روح همسایه فصل 09

The Ghost Next Door - Chapter 9

“So, I’m right,” Hannah said softly. “You’re a ghost.”

She shuddered, a wave of cold fear sweeping over her.

When did you die, Danny?

Why are you here? To haunt me?

What are you going to do to me?

Questions raced through her mind. Frightening questions.

“Give me the letter, Hannah,” Danny insisted. “No one will ever read it. No one can know.” “But, Danny—” She stared up at him. Stared up at a ghost.

The golden sunlight poured through him. He shimmered in and out of view.

She raised a hand to shield her eyes.

He became too bright, too bright to look at.

“What are you going to do to me, Danny?” Hannah asked, shutting her eyes tight. “What are you going to do to me now?” He didn’t reply.

When Hannah opened her eyes, she stared up into two faces instead of one.

Two grinning faces.

Her twin brothers pointed at her and laughed. “You were asleep,” Bill said.

“You were snoring,” Herb told her.

“Huh?” Hannah blinked several times, trying to clear her mind. Her neck felt stiff. Her back ached.

“Here’s how you were snoring,” Herb said. He performed some hideous snuffling sounds.

Both boys fell to the grass, laughing. They rolled onto each other and began an impromptu wrestling match.

“I had a bad dream,” Hannah said, more to herself than to her brothers. They weren’t listening to her.

She climbed to her feet and stretched her arms above her head, trying to stretch away her stiff neck. “Ow.” Falling asleep sitting up against a tree trunk was a bad idea.

Hannah gazed toward Danny’s house. That dream was so real, she thought, feeling a cold chill down her back. So frightening.

“Thanks for waking me up,” she told the twins. They didn’t hear her. They were racing toward the back yard.

Hannah bent down and picked up the letter.

She folded it in half and made her way up the lawn to the front door.

Sometimes dreams tell the truth, she thought, her shoulders still aching. Sometimes dreams tell you things you couldn’t know any other way.

I’m going to find out the truth about Danny, she vowed.

I’m going to find out the truth if it kills me.

The next evening, Hannah decided to see if Danny was home. Maybe he’d like to walk to Harder’s and get ice-cream cones, she thought.

She told her mother where she was going and made her way across the back yard.

It had rained all day. The grass glistened wetly, and the ground beneath her sneakers was soft and marshy. A pale, crescent-shaped moon rose above wisps of black cloud. The night air felt tingly and wet.

Hannah crossed the driveway, then hesitated a few yards from Danny’s back stoop. A square of dim yellow light escaped through the window on the back door.

She remembered standing at this door a few nights before and being totally embarrassed when Danny opened the door and she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

At least this time I know what I’m going to say, she thought.

Taking a deep breath, Hannah stepped into the square of light on the stoop. She knocked on the window of the kitchen door.

She listened. The house was silent.

She knocked again.

Silence. No footsteps to answer the door.

She leaned forward and peered into the kitchen.

“Oh!” Hannah cried out in surprise.

Danny’s mother sat at the yellow kitchen table, her back to Hannah, her hair glowing in the light of a low ceiling fixture. She had both hands wrapped around a steaming white coffee mug.

Why doesn’t she answer the door? Hannah wondered.

She hesitated, then raised her fist and knocked loudly on the door. Several times.

Through the window, she could see that Danny’s mother didn’t react to the knocking at all. She lifted the white mug to her lips and took a long sip, her back to Hannah.

“Answer the door!” Hannah cried aloud.

She knocked again. And called: “Mrs. Anderson! Mrs. Anderson! It’s me—Hannah! From next door!” Under the cone of light, Danny’s mother set the white mug down on the yellow table. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t move from her chair.

“Mrs. Anderson—!”

Hannah raised her hand to knock, then lowered it in defeat.

Why doesn’t she hear me? Hannah wondered, staring at the woman’s slender shoulders, at her hair gleaming down past the collar of her blouse.

Why won’t she come to the door?

And then Hannah shivered with fear as she answered her own questions.

I know why she doesn’t hear me, Hannah thought, backing away from the window.

I know why she doesn’t answer the door.

Overcome with fear, Hannah uttered a low moan and backed away from the light, off the stoop, into the safety of the darkness.