Spirit’s Key (6 page)

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Hatterask walks toward me and pushes the floorboards back into place. “Weather report didn't say a thing about a storm today.”

“Sorry, I…”

Her face is forbidding. “If you or your dad know different, don't you dare tell me. I was all set to have a pleasant afternoon, and I intend to keep it that way.”

“I won't,” I promise. But if Dad had a vision of another hurricane, I don't understand why she wouldn't want to know.

She nods. “Good. Best run along, then.”

She doesn't have to tell me twice. I scramble out of there, wondering how I'm going to explain not having a washcloth, but when I get outside Eder's big truck is gone.

 

9

T
HE
K
EY TO
S
KY

early Sunday morning I ride my bike over the whole island looking for Sky. But he's vanished like the ghost that he is. I look for him outside the school windows, around the Hatterasks' trees where I saw him before, and along the edges of the woods. But I can't find him anywhere.

When I get home and put my key in the front door, I get so nauseous I almost puke on the doorstep. Maybe I caught what made Mr. Selnick so sick yesterday. Stomach viruses sweep the island every now and then.

“Dad?” He doesn't answer. I muster the strength to call again. “Dad? Are you home? I'm back from my bike ride, and I'm not feeling so great.”

Maybe he's out giving a reading. But I find a long Dad-shaped mound in the blue room under the cornflower comforter.

“Dad?” I shake him awake. “You slept all morning … again?” I'd been out for several hours. “You might have the stomach bug, too,” I say.

Dad's been tired for a few months, but not sleeping-all-day-every-day tired. He lowers his legs to the floor with such effort I wonder if he pulled his back unloading all those boxes on Thursday. “What day is it?” He stares up at me groggy-eyed and confused, like instead of taking a nap, he traveled to another dimension.

“Sunday.” I help him out of bed. “Are you sick?”

“We have to try a reading,” he says. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what? Dad, are you talking in your sleep?” A creepy feeling snakes up my spine.

“Mr. Selnick,” he says. “Help me up. We're going to visit Mr. Selnick.”

Dad walks to the Selnicks' house with his arm across my shoulder—too weak to stand up straight and too delirious to make much sense.

“Please let me get Dr. Wade,” I beg. “I think you have a terrible fever.”

But Dad shakes his head.

We knock on the Selnicks' door, and Poppi answers wearing a diaper and a cartoon T-shirt. “GeePa!”

Poppi can't say
godfather
yet. She puts her arms in the air toward Dad.

Dad kisses the top of Poppi's forehead, but he doesn't pick her up and throw her in the air like usual. He stumbles into the house. “Jolie?” he shouts.

“Back here,” Mrs. Selnick answers.

Dad stops to lean on the wall for a moment like shouting took all the energy he had left. His face is as white as the paint.

“Please let me get the doctor,” I insist. But when we get inside the Selnicks' bedroom, I see the doctor is already here.

Dad falls into a chair by the window and waves me toward the bed, where Mr. Selnick lies pale and still, his wife at his side. He looks like a blowfish slowly deflating.

“What's wrong with him?” I ask Dr. Wade.

“Not sure, to be honest,” the doctor says.

“It's the devil,” Mrs. Selnick whispers. “Devil got him when he touched that baldie.”

“Well, it
is
mysterious,” Dr. Wade agrees. “I'll give you that. I've never seen anything quite like it.”

Dad slumps over in the chair, like even sitting up is too much.

“Dad? Are you okay?”

Dr. Wade rushes over. He clucks his tongue. “Looks like this thing is contagious. Shame it's not responding faster to the medication. Something this bad has the potential to wipe out the island.”

Dad shakes his head in protest, but he looks so sick I worry Dr. Wade is right.

Fear rushes up my throat. Bitter. Fear tastes bitter.

“Ask for the Selnicks' key,” Dad urges me.

Normally before Dad can give a reading the person needs to ask him for it, so I'm not sure why Dad wants Mr. Selnick's key. But Mrs. Selnick hands it to me without question.

I pass it to Dad, but he refuses and pushes it toward me. “You,” he whispers.

“Me?” I drop the Selnicks' key, even though Dad didn't try to take it, and it never left my hand. When I pick it up, I realize why. It's hot. Not burn-you-up metal-pot-handle hot, but just hot enough to be slightly uncomfortable. “Was it lying in the sun?” I ask.

“Been here in Mr. Selnick's pants pocket,” Mrs. Selnick says.

Dad nods enthusiastically like the fact that it's hot means I'll be able to glean something from it. Know the future. Cure the sick. Dr. Wade and the Selnick family watch me hopefully. Like I am a miracle worker instead of a giftless twelve-year-old girl. Having predicted Poppi, Dad has set their expectations high.

“Dad, please, it's you the Selnicks need, not me.” Dad has been giving readings for three decades. Even if he's sick and a tad rusty, all he has to do is take the key, and he'll
know
a lot more than I ever could.

Dad shakes his head. “The power has moved on.”

Moved? Moved where?

“You,” Dad whispers again, like knowing the future is as simple as brown-bagging oatmeal and eggs at the general store.

I flip the key in my hand. Rub its jagged edges. Concentrate. On what? How can I know the answer if I don't know the question?

“But you already gave Mr. Selnick a reading,” I argue. “Remember the fire, Mr. Selnick saying,
We should've left the island
?”

Dad looks surprised. “I didn't say anything about a fire.”

“What fire?” Mrs. Selnick pats the bed blankets in a panic, like flames are licking at her husband's fingertips—as if the saying of a thing pops it into being. Maybe this is how Poppi got her name.

“Sorry. I must have made that up. I thought Dad said there would be a fire. Maybe I thought it because I smell something burning.” I turn to Mrs. Selnick. “Did you leave the stove on?”

“Haven't cooked at all today. People been so kind, bringin' over food. Mrs. Fishborne brought over oyster stew, and Mrs. Dialfield made up some—”

“So there's going to be a fire,” Dad interrupts as if it's a statement of fact. “That makes sense.” He looks thoughtful, like he's recalling the vision. “His face was smudged black … Could have been ash.”

“I don't know the future, Dad. I do smell something burning though.” I sniff the air again and hand the Selnicks' key back.

Dr. Wade and the Selnicks watch me intently.

“Well, I don't know. Maybe not. I don't smell it now. I'm sorry I…” For comfort, I tuck my free hand in my pocket and find Sky's dog tag, there from the last time I wore these shorts. Then, behind Dad's head outside the Selnicks' window, I see Sky, wagging his tail and shaking the toy pheasant like he's happy to see me.

The dog tag! When I touch it, Sky appears.

Sky drops the pheasant. Barks. Raises his rear end in the air. Dog language for
Want to play?

As soon as I let go of Sky's tag, he's gone.
Poof.
Touch the tag, he appears. Release it, he disappears. I try this a few times, and it continues to work. Appear. Disappear. Appear. Disappear.

Dad follows my gaze out the window. “What is it? What do you see?”

The Selnicks keep a horse in their backyard—the only horse on the island. He snorts.

Dad looks disappointed, like he thinks I'm horse-gazing instead of helping poor Mr. Selnick. How can I tell him the ghost of my dead dog wants to play, especially when he's so sure animals can't be ghosts? I touch and release Sky's dog tag again.

Appear.

Disappear.

Appear.

Disappear.

Well, if Sky isn't real, at least my imagination has an on/off switch.

 

10

B
ALDIE
L
EGEND

On the way home from the Selnicks', Dad stops to throw up in Mrs. Borse's bushes, and when I put my key into our door, I feel like puking, too. It has to be a stomach bug.

But Dad says, “It's not a bug. This is what happens when the gift passes from one generation to the next.”

My heart pounds like when the undertow catches me off guard, pulls me out too far, makes me lose my footing. “Why didn't you tell me that we'd get sick—that you'd lose your gift?”

“I didn't want to worry you.”

“If I'm supposed to have the gift, why didn't I see anything when I held Mr. Selnick's key?” Darkness, as if I were at the beach on a moonless night, that's all I saw.

“It'll come,” Dad says. “We'll keep trying.” He sits at the table where he gives readings, like he can't make it any farther. “If you get sick when you touch a key, or it feels warm, it's the key's way of warning you something powerful is coming. It's…” Dad pauses like he's thinking of how to explain it. “It's the key's way of asking us to have courage. We must help others face what lies ahead, but first we must face ourselves.”

“Do you always feel sick when you touch a key?”

Dad shakes his head. “It's the worst when you're learning. When I was your age, the first time, I threw up in your grandmother's good chowder pot.” He laughs. “Boy, was she furious! After that I learned to run outside when I felt sick.”

“How long did it take before you learned to use your gift?”

“Don't worry, sweetheart. We'll both feel better soon.” He puts a heavy hand on mine. “I'm tired. I've got to rest now.”

I want to ask Dad a million more questions. I want him to teach me so I can help us not to be sick. Most of all, I want to ask him if it's possible I caught a different gift. The kind that involves a ghost dog.

But Dad hugs me tight and whispers, “I know you have the courage to face what lies ahead. I will be so proud.” Then he stumbles back into the blue bedroom to sleep.

I'm wondering why Dad used the future tense, like when he has a vision, like he knows for sure I'll do something to be proud of, when the phone rings. It's Mrs. Borse. I assume she wants Dad—to ask for a reading or to complain about the throw-up in her bushes—but it turns out she wants me. Something flew through the window. Again.

Maybe it's a Pegasus. At this point, I'd believe anything. The world seems upside down and inside out.

“It's something that belongs to you,” she says.

“Can you bring it over?”

“Don't be smart with me,” Mrs. Borse warns.

She's right, of course. I know she won't leave her house to come over. But I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. “Okay, I'll be right there.” I leave the door unlocked so I don't have to touch my key and get a jolt of nausea.

*   *   *

Mrs. Borse opens the door so there's just a sliver of space to squeeze in. I have to flatten myself like a sheet of cardboard. It's eighty degrees in June, but she is still dressed head to toe in fur. She even has one of those Russian-looking hats with the earflaps.

“Have a seat, and I'll get what's yours.”

I sit on her couch in the center of the severed animal heads, and the smell of fur and skin shoots up my nose like a bullet. “Did you kill these animals yourself?” I ask.

She disappears up the stairs. “If you're talking to me, child, I can't hear you. You'll have to wait till I come down so you can talk into my good ear.”

I wait with my bodiless friends, and an anger rises within me. If I were dead, I wouldn't want my head on a wall.

“Couldn't sleep a wink last night.” Mrs. Borse's voice trails down. “Blasted baldies howling for hours. If my husband were alive, he'd shoot them all. Make me a new fur coat.”

I stand up. “I don't care what you have of mine—you can keep it.” The only thing I want back is Sky, and I already have the key to getting him.

“I can't hear you, child,” Mrs. Borse calls.

The urge to bolt is hurricane-strong, but I force myself to wait for her to come down the stairs. When she does, I say, “If you can't hear me, how can you hear the baldies?”

“Got one good ear.”

“Well, sleep on it, then, so you can't hear them.” It comes out mean and as angry as I feel, loud enough for her to hear it on the first try. When I see her surprise, my fury curls back.

“Child…” She pauses.

“I'm sorry, but those animals.” I point to the wall. “They're dead, and their heads are—”

She swings her own furry head around as if she's forgotten what's on the walls. “You're not one of those vegetarians are you?” She drawls the word
vegetarian
like it's foreign and hard to pronounce.

I shake my head.

One side of Mrs. Borse's grumpy face turns into an almost smile, and she slaps my back. “Good.”

I've won her approval, but it doesn't feel good. A swirl of confusing emotions twists inside me, but I can't seem to lay them straight. Finally I say, “The baldies aren't your enemy.”

“It's easy to be brave, child, when you don't know any better. You don't understand about the baldies.” Mrs. Borse shudders like the thought of them, even in all her fur, gives her a chill. “You didn't grow up hearing their history like I did, because you aren't from around here. But maybe it's time someone told you a thing or two about those devil creatures.” She pushes me back onto the couch and gets herself comfortable like we'll be there awhile. “You know what legends are?”