The Doll in the Garden Read online

  But where had he gone? How had he just disappeared? Little goose bumps chased themselves up and down my neck as I tried to convince myself that Kristi was teasing me. She’d watched me go into the garden, she’d probably seen the white cat, and she’d wanted to scare me with ghost stories. That’s all there was to it.

  …

  By the time Mom came home, I was thinking more about pizza than the garden or the white cat. When I heard her car in the driveway, I leaned over the porch railing to watch her balancing the pizza box and a couple of cans of soda.

  “Do you need any help?” I called.

  Mom shook her head, but I ran down to meet her anyway and took the sodas. The pizza smelled so wonderful I could almost taste the gooey, melted cheese and the hot tomato sauce.

  Making ourselves comfortable on the steps, we divided the pizza. The sun had sunk behind the mountains, but the sky was still pink and the shadow of the garden stretched halfway across the lawn. The first star hung just below the moon. Crickets chirped from their hiding places, and a mockingbird sang a long, lovely serenade from the tree in Kristi’s yard.

  “Baltimore was like an oven,” Mom said after we’d eaten enough pizza to take the edge off our appetites. “I was caught right in the middle of rush hour, and the traffic was awful.”

  “They don’t have rush hour here,” I told her. “Not enough people.”

  “Not enough rush either,” Mom said. “Just peace and quiet.”

  I chewed my last piece of pizza and wondered if I should tell Mom what I’d learned from Kristi. I opened my mouth, but when I started talking I told her about meeting Kristi instead. Why ruin a beautiful evening talking about ghosts?

  “Maybe you’ll make friends with Kristi’s mother,” I said.

  “I didn’t come here to make friends, sweetie,” Mom said. “I have to finish my dissertation so I can get a job teaching. The money Daddy left won’t last forever.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t agree with her. Like me, Mom had been sad for too long. She needed somebody to cheer her up, to make her happy again. I wanted her to smile and laugh and joke the way she used to before Daddy got sick.

  I didn’t say anything, though; I just leaned against her and felt the comfort of her arm circling me and drawing me close.

  …

  It wasn’t till I’d gotten into bed and turned out the light that I thought about the garden and Kristi’s ghost story. The moon shone in my window and slanted across my bed, and a night breeze brought the smell of roses and honeysuckle into the room. Outside, leaves rustled, but I didn’t hear anything else. No sobbing, no strange cat meowing—just the sound of Mom’s fingers hitting the keys of her typewriter. Feeling sure Kristi had been teasing me, I drifted off to sleep.

  Much later I woke up. The house was silent, and Oscar was crouched on the windowsill at the foot of my bed. His body was tense, his ears cocked forward, and his tail lashed back and forth furiously. As I sat up, I heard him growl softly, not at me but at something outside.

  Cautiously, I peeked out the window. At first I saw nothing but the moonlight whitening the grass and blackening the shadows. Then something moved near the garden, and Oscar growled again.

  It was the white cat. He was creeping along the edge of a shadow, but while I watched, he paused and looked up at my window. The moonlight reflected in his eyes, making them two silver disks. When he meowed softly, Oscar lunged against the screen, tearing at the wire with his claws and growling.

  Grabbing my cat, I pulled him away from the window, but he writhed free and disappeared under the bed, still growling. As Oscar vanished, I looked fearfully outside. The white cat was gone, but the scraggly bushes moved with the breeze and the shadows they cast swayed on the grass. The sweet smell of roses filled my room, and I shivered as a gust of wind blew over me.

  Before I could crawl under the covers, I heard something in the darkness. It wasn’t the breeze in the leaves or a cat meowing or a night bird calling; it was unmistakably the sound of a child crying.

  Truly afraid, I pulled the blanket over my head and fought against a strong urge to run to my mother’s room and the safety of her bed. As if he sensed my feelings, Oscar came out from his hiding place. Purring in my ear, he curled up on my pillow, and the two of us finally fell asleep together.

  Chapter 4

  In Trouble

  IN THE MORNING, I asked Mom if she’d heard any strange noises during the night.

  She smiled and shook her head. “I was up till two typing,” she said, “and when I hit the bed, I slept like the proverbial log, Ash.”

  As Mom paused to sip her coffee, her eyes scanned my face. “People often hear strange noises when they sleep in a new place,” she said. “It’s perfectly natural.”

  “But it sounded like a child crying,” I told her, “all by itself somewhere outside.”

  Mom put down her empty cup. “Maybe one of our neighbors has a baby, Ash.”

  “I saw a cat, too, staring at the house. Oscar was scared of him. He growled and hid under the bed.”

  Mom looked puzzled. “There’s nothing unusual about seeing a cat in the yard. Or in Oscar being scared of him. Oscar’s afraid of his own shadow.”

  Then she reached out and closed her hand over mine. Giving me a squeeze, she said, “How about helping me put up the curtains and pictures?”

  Instead of telling Mom what Kristi had told me, I silently finished my cereal. In the morning sunlight, the garden had lost its sinister quality, and I found myself thinking again of building my own little hideout in its shady center. Unlike Kristi, I wouldn’t be scared away by a white cat, especially not in the daytime.

  …

  When we’d finished hanging the curtains and pictures in their new places, I told Mom I was going to visit Kristi. But, as I ran across the grass, Miss Cooper stopped me.

  Without giving me a chance to say hello, she said, “Did I see you in my garden yesterday?”

  I nodded, surprised by her tone of voice. It hadn’t occurred to me she wouldn’t want me in the garden. “The real estate agent said I could play in the backyard,” I told her.

  “Not in the garden, though. Not there! You stay away from my roses!”

  “It’s all weeds,” I began, but Miss Cooper interrupted me.

  “Don’t you sass me! This is my house and if I don’t want you and your mother here, I can kick you out—just like that!” Miss Cooper snapped her fingers with a dry sound like sandpaper being rubbed together.

  As if to emphasize what Miss Cooper said, Max bared his teeth and growled at me.

  “And I don’t want that Smith girl in my yard. Or her brother—do you hear me?” Miss Cooper added shrilly.

  “Kristi’s my friend,” I said, edging away from her. By now I could feel the hedge at my back. A few more steps and I’d be safe from Miss Cooper and her dog.

  “We’ll see about that!” She brandished her walking stick and turned away from me. I watched her pause at the bottom of our steps. “Is your mother home?” she called.

  Before I could answer, Mom came outside and leaned over the railing. “Is something wrong, Miss Cooper?”

  Without waiting to hear what the old woman would tell Mom, I ran through the gap in the hedge to Kristi’s house.

  When I knocked at the door, Kristi’s mother invited me in. Her brother was sitting at the kitchen table reading the comics, but he barely looked up at me.

  “So you’re Ashley,” Mrs. Smith said, smiling pleasantly. “Kristi’s upstairs doing some chores, but she’ll be down soon.”

  Mrs. Smith offered me a seat and a glass of Hi-C. While I sipped it, she told me she had a pie in the oven. “I was planning to send Kristi over with it, but maybe you can take it to your mother yourself.”

  Brian groaned. “I thought you were making that for us,” he said. Close up, he was a taller version of Kristi — same tawny hair, same tan skin, same gap between his front teeth.

  “I made two,” Mrs. Smith said. “One for As
hley and her mother and one for us.”

  Brian wrinkled his nose as if he were thinking half a pie was more than enough for Mom and me. Then he pushed his chair away from the table and left the room. I could hear him whistling as he thumped upstairs.

  “Teenagers,” Mrs. Smith sighed as she gathered up Brian’s breakfast dishes and dumped them in the sink.

  Glancing out the kitchen window, she watched Miss Cooper and my mother for a few seconds. “Don’t let that old grouch worry you,” Mrs. Smith said to me. “She doesn’t have much use for children, so I always tell Kristi and Brian to stay out of her way as much as possible. Of course, that only makes them devil her all the more.”

  Just then Kristi came downstairs, and I followed her outside. She led me up a ladder into her tree house, and I realized that’s where she’d been sitting when I saw her red shirt the day before. The tree house had been hammered together from all kinds and sizes of wood and it tilted to one side. But it had a roof and two crooked windows, and it was big enough for us to stand up in.

  “Brian built this when he was ten, but he gave it to me a couple of years ago,” Kristi said. “One of these days, if my dad ever buys me the paint, I’m going to fix it up. Mom might even make some curtains for the windows.”

  As Kristi droned on about her plans for the tree house, I interrupted her. After all, I’d come over here to talk about something much more important than paint and curtains and rugs. “Were you trying to scare me last night?” I asked her.

  Kristi sucked in her breath and her eyes widened. “You heard the ghost, too, didn’t you?” she whispered.

  “It was you,” I said. “Playing a trick on me.”

  Kristi shook her head. “It was not! Whenever I hear that sound, it scares me to death. I hide under the covers and put my fingers in my ears.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I glared at Kristi. No seven-year-old kid was going to scare me.

  For a couple of minutes, Kristi didn’t say anything. She just sat there on the platform and scratched the mosquito bites on her legs. Then she looked past me at the garden. “I don’t care what you think, Ashley,” she said. “Every summer the cat comes and I hear the crying—why would I make up something like that?”

  “For a joke, to tease me or scare me.”

  Kristi shook her head. “I don’t want to scare you,” she said and her face got red. “I want you to be my friend. Honest.”

  I looked her in the eye for as long as I could without blinking, but she kept her eyes on mine, and she didn’t blink either. Little goose bumps ran up and down my spine and made me shiver.

  “So what do you think is going on?” I asked her. “Why would a garden be haunted?”

  Kristi shook her head and together we stared down at the tangled bushes and weeds. From here, I couldn’t see the little cherub or the dried-up goldfish pond, but I noticed a movement in the shrubbery near the garden’s center, and I wondered if the white cat was back. I wanted to see him again in the daylight. He had to be real, I thought, a stray cat who’d made a home for himself in the underbrush.

  “Will you go in the garden with me?” I asked Kristi. “I want to find the white cat and prove he’s real.”

  She chewed on her lip and stared at me for a second before busying herself by scratching another mosquito bite. “I’m not going in there,” she said in a low voice.

  “Are you scared?”

  “No!” Kristi scowled at me, the mosquito bite forgotten. “I just don’t want to.”

  I leaned toward her. “Come with me and prove you’re not scared.”

  “Miss Cooper will see us,” Kristi muttered.

  “Not if we’re careful. I bet we can sneak into the garden from your yard.”

  When Kristi once more returned her attention to her mosquito bites, I added, “It’s not scary in the daytime. It’s nice and cool. There’s a goldfish pool in the middle, and I was thinking we could fix it up and make it our secret hideout. Wouldn’t that be neat?”

  “We already have my tree house,” Kristi said. “Can’t it be our special place?”

  I sprang to my feet, exasperated. “All right,” I said. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do it by myself.”

  Without looking at Kristi, I started backing down the rope ladder. But, before I reached the ground, I heard her behind me, begging me to wait.

  Chapter 5

  The Garden’s Secret

  JUST AS KRISTI and I hit the ground under the tree house, Mrs. Smith stepped out on her back porch, holding a cherry pie.

  “I’d deliver it myself,” Mrs. Smith told me, “but I’m right in the middle of doing the wash. You tell your mother to come over, though, as soon as she gets a chance. I’d love to meet her.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay if I come with you?” Kristi said as she followed me through the gap in the hedge. “I heard what Miss Cooper said about me being in the yard.”

  I looked at Miss Cooper’s windows, but as usual all the shades were pulled down. “You can visit me,” I said. “It’s our apartment, and we can invite anybody we want.”

  As we started up the steps, I heard Max barking from somewhere inside the house. “Does he bite?” I asked Kristi.

  “Mad Max? He’s getting kind of old now, and Mom says his bark is worse than his bite.” She glanced down as if she expected to see Max coming up the stairs after us. “I don’t think I’d take any chances with him, though.”

  Mom was delighted with the pie and happy to meet Kristi. She told her she’d come over soon. But the minute she’d eaten her piece of pie, she excused herself and went back to her typewriter.

  “Come on,” I said to Kristi. “Let’s explore the garden now.”

  Without giving her a chance to argue, I ran down the steps. Glancing at Miss Cooper’s windows, I saw the blinds were still drawn. Recklessly I sprinted across the grass and plunged into the garden’s cool, green shade.

  In a few seconds I heard Kristi pushing her way cautiously through the undergrowth. When she emerged, her face was red and shiny from the heat, and she was breathing hard as she sank down on the pond’s edge beside me.

  “It’s spooky in here,” Kristi whispered. Peering into the shadowy spaces under the bushes, she added, “I know that white cat’s hiding somewhere, just waiting to get me.”

  For some reason, probably because of Kristi’s talk of ghosts, the garden seemed a little scary to me, too, but I wasn’t going to admit it. Brushing a cobweb away from my face, I said, “Just think, nobody can see us in here. Not even Miss Cooper. It’s our private kingdom, Kristi. We can be princesses here.”

  Kristi sighed and looked at the cherub’s worn face. “He looks sad,” she said, “like he’s been crying.”

  She was right. Years of rain had made streaks on the cherub’s face like the tracks of tears. To add to the melancholy, a mourning dove began to coo, and a cloud drifted in front of the sun, casting everything into deep gray shade.

  “Let’s go to my house,” Kristi said. “We can play with my Barbie dolls.”

  I shook my head. “Go home if you want to, but I’m staying here.”

  Without looking at her, I stepped into the pond and started tugging at the ivy and honeysuckle draping the cherub.

  For a few minutes Kristi watched me silently. Then, without saying a word, she sighed loudly and yanked a handful of weeds out of the pond.

  Even with Kristi’s help, it was hot, dirty work. The sun popped out from behind the clouds again, and in no time we were both sweating. Mosquitoes whined around our heads and gnats tried to get in our eyes, but we kept on working till the cherub was free of ivy and honeysuckle and the pond was weed-free.

  “Maybe we could run a hose out here from your yard and fill up the pond,” I said.

  “And buy some fishes for it,” Kristi said.

  I nodded, glad to hear a little enthusiasm in her voice.

  Even though Kristi wanted to stop and rest, I talked her into clearing a circle around the pond. While I was
dumping an armload of weeds by the fence, I suddenly heard her scream. Startled, I ran to her side and stared into a hole she’d made pulling out a gigantic thistle.

  “There’s something buried here.” Kristi pointed a wobbly finger at the corner of a wooden box sticking out of the dirt. Her face had turned white under her tan, giving her skin a grayish look, and she was shaking.

  Except for the persistent cooing of the mourning dove, it was so quiet I could almost hear my own heart beating. “It’s not deep enough to be a grave,” I whispered.

  As a worm coiled itself out of the dirt and wriggled away, I said, “Maybe it’s a treasure chest.” My voice was so loud it made Kristi jump.

  Cautiously, I knelt down and gently brushed the dirt away from the plain wood box. It wasn’t very big. Maybe sixteen to twenty inches long, no more than three or four inches deep, and six inches wide.

  “Look, there’s something caned on the top.” Spitting on my finger, I cleaned the dirt from the letters crudely scratched into the lid. “I think it says Anna Maria,” I said, but Kristi was standing too far away to see.

  “Bury it again, Ashley, just the way it was,” she begged. “It’s the white cat’s coffin, I know it is!”

  But something in me wanted to see what was in the box. Telling myself I was going to find gold or silver, enough to make Mom and me rich for life, I lifted it carefully out of the earth.

  Before I raised the lid, I glanced at Kristi. She was standing several feet away, ready to run.

  “Don’t you want to see?” I asked.

  “No,” she whispered. “It’s going to be something awful.”

  Turning back to the box, I began prying the lid off. Kristi crept closer, and when I finally got it open, she screamed at the sight of its contents.

  “It’s a dead girl!” she cried.

  She startled me so much that I hurled the box into the weeds and backed away from it, terrified.