The Ghost of Fossil Glen (10 page)

Allie ran after Hoover, hopping from one rock to another, trying to watch her feet and at the same time look ahead for a glimpse of the dog's golden fur or the red of her bandanna.

“Hoover!” she called. “Come here, girl.” Her hiking boot plopped into the water as Hoover charged ahead, out of sight. Looking down at her sopping foot, Allie muttered, “Mr. Henry should send you to obedience school.”

She rounded the curve of the stream and came to a place where the steep shale cliffs widened and the stream bed spread out into a shallow, lazy flow. Bushes, trees, and cattails grew along the edge of the stream, and the ground was softer and spongier and less rocky than farther downstream.

There was a fresh cut in the bank, where the swollen waters had recently washed out a corner. Beyond that was another place where the dirt of the bank was newly disturbed. And there Allie saw Hoover—the back end of her, at least. Her tail was wagging furiously as she dug at the exposed earth bank. Dirt flew backward through the air.

“Hoover, you crazy girl,” scolded Allie gently. “What are you up to?”

Hoover looked up momentarily and Allie could see that the dog's face, chest, and front paws were covered with mud. Well, so much for her attempt to keep Hoover clean and out of trouble.

“You're a mess!” Allie scolded. Hoover blinked, unconcerned, and returned to her digging.

“What are you after, Hoovey?” asked Allie. She walked closer, trying to avoid the shower of flying dirt. “Did you find something good?”

At that moment, Allie was overcome by the chilly, shivery feeling that she had first felt at the mailbox. She stopped, waiting to see what would happen next. And it came, a vision in her mind's eye. It was the same scene that had come to her so clearly before: the night of Lucy's murder, the girl's plunge from the cliff, the shadowy figure of a man struggling in the dark, dragging the body upstream—with something in his hand.

What
was
that in his hand? In the darkness of the scene in her mind, Allie couldn't quite see it, couldn't quite make out what it was. She squinted, concentrating. Then, in his struggle to drag the body, the man dropped the object and Allie saw it: a shovel. The image faded away.

Allie stood quietly, considering the significance of the vision. At that moment, she saw that Hoover had stopped digging and was tugging at something in the creek bank.

“Hoover! Come!” Allie called. To her surprise, Hoover gave one last pull and raced triumphantly toward Allie with something in her mouth, which she dropped at Allie's feet. She gave two sharp, excited barks and returned to the cliff, where she continued her excavation.

Allie leaned down and picked up Hoover's offering. It was a ragged piece of cloth, damp and rotten from being in the ground. Gee, thanks, Hoover, she thought. Frowning, Allie examined it and saw what appeared to be a cuff, with the button missing. The sleeve of a shirt, she decided. The cloth was checkered and felt like flannel. The checks were red and black.

With a gasp, Allie dropped the piece of cloth.

The words of the newspaper article about Lucy's disappearance echoed in her brain:
She was last seen wearing jeans, sneakers, and a red-and-black-checkered flannel shirt
.

Horrified, Allie looked ahead to where Hoover was digging deeper into the bank.

“Hoover,
no
!” she screamed.

But Hoover was already running back toward Allie, carrying something long and thin and white, with knobby ends, clutched tightly in her mouth. And although the object was smeared and streaked with mud, Allie knew what it was even before Hoover dropped it proudly at her feet.

Allie was standing still, staring with fascinated loathing at the bone, when a man stepped out from behind a scrubby willow bush.

“You're a meddler, aren't you?” he said. “Just like her.”

With a startled cry, Allie looked up at the figure which had materialized, it seemed, out of nowhere. Although she'd never seen him before, she knew who he was. The thin, bristly mustache and the stained yellow teeth were just as Lucy had described, though he was bigger than Allie had imagined him to be. His face was flushed and sweaty, and he was breathing heavily, as if from exertion.

He wasn't the classic movie villain she had pictured that morning. He was quite ordinary-looking.

Except for the shovel in his hand.

“I can't let you ruin everything now, you realize that, don't you?” He spoke calmly, as if they were discussing the weather, as if he had said, “You realize it's raining, don't you?” He took a step closer, raised the shovel, and held it in both hands like a baseball bat. Mesmerized by his low, reasonable tone and slow, deliberate movements, Allie stood, transfixed. Too late, she realized that he had placed himself downstream of her, blocking any chance of escape toward her classmates.

Vaguely, she was aware of Hoover, running with carefree abandon back toward safety.

Raymond Gagney came another step closer, and Allie took one step back. Again and again, he moved forward and she moved back in a nightmarish dance. Bringing the shovel over his shoulder, Gag-Me prepared to swing. The placid, almost pleasant look on his face made his actions all the more horrifying. He looked like a man preparing to swing a bat in a friendly back-yard ball game.

Their eyes were locked. Lucy had said that looking into Gag-Me's eyes was like looking into a deep poisoned well. Allie could feel herself being pulled into his gaze and down that well. She tore her eyes away, turned, and began to run as the scoop of the shovel whooshed past her head. She ran blindly, splashing through the water, slipping on the loose shale, sinking in the soft, boggy places, running, running, running, keeping a few steps ahead of the man and the shovel that came slicing and whistling through the air.

Desperately, Allie tried to think. Ahead, she knew, was an old mill site. There the glen narrowed again, the sides closed in, steep and high, and the stream bed ended at the foot of a magnificent waterfall. It was a beautiful—and deadly—trap.

Behind her she could hear Gag-Me's labored breathing, punctuated by curses as he struggled to keep up. When they approached the foot of the falls, she heard him chuckle with amusement. “Where are you going to go now?” he asked.

She looked back. Gag-Me had stopped running and was standing, leaning on the shovel, watching her with a curious grin.

There was nowhere to go—nowhere but up. Allie reached for the skinny branch of one of the trees that struggled to grow in the steep, stony cliff side. Digging in with the toe of her hiking boot, she hoisted herself up, planted her other foot, and grabbed for a fingerhold on the root of a hemlock tree. Again, she pulled herself up, and again and again, slowly scaling the face of the cliff. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw with relief that she was out of range of the swinging shovel and that Gag-Me wasn't even attempting to follow her. He stood below her, relaxed, waiting. Waiting for her to slip and fall, or to give up and come sliding down to land at his feet.

Grimly, Allie held on and looked above her to consider her route. Overhead was a relatively flat shelf; if she could reach it, she could rest a moment and then angle over toward a bunch of weeds and vines that would offer a handhold. Beyond that, she didn't know. She'd deal with it when the time came.

Grunting with effort, she managed to pull herself up to the shelf. She looked back over her shoulder and was surprised to see how far she had climbed. Raymond Gagney was about twenty-five yards below her. His smug grin had turned to an annoyed grimace, probably from the realization that Allie was going to be more trouble than he had anticipated. With a sound of disgust, he threw the shovel to the ground and started up the cliff after her.

Terrified, Allie began to scramble haphazardly toward the tangle of vines. She clutched blindly until her fingers wrapped around a stalk. Too frantic to remember to test its strength, she used it to pull herself up. For a moment the stalk held her weight. Then she felt it slipping right out of the cliff, sending her sliding backward in a shower of dirt and shale. At last, she found a foothold on the shelf again and tried to gather her wits and her courage.

Beneath her, Gag-Me was slowly, determinedly climbing higher and closer. She had to figure out each hand and foothold; all he had to do was follow the route she had chosen. A sob of terror and frustration rose in her throat. No, she told herself fiercely. Don't cry. Don't think about him. You can do this; you've climbed places this steep before. Well, almost this steep. Remember the other day. Pretend you're looking for fossils. Take one step at a time. Test each hand and foothold before you trust your weight to it. Slow down. Don't panic. Don't look back. Keep moving.

With desperate concentration, Allie climbed, no thought in her head beyond her next step and that of the man beneath her. There was no sound except for Raymond Gagney's steady swearing, the grunts of his exertion and hers, and the occasional shower of loose stones and dirt.

Gag-Me's breathing was becoming more and more labored. Allie, too, was near the point of exhaustion, but she made herself push on. And then, to her utter dismay, she came to a spot where she was stuck. Above her was a sheer, blank rock face. There was no place to dig a toehold, nothing to grasp, nowhere to go. Below her, very close, was Gag-Me.

Clinging to her fragile position on the side of the cliff, Allie began to sob with helplessness, fatigue, and fear. Gag-Me was climbing steadily. Soon he would reach her and then he would kill her as he had killed Lucy.

Allie closed her eyes and waited to die.

Gag-Me was very close. She could hear the sounds of his struggle, the scramble of his feet, the clawing of his hands on the rock just below her. She imagined that she could feel his hot breath on the back of her legs, and she waited for his hand to close around her ankle.

Suddenly everything was quiet: no breathing, no falling rock, no slipping shale. Allie felt a familiar chill steal down her neck. She heard Gag-Me draw in a sharp breath.

“No!” he cried shakily. “No!” he repeated in a voice filled with horror. “It can't be! Go away! You're dead! No-o-o-o-!”

Next came a long, drawn-out, anguished scream which seemed to go on forever but which could not have lasted more than seconds, as Raymond Gagney fell more than one hundred feet down the side of the cliff. There was a sickening thud when he hit bedrock, followed by an awful silence. It was broken by what Allie only dimly realized was the raw, strangled sound of her own voice, crying for help.

“Hang on, Allie. You're going to be all right. Help is on the way. Don't try to move.
Hang on
.”

“I can't.”

“You
can
. Listen to me, Allie.
You can do it
.”

The voice was Mr. Henry's. It was calm and soothing, and when she thought she couldn't hold on any longer, it insisted that she could. And she did.

Then more people were speaking to her, from the top of the cliff this time. A rope appeared above her, and a man in a safety harness came down with it. He tied the rope around Allie and said, “It's all over now, honey. We're going up. It's okay, you can let go.”

But Allie couldn't let go. Her fingers refused to uncurl from their death grip on the cliff; her feet wouldn't budge from their desperate hold on the rock. Finally, her rescuer gently pried open her hands and wrapped his arms tightly around her. Together, they were pulled to the rim of the glen, to safety.

Allie was carried to a waiting ambulance and placed on a stretcher, despite her protestations that she was really perfectly fine. As she was being loaded into the ambulance, she saw that a crowd had gathered. There were two Town of Seneca police cars and a fire truck, as well as many trucks belonging to volunteer rescue workers from the neighborhood.

One of the policemen walked over and stuck his head inside the back of the ambulance. “Do you know the identity of the man at the bottom of the glen?” he asked.

Allie nodded. “Raymond Gagney,” she said. Her voice came out sounding dry and croaky. She cleared her throat and wet her lips. “There's another body, too,” she added. “It's buried in the side of the cliff. You'll see. It's where Hoover—she's a dog—was digging.”

The policeman's eyes widened in surprise. “Another body?” he repeated. “Do you know who it is?”

“Lucy Stiles,” said Allie.

“Lucy Stiles. That sounds familiar.” His eyes narrowed with concentration, then his expression turned to one of recognition. He said incredulously, “You mean the girl who fell off the cliff some—what?—four years ago?”

Allie nodded again as the ambulance driver appeared at the door. “We'll be heading to the hospital now, officer,” he said.

“I'll follow you,” said the policeman. To Allie he said, “I'll need to ask you some more questions after you get checked out by the doctor.”

Just then Mr. Henry appeared, breathless from running up from the bottom of the glen. “I'm her teacher,” he told the driver. “Okay if I ride along?”

“Get in. Let's go.”

Mr. Henry slid into the seat beside Allie's stretcher. He grabbed her hand, and she looked up into his worried face. “How are you doing?” he asked.

“I'm fine, really,” said Allie. At that moment the siren sounded its urgent wail. Allie smiled. “I always wanted to ride in one of these things,” she said.

Mr. Henry laughed and looked relieved, but he soon became serious again. “Who was that man? And why were you so far up the glen? I feel responsible for this, Allie. I should have kept my eye on you.”

Allie shook her head. “It's not your fault,” she said. “I was chasing after Hoover.”

“Hoover! You mean she's the one who led you into this mess?”

“Not exactly,” Allie answered. “I was in it before. But if she hadn't run off, I wouldn't have followed her, and then I wouldn't have known that she'd discovered Lucy's body. So, if you think about it, it worked out.”

“Wait a second,” Mr. Henry said. “Back up. There's another body down there?”

“It's Lucy Stiles,” Allie answered solemnly. “Gag-Me murdered her.”

“Gag-Me?” Mr. Henry repeated, looking confused.

“Raymond Gagney,” said Allie. “Lucy's mother's boyfriend. Gag-Me was Lucy's nickname for him.” At Mr. Henry's look of bewilderment, Allie explained, “See, I found Lucy's diary. That's how I knew about Gag-Me. He murdered Lucy, Mr. Henry. It wasn't an accident at all.”

Above the wailing of the siren, Allie told a spellbound Mr. Henry the bare facts about Lucy's death. When she finished, she said, “Lucy was a great journal writer, Mr. Henry. When I read her diary, I felt as if I knew her.”

“I bet the two of you would have been good friends,” said Mr. Henry. “I told you she was special. And smart, like you.”

Allie felt her face flushing. To cover her embarrassment, she said, “I'm so glad she kept that diary. I mean, it helped me to solve her murder. But also, in a weird kind of way, when I read her words, it was almost as if she was talking to me—as if she was still alive.”

Mr. Henry nodded. “That's one reason I've been encouraging you to put your thoughts and dreams down in your journals.”

“Do you keep a journal, Mr. Henry?” Allie asked.

“Sure do,” Mr. Henry answered. He started to say something else, hesitated, then began again. “Allie,” he said, “when I first got to you, when you were still hanging there on the cliff, you said something. Something I'm wondering about.”

“I did? I don't remember. What did I say?”

“You said, ‘Thank you, Lucy.' Then I thought I heard you say, ‘for saving my life.'” Mr. Henry looked quizzically at Allie.

“Oh.” She didn't know what to say. How could she explain to Mr. Henry what had happened on the cliff?

“Sometimes,” Mr. Henry said quietly, “when it's difficult to talk about something, it helps to write about it.”

“The way Lucy did, in her diary,” Allie said softly.

The noise of the siren began to fade as the ambulance pulled into the entrance of the hospital.

“How did you find me, anyway?” Allie asked. She was curious, but she also needed time to decide how much, if anything, she wanted to tell Mr. Henry about Lucy's ghost.

“Are you kidding? Your scream came echoing down the glen and we all came running. As soon as I saw you—and the body on the ground—I sent the kids back to school for help, and I stayed there with you. That's when I heard you talking.” He paused. “I'd like to hear the whole story sometime, Allie, about you and Lucy.”

Allie looked out the window, thinking.

“Maybe in your next journal entry…”

“Maybe,” she said uncertainly. Then, looking into Mr. Henry's eager, open face, she said, “All right. I'll write the
whole
story.” With a grin she added, “You've already read the beginning.”

“I kind of thought so,” said Mr. Henry, grinning back.

The ambulance door opened and a hospital attendant appeared. Mr. Henry scrambled out of his seat. As Allie was lifted out of the ambulance and wheeled inside, he called, “I'm going to wait until your parents arrive, and then I've got to get back to school. I'm afraid to think of what Hoover might be up to. You take care now. I'll see you on Monday.”

Allie waved. “Bye, Mr. Henry. Thanks.”

In a little cubicle in the emergency room, Allie was examined thoroughly, even though she tried to tell the doctor that she was okay. Despite her scrapes and her sprained ankle, she really
did
feel fine, except when she thought about being on the cliff with Raymond Gagney. His terrified scream echoed through her head again and again and, worse, it was followed by the horrible thud of his landing.

But what she thought about most were the words Gag-Me had spoken right before he fell.

After the doctor had taken her temperature and blood pressure, made sure she could follow a finger with both of her eyes, and poked her here and there to find out what hurt, her parents arrived, breathless with concern. They hugged her over and over and asked the doctor what seemed like a hundred questions. Then the policeman came into the little examining room and asked Allie to tell him what she knew about the bodies in the glen. Here we go again, she thought. Feeling suddenly tired, she said, “There's a red leather book in my desk at home that will help to explain everything.”

“Your journal?” asked her mother in a puzzled voice.

“No,” said Allie. “It belonged to Lucy Stiles. It's the diary Mr. Curtis was looking for. His boss is the dead man in the glen.”

Mrs. Nichols's hand flew to her mouth and her eyes grew round. “What in the world?”

“You know that man?” her father asked with astonishment.

“Sort of,” Allie answered. She looked at the expressions of amazement on the three faces above her, took a deep breath, and prepared to tell her story. Or, at least, most of it.