Haunted (5 page)

As soon as I got outside, the organ stopped mid-tune.

Silence. Except . . . from far away, the faintest hint of a laugh.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Paranoid delusions, with the idea that someone is watching you
or stalking you, can be a big part of schizophrenia.

 

—Class presentation excerpt,
Bethany Robb and Phoebe Irving

I
tore into the apartment, making little half-breath screams. They were in the kitchen, all three of them. Mom was chopping something while Steven entertained Tabby at the table.

“There's a ghost,” I shrieked. “She's living in the house and she's your ancestor, Steven, and she drank blood, and she . . .”

I went on and on, sobbing. I told them everything I'd seen—and what Miles had told me. Mom finished her chopping and came to sit at the table, staring at Tabby, this kind of grieved expression on her face. Clearly she didn't want Tabby to hear it and get scared. She just wanted me to shut up so she could pay attention to the kid that
did
matter.

Steven looked at me only once, then his gaze flickered back to Tabby.

It was always this way. When I'd told them about fainting over Richard Spees, Mom had actually laughed. “You sure know how to work yourself up,” she'd said at the time, and her face said the same thing now.

I felt a rush of frustration and rage, my cheeks flaming. Why didn't they
listen
to me? Because it was my fault we were here?

Mom used to listen to me, used to lay her cheek against mine and sit quietly while I told her things. Even when I was big, she'd pull me onto her lap and wrap her arms around me from behind. But that was before Tabby was born.

“You guys are just evil!” I said. “You don't—”

Before I could finish the sentence, something awful happened. Something wrenched me out of that kitchen and whistled me through time . . .
backward
.

I wound up back in California, a year or so ago, back in the same discussion I had been thinking about. The conversation about my fainting.

My breath halted in my throat.

What was going on?

Mom and Steven didn't react. To them, it was as if this were happening for the first time. They had the same expressions. Mom was wearing the Allo Oiseau dress she'd bought at the designer's rack sale, and her hair was falling out of her clip as she lightly scolded me.

“Maybe you should think about
why
this happened to you,” she was saying.

What? Why I had just traveled through time to this weird memory?

No
. I put my hands over my face. She meant I should think about why a fainting spell happened to me.

Panic welled up in me. Surely I was still in the Arnaud kitchen, telling them about Madame Arnaud? But this was San Francisco, with our sunny kitchen window giving a view of the backyard eucalyptus tree sloughing off its aromatic bark. I couldn't understand why I was stuck in some old, totally unimportant memory.

“We need to leave,” I pleaded.

“. . . need to take better care of yourself, Phoebe,” Steven was saying. “What did you have for lunch?”

The words came automatically to my mouth, although I wanted to talk about Madame Arnaud, and not what I'd eaten so long ago. “I bought a Caesar salad, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“You're not eating well,” Mom agreed. “It's easy to get light-headed if you're just eating lettuce.”

“Have chicken on it next time,” said Steven. “You're an athlete; you're burning calories.”

“And remember to breathe,” Mom teased, “when you're talking to a boy.”

I felt helpless. The fainting had nothing to do with food, with excitement. It was something my body did inexplicably.
Listen to me,
I tried to say, but Tabby derailed everything, like she did then, like she was doing now . . .

She had tried to get out of her chair and fallen, hitting her forehead on the table edge. Now she was crying wildly, while Steven hugged her and Mom leaned across the table with her arms extended, so he could hand her over.

Time skipped again while she leaned.

Her Allo Oiseau dress morphed into the simple red Old Navy sweatshirt she was wearing on top of jeans. The bright sunlight faded. The table was no longer our blond wood one that she and Steven had put on their wedding registry; it was now the dark oak of the Arnaud kitchen's. I was back. We were all back.

Steven handed Tabby to Mom. She soothed her youngest daughter with new words: words that hadn't come from previous conversations, from a different country.

I sank down into a chair opposite Steven. I was going crazy. I must have just had a psychotic episode. A memory had taken me by the throat and yanked me back to the past, while the present had become filmy, stepsister to the real.

What had happened here in the last ten minutes was just as terrifying as what had happened—if it did—with Madame Arnaud. I was losing my mind. I was losing my freaking mind.

Reeling, I watched them continue their everyday talk. And after I'd made sure the present was
staying,
and I wasn't going to shift somewhere else, I rose and went quietly back to my lime green bedroom.

I lay down on the bed without pulling back the covers. What was the use? I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway.

I rolled over onto my side and a paper in my pocket crinkled. Wiggling around a little, I was able to pull it out.

I read it while a headache built fortifications in my skull. Soon my head was throbbing as I stared at Bethany's careful handwriting, once so familiar to me. This was an explanation for what I'd seen in the old part of the manor . . . and for what had just happened in the kitchen. It made perfect sense.

The paper was a page from her notebook, notes she'd started to take for our presentation in psychology class. We hadn't gotten far, and that night we couldn't find this page, so we'd started over again on her laptop. I guess I hadn't worn these pants since then. Mom had packed them for me, not knowing I didn't like the way the waist sat.

The headache drove a mallet into my brain again and again.

I read the page a hundred times.

And then I read it again.

I was swimming. Miles wasn't there and I couldn't see anyone else, either. The pool was dark and silent, no splashing sounds. The lighting was so dim I forced myself to relax into it, absorbed by the familiar sensations of my body threading the water's needle.

I don't know how long this lasted. Hours, maybe. Then the lights came on and someone entered, setting up cones for the lanes. Shortly afterward, children trickled in and took a swim class from the lifeguard who'd opened the pool up.

I treaded water and watched them for a long time, remembering my first lessons and how initially I'd been terrified to put my face in the water. Their serious faces were so heartbreaking as they kicked their stubby legs and swam back to their mothers. The class ended. The high ceiling echoed with their talk as they headed back to the locker room, and the pool settled.

I was alone again, a single flower in a dark blue field. Free swim began and I pulled myself out to make room in the lane for those lean-bodied adults who came, swam steadily, then toweled off and left.

I stayed forever, watching swimmers come and go. None of them were Miles. I had to admit that was why I'd lingered, although I couldn't remember when I'd asked Mom to come pick me up. Or maybe they'd lent me the car? No: I would've remembered my first time driving on the left side of the road.

You're losing your grip again
, I thought, and shivered. Which reminded me I'd never dried off, sitting there dripping on the cold tile.

I stood and stretched. Miles wasn't coming.

 

I walked into the kitchen and they were all eating dinner.
Oh crap.
Setting the table was my job. Mom must've called me and I didn't hear her . . . and in these post-screw-up days, I wasn't given extra chances. She had set the table and deliberately didn't set a place for me.

“I'm really sorry, I didn't hear you calling me,” I said.

Mom said nothing, just swabbed at some applesauce Tabby had pushed over the edge of her plastic bunny plate.

“I feel like a jerk,” I said. “I didn't mean to forget my job.”

“I'll set the table from now on,” said Steven.

“No!” I said. “I can do it. I honestly didn't hear you. The acoustics here are really weird.”

“Oh, Steven,” said Mom. “That's sweet of you. One less thing to . . .” Her voice drifted off.

“Seriously! It's not a big deal. I just didn't hear you!” I protested.

They were studiously ignoring me. Such is the fate of the teen who has let down her family. My eyes filled with tears, and I turned around and went back to my room. I wasn't hungry. I didn't need dinnertime chatter. I sat on my bed and imagined a window where no window existed: I let curtains billow in a breeze and send the fragrance of roses to me. I calmed. I didn't even end up crying. I would just have to make a better effort from now on. Try harder.

 

Nighttime.

Tabby woke up crying and I listened through the wall as Mom went in and changed her diaper and sang her one more lullaby.

I'd been awake for hours, thinking about what I'd experienced: seeing Madame Arnaud although I knew I hadn't, spending hours at the pool in a weird daze. Even the simple example of forgetting to set the table.

They had meds for this kind of thing. I could ask Mom to make me an appointment. I'd be assertive with her, and I wouldn't let Tabby get in the way of saying what I needed to. This time I'd be completely clear, and I wouldn't let anything divert me from talking to her.
I need to see someone,
I'd say.
A therapist. I'm seeing things, Mom.

I wished I could call Bethany, but I hadn't charged my cell and it was dead. She'd be cycling through Web pages to find me the best therapist, and the whole time she'd be babbling and laughing so I wouldn't feel bad. “You know, you didn't have to develop schizophrenia just because we did a report on it,” she'd tease. “I know you're super scholarly, but no one expects that.”

I stretched out on my bed, feeling an ache for her and for my life back in California. Everything was
light
back there. England didn't even offer windows.

I kept mentally rehearsing what I'd say to Mom.
I just don't feel right, and I think I need help.
I imagined the look on Mom's face as she tried to process the idea that her daughter had mental issues. In my vision, her face instantly relaxed as Tabby came up and hugged her legs. She bent, picked her up, and asked her if she was hungry.
No!
I shouted in my imagination.
Listen to me! Listen to me for once! I need help!

I'd tell her in the morning.

Why wait?
I imagined Bethany saying. She was right. Based on the silence from the room next door, Tabby was back asleep and Mom had left. I got off the bed and left my room, walking past Tabby's room where she slept, kneeling with her butt in the air, the puffiness of her diaper making her body look like a loaf of bread. I smiled in at her. She was a good kid. It wasn't her fault she got all the attention.

I continued down the hallway and turned the corner.

Panic stabbed my brain. I tried to scream but all I managed was a raw sob.

Madame Arnaud blocked my way. This time she was pretty, with porcelain skin and dark black hair. But somehow her beauty was worse than seeing her real self, more deceptive and conniving. I could dimly hear the television from the living room. Mom and Steven were close by but completely unaware.

Madame Arnaud's carmine skirts were as wide as the hall, and the embroidery on her bodice was dazzlingly elaborate. She exuded wealth. She was a bold, pestilent velvet blotch, her pallor kin to the porcelain-colored walls. I tried to back away, but couldn't.

As she walked toward me, her hair moved slightly; a nest of spiders seethed in her coiffure. One of the larger spiders crawled out of her hair and down her forehead, its legs slow and solid as it crossed the plane of her pale brow. It resembled a beauty spot, like the ones French nobles pasted onto their cheeks, but this one was alive. She didn't notice.

I tried to scream, tried to move, but I was frozen. The hall filled with the sound of my heartbeat. It seemed like the walls trembled to the sound, my pulse dictating the way the house throbbed.

She's not there,
I told myself.
You need medication. You're hallucinating.

She stopped and stared at me. My heart skipped a beat, and so did the walls, lurching after a delayed second.

Her eyes widened in recognition and hatred.

She lifted her lip in a sneer. I imagined that to her I was a commoner worth no more than a maggot that has surged to the forefront of its popping, headless cousins.