Sophie’s wide blue eyes studied me. “I was sure you were. I felt a connection.”
I frowned and saw the color deepen in her cheeks. She picked up her tray of cleaning supplies and reached for the vacuum. “I’ve got another room to do.”
I followed her across the hall to a room that had different wallpaper but a similar arrangement of bed and furniture. Sophie snatched up a feather duster and began whisking it over frames and mirrors. She didn’t look at me.
“I would never have said anything,” she explained, talking a little too fast, “except I thought you were like me. That’s why I hoped you had seen the ghost. Psychics seem to attract other forms of spiritual energy-they’re like magnets to ghosts. And-well, that’s all,” she said.
I caught her peeking at me.
“Are you sure you’re not?” she asked. “You’ve never been aware of things that other people aren’t? You’ve never had an experience you can’t explain?”
“No,” I lied.
She shook her head. “1 read you wrong.”
“Except,” I said, “some, uh, strange dreams.”
“Miss Lydia says that dreams are shadows cast by truth shining on our darkest secrets.”
“Well, mine aren’t all that mysterious,” I replied. “1 can explain them-most of them.”
I told Sophie about my childhood visits to a house that looked like Grandmother’s and my recent dream of the dollhouse, along with my theories about seeing photos of Mom with the miniature house.
“You could be right,” Sophie said, sounding unconvinced.
“You have a better explanation?”
“You’re psychic-telepathic. When you were little, your mom was watching you play and thinking about herself as a kid at home. You picked up the images and made them your own.”
“I like my theory better.”
“Okay by me,” Sophie said agreeably. She lifted a sheet from a pile on a chair, and we went to work making the bed.
“Who’s Miss Lydia?” I asked.
“The old lady who owns the café next door. Jamie Riley’s mother.”
“Oh!”
“When I was little,” Sophie went on, “and Mom was working here at the Mallard, I’d go to Tea Leaves for my after-school snack. Miss Lydia liked me and talked to me a lot.”
“She sure doesn’t like me,” I said, then told Sophie about my introduction to the woman.
“Don’t be offended,” Sophie advised. “Miss Lydia doesn’t trust many people. A couple years ago she got in trouble for selling her herbal remedies at the Queen Victoria, the hotel across the street. Guests complained. A woman said she got sick, but that can happen with herbal stuff, just like it does with a prescription from a doctor. Anyway, now Miss Lydia only deals with locals and keeps thinking guys from the FBI are coming after her.”
“If she’s psychic, wouldn’t she know they aren’t?”
Sophie didn’t laugh and didn’t get annoyed. “No. Just because you’re psychic doesn’t mean you can see clearly. Sometimes the more you see, the more confusing it is. Images overlap and it’s hard to sort them out.”
We finished making the bed in silence. Sophie kept her head down as if she were deep in thought. When she looked up, her eyes were bright. “How about an O.B.E.? Out-of-body experience? Some people do that, you know. Their spirit breaks free of their body and travels around. Maybe you were curious about your grandmother and came to see her as a child,”
“Without my body?” I said, looking at Sophie like she was crazy.
“Well, yes and no,” she replied. “Your body would be back where you left it. But if your grandmother were psychically aware, she’d have seen an apparition of you that looked like your body.”
I kept quiet.
“I’m making you uncomfortable,” Sophie observed. She stuck the vacuum cleaner plug in a wall socket. “This is all I have left to do. Thanks for stopping by.” She waited for me to leave, her finger on the trigger of the machine.
“Have you seen Sheer Blue?” I asked.
“The movie?” she replied. “No.”
“Want to go?”
She looked surprised, then smiled. “Didn’t scare you away, huh?”
“Not yet.”
“How about Thursday night?” she suggested. “We’re off school Friday.”
“Great.”
The vacuum roared to life and I left. As I walked up High Street, I wondered to myself what secrets were casting shadows long enough to reach into my dreams.
nine
When I arrived home that afternoon, I found my grandmother sitting in the kitchen, idly watching her housekeeper fix dinner. Grandmother’s skin was so pale it seemed translucent, her hands clasped but in constant motion, as if she couldn’t keep them warm.
“Are you okay?” I asked, quickly setting down my purse. “Has something happened, Grandmother?”
She didn’t reply.
I glanced over at Nancy. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t know. She won’t say,” Nancy replied, then shoved a runny casserole into the oven. “I’ve tried all afternoon to get her to see the doctor. No use wasting your breath-she won’t go. She’s been spooky ever since I found that little clock.”
“You found the clock?” I asked, my mouth dry.
“Now, don’t you get funny on me.”
“Where was it?”
“On the hall table, behind the silk flowers.”
I pulled a chair up close to Grandmother and sat down. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“You don’t look it. I want to call your doctor.”
“I forbid you,” she said.
Nancy gave me an l-told-you-so look.
“As you know, Grandmother, I don’t always listen.”
“You may call, but I won’t go.”
I stood up. “Matt should be home soon. He’ll know what to do.”
Nancy shook her head. “He called and Mrs. Barnes told him he could stay at Alex’s.” The woman sounded exasperated. “She could have told me earlier. All the time I put into that casserole, and her with no appetite and you a vegetarian.”
“I eat meat,” I said.
“Take it out when the buzzer goes off,” Nancy went on. “You can dig around for the peas.”
I didn’t correct her a second time, just waited for her to leave, hoping Grandmother would talk to me then. But as soon as Nancy was gone, Grandmother retreated to her room. I followed her upstairs and told her I would check on her in an hour.
“You will not,” she said, then closed the door. I heard the lock click.
I ate alone in the kitchen that evening, glad to be away from the gory deer in the dining room. Afterward, I went to the library to see the antique clock. I weighed it in my hands and ran my fingers over its cold metal surfaces, hoping they would remember what my mind did not: Was this the first time I’d held it? Could I have moved it before I went to the rose-papered room? I set the clock down gently, knowing no more than I did before.
At ten o’clock Matt still hadn’t come back from Alex’s. I found the number and called to tell Matt the situation. He said he’d check on Grandmother when he got home. I went to bed, leaving my bedroom door cracked, knowing I wouldn’t sleep.
Twenty minutes later Matt knocked softly on Grandmother’s door, calling to her. The door creaked open. I slipped out of bed and went to the entrance of my room. Though I couldn’t make out Matt’s words, I knew from his tone he was asking questions.
Grandmother was upset and either forgot I was in the next room or didn’t care. She spoke loudly. “I have brought it on myself, Matt.”
He quietly asked her something else.
“I have brought it on myself!” she repeated, sounding frustrated. “Don’t you understand? I’m being punished.”
“But there’s nothing for you to be punished for,” Matt replied, his voice growing as intense as hers.
“God has chosen her as his instrument,” Grandmother ins
isted.
“God hasn’t chosen anything,” he argued. “You were the one who invited Megan. Things are being misplaced, Grandmother, nothing more. It’s all in your head.”
Her response was muffled with emotion.
“Hush! Everything’s going to be all right,” he said. Then I heard him take a step inside the room. The door closed.
Cut off from their conversation, I closed my own door and rested back against it. Their conference lasted a long time. Finally I heard Grandmother’s door open and close again, then Matt’s footsteps in the hall, heading in the direction of the stairway. He stopped at my door. I knew he was standing on the other side and I waited for him to knock.
When I heard him walk away, I quickly opened the door. He turned around.
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.
His mouth formed a grim line. “She’s confused. If she doesn’t get better, I’m taking her to a doctor.”
“And you?” I saw how shaken he looked. “How are you doing?”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Do anyway.”
He looked away.
I stepped into the hall. “Matt, why is she acting this way?”
“You should never have come here, Megan.”
“Are you saying it’s my fault?” I asked. “Are you? Please look at me.”
He did, and for a moment neither of us spoke.
“Are you asking me to leave?”
He took a deep breath. “It would be the best thing.”
“Okay, I’ll consider it, but first tell me why she’s upset. I want to know what’s going on.”
He didn’t reply.
“Matt, I can’t help if I don’t understand the problem.”
Still he said nothing.
“So I guess you don’t want my help.”
“I don’t.”
I stepped back into my room and closed the door. The distance he kept between us no longer made me mad; it made me hurt.
We were playing a game, Matt and 1.1 was tiptoeing around an abandoned house-or maybe it was a barn. The walls and floors were made of rough wood, and the simple wooden stairs looked more like tilted ladders. We were playing hide-and-seek.
It was twilight outside. Inside, it grew darker with each minute. I knew we should stop the game before it got too late, but I kept on. I could hear Matt walking on the floor above my head, searching for me. I quietly opened a trapdoor and descended the stairs that led to the basement.
The air was cold and damp down there; it held the darkness like a sponge. My eyes adjusted slowly to the bit of light that came from the doorway above. Suddenly I saw huge wheels, wheels with teeth, one wheel interlocking with the next, like the gears inside a clock. The largest was as tall as 1.
I heard a noise, a groan from the machinery. My eyes focused on the biggest wheel. It started to turn slowly, very slowly at first. The smaller wheels rotated with it. I had to stop them. I knew if I didn’t, they’d turn faster and faster, shaking the old building till it flew apart.
I grasped the huge teeth of the main wheel and pulled back, dragging it in the opposite direction. But as soon as I stopped pulling, the wheel moved forward again, turning more quickly. I gripped harder, my hands slippery with sweat. Still, each time I pulled back, the gigantic wheel made up those inches and moved even farther ahead, pulling me with it.
I had to find another way to stop it. I tried to step back to study the wheel and discovered I couldn’t move. I yanked my arm, struggling to pull it away, but the edge of my sweater sleeve was caught between the teeth of the big wheel and a smaller one. The speed of the wheels was steadily increasing. I called for help, called for Matt. I writhed and pulled and bit the threads of my sweater. At the last moment I slipped free of it.
Run, I told myself. But I stood there, fascinated, watching the wheels consume my garment. Then I felt the pull. The powerful teeth had caught my hair. I was being dragged toward the center of the wheels. I screamed for Matt.
I heard his footsteps cross the floor above me. I shouted his name over and over. Then I heard his footsteps fading and the door upstairs shut. He had left me.
I struggled to free myself, fighting for each inch against the powerful wheels, dreading the teeth that would crush whatever came between them.
I couldn’t believe Matt had abandoned me. Then I thought, he knows what’s happening. He started these wheels moving. That instant I was pulled into the darkness.
ten
In the morning light last night’s dream had lost its terror but not its power to disturb. I recognized the exaggerations of a nightmare-huge wheels, like gears inside a gigantic clock, waiting to grind me up-it was surreal. Even so, I felt a sense of foreboding. What truth lay behind the images? In the dream I had been drawn into something I had no control over, something I couldn’t stop, and Matt had walked away.
I dressed slowly, then went down to the kitchen. Matt was there, finishing a bowl of cereal.
“How’s Grandmother?” I asked. “Where’s Grandmother?”
Her Bible lay open on the table next to a half-drained cup of coffee.
“In the music room,” he said wearily.
“Why?”
“Don’t you know?” he snapped.
I bit back a sharp response. “Something else has been moved.”
“How did you know it was moved, rather than missing?” he asked, as if trying to trap me in my words.
“Ease up, Matt. When we thought the Bible and clock were missing, it turned out they were moved.”
He rubbed his head. He looked as if he’d barely slept.
“So what was it this time?”
“Paintings. An old painting of the mill was moved from the parlor to the music room and hung above the Chinese chest. The watercolor that was there was left facedown on the floor.”
“When did this happen?”
“You tell me. You were here last night, alone in the house while she was up in bed.”
“Are you accusing me?” I asked.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he mumbled.
I intercepted him as he walked toward the refrigerator. “You have as much access to this house as I do, and know the place better. We can point fingers at each other and refuse to trust or we can try-”
The kitchen door opened.
Grandmother gazed at the two of us, her eyes narrowing. Matt and I stepped back from each other.
“I have put the watercolor where it belongs,” she informed us. “I need help with the landscape.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “You’ll be late for school, Matt. Leave me the phone number of Grandmother’s doctor,” I added, when she had exited.
I followed her through the door and down the hall to the front parlor, where I helped her set the large painting back on its hook.
“Is there anything else I can do?” I asked.
“Haven’t you done enough?” Grandmother replied sarcastically.
I stared after her as she left the room. If I didn’t get some answers soon, I was going to be as paranoid as she. I needed information, and there was only one person I knew who might have it.
I arrived at Tea Leaves an hour before work.
“I don’t want my fortune read,” I said to Jamie. “Tell your mother I have some questions about my grandmother’s house and the family. Strange things are happening, and I need her advice.”
A few minutes later the door opened at the top of the stairs, and the old woman beckoned to me. Before I reached the entrance to the second-floor apartment, Mrs. Riley had disappeared around the corner. I closed the door behind me and followed her down a narrow hall that ran toward the front of the building.
The room I entered had three windows, all of them facing High Street. Heavy drapes hung lopsided from their rods but were open enough to let in light. To the left were two sofas with faded print covers, and to the right an alcove, a square area between the front wall of the building and the wall of
the stairwell. A round table and several straight-back chairs filled that space. A silk lamp with fringe hung from the ceiling.
Mrs. Riley sat down at the table, facing into the room, and gestured to a seat across from her. I perched on it nervously, tucking my hands under my legs.
“You have questions,” she said.
I nodded. “I’m not sure where to begin.”
“Strange things have been happening at the house.” Her voice was low, almost soothing. “What kind of things?”
“Well, objects are being moved. The Bible, for instance. It was missing from its shelf in the kitchen, and Grandmother became convinced that someone had stolen it. Later, I spotted it in the library. Instead of being glad I found it, she was angry and kept staring at the spot it had occupied.”
“Which was on a library shelf,” Mrs. Riley said.
“Yes, just to the left of the fireplace.”
The psychic’s head lifted slightly. “Tell me more.”
Feeling a little more comfortable, I rested my hands on the table. “This morning we found that a picture had been moved from the front parlor to the music room. Grandmother started getting weird again-paranoid, as if someone were doing this to her, as if Z were doing it.
“A painting,” she repeated.
“A landscape,” I said. “A picture of a mill.”
Mrs. Riley didn’t make a sound, but I saw the buttons on her dress move and catch the light as if she had quickly sucked in a breath.
“Yesterday a clock was missing from Grandmother’s desk.”
“A small clock . . . an old one,” she murmured.
“Yes. It has a picture painted on its face, roses and-”
“Was it found on the hall table?”
I blinked. “How did you know?”
She sat back in her chair. “That is where it used to be kept. The Bible always sat on a shelf by the library’s hearth. The mill painting hung over the Chinese chest in the music room.”
“You mean things are being moved back to where they were years ago? To where they were when you worked there?”
She nodded her head slowly, rhythmically.
“But then why would Grandmother blame me? How would I know where those things were kept? I don’t see how Matt would know, either, unless Grandmother told him.”