Horror at the Haunted House (3 page)

Ellen loved fairies. When she was little, her two favorite books had illustrations of fairies. She had asked to hear those stories so often that eventually she memorized them and “read” them to herself, long before she really knew how to read. She used to tape cloth wings to her dolls and pretend that they were the fairies in the stories, flying through the air. And three years in a row, she insisted on having a fairy costume for Halloween.

Ellen no longer played with dolls, but she kept a small glass fairy on her dresser, for good luck. She still had her fairy books, too. The octagonal bowl was even more beautiful than the illustrations in Ellen’s books.

“You may hold it, if you like,” Mrs. Whittacker said. “Until we have enough money to install spotlights, it’s difficult to fully appreciate these pieces unless you pick them up.”

Ellen hesitated. Mrs. Whittacker had said that even the small pieces of Fairylustre were appraised at more than two thousand dollars. What if she accidentally dropped it? Still, there was something compelling about the shimmering colors that made her want to touch them, and she longed to see the fairies up close. She picked up the bowl and turned it slowly around, examining each fairy. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

“The full name is Wedgwood Fairyland Lustre,” Mrs. Whittacker said, “but it’s usually shortened to Fairylustre. It was made between 1915 and 1931.”

No wonder Mrs. Whittacker was excited about turning Clayton House into a museum. Treasures such as the silver fireplace, the carved banisters, and the Fairylustre should be displayed where people could enjoy looking at them.

Ellen laughed. “Look, Grandma,” she said and she pointed to the shoes on a flying fairy.

Grandma looked and laughed, too. She told Mrs. Whittacker, “I’ve always said Ellen needs fairy shoes.”

“I always wear out my tennis shoes on
top,”
Ellen explained. “I get holes in them, right over my big toes. Mom accuses me of walking with my toes pointed straight up.”

“Let me see the fairy shoes,” Corey said.

“They point upward,” Ellen said, as Corey bent over the bowl.

“Do you want to hold the bowl too, Corey?” Mrs. Whittacker asked.

Corey nodded. Ellen started to hand the bowl to him and
then stopped. The bowl was suddenly cold and a damp chill spread up her wrists.

Ellen stared at the bowl. It felt like a bowl sculpted of ice, with a fan behind it blowing the cold air toward Ellen.

“It’s my turn,” Corey said, reaching for the bowl.

Ellen handed it to him but the feeling of cold stayed on her arms. She watched her brother carefully. He didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about the bowl. If he felt the cold, she was sure he would say something about it. Corey was not known for keeping still when anything unusual happened.

Corey held the bowl for only a moment. “You’d better take it back,” he told Mrs. Whittacker. “Sometimes I get the dropsies.”

As soon as the bowl was safely back on the shelf, the cold disappeared from Ellen’s hands. She waited a moment and then touched the Fairylustre bowl. There was no cold air, no icy feeling. Ellen jammed her hands in her pockets and stepped away from the shelves of Wedgwood.

“Let’s go see the pig,” Corey said.

“What pig?” Ellen said.

“Some king of Norway was murdered in a pigpen,” Corey said, “and that scene is going to have a real pig in it. Mom told me.”

“I think Corey’s more interested in the horror scenes than he is in fine old ceramics,” Grandma said.

“The pig won’t be here until the haunted house opens,” Mrs. Whittacker said.

Ellen wondered if the pigpen murder was the scene that wasn’t based on truth.

“The dining room is the only room of the mansion that won’t be made into a scene from history,” Mrs. Whittacker said.
“Instead, we’ll display the Wedgwood collection and some of the finer pieces of furniture in here.”

The rest of the volunteers began arriving then and everyone assembled in what Mrs. Whittacker called “the second drawing room” to get their instructions.

As soon as they were seated, Ellen nudged Corey with her elbow and whispered, “Did you feel anything odd when you held that bowl?”

“Like what?”

“It seemed cold to me. And while we were holding it, I felt a cold wind blowing on my arms.”

“I didn’t feel anything.”

“Why did you give the bowl back so quickly?”

Corey shrugged. “I was afraid I’d drop it. And I wanted to see the pig.”

Ellen didn’t say anything else. She kept thinking of what Mrs. Whittacker had said about someone feeling the ghost’s presence.

Corey apparently had the same thought because he suddenly shouted, “Maybe it was Lydia!” Everyone turned to look at him.

“Shhh!!” Ellen said.

“What?” said Grandma. “What was Lydia?”

“Oh, nothing,” Ellen said. “Corey’s just telling me one of his stories.”

Grandma chuckled and the other people quit staring.

Corey whispered to Ellen, “Maybe the cold air you felt was really a ghost.” Corey’s eyes were wide and serious.

It made her nervous to have him say what she had been thinking. “It was probably just my imagination,” she said. “Old houses like this give me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Well, if you feel it again,” Corey said, “tell me so I can feel
it, too.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “Don’t tell Grandma,” he said. “If Mom and Dad find out there’s a real ghost here, they might not let us do the haunted house. Maybe we should keep the ghost a secret.”

“We don’t know that there is a real ghost,” Ellen said. She did not point out that she wasn’t the one who shouted Lydia’s name to a roomful of people the second the idea popped into her mind.

“What are you two whispering about?” Grandma asked.

Corey and Ellen answered exactly together: “Nothing.”

Ellen wished she hadn’t told Corey about the cold feeling. He said he wanted to keep it a secret, but he always blurted out whatever came into his head. She wondered why she had felt the cold air and he didn’t. Did she only imagine it? She would have to be careful or her parents would think she was making things up, the way Corey does.

While Mr. and Mrs. Streater encouraged Corey’s imagination, they also worried that he would forget to distinguish between what was true and what wasn’t. Mr. Streater often said he thought Corey had the potential to be a first-rate writer—and also the potential to be a first-rate liar.

Perhaps, Ellen decided, a door had opened, causing cold air to blow across her hands just when she held the Fairylustre bowl. Yes, that must be what had happened.

The meeting began. Mrs. Whittacker explained to the group of volunteers exactly how the Historical Haunted House would work. Ellen tried to listen carefully but it was hard to concentrate when there were so many well-known people in the room. She recognized two sportscasters, several TV news people, the weatherman from Channel Five, and a woman who did a cooking show that Ellen’s mother sometimes watched.

A part of her mind kept thinking about the Fairylustre bowl and the cold wind.

Partway through the meeting, Ellen sensed that someone was watching her. When she glanced around, everyone in the room appeared to be looking straight at Mrs. Whittacker. Still, Ellen couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was staring at her.

You’re getting jumpy, she told herself, and the haunted house hasn’t even started yet.

When the general instructions were finished, each person was told which room his or her scene would be in. Corey’s scene was in the conservatory and Ellen’s was in the parlor. Maps of the mansion were distributed. Ellen couldn’t imagine living in a house so big that people needed maps to find their way around.

“Someone from the Historical Society will be in each room, to assist you,” Mrs. Whittacker said. “Please find your assigned room and go there now.”

“If you can find your own way,” Grandma told Ellen, “I’ll go with Corey to the conservatory.”

Ellen studied the map. The parlor and the conservatory were both upstairs, across the hall from the main dining room where all the Wedgwood was displayed.

“We’ll be in adjoining rooms,” she told Corey.

“Good,” he said. “You can meet Mighty Mike, too. I wonder what he looks like.” Corey seemed to have forgotten all about the ghost of Lydia Clayton.

As Ellen walked toward the parlor, she wondered who else would be in her scene. One of the newscasters? The weatherman? The cooking school woman? Ellen entered the parlor and stopped in dismay as she saw which Historical Society member had been assigned to the Joan of Arc scene. Agnes Munset.

“Yours is the only scene with just one person,” said Agnes.
“We all felt that extra actors would dilute the impact of watching young Joan burn at the stake.”

Ellen tried to hide her disappointment. She wasn’t going to work with a celebrity, after all.

“I’ll tie you to the stake each night,” said Agnes, “and I’ll start the machine that makes the fake fire. Then I’ll need to take care of other duties. I assume you know what you’re supposed to do.”

Ellen said, “I’m supposed to stand still and look saintly.”

Agnes nodded. “That’s exactly right,” she said. “Let’s try it once, to be sure everything works properly.”

Scenery flats, painted to look like shop fronts and crowds of people, loomed across the back and both sides of the room, making it look like the village square of Rouen, France, in the year 1430. In the center of the scene, a pile of sticks and branches waited. If it had not been for the small platform in the middle of the pile—and the rough hewn 2 × 4 going straight up from the middle of the platform—the scene would have seemed like preparations for a homecoming bonfire or some other town celebration.

On the back of the platform, not seen from the public viewing area, three steps led upward. Ellen climbed them and stood on the platform with her back to the stake. It rose several feet above her head.

“Cross your arms and put your hands on your shoulders,” Agnes said.

Ellen did.

Agnes tied Ellen to the 2 × 4 with rope. She wound the rope around Ellen, just below her shoulders, and again at the waist. Using another length of rope, she bound Ellen’s ankles to the stake.

“It should be loose enough that you can wiggle out if you need to,” Agnes said. “Of course, you shouldn’t do that when there’s an audience.”

Even with the rope fairly loose, it made her feel helpless to be lashed to the stake.

Agnes flipped a switch and Ellen heard a crowd shouting. The angry voices filled the room.

“Witch!”

“Heretic!”

“Death to the traitor!”

Ellen’s skin prickled.

When Mr. Streater had learned that Ellen and Corey were to be in the haunted house, he urged them to study the characters they played. Corey had not yet bothered to learn about Prince Rufus but Ellen had read everything she could find about Joan of Arc.

She learned that Joan was a French patriot and mystic who lived more than five hundred years ago. When Joan was in her teens, she believed she heard the voices of saints directing her to lead the French army against their English invaders. Obeying the voices, she inspired the soldiers and led the French to victory.

Then, during an attempt to liberate Paris, Joan was taken prisoner and accused of witchcraft. A church court condemned her. Before her death, she publicly declared the justice of France’s cause and the authenticity of the voices she heard. Twenty-five years later, legal proceedings cleared her name and her condemnation was annulled. And in 1920, the Roman Catholic Church declared her a saint.

Ellen felt sorry for Joan of Arc. A lot of good it did to clear her name after they had already killed her.

Her only “crimes” were patriotism and a belief that she heard the voices of saints. Why were her accusers so angry?

When Ellen had asked her father about it, he said people can always find good reasons to do terrible deeds and that the real lesson of history is to stay calm and not be too quick to judge other people.

As she listened to the angry voices, Ellen wished the people who condemned Joan of Arc had not been so quick to judge.

Agnes hit another switch. As the lights dimmed, Ellen felt as if she stood in the middle of a fire. Red and yellow lights whirled at her feet in a way that made the pile of sticks appear to be burning. She heard the crackling of the flames, with the shouting crowd still in the background. To her amazement, she also smelled smoke.

“I can smell it!” she said.

“Several of the exhibits have smells as well as sight and sound,” Agnes said. “Technicians from the Provincial Museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, helped us prepare them.”

Ellen leaned her head against the stake and looked upward. Joan of Arc must have been terrified, with the flames leaping around her ankles and the wild crowd cheering as her clothing caught fire. How did she keep from struggling and screaming? How did she manage to stand there calmly and pray?

“It’s perfect,” Agnes said. She stood now in the viewing area, behind the ropes that would keep the public at the far end of the parlor. “You look exactly like Joan should look.”

“Thanks,” Perhaps, Ellen decided, she had judged Agnes too hastily. Maybe she wasn’t mean, after all.

Agnes turned off all the special effects and untied the ropes. Since Ellen didn’t have to practice with anyone else or rehearse any lines, she finished before Corey did.

While she waited for Grandma and Corey, Ellen went back into the dining room to look at the Fairylustre again. Each piece was different; each had exquisite colors. Not all of the Fairylustre pieces had fairy scenes, however. One had tiny drops of gold forming a spider web pattern. Another, a large vase, pictured a twisted, dry tree with demon’s heads instead of leaves, and bats hanging on the branches. At the foot of the tree, a white rabbit with pink eyes, wearing a pink jacket, seemed to be running for his life. Ellen wondered if there were stories depicted on the Fairylustre or just random scenes.

Behind her, Ellen heard Corey’s excited voice. “Wait till you hear me scream, Mighty Mike. I’m going to practice until I’m the best screamer in the world.”