Read The Ghost of Tillie Jean Cassaway Online

Authors: Ellen Harvey Showell

The Ghost of Tillie Jean Cassaway (3 page)

He watched as a fish jumped out of the water, thinking, “I'd like to paint that.” Angry at himself for leaving his brushes and not getting them from Hilary, he started to head home when something else caught his attention. Debris from the river, sticks, and trash, were caught on branches and rock crevices at the water's edge. Something pink in the water, pushing up against the rocks, tugged at by the current, looked odd. He went over and pulled it loose.

“A doll,” he said. “Got only one arm and one leg. Poor waterlogged thing.” Without thinking, he pitched the naked, plastic doll back into the river. A short, high-pitched scream filled the air. He swung around to see who had cried out but saw no one.

“Who's there?” called Willy. “Who's there?”

He stood a few minutes, trying to look everywhere, waiting to hear something more. But the silence was not broken again. He got his bike and rode home, feeling as though he were leaving something unfinished, undone, feeling pulled back.

That night at the supper table, Hilary was moping, as her mother put it, and Willy seemed lost in thought. They did not speak to each other or to their parents. Mr. and Mrs. Barbour decided to ignore the two and be cheerful.

“It was a beautiful day,” said Mrs. Barbour.

“Sure was,” said her husband. “Felt like taking off and going fishing.”

“I'd go too if I didn't have so much canning to do now.”

“Well, I'll never get away any time soon. We're way backed up on jobs at the garage. Hey, guess who came in to get some oil—old man Craig. Hadn't seen him for weeks.”

“I saw him at Echol's store,” said Mrs. Barbour. “He don't come to Mauvy much anymore. Goes over to Maryville to buy, they say. Some time now he's been doing that, like he was avoiding people around here. Think he's hiding something?”

“Not corn liquor,” said her husband. “He don't touch the stuff. Never did. I tried to talk to him at the garage, but he wouldn't say nothing but, ‘Damn prices go up every month!' He acts like you're prying if you ask him how he's doing. So I let him be.”

“Dad,” said Willy. “I'll catch us some fish. Let me go tomorrow. I know a good place. I saw them jumping.”

“He don't fish, he just sits and draws or paints,” said Hilary. “Better let me go.”

“Why don't you go together?” asked her mother.

“No!” said Willy and Hilary in unison.

“What's the matter? Have you two had a falling out?” asked Mr. Barbour.

Hilary was stubbornly quiet. She was not going to tattle on Willy for causing her to wreck. And she did not dare tell about seeing Mr. Craig on the road—they'd never let her ride by herself again. She wasn't supposed to be out that way.

Willy only knew that he had to go alone. He felt an inner excitement, as though he were on the verge of something. He felt that if he did not go back to the ravine, a chance for discovery would be lost forever—a chance to look into doors that rarely opened, that might never be opened again. He said, “I want to camp out alone, by the river … up past Holmans Hollow.”

“You going to paint or fish?” asked his mother.

“Well … both,” said Willy. “I'd like to paint the fish jumping.”

“He's always trying to paint things that change or move,” said Hilary. “He can't, though.”

“Yeah,” chuckled Mr. Barbour, rocking back in his chair. “It's a difficult thing. You want to get into things … ride them. The flight of birds looks so beautiful you want to paint it, but once you fix it on paper, well, it don't look like you want.” His voice trailed off and he sounded a little sad.

“Well, don't you go messing around Holmans Hollow,” said Mrs. Barbour. “You know how them people are! Stay away from Craig's Island, too!”

“Aw, nobody's gonna bother a kid out to get some fish,” said Mr. Barbour. “We used to go blackberry picking up that way when we were kids.”

“He better watch out for ghosts,” said Hilary.

“Oh, yes,” said her dad. “There's plenty of ghost stories about that area.” He laughed. “But I reckon our Willy ain't scared of ghosts.”

“Are they true?” asked Hilary.

“Of course not,” said her mother. “But there is a wild dog running loose up that way, I've heard, supposed to be mean. Watch out for him.”

Willy slept very little that night. He planned to get up before dawn to start on his camping trip. He had fixed his paint supplies as well as his fishing gear to his bike.

Hilary wanted very much to tell someone about Tillie Jean Cassaway. There was one person who would always listen … one person she could talk to about anything. As she went to sleep, she thought, “Tomorrow I'll go to Granny Barbour's.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“Mom, can I do it today?”

“Do what, Hilary? What are you doing up so early? Willy has gone.”

“I can take some apples to Granny Barbour. Like you wanted me to.”

“What makes you so eager now?”

“I ain't been to see her for ages.”

“Well, go this morning then, but for goodness sake, it's not light yet, go back to bed awhile.”

Hilary did and her mother had to wake her at 8:30. “Better gather them now, Hilary, and go on, before it gets too hot.”

Hilary thought, “Granny Barbour is the one to ask about ghosts and Tillie Jean. Everybody knows Granny and she knows everybody.” She set out with a basket of apples to her grandmother's place which was about two miles out of Mauvy.

Granny Barbour—all the children called her Granny—was a small, wiry, black-haired woman, quick and energetic. Her husband had been gone five years, killed by an accident on a tractor. She kept up the small farm she'd lived on most of her life. She milked two cows and kept six pigs, a goat, and chickens, all by herself, in addition to working a good-sized vegetable garden. She let her son, Hank, raise corn on a part of her twenty acres but kept a grove of pine trees at the urging of the county agent.

She lived in a tiny wood house that her neighbors had helped her build two years ago when her old farm place had burnt down.

“Well, if it ain't Little Red Riding Hood!” said the woman as she opened the door to Hilary.

“No, I'm really the wolf.”

“Well, I need a nice, strong wolf around to help me feed the pigs. Did you reckon on that when you come?”

“No, but I'll help,” said Hilary. As she carried a pail of slop down to the pigpen, she questioned her grandmother.

“Granny, have you heard of Tillie Jean Cassaway's ghost?”

“Where'd you hear that? That's Holmans Hollow talk.”

Hilary began telling her in a rush of words. “Well, Willy was going riding and took his paper and paints but forgot his brushes, so I was going to take them to him, and went after him on my bike. It was down the river, by the tracks. Willy hid and made me wreck and then … then he … he told me to go home. I'm never going to speak to him again. I didn't give him his brushes, neither!”

“What about ghosts?”

“Coming back, a man stopped me.” Hilary told her grandmother everything the man had said.

“Uh huh, I've heard it,” said Granny.

“You've heard of Tillie Jean?”

“I heard 'em talk about her. It's just talk. But Hilary, why ain't you speaking to Willy? I doubt he meant to hurt you.”

“He could have let me go with him.”

“Maybe he wanted to be alone.”

“But why? I always go with him. We always had fun. And he went this morning by himself, to camp overnight!”

“Hilary, don't you ever have the need to be with yourself?”

“I always am!”

“Well, honey, some people need time out from other people … time to think about things without nobody bothering.”

Hilary thought a minute, then said, “Granny, please don't tell Ma what I told you about riding after Willy. I'm not supposed to ride my bike there.”

“Why not?”

“You know, the people.”

“What's wrong with the people?”

“They live back in the hollow and keep to themselves and don't like strangers.”

“Well, I know some right nice folks at Holmans Hollow. How would you like to go there with me? Maybe we could find out more about the ghost.”

“Oh good, Granny! When?”

“Soon's I git the chores done.”

While Hilary had been sleeping that morning, Willy had set out on his bike, alone, in the grey light of dawn. The fog that came and went with every morning lingered in the pockets of the hills and caressed the river. He could hardly see the road. The air was cool, almost chilly.

When the road took a sharp turn and became gravel, he knew he had passed the entrance to Holmans Hollow. Soon, he saw a shape looming up to his right which he figured must be the burnt-off hill. As he was getting off his bike, a high, mournful sound drifted through the air, seemed to barely reach him and die before it started again—a hurting, inhuman sound, but familiar—the wail of a hound. He heard someone calling. The howling stopped.

Willy left his bike and began climbing the hill. There was enough light for him to make out the two trees that stretched their bare, charred limbs into the new light. But at the top he could see nothing. The ravine still held the mist.

He started down slowly and carefully, trying not to slip on the wet grass and rocks, concentrating on the ground at his feet. He could not stay in the path and, as a result, veered further to the left than before, moving down the slope at a gentler angle and taking longer to reach the bottom. When on level ground, he stopped and looked around, but the fog was like a veil over his eyes. He could be in a wide valley or at the edge of a cliff for all his senses told. As he searched and groped for a familiar sign, sureness of anything slipped from him. All was haze, fog, grey and indistinct shapes. Willy held still, hoping for a familiar sound, and became aware of a gentle trickling. “Must be the spring,” he thought.

He groped forward and felt cold water run over his shoes. Wading through the shallow, rocky stream, he felt drawn deeper and deeper into a soft, white unknown. Then he realized he was not alone. Someone—something—was near him, moving. There was a figure—its arms moved, one up, one down, reached out.…

“Hey!” Willy cried, and as the words came out, he stumbled and fell. He was getting to his feet when the sun shone brightly and the fog lifted as though a hand had reached down and plucked off a shroud. The picture that had almost slipped from Willy's mind settled into reality—the vine-covered house was there, the remnants of a garden, the rocky cliffs—everything in place. But no sign of anyone else.

Then Willy looked down and realized that he was standing in the middle of the little grave marked by the homemade tombstone. He had tripped over the fence.

“Uh, sorry,” he said, stepping out. He moved toward the house. As he came close, he heard a creaking sound and saw that the back door was open and moving slightly with the breeze. When Willy had left the day before, he had locked the back door from inside and had gone out the window, the way he'd come. Cautiously, he moved toward the door.

“Anybody there?” he called. There was no answer.

“Answer me, I know someone is here!”

He went in and stood quietly in the kitchen, listening. The kittens were asleep in the corner. He moved quickly through the house, but stopped short when he got to the blue door, his eyes to the floor. From underneath ran a trickle of water.

“What in the world,” whispered Willy. He opened the door slowly, and took a deep breath. Propped up in a corner, still dripping water from its head, was the broken, pink plastic body of the doll he had only yesterday thrown in the river and seen float downstream.

He backed out and closed the door and walked around outside, thinking, confused. Had he really heard someone calling him, seen what he seemed to see? Maybe it was all in his imagination. Yet he felt, deep inside, that someone was trying to reach him, to know him. But the doll made no sense. It made him feel he did not belong. He decided to go back to the river. He would paint, and think about it, and watch.

Back at his bike, Willy removed his paper, paints, and brushes from the plastic bag in which he carried them and dipped some river water into a tin cup to use for wetting. He planned to fish and paint at the same time. He fastened a worm on the end of his line and found the place he was looking for—a large, flat-surfaced rock jutting out over the water. He laid his pole on the rock, placed a heavy stone over it, and sat down beside the pole to paint.

Across the river, high green banks seemed to plunge into the depths of the water. Overhead, clouds moved fast, as if to keep up with the swift current below.

A fish broke the water and Willy watched as ever-widening circles spread out from the spot, disturbing the reflection of trees and clouds. Willy became absorbed in trying to paint what he saw—the movement, the multiplying colors. If a fish nibbled at his line, he did not notice it.

There was so much in the water—moving green, brown, and blue. The longer he gazed into the depths, the more he saw. There were dim shapes constantly changing … he could almost imagine he saw a face down there.…

Willy leaned forward, straining to see better, not daring to move his eyes, painting what he saw. He knelt on the edge of the rock and peered in the river but there were only minnows swimming around the slippery, brown flat rocks close to shore. Ah! He could see the face again, a little further out. He climbed down to the riverbank and waded into the water, painting as he went, trying to capture a strange smile, wispy strands of hair, a pale brow, all shimmering beneath the surface, untouchable, not real, he knew. Suddenly he was swallowing water. He had slipped on a rock and gone under.

Sputtering he struggled to his feet and grasped for the painting, but it had been caught by the current, was gone. The image was gone too. Willy stood there a minute, in water to his waist, dripping, feeling foolish. He spoke softly to the water, “You've got your picture, hope you like it, whatever you are.” He made his way back to his fishing pole, pulled in the line, and saw that the worm was gone.

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