The Boys Return (4 page)

“Yeah, but we don't really know them. Anyone can look angelic for an hour or so,” said Eddie.

Caroline took in the dessert plates and napkins while Mrs. Malloy poured the tea, and Beth and Eddie followed with the platters of cakes and sandwiches. Soon everyone was happily munching on cucumber sandwiches, cream cheese on crackers, and little cakes with green or yellow frosting that Mrs. Malloy had bought from Ethel's Bakery.

The most astonishing thing was how rapidly the food was disappearing. Never having had sons, Mrs. Malloy did not know just how much a boy could eat, and she and Caroline and Beth and Eddie stared. It looked as though the platters of food were being attacked by robotic arms that reached out from all sides, arms whose hands were programmed to pluck a cake here, a sandwich there—every fifteen seconds, it seemed, another morsel of food was gone. Mrs. Malloy quickly excused herself and hurried out to the kitchen, followed by the girls.

“They must be starving! They can't have eaten all day!” she whispered.

“That's just the way guys eat, Mom,” Eddie told her. “You'd better make some more.”

Out came the cucumbers and olives, the cream cheese and the bread. Mrs. Malloy opened the refrigerator wide and put jars of this and that on the table. Beth cut the crusts off a new loaf of bread, sliced each piece diagonally, and smeared cream cheese or mayonnaise on every one.

By the time the third serving of food was being devoured and teacups were refilled, Steve Benson said, quite politely, “Excuse me, but could I use your bathroom?”

“Of course,” said Coach Malloy. “You know where it is, of course—right at the top of the stairs.”

Eddie and Beth exchanged knowing looks. The girls were tempted to tiptoe up the stairs after him just to see his expression when he checked out his room. But they knew that would be extremely rude, and besides, it was time to make still more sandwiches.

As they brought in the platter, however, Danny and Bill were heading for the stairs, and they saw Steve whispering to Tony. When Danny and Bill came back down, Tony and Doug needed the bathroom too, it seemed.

Mrs. Benson looked embarrassed. “It's all that tea, I'm afraid,” she said, smiling apologetically.

“Oh, it's quite all right,” said Mrs. Malloy, and the three women chatted on about life in Buckman. They talked about the cougar that had been seen from time to time, and what pie was being offered at Ethel's Bakery that month. The men discussed football scores and the blizzard that had blown through Buckman in January.

If Caroline and her sisters expected the boys to be angry because of all the girly stuff hanging in their old bedrooms, however, the boys didn't show it. They each came back downstairs looking somewhat dazed and desperate, but they remained as polite as ever.

“They're not going to say anything about their rooms, just to annoy us!” Eddie whispered to Beth.

“They'll pretend they didn't even peek!” Caroline whispered.

“Do you have any games or stuff in the basement?” Tony asked. “That's where we kept our computer.”

Mr. Malloy overheard. “The basement, yes! Excellent idea. Eddie, maybe these boys would like to play table tennis.”

The twelve children went down the stairs. Jake and Josh challenged Steve and Tony, and the others gathered around a pachinko game in the corner.

When the four older boys turned their paddles over to the next in line, they sat down on some folding chairs across from the girls.

“You know what?” Tony said softly to Josh, but loudly enough for the girls to hear. “Doesn't Caroline look like Annabelle?”

Josh looked over at Caroline, then back at Tony. “I don't know. What did Annabelle look like?”

“Who's Annabelle?” asked Caroline, but the boys seemed to ignore her.

“The dress, I mean,” Tony went on. “Isn't that what she was supposed to be wearing in her coffin? A black dress with a white lace collar? Caroline's got the dress right, anyway.”

“Who's Annabelle?” Caroline asked again, more loudly.

Tony apologized and said, “Just somebody we heard
about. Someone who used to live in this house, I think.”

“It's possible!” said Caroline. “I was in a play in January about some families that lived in Buckman, and one of the women was named Annabelle.”

A look of genuine surprise passed between Tony and Steve and Josh and Jake. Over at the Ping-Pong table, Wally and Bill and Danny stopped playing momentarily, and Peter kept saying, “Come
on
! Come
on
!” But Wally walked over to where the older kids were sitting.

“No kidding!” Steve said at last. “That
is
a coincidence!”

“So how did you know she was wearing a black dress with a lace collar at her funeral?” asked Beth curiously.

“And how did she die?” Eddie wanted to know.

“Oh, it's a long story,” Tony said. “Actually, it's a page from a diary I found in the wall of my room when we were living here.”

“That's Caroline's room now,” said Wally.

“Really? A letter in the wall?” Caroline said, her eyes huge.

Tony nodded. “It's really old. I don't even like to handle it because the edges are crumbling. But if we see you again before we go back to Georgia, maybe I could show it to you. I've got it in my bag.”

“But how did she die?” Eddie persisted.

“She drowned,” said Steve. “Really tragic. And there's sort of…well, a mystery about it.”

“What?”
cried Caroline, Beth, and Eddie together.

Tony nodded toward Peter and Doug, who were the only ones left at the Ping-Pong table. “Better not talk about it here,” he said. “We'll show you the page sometime.”

Five
The Plan

O
n the swinging bridge later, as the Benson and Hatford boys followed their parents home, they gave each other high fives.

“They
bought
it—hook, line, and sinker!” whispered Jake.

“Not exactly,” said Steve. “They haven't read the page from the so-called diary yet. But at least they seemed to like us. They didn't hate us, anyway.”

“They'll hate us when they see what we did to their rooms,” Tony said, grinning.

“What?” asked Wally.

Steve and Tony began to laugh, and Danny and Bill joined in.

“Cross-eyed faces on the ballet slippers, horns on all the hearts, and a mustache on every china doll and teddy bear,” said Steve, and they all laughed together.

“Talk about coincidence, though!” said Tony, chuckling. “I just picked the name Annabelle out of my head, and there really was an Annabelle living in Buckman, according to Caroline. Are we lucky, or are we
lucky
!”

Wally didn't see that it mattered one way or the other. So the girls believed that the diary page was real. So what? Aloud he said, “So, then what?”

“Don't you see?” said Tony. “It's only a step from there to believing that the house is haunted.”

Wally still didn't get it. It seemed it would take more than a step to go from believing that a girl had drowned to believing the house was haunted.

Josh, too, was having doubts. “No, I
don't
see,” he said.

“Wait till we get up in your bedroom. I'll explain it all then,” Tony promised.

In the Hatfords' driveway, Mr. and Mrs. Benson said good night. “Now, remember,” they said to the Hatfords. “We're taking you all out to dinner Monday night.” And then, with instructions to the boys to behave themselves, they got into their van and drove to the motel where they would be staying for the week.

Peter and Doug wanted to trade Pokémon cards and began spreading them out on the dining room table. That gave the older boys a chance to go upstairs and make a plan.

“So here's the deal,” said Tony. “I tell the girls that when we lived in that house, I was awakened every night on March twenty-second by the sound of
tapping, as though someone were trapped in the wall or something. And then I'll say I'd feel a chill, like a cold draft sweeping through my bedroom, and cold fingers touching my forehead—you get the picture. But it wasn't until two years ago, I'll tell them, when workmen tore out a panel in my wall, that I discovered this page of a diary that someone hid in there.”

“And?” said Bill.

“And do you know what Tuesday is?” Tony asked.

“The day after Monday,” said Wally. Bill and Danny laughed. That was one reason Wally liked them. They always thought he was funny.

“What
date
it is?” added Steve.

The boys all looked at each other, and then at the Mark McGwire calendar on the wall.

“March twenty-second!” they all said together.

“Riiiiight!” said Tony. “I'm going to tell Caroline that I figure Annabelle's ghost comes back each year on the anniversary of her death, looking for the sister who couldn't save her. But since I'm a guy, not a girl, she leaves me alone.
Caroline
, however…!We've got to convince Caroline that Annabelle is coming for her. We'll have her so psyched on Tuesday that if she hears so much as a pin drop, she'll run from the room screaming.”

“They'll always remember the week the Bensons came here and got them scared so silly that no one would sleep in Caroline's room after that,” said Steve. “We'll be famous.”

“
Nobody's
going to be scared of a story!” said Wally.
“You don't know those girls! It's got to be more than talk.”

“It
will
be.” Tony grinned. “What if, on Tuesday night, Caroline goes to bed and hears tapping coming from inside her wall?” He looked around the room, and the other boys began to grin.

“And who's going to do the tapping? How are you going to do that without anyone seeing you? Caroline's bedroom is right next to Beth's, remember,” said Josh.

“Right! And what's on the other side of Caroline's bedroom?”

“The bathroom,” said Jake.

“Right again!” said Tony. “And I just happen to know that if someone is in the basement tapping a rhythm on the water pipes, the sound will travel right upstairs. Caroline will hear it through the wall.”

“But you'd still have to get in their basement!” said Wally.

“Right for the third time!” said Tony. “And did you notice that when we were playing table tennis tonight, I complained that it was too warm and opened a basement window? And that, before we went back upstairs, I closed the window but I didn't lock it?
That's
how I'll get in.”

“Man, Tony! You think of everything!” Jake said admiringly. “I'll bet they'll
never
forget your visit!”

“Not by a long shot,” said Steve.

“You can count on it!” said Danny. “We'll make it sound real.”

Wally didn't say any more. He figured he'd just
better keep his mouth shut when he was around the girls, because he'd probably give it away for sure.

The next day Mr. and Mrs. Benson drove back to take their family to church, but as soon as the boys had been delivered to the Hatfords again, Mr. and Mrs. Benson went off to visit other friends. Sunday shirts were exchanged for T-shirts, Mrs. Hatford's baked ham dinner was devoured, and all nine boys trooped off to the school's baseball diamond to help Jake and Josh practice for the sixth-grade baseball team, the Buckman Badgers.

It was as though the March sun knew it was the beginning of spring vacation, for it fought its way from behind the clouds and melted what little snow was left on the ground. Water trickled down the gutters in the streets, the breeze was mild, and by the time the boys reached the ball field, they had their jackets off.

But as they stepped inside the chain-link fence, they stopped and stared, for the baseball diamond was already taken. One girl was standing on the pitcher's mound winding up, the second girl was in the batter's box, and the third girl stood behind her, ready to catch the toss.

“Look at that pitcher! Did you ever see anything more ridiculous?” laughed Steve. “That girl couldn't pitch a ball if—”

The pitch
wasn't
much good, but the pitcher
did
get
the ball in the direction of home plate, and in the second before the catcher could get the ball, the bat came forward with a terrific
crack.

Nine faces turned slowly upward, nine heads swiveled to stare at the ball sailing high over left field. A second later the pitcher was running after it, shouting happily.

“Way to go, Eddie!” the boys heard Beth yell. “You'll show 'em! How could they
not
let you on the team! How would they dare?”

“That's
Eddie
at bat?” gulped Steve, still staring.

“We don't call her the Whomper for nothing,” said Wally.

“Man oh man oh man!” breathed Tony. “That girl's got an arm on her like Mark McGwire!”

“Yeah, but if we can get
Eddie
to believe the ghost story, she won't be such a hotshot!” said Jake glumly.

The boys walked over as Beth came back with the ball.

“Well, look who's here,” Wally heard Eddie say.

“So, who's winning?” Josh joked.

“We're just helping Eddie practice for tryouts next week,” Caroline explained.

But Beth didn't stop at the pitcher's mound. She walked over toward the boys. “Did you bring the page from the diary?” she asked Tony.