A Coming Evil

by Vivian Vande Velde

  Lisette intentionally walked toward where she had seen the movement, to prove to herself that she could. The area was much too overgrown for anybody to have been there. Could she have glimpsed an animal? Possibly a bird, because the movement had been at eye level, and she didn't want to think about any animal that would stand that tall. Silly, she told herself. If it's too overgrown for a person, it's too overgrown for an ani mal. And there probably weren't any more dangerous animals in Sibourne than in Paris. So she stood looking into the thickest section of interwoven branches and called out, just to make herself feel brave, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

  And there, not an arm's length away, she saw a face.

  She gasped and took a quick step back.

  It never occurred to her that it was anything besides a ghost because she could see right through him just the way that looking through a store window you can sometimes see both a reflection of the street and what's in the store itself. The ghost also took a quick step back, so that now a branch seemed to be growing in his transparent head and sticking out through his ear. Which was very disconcerting to Lisette, if not to the ghost.

  But the ghost seemed at least as startled and afraid of her as she was startled and afraid of him. And then he made a quick sign of the cross. A Catholic ghost? Lisette put her hand over her heart, willing it to stop pounding so hard. Back in Paris, Brigitte always made her hold her breath when they passed a cemetery, saying that you didn't want to flaunt being alive in front of ghosts, who were notoriously jealous of the living. But this ghost didn't seem aware of her breathing or of the beating of her heart. In fact, whatever had killed him, he looked ready to die all over again of fright.

  And he couldn't be any older than Lisette herself, which was more sad than scary. She found herself saying, "Don't be frightened. I won't hurt you."

  That seemed to calm him a bit. He was a good-looking boy, with brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a baggy shirt that hung to his knees, skin-tight pants, and tall boots. Old-fashioned or just poor, she couldn't tell. How long did ghosts remain in one place, she wondered.

  He seemed to be appraising her, too. He said something, except that no words came out. The poor boy must be mute as well as dead, except ... except wouldn't a mute boy have exaggerated the movements of his mouth so that she could read his lips more easily?

  "What?" she asked. And the fact that he looked surprised at her question made her add, "I can't hear you."

  This time, he did exaggerate it. In addition, he gestured toward her, then indicated himself, then touched his fingertips first to his lips, then to his ear. Obviously he was asking: "You can't hear me?"

  She shook her head. "Can you hear me?"

  He nodded.

  This was getting stranger all the time. But now that she was over being startled, he certainly didn't seem frightening at all. She put her hand out to shake his. "My name is Lisette Beaucaire."

  He hesitated, looking from her face to her hand, seeming uncertain what was expected of him. He stepped forward, and she felt a cold draft when his hand passed through hers.

  She took an instinctive step back at the same time he did. She wrapped her arms around herself, tucking her right hand under her arm to warm it.

  He said something that she couldn't understand.

  "What?" she asked.

  He repeated it, and still she didn't understand.

  "Your name?" she asked, and he nodded. "Say it more slowly."

  Not only did he say it more slowly, but he shortened it, concentrating on the first name.

  "Jean something?"

  He shook his head.

  "Gerard?"

  He smiled. He had a wonderful smile.

  "Gerard," she repeated. "Last name?"

  He shook his head, looking more amused than out of patience.

  "Do you come from around here?" She had changed the wording of her question at the last second, to avoid asking where he lived.

  Still, he frowned in concentration and took another step back. He had gone right through the outermost branches, which now blocked part of his face.

  "I'm not from here," Lisette said. "I'm just visiting and I'm lost."

  At least he didn't retreat any farther.

  "Can you show me how to get down from this hill?"

  He only hesitated a moment before indicating for her to follow him. Then he took off into a tree.

  "Gerard!" she called.

  He must have turned around while he was actually in the tree, for he came back.

  "I can't go that way. Can we go around?"

  He looked at her quizzically.

  Walking around that particular clump of tree and surrounding bushes, she walked as nearly in the direction he had started as she could.

  In another moment he stepped back in front of her. But he had that wary expression again as if not quite sure he should trust her. When he thought she wasn't looking, he made another sign of the cross.

  From the way he would walk around perfectly clear patches of ground, holding his arm up as though to force his way through nonexistent branches, and from the way he'd sometimes look back to check her progress and blink as though finding it hard to believe his eyes, Lisette gathered that just as he couldn't see all the surroundings that were obvious to her, he could see obstacles she couldn't.

  This is ridiculous, she thought as he casually walked through a willow, following a ghost to who knows where.

  But when she circled around the willow, she found herself once again near the edge of the hill, and very close to where she had originally come up.

  "There's my house," she said, pointing. "I mean, Aunt Josephine's."

  From the look he gave her, he couldn't see that, either.

  "Thank you," she said earnestly.

  He gave that disarming smile again, touching fingers to lips as though to say "You're welcome."

  "Will I see you again?" Surely a ghost didn't come into being merely to help a lost girl find her way home.

  From down below, she heard Cecile's petulant, "Lisette, you're in trouble now."

  She glanced down at her cousin, and by the time she looked back, Gerard was gone.

  6.

  Sunday, September 1, 1940

  Lisette started down the slope slowly, but she found herself going faster and faster, unable to stop. Cecile, of course, wouldn't budge, though she had to see that she stood right in Lisette's path. If the collision didn't knock them both out, Cecile would be sure to tell Aunt Josephine that Lisette had intentionally run her down.

  Lisette skidded to a stop barely a nose's length from Cecile.

  Hands on hips and obviously pleased with herself, Cecile said, "I told."

  Lisette swept her hair back off her shoulders. "I'm sure you did."

  Cecile followed close on Lisette's heels as Lisette entered the house, obviously determined not to let her out of sight again.

  In the kitchen, Aunt Josephine looked up from peeling carrots at the sink. "That wasn't very nice," she said, "running off without Cecile, not helping to get dinner ready."

  "I'm sorry," Lisette said. "I was exploring and didn't realize it was that late." Which addressed the second complaint, if not the first. And which left a perfect opening for telling about Gerard. But though she had made no conscious decision not to tell about him, she hadn't said anything to Cecile, and now, as the perfect opening passed, she didn't say anything to Aunt Josephine, either.

  "It's not that late," Aunt Josephine explained, "but sometimes the gas and electricity go off at six o'clock, so we have to make sure we're ready."

  Paris might be the Germans' French headquarters, but at least there was electricity more or less regularly, except when the English were bombing nearby. Lisette didn't point that out. Nor did she take her last chance to mention Gerard. She said, "Let me set the table," and started for the cupboard.

  But Aunt Josephine said, "Your hands are filthy. Better clean up first."

  Cecile was standing in the doorway
, making faces and looking pleased with herself.

  "Cecile," Aunt Josephine said, "you can help the children get ready."

  And if she had seen the face Cecile made at that, Lisette thought, she wouldn't go around telling people how much Cecile loved babies.

  Lisette went running up the stairs as Louis Jerome was coming down. "Be careful," he told her. "Running on stairs is dangerous. What if you fell?"

  "That's what banisters are for," Lisette told him.

  "If you fell on the banister hard enough, it could break."

  Lisette looked over the edge and gauged the distance down to the hall floor. "It's not that high."

  "But," Louis Jerome said, "if the banister broke, and you fell through, you'd probably land on the broken piece. What if it punctured some vital organ? You'd die immediately."

  Lisette gulped.

  "Or, what if you were lucky, and it just went through your hand, or maybe your leg? Then Madame LePage would have to send Cecile to Monsieur Maurice, since she doesn't have a car to get you to the doctor. What if Monsieur Maurice isn't home, or what if the doctor isn't in the office? You might bleed to death, or what if gangrene sets in—"

  "Louis Jerome," Lisette interrupted, "be quiet."

  The boy didn't seem at all put out. If he always talked like that, no doubt he was used to people shutting him up. He pointed to the clock on the mantle and said, "It's already five forty-five. Madame LePage likes us to eat at five forty-five."

  "I need to change," Lisette told him. "I'd be done by now if you hadn't stopped me."

  "All right, but don't run on the stairs."

  Lisette refrained from pushing him into the banister.

  By the time she'd put on a clean dress and changed her shoes, in the hope that Aunt Josephine had been too busy earlier to have noticed how dirty she was, and by the time she'd brushed the twigs out of her hair and washed her hands and face, everybody was sitting at the table waiting for her. The only exception was baby Rachel, who was asleep in a bassinet at one end of the kitchen.

  Lisette took her place in the empty chair next to one of the twins, she couldn't tell which. Across from them were Etienne, Louis Jerome, and the other twin, with Aunt Josephine at the head of the table and Cecile at the end. Etienne was once again wearing his gas mask, this time pulled down over his face. Still, everybody seemed to be ignoring him, so Lisette didn't say anything either.

  Aunt Josephine said, "We're having chicken tonight in honor of Lisette joining us."

  "Yay!" the twins cried, probably more for the chicken than for Lisette.

  Lisette was pleased, too. The last meat she'd had in Paris had been horse.

  As Aunt Josephine selected a piece of chicken, the little girl across the table asked Lisette, "Were there Germans outside?"

  Lisette shook her head.

  "There could have been," Louis Jerome protested. "They could have been hiding. What if they followed you here?"

  Exasperated, Lisette asked, "Have you ever seen anything outside that made you think there were Germans nearby?"

  "We're not allowed outside," Louis Jerome explained. "What if somebody saw us?"

  Lisette had no answer for that. Fortunately, Aunt Josephine handed the platter to her then and said, "Lisette, can you help ... um..."

  "Anne," supplied the twin sitting across from them.

  The one next to Lisette smiled shyly. "Which do you want?" Lisette asked her.

  Anne tapped her finger against the breast, which was the piece Lisette had wanted. There was another breast, but that was on the bottom of the plate, so she put the breast on Anne's plate, even though it was probably too big a piece for her, and took a drumstick for herself. Then she handed the platter to Cecile.

  "Lisette saw a ghost," Cecile explained on Lisette's behalf, which Lisette knew was purely a guess, for Cecile had certainly not dared get close enough to see anything. Cecile dug under the legs and wings to get to the remaining breast, dropping a thigh and the back onto the tablecloth in her struggles.

  "Ghost?" Anne's lip began to tremble.

  "Nonsense," Aunt Josephine said quickly and decisively. Perhaps too quickly and decisively. "There's no such thing as ghosts." She began ladling potatoes onto the girls' plates.

  But Lisette had been looking at her. She knows, she thought. She's seen him too. But then why doesn't she admit it f Why doesn't she just assure the children that he isn't a scary ghost? Out loud Lisette asked, as though it were the most ridiculous thing in the world, "Do you believe in ghosts, Cecile?"

  "I've seen lots of them," Cecile said. But then she added, "One is a huge, hairy man with these big oozy sores—"

  "Cecile!" Aunt Josephine said as Anne began to howl.

  "And a big German helmet—"

  "Since you have so much energy," Aunt Josephine told her, "you can do the dishes when we're finished. Anne, please stop that."

  Cecile shot Lisette a venomous look as though somehow this was all her fault. She took out her frustration on Etienne. "You have to take off the gas mask," she told him, "or you don't get to eat."

  "No," Etienne said, his voice muffled by the mask.

  Cecile reached over him to hand the meat platter to Louis Jerome.

  Etienne grabbed the plate, Louis Jerome tugged, Cecile wouldn't let go, and Anne poked Lisette, while Emma explained on her sister's behalf, "You didn't cut it. You're supposed to cut her meat for her."

  Just then Aunt Josephine looked up. "Children, stop fighting over the chicken. There's enough for everybody."

  Louis Jerome and Etienne simultaneously let go.

  Cecile did not.

  The platter flipped in her hand, and the remaining pieces of chicken went flying at Lisette and Anne. Lisette ducked, and the chicken sailed harmlessly over her head. But Anne jerked her chair back, yanking the tablecloth halfway across the table and sloshing the children's lemonade out of their glasses. Aunt Josephine slammed her hands down on the table to keep the cloth from coming off entirely and knocked over her glass of wine. Lisette caught her plate—face-down—on her lap. Across the table Emma gleefully clapped her hands. "Do it again!" she squealed.

  Aunt Josephine gave her such a look that she only said it once.

  Etienne dove under the table. "Don't panic, men," he yelled, "but we're under attack!"

  Meanwhile, Rachel had started crying.

  Lisette looked over and saw that one of the pieces of chicken had hit the bassinet and was now lying on the baby's chest.

  At which point the lights flickered once, dimmed, then went out.

  Lisette rested her head on her hand. Welcome to Sibourne, she told herself.

  7.

  Sunday, September 1, 1940 – Monday, September 2, 1940

  Lisette decided that the safest thing to do was to go to bed. She was sure she'd never actually be able to fall asleep, missing her parents despite herself, remembering things and wondering about what she'd seen that day. But the next thing she knew, Cecile was pulling back the heavy blackout drapes and letting in the morning sunshine.

  At breakfast, just as everyone was finishing, Aunt Josephine suddenly pulled a pocket watch out of her apron pocket. Very calmly she announced, "German drill."

  "What?" Lisette asked.

  Aunt Josephine reached across the table to place her hand over Lisette's. "For this time, just watch."

  Everybody else was moving—quickly but methodically. They all brought their dishes to the sink, then Louis Jerome picked up baby Rachel; Emma and Anne held hands; Etienne pulled his gas mask down over his face. As Cecile gathered up four of the seven placemats and tossed them into the linen closet, the other children headed for the basement door. They disappeared downstairs while Cecile went thundering up the stairs to the bedrooms.

  Lisette's hands were clammy and she was having trouble sitting still. A drill, Aunt Josephine had said. And certainly she had never been afraid of fire drills at school. She was even getting used to the air raid sirens. But the idea that Aunt Josephine wa
s worried about Germans was scarier than knowing that her parents were worried, for her parents worried about everything, and Aunt Josephine had always been as unorganized and unconcerned as any of the cousins in the Beaucaire family. But here she was planning for the possibility of Germans coming. Hadn't her parents sent her here specifically to be safe from the Germans?

  At the point when they could no longer hear banging doors or running footsteps, Aunt Josephine checked her watch. "Forty-seven seconds," she said. "Not bad." She put the watch back in her apron pocket. "Let's check Cecile first."

  Lisette had assumed Cecile had been heading for their room, but instead she was in the room Etienne and Louis Jerome shared, sitting on their unmade bed, playing with a doll.

  "Veil, little girl," Aunt Josephine said in what was no doubt supposed to be a gruff German officer's voice, "vhat have ve here? This is your room?"

  "No," Cecile said, in a prim and proper voice. "This is a spare bedroom. I'm just playing in here. This is my doll, Julie, and she's exploring caves." Cecile stuck her doll under the blanket and moved it around, as though that were how the sheets had gotten mussed.

  Aunt Josephine opened some of the drawers. "And these clothes? These little boys' clothes?"

  "They belong to my boy cousins from Tours. They visit often, and they leave some of their extra things here so they don't have to pack them and bring them on the train every time."

  "Ve shall see, little girl," Aunt Josephine said, trying to sound ominous. "Now show me the other rooms."

  Lisette found that her throat was tight and dry as Cecile led the way down the hall. Calm down, she told herself. If she got this flustered during a drill, she'd fall apart totally if Germans ever really came. But surely if Cecile could do it, so could she.

  At the twins' room Cecile said, "This is the room I used to use. See all my baby things? Now I have the bigger room down at the end of the hall."

  "This bed, too, is unmade," Aunt Josephine pointed out in her bad accent. "More explorations of the caves?"

  "No," Cecile said. "My cousin Lisette is visiting from Paris. Normally she stays in my room, but last night we had a big fight, so she slept here."

  Aunt Josephine forgot her German impersonation. "Very good," she said.