Ghosts Beneath Our Feet Read Online Free

wonders—an old-fashioned wood-burning stove. Katie unlatched the oven door and stared into a sooty cavern, feeling like the witch in Hansel and Gretel .
    The kitchen shades were drawn, and the air was hot and musty. Katie closed the oven and went back to the dining room, then turned off through partially opened French doors into a small library. At least I’ll have plenty to read , she told herself and ran a finger across rows of bindings. But the books did little to cheer her. The house felt neglected, unloved—and what else? She had a strange feeling that something was about to happen. Here in the middle of a meadow on the edge of a forgotten town, the house seemed to be full of secrets.
    Upstairs, a dim corridor divided the second floor in half. Katie turned toward the first open door, then stopped, startled by a movement at the end of the hall. Someone was there! Someone short and-dark-haired, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Katie took a quivery breath. What a place for a full-length mirror! She’d have to remember it was there, or she’d scare herself every time she came upstairs.
    Her mother’s suitcase stood, unopened, in the large front bedroom. Katie’s bag was in the smaller room next to it. There was a lumpy-looking bed, a dresser with a wavy mirror, and a bedside stand. The blue rug was furred with dust, and the rosebud wallpaper was peeling at the corners. Katie opened the two windows and pushed back graying curtains to let in some air.
    Jay appeared in the doorway. “There’s no TV in this dump,” he announced. “How’re you going to like being stuck in the middle of nowhere without a television set?”
    Katie’s heart sank. She’d miss television a lot, but not as much as Jay would.
    â€œListen.” He threw himself on the bed and groaned at the unyielding mattress. “Could you talk to her—to your mother?” Katie saw that he was very serious. “This whole thing isn’t going to work. We don’t belong here—anybody can see that. The old guy doesn’t seem so sick to me, and besides, he isn’t even related to your mother. Why does she think she has to come running when he says he needs a nurse? It doesn’t make sense.”
    Katie sat carefully in a rocker with a split in its cane seat.
    â€œFrank was just like a real uncle to Mom a long time ago,” she said. “And he’s not supposed to live by himself anymore. The doctors told him—”
    â€œHe must have a family of his own somewhere.”
    Katie shook her head. They’d been over all this when Uncle Frank’s letter arrived. “He had a son who was killed in an accident when Mom was a little girl. And his wife died a long time before that. After the son was killed, Uncle Frank changed a lot, Mom said. I guess he was really bitter. He wrote a few times, but he never came to Milwaukee again.”
    Jay sat up. “He could go to a nursing home. Lots of people do.”
    â€œMaybe he will, later on,” Katie said. “But he’d like to stay in his own house as long as he can. And you know Mom wanted to get away from Milwaukee this summer—”
    â€œWell, I didn’t!” Jay punched a pillow and then sneezed as dust rose around him. “We were going to fix up Doug Krocker’s motorbike and do a lot of other good stuff.” He looked at Katie intently. “ You don’t want to stay here, do you? Tell the truth.”
    Katie turned away. “I—I don’t know,” she said finally. “It isn’t the way I thought it would be, but I don’t see how we can leave Uncle Frank now.”
    She smiled, willing him to smile, too. “Maybe you’ll have fun here,” she coaxed. “You don’t know yet. We might as well find out what it’s like, now that we’re here.”
    â€œNo way.” Jay clenched his fists. “I just may go home by