The Mystery of the Whispering Witch

“I shouldn’t have said anything....”
    Fay didn’t seem to have heard her. “And so I learned the terrible truth. Somehow, someway, Sarah Sligo has taken over. How else can you explain what happened last night? Did you hear, all of you, how I almost burned us alive? I did it. I must have done it! There’s no other explanation! We were asleep. I was dreaming again about Sarah. And when I woke up—” her voice broke— “the room was full of smoke.”
    “That’s silly, Fay,” Honey said sharply. “How do you account, then, for all those other sounds we heard—the axes hacking at the front door; the footsteps in the passage; the screaming?” She stopped, shuddering.
    Fay leaped to her feet, her hands clenched at her sides. “I can summon the powers of darkness!” she cried. “When I am Sarah, I can do anything— anything at all!” She looked away and broke into a storm of weeping.
    The Bob-Whites sat in stunned silence. Then the girls hurried to comfort her.
    “Listen, Fay,” sensible Honey said earnestly, “what I think is that you’ve been brooding about this for far too long. Things can’t possibly have happened the way you think. It just doesn’t make sense.”
    “It does too make sense,” Fay insisted. She sniffled, then added uncertainly, “Why doesn’t it make sense?”
    Honey obviously had no answer to this and threw Trixie a silent appeal for help.
    “It doesn’t make sense,” Trixie said, trying desperately to think of something, “because— because—” Suddenly she stopped. “Because I’ve had an idea all along that someone else was there in the house with us last night.”
    “The whispering witch?” asked Di.
    Puzzled, Trixie ran a hand through her curls and frowned. “No,” she said at last, “someone else.” Fay lifted a tearstained face from Honey’s shoulder and stared. “But we were alone in the house last night. You know we were. There wasn’t anyone else but us. We checked, remember?”
    “I know,” Trixie said obstinately, “but all the same, I’m sure I’m right. I saw something—heard something— Oh, what was it?”
    “Maybe you’ll think of it later, Trix,” Brian’s deep voice remarked. He turned toward Fay. “Come on, kiddo. Leave everything to Uncle Brian. It seems to me that Honey’s right. You’ve been worrying about this ghost stuff way too much. It isn’t good to do that, you know. I’m sure you’re no more possessed than I am. It’s time to go to visit your mother. That’s going to make you feel a whole lot better.” He led Fay toward the clubhouse door. “You coming, Trix?”
    “I’d like to come, too, if Fay doesn’t mind,” Honey said.
    “And me?” Di asked. “Me, too?”
    In the end, it was decided that all the Bob-Whites, with the exception of Dan, would accompany Fay to the hospital.
    Dan thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his corduroys. “You know I’d be with you if I could,” he told Fay awkwardly, “but I guess I’d better get back to work on the game preserve.”
    Dan worked for Mr. Maypenny, the Wheelers’ gamekeeper, and was now a well-adjusted person. There had been a time when he had been involved with a New York City street gang and had gotten into trouble with the law. Those days were long since over with, though. Now Dan’s ambition was to be a policeman.
    “We understand, Dan,” Trixie told him, and she smiled as she watched him stride away.
    She was still thinking about Fay’s strange story as she and her friends climbed into the station wagon, which had been given to the Bob-Whites by Honey’s father.
    “If only I could remember what it was that’s made me suspicious about what went on last night,” Trixie whispered to Mart, who was sitting beside her in the backseat. “I know it’s really important.” She hesitated. “Mart, did you believe the stuff Fay told us? Do you really think she’s possessed? Are there such things as ghosts? Can they come back to haunt the living? Do you—do you think Fay’s telling us the truth?”
    For a moment, she thought her brother wasn’t going to answer her. He seemed to be busy watching Jim climb into the driver’s seat.
    Mart didn’t say anything until the big car was heading west along Glen Road and had sped past Lisgard House. Then he stirred and asked, “Has it occurred to you, Trix, that if Fay is telling the truth—and I did say if— that trying to get rid of a spirit could be very difficult?”
    Trixie nodded.