Ghostlight (5 page)

It took Julian a little while to come to the door Tuesday morning, and this time no sweet smells of baking greeted me in the hallway. Instead I heard the guitar strumming in the living room.

“Dad is
finally
composing, so he'll leave us alone,” Julian whispered, waving me toward the stairs.

“Can we stand here and listen for a bit?”

“No time to waste. We've got two more movies to watch before filming starts.”

“But I've never heard anyone write a song before.”

Julian frowned. “What do you want to be, Avery? A groupie or a filmmaker?”

“Geez, I was just curious.”

Once we'd settled ourselves in his room—Julian stiff and serious in his leather chair and me perched on the bed—he leaned forward. “I've decided our film should be black and white.”

For some reason I thought of those old cameras you saw in movies, the kind you had to wind as you filmed. I couldn't really see Julian doing that. “You mean on actual black-and-white film?”

“I wish. I don't even know how to use a camera with actual film. I learned on a digital camera, and that's what we'll be using. We can change it to black and white afterwards. I have all sorts of cool filters we can use in postproduction.”

Julian had queued up the movie as he was talking, and this one was about a lady who was taking care of two little children in a beautiful mansion long ago. The creepy music during the opening credits probably should have clued me in, but it was still strange to see that sweet little boy and girl turn weird on her. And when the ghosts started to peek through windows and appear on the towers? The hair lifted on the back of my neck. But I didn't let it get to me. Not
really.
Things that would have made me shut my eyes only a few days ago didn't bother me so much now, and I think it was because I was
studying
the movie.

Here's what I noticed: this movie had a lot more close-ups than the last one. In the other movie, the shots were so wide that you saw a lot of the house—the furniture and wallpaper and stuff—and the character would be a small, helpless thing at the center of the screen. That made sense to me, because in that movie the house was the bad guy, and the characters were in its clutches. In this movie, a character's face would fill the entire screen. It was almost claustrophobic, and I was proud of myself for thinking of that word when I explained my thoughts to Julian.

“That's a good way to describe it,” he said. “The shots are so tight it's like there's no room to breathe. But how does it fit the story? Is there anything about
her
that makes you feel kind of, um…”

“Kind of what?” I asked.

“Smothered?”

His face was a little strange when he asked that—almost like he was trying not to flinch or something. I got the sense that he'd clam right up if I asked him about it, so I took a moment to ponder the question.

“I think the close-ups are important because…well, we see everything from her point of view. She's the first one who decides there are ghosts. She's the one who decides the little boy is bad. By the end, it's almost like she made the whole thing up.”

Julian smiled. “Good work, Avery. You've picked up film analysis quicker than I thought you might.” He turned to pull something out of a box on his desk. “I'm loaning you my tablet. I added the last ghost film for you to watch tonight—that way we can get to the filming faster.”

I took the tablet and tried to imagine watching a spooky movie in the attic with the air conditioner wheezing and the shadows reaching for me.

“And, Avery?” Julian said. “Try to get that key soon. Tomorrow we'll find some cool stuff at the cemetery, and then it's on to Hilliard House.”

Later that evening, after I'd said good night to Grandma, I set up Julian's tablet at the end of my bed. He'd showed me where to find the ghost movie and how to play it, but first I wanted to see what else he had. It was pretty nosy of me, but I figured he wouldn't give me the tablet if there was something super private on it.

He had the usual Internet and social networking apps, but since it was a Wi-Fi tablet, there was no point in opening those. His photos and videos were recent ones of the farm and Hilliard House. Nothing from before I met him except for a five-second clip filmed in a noisy school lunchroom titled “Bullied3.” It was just a shaky view of kids sitting at a table, so I figured it was something old he'd forgotten to delete.

The only other thing that caught my eye was an app called “Media Vault,” which I recognized because Blake had installed it on his phone once. That had only lasted a day, though. The instant Mom saw it she forced him to take it off, because it was for hiding photos and videos you didn't want anyone else to see. Knowing Blake, he'd probably put his own selfies in there or something sad like that. What would Julian hide? When I clicked the app, it prompted me for a password, just as I'd expected. I didn't bother to type anything—I was already yawning my head off, so there was no way I'd crack Julian's code tonight.

Since there was nothing else to snoop through, I turned the air conditioner down and opened the movie Julian had told me to watch. The opening credits dragged on for about a hundred years, and I had to turn the volume down because the music was loud and dramatic in that “HARK, A SCARY MOVIE!” way.

Finally the story started with a man and a woman finding a beautiful old house on a cliff that faced the sea. They talked really fast in that old-fashioned, prissy style that annoyed me about black-and-white movies. I'd been worried this one would be too creepy for me to watch alone in the attic, but it was so old-timey that it didn't get under my skin at all. When the man and woman turned out to be brother and sister—and bought the house so they could live there
together
—I gave up and crawled under the covers.

My second-to-last thought before I fell asleep was that Blake would have found the whole brother-and-sister thing hilarious. My last thought was that he would never know because there was no way I was going to tell him about it.

The next day Julian and I took the gravel road down to the blacktopped highway that led to Clearview Cemetery. The sky was bright blue and a light breeze carried the scent of freshly mown grass. I waited quietly as Julian took in the flowers on the headstones and the tall trees that leaned forward to make a curtain around the graves.

“Huh,” he said. “It's like a park. Only with dead people.” He turned to me. “Is your dad's grave here?”

My stomach convulsed. He'd caught me off guard
again.
“Um, no.”

“Why not?”

Why, why, why?
The answers came so easy to me back home, but here…somehow it was harder to lie. “Because he wasn't from around here.”

That much
was
true.

Julian nodded. “I know you don't like talking about him. I just wanted to pay my respects if his grave was here.”

The tightness in my shoulders eased up. Sometimes he talked like he was a lot older—maybe it was all those old movies he watched—but that was the most gentlemanly thing I'd heard him say. Heck, it was the most gentlemanly thing I'd heard
anyone
say.

I grinned. “Are you hungry? Because I worked all morning in the garden and now I'm starving. Plus, I want to show you something.”

A wooden fence lay on the eastern edge of the cemetery, and on the other side was a wooded area. Within those woods was a grove of dwarf blue spruce trees. When we were younger, Blake and I decided the grove was a magical place. A forest within a forest, blue within green. It was quiet and cool there, the perfect spot for spinning tales about Kingdom during the hottest part of the day.

I climbed over the fence and looked back at Julian. “Coming?”

“Will I be trespassing again?”

“The land across the fence belongs to Mr. Shepherd, but he's never shot at us or anything.”

Julian froze and looked around, as if expecting a crazy rifleman to appear from the tree line.

“It's safe, I promise.” As soon as he was on my side of the fence, I led him to the circle of plump spruce trees. Then I handed him a sandwich and water bottle from my knapsack. “This is the secret grove. Cool, huh?”

“Do you and your brother come here a lot?”

“We used to.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Not anymore?”

“He's changed,” I said flatly. “Actually, more like
mutated.
”

“Into…?”

“A jerk.”

Julian twisted the cap off his water and took a swig. “I was an only child for a long time. I always wanted a brother. Then Lily came along.”

I couldn't read his face. “Did you love her or hate her?”

“I didn't feel anything at first. All babies do is cry and drool and stink. One time Dad made me change her dirty diaper, and I threw up.”

“Gross!”

“When she finally started using the potty, and when we could actually talk to each other, I liked her better.” He took the sandwich out of the baggie and sniffed it. “Is this ham and Swiss?”

I nodded. “When is Lily coming?”

“Very soon,” he said. “So what'd you think of that movie I told you to watch?”

I swallowed a gulp of water. “Actually, I fell asleep. It started out kind of slow, and I was really tired.”

“Can you watch it tonight? I promise the story picks up once they move into the house.”

“It's a lot easier when we watch during the day on your big screen.”

“Fine,” he said. “But it'll put us a day behind. Did you at least get the key?”

“Not yet, but I
will.
”

As soon as we'd put away the lunch stuff, I took him to Grandma and Grandpa's plot. I'd never taken the time to find all the Hilliard graves before, but this seemed like the best place to start. It was a wide headstone inscribed with a verse from the book of John:

I AM THE RESURRECTION, AND THE LIFE; HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE LIVE.

“ ‘Samuel Hilliard,' ” Julian read. “ ‘Born March 26, 1935, died August 7, 2002.' ”

“My grandpa.”

“He wasn't that old, was he?”

“Heart disease. Grandma said he hated going to the doctor.” I swatted at a buzzing bee. “She still talks to him whenever we come by to tidy the grave. She likes to fill him in on the latest news.”

Julian pointed at the headstone where Grandma's name—Ava Louise—was already etched in along with her birth date. “Does everyone do that?” he asked. “Put their name on the stone before they've even died?”

“A lot of them do. I mean, if you're married, you go ahead and buy the plot for two people.” I shivered. “I wouldn't want to see
my
name on a gravestone, though.”

Julian traced Grandma's birth year with his finger. “Can you imagine your grandmother visiting this grave and seeing a
death
 date chiseled on her side? And that's when she realizes she's a ghost? That would be a cool scene in a movie.” He pulled a small notebook and pen out of his pocket and scribbled.

After that we wandered around the headstones, looking for more Hilliards. Near a knotty tree I found a collection of old headstones, thinner and lower to the ground than the newer ones. Julian stood at my side as I bent down to peer at the inscriptions.

“This green mold makes it harder to read the words,” I said.

“It's lichen, actually.” He reached for his camera. “And it looks great on film, but I'm not sure how it will translate to black and white…”

He was totally absorbed in taking close-up shots of the moldy lettering, so I studied the other Hilliard headstones. “Hey, this Ephraim guy was the one who settled Grandma's land.” I stepped toward the neighboring headstone. “And this must be his son Josiah—the one who actually built Hilliard House. Grandma couldn't remember his name the other day, but the dates look right.”

Julian had already moved on to study the next row of headstones. “Who was it that outlived his family?” he asked. “You know, the last Hilliard to live in that house?”

“Joshua. But he died in the eighties—he's probably farther back in the cemetery.”

“I think I've found him. Come here.”

He stood midway between two headstones and pointed to the one on his right. “This is him, right?”

JOSHUA EVERETT HILLIARD

AUGUST
23
,
1899
–
FEBRUARY
 
5
, 
1985

It was the plainest of headstones, thick but not very wide. No carvings or quotations from the Bible. Just his name and dates engraved in stark lettering.

“There's another stone over there,” Julian said. “It's what I really wanted you to see.”

I followed him to a wide stone of thick, expensive granite. It had two names on it.

ELIZABETH ANNE CUNNINGHAM HILLIARD

NOVEMBER 10
, 
1905–APRIL 10
,
1955

MARGARET ANNE HILLIARD

JANUARY 5
,
1930–FEBRUARY 12
,
1937

Julian glanced at me. “It's interesting, isn't it?”

“Mother and daughter?”

“Yeah, and I bet Elizabeth was Joshua's wife. Can you check with your grandma?”

I nodded slowly. “Poor little Margaret. Only seven years old when she died. And when they buried her, they left room for the mom but not the dad. What's up with that?”

“It is a bit peculiar.” Julian took several close-up shots of the headstone. “Yesterday I checked that shelf of local history books at your grandma's cottage. I found an old paperback about the Carver County floods of 1937. The big flood in February was the worst—houses were swept away and people died.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Avery, look at the death date on Margaret Anne's grave.” His eyes gleamed as he pointed at the stone. “1937.
February
1937. I bet she drowned in the flood. And you know what that means?”

I shook my head.

“Our film has its ghost.”