THE GHOST OF
ANGELINA KITTURA
By Caitlind L. Alexander
A LearningIsland.com
Mystery
Editor: Jennifer Robinson
Smashwords Edition
(c) Copyright 2004 Caitlind L. Alexander. All rights reserved.
Published by LearningIsland.com.
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The Ghost of Angelina Kittura / Caitlind L. Alexander
Summary: Three young children are confronted with a mystery in their new house, and the sad ghost of a long lost woman.
1. Mystery. Juvenile Literature. 2. Ghosts. Juvenile Literature.
Created in USA
Reading Level: 5.6
Words: 20,706
Chapter 3: The Cradle that Rocked
Chapter 5: More Clues to the Ghost
Chapter 6: The Mysterious Secret
Chapter 10: The Death of Angelina
Chapter 11: Mystery and More Mystery
Chapter 12: Angelina Explains Her Tears
Chapter 14: The Mystery is Solved
“Don't panic,” Kathy told herself in as calm a voice as she could find. “Don't panic or you'll die.”
She closed her eyes and tried to force herself to breath easier, but she just kept seeing her situation replayed on the inside of her eyelids.
Her legs hurt from where the quicksand was pressing in around them. It was coming tighter and tighter until it was shutting off the circulation.
Kathy's eyes flew open and she saw again the haunted house sitting across the wide, dead field. She and the house were alone together on the crest of a hill that not even the birds or forest animals would visit.
Kathy struggled again, but it was useless. The quicksand rose up around her chest. It squoze around her like some huge snake squeezing tighter and tighter, not letting her breathe.
“Arms up. Keep your arms up,” she ordered herself. “Then you'll have something to grab the rope with.”
“WHAT ROPE?” her conscious screamed back. “You're up here alone and you're going to die alone.”
Kathy raised her hands anyway and the motion immediately caused her to sink even deeper. The sandy monster was inching its way up to her neck. She was being swallowed alive and no one would ever know when or where she had died.
Kathy finally gave in to the panic. She opened her mouth to scream, but only a strangled gasp came out. Flailing her arms wildly, she tried to climb out of the muck as it sucked her deeper and deeper. She tilted her head back, trying to gasp a few last precious seconds of air before it was all over.
“Kathy. Kathy wake up!” The words pierced her brain like a semi inching its way through blinding fog.
Suddenly her eyes popped open and she looked around. There she was, squashed in the back of the family car next to her twin sister and her little brother.
Her legs still ached and she looked down to find the cooler had toppled from its perch between the front seats and was resting on them. It hadn't been a quicksand monster crushing her legs after all, just their day's supply of food.
Glancing outside, she found that the car had stopped and the sun was just pulling itself above the horizon. Its sleepy gray light cast pale shadows over the town that was as awake as she had been minutes before.
She peered through the window to find they had parked on a narrow business street. The buildings seemed to be all cut from the same cookie cutter and red brick dough. Even the store just down the street looked the same. It was homey, in an old fashioned, small town sort of way. This would definitely take some getting used to, especially after the hustle and bustle of New York City.
(HABS)
Kathy quickly flipped her long curly pigtails behind her back and dug her elbow into the set of boney ribs next to her.
“Are we there yet?” she quickly asked, enjoying the fact that for once she was awake first.
“Ow,” Karen mumbled as she awoke from a deep slumber. Though twins, Karen and Kathy didn't look at all alike. Kathy had long, light brown hair while Karen's was much shorter and darker. And Karen's skin was a lighter tone than Kathy's.
“Are we there yet?” Karen parroted, transferring the nudge to seven year old Bobby who sat on the far side. “Tag-along, wake up. We're there.”
“Where's the house?” Bobby asked, sleep mingled with a touch of fear. Bobby's hair and skin tones matched Kathy's but his face housed an impish grin and a large set of freckles.
At that moment their father emerged from the building parked beside the car. “D. Pratman, Attorney at Law,” Kathy read from the picture window across the front. “Serving the town of Chesterton for over six generations.”
The downstairs office was dark, but in the apartment upstairs, a light was still burning. Their father walked quickly down the stairs and climbed into the car. Before he was even settled, the questions began.
“What does the house look like?” Karen asked.
“Is it real far from town?” Bobby wanted to know.
“And is it really haunted like Great Aunt Margaret and Great Aunt Hilda said it was?” That was from Kathy, who said it with a shiver of delight. She loved a good ghost story.
“Does it really have ghosts?” Bobby asked in a fearful voice.
“There are no such thing as ghosts,” Mr. Peters said. That was just a story that my great aunts used to tell when I visited there as a little boy. It was just something to pass the time.
“But what does the house look like?” Karen asked again.
“No one has been out there for the last ten years,” Mr. Peters said. “So I'd imagine that it's pretty run down. Great Aunt Hilda moved into a nursing home in town about ten years ago, after Great Aunt Margaret died. If I remember right, the house is a huge Victorian, with brick walls painted red. It sits like a king on the top of a mountain that's covered with trees and wildflowers.”
“Let's just see how good your memory is,” Mrs. Peters said with a laugh. “If this place is nothing more than a few boards held together by dust I'm not staying, no matter how desperate we are.”
The kids knew their mom was only kidding. Since their dad had lost his job six months ago, moving to the house their father had inherited was their only choice.
The square brick buildings soon gave way to old, slatted wood houses, which gave way to farms fewer and farther between. Within five miles the town, the house, and the farms had given up their space to a forest of oak and pine trees.
As they drove up the winding hill, Kathy glanced upward. The sunlight barely brushed the treetops high above her head, leaving the roadway drenched in murky darkness.
Mrs. Peters rolled down her window and took a deep breath of the frigid air.
“Just feel that cool, fresh mountain air, you kids,” she said as if it were the greatest thing around.
They quickly admitted that it smelled different than the smog of New York City where they had grown up, but all three kids thought it was a smell they were going to have to get used to. It wasn't at all like the “forest glade” scented car fresheners that Mr. Peters always kept hanging from the dashboard.
Suddenly their father slowed the car and pulled to the side of the road.
“What's the matter, dear?” Mrs. Peters asked anxiously.
“We just missed the turnoff,” Mr. Peters said as he swung the car and trailer around. He had a funny, excited sound in his throat.
The kids looked eagerly out each side of the car, but couldn't see any turnoff, just an overgrown trail leading deeper into the dark woods.
When they reached the trail, Mr. Peters stopped the car and pointed at a majestic oak. Hanging from the trunk was an old, weather-beaten sign: HOLLOWAY HOUSE.
“We'll definitely have to fix that sign,” Mrs. Peters said.
“And the road,” Mr. Peters added as he looked at it.
Everyone glanced at the weeds and brush growing in the trail. Here and there a number of small pine trees had found the open ground to be a great place to grow.
Mr. Peters pulled the car as far down the lane as he could, then shut off the engine.
“It looks like we walk from here,” he said. “If the mileage estimate is right, the house should be about half a mile from here.”
“But how will we get all our stuff up to the house?” Kathy asked.
“How far is a mile?” Bobby interrupted.
“We'll leave the stuff here until we can bring in a bulldozer to clear the road,” Mr. Peters explained. “And a mile is five thousand, two hundred and eighty feet.”
“Shall we get this adventure started?” Mrs. Peters asked with a sparkle dancing in her blue eyes.
“Yes,” Karen yelled as she jumped out of the car and started up the road at a run. Kathy followed.
“Wait for us,” Mr. Peters cautioned.
“Why,” Kathy asked. “Is there quicksand around here?”
“No,” her father answered, bewildered.
“Is that what your nightmare was about this morning,” her mother asked loud enough for all of them to hear. Kathy hung her head in embarrassment. Only little kids had nightmares.
She expected her sister to tease her, but Karen's attention was focused on Bobby instead.
Behind them all, Bobby was slowly putting one foot directly in front of the other. His head was lowered, and his mouth was moving.
“Bobby, what are you doing?” Karen yelled in exasperation.
“Counting how many feet it is to the house. I want to see if it really is half a mile like daddy said.”
Everyone groaned.
“Bobby, there'll be plenty of time to do that in the future. If you'd like, I'll even measure it with the car's odometer. But right now, I think we're going to kill you if you don't hurry up.”
The girls giggled as Bobby promptly forgot about the distance and ran forward. As he reached his sisters, they took up the race and sprinted ahead.
They raced around the trees, following the overgrown track steadily upwards, deeper and deeper into the woods. Moments later they slowed to a walk, allowing their parents and their breath to almost catch up with them. Suddenly the woods began to thin out and they could see rays of sunlight streaming through the trees ahead.
“Come on, we're almost there,” Kathy hollered.
Mr. and Mrs. Peters looked at each other and laughed happily. Suddenly they joined hands and began running forward. The kids yelled with delight as they all raced to the edge of the woods.
Suddenly they stopped. The laughter fled from their eyes as they stood, staring at their inheritance.
Kathy shuddered. The house didn't look exactly like the house in her dream, but it was close enough. Before them, sitting high on a hill, was Holloway House. The house was huge, and at one time it had probably looked very elegant. Now it looked like a homeless drunk who had spent too long in the gutter. It was shabby and dirty, and the porch leaned to one side a bit.
The cheerful red paint of Mr. Peters' memory was proven by minute specks which hung stubbornly from a few of the bricks. Otherwise everything was weather-beaten into a grayish red.
“A real haunted house,” Kathy gasped as she noticed the sloping roof and the columns around the porch.
(Black Doll)
Bobby quickly stepped back and clutched his mother's hand.
“Well, it's going to need a lot of work,” Mr. Peters said.
“But look at the fields around it. It will be a perfect artists retreat once we get everything fixed up,” Mrs. Peters said enthusiastically. “You'll be surprised what a few gallons of paint can accomplish.”
“And a lot of hard work,” Karen said under her breath.
Kathy knew what was coming, so she said it for her mom. “We can do it. We're the best-makers. We can make the best of it.” Her mom smiled down at her.
With their smiles held firmly in place, they followed the trail through the weeds and up to the sagging front porch.
“Let me go first,” Mr. Peters said. I want to test the boards before any of us falls through and breaks their neck.”
The kids bounced around anxiously while their father tested each step completely, all the way across, before stepping up to the next one.
“At least if we break our neck we'll die quickly,” Kathy finally said. “This way we're going to die of old age.”
Mr. Peters laughed at her and stepped up to the porch itself. He quickly walked around the entire thing, testing for weak spots.
“Well, everything seems to be solid enough,” he announced. “The only problem appears to be this broken post and sagging roof, but we should be able to fix that easily enough. Shall we check inside?”
Everyone raced up the porch to join him. Mr. Peters quickly pulled out the set of antique keys Mr. Pratman had given him. It took a moment of fiddling to find the right one and get it to work in the rusty lock. When the door finally opened, it did so with a loud screech that chased shivers up and down their spines.
They stepped into the dim light to discover that the inside of the house was dirtier than the outside had been. Each step they took stirred up its own little dust cloud, clogging their lungs like New York smog.
(HABS)
When their eyes adjusted to the light, they found themselves in an oak paneled entry hall. A carved wood staircase started near the front door, and then disappeared around a corner when it neared the ceiling. Everything was old and dirty, and the paint had peeled off of much of the walls.
Through a sliding door on their left, a parlor appeared, and they peeked in. White sheets had been laid over all the furniture, making the room look like it was inhabited by hundreds of ghosts in a multitude of shapes and sizes. At any moment the kids expected one of the forms to begin moving eerily, or to hear some creaks and groans echoing through the old house.
“At least they covered the furniture,” Mrs. Peters said cheerily.
“It didn't do much good,” Karen noted. “The sheets are filled with holes.”
“Well, shall we take the grand tour?” Mr. Peters asked.
They quickly began exploring the rooms. Behind the parlor stood a kitchen and dining area. The other half of the house held another parlor and, much to Kathy's delight, a library filled with dust covered books. An old fashioned toilet and sink had been squeezed into the space under the stairs.
They slowly mounted the stairs to the second floor, listening to the creaks and groans they had expected to hear earlier.
“These stairs are definitely going to need something done to them,” Mrs. Peters said with a shudder. “If someone goes downstairs for a midnight snack, our guests are going to think this place is haunted.”
“Maybe it is,” Kathy said breathlessly.
“Kathy, I warned you about scaring your brother,” Mr. Peters said sternly. “You're old enough to know that there are no such things as ghosts.”
“But this book I read said that if people die with unfinished business, their spirit hangs around to try and get it done.”
Her father turned on her sternly. “You need to stop believing everything you read. There are absolutely no such things as ghosts.”
Kathy swallowed the lump in her throat and meekly followed her father up the stairs.
When they reached the second floor, they were confronted with a long, dark hallway. The door to each room was closed, and there were no windows to let in any light.
Mr. Peters quickly solved that situation by stepping over to the nearest door and swinging it wide. Everyone gasped when they saw what the light revealed.
There, stretched across the hallway was a huge spider web. An equally huge spider sat in the center of the lacy framework, devouring its breakfast of a wayward fly that had gotten caught in the web.
“Don't kill it,” Bobby yelled as Mr. Peters stepped forward. Ignoring the plea, Mr. Peters quickly brushed the spider web to the floor and crushed the spider.
“Let's see what else there is on this floor, for those of us who aren't quite so buggy,” Mr. Peters said lightly.
Bobby sulked, but moved with them down the hall. Everyone wanted to open a room themselves, so they spread out and quickly began swinging the doors wide.
The rooms upstairs were as dirty as the ones downstairs had been. One door opened on a bathroom and the rest revealed bedrooms. All the rooms were huge, and still held pieces of furniture also covered in the ghostly sheets.
“Man, they must have gone crazy at a white sale,” Karen remarked.
“Hey,” Kathy suddenly interrupted, forgetting to sulk. “This door has a lock on it.”
Everyone rushed forward and quickly crowded around the door. Two beautifully molded pieces of metal were bolted, one to the door and one to its frame. They were decorated with a molded ivy vine which wound around the plates and eventually intertwined to form a hasp. Through this was looped a lock.
Mr. Peters sifted through the keys on his ring.
“It doesn't look like I have a key for this one,” he announced. “I guess we're going to have to undo the screws to get in.”
“What do you think is in there?” Kathy asked breathlessly.
Mr. Peters didn't answer. Bobby quickly elbowed his way to the front. Bending down, he placed his eye next to the large keyhole below the knob.
“Well, do you see anything?” Karen asked impatiently as Bobby stood motionless for a few minutes.
“No,” he finally answered without moving. “The hole is clogged up with dirt.”
“I can fix that,” Mr. Peters announced. He took the longest key from the key ring and poked it into the keyhole. After wiggling it around a bit, he blew a strong gust of air into the hole.
Before Bobby could sneak back into place, Mr. Peters stuck his eye up to the hole and peeked in. “Well, I'll be,” he said.
As he straightened up and stepped back, Bobby quickly scooted into the place he left.
“What is it?” Mrs. Peters asked.
Kathy saw Mr. Peters quickly give his head a brief shake, telling his wife not to ask about it now.
“Aw, it's just a baby's room,” Bobby said disappointedly. “Why would anybody lock that up?”
Karen quickly edged Bobby to the side and took a look through the keyhole herself. She was just as disappointed as her brother.
“Perhaps there are some antiques in there that the previous owners didn't want people to break,” Mr. Peters said quickly.
When it was Kathy's turn to look, she quickly peered through the keyhole. Inside she saw a typical nineteenth century nursery. An old rocking horse stood in front of the window, its stuffing poking out from rotted seams. A set of shelves held numerous antique porcelain dolls and other toys, which were all shrouded in dust. A sleeping couch, a large, carefully carved cradle, and a dresser seemed to be the only pieces of furniture in the room.
“I read a story once where these people had a baby and it died so they locked the room up because they couldn't bear to go in it anymore,” Kathy said sadly.
“That was just a story,” her father announced quickly.
“But it could happen,” Kathy insisted.
“Let's take a look at the next floor,” Mrs. Peters interrupted. “Maybe there's some interesting stuff up there.”
There wasn't. Just more huge bedrooms like those on the second floor, and another bathroom.
They spent the remainder of the day cleaning the kitchen and the parlor. They had decided to live in these two rooms until everything was cleaned and they could figure out where to put their belongings.
When it was time for bed, the kids threw their sleeping bags on the floor in the parlor. The moonlight sparkled on the windows and the smell of cleaning solution and bleach hung in the corners. They were all tired, but Kathy had a hard time falling asleep in the strange house. As she lay there listening to the sound of heavy breathing coming from Bobby and Karen, she thought of the strange locked room upstairs.
Why would it have been kept locked? How long had it been that way? Did daddy's great aunts have the room locked, or was it like that before they moved in?
Suddenly she caught a snatch of conversation. Her parents were in the kitchen next door, and they were talking about the room! She quickly pushed her pillow to the side and pressed her ear against the floor. The sound carried through the floorboards and she listened closely.
“Kathy wasn't too wrong about that locked room up there,” she could hear her father telling her mother.
“When I was here as a child, the room was kept locked then, too. My great aunts insisted it was haunted by the spirit of a dead mother and her infant baby. They used to tell us stories about how the cradle in that room rocked by itself!”
Chapter 3: The Cradle That Rocked
“When I was a kid, I actually believed the story. In fact, my brothers and I nearly killed ourselves trying to climb up the outside wall and get a look in the window.”
“I can just see the three of you trying to figure out how to get up there,” Kathy heard her mother laugh.
“Yeah. When you're a kid, ghosts seem to be a lot more real,” her father said. “We'd better not tell Kathy about this. If she starts telling people this place is haunted, our artists retreat could be sunk before it even gets off the ground. Some people can be pretty superstitious.”
“I'll have a talk with her. We'll need the income from renting these rooms to cover the taxes on this place.”
“And the bills we left in New York,” her father added.
Even in the parlor, Kathy could hear the worry in her parents' voices.
As Kathy scooted the pillow back under her head, she thought about what her parents had said. Maybe it was just her overactive imagination, but Kathy did feel that something, or someone else lived in this house. If that was true maybe the artists and writers wouldn't come. Somehow, if there was a ghost, Kathy would have to help it finish whatever it was it hadn't done.
The next three days were busy ones. The Peters worked hard cleaning room after room. The gas and electricity had finally been turned on, and everything was starting to look pretty normal. They had even chosen and cleaned their own bedrooms, so it felt more like they were living here, not just visiting.