The Ghost in the Garden

By Dr. Patricia Dey Cuendet

12 year old Jo Keaton hopes to save her 100 year old home from demolition by the University in her small town in deep southern Illinois. There are only 5 days left as Jo explores the attic and discovers an ancient trunk and a letter hidden in its lining. During a violent thunderstorm, she reads of a ghost seen haunting the rose garden. This mystery galvanizes her to search for a connection to the Underground Railroad, and leads her to learn the horrors of slavery and the dangers of life in a border state during the 1800s and the Civil War.

Jo is impulsive and impetuous but changes dramatically as she realizes there is a cause greater than herself in her journey to solve the mystery of the ghost and save her home. Jo also experiences prejudice that is present in the 40s as she sees her best friend Claire, who is colored, mistreated. The harrowing story told by Claires 100 year old great-great-grandmother of a tragedy she had witnessed at the old Thompson house in 1858 leads Jo into a dark and violent past. Jo also experiences a chilling supernatural encounter that she could and would not reveal to anyone, but that is instrumental in her quest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496934086

Dr. Patricia Dey Cuendet

I always loved reading mysteries that included huge old spooky houses with creepy attics to explore during violent thunder storms, especially if there was a ghost involved. The Ghost in the Garden has all of these and more, as young Jo Keaton desperately tries to save her beloved house from being demolished. I actually lived in this grand old house, and its footprint remains deep in the Thompson Woods on the campus of Southern Illinois University. The story takes place in the summer of 1949 in a small Midwestern college town. It was an almost magical time and place in which to live, when life was so different than now. But the story also reaches back to a July night in 1858, when a tragedy occurred  at the old Thompson house, one which affected all of the characters as well as the old house itself, and changed young Jo Keaton forever.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

It was so hot today. The leaves of the giant oak tree above me weren’t rustling as they usually do. Everything was still. Even the birds were quiet. A low rumble of thunder came from the west, warning of a summer storm. Sweat trickled down my neck, and my shirt was already wet and stuck to my back. The worst part, though, was the way I felt inside. I sank down to the ground, brushed a sun-bleached braid over my shoulder and leaned back against the hard bark of the old tree.

I turned my head and looked up and studied the house as it towered over me, old and neglected. The roof sagged where the eaves couldn’t support it anymore. Empty spaces gaped where shingles should have been. Metal gutters dangled from the roof. The once-white paint was now gray and peeling, and the tall faded green shutters hung askew. It looked for all the world like a haunted house. I loved every part of it, just the way it was. I could hardly swallow for the lump in my throat.

I didn’t want to leave.

This house has always been more than just bricks and mortar and wood to me. It seemed like it had a soul. I know that years of secrets were hidden in the walls. What would they be, if the house could tell me, if I could hear the words? Especially now, so I could take them with me, wherever I go.

Did the old house even know I was leaving?

I’ve lived here since I was in kindergarten, when mom and dad bought it from the Thompson family. I remember, clear as day, the first time I ever saw it. I thought it was the biggest house I’d ever seen. When we went inside, the wood floors made our footsteps echo throughout the empty rooms. The ceilings were 14 feet high and the windows were taller than my dad. My sister Mary thought it was spooky, but not me. Even then I felt a connection to it, as if I’d lived there forever.

Dad told us that the townspeople in Carbondale called it the Old Thompson Place, all the words run together like the title of a book. At one time it was part of a farm, one of the bigger ones in southern Illinois. Thompson Woods stood behind the house and went on for acres, full of gigantic old walnut and oak and maple trees. The leaves were so thick on the trees that in the summer, hardly a bit of sunlight could make it to the ground below them.

There was a gigantic barn and a carriage house and stables and pastures and orchards and, of course, this grand old house. That was a hundred years ago. It was in the country then, but the little town of Carbondale grew out to it and around it. It still feels more like country than town to me, even though some of the buildings have fallen down and there are no animals or crops anymore. The best part of all, though, was this huge old house.

My dad had watched me wander through the rooms that day, looking at the ceilings and out the tall windows and into the funny little cabinets that were built into the walls. He laughed when I asked him about the speaking tube in the dining room, and then he told me that the house was so big they couldn’t hear someone on the second floor without it. Then he cocked his head, like he does sometimes when he’s thinking hard, and put his hand on my shoulder.

So, Miss Josephine Elizabeth Keaton, what do you think of this house? Should we buy it? he asked, his eyes twinkling.

Oh, yes, Dad, please please buy it! I was jumping up and down and making such an awful racket that mom came in from the front parlor to see what in the world was going on.

I think, Dan, we’d better move into this old house, or Jo will faint dead away from disappointment, she said, laughing.

And so we bought the house, although my sister Mary rolled her eyes and said she just knew it was haunted. I loved living in it. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else in the world than in this old 100-year-old Thompson house. It was meant for me, I just knew it from the moment I first laid eyes on it.

But this house wasn’t mine anymore. Southern Illinois University (SIU) owns this house and every other one on Thompson Road, all the way up to the president’s house across from the campus and down to Dr. Ellis Crandles’ house at the very end of town.

Everything changed in my little town in 1949, when Dr. Howard R. Morse came here to be the new president of the University. My dad explained that Dr. Morse had convinced the Illinois Legislature to send more money to SIU. That’s when the University began buying up land and houses nearby. They needed the space for new buildings when the money came through.

Nearly all the houses on Thompson Road are empty now. The grass in the yards has grown tall and full of weeds. I call them ghost houses. Some of them have already been torn down and some have been moved. It was strange to see these big old houses rumbling down Thompson Road. They would be relocated on country roads nearby.

Now there are only five houses left on Thompson Road with anyone living in them. And in just a few days, there won’t be anyone in mine either. Then this house will be like the others, another ghost house.

But I didn’t care about the old University and its new buildings. I liked things just the way they were. Carbondale was a quiet little college town in deep southern Illinois before 1949, before Dr. Morse came.

I closed my eyes and pictured the way the old campus looked. I loved the old castlelike Altgeld Hall, the stately Wheeler Library, the elegant Shryock Auditorium, the Anthony Hall girls dormitory, the more modern Gymnasium, the red brick Parkinson Building where my dad worked, and the Allyn Building. The University Teacher Training School was in the Allyn building, where I go to school.

But my very favorite was the beautiful Old Main Building, right in the middle of the campus. It was the oldest building at the University. In fact, it was the whole college at one time, years ago, before the other buildings were added.

Old Main was three stories tall, with regal-looking stone stairways at each end. It was made of red brick that had aged to a soft rosy color. The roof was made of slate and there were beautiful designs in the concrete around the doors and windows and under the eaves. The classrooms had high ceilings and tall windows with deep window seats. The floors and wide hallways and stairwells were made of wood that had mellowed with age to a warm light brown. In the summertime, when there was no school at the University, I used to roam the old building. There was a sense of peace there, a quiet almost churchlike feeling, and a wonderfully musty scent of age. I was always a little sad when Old Main was filled with students again in the fall, and it wasn’t mine anymore.

I came back to the present when I heard a soft bark, and looked toward the house. Sam, our Old English mastiff, was sprawled on the front porch, his big head on his paws. He watched me, then stood up and lumbered over. He groaned as he sat down, like he always did. Sam was huge, taller than me when we sat side by side. He leaned against me. I looped my arm around his thick neck and leaned against him, too.

It wasn’t fair. I’d lived here so long. Why did I have to move? Why did the old University need this place, anyway? It had already gobbled up a lot of the town for its precious new buildings. What difference would one more house make? Lots of the townspeople thought the University grew too big too fast, and I thought so too.

To my way of thinking, the only good thing about Dr. Morse coming to town and causing everything to change was that his son Rob came, too. He’s in the fifth grade, like me. He’s my friend, but I sort of blame his dad for the way the University took over the town. Rob doesn’t say anything when I tell him that. He just looks away like he hadn’t heard me.

Oh, Sam, I whispered, and lay my cheek on the top of his head where his fur was softest. What are we going to do?

I hated the thought of moving farther into town. Sam would too. Neither of us would have room to run like we did here. Here on South Thompson Street, south of the University, it was almost like living in the country. We had so many places we could explore and play. The orchards were beautiful in the spring, and we could run like the wind through the fields and pastures. Thompson Woods was full of adventure. Rob and I made forts, waded in the little creek, climbed trees and gathered blackberries for Grandma’s cobblers.

You might even have to wear a leash, I told him. To be penned up or walked with a leash would be awful for Sam. He raised his big head and looked at me like he understood every word. I was glad he couldn’t.

Mary, who is now sixteen, came out of the house and called to me from the porch.

Hey, Josephine. Mom wanted to know if you’ve packed all your books yet.

My name is Josephine, but everybody just calls me Jo. Except Mary. And she does that just to make me mad.

Almost, I yelled back.

I’m all finished, she said with a smirk.

Perfect Mary. Who makes perfect grades and acts like a perfect lady. It’s enough to make me sick. I glared at her. She grinned, then turned and flounced back into the house to report to Mom. But before she slammed the screen door shut, she leaned back from the doorway and looked at what I was wearing. Then she rolled her eyes, shook her head and marched inside. She does that a lot. She wouldn’t be caught dead in what I wear every day. I looked down at my old camp shirt, my torn khaki shorts and my battered tennis shoes with the left little toe sticking out. My arms and legs were tanned as dark as old leather, and my hair was bleached almost blond from the sun. I loved the way I looked. And I loved that it made Mary mad, too. I frowned at the empty doorway and threw a little stick in that direction. Of course she couldn’t see that, but it made me feel better.

Mary was excited about moving. She’d be in town with all her friends. She didn’t like to play in the barns and the woods and the orchards. She and her girlfriends liked to talk about hair and lipstick and boys.

She didn’t used to be like that. I miss the old Mary. She was a tomboy, like me, and we played in the barn and explored the stables together. We roamed in the woods for hours, and poked around in the crumbling old buildings and the barn. We dressed up in the old clothes that were left in the trunk room, and made dolls out of corncobs. But she changed when she turned 16. I hardly know her anymore. Mom said she’ll be her old self again when she’s older, but I don’t know how long that will be. She’s happy now, though, and I guess that’s a good thing.

I wondered if I would ever feel happy again. I leaned back against the tree and looked up through the branches to the darkening sky. The storm would be upon us before the day was over.

Hey, Jo! It was Rob. He pedaled furiously down Thompson Road on his red Schwinn bike, waving with one hand and steering with the other. He careened up the dirt path shortcut and flew across the yard. When he braked, his tires kicked up a cloud of dust.

Someday, I said while waving dirt away from my face, you’re gonna kill yourself on that bike.

Nah, not me. He hopped off and set the kickstand in place. He’d cut the legs off an old pair of jeans so the denim wouldn’t catch in the chain. What’s up, Sambo? Sam’s heavy tail thumped on the hard ground. Rob gave him a knuckle-rub on his head and flopped down beside him. Sam licked Rob’s cheek with his long red tongue.

Geez, Sam, I didn’t need a bath, he said, and laughed as he wiped his cheek with the bottom of his torn t-shirt.

I looked down at my old clothes. They were worn and stained, but at least they were clean. Rob’s cut-offs and t-shirt looked like they hadn’t been washed in a week. He probably snuck out of the house without his mom catching him. I watched him play with Sam.

Only a few more days? Rob asked, his face serious.

I nodded. I wondered what he was thinking. He’d never really said, in words, how he felt about the Thompson Place. I knew he liked the house and the farm because he came here every chance he got. But he couldn’t love it like I did. No one could.

Rob and I were alike in lots of ways. We were both in the fifth grade and our dads worked at the University, my dad being a history professor. We even looked alike, tanned and hair bleached to nearly blond from the sun. Rob had more freckles than me, and he was taller, too. He could throw a ball farther than I could, but he couldn’t beat me in running. I nearly always won when we raced. We were both Cardinals fans, and listened to baseball games on the radio. The announcer called them the Old Gas House Gang. Neither of us liked to listen to the latest music or to talk about movie stars, like lots of the other kids did. And we sure weren’t interested in who liked who else in our class, or having girlfriends and boyfriends.

But our favorite thing was being out-of-doors. We’d ride our bikes through the pasture and across the wooden footbridges so we could swim in Thompson Lake. We’d explored every outbuilding on the farm, and every inch of the house. Rob always said there was a lot more to do here than where he lived, in the president’s house near the campus.

Thought I’d come down and see if I could help, Rob said as he picked up a walnut, aimed and threw it at one of the big trees in the yard. We both watched it hit high in the branches. It bounced down, hitting the limbs until it landed with a thud. Rob’s the best ballplayer in our class. He always hit what he was aiming for, even sitting down, like now.

You ready for summer school? I asked.

For just a minute, I thought of something other than the move. I liked summer school. All the kids did. At least I would still get to go to the same school on campus next year, instead of going to Brush School in town. But nothing would make it better, not summer school or going back to my same school next year or having a room of my own in our new house. Nothing.

Yeah. Are you?

Rob always waited until the last minute to do anything. He’d put off everything he could until it was almost too late, and then he’d dash around and get it done by the skin of his teeth. He didn’t get one report done on time last year in the fifth grade. Not one. Rob got in trouble with his mom and dad for that. He was grounded a lot.

Yep. Got a new notebook and even got all my yellow Ticonderoga number-2 pencils sharpened, too.

Hey, I’m impressed. And I was. I’m glad we’re studying more about the Civil War.

Me, too. Especially all those bloody battles. Rob pretended to hold up a rifle and look down the sight, then made shooting sounds at every tree and bush in the yard. Sam perked up and watched. Rob did stuff like that all the time. He usually teased or got loud