“Who are Jessica and Emily and all?” said Gretch.
“Shells,” said Christina.
“My sister?” cried Robbie. “Christina, is Val all right?”
“No,” said Christina, “but she’s better. She came for me. She woke me. She dressed me. She was the only one who knew how, because she had been there. She had swung in the same hammock.”
“Hammock?” said Vicki and Gretch together. “Christina, do you have any idea how weird you sound?”
“Come, Christina,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “You and I will go down to the office. You need sedation. Mr. Shevvington and I will help you.”
“I will go to the office with you,” said Christina. “But I am using the phone there. To end all the terrible things you have been doing.”
“Excuse me?” said Mrs. Shevvington, pasting a smile on her oatmeal face.
“No,” said Christina, slowly shaking her head back and forth. The silver locks slid over the gold and tangled with the brown. “I will not excuse you. The law will not excuse you. Parents will not excuse you.”
“She has flipped out,” whispered Vicki. “You were right, Mrs. Shevvington. Christina is gone-zo.” Vicki and Gretch snickered.
The froth on Mrs. Shevvington’s lips spilled over.
“Being crazy is rather pleasant,” said Christina, “once they soften it with drugs or sleep. Like a hammock. You just swing quietly in the shade of your mind.”
Mrs. Shevvington seemed to rock back and forth, like a swing.
“And Val,” said Robbie, “is Val still in the shade?”
“No,” said Christina. “She is back.”
Mrs. Shevvington licked the froth from her mouth. “Come, my child of the Isle,” she said. “We will go read your silly little papers together. And if you call the police, that is fine with me. It’s about time they put a stop to your fire-setting and your match-collecting.”
They entered the hallway of the middle school together.
Jonah and Robbie tried to follow.
“I think not,” said Mrs. Shevvington, closing the door of the seventh-grade English room behind her. She and Christina walked down the long, wide corridors, where no teacher stood, no student passed, no janitor cleaned. Alone, they walked.
“You made a fatal error, Christina,” said Mrs. Shevvington. Her smile widened, as if the smile planned to slit her face, as if it were a parasite turning on its own body. “You wanted to gloat. I sympathize. I enjoy gloating.” The smile ate like acid into the oatmeal complexion, until Mrs. Shevvington’s face vanished and nothing was there but a yellow slit of triumph. “Val is not safe,” said Mrs. Shevvington. Laughing, she whispered, “And neither, my fair island girl, are you.”
Chapter 21
THEY WERE TOO FAR from the seventh-grade class for her to scream for Robbie or Jonah. Too far from the high school halls to scream for Michael or Benjamin Jaye. They were in the front lobby, by the school offices, where only parents and teachers went willingly.
Mrs. Shevvington stumped on. It was like the evening they went for ice cream, and she struggled in Michael’s grip like a kitten dragged to the vet.
Jonah knew this would happen, thought Christina. He told me I was getting cocky. But I had to show off. I had to sashay in there, so the seventh grade would know. I was playing games. But this isn’t a game. Don’t I know that best? But even so, I kept playing games, thinking I would win.
The grown-ups always win.
In lock-step Mrs. Shevvington and Christina entered the outer office. Filing cabinet drawers were half open while secretaries pretended to look things up. A gym coach without a class lounged on the counter and a big kid getting suspended slouched against the wall.
The staff glanced up. “Oh! Mrs. Shevvington!” they said, ignoring Christina. “Mr. Shevvington just left! Poor little Val showed up after all this time!”
Christina cried out.
“Mr. Shevvington was so sweet to her,” put in the file clerk, not answering her ringing phone. “Val was so strange. You would not have believed the accusations she made. The poor child. A clinical case of paranoia if I ever saw one. Just like on soap operas. And she comes from such a nice family, too.”
“She was supposed to stay at the Inne,” mumbled Christina. “Where she’d be safe.”
The gym coach slapped the counter with his huge flat hand. “You’re the one who was hiding Val?” he demanded. “You’re one of those island girls, aren’t you? The one who plays with matches and tried to set a storm cottage on fire. I heard about you. Kids like you shouldn’t be allowed in the school system with regular kids.”
Christina ripped loose from Mrs. Shevvington and tried to bolt. The gym coach caught Christina’s elbows and pinned her to the wall. “This has been some year!” he said to Mrs. Shevvington. “I bet you guys are sorry you ever transferred to Maine. We’ve handed you more crazies than the rest of the country has in a generation!”
Mrs. Shevvington smiled. There was a puffiness to her now: a contentment. “So true,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “You might call the ambulance for Christina. She must be sedated.”
Christina remembered the quiet of the guest room, the painted isles, and the foggy mind. I’ll be back there in a minute, she thought. Or in the Institute. And I won’t know, or care. I’ll be a shell again. What made Val come here? What made either of us come here? Did the Shevvingtons pull us in with their evil or did something in us want to be defeated?
Christina felt herself fading like a sheet in the storm cottage, drifting into mists of mindlessness. Perhaps you had to participate in your own ending. You had to allow it to happen.
“Mr. Shevvington was going to call Val’s parents from Schooner Inne,” said the file clerk, “for privacy. He always puts the child first, you know. No matter how undeserving. He drove Val back there.”
“Did my husband have his briefcase?” asked Mrs. Shevvington.
“Why, yes,” said the typist, “I believe he went back into the office to get it. He had Val in one hand and the briefcase in the other.”
The coach released Christina’s arms. Defeat was so complete that she went limp and sagged to the floor. He knelt beside her. “I’d better get her a glass of water.”
The typist said, “I’ll call the nurse.”
“No need,” said Mrs. Shevvington, retrieving the pile of papers that had slipped out of Christina’s hands.
“She might be ill,” protested the coach. “Sometimes when my students act weird out on the field, it turns out to be heatstroke or something.”
“The ambulance is coming. Some things are better left to trained paramedics.”
Christina was not ill. She was faking. She leaped to her feet, shoving Mrs. Shevvington against the door. She raced out of the office, skidding on waxy floors toward the front doors. “Stop her!” cried Mrs. Shevvington. “She’s dangerous.”
Gym coach, secretary, and teacher lurched after Christina.
The big kid getting suspended yawned, stretched, and stuck his feet out. “Oh, sorry,” he said pleasantly, when they tripped over him and knocked into each other, bottling up their own exit.
Through the lobby, out the doors, down the wide granite steps, Christina tried to soak granite through her shoes; she would need it all. She heard them coming after her, but the women were wearing narrow skirts and high heels; the coach made kids exercise but rarely exercised himself; Christina was too fleet of foot for them.
Across the wide green expanse of campus she ran. The coach tried to catch her, but Mrs. Shevvington didn’t bother. She headed for her car. Christina swerved through the trees, cutting through the opening in the fence. Mrs. Shevvington started her engine. Christina burst out onto the sidewalk, ran down School Street, heading for town. Mrs. Shevvington, driving in the most ordinary way, without unseemly haste, could go forty miles an hour. The woman turned onto the School Street and accelerated.
Christina, sobbing for breath, ran up a side street, crossed two backyards, duck
ed down a driveway, and came out behind the laundromat. Through the laundromat, between the clattering washers and the steamy dryers, she went. Anya had worked here. Mindlessly folding other people’s underwear. Don’t let them catch me! prayed Christina.
She crossed Seaside Avenue, and jumped up onto the sidewalk just as Mrs. Shevvington drove across Seaside. She’s not trying to catch me, thought Christina. She’s going straight to Schooner Inne.
Christina came out at the bottom of Breakneck Hill. Mrs. Shevvington came out at the top and parked in front of Schooner Inne. She unlocked the huge green door, let herself in, and shut it behind her.
I have to get Val, thought Christina. I did this. This is my fault. How did it happen?
Christina stepped over the cliff. She had come up these rocks, but never gone down. Tide was out. The mudflats were slimy and pockmarked. She climbed carefully down the treacherous crags and outcroppings. She had to drop down into the mud. It sucked her in almost to the knees. She tugged her right foot free, and it came out black with slime. Slogging across the flats, mud sucking at her feet, Christina stayed next to the cliffs. No windows in Schooner Inne could see a person at the bottom of the cliff. In some places the mud had dried and she walked on top. In some places there was water a foot deep, or even two feet, and she waded, or fell in.
She made her way around a jutting stone with sharp edges, and there, hidden in a cleft, was the entrance to the cellar passage the old sea captain had used for smuggling. They would not be expecting her to arrive this way. They would look for her by road, by door, but not by cellar. Tearing her hands, ripping her clothes, she finally got up to the opening. The opening she and Dolly had found so tantalizing — had fallen out of, and nearly been swallowed by the tide while the Shevvingtons’ insane son laughed joyfully above.
Christina tiptoed up the splintery wooden cellar steps. How many horrible sounds had she heard in this black hole? How many times had she been cornered here? But today it was her secret entry. Creeping up from the cellar — as the Shevvingtons’ son had done in his time — she would slip unnoticed into the house, as Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington watched for her from the doors and windows, and silently she and Val would go back to the sea. Just as she had done with Dolly! They would sail back to the Isle and be safe. Somehow Christina would make all the parents believe her.
Her heart was thudding painfully. Her feet slid muddily inside her own shoes. Pressing her ear against the door that opened into the kitchen, she listened for the silence that would mean she could ease herself inside the house.
“Christina’s here,” said Mr. Shevvington, laughing. “Open the door, Valerie dear, and let her in.”
The kitchen door opened and Christina fell onto the linoleum. Val, whimpering, crowded up against her.
Mr. Shevvington laughed and laughed. The laughter whipped him back and forth, like a flag in the wind. “Come,” he said gaily. “Follow me.”
The girls followed as if on leashes.
“What’s happening?” said Christina. She was crying. All her pain, all her dangerous effort — and for what?
“We thought you’d enjoy watching your so-called proof burn up,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “We have files on you, Christina, dear, and on Val of course. On Anya and Dolly. But there are other names. Emily. Margaret. Jessica. Wendy. And oh, so many more! And it will continue, of course. We will never stop.”
The wind from the sea came up the cellar passage and tossed the kitchen door back and forth, in a wet, ghostly, low-tide way.
“But we have learned a little something from you, Christina,” said Mr. Shevvington. “I just want you to know that first. You taught us not to write anything down and not to save it. So when you’re in your little cot, swallowing your little pills, watching your little television, you remember how generous you were to us. Helping us out.”
“And giving us,” said Mrs. Shevvington, beaming, “such an exciting year. Christina, you were a worthy opponent. I have truly enjoyed bringing you down.”
Christina halted at the door to the parlor. “Come on, Val,” she said, trying not to let her voice shake, “let’s just go out the front door.”
“You cannot get out the front door, my dear,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “Or any other door. There are bolts, as you well know. There is no exit from this house, Christina, darling. And the windows, too, are locked. The only way out is through the cellar. And what good would that do you? Because the tide is rising.”
The tide whiffled and puffed between the cliffs. The sound of the sea blowing out its birthday candles. Candle Cove.
“You and Dolly managed it once, my dear. Late last winter. And you survived. But I doubt if you would be so lucky again.” Mrs. Shevvington laughed. “Would you like to light the fire, Christina, dear? Since you so enjoy playing with matches? Would you like to see yourself go up in smoke?”
Val shivered up against Christina like a draft. “It’s my fault,” she said, weeping on Christina. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I wanted the whole town to see how terrible they are, so I thought I would start with the school and the teachers and tell them out loud what the Shevvingtons have been doing. But they thought I was crazy.”
We were crazy, thought Christina, to believe for a single moment that we could beat Authority. People are dogs on leashes. They follow the biggest and the strongest, not the small and weak. “It’s all right,” said Christina, patting Val. To the Shevvingtons she said, “What are you going to do with us after you burn all those papers?”
Mr. Shevvington laughed. “Christina, you know better,” he chided gently. “We won’t do anything to you. Your own families, your own neighbors, perhaps your own boyfriend, will do things to you. Get you psychiatrists, medications, institutional care. This is America, the end of the twentieth century. We don’t take care of our mentally deranged at home. We hospitalize them. Otherwise they would upset us.” His voice was like old velvet: soft, but cracked.
The girls were pushed into the parlor.
Mr. Shevvington picked one file out of his bulging briefcase. From his jacket pocket he took a slim, gold-trimmed fountain pen. In neat black ink he added a brief notation. Then he handed the file to Christina.
It was her own. Dated the first day of school, the past September. On that day they had chosen her, had opened her file. And the new writing was today’s date.
This day in May, before she was fourteen, before she went to the dance, before she had her first date, before she danced in her innocent white dress — Christina Romney’s file would close.
Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington lit a real fire in the fireplace with the sea-green mantel. The mantel arched over the cold stone. The fire caught. While Christina clung to her own file, Mr. Shevvington drew another from his beloved briefcase. “Jessica,” he said lovingly to his wife.
“Jessica,” she nodded, and they smiled, remembering. They crumpled all the evidence of Jessica — perhaps all that Jessica was or ever would be now — and tossed it onto the fire, smiling, smiling, smiling. The fire flickered and smiled back, like an ally. Like an old friend.
The day was hot. Mrs. Shevvington crossed the parlor with its dark flocked walls and pushed aside the thick ancient curtains, with their linings as ancient and rotten as her own mind. She thrust open the window.
The curtains swayed in the breeze.
The scent of roses, wisteria vines, and sea grass reached their noses; the perfumes of Christina’s world. Of her own space on this earth. Of Burning Fog Isle.
Come to me! thought Christina. Come save me. I am Christina of the Isle, and I need you.
Sea wind raced over the waves, lifting them into great curls, like fingers of the dead.
Sea wind separated the three colors of her hair: again, she was silver and gold and sable.
Sea wind coursed through the dry, old house. It came in through the cellar passage, and passed through the kitchen, and crept into the hallways, invisibly swirling and twisting.
It entered every room, l
ooking for a way out.
Jessica burst into flames.
Mrs. Shevvington added Emily.
The wind kicked the parlor door open.
The door slammed against the wall, as if an angry ghost had stormed in.
The Shevvingtons turned, alarmed. But nothing was there. “For a minute, I thought Christina had found a way out,” laughed Mr. Shevvington. He tossed crunched-up remains of Emily into the fire.
Nothing visible had been added to the room.
But the wind had come: Christina’s wind, of the Isle.
Chapter 22
SEA WIND REACHED INTO the shallow fireplace. It lifted the crumpled, flaming balls of paper that were Jessica and Emily. There was no grate, no screen. The wind hurled the smouldering proof across the room into the dry, silken, old drapes.
The curtains caught fire in the blink of an eye. They turned silver and gold and then immediately were nothing but black char, falling to the floor.
The green-flocked wallpaper caught fire.
The intricate, creamy wooden molding around the windows caught fire.
The old spindled tables and elegant varnished chairs caught fire.
Val screamed. Christina and Val backed into the hall. Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington came right after them. Mr. Shevvington said calmly to his wife, “Just shut the door, my dear. Stopping the draft will stop the fire.”
Christina grabbed Val’s hand and they ran up the stairs. Up, up, and up, to the only place left to go, to the cupola.
But the parlor door was as old as the curtains, and it no longer met at the edges. Flames licked through the cracks like long yellow tongues. The fire ran ahead of the wind, snatching curtains and furniture, old walls and ancient beams.
The parlor was consumed.
The fire reached for the hall.
More! cried the house, which the Shevvingtons had wired to whisper names and evil thoughts.
More! cried the wind, which the Shevvingtons had caused to whistle through tiny holes and frighten fragile Anya.
More! cried the sea, whose tides the Shevvingtons had used to swallow Dolly.