hearing completely. And after that, since she wasn’t able to talk to people, she spent all her time with animals. Particularly with the horses.”

“Liza,” Aurora said. She stared at the picture for quite a while, but at last she let Mrs. A. turn the page, and they went on looking at other boring pictures.

Kate was feeling more frustrated all the time. Here they were sitting indoors on Halloween night looking at old pictures because they were hoping to find one of Addie before she was a ghost. But there didn’t seem to be an Addie in the whole book. As Mrs. A. turned the pages more and more slowly and went on talking and talking, Kate tried to get Aurora’s attention. If Aurora would just look up she could make a bored face and nod toward the door. But Aurora wouldn’t lift her eyes from the pages of the album. At last Kate decided to take charge on her own, just to get things moving.

“Isn’t there a picture of Addie anywhere in there?” she asked.

Mrs. A. looked puzzled. “Of me?” she asked. “My given name is Adelaide, you know.”

Kate ignored Aurora’s warning frown. “Yes, I know that,” she said. “But I didn’t mean you. I meant another Addie who lived a long time ago.” Kate gave Aurora a “try and stop me” look. “I mean, the one who had a boyfriend who was a bandit.”

Mrs. A. looked puzzled. “I don’t know of any other Addie,” she said. “Or anyone who had a …” She paused for a minute and then went on. “Who told you about this Addie and her boyfriend, Kate? It wasn’t … it wasn’t our Bettina, was it?”

Kate looked at Aurora, asking for her help, but Aurora’s face said something like “You got yourself into this mess. It’s your problem.” That made Kate even angrier. All right. If Aurora wouldn’t help out, she would decide what to tell all by herself, and she’d tell everything—if she wanted to. Everything they knew about Addie and the bandit.

So she did. All about what Bettina had said about the two ghosts and how they were the ghosts of Addie and her boyfriend. And how the boyfriend had been shot, and perhaps Addie had too. When she finished, Mrs. A. was smiling. A strange, sad-looking smile.

She sighed. “Bettina,” she said and sighed again. “I’m afraid Bettina is a great storyteller.”

Kate stared at Mrs. A. and then at Aurora and then back at Mrs. A. “You mean,” she said finally, “that Bettina just made up all that stuff—about the ghosts and everything?”

Mrs. A. nodded. “I’m afraid so. I think she just wanted to upset you. I’m afraid Bettina likes to be upsetting.”

Kate didn’t know what to say. What she wanted to say was “But there is a ghost in the old barn. Aurora knew there was one before we even met Bettina. And Aurora knows about things like that.” Instead she just shrugged and said, “Yeah. Well, I guess I knew that Bettina was joking. I kind of thought it was just a joke.”

That was all she said out loud, but inside she was thinking a lot of other things. One of the things she was thinking was that she was angry—and getting angrier every minute. She was angry at Bettina for lying to them. And she was angry at Mrs. A. for keeping them there looking at her boring old pictures when they could have been out trick-or-treating. But most of all she was angry at Aurora for not telling her that there wasn’t any Addie ghost, because she must have known all along. Aurora
always
knew about things like that.

W
HILE KATE AND AURORA
were hiding behind the shrubbery and then being caught by Mrs. A., the rest of the Castle Court trick-or-treaters were leaving the cul-de-sac and heading down Beaumont Avenue. And by the time the girls were sitting on Mrs. A.’s sofa looking at old photos, the Castle Court gang were knocking on doors up and down the avenue—and beginning to run into bunches of kids from other neighborhoods. Before long the gang started to look more like a swarm.

Ari couldn’t keep track of everyone. There were now at least three Fred Flintstones in the mob, although he was still the only one in an angora goatskin. There were a couple of new gypsy girls, too, and so many ghosts he lost count.

Halfway down the sidewalk to the third house he stopped and looked around anxiously. He’d just realized he hadn’t seen Kate and Aurora for quite a while. They might still be around, mixed up with the confusing mob of masked and costumed trick-or-treaters. Or they might have already split off from the group and headed for the barn.

He gave up on Kate and Aurora then and started to look for Web and Carson, but for quite a while he couldn’t find them either. Once when he grabbed a ghost and said, “Stay with me, Carson. We have to stay close together,” a girl’s voice said, “Hey, back off, you nerd. My name isn’t Carson.”

The whole mob had straggled up to two or three more houses before Ari finally located the right ghost and astronaut. “We’re going to have to leave,” he whispered urgently. “Right away.”

“I know,” Web whispered back. “We should have gone before this, but I lost you back there. We’re going to have to get going or it will be too late.” He glanced up at the darkening sky. “It’s just about time—right now. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Ari nodded. Grabbing Carson’s arms, they pulled him back behind a fence and waited for the last few trick-or-treaters to move on down the sidewalk. Then they ran back toward Castle Court, dragging Carson between them.

All the way back down the sidewalk and across the court Ari was wondering about Kate and Aurora. They must have left the group some time ago, and by now they had probably reached the barn. And that might be a big problem unless … unless he could get Web and Carson to be very quiet. But Web and Carson might not be quiet enough if they didn’t have a good reason to be. Particularly Web. Web liked to have good reasons for everything he did.

They had crossed the Andersons’ yard and were safely into the deep shadows of the forest before Ari decided what to do. He would tell Web and Carson the truth. Or at least part of it.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “I have to tell you something before we go in the barn.”

Web stopped. “Okay. What?” he said.

“Well, somebody else might be there already. I mean, it might be Kate and Aurora. They were planning to come here tonight too.”

“Kate?” Carson sounded horrified. “She won’t let me. Kate won’t let me do it.”

“Yeah, I suppose not. But don’t worry, I’ve got it all figured out so she won’t see us. At least not until we’re all finished. If we don’t have to climb up the ladder they won’t even know we’re there because they’ll probably be in that big stall right next to the ladder. That’s where they usually go.”

“But
I
have to go up in the loft,” Carson said.