The Ghost and Mrs. Hobbs Read online

  The Ghost and Mrs. Hobbs

  Also by Cynthia DeFelice

  The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker

  Under the Same Sky

  The Missing Manatee

  Bringing Ezra Back

  Signal

  The Ghost Mysteries

  The Ghost of Fossil Glen

  The Ghost and Mrs. Hobbs

  The Ghost of Cutler Creek

  The Ghost of Poplar Point

  Picture Books

  Casey in the Bath

  illustrated by Chris L. Demarest

  Old Granny and the Bean Thief

  illustrated by Cat Bowman Smith

  One Potato, Two Potato

  illustrated by Andrea U’Ren

  CYNTHIA DEFELICE

  FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX

  NEW YORK

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  An Imprint of Macmillan

  THE GHOST AND MRS. HOBBS. Copyright © 2001 by Cynthia C. DeFelice.

  All rights reserved. Distributed in Canada by H.B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

  Printed in July 2010 in the United States of America by R. R. Donnelley &

  Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia. For information, address Square Fish,

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Macmillan and are used by Farrar, Straus and Giroux under license from Macmillan.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  DeFelice, Cynthia C.

  The ghost and Mrs. Hobbs / Cynthia DeFelice.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Hindered by a fight with her friend Dub and a series of mysterious fires, eleven-year-old Allie investigates the fire seventeen years earlier which claimed the lives of the husband and infant son of a school cafeteria worker, as well as the handsome young man whose ghost asks Allie for help.

  ISBN: 978-0-312-62909-0

  [1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Arson—Fiction. 3. Jealousy—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D3597 Ge 2001

  [Fic]—dc21

  00-52827

  Originally published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  Square Fish logo designed by Filomena Tuosto

  Designed by Judy Lanfredi

  First Square Fish Edition: 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  www.squarefishbooks.com

  LEXILE 660L

  For Zoe,

  who wanted a touch of romance!

  The Ghost and Mrs. Hobbs

  One

  Allie Nichols knew she was dreaming, but that didn’t make the feeling of being trapped in a burning building any less terrifying. Flames surrounded her, scorching her skin, licking at her clothing and hair, sucking the oxygen from the room and from her lungs until she couldn’t breathe. Frantic, blinded by smoke and coughing, she crawled across an endless floor toward a door. When she got there, the doorknob was too hot to touch. Someone was on the other side of that door, someone who would die unless she got through. But she couldn’t, she couldn’t. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t reach the door, and it was going to be too late. And then—oh no, no, no!—the ceiling came crashing down and she was trapped, and then it was too late.

  Allie woke up with a sob, drenched in sweat, the taste of ashes in her mouth. She lay still, willing her heart to stop pounding, but the nightmarish urgency and the feelings of fear and desperation lingered. Not wanting to be alone, but not wanting to disturb her parents, either, she went down the hall to her little brother Michael’s room and crawled into bed with him.

  “Mmmm,” he murmured sleepily.

  “Okay if I get in with you for a while, Mikey?” Allie whispered.

  “Mmmm.”

  Allie snuggled up to the curve of his warm, little four-year-old body and took a deep breath. What a dreadful dream! At first it had seemed to be happening to her. But then, in the strange logic of nightmares, she had felt as if she were watching and it was someone else who was struggling toward that door.

  Who? And who was on the other side, waiting to be rescued? She couldn’t imagine, and at last grew tired of trying. Concentrating instead on the soft, even rhythm of Michael’s breathing, she finally fell back to sleep.

  The vividness and power of the dream were still with her, though, when she woke up to find Michael staring at her curiously. “How come you’re here?” he asked.

  “Don’t you remember when I came in?”

  Michael shook his head. “Did you have a bad dream?” he asked.

  Allie nodded.

  “About the tree monster?” Michael asked, his eyes growing big and round.

  “No,” said Allie, giving him a hug. “Not that dumb old monster. Remember? I told him he better not show up in your dreams or mine ever again or else.”

  Michael giggled. “Oh yeah. Dumb monster!”

  “My dream is all gone now,” Allie said, lying. Michael had a powerful imagination, just as she did. Sometimes he scared himself with his own fantasies. She didn’t want to get him started again on his old, bad dreams about the tree outside his window coming to grab him while he slept. “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast.”

  The dream stayed in the back of Allie’s mind while she and Michael ate their cereal.

  When their parents joined them in the kitchen, Michael announced proudly, “Allie was in my bed this morning.”

  “Trouble sleeping, sweetie?” Allie’s mother asked with concern.

  “A little,” Allie answered evasively. She had been trying especially hard not to give her parents any reason to worry about her, since she’d nearly died during a class field trip to Fossil Glen just three weeks before.

  Allie had never figured out quite how to explain to them that the whole Fossil Glen episode had come about because she’d been helping a ghost. Now that some time had gone by, it seemed even harder to bring up the subject. Allie was afraid that her parents would start worrying again that she didn’t know the difference between fantasy and reality.

  It was asking a lot to expect them to believe that the ghost of an eleven-year-old girl named Lucy Stiles, who had been murdered, had come to Allie for help in proving it. Allie didn’t know if she’d be able to accept it if it hadn’t happened to her.

  The only person who knew the whole story was her best friend, Dub Whitwell. Thank goodness for Dub, she thought, not for the first time. If it wasn’t for him, she might worry that she was crazy.

  As Allie walked to school, her frightful dream replayed in her mind. She tried to concentrate during language arts, but the dream kept drifting through her thoughts, accompanied by the faint smell of smoke.

  She was finally roused from her reverie when Mr. Henry announced that the school’s annual Elders Day celebration was coming up the following week. A groan rose from the class.

  Mr. Henry just smiled. “I know, I know,” he said calmly. “You’v
e done Elders Day in May of every school year since kindergarten. And you’re tired of it. So I was thinking that instead of having each of you bring a special older friend to school for the day, as you’ve done before, we’d do something different this year.”

  Joey Fratto let out a cheer. Karen Laver muttered, “This better be good,” but, as always, she made her comment too soft for Mr. Henry to hear.

  Allie sat up and listened attentively. Mr. Henry was the best sixth-grade teacher in the school, the best teacher she had ever had. He had a way of making almost every subject fun and interesting. No matter what Karen said, Allie had a feeling Mr. Henry’s plan for Elders Day was going to mean excitement.

  Two

  “So, Dub, who are you going to interview?” Allie asked. She and her classmates were eating lunch in the cafeteria, following Mr. Henry’s announcement that the kids would interview an older person and give an oral presentation.

  Dub had just taken a huge bite of his sub sandwich. He struggled to chew and swallow so he could answer, but before he had a chance, Karen spoke up. “I don’t know why we can’t just skip stupid Elders Day now that we’re in sixth grade,” she said sulkily. “I mean, enough already.”

  “Well, at least Mr. Henry’s letting us do something interesting this time,” said Allie.

  “Big deal,” Karen replied. “It’s just as boring.”

  Allie shrugged. Karen thought everything was boring.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” said Dub, “anything we do will be an improvement over last year.”

  Allie laughed, along with several other kids who had been in Dub’s fifth-grade class to witness the previous year’s fiasco. Like Allie, Dub had no grandparents living conveniently nearby, so he had been stuck with bringing his neighbor, old Louie Howell, to school for Elders Day. The trouble was that Louie was almost totally deaf.

  Dub groaned. “That was a real nightmare.”

  “A real white hair, you say?” Imitating Louie Howell, Joey shouted in a high, whining voice, “Who’s got white hair? For the love of Myrtle, speak up, young man, and stop your mumbling!”

  Everyone at the lunch table cracked up. Dub said, “Compared to that, picking an elderly person to interview will be a piece of cake. And here’s some free advice: Pick somebody who can hear your questions.”

  “So, Dub,” Allie persisted, “who are you going to pick?”

  “I’m going to ask Mr. Henry if it’s okay to do the interview over the phone,” Dub answered eagerly. “If he says yes, I want to call this cool old guy I met at the Cape last summer. He invents stuff using seaweed. So far he’s made spaghetti sauce, wrinkle cream, and dog bones. Last summer he was making paste to hold his false teeth in.”

  “Gross!” squealed Pam Wright.

  “He figures he’s going to make millions on it,” Dub added.

  “Sure he is,” said Karen scornfully.

  “I think I’ll bring my grandfather to school again,” said Joey. “He was there the day that blimp, the whatchamacallit—the Hindenburg—blew up. It’s a great story, the way he tells it.”

  “No fair,” protested Karen. “You have to do the interview and make the presentation yourself.”

  “Nice try, though, Joey,” said Allie with a smile.

  “I think my aunt used to be a nurse in the coal mines or something,” said Pam. “That could be kind of interesting.”

  Karen gave Pam a look, as if to say, You’re not actually getting into this dumb idea, are you? She leaned back in her chair and tossed her braid over her shoulder. “I have no clue who to interview,” she said. “I mean, my grandmother lives with us, but she’s a total vegetable. All she ever does is watch the home shopping channel and order useless stuff that my mother has to send back.”

  Allie felt sorry for anyone who had to live with Karen. She figured Karen’s grandmother kept the TV on so she wouldn’t have to listen to Karen complaining all the time. But she kept her thoughts to herself.

  Allie didn’t care if Karen thought Mr. Henry’s idea for Elders Day was boring. She had always been interested in people’s stories, especially in the things they usually kept hidden. She was curious about what lay beneath the surface. She decided that she was going to find someone really fascinating to interview.

  “Maybe I’ll pick my Uncle Hal,” said Brad Lewis. “Once he ate forty-seven pickled eggs and won a hundred bucks, and he won another contest for smashing beer cans on his forehead. I think he demolished thirty-three cans before he knocked himself out.”

  Everybody laughed, and Dub said, “Mr. Henry said this project might teach us about some milestones in history, and it looks like he was right.”

  “And get this,” Brad added. “Every time he smashes a can, he hollers, ‘Recycle this!’ ”

  Allie was just opening her mouth to speak when a voice blurted, “Well, my subject is going to be Mrs. Hobbs.”

  Allie felt her eyes widen in astonishment. She looked around the lunch table to discover who had said such a foolish thing and saw that all of her classmates were turned toward her, their faces registering shock and disbelief.

  Horrified voices whispered, “Mrs. Hobbs?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “You’re going to interview the Snapping Turtle?”

  “Old Hobbling Hobbs?”

  “That’s not even funny, Al,” said Dub, looking worried. “She hates kids.”

  Allie’s hand flew to her mouth. Was she really the one who had spoken? What in the world was she thinking? Why had she said such a thing?

  Mrs. Hobbs had worked in the cafeteria as long as Allie could remember. All the kids, even the sixth-graders, were terrified of her. Many of them, like Allie, brought their own lunches from home just so they wouldn’t have to pass through the food line under her unblinking glare.

  Allie glanced toward the front of the cafeteria and shuddered. There stood Mrs. Hobbs, her thin, wrinkled lips tightly clamped and her beady eyes darting from side to side, like a snapping turtle sizing up its next victim. As she ladled glops of food onto trays, her eyes seemed to devour each child who crept by.

  The nickname Hobbling Hobbs referred to her peculiar, lurching gait, which had caused some kids to speculate that she wasn’t human at all but a robot whose inner controls had gone haywire. Allie had seen kindergartners burst into tears at the mere sight of Mrs. Hobbs.

  What was even more unsettling than the prospect of a one-on-one, face-to-face interview with Mrs. Hobbs was that Allie had blurted out this startling information without having any idea she was going to do it.

  The last time something like that had happened was three weeks before, when Allie was being haunted by Lucy Stiles’s ghost. The same chill she had felt then was creeping down her neck. A familiar feeling took hold of her, a mixture of excitement and dread.

  Was it happening again?

  Three

  On the way home from school that day, Karen and Pam caught up with Allie and Dub.

  “I don’t believe you, Allie,” said Karen. “You have to announce you’re going to interview the Snapping Turtle because you’re so desperate to be the center of attention!”

  “I am not!” said Allie indignantly. “I—” She stopped, flustered by the unfairness of Karen’s attack. Besides, she couldn’t explain why she’d blurted out such a bizarre thing, even if she’d wanted to do it.

  “As if you’re really going to talk to her,” said Karen disdainfully.

  “Don’t let her get to you, Al,” Dub said under his breath.

  Allie knew Dub was right, but it wasn’t easy to follow his advice. To make matters worse, Karen was accompanied by her faithful sidekick Pam, who went along with everything Karen said and did. Allie kept walking, waiting for Pam to chime in with her own nasty comment.

  Sure enough, Pam did speak up next. “I think it’s a pretty cool idea.”

  Allie was so surprised, she stopped walking to stare at Pam. It was amazing enough that Pam had contradicted Karen, but had she a
lso said she thought the idea of interviewing Mrs. Hobbs was cool?

  “It’s awesome, actually,” Pam went on, giving Allie what seemed to be a genuine smile. “If you survive, that is.”

  Allie let out a burst of laughter, both at Pam’s unexpected friendliness and at the expression on Karen’s face. She looked as if she’d just opened a beautiful package only to find it filled with used tissues.

  “Way to go, Pam,” Dub murmured. Louder, he said, “Of course we understand you wouldn’t have the guts to do it, Karen.”

  “It isn’t a question of guts, Dub Whitwell,” said Karen furiously. “It’s a question of brains. I’m not stupid enough—or desperate enough for attention—to even think about it.” She turned to Allie and smiled wickedly. “But now that you’ve made your big announcement, I can’t decide which will be more fun: seeing you try to worm your way out of it or watching you go through with it. Either way, it’ll be entertaining.”

  She turned to leave, calling over her shoulder, “Come on, Pam. Let’s go.”

  For a moment Pam looked from Allie to Dub without moving.

  “Pam, come on.”

  Pam smiled uncertainly. “Okay, well, I’ll see you guys.”

  “Bye, Pam,” called Allie as Pam hurried away to catch up with Karen. She turned to Dub and said, “Wow. That was weird.”

  “Maybe Pam is a vertebrate, after all,” mused Dub.

  “Huh?”

  “I just mean she showed a little backbone there for a minute.”

  Allie laughed. “Yeah. That was nice the way she stuck up for me.”

  “True,” Dub agreed. “But let’s not get carried away. We can’t expect a leopard to change her spots overnight.”

  Allie laughed again. “Listen, I’ve got to talk to you about what happened today.”

  “What did happen today? What the heck were you thinking of, saying you’re going to interview the Snapping Turtle?”

  “That’s just it, Dub,” Allie answered in a small voice. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t say it. I mean, I didn’t mean to say it. It just came out.”