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Ollie was nearly within arm’s reach now. The woman smelled sour—frightened. Ollie, completely bewildered, decided to ignore the stranger elements of the conversation. Later, she would wish she hadn’t. “If you don’t want that book, I’ll take it,” said Ollie. “I like books.”
“Avoid large places at night,” the woman said. “Keep to small.”
“You don’t have to. But, Ollie, you can’t hide in your books forever. There are all kinds of people, and good things, and life, just waiting for you to—” She had known he was going to say that, or something like that. She was on her feet. “To what? Forget? I won’t, even if you have. I’ll do what I want. You are not the boss of me.”
When the mist rises, and the smiling man comes walking, you must avoid large places at night. Keep to small.
That was when the rumors of hauntings started. Rustling in the corn. Voices. Footsteps without feet. They said the two brothers didn’t lie quiet.”
Legend says that now the woman haunts the farm too. Looking for her lost husband and her brother-in-law.”
Ollie stared, and then shrugged. Let boys be a mystery for another day; there was the mystery of her book in front of her.
You might get to know characters in books, Ollie thought, but getting to know a human was an entirely different thing. She tried to keep reading but couldn’t.
“So yes, there is always a ghost story. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Wherever you go in this big, gorgeous, hideous world, there is a ghost story waiting for you.
Maybe, she kept thinking, when she came back from one of those other worlds, when she woke up from book dreaming, she would come back to a world where her mother wasn’t dead. She hadn’t.
“I don’t like novels,” said Coco with dignity. “I like books that tell you about real things. So you think the smiling man is the White Witch? He controls this place? Is that what you mean?”
Coco didn’t cry because she was weak. Coco cried because she felt things. Ollie never cried because she didn’t feel things. Not anymore. Not really. She tried not to feel things.
“The cornfield is the doorway,” said the ghost. “It’s a maze, a corn maze. The scarecrows exist here and there. They are neither flesh nor spirit; they hold the door open for him. They are his servants in this world and his gatekeepers in the other.” Big tears, as horrible as her laughter, ran down her bony nose. “And I am only a ghost, and my love is a scarecrow, and the servant of that horrible man.” Her sad mouth seemed to droop down her face, as though the skin was rotten.
“Why scarecrows then?” He shrugged. “No one notices them in the sunlit world. They have hands; they are useful. They can be my eyes and my ears, and since they are neither flesh nor spirit, they can be my doorway.” He grinned. “Also they are frightening, and I do love that.”
