All The Lovely Bad Ones

Mrs. Jennings encourages Travis to go with them to the grove, but he turns her down. Tracy is furious at Travis for suggesting that what she saw the night before was only a part of her imagination. Travis goes looking for Corey, and she confronts him, listing off all the things he’d done to her that day: making noises at her door, throwing apples at her window, and thumping on her wall. Travis denies doing any of it. Amidst their argument, they both hear a muffled giggle and feel a brush of cold air against their hair. The two of them run back into the inn, where Mrs. Brewster and Grandmother meet them. They’re discussing the power outage when the Jennings’s friends enter the kitchen, proclaiming that they’ve managed to take a video of a ghost. Throughout the ensuing chaos, giggling is heard, and Grandmother blames Travis for it.

In the video, the figure they captured is wearing a long dress. The group of ghost enthusiasts are clearly shaken, terrified by the video. Grandmother has reached her limit; she orders Chester to leave the inn tomorrow morning. Leading Travis and Corey to their bedrooms, she demands that Travis apologize to everyone for giggling in the morning. She threatens them with calling their parents before leaving for the night. Travis and Corey bemoan the events that have occurred. Corey’s bed soon begins to shake, her clothes flying around the room, and they are both pinched over and over as laughter echoes in the room. The closet door flies off its hinges, and Grandmother bursts in just in time to see the carnage. Grandmother blames the siblings entirely for the mess; Chester and Miss Duvall try to convince her that the children are not to blame for it. A voice mocks Miss Duvall and Grandmother while yanking at their clothes and pinching them. Travis is frozen in fear, and Corey is sobbing on the bed, neither of them could be responsible for everything, despite Grandmother’s claims. A dark shadowy shape flies into the bedroom, screaming at the children ghosts to stop at once.

Grandmother is still unconvinced that the inn has ghosts. She threatens Miss Duvall and Chester with a lawsuit. She tells them once more that they are to leave the inn at first light. Travis decides to sleep on the floor of Corey’s room that night so that neither of them will be alone. The next morning, Travis returns to his bedroom to find it a mess. Everything is ruined. Chester crawls in through the first-floor window and begins taking pictures of the mess for his investigation. Grandmother comes in and catches him; she is furious and orders him to leave again. Grandmother tells Travis that she spent all night trying to think of an explanation from the night before. Unable to think of one, she has simply decided to pretend that the night before did not happen.

After breakfast, most of the guests check out in support of Miss Duvall and Chester. The remaining guests, unaware of the ghost hunt on the premises, complain about the racket from the night before. After cleaning up his room, Travis begs Mr. Brewster to tell him about the ghosts. He doesn’t tell Travis much, but he does lament the fact that the Cornells purchased and fixed up the house. He believes that some places should be left alone. Travis makes it inside just as Chester and Miss Duvall are checking out; Grandmother threatens to sue them should they publish their findings anywhere.

At lunch, Tracy tells Grandmother that she’s considering going home. Grandmother is angry, telling her that she needs her as more guests are checking in the next day. Tracy eventually agrees to stay if the ghosts don’t return. Tracy is still shaken up from her experience with the ghost of Miss Ada in the grove the night before. Grandmother is convinced that Miss Duvall and Chester are responsible for all the ghostly events at the inn.

Once Grandmother leaves, the ghosts begin wrecking the dining room, sending plates and cups crashing against the walls. Travis, Corey, and Tracy are terrified. Mrs. Brewster storms in, yelling at the ghosts to behave. A pitcher of water dumps itself over her head before the ghosts sweep out of the room. Mrs. Brewster tells Tracy to get Mr. Brewster and to tell him that it’s worse than before. Grandmother enters and is shocked by the scene before her. Mr. Brewster blames Travis and Corey’s pranks for the ghosts’ return. Travis and Corey return to their bedroom. Corey wants to go home, but Travis insists that they need to stay and finish what they started. They see Mrs. Brewster walking out towards the grove, and they follow her. They overhear her speaking to the stones, telling the ghosts that Travis and Corey are bad ones just like them, but no more deserving of punishment than they were. They confront Mrs. Brewster and demand to know those to whom she was talking. She refuses to tell them anything. Voices follow Travis and Corey as they run to hide in the library.

In the library, Corey and Travis read a pamphlet that floats off a bookshelf. Written by a reverend, the pamphlet details the history of the inn as a poor farm. In it, they learn about Miss Ada Jaggs and her brother, the two cruel proprietors of the poor farm. They ran the poor house for over 20 years, leading to the deaths of countless people due to their mistreatment. After the public hearing about these offenses, Ada’s brother abandoned her, and she hanged herself in the grove. The pamphlet also reveals that at least a dozen young boys who died at Ada’s hands are also buried on the grounds. The ghosts of Caleb, Ira, and Seth reveal themselves to Travis and Corey; they are the chosen representatives of the group of boys called the shadow children. Caleb tells the siblings that they “woke Miss Ada up with [their] tomfoolery” and it is now their responsibility to put them all back to sleep (102). The children are terrified of Miss Ada, worried that she will overhear them in the daytime. They tell the siblings that Miss Ada blames them for her death, despite it being at her own hands.

Grandmother comes to get Travis and Corey for dinner; she cannot see the ghost children, only what they do. The ghosts disappear after making magazines fly about the room. At dinner, Travis shows Grandmother the pamphlet, and Mrs. Brewster whispers that they better listen to what the ghost children are telling them. Grandmother admits that Tracy left that afternoon after the events in the dining room that morning. Watching Mrs. Brewster move about the dining room, the siblings soon realize that she can see the ghost children, too.