The Ghost Road Read online

  Text copyright © 2018

  by Charis Cotter

  Cover image © 2018 by Jensine Eckwall

  Tundra Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a Penguin Random House Company

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Cotter, Charis, author

  The ghost road / Charis Cotter.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 9781101918890 (hardcover).—ISBN 9781101918906 (EPUB)

  I. Title.

  PS8605.O8846G56 2018 jC813′.6 C2017-905847-9

  C2017-905848-7

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by Tundra Books of Northern New York, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a Penguin Random House Company

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952670

  Edited by Samantha Swenson

  Ebook design adapted from printed book design by Terri Nimmo

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v5.3.2

  a

  For Zoe, who helped me break the curse

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: The Shipwreck

  Chapter Two: The Candle

  Chapter Three: Making Bread

  Chapter Four: Twins

  Chapter Five: The Meadow

  Chapter Six: Eldred

  Chapter Seven: The Fairy Path

  Chapter Eight: Ruby

  Chapter Nine: Gannets

  Chapter Ten: The Sheep

  Chapter Eleven: Spitting Image

  Chapter Twelve: The Feud

  Chapter Thirteen: The Finns

  Chapter Fourteen: The Sight

  Chapter Fifteen: Wildflowers

  Chapter Sixteen: Family Tree

  Chapter Seventeen: The Ghost

  Chapter Eighteen: Cocoa and Cookies

  Chapter Nineteen: The Secret Passage

  Chapter Twenty: Partridgeberries

  Chapter Twenty-one: The Photograph

  Chapter Twenty-two: Measuring

  Chapter Twenty-three: The Witch

  Chapter Twenty-four: Wynken, Blynken and Nod

  Chapter Twenty-five: Buckle Graveyard

  Chapter Twenty-six: The Curse

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Dusting

  Chapter Twenty-eight: The Flame

  Chapter Twenty-nine: The Dark

  Chapter Thirty: The Hidden Room

  Chapter Thirty-one: The Letter

  Chapter Thirty-two: The Secret

  Chapter Thirty-three: Whispering

  Chapter Thirty-four: Polishing

  Chapter Thirty-five: The Spider

  Chapter Thirty-six: The Beginning

  Chapter Thirty-seven: The Lie

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Names

  Chapter Thirty-nine: The Painting

  Chapter Forty: The Smartest Duggan

  Chapter Forty-one: The Bible

  Chapter Forty-two: Seven

  Chapter Forty-three: The Fire

  Chapter Forty-four: The Deed of Gift

  Chapter Forty-five: Off with the Fairies

  Chapter Forty-six: The Eavesdroppers

  Chapter Forty-seven: George

  Chapter Forty-eight: Chocolate Brownies

  Chapter Forty-nine: The Ship

  Chapter Fifty: Lady Slippers

  Chapter Fifty-one: The Root Cellar

  Chapter Fifty-two: The Angel

  Chapter Fifty-three: Trapped

  Chapter Fifty-four: The Loneliest Place

  Chapter Fifty-five: The Frying Pan

  Chapter Fifty-six: Possession

  Chapter Fifty-seven: Bring it into the Light

  Chapter Fifty-eight: Rescue

  Chapter Fifty-nine: Rest in Peace

  Chapter Sixty: Going Home

  Chapter Sixty-one: Cinnamon Buns

  Chapter Sixty-two: The Key

  Chapter Sixty-three: Twisted

  Chapter Sixty-four: Michael Finn’s Letter

  Chapter Sixty-five: The Whirlpool

  Chapter Sixty-six: The Storyteller

  Chapter Sixty-seven: Sunshine

  Family Tree

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE SHIPWRECK

  The ship was going down. There was a tremendous crack and sails fell to the deck, a mass of canvas and ropes. A broken boom swung wildly in the wind and the deck tilted to an impossible angle. People were shouting and screaming, and I felt myself sliding toward the water, grabbing at anything I could to stop myself. Then I heard my name, and I felt a strong hand grasp mine, and I looked up into my mother’s face.

  “It’s okay, Ruthie,” she said, smiling in the midst of the rain and the wind and the chaotic, sinking ship. “I’ve got you.”

  I jerked awake and sat up, gasping for breath. I felt the familiar pain in my chest that always came with this dream. My cheeks were wet with tears.

  For some reason my room was pitch-black. Usually a sliver of light from the hall shows under my bedroom door, but Dad must have forgotten to turn on the hall light. I fumbled for my bedside lamp, but it wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

  Then I remembered. I wasn’t in my bedroom in Toronto, surrounded by houses full of sleeping people, parked cars and streetlights. I couldn’t call out to my father after a bad dream, because he and Gwen were in Greece. I was in Buckle, Newfoundland, at the end of the road, in the middle of nowhere. I was sleeping in the room my mother had slept in as a child, and my Aunt Doll was somewhere on the other side of the house. The side with electricity.

  I lay back down in the bed, trying to get my breathing under control. I was still shaking from the dream, and I was afraid that if I closed my eyes, I’d be back on that sloping ship’s deck, sliding toward the black water. If only I could turn on a light, I could chase the dream away. Why was there no electricity in this part of the house? It was 1978! Everyone in Toronto had electricity all through their houses, not just on one side. What kind of a place was Newfoundland anyway?

  What had Aunt Doll said to me about the light in this room? Last night was a jumble of impressions: stumbling half-asleep from the car in the dark after the long drive from St. John’s, climbing up the stairs, and walking along a hall, round a corner and down a couple of steps into this room. Aunt Doll had an oil lamp she put on the tall dresser. She said she’d show me how to use it tomorrow.

  So no light. I took deep breaths, the way Dad taught me. In and out. “Everything can be controlled, Ruthie,” he would say. “Just breathe.”

  I’ve had recurring nightmares ever since I was a little kid. The shipwreck dream was one of the worst. Dad would always be there, as soon as I cried out, talking quietly to me. Telling me to breathe. To wake up. To look around and see my room, that it was only a dream.

  Except now he was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean with Awful Gwen. And there was no light to turn on, and the dream was coming back: I could hear the creaking of the decks, the screams of the people drowning—no. I took another deep breath. I was safe in bed, and if I yelled loud enough, Aunt Doll would come. Or I could get up and find my way to her room and wake her up. I was fine. I breathed in and out.

  But I could still hear the creaking of the ship. Wait—not the ship. Footsteps. Aunt Doll? Coming to c
heck on me? But I remembered her firm footsteps from earlier in the night. These were quite different. Lighter. Quieter. Getting closer.

  A faint glow appeared under the door, and then the door slowly opened.

  I caught my breath. A girl in a long white nightgown tiptoed into the room, carrying a candle that skittled in the draft and threw strange shadows across her face. She placed the candle carefully on the bedside table. Then she turned and climbed into the bed opposite mine. She leaned toward the light and her long blonde hair swung forward. She looked into my eyes for a second, smiled, then blew out the candle.

  I closed my eyes. A delicious feeling of calm spread over me. I wasn’t alone anymore. I could hear her breathing softly. In and out. In and out. I let my breath match hers. The shipwreck nightmare evaporated.

  This must be my cousin Ruby. Aunt Doll said she was coming for the summer, but I didn’t realize it would be tonight. Time enough to meet her properly in the morning. The darkness closed around us and we slept.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE CANDLE

  I woke up to a gray morning and a low roaring sound, as if I were near a busy expressway. I sat up. The bed opposite me was neatly made; Ruby must have gotten up early. I swung my feet out of bed and stood up. The floor was icy cold on my bare feet. I peered out the window. Gray clouds scuttered across a dirty-white sky and the sound of traffic ebbed and flowed.

  Traffic? No. The ocean. Waves on a beach. I knew that sound well, but I had forgotten. The last time I had heard it was on a beach in Venezuela, last summer with Dad on one of our plant-hunting expeditions. And this summer he was doing it without me, with Awful Gwen instead. I pushed that thought away.

  There was no beach in sight though—the ocean was on the other side of the house. Through the sheets of rain, I could see meadows stretching away to tall hills, with patches of dark green that were probably trees. The faint track of a road disappeared over the biggest hill. A crow squawked by.

  As I turned back into the room, my arm caught something on the bedside table and knocked it to the floor. A picture in a silver frame lay on the floor in a spill of shattered glass. My mother’s picture. I had wrapped it in my pajamas when I was packing my things in Toronto, and when I pulled them from the suitcase last night, it fell out. I dimly remembered putting it on the table beside my bed before Aunt Doll came in and kissed me good night and turned off the lamp.

  The frame was okay but the glass was broken. I sat down on my bed and pulled my feet up and away from the splinters of glass, cradling the picture in my hands. My mother sat laughing in a deck chair, with me on her lap. I was about two. Dad said the picture was taken a week before she died. I couldn’t really remember much about her. But I knew her face so well. From this picture, and from the recurring shipwreck dream. And from something I wasn’t sure was a memory or a dream—the image of her face leaning over mine, laughing, eyes full of love.

  I put the picture back on the table, beside a candle in a battered old brass candlestick. I could hear the muffled sound of a radio, and there was a faint smell of toast. Suddenly I was starving, and I wanted to meet Ruby. I climbed over the end of the iron bedstead to avoid the broken glass, dug some clothes out of my suitcase and pulled them on.

  Aunt Doll was alone in the kitchen, putting breakfast on the table. She wore a red flowered housedress and a big blue apron, tied with a bow at the back.

  “How do you like your eggs, dear?” she asked, holding a couple over a frying pan.

  “Fried is good, over easy,” I replied.

  I sat down at the table, noticing there were only two places set.

  “These are fresh laid this morning,” said Aunt Doll, as she cracked the eggs into the pan.

  “You have chickens?” I asked.

  “Chickens? Oh my yes—hens, a few sheep and a cow. Nothing like the old days, of course, when this was a working farm, but we do alright.”

  “I never had fresh eggs before,” I said, as I watched her slide two crackly-brown eggs onto my plate, then add some bacon.

  “Fresh bread too,” she said, passing me some thick slices of buttered toast. “I make that myself. And there’s some of last year’s partridgeberry jam. Daresay there are a lot of things you don’t get up in Canada. I mean, Ontario.” She sat down and started to tuck into her breakfast. Her cheeks were rosy from the heat of the stove.

  “Isn’t Ruby eating?” I asked, taking a bite of egg. It was delicious.

  Aunt Doll looked up with a frown. “Ruby? What do you mean?”

  “I saw her come in to bed late last night, but she was gone this morning. Where is she?”

  “What are you talking about, child?”

  “Ruby. I saw her last night. She came into my room with a candle and went to bed.”

  Aunt Doll laughed. “You were dreaming, my dear. Ruby’s not here. She’s not coming till later today.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling a little foolish. A dream.

  It didn’t seem like a dream. Not like the shipwreck. The girl in the night with her long blonde hair and her smile seemed as real as Aunt Doll this morning, sitting across from me at the table, spooning dark red jam onto her toast.

  “And there won’t be any candles in your room,” she continued. “Too dangerous. I’ll teach you how to use the lamp.”

  If candles weren’t allowed, why was there one sitting beside my bed?

  CHAPTER THREE

  MAKING BREAD

  After breakfast, I told Aunt Doll about breaking the glass. She clucked a bit but didn’t make a big fuss. I borrowed her broom and some paper towels and went to clean it up. When all the slivers of glass were safely in the wastebasket, I sat on the bed and looked at the candle for a while. Then I took it and pushed it far under my bed.

  Aunt Doll had told me to unpack, so I did. A large dresser stood against the far wall, with an old painting hung above it. The artist had painted a sailing ship in a fierce storm, balanced precariously at the top of a huge wave. It was night, and there was a full moon high above, half-hidden by dark clouds.

  I shivered. As I pulled my shorts and sleeveless tops and a couple of sundresses out of my suitcase, I looked doubtfully out at the rain, which was still streaking down from the sky, almost sideways in the fierce wind. I had shrugged off Gwen’s offers of help and packed for a Toronto summer. But here it felt more like April than July. I was already a bit cold without even venturing outside, and I was wearing all my warmest clothes.

  I found the framed picture Dad had given me the day before I left, rolled in a cardigan at the bottom of my suitcase. Dad and Gwen on their wedding day, smiling blissfully into the camera. I pushed it to the back of the drawer, under my socks. Why did he think I would want to look at that all summer? I pulled out my diary. There was a better picture of Dad in there, of him and me in Venezuela last year, halfway up a mountain in our hiking gear, grinning our heads off. I looked at it for a minute, then snapped the diary shut as the familiar pain shot through me.

  I felt the tears pricking into my eyes, and I felt like there was something in my throat preventing me from breathing. I shook my head angrily and clenched my fists, taking quick breaths.

  “I can control it. I can control anything,” I repeated to myself. Dad was in Greece, with Gwen. Dad and I wouldn’t be going on any more botanical trips together, just the two of us. From now on, Gwen would always be there—in our house, in our kitchen, on our holidays. If I ever got to go with them, that is. This year Dad made it clear that it was their honeymoon and I was not wanted. So here I was in Newfoundland with an aunt I had never met before. I just had to get on with it. Breathe in and out. Control it.

  After a couple of minutes, my breathing evened out and I flicked the tears away. I finished my unpacking and went downstairs.

  Aunt Doll was up to her elbows in bread dough.

  “There you are,” she said, giving the lump of dough a vigorous shove, then a couple of punches. “All set?”

  “Yes,” I replied, sitting down at
the table and watching her beat up on the dough. I’d never seen anyone make bread before. “I left half the drawers for Ruby.”

  “Mmfff,” grunted Aunt Doll as she gave the dough a couple more slaps and then shaped it into smaller lumps.

  “What’s she like? Ruby I mean?” I asked.

  My aunt gave me a sharp glance, “I told you last night in the car, don’t you remember?”

  She began to tuck the lumps of dough, three at a time, into a row of narrow baking pans.

  “I…uh…” All I could remember about the drive was long low lines of hills stretching on forever in all directions, Aunt Doll talking a blue streak, white fog rising up and blanking everything out, and a slow rocking into sleep as Aunt Doll’s voice went on and on. “I think I must have been asleep,” I said lamely.

  Aunt Doll burst out laughing. “And I’m after giving you the history of the family from Day One, and telling you all about Ruby and her three little brothers, and all the shenanigans your mother and Ruby’s mother used to get up to when they were girls, and how I went dancing every night with the Yanks during the war, and you were sleeping the whole time?” She laughed again, and covered the bread pans with tea towels.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. I wasn’t sure how to take Aunt Doll.

  “Never you mind,” she said, reaching for the kettle. “Let’s have a cup of tea and I’ll tell you all over again. I guess I didn’t notice how long you were asleep because I couldn’t take my eyes off the road with all the fog.”

  “Who was Ruby’s mother?” I asked, as Aunt Doll took some china cups down from the cupboard. She turned and looked at me, her mouth open.

  “You don’t know who Ruby’s mother is? Didn’t your father tell you anything?”

  “I don’t think he knows very much about my mother’s family,” I said. “He said my mother didn’t talk about them.”

  Aunt Doll bit her lip. “Well for goodness’ sake,” she said, giving her head a shake and fiddling with the teacups. “What got into that girl when she left here I’ll never know.” Then she went quiet.

  I watched as she cleared away the few dishes she’d used making the bread and finished making the tea. She put out a sugar bowl and a little jug of milk she filled from a tin with two holes poked in the top. Milk in a tin? Weird.