The Haunting (6 page)

“I’ve talked about the dream your father and I have had for a long time, and I guess I’ve taken it for granted that you’re a part of that dream. Maybe I haven’t paid attention when you’ve made negative comments. I just assumed that you’d come around to our way of thinking when we eventually were able to provide a home for kids no one has wanted to adopt.”

“How many kids are we talking about?”

“At least a dozen. More, I hope. Eventually two
dozen. I’ve talked to the right people about the idea, and if we just had the proper environment for the children—”

I tried another argument against the idea. “It costs a lot to raise children. You’d have to be a millionaire to have enough food and clothing for so many.”

Mom smiled. “There are government funds for adoptive parents of hard-to-place children. It’s possible that we could use those. With the legacy that comes with Graymoss and the income from Dad’s job, we could swing it.”

My feelings spilled over, and I blurted out, “A dozen kids running and yelling and fighting and tearing up things. You’d spend all your time with them.”

I could hear the disappointment in Mom’s voice. “The children wouldn’t be out of control. I’d be there to supervise, to set rules and boundaries, and to help them develop social skills … and, most of all, to give them some of the love and care they need. Just what I do for you.”

I didn’t have to answer, because two flight attendants stopped at our row with their cart and everyone got busy.

Was I so wrong because I wanted a normal life like everyone else? The food that was served sat in front of me. I bit into my sandwich, but the oversized bun was dry and tough and hard to swallow.

I wanted to read Charlotte’s diary again, so Mom let me borrow it. I planned to read it—but only after Jolie had. Jolie came over. I told her what
Mom and Dad wanted to do with Graymoss. Then I gave her the diary to read while we sat in my room. I fidgeted and squirmed while she made little noises at the scary parts, twisting her longish blond hair back and forth.

Finally, after she’d read the entire diary, she stared at me with wide eyes and asked, “Are you really going to Graymoss on Saturday? Really?”

“Really,” I answered.

Jolie sighed. “I’d be too scared.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t scared of what might be in that house,” I admitted. “But I do want to find out.”

“What if … what if the evil that hides there and comes out at night harms you?”

“I’ll protect myself.”

“Protect yourself against a ghost? How?”

“That’s what I have to find out,” I said.

“What if the evil thing hurts you first? Even kills you?” Jolie asked.

“It can’t. Ghosts can scare, but they can’t kill people.”

“Yes, they can,” Jolie said. “I read about it. They have records of a ghost that pushed a man over a cliff, and one who disguised himself as a woman’s husband and led her into a cave, where she fell into a pit and drowned.”

“Ugh! Stop it!” I said, but I thought uncomfortably of Cousin Lydia and her fall on the stairs. Had she been pushed? If Charlotte hadn’t caught Lydia, what might have happened to her? I shivered.

“Would you come to the library with me right now?” I said. “Since we’re driving to Graymoss on
Saturday, I have to learn as much as I can about ghosts before then.”

I’d expected Jolie to get excited about the ghost hunt, but instead she looked at me with tears puddling in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks.

“Oh, Lia,” she cried, “you’re my best friend. I don’t want you to move away.”

“We won’t. When Mom and Dad find out that the house really is haunted by evil, they’ll give up their idea.”

Jolie’s lower lip turned down. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t lose me,” I reassured her.

Jolie nodded, the tears dropping onto her lap and making dark spots on her shorts. “But you’ll be in the house while the evil is there. Graymoss isn’t haunted by some wispy spirit in a long white dress that floats off when someone gets near,” Jolie said. “I read what Charlotte wrote, just like you did. Whatever is in that house is evil and dangerous. The people who ran away from it had good reason.”

I’d never seen Jolie so upset. “Calm down,” I told her. “The thing in the house isn’t going to hurt me.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Jolie said. “Just stay away from it, Lia. I have this awful feeling that I may never see you again!”

J
olie and I set to work at the library’s computers, amazed at the number of people who had written about ghosts.

“This one looks good,” Jolie said, and wrote down a title. “It’s ghost stories to tell around a campfire.”

“That’s not what we want,” I said. “We want something like … well, sort of like a specialist would write about how to protect yourself against ghosts.”

“You mean like
The Exorcist
?”

“That’s not what I mean at all. We don’t want fiction. We want nonfiction.”

“You mean like those books about UFOs landing in New Mexico?”

“No! I mean—” I put my chin in my hands and
said, “I don’t know what I mean. What I want is a sort of recipe for what to do about ghosts.”

“Okay,” Jolie said. “We’ll keep looking.”

I found a couple of titles and wrote down their call numbers. Jodi found two more, so we went to the stacks to find them. We sat cross-legged on the floor and skimmed through the books.

Of the four books, only three were on hand. Two were simply chapters about visits to haunted houses, with nothing really helpful listed. The third book, however, did tell about the power of evil. The author claimed to be able to withstand ghosts throwing china and knocking over tables through strong mind control.

“Mind control, oh, sure,” I said. “Like anybody can have it.”

“What is it?” Jolie asked.

“The author doesn’t say. Only that she’s got it.” I sighed. “What am I going to do?”

“Tell your parents you don’t want to go with them to Graymoss on Saturday. Stay here with me.”

“That’s not the kind of advice I need. I need someone who knows how to deal with evil.”

Jolie suddenly blinked and sat up straight. “I know who,” she said. “One of Mom’s friends was telling her all about a voodoo shop in New Orleans. Voodoo. You know. There are all kinds of voodoo spells. They probably have one to get rid of ghosts.”

I began to get excited. “Do you know where the voodoo shop is?”

“In the French Quarter,” Jolie said. “Mom’s friend told her that there are a lot of voodoo shops
there. They sell stuff to tourists and to people who still practice voodoo.”

I jumped up and shoved the books back where we’d got them. “Let’s go home and get some money and ride the commuter into New Orleans.”

When we got home Jolie called her mother and told her she’d be with me. I told Mom I was going to be with Jolie. We were telling the truth. Both mothers were so used to our being together, they automatically said okay without asking where we’d be.

“Let’s take Charlotte’s diary with us,” I said. “It will give the people who sell voodoo a better idea of why I need it.”

The diary wasn’t in sight, so I leaned over the stair railing and yelled downstairs to Mom to ask what had happened to it.

Mom came to the foot of the stairs and quietly said, “I shouldn’t have allowed you to read it again. I shouldn’t have let you read it the first time. Charlotte suffered delusions and wrote about them. I don’t want your own thinking to be influenced by those delusions.”

Don’t try arguing with a psychologist. It’s impossible.

I took my wallet, which had thirty dollars left from the birthday money Grandma had sent me, and shoved it into the pocket of my cutoffs. Jolie and I hiked two blocks to the bus stop.

We’d been to the Quarter often enough to know how to get there. Every time visitors come to New Orleans they have to see the French Quarter, so people who live in a suburb, like Metairie, are always taking relatives and friends to the
Quarter. Sometimes, too, on special occasions Mom, Dad, and I visit the Quarter just to enjoy one of the really great restaurants.

Jolie and I left Canal Street and walked into the Quarter’s nearest cross street. Sure enough, just four blocks in was a small, tacky-looking shop with a dusty window displaying all sorts of candles and jars of dark powder, and even a bone.

Jolie looked at the faded nameplate over the door and translated from the French. “It’s named Good Luck,” she said. “It doesn’t say anything about voodoo.”

“Just look in the window,” I told her. “They’ve got to sell charms and stuff.”

We walked up a flight of three steps, opened a door, and entered the most cluttered room I’d ever seen in my life. The walls were covered with shelves, and on the shelves was an array of boxes, jars, and bottles. A woman, twice as wide as the door we’d just come through, sat behind a chipped and stained wooden counter.

“Whatcha want?” she asked in a high, singsong voice. She shoved a strand of greasy brown hair out of her puffy eyes and looked us up and down.

I wished I could turn and run. But I couldn’t. I had to get the help I needed before I visited Graymoss. I cleared my throat a couple of times, wishing that Jolie would stop cringing behind me, and managed to speak. “I’m going to visit a house that has something evil in it,” I said. “I need protection from the evil.”

The woman nodded. “That’s okay then. I’d get in trouble with the law if I sold you bad voodoo. Good voodoo is okay. Protection is okay.”

“You mean you can do it?” Eagerly I took a step closer to the counter.

Jolie stepped out from behind me. “You can really protect her so she won’t get hurt?”

“Sure. I’ll mix up a bag of gris-gris. You wear it on a string around your neck. Tuck it inside your blouse. It’ll keep the ghosts away from you.”

“And get rid of them?” Jolie asked.

Shaking her head, the woman said, “No, no, no. I didn’t say that. Getting rid of ghosts is something else altogether. Some people burn brimstone, but that doesn’t work for me. First you gotta know why the ghost is there and second you gotta understand the ghost’s problem so you can help it to free itself. And then you say, ‘Go away to whatever awaits you,’ to the ghost. Gris-gris can’t do that. But it can keep ghosts from bothering you.”

Jolie tugged on my arm. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Protection while you’re there. Your parents won’t want to stay, so you’ll come home, and that will be the end of it.”

“Yes,” I said. “That is what I want.”

The woman mixed up all kinds of powders and tied them up in a very small cloth bag, about the size of a Ping-Pong ball, only flatter. She tied it tightly with a string and made a loop with the string so that I could wear it around my neck.

“What’s in it?” I asked.

“You don’t need to know,” she said. “You just have to believe that it will protect you. And you can believe because I said that it will. Five dollars. You want to wear it now?”

“No,” I said, giving her the money. “I don’t need it yet. Could you put it in a paper bag?”

She reached under the counter and brought forth a small paper bag, used and wrinkled. She dropped the gris-gris charm into it.

I took it and thanked her, and Jolie and I left the store.

“Whew!” Jolie said when we were on the street with the door closed behind us. “I’m glad to be out of there.”

I held the bag gingerly. “I’m the one who’s got to wear the gris-gris,” I said. “It looks weird. It even smells a little funny. What if it’s got dead stuff in it or ground-up bones?”

Jolie stopped and faced me. “Don’t back off now, Lia,” she said. “Promise me that you’ll wear it. Promise, or I won’t be able to sleep or eat or do anything except worry until you come home. Promise!”

“All right,” I said reluctantly. “I promise.”

In Louisiana in the summertime the sun rises early and hot, so even though my alarm clock was on roll-over-and-go-back-to-sleep time, Dad knocked at my door and called, “Wake up, Lia. We want to get an early start.”

I staggered out of bed, groaning, but as my mind began to wake up I remembered we were going to Graymoss. I hurried to dress and gulp down my breakfast. Not knowing what else to do with my gris-gris bag, I wore it, hidden inside the neck of my blue chambray shirt.

We drove Highway 61 to 190, a little north of Baton Rouge, where we turned east until we
reached Highway 1. Then we drove north, following the Mississippi River.

Mom used the cell phone to make a couple of calls to the engineers. Finally I heard her say, “Not until Friday morning? That’s the earliest you can make it?… Yes. Fine. Nine o’clock. We’ll be there when you arrive.”

Dad laughed. “You didn’t expect them to drop everything and come today, did you?”

“I guess I’m impatient,” Mom said. “I just can’t wait to find out the results of their inspection.”

“Take it easy,” Dad said. “We haven’t even seen Graymoss yet.”

The drive didn’t take long, even though we stopped to ask directions in a small town called Bogue City, which Mom said was close to Graymoss.

“Bogue
City
? Someone had dreams of grandeur,” Dad said. He glanced down the main street and chuckled.