The Ghosts of Stone Hollow (13 page)

“No,” Jason said slowly. “I don’t think so. I think it’s not the same as imagining. You can imagine anywhere, and the kind of seeing that I mean only happens there—at the Stone.”

“You mean the only time you’ve seen them, the Indians and the Italians and everything, you’ve been in the grotto, near the Stone?”

“Yes, only there.”

Amy nodded slowly while her mind raced. “Ha!” she said finally. “Now I
know
you’ve been lying.”

But Jason hardly seemed to react—his eyes were blurry, the way they always were when he talked about the Stone. “Lying?” he said, at last.

“Sure. Because you just got through saying all that stuff about seeing the man digging all over the Hollow, and the mother going to the village. How could you see that if you were way up by the Stone?”

“At the Stone,” Jason said, “you can see things that happened in other places. When you’re near the Stone, you can see things that happened a long way away.”

“Then how come you just see all that stuff that happened in the Hollow? How come you don’t see things that happened in Los Angeles—or Timbuktu?”

“I’m not sure. But I think it has something to do with things that are near. Near the Stone, I mean. The grotto is full of Indian things, things the Indians brought there, and I’ve seen the Indians most of all.”

“Indian things? What kinds of Indian things?”

“Little things. Beads and prayer amulets carved out of bone or stone. I’ve found a lot of them. And the time I saw about the Ranzonis, I brought the doll to the grotto.”

“The doll? You mean you took the doll from the shack up to the grotto?”

Jason nodded. “And once I took a letter from my friend in Greece, and I saw something that happened in Greece, a long time ago.”

“What?” Amy asked. “What happened in Greece?”

But before Jason could answer, the sound of voices very close by made Amy jump to her feet. Jason followed her example, and together they sidled around the clump of eucalyptus, keeping it between themselves and the voices. By peering through a curtain of long slender eucalyptus leaves, Amy saw that the voices were coming from three boys who were approaching the grove on the Old Road. The boys varied in size from small to enormous, and it was immediately evident that the biggest one was Gordie Parks.

The next biggest boy was Albert Hendricks, Gordie’s best friend, if a person like Gordie could be said to have a friend. It was really more as if Gordie had given him the choice of being slave and companion— or personal punching bag, and Albert had taken the first choice. The smallest boy was Bobby Parks, Gordie’s little brother and one of his favorite victims. As they approached the crossroads, it became evident that Gordie and Albert were playing a game with Bobby. The game seemed to be Keep Away, and Bobby was crying.

As Albert and Gordie walked along they were tossing something back and forth, something that Bobby obviously wanted very badly. The big boys laughed and yelled as Bobby ran back and forth, jumping and grabbing hopelessly. “Here it is. Come and get it,” they kept yelling. Then, when Bobby gave up and started back toward town, sobbing and swearing, they yelled, “Come on back, Bobby. We’re sorry. You can have it now.” Bobby came running back, tearstained but smiling—and they went on throwing whatever it was, just like before, They disappeared around the curve with Bobby still jumping and crying.

“Boy!” Amy said when the boys were safely out of earshot. “That Gordie Parks. I’d like to—” She noticed the look on Jason’s face then and stopped, intrigued out of her anger by his strange expression. More than anything else, he looked amazed, disbelieving.

“Jason,” she said, “what are you thinking about?”

“Gordie—about Gordie.”

“What about him?”

“He’s just so—strange. I’ve never known anyone like Gordie before.”

“You haven’t? He’s just an ordinary bully. Weren’t there any bullies at your other schools?”

“I’ve never been to any other schools,” Jason said.

“You haven’t? How’d you get to be in sixth grade, then, and so good at history and literature and everything?”

“My parents taught me. In some of the places we’ve lived, I didn’t speak the language well enough to go to the schools, and sometimes we weren’t going to be there very long. So they just taught me.”

“Oh,” Amy said, “I see.” She felt as if she were beginning to see a lot of things she’d never really understood before. There was one thing about Jason that she still didn’t understand, however, and that she’d never gotten up her nerve to ask about; but now she decided to try it.

“You know what I don’t get? About you, I mean, and Gordie? What I don’t get is why you’re so scared of Gordie when you’re not afraid of haunted places or doing all kinds of dangerous things.” She watched carefully for Jason’s reaction, wondering if he was going to be hurt or angry. But he didn’t seem to be either.

“I don’t know,” he said, thoughtfully, “Gordie is frightened. I think that’s why he scares me.”

“Gordie frightened? Gordie frightened of you?” Amy laughed.

“Not of me. Of something else. Of something that’s wrong with him. He knows something’s missing, and he has to hurt people to be sure he’s there at all.”

Amy stared at Jason, wondering how he could say such really weird things and make them sound so much like the truth. “Gee, Jason,” she said finally. “You are the most—”

Saying “Gee” was a mistake. “Gee,” according to Amy’s mother and the Reverend Dawson, meant “G.,” which was short for God and just a sneaky way of swearing. Amy didn’t say it very often, and when she did, she always felt a little guilty. And feeling guilty reminded her that it was getting late and she should be on her way home.

“It’s late,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”

“There
were
some other things,” Jason said. “Things I was going to tell you about. I’ve been back to the Hollow two times since you were there. There are some other things—”

Amy hesitated, terribly torn. “No,” she said finally. “I’ll have to run all the way as it is.”

Jason smiled. “You’d run anyway,” he said. “You always run, don’t you?”

Amy looked at him sharply. “I
like
to run,” she said defensively. “I’m a good runner. I’m the fourth fastest in the whole school.”

That really interested Jason, Amy could tell. His mouth opened to ask a question, but she didn’t wait to answer. Instead she whirled around and began to run toward home at top speed, her knees high and her feet pounding over crumbly macadam and dusty shoulders. She had gone only a few steps when she realized that she was hearing more footsteps than her own, and that the others were very close and getting closer. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed the fact that Jason was running after her.

Then Amy really ran. Tucking her chin and clenching her fists, she forced herself to the very limits of her strength and skill. But Jason, running light and leggy as a half-grown colt, drew even and then, with unbelievable ease, pulled ahead. When he was several yards ahead, he turned aside and stopped. With her head high and her eyes straight ahead, Amy pounded past him and on toward the Hunter farm. She ran all the way to the front gate, while all kinds of strange ideas flowed through her mind as rapidly as the ground flowed beneath her flying feet.

S
OMETIME DURING THAT
night it began to rain, not just a sprinkle, but a long steady downpour that signaled the beginning of the fall rainy season. For several days huge gray clouds, bulging with moisture, drifted in from the west, to pile up against the Hills and drop their burden of water on the valley below. And for several mornings there was a discussion at breakfast about how Amy was going to get to school.

Amy would have liked to walk. She had a perfectly good umbrella and raincoat, and she liked walking in the rain. Her father agreed with her, saying that walking in the rain was good for healthy kids like Amy. However, her last year’s rubbers were worn out and the new ones hadn’t arrived yet from Sears Roebuck, and Aunt Abigail didn’t think she should risk ruining perfectly good shoes. “Or pneumonia,” Amy’s mother said. According to Amy’s mother, wearing wet shoes all day was the surest way in the world to get pneumonia. So, for several days, Amy got driven to school every morning by Old Ike in the Model T.

Amy had mixed feelings about riding to school. On the one hand, she rather welcomed the opportunity to observe the mysterious and forbidding old man at close range. Such observation was not often possible, since Old Ike made it very plain that, if there was anything he resented more than anything else, it was curiosity. But trapped there beside Amy on the front seat, and kept busy with all the pumping, choking and coaxing it took to keep the old car running, he was fair game for Amy’s observations.

On the other hand, riding to school ruled out the possibility of a chance meeting with Jason along the way, and that, of course, was of much greater importance at the moment.

But no matter what Amy would have liked, the rain kept on falling for three days, and for three days Amy went on watching Old Ike out of the corner of her eye, all the way to school and back. All the way, that is, except for the few minutes it took to pass the turnoff to Bradley Lane. During those few minutes, of course, Amy was busy looking for Jason. The rain wouldn’t make any difference to Jason, she was sure of that.

On the afternoon of the third day, Amy checked the turnoff to see if Jason might be there, and then she allowed her eyes to follow the Stone Hollow trail until it disappeared from view in the tree-filled canyon. From there she followed the canyon to where it lost itself in the confusion of cliffs and ridges in the general area of Stone Hollow. She turned away, at last, as the car rattled slowly around the turn, and found Old Ike looking at her. Even more surprising, he was getting ready to say something.

“You been there,” he said, “to the Hollow.”

Amy stared at him, trying to guess his meaning, trying to decide if he was asking a question or making a statement of fact.

“I—I—Do you mean—” she stammered.

“It ain’t no business of mine,” the old man said, “but you’d best stay out of them hills—you and that wild-eyed—”

But right at that moment the Model T went into one of its convulsions, choking and sputtering until its forward motion was reduced to a series of jerking staggers. Old Ike bent over the wheel working with buttons and levers, and whatever he had to say to Amy became mixed with muttered comments to—or at least about—the old car.

“Mutter—mutter—worthless heap of junk—playing with fire, Missy—gas-eatin’ mutter—mutter—mutter—bring down evil on yourself and your kinfolk—mutter—you take it from one who got good cause to know.”

The car went on choking and sputtering, and when it finally staggered its way into the driveway at the Hunter farm, Amy was still completely in the dark as to what it was Old Ike was trying to say, and just how much he really knew.

So Amy had one more thing to worry about and that was certainly something she didn’t need at the moment. In the past few days she had already worried and wondered herself into a dose of chamomile tea and the job of polishing the Fairchild silver tea service. Ever since the afternoon she had talked to Jason, no matter what she was doing, she would find herself coming out of a daze with someone staring at her in consternation.

“What are you thinking about, child? You’ve been standing in the middle of the floor drying that one plate for five minutes.”

“Amy dear, you didn’t hear a word I said. Is something the matter? Here, let me feel your forehead.”

They had all noticed it at home, and they had all agreed that something should be done. But, as usual, they didn’t agree about what it should be. Amy’s mother thought she looked peaked and decided that perhaps some chamomile tea would help. Aunt Abigail said she thought Amy just needed something constructive to do with her time, and climbed up on a chair and got the silver tea service down from the top shelf in the pantry. Amy’s father said Amy needed to get out and have some fun, but nobody did anything about that.

Of course, Amy knew exactly what she needed, but there was no way to do anything about that until the rain stopped. In the meantime she could only try not to think about Jason and Stone Hollow except when she was all by herself. The best time was after everyone else had gone to bed.

Every night, after the rest of them had gone to their rooms, Amy wrapped herself in a warm blanket and tiptoed down the hall to the storage room. Cocooned in the heavy blanket in the cold dark room, she sat cross-legged on the steamer trunk and stared out the window at the dark, rain-blurred masses of the Hills.

There she tried to think and plan and decide. Could Jason possibly have started from what she herself had told him about the Italians and the Indians, and made up all the rest? Or, on the other hand, could there really be such a thing as a Time Stone, and was there really something about Jason that made him able to see and understand things that most other people could not see and understand?

Alone, there in the darkness, with only a thin pane of glass between herself and the storm, the ideas that came easily and naturally were as wild and dark and clouded as the night. Amy found that it was hard to keep her thoughts from flowing as freely as the dark wet wind.

During the day, however, things were quite different. During the day Amy, and Jason too, were cooped up in a stuffy schoolroom, packed so full of restless sixth-graders that it was hard to escape the smell of wet hair and sweaters, and whispered bits of private conversations. There in the classroom, squeezed in between Shirley and Marybeth, Amy was embarrassed even to remember the wild ideas that had seemed so possible the night before. By daylight everything seemed so different, so ordinary and predictable. Everything—even Jason himself.

As a matter of fact, Amy decided, Jason was looking more ordinary all the time. He had recently started wearing long pants made of corduroy instead of the short, foreign-looking ones. His hair was shorter, and his face even seemed to have filled out a little, making his eyes seem less huge and owly. Watching him struggling with a math paper, chewing on his pencil and squirming in a perfectly normal way, Amy began to plan some very pointed questions—and even a few accusations—to be used the next time they had a chance to talk.