Horror at the Haunted House (6 page)

Ellen didn’t know what to say so she was silent. She let go of the rope and walked toward the door. As she passed Agnes, the woman put out a hand to detain her. “Why were you leaning so close just now? Why were you examining that vase?”

Ellen was not about to tell her the real reason—that she was leaning toward the vase because she felt two icy invisible hands on her shoulders, pushing her that way. If she did, she knew there would be someone else playing Joan of Arc tomorrow.

Instead, she said, “No particular reason. That’s just where I happened to be standing.”

Agnes’s frown softened slightly. A flicker of emotion flashed across her face. Relief? But why did she care which piece of Fairylustre Ellen admired? There was something odd about this conversation, something that didn’t quite make sense. Maybe Agnes had seen the ghost, too, but didn’t want to admit it. Maybe she was afraid that Ellen would tell and that it would somehow have a bad effect on the museum.

Ellen tried to think it through on the way home but it was hard to concentrate with Corey chattering from the back seat.

“Mighty Mike says he’ll take me to the radio station someday when he isn’t working and take me in the studio and show me where he plays the Top Ten songs every Saturday. And he says he’ll show me where they broadcast the news. And he’s even going to buy me lunch at the cafeteria, where all the radio and TV guys eat.”

“He must have taken quite a shine to you,” said Mrs. Streater.

“He says I scream better than anyone and that if they ever
do a mystery on the radio and they need someone to scream, he’s going to call me.”

Lulled by the rhythm of the windshield wipers, Ellen began to relax. She tuned out Corey’s voice—something she had learned, from necessity, to do with ease—and replayed in her mind the scenes in the Clayton mansion.

Lydia Clayton’s icy hands had pushed Ellen toward the Wedgwood collection because she wanted Ellen to look closely at it. Why?

There’s something she wants me to see, Ellen decided. Some piece in particular? Maybe there is one piece that was her favorite and she wants to make sure I notice it.

Tomorrow, Ellen decided, I’ll go to the Historical Society and ask to read those old diaries.

If she knew more about Lydia Clayton, she might be able to figure out what the ghost was trying to tell her.

W
hat secrets would the diaries divulge? What would she learn about Lydia Clayton? Ellen arrived at the Historical Society’s office promptly at noon the next day, filled with anticipation. She asked to see the Clayton family diaries, hoping she might soon understand the strange events at Clayton House.

The woman in charge hesitated, as if debating whether to trust Ellen with the diaries.

“Mrs. Whittacker suggested that I read them,” Ellen said, “and I’ll be careful.”

The woman nodded and brought the diaries to Ellen.

There were three slim volumes, each with a soft leather cover embossed in gold. The pages inside were a thin parchment, yellowed with age. The writing had been done with brown ink, in a flowery script. The first letter of each paragraph was double size and full of curlicues.

Ellen carried the diaries to a table and began to read. Some
of the writing was difficult to read and the language was hard to understand. Ellen hadn’t known the English language had changed so much. After an hour of straining her eyes and her brain, Ellen closed the first volume and paged through the others, feeling discouraged.

She had hoped that the diaries would be personal accounts of life at Clayton House, perhaps written by Lydia herself. Instead, most of the diary entries were about the interior of the house and the furniture. All were signed by someone named Franklin Haller. Since Mr. Haller included details of cost and shipping arrangements for the furniture, the diaries read more like a designer’s ledger than a personal history. Ellen wished she had gone for a bike ride with Caitlin instead of coming here.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” asked the woman who worked in the library.

Ellen shook her head. “I wanted to read about Lydia Clayton,” she said.

The woman’s eyes twinkled. “Do you like ghost stories?” she said, and then laughed at Ellen’s surprised look. “You aren’t the first to be fascinated by the reports of Lydia’s antics,” she said. She walked to a shelf of books, reached up, and removed one. Handing it to Ellen, she said, “Try this. It’s a short biography of Lydia Clayton and includes the stories about her ghost.”

“Thank you.”

As she read, Ellen was fascinated by the woman who had lived so long ago. Lydia was only sixteen in 1866 when she married Samuel Clayton and went to live in his grand mansion. A spoiled girl who was used to having her own way, she threw a fierce temper tantrum the first time her husband went to England on a business trip. To placate her, he brought her a gift—a set of creamy white dishes with a hand-painted green and
rose border design. The dishes were creamware, made by Wedgwood, and Lydia fell completely in love with them.

After that, the only gift she ever wanted was more Wedgwood and she devoted much of her time to her collection. She studied the old pieces and cataloged her new ones. “Her Wedgwood,” according to the biographer, “was her passion and her delight.”

Lydia and Samuel Clayton had a son they named Josiah, after Josiah Wedgwood. Lydia adored her baby and spent every waking moment with him. When little Josiah died of whooping cough at the age of four months, Lydia was inconsolable and never fully recovered from her grief. She became a recluse, spending all of her time with her beloved Wedgwood.

A year after Josiah’s death, another son, Paul, was born. It was a difficult birth which left Lydia weak and ill. When Paul was only six weeks old, Lydia got pneumonia and died. On her death bed, she made her husband promise that he would always keep her Wedgwood.

Ellen pitied Lydia Clayton. She lost her first baby and didn’t live to raise her second one. The unfortunate girl lived in the mansion only five years, and died when she was just twenty-one.

Ellen continued to read. Two years after Lydia’s death, Samuel Clayton remarried. The union turned out to be an unhappy one. His new wife, Caroline, desiring to decorate the mansion to her own tastes, sold the Wedgwood collection, without her husband’s knowledge, to a wealthy land baron who intended to give it to his daughter as a dowry.

When the land baron’s workman arrived to pack the Wedgwood, he was forced out of the room by what he described as “a cold hurricane of such force that I thought the roof would fly off the house.”

Once outside, the weather was calm and sunny but the worker refused to go back inside and try again. Insisting that supernatural forces were at work in the Clayton mansion, he believed he had been given a clear mandate not to pack the Wedgwood.

The land baron cancelled the deal, and Samuel Clayton found out what had happened. He forbade Caroline to sell the Wedgwood and he continued to add to the collection until his own death.

The incident with the land baron’s workman was the first of what would be many reports of cold winds, moans in the night, and fleeting apparitions in the Clayton mansion. Local people, many of them jealous of the Clayton family’s wealth, gossiped that Lydia Clayton’s ghost was still guarding her worldly treasures, even after death.

The reports of hauntings continued for several years, with Caroline the main victim. Caroline, already jealous of her pretty predecessor, complained bitterly to Samuel that Lydia’s spirit refused to leave Clayton House. More than once, Caroline tried to pack the Wedgwood away in storage, hoping that Samuel wouldn’t miss it. He always noticed and insisted it be returned to its original shelves.

Caroline never had children and when she suffered a miscarriage, she told Samuel that it was caused by a fall she took as she fled from Lydia’s ghost. Since no one witnessed the fall, there was no proof of her story, but Samuel, who longed for another child, decided to have Lydia’s coffin dug up and burned. He intended to put Lydia’s cremated remains in the Wedgwood and told Caroline, “She loved those dishes more than she loved me. She wants them in death, just as she always wanted them in life.”

Caroline, however, refused to have Lydia’s remains in the house and so Samuel gave up the plan.

Reports of ghost sightings continued to plague Samuel until his death from smallpox in 1895. He often blamed Caroline for the hauntings, saying that if she had allowed Lydia to be cremated and her remains placed in the Wedgwood, the ghost would quit haunting Clayton House. Caroline also died of smallpox, just a week after Samuel.

Years later, Samuel’s great-grandson developed a passion for Wedgwood. “In particular,” the book said, “Edward Clayton was fond of a new Wedgwood line called Fairyland Lustre. More than once, he declared that his great-grandmother, Lydia, would have liked the brilliant colors and the imaginative scenes.”

Ellen reread that paragraph three times. Even though the pieces in the collection were dated, it had not occurred to her until now that Lydia Clayton lived long before the Fairylustre was made. If Lydia had never owned any of it, why would her ghost care about it now? Why did the hands push Ellen toward it, as if she wanted to be sure Ellen noticed it?

Whatever his feelings about Lydia’s ghost, Samuel Clayton kept his promise about the Wedgwood. In his Last Will and Testament, he made sure his heirs would honor Lydia’s request, as well. He left the mansion to his son, Paul, on condition that the entire Wedgwood collection must stay right where it was.

Paul not only followed his father’s command, he perpetuated it in
his
will, and his heirs did the same. Samuel’s great-grandson, Edward, was the last of the Clayton line. The book didn’t say so, but Ellen knew he was the one who left the mansion to the city, to be managed by the Historical Society. Ellen wondered if the gift had specified that the famous collection of Wedgwood
be kept or whether the Historical Society had made that choice.

After Samuel and Caroline died, there were no further reports of a ghost. The gossips of the time decided that it wasn’t the Wedgwood Lydia wanted, it was her husband. The writer of the book agreed, claiming that, with the death of her husband, Lydia’s restless spirit was finally at peace and her ghost was gone forever.

Ellen turned to the copyright page of the book. It was published in 1945. What had happened in the decades since then?

Were there other, unreported ghost sightings? Too bad no members of the Clayton family were still alive. The people who had lived in Clayton House would be the logical ones to see a ghost, if she appeared. But if Lydia’s ghost had been seen, surely there would be some mention of it in newspapers.

Fleeting apparitions, the book said. It was a perfect description of the reflection of the woman in the mirror.

Ellen asked the Historical Society woman if this book was the most recent publication there was about Lydia Clayton.

The woman nodded. “From time to time, rumors of a ghost circulated, but none were ever documented. Eventually, they always faded away.”

What did the ghost want, Ellen wondered, more than a century after her death? Why, after so many years without any proof of a ghost, would Ellen feel the icy wind which had chilled the land baron’s workman so long ago?

The Wedgwood, of course. The reason was somehow connected to Lydia’s treasured collection. But surely she would not object to showing the Wedgwood in a museum setting. The pieces were in no danger; they were beautifully displayed. As soon as the Historical Society spent the haunted house money,
the Wedgwood would have special lights, to show it off even more. If the ghost truly loved these dishes, she should be happy to see people admiring them.

Ellen thanked the woman for letting her read the books. As she rode the bus home, she decided to go to the mansion early that night, to give herself time to examine the Wedgwood exhibit before she dressed in her Joan of Arc costume. Corey wouldn’t mind going early. If he could, he would take his sleeping bag and stay at the haunted house all night.

Until now, Ellen had been interested only in the Fairylustre. She was attracted to the fairies, not the dishes themselves. Now, after reading about Samuel and Caroline and the ghost, Ellen was interested in all the Wedgwood and eager to study the older pieces. She would have to be careful, though. She couldn’t let Agnes catch her in the dining room again.

E
verything went wrong.

Corey agreed to go an hour early that night but when Ellen told her mother, Mrs. Streater said, “You’ll have to check with Grandma and Grandpa. We have tickets for the Seattle Repertory Theatre tonight so Grandma and Grandpa will drive you to the haunted house and pick you up afterward. What time do you want to leave?”

“Five o’clock. That would get us there at five-thirty instead of six-thirty.”

“All right,” Mrs. Streater said. “Be sure Grandpa and Grandma don’t have to wait around with you. They’re planning to go out to dinner after they drop you off.”

When Ellen tried to reach her grandparents, she got their telephone answering machine. She left a message but they didn’t call back. She tried two more times, just in case they were home
but had forgotten to check the machine; each time she got the recording.

At five-thirty, she gave up. Grandpa and Grandma were scheduled to pick them up at six and obviously they had gone somewhere else first. She would just have to find a different time to study the Wedgwood.

When they arrived at the haunted house, they were astonished to see a long line of people waiting to get in.

“Looks like you’re going to be busy tonight,” Grandpa said.

“Mighty Mike’s been talking about it on the radio,” Corey said.

“This is wonderful,” Grandma said. “They’ll easily raise enough money to finish renovating the mansion. And I’m so proud of you two for all the time you’re putting in. Grandpa and I brag to all our friends about it.”

Ellen raced to the parlor and hurried into her costume. She had already applied her makeup at home and had helped Corey with his, too. She was all ready fifteen minutes before the doors opened. Just time to sneak across to the dining room and take a good close look at the big urn that the hands came out of.