Haunted (9 page)

“It rises in spring,” commented Miles tightly. “Even overflows sometimes.”

Oh my God, I was hallucinating again. I was like those people Bethany and I had written our schizophrenia report on. My eyes filled with tears, and I tried to keep that from him. Although . . . was he even there?

On the other side of the bridge, I saw a field of wildflowers, but Miles turned left, toward the woods instead. The flowers lured me with their brilliant scarlets and golden hues. Sirens wafting fragrance to me.

“Go back!” I said. “Those were so pretty.”

“No thanks.”

I almost insisted, but I was like a leaf being carried by that low river, twirling and snagging on rocks, then freeing myself and floating farther.

He drove until it fell dark. We didn't talk. We kept circling around and driving over the bridge. Now and then, he glanced over at me, but it didn't seem like he wanted to talk. He turned on the radio and I relaxed into his music, closing my eyes.

Eventually I remembered.

I had to get back to the manor to help protect Tabby. I had to show Mom and Steven the automatic writing pages.

“Miles?” I said. “We need to go back.” He turned to look at me, his mouth opening to reply, and then—

Then instantly I was
there,
crouched at Tabby's crib, gripping the bars like I was a prisoner. He was gone.

What was happening to me? How could I be in her room when a second ago I was with Miles? I whimpered, watching my sister sleep, innocent and harmless as a baby mouse still blind from birthing. I wasn't in control anymore. My body operated according to someone else's dictates. I was a rat carried from cage to maze by the scientist.

That was a dream,
I told myself.
Miles and the car were a dream. I've been here the whole time.

So . . . had we really been in the library looking at the portrait in the book? And reading Eleanor Darrow's diary?

Of course. That had to be real. I couldn't imagine to that degree of specificity. That part had happened, the library and Eleanor's slow, written recitation of terrible details. The fact that Madame Arnaud was
alive
.

I frantically began to assemble explanations.

I must've fallen asleep in the car, and Miles drove me back to the manor. But what about when I'd spaced out while Madame Arnaud was sitting there writing pages next to me, taunting me?

I'd give anything to be in control again. It wasn't fair.

I let go of Tabby's crib bars and took a seat on the nearby armchair.

Eleanor had said evil was in the very stones of the manor. I pictured the workmen who quarried and stacked those stones returning home after the day's labor. Heavy perspiration turned their shirts a darker color. They must have kissed their wives with delicate embraces so as not to get them sweaty, washed up at a tin bucket and changed their clothes so they could tickle their children and talk about the day. They tipped back a pint of ale, hardly aware that they were building the cage for a monster.

Those men had no idea that when Madame Arnaud unpacked all the trunks of finery from France and began her new empire, she would turn her eye to the sprites of the family, the little elves that made their parents laugh. She'd scoop up the ones who crawled upon the floor before they could toddle to standing and point at things: the cat, the candle, the fireplace, the woman in the mirror with blood staining her teeth.

 

As soon as it was morning and I heard Steven's shower running, I let out a sob. I could relax my vigilance. Tabby had made it through the night just fine. It was time to go gather up the automatic writing pages from the office where Miles and I had left them and show them to Mom.

I padded down the hallway with its runner of gold shag, and made my way to the den. I entered and instantly saw that the half-moon of pages was missing. No sign of it, and Steven's printer tray and pencil cup looked untouched.

I stood like a statue. I had known all along they would be gone. Madame Arnaud was alive. She didn't need my body to write. She'd written those pages while I daydreamed, and after I'd read them, she'd scooped them up and taken them away. She knew I would use them to convince Mom and Steven to leave Grenshire, taking Tabby with us.

But for some reason she wanted me to read them. She wanted to communicate with me.

All of a sudden, my heart leapt. Maybe Mom or Steven
had
found them—maybe Steven had been in here last night to use his computer and gathered up the pages!

I raced back up the hallway. I peeked in Tabby's room on the way: still asleep. I walked into the master bedroom where, surprisingly, Mom was still dozing, too. Since Steven was in the shower, she'd taken advantage and sprawled over onto his side. She lay there like a starfish stretched to its utmost.

I looked around the room, listening to the water run in the bathroom as Steven showered. He was humming to himself. Their closet door was open and I snapped my head away. I had a bad feeling about that closet.

I didn't see the papers anywhere.

Back in my own room, I searched more. Were the pages here? Had Steven left them while I'd spent the night crouched at Tabby's crib?

No sign of them. I sat down on my bed and let my thoughts swarm.

I sat there, long past when the water stopped, long past when Tabby woke up and Mom rushed down the hallway to her, muttering, “I'm coming, I'm coming” . . . just
long
. A long time.

I didn't understand anything.

I had a flash of memory—I'd done something.
Bad.
Whatever it was that made us leave California.

I inhaled quickly.

The sensation was gone.

If I could just access that brief half second of information. . . it was like a déjà vu. Something that some obscure corner of my mind remembered, but not the rest.

“Miles,” I said. “I can't remember stuff.”

We were at the pool again. My feet touched the bottom, scraping along the ragged surface of the painted concrete. We were both up to our chins, two disembodied heads floating. I wasn't wearing my swim cap, and my hair tugged slightly in the water, unfurling around my neck.

“It's okay,” he said. “Just focus on one thing at a time. We've got to get your family out of the manor.”

“Madame Arnaud took the pages away,” I said.

“We'll show them Eleanor's diary, then.”

“Don't you think she would have stolen that, too? Did I put it back in the secret drawer?”

“I don't remember,” he admitted.

I swore. We were bungling idiots trying to save my sister. And here we were
swimming
?
Fantastic vigilance,
I told myself.
You're like Lincoln's bodyguard who fell asleep at Ford's Theatre,
a fact I remembered from some long-ago history class.

Miles lifted a dripping hand from the depths to brush some of my wet hair up and away from my cheek.

With a mixture of tenderness and sexiness, his fingers massaged the back of my neck. My head tipped back, my neck arching.

Wow,
I thought.
This is happening
?

He took a step closer. Water lapped against my shoulders from the motion. He opened his lips and I did the same, lifting my chin for him.

The gentle hand on my neck grew firm, pulling me closer. I lifted my arms from the heaviness of the water and wrapped them around him. He lowered his head and kissed me leisurely. Water tickled at my earlobe as I curled my body into his embrace.

His tongue was warm, but his lips were cold from the pool, a combination that made me crazy with arousal. My nipples hardened against his bare chest, with my swimsuit a scant barrier between us. My thighs grazed his. I pressed against him, unable to stop myself. We were so close, skin to skin.

But then he pulled away. I shivered in the cold water without his body heat.

“I shouldn't have done that,” he said.

“It's okay,” I said stiffly. I wiped water off my forehead and wrung out my hair, anything to not have to look him in the eye.

“I have to go,” he said, his voice sounding raw and emotional. “I'm really sorry. I feel awful.”

He turned and dove under the surface, and in one long push he was at the edge of the pool. He pulled himself up without looking at me and walked away, water streaming down his swim trunks and large calves.

I stayed in the water feeling stupid. Had anyone seen him kiss me and stalk off afterward? I looked around but no one seemed to pay any attention, everyone still doing their laps and messing around with their kids in the shallow end. No one had seen the newcomer so blatantly humiliated.

What had I done wrong?

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Of particular interest to the simple townsfolk who, with
widened eyes, ogled the shipload after shipload of arriving
treasures, was the Hall of Ancestors, a portrait gallery on the
top floor of the west wing. Pictured here are several notable
examples, particularly one featuring the mistress of the
residence herself, Yolande Arnaud, painted by French royal
portraitist Hyacinthe Rigaud.

 

—From
England: Her Cities, Her Towns, Her Pride,
Vol. XII

T
hat night, I watched Tabby sleep again. What else could I do?

Periodically she flopped noisily from one side to the other, kicking her feet free of the blanket. Then she'd sigh and drowsily pull it back up. My own eyelids never closed.

Deep shame seethed through me as I stared at the pajama sleeve covering her puncture mark.

Hours later, she woke and Mom spirited her away for breakfast. If not for that marker, I'd have no idea what time of day it was. Without windows to note the sun's progress, I was at a loss. Once again I thought how strange it was that there were windows on only one side of the apartment, that our living quarters nested inside the manor like those stout, wooden, kerchief-wearing Russian dolls, each smaller than the one it fit into.

I walked down the hall. I was going to go back to find Eleanor Darrow's diary, and if it wasn't there, I'd try the automatic writing again—Madame Arnaud's version of it. I'd invite her to write to me again.

But as soon as I walked past the den, I saw them. Pages carefully placed on the rug in a row like color samples.

The sheets were riddled with her slanted, aristocratic handwriting. This time she'd done me the favor of numbering them.

Oh, Phoebe, how droll you are!
Madame Arnaud had written.

I stopped reading for a second. She was talking about the silver straw as if I hadn't heard of it before . . . which meant she had not been privy to my conversation with Miles as we read Eleanor Darrow's diary.

I stopped, my heart racing. It was one thing to see my own name in that dreadful handwriting, but it was terrifying to have her refer to Tabby. She had earned my sister's trust . . . enough that Tabby permitted her to place the straw into her arm. Tabby didn't scream or cry to wake up Mom; she probably just made a face until it was over. My little defenseless sister, and I was doing nothing to help her.

The pages continued . . .

Oh my God.

She meant for me to help her get other children.

In return for Tabby's life.

No way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way.

No goddamn way.

But . . . if it saved Tabby?

She wanted me to . . . to, what? Go into town and snatch a child? Pull a kid into the car and drive off?

I left the pages there. It didn't matter. Like she'd said, Mom and Steven would think I'd written it, with my big imagination and my teacher-endorsed creative writing talent.

My head was so dizzy, my gut so filled with spinning nausea, that I stumbled a little on my way out of the room. The evil I faced was so much more powerful than anything I could fight.

I couldn't convince Mom and Steven there was danger here.

I couldn't therefore get Tabby out of danger.

I was going to have to watch Madame Arnaud murder her.

Unless I could offer up someone else's child.

 

I emerged from the claustrophobia of the manor and dragged in several welcome breaths of untainted air.

But it
was
tainted. The winds on these grounds obeyed Madame Arnaud. They blew when she wanted. I looked to the thick covering of woods, which was keeping Madame Arnaud's secrets for her.

If only we had never come here. We'd still be in California, and the halls of the Arnaud Manor would steadily accrue their layers of dust.

What
had
I done? I watched a few leaves skitter across my shoes. Was it something Bethany and I did? Why did I get in trouble and she didn't?

I tried to cast my mind back to that faraway place, that world where my worst worry was whether the mole in my cleavage could be seen in the shirt I was wearing. Had I maybe . . . partied too hard and screwed up somehow? Blacked out so I didn't remember? I wasn't a big drinker and definitely no drugs—I couldn't run the risk of getting kicked off the swim team—and Bethany was always with me; we kept an eye on each other so we didn't get into trouble with guys. Bethany would've kept anything from happening.

I focused and tried harder, fixing my gaze on the upper roofline of the manor. What were those called: crenellations? ramparts? I used to have a plastic bucket that created those rectangular cutouts in the sand castles I made with it. For a moment, I remembered sitting on the sand at Stinson Beach, a child packing wet sand into the bottom of that bucket, hoping the shape would hold, that the castle walls wouldn't fail and slide like salt settling in a shaker.

Maybe it had something to do with Richard Spees.

I bit my lip and walked away from the manor, feeling it at my back like someone about to tap my shoulder.
Leave me alone,
I thought.
I've had all I can take
.

I could walk into town, leave all this behind. I could follow that twisting roadway until Miles pulled up to me in his car, grinning and leaning across to open the door for me. Except that he wouldn't. He'd kissed me and then run away like he was horrified.

I kept walking. I noted the ruins of a gate I hadn't seen before, that had once blocked the way to the manor—someone had chipped away at it to reopen the drive, and left a pile of the bricks by the side. Where was one of those hallucinatory episodes, to rescue me? Couldn't my mind zap me to the pool, or send me to the flower field just over the bridge that Miles wouldn't drive to? For once, I wanted to be yanked away; I would gladly give up control. I just wanted to be somewhere,
anywhere
else.

I left the driveway and cut through the trees. I heard a single bird issue a strident whistle. The trees had impressive root systems that gnarled through the dirt like ragged-skin serpents, making it difficult to walk without stepping up and over them.

I came into a small clearing. In the middle, I saw a little stone cottage nestled amid thick foliage. My jaw dropped; Steven had said there weren't any neighbors for miles around.

This was a tall structure, but its facade was meant to emphasize its coziness. It looked a bit like a grotto, with handpicked rocks hewn into place to suit each other. Moss grew over the stones. There was one small wooden entrance, curved like a chapel door, with a brief set of stone steps leading up to it. Ever since I was a child, I had pictured Hansel and Gretel's cottage as something wooden with a thatched roof, but now I was rethinking that. They might live in a stone cottage such as this, in the very heart of the woods, where inside they baked bread, never dreaming their father would push them into the wild.

I climbed the flight of stairs. I don't know what I was thinking, that I'd just knock on the door and introduce myself? Ask for help fighting Madame Arnaud? I reached out and turned the doorknob, made of a single, perfectly round gray stone.

The door was unlocked.

A wave of strong emotion came over me. My heart started pounding. I left the door slightly ajar and ran down the steps. I sprinted until I felt far enough away from the house to really see it. I turned and looked.

The tiny cottage . . . not so tiny. The huge panel of rock, I could now see, rose several stories. The roof towered far above. I began to suspect something.

I ran around to the side of the house, and what I had feared was true. Behind the charming little facade stretched a
lot
more house. Eons of stone, a quarry's worth. I was just at the head of the snake.

It wasn't just any house. I had stumbled across the entrance to the western wing of the Arnaud Manor.

I inhaled through the sensation of panic; maybe I could push it back. I stood without moving for probably ten minutes, looking at the western wing that had so nearly deceived me.

Climb to the roof,
said someone.

It didn't even sound like the voice in my head.

At each corner of this wing's facade, the stones met and overhung each other, protruding at different lengths to form a sort of staircase to the roof.

Climb
.

Then I was doing just that, my hands finding straightforward purchase in the cross-hatched stones. It was unbelievably easy, like someone had devised a false Mount Everest so anyone could climb it. The notches in the stones were large enough that both my feet could rest on them securely before I reached to the next level and pulled myself up.

I stretched my arms overhead—just the perfect distance to have to stretch a little, but not so far that it was difficult—to grasp the stone above me and lever myself up. My body was used to stretching like this. When I swam the freestyle stroke, I always tried to stretch each arm just a bit farther than it wanted to go, to lengthen my stride and increase my speed. The stones were warm against my palms.

Somehow, in the honest effort of climbing, I relaxed.

On the roof, I stood looking in all four directions and saw how amazingly isolated the house was. Despite the fact that cities were booming and populations were out of control in other parts of the world, here Steven's family had a monopoly on miles and miles of land. From this vantage point I couldn't see all of the grounds, but could see the footprint of the manor and a colossal glass tower, like a goblet resting on the roof.