The Presence (12 page)

"She's OK, your grandma," Collin said as she left to get a vase.

He and I sat side by side on the couch. I tried to make myself think only of now and being here and to keep bad thoughts out of my head.

"Did you have a good day?" Collin asked, and I knew that he wasn't comfortable, either. Maybe I was giving off some kind of anxiety vibes.

"Real good," I lied, wishing Grandma would hurry back.

She brought a slim crystal flute, and I put the rose in it and set it on the table. "Pretty," I told Collin.

He said the Trader Joe lasagna was great.

I could only eat a little.

"She's not dieting," Grandma told him. "It's just she eats like a sparrow."

I tried to laugh. "I've heard sparrows eat a lot. I think they eat their own weight in food every day. Something like that."

"I do, too," Collin said.

Grandma asked him about the water polo team and about what college he wanted to go to and if he thought he'd like to go into the ministry like his father, which made him roll his eyes.

"I've had some offers of scholarships," he said. "I think I might go to the Air Force Academy. I like what they do there."

We talked about how badly we were treating the environment and about global warming and about movies we'd seen and concerts, and I tried hard to act interested. But I wasn't interested, not a bit. I didn't care. This guy's going to think I'm a total washout, I thought. And I didn't care about that, either. There was something I wanted desperately to ask, but I didn't know how.

The phone rang. Grandma answered and snarled into it, "Get a life!"

"Nobody there," she told us. "Again. If it wasn't that your parents might call, Catherine, I'd take the thing off the hook."

Of course it was Noah. Go away, Noah.

We had cookies and ice cream for dessert, and then Grandma said she was going up to bed. There was a choral concert on NPR she wanted to hear and, besides, she was kind of sleepy. And then there was her book. "I'm at a good, yummy part," she said, smiling broadly. "Informative, too."

"And what does that mean exactly, Mrs. Larrimer?" Collin asked, wide-eyed and innocent.

"I learn a lot," Grandma said, as innocent as he was.

Now, I thought. I'm going to ask now.

"I was wondering," I said, proud of my light, casual voice, "is there ever any talk ghosts haunting the halls of St. Matthew's?"

Grandma's brow wrinkled. "Heavens, child. What a strange question." She stared across at me. "You don't think ... you don't think you saw something there, Catherine?"

"Oh, Grandma. Don't look so worried." I smiled a reassuring smile. Her worry was over my mental state, of course, not the possibility or the impossibility of a haunted church. "I was just wondering." Oh, gosh, now I was stuttering. "Such an old building—you know. Sometimes..."

Collin leaned way back in his chair, stretched his long legs, laced his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. "There
was
the little girl, remember, Mrs. Larrimer."

Grandma frowned. "Oh, that. That was all nonsense, of course. And so long ago. Everyone knows the story just grew and grew, making something out of nothing."

"Tell me," I said.

"Oh, there's nothing really to tell. Just a silly legend. Way before my time, before you or Collin were even born."

"You tell me, Collin." I faked a laugh. "I like ghost stories. Was the little girl ... a ghost?"

"Catherine!" Grandma stood up. "I don't think this is the kind of thing we should be talking about. Bad dreams all around."

Poor Grandma. I could tell the subject of ghosts was too close to the subject of death, was too close to the subject of Catherine killing her friend. She didn't want old agonies surfacing.

"It's all right, Grandma," I said. "I want to know."

"OK?" Collin asked Grandma, and she gave the slightest of shrugs.

"Let's see how it went." His eyes were fixed again on the ceiling. "Oh, yeah. Her name was Grace Feathertree. She and her parents came to St. Matthew's from South Dakota. They were Native Americans, Ojibwa. Right, Mrs. Larrimer? Right so far?"

"That's the story," Grandma said. "For what it's worth."

The phone rang.

"Not again," Collin said.

It was beside me. I felt I had to be the one to pick it up.

"Catherine?" He didn't need to say who it was. I touched the roundness of my gold locket under my sweater. For courage.

"Why didn't you come today?" he asked. "I waited. Kirsty waited. She says if you don't come tomorrow, she'll close the curtain again. She says she won't wait the way she did when you didn't show up for the Chieftains' concert. She says that time she waited in the rain for two hours."

"She knows what happened," I began and then stopped. I didn't need to tell Noah my good excuse for not turning up that day. Who was I talking to anyway? A ghost who might be a murderer? A ghost who knew secrets, who knew everything?

But how
did
he know about the Chieftains' concert? Was it still possible that he had talked to Kirsty? As a ghost, maybe?

No. He knew things because he listened. He listened to Grandma telling her friends how I regretted even the littlest ways I'd hurt Kirsty. I spread my guilt around.

"You'd better come tomorrow at three o'clock," he whispered. "Or she'll be gone from you forever and ever."

I bit the inside of my lip and tasted blood, as salty as tears.

"Who was that?" Grandma asked sharply as I slid the phone back in place. She loved me, and she sensed a wrongness.

"It was nobody," I said, stunned at the truth of the words even as I said them. The old, almost forgotten childhood poem flashed into my head:

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish that man would go away.

Noah. The man who wasn't there.

"Collin? Go on about the little girl," I whispered. "I want to hear." I leaned across and covered Grandma's hand with mine. "It won't freak me out. Honest."

"OK," Collin said. "Let me think. I guess she was about five. The story is she was born in some sort of shroud."

"Caul," Grandma said. "Not a shroud, for heaven's sake. A caul is a kind of covering that's around some people when they're born. But it's nonsense to think it gives that person special powers." She looked at me. "Are you sure you want to hear this, Catherine? It's stupid, but it's also a little scary."

"I do want to hear," I said.

Collin looked from me to Grandma. She spread her hands. "Better just finish it now you've started."

"Supposedly, little Grace was in Sunday School, in Oak Chapel, the tiny room at the back of the church. The kids were supervised, but somehow she wandered away and went down the stairs into the basement. No one goes down there anymore. There's no light and no heat and parts of it are sealed off because of insurance and stuff. Maybe it was different then. They started looking for Grace, and she came stumbling up. I guess she'd cut her hands and her knees falling on the steps, and they were all bloody. She looked really weird and then..." Collin stopped for effect.

"Go on," I urged.

"When you're telling a good ghost story, you have to wait a few heartbeats at the grisly part." Collin grinned a maniacal grin. "Then Grace spoke. Her voice had totally changed. It was way deep. 'I smell evil and death in the shades below,' she growled. They said her voice sounded like the girl in
The Exorcist,
not like her little baby voice at all. But at least her head didn't turn around backward, like in the movie."

"I'm surprised somebody hasn't made up that little detail," Grandma said. "What a bunch of twaddle. The child probably said she smelled a bad smell. Damp and mildew."

I was stretched tight, icy inside. "
Shades below,
" I repeated. "Those don't seem like words a little girl would know."

Grandma snorted. "They seem like an embellishment to me. Somebody making up a story."

"Anyway, her parents left St. Matthew's. Took off for someplace that smelled better." Collin knocked on the table. "And that's all, folks!"

The shades below, where Lottie had been, and Belinda. And where I was invited.

In the shades below, the Presence paced his room, impatient and angry. He'd told her,
warned
her, that Kirsty wouldn't wait any longer. Was that enough? Would she come?

He made himself sit and read from the book of poetry that he'd taken from the library. Browning, Robert, 1812–89.

Idly, he thought that if he should ever write that autobiography he was planning, there'd be no end date for him. Just Noah Vanderhorst,
1864—?

Those kinds of thoughts usually amused him. Or depressed and frightened him. Forever. More long years, a prisoner in the church. Long years alone.

He opened the book and found the lines that he liked best:

Whence the grieved and obscure waters slope
Into a darkness quieted by hope;

Hope to quiet his darkness.

The hope of Catherine.

I don't know much about what Collin and I did that night or what we talked about. I know he found
It's a Wonderful Life
on television, and we watched it. I smiled when he smiled, laughed when he laughed, not seeing the pictures that flickered in front of me. There wasn't much of the diary left to read. I wished I could just go up to my room and finish it.

I made hot chocolate for us and brought in some of Grandma's cookies. I nodded my head and tried to look interested when Collin talked.

I know my parents called. They were back in London. It was cold and wet but still bright with the Christmas spirit. My dad said the people were "off their rockers" about the rise of gangs and crime. But it seemed peaceful to him and Mom. He said "off their rockers" was an old expression he'd latched on to, much used in England. He said the food was great but different. Steak-and-kidney pudding, meat pies, Scotch eggs. They loved it all.

I guess I made the right sounds and gave the right answers.

But when Mom came on, she asked, "Are you really all right, Best Girl?" as if she sensed or suspected something was not all right at all.

Tears choked my throat. Mom liked to call me "Best Girl." When I was little, she'd sing a baby song to me:

"Best Girl in the whole wide world.
Nobody else will do.
Best girl that ever was.
I love you."

I swallowed hard. "Best Girl's OK," I whispered.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Just three days and we'll be home, and you'll be home with us." She waited a minute and then said softly, "We'll call again tomorrow night, early. Before your Christmas Eve service."

"Good," I said.

Tomorrow night. How many things will have happened by tomorrow night?

"You miss them?" Collin asked.

I nodded. "It's silly. They'll be back in a few days. And they've only been gone a week. It's just, when I hear their voices and think of them being so far away..." I let the words snuffle off.

Collin nodded. "My dad was gone for two months once, building houses in Africa with some other church people. I bawled every time he called home. You just want to be able to touch."

"I know."

He glanced sideways at me. "And I wasn't in first grade at the time, either. That was last year."

I smiled. Nice that he'd admit to something like that. A lot of guys wouldn't.

When I sat back down, he curled an arm casually around my shoulders. It felt so good there, so steady, that I let my head relax into the comfort of it. He was wearing a navy blue sweater, the wool scratchy against my skin. My dad has a sweater like that, scratchy to everyone but him.

Collin's head moved closer to mine. His lips brushed my cheek. I turned my face, and we kissed. It was nice. His mouth was warm and dry and kind.

For a minute, I thought of telling him everything. But then I imagined his startled look, his embarrassment, the fumbling for words, what to say to this crazy girl with her crazy stories. This one was "off her rocker" for sure. She'd been off it before.

Talk about little Grace, who'd been born in a caul!

Tell him.

I couldn't.

I let my cheek rub gently against his. I knew we could have liked each other a lot if things had been different.

"Do you think we could do something tomorrow?" he asked. "Maybe drive up to Angeles Crest. There's snow. 'Course, I know snow's nothing new for you, living in Chicago, but still.... It's pretty. Sometimes you can see all the way to the ocean. Hard to believe we have snow in California, huh? Or we could pack a picnic lunch and ride our bikes down to Tournament Park. There's a band playing Christmas music tomorrow afternoon."

"I think Grandma has something she wants us to do tomorrow," I said, and I felt bad, lying to him. Except it probably wasn't a lie. I'd have to dodge Grandma's plans, too, if...

"We'll be going to the Christmas Eve service tomorrow night," I told him. "So I'll see you there."

Collin beamed. "Absolutely."

At the door, he kissed me again. His kiss was gentle and sweet and unsure. I could tell he was deflated. No response from Best Girl. No holding or clinging. I was sorry.

When he left, I hurried to put the cups and plates in the dishwasher, double-lock the door, and turn off the lamps. I started for the stairs, then went back and took the rose in its slender vase with me. I wasn't sure why.

I set the rose beside my bed, took a deep breath, and opened the drawer.

I sat on the edge of my bed to read, the white down comforter puffing itself into a nest beneath me. Already my heart was jittering.

Oh, god, tell me what to do! I'm safe here at home. But that girl, Belinda. I should have told someone right away. I will. I will tell, but they won't believe me. They'll think me delusional. I have to be careful.

I looked up from the diary. Oh, Lottie. I'm feeling what you felt. I understand. What did you do? Did you tell?