Amber House (36 page)

The darkness was growing. The room was tilting backward, a house in a tornado. The smoke girl went up the floor to the door, where she stopped to look back down at me. Then she too was gone.

“He was not Matty; she was not Sarah,” the lady said, sorrowful.

“I’m Sarah,” I said, laying my head on the woven rag rug in the room of red and white and yellow.

The beautiful lady knelt beside me, to stroke my cheek. “Sarah,” she said, as if seeing me for the first time. “Sarah-Louise.”

Once
, I thought dully,
I’d been Sarah-Louise. But that had been a dream, hadn’t it?
One more person who needs to wake, I realized with dreadful reluctance. I felt like crying. My tongue moved thickly. “I’m not,” I said. “Your daughter.”

“My daughter,” the lady said softly, her touch light on my head. I couldn’t remember being touched like that before. So sweet. So gentle. A good mother’s touch —

“No!” I tried to shout, but it came out a whisper. It hurt to speak, and tears leaked from my eyes. But I had to try. “Not — daughter.”
What was the other thing? Oh, yes.
“You. Are sleeping.”

“Sleeping?” She looked at me, uncomprehending.
Stupid woman.

“Just a dream.” I wanted just to dream. The salt of my tears reached the corner of my lips. A real thing. I jerked my head up again. “Sarah-Louise. Holding your hand. Can’t you feel her?”

“I feel you, my sweet girl,” she said.

“Wake up,” I snarled. I had hardly any air left to make words. “She needs you. She’s afraid. Of the Captain.”

“I’m afraid of the Captain.”

“Have to. Help her.”
Wake up!
“She needs. Her mother.”

“She needs her good mother,” she repeated. “Yes.” And then understanding finally reached her eyes. “My God. What have I done? I made myself forget, but — she should not have to face him alone.” She seemed to see me anew. She stroked my head again, tenderly. “You are like my Sarah. I am sorry for you. But I have to go now.” She looked toward the door. “Sarah-Louise needs me.” Her words faded away, like an echo. And I couldn’t see her anymore.

I knew I lay on a dusty floor in an empty attic. I couldn’t feel my body, and a coldness had seeped into my head. I thought, uncaring,
This isn’t a dream you wake up from — if your spirit lets go, you will go out forever.

Then that thought slipped sideways from my mind, and I could not get it back. The contents of my head — images flat and shrunken — were sucked away in a funnel wind, and I could not get any of them back.

The walls pressed in; the light grew dim and dimmer still, and was shut behind a door too small to pass through. I huddled tight and listened to the storm howling beyond the edges of this tiny room. Darkness inside me was filling all the spaces. The walls pressed up against my sides. The ceiling crowded my head. Amber House was folding down upon me. It was time.

Time to let go.

A hand — large, warm, strong, sturdy — took mine and pulled me to my feet into the circle of his arm.

I looked up into green eyes I knew. We were connected, he and I, weren’t we? I could feel it. A current like breath flowing between us as we met in this place, this last place that would ever be. We stood in the center, and a storm circled all around. I said, “Jackson —”

“— Jackson.” A little boy with green eyes. The car was slipping sideways, the tires screeching, the woman screeching, reaching behind, her fingers working frantically to pop the buckle of the car seat. Fire filled the world —

And there was pain, searing pain, blistering pain. I sagged, held up by him — the boy with the green eyes. “Shh, shh,” he told me, his scarred arm wrapped strongly around me. I felt the thousand touches of other times, other possibilities, pulling at me irresistibly, and he was the only solid thing left in the world. He stroked my hair with his long surgeon’s fingers. “Don’t slip away,” he said. “Stay with me. Stay awake —”

“— awake. Mama just opened her eyes, Nanga, just like that.” Sarah-Louise was hugging Nyangu, who looked blindly for me. I could feel her searching. “You hear me, Sarah, girl? It is possible. You got to remember —”

“— You’ve got to remember,” Gramma said as she tucked the piece of amber inside the hole under the bear’s arm. Then she began to stitch him shut again. She ducked down to look into Sammy’s face and told him, “Nanga said you’ll be the only one who doesn’t forget. Tell her: You changed things once, you can change it again, it is poss —”

“— possible,” the boy finished, still holding me. His strange green eyes were filled with such hope, it was painful. “I see it too. I see what you’re seeing, Sarah. We just have to remember —”

“— have to remember,” my crazy great-grandmother said, laying The World upside-down on a cloth-covered table, “that when the card is reversed like this, it means that events have not yet come to a conclusion.” A little girl with green eyes and honey-colored skin stood just behind her, watching me. “But they are nearing completion,” Fiona finished. She looked in my direction, her face shadowed, but her eyes oddly bright. I saw pity in them. “Are you —”

“— Are you asleep, Sarah? Sarah? Honey? Wake up.”

My ears felt empty, as if there should be noise, but there was not. Just birdsong. A peaceful sound. I was lying on the grass beneath the old oak, and someone was gently patting my hand. I felt air fill my lungs in a gasp, like I hadn’t been breathing, but now I was. It hurt a little.

I looked up into the face hidden by the sun behind it — a shadow face haloed in light. A face so like my mother’s, but softer, simpler.

“Maggie,” I said, remembering where I was, and why. “Did Mom send you to look for me?”

“Yes,” my aunt said. “Your mom sent me.”

“It’s time?”

“Yes,” she agreed again. “It’s time.”

“Then I guess we should go in.” I took Maggie’s arm. I reached up to touch the brooch on her collar, the one she always wore: a love knot she and Mom had made when they were girls. She’d nearly died once; a fall had left her in a coma, and when she woke up, she’d asked for this pin, and had worn it ever since.

“Your lucky pin,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Very lucky.”

We stood on the hill, inside the iron fence of the family graveyard. It was late October, and winter had come early. In one
weekend, the air had turned frosty and the trees had begun to drop their leaves, damp blankets around their feet.

We clustered around the open grave like a flock of starlings. The priest intoned in a somber voice. My little brother, Sammy, played a solitary game of hide-and-seek among the tombstones, just he and Heavy Bear. The rest of us seemed frozen, including my mother.

Dad reached out and took her hand, and I saw her squeeze back.
It must be nice
, I thought for the thousandth time,
to love someone like that.

Outside the fence, Rose and Jackson stood apart. When I glanced at them, Jackson looked away, like he’d been caught staring. Up the hill a bit, apart from the group, there was a family trio, all tall and blond, father, mother, and son. I noticed a few of the other mourners covertly pointing them out to one another. They were my mother’s old friends, Senator and Mrs. Hathaway, and their son, Richard.

“‘For there shall be a time for everything under the sun’” — the priest’s voice raised on a conclusive note — “‘a time to laugh and a time to dance.’ I believe, even now, Ida is dancing in the moonlight, in the arms of her beloved Mark.”

I looked beyond the graveyard, at the fields and woods of my family’s home, at the house crouched behind the thick border of gardens. A gust blew my hair into my face, whispering in my ears. The naked branches of the graveyard willow rattled one against another. I heard an eho of voices, perhaps rising from some boaters on the river.

Sammy and I were the only ones who seemed to notice.

We filed down the hill to the house for a luncheon Rose had prepared. I was one of the last through the door. I’d had a headache ever since Maggie woke me, thick and dull and numbing.

The house was packed with people, many with full plates already in hand. They talked quietly in small groups, I assumed about my grandmother. She had been a fixture in these parts. Active in her church, active in the community. A big fund-raiser for research into brain function and neurological abnormalities.

Even with all these people in it, the house seemed desolate without her. For the first time, I felt all its empty places. For the first time, I noticed how the high ceilings and long halls and shuttered, vacant rooms seemed to catch sound and hold it there, a dim echo.

Maybe it was just my headache.

I located Mom in the parlor to the right of the stairs. She sat alone on the sofa, an untouched plate of food in her lap. She motioned for me to sit beside her.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked.

“Helping Mrs. Whipple to her car.”

“How come the mirrors are draped? All over the house.”

“Rose must have done it,” Mom said. “Southern custom. To help Gramma’s spirit cross over.” She took a deep breath. I put a hand on her arm. “She had a good life, don’t you think?” she said. “It happened so suddenly, you know? A stroke. Just like that. I never expected it.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But I woke up today, and it was like I wasn’t surprised anymore. It was like I’d … known about it for weeks.” Her voice broke a little, but she steadied herself. “I’m glad, you know, that we were able to celebrate your birthday before we got the news.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

She rubbed her temple with her palm. “I have such a headache. Would you get me some aspirin, honey? Please?”

I squeezed through the crowd, making my way toward the swinging door at the end of the hall. I pushed through to the kitchen.

Rose turned to stare at me.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.” There was a ringing in my ears, and I felt a little dizzy.

“Something wrong?” Rose asked.

“No. I, um — I … Shouldn’t Jackson be here?”

I had no idea why I’d said that. Neither, apparently, did Rose.

“You need something? Maybe some pop?”

“I’d kill for a cherry Coke.”

She went to the fridge and rummaged through its contents. I went to the narrow cabinet where Gramma had kept the aspirin.

“You not feeling good?” Rose asked, noticing the pills as she handed me the drink.

“Mom has a headache.”

“Seems like it’s going around.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for the soda.”

“Gotta get back out there, collect up some of those dishes. Getting crumbs everywhere. Gonna have —”

“— cockroaches living in the sofa,” I concluded. She stared. “Sorry,” I said again, “didn’t mean to finish your sentence.”

“Don’t forget a glass of water,” Rose said, eyeing me strangely.

“Huh?”

“For your mama.”

“Right,” I said.

I went looking for Sam after I gave Mom the aspirin. I found him where I knew I would — in the nautical room upstairs. It was his room whenever we came to visit.

Sammy was at the desk, sitting in the swivel chair, pushing himself in slow circles. He looked at me questioningly.

“You doing okay, bud?” I said.

“My head hurts,” he said finally, “but I’m okay.”

“Okay,” I said. “I guess I’ll go back down.” I turned to leave.

“It’s better now than it was before,” he said.

“Better?” I repeated. “What’s better, bud?”

“Things,” he said. That was Sam. The master of specificity. “I have to give you something, Sarah. Something I found.”

“What you got, Samwise?”

He pulled Heavy Bear to him and poked a couple stubby fingers into a hole under the stuffed animal’s arm. He fished out the end of a chain, which he drew from the bear. The pendant on the end popped loose from the hole.

Treasure
, I thought, foolishly. “What is it?” I asked.

He put it in my hand. It was a smooth stone, yellow-orange and translucent. Amber. And at its heart was a spider, with long spindly legs. My skin crawled. I’d always hated spiders. “These are poisonous. The bite never goes away.”

“I know, Sarah.”

“It’s amazing,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” he said, nodding.

“Yeah, thanks, bud.” I slipped it over my neck. It struck me, then, that there was someone I needed to see, something I needed to say. “I gotta go, Sam, okay? I gotta find — Jackson.”

He looked at me, measuring. “Yep,” he said. “You gotta find Jackson.”

I went outside. I walked to the stable and peeked in. The horses nickered softly. I wandered across the front lawns and through
the gardens. Trotted down the stone steps to the dock where the
Amber
floated.

Climbing back up the hill toward the house, I veered to one side and entered the maze. I found my way to the heart and climbed the marble steps of the metal house.

And there he was.

He smiled. I liked his smile. It fit him. Warm, friendly, honest.

I had known Jackson forever. We had played together sometimes when we were littler, the times my family came to visit. I didn’t even see his scars anymore — Jackson was just Jackson. So it was odd, me noticing his smile. And the muscles under the fabric of his shirt. And the way his hands were like my father’s — a surgeon’s hands, huge and square, with long fingers. It was odd, me wondering what it would feel like to have those hands cradle my face, to —