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The Secret of Laurel Oaks

Tom Doherty Associates

Lila

"Here we are!" Dad said, waking Mom from her short nap. It had been a long Thursday of travel from Albuquerque to Baton Rouge, and after a quick dinner of muffuletta sandwiches at the airport, we had hit the road to get to the bed-and-breakfast before dark.

Though there was room for maybe six cars, the Laurel Oaks parking lot was totally deserted. Where were all the other guests? As our rented SUV crunched the gravel of the plantation grounds, I rolled down my window and stuck my head out. Steamy air blasted my face. It was October, which in Louisiana means still hot enough to fry bacon on the hood of the car.

The two-story mansion loomed ahead at the end of the driveway, in the dusty shadows of twilight. I couldn't wait to explore the whole place, which was supposed to be one of the ten most haunted houses in the entire country. That is, if you believe the Smithsonian Institution's Web site. "Wow, it really looks —"

"Creepy." My brother Gabe, who's fourteen, a year older than me, had an annoying habit of finishing my sentences, when I was perfectly capable of doing it myself.

We were missing two days of school for our family trek, because Mom had been invited to give a paper at the Biophysical Anthropology Conference at Louisiana State. Since she was always overwhelmed with whatever it is professors do, and Dad was hopelessly nontech, Mom had asked me to hunt down an interesting place to stay.

"And, Lila, make sure it's someplace not at all like Albuquerque," she'd said.

What could be more not like high desert Albuquerque than a swampy plantation? I did an Internet search and came up with a sure winner: "Laurel Oaks is certifiably haunted. Come on, it'll be so much fun!" I'd promised my family back in the summer. Of course, that was before Roberto died and everything changed.

Now my dark spiked hair wilted in the humidity, and my usual gobs of mousse plastered the hair to my forehead. I looked over at Gabe. His perfect cap of blond hair bobbed around his face and fell over one eye, making him look like a lopsided cyclops. Even his Balloon Fiesta T-shirt looked like it'd just come out of the dryer. Me, I was leaking from every pore in the Louisiana soup.

Dad parked the car and we tumbled out. "Ouch!" The hot gravel burned my bare feet. I leaped to the grass for relief until Mom tossed me my flip-flops.

Dad looked around, nervously jingling the car keys. "You got a confirmation, didn't you, Emily?"

"Right here." Mom fanned the yellow paper under his nose. "It says to park in the back and check in at the General Store. Over there."

"Which has a CLOSED sign on it," Gabe observed. "They're trying to get under our skin from square one."

"Lila, get the local Comfort Inn on that cell phone BlackBerry whatever you call it thing of yours."

"No way, Dad!" cried Gabe. "I'm ready to collide head-on with a bunch of ghouls. You up for it, Lila?"

"Oh, yeah," I murmured, but I had a different take on it. Ask me a month ago, and I'd have agreed with Gabe one hundred percent. But at the end of the summer things changed for me. Because of Roberto. I shuddered at the thought of his broken body and the weird stuff that came afterward. Stuff I'd never told anybody.

But I trudged right ahead, leading the troops down the gallery, which was a long porch that spanned the back of the house. Six rocking chairs lined the gallery, perfectly still and gleaming white in the dusky moonlight.

The whole house was dark except for one dim bulb lamp in the window of a second-floor dormer, flickering the way those fake electric Christmas candles do.

Mom sank into one of the rockers and looked around wanly. Her Southwest peasant skirt billowed around her like a parachute. "Look at me!" She thrust out an arm puckered with big goose bumps. "I have a bad feeling about this place, kids."

"Lila's idea, her fault," Gabe said gleefully.

Dad glanced my way and smiled. He's absolutely the gentlest of men. "Emily, let's you and I go around to the front. You kids stay put." They walked around the side of the house, holding hands. Embarrassing if anyone else were around to see them.

I rattled every doorknob along the gallery. Each door was locked tight, and each had a horseshoe hanging over it, some good-luck thing. Looked like we were going to need a little luck to get inside.

A lamppost over by the courtyard fountain shed thin sprays of light, enough to create a glare against the windows of the house's ground floor. Peering in, I saw that it was filled with dark furniture as massive as bears, and huge hanging chandeliers, and shimmery mirrors and unlit sconces, and the faint outline of a back staircase, but no people.

"There's got to be an innkeeper around," Gabe said. "Or a caretaker, or janitor or someone."

We cupped our hands against the window glare and peered into the back side of the reception hall. A dim lamp suddenly sputtered on. I jumped.

"Motion detector," Gabe said.

"Yeah, but whose motion?" Nobody stirred inside. The old-fashioned lamp revealed a baby-grand piano with its top raised like the wing of a swooping eagle. A pot of yellow mums perched on the piano, centered on a lace doily.

I grabbed Gabe's arm. "Look!"

The piano keys were rising and falling rapidly, all the way up and down the keyboard, as though someone were playing a jaunty tune.

Gabe put his sweaty ear to the window. "Hear anything?"

Not a sound came from the room, and the piano bench was empty.

"It's a player piano with the sound gutted out," Gabe said. "Pretty convincing."

"Probably. Sure." I watched those silent keys jump up and down as though ghostly fingers tapped them. And then the flowerpot began inching toward the end of the piano as the lace doily seemed to be pulled slowly out from under it. I gasped.

Gabe just snorted. "Look for wires," he said. "Somebody's behind a chair, jerking that pot across the piano. I'll bet money on it."

"What money? You owe me five dollars already," I muttered, heart pounding as the pot hung off the edge of the piano for a second until gravity kicked in, and the mums came crashing to the floor. More dirt than could possibly have filled that small pot scattered all over the threadbare Persian rug.

"Whoa!" I cried.

"Just special effects to spook gullible people like you," Gabe scoffed.

By now gray dusk had slid into navy-blue night. Gabe trotted along the porch, and as he whooshed by, he set all six rockers in furious motion, their legs slamming against the ancient floorboards. A minute passed, then another.

"Weird," I said, trying to sound unconcerned. "There's no wind to keep the rockers going."

"Electromagnetic something or other," Gabe said.

I swirled my hand around the middle chair, as if I could grab a fistful of ghost or charged air. Nothing. A shiver went down my back. I glanced over at our SUV. Maybe we could still get a room somewhere else. Anywhere else. The fierce churning song of cicadas filled the night. "This place creeps me out."

"That's the beauty of it," Gabe replied. And the chairs kept thumping.

"What's that racket?" asked Dad as he and Mom came around to the back of the house.

"The old lady ghosts are racing to the edge of the veranda in their rocking chairs," Gabe replied dryly.

"So I see." Dad tossed the car keys from hand to hand. "I guess it's no surprise that every single door's locked all around the house."

"I don't like this place, Ethan. The management must have forgotten that we were checking in tonight." Mom rolled her long, salt-and-pepper hair into a knot that she tucked in at the top of her head. Rivers of sweat streamed down her face and neck. My mom, who'd done fieldwork in remote rain forest villages of South America where natives speared poisonous snakes for lunch, looked positively spooked by Laurel Oaks.

"Just one night," Dad reassured her, and she grudgingly nodded.

Gabe strode along the porch, his sneakers slapping the splintery wood. This time as he passed, every rocker stopped suddenly, some tilting back on their legs in freeze-frame.

"How'd they do that?" I yelped.

"Good trick, and here's our next clue." A banana tree loomed in the corner between the General Store and the house. Gabe pulled an envelope out of its tangle of floppy huge leaves. "Must have been blown over here by the wind."

What wind? The air was unnaturally still, as if the night held us all in suspension, and not even a leaf dared to flutter. And yet, without a breath of cool air, I felt chills ripple up and down my back. I huddled close to Gabe. He waved the envelope. Printed on the front were these words:

The Barry Party

Us. That made me think of the Donner Party in the 1840s, a bunch of people in covered wagons trekking from Illinois to California to pan for gold. They got stranded in the wintery mountains, ran out of food, and then it was down to feast on friends and family or starve. Too bad Gabe was too skinny and sinewy to provide much tender meat for the Barry party.

An old-fashioned skeleton key, glinting gold, tumbled out of the envelope and clattered to the floor. I swooped it up while Gabe tilted a sheet of onionskin paper toward the lamplight and read aloud:

Welcome to Laurel Oaks Plantation.

I'm frightfully glad you're here.

•Do not attempt to enter the General Cambridge Suite at the far end of the gallery.

•The golden key opens the door at the bottom of the steep staircase leading to the dark belly of the house. BEWARE THE TWELFTH STEP.

•Keys wait in the doors of your rooms at the top of the stairs. The Eberly room is on your right; the Brookes and Gladstone rooms are on your left. Choose wisely.

•Caution: Do not, DO NOT turn out the light in the hall. When the last light at Laurel Oaks is snuffed out, the spirits are released to take their pleasure.

•There are no phones in the house. There is no one in the house but you. Lock your door from the inside. Carefully. Rest in peace.

Your Host, Camilla

"They certainly know how to set atmosphere around here." Dad laughed out loud as he folded the welcome note into his shirt pocket.

"No kidding," Gabe said. "Rest in peace, that's what they say when you're six feet under, eating worms!"

Dad, Gabe, and even Mom were all laughing, while my heart raced and my curiosity went into overdrive.

Of course, the thing I most wanted to know was, what's in the General Cambridge Suite?

Daphne

Used to be called the Cambridge Plantation, named for Miss Amelia's daddy when he came down here after bad business up north, something about rum or whiskey, one.

The Cambridges, they brought along Luke Mullin to tend their kitchen garden. Like his daddy, and his daddy before him, Luke Mullin was a free black man, only one I ever knew. I s'pose he could of gone up north and worked for money, but our folks whispered around that Luke Mullin was fou in the head or else too shy or scared to go off on his own, even with free papers. So, he lived in a shed way apart from the rest of us, because we weren't none of us free.

He could make anything grow, could make flowers spring from old cork. The fields are overgrown with wild bushes, now. Gotta wonder if Eulie's spirit got caught in the thicket somewhere around the place. I bet being dead hasn't improved her none. If I ever saw her nowadays, I'd stay clear of that girl. Even back then, none of us had any use for her stirring up the pot, not even Luke Mullin, the mildest of souls.

Old cross-eyed Luke, he never could look me in the eye or talk to me direct. He's long gone now. No planting's been done here for more than a hundred years — not indigo, not cotton, not even the house greens that Luke Mullin used to grow for the supper table, or those flowers that did us in. Back then, Luke plugged a couple dozen laurel saplings in the ground, and that's why the name of this place got changed. Laurel Oaks Plantation. They're all gone now, those laurels.

My own tree's a big old live oak. Anybody could look at him in the light of day and know he's Daphne's tree. He used to listen to me, like he had ears his own self, and he talked to me, too, even told me his name. Timberlarken. True. I couldn't of made up a name like that. I believe he's been around since the beginning, since the Garden of Eden, and he'll still be here at the great reckoning, come the end of days when tous les saints go marching home. He'll still be holding all my secrets and rememories in his wavy leaves. But I don't go to my tree anymore. Scares me too much.

Lots of folks stay at our place time to time, ghost-hunters mostly wanting to prove we're real, or else wanting to prove we're not. Sweet Jesus must be having a laugh over that!

Most of those folks don't have it in them to see us, at least not the way we want to be seen. When Birdie was alive, she used to say, "Some folks just ain't got the third eye to see with." She must have had a hundred eyes, 'cause my Birdie saw into everybody as clear as glass. She's not around this place anymore, neither. She finished up what the Lord sent her here to do, and I 'spect she's having a good long rest on a featherbed up there in heaven.

These folks came tonight right before dark. They look like a nice family with a loving maman and daddy, a sister and brother who don't snarl at each other too bad. Now, that boy, seems like his feet came from somebody else. They're too big for his body, but what do I know about boys?

I do know girls. That one they call Lila, something about her stirs my soul. Her hair stands up straight off her head all spiny. Reminds me a lot of Miss Amelia's youngest, Molly, who never did want me messing with her hair that was a bird's nest if you didn't watch it. My Molly was always a breath away from trouble half the day, like this Lila, I 'spect, but she's scared of something, too. Don't know what, yet. Couple times I passed right in front of her, see if she'd notice. She did, just didn't know what she noticed. I believe she has the third eye. Got to watch myself, filling up with hope. I've been fooled before.

A dark-skinned girl's been living here a while with the fool Camilla who's always touring folks around the place. Sal's the girl's name. She sits down at the piano now and then and pounds out a few notes, but not like my Alice, bless her heart. Miss Amelia's oldest, she used to play the piano like a dream, with her lily-white hands arched so dainty, and just the pads of her fingers racing over the keys so pretty, you hardly noticed a sour note. She still plays, like tonight, sorrowful and sweet.

Sal's younger than I was when I was alive. Wait 'til she meets that Lila girl. Seems to me those two might be birds of a feather.

Not like Alice and Molly, who were as different as a banana to a watermelon. Molly couldn't sit still on the piano bench for more than a blink without falling off or knocking over the flowerpot, or slamming down that big heavy lid. The child, bless her soul, could find mischief worse than anybody I ever saw. One time she jumped in the trough where we watered the pigs, then rolled around in the dirt until her dress was gray as rain clouds. Miss Amelia had a fit, because she wanted her girls done up like ladies every minute. "Molly Cambridge Nethercott, get that dress off this instant!" Miss Amelia said, and I knew what was coming next. "Daphne, scrub this dress over the washboard as long as it takes to get it white again. This is a disgrace!"

Back in my time when they called the big house Cambridge House, Birdie was queen of the kitchen, and I was her go-get-it girl, happy as a meadowlark. Ooh, what didn't I learn from Birdie! She spun all kinds of voudoun spells. Hoodoo, we called it. Like, take a shank of red flannel and sew up a gris-gris bag. Stuff it full with nail clippings, ground-up frog bone, red sneezing pepper. Sprinkle on a pinch of goofer dust from the graveyard out beyond and give it to somebody to make him lovesick. Turn his heart, just like that. The right magic, you can make him weak as a baby chick, or sick to his innards, or crazy in the head. Make him dumb 'til his tongue just rolls around in his mouth like a tough clot of mouton. Then you turn right around and make him whole, again. Birdie was a conjure woman, all right. Wasn't anything Birdie couldn't do.

Two, three years after me and Birdie sweated side by side in the kitchen, I got to stringing chestnuts with her boy, Isaac. You did that, strung chestnuts and hung 'em around your neck when you liked a boy. Isaac, he paraded by the kitchen window every chance he got to catch sight of me. Once he stuck a bunch of white flowers in Birdie's peach pie cooling on the windowsill. When Birdie saw that, she just grinned, showing big dark spaces. Real teasing-like, she said, "Take care those posies ain't no 'lander."

Everybody knows oleander's about the prettiest thing out there, but it's poison — roots, bark, sap, and even those buttery-colored flowers. Pure poison, I tell you.

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Excerpted from The Secret of Laurel Oaks by Lois Ruby. Copyright © 2008 Lois Ruby. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
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