The Old Willis Place

Miss Lilian."
    I lay back, propped on my elbows, and let him go on.
    "The police were talking," Georgie told me. "One said it might've been an accident, but the other said the door was bolted from the outside. That meant someone had locked us in, he said—and who else could it have been but that crazy old woman?"
    "It's a shame nobody figured that out sooner" I said. "Miss Lilian got away with killing us. She never went to jail, she was never punished."
    "It's not fair." Georgie scowled. "It's not fair, Diana!"
    I pulled the covers up under my chin. The fading light of day shone through the cave's opening, barely illuminating the darkness around us. "Did the police say anything else?" I asked.
    Georgie shifted his position to see me better. "Mother and Daddy are dead," he said in a low voice. "But I'd guessed that already. Hadn't you?"
    "I always hoped they'd come back for us someday," I told him. "I guess that's silly, but, well, I wanted it to be true, so I—" I pressed my lips together and tried not to cry.
    "They're going to bury us with Mother and Daddy," Georgie said, as if to console me. "We'll all be together, Diana."
    I wasn't consoled. I wanted to be with Mother and Daddy again, but not in a graveyard. I wanted them to be here on the farm, the way we were before the bad thing happened.
    Outside, twilight darkened into night. The wind blew harder, soughing in the treetops. Far away, from the direction of the house, came the faint sound of a piano. Miss Lilian's favorite piece, the Moonlight Sonata, floated through the darkness, eerie, distorted, out of tune. I pictured her at the piano, back in the days when its mahogany gleamed and every note was true. Her hands struck the keys, her head moved to the music's rhythm, her thin body swayed. I stood in the doorway, watching, hearing her mistakes, yearning to push her aside and play the piece properly. She looked up and saw me. Her face twisted in anger, and she slammed the piano lid shut. "Get out!" she yelled. "Get out!"
    Pushing the memory away, I burrowed deeper under the covers, hoping to block the sound of the piano. Beside me, Georgie slept quietly, Lissa's bear clasped to his chest. Nero came closer, turned around once or twice, and curled between us, purring as if he hoped to comfort us. But there was no comfort without Mother and Daddy.

    The next thing I knew, Georgie was shaking my shoulder. "Diana "he whispered. "Something's outside the cave."
    I rose to my knees, listening for sounds in the darkness outside. I heard nothing, but Nero's back rose and his tail puffed to twice its normal size. The cave filled with his eerie growling song.
    "It's her." Georgie clutched my arm, his nails biting into my skin. "It's Miss Lilian."
    We crept to the cave's entrance and peered into the night. The wind shook shadows across the snow, confusing my eyes.
    Then I heard what Georgie had heard, a voice calling, rising and falling with the wind. She was in the woods, not far away, coming toward us.
    "Run," Georgie whimpered. "Don't let her get us!"
    I would have taken his hand, but he was clutching Alfie. The two of us darted out of the cave and slid down the snowy bank into the creek. She must not trap us again.
    Through the woods, across fields and streams, uphill and down, we ran and she followed, calling us again and again. Our names echoed from bare trees, bounced back from the snow, became unrecognizable. Deer fled from the sounds of the chase, bounding through the snow in fright. A fox barked from a boulder and vanished into a thicket, fearful for his own safety.
    Georgie and I came out of the woods behind the house. It sat on the hill above us, a dark shape crouched against the moonlit sky, its crooked chimneys rising like broken fingers from the roof. We ran across the snowy lawn spiked with dead weeds. I looked back. She was behind us, running as only the dead can run, tirelessly, her white hair wild and loose in the wind, her gray dress fluttering.
    "Diana, Georgie," she cried, as if she knew no words other than our names. "Diana, Georgie!"
    "Not there!" I grabbed Georgie's arm to steer him away from the house.
    He looked at me, glassy-eyed with fear, as if he didn't know where he was or what he was doing.
    Still holding his arm, I skirted the house and ran down the drive. The tracks of the police car and the hearse cast shadows in the snow. Like a ghost himself, the albino deer stood at the edge of the trees. He watched us for a moment and then vanished