Haunted (11 page)

This had once been a showcase of a garden—gardens, really—with lawns stretching gently downhill miles into the distance. There were pools with fountains in them, overcome with mold, and paving stones laid in curling, graceful pathways, and trees marking the
grande allée
. White statues, stationed periodically, held graceful poses. Farther off, a long, substantial canal held water.

“It's modeled on Versailles,” said Miles. “My parents took me last year. Madame Arnaud must've been trying to re-create it, with her own stamp.”

We went down the somewhat-broken stairs to reach the lower terrace. I looked out into the distance—and my heart jolted.

“What's that?” I asked him, pointing to the small shape emerging from what looked to be a maze. Soon the shape was running; it was human. A toddler.

“What's he doing out here?” Miles asked.

I felt the contradiction of wanting to protect an untended infant and feeling pure terror that something wasn't right with it, that it was part of Madame Arnaud's menagerie.

“I wouldn't call it ‘he,' ” I said.

It ran toward us in the clumsy way of young children. It had a young rooster's fluff of black hair and still wore yesteryear's blowsy boy's tunic. When it was about forty yards away, it tumbled, and I gasped. It quickly rolled over and stood up again. Running straight toward us.

“Uh . . .” I said. I had no idea what I feared: the toddler's teeth, the unearthly howl that might emerge from its soft, milk-fed throat?

As it got closer, I saw the look on its face.
Not good
.

“Yeah, time to go,” Miles said.

We bolted. I kept turning my head to see the fervent progress of the pale, nearly translucent, child. I had seen the infrastructure under its face, the network of tired, emptied veins, the panels of bone and muscle . . . and the desperate wanting that was in its eyes. It wanted something from us.

As soon as we turned the corner to start down the adjoining wing, we slowed to a jog. There was no way the infant could pursue and catch us on its tiny, untried legs.

“What the hell
was
that?” asked Miles.

“You tell me.”

We collapsed onto a stone bench covered with the circuitous scrollwork snails had left behind.

“It was one of them,” I said. “One of Madame Arnaud's victims.”

“So he's not at rest.”

“Clearly!” I said. “The weird thing is, there were hundreds of tombstones for the kids. Why isn't this place crawling with ghosts?”

He didn't answer, and I heard my sentence linger in the air. “Am I really talking about ghosts?” I asked. “This is seriously what we're talking about?”

I remembered when he'd first told me about Madame Arnaud and I'd been so skeptical. I felt myself blushing—but it wasn't actually embarrassment, but something bigger, something tinged with queasiness and maybe even anger.

Miles narrowed his eyes at me. “Maybe there are ghosts here, but we can't see them. So why would that boy be any different?”

I released the breath I didn't know I was holding. Yes, we were seriously talking about ghosts.

“I wonder how long the poor kid has waited for someone to come talk to him,” I said.

“Poor kid? It looked like it wanted to kill us.”

“Maybe that's just because we're not used to seeing desperation so severe. Think about it. Based on his clothing style, he must have been haunting the backyard for hundreds of years.”

“You think he just wanted to talk to us?” Miles asked.

I didn't know how to answer. I watched the corner of the manor, wondering if we'd see the scrap of a child stagger around it, exhausted, but doggedly trying to catch up to us. And what would he say? Could he even talk yet?

“Let's keep going,” Miles said. We stood up and turned our backs to the possibility of interacting with the boy. We had another child to tend to: my sister.

 

Sitting glued to Tabby's side, I reflected that another day had passed without my showing proof to Mom and Steven. The pages in the den were gone: big surprise. And somehow we'd been deterred from returning to Eleanor's chamber to get her diary, which would explain everything. Now it was nighttime and I was back on vigilance duty, watching my sister sleeping cluelessly in her crib.

I was supposed to find a substitute, to keep Madame Arnaud from preying on Tabby. I could get Miles to take me in his car. I could look for the worst child, the bully at the school, the bastard who tortured animals. We could research it, find out which child was expendable. And then I'd . . .

Jesus. I couldn't even imagine it. Coaxing a child into the car for . . . my stomach lurched. I just wasn't capable of it, even if it would save my sister's life.

All it would do was buy Tabby time. Because undoubtedly, once Madame Arnaud was hungry again, she'd threaten Tabby again. And I'd have to find another child. I'd be stuck in the pattern until Tabby was too old for Madame Arnaud to want her.
Years
would go by.

I couldn't do it.

How many people, given the chance to save the life of a family member, would do whatever possible? They wouldn't even question it. They would just do it.

I'd never been more dangerous to the world than I was right now. I was walking on the thin crust of a lake covered in desultory ice. Below me, I could see the water rising up, ready to spring, willing to let that ice crack. The water wanted to welcome me into its cold and bracing arms.

On her grade sheet, our psych teacher had said Bethany and I never talked about what happens to undiagnosed patients. What danger they pose to themselves and others.

If this was all an out-of-control delusion, with an illusory Miles confirming it for me, what horrible deeds might I do, thinking I was doing the right thing?

We had moved here to England because I did something wrong, after all.

I'm a good person,
I told myself.
I might have made a mistake. But I'm a good person.

I pulled my mind out of the morass of circular thinking and focused on the little girl in the room with me. I could guard my sister; I could watch her intensely. Now that I knew Madame Arnaud was alive, I realized she was someone I could actually fight. As long as I didn't faint, that is.

All I could do was hover over Tabby so closely I was able to memorize every inch of her skin. I'd never noticed that one mole over by her ear, nor ever peered in that ear to see the tiny passageway with its slightly yellow walls. I counted her teeth and looked at the pale blue veins visible through the part in her scant hair.

Tabby woke from a nightmare, fussing, and Mom came back in for another lullaby. I felt like a voyeur during the tenderness of her song—the same one she'd sung to me basically until third grade. I know, embarrassing it went on so long, but honestly nothing else relaxed me so much as hearing that one brief song in my mom's light soprano voice.

But as her voice cracked over the phrase “and keep you safe, sweet child, till morn,” I fled. I ran back to my lime green room. Then I got confused.

I forgot. I forgot danger, forgot everything. I sat on my bed and I can't say where my mind went or what I was thinking. I bathed in nothingness. I couldn't connect my body and my mind . . . almost like swimming with gravity releasing its hold . . . but in a completely disorienting way that left me devoid of emotion.

I think that then I knew. But I pushed the thought away. Instead, I drifted, taking solace in the vacuum of sensation.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

Born: a son Louis Arnaud, April 14, 1722, to Isabelle and
Henri Arnaud. Henri along with several relatives moved here
from France last year, and a manor house has been built for
them on Auldkirk Lane.

 

—Grenshire Argus
birth announcement

T
he breakfast table.

I was sitting looking at Tabby's toast. It didn't interest me in the slightest. I had no hunger.

“Today's going to be one of the sad days,” Mom said. Steven froze with his coffee mug halfway to his lips. He set it down, stood up, and walked behind her chair, leaning over so his cheek rested on top of her head.

Something was so intimate, so private about them that I turned my face away.

“They're all sad,” he murmured.

“But today . . . it's debilitating. I can't watch Tabby. I just want to . . .”

“You can stay in bed all day,” promised Steven. “I'll watch her.”

She reached up a hand and he held it, his thumb caressing back and forth. Mom gave a guttural moan and her mouth shaped into a soundless rectangle—an expression I've never seen before on her face. It was like she was somewhere far beyond sadness, that mere sobbing was not enough to express her profound grief.

But when it did come, her sob was so catastrophic that I cried aloud myself in horror. What on earth had happened to Mom?

Steven was crying, too, quiet tears running down his face and into her hair.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” I said. It was me. I did something. I buried my face in my hands.

“It's not your fault,” said Steven. “You have to let go of that.”

“It
is,
” I said, muffled by my palms. I'd screwed up royally.

I couldn't handle seeing Mom so overcome; it just killed me. And Steven crying, too? That never happened.

I felt so sick the bile rose in my throat. This was the kind of pain nothing would ever heal, like a knife was in my chest, puncturing my lungs, making me fight for every breath past its heavy silver heft.

Misery settled into every cell of my body . . . nestling in with guilt. Together they rode my electrons and protons, terrible masters digging in the spurs.

I'd done something wrong.

What was it, though?

Looking at my mother's tortured face, I'd had enough. I had to figure this out, and
now
. I pushed past all the signals that told me to stop, that it was too hurtful to think about.

I had to know. I had to
know
.

Left arm, right arm, cleaving through the water with succinct splashes. Turn my head and breathe. Legs strong. Hips gently canting. All my bodily systems working in tandem.

Pushing with everything I had, my lungs on fire.
I can relax when it's over,
I was telling myself.
Push through the pain. Pain is temporary, but a win is forever
.

The swim meet against Berkeley High.

I remember this,
I marveled. Their lead girl had posted better times earlier in the season, but I knew I could beat her.
Every tenth of a second counts,
I was coaching myself.
Stretch those arms farther, grab as much pool as you can. Quick economical inhales every eighth stroke.
My lungs were burning. Every muscle was burning.

Then . . . the stars. The dizzy constellations behind my eyelids. There they were in all their bright and terrible splendor, a whole skyful taking over my vision. Too many to count, too many to comprehend.

Almost there,
I told myself.
Fight it off
.

Couldn't remember if I was close to the wall or not, praying for my fingers to touch the reassuring solidity of tiles. But all I felt was more water.

I was laid out, exposed and helpless, to the starred universe inside myself.

A mouthful of water.

I sank without a fight.

The water won, but I hadn't even tried. Instead, I had been stargazing, watching the cosmos in the loneliest of nights.

 

I couldn't bear to attend the autopsy, but I did hover in and listen later when the coroner told Mom and Steven it was long QT syndrome. My fainting spells had been real, were caused by a genetic mutation.

“If she hadn't fainted in the pool, it still would have been fatal,” he told them. “It slows the heart.”

Since there was water in my lungs, the true cause of my death was drowning, and that's what he told them he'd put on the death certificate. He meant it to be reassuring that I would've died anyway.

As I drifted away to process the news in private, like an animal buries itself in leaves to brood over an injury, I heard my mom ask, “If we'd sought medical advice and gotten her diagnosed . . .”

She couldn't continue, breaking down in tears. Steven finished the sentence for her. “If she'd been diagnosed, could she have lived?”

The coroner said very gently, “You'll need to talk to your doctor about that. This is a very rare syndrome and it would take an outside-the-box thinker to arrive at this diagnosis.” He paused for a long time. “But there are medications she could have taken to control the—”

She didn't let him finish. She screamed. She screamed one long, singular sound until every iota of breath had left her lungs.

Her lungs empty.

Mine full.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

The mood was high and the music brilliant at the recent fête
held at the Arnaud property in northern England. For many
attendees it was quite a drive into the wild. However, the gasps
upon arrival into the main hall made it clear that swaying in a
carriage for hours on end was certainly worthwhile. Lanterns
decorated the lavish grounds while flowers and rich
adornments were found in every inch of the interior, a massive
and luxurious manor decorated in the Continental style. After
the bustle of a busy Season, it was a pleasure to stop at the
Arnaud estate for one last hurrah before returning home.

 

—From the
London Social Whisper
, August 14, 1801

I
had a job to do.

I needed Miles's help.

My sweet friend Miles. I understood exactly now. I saw it all. I couldn't believe it had taken me so long to understand. I had to help him understand, too.

But where was he? Every time I'd ever seen him, something threw us together. I had no idea what that force was or how to harness it. How would I find him again? Every time I witlessly landed in his car's passenger seat, or joined him in the fast lane of the pool, I'd had nothing to do with it. It had just happened.

Well, if there's nowhere else to look, try inside yourself,
I thought.

Maybe I could call him to me by the sheer fervor of my desire to see him.

I closed my eyes and called to him in my mind.

“Miles, I need you, I need you. Please . . . come.”

I felt a stirring in the air surrounding me.

“Phoebe,” he said. I opened my eyes and he was there. We were in my lime bedroom. “Are you okay?” His voice held so much tenderness.

“I'm okay,” I said. I paused. “I'm working on ‘okay,' actually.”

He smiled at me uncertainly.

“Miles. Tell me what's on the other side of the bridge,” I said.

He looked at me, confused. “What bridge?”

“The one we always drive over,” I said. “You never want to turn right.”

He nodded, then shrugged. “There's nothing on the other side.”

“I think there is,” I said quietly. “What would we find if we turned the other direction?”

We were in the car now. The motor sounded scratchy, small.

“I've been trying to turn right,” he said in a tight voice.

“Since when?”

“Since I met you.”

Whoa
. I raised my eyebrows and took a closer look at him, hunched over the steering wheel, seemingly in agony.

“Yeah,” he said. “I've been trying to take that goddamn, bleeding turn since I met you!” He thumped his palm on the steering wheel. We were on the bridge now, the water sparkling beneath us like tinsel.

“Here it is, just slow down, just . . . Miles, you missed it!”

He had turned left. I looked at my hands, folded in my lap. This was so cruel of me.

“Do it over!” I insisted.

We were back on the bridge.

He decelerated, and actually began to turn the wheel to the right. But then he stopped the car completely.

“What is wrong with me?” he asked. I pointed to the right, where the field of flowers invitingly wafted in the wind.

“Turn right!” I said. I was firm. My eyes filled with tears, though, the minute he looked away.

The car began moving again. I put my hand out to help steer, but underneath my palm the steering wheel was already moving to the right. He was doing it.

The field was filled to tumult with towering foxglove and primrose. These flowers had caught the chance of a breeze that spread their seed, or bees that had made quick work of delivering pollen. Nothing was planned about this riotous spread of color, with oxeye daisies and pansies and wildflowers whose names I didn't know.

I noticed a huge ditch between the road and the field, somewhat hidden by the way the land fell. I was reflecting that in the U.S. there'd be guardrails here and you'd have to sign a form swearing you wouldn't litigate before they'd let you drive it.

I was about to turn and say this to Miles when he made a horrible sound, halfway between a sob and a scream. The look of horror on his face would have brought me to my knees if I'd been standing.

He must've taken his foot off the gas, because the car dramatically slowed. He lifted his hands off the wheel and pressed them to his face. The road was fairly straight, and the car drifted lightly to the edge of the ditch before coming, completely undriven and unoperated, to a stop. The heavy air, drooping with pollen, flooded through my open window.

Behind his hands, he was . . . I don't know . . . hyperventilating or crying in some strange hitch-of-his-breath way.

I tried to pry his hands from his face. “Miles, tell me,” I said. “I want to hear. I want to know how it happened.”

I don't know how long we sat there with me pleading for him to tell me. It could've been hours. The wind picked up and the steady droning sound of the bees working their way through the field ceased.

Twilight eased its way across my vision and I hovered with Miles in the flower-besotted darkness. Hovered, like an insect above the tassel of the bloom, ready to risk everything for just a bit of sweetness.

“I'm so sorry,” I murmured.

I pulled away and looked. Broad daylight again, sunlight dappling the foxglove and making a blaze of his windshield.

“You, too?” he asked.

I nodded. I reached out and ran a lingering hand down his jawline. He was so strong. I could tell he saw things differently now. Like I did. I saw the deadness in him.

“Car accident right here. The ditch isn't that bad, except for that rock.” He pointed it out. Then he pointed at his head.

I caressed his thick, dark hair. It had been covered in blood that day, and his skull had been a complex medley of pieces, but now he was handsome and whole again.

“Now I get it,” he said. “How everyone's been treating me. Or not treating me, I guess I should say.”

“I know,” I said. “I kept finding ways to explain it, but it was so awful to be ignored like that.”

“What . . .” He snorted, and gave me an apologetic smile. “There's no easy way to say this. What happened to you?”

“I had a rare syndrome that made me faint. I lost consciousness during a swim meet and drowned. All along, I thought I had done something bad, something that made us move here.” I paused. “I guess I did. I died.”

We sat there for a long time. Or maybe it was a short time, in the grand scheme of things.

“Gillian was with me when it happened,” he said. “She wasn't hurt badly. But that's why I haven't been able to break it off with her. She doesn't listen . . .”

“. . . because she can't,” I said.

“Right. And I could've proceeded anyway, except she was the one who was there. She held my hand when I died. Even though I couldn't bring myself to remember, I still felt some sense of gratefulness to her for that. And . . . well, guilt for putting her through it.”

I felt no jealousy. If death was a wide field of lonesome blankness, I couldn't begrudge him anything he felt for her. He leaned over and arranged my hair for me, tucking it behind my shoulders to fall free. He was inexpressibly tender, his eyes intent on mine the whole time. His fingertips barely touched my skin. I could hardly breathe.

The emotions were so intense that I buried my face in his neck. I took a few deep breaths against the warmth of his throat, feeling his chest pressed against mine, and then lifted my head.

“Is everyone like us?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he said.

I remembered a poem I'd studied last year in English class. It was by Emily Dickinson, and about someone who was riding around in a carriage not realizing they were dead. Kind of like Miles in his car.
Exactly
like it, actually.

The poem ends:

 

Since then 'tis centuries; but each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.

 

I got it now. The eternity. It happened to me on a moment-by-moment basis.

I was never going to be real, ever again. I was a ghost, a shadow. Someone who could reach through the living only with ineffective fingers. Someone who would talk to loved ones and never get an answer.

“We can worry about our own . . . status . . . later,” I said. “I still need to deal with Madame Arnaud. I know for sure she's real now. I'm not crazy, just . . .” My voice trailed off.

“I can understand why you thought you were crazy,” said Miles.

His hand was warm, to me anyway. I rubbed my fingers over the bones of his knuckles. He lifted our joined hands to hold my jaw and give me one sweet, quiet kiss.

I could have cried.

I straightened up. “We've got to get back to the manor,” I said. “My mom's already lost one daughter. I can't let her lose the other.”

But still we sat.

We drifted in our heads as a beehive was crafted, cell by cell, against the underside of Miles's rock, then decayed after generations of bees left for some more wholesome environment.

“You're right,” said Miles with a new edge of decisiveness. He turned the key in the ignition. I was amazed at his aliveness. “And who knows, maybe saving your sister is the thing we need to do to graduate, as it were. On to the next realm.”

I sat up straighter, reveling in how good it felt to again have a desire, a wish, something to do with myself other than ponder the sad and static fact of my own death.

I could be useful. I could help from where I was. The big sister reaching out a vaporous hand to help her infant sister.

“Let's go,” I said.