The Seeker A Novel (R. B. Chesterton) (17 page)

I struck a match and lit the lamp’s wick. At first I didn’t see her sitting so quietly in the corner. When I did, I thought my heart might stop.

“I knew you’d come,” she said. “I’ve been watching. And waiting.” She sat perfectly still, and in the dimness I couldn’t be certain if her lips were moving or if she was communicating telepathically. The urge to run consumed me, but my legs refused to work.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. Her lips twitched at the corners, but her eyes remained wide and black. “I’m just a little girl. I can’t hurt you.”

How did one speak to a ghost? “Why are you watching me?”

“Because you’ll listen. So few people will. You can see me, and so many can’t. Or won’t.”

She sat so still that had the lamplight not caught in her eyes I’d have thought I was conversing with a shadow. “Are you Mischa Lobrano?” I asked. “You never told me your name. Back at Walden.”

“Researcher that you are, I thought you’d dig it up. A joke, if you will.” Her smile was too cynical for such a young girl. “My name matters not. Call me whatever you wish.”

“To me it does matter. What’s your name?”

“Mischa will do. Where I live now, names aren’t so important. Understanding is.”

“What do you want of me?”

She didn’t seem to move, yet she was standing in front of me. “Not so very much. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

In the lamplight, her eyes were as black and bottomless as those in the scrimshaw.

24

There wasn’t a fire in the tiny cabin, no method of heat, but strangely I began to warm. The walls blocked the wind, and the roof, though tenuous, kept out the snow. When I went to close the door more firmly, I noticed drifts piling high against tree trunks. The skies showed no signs of letting up.

“Worried about the walk home?” the child asked. “It can be dangerous cutting through the woods, but that’s the fastest way. In the snow, the roots and holes are covered up and can’t be seen. You have to be very careful.”

“Did you cut through the woods the day you disappeared?”

She cocked her head to one side like a bird. “Little Miss Nancy Drew. You can’t stop gnawing on the mystery. Do you really care what happened to a little girl?”

I did. “Who hurt you?”

“That’s the crux of your worry. You suspect one of your lovers did something very, very bad.”

She looked like a child, but she spoke like a much older woman. And she meant to tease me by withholding whatever I asked. “What do you know about lovers?”

“I know most people think fucking two men is bad form. Some might call that promiscuous. Or desperate. Or maybe insane.”

She shocked me, and also pissed me off. “Who are you to judge, flitting through the woods leaving dead birds and dolls?”

“Just an observation. Social mores come and go. In the place where I live, such things aren’t of any significance. We understand that monogamy isn’t part of the human condition. In the natural world, animals pick the vibrant, strongest mate. The man who can provide and survive. That’s the way of nature. Who can fault a woman for being natural?”

Such sentiments coming from the mouth of a child made me backpedal toward the door. This was very wrong. My fingers found the knob and I turned it slowly, praying it wouldn’t rattle or squeak.

“Leaving so soon?” She never moved, but the latch slid home. “I don’t want you to go. Let’s play a game. I haven’t had a playmate in such a long time.”

“Who are you?” I no longer felt certain this was the ghost of Mischa Lobrano. She wasn’t even a child. There was age-old intelligence in her gaze, a jadedness that scared me.

“Mischa. You like to think of me as her.”

“No child talks like you do.”

A small hand slid down her face as if she meant to wipe her expression off. “I’m sorry.” Her voice remained childlike, but her entire bearing changed. Rounder shoulders, limber spine. “Being dead does strange things to you. Dead means lonely. You’re the only person who can see me. Think what it’s been like for the past days and nights. I’ve been here. Stuck, in-between. I’ve tried to tell people what happened. No one listens. Years have passed. It’s true, I’ve grown testy. I was once the princess. My parents loved me so much. Do you know how hard it is to watch them suffer?”

“So you
are
Mischa.” It had been nearly a decade since the kid disappeared. Had she lived, she’d be a smart-mouthed teenager. It fit. She’d matured, but not physically. I thought of Ann Rice’s sorrowful creation, Claudia, the child vampire, doomed never to go through puberty or experience a sexual relationship.

“Do you know why you can hear me?” she asked.

“No, but I’d like to.” Because I felt sorry for her, I offered friendship. Not to mention my curiosity and the hope this child, who produced dolls and tintypes, might also help me with my primary quest. Aunt Bonnie.

“You’re a Cahill. You aren’t the first of your blood with the gift of communicating with the dead.”

“My aunt Bonnie had a gift. Predicting the future by dreams. Second sight. She hinted at communicating with the dead.”

She clapped her hands. “Very good. You’re smart, too. I like that.”

An awesome possibility presented itself. “Can I speak with Bonnie?”

She shook her head and her blond hair shimmered in the lamplight. “I can’t answer, because I don’t know.
Maybe
you can. If she’ll talk with you. She may not want to.”

My head was reeling, and I felt slightly nauseous. I put a hand on the table to steady myself. This was incredible. I was having a conversation with a long-dead child. A wave of heat washed over me, and I feared I might be sick.

“Let me help you.” She was at my side. The door opened and a blast of frigid air brushed over me, bringing sweet relief from the nausea. I inhaled and closed my eyes, allowing my stomach and head to calm and settle.

“Better?” she asked.

“Yes.” I blinked and stared into the black depths of her eyes. They weren’t black, but a deep navy blue. I pushed the hood back from her face. Her blond hair was silky and a pure golden yellow, the color of childhood, of innocence, of summer sun. No bottle could duplicate that shade. “I’ll bet your mother’s heart broke when you didn’t come home.”

She glanced down at her feet. “A lot of people hurt. Joe was one of them.”

I found I couldn’t ask the question I most wanted an answer to. I couldn’t ask if Joe had hurt her.

“Don’t ask if you can’t take the answer.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and went to close the door.

I would forever berate myself as a coward if I didn’t try. “Do you know what happened to you?”

“No.”

I wondered if she was lying, and to what purpose. “What do you remember?”

“What do I remember?” She spun like a child, arms wide. I grabbed the oil lamp for fear she’d knock it off the table.

“I remember walking in the woods. Mr. Sinclair had taken us on a nature walk the first of the school year. We talked about ladybugs. They’re the state insect for Massachusetts, you know. The state called for ‘citizen biologists’ to help find and photograph all the ladybugs.” She spun again, her features gleeful. “Mr. Sinclair said if we could find any nine-spotted ladybugs—they called them C-9—and photograph them, he would give us each ten dollars.”

“Did Joe mean for you to go into the woods alone?”

She twirled, halting in front of me. “No. He had no idea I was going into the woods. He’d probably forgotten all about ladybugs and the money.” Her voice lowered. “But he didn’t tell me the C-9 was thought to be extinct. It’s not right to send children on a quest that hard.”

My knees weakened. If Joe hadn’t tempted her into the woods, he wasn’t there waiting to take her. He hadn’t asked her to meet him. She’d gone on her own initiative. I might not be able to tackle this issue head on, but I could nibble away at it.

“That makes you feel better, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You like Mr. Sinclair.”

“I do.” She seemed able to read my mind, so why deny it?

“And the boy, Patrick? Do you like him, too?”

“Not in the same way.” I didn’t mind her curiosity about my life. She’d been cheated out of hers. Why not share a little? “Patrick is fun. Joe is serious. There are days when I’m lonely, and I just want to laugh and feel good.”

“I know how that feels.” All life drained from her face. “I’m lonely all the time. Until you came.”

I had the strangest urge to comfort her. She might be a ghost with too much knowledge, but she was also a little girl who’d died before her life had even begun. “I tried to befriend you at Walden. You ran away.”

“I couldn’t be certain what you’d do if you realized what I am. I’ve tried so many times over the years and failed. People are afraid of me, but you’re a special person, Aine.”

“I had a lonely childhood, so I can empathize.”

“You want a child, don’t you?”

She had the uncanny ability to read me. “Maybe once I get my doctorate.”

“You want a little girl. Like me. A blonde.” Her smile hinted at things she shouldn’t know.

“No. A boy.” I spoke too quickly.

“No, you don’t. You want a girl. To replace the one you killed.”

Her words ripped at me. I raised my hands in self-defense. How did she know? She couldn’t know. It was impossible. Even if she was a ghost, she’d have no way to know my personal history.

“It’s okay, silly,” Mischa said. “You were only a kid. You couldn’t have a baby. Everyone knows that.”

My hand found the latch and I eased it open. Before she could protest, I yanked the door open and ran out into the darkness. Stumbling over a loose board on the porch, I hurtled into the snow. I went down on my knees and scrambled to my feet, lurching forward, gasping for air.

When I turned back to look at the little shack, I could see the glow of the oil lamp through the open door. The day had disappeared, and while I’d been inside the shack with Mischa, night, so perfectly still and silent, had slipped over me. I’d lost hours of time.

Standing alone in the woods I could hear the snow falling. I’d never felt the world so hushed and shut down. Had I been inside the cabin at all? Standing knee-deep in snow, I couldn’t be certain. I couldn’t even find my footprints. The snow obliterated them.

The light visible through the open door, though, reassured me that I hadn’t imagined the encounter. I hadn’t. She was in there. A little dead girl’s spirit. An angry child who had every right to be furious. Someone had taken her life, stolen her future. She knew things she shouldn’t, but perhaps that was a compensation to the dead for all the pleasures of life they’d never know again. I couldn’t run away from her. She held the answers about my aunt. Answers I needed.

Even though I didn’t want to, I shook off the snow and started back to the porch.

Without warning, the door slammed shut.

25

When I made it to Route 126, the major road skirting the forested land around Walden Pond, I knew I was in serious trouble. Within a few minutes of leaving the cabin, I was lost. Somehow I managed to stumble in the right direction.

I’d thought finding 126 would solve my problems, but that wasn’t the case. Once I reached the ribbon of clearing that had to be the road, I got a better picture of what I faced. Everything familiar had vanished under a covering of soundless white. Heavy clouds obscured the starlight and the white cold obliterated my senses. It seemed I’d gone deaf and mute and blind. I was completely alone. Everyone with good sense was indoors. There would be no passing cars, no help from strangers. I was stranded in a world absent of everything except snow.

My years in Kentucky hadn’t prepared me for this kind of snowfall. I’d been a fool to wander so far away from town, and I had no explanation for what had happened to the daylight hours. It had been afternoon and then night. Granny Siobhan had taught me to read the clouds and hear the whisper of the leaves. Mother Earth gave warnings of her intentions for those who listened. I’d witnessed the pregnant sky, swollen and gray, and the jittery warning of the wind in the trees—and hardheadedly pursued my own agenda. No matter that I’d assumed I could call for help—a cab or Joe or Patrick. My cell phone was useless. I’d ignored nature’s plentiful signals and continued on, driven by the unsolved murder of a child.

Not an innocent child. She might have been naïve once, but Mischa Lobrano was far from blameless now. Death had taught her many things a young girl shouldn’t know. And at least one trick. She possessed a keen ability to read the past. My past. How, I wasn’t certain. All I knew was that she could discern my secrets. That was not a comfortable thing for me.

The snow piled up to mid-thigh and I floundered forward, afraid to stand in one place too long. I’d heard it said that people who were caught outside during blizzards often grew too weary to keep moving. They were found curled in a ball in the snow, dead. They gave in to weariness, to the desperate need to stop and sleep.

Would that be such a terrible death? It sounded peaceful enough. The cold was biting, but that wouldn’t last long. Numbness would set in. Already the cold pulled at me, promising a rest would refresh me. But I remembered Pauley Cahill, a cousin who got lost hunting in the mountains during a frigid February.

That winter had been an anomaly. The snow had come down fast and thick, like now. Pauley was an experienced woodsman. All of the Cahill boys were taught to hunt and kill before grade school. Pauley knew his way around the forest, but he’d slipped and sprained his ankle. Unable to do anything more than hobble, he’d gone as far as he could and then curled up under an overhanging rock to rest and wait for help.

When they found him, he was almost dead. They should have let him die. They took his feet above the ankles. A week later, they severed his hands just below the elbows. He lost both ears and his nose. What was left of Pauley was barely human, and he burned with a fury more terrifying than his noseless face over what had been taken from him by the cold. He was in charge of making sure the Oxy buyers paid their bills. He showed slackers the same compassion the cold had shown him.