Chapter 3
The old saltbox house was little more than planks by that point. There was no discernible paint or wallpaper or rugs of any sort left inside. Weeds had grown up through some of the broken floorboards and all manner of creature had made themselves at home inside. It smelled musty with just a hint of animal urine and I was glad it was cold, as the summer heat would’ve really brought out the stink. I imagined snakes and spiders of gigantic proportions lurking around every turn as I stood there.
Sean and his brother laid blankets down on the floor and then proceeded to light candles and place them around in a circle. It worried me. If we’d knocked over just one, those old dry boards would’ve gone up in a fiery minute. But we didn’t knock anything over or burn anything up. Everything went off like a textbook surgical procedure. Burning that place to the ground may have been a better end.
“Help me spread this out,” Sean said.
I grabbed one corner of the thin wool blanket and Matt grabbed another. We raised it and snapped the edges letting it settle into a perfectly flat square. Then we did the same with a second blanket. The candles came next, twelve in all, set in a vague circle around our little campsite. By the time they were all lit, the room—what used to be the main room and kitchen area of the old farmhouse—had a warm glow to it. I pictured the family living there, where their furniture had been placed, and little Nataliya playing in the floor with her favorite hand-made doll. It had button eyes and a hand-stitched smile. Her mother cooked and her father was just coming in from a hard day’s work on the farm.
There was another image as well, one in which the mother and father lay in the floor, their throats open and blood pulsing out in thick streams. In that image, Nataliya stood, pale-faced and grinning, with a straight razor in one hand and that same doll in the other. It made me shudder.
My next thought was how he must have beaten her in that room many times, and if I looked, I might find drops of blood amidst the mold and dust like the ones I left on the floor after John beat me. Drops I had to clean up because they were my fault. I thought just maybe it was justified what Nataliya did and that maybe sometimes killing was the answer. I shook that feeling away and turned my attention back to Sean and his makeshift séance. I had a sick feeling in my stomach, a knot in its pit that felt like it weighed a hundred pounds or more.
Danny nudged me and when I looked at him, he was waving me down to his level. I leaned over so he could whisper in my ear. The whisper was loud, like some kids do.
“I don’t get it. Somehow she’s gonna float in the air?” Danny asked.
They all heard him. In another room, in another situation, it would’ve been comical how loud he whispered, but given the spooky surroundings, nothing was funny.
“S’posed to,” said Matt. “Then we can ask her questions and the ghosts are supposed to answer through your sister.”
“Not ghosts, just one ghost. Nataliya Koslov. She will speak to us through Robin,” Sean said.
“I’m not so sure about this,” Robin said. “In the basement, it was silly. But now it’s a little spooky.”
“You’ll be fine,” Sean said.
I should’ve stopped it right then, but I didn’t. I was caught up in it, just like the others. Sean’s confidence—his need to try—was addicting, intoxicating. The reality of the house was like living in a late night black and white movie, only it wasn’t black and white, it was in full color, high definition and three dimensions. Still, it was all very surreal. Apprehension glowed off of us like a sickening, puke-green aura, but so did the wonder and the excitement and before long, Robin was caught up in it again.
“What questions should we ask? I mean, should we have a list or something?” I said.
“Anything,” Sean said.
“So it’s like a magic eight-ball?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, something like that. Only these are supposed to be real answers. Not shitty ones. Magic eight-ball is crap,” Sean said.
“Crap.” Danny said.
Then he giggled. Crap, for him, was a step toward grown up talk. Sean sat down in his place and waited. Robin settled herself in the center of the blanket and propped herself on her elbows as she gave Sean a sarcastic look.
“You know what you’re doing now?” she asked.
“Smartass. I got it now,” he said, then he tapped her and twirled his index finger clockwise. “You’re supposed to face west—so your feet point west. I don’t know why.”
Then he helped Robin adjust herself so her feet pointed in the direction of the just set sun. She laughed as Sean squeezed her feet and dragged her into position. Once he was satisfied, he gestured for us to take our places like before. The white Christmas candles had melted halfway and that signaled time was running out. I don’t know if it would’ve mattered if those candles had not even been there.
There was no laughter, not even a smile that time. The scene was different, serious, and we all played our parts with sober awareness. If I was going to do that thing, perform some dark ritual in that house, I was going to do it right the first time and I was only going to do it once. As excited as I was, I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
As we clasped hands, a noticeable change in temperature occurred. It felt like someone had opened a window and let a frozen winter breeze in from the outside, only there was no breeze. We were already chilly, shivering, but that cold was different, like it came from within, clawing its way from the bone marrow out. Robin tucked her hands into the sleeves of her sweatshirt to warm them and shuddered, but she closed her eyes and crossed her arms on her tiny chest anyway. She wiggled for just a moment, like a puppy looking for a comfortable place to nap.
I glanced from Danny to Matt and back to Robin. They were all wiggling. Nerves or something. After everyone calmed down, I shut my eyes. With joined hands, our little circle of four around my sister was quiet and Sean spoke those words again. Unlike the dress rehearsal—or perhaps because of it—the ceremony flowed smoothly and with a reverent quality. I felt like we should’ve been wearing heavy robes with hoods on. Druids in another one of those monster movies I was always watching performing a pagan ritual.
“Here lies the body of Robin McNeill,” Sean said.
We boys responded to his calls like a seasoned congregation on Sunday morning.
“She looks ill,” he continued.
“She looks worse,” Danny said.
“I think she’s dying,” I said.
“I think she’s dead,” Matt said.
The fluctuation in temperature settled at that moment and the air took on a stagnant quality. It made me swallow and felt like sand in my dry throat. Sean continued.
“Here lies the body of Robin McNeill. She passed away at the age of six,” he said.
We repeated.
“A car took her life on the old mill road, and when they found her she was light as a feather and stiff as a board,” he said.
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” Matt, Danny and I said in perfect unison.
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” Sean said and we repeated again and again.
We released our hands and opened our eyes. Robin looked pale, her face sunken. It scared me. It might have been a trick of the light, the flickering candles, the way I was shaking, partly from cold, partly from fear. She didn’t look like she was pretending, nor did it look to me like she was sleeping. Robin looked dead. In my thirteen-year-old estimation, she looked as dead as anyone I’d ever seen. I wanted to touch her, to shake her and set her back in motion but I didn’t. I just stared and kept silent.
No one spoke. Sean held up his hands, making peace signs with his index and middle fingers as a demonstration. We watched as he rotated his hands, palms up, and placed them under Robin’s shoulders. Then he nodded and we did the same. Robin didn’t move, open her eyes or change expressions. It should’ve tickled. She should have squirmed as we stuck our fingers under her shoulders, under her sides, under her feet. Seven-ye
ar-olds wiggled. It’s what they did. My sister’s eyes were dark and her expression read nothing at all.
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” Sean said again and we repeated, not intentionally, but as if we couldn’t help ourselves.
He said it again…and he said it again. It was no longer a call and response, but a chant. The pagan ritual from that movie. Our eyes were open and we stared at the person across from us. No one looked at Robin. I was afraid to look. I think we all were.
The first time I’d been to a funeral, it was my grandmother on John’s side in the casket. Her name was Agnes McNeill, but we all called her Granny Agnes. She was a mean old drunk and I was terrified of her. As I stood there next to my mother, dressed in a small gray suit with a deep red tie that John tied for me, I expected her to sit up out of her coffin and scream at me like she had done so many times when she was sickly and in bed.
“Where’s my juice, boy? Don’t you know granny needs it? Get out of here you worthless little rat!”
I saw it happening in my head although Granny Agnes never did sit up. Still, I never did look directly at her corpse. I felt if I didn’t, she couldn’t get me. I was nine. That night, in that dry-rotted Russian House, I had that same feeling about my sister. My sister who looked like she had lost her life on the old Mill Road. My sister who looked like she wasn’t only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead as a tiny coroner once said. If I looked directly at her, Nataliya Koslov would seep through, pouring out of Robin’s eyes and her mouth and her ghost would get me...get me and swallow me up.
“Vere’s my juice, boy? Don’tchoo know granny needs it?” Granny Agnes said with a thick Russian accent and a bloody straight razor in one hand, a tattered doll with button eyes and a stitched on smile in the other.
I shook that feeling away.
We continued to chant and the room started to spin, like it had the first time I drank an entire bottle of wine some three years later. I felt dizzy and cold and something tingled in my extremities. I don’t know what the others felt. Slowly, as we spoke, as we tried not to look, Robin rose into the air. At first, it just felt like she had shifted her weight, like she was uncomfortable and moving, but I chanced a look down, and her hands were still crossed, her eyes were still closed, and her expression was still…dead. I felt myself gasp, but I didn’t hear anything. I was in a vacuum. There was no sound, no resistance, and Robin’s body had no weight.
Our hands moved with her. We weren’t lifting her, but merely following the path of a levitating girl who seemed oblivious to her own body’s motion. Her long hair dangled freely from her scalp and eventually even the ends of the strands left the blanket beneath. She rose until we could no longer reach her from our sitting positions and had to stand up. Her ascent paused, stopping to rest on our very fingertips for a moment and then she rose just a bit more, just out of our grasp. I stared in awe. I can only assume the others did the same.
“Now what do we do?” Matt said in a whisper.
“Ask it a question,” Danny replied.
“It? That’s our sister,” I said. “That’s Robin.”
Matt slowly, tentatively dropped his fingers, as if moving them might topple her to the ground, but she stayed where she was, floating eighteen inches away from the dilapidated ceiling. One by one, the rest of us dropped our arms to our sides and walked under and around her. Danny swooped his arms beneath her the way magicians do in a levitation trick with a hula hoop or a metal ring.
Look, no strings!
He scratched his head, but at ten years old, Danny still believed in magic and magical things. I’m not sure it was as hard for him to process. I had already given up on the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. Sean paid no attention to us and positioned himself so he could see the left side of Robin’s face.
“What is your name?” he said, looking up at her.
His voice cracked, barely more than a whisper. She floated down a foot, maybe a little more so she was head height with him. He moved in closer and cleared his throat. His face was only inches from hers.
“What is your name?” he said again, speaking more clearly.
Robin’s eyes opened abruptly and her head snapped left, startling him. Startling all of us. Her expression was innocent on her tiny face, but it still had a lifeless quality—a ghostly Halloween mask, thin and ghoulish and painted on. The voice that came forth from that face was unsettling. More unsettling than the fact she was floating in the air.
“Nataliya,” she said, the sound husky and full of gravel.
My stomach knotted. Danny grabbed my arm.
“Oh shit,” Matt whispered.
Robin rolled in the air until it looked like she was lying on her belly. Sean stared at her with a look of scientific curiosity—like his experiment was a success and he was enjoying the whole morbid scene. She turned a little, facing him directly and placed her hands on his cheeks. He grinned. Robin…Nataliya grinned back and then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She released his cheeks and shoved, floating backwards like an astronaut in zero gravity. She waved her hands which seemed to bring her body to a stop in midair. When her eyes opened, they were solid blue like ice, her pupils constricted to pinpoints.
“лезвие,” she whispered. It sounded like lez-viya.
“What?” Matt said. “What does that mean?”
She turned to face him.
“лезвие,” she repeated.
“I don’t know. Is it Russian?” Sean asked, now as startled as the rest of us.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The only Russian I had ever experienced was Boris and Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show and their badly stereotyped accents.
Natasha, we must get moose and squirrel.
Yes, Boris darling.
Still facing Matt, she moved toward him. Her motions had the same eerie quality a praying mantis has when it turns its head, like it’s on a gear or a swivel. It looked alien, an alien fish swimming in the air. Matt stared back as if caught in a trance. She brushed a hand across his cheek and considered him for a moment.
“оранжевый, облизывает,” she said, oranzhevyy, oblizyvayet we heard.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, Robin!” Matt said.
He was on the verge of tears. It was all so strange. Danny started to cry. Robin, or Nataliya, or whatever it was flipped in the air and put her nose a few centimeters away from his. Danny sniffed and strained to pull his face away, but she grabbed his wrists in her pallid hands.
“белый и светло он сжигает ночь,” she said. Belyy i svetlo on szhigayet noch.
“We can’t understand you,” I said. “None of us can understand you, Robin. What is happening? What are you saying?”
My voice caught her attention and she hovered, spinning sideways toward me. Her hands undulated around my face and I couldn’t speak. Up close, her face was haggard, older, and she looked angry at me. I wanted to reach up and grab Robin and pull her, pull her out of that floating thing, pull her to the floor where she looked normal, but I didn’t know what consequences that might bring for me…or for her.
“No Robin. Nataliya,” she said in staccato bursts.
Her expression was crazed, like Granny’s.
Where’s my juice, boy?
“Okay,” I said, nodding.
“да,” she said. Dah.
Her voice sounded mature. It was a woman’s voice, not sultry, but self-assured and deeper in timbre. She cocked her head as if trying to read my mind and there was only one thought there to read. The fact that she was beaten. Beaten like me. Her father was like John, and maybe he deserved to die.
“I’m sorry your father hurt you,” I said. It was all I could think of.
Robin’s face was puppeted into an expression of consideration, as if she was unsure of my sincerity. She reached a cold hand out and cupped my right cheek. I shrank away from the touch but she stayed with it, following me, eye t
o eye.
Then she said, “Она поедает.” Ona poyedayet.
I mouthed the words after her and then looked at Matt. He shrugged. Danny was still crying light sobs as he held my arm. Sean, who had orchestrated the whole thing, stood looking stunned but remained silent. Robin floated around another moment before I couldn’t take it anymore.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Wake up, Robin!”
Sean gave me a stern look, “Don’t. She has to wake up on her own. It’s in my notes.”
“Where’d you get those notes anyway?” I asked.
“A library book. They were stuffed inside.”
“You just found them?” I said.
“No, a friend showed them to me. He’s done this before.”
“But where did they come from?”
“I have no idea,” Sean said and for the first time, he looked scared.
Robin looked from Matt to Sean and then spun around to Danny again. His eyes met hers and he tried to smile although he was very nervous. His voice wavered when he spoke.
“Are you a g-ghost?”
Robin smiled back. The expression didn’t look right. Her pupils were still pinpoints, although the color had now washed out from her blue irises, and her lips were crooked. She no longer looked like Robin at all. It was as if Nataliya’s dead face had found a home in my sister’s skin and her lips and cheeks were misshapen, held in place by different muscle memory. Her chin was elongated, and her eyes were the sunken pits of a soul that had given up.
She didn’t speak, but hissed like a tire slowly leaking air. Danny started crying again. He held his hands up to his face to shield the tears from the rest of us, and to shield his eyes from what was going on. Robin—Nataliya looked at him lovingly.
She touched his hand, then his face like a loving mother trying to comfort a child. Danny lashed out with one hand and shoved her away. Immediately the air rushed out of the room, each of the candles winked out and Robin crashed to the ground with a THUD. We all gasped.
I rushed to her, fearing she was actually dead, but she gathered herself quickly to a sitting position and scooted backwards until the brittle wall stopped her. Dust and splinters fell and covered her. Her face was manic, drawn into a grimace of terror as her eyes darted in every direction, looking at everything but focusing on nothing. She screamed at full volume. I rushed to her side and put my arms around her. She fought me off and her wild eyes told me all that I needed to know. She was terrified…hysterical. I hugged her again, pulling her into my chest and holding tight.
“It’s okay, Robin. I’m here. It’s okay,” I said.
The house rocked like a bomb had landed just outside and the ceiling cracked and rained down more debris. Something swirled in the room. Something filled with anger and hatred and jealousy and anxiety and fear and all the bad emotions spun around us like a tornado and I knew it was Nataliya. I don’t know if the boys knew, but I did, and I’m sure Robin knew, too.
When it materialized, the spirit screamed and flashed a stretched, pained, demonic look in each of our faces. Then she laughed and it was a shrill, maddening sound that I will never forget as long as I walk this earth. When it left the room, it did so through the center of the ceiling with a WHOOSH. More dust fell from the old structure drenching us in powder and small pieces of rotted wood. Only then did the air return to normal. The autumn chill was still there, but the supernatural, unexplainable one that had been there before was gone. The candles were flattened puddles of dried wax.
I checked on Danny and on my friends. Each was breathing and upright, but frightened. Then I looked back down at Robin. She shuddered and shook, tears streamed from her wild eyes. In a breathless, stuttered whisper, she kept repeating, “Now…Now …Now …Now.”