The Haunting (2 page)

Sarah’s voice grew so low and soft that I had to lean close to hear her.

“Someone has actually cared for the house all these years?” I asked.

“Yes. There is a trust that takes care of taxes, repairs, expenses, and the caretaker’s salary.”

“I don’t understand,” I told her. “If the house is still standing and is in good condition, then why hasn’t anyone in the family ever lived in it?”

Sarah sighed. Her lips barely moved as she said, “Read Charlotte’s diary. Then you’ll know.”

“Know
what
, Great-grandmother? What will I know?”

“Read the diary.”

“Where is the diary? Where will I find it?”

For just an instant Sarah’s fingers tightened on my arm. “We must save Graymoss, but stay far away from it,” she said. “The house is haunted by a terrible, fearful evil.”

T
he door opened, and a nurse hurried into the room. “Move back, please,” she told me. “Quickly!”

Sarah’s fingers had gone limp, so I easily slid my arm from under her hand. Tripping, scrambling to one side, and dragging the chair with me, I managed to end up wedged into a corner near the door.

Another nurse arrived, pushing her way past Mom and Grandma, who had also arrived and were trying to get through the door at the same time.

“What happened?” Mom asked, her voice rising.

The first nurse turned to look at Mom. Then the nurse began turning off things and unfastening some of the tubes that had been attached to
Sarah. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Starling,” she said. Then she nodded sympathetically at Grandma. “Mrs. Moore, there’s no longer a pulse … no heartbeat.”

Mom’s mouth opened and shut and opened again, but nothing came out. It was the only time I’d seen her at a loss for words.

Grandma’s voice broke as she whispered, “We didn’t have a chance to say a last goodbye.” A tear rolled down Grandma Augusta’s cheek, and I felt a terrible wave of sorrow. I shuddered to think how awful it would be, no matter how old you were, to lose your mother, and Sarah was Grandma’s mother.

“I’d hoped she’d wake,” Grandma Augusta said. She pulled a tissue from the pocket of her skirt and blew her nose loudly.

“She did,” I said.

Mom and Grandma turned to look at me.

“What did you say?” Grandma boomed. “Speak up, Lia. This is no time to whisper.”

I cleared my throat and took a step away from the corner. “I said—”

“Push your hair out of your eyes and tell us what happened.”

Tucking my hair behind my ears, I cleared my throat again and said, “Great-grandmother
did
wake up.” I looked at Mom. “She thought I was you, Mom. She kept calling me Anne.”

Mom got this disappointed, hurt expression on her face. “Why didn’t you come and get us, Lia?”

“I couldn’t.” I tried to explain. “She was holding my wrist.”

Grandma rolled her eyes. Then she reached
down and stroked Sarah’s hand. “I see. She was stronger than you?”

The sarcasm in her words made me wince. “Yes,” I said. “She was.”

Mom sighed. “Lia, dear, why didn’t you press the call button for the nurse?”

“I didn’t think of it,” I whispered.

“She wanted to say goodbye,” Mom murmured, and she hugged Grandma.

One of the nurses, nudging and patting, managed to shoo us out of Sarah’s room and across the hallway into a small waiting room. “The doctor will be here soon,” she explained. “We’ll have some papers for you to sign.”

As soon as the nurse left, I managed to find the courage to say, “Great-grandmother didn’t want to say goodbye. She wanted to talk about Graymoss.”

“About Graymoss?” Mom looked surprised. “Was she hallucinating, Lia?”

“No,” I said. “She told me about the house, Mom. She said it was waiting.”

“That plantation house is still standing? It must be in terrible condition,” Mom said.

Grandma frowned and seemed uncomfortable. “I’m sorry Mother said anything about Graymoss. It’s a nasty place. When you were young and impressionable, Anne, I made Mother promise not to mention it to you.”

“Why?” Mom asked. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable watching my mother in the role of daughter.

“Because it’s not far from my home in Baton Rouge, so you’d insist on seeing the house. You know how curious you are. You’d have gone there,
no matter what I said. You have to admit you would have.”

“Why shouldn’t I have seen the house?” Mom asked. She still sounded bewildered. “We could have visited Graymoss together.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Grandma. “You’ve visited Graymoss without me, haven’t you?”

“I did. Once,” Grandma admitted. “Once was enough. But it doesn’t matter, does it, because now it will be torn down, as it should have been years ago.”

I don’t know where I got the courage to say what had happened, but I did. “Great-grandmother said that Graymoss
can’t
be torn down. It has something to do with Charlotte Blevins’s will. Graymoss isn’t in terrible condition. All these years it has had a caretaker.”

“What? Did you know about this, Mother?” Mom asked Grandma, almost accusingly.

“Of course I knew,” Grandma said.

Mom slowly shook her head. “I still can’t imagine why you wouldn’t tell me.”

“I had to keep you away from the house because … well, because it’s evil.”

Mom gave a surprised laugh as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “An evil house? That doesn’t sound like you, Mother. You’ve never been afraid of anyone or anything—human or beastie. ‘We don’t believe in ghosts,’ you used to tell me. But now you’re talking about an evil house?”

Grandma looked down at her lap. Her face was red, and little veins stood out in her forehead. “I
know it sounds foolish,” she began, “and I don’t expect you to believe me—”

She looked so miserable that I interrupted. “I believe you, Grandma,” I said. “Because Great-grandmother said the very same thing. She said to take care of the house and protect it, but stay away from it because it was evil.”

The spark came back into Grandma’s eyes and she raised her head. “There! You see!” she crowed. “When all the legal folderol is over and the house is passed on to me, I’ll put an end to it, no matter what Charlotte requested. I’ll burn the fool house down.”

“You can’t,” I told her, and now it was my turn to blush as Grandma and Mom stared at me in amazement.

“What I mean is,” I told them, “Graymoss won’t be yours, Grandma. Great-grandmother Sarah told me she left the plantation to Mom.”

I sat through the memorial service for my great-grandmother Sarah Langley, trying not to fidget and wishing I could feel even a little sorrow at her passing.

The minister’s talk was filled with high praise for Sarah. He glowed as he described her great courage in ferrying planes from the United States to England during World War II. He glanced at the bronze memorial urn holding Sarah’s ashes and spoke in awed tones about her also risking her life to fly medical supplies into Alaskan villages and participating in a daring rescue of two mountain climbers, stranded during a blizzard.

I knew all that. I’d heard the stories over and over from Mom. It was Sarah herself I’d never gotten to know. Busy making news and winning awards until she grew too old to travel, she’d had no time to spend in Louisiana with a young great-granddaughter.

I stopped listening to the minister and designed an imaginary banner. Across a bright blue background were gold letters in an elegant script:
WOMEN WHO ARE EXCEPTIONALLY BRAVE
. I hung it across the back of the chapel, mentally pinning it to the dark red velvet drapes that covered the wall.

Sarah had been brave, and so had her mother, Elizabeth Clary. Elizabeth didn’t try to escape San Francisco during the great earthquake of 1906, but helped dig people out of collapsed buildings and save them from the fires that followed.

I suppose everyone took it for granted that Elizabeth had been an exceptionally brave woman. Elizabeth, born in 1877, was Charlotte Blevins’s daughter.

Grandmother Augusta was no slouch, either. An army nurse and officer, Augusta helped to arrange rescue operations to get children out of Vietnam. And in the sixties she marched through the South with civil rights groups.

Mom marched with her, when she was a teenager like me. And when Mom got her Ph.D. in psychology, she married Dad because the two of them not only fell in love, but they also had the same dream—to help homeless children. Dad got a job with a child protective agency, and Mom with a private group that counsels abused women
and children. They regularly lobbied state and national officials, trying to get funds and better legislation, and Mom had a reputation for not being afraid to tackle anybody—including the President of the United States.

Sighing, I began to embroider names on my imaginary banner,
WOMEN WHO ARE EXCEPTIONALLY BRAVE
: Charlotte Blevins Porter, Elizabeth Porter Clary, Sarah Clary Langley, Augusta Langley Moore, and Anne Moore Starling. I ran out of space on the banner, but that was all right. There was no way my name could belong on it.

Mom nudged me, and I realized that the minister had stopped speaking and people were leaving the chapel. Augusta began briskly shaking hands with people and thanking them for coming. Mom, too.

I hung back, as I usually did. None of these people wanted to talk to me.

It was surprising how fast the room cleared. I guess everyone was in a hurry. Maybe that was the way things were in San Francisco.

It wasn’t like that in Louisiana. As soon as word got out that Grandpa had died, people began coming by Grandma’s house with pies and cakes. I’d stayed out of the kitchen because people I’d never seen before were busy sliding casseroles into the oven, and slicing hams, and setting out Grandma’s good china plates. After the funeral the house was crowded with people. They cried a little and laughed a lot, telling and retelling stories about Grandpa. Some of the stories got kind of boring, but at least Grandma didn’t have to feel alone.

Thinking about Grandpa made me miss him. I
was only ten when he died, but I remembered him as being a kind, gentle, quiet man who read stories to me any time I asked.

“Come on, Lia. It’s time to go,” Mom said.

When I saw that Grandma was carrying the urn with Sarah’s ashes in it I took a step back. “Doesn’t that urn go to—uh—a cemetery or something?” I asked.

“No,” Grandma said. “I’m going to take it home and keep it in the library.”

I shuddered. I couldn’t help it.

Mom gave one of her impatient sighs and said, “We’ve got a tight schedule. We have an appointment with Sarah’s attorney in an hour. I’d suggest that we have lunch before we meet Mr. Clayton.”

“Somewhere with quick service,” Grandma added.

I thought of taking the urn into a fast-food hamburger place and started to giggle. The giggle hopped out of control and spread into a belly laugh. I laughed so hard I bent over, holding my stomach. But at the same time I thought of this great-grandmother I didn’t really know and how everybody praised her but nobody seemed to be mourning her, and tears for Sarah ran down my face.

Mom wrapped her arms around me and held me tightly. “Darling,” she murmured, “I didn’t realize what stress all of this has been. I shouldn’t have brought you with me.”

My sobs and laughter stuck in my throat, turning into hiccups. “It’s okay, Mom,” I managed to say. “Could I get a drink of water?”

A pale-faced man in a dark suit suddenly appeared
at my side and held out a glass of water. Gratefully I took it and gulped it down.

Grandma fixed her gaze on the man and asked, “Is there somewhere nearby where we can get food quickly?”

He nodded. “There’s a hamburger place on the corner.”

I didn’t mean to, but once again I exploded into laughter.

“It happens,” the man said. “Nervous tension.” He shoved an open bottle of smelling salts under my nose, and the horrible smell made me choke and cough. At least it stopped the laughter.

Mom pulled out a tissue and mopped at my eyes.

Grandma said, “I swear she isn’t like the Moore side of the family—or anyone else as far back as we know.”

Mom patted me reassuringly, and we left the funeral home. As we climbed into our rental car Mom glanced at Sarah’s urn. Her eyebrows rose, as they sometimes did when she’d just had a surprising thought, and a tiny smile flickered at the corners of her lips. She said, “Why don’t we order at the drive-in window? I saw a small park in the next block. We can eat our hamburgers there.”

That was the difference between Mom and me. Mom and I saw the same problem. I had an embarrassing case of hysterics, but Mom worked out a solution to the problem. I slumped down in the backseat, wishing I’d gotten even a few of the genes from the Women Who Are Exceptionally Brave. Why did I get left out?