The Ghost Belonged to Me Read Online Free Page A

whole minute in that direction before I owned up to what I was seeing. It was a moonless night, and there’s a Dutch elm tree to throw more shadow.
    The dormer window on the barn was candlelit. The colored glass border panes were awash with light. And there was candle flame at the window, haloed with fuzzy yellow. Pinkish-yellow.
    The breeze whipped up my nightshirt, and my heart hammered my ribs. Then I made a run for the bed. I grabbed up my pillow and took off down the hall to a spare bedroom facing the front of the house. In there is a high brass bed with an extra comforter folded at the foot. I shot the bolt behind me. Just as I was climbing into the bed, I heard voices drifting up. The window in that room looks down on the open part of the porch.
    They were human voices, and I knew whose they were. I crept over to the window to listen a while.
    Down on what Mother calls the piazza Lucille was entertaining Tom Hackett on a bentwood settee. I couldn’t see them clear, but then I didn’t need to.
    â€œOh, Tom,” says Lucille, “you better never do that!”
    â€œCome on, Lucille, you know you want—”
    â€œI know I want you to mind your manners, Tom Hackett!”
    â€œI won’t mind if you don’t mind.”
    â€œOh, Tom. Oh ...”
    Oh good grief, is what I thought. I crept back to bed and began drifting off right away. Before I slept, though, I had a picture of Blossom creeping up the loft steps in the middle of the night to light a candle that could bum the whole durn place down. Then I had a picture of Blossom sound asleep in her bed, untroubled by a guilty conscience. Then I slept, but I tossed some.

Chapter Four
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    I rose up next morning out of the wrong bed, sure that Blossom’s scheming was at the bottom of everything. While I waited ten hours for Lucille to get out of the bathroom, I worked my brains as to how I could square myself with Blossom. The usual earthworms and slimy slugs in the lunch-pail wouldn’t faze her. I cast about for something that would.
    I was still casting at the breakfast table, where I’d finally gone direct because I never did get into the bathroom.
    â€œAlexander, those ears don’t look scrubbed to me,” Mother observed. My face was low in a plate of breaded pork chops, cottage fries, and eggs that Gladys had just put in front of me.
    She saved the day by saying to Mother, “If Lucille ain’t comin’ down, Mrs. Armsworth, I’m not wrastlin’ a tray up to her room.”
    I couldn’t see Dad for the newspaper over his face. He had it folded lengthwise and was drinking coffee on the other side of it. I could tell how his high collar was grabbing at his throat from the sound of gulping when he swallowed.
    Right about then, Lucille charged into the dining room, looking a little baggy-eyed. “I’m here,” she sang out to the kitchen door.
    And from the other side Gladys yelled, “You better be.”
    â€œHello, Brother dear,” Lucille said to me and whipped up all the hair on my head as she slid her sizable bottom into a chair.
    â€œLemme alone,” I greeted her.
    â€œLucille,” Mother said, working her rings, “when will you stop hollering from room to room at the servant?”
    The servant came through the door with Lucille’s chops and eggs and wished out loud that certain people would refer to her as the hired girl instead of a servant because out in the country where we all of us originated, hired help wasn’t called servants.
    Mother let that pass but set on Lucille again. “I fell into a fitful sleep last night before I heard the front door lock behind you and on a school night too. If Tom Hackett can’t see you home at a reasonable hour, I’m very much afraid there are going to have to be some rules set down.” She looked toward the folded newspaper, “by your father.” Dad is deaf when he gets