The Crossroads (15 page)

Zack and
his father didn't speak during the twenty-minute drive to Home Depot. They didn't speak while they pushed the rumbling orange cart around the cavernous warehouse or when they loaded it up with plywood sheets, two-by-fours, two-by-twelves, and one twenty-foot-square blue vinyl tarp.

Finally, when the lumber was tied down to the luggage rack on top of their car, Zack broke the silence.

“I'm sorry, Dad.”

“I'm sorry, too. We should have come out here last weekend.”

“I guess.”

“Well, tomorrow I'm staying home from work.”

“Really?” Zack tried to sound excited.

“I think they owe me the day, don't you? I mean, I have to leave at night and spend all day Tuesday on an airplane.”

“Yeah.”

“I could help you guys hammer in a few nails.”

“I hope you're not mad at Davy. None of this was his fault.”

“I don't blame Davy. He seems like a good kid.”

“He's awesome. We were even thinking about having a campout.”

“Really? Up in your pirate ship?”

“Yeah.” Zack hung his head. “But I guess I'm kind of grounded….”

“Well, I think you've learned your lesson. So do you guys need supplies for this campout?”

“Really? Do you think we could buy a kerosene lantern?”

“Wouldn't propane be better?”

“Kerosene is more like what a pirate would have. With the wick and all. More old-fashionedy.”

“I see. Okay. Let's go back inside and see if they have a lantern.”

“How about one of those fuel cans?”

“Good idea.” His father smiled. “You know, I had a kerosene lantern when I was your age.”

“Really?”

“Yep. And you're right. It does look more like what a pirate would have.”

An hour later, they returned home with the building supplies, a lantern, and a red plastic canister filled with two and a half gallons of kerosene.

Now Zack and Davy had everything they needed.

Judy decided
to just ask.

“So tell me, Mrs. Emerson, do you believe in ghosts?”

The librarian didn't miss a beat. “Of course I do, dear. Then again, I have a slight advantage over you. I've actually seen a few. Six to be precise.”

“Ghosts?”

“Yes, dear. We were discussing ghosts, weren't we?”

“Yes, but—”

“Oh, they're nothing to be afraid of. Just one more piece of information to process. A new realm to explore.”

“You're saying you've actually seen a ghost?”

“No, dear. I said I actually saw six. It was forty years ago. Late May. Early June. Mr. Emerson and I weren't married. Just dating. I was nineteen. He was twenty-one, had a car. One Saturday night, he took me for a drive down this back country road so we could watch the submarine races.”

“The what?”

“We went there to neck, dear. To make out? We parked near a cornfield not far from the crossroads. We saw nothing but moonlight and fireflies until the Rowdy Army Men appeared.”

The Rowdy Army Men. Grandpa's favorite ghost story.

“Six drunken soldiers stumbled out of the forest like a small herd of deer. They weaved their way into the darkened field, waved their weapons, and swigged hooch from brown paper sacks. One soldier eventually spied us watching and, as quickly as they came, the six men disappeared. They vanished into a foggy mist.”

“I've heard about these army men,” Judy said.

“Yes. They're quite the local legend. Children dress up as Rowdy Army Men on Halloween. Well, not the little children. The teenagers. The ones who find it funny that six drunken soldiers home on leave shot each other and died in a Connecticut cornfield instead of on a Korean battlefield.”

“Is that how the story goes?”

“Yes, dear. Although I don't believe it to be true.”

“You don't?”

“Of course not. However, I do believe the six men did, indeed, die together, which is why they must spend eternity together.”

“Scaring teenagers in lovers' lane?”

“It's not really a lane. More like a dirt road. Since that night, I have made quite a study of paranormal phenomena. At first I assumed that the field was a portal. A door for spirits to pass through as they journey from their world into ours.”

“Okay.”

“Then I wondered: Was it a residual haunting? That's the most common kind.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. The residual theory suggests that a building or a piece of earth holds the psychic impression a person made when they were alive.”

“I see.”

“But then again, this could be a traditional haunting. The soldiers didn't pass over at the time of their death because some sort of unfinished business held them back.”

“Wait a minute,” Judy said.

“Yes?”

“You said that these six soldiers shot each other?”

“No. I didn't say that. That's simply what the local legend would have us believe.”

“Okay. But in order for that legend to be true, two of those army men had to fire
and
get shot at the same instant. The last two men had to kill each other.”

Mrs. Emerson smiled. “Exactly. I like the way you think because it's precisely what I thought! It's also why I never went along with the conventional wisdom. Those soldiers didn't shoot each other.”

“No?”

“No, dear. You see, I am old enough to remember this Greyhound bus accident in the crossroads.” Mrs. Emerson tapped the newspaper. The passenger manifest. “Take a closer look, dear. The answer is right there. Read the list of names.”

Judy did.

Mrs. Emerson smiled. “Pay particular attention to passengers one, eleven, twelve, twenty-six, thirty-eight, and thirty-nine.”

Judy read the names: “‘Private First Class Sylvester Barrows, Corporal Simon Gorham, Private First Class Alfred Grabowski, Private First Class Amos Morgan, Sergeant Abraham Yates, Private First Class Adam Zahn.' They're all U.S. Army soldiers.”

Mrs. Emerson nodded. “Six soldiers. Six ghosts. The Rowdy Army Men were all passengers on the same bus. They died together; they now spend eternity together.”

“Well, then,” said Judy, “I guess your ghosts know my ghost. Mr. Bud Heckman. He was their driver!”

Billy O'Claire
sat in his trailer, staring at the blade of a butter knife.

Someone had carved a message into the stainless steel.

Unfinishd biznis.

Billy knew he had probably scratched the words into the knife himself. Probably used a paper clip. Maybe a chunk of gravel from out in the yard.

But if his hands were responsible for etching the words, he wasn't the one choosing them. It was the other guy, his newly discovered grandfather.

It was early Monday morning. Billy's head throbbed and his teeth felt slimy. He hadn't showered or shaved for a couple of days. He was a stinky, stubbly-faced wreck. But he was alone.

Alone!

Clint Eberhart, the evil spirit, wasn't with him! Wasn't inside him!

Billy had to think.

Who else does Eberhart want dead?

He already gave Mee Maw a heart attack. Now he wants to hunt down this Jennings family. But what about the rest of the O'Claire clan? What about me?

And Aidan!

Oh, no. What about Aidan? What if he wants to kill my son?

 

Billy raced
over to Spratling Manor.

He saw his ex-wife's car parked out front in the same circular driveway where his parents—Tommy and Alice—had been shot twenty-five years earlier.

Billy hated this place, but he had to do this, had to do what was right. He had to protect his son.

An antique Cadillac crawled out from behind a vine-covered brick wall. Billy climbed down from his pickup truck and hurried across the weedy driveway to confront the chauffeur.

“Excuse me? Sir?”

The sleepy-eyed old man tilted his head slightly.

“I'm looking for Sharon.”

“What?”

“Does Sharon still work here?”

“Who?” The chauffeur looked confused.

“Sharon!” he shouted at the old man.

“Billy?”

Sharon was on the front porch. She was dressed in a puke green nurse's smock.

Billy ran over to her, but she gave him the palm of her hand.

“Hold on, Billy.”

He froze.

“How many times do I have to tell you? I don't ever want to see you again!”

“I know. But you've got to listen to me. Just this one last time.”

“Billy,” Sharon said impatiently, “it's Monday and we need to take Miss Spratling into town and then out to her memorial. If you have something to say, you better say it fast!”

“Don't ever let me near my son.” He said it as quickly as he could. “Don'teverletmenearmyson!” He repeated it even faster.

“I don't get this, Billy. Ever since the divorce, you've been pestering me: ‘Let me see Aidan.' Now you're telling me to keep you away?”

“Yes! No matter what I say. No matter what I do. Don't let me anywhere near Aidan, okay?”

“My, my, my. Who is this?”

The old bag, Gerda Spratling, appeared on the porch behind Sharon. She was wearing some sort of long black gown and a black veil that covered her face. She raised it to smile flirtatiously at Billy and give him a queasy stomach.

He tried hard to smile back. It wasn't easy to do when a wrinkled old prune was giving you goo-goo eyes.

“Sharon?” Miss Spratling crowed dryly. “Who is this handsome young man? Your boyfriend, perchance?”

“No, ma'am.” Sharon's ears burned red. “I don't have a boyfriend.”

“Well, that doesn't surprise me. Not in the least. You are rather homely.” Miss Spratling took a step forward. “Have we met before?” she asked Billy. “You look so familiar…especially around the eyes.”

Billy took off his sweat-stained baseball cap. “I'm just a friend of Sharon's.”

“A friend, eh?” The old lady hunched her head toward her shoulder. “My, my, my.”

“Well, I have to go.”

“So soon?” Miss Spratling fluttered her eyelids. “You will call again, won't you, Mr…. I'm sorry; I don't believe I caught your name.”

“O'Claire. Billy O'Claire.”

Gerda Spratling cringed at the name.

O'Claire. Just like Mary O'Claire—the lying guttersnipe who walked off that bus and told all those horrible lies about Clint Eberhart.

She should have hated anyone named O'Claire.

But this charming boy named Billy was just too handsome to hate—almost too handsome to resist.

With such soulful blue, blue eyes.

Judy decided
not to tell anybody else about the ghosts.

It would only scare Zack, and her new husband didn't really believe in “goofy stuff” like goblins and ghouls. Even if George didn't think she was crazy, Judy still didn't want to talk to him about ghosts because he had one of his own. So did Zack. In fact, they shared the same one. How could you talk to people about the ghosts you thought you'd chatted with when they both wished they could talk one more time with just one: their late wife, their dead mother?

The ghost sightings would remain Judy's secret. If she needed to talk to somebody about it, Mrs. Emerson would be more than happy to oblige.

Judy was out in the woods near the big stump, tamping down the soil around a newly planted rosebush, when George came out to join her.

“Hey,” she said. “All packed?”

“Yeah. What are you up to?”

“Putting in a couple rosebushes.”

“Neat. Have you seen Zack? I promised him I'd pound a few nails before I took off for the airport.”

“He and Davy went swimming again. They have a secret lagoon.”

George smiled. “Really? I had one of those when I was his age.”

“I think this one's really a cow pond.”

“Yeah. Mine was, too. There was this big boulder you could dive off of. We called it Dead Man's Bluff.”

They heard the crunch of gravel under tires—cars pulling off the road.

“Well, here she comes,” Judy said. “Right on schedule.”

George peered through the trees, down to the highway. “I remember seeing that Cadillac when I was a kid. They used to drive it up the middle of the road. Thought they owned the streets as well as everybody's souls.”

“George? Behave. Promise?”

“Yes, dear.”

There were three cars parked on the shoulder of the highway this week. The Cadillac, the Hyundai, and, a new addition, a maroon Lincoln Town Car. Judy saw the feeble old chauffeur climb out of the big-bumpered Caddy and shuffle around to the right rear door.

A dark-haired young priest stepped around to the trunk of the Lincoln and disappeared under the lid. When he emerged, he was carrying a four-foot-tall resin statue.

“Oh, boy,” mumbled George. “Is that a birdbath?”

Judy shushed him.

“Hello again,” Judy called out cheerfully as Miss Spratling and the priest trudged up the woodsy slope to the stump. “Beautiful day, isn't it?”

“Mrs. Jennings,” the old woman said. Her voice was dry ice.

“What a pretty statue,” Judy said to the priest, a man she had never met before.

“Thank you,” he panted.

Miss Spratling cleared her throat. Loudly.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” said Judy. “Miss Spratling, I'd like you to meet my husband, George Jennings. He grew up here in North Chester.”

George extended his hand. “I'm very pleased to finally make your acquaintance, Miss Spratling.”

Miss Spratling clucked her tongue. “My, my, my. You're just like your father, aren't you? All la-di-da and polite. Just like your father.”

“Excuse me?”

The old woman pointed her gnarled finger at Judy's new planting. “What is that?”

“A white rosebush.”

“Pull it out of the ground this instant! That's where the statue is meant to go!”

“Whoa!” said George. “Take it easy, Miss Spratling. My wife was simply trying to—”

“I will not have you two defiling sacred ground!”

“And I will not have
you
telling us what we can and cannot do on our own property.”

“This is not your property, Mr. Jennings! Clint Eberhart purchased this soil with his soul!”

“Is that so? I'm a lawyer, so I'll need to see the deed and title report.”

Miss Spratling scowled, then seethed.

The priest dabbed his brow with a linen handkerchief. “I just came to bless the statue,” he said. “To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary.”

“The anniversary of what?” George demanded.

Miss Spratling's lips quivered.

“The accident,” said Judy.

“It was no accident, you foolish little girl! I remember what that bus driver did to Clint.” She glared at George. “I remember what
others
did to my father!”

“Look, it's okay, George,” said Judy. “She can put her statue there for the celebration.”

“Celebration? Why, you ignorant, ill-bred child!”

“Hey!” George shot back. Judy cut him off with a shake of her head.

Miss Spratling knotted her fists. “There is nothing here to celebrate!”

“I'm sorry, I meant—”

“You wait. You'll see. One day, your husband here will drop dead and you will be forced to go on living—knowing that you will never,
ever
see him again. When that happens, will you
celebrate,
Mrs. Jennings? Will you decorate your home with gaily colored balloons?”

“Okay.” Judy had heard enough. “We're going inside now. You can pull up the rosebush. You can tear out everything. You can do whatever you want.”

“My, my, my. Aren't you congenial?”

Then Miss Spratling grabbed the thorny rosebush with her black-gloved hands and ripped its roots right out of the ground.