“I’ll be fine by myself,” I told her. “I’ll spend the afternoon reading the mystery you brought home from the library.”
Mother smiled and ran upstairs to powder her nose, as she put it, and I curled up on the sofa with The Moonstone. Jane told me it was too scary for her, but, scary or not, I knew I’d like it. I’d read The Woman in White and loved it—The Moonstone couldn’t be any scarier than that.
After Mother left, the house was very quiet. The tick-tock-tick of the clock on the mantel was the loudest sound. That and the occasional scratching and tapping of branches at the window.
I’d no sooner begun reading than I found myself thinking about my dream. Last night it had been so vivid. As usual, I lay at the angel’s feet, bleeding in the snow. The girl with the mask emerged and stood above me. As she dragged me down into the dark, I almost recognized her. I awoke with her name on my lips, but it slipped away and I shivered with fear.
Suddenly I felt an irresistible urge to return to the cemetery. Maybe if I saw the angel again, I could banish it from my dreams. Tossing off the afghan, I pulled on the blue sweater Mother had knitted for me and bundled up in my coat, snow pants, scarf, hat, and mittens. I looked as round as a snowman, but even though it was the beginning of February, the weather was still cold. We’d had snow the day before, and it lay atop the dirty old snow in a fresh white coat, as if someone had painted it there to hide the ugliness beneath.
It was a long walk. By the time I came to the shanties where the millworkers lived, I was cold and tired. My head throbbed, and I wondered if I’d overdone the limited exercise Dr. Hughes had prescribed for me.
This time the gates were open. A horse-drawn hearse passed me, followed by a line of black carriages. As the funeral procession slowly disappeared into the depths of the cemetery, I crossed my fingers inside my mittens, a habit I’d gotten into whenever I saw a hearse—a sort of protection against the flu. So far it had worked.
I considered walking up the plowed driveway, much easier than wading through deep snow, but I wasn’t sure I’d find the angel without following the exact route we’d taken that night.
I trudged along the fence until I found the gap. Wiggling through, I looked for the tracks we’d made, but new snow covered them. I should have given up then and turned back, but instead I began climbing the hill. It was steeper than I remembered, and I rested for a while at the top.
Seven crows flew out of a nearby grove of oak trees and passed in a ragged black line over my head. I thought of the old counting rhyme which began one crow for sorrow, but what did seven crows mean? I’d forgotten.
Slowly and carefully, I made my way downhill. My boots filled with snow, and my cold toes tingled with pain. My head throbbed, and my skull echoed with mumbling muttering sounds. The bright sun on the white snow blinded me. Unable to see properly, I fell and slid to the bottom, landing at the feet of a stone angel.
Near me, a splintered bit of my sled poked up through the snow. I’d come to the right place.
But the noise in my head was so loud and hurt so much that I lay where I’d fallen and looked up at the angel. She was smaller than I remembered, no bigger than a doll, but she had a mean expression, not what you’d expect on an angel’s face at all. From her outstretched finger, a flu mask dangled, twisting in the wind.
Frightened by the mask, I squinted at the inscription beneath the angel’s stone-cold toes. The words were blurred by a frosting of frozen snow. Carefully I brushed it aside and read
HERE LIES ELSIE SCHNEIDER
BELOVED DAUGHTER OF
HILDA AND KARL SCHNEIDER
BORN 15 MARCH 1906
DIED 8 NOVEMBER 1918
IN HER TWELFTH YEAR
In a panic of fear and guilt, I scrambled to my feet and backed away, slipping and sliding on the icy snow, breaking through the crust and sinking deeper with every effort I made to run. Of all the graves in the cemetery, I’d crashed into Elsie’s.
Twelve
S I STRUGGLED IN THE SNOW, the voices in my head became one voice, and it was speaking words in a language I understood.
“Hello, Annie Browne,” the voice said. “At last you’ve come.”
Elsie floated above the snow. She was deathly pale and not quite solid. Her lusterless blond hair blew around her face, and she wore the same pale blue silk dress and matching bow she’d worn when I last saw her lying in her coffin, apparently as dead as dead can be.
“Why don’t you say hello?” she asked. “Surely you haven’t forgotten me already.”
She drifted closer. Her bare feet grazed the snow’s surface but left no tracks. I wanted to turn my head away, but I couldn’t help looking at her. I saw her crooked teeth, longer and more yellow than I remembered. Her skin was stretched tight over her skull, and her eyes gleamed in their sockets. She looked as if she wanted to take my life and make it hers.
Elsie laughed. “Well, I do declare,” she said. “You’re afraid of me. I wonder why? Could it be you think I want to get even with you?”
Desperately I looked for someone to rescue me, but the only living creature in sight was a crow, hunched on a nearby stone cross and watching me.
“One crow for sorrow,” Elsie whispered in a voice as harsh as the wind on a winter night. “Your sorrow.”
I finally found my voice. “You’re not real, you can’t be, you’re dead, I saw you in your coffin. I saw them take you away in a hearse. They buried you.” I pointed at her grave. “Right there—can’t you see your name written at the angel’s feet?”
Elsie ran one finger over the inscription. “I’d still be sleeping if you hadn’t waked me up crashing into my grave. You disturbed some of the others as well. You must have heard us complaining.”
“I didn’t know, Elsie, I couldn’t understand the voices, I thought it was just noise in my head.” This can’t be true, I thought. I must be dreaming. I’ll open my eyes and find myself at home on the sofa.
Elsie flashed her terrible teeth in a smile. “But you understand me now, don’t you?”
“What do you want from me?”
“You know what I want.”
“No, I don’t, I swear I don’t.” I hid my face behind my hands to keep from looking into her eyes.
“Now that I’m dead, I mean to have the friend I wanted when I was alive—you, Annie.”
“How can we be friends? You’re, you’re—”
As I fumbled for the right words, Elsie shrugged. “Oh, yes, you’re right. I’m dead. Well, la tee dah, we can’t let a little thing like that come between us, can we?”
“I didn’t want to be your friend when you were alive, and I don’t want to be your friend now.” I stared at Elsie. “I have plenty of friends already!”
“Not for long,” Elsie said. “Soon everyone will hate you even more than they hated me.”
“My friends won’t turn against me. Not ever!”
“Just wait,” Elsie said. “You’ll see.”
A gang of crows settled themselves noisily in a tall oak. Elsie turned away to count them. “Seven,” she said. “Do you know what seven crows mean?”
When I shook my head, she said, “Seven crows for a secret, never to be told. That’s what our friendship will be—a secret never to be told.” She laughed. “Even if you tell, no one will believe you.”
The sun was low in the sky now, and the tombstone’s blue shadows were long and menacing. The wind blew harder, and I thought I might freeze to death in the cemetery.
“Please let me go home, Elsie,” I begged.
“First you have to promise something.” Plucking the flu mask from the angel’s stone finger, she thrust it at me. “I think Rosie should have this, don’t you?”
“No.” I put my hands behind my back. “Get that thing away from me. I won’t touch it!”
Elsie blew her cold breath in my face. “You always do what Rosie says. Now you must do what I say.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Do
you want to go home?” She held out the mask. “Or do you want to stay here and freeze to death?”
With revulsion, I took it from her. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“When you go back to school, put the mask in Rosie’s bookbag. Don’t let anyone see you.” She paused to be sure I was listening. “All the things we do will be secrets. I’ll know if you tell.”
With that, Elsie faded away, and I was alone with the seven crows. They sat on a branch with their heads turned toward me. How long and sharp their beaks were, how beady their eyes. How wicked they looked.
Stuffing the mask into my pocket, I pulled free of the snow’s grip. My legs and feet were numb with cold and weak with fear. Without giving my sled a thought, I stumbled downhill to the fence and squeezed through the gap in the railings. Behind me the crows cawed. Their voices sounded like laughter.
As I hurried past the shabby little houses on Railroad Avenue, I told myself Elsie had been a hallucination brought on by my concussion. I wasn’t over it yet—it must be worse than Dr. Hughes thought.
But how was I to explain the flu mask in my pocket? I pulled it out and looked at it. Dingy and tattered, it was disgusting. I wanted to throw it away, but Elsie’s voice rang in my head. She’d know if I didn’t put it in Rosie’s bookbag. She’d know.
But why did she want me to put it there? Would Rosie get the flu? Was that Elsie’s intention?
I wadded the mask up and threw it into a pile of snow left by the plow. Before I’d taken more than ten steps, I turned around and went back for it. She’d know, she’d know, I knew she’d know. And she’d make something horrible happen.
By the time I reached my house, I was gasping for breath. Elsie’s words spun in my brain as sharp as knives and just as painful—best friends forever, you and me, me and you, no one else, you and me, me and you, best friends . . .
No, no, no—it couldn’t be, mustn’t be. There had to be a way to escape from Elsie. But how? She might be following me at this very moment, cloaked in darkness, invisible but always there, just behind me. I looked back, fearing I’d see her, but the sidewalk was empty.
I opened the front door and ran inside, straight into Mother’s arms. “Where have you been?” she cried. “It’s almost dark.”
She drew back and studied my face. “Look at you, you’re as white as a ghost. What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Oh, Mother, Mother,” I sobbed, “please don’t be upset. I’m sorry I’m late. I was at the library, and I lost track of the time. I ran all the way home.”
“You must be exhausted,” Mother said. “Let me help you with your boots and snow pants. Then you can change your clothes and rest by the fire. I’ll bring you a nice hot cup of tea.”
Soon I was lying on the couch covered with one of Mother’s hand-knit afghans. The tea was hot and the fire warm. My cold feet and hands gradually thawed.
“You’ve overexerted yourself.” Mother looked worried. “Dr. Hughes said moderate exercise, not a ten-block walk to the library.”
I finished my tea and set the cup and saucer on a low table beside the couch. The firelight shone through the fragile porcelain. Just as I began to relax, I sensed a movement in the dark corner behind Father’s chair. I waited for it to move again. Had Elsie followed me home and slipped through the door behind me?
The shadows moved again. When I leaned forward to see better, Mother looked at me. “Why are you staring into the corner, Annie? Is something there?”
“No, no, of course not.” I leaned back against a sofa pillow and forced myself to gaze into the fire. I wouldn’t look in the corner. I wouldn’t. And I would not, would not, would not put the flu mask in Rosie’s bookbag. Elsie wasn’t real, she was a hallucination, and so was the mask. If I looked in my coat pocket, it wouldn’t be there.
“You seem worried,” Mother said. “Does your head hurt?”
“No, my head’s fine, but I was wondering about something. May I ask you a silly question?”
“You may ask anything you want.”
I hesitated a moment, afraid of what Mother might say. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Ghosts?” She looked startled. “Good heavens, no. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I was reading a book about ghosts at the library—true stories that really happened to people.”
“True? I doubt that very much.”
“Well,” I said slowly, “one of the stories was about a girl who died, and her ghost came back to haunt a girl who’d been mean to her when the ghost was alive. The ghost said she was the girl’s best friend and the girl had to do everything she told her to do, no matter how bad it was. And the girl had to keep it secret.”
“No wonder you’re upset. That sounds very scary.” Mother finished the row she was knitting and looked at me. “What happened to the girl?”
“The library closed, and I didn’t have time to finish reading the story.”
Mother smiled and resumed knitting. “Don’t worry, Annie. The person who told that story made it up. In real life, things like that don’t happen.”
Oh, Mother, Mother, I wish I could tell you how wrong you are.
Thirteen
ONDAY MORNING came long before I was ready for it. I dressed in my uniform, and Mother helped me tie my hair ribbon.
“You look so pretty,” she told me. “Everyone in your class will be very happy to see you.”
I gazed into the mirror and pointed to the bald spot, smaller now but still visible, as was the jagged red line of the scar running through it. “What about this?”
Mother smiled. “Think of it as your red badge of courage,” she said. “All the girls will want to hear about your accident.”
Just as I finished my oatmeal, Jane knocked at the door.
When I ran to meet her, she gave me a big hug. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re well enough to come to school, Annie. I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
As Jane walked beside me chattering about the spring program, I felt stiff and uncomfortable and found little to say. My bookbag’s strap weighed heavily on my shoulder, and all I thought about was the mask hidden at the bottom.
As we climbed the school steps, I saw Elsie sitting on a ledge above the door. She swung her bare feet and waved at me. “Don’t forget to do what I told you—I’ll know if you don’t do it.”
She vanished as quickly as she’d appeared, but after Jane and I went inside, Elsie joined us, so close I felt the cold of her body through my coat.
“Best friends, best friends,” she whispered in my ear.
“Go away, I’m not your friend!” I shouted. “Leave me alone!”
Jane turned to me in alarm. “What do you mean, Annie? Of course you’re my friend. Why did you say that?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” I said, but my voice was wrong. I meant to sound sorry, but I sounded mad instead.
“But there’s no one here but me,” Jane said.
Elsie blew cold air in her face and laughed when Jane shivered.
“You gave me a headache talking and talking and talking about ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus,’” I said. “It’s a boring poem, and I’m sick of it.”
I stared at Jane, horrified at myself. Why had I said such a dreadful thing? It was as if the words had tumbled out of my mouth without my meaning to say them. Yet I couldn’t find it in me to apologize.
“Are you mad at me?” Jane asked.
“Let’s just say I’m tired of your whiny voice.”
I wanted to take back what I’d said, what Elsie had made me say, but instead I walked away from Jane, into the cloakroom, where we hung our coats. Rosie’s bookbag, emptied of everything but her lunch, lay on the floor beside her boots. Elsie perched on a windowsill and watched me.
Without looking at me, Jane hung up her coat, pulled off her boots, snow pants, mittens, and hat, and went into the classroom.
I hurried after her, hoping to make up, but Miss
Harrison stopped me with a hug. “I’m so glad you’re back, Annie. We missed you.”
I opened my mouth to tell her how much I’d missed her, but Elsie spoke for me. “I didn’t miss you or anyone else,” I heard myself say. “I hate this school and everyone in it.”
Miss Harrison looked at me as if I’d slapped her. “Annie Browne,” she said, “I’ve never heard you talk like that. Perhaps you’d better march yourself back into the cloakroom and stay there until I give you permission to join the class.”
I shrugged and walked away, my head high to show her I wasn’t sorry and I didn’t care. The room was very quiet. Though I didn’t look at anyone, I knew the other girls were staring at me. The silence rang with shock and dismay. What was wrong with Annie Browne?
Alone except for Elsie, I found myself removing the flu mask from my bookbag and tucking it into Rosie’s. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop. It was as if I were outside my own body, watching myself.
On the windowsill, Elsie clapped her hands. “You are now my true friend.”
In the classroom, the girls recited the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer. Their voices rose and fell in unison. Elsie had made me into an outsider again.
Elsie hovered in front of me, her face close to mine. “See? Soon everyone will hate you,” she jeered, “just the way they hated me.”
I tried to back away, but my shoulders touched the coats hanging from their hooks. I was trapped just inches from her, close enough to see every pore in her pale skin, close enough to smell her earthy odor.
“But you’ll have me,” she whispered, “you’ll always have me, your best friend, your bosom buddy, as they say in those dumb girls’ stories I used to read.”
“I’d rather have nobody.”
She floated above me singing, “I ain’t got no body, and nobody cares about me.”