Ghosts Beneath Our Feet (6 page)

“That's wind in the shaft,” Katie said uncertainly. “You know it is.” Goose bumps popped up on her arms.

Joan made a sudden dash toward the crate beneath the window. “Let's get out of here before the cage comes up,” she cried. “Those knackers could grab us and throw us down that shaft, and no one would ever know what happened.” She hopped up onto the crate and lifted herself to the window ledge. “I'll go out first and catch you on the other side,” she said. In a flash she'd swung her long legs over the side, and Katie was alone in the shaft house.

She scrambled onto the crate and reached for the sill. Even though she knew Joan was teasing, the shaft house was a very eerie place. She wanted to get out, fast.

Later, she couldn't even remember why she'd stopped to look over her shoulder. The wailing in the shaft had ended, but had she heard something else? A small sound, perhaps, almost like a sob, where there should be no sound at all? Whatever the reason, she turned and saw a movement in the shadows at one side of the shaft. As she stared, a white face framed in long blond hair became visible, and a pale hand lifted in the gloom. The figure moved forward with a strange hobbling motion, and the hand reached out.

Katie screamed. With one leap she was halfway through the window and dangling upside down on the other side.

“Wait!” Joan shouted and grabbed her shoulders. But Katie couldn't wait. Wiggling like a fish, she dropped over the sill, and both girls crashed to the ground.

Chapter Eight

“You're making that up!” The two girls faced each other from opposite sides of the crate. Joan wiped her face with the back of her hand, leaving a rusty smudge. “You know I was just kidding about the knackers. Now you're trying to get even. You think you can say anything and I'll believe it. Well, I don't!”

Katie's shoulder ached where she'd landed on it, and her knee was bleeding. She closed her eyes for a second and saw again the girl moving toward her with that strange bobbing gait.

“I'm not lying,” she said. “I saw a girl's face with lots of blond hair, and a hand. Look for yourself.”

Joan climbed up on the crate and reached for the sill. “Okay, I will,” she snapped. “But I know you're making it up.”

Moments later she was back on the ground. “There isn't anybody in there. The place is empty—the way it was when we went in.”

“But she was there a couple of minutes ago. I saw her! Over in the corner close to the shaft.”

Joan shrugged. Silently, the girls tugged the crate back to where they'd found it and started around the side of the shaft house. Thunder rumbled behind them, and the sky, which had seemed lighter for a while, darkened again. The mine buildings looked a thousand years old in the raw glare of lightning.

“We'd better hurry,” Joan murmured. She brushed back her wet hair and started off.

“I'm telling you the truth,” Katie said. “I hate it when people say I just imagine things.”

“And I hate it when someone thinks I'm a
hick
who'll believe anything,” Joan retorted. “You say you saw someone. I say you didn't. Let it go.”

“I heard noises underground the first night we were in Newquay,” Katie insisted. “I didn't make that up either.”

They reached the meadow and waded through the grass, wind rising at their backs. At the top of Newquay hill Joan stopped. “I wasn't calling you a liar, Katie,” she said. “It's just that … you
want
to believe in ghosts, right?”

“If I see them, I believe in them,” Katie said. “And I don't think you're a hick, for Pete's sake. You aren't the only person who thinks I imagine things. My brother said I was flaky when I told him about the noise underground.”

“Oh, him!” Joan's big laugh rang out, breaking the tension. “Funny thing, me agreein' with him!” She began to run down the hill in great, galloping leaps. “So let's forget the whole thing,” she called. “See you later, okay?”

“Okay.” Katie turned toward the woods.

The rain began, and she threw back her head to catch the cool drops. Walking in summer rain had always been one of her favorite things to do. But then the drops turned to stinging needles, and thunder burst directly overhead. She began to run, racing light-footed through the woods, which seemed alive and full of movement as the storm closed in.

Katie called a hello to her mother in the kitchen and slipped upstairs to wash and change her clothes before lunch. She didn't want to answer questions about where she'd been and what she'd been doing.

But she needn't have worried. Mrs. Blaine's mind was on Jay. He'd left the house right after breakfast without a word.

“He's probably with his friend,” Katie said cautiously. “I think they were going somewhere today.”

“What's the friend like?” Mrs. Blaine studied Katie over her coffee cup.

“His name's Skip Poldeen. He lives across from Joan. I—I don't know what he's like. I hardly met him.”

Her mother's lips tightened. “I can tell a lot from the look on your face,” she said. “And I don't like what I see there.”

“Maybe they're at Skip's house.” Katie remembered her dream and pictured the motorcycle skidding up and down the rain-wet streets of Newquay. She glanced across the table at Uncle Frank, hoping for a distraction, but he was busy spitting watermelon seeds into his spoon. No help there.

The front door slammed, and quick steps sounded on the stairs.

“Jay?” her mother called.

After a defiant pause, the footsteps started back down. Jay came into the kitchen. His hair was soaked, and his shirt clung to his shoulders. He looked excited and a little scared.
The way I felt when I got home
, Katie thought.
Maybe he saw a ghost, too
.

“Where have you been?” Mrs. Blaine asked. “It worries me when you sneak away without a word.”

“I didn't sneak. I just went.” He
was
scared. Katie could hear it in his voice, see it in the way he kept glancing over his shoulder.

“Go upstairs and change,” Mrs. Blaine said. “You're absolutely drenched. And then I want to hear about this Skip Poldeen.”

Jay shot Katie a look of pure dislike.

“I have a right to know whom you're spending your time with,” Mrs. Blaine insisted. “And I want to know where you go. I'm responsible for you, remember that.”

Jay clenched his fists. “I can look after myself,” he said, his voice squeaking out of control. “You don't have to be responsible for me. I'm not your kid!”

“You
are
my kid. Your father and I—”

“My father's dead! He's not part of this anymore—”

“'Ere, 'ere!” Uncle Frank's shout made them all jump. “You're a saucy young feller, ain't you? We don't want such talk in this 'ouse, you 'ear? My boy Kenny never would have—”

Jay ran out of the kitchen. Katie got up to go after him, but her mother put out a hand.

“Let him be. He has to cool down.”

“But he was
crying
, Mom! He doesn't mean all that stuff—”

“I said, let him go.” Mrs. Blaine looked close to tears herself. “I'll talk to him later. You can clean up the lunch dishes, if you want to help. I'd like to lie down—”

The ring of the telephone cut her short. Mrs. Blaine hurried into the hall to answer it. Katie wondered if it was Joan, inviting her to come down the hill for the afternoon. She'd gladly walk through the storm to get away from the house for a while.

But when her mother returned, her face was white with shock. “That was the sheriff!” she exclaimed. “He wants to know if I have a son and if that son was home this morning.” Katie waited, her heart thumping. “Two boys were seen running away from a cottage out at Tuesday Lake. They had forced a window to get inside and had taken some food. They got away on a motorcycle.”

“Poldeen,” Uncle Frank said. “Poldeen's got a motorcycle.”

Mrs. Blaine looked at Katie, who said nothing.

“'E'll come to no good, that Poldeen,” Uncle Frank predicted. “Needs a whuppin', 'e does.”

“Wh—what's going to happen?” Katie felt sick.

“I don't know. The sheriff said he'd be up here later to talk to Jay.” Mrs. Blaine sat down with a thump, as if her legs would no longer support her. “I should talk to him myself, but what if he runs off again and makes things worse? I don't know what to do. I just don't.”

“You could whup 'im,” Uncle Frank suggested. “I'd do it for ye, but 'e's a mite big.” He stood up and stretched. “Time for my nap,” he yawned. “Old feller like me can't take all this stirrin' up.”

“Oh, Uncle Frank, I'm sorry.”

The old man waved a dismissing hand. Katie decided that he wasn't as upset as he pretended to be. Maybe any kind of excitement was better than none at all. She remembered what Joan's mother had said:
The old tales make life more interesting for Gram.… She needs 'em
.

It looked as if the Blaines were giving Uncle Frank plenty to think about.

The thunderheads rolled away across the hills, and new ones took their place. The rain never stopped, a harsh downpour that threatened to drown the meadows around the house. Katie saw closed doors wherever she looked—Jay's, her mother's, Uncle Frank's. She thought of telephoning Joan but decided against it. Joan disliked Jay; she wouldn't understand why Katie felt sorry for him now.

She ended up in the library. It was the smallest and, in this weather, the darkest room in the house, but she switched on a lamp next to a massive chair of wood and leather and began pulling books from the shelves. There were some adventure series published fifty or sixty years ago. A row of biographies, in very small print, filled one shelf, and old textbooks crowded several others. There were lots of travel books and atlases. Katie finally chose
The Sinking of the Titanic
. The book jacket said it was a true story about a terrible disaster at sea. The subject suited her mood.

Two hours later she was completely lost in the terrible events of that long-ago night on the Atlantic. On the deck of the
Titanic
, John Jacob Astor was helping his wife into one of the last lifeboats, knowing they would never meet again on this earth. Katie's eyes blurred with tears. How dreadful it all was! Her own troubles seemed small by comparison. She could picture the listing ship, hear the brave men of the ship's orchestra playing “Nearer My God to Thee.…”

A car door slammed. A moment later there was a tapping, hardly louder than the rain.

Katie waited, hoping her mother would go to the door. When the tapping was repeated, she put her book aside and went down the hall. A tall figure waited on the other side of the screen. She opened the door for the visitor, who stamped his feet on the mat and mopped his face with a rumpled handkerchief.

“Enough rain to sink a ship,” he said, making Katie wonder if he could read her mind. “I'm Sheriff Hesbruck. Mind if I come in?”

Katie stepped back. “I'm Katie Blaine. You can sit in the parlor if you want to. I'll call my mother.”

“It's your brother I want to talk to,” the sheriff said. He had a long, thin face, and eyes that studied her as if he intended to remember her forever. “That is, if Jay Blaine is your brother.”

“My stepbrother. I'll get him. He's upstairs.”

Was he going to arrest Jay? Her feet dragged as she climbed the stairs, and when she stood outside Jay's door, her voice was a queer, choky whisper. “Jay. Come on out. The sheriff wants to see you.”

Her mother's door popped open as if she'd been waiting with her hand on the knob. Jay's door opened more slowly. They both stood looking at her, while thunder crashed overhead.

“What did you say?” Jay demanded. “Who wants to see me?”

“The sheriff. The sheriff's downstairs waiting.”

Jay's face darkened, and he moved back into the safety of his room. Katie wished she could help him. John Jacob Astor must have looked a little like that, she thought, when he realized the
Titanic
was going down.

Chapter Nine

“Now what's going to happen?” The words had drummed through Katie's head all the time Sheriff Hesbruck, Jay, and Mrs. Blaine talked in the parlor. Now the sheriff was gone, Jay was back upstairs, Uncle Frank was still napping, and Katie and her mother were alone in the library.

“The sheriff let him off with a warning,” Mrs. Blaine said, her voice flat and weary. “They didn't actually hurt the cottage, and the owner decided not to press charges. Jay says they went inside to get out of the rain.”

“Then is everything okay?”

“No.” Mrs. Blaine sat up. “No, everything is definitely not okay. I have a fifteen-year-old stepson who defies me and h-hates me”—her voice trembled—“and I don't know what to do about it. I know he misses his father terribly—so do I!—but there's no way I can take Tom's place. The four of us had such a short time before Tom died, that's the trouble.” She shook her head at Katie's expression. “I shouldn't talk to you this way, hon—it's not your problem.”

“It is too my problem,” Katie protested. “We're a family.”

“Some family!” Mrs. Blaine stood up and patted Katie's shoulder. “Oh, well, we'll get by,” she said. “Don't worry, Katherine Jane. Right?”

“Right.” As if you could stop worrying when you wanted to.

At the dinner table that evening Jay barely spoke, and even Uncle Frank seemed withdrawn. Mrs. Blaine urged everyone to have a second piece of raspberry pie, and she chattered about the storm and about the rainbow that had arced over Newquay when the clouds finally blew away. Katie listened through Jay's ears, and the words sounded empty, phony.

As soon as the table was cleared, Jay went back to his room and switched on a tape. Katie waited until her mother stepped outside to get some air, and then she hurried upstairs. When there was no reply to her knock, she opened Jay's door. The tape clicked off. He lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.