Ghost Invasion by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Author:Zilpha Keatley Snyder [Snyder, Zilpha Keatley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-4804-7161-0
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-02-10T19:08:00+00:00

Chapter 13

AT FIRST WHEN AURORA said there was something in the Andersons’ living room that they had to see, Kate couldn’t imagine what on earth she was talking about. It wasn’t until she noticed the strange way Aurora was staring at the photo albums that she began to understand.

Suddenly Kate felt very excited. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it? There would probably be some old photographs of Addie and the bandit boyfriend. Or of Addie, at least. Not of her ghost, of course, but of Addie herself when she was a young woman.

Kate was reaching for the nearest photo album when Aurora grabbed her hand and pulled it back. “No,” she said. “Not yet. Here she comes.” And a second later Mrs. A. came back into the room carrying a tray.

“Here we are,” she said. “Now if you’d just push those albums over a bit, Aurora, I’ll put the tray down right here where we can all reach it.”

As Kate watched, Aurora reached out quickly and moved the stack of heavy leather-covered books to one side of the coffee table. After she moved them she took her hands and eyes away very slowly, as if she were trying to get a message right through the leather covers. And later while Mrs. A. was passing around cookies and cider and chattering away about the things her kids used to do on Halloween, Aurora’s eyes kept going back to the albums.

Kate sipped her apple cider and nibbled a cookie, listening to Mrs. A. and watching Aurora. Finally Mrs. A. seemed to notice too.

“Aurora,” she said, “you seem to be interested in my albums. Do you like to look at family photographs?”

Aurora’s enormous gray eyes turned toward Mrs. A. and her solemn face glowed into a smile. “Oh yes,” she said. “I do. I love to look at photographs. Especially old ones. We both love to look at old photos. Don’t we, Kate?”

“Yes. Yes. We really do,” Kate said eagerly. “Looking at old photos is one of our favorite hobbies.”

Mrs. A. put down her glass of cider and reached for one of the albums. “Well, in that case,” she said, “you might enjoy seeing this. There are some very old pictures in this album. Anderson family pictures that date back past the turn of the century. Even a few old tintypes. Here we are. Perhaps if you’d move over just a bit, so I could sit between you …”

So Mrs. A. sat between Kate and Aurora and turned the pages of the album, and they looked at old pictures. Lots of them. At first Kate was very interested, but there were an awful lot of people in the pictures who couldn’t possibly have been Addie, and after a while they all began to look alike.

There were lots of pictures of wives in long, high-necked dresses standing stiffly beside stiffly seated husbands. Also lots of pictures of stiff-looking babies in long white dresses. Not to mention dozens of big family groups where rows of people of all ages posed stiffly in long straight lines.

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