Ghost Stories Page 9

“I have only one thing to say,” was her reply.

  “What’s that?”

  “There will be a full moon tonight!”

  “What do you mean?”

  But the woman would tell them no more. Instead she turned to a customer to sell him stamps.

  Puzzled, Frank and Joe went back to the castle. “What’s a full moon have to do with the witches?” Joe wondered.

  An idea occurred to Frank. “Maybe there’ll be a meeting tonight, Joe! Witches get together under a full moon, don’t they? Suppose they gather on the castle grounds, near where they used to meet before the place was built?”

  Joe became excited. “Could be someone in the castle is a witch!” he declared. “Mrs. Crone, for instance. She’s been acting kind of strange all along.”

  Frank nodded. “We’re supposed to hunt for the ghost, but we’ll keep an eye on her at the same time.”

  That night after dinner the Hardys went into their room opposite the dungeon. Frank took the first watch while Joe tried to sleep.

  About an hour later, Frank heard footsteps on the spiral stone staircase. Quickly he lay down on his cot, closed his eyes until he could barely see, and pretended to be asleep. The footsteps advanced along the passageway until they stopped at their door. The next moment, Mrs. Crone looked in!

  Satisfied that the Hardys were asleep, she turned and peered through the grill into the dungeon. Frank felt the hair rise on the back of his neck when he heard her speak.

  “You are not here, Rollo MacElphin!” she intoned in a hoarse whisper. “Return soon!”

  Then she continued walking down the passageway. Frank silently got up from his cot and shook Joe awake.

  “It’s Mrs. Crone,” he whispered. “We’ll have to follow her and find out what she’s up to.”

  A moment later, both boys were on the trail of the housekeeper. She was just about to walk through the rear door of the hallway. The Hardys tiptoed behind her and soon found themselves in the garden bathed in the light of the full moon.

  Mrs. Crone went straight into the woods until she came to a broad, open space between the trees. Hiding behind a clump of bushes, Frank and Joe saw several women already assembled in the clearing. They greeted Mrs. Crone as their leader.

  Then they formed a circle around her and began an eerie dance, spinning slowly at first, but getting faster and faster as the tempo of their chant increased. Mrs. Crone stood silently, gazing at the moon.

  Suddenly the dance ceased and the women went down on their knees, starting another rhythmic chant. “We are witches!” they cried. “We know the magic spells and will bring the powers of darkness down on anyone who tries to cross us!”

  Finally the chanting stopped and the witches held their hands out toward Mrs. Crone. She extended her arms to the full moon.

  “The curse is on MacElphin Castle,” she shrieked. “It shall remain until the castle falls! Then the domain of the witches will be ours again as it was in centuries gone by.”

  Frank nudged Joe. “That’s why she said the place should be torn down,” he whispered. “She wants to get their old meeting place back!”

  “No wonder she’s not afraid of the ghost,” Joe added. “They’re both occult.”

  After some more chanting and dancing, the witches disbanded. Most of them moved off into the woods, while Mrs. Crone headed back to MacElphin Castle with the Hardys dogging her footsteps. She went through the garden door into the passageway. Silently they came after her.

  Again she stopped at the dungeon grill. “Are you there, Rollo MacElphin? No? Well, there is still time,” she murmured.

  “Time for what?” Frank demanded. “To haunt the castle till it has to be torn down?”

  Mrs. Crone whirled around. Her eyes blazed in the dancing flames of the flambeau on the wall.

  “I told you to leave the castle!” she hissed.

  “We know why,” Joe said. “You’re a witch! We followed you to the meeting and saw everything! You want this land back. That’s why you’re so friendly with the ghost.”

  “Rollo MacElphin did the damage,” Mrs. Crone muttered. “He must undo the damage!”

  Frank looked sternly at the woman. “Did you summon the ghost of the Wicked Lord to haunt the place?”

  Mrs. Crone smiled, the corners of her lips curled slyly. “Ask Rollo MacElphin when you meet him!”

  Frank made a quick guess. “Mrs. Crone, you slammed the garden door last night and made the flambeau go out. You thought we’d be scared and leave. You were worried we’d find out you’re a witch; that’s why you told us the curse was just a superstition.”

  “And you don’t want to get rid of the ghost,” Joe accused the housekeeper. “You just want to get rid of us!”

  Mrs. Crone’s guilty look showed the Hardys they were right. But she did not reply. Instead, she turned and hurried up the spiral staircase.

  The boys let her go and went back into the room opposite the dungeon to resume their watch. Frank dozed off while Joe stood guard in the silence that blanketed the castle. Thinking he heard a noise in the dungeon, the younger Hardy quickly stepped across the room into the passageway and stared through the grill on the prison door.

  Rays of moonlight slanted between the bars of the window, throwing shafts of yellow light across the floor. The handcuffs and leg irons, as well as the chains from the pirate chest, hung on the wall as before, but there was no sign of the ghost.

  “I must be imagining things,” Joe muttered to himself.

  He was inspecting the flambeau to make sure it was burning properly when a furtive movement caught his eye. Startled, he swiveled around in time to see a large black cat scoot off along the passageway into the darkness.

  They say a black cat brings bad luck, he reminded himself. I wonder if that was a ghost cat. Maybe Rollo MacElphin brought it back from a pirate voyage!

  Ruminating over such thoughts, Joe returned to his post. He resumed his watch, sitting on the edge of his cot and straining his eyes and ears as the minutes ticked away slowly. Frank was still asleep.

  Suddenly a noise brought Joe to his feet again. He awakened Frank as he heard the sound of metal striking stone!

  Both boys darted across the room and out to the prison door. Through the grill they saw the Wicked Lord materializing through the wall beneath the window. The ghost swung his cutlass as he came, and the strange sound was caused by the blade striking against the blocks of stone!

  Again Joe grabbed the flambeau while Frank unlocked the door. They burst into the dungeon, determined to corner the phantom, yet afraid it might vanish before they had a chance.

  However, Rollo MacElphin did not disappear. He glared at them malevolently, his flattened nose, leering mouth, and crooked yellow teeth just as in the portrait.

  The Hardys stopped a few feet away from the uncanny specter, who now spoke in an eerie voice that gave them cold chills.

  “I have tested you before and you do not seem to be afraid, strangers from another land. By the laws of the occult, I must speak to you! What I say may chill your blood. Do you dare hear it?”

  Frank roused himself to a bold reply. “Yes. We do. Let us hear whatever it is!”

  “I have been haunting this castle for nearly three centuries,” the ghostly image said. “I was doomed to it by the witch’s curse!”

  “What is the witch’s curse?” Joe asked, holding his voice steady in spite of the specter’s evil look.

  The ghost rested the cutlass in the crook of its arm and recited the lines in a harsh voice:

  Lord MacElphin at night shall roam

  Around the castle he made his home

  Until he returns the woods and land

  To the women of the witches’ band.

  The Hardys felt goose bumps as they listened to the ghost intone the weird verse. The uncanny creature went on, “The witch leader, an ancestor of Mrs. Crone, warned me not to build my castle on the meeting ground of her coven. But I scoffed at her. Therefore she placed the curse on me
at the time of my death!”

  The Hardys looked at each other. Both realized the clues of the MacElphin mystery were beginning to fall into place.

  Joe faced the ghost. “So Mrs. Crone has power over you now,” he surmised.

  “Yes!” the specter snarled. “When she learned the castle was going to be sold, she ordered me to make myself visible to those living in it. Before that I was invisible, and only Mrs. Crone knew I was here.”

  “She thought if you were seen,” Joe concluded, “the castle would have to be torn down, because nobody would buy it. Then the witches would get their meeting place back.”

  “And she ordered you to scare us away,” Frank inferred. “But can’t you escape from this witch’s curse?”

  The ghost nodded his head slowly, and something like a smile spread over his ugly face. “You are enabling me to escape right now!”

  The Hardys were thunderstruck by the statement.

  “How are we doing that?” Joe gasped.

  “You are fulfilling a prophecy made by a wizard at my funeral.” The ghost again recited some verse:

  When a strange country help shall send,

  Then the witch’s curse will end.

  When a hardy pair guards the dungeon door,

  The specter needs to come no more.

  Frank and Joe started when they heard the word “hardy.” Both wondered if it could be a reference to their name. The ghost answered the question for them.

  “I know you come from America, and your name is Hardy. And you had the courage to watch the dungeon for a second time after you saw me. Mrs. Crone thought the first experience would frighten you. She was wrong. You are hardy in nature as well as in name. The wizard’s prophecy applies to you.”

  “What does that mean?” Frank wondered.

  “It means you have released me from eternal doom! Mrs. Crone has lost her power over me and I can leave MacElphin Castle forever.”

  The voice of the apparition dropped to an eerie whisper and finally died away. The pirate’s outline grew dim, and, as Frank and Joe watched openmouthed, it faded back into the stones of the wall.

  Frank rubbed his eyes. “Did we really see that, Joe?”

  “Yes, we did! And we’ll have some story to tell to our host in the morning.”

  When they recounted to Lord MacElphin what they had experienced during the night, he was amazed.

  “Now Rollo MacElphin is gone for good?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Unless his ghost was lying to us, he’s gone,” Frank said.

  “You boys are wonderful! You stayed despite the danger and saved all of us. Now no one who lives in the castle has to be afraid of being haunted anymore. But now I must deal with Mrs. Crone.”

  Summoned to the study, the housekeeper confessed everything. “I am descended from a long line of witches going back to the time when the castle was being built,” she explained. “We have always known the ghost of the Wicked Lord was here.”

  “But he never showed himself before,” the little Scotsman pointed out.

  “That is true. I was the first with a chance to use the ghost to have the castle demolished and the meeting place of the witches restored,” she said. “It had become necessary because of the impending sale. Better to destroy one castle than many houses that the real estate syndicate might have built on the property.”

  She nodded sadly and almost sobbed as she went on. “But I failed, and therefore I have lost my occult powers. I will go to Glasgow and cease to be a witch.”

  Now tears were running down her face and Lord MacElphin was too stunned to say anything. Mrs. Crone turned and left the study. Less than ten minutes later, she walked out of the castle for good.

  Word that the Hardys had rid the castle of the ghost soon spread through the staff. The servants came to thank the boys and from then on went about their duties with smiles on their faces.

  Haver shook Frank’s and Joe’s hands. “I was afraid that I could no longer stay on in my job,” he admitted. “But now you have made it possible for me to work here as long as the master wishes me to.”

  “It must be strange to think you were living with a ghost all this time,” Frank said.

  The butler nodded ruefully. “And who would have thought Mrs. Crone was a witch? She and I have supervised the place for quite a few years now.”

  He shuddered and walked into the kitchen. The Hardy boys called the airport to reserve a flight, then went upstairs to pack their suitcases.

  “We never got to use our room,” Joe laughed. “These beds look a lot more comfortable than those cots in the basement.”

  “Well, we didn’t spend much time on them,” Frank pointed out. “Maybe we’ll get some sleep on the plane home. I’m sure tired.”

  When they were finished, they went into the study to say good-bye to their host.

  “Frank and Joe, you did a wonderful job, and I’ll write to your father and tell him so!” MacElphin declared enthusiastically as he shook their hands and escorted them to the door.

  Haver drove them to Prestwick Airport, and soon they were airborne over the Atlantic. They discussed everything that had happened to them in Scotland and agreed that they had been through an experience they could not explain logically.

  “At least we had one thing going for us,” Joe observed.

  “What do you mean?” Frank asked.

  “We had the right name for the wizard’s prophecy. Sometimes it pays to be a Hardy!”

  THE MYSTERY OF ROOM 12

  “I don’t know where you’re taking us, but it sure is in the middle of nowhere!” Joe Hardy said to his father, who sat behind the wheel of the family station wagon.

  Mr. Hardy chuckled. “The inn is quite isolated from the rest of the coastal communities,” he admitted. “And the nearest airport is fifty miles away. But it’s supposed to be a real nice place, so your mother and I thought we should try it.”

  Joe stared out the window at the deserted road, which was right next to the ocean. He saw a cliff rising up straight ahead of them, with a large white building sitting right on top. “Is that it?” he asked.

  Mr. Hardy nodded. “It’s called the Presidents Inn, because supposedly both Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt stayed there at one time.”

  “It’s beautiful!” Mrs. Hardy cried out as they turned onto the steep road leading up to the hotel. “What a picturesque location!”

  A few minutes later Mr. Hardy parked the car and the family got out. The inn proved to be a luxurious old place with a vast, sweeping lawn and thousands of blooming flowers still visible in the falling dusk.

  “It looks more like the home of a wealthy family than a hotel,” Frank declared.

  “It probably was, once,” his father agreed.

  Joe suddenly stopped walking. “Even though it’s beautiful, there’s something ominous about it. I mean, it’s so quiet, and a little eerie, don’t you think?”

  Frank grinned. “Your imagination is running away again, little brother,” he said. “You must be tired.”

  Joe shot him a sidelong glance. Obviously they were not on the same wavelength in their impression of the place where they would spend the next few nights.

  Just then a man came out to greet them. He was huge, with dark hair and bushy, beetling eyebrows.

  “Welcome to the Presidents Inn,” he said and picked up their suitcases with his large hands. “My name is Jacob. Please follow me.”

  Jacob led the Hardys into the lobby, where they met the innkeeper. He rose from his desk when he saw the visitors.

  “Josiah Butler,” he said, sticking his hand out for everyone to shake. “Yankee born and bred. Welcome to the Presidents Inn, Mr. and Mrs. Hardy, and your fine sons, too.”

  Josiah Butler looked every inch an Old Yankee. He was spare of build and didn’t seem very talkative once the greetings were out of the way.

  Joe studied the interior of the inn. There was plenty of shining old wood paneling, and the ceiling was cros
sed by heavy beams. The lighting was soft and dignified.

  “Dinner is at seven sharp,” Josiah Butler told Mr. Hardy when he had finished signing the visitors in. “Now Jacob will see you to your rooms.”

  The dark, sad-looking bellhop appeared again and led the way up two flights of beautiful, winding stairs. On the landings were pieces of Early American furniture, including a grandfather clock more than seven feet tall.

  “Look at that!” Frank said and pointed to an antique winepress. “I’ve never seen one like that before.”

  “It dates back before the Revolutionary War,” Jacob explained.

  He ushered Mr. and Mrs. Hardy into room number 11 and pointed out that the boys would be next to them. There was a bathroom in between that opened to both rooms.

  The boys took their bags and went right through the connecting bathroom into their room. It was large and airy and faced the ocean.

  “Hey, this is great!” Frank said.

  Just then Jacob came through the door to the hallway. “Will you be all right here?” he asked. “You see, this is the first time we’ve opened this room since the place was converted to a hotel.”

  Frank shrugged. “It looks fine to me.”

  Jacob nodded. “Yes. Well, I hope you’ll be all right. If you need me, just call. I’m never very far away.” Somewhat hesitantly, he turned and left.

  Frank and Joe looked at each other.

  “What do you think he meant?” Joe asked.

  “I have no idea. But he was almost apologizing that they put us in this room.”

  Joe nodded. “He gives me the creeps. In a way, this whole place—”

  “Aw, come on, Joe. It’s a great hotel. We’ll have a good time, you’ll see. Just look at the view out the window!”

  Joe walked up to his brother and looked outside. The sight took his breath away. They were three stories up and the building sat right at the edge of a sheer cliff. A hundred feet below them the sea was lashing the boulder- and rock-strewn shore. The waves came crashing in, hit the rocks, and sent spray high in the air.

  “That,” Frank declared, “is almost scary.”

  “I’m getting dizzy looking down,” Joe admitted. “But it is beautiful.”