Believing (2 page)

Mom’s old jewelry box opened all by itself, playing the hauntingly familiar melody Calla has been trying to place from the moment she arrived here.

As it woke her from a deep sleep, she finally recalled where she’d heard it before.

And now that I remember
—
and now that this has happened
—
I’m really scared.

Calla looks down at the bracelet in her hand.

When she had jumped out of bed, there it was, lying in the open jewelry box.

The same jewelry box she had rummaged through many times since she arrived, as part of her mission to get to know the girl who had grown up here in Lily Dale and gone on to become Calla’s mother.

The bracelet hadn’t been in the jewelry box until now.

And I never really knew you at all,
she silently tells her mother . . . wherever she is.

Suddenly the woman who raised her for seventeen years seems like a stranger.

With a shudder, Calla abruptly reaches for the tap and turns it.

Again, the groan of old pipes; again, the deafening splashing sound.

This time, though, she’s hearing only the voices in her head. Mom’s and Odelia’s, repeating a long-ago argument that keeps echoing through Calla’s mind when she’s asleep. She was having the disturbing dream yet again just minutes ago, before the jewelry box opened itself and interrupted those eerie, chilling words that drove her mother and grandmother apart forever.

“. . . because I promised I’d never tell . . .”
That was Mom, distraught, tearful.

“. . . for your own good . . .”
That was Odelia.

“. . . how you can live with yourself . . .”
Odelia again.

And then:
“The only way we’ll learn the truth is to dredge the lake.”

Calla doesn’t know which of them said that. The voice was so shrill and desperate she couldn’t tell.

But they had to be talking about the lake here
—
Cassadaga Lake,
she thinks as she fits the rubber plug into the drain and watches the water fill the basin.

Just last week, Odelia sternly—and inexplicably—warned her never to venture into its cold waters.

Calla turns off the tap and drops the bracelet into the filled basin. A cloud of mud swirls around it, rapidly turning the water murky, then opaque, obscuring the bracelet as it sinks to the bottom.

Just like whatever dark secret lies at the bottom of Cas-sadaga Lake, waiting to be dredged up . . .

So that the truth can be told at last.

Calla wonders, as an icy ripple of dread flows through her veins, if she really wants to know what that is.

Staring at her reflection in the mirror, she gradually becomes aware that something is changing in the room. There’s a sudden heaviness in the chilly night air.

On the tile wall behind her, the light casts tall shadows.

Human shadows.
Shadows.

Two.

Two shadows?

But . . . how can that be?

Eyes wide, Calla stares into the mirror at the pair of distinct human forms on the wall behind her. One is unmistakably hers, frozen in fear. The other—almost the same height and size—is just beside it, as it would be if someone were standing right next to her.

But no one is there.

No one she can see, anyway.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

Is it a trick of the light? Or . . .

Is something here?
Someone?
Some presence?

Calla raises her left arm slowly and watches as one of the reflected shadows—her own—simultaneously does the same on the wall behind her.

The other shadow simply hovers there, motionless.

But it is there. Calla isn’t alone.

She turns her head abruptly to the left, to the right, spins around completely.

The second shadow remains . . . but the small bathroom is otherwise empty.

Heart racing, she reaches for the dangling light chain above the sink and pulls it. The room is instantly plunged into darkness.

She counts to ten, then yanks the chain again.

Blinking in the sudden blast of light, she can see that the second shadow is now gone . . . and with it, the sense of a presence in the room.

She takes a deep breath to steady her nerves. It’s only then that she notices the faint fragrance of lilies of the valley, Mom’s favorite flower, hovering in the air.

“Mom,” she whispers, shaken, “was that you?”

But of course, there’s no reply. The presence is gone and she’s alone again . . . or so it seems.

For now.

TWO

Wednesday, September 5
7:20 a.m.

Tuesday had been a strange, cool, and stormy day. Calla spent most of it lying on her bed, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt handmade from her mother’s childhood dresses, and brooding about all that had happened the night before.

She still doesn’t know what to make of her mother’s emerald bracelet reappearing.

She had tucked it back into the jewelry box, then checked all day to make sure it was really there, just in case she had imagined the whole thing.

Nope. It was definitely there when she fell into bed before eight o’clock, so physically and emotionally exhausted that she drifted right to sleep without even worrying about starting a new school today.

And it was still there this morning, when, for a change, Calla woke up well rested, having finally slept soundly through the night.

Now the air is fragrant with bacon, and she can hear pans clattering in the kitchen as she creaks slowly down the steep stairs. She left the bracelet behind. The clasp is probably still loose, and she doesn’t dare risk losing it again.

Yeah, that, and you’re still too spooked to wear it again.

Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black top from the Gap, she’s toting her heavy backpack, bulging with school supplies her grandmother picked up for her. Her iPod is tucked into one of the pockets, just in case she finds herself with some downtime.

Missing is her cell phone. She never left the house without it back in Florida, but there’s no need to carry it around now; she can’t even get a signal here in Lily Dale.

Nor can she get online to check her e-mail, IM with her friends, maintain her MySpace page, write in her blog, surf the Web . . .

To do anything on the Internet, she has to go next door to use Odelia’s neighbors’ computer. Luckily, the girl who lives there, Evangeline Taggart, is her age and has fast become a good friend to Calla. The computer belongs to her aunt Ramona, who’s raising the orphaned Evangeline and her brother, Mason, but she said Calla’s welcome to come use it anytime.

Still, it’s not the same. In her old life, Calla was used to being plugged into the world around her. Well, maybe not the world immediately around her . . . but, electronically, to the world beyond her family’s doorstep.

Here in Lily Dale, she can be in tune only with her immediate surroundings.

Maybe, she’s starting to realize, that’s made her more sensitive to . . .

Well, a new kind of energy, which has nothing to do with electronics.

Even now, as she reaches the shadowy front hall, a sound reaches her ears: steady rapping.

She looks around, half expecting to see another inexplicable shadow . . . or perhaps a manifestation of Miriam, the resident ghost, who lived in this house a hundred years ago. She likes to make things go bump, not just in the night, but all day long.

Nope, no Miriam. This time, the rapping sound is coming from somewhere outside.

Calla glances out the window and immediately spots the very human source. One of Odelia’s neighbors across Cottage Row is using a hammer to nail a sheet of weather-proofing plastic over the windows of his little house.

Farther down the street, a pair of heavyset women in plaid flannel shirts load boxes into the SUV parked in front of another cottage that’s already been boarded up.

Wow. People are leaving town in droves.

The official Lily Dale “season” just ended on Labor Day weekend. According to Evangeline Taggart, the place empties out as most of the resident mediums head for warmer climates to avoid the harsh western New York winter.

They sure don’t waste any time,
Calla thinks, watching a car towing a U-Haul trailer rumble past.

Beyond the lofty trees and Victorian rooftops of the little houses across the way, the sky is heavy with rain clouds. Cool air gusts through the screened window. Shivering, Calla pulls it down a little. Her thin Florida blood isn’t used to weather like this—not in September, anyway. Her grandmother mentioned that the first snowflakes start to fall around mid-October, and the wintry weather doesn’t fully let up until May.

Not that it matters, because Calla expects to be out in California with her dad by the time the real snow accumulates and winter gets under way. Which is kind of a shame, because she’s seen snow only once in her life, on a family ski trip to Utah.

Leaving the chilly air and the misty gray view behind, she heads into the kitchen, where the overhead light dispels the gloom.

She remembers seeing the room for the first time a couple of weeks ago and comparing it to her Florida home’s sleek, modern, expensive granite-and-stainless-steel kitchen with custom cabinetry.

Here, the floors are green-and-white linoleum and the walls are papered in an ivy pattern, peeling at the seams. There are white metal cabinets with metal handle pulls, an outdated olive green fridge and stove, and pale green countertops crammed with everything anyone could ever need in a kitchen, and cluttered with a lot of stuff nobody but Odelia could possibly ever need anywhere.

Today, the room—like the rest of the house—seems charming. Homey. Familiar.

“Happy first day of school!” Standing at the stove, Odelia looks up from the griddle where she’s frying . . . something.

It doesn’t look like eggs, or pancakes. It pretty much looks like . . .

“Mush.” That came from Odelia.

“Mush?” Calla echoes.

Odelia lifts the corner of the griddle and points at the yellowy goo. “Fried cornmeal mush. Ever had it?”

“Nope.” And she isn’t particularly anxious to try it.

“Really? I’m surprised. It’s a real southern thing. I’d think growing up down there . . .”

“Yeah, well.” Calla shrugs. “I guess we’ve never eaten much Southern food. Maybe since Mom is—
was
—from here, and Dad is from Chicago . . . I don’t know.”

“Well, then, you’ve been missing out.” Odelia slides a spatula beneath one of the blobs and expertly flips it. “There’s nothing like starting the school day with a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast like fried mush and a side of bacon. I’ve got some under the broiler.”

“I always just had cereal at home.” Organic, unsweetened cereal. “Mom’s pretty much a health nut. I mean . . . she
was
.”

Will she ever get used to speaking of her mother in the past tense?

“Not when she was a kid, she wasn’t.” Odelia snorts and shakes her unnaturally red head. “She always could eat everything I put in front of her, and then some.”

Her grandmother’s back is to Calla. Her voice grows wistful, and her hand trembles a little on the spatula handle as she continues, “Back then, Stephanie loved everything that was bad for you. Her favorite was homemade fried chicken with mashed potatoes. She liked them with a whole lot of salt and butter and heavy cream. She’d pull up a chair to the counter and stand on it, and I’d let her do the mashing.”

There’s a long pause. Calla pictures a younger, thinner Odelia standing at the counter, and Mom standing beside her on a chair, a little girl in pigtails, just like in the framed photo on the living room wall.

Odelia’s back straightens and she swipes a hand at her eye, seeming to get hold of her emotions as she turns toward Calla. “If I do say so myself, I make the best fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy you’ll find north of the Mason-Dixon line.”

“I bet you do, Gammy.”

Odelia’s a good cook, even if her taste buds are a little wacky. The night Calla arrived, she was taken aback to find that her grandmother put raisins in the meatballs and sugar in the spaghetti sauce. Turned out, it tasted pretty good.

She’s getting used to Odelia’s eccentric style in the kitchen. And in everything else.

Like her wardrobe. Today, her grandmother’s plus-sized figure is crammed into leopard-print leggings and a yellowy orange fleece pullover. On her feet: a pair of beat-up purple rubber Crocs.

“So tell me,” Odelia says. “Are you nervous?”

“Me?” Calla busies herself taking a carton of orange juice from the fridge. “Nervous?”

“You, ” Odelia agrees, looking at Calla over the pinkish cat’s-eye glasses propped on the tip of her nose. “Nervous.”

“Maybe a little.”

“I would be. Maybe a lot. Starting a new school and all.”

It’s hard to imagine Odelia nervous about anything. She pretty much takes in stride everything from her semipermanent seventeen-year-old houseguest to Miriam and the other shadowy entities who hover around the house.

“At least you know a few of the kids already, though,” Odelia points out.

Some better than others,
Calla thinks, and a faint smile curves the lips Blue Slayton kissed after their first date last week.

Then she remembers Willow York, Blue’s ex-girlfriend, and her smile fades.

Evangeline mentioned that Lily Dale High is pretty small. Meaning, Calla’s bound to run into Willow there. On the upside, she’s bound to run into Blue, too—along with Jacy Bly, who held the unofficial title of resident newcomer before Calla came along.

With Native American blood and exotic dark good looks, Jacy captivated her from the second she saw him. He lives down Cottage Row with two foster dads who took him in after Social Services took him away from his alcoholic, abusive parents.

He briefly told Calla about that when they spent an afternoon fishing together in Cassadaga Lake. But even after spending a few hours alone together, she found herself with more questions than answers about Jacy and his difficult past. She’d love to get to know him better—if that’s even possible. Sometimes she sees him from afar, jogging past Odelia’s house with a couple of other boys. He mentioned he’s on the school track team.