10 - The Ghost Next Door (2 page)

“I’m going out!” she shouted, pushing open the screen door.

They probably didn’t hear her, she realized.

It was a hot afternoon, no breeze at all, the air heavy and wet. Hannah’s
father had mowed the front lawn the day before. The freshly cut grass smelled
sweet as Hannah made her way down the driveway.

She glanced over to Danny’s house. No signs of life there. The front door was closed. The big living room picture window
appeared bare and dark.

Hannah decided to walk the three blocks to town and mail the letter at the
post office. She sighed. Nothing else to do, she thought glumly. At least a walk
to town will kill some time.

The sidewalk was covered with cut blades of grass, the green fading to brown.
Humming to herself, Hannah passed Mrs. Quilty’s redbrick house. Mrs. Quilty was
bent over her garden, pulling up weeds.

“Hi, Mrs. Quilty. How are you?” Hannah called.

Mrs. Quilty didn’t look up.

What a snob!
Hannah thought angrily. I know she heard me.

Hannah crossed the street. The sound of a piano floated from the house on the
corner. Someone was practicing a piece of classical music, playing the same
wrong note over and over, then starting the piece again.

I’m glad they’re not
my
neighbors, Hannah thought, smiling.

She walked the rest of the way to town, humming to herself.

The two-story white post office stood across the tiny town square, its flag
drooping on the pole in the windless sky. Around the square stood a bank, a
barbershop, a small grocery, and a gas station. A few other stores, Harder’s
Ice-Cream Parlor, and a diner called Diner stretched behind the square.

Two women were walking out of the grocery. Through the barbershop window,
Hannah could see Ernie, the barber, sitting in the chair, reading a magazine.

Real lively scene, she thought, shaking her head.

Hannah crossed the small, grassy square and dropped her letter in the mailbox
in front of the post office door. She turned back toward home—but stopped when
she heard the angry shouts.

The shouts were coming from behind the post office, Hannah realized. A man
was screaming.

Hannah heard boys’ voices. More yelling.

She began jogging around the side of the building, toward the angry voices.

She was nearly to the alley when she heard the shrill
yelp
of pain.

“Hey—!” Hannah called out and ran the rest of the way. “What’s going on?”

A narrow alley stretched behind the post office. It was a hidden place where
kids liked to hang out.

Hannah saw Mr. Chesney, the postmaster. He was shaking a fist angrily at a
wiry brown mutt.

There were three boys in the alley. Hannah recognized Danny. He was hanging
behind the two boys she didn’t recognize.

The dog had its head lowered and was whimpering softly. A tall boy, thin and
lanky with scraggly blond hair, grabbed the dog gently and bent down to comfort
it.

“Don’t throw stones at my dog!” the boy shouted at Mr. Chesney.

The other boy stepped forward. He was a short, stubby kid, kind of
tough-looking, with spiky black hair. He glared at Mr. Chesney, his hands balled into fists at
his sides.

Danny lingered away from the others, very pale, his eyes narrowed tensely.

“Get away! Go! I warned you!” Mr. Chesney snarled. He was a thin, red-faced
man, entirely bald, with a bushy brown mustache under his pointed nose. He wore
a tight-fitting gray wool suit, despite the summer heat.

“You don’t have the right to hurt my dog!” the blond boy insisted, still
cradling the mutt. The dog’s stubby tail was wagging furiously now. The dog
licked the boy’s hand.

“This is government property,” the postmaster replied sharply. “I’m warning
you—get away from here. This isn’t a hangout for you troublemakers.” He took a
menacing step toward the three boys.

Hannah saw Danny take a few steps back, his expression frightened. The other
two boys stood their ground, staring at the red-faced postmaster defiantly. They
were big, Hannah saw. Bigger than Danny. They appeared to be older than Danny.

“I’m telling my dad you hurt Rusty,” the blond boy said.

“Tell your dad you were trespassing,” Mr. Chesney shot back. “And tell him
you were rude and disrespectful. And tell him I’ll file a complaint against all three of you punks if I catch you back here again.”

“We’re not punks!” the heavier boy shouted angrily.

Then all three boys turned and started running down the alley. The dog
zigzagged excitedly at their heels, its stubby tail twitching wildly.

Mr. Chesney stormed past Hannah, muttering curses to himself. He was so
angry, he pushed right past her as he made his way to the front of the post
office.

What a jerk, Hannah thought, shaking her head. What is his problem, anyway?

All of the kids in Greenwood Falls hated Mr. Chesney. Mainly because he hated
kids. He was always shouting at them to stop loitering in the square, or stop
playing such loud music, or stop talking so loudly, or stop laughing so much, or
to get out of his precious alley.

He acts as if he owns the whole town, Hannah thought.

At Halloween, Hannah and a bunch of friends had decided to go to Mr.
Chesney’s house and spray-paint his windows. But to their disappointment,
Chesney was prepared for any Halloween trick-players. He stood at the ready in
his front window, an enormous shotgun in his hand.

Hannah and her friends had gone on their way, disappointed and scared.

He knows how much we all hate him, Hannah realized.

And he doesn’t care.

The alley was quiet now. Hannah headed back toward the town square, thinking
about Danny. He had looked so frightened, so pale. So pale, he nearly seemed to
fade away in the bright sunlight.

Danny’s two friends didn’t seem frightened at all, Hannah thought. They
seemed angry and tough. Or maybe they were just acting tough because Mr. Chesney
was being so horrible to the blond boy’s dog.

Crossing the square, Hannah searched for signs of life. In his brightly lit
shop, Ernie was still sitting in the barber chair, his face buried in a
magazine. A blue station wagon had pulled into the gas station. A woman Hannah
didn’t recognize was hurrying to get to the bank before it closed.

No sign of Danny and his two friends.

I guess I’ll go home and catch
General Hospital,
Hannah thought with a
sigh. She crossed the street and made her way slowly toward home.

Tall trees, maples and birches and sassafras, lined the sidewalk. The leaves
were so thick, they nearly blocked the sunlight.

It was cooler under their shade, Hannah realized as she walked under them.

She was halfway down the block when the dark figure slid out from behind a
tree.

At first Hannah thought it was just the shadow cast by the wide trunk. But
then, as her eyes adjusted to the shade, the figure became clear.

Hannah gasped and stopped walking.

She stared hard, squinting at him, struggling to bring him into focus.

He stood in a deep blue puddle of shadow. Dressed in black, he was tall and
slender, his face completely hidden in darkness.

Hannah felt a cold shiver of fear roll down her body.

Who is he? she wondered. Why is he dressed like that?

Why is he standing so still, keeping in the shadows, staring back at me from
the dark shade?

Is he trying to scare me?

He slowly raised a hand, motioning for her to come nearer.

Her heart fluttering in her chest, Hannah took a step back.

Is there really someone there?

A figure dressed in black?

Or am I seeing shadows cast by the trees?

She wasn’t sure—until she heard the whisper:

“Hannah… Hannah…”

The whisper was as dry as the brush of tree leaves, and nearly as soft.

“Hannah… Hannah…”

A slender black shadow, motioning to her with arms as bony as twigs, whispering to her. Such a dry, inhuman whisper.

“No!” Hannah cried.

She spun around and struggled to run. Her legs felt weak. Her knees didn’t
want to bend.

But she forced herself to run. Faster.

Faster.

Was he following her?

Panting loudly, Hannah crossed the street without stopping to look for
traffic. Her sneakers pounded against the sidewalk as she ran.

One more block to go.

Is he following?

The shadows shifted and bent as she ran under the trees. Shadows on top of
shadows, sliding over each other, gray on black, blue on gray.

“Hannah… Hannah…” The dry whisper.

Dry as death.

Calling to her from the shifting shadows.

He knows my name,
she thought, gulping for breath, forcing her legs to
keep moving.

And then she stopped.

And spun around.

“Who
are
you?” she shouted breathlessly. “What do you
want?”

But he had vanished.

There was silence now. Except for Hannah’s hard breathing.

Hannah stared into the tangle of late afternoon shadows. Her eyes darted over
the shrubs and hedges of the yards on her block. She searched the spaces between
the houses, the darkness behind an open garage door, the slanting gray square
beside a small shed.

Gone. Vanished.

No sign of the black-enshrouded figure that had whispered her name.

“Whoa—!” she uttered out loud.

It was an optical illusion, she decided, her eyes still warily studying the
front lawns.

No way.

She argued with herself. An optical illusion doesn’t call your name.

There’s nothing there, Hannah, she assured herself. Her breathing returned to
normal. Nothing there.

You’re making up more ghost stories. You’re scaring yourself again.

You’re bored and lonely, and so you’re letting your imagination run away with
you.

Feeling only a little better, Hannah jogged the rest of the way home.

Later, at dinner, she decided not to mention the shadow figure to her
parents. They would never believe it anyway.

Instead, Hannah told them about the new family who had moved next door.

“Huh? Someone moved into the Dodsons’ house?” Mr. Fairchild set down his fork
and knife and stared across the table at Hannah from behind his square-framed
horn-rimmed glasses.

“There’s a boy my age,” Hannah reported. “His name is Danny. He has bright
orange hair and freckles.”

“That’s nice,” Mrs. Fairchild replied distractedly, motioning for the twins
to stop shoving each other and eat their dinners.

Hannah wasn’t even sure her mother had heard her.

“How did they move in without us seeing them?” Hannah asked her father. “Did
you see a moving truck or anything?”

“Huh-uh,” Mr. Fairchild muttered, picking up his silverware and returning to
his roast chicken.

“Well, don’t you think it’s
weird?”
Hannah demanded.

But before either parent could reply, Herb’s chair toppled over backwards.
His head hit the linoleum, and he began to howl.

Her mom and dad leapt off their chairs and bent to help him.

“I didn’t push him!” Bill screamed shrilly. “Really. I didn’t!”

Frustrated that her parents weren’t interested in her big news, Hannah
carried her plate to the kitchen. Then she wandered into her bedroom.

Making her way to her desk, she pushed aside the curtains and peered out the
window.

Danny, are you in there? she wondered, staring at the curtains that covered
his dark window. What are you doing right now?

The summer days seemed to float by. Hannah could barely remember how she
passed the time. If only some of my friends were around, she thought wistfully.

If only
one
of my friends was around!

If only one of my friends would write.

Such a lonely summer…

She looked for Danny, but he never seemed to be around. When she finally saw
him in his back yard one late afternoon, she hurried over to talk to him. “Hi!”
she cried enthusiastically.

He was tossing a tennis ball against the back of the house and catching it.
The ball made a loud
thock
each time it hit the redwood wall.

“Hi!” Hannah called again, jogging across the grass.

Danny turned, startled. “Oh. Hi. How’s it going?” He turned back to the house
and tossed the ball.

He was wearing a blue T-shirt over baggy black-and-yellow-striped shorts.
Hannah stepped up beside him.

Thock.
The ball hit the wall just below the gutter and bounced into
Danny’s hand.

“I haven’t seen you around,” Hannah said awkwardly.

“Uh-huh,” was his brief reply.

Thock.

“I saw you behind the post office,” she blurted out.

“Huh?” He spun the ball in his hand, but didn’t throw it.

“A few days ago, I saw you in the alley. With those two guys. Mr. Chesney is
a real jerk, isn’t he?” Hannah said.

Danny snickered. “When he yells, his whole head turns bright red. Just like a
tomato.”

“A rotten tomato,” Hannah added.

“What’s his problem, anyway?” Danny asked, tossing the ball.
Thock.
“My friends and I—we weren’t doing anything. Just hanging out.”

“He thinks he’s a big shot,” Hannah replied. “He’s always bragging how he’s a
federal
employee.”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing this summer?” she asked. “Just hanging around like me?”

“Kind of,” he said.
Thock.
He missed the ball and had to chase it to
the garage.

As he walked back toward the house, he gazed at her, as if seeing her for the
first time. Hannah suddenly felt self-conscious. She was wearing a yellow top with grape jelly
stains on the front, and her rattiest blue cotton shorts.