Kindred Spirits (5 page)

“Miranda!
Are you okay?” Adam is leaning over me. To my surprise, I’m lying flat on my
back on his living room floor.

“Uh...yeah.” The pain is
gone, except for a dull ache in the back of my head.

“You fell backwards,”
Adam says. “Actually, it looked more like you were pushed backwards. I tried to
catch you, but it happened too fast.”

“Is everything all
right?” Mrs. So has rushed in, no doubt having heard the thunk my head made
when it hit the floor.

I force myself to sit up.
“Yes, ma’am. I just tripped on a lamp cord.”

Mrs. So looks at the lamp
cord, which is pretty far away from where I am, and then at me, with the
expression of a mother who’s wondering if she should let her kid hang out with
such a strange person. “Okay...well, there are snacks in the kitchen if you want
them.”

“Thanks,” Adam and I both
say.

When Mrs. So is gone I
say, “So let me see your bathroom.”

“After what just
happened, I think you may have seen enough for one day.”

“No, really.  Let me see
it.”

Adam sighs. “Okay.” He
leads me upstairs to the room next door to his. Like the bathroom in our house,
it’s old-fashioned but has been updated. The big, claw-footed tub has had a
shower added onto it, and a new lighted mirror hangs over the old-fashioned
sink.

“It won’t work unless you
close the door,” Adam says.

I have no clue what he’s
talking about, but I close the door anyway. Adam leans over the bathtub and
turns on the shower full blast. “It’ll take a minute,” he says.

I, of course, have no
idea what he means, but I wait anyway. Soon steam from the shower is filling
the room, making everything hot and misty. Adam’s glasses are fogged up.

“There it is!” he says.
“The mirror! Look at the mirror!”

I turn around and see it.
The mirror is completely fogged over, like Adam’s glasses, except for one short
line of cursive writing that looks like it’s been drawn on the glass with
someone’s fingertip. I step closer and read the words:
He is innocent.

I touch the mirror,
wondering if I can get some kind of feeling from it, like I did with the hand
prints, but all I feel is wet glass. “Does it say this every time?”

“Yep,” Adam says. “It’s
always ’
He is innocent
.’ At first, I thought it might just be regular
writing that hadn’t gotten cleaned off good.  But check this out.”

He opens the towel closet
and takes out a bottle of spray cleaner and a washcloth. He sprays over the
words and wipes them off. Within seconds, as soon has the steam has fogged the
mirror back up, the words are back again.

“Do your parents know
about this?” I ask.

“No. They shower in the
other bathroom. And I haven’t told them about it. I know the hand print thing
freaks them out even though they pretend it doesn’t. I don’t want to give them
something else to pretend not to be freaked out about.”

I
look at the words one more time. “Well, if we don’t get out of here, your mom’s
going to freak out anyway... about why we’re spending so much time together in
the bathroom.”

Adam grins. “Good point.”
He opens the bathroom door. “You want to play some Nintendo?”

“No, I have to head
home,” I say. “But this has certainly been...interesting. If Abigail pops by
tonight, I’ll tell her about it and see what she has to say.”

“Miranda,” Adam looks at
me, and I feel a surge of fear shoot from him. “Do you think I should
be...scared?”

“No,” I say. “The person
who left those hand prints was afraid, but I don’t think what they were afraid
of is still in this house. And the words on the mirror aren’t threatening or
anything. They seem like..information. Like something somebody wants you to
know.”

“But what do they want me
to know? You’re psychic; you’re supposed to know this stuff.”

“I’m psychic about living
people, not haunted bathroom mirrors. I have no idea what the presence in this
house is trying to tell you.  But I’d sure like to find out.”

“Oh, you didn’t tell me
your friend lived in the Jameson place.” Abigail is flipping through an issue
of
Seventeen
magazine I picked up for her. “Look at this,” she says,
pointing to a model in a tummy-baring top and low-rider jeans. “In my day,
girls weren’t even supposed to show their ankles.”

“What do you know about
the Jameson place?” I ask, trying to keep her on the subject, even though she
seems to find the magazine a lot more interesting than my talk of ghostly hand
prints and haunted bathroom mirrors.

“I don’t know much,
really.” Abigail waves a perfume sample under her nose and sighs, “I wish I
could smell.” She sets down the magazine. “I can remember people in this house
talking about the murders, but I don’t know any details. When they happened, I
had been dead for years.”

“The murders?”

“Yes, the murders. In the Jameson
house...sometime in the nineteen-thirties, I suppose. But you know me...all the
dates after my death are hazy. Your grandmother should remember them, though.
She would have been a schoolgirl when they happened.” Abigail looks faraway for
a second, then mutters, “Helen and Mildred.”

“Helen
and Mildred?” I say.

“The Jameson sisters. The
ones who were murdered. I used to play with them when they were girls.”

I scoot to the edge of my
bed. “Really? What were they like?”

Abigail thinks for a
second,then says,“I liked Helen. She was quiet and shy but nice. Mildred,
though, was different. ‘Mil-dread,’ I used to call her. She was always telling
her sister what to do in the rudest possible way. She changed the rules of
games so she would win. If she was playing in here, she would even rearrange
the things in my room so they would suit her better.”

My arms prickle with
goose bumps at the thought of the murdered Jameson sisters having played in
this room years ago. “They came to this house?”

“Yes,” Abigail says. “A
few times. Their parents and my parents knew each other socially. I think I
might have enjoyed playing alone with Helen, but Helen never came without
Mildred. They were a matched set, like salt and pepper shakers. I could never
figure out why Helen let Mildred tell her what to do since Mildred was two
years younger than she was. It was just their personalities, I suppose. I guess
there have always been bossy kids and kids who let themselves be bossed
around,”

I say. “So do you think
it could be the Jameson sisters leaving messages on the bathroom mirror?”

“It probably is. Often,
when one meets an untimely end, through violence or an accident or an early
illness, one feels a strong need to communicate with the world of the living.”
Abigail’s lips turn up in a half-smile. “I speak from experience, of course.”

“Yeah,”
I say, “but you do speak...out loud so I can hear you. And Adam, too, even if
he can’t see you. If the spirits of the Jameson sisters want to communicate so
much, why don’t they just to talk to Adam? If he can hear you, he can hear
them.”

“Not necessarily,”
Abigail says, walking over to look at herself in the dresser mirror. “Not all
spirits are as able to communicate with the living as I am. There are different
categories of spirits who can communicate with the living on different levels.
There are the signers, for example. They cannot speak or be seen but can leave
messages like the hand prints on your friend’s wall, or, on good days, the
writing on his mirror.” Abigail braids her hair as she looks at herself. As
soon as she lets go of the braid, her hair goes back to the way it was before,
in the same ringlets she was wearing when they buried her.

“And then there are the
spirits like me,” she says. “The talkers, who can appear and talk to a few
chosen people.” She piles her hair on top of her head. “And then there are the
rappers.”

I can’t get a picture of
a ghost wearing baggy pants and saying “yo” out of my mind. “You mean...like
rap music?”

Abigail looks at me
blankly, letting her hair return to ringlets. “No. They rap’” she knocks her
fist on the dresser’”like this. They can’t speak, but they try to communicate
by banging on things. You should ask Adam if he’s heard any unusual noises.
Sometimes signers can be rappers as well.”

She flops back down in the beanbag chair and picks up the
magazine. “Ooh, look at this,” she says, pointing to a page. “The New Victorian
look” She shows me a photo of long-haired girls wearing dresses with puffy
sleeves and heavy lace collars. “If I could only get out of this room, I’d be
quite fashionable, wouldn’t I?”

We
get up early at my house. Samson the rooster crows at sunrise, and then it’s
time to gather the eggs and milk the goats and give all the animals their
breakfast. After our chores, Mom and Granny and I always sit down to our own
breakfast of fresh eggs, hot biscuits, and cooked apples, with coffee for the
grownups and goat’s milk for me.

When I told Adam how long
I’ve usually been awake before I come to school, he was shocked. He said he
wakes up fifteen minutes before the bell rings and grabs a Pop Tart on his way
out the door.

This morning at
breakfast, as Granny is sliding a fried egg off a spatula and onto my plate,
she says, “Well, mercy, honey, who told you that?”

What Granny’s talking
about is the question that was in my head but hadn’t made it to my mouth yet,
namely:
So what do you know about the murder of Helen and Mildred Jameson?

It’s not unusual for
Granny to answer a question before you ask it. The longer a woman has the
Sight, the stronger it grows, and so Granny’s powers are much stronger than
mine and quite a bit stronger than Mom’s.

Mom’s are still strong,
though. Sometimes I’ll walk into the living room and Mom and Granny will be
sitting there, and I’ll know that even though they aren’t saying anything out
loud, they’re talking to each other.

“Abigail told me a little
about it,” I say. “But she didn’t know much. She said she used to play with the
Jameson girls when she was a kid.”

“Your
friend Adam lives in the Jameson house, doesn’t he?” Mom says, her silver
bracelets clanging as she pours goat’s milk in her coffee.

“Yeah, and there’s been
some weird stuff going on... messages on mirrors, hand prints that won’t go
away.” I figure I might as well tell Mom and Granny about it After all, it’s
not like I can hide the truth from them.

“Restless spirits,”
Granny says, pouring molasses on a biscuit. “They ort to burn some sage in the
house. If the spirits are evil, that might run them off.” Methuselah flies over
and perches on her shoulder, and she feeds him a bite of biscuit. “Course, if
the spirits meant them harm, they probably would’ve harmed them by now.”

“Abigail thinks it might
be the spirits of the Jameson sisters trying to communicate with the living,” I
say.

“Could be,” Granny says.
She takes a thoughtful slurp of coffee. “It was a terrible thing done in that
house.”

I’m on the edge of my
chair. “Tell me about it.”

“Another time, Miranda,”
Mom says. “This is far too upsetting a subject to discuss at the breakfast
table. And besides, you need to get ready for school.”

“I am ready, and school
doesn’t start for another hour. Tell me, Granny.”

Mom sighs and takes her
breakfast plate to the sink. “How lucky I am to have a daughter who’s just as
morbid as my mother,” she says.

“Well, honey,” Granny
begins. “All I know is what I got told. I was younger than you are now when it
happened. The Jameson sisters was as different as only two sisters can be.
Mildred was the bold one, strong-willed and bossy. She gave piano lessons to
some of the girls in town, who was scared to death of her.. Helen, though, was
shy and sweet, wouldn’t say boo to a goose, that one. But she loved children
and taught at the elementary school. Younguns loved her as much as they feared
Mildred.”

Granny
pushes away her coffee cup. “Everybody respected the Jameson sisters. Their
daddy had been a bigwig at the mines before he died, and they were both
respectable, churchgoing ladies. So it was a real shock that afternoon when
shots rang out at the Jameson place. When the sheriff got there, there was
three people lying in the floor. Mildred and Helen had both been shot, and
laying a little ways from them near the living room wall was this little
colored boy”

“Mother, don’t say
‘colored,’” Mom says while she’s packing my lunch at the kitchen counter. “At
the very least say ‘black.’”

“Black is the color of
mourning,” Granny says. “It’s the color of clothes I put on every day, and I
ain’t yet seem a person with skin the same color as this dress. I think
‘colored’ sounds happier than ‘black.’ And Sarah, you know as good as I do that
it ain’t what you call people, it’s how you think of ‘em that matters. Look in
my head right now, and tell me you think I’m prejudiced.”

“I never said you were
prejudiced,” Mom says. “I just meant ‘colored’ doesn’t sound nice.”

I look at the clock on
the wall. Before long I’ll have to leave for school. “Can’t you two argue later
and tell me about the Jameson murder now?”

“You two talk about what
you like. I’m getting ready for work.” Mom strides out of the room, her bracelets
jangling.

“So there was this little
colored boy,” Granny says when Mom’s gone. “He used to deliver newspapers and
do odd jobs for people. His name was Charlie Thomas, but everybody called him
Charlie T. And he was there at the scene of the murder, laying on the living
room floor. He had been knocked out cold with a fireplace poker. And in his
hand was the gun that killed both the Jameson sisters.”

“Did
he kill them?” By this time I’ve so totally forgotten about the plate in front
of me that I accidentally stick my elbow in my cooked apples.