Haunted (13 page)

“I need her to get me orders,” insisted the woman. “Mum says I mun do all I'm bid and more besides, for I can't lose me place. We'll all starve.”

She and I froze in a searching survey of each other's faces. Pity filled me. She was troubled by the doings of the manor, enough to haunt it, and still obsessed about hunger in a household whose inhabitants were long dead. What did she see in my face?

“I'm Maud Pike, and me family has the farm out on the Stone Cross Way,” she said to me. “Can't you help me?”

“You're forgetting something, Maud,” said Miles.

“I'm forgetting summat?” she asked. “Oh, I'll be beaten!”

Miles raised an eyebrow at me.

“Your family can't starve,” I said gently. “Remember?”

“Can't?” she repeated. “I'm to provide for wee Jackie and Michael, as they're years from being able to work, and poor Sampson is addled and unable, and Mum with her hands full, and Da dead these three years . . .” Her face changed. “No, no, dead far longer,” she marveled to herself. “And didn't Mum marry again, to John the smith, who did her well, and there was enow to eat, e'en with the passel of new uns he had on her?”

I waited.

She burst into tears. “But she never forgot me, did she? I'd watch her cry and my hands would go through her.”

Oh, I could relate to what she said. I glanced over at my own mom, talking Tabby into finishing her oatmeal by making her spoon into an airplane with a swirling route.

“And she died, too, and finally Jackie me favorite was an old man. All of 'em. For years, I watched, and their children, too, though I was nothing to 'em.” She paused a long while. I didn't dare look at Miles, in case he said something and interrupted her. I realized he had done the right thing in pushing her to recall the once-acknowledged fact of her own death. “But here I stayed, didn't I, in the house that killed me.”

Now
I looked at Miles. The house killed her? Not Madame Arnaud?

“What did the house do?” I asked, as softly as I could.

“Well, it harbored the mistress, didn't it? Let her carry on with her terrible business.”

I frowned over at Miles. “And that . . . killed you?” I hated to use the
k
word, but after all, she had used it first.

“The shame did.” She lowered her head and the loose cap slid a bit farther down her forehead. Her eyelashes were the color of sand. Poor girl, there wasn't much to her.

It took me a while to figure out what she meant. Shame? The house? Huh? Then I understood. She'd committed suicide.

Tears rolled down her thin cheeks. “And I was meant to support them all,” she said. “But I couldn't stand meself bringing a plate of cakes for the little ones
she'd
brung here. Made me just as much a monster as her.”

She wiped her face with her apron. “Thank the saints for John the smith. Though I'd no notion of him for Mum afore I . . .” Her voice trailed off.

How awful. She didn't look that much older than me. In fact, maybe she was my age. And her wages were responsible for feeding a family of . . . I think she'd mentioned four or five names. The only thing I'd ever been accountable for was good grades on my report card. Even my competitive swimming was something I felt no pressure around.

“Didn't you try to fight?” Miles asked.

“Oh, there was some as tried,” she said. “But the mistress outsmarted the lot.”

Steven walked through Miles to refill his mug, underscoring how incredibly powerless we were. Without substance, how could we fight Madame Arnaud?

“Oh, the bell!” cried Maud, and she scurried off through the wall. Not only did she hear instruments of her indenture that we were not privy to, she apparently followed the floor plan of her day, walking through doors that had been walled up.

“You see what we're up against,” said Miles.

I nodded. I inhaled a shaky breath. Now that the conversation was over, I realized how much it had unnerved me. I had just spoken with someone who died in the 1800s. And why was the manor suddenly full of her kind? Ghosts were everywhere now.

Somehow overnight the manor had populated itself with ghosts . . . it didn't make sense. Then, with a sick pang, I got it.

“Miles, the difference is us,” I said. “I think the ghosts have always been here. It's just that now we can see them, because we know we're dead, too.”

Before Miles and I understood we'd passed, we could interact only with those who were also unaware, like . . . well, like anyone too young to understand the concept of death. That toddler in the back garden.

Dressed in his 1700s breeches, that boy had spent centuries confused, with no one to tend him, help him, mother him. What a pure and utter hell. And he'd never emerge, because the idea of death had never been explained to him.

For over two hundred years, he'd been bewildered that his mother never came . . . that
nobody
came. Too young to care for himself, he'd turned crazy. He was feral.

I stood there thinking, rocked to the core.

I wasn't exactly sure how long I'd spent unaware that I was dead—not long. A few months, maybe: whatever time it took Mom and Steven to overturn their lives and escape to another country. I'd heard the doctor's diagnosis and pushed that knowledge down, down, down, as tight as clothes stuffed in a suitcase before you start trying to zip it. I'd heard, understood, and discarded. I'd started over, just as Mom and Steven had tried to.

But it had been so horrible—so upsetting to talk to Mom and not have her respond properly, or at all. I felt constantly ignored. It was a crazy stroke of luck—if you could call it that—that Miles had died around the same time I did. We had each other at least. And we'd helped each other reach that crucial understanding.

But now . . . Were Miles and I going to spend eternity like Maud? Powerless?

I positioned myself in front of Mom and used every bit of my strength and intention to try to reach her. “Mom, it's Phoebe. I'm right here!” I said. “You have to help Tabby by getting out of here.”

I put my hands on either side of her face, even though my trembling fingers passed through her jaw. “Please, Mom, you
have
to hear me.”

She shuddered.

I jolted back myself, startled.

“Goose walking over her grave,” said Miles.

Her quiver did seem to show I'd breached the film between the living and the dead.

“She felt me somehow!” I said. Although it seemed impossible that anything in my world could ever be happy again, I did feel a surge of something close to excitement. If I worked on it, could I eventually communicate with Mom?

I tried again, hovering inches away from her face. I exhaled. If I had a breath, it went right into her mouth as she in turn inhaled. “It's Phoebe. It's me.”

This time she didn't move, didn't register my presence. “It's me, Mom, it's me,” I repeated.

Over the course of what was, to her, a day, I stuck with her like a second layer of skin. I pleaded with her to notice me as she finished up breakfast and washed the dishes, as she sang a song for Tabby and put her down for her nap. I followed her room to room, punctuated a discussion she had with Steven by chanting, “Tabby's in trouble.” I was with her when Tabby woke up, I played with them, I talked myself into a fury. And the whole time Miles patiently stayed with me, although I knew he wanted to go hunt down Eleanor Darrow.

Finally, I gave up.

“It's not working,” I said stupidly. “Maybe I just had beginner's luck the first time.”

He took me in his arms and hugged me fiercely. It was so good to
feel
him. Thank God he was here.

“Maybe you could try Steven,” he said. “Or even Tabby.”

I wouldn't rule out anything, but my relationship with Steven wasn't half of what I had with Mom. If anyone was going to pay attention to me from the other side, it'd be her. And Tabby—even if I could convey to her the complex idea that she should urge the family to leave, who was going to listen to a toddler?

“I mean, even if you're not as close to him, maybe he's more psychically sensitive,” he added.

Good point. Some people saw ghosts—or said they did—and some didn't.

That night, as Steven sat changing channels on the old-fashioned TV, using a toaster-sized remote control, I sidled up next to him. I lay my head on his shoulder, which required me to hold it up myself. I reached up an arm and hugged him. Good old Steven. He'd made Mom a lot happier than my real dad did.

“Steven,” I whispered. “It's me, Phoebe.”

“I hardly think a whisper is going to work when outright shouting in your mum's face didn't,” said Miles. I shot him an angry look, but softened instantly when I saw how earnest he was. He wanted this to work. And really, he could be a hundred other places instead of here trying to save my sister. He hadn't even left to see his own family yet.

“You're right,” I said. I sat upright, face-to-face with Steven, and firmly spoke his name.

Nothing.

“Steven, listen!” I moved so that my mouth was at his ear. “It's Phoebe.”

But like Mom, he wouldn't respond. He stonily watched the TV as I tried again and again. The show was some sort of sitcom filmed in stark matte, with the actors doing pratfalls and making expressions directly at the camera.

“Can't tell half of what they're saying with those accents,” he said to Mom, who smiled.

Ironic. Along with a cast of mobile-faced actors, I was doing my best to deliver lines to my family, unsuccessfully.

 

Miles and I swam again. It was after hours and the only lights were the ones framing the emergency exit signs. I realized we'd been here before when the pool was closed, but not understood the dimness.

“Damn!” I said. “We need to stay with Tabby. Bring us back.”

“I didn't bring us here,” said Miles.

“So, what . . . it's random?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

I was in a black swimsuit with a halter neckline. I'd had it as a freshman and forgotten it in a locker room. I'd gone back the next day, but someone must have snagged it. Objects behaved so strangely here, offering a semblance of reality, like the clothes I'd thought Mom had unpacked and put in the dresser for me. I knew now the drawer was completely empty. My mind had just been filling in gaps for me, protecting me from the harsh truth that I didn't need clothes, that I was dead.

“Does it feel weird?” he asked. He meant because it was my first time swimming since understanding that I'd drowned.

I cupped water and brought it to my face. No panic. Water was water. I shook my head.

“The two places we always go have to do with our deaths,” he pointed out. “I drove and drove that damn stretch of roadway until you made me turn right.”

I nodded. “I wonder why I don't go to the pool I drowned in,” I said. “Back in California.” I looked at him and my eyes narrowed. “And why do
you
come to the pool?”

“And why do you ride with me?”

It seemed like a clue. Some force had wanted us to meet, to ally our forces.

“Someone or something is on our side,” I said.

I swam to the edge and pulled myself out. Easy. If only I could've done that when dizziness threw stars in my eyes.

I tipped my head back and looked up at the skylight. “Night is falling,” I said. “We need to get back to the manor.”

Miles pulled himself out of the pool, water glistening down his firm biceps and triceps. Or was that just a trick of my death now, to retain some sort of link to reality? Did water really course down his body? How could we be wet or dry if we had no substance?

I reached up to pull my loose hair into a ponytail and wring it . . . but it was already dry. I looked at him. Dry now, too.

He pulled me to him and kissed me. It felt incredible—the best thing I'd felt in seemingly years. He put a hand on the small of my back and one on the back of my head, both gently pulling me toward him. Our bodies met, from toes to hips to forehead.

But now that I knew what I knew about us, the sensation was a little bit muted. His body seemed real to me; but it wasn't real.

I adjusted to find nuance, like a blind person develops greater hearing. Our bodies would do this for us . . . but not with the same roaring sensuality we'd been able to experience when alive.

We sank onto . . . well, a bed appeared. We were in a room. On the wall was a handmade wooden shelf with several trophies on it. The curtains were a striped brown and there was a desk with very messy piles of paper and textbooks on it, and a dresser.

“It's my room,” said Miles.

Downstairs, we heard a TV. I looked at him questioningly. This was his chance to see his family again.

“I've been here before,” he said. “Obviously I've been here before. But I mean, I've been here since the accident. There's the phone Gillian called me on,” he pointed to an old-fashioned loaf-shaped phone on his desk, with a cord snaking into the wall, “to ask for a ride.”

I sat up. As good as it had felt to kiss him, we had moved into a different mood.

“My folks watch TV endlessly,” he said. “And I've tried to talk to them. Same as you, doubtless. Trying to convince myself that they were responding in a way.”

“Do you want to go downstairs?” I asked. “I can wait for you.”

“No,” he said. “I can't.”

I kissed a slow line of petite kisses along his jawbone. I ached for his sadness.