Who Stole Halloween? (8 page)

Mr. Stone nodded. “A big cat, black as midnight, with eyes as green and bright as emeralds. A smart cat, too! He was known throughout the town for his intelligence. One time a child fell through the ice, and the cat stayed on the bank howling till someone came to the rescue. Another time Mrs. Harvey couldn't find her diamond necklace—the Harveys were the richest people in town—and who led her directly to it? That big black cat.”

“But why would a cat want to murder its owner?” I asked. I admit I was thinking of Luau. He's smart, too. Didn't he find the key to the handcuffs? Maybe he was a descendant of Old Man Harvey's cat. Maybe I should watch my back.

Mr. Stone continued: “The way my dad told it, Old Man Harvey was rich for three simple reasons: He worked hard. He was greedy. And he was mean. The only person he cared about was Marianne Harvey, his wife. Supposedly, she was a great beauty, and he wooed her for a long time, showering her with extravagant gifts like that necklace. Her sister—she married my grandmother's cousin—always said that Marianne got married against her better judgment. She was finally so sick of being pestered that she said yes. Besides, in those days a girl didn't have so many options.”

Mr. Stone took more marshmallows from the bag and put them in our mugs. “The scary part's coming,” he said. “You'll need your strength. Now, as I was saying, Mr. Harvey adored his wife and didn't give a fig about anybody else.”

“How did he feel about his cat?” I asked.

Mr. Stone looked at me. “I am pretty sure, Mr. Parakeet, that when my dad used to tell this story, we kids didn't ask questions.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Well, one day—it was in October, not so very long before Halloween—Mr. Harvey didn't come in to work. Now, I know you're going to ask, Mr. Parakeet, so I'll go ahead and tell you: Mr. Harvey owned a dry goods store, the first in College Springs, and it was unlike the old miser to miss a workday. Along about noon one of his employees, a fellow by the name of Floyd, went to the house to check up on him.

“Floyd rang the bell. No answer. Floyd knocked on the door. No answer. Floyd called out.” Mr. Stone looked at us.

“No answer!”
Yasmeen and I chorused.

Mr. Stone nodded. “That's right. Now Floyd was worried. He probably ought to have run for the authorities. But he was a strong and steady fellow, and he decided first to have a look around on his own. As luck would have it, the parlor
window was open a crack, and Floyd wedged his fingers under, pushed the window up, and climbed inside.”

Mr. Stone paused and shook his head mournfully. I wanted to ask about ten questions—like how old was Floyd? and where was the dry goods store?—but I clamped my lips together and kept quiet.

“Well,” Mr. Stone sighed, “
what
a sight in that parlor, that same parlor where only the day before Mrs. Harvey had entertained ladies for tea. Tables were overturned; lamps and precious gewgaws were shattered—you'd have thought a typhoon had passed through. But it was on the silk-brocaded chaise that poor Floyd beheld the most awful sight of all, a sight that would have stopped any but the stoutest heart, the strangled, lifeless body of—”

“Mr. Harvey!” I said.

Mr. Stone closed his mouth and narrowed his eyes. “No, smarty-pants,
not
Mr. Harvey.
Mrs
. Harvey.”

“But you
said
—” I started to argue.

“I am not done yet,” said Mr. Stone. “Here.”
He held out the bag of marshmallows to me. “Stick a couple in your mouth and keep them there. Now,” he went on, “where was I? Oh, yes—and this is one of the queer parts—that big black cat was curled up in her lap, and later Floyd told people it was as though the cat was trying to bring back the warmth to his mistress's cold, dead body.”

When Mr. Stone paused to sip his hot chocolate, neither Yasmeen nor I said a word. We were too caught up in the spookiness.

“Two days later,” Mr. Stone continued, “Marianne Harvey was buried—right here at St. Bernard's, by the way, the marker is there for all to see—and her grieving husband wept at the graveside. Mr. Harvey told the police he had been unexpectedly called over the mountain to Belleburg the morning of the murder. While he was gone, he said, some thief must have broken in and surprised his wife.

“Well, the thief was never caught. In fact, no one ever saw hide nor hair of any thief. Add to that the fact that Mr. Harvey was not a popular man, and you can infer the rumors that flew.
Some people speculated that Marianne Harvey was miserable in her marriage, that her husband had mistreated her, that she had had a sweetheart and when Mr. Harvey found out, he killed her in a jealous rage. Some speculated that it was poor stouthearted Floyd himself who was the sweetheart. But if there was evidence one way or the other, I never heard about it. And in those days no one had the guts to stand up to the richest man in town.

“A few days passed, and the weather grew colder. Finally, it was Halloween night. Wisps of cloud obscured the full moon. A gentleman walking home from a local tavern passed the Harvey house and heard a ruckus inside. Now, this gentleman had been at the tavern for some hours, and so not everyone credited his account with perfect accuracy. What he claimed he heard were three sounds at once—a mountain lion's scream, the howl of a madman, and the rough-and-tumble of a barroom brawl. This cater-wumpus lasted perhaps one minute. And then there was an eerie silence.

“Not being so stouthearted as Floyd, the fellow hightailed it to the courthouse, which in those days was also the headquarters for the police. And so it was an officer of the law who opened the parlor door at the Harvey house on Halloween night and found the mangled corpse of . . .”

Yasmeen said, “Mr. Harvey.”

Mr. Stone nodded. “It was a grisly scene. Mr. Harvey had locked up the parlor after his wife died there, but he or someone else had opened it up that night. There was blood everywhere—streaking the rugs and the walls, splattered on the ceiling. And the body”—Mr. Stone shuddered as if he had seen it himself, which I guess he had in his imagination—“it was unrecognizable, just as though some beast of the jungle had wrought revenge.”

“Where was the cat?” Yasmeen asked.

Mr. Stone nodded. “Well you might ask,” he said. “There had been a fire in the fireplace, and a few hot embers remained. The cat was on the hearth, absorbing the last of the warmth and cleaning something red and sticky from its paws.”

“Ewwwww!”
Yasmeen and I said.

Mr. Stone smiled and folded his hands in front of him on the table. He looked pleased with himself. “That's the story, just as my dad told it. I'm surprised I still remember.”

“But what about the ghost?” I asked.

Mr. Stone got up from the table and cleared our cups. “Ah yes, the ghost,” he said. “It seems that old man Harvey's ghost still haunts the mansion he built for himself and his bride, and those who have lived there since have spent many a sleepless night.”

“I've heard cats in College Springs often get catnapped around Halloween,” I said. “And sometimes whoever it is blames the ghost. This year there are five missing cats already.”

“Really?” said Mr. Stone. “That's a shame. It would seem the Harvey ghost is not entirely rational. Having been killed by his wife's cat, he seeks revenge on
all
cats.”

Yasmeen looked disgusted. “You don't really believe in ghosts, do you, Mr. Stone?”

“The older I get, the more I find the world to be mysterious,” Mr. Stone said.

“In the story, what happened to the poor cat? Marianne Harvey's cat?” I asked.

“The ‘poor cat'?” Mr. Stone said. “The ‘poor cat' was a bloodthirsty killer!”

“But it doesn't sound like his victim, Mr. Harvey, was a very nice man,” Yasmeen said.

“
Or
a very nice ghost,” I said.

“We don't know for certain what kind of man Mr. Harvey was,” Mr. Stone said.

Yasmeen disagreed. “The cat knew,” she said.

I looked at Yasmeen. “It seems kind of
strange that you're totally ready to accept a cat witnessing a murder and getting revenge, but you're totally rejecting the idea of ghosts.”

“What's so strange about it?” Yasmeen said. “I don't believe in ghosts. I do believe in cats.”

Mr. Stone didn't give me time to puzzle that one out. “As the story goes,” he said, “Marianne Harvey's cat suffered the sorry fate that is common to unwanted felines—he was put in a sack with a great number of rocks and thrown into a pool of water, in this case the Harveys' well. People said his howling was enough to freeze your blood.”

Yasmeen and I both felt better when we left Mr. Stone's house. It couldn't have been the gory ghost story that cheered us up. It must have been the hot chocolate and marshmallows.

“Let's go back to St. Bernard's,” I suggested, “to see where Marianne Harvey is buried.”

“I can't,” Yasmeen said. “I'm going over to see the Lees' new baby. My whole family has to. But—I know, Alex—why don't you go over to
the cemetery? Maybe what's going on
is
a Halloween prank, and somebody's eventually going to blame the whole thing on the ghost. You might notice something new at the cemetery.”

This time it was me who opened my mouth and closed it again. I never thought of going to the cemetery
alone
. But Yasmeen already had plenty of reasons to call me a wimp. If I refused to go, she'd have plenty plus one.

“No problem,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it. “I'll call you after dinner.” Then I turned around and started walking toward St. Bernard's, all the time thinking, “Provided the ghosts don't get me first.”

The last time I had paid a visit to my local graveyard, my cat had paused to do a little personal grooming beside a statue of a grumpy angel. As it turned out, that angel was Marianne Harvey's grave marker.

Actually, the angel was pretty close to the gate, but that day I turned right when I walked in, and I wound around searching among a lot of other headstones before I came to it. By the time I did, the light was almost gone, and I had to stare to read the inscription:

M
ARIANNE
M
C
C
LELLAN
H
ARVEY
B
ORN
J
ULY
2, 1854
D
IED
O
CTOBER
28, 1879
I
N DEATH
,
THE ETERNAL WIFE
.

It was dark and cold. I was in a cemetery. The leafless trees looked sharp and thorny against the rising moon. Can you blame me for feeling creeped out?

And that inscription didn't help. It was like it condemned poor Marianne to be stuck with her murderous husband forever.

Mr. Stone had said Mr. Harvey was buried next to Marianne, but searching still took me a few minutes. In the end, I had to brush away dirt to read the inscription. When I did, it was even stranger than his wife's.

G
ILMORE
S
AMUEL
H
ARVEY
B
ORN
D
ECEMBER
2, 1836
D
IED
O
CTOBER
31, 1879
S
O SHALL THE RIGHTEOUS
ESCAPE THE GRAVE
.

Now not only was I creeped out, I had something to think about. Maybe this was crazy, but it almost felt like that one was trying to tell me something. But what?

A cold gust made me shiver, and I noticed the bats were out again. If there was ever a moment for ghosts and vampires and werewolves to appear in a regular kid's life, this was it.

I started to run. I didn't get very far.

That night after dinner I called Yasmeen to fill her in. I swear, even over the phone line, I could hear her shake her head, exasperated. “That's why I carry Band-Aids and antiseptic,” she said.