Ghosts Beneath Our Feet Read Online Free Page B

that’s happened since we got off that bus,” Katie retorted. “It’s a real mystery!” She leaned back and considered. “Maybe Uncle Frank and Nancy Trelawny were lovers when they were young. Maybe they quarreled and married other people, but she never stopped loving him, and now she wants to warn him that something bad is going to happen.”
    â€œAnd maybe you’re crazy, too,” Jay said. “That doesn’t sound like a love message to me—more like a threat.” He looked at her with amusement and disdain. “What a dreamer! Never a dull moment with you around!”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with that?”
    â€œNothing, I guess.” Jay grinned, and for a while they sat quietly in the dusk. Then Jay shrugged. “The thing is, you make up problems for the fun of it,” he said. “You don’t have any real ones.”
    His tone suggested that he had worries she knew nothing about. Katie waited, hoping he’d say more, but he pushed back his chair and stood up. “See you,” he muttered.
    Katie finished her canned pears, spooning the sweet syrup slowly to make it last. A mystery, she thought. Jay could tease all he wanted, but a mystery would make up for having to spend the summer in this dreary place.
    She checked to see if there was one last pear half in the can, then crossed the kitchen to the open back door. This was the right setting for a mystery, no question about that. A small porch extended from the house like a raft afloat on a sea of meadow grass. Katie went down the steps, stopping on the last one to gaze into the twilight. There were probably rabbits and mice and all kinds of wild creatures living in this field. Even snakes! She pulled her foot back hastily, and as she did, her toe caught in a rotting board and she lost her balance. One moment she’d been looking out over the meadow. The next, she was stretched full-length on the ground. Her chest ached with the force of her fall.
    She started to get up, then froze. There was a groaning beneath her, a somber sound that began and ended in seconds. She lifted her head to look around, then pressed her ear to the ground once more. Silence. But as she lay there, not moving, the earth shuddered beneath her hands.
    Katie scrambled to her feet and flew up the porch steps. She hurtled through the door just as Mrs. Blaine returned to the kitchen.
    â€œKatie, for heaven’s sake! Uncle Frank’s trying to sleep.” She sank into a chair. “You really disturbed him just now,” she went on, without noticing her daughter’s flushed face. “I don’t want any more questions about mysterious messages, okay? Uncle Frank’s heart is weak. He needs rest and quiet and no stress .”
    Katie peeked over her shoulder at the open door. She half expected to see something horrible hulking there.
    â€œAnd where’s Jay?” Mrs. Blaine asked. “He’s going to have to watch his tongue, too.”
    â€œHe went upstairs.” Katie took a deep breath to steady herself. “I’ll wash the dishes.”
    She couldn’t tell her mother what had happened. Not now, anyway. In the first place, her mother probably wouldn’t believe her. And in the second place, she already had a sick old man and a rebellious stepson to worry about. She wouldn’t want to hear that there was a Mysterious Something moving around under Uncle Frank’s backyard.

Chapter Five
    â€œYou’re one very flaky kid. Period.” Jay scrambled to his feet and brushed bits of grass from his hair. “I don’t hear anything. Except bees buzzing.”
    Katie collapsed on the bottom step of the porch. “Well, you would have heard something really scary last night,” she snapped. “And I’m not flaky! I did hear a noise underground, right where you were lying. And I felt the earth shake, too!”
    â€œKatie,” Mrs. Blaine called from inside