The Girl in the Locked Room: A Ghost Story

by Mary Downing Hahn

  Once I’d bandaged my cut and we were safe in bed, Maisie asked, “Where are we going to hide Lily?”

  I took a deep breath. “I have an idea.” I looked at her, worried about her reaction. “If you promise not to laugh, I’ll tell you.”

  Maisie stared at me. “I won’t laugh, I promise.”

  I smoothed the Band-Aid on my knee. “You might think I’m crazy, I don’t know, but remember when you told me that some people believe alternate worlds might really exist?”

  Maisie frowned. “Yes, but—”

  “Well, what if Lily could go to a different world, a world where her parents don’t die and neither does she?”

  Maisie thought about it. “But the world where she doesn’t die,” she said slowly, “can’t exist until she changes what happened that night.”

  “Suppose she didn’t hide,” I said. “Suppose she came downstairs and saved her parents?”

  “Like she got a gun and shot Mr. Bailey and Ellis Dixon,” Maisie said.

  “I can’t see Lily doing that.”

  “How about she spills a big bag of marbles on the floor and the men slip on them and fall and her father gets their guns and calls the police.”

  “What if Lily doesn’t have any marbles?”

  Maisie frowned and ran a hand through her hair. “Okay, Jules, what do you think she should do?”

  “In the picture story, Lily drew a woman outside with the horses. She’s the one who cries out on the nights I hear the horsemen. Maybe she’d help Lily. . . .”

  “Yes,” Maisie said. “Lily can run out of the house and cry for help—”

  “And the woman can fetch the sheriff or stop the men or something.”

  “Do you think it will work?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I can’t think of anything else. Can you?”

  “No,” Maisie whispered.

  Exhausted, we tried to sleep. Above us, Lily’s window was dark, but I sensed her pacing around her room, frightened, confused, worried. She must not know what to do. Stay and obey or leave and disobey. For the first time, I realized what I’d asked Lily to do. She hadn’t been out of that room for more than a hundred years. It was all she knew, her safe place. Leaving it must terrify her. No mother, no father to comfort her. No familiar places for her to take shelter from Mr. Bailey and Ellis Dixon.

  Maybe it was wrong to ask her to gamble her life on a crazy idea that might not work. But what else was she to do?

  In the other bed, Maisie was snoring softly, but I was still awake when the morning light crept in through the skylight and chased the shadows from their corners.

  24

  Lily

  After Jules and Maisie leave, Lily opens the wardrobe door and peers out. Sure enough, the key is on the floor. And the door to her room is open.

  With some difficulty, she picks up the key. Her fingers don’t work as well as they used to. Indeed, she has become rather clumsy.

  She studies the key. As Maisie said, she can lock herself in the room again. Or maybe, if she’s brave, if she dares, if she trusts Jules, she can leave.

  She tiptoes to the open door. With the key in one hand and her other hand on the doorknob, Lily considers. She’s been in this room for a long time, hours and days and weeks, and years—​too many to reckon up. She’s waited for Mama and Papa. She’s done what she was told to do.

  She knows why they never came back. They’re dead; they’ve been dead since the night she locked herself in this room. If she stays here, she’ll never see them again.

  How does she know this? Because they’re dead, and now she knows what that means. And she’s still alive. Well, not exactly alive. But not exactly dead either. It’s as if she’s been forgotten, left behind, with no way to go forward or backward. She’s trapped in a world that exists for no one but her and the killers who come for her.

  What will happen if she leaves the room? She takes a step over the threshold and then takes a step backwards into the room. She wishes she knew what Papa and Mama want her to do, but they’ve been gone too long for her to ask. They have no more substance than a shaft of sunlight.

  Lily looks out the door again. The hall is empty. It leads to the steps. What will she see if she goes downstairs? Her legs tremble, and she holds fast to the doorframe to keep from falling. She’s afraid of what she’ll find in the house.

  While she hesitates, the sun comes up and paints in the colors that night took away. The workmen arrive. Their laughter booms in the empty rooms, their voices bounce from wall to wall, their heavy boots tramp back and forth on the floor beneath her. Doors open and slam shut.

  She creeps to the top of the stairs and pauses there. She holds her breath. Her toes grip the edge of the first step. She’s poised like a diver ready to plunge into deep water.

  She lowers one foot, then the other, slow baby steps. She’s afraid the stairs will creak, but the wood is silent under her bare feet.

  On the second floor, she stops and stares about in bewilderment. The furniture is gone. The rugs and the drapes are gone. The pictures are gone. The floor is splintered and uneven. There are streaks and stains and blotches of mold on the plaster walls. The roof must have leaked.

  A few tattered strips of wallpaper remain. Pink and blue flowers faded now to gray. Lily remembers helping Mama choose that pattern. She tightens her grip on the banister to keep herself from running back to the safety of the studio, where nothing has changed.

  She looks down at the first floor. It’s empty, ruined. The noisy men have torn it apart. Dust covers everything. The walls are open wood frameworks. She can see through them into every room.

  The workmen are in the parlor. They lounge about, standing in corners, leaning against walls, eating buns and drinking coffee from paper cups. They wear their strange yellow hats and working clothes and heavy boots. One spits on the floor.

  She stays in the shadows as she descends, stopping on every step to be certain nobody notices her. No one does.

  Lily tiptoes past the parlor. She should be in plain sight, but the men continue talking and laughing as if she isn’t there. One man looks right at her, and she can tell he doesn’t see her. It’s most peculiar.

  Moving into a patch of bright sunlight, she stretches out her hand and looks for its shadow. It’s not there. She lifts her foot. It casts no shadow either.

  She remembers trying to see herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door, how blurred and indistinct she was, more of a mist than a reflection. She’d wondered then if people could see her. Now she’s sure they can’t. Jules and Maisie won’t see her, even with their eyes wide open.

  Invisibility gives Lily courage. If she can’t be seen, she can’t be hurt. She walks right past a man and glides into the kitchen. It’s stripped bare, like the rest of the house. Aunt Nellie’s stove is gone, her sink too. The shelves have disappeared, along with all the pots and pans.

  She notices a new door. It must lead to the addition. She turns the knob, but it’s locked. Through it, she hears voices. She smells bacon and remembers its smoky taste. Something in the empty place inside her aches.

  She looks out a window and sees a path that leads to the meadow where Papa kept his dairy cows.

  Summoning courage she didn’t know she had, Lily slips outside through the open kitchen door. If no one can see her, she can go anywhere.

  The sun hurts her eyes, and she stumbles, half blind. She doesn’t remember how painfully bright sunlight is. She stands still and opens her eyes slowly. At first, she can’t see anything but blobs of dark and light. Gradually her eyes stop hurting and her vision clears.

  Her surroundings are familiar yet unfamiliar. Most of the trees are gone. What was once a green lawn is now a churned-up field of red mud. Nettles, milkweed, and Queen Anne’s lace flourish where Mama’s roses grew.

  She walks farther from the house. Nothing is left of the barn except its stone foundation. Weeds and brambles grow in the pasture. Honeysuckle smothers sagging fences and broken st
one walls.

  No hens peck in the dirt. No rooster struts and crows. No cows rest in the grass. No sheep graze in the upper meadow. No corn rustles in the breeze, no wheat rippling like waves. No one works in the fields.

  A blight has fallen on the farm.

  Once more, Lily is tempted to run back to Papa’s studio and hide in the wardrobe, but in spite of the farm’s desolation, the sky is blue and the sun is warm. It’s good to be away from dust and dead insects and musty air. It’s good to hear birds instead of hammers and saws and men shouting.

  At last Lily comes to the field and sees the willow tree. It’s much taller than she remembers. She’s not even sure it’s the same tree. Another might have grown in its place.

  Except for the size of the willow, the field looks exactly the same as it did the day she and Papa and Mama had their last picnic by the stream. Wildflowers sway in a breeze. Birds sing. The sky arches overhead, a lovely shade of pure blue—​the same blue as Papa’s eyes.

  A terrible loneliness casts a dark shadow over Lily. She’s by herself in this spot where she was happy with Mama and Papa. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.

  Just as she’s about to return to the house, Lily hears voices. Jules and Maisie are coming across the field.

  Lily hesitates. Half of her longs to be seen. The other half is terrified of being seen. She smooths her ragged nightgown. She touches her hair. It’s wild and tangled, unwashed, uncombed, unbrushed. It’s grown very long. In truth, it almost touches the ground.

  Mama would have a conniption fit if she saw Lily outdoors in her nightgown, her hair uncombed and her feet bare.

  She decides to hide in the willow tree and watch the girls from above. Silently she climbs from branch to branch, higher and higher. At some point she realizes that she isn’t actually climbing. She no longer needs to hold on to the limbs of the willow. She lets a breeze carry her to the top of the tree and she perches there. The branches rock her gently.

  This must be what it’s like to be a bird. If only she had wings. She’d fly high into the sky and look down at the earth. Oh, what sights she’d see.

  Lily watches Jules and Maisie brush aside the willow’s drooping branches. They sit by the stream and dangle their bare feet in the water.

  How small the girls are. How fragile. It breaks her heart to hear them talk and laugh. They do not know what Lily knows. She hopes they never will.

  25

  Jules

  Maisie and I sat under the willow and waited for Lily. The sun splashed the ground with light and shadows. A dragonfly skimmed over the water.

  “Do you think she’ll really come?” Maisie asked.

  “She promised.”

  A breeze riffled the leaves of the willow, and someone laughed. Maisie and I looked up. Sunlight flared in my eyes. I saw nothing but the tree.

  “Lily?” I cried. “Is it you? Are you here?”

  The willow leaves moved in one place, but the tree was motionless everywhere else.

  “Please, Lily,” Maisie called, “let us see you.”

  The willow swayed. Something light and small moved slowly from branch to branch, but I saw nothing except fluttering leaves.

  Willing myself to see her, I closed my eyes, opened them, widened them, narrowed them, blinked, and blinked again.

  Lily laughed. “I see you, but you can’t see me. I’m invisible.”

  Her voice was right in front of us now. Squeezing my eyes shut again, I pictured the girl I’d glimpsed in the field, the one in the portrait—​long blond hair, blue dress, ribbons in her hair. I pressed my eyelids shut until I saw flashes of light. Then slowly, slowly, I opened them, taking care not to look directly at the place where I guessed she’d be.

  And there she was, sitting in the willow tree just above Maisie and me. She wore the dress I’d seen before, and her long, yellow hair was held back from her face with blue ribbons.

  “Oh, Lily,” I whispered. “You look exactly like you did the first time I saw you.”

  Maisie smiled. “You might have stepped right out of your father’s painting—​just as we wished you would.”

  26

  Lily

  Lily looks down at herself. Instead of a blue dress, she’s wearing her disgraceful nightgown, yellow with age and worn almost transparent.

  She tries to smooth her hair back from her face, but it’s like pushing cobweb strands away. What she needs is a hot bath and a change of clothes. A pair of shoes would also be nice.

  But perhaps it doesn’t matter. Jules and Maisie see her as she once was, not as she is now.

  Sitting quietly in the tree, she watches Papa’s gerry bugs parade across the water’s surface, tracing their ever-changing patterns of circles, over and over again. Above her head, leaves murmur like children telling secrets.

  A bumblebee burrows into a flower. It’s so easy to hide, she thinks, and so hard to be found.

  “We’re happy you came,” Jules says. “We were worried you’d be scared to leave your room.”

  “I was afraid,” Lily admits. “I’ve been there ever so long. I went downstairs, and I saw what’s become of our house. It’s in ruins. Everything we had is gone. The lawn is mud, Mama’s garden is overgrown with weeds—​the barns and sheds, the chickens, the cows . . . What have they done with it all?”

  “Your house was empty for a long, long time,” Maisie says.

  “This big company hired my father to restore Oak Hill,” Jules says. “When he’s done, it will look almost like it did when you lived there.”

  Lily ponders what they have told her. “Please don’t think I’m foolish, but when you say a long, long time, I don’t know what you mean exactly. When I lived in Oak Hill—​my real life with Mama and Papa and Aunt Nellie—​it was 1889. What year is it now?”

  The girls look at each other, as if they’re afraid she won’t like the answer to her question.

  When Jules tells her, Lily feels as if she’s been swallowed up by time. No one from her world is alive now. No one. Not even Mrs. Brown’s new baby that was baptized the Sunday before everything changed.

  When she can speak again, Lily says, “Reverend Donaldson told us the world would end in the year two thousand. Judgment Day would come, and the dead would rise from their graves, and we’d be sent to heaven or hell.”

  “In 1999, a lot of people thought the same thing,” Maisie says. “They stocked up on food and water and prepared for the end of the world, but on the first day of two thousand, everything was just the same.” She shrugged. “And here we are.”

  Yes, Lily thinks, here we are, but unlike Maisie and Jules, she doesn’t belong in the twenty-first century. She belongs in 1889.

  “I was born on the ninth of February in 1880,” Lily says. “So I’m old now. Impossibly old.”

  Jules and Maisie nod.

  No one is meant to live this long, Lily thinks. She should be dead, really and completely dead. She belongs in her grave, not sitting in a willow tree wearing a tattered nightgown and talking to living, breathing girls.

  She looks at them. “I’m not supposed to be here, am I ?”

  The girls look at each other, their faces solemn. Lily senses that they have something to tell her. She sits quietly and waits for them to speak.

  27

  Jules

  It seemed to me that Lily was thinking along the same lines as Maisie and I. She already knew she was in the wrong time. If we convinced her about alternate worlds, perhaps she’d do what had to be done to set things right.

  “Maisie and I’ve been thinking about the night Mr. Bailey and Ellis Dixon came to your house,” I told her. “What if you hadn’t hidden upstairs? What would have happened?”

  “But Mama told me to hide,” Lily said. “I’d never disobey her or Papa.”

  “But suppose you knew what was going to happen,” Maisie said. “Would you still obey your mother?”

  Lily frowned and slowly shook her head. “I’d run downstairs after her.
When the men came, they’d kill us all.”

  “That’s not a very happy ending,” I said.

  Lily shrugged. “Don’t you see? All I want is to be with Mama and Papa. Even if we’re dead, I’d be happier with them than I am without them.”

  “Think, Lily,” I said. “Could you possibly have gotten help? What if you’d fetched the sheriff? Or a neighbor?”

  “They were too far away,” Lily said.

  “How about the woman with the horses?” I asked. “Would she help you?”

  “Aunt Nellie,” Lily whispered. “Of course. She was outside with the horses that night. She’d never let anyone hurt me. She loved me as if I were her own child. Mama told me so.”

  “But she’s Mr. Bailey’s wife,” Maisie said. “Would she go against her own husband?”

  “Mr. Bailey’s a bad man,” Lily said. “He drinks whiskey and he hits Aunt Nellie and he stole Papa’s money. She’d do anything to save me, even if he told her not to. So help me, if I had a gun, I’d shoot Mr. Bailey dead.” She was so angry, her body quivered as if she might break into thousands of pieces and disappear. “I know about guns. Papa gave me lessons.”

  Maisie and I looked at each other in surprise. Lily was fiercer than she looked. With a temper like that, she might be brave enough to save her parents and herself.

  Deciding this was the right moment to explain our plan, I took a deep breath and said, “I’m going to tell you something you might not understand. In fact, you might not believe it. You might even think I’ve lost my mind.”

  When I paused, Maisie said, “Go on, tell her.”

  “Okay. Suppose this world isn’t the only world. Suppose there are lots of other worlds, some almost like this one and others completely different.”

  “Mars, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter. I learned about them in school. Nobody lives on them. Except maybe Mars.”