Eleanor, Alice, and the Roosevelt Ghosts

by Dianne K. Salerni

  Alice gapes at me. It’s too late to hide this information from her; she’s about two seconds from ripping the sheet of paper out of my hands. But maybe I can prepare her for the blow. “What do you know about the house you were born in?”

  “The house I was born in? What do you mean?”

  “Your parents were living with our grandmother, Martha Roosevelt, at the time you were born.”

  “I know that.”

  “The house was Number Six on West Fifty-Seventh Street. According to the city registry, that house was declared Unsafe for Habitation after the outbreak of a Vengeful in February 1884, and the designation hasn’t been changed since.” I don’t have to remind Alice that February of 1884 is the month she was born, and the month her mother and our grandmother died. I remove my hand and let her read my notes for herself.

  The blush drains from her cheeks, leaving her skin the color of porcelain. “Who is the progenitor of this…Vengeful?”

  “That’s not listed in the public records.”

  I checked with the librarian. Information on progenitors is protected by privacy law. Nobody wants strangers knowing that their great-aunt Minnie erupted as a Vengeful and killed seven people. You can petition the Supernatural Registry board if you’re the owner of a haunted house or potentially buying one, and if the progenitor’s name is recorded, they’ll tell you. But they won’t hand that information over to anyone else. “Your father and Aunt Bye were there when it happened,” I remind Alice, “and your father now owns the house. If anyone knows, they do.”

  She stares at the paper for a long, long time, then abruptly opens a drawer in her dresser. Pushing aside bloomers and petticoats, she fishes out a handful of bills. It’s more money than she should have as a spending allowance, and I’m alarmed to watch her stuff the bills into her skirt pocket. “What are you doing?” I ask, even though I can guess, especially when Alice pins on that hat with the ridiculous ostrich feathers.

  “I want to see it for myself.” She pulls her blue coat out of her wardrobe.

  “What? How are you going to get there?”

  Alice sweeps out of the room without responding, and I chase after her, leaving my notes behind.

  Census Records for 132 East 21st Street

  1830

  Edgar Drummond—Head of Household—38

  Amelia Drummond—Wife—30

  Edgar Drummond, Jr.—Son—10

  Benjamin Drummond—Son—5

  Susannah Drummond—Daughter—2

  Betty Piper—Housemaid—14

  1840

  Edgar Drummond—Head of Household—48

  Ella Drummond—Wife—32 (must be second wife)

  Edgar Drummond, Jr.—Son—20

  Lisandra Taylor Drummond—Daughter-in-law—19

  Edgar Drummond, the 3rd—Grandson—1

  Benjamin Drummond—Son—15

  Susannah Drummond—Daughter—12

  Charles Brown—Stepson—10 (Ella’s from first marriage?)

  Mary Isabel Brown—Stepdaughter—9

  David Drummond—Son—1 (Edgar & Ella’s son, probably)

  1850

  Ella Drummond—Head of Household—42

  David Drummond—son—11

  (I assume Mr. Drummond died.

  Where did all the other family members go?)

  New York City Supernatural Registry

  6 West 57th Street

  Roosevelt Household

  Owned at the time of eruption by Martha Bulloch Roosevelt

  Designated Unsafe for Habitation, February 1884

  Haunting Type—Vengeful

  Designation never changed!

  Current owner—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.—Uncle Teddy!

  9

  ELEANOR ON AN ESCAPADE

  I follow Alice out to the street, where she raises her arm in an attempt to summon a hansom cab. Two pass without stopping.

  “Alice, wait!” I exclaim.

  “Why won’t these cabs stop for me?” She waves a dollar bill over her head as proof of her ability to pay.

  “Because none of them want to pick up two girls without a chaperone.” I hardly believe I’m including myself in Alice’s escapade, but I cannot let her run off alone in her current state of distress.

  Alice looks me up and down. “You could be the chaperone. You’re tall enough. Take off that horrible bonnet and coat.”

  “What?” Alice is already untying my bonnet, tugging it from my head. She pulls pins from her own hair and uses them to coil my braid under the ostrich monstrosity. We switch outer garments. Alice swims in my brown wool coat, while I can barely force my shoulders into her fashionable tailored one.

  But she’s right. Within seconds of my recostuming, a hansom cab stops for us. The cabman shoots me a doubtful glance when he gets a better look at my face. Then Alice holds up her bill again and he waves us into the carriage. “Number Six West Fifty-Seventh Street,” Alice says. The driver clucks to his horse, pretending we are an ordinary fare and not two girls who shouldn’t be gallivanting around the city on our own.

  Alice’s lips are pinched, and her leg jiggles in a very unladylike way. “What made you look up my grandmother’s house in the supernatural registry?”

  Our grandmother’s house, I want to remind her. Instead, I consider how to answer. I may not like Alice very much, but I’m not cruel enough to wound her with the knowledge that Uncle Will regrets welcoming her to his home. “It was a comment Grandmother Hall made,” I tell her, and she nods because that is believable.

  Which makes me wonder, belatedly, why I’ve never heard a whisper of gossip from Grandmother Hall about my grandmother Roosevelt’s house being haunted by a Vengeful. Perhaps, just this once, she kept the story to herself out of respect for my relatives.

  The ride takes a quarter of an hour, and the cab stops on a street filled with majestic homes three times the size of my own. My eyes jump immediately to the sign nailed to the door of Number 6—faded black letters on a faded yellow background, but still readable.

  UNSAFE FOR HABITATION

  The driver of the cab sees it too and opens his mouth to say something, but Alice offers him his fare and an overly generous tip. The man takes it, clamps his lips shut, and signals his horse to move on. I feel abandoned, especially when Alice leaves my side and strides purposefully toward that house.

  “Alice! Don’t get too close!”

  “The ghost is inside,” she calls back. “It’s not going to come out and get us.”

  Once again, I find myself following her like a child’s toy on a string.

  From the outside, the house looks similar to the others on this street: multiple stories in tawny stone with tall windows, balconies, and sloping rooflines. But something emanates from Number 6 that makes my heart race. The street is unnaturally still for the middle of the day, especially in a neighborhood this close to Central Park. It’s as if everybody knows to avoid this block.

  “Eleanor, come look.” Alice climbs onto the iron street-side fence, trying to peer through one of the first-floor windows.

  My skin crawls, but I approach, one grudging step at a time. Waves of cold roll from the house, like a fireplace that throws off ice instead of flames. The draperies on this front window are open, surprisingly, but there’s a thick layer of frost on the inside of the glass.

  “There’s furniture inside,” Alice says.

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can see the shapes—dimly. That’s a grandfather clock next to a sofa, maybe.”

  “What are you girls doing?”

  We both jump. Alice nearly tumbles over the fence, but I grab her by the belt of her coat and haul her back. Then we face the woman who’s scowling at us from the threshold of the house next door. “Get away from there,” she snaps. “That house i
s Unsafe.”

  “Yes, we know—” I begin.

  “This house belongs to my father,” Alice interrupts. “I was born here.”

  The woman tips her head to scrutinize us. She’s perhaps fifty, thin as a poker with a face like a hatchet. “You’re a Roosevelt?” Alice nods. “You’d better come in.”

  Alice and I look at each other. A neighbor who knows our family and the history of Number 6? We collide in our haste to scurry down the sidewalk and up the steps to the front door of her home. She waves us inside and closes the door.

  The entrance hall is wide and high-ceilinged. There’s a second-floor landing overlooking the foyer, accessible by two curved marble staircases. The woman leads us directly into a grand front parlor that could swallow several rooms in Grandmother’s house. “Take off your coats and hats, girls. I’ll bring in tea.”

  “Oh, thank you,” I say. “But you don’t have to—”

  “It’s already made.” Before I can protest again, the woman darts from the room. I wonder if she’s going to deliver instructions to a servant, because in a house this large, I expect she must have servants.

  Alice unties my old bonnet, and I remove the ostrich hat, but neither of us takes off our coat. The room is too cold, the small fire in the corner fireplace too weak to hold off the chill of winter. Or, perhaps, the chill of the house next door.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have come in here,” I whisper. I’ve never been in a stranger’s house except in the company of an adult, and this house seems odd. It reminds me of Aunt Bye’s front hallway on the day after the eruption. Shadows are long and deep and…somehow…too many.

  Alice jumps in her seat and jerks around to look at the wall behind her, the wall that neighbors her father’s house. I don’t know what caught her attention, but when I peer across the gloom I notice that the wallpaper on that wall is different from the rest of the room. At first I think it’s a different pattern. Then I realize it’s the same paper except blackened by mildew.

  The woman returns carrying a heavy tray, which she sets down on the low table in front of our chairs. “I’m Miss Barnstable,” she says. I glance at the door, but there’s no sign of a maidservant.

  “I’m Alice Roosevelt,” my cousin says.

  Miss Barnstable gives her a sharp look. “I forgot they named you after your mother.”

  Alice stares at her eagerly. “You lived here then?”

  “I’ve lived here all my life. I went to school with your aunt Bye.”

  That surprises me. She looks ten years older than Bye. “I’m Eleanor, Elliott’s daughter.”

  Miss Barnstable nods briefly at me, but her attention seems fixed on Alice as she pours tea into our cups. “I can’t believe it’s been so long.”

  “Can you tell us what happened?” I ask. Alice shoots me an angry look.

  Miss Barnstable places a plate of cheese on the table. “You don’t know?”

  “Of course we know,” Alice says, glaring at me. “But there are so many false rumors. I want to make sure people know what really happened.”

  “I’ll fetch the cake.” Miss Barnstable straightens.

  “Please don’t go to any trouble. Tea and cheese is generous enough.” Alice reaches for a chunk and stops. The cheese is hard, cracked, and yellow, as if it was sliced days ago and left out. She withdraws her hand.

  “I’ll be right back,” our hostess chirps.

  “Thank you, but—” She ignores me entirely and disappears into the back of her house. I turn on Alice. “Why are you glaring at me like that?”

  “You can’t let her know our family didn’t tell us what happened or she won’t tell us either. Adults stick together. We have to pretend she’s confirming what we already know.” Alice whips around and looks at the wall again. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” The only sound in the room besides our voices is the crackle of wood burning in the fireplace.

  “Nothing.” She faces forward again, but her leg bounces up and down.

  “Alice?”

  “Leave it be, Eleanor.”

  What is she not telling me? I pick up my teacup purely for the warmth, but when I look at the contents, my hand flinches, sloshing liquid over the rim.

  The surface of the tea is slick and oily.

  “Here we are,” Miss Barnstable sings out, returning with a cake plate. She almost catches me pouring my tea back into the pot. “It’s German chocolate cake. My favorite.”

  I eye it warily, but this offering looks edible: three layers, iced with a coconut-laden frosting. She slices into the cake, cutting a wedge, which she lays on a separate serving plate.

  Worms ooze from the center of the cake—long, gray, dead, cooked worms.

  I jump to my feet, and Miss Barnstable smiles at me, her teeth too shiny and a little too sharp. She holds out the plate full of cake and worms. I back away and grab Alice by the arm, yanking her to her feet. “We’re leaving!”

  Alice resists. “But she hasn’t told us—”

  “She isn’t going to tell us anything!” I try to pull Alice away from the table, but she lunges back. To my horror, I think she’s reaching for that slice of cake. But no, it’s her feathered hat that she snatches from the arm of my chair.

  Then the two of us flee the house, running hand in hand.

  10

  ALICE LEARNS THE TRUTH

  ALICE lets Eleanor drag her two blocks before digging in her heels. Eleanor, with those coltish legs, could probably keep going a mile before getting winded. But Alice needs to catch her breath. “What is wrong with that woman? Is she completely off her trolley? She baked worms in her cake!”

  Eleanor’s eyes are wide with shock. “She’s like Miss Havisham!”

  “Who?” Alice recognizes the name a second after asking the question but doesn’t stop Eleanor from launching into an explanation of the jilted bride from Great Expectations who goes mad living close to a powerful Vengeful ghost. She needs that minute of Eleanor prattling to recover her wits.

  Eleanor didn’t hear the voice. That crazy woman didn’t hear it. Only I did.

  It sounded like a tree branch scraping against window shutters, scritching and scratching.

  Al—ice. Al—ice. Come hoooommme.

  “Alice, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes!” Alice shoves her hat at her cousin. “Here. Put this on and get us a ride home.”

  Eleanor takes the hat but looks around. “Where’s my bonnet? Did it get left behind?”

  “Yes. I did you a favor.”

  Their ruse doesn’t work a second time. No matter how imperiously Eleanor waves, no cab will stop for her. Eventually, they resign themselves to walking the hour or so back to Bye’s house. “Take the hat back,” Eleanor says after half an hour. “Your ears are bright red, Alice.”

  “I can’t wear that hat with this coat. Are you mad?”

  “Take them both back. The coat doesn’t fit me anyway.”

  “Fine!” Right there on the street, under the curious looks of bystanders, she and Eleanor swap coats. Alice gets her hat back, already warmed by Eleanor’s head, which comforts her stinging ears. They continue walking.

  “That poor woman,” Eleanor says. “Where’s her family? Why do they let her live in that house?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t have anyone.”

  “That’s terrible. Somebody should help her.”

  Alice shrugs. Miss Barnstable is not their problem.

  Eleanor doesn’t try to make conversation again, and Alice’s thoughts swirl during their cold forty-block walk. By the time they get home, her hands are frozen and her feet are blistered. When she learns from Maisie that Aunt Bye has returned from visiting, Alice bursts into the parlor with Eleanor trailing behind.

  Aunt Bye is reading a newspaper but looks up when they enter. “Girls! Maisie
told me you went out. Where—”

  “We went to Number Six, West Fifty-Seventh Street,” Alice says.

  Aunt Bye flinches, and the newspaper drops into her lap. “Why—”

  “Eleanor found out at the library. We went and looked at the house.” Alice marches across the room. “Did a Vengeful ghost kill my mother?”

  “No!” Aunt Bye takes her niece’s hands and pulls her down on the sofa. “Oh, Alice, your hands are blocks of ice! No, a ghost did not kill your mother.”

  Alice’s relief is tempered by another, more difficult-to-name emotion. Because as horrifying as it would be to learn that a Vengeful murdered her mother, such a revelation would also liberate her from a lifelong burden. “Was it me, then? I killed her, by being born?”

  “No, Alice, you did not. Didn’t your father tell you what happened?”

  “Father never speaks of her.” Alice doesn’t bother to disguise the bitterness in her voice. “It’s as if she never existed. I know he wishes I didn’t.”

  Across the room, Eleanor sucks in her breath, and Aunt Bye squeezes Alice’s hands. “That isn’t true! Your father adores you, and he loved your mother dearly. He should have explained to you years ago that your mother died of a kidney disorder. She wasn’t diagnosed with the disease until well into her pregnancy, and there is no treatment for it in any case. It was lucky she was able to deliver you safely, as sick as she was.”

  Alice’s eyes sting. She glances across the room at Eleanor, who casts her gaze at the floor, giving her cousin privacy without leaving the room. To her surprise, Alice isn’t annoyed that she’s still here. If it weren’t for Eleanor, Alice would still know nothing about the events surrounding her birth. “What about my grandmother? How did she die?”

  Aunt Bye closes her eyes. This is her mother they’re talking about, and Alice is sorry to cause her pain. But now that the subject is open, she intends to find out everything she can. “Typhoid fever,” Aunt Bye says. “We kept her isolated from your mother to avoid contamination, and we thought Mother was going to recover. But she took a turn for the worse.” Only then does Aunt Bye open her eyes. “The end was very sudden, and no one was expecting it.”