The Mystery of the Whispering Witch

her hands!
    Trixie had often read about fictional characters who did that, but she didn’t remember ever seeing a real, live person do it.
    Fay’s hands clutched each other nervously. Their fingers intertwined, then released their grip. Each hand “washed” the other, then clutched at the other once more. Fay did it over and over.
    Trixie thought back over the events of the evening. She recalled how hard Fay had tried to conceal her worry about her mother’s accident. She remembered Fay’s reaction to that small room off the living room that had been the scene of the long-ago tragedy. She remembered Fay’s intense, almost unnatural, interest in Sarah Sligo’s story.
    “Yes?” Fay prompted her. “You were about to go into the kitchen and turn off the light when you saw—what?”
    “A mouse,” Trixie said, crossing her fingers behind her back. Surely it wouldn’t matter if she told another small lie if, by doing so, she would protect a friend in trouble.
    Honey stared. “You—you saw a mouse? Do you mean to tell me that was what all this—” she waved a hand in the direction of her warm and comfortable bed—“is about?”
    Trixie swung around to face her. “It—uh— startled me,” she finished lamely.
    Fay sighed and seemed to relax at once. “Is that all it was? I thought—that is— Maybe it was just a little field mouse from the marsh you saw, Trixie,” she said. “We do get them sometimes. When we can catch them, Mother and I always put them back outside where they came from.”
    Trixie nodded her curly head vigorously. “Yes, that’s what it must have been—a field mouse from the marsh. It was white and brown and had a little pink, twitchy nose.”
    Honey was far from satisfied. “I still don’t understand it,” she declared. “You’ve never been scared of a mouse in your life, Trixie Belden. In fact, one time you told me you thought they were cute.”
    “They are cute,” Trixie replied firmly, “but not at this time of the night—morning, I mean. Gleeps! Look at the time. We’ll never get any sleep at this rate.”
    Still talking, she shooed Honey back to her own bed and stood over Fay as she swung her slim legs back under the covers. In another few moments, Trixie had arranged herself, if not comfortably, then at least in a position in which she thought she could sleep.
    When Fay turned out the light once more, however, Trixie found that her brain was just as active as it had been earlier.
    She tried to remember every single detail of the apparition she had seen in the hallway—if, indeed, it had been an apparition at all. Had she seen the witch’s ghost? Had Sarah Sligo appeared in order to warn her of another impending tragedy? If so, what tragedy? And when was it supposed to happen?
    On the other hand, it could have been someone playing a trick on her. But how had it been accomplished? The more Trixie thought about it, the more she was certain that the figure in the hallway had not been anything like the one she’d seen outside the house. The one outside had been real and solid, while the figure in the hallway - Trixie gasped and sat bolt upright in bed. What she had been about to say to herself was that the figure in the passage had been transparent.
    Trixie had been able to see right through it!

    Later, Trixie could have sworn that she hadn’t closed her eyes even for a second. It had seemed to her that after her last startling thought, she was so wide-awake that she never expected to close her eyes again.
    Whatever the truth of the matter, the next thing she knew was that someone was shaking her. Trixie tried to bury her nose deeper in her pillow.
    “Go ’way!” she mumbled. “I’m only waiting till
    Fay’s asleep. Then I’m going to wake Honey up, and we’re both going hunting for that ghost.”
    “What ghost?” Honey’s voice said in her ear. “Oh, please, wake up, Trix! Listen, can’t you hear it?”
    At first, Trixie could hear nothing but the beating of her own heart. Then, as if from a great distance, she could hear the sound of marching feet, and the sound of angry voices. They grew louder.
    Every nerve in Trixie’s body seemed to snap to attention. Her eyes, which, until this moment, she hadn’t known were closed, popped open. She turned her head and gazed up at the white blob that was Honey’s face bending over her in the dark.
    Trixie gasped and sat up. As she did so, Fay snapped on the light and stared, white-faced, across the room