Time Windows (15 page)

"So then today, when I'm wearing my new shirt and planning to come over to see you, you arrive at our door and finally seem to want to be friends! You even invite me over—okay, me and Buddy, but he more or less invited himself, right? I start thinking, good, maybe she really does like boys. Maybe she'll even come out to see a movie. But then you get all weird again. And do you know when you got weird? When we started talking about this dollhouse, is when." He ran out of breath and sat there, searching her face, his own expression serious.

Miranda laughed weakly. What was she supposed to say to all this? "So—you want to know if I'll go to a movie with you? What's playing?"

"Forget that for now," he said. "First of all, I want to know what's going on with you." He sounded determined to get what he wanted, and Miranda felt a flicker of panic.

She fought it down. "Listen," she told him. "You won't believe me in a million years. You'll think I'm totally insane."

"Yeah, a real lunatic. But I'm all ears."

She stood up and paced restlessly around the attic. What did she have to lose? So what if he thought she was crazy? She had been alone with the dollhouse for too long now. Its magic had stopped being an exciting secret and was becoming a burden. She still didn't know why she had this power to see the past, and she didn't have a clue about what she was supposed to
do
with the power. Just watch? Or something more? Maybe Dan would have some ideas.

Don't tell!
the dollhouse seemed to shriek—but another voice, one in her own head, cried:
Yes!

"Okay, then, listen. It all began when we moved here—at least part of it began then..."

Dan settled himself on the cushions. He watched Miranda move around the room, but he did not speak.

She told him the whole story, beginning with the very first night in the new house when she had peered through the dollhouse attic windows and seen the dressmaker's dummy. She told him about the Kramers and the Galworthys—all she knew of their lives from the scenes she saw. She explained how she could sit there behind the house for hours, watching.

"I asked Buddy to look through the windows because he's sensitive to the atmosphere, somehow," she concluded. "But he didn't see anything. He just felt frightened—and you'd better not laugh at him, because I've felt frightened, too. It's an unbelievable thing to be able to see the past through the dollhouse, and it makes me feel very lonely to know that it's only happening to me. That I'm all alone in this."

She sat back down on the floor near the dollhouse and fell silent.

Dan traced a floorboard with his finger. "It's impossible," he murmured.

"See? I knew you wouldn't believe me!"

"It sounds like science fiction. It's not that I think you're lying—at least, you have no reason to lie to me. But I think you must be mistaken, somehow. What you think you see isn't really there."

"Oh, I get it—I'm not lying, just hallucinating! You believe I believe I see what I see. Thanks a lot."

"You make it so complicated," he said.

"Listen, I see what I see because it's
there!
" She frowned at him. "Or was there. But I know I'm not crazy." She wondered if maybe she were, if maybe feeling sane had nothing to do with whether you were crazy or not. But no, no. Aunt Belle had felt something in the house. And Nicole. And Buddy...

Dan touched her on the knee. "Mandy, I'd love to believe you. It's the whole business of time travel, you know. The subject fascinates me. But it's science fiction! I'd have to see something for myself to believe what you're saying."

"Then you don't believe in what you can't see?"

"Right."

"Then you don't believe in electricity—or sound waves, or molecules—or even God!"

He looked away. "It's not the same thing at all."

"It is exactly the same!"

Dan frowned and rubbed his temples. Then he sat back and looked at her. A slow smile spread across his face. "Okay, Mandy. How about this? We'll do an experiment to prove you really see into the past."

"But I've already done one." She explained how she had put the crumpled newspaper balls on the floor in front of the house and how when she looked through the windows from the other side, she'd seen Dorothy in the attic playroom. But when she'd put the balls in the dollhouse itself and looked in at them, she saw only the paper.

"Yeah, yeah," said Dan impatiently. "But that only proved things to
you.
My experiment will prove it to me, too."

Miranda listened to his plan. It seemed easy enough. She was to look into the Galworthy house and describe to him exactly what she saw—paying special attention to furniture and household items.

"You see," Dan continued, "it seems to me that if you're really seeing into the Galworthys' house as it was in 1904, some of the things you describe will match pieces in our museum. I don't know much about the Galworthys, but I do know a lot about the museum. I know that before old Sigmund Galworthy locked up the house and left Garnet for good, he gave a lot of his family's belongings to my ancestors—the ones who let him stay in our house."

Miranda felt excited. "I get it! You'll check in the museum to see if any of the things I see are there. What a great idea!"

Dan smiled modestly. "Oh, it was nothing. Wait till you hear about some of my better ideas."

She relaxed next to him, feeling better about the whole mystery and about him, too. "Let's wait and see if it works, first, before I award you a Nobel Prize."

"We could win one for this. We really could!" he grinned. "Think of it—we'll have proved you can see what no one can possibly see—into another time!"

"When I asked about it at your house this morning, everyone seemed to agree that time travel is impossible."

"It's not actually time travel, though, is it?" mused Dan. "I mean, even if what you say is true, you don't actually
go
anywhere. It's more like—like museum exhibits! As if time were preserved in a case for you to look back on."

A shiver pounced up Miranda's back. "But why me?" she pressed.

Dan gave her a long, measured look. "Because you've got great legs?"

She threw a pillow at him.

Her parents' bedroom was dim when Miranda peeked in after lunch. Helen lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling.

"How are you feeling?" asked Miranda.

"Better," Helen answered with a trace of the smile she used to have before moving to Garnet. "Sit down, Mandy." She patted the bed and pulled a pillow behind her head.

"What is it?"

Her mother answered with another question. "What were you doing up in the attic?"

"Talking to Dan Hooton. He just left."

"I'm glad you're getting to know the neighbors, honey—but why in the attic?"

"We were looking around for the secret room that Mrs. Wainwright says is here somewhere." She re-counted the story of the airtight room and the fugitives who had almost died there.

Helen shut her eyes for a moment. "What a close call! Those poor people!" She rearranged the pillow under her head. "Listen, Mandy. It's fine with me if you and Dan want to explore the house. But I don't like the attic. I don't want you going up there."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know." She adjusted the pillow again. "I just don't like this house anymore. It's a strange atmosphere—don't you feel it? A ... waiting atmosphere. As if someone were waiting for something."

"Waiting for what?" cried Miranda. "Oh, Mither—"

"Waiting and brooding," said Helen slowly "Poor Belle was right, I'm afraid."

"I don't think anyone is ... waiting."

"Belle warned me that something was wrong with the house—she said we should leave. I got a letter from her yesterday. She said she has no other explanation for what happened to her here, but everything is back to normal since they left this place."

"Mither, you're scaring me!"

"I always have headaches here," continued Helen, as if she hadn't heard Miranda. "I never used to be sick at all in New York. Sometimes I feel so ... strange here. Not like myself at all. I forget things. Little things like your tomato sandwich. For some reason I felt sure you didn't like tomatoes. And I get these angry flashes of wanting something I can't have, but then when I really think about it, I don't know what it is I want! I had a fight with Dad this morning while you were gone—I was furious he wouldn't let me have a job. Mandy, what I was saying was crazy! My work is why we moved to Garnet. I have a career I love! I wasn't making any sense at all." She fingered the sheet, pleating it. "These days I always feel like I'm going in and out of a fog."

Miranda froze. Lucinda. Iris. Her own mother? All having headaches. All disliking the house, wanting to leave. All, unbelievably, making some kind of fuss about tomatoes. And now this business about jobs...

She stretched out a hand and smoothed back her mother's hair. "Don't worry, Mither. Don't worry." She said it as much to comfort herself as to reassure her mother.

"Stay out of the attic, Mandy. Promise me."

Miranda hesitated. "I can't," she said gently. "I don't get headaches and I'm feeling fine. There's no reason for me to stay out of anywhere."

Helen sighed and sank even further into her pillow. "I suppose you're right. I'm letting my imagination get the better of me." She closed her eyes wearily. "I'm just so sorry we moved here."

Miranda stared at her for a moment, then left the room. She walked quickly up the attic stairs.

 

Miranda searched for the Galworthys but encountered Kramers instead in every room, in every season. After a few minutes of changing from room to room, she gave up trying to find the Galworthys and resigned herself to the Kramers' attic. Dan's experiment would have to wait.

Timmy and Jeff Kramer, dressed in pajamas and slippers, stood in the middle of the black-curtained attic, howling. Jeff ran to the door and pounded his fists on it. After a minute or two the crying subsided. Jeff stopped his pounding, and Timmy stopped kicking the floor. They sat together quietly.

"I hate her, I hate her, I hate her," Timmy whispered fiercely. He turned on his brother. "If you hadn't spilled her perfume, we wouldn't be here!"

Jeff began to cry. "I didn't spill it! She only
said
I took it, but I didn't!"

"Yeah, but then you went and said I must have spilled it! Liar! Liar! Jeff is a liar!" His voice rose in a hysterical singsong.

"You shut up!" cried Jeff, and he pounded on the door again. After a second, Timmy joined in, and the din grew thunderous. "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!"

Just as Miranda noticed the sturdy new latch that had been installed on the door, the door flew open, sending both little boys sprawling. Iris Kramer, her hair wild, stormed in on a wave of magnolia perfume.

"I've had it with you, you little brats! Any more nonsense out of you and you'll stay up here all night!"

Miranda clenched her hands into fists. She had seen this before, heard this before, even
smelted
this before.

Timmy and Jeff began to cry again as Iris towered over them, her hand raised to strike.

"Don't hurt me, Mommy!" screamed Timmy.

A doorbell, very faint, chimed downstairs. Iris paused "Any more noise out of you two and you'll really answer for it," she said coldly and walked to the door. Far away, the door chimes sounded again. The attic door closed; Miranda heard the scrape of the new latch. She felt sick.

"I'm scared," whimpered Jeff.

Timmy sat up. "Don't cry, Jeff. Don't cry. Daddy has just gone to the town meeting. He'll come home soon and let us out."

"Mommy said Daddy will spank us!"

"You know he won't. Mommy just said that because she has a headache."

"She always has a headache," said Jeff. "She didn't used to."

"She doesn't like it here. She wants to move and get a job."

"Mommies don't have jobs! They have to stay home with their children."

"Well, she wants a job. I heard her tell Daddy the house gives her a headache. If she had a job she wouldn't have to be home."

"I don't like it here, either!" Jeff peered around him. "Timmy! It's dark in here!"

"Shh! It's all right."

"It's dark, it's dark!" Jeff's cries took on a note of panic as his fear of the dark closed in on him. He ran to the door and had raised his fists to hammer again, when Timmy caught his arms.

"No," he said softly. "Do you want
her
to come up again?"

Jeff lowered his arms and burst into fresh sobs. Timmy searched his pockets. "Look, don't cry. Look!" He held up a box of matches. "Light! I found these on Daddy's desk. We can make a torch."

Jeff brightened. "We can make a fire?"

"We could light up some of those old papers—roll them up, you know, into a big stick to carry around."

"Yeah, okay!"

They set to work gathering the yellowed newspapers and twisting them into tight rolls. "Just like Daddy makes to light the fire in the fireplace," observed Jeff, perking up.

Timmy considered this. "You know, we could probably build a fireplace out of those old suitcases in the corner."

Miranda refrained from closing her eyes, not wanting to lose the scene. She feared for the little boys' safety—feared she was about to witness the fire that blackened the attic so long ago. If only she had some way to warn the boys of the danger!

Timmy and Jeff soon had a small blaze going in the corner. They fed it with bits of newspaper. "There," said Jeff, satisfied with their work.

"Now it isn't dark," added Timmy after a while.

A tongue of flame lapped around Timmy's slipper, and Miranda sucked in her breath. Those stupid kids! "Watch out!" she shouted, forgetting they couldn't hear her. Timmy moved his foot and stamped out the small flame. He fed another twist of paper to the fire.

"You know, the fireplace downstairs has a chimney," he said to Jeff, looking rather concerned about the smoke that now swirled around them. "Maybe we should try to make one, too?"

But Jeff wasn't listening. "Hey, come here!" he called, waving his brother over to the wall. "Look at this little crack in the floor!"