The Mystery of the Whispering Witch

everything.”
    Trixie nodded, remembering that October storm. “We lost all our power, too,” she said. “We had to use candles, too.”
    “But mine wouldn’t stay lit,” Fay said, her voice beginning to shake again. “As fast as I lit them and moved to another room to light others, I’d come back and find that they’d been blown out—or, at least, extinguished.”
    “Maybe you set them in a draft,” Mart suggested, still not looking at her.
    “No.” Fay sounded certain about it.
    “Go on,” Trixie prompted her.
    “It was soon after this that the strange noises began. I’d hear footsteps upstairs, pacing up and down. And I’d hear doors closing and opening. Once I heard someone laughing, as if there were some sort of joke going on that I knew nothing about. At first I thought it was someone playing a joke—”
    “A logical and entirely commendable thought,” Mart put in.
    “I thought it was Zeke Collins,” Fay stated flatly. “I thought he might be trying to scare Mother and me away from the house for some reason.
    He—he always seems so unfriendly. He’s been there for so long, you see. He knows every inch of the grounds. I guess Old Caleb wasn’t an easy man to work for. But for some reason, Zeke stayed around, even after the last of the Lisgards died. I think—that is, I thought Zeke wanted the Lisgard place to himself.” She tried to laugh. “Mother’s convinced that Zeke’s got something hidden on the grounds. Buried treasure, maybe. Oh, I know it sounds silly—”
    Trixie groaned to herself. It sounded more than silly. It sounded downright unbelievable. She couldn’t blame Brian, Mart, and Dan for sounding skeptical. She wasn’t surprised when she saw them exchanging doubtful glances.
    Fay hurried to finish her story. She told them about all the other strange things that had happened in that old house. She spoke of cold air that seemed to flow through a closed and windowless room. She told of a message written in crayon that she had found scrawled across her dressing table mirror.
    “What did it say?” Honey asked, though she’d already heard this part once.
    “It said, ‘I’m back!’ ” Fay answered.
    “That’s all?” Di asked. “Just that? ‘I’m back’?” Brian raised his head at last and looked directly at the Beldens’ houseguest. “And what did your mother have to say about all this?”
    Fay flushed. “I didn’t tell her. You see, all these things happened when I was alone in the house. Mother seemed to be so happy. She’d found a job that paid well. For the first time, she could see all her dreams for me coming true. She often said that perhaps the old house wasn’t as bright and cheerful as it could be, but...
    Trixie thought again of the old mansion as it had looked last night, and she couldn’t help thinking that Mrs. Franklin’s remark had been the understatement of the year.
    “And so I didn’t tell her,” Fay continued. “I began to wonder if everything that was going on was all my imagination. I began listening to stories—gossip, really—about Lisgard House. The more I heard, the more uneasy I got. And—and then I began to wonder if I was doing all these things myself.” She flung her head back and gazed at the circle of faces around her. Her eyes filled with tears. “And then one day Zeke Collins told me the story of poor Sarah Sligo. What he didn’t tell me, I found out from other people. I found out that the house brings bad luck to everyone who lives there. I found out that its occupants are—well, cursed. I began to have dreams— nightmares—and Sarah would be in them. She was always dressed the same.” Fay’s voice was so low now that the Bob-Whites had to strain their ears to hear her. “I would be sitting in the study, the little room where she died. Suddenly the door would open, and there she’d be. ‘I need you, Fay,’ she’d say. ‘Only you can help me. You must help me get my revenge.’ ”
    Trixie stirred uneasily. “Those were only dreams, Fay,” she said.
    Fay shook her dark head. “But they were so vivid. And then, last night, Trixie told me the real story, the true story of Sarah Sligo. She didn’t want to at first, but I made her. I had to know the truth about Sarah Sligo.”
    Trixie gasped and remembered her own hunch that she was about to make a terrible mistake if she repeated the legend of the Lisgard witch. Why hadn’t she listened to her own warning?
    “Oh, Fay,” Trixie whispered,