All the Lovely Bad Ones (9 page)

With that, she left the dining room, her faded denim skirt swinging.

Tracy sat down at our table and rested her chin on her hands. "If your grandmother didn't need me, I'd leave right now." She tried to pour herself a glass of water, but this time it slopped all over the table.

"Clumsy," someone whispered.

"What did you say?" Tracy turned to me.

"I didn't say anything."

"Clumsy, sloppy girl."

Tracy jumped up and whirled around, trying to see who'd spoken. Her apron slid to the floor, its strings untied, and the same giggling we'd heard last night rippled around the room. Here and there, a cloth slithered off a table, forks, spoons, and knives rose into the air, and napkins whirled like eddies of leaves on a windy day. China plates and cups smashed against walls. Ketchup bottles spurted like ruptured arteries and splattered tables and carpets.

The three of us cowered together, our flesh pinched, our hair pulled, our faces slapped by invisible hands, until we screamed.

With a bellow of rage, Mrs. Brewster barreled into the room, her chest heaving. "Behave, bad ones, behave!" she screamed.

"It's not us," I yelled. "We didn't do anything!"

But it wasn't us Mrs. Brewster was looking at. Her eyes were focused on the swinging chandelier. "Stop it this minute!"

Behind her, a pitcher of water rose from a table, sailed through the air, and dumped itself on the old woman's head. The giggles changed into wild laughter. A cold draft swirled around us. Giving us a few last pinches, something swept out of the room.

Tracy ran to Mrs. Brewster and began drying her with a tablecloth. "Are you all right?"

Mrs. Brewster pushed Tracy aside and surveyed the dining room. "One of you fetch Mr. Brewster," she said. "Tell him it's worse than before."

As I ran out of the room to find Mr. Brewster, I bumped into Grandmother rushing into the room.

"No," she cried. "I don't believe this!"

"I want my mother," Tracy wailed.

Leaving them to settle things, I dashed out the back door and began searching for Mr. Brewster. I found him weeding the vegetable garden.

"Mrs. Brewster sent me to get you," I shouted. "She says it's worse than before!"

The old man dropped the hoe and came running. He didn't ask for an explanation. He knew.

"So they done all this," he said glumly, taking in the dining room. Overturned chairs, linens on the floor, puddles of water, broken china, ketchup on the walls, Tracy weeping, his wife rubbing her wet hair with a tablecloth.

Turning to Corey, Mr. Brewster added, "You and your pranks. I hope you're satisfied, miss."

Without looking at him, my sister ran out of the dining room. When I followed her, she tried to slam her door in my face, but I managed to push my way into her room.

"What's wrong with you?" I yelled. "Why won't you talk to me? Are you mad at me?"

"I'm scared," she whispered. "Just scared. That's all." She sank down on her bed and began to cry. "I want to go home."

I sat beside her and patted her shoulder. "Don't you think I'm scared, too?"

"Let's call Mom."

"No." My chest was so tight with fear I thought I was having a heart attack. "We started this, and we have to finish it."

Corey raised her head and looked at me with teary eyes. "But how do we do that?" "They're ghosts," I said. "They must be here for a reason. Unfinished business or something."

"The Brewsters know more than they're saying," Corey muttered.

As she spoke, I glanced out the window and saw Mrs. Brewster walking slowly across the grass toward the barn. Her hair and dress were still wet from the pitcher of water. She looked tired. While I watched, she vanished behind the hedge.

"I wonder where she's going," I said.

Corey perked up. "Let's follow her."

We ran across the lawn and peeked through the hedge. Mrs. Brewster was standing in the weeds, staring down at the numbered stones. "It's too bad, that's what it is," she said softly. "You ought to be sleeping peaceful. All of you."

As she spoke, shadows stirred among the stones and whispered in the grass.

"That boy and girl are bad ones," she muttered, "full of pranks and mischief, just like you."

She cocked her head like a robin listening for a worm to turn in the earth. "No, it ain't punishment they need," she said. "No more than you needed it."

She cocked her head again, listening hard to the rustle in the weeds, and then looked up, straight at our hiding place. "Come out from there. Didn't nobody teach you manners?"

Corey and I stepped through a gap in the hedge. A cloud drifted across the sun and turned the day cold.

"Who were you talking to?" I whispered.

"Nobody." Mrs. Brewster frowned at Corey and me, her face grim. "You were talking to
them
!" Corey's voice shook. "They're here, I can feel them all around us, watching, listening."

Hoping to calm her, I took my sister's hand, but she snatched it away. "Tell us who they are," she cried. "Tell us what they want! Tell them we're sorry. Tell them—"

"'Sorry' can't change nothing," Mrs. Brewster interrupted. "It's got to run its course now."

"But can't you just tell us who they are?" I asked.

"I can't," Mrs. Brewster said, "but maybe
they
will." With that, she pushed past us and strode off toward the inn. Even her shadow looked angry.

For a moment, I thought Corey was going to run after her and keep begging for answers, but she stayed where she was, head down, staring at the numbered stones.

"Come on." I reached for her hand again. "Let's go back to the inn."

The cloud had moved past the sun, and the day was hot again, thick with humidity and buzzing, biting bugs.

Corey watched a butterfly drift from one stone to the next, pausing to fan its wings. "I never really believed in ghosts before," she said.

"Me, either."

As I spoke, a pebble hit my cheek, then another and another. Suddenly, the air was full of pebbles, striking Corey and me but too small to do more than sting. At the same moment, the giggling started. And the whispers.

Corey and I ran toward the hedge, pebbles flying after us, but before we reached it, a shadow detached itself from the deep shade and blocked our path. Corey covered her face with her hands, but I stared into the darkness so hard my eyes stung. Someone was there, but I couldn't see more than a vague shape.

"Who are you?" I whispered.

"Who are you?" it whispered back, coming a little closer.

"What do you want?"

"What do you want?"

"Stop copying me!"

"Stop copying me!" it yelled in a shaky voice just like mine. "Stop copying me, stop, stop."

Laughter erupted all around us. A hand pulled my hair so hard I saw strands floating away.

Corey cried out in pain and stumbled backward, holding her cheek, the skin red from a slap.

"You'd better be scared," someone whispered. "We're the bad ones, the lovely bad ones, the bad, bad, bad ones."

Corey and I ran, but we couldn't escape the laughter or the pinches, slaps, and yanks at our hair. It was like being chased by a swarm of stinging hornets. Only worse. When hornets sting you, you know what they are. You can see them.

Somewhere near the grove, our pursuers gave up and let us escape. But we kept running until we reached the inn and stumbled through the kitchen door.

Mrs. Brewster looked up from the chicken she was preparing and scowled. Before she could say a word, we rushed past her and headed for the library. Neither of us wanted another scolding.

We collapsed on a couch in the library, breathing hard and soaked with sweat, our skin dotted with red marks left by the pebbles. The afternoon sun slanted through the tall windows and lit the bookcases on the opposite wall. Dust motes floated in the columns of light. The air was quiet, undisturbed. The only sound was the drowsy hum of bees in the flower boxes.

In other words, everything felt normal. Ordinary. On the surface, at least.

Corey picked up an old
New Yorker.
She leafed through it, not even pausing to read the cartoons, then threw it aside.

As restless as my sister, I prowled around the room, studying the books on the shelves, wishing I could find something to read but knowing I was in no mood to sit quietly. Something was going to happen—I could sense it in the air like electricity before a thunderstorm.

Suddenly, a pamphlet slid off a shelf and fell to the floor at my feet. Corey gasped, but I picked it up and read the title—
The Strange History of Fox Hill, as Recorded by the Reverend William Plaistow.

"
They
must have knocked it off the shelf," Corey whispered.

We looked around the room uneasily. The back of my neck prickled as if someone was watching me, but I heard no giggles or whispers and felt no slaps or pinches.

"They want us to read it," Corey said.

Cautiously, I opened the pamphlet. With Corey pressed close to my side, I began reading out loud.

"
This treatise is dedicated to those who suffered at Fox Hill Poor Farm, especially, if I may borrow a few lines from John Greenleaf Whittier, the children:

The happy ones; and sad ones;
The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones;
The good ones—Yes, the good ones, too;
and all the lovely bad ones.
"

"Poor farm?" Corey stared at me. "What's that?"

"It's where they used to send people who didn't have anywhere else to go."

"Like the workhouse in
Oliver Twist
?"

"Yes." I turned the page and went on reading.

"
Built in 1778, Fox Hill Farm was originally the home of Jedediah Cooper. Unfortunately, Jedidiah's great-grandson, Charles Cooper, amassed enormous gambling debts, which made it impossible for him to pay his property taxes. After repeated warnings, the county seized the farm in 1819 and attempted to sell it at public auction. When no buyer stepped forth, the county put the property to use as a poor farm in 1821.

"
Mr. Cornelius Jaggs was appointed overseer of the poor. He chose his sister, Miss Ada Jaggs, to supervise the children. These two ran Fox Hill for the next twenty years. Apparently, their harsh, perhaps even cruel, treatment of the helpless people in their care eventually caused an outcry from the local populace. After a public hearing in 1841, the two were dismissed from their positions, and the poor farm was shut down.

"
Cornelius Jaggs left the area at once and vanished into the fog of history. Deserted by her brother, Ada Jaggs hanged herself in a grove of trees not far from the house.
"

Corey and I looked outside at the grove. Even though there was no breeze, the leaves of the tallest tree stirred and its branches swayed. A bunch of crows rose into the air, cawing, and flew away as if something had disturbed them.

The page turned all by itself. A cloud drifted across the sun, and the dim light made it hard to read the faded print.

"Ada
Jaggs is buried at Fox Hill, along with many poor souls who suffered and died on the farm.

"
Among her dead companions are at least a dozen boys whom she singled out for her most severe punishments. Guilty of no more than normal high spirits, these boys, my lovely bad ones, had their lives cut short by a cruel and wicked woman.
"

The whisper I'd been expecting now ran around the walls. "Bad, bad, bad.
She
was the bad one. Bad beyond telling, bad beyond belief."

The whisper died away, but no one giggled. No one pinched or kicked or slapped. Sorrow filled the room. It pressed down on us, heavy and dark and so full of pain we could hardly breathe.

A cold hand touched my face. "Don't be afraid."

With Corey pressed against my side, I focused on the shadow standing in front of me. Slowly, a boy took shape, maybe ten or eleven years old, his face pale and freckled, his clothes ragged. He stood as straight and tall as he could and stared into my eyes.

"I'm Caleb," he said. "That's Ira, and Seth."

Two boys stepped out of the shadows. Ira was about the same age as Caleb, dark and melancholy. Seth was the littlest of the three, with a tangled head of red curls and two missing front teeth. I guessed he was about seven.

"There's more of us," Caleb said. "But we've been chosen to do the talking."

"I'm sorry we scared you," Ira said, "but—"

"I ain't sorry," Seth said. "We're the bad ones! We got to live up to our name."

Giggles ran along the shadowy walls like a stream running over pebbles, chuckling to itself. "Bad ones, bad ones, bad, bad, bad."

Speechless, Corey and I huddled together like scared sheep and stared at the boys—the ghosts, that is. The bad ones.

And they stared at us. Seth made a sudden lunge as if he meant to pinch us, and we scooted backward. The giggles got louder.

"What do you want?" Corey whispered.

"You woke Miss Ada up with your tomfoolery," Caleb said. "And she woke us up. Now you have to put us back to sleep."

"And her, too," Seth put in.

"So we can rest easy," Ira said. "Without her coming after us, over and over and over. Didn't she cause us enough grief when we were alive?"

"But—but how can we?" I stuttered and stammered, unable to say anything that made sense. "I mean, what can we do, we're just kids. We aren't—"

"I told you it wouldn't do any good to talk to them," Ira muttered to Caleb. "The living know nothing."

A whisper of mutterings swept around the room, from shadow to shadow. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," someone chanted. "Don't know nothing—either one of you."

"Pinchy, pinchy, pinchy," someone whispered, plucking at my skin.

"Ouch, that hurts!" I shouted, trying to evade the invisible fingers.

"Stop it!" Corey flailed her arms as if she was trying to hit the shadows romping around us.

"Boys, boys," Caleb called. "Leave them be. They can't help being ninnies."

The voices whispered to themselves, but they withdrew to the corners of the room and sulked there.