Apparition, p.20
Apparition, page 20
“So maybe getting rid of the barn wouldn’t make any difference. Maybe the ghosts would just hang out in the field.”
“Or maybe they’d get back on course, crossing over to some afterworld.” Kip must be paying more attention to his dad’s theories than he lets on. “Maybe this barn is what’s holding them up.”
Morris cuts in. “Well, we don’t know for sure if getting rid of the barn would solve anything, true. But there’s a long tradition of destroying haunted houses, and maybe that’s because it works. Maybe a building becomes transformed by the presence of ghosts, becomes like hallowed ground.”
“What do you mean? Isn’t that something religious?”
“Well, the expression ‘hallowed ground’ used to mean the ground was holy or blessed. Like at a sacred site. But maybe the true meaning of ‘hallowed’ is closer to Halloween, as in ‘spirit-ridden.’ It could be that a haunted place loses its innocence—becomes hallowed in a bad way, in other words—and the damage can’t be undone. The place can’t be saved. And it becomes part of the problem.”
“But what if there was a way to get rid of Jimmy and leave the barn as it is? I mean, if the other ghosts aren’t hurting anybody, can’t we leave them in peace? Shouldn’t we be thinking about how to do that?”
“Okay, so there are only friendly ghosts holed up in the barn. Then what?” says Kip. He’s starting to sound irritated.
“Well, what if—I’m just saying—what if a ghost could actually, maybe, get used to his situation, and start to feel comfortable, even? Being a ghost among living people. Couldn’t that happen?” Both Morris and Kip are looking at me strangely now, like they don’t know what to think. “I’m just wondering.” They must know I’m talking about Matthew. They’re not stupid.
“Then there’s that other mystery,” says Kip, his eyes steady on me. “Why does Amelia care more about the dead than the living?”
I’m speechless. Morris shoots a concerned look at Kip, like something’s just occurred to him. Then he turns to me.
“Let’s forget about the barn for a bit and focus on Mrs. Ross.” He gets off the couch and moves to his desk to make the phone call. He says he’s going to have to be a little more honest with her this time about what we’re really up to.
While he’s dialing the number, Kip takes a seat beside me on the couch and his arm goes up along the back, behind my head. He leans over to me and in a low voice, so he won’t interrupt the phone call, he asks where my “boyfriend” was during that “magic rope trick” yesterday. “I’m curious,” he says. “Was he rooting for me, do you think? Or maybe just enjoying the show?” His face is very close to mine, making me nervous.
I try to stay cool. “Once everything went crazy, I was pretty focused on you and the rope,” I say. “I didn’t see anyone after that, except Jimmy with half his head blown off. But you know, maybe Matthew did help. Because he says he was the one who let loose the rope when Jack was going to hang himself with it. He probably saved Jack’s life, so it’s possible he saved yours too.”
“So still your superhero, then?” Why is Kip acting so hostile?
“Well, I can’t just abandon him to a wrecking ball.”
“Why not? Because he might get hurt? He’s dead, Amelia.”
Looking into his angry blue eyes, I’m lost for words. I turn away to watch Morris on the phone, talking in a low, intense voice. Kip taps lightly on my chin to get my attention again.
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe ghosthood can change a person’s character? Bring out his dark side?”
“Matthew doesn’t have a dark side.”
“Ah, I see. Well, the rest of us mortals tend to.” I resist responding. It’s not his fault if he doesn’t know the real Matthew. “Amelia, you are going to stay out of the barn from now on, right? Will you promise me? You know yourself, I could have died in there yesterday.”
“I know, Kip. Believe me, it’s all I’ve been thinking about. But I don’t know if I can promise.”
“Well, sometimes you’ve got to make a decision even when you don’t know for sure. I’m serious. I’ll burn the barn down myself tomorrow if you can’t stay out of it.” He pulls his arm away and straightens up. I didn’t think he could be this aggressive.
I get up and walk over to one of Morris’s bookshelves and start checking out the titles. I don’t want to feel angry at him, but I do. I glance back at him on the couch. He’s looking away and seems upset.
“Well, that’s not good.” Morris puts down the phone. “She just hung up on me.”
“What? Are you sure she hung up?” I ask. “Maybe it was an accident.”
“Preceded by the words ‘Please don’t ever call me again’? No, she was seriously pissed off.”
“What was it that upset her?”
“Well, I told her that more than a few young men have died in that barn, not just her brother. She didn’t seem to want to hear that. But when I asked if she’d ever been called Dot, that’s when I really hit a nerve. She got angry and cut me off. Said she had to go and told me never to call her back. I doubt we’ll get anything more from her.”
“That’s awful! I can’t believe Mrs. Ross would act like that.”
Kip finally speaks up. “Maybe we don’t need Mrs. Ross. I mean, we found out a lot about the other deaths through our own research. Maybe there’s a ‘Jimmy’ buried in the death records too.”
Morris nods slowly. “This trouble started before Willy’s death, that’s for sure. And Mrs. Ross is caught up in it somehow. She’s afraid of something.”
“Afraid?” says Kip. “Or feeling guilty?”
A short while later Kip takes me home, but he barely says a word during the drive. He’s angry with me, and I know it’s because he doesn’t want me going back into the barn. But if the barn is coming down soon, I’ve got to go in one more time, by myself. If only to say goodbye.
He pulls into my driveway and stops the car.
“Kip?” I reach over to touch his arm but he stiffens, so I pull back. “Kip, why are you so angry? I’m sorry if—”
“Don’t be,” he says, cutting me off. “This whole ghost world of yours … I guess I just don’t get it. I mean, you’re a psychic sixteen-year-old with a dead superhero boyfriend, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with you. I can’t handle it.” He seems to relax a bit, then looks at me with a sad smile. “It’s just that I can’t compete with a ghost. That’s all.”
“I don’t know what you mean. You don’t have to compete with Matthew.” I’m feeling panicky. “Besides, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Really? Does he know that?”
“There’s no competition, Kip. Matthew’s different … so different from you.”
He rolls his eyes and I hear him take a deep breath. “You should go now,” he says softly.
I get out of the car and walk into the house like a zombie. Joyce is yelling from the kitchen, asking if anyone’s seen her new cigarette lighter. That’s the second one to disappear lately, she complains.
“Maybe you should check under Ethan’s pillow,” I mutter as I head upstairs.
She shoots me this look, like it’s going to be my fault if Ethan’s acting any weirder than usual. I’d like to remind her that he’s always weird, all by himself, but I take one look at her face and decide to keep my mouth shut. I head for my bedroom and shut the door behind me.
I don’t know what to do about Kip. But I can’t worry about that right now. I’ve got to see Matthew. I’ve got to warn him that the barn may be destroyed, and I don’t know what effect that will have on him. I can’t just stand by, not caring what happens to him. He still means too much to me.
29
When I woke up this morning, tired after lying awake for hours last night, I found a short e-mail from Kip in my inbox, sent after midnight. He’d spent some time in the archives yesterday, he wrote, and found a death notice, dated September 1941, for James Wallace, a seventeen-year-old farmhand from Saskatchewan. Wallace was found in a barn on 12th Line in Grey County. Cause of death was listed as suicide. Hanging.
He added that he was thinking of going on a last-minute vacation to Mexico with some Chicago friends, flying out Boxing Day. Then he said he was sorry about being in such a bad mood yesterday, and told me to forget what he’d said. What did he mean? Which part? Was that supposed to make me feel better? It didn’t.
I can’t believe I actually have to go to school this week. Only a few more days before the Christmas break, thank God, but what a waste of time. My head feels a million miles away from the classroom. When I’m not thinking about Kip or Matthew, I’m thinking about James Wallace. What was up with him? Did some ghost make him kill himself, just like the others? Or was he the very first, the one who started it all?
After school I decide to run down to the archives office before it closes. I know I may find Kip, but that isn’t the only reason I want to go. I have some new research to do.
A quick scan from the entrance and I immediately catch sight of Kip’s thick, dark blond hair bent over a file, hanging down long enough to hide his face. He looks up briefly as I walk toward him, my heart picking up speed, but he doesn’t say hi. His supervisor is nearby, and he treats me like I’m just another person dropping in to look something up.
He seems tired, and he acts cool and distant. “Can I help you?” he asks politely. I can’t tell what he’s feeling. I try to smile but I’m embarrassed, feeling my face go warm. I decide to go along with his professional tone.
“I’m just wondering if I could do a search, a newspaper search, on a young man who died about seventy years ago near here. Just wondering if any reporter from a Grey County paper wrote an article about him. The name was James Wallace.”
“Ah.” He lifts his eyebrows. “Well, let’s see.” I follow him to another part of the office and he shows me a chair in front of an old microfilm machine.
“No search engine I can just plug his name into?” I ask innocently.
“Afraid not. But you have a date to work with, right?” Strange, I think, pretending we don’t know each other. I can’t help it—I search his face for some kind of sign, and our eyes meet. The corners of his mouth twitch, almost into a smile, then he looks away. “You know how this works, right?” he asks, pointing to the machine.
“I don’t know how anything works,” I tell him.
He smirks. “You’ll figure it out. Call me if it gives you trouble.” He walks back to the front desk. I watch him cross the floor until he’s out of sight.
My hunch pays off. There’s a whole article written by a Mrs. Ruth Berger about the short, tragic life of Jimmy Wallace. He was taken into foster care by a family in Meaford at the age of twelve, transferred by the Children’s Aid Society from somewhere in Manitoba. “What many never knew about,” the article reads, “was the notorious case that had stunned a rural community and filled the town papers out west.” Turns out he was the victim of brutal abuse as a child. His stepfather used to tie him up and beat him in the back shed, leaving him locked up in there, sometimes for days on end, without food. The stepfather also beat a dog to death, and that was the last straw for the neighbours. They called in the police, who discovered the full extent of his crimes against the boy, and the stepfather was thrown in jail. “The tragedy,” wrote Mrs. Berger, “was that all the good Christian kindness of the Meaford family who took that child into their home couldn’t undo the damage of years of abject cruelty. In the end, in spite of five years of loving support, the boy took his own life, as if to finish the work of the devil he’d called his father.”
I make two photocopies of the article, folding one in half and writing Kip’s name on it. I hand it to the archive supervisor, asking if she would mind passing it to Kip Dyson. He’s only twenty feet away, standing behind a bookcase, hidden from view. I can see the top of his head as it turns my way, but he stays where he is.
I pick up the phone and dial a number with shaky fingers.
“Can I please speak to Mrs. Dee Ross? It … it’s Amelia Mackenzie calling. Thank you.” I wait, with an eye on the digital clock in the corner of my computer screen. Ten minutes go by. Then twelve. I’m thinking I’ll wait three more minutes when someone finally picks up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Ross, I didn’t think you’d answer.”
“I didn’t think you’d call.” She does not sound happy. But resigned, maybe.
“Mrs. Ross, I am so sorry to dredge up the painful past like this. I really am. But at least four young men have killed themselves in your father’s barn. One of them was my best friend. And a fifth who tried and failed was my brother Jack. I’m afraid it could happen again, and I want to try to stop it before it does.” I pause, and when she doesn’t say anything or hang up on me, I plunge ahead. “I need to find out why this is happening, and who’s behind it. It could save lives. Does the name James Wallace mean anything to you? Jimmy Wallace?”
There’s a very long pause. I work at being patient.
“Where did you get that name?” she whispers.
“I’m not sure you want to know.” I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t. “There are five ghosts in the barn. One of them is your brother. I got the name Jimmy from him.”
This time the silence lasts even longer. I wish she would say something. I try again.
“Do you remember a boy named Jimmy Wallace?”
Finally she begins to talk. Her voice is weak and shaking. “He was hired by my father to help out on the farm. Because Willy was going away to war. My father was going to need an extra hand, and he hired Jimmy.”
“Jimmy Wallace?”
“Yes. Jimmy was from out west. He’d been staying with family in Meaford.”
“Can you tell me what you remember about him?”
“Just that he was sick. He wasn’t well. That’s all. He wasn’t right in the head. And … well, he killed himself. When he was only seventeen.”
“He killed himself? In your barn?”
I can hear what sounds like gasping.
“He hanged himself in the barn. From the rafters.” She adds, “Or that’s what I was told. I wasn’t there.”
“Mrs. Ross, I know this isn’t any of my business, but is it possible that Jimmy Wallace was in love with you?”
“He thought he was in love with me,” she says, her voice trembling. “But it wasn’t true love. It was more like an obsession. We … we went out a few times. Not real dates, you understand. I was waiting for Philip to come back from the front. That’s all I cared about. I was just trying to be nice to Jimmy, but he took everything so seriously. He misunderstood everything. And he was so … so presumptuous. He started to get angry, to frighten me. But he was more vulnerable than we knew. It was all a big mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“I confided in Willy. He was always so protective of me, and he was angry that Jimmy wouldn’t leave me alone, with him about to go off to the war. He only wanted to teach him a lesson, he said. I regretted it soon enough … I’ve always regretted it. You have no idea.”
“What happened? Did Willy do something to Jimmy?”
“You have to believe me. We didn’t know. Nobody knew. Not until after, when it was too late.”
I hear another shuddering breath. “I told Jimmy I’d meet him one evening in the barn. But it was a trap, and Willy was there instead. He told Jimmy to leave me alone. Said he was going to teach him a lesson. He tied him to one of the posts and left him there overnight. We didn’t realize the harm it would do. A couple of Willy’s friends heard about it and showed up at the barn later in the night to taunt him. Willy didn’t know about that. It pushed Jimmy over the edge. The next morning Willy went in to untie him. I stood by the door, worried, already regretting it. When Jimmy saw me, he got hysterical. He was all wet with tears and urine, screaming for me to get out. Get out! I can still hear it.” There’s a long silence, broken only by the sound of her uneven breath.
“Did Jimmy call you Dot?”
A long pause. “Yes, he did. But why does it matter?”
“Because it’s proof that there’s a connection between him and the others who died in that barn. If he’s the only one who ever called you by that name, that is.”
“He’s the only one.” There’s another pause. “Except once.”
“Who was it, Mrs. Ross?”
“Willy. On the night he died.” Her voice sounds so strained.
“Willy called you Dot?”
“Yes. Yes, Amelia, he did. Now I’ve told you everything.”
“Can I just ask what he said to you when he called you Dot?”
“He said he wanted me to meet him later that night. In the barn. I can’t tell you any more than that.” There’s another long pause, and then she starts to plead with me. “I’ve lived a very long life, Amelia. I was never blessed with children, but my marriage was a blessing. Fifty-five years with my beloved Philip. He was the love of my life. My only love. I’m an old woman now—I’m almost ninety—and I just want to live out my life in peace. Have some compassion, please.”
“I am so sorry, Mrs. Ross. I really am. But I need to ask one last question: Did you meet your brother in the barn that night?”
“No, I didn’t, and I wish I had.” Her voice is breaking. “I’ve never been able to forgive myself for that.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t go on.”
“Was it because he was talking like Jimmy?”
The line goes dead.
A tragedy that happened a long time ago has been repeating itself ever since. But how to stop it? What will it take? I know what I have to do, but I’ve got an hour of daylight, tops, to do it in.
Sneaking out of the house won’t be easy. I check the backyard through my window, and sure enough, Joyce is out there with the horses. With my hand on my bedroom doorknob I try to compose myself, put on a casual face. I’m just going for a walk. I won’t be long. Hopefully, no one will notice.
