When Mom told me we were moving, I was ticked off. Their divorce wasn’t my fault, so why was I being punished? I didn’t want to leave my house or my friends, but I had no choice. And I wasn’t nice about it, either.
Mom found a creepy old Victorian at the edge of the smallest town I’d ever seen. The house once belonged to her favorite childhood writer, Audie Louise Frank, author of the excessively saccharine McGinnis and Me book series. Mom was a voracious reader, had been since she was little, and now she was an editor with Cole Books, her dream job.
Mom talked incessantly about Audie, about how she was a child prodigy who wrote about McGinnis, her beloved dog, and how Audie died at age 17 in 1919 from Spanish flu. “Rumor has it that there were more McGinnis stories. But Audie’s mother, Mary Murphy Frank, was angry with the publisher because he wanted to make significant changes to the stories. Mary refused to hand over the stories and never disclosed their whereabouts; some people think she destroyed them.” Mom would always stare off into the distance, telling me her dream was to publish them if they ever came to light.
“Who cares?” I always thought.
Mary had been dead for ten years when we bought the house, and we moved in on Halloween, 1992. My room was at the top of the stairs. It had a triangular window and some of the ugliest built-in bookcases I’d ever seen. They leaned to the right and didn’t look like they could hold up a paperweight, much less books.
I was unpacking when I heard something whining in the backyard.
Once I figured out how to open that weird window, I stuck my head out and saw a dog scratching at the crawlspace door. I ran downstairs and out the back. An old Irish setter was digging around the door, whining. White fur shot through his reddish coat, and his haunches were thin. This dog had been around for a while. “Hey puppy, good puppy, come here, old boy,” I called. He stared at me with sad, serious eyes, then turned and doddered into the woods at the back of the yard.
Later that evening, I was in my room, House of Pain’s Jump Around blaring from my CD player. I was lying on my stomach on my bed reading Stephen King’s Delores Claiborne. I had just gotten to the part at the well when something grabbed my shoulder and shook me. I shrieked, threw my book in the air, and whirled around.
Mom screamed, stumbled backward over a box, and fell, whump, right onto her fanny.
I jumped up and turned the CD player off and tried, oh how I tried, not to laugh. But I couldn’t help it. Mom lay in the middle of my floor, flat on her back, legs splayed. I laughed so hard that tears poured down my cheeks.
“Yuck it up, dear daughter. You’ve killed your mother,” she said, staring at the ceiling.
“Mom,” I choked out between giggles, “What were you doing? Why did you sneak up on me?”
She sat up slowly and exaggerated looking for injuries. She sighed and stood, brushing off her backside. “I didn’t sneak up on you. I knocked. I yelled. Your music was too loud for you to hear me. I’m going to shower, and then I thought we could watch a scary movie together since it is Halloween.”
I shrugged and said, “Why not.” She looked sad and for a minute I felt bad about the way I had been acting toward her. She sighed and headed back to her room, the old door screeching on its hinges as she pushed it closed.
I picked up my book and found my place again when I heard more scratching around the crawlspace door. Enough, dog. I ran downstairs, grabbing a flashlight on my way out.
The dog moved away in the early evening dusk, watching me. “What in the world do you want in here?” I asked the dog. He just stared.
It looked like the door was only held in place by a couple of hooks. I lifted the hooks and pulled the door open, shining the flashlight under the house. Freakish half-spider-half-crickets exploded toward me, attaching themselves to my jeans and sweater. I screamed and swatted, knocking them to the ground, stomping as many as I could. I pulled them out of my hair. “I think I’m going to throw up!” I shouted, flinging them from me, their legs making disgusting clicking noises. The goo from their squashed bodies collected on my shoes. “What are these things?” I hollered. Then, the dog walked up to the door, leaned against my leg, and barked once. The hideous creatures hopped away, deep under the house, as if they understood him. “Thanks, dude,” I said. Still, the dog just stared.
I shined the light under the house again. There were thousands of those creepy bugs. Then, I saw a shape in the shadow just beyond a brick column. The dog whined and nudged my shoulder. “Is that what you want?” I took a deep breath and crawled under, but the long-legged monsters hopped away from me this time. I grabbed the shape and slithered back out.
It was an ancient, tattered ball.
The setter yelped, and his sad eyes lit up. I tossed the ball to him, hoping he would bring it back to me. Instead, he grabbed it and ran into the woods.
Oh no you don’t, not after I fought those monsters for you! I sprinted after him, the beam from my light bouncing through the gloaming.
I reached an old, rusted wrought-iron fence with a sign that read Frank Cemetery. The dog was inside the fence, but the gate was still closed. “Hey, pup, you’ve still got some juice in you if you jumped that.” The gate was almost stuck and screeched when I finally wrestled it open. I entered the cemetery.
Headstones leaned like crooked teeth, and English ivy grew up the trees. Old as it was, it looked well-kept. The dog had moved to the back corner, so I started over.
“Mind your step.”
I let out a yelp. My heart pounded. The tinny voice came out of nowhere. I whipped my head around and saw a lady crouched beside a grave, brushing leaves from the headstone. “Oh,” I said, “I didn’t see you. I’m sorry.”
She stood, wiping her hands on her long skirt. She looked ancient and yet young. Her blue eyes sparkled, and she wore a small smile. “You’ve moved into the Frank house,” she said, blinking at me.
“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, willing my still-pounding heart to slow. “I’ll leave you alone now.” I turned to go.
“No, dear, stay a minute. I guess you know who lived in the house before you did.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Audie Louise Frank. Audie’s stories are my mom’s favorites.” I looked around and gestured. “I didn’t know this cemetery was here. I followed the dog.”
“Audie’s many fans come regularly to keep it tidy.” The dog walked up behind the lady and dropped the ball on the neighboring grave. “Oh, my, look at that! He’s been looking for that ball forever!” The dog lay down, resting his head on his paws. He let out a deep sigh.
“I found it under the house after fighting creepy long-legged bugs.”
“Camel crickets. Evil things!” She shuddered. “Are you a fan of Audie’s, too?” she asked.
“I like her stories,” I answered, “but Mom’s the rabid one.” I kicked at the ground with the toe of my shoe, dirt sticking to the bug goo. I suddenly felt the need to tell this stranger everything. “I didn’t want to move, especially into that creepy old house. Dad left, they sold the only house I’ve ever lived in, and now all my friends are far away. It’s not fair. None of it was my fault. Why did I have to give up everything?” I felt the back of my throat start to burn.
The lady knelt again, pulling errant weeds from the base of the stone. “I imagine your mother is grieving, child. Grief sometimes closes our eyes to the needs of others. Sometimes we do things that anger people but work out for the best for those we love. Perhaps if you reached toward her, you might find peace together.”
I stared at the leaves at my feet. I hadn’t thought about that. “Maybe I could help her a little more,” I said.
“Sometimes things are discoverable when you straighten up.” She winked.
I guess I did need to straighten myself up.
“And dear, that’s not such a creepy old house. I always found it quite nice.”
Mom called. Darkness had crept up on the cemetery while we were talking, and I hadn’t realized how dim the light was until now. I turned toward the house, then turned back to her, saying, “I suppose I should let Mom know where I am. I just…” My words faltered.
The lady was gone.
“Where in the heck? She’s really fast,” I said, looking around in the low light. I clicked my flashlight back on, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Mom called again, and I shouted that I was coming. The dog whined at my feet, eyeing me, and nudged the ball with his nose. It rolled away from him and bumped into the headstone next to the one the lady had been cleaning. I turned to pick up the ball to return it to the dog, but when I looked back, the dog, too, had disappeared. I looked down at the headstone where the ball now rested. It read: McGinnis, A Good Dog.
“Wait a minute,” I whispered. “This can’t be…”
I looked at the grave the lady cleaned, shining my flashlight on the engraving: Audie Louise Frank, Storyteller, 1902-1919. The headstone beside it read: Mary Murphy Frank, Beloved Mother, 1882-1982. “Mom’s not gonna believe this,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. I turned and sprinted toward the house.
Mom was a good sport about my story, but I could tell she thought I was making it up. I finally stopped trying to convince her; what was the point? I knew what had happened.
As I was falling asleep that night, I looked toward the crooked bookshelf. Mary Murphy Frank’s words echoed in my head. Sometimes things are discoverable when you straighten up. “Straighten up!” I shouted. I leaped from my bed and pushed the top of the bookcase hard to the left. It creaked and groaned, but with a pop, it straightened, revealing a gap in the wall behind. I tugged the board around the opening, and it fell into my hands. On the horizontal framework inside the wall rested stacks and stacks of handwritten pages. I shouted for Mom.
She believed me after that.
And the dog never visited us again.
KD Smith is a Berry College alumna, poet, and short story writer. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Poetic Sun, The Literary Yard, Calhoun Magazine, and others. You can find KD on Twitter @KDSmith_Writer, on Instagram kd_smith_the_writer, on Facebook KD Smith the Writer, on Mastodon @KDSmith_Writer@mindly.social, and her website kdsmiththewriter.com.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 