Are You Haunted (part thirteen)

Are You Haunted

(part thirteen)

Rohdl handed his empty bottle to Isobel, and left them. Isobel tossed the bottle through the car’s open window.

Powell said, “Mister… I guess I don’t know your name.” The stranger had got a long friendly ways into the conversation.

“No, that wouldn’t be likely. Let me tell you about the ghost. No one can ever say what the Drybrooks saw, when they lived up here. Old Mrs. Drybrook is not to be bothered, and she’s the only one left. She was married to the girl’s brother, father of the Davis some of us knew from… Here’s Mr. Rohdl back.”

Rohdl tapped Powell on the elbow, and beckoned. “You, Mr. Kenzie, and you, Miss.”

Isobel slid to earth, and they followed at first parallel to Mill Road, about twenty feet back towards the highway. A stream too wide to step across fed the ditch here.

Rohdl pointed uphill, and they saw the stream emerged from a concrete culvert below the house. “But of course they knew to avoid that danger. You see the path they would follow. You see there is an outcrop of rock, and the path becomes narrow. I say they had stopped, confused to find their way. For a moment they dropped hands. In the wind, no one could speak to be heard. So one of the party, thinking so, took up the hand again that had been hers. This was how it happened. And see…”

He walked on, eager. Empty panes stared from the house; the hill falling away, green and wild as they climbed, seemed as abandoned as though they themselves were not there.

Here,” Rohdl said. “She was lost. The snow had made it all seem smooth, but when her foot came down, just over the edge, she sank.”

“The rocks are that sheer in this spot…if she struggled, she would only mire herself in further,” Isobel finished for him.

“Yes. Well, that is what I thought. There is a science to the lay of the land.”

“And is this,” Isobel called to the stranger, “where they see the ghost?”

“Round about the property, ma’am.” Coins or keys jingled with his exertion, and he stood, catching his breath. “The Drybrooks never liked the story told. And they didn’t used to run shifts at the mill, not til wartime. They didn’t have a lot of folks out this way after dark. It was Alfin Doyle, who patrolled the grounds at night… I guess he worked there up to ’44, when Mr. Drybrook contracted with the government. Well, you know that yourself, ma’am.”

“Alfin Doyle was my grandfather.”

The stranger moved ahead of her. “Mr. Doyle…and he was known for it about the town, said he had seen the ghost many times.”

“They treated my grandfather like an old fathead, like he hadn’t served them forty-two years. I would never myself have asked him. So be as free with your story as you like, Mr. Summers, and don’t expect me to have heard it.”

13

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part fourteen)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)