"Mr. GWynne's name is Trip," was all I could answer. "Trip. Can you believe it?"

Jeff laughed. "Oh, yeah. Man, that is so cool," he said sarcastically.

"I bet he wears pink socks and alligator shirts and his friends call him, like, the Trip-Man or something."

"I bet he plays golf," said Jeff, with a snort of laughter.

"I bet his idea of an amusing afternoon is balancing his checkbook. And," I added, "I bet he has real short hair, wears wire-rim gla.s.ses, and has gray eyes, but wears contacts to make them look blue."

Jeff laughed so hard that he collapsed on the floor. I joined him - but mid-collapse I let out a yelp.

"What is it?" cried Jeff.

"What are we laughing for? That ghost could be sneaking into my room this very second. We've got to go block the wall off!"

"In the dark?"

"Do you want the ghost in here with us?"

"No." Jeff flew out of Mom's room and into mine before I'd even gotten up off the floor. "Shove something in front of the wall/' he commanded as soon as I ran in.

We moved my dresser in front of the door to the pa.s.sage. Then we put a chair on top of it, and, puffing hard, slid my bed against the front of the dresser.

We were unloading books from my shelves and piling them on the chair and bed when two things happened at once: the power was restored, and Mom and Mr. Gwynne came home. When the lights flicked on, Mom found Jeff and me standing on my bed, stacking books onto a pile of furniture. And Jeff and I saw two people standing in a doorway that we thought was empty.

Everyone screamed.

"What are you doing?" cried Mom at the same time that I yelled, "When did you get here?"

Then we answered each other at the same time, too. "Keeping the ghost out," I replied as Mom said, "Just now."

"Whoa! Everybody calm down," exclaimed Mom's date.

Jeff and I jumped to the floor.

"Kids," said my mother, who was trying to catch her breath. "This is Mr. Gwynne. Theodore Gwynne."

(My mother had no idea why Jeff and I looked at each other and began to laugh then.) "And," she went on, ignoring us, "this is Dawn, and this is Jeff."

"Hi," the three of us said uncomfortably.

I have to admit that the Trip-Man didn't look exactly as Jeff and I had imagined, but he was pretty close. He was wearing gla.s.ses, but not wire-rims. The frames were tortoise-sh.e.l.l and very round. His blonde hair was short, but behind the gla.s.ses, his eyes were brown. He was wearing a suit and tie, so there were no alligators anywhere, and his socks weren't pink but his shirt was.

"Dawn," said Mom, sounding exasperated, "what are you and Jeff doing?"

"Blocking the entrance to the secret pa.s.sage so no one can come in."

"You mean the ghost?" she asked with a smile.

"Yeah."

"I thought ghosts could float right through walls."

"Urn ..." I said. (Why hadn't I thought of that?) "Of course they can. But the pa.s.sage is his home base." What a stupid excuse.

And now I had something new to worry about.

"Well, let's just see what we have here," said the Trip-Man.

He and Jeff and I moved the books and furniture away from the wall. Then I pressed the molding and the wall opened up.

Mom gasped. I don't think she'd really believed I'd found a secret pa.s.sage until then.

The Trip-Man held out his hand. "If you'll let me have the flashlight, I'll go take a look-see," he said.

A look-see?

Jeff handed him the flashlight.

"Oh, Trip, do you think you should?" asked Mom.

(Jeff and I dissolved into giggles again.) My mother peered through the opening into the dark tunnel. She watched the Trip-Man disappear. "How did you discover this, Dawn?"

I told her the whole story, explaining where the pa.s.sage led.

"I just can't believe it," said Mom. "I know this is an old house, but..." Her voice trailed off.

When the Trip-Man returned, he looked dusty but was in one piece. "There's no one - and nothing - " he added, looking at me, "in the pa.s.sage. If you heard noises, I'm sure they were just - "

"The storm," I supplied. "Or the house settling."

The Trip-Man deared his throat. "Right," he said. "By the way, I found this." He opened one hand and extended the ghost's Indian-head nickel toward me.

I just barely managed not to scream as I took it.

"I suggest," the Trip-Man went on, talking to Mom, "that tomorrow morning you figure out some way to lock both entrances to the pa.s.sage, or at least the entrance in the barn. I'm sure no one knows about the pa.s.sage, but since it is another way into your home, you should lock it as you would any door."

"Definitely," agreed Mom.

"Well, that'll keep people out," I said, "but what about the ghost?"

"Dawn," Mom began warningly.

"There is one," I said. "The ghost of the secret pa.s.sage." I explained how I knew that the pa.s.sage was haunted.

My mother and the Trip-Man began to look incredibly impatient. They didn't even let me tell them about the ice-cream cone and the meaning of the nickel. Mom waved me to a stop.

A few minutes later, the Trip-Man left. Mom walked him out to his car.

Jeff reluctantly went to bed.

I looked around my room. No way was I going to sleep in there. I gathered up a blanket, a pillow, and Thrills and Chills. Before I took everything down to the living room, though, I opened the molded wall a crack and tossed the Indian-head nickel back to the ghost in the pa.s.sageway.

Mom went upstairs to her bedroom. I thought she was crazy. After all, the secret pa.s.sage ran between our rooms. Mom was as close to the ghost as I was.

I was just settling down on the couch when I saw Mom's purse on the floor in the dining room. She is so scatterbrained. I really should take it upstairs to her, I thought, heaving myself off the couch. But when I picked up the purse, I saw that it had been sitting on something, a tattered old book called A History of Stoney-brooke. It must have come from Granny. She never sends any of us home empty handed. Sometimes she gives us food, but mostly little treasures and keepsakes. Mom says it's Granny's way of making sure she gives the things she loves best to the people she loves best before she dies. (As if she's going to die any time soon. She's only about sixty or sixty-three or something.) The book I was holding was so old it was falling apart. The t.i.tle was written in gold, but the gold had mostly rubbed off. The binding was peeling away, and two of the corners of the cover had cracked off. Gingerly, I opened the book to the first page. A History of Stoney-brooke, it said again. By Enos CotterBng. Copyright MDCCCLXXII. I dredged up an old arithmetic lesson (where was Stacey's math brain when I needed it?), and decided the book had been published in 1872. Over a hundred years ago! Stoneybrooke . . . was that our town - Stoneybrook? When had the "e" been dropped? A line of teeny-tiny print said that the book had been published by Tynedale Press, right here in town.

I forgot all about Mom's purse and wandered back to the couch, turning pages as I went. The table of contents looked pretty boring - taxation, imports and exports, trade, growth of town, property laws. But the very last chapter sounded interesting. It was called, simply, Legends.

I turned carefully to the back of the book.

Two pages fell out, and I replaced them guiltily, even though I knew I hadn't done anything wrong.

"Like most New England towns," the chapter began, "Stoneybrooke is replete with Indian myths and legends. But one local legend, not to be discounted lightly, is the unsolved mystery of Mister Jared Mullray." That did it. I was hooked. I started reading in earnest.

It seemed that long before Enos Cotterling had written his history, around the year 1810, a family in Stoneybrooke, the Mullrays, had fallen into financial trouble. They were deeply in debt to a banker named Mathias Bradford and couldn't pay their bills. The only things they owned that were worth much at all were their home, "a clapboard structure out past the Smythe property," and their small farm, Wood Acres. In order to pay off their debts, the Mullrays were forced to sell both, including their furniture and many of their belongings.

Old Man Mullray wanted to move up to Peacham, a tiny, young town in Vermont, and he convipced his wife, his daughter, his son-in-law, and their three children to move with him. There, he said, they could start over. But he could not convince his younger son, thirty-year-old Jared, to go with them. Jared, the author wrote, had never been "quite right in the head." He loved Wood Acres - a little too much.

Early on a Monday morning, the Mullrays packed a few personal belongings onto a cart, saddled up one of their horses, and prepared to leave. Mathias Bradford, who was going to sell off the farm, arrived with some men from the bank just as the Mullrays were tossing their last bag onto the cart.

" Jared!" shouted Old Man Mullray.

"I ain't leaving!" was the reply everyone heard. But Mr. Bradford was to say later that it didn't sound as if his voice was coining from the house or the barn - sort of somewhere in between, although no one could see him anywhere.

(A clap of thunder sounded, and I shivered, pulling my blanket more tightly around me.) Old Man Mullray glanced at this wife, who shrugged sadly. Then he flicked the reins, and the horse plodded down the lane. The Mullrays left Wood Acres behind forever.

Now, Mathias Bradford and four other men (one of whom was the head of the town council) had watched the Mullrays drive off without Jared. And they had heard his disembodied voice say that he wasn't leaving. But although the house and barn were searched thoroughly as every last stick of furniture and every last harness were sold off, no one ever saw Jared again. He simply disappeared.

A few people said he had packed up and moved to Alaska, but Mr. Bradford didn't believe that. He had heard Jared and was convinced he'd never leave. The only question was - where was he? Soon another rumor began to circulate about Jared, and the people of Stoneybrooke were more inclined to believe this one. They thought that Jared, who couldn't bear to leave Wood Acres, was still there . . . somewhere. They thought he must know about some secret hiding place, and that he stayed there by day and scavenged for food at night.

Decades pa.s.sed. By the time Enos Cotterling was writing his history, he presumed that Jared was dead. In fact, the story about Jared had become a ghost story. Jared, people said, had died in his secret hiding place, but his spirit remained. Wood Acres (which had been swallowed up by another, larger, farm and was no longer called Wood Acres) was haunted by Jared, who was always on the prowl not only for food, but for trinkets and things that he could sell in order to try to pay back Mr. Bradford.

I put the book down thoughtfully. Wood Acres, a ghost, a secret hiding pi... A secret hiding place! Suddenly my arms broke out in crawly gooseflesh. I shivered so hard my teeth chattered.

It fit! Everything fit! Enos Cotterling hadn't described where Wood Acres was, but it must be my house and my barn! The house was old enough, it had once been part of a farm, and there certainly was a good hiding place on the property ... a place you could yell from and sound as if you were between the house and the barn, yet not be seen.

There really was a ghost in our secret pa.s.sage, and that ghost was crazy Jared Mullray!

Chapter 10.

It was eight o'clock when Claudia reached the Newtons'. Her job that night really should have been one of the easiest in baby-sitting history. Lucy was already in her crib and sound asleep. Jamie had already eaten dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Newton were only going to be gone for two hours. All Claudia had to do was put Jamie to bed - and the evening was hers.

That's how the evening should have gone. There was just one problem: Jamie didn't want to go to bed. I mean, he really didn't want to go to bed.

When Claudia rang the Newtons' doorbell that night, Jamie answered it. Right away, Claudia could tell he was wound up.

"Hi-hi! Hi-hi! Hi-hi!" he greeted her.

"Hi-hi, Jamie," said Claud.

Jamie was jumping up and down, up and down, like a yo-yo in blue jeans. "I learned a new song!" he exclaimed. "Listen to this: I'm in love with a big blue frog. A big blue frog loves me. It's not as bad as it may seem. He wears gla.s.ses and he's six foot three. Oh - "

Jamie's song was interrupted by his father. Mr. Newton rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry I taught him that," he said. "He's been singing it all day. And there are several more verses."

Claudia laughed. "I think it's funny," she said.

"Only the first seventy-five times," replied Mr. Newton, but he was smiling.

Mrs. Newton came down the stairs as Claudia stepped inside. "Hi, honey," she said. "Well, the baby's asleep, and Jamie has eaten. I don't think he needs a bath tonight - "

"Yea!" interrupted Jamie.

"So just put his p.j.'s on him. He's had a long day and should go to bed - " (she glanced at Jamie, who was listening intently) " - s-o-o-n," she spelled out.

"No fair spelling, Mommy!" Jamie protested.

"Okay," Claudia said to Mrs. Newton. Then she added, "Don't worry, Jamie. We'll have fun tonight before you go to bed."

"Goody."

The Newtons left then, and Jamie began hopping up and down again.

"Okay, Jamie. Time to put your p.j.'s on," said Claudia.

"Already?" he whined.

"Yup. It's almost bedtime. Come on upstairs."

"Just let me show you this one thing first. . . . Okay?"

"Okay," Claudia relented. "Just one thing."

"It's down in the playroom." Jamie took Claudia by the hand and led her down a flight of stairs to the Newtons' rec room. He stood in the middle of the room and looked around.

"What is it?" asked Claudia.

"It's, um ..." Jamie put his finger in his mouth. "It's this!" He darted over to a beat-up dump truck. "Look at it," he said.

"Your old truck?" asked Claudia, puzzled.

Jamie paused. "Oh, no. That wasn't it. I meant..." He picked up a little wooden cow that was lying next to the truck. "I meant my cow."