Free The Ghosts of Stone Hollow by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

never met heathens before, or people who wrote books, and she felt sure she wouldn’t know how to talk to them. It would be almost like trying to talk to Grandpa Simmons, who was always saying something that made so little sense there was absolutely no way to answer sensibly. The most important reason, though, was simply that girls didn’t go calling on boys—it just wasn’t one of the things you did in Taylor Springs.
    There was no sign of Jason near the clump of eucalyptus, so she went on up the lane until she came to the first good climbing tree. She shinnied up the trunk to the first branch and then scrambled higher, stopping now and then to look around. She was about as high as she dared go when, looking down, she saw a figure coming around the bend in the lane. It was Jason all right, and he was walking fast and looking around, as if he were hunting for something or someone in particular. As Amy watched unseen in her treetop perch, Jason and Caesar saw each other at the same moment. Jason walked toward Caesar, holding out his hand. Amy couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could see that Caesar was behaving in a very unusual manner.
    As a rule Caesar, who was only sedately enthusiastic even with old friends—except, of course when a walk was mentioned—was shy and sometimes even threatening with strangers. But now, as Jason approached, he cocked his head and bounded forward. Sinking down onto his belly at Jason’s feet, he wagged his tail frantically and licked eagerly at the boy’s hand. Jason bent over the dog, petting and talking to him for a long time before he stood up and looked around.
    “Amy,” he called. “Where are you?”
    Amy climbed down from the tree. Still shinnying down the trunk, she yelled at Jason accusingly, “Have you been hanging around my house?”
    She didn’t hear any answer, and when she reached the ground and had finished brushing the tree ants and itchy pieces of bark off her arms and legs, she faced him, jutting her jaw.
    “Have you?” she demanded.
    “Why do you think I’ve been hanging around your house?” Jason asked.
    “Because you knew Caesar was our dog. How’d you know I was here because Caesar was?”
    Jason looked at the dog. “Caesar?” he said. “Who named him that?”
    Amy shrugged. “I don’t know. Old Ike, I guess. He really belongs to Old Ike, this hired man who works for my aunt. Ike used to take long walks a lot before his leg got bad. Years ago he came back from a walk in the Hills, and he had Caesar with him, and he’s had him ever since. Only he always says that Caesar isn’t his.”
    Jason nodded. “Did you want to go now?” he asked. “To the Hollow?”
    Amy stared. She had been trying to think of an unembarrassing way to bring up the subject, since the last time they’d talked about it she’d said that she would never, ever go there. But now all she had to do was agree, and it would all be settled. “Yes,” she said, trying to sound casual. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I would like to go there, for just a little while. Just to kind of look around.”
    “All right,” Jason said, smiling his crazy smile. “Let’s go.”
    As they started down the lane, Jason asked, “Why are people afraid to go there—to Stone Hollow? Why do they think it’s haunted?”
    “Lots of reasons. There was this family who lived there once and built the house, and they all died except the mother, and she went crazy.” She told him everything she could remember ever having heard about the Italians, and even added a few facts that she hadn’t exactly heard, but that just seemed likely—and particularly intriguing. Like, how the poor madwoman, when she was found wandering and raving, had said something about a curse. Then she told Jason all about the bootleggers and how they had been found dead, near where they had been building a still for making whiskey. And how they had been dead for a long time when they were found, so it was