The Doll In The Garden Part 1

The Doll in the Garden.

A Ghost Story.

Mary Downing Hahn.

For my nieces, Sarah and Lisa Collins.

and My cousin, Colleen Nugent.

Chapter 1.

The Cat Hater.

THE DAY WE MOVED into Monkton Mills, I made an enemy of our new landlady. My mother and I were renting the top floor of what had once been a big single-family house, and the owner, Miss Cooper, was sitting on the front porch when we arrived in our rented truck. She watched us walk up the sidewalk toward the house, and the first thing she said was, "What's in there?"

She was speaking to me, but she was looking at the plastic cat carrier I was toting.

"It's my cat Oscar," I said, trying hard not to stare at her. Miss Cooper was the oldest human being I'd ever seen. Her face was furrowed with wrinkles, and her nose jutted out like a hawk's beak, sharp and cruel. The hand grasping her cane was knotted with veins, and her collarbones stuck out above the loose neckline of her flowered dress.

The real estate agent who'd helped us rind a place we could afford had warned Mom and me that Miss Cooper wasn't very friendly and didn't particularly like children. So, hoping to soften the old woman's heart, I smiled politely at her. "Would you like to see him?"

"Certainly not!" Miss Cooper levered herself up from her rocking chair, and the old dog sleeping beside her got up too and growled. He was black and not very big, but he had a sharp, pointed nose and a mean look around the eyes.

"I detest cats," Miss Cooper went on. "You take that creature upstairs right now and don't ever let me see it in the yard. If it kills one bird, I'll send it straight to the pound!"

"Grrrr," said the dog who obviously hated cats as much as his mistress did.

I looked at Mom. She was shifting her heavy typewriter case from one hand to the other, her face worried. "I'm Jan c.u.mmings." She stuck out her free hand and smiled, but Miss Cooper merely stared at her.

"And this is Ashley," Mom continued, her smile fading. "I'm sorry you weren't here the day Mrs. Walker showed me the apartment."

"Ashley." Miss Cooper turned back to me and sniffed. "What kind of name is that? It doesn't sound proper for a girl." She poked her face closer to mine. "How old are you?"

"Almost eleven," I said, backing off a little. Up close, she was kind of scary.

"Almost? That means ten, if you ask me." Miss Cooper frowned, adding even more creases to her forehead, and the dog moved a little closer, sniffing at Oscar's carrier. "Well, I'm eighty-eight, and I know what girls your age are like," she went on. "Don't think you can get away with anything just because I'm old. There's nothing wrong with my eves or my ears, missy."

"Don't worry about Ashley," Mom said. Putting her arm around my shoulders, she drew me close. "She won't give you any trouble."

Miss Cooper turned her attention to Mom. "Where's Mr. c.u.mmings?" she asked.

Mom's face reddened. "It's just Ashley and me," she said calmly.

"Divorced?" Miss Cooper leaned toward us, taking in every detail: Mom's tall, thin figure, her long brown hair, her faded jeans, her old tee shirt, and me, a smaller version of Mom right down to my freckles and worn-out running shoes. Then she sniffed and turned away. "Come on. Max," she snapped at the dog who was growling at the pet carrier.

Two steps later, she looked back. "I don't want a lot of noise up there," she said. 'Til complain to the real estate company if my sleep is disturbed."

We stood where we were and watched the old woman shuffle inside and slam the door behind her. In the sudden silence, Mom and I looked at each other.

"Well," Mom said, "so much for a friendly welcome." With a sigh, she followed the sidewalk around the corner to a steep flight of stairs at the back of the house. They were more like a fire escape than anything else, and I was glad we didn't have much more furniture; the movers had brought the heavy things earlier. But getting the little that was left up to our apartment wasn't going to be easy.

Mom paused on the porch at the top of the steps. "Isn't the lawn lovely?" she asked.

I stared down at the neatly mown expanse of gra.s.s that swept away from the house. In its center was a circular bed of bright flowers. Bird feeders hung from several trees, and a pair of catbirds splashed in a stone bath.

In sharp contrast, an overgrown ma.s.s of shrubbery and towering weeds cast a shadow across the end of the yard. It must have been a rose garden once, but, from the look of it, the bushes had grown wild for years. Honeysuckle, wild flowers, and weeds struggled together to reach the sun.

Tall hedges bordered both sides of the lawn, but from the porch I could see across them. Next door was a big white house similar to Miss Cooper's, trimmed with fancy woodwork and graced with porches front and back, well-tended despite the bicycles in the driveway. On the other side was an empty lot, grown high with Queen Anne's lace and black-eyed Susans.

"Can I let Oscar out of his carrier now?" I asked Mom. He was meowing and sticking his paw through the bars like a prisoner in a jail movie.

"Put him in your room and close the door, Ash," Mom said. "We don't want him to run outside while we're carrying things in."

My room was at the back of the house, and from my windows I could see the yard, the garden, and the empty field next door. Way beyond were the mountains, hazy blue against the sky. It all seemed very peaceful, and I was glad we'd come to Monkton Mills. Mom and I needed a place like this, I thought. In a new town, far away from everything that reminded us of Daddy, maybe we could stop feeling sad.

To keep myself from thinking about my father, I turned away from the window and opened the door of the pet carrier. "Come on out," I told Oscar.

For a minute Oscar looked at me as if he thought I was playing a trick on him. Then he crept forward and stared at his new surroundings. Ignoring my caress, he slid out from under my hand and ran around the empty room, meowing continuously and staying close to the walls, his belly almost dragging along the floor. Finding nothing to hide under, he darted back into his carrier and crouched at the back.

Mom opened my door a crack and looked at the cat. "Poor old Oscar," she said. "Just leave him in there and come help, Ash. He needs time to get used to moving."

Mom and I made at least six trips up the steps to get our things into the apartment. To make it worse, Max barked every time we went up and down the stairs. When we were finally finished, it was late in the afternoon and we were hot and tired and Mom still had to take the rental truck back to Baltimore.

"Why don't you just stay here and rest. Ash?" Mom suggested. "I'll pick up a pizza on the way home, and we can eat it on the porch."

After Mom left, I sat down on the top step. A gentle breeze stirred the bushes in the garden, and I breathed in the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle and roses.

Sitting there, staring at the jungle at the end of the lawn, I wondered why Miss Cooper had let her garden grow wild. The rest of her yard was so neat and tidy. Even bush had been trimmed into a cone or a ball and surrounded by a circle of pine mulch. The flower bed was edged with white stones, and the flowers themselves were laid out in patterns according to size and color.

But the garden was a wilderness, and the more I looked at it, the more inviting it seemed. Lush and green, the bushes swayed in the breeze, promising cool shade and privacy. It was a place to be alone, a place of secrets, a forest for me to explore and make my own.

But not now. I was too hot and tired to move. Lazily I told myself I'd save the garden for tomorrow when I felt more energetic. Yawning, I closed my eyes and stretched. But when I looked at the garden again, I saw a flash of white in the weeds. Was it a cat?

Remembering Miss Cooper's att.i.tude toward Oscar, I forgot my fatigue and ran down the steps. If a cat had ventured into the yard, I'd rescue it before the old woman saw it and called the pound.

As I dashed across the gra.s.s, I had the strongest feeling that someone was watching me; I could almost feel eyes boring into the back of my neck. Afraid Miss Cooper had spotted the cat, I glanced over my shoulder. The shades at her windows were drawn and there was no sign of her or Max, but next door I glimpsed a flash of red in the leaves of a tall tree.

Stopping for a moment, I stared hard, sure it wasn't a bird, but I couldn't see a face or even a leg or an arm, just a bit of red that didn't belong there.

"Nosy, aren't you?" I muttered.

A mockingbird answered, and a cat meowed from somewhere in the garden. Reminded of my purpose, I turned my back on the spy, ducked my head to avoid the th.o.r.n.y arm of a rosebush, and pushed my way through the weeds into the cool, green shade of the garden.

Chapter 2.

Kristi ALL AROUND ME roses ran riot, sending long p.r.i.c.kly shoots in every direction, fighting with honeysuckle for growing s.p.a.ce. Waist-high thistles and Queen Anne's lace almost choked out the daisies and black-eyed Susans.

Hoping I wasn't stepping in poison ivy, I made my way down a narrow path to the dried-up goldfish pond at the center of the garden. In its middle was a statue of a cherub. His arms were draped with ivy and a wreath of honeysuckle circled his head. At his feet were foot-high weeds. His worn features and weather-streaked face reminded me of statues in pictures of Pompeii that I'd seen in a book.

As the stillness of the garden settled around me, I looked for the cat. Calling softly, I thought I heard something rustling in the weeds.

"Kitty, kitty," I whispered, almost sure I saw a pair of green eyes peering out at me. "Kitty, kitty, kitty," I called again. Dropping to my knees, I peered under a rosebush and stretched out my hand.

For a moment, a cool, pink nose brushed against my finger tips. Then it was gone and the garden was empty, silent except for a cloud of gnats circling my head.

"Where did you go?" I tried to crawl into the bushes after the cat, but thorns caught in my hair and thistles p.r.i.c.ked my bare arms. Backing out, I sat on the edge of the empty pond. The cherub looked sadly down at me, and a mockingbird hopped from one branch of a dogwood tree to another just over my head.

Where I sat, I was completely surrounded by a dense wall of bushes, trees, and weeds bound together with honeysuckle. Just as I'd thought, the garden was a secret place, somewhere to go when I needed to be alone. No one could see me here - not the spy in the red shirt, not Miss Cooper, not her dog. Not even Mom.

As still as the cherub behind me, I watched the leaves sway in the breeze. Sunlight and shadow mottled the ground, and the weeds whispered to themselves, lulling me like distant voices of children at play. Closing my eyes, I pretended I was in a magical place, safe from pain and sadness and death. In this garden, Daddy was alive again. I could almost hear his voice, smell his pipe and the after-shave lotion he used, feel his hand on my shoulder.

Slowly I opened my eyes like Sleeping Beauty in an enchanted bower, but all I saw were weeds and bushes. Daddy wasn't there. Except for the mockingbird, I was alone. Blinking hard to keep from crying, I got to my feet and tried calling the cat once more.

I thought I heard a faint meow from somewhere deep in the bushes, but the cat wouldn't come to me.

I waited for a few minutes, hoping the cat would change his mind, but when I saw no sign of him, I made my way through the weeds and bushes to the lawn. Mom would be back soon, I thought, and I didn't want to worry her by not being where she'd left me.

As I pa.s.sed the tree between Miss Cooper's house and the house next door, I saw a girl in a red polo shirt standing in a gap in the hedge. She was younger than I was - seven or eight, I guessed. Her hair was short and s.h.a.ggy and streaked with yellow from the summer sun, and her skin was golden tan. Her bare feet and legs were dirty and scratched, and she was covered with mosquito bites.

"Are you going to live in Miss Cooper's house?" the girl wanted to know. When I nodded, she said, "My name's Kristi Smith. What's yours?"

"Ashley c.u.mmings," I told her.

She smiled then, a grin that showed the gap between her two front teeth, and started firing questions at me. In a few seconds, she'd learned I was almost eleven; I used to live near Baltimore; I liked reading, drawing, and bike riding; I didn't have a dog but I did have a cat. Finally she got to the question I'd been dreading.

"Where's your dad?" she wanted to know.

"He died last November," I said. "He had cancer." I turned away then, hoping she wouldn't ask me anything else. It was still hard to talk about my father.

Kristi was silent for a while. The only sound was a bird singing in the garden. Finally she cleared her throat and said, "My grandfather died a couple of weeks ago."

I looked at her and she looked at me. It was a long look and it said we understood something about each other. Then Kristi leaned toward me. "How do you like Miss Cooper?"

"Not much," I said. "She hates me already. And my cat too."

"Miss Cooper hates everybody? Kristi said. "She calls the police if my brother turns his stereo on after ten. She thinks I'm a nosy brat, and she's always complaining to my mother about me. She says I spy on her."

"Do you?"

"Sometimes." Kristi grinned again. "When I was little I thought she was a witch."

"She looks like one." I thought of Miss Cooper's wild white hair floating around her face, her sharp nose and little chin, her red-rimmed eyes netted with wrinkles.

"I feel sorry for you, living upstairs from her," Kristi went on. "It used to be her house, all of it. She was born there, my mom says, but when she got older she was so poor she had to make the upstairs into an apartment. n.o.body lives in it for long, though."

"Why? Because Miss Cooper's so grouchy?"

Kristi put a piece of gra.s.s in her mouth and chewed on it. "That's part of the reason," she said after a while.

I watched her for a few seconds, waiting for her to go on. "What's the other reason?" I asked.

"I don't know if I should tell you." As Kristi spoke, she glanced at the garden, then looked away. The shadows were getting longer now, and the tangled underbrush looked dark and mysterious. "You might get scared and want to move away."

I leaned toward Kristi, my face inches from hers. "I won't be scared."

"Well, it's the garden," she said slowly. "Some people think it's haunted."

"A haunted garden?" I sat back on my heels and tossed my hair. "How can a garden be haunted?"

Kristi frowned and her lower Up crept out. I could tell she was annoyed at not being taken seriously. "You wait," she muttered. "When you see the cat and hear the crying, you won't laugh."

I stared at her. "What cat?"

"A white one. He meows and meows and then he disappears into the garden. You hear him mostly at night. And only in the summer."

Before I could tell Kristi I'd just seen a white cat, a teenaged boy stepped out on the porch next door. "Hey, Kristi," he called. "Get over here. It's dinnertime."

"That's my brother Brian, the creep," Kristi said. "I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow. Okay?"

She ran through the gap in the hedge, but paused once to call back, "If you hear anybody crying tonight, just remember I told you so." Then she was up her steps and gone, letting the screen door bang shut behind her.

Chapter 3.

The White Cat LEFT ALONE, I ran up the steps and into the empty apartment. Coaxing Oscar into my lap, I stared out the window at the garden. I had seen a white cat, I was sure I had, but he was even bit as real as Oscar. I'd felt his nose, my fingertips had brushed his fur, I'd heard him meow. He couldn't have been a ghost.

But where had he gone? How had he just disappeared? Little goose b.u.mps 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.