by Paula Morris
"You shouldn't have brought me," she said softly. The champagne had gone to her head: She felt kind of dizzy. "You're not having a good time."
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"I'm having the best time," he said, turning his head toward her, and they both laughed. "That's a big lie," Rebecca said.
"What I mean is, I'm having the best time right now. We should have come out here earlier."
"We should have just stayed out here the whole time, you mean? "
"That's exactly what I mean. We could have sent in for champagne, and told the band to play louder."
Their shoulders were brushing and, with every lilting swing of the seat, Rebecca felt Anton leaning closer.
"And I should have worn ... a sweater," she whispered.
"A snowsuit, maybe," he said, and when he laughed, Rebecca didn't know where to look: He was so close, his face angular and chiseled, his chest rising and falling a little with every breath.
"A fur coat," she said, but the words could barely get themselves out, because Anton's face was brushing hers now -- his hair tickling her forehead, his nose knocking hers.
His lips pressing hers.
Anton was kissing her, so softly, so sweetly....
And someone was standing right there.
Rebecca gasped, and Anton pulled away quickly.
"There's someone ..." She stopped. There was somebody there, just a foot away, staring straight at them, but it wasn't anyone Anton could see. It was Lisette, standing very still, looking as startled as Rebecca.
"What's wrong?" Anton asked her, scanning the gallery. "Who was here? Where?"
"Oh ... nobody. I mean, they must have left."
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Lisette turned away, stepping up to the French doors and gazing into the busy room. Anton was still looking around, up and down the gallery, out into the yard. The moment between them was broken, Rebecca knew. Maybe Anton thought she'd done it on purpose, invented some excuse to stop the kiss. But she hadn't wanted the kiss to stop. She really hadn't ...
A terrible scream pierced through the party noise. The band stopped playing and the chatter dwindled to a low excited hum, like the sound of insects in a garden.
"It's her!" Helena screamed. She was almost hysterical, standing in front of the French doors and pointing out at the gallery with a trembling, accusing finger. "Mama! Mama, I can see her! The black girl -- she's here! I can see her!"
Helena's mother, thin and dark like her daughter, rushed to her side, clutching Helena around her bony shoulders.
"Where, darling -- where?" she cried. Someone rattled at the doors, shaking them open.
"Out there! She's right out there!" Helena was shrieking, her body quaking with sobs. "Someone DO something! Someone grab her!"
"Are you sure, darling-- are you sure?" Helena's mother grabbed her, rocking her back and forth. Whatever else they were saying was lost in the uproar: Men poured onto the back gallery, shouting and running. Anton jumped up, spinning around in confusion.
"There's nobody out here," he said, turning to Rebecca. "Is there?"
Male guests rushed all over the yard, searching in the hedges, leaping over the wrought-iron fence, tearing back
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the lumber stack's canvas covering, shining flashlights hastily supplied by the elderly butler into every corner of the lush garden. If they were looking for Lisette, Rebecca thought, they wouldn't find her: Not a single one of them would be able to see her. Rebecca couldn't even see her now. In the midst of the melee, the ghost disappeared from the porch. Maybe she was inside the house, or perhaps she'd drifted back to the cemetery after Helena spotted her. And how had Helena seen her? Wasn't Rebecca the only one who could see Lisette?
Rebecca stood up and backed against the wall, pulling Anton's jacket around her shoulders. People rushed past her, running to the gallery railings: One woman told another that it was a mugging; someone else shouted that Helena had been shot. Glasses were dropped, crashing onto the gallery's wooden boards. Rebecca wriggled inside, not sure what she should do next. The musicians were packing away their instruments, probably worried they'd get trampled. Someone knocked a whole row of tea lights off the mantel; they shattered on the floor, unnerving one old man so much that he struck out wildly with his cane.
Rebecca stood by the fireplace, trying to make sense of the chaos. Why was Lisette visible to two such very different girls? Did Lisette know that Helena would be able to see her? And why did the sight of Lisette make Helena freak out in such an extreme way?
"I think we should go." Anton was back, reaching for her hand; he looked strained and unhappy. "Come on. I have to get you home."
Rebecca nodded, following him through the parlors to the hallway, out the front door, and through the chaos in the
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yard and the street. Back at his car, he pulled Rebecca's bag out of the trunk, and then stopped, as though he couldn't go any farther or do another thing. He looked as though he was about to be sick.
"What was going on there?" Rebecca asked him. "Why was Helena so upset?"
Anton shook his head, glancing up and down the street. In the moonlight, his face looked more pale and gaunt than usual, sinister in the dark shadows cast by the oak branches stretching above them. He seemed to be struggling, as though he was trying to say something but couldn't. What did he know that he didn't want to tell her? Rebecca knew what she was trying to hide from Anton -- the fact that she could see a ghost. But what was Anton trying to hide from her?
"What happened tonight ... it's too hard to explain," he said.
"Please tell me," Rebecca begged. She reached down into the bag, now resting at her feet, and pulled out the sweatshirt she'd packed. She handed back Anton's jacket and pulled the soft fabric over her head. Her teeth were chattering now, a combination of cold and nerves.
"It's just ... it's just a weird thing to do with the Bowman family," Anton said, leaning back against the tree trunk.
"What weird thing?" she prompted.
"Well, I shouldn't be telling you this." He took his blazer and draped it around her shoulders, even though she had her sweatshirt on. "I really shouldn't. It's something that's only known to ... well, certain families. Some of the old-line families around here."
"You know I won't say a word to anyone else," Rebecca told
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him. This was true: Who was she going to tell? She had no friends here apart from Lisette, and Lisette appeared to be implicated, in some strange way, with the events of the evening.
"I know you won't. The thing is, it just sounds completely insane. You'll probably think I'm crazy when I tell you ...'
"Tell me what?" she whispered. The shouts from around the corner were dying down. Perhaps the search party had given up their quest.
"That there's some sort of curse on the Bowman family." Anton looked at her, as though he was daring her to laugh. "I know it sounds crazy, but ... it's just that bad things happen to girls in the family. And it's been going on for, like, a hundred years. Longer, even. And before these ... before these bad things happen, the girls all see this ... this ghost, I guess."
A tide of panic swept through Rebecca. Lisette was a harbinger of bad things? An evil spirit, there to play tricks on generations of Bowmans? Something terrible had happened to Lisette, but Rebecca couldn't believe she was evil herself. How could Lisette hurt anyone?
None of this she could say to Anton, of course: Now was really not the time to announce she could see this ghost, too. And maybe she was jumping to conclusions.
"What does this ghost look like?" Rebecca asked him. "Do you have any idea?"
Anton nodded, his face disappearing into the tree's velvety shadow. He picked at the bark with one finger.
"She's a black girl," he murmured. "She's sixteen years old and her name is Lisette."
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Rebecca's heart sank with a thud, like an anchor hitting the ocean floor.
"The story goes ..." Anton was saying. "Well, in the B
owman family, they believe that whenever one of the girls sees her, it means she only has a few months left."
"What do you mean, a few months?" Rebecca's chest was tight; she felt as though she could barely breathe.
Anton looked up, his eyes boring into her. He took a deep breath before replying.
"A few months to live," he said slowly. "It means ... it means Helena only has a few months to live."
Rebecca stared at him. Helena was going to die? And somehow Lisette was involved -- her friend, Lisette?
But I can see Lisette, too. Did that mean she only had a few months to live? No, she said to herself: This was a Bowman family thing, a New Orleans thing. It had nothing to do with Rebecca.
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***
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
***
Rebecca!" aurelia was leaning out an upstairs window, waving frantically at her. She and Anton were standing outside Claire's house, Rebecca realized. "What's all the noise about?" "Nothing -- go to bed!"
"You go to bed," Aurelia retorted. Claire's round face appeared next to hers in the window. "You're the one who's out late!"
Rebecca pulled her cell phone out of her bag, dislodging her socks, which tumbled onto the ground. She glanced at the time: They had about three minutes before Aunt Claudia would be out pacing the porch and calling the police.
"I have to go," she told Anton.
He swept back his hair with one trembling hand, frowning down at the ground. Rebecca hated just leaving him on the street this way.
"Sure" was all he could say, his voice cracking. He seemed completely traumatized by what just happened at the
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Bowmans' house. Rebecca took a step away: She had to go now if she wanted to avoid getting into trouble. She still had to finish getting changed, something she'd planned to do in the bushes in Claire's garden. But now the thought of an angry Aunt Claudia didn't seem all that frightening. Not compared with the story Anton had just told her.
Whenever one of the girls sees her, it means she only has a few months left to live.
"Walk me home," she said to Anton. There were times when you just had to get into trouble, Rebecca decided, and tonight was one of them. "I want you to tell me more."
But as it turned out, Anton didn't have that much more to reveal. Everything he knew about the curse and the ghost, he'd spilled out on that sidewalk on Fourth Street.
It was Aunt Claudia who knew.
Rebecca was still fumbling for her key when her aunt jerked open the front door, so upset she didn't even notice Anton at first.
"What is all this terrible noise in the cemetery?" Aunt Claudia asked, a paisley shawl slipping off her narrow shoulders. "And Rebecca, why are you ... Anton? Is that you? What are you ... Good God, child, where are your pants?"
Although Rebecca was wearing her sweatshirt, she was still in her short party dress and sandals, her bare legs prickling in the cold.
"I'll explain everything inside." Rebecca turned to Anton; he was a picture of gloom. "Will you be OK? Without anyone at home, I mean?"
"Don't worry about me," he told her. "I'm sorry, Miss Claudia."
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"I don't know what you're sorry for," her aunt said sharply, "but I intend to find out. Rebecca?"
She held the door open and Rebecca trudged in, glancing back at Anton with a rueful smile. She'd rather face the inquisition from Aunt Claudia than go home to an empty house right now.
The inquisition -- held at the kitchen table, without even the offer of tea -- didn't last long, because Rebecca confessed all of the evening's events: the fake trip to the movies, attending the party, Helena's hysteria, Anton's story. Of course, it wasn't an entirely true confession. To save Aurelia's skin, Rebecca told Aunt Claudia that her little cousin had taken no part in the subterfuge. And she didn't mention a thing about seeing the ghost herself. First she needed to find out what her aunt knew.
"So what is this curse that Anton's talking about?" Rebecca asked. A pensive Aunt Claudia sat stroking her pack of tarot cards, not meeting Rebecca's eye. "Do you know anything about it?"
"No," her aunt replied, but the answer came too quickly, and Rebecca could tell this wasn't the truth.
"I don't believe you," she said. Aunt Claudia kept on stroking the pack of cards. "Anton said some of the families around here know about it. He said it had been going on for a hundred years."
"One hundred and fifty-five," her aunt said softly, looking up at Rebecca at last. No more shouts drifted over from the cemetery, and they sat in silence, gazing at each other. The house was so quiet that a sudden wheeze from the aging fridge made them both jump.
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"What happened?" Rebecca whispered, her throat suddenly croaky. Aunt Claudia gave a long sigh, picking her bracelets off one by one and laying them on the table.
"A servant girl was murdered in that house," she said. With one hand, she fanned the bracelets out as though they were cards. "The Bowman house. They told her mother that the girl died from yellow fever, but her mother wouldn't believe it. She knew the girl had already had the fever and recovered. So she came to the house to demand answers, and when she was turned away ... well, it's said she put a curse on the family."
"Her mother?" This was the first Rebecca had heard about Lisette's mother doing something after her daughter died; Anton hadn't mentioned her at all. And all Lisette had said was that her mother had died not long after that terrible day in August.
"She was from Haiti," Aunt Claudia said. "Well, she was born in New Orleans, but her parents had come from Haiti when they were young, after the revolution. It was called Saint-Domingue in those days, and her family were free people of color. There were things this woman knew -- things she'd learned from her own grandmother, I've heard. She said that because her own daughter had died at sixteen, no daughter of the Bowman house would ever see her seventeenth birthday."
"And that was the curse," Rebecca said, thinking of Helena. Her seventeenth birthday was coming up in February -- the day after the Septimus parade. Amy and Jessica had told her that, in one of their exhaustive, minutely
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detailed accounts of the highlights of carnival season. No wonder Helena was terrified.
"A curse, a prophecy." Aunt Claudia got up, scraping her chair back. "Whatever it was, it's come true. In one hundred and fifty five years, not a single Bowman daughter has survived. The sons grow up and marry and have children, but no daughter ever survives her teens."
"Really?" This sounded too melodramatic to be true. Wouldn't the police start investigating if girls kept dropping dead in one particular house?
"There haven't been many girls born to the Bowmans through the years," Aunt Claudia told her, pacing back and forth like a polar bear in the zoo. "But each one dies before her seventeenth birthday. Even the ones who are sent away from the house to live with friends and family in other states."
"And what about this ghost that they say the girls can see?" This was what Rebecca really wanted to know, and the question seemed to snap Aunt Claudia out of her trance. She stopped pacing and stared at Rebecca.
"Have you seen this ghost?" she asked, the color draining from her face. A cockroach scuttled along the kitchen floor, inches from her foot, but Aunt Claudia didn't appear to notice.
"Of course not!" Now wasn't the time to tell her, Rebecca decided. She wasn't sure why she felt this way, why she wasn't ready to confide in Aunt Claudia about everything. Maybe it was because she didn't want anyone telling her who she could and couldn't see, and -- from what she'd learned this
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evening -- Lisette had kind of a bad reputation in this neighborhood. "I don't believe in ghosts, you know."
This might have been true a month ago, but now it was a lie. A necessary lie, Rebecca decided.
"You are my own sweet skeptic," Aunt Claudia said, her face relaxing. She walked over, running a soft hand over Rebecca's hair. "That's good. It's a good thing."
"Really?
" Rebecca smiled at her aunt. This was the woman who collected voodoo charms and read tarot cards for a living. Maybe Aunt Claudia was admitting she was a fraud.
"Yes, it is. Seeing that ghost ... well. There's nothing more to say about that. Now, it's time we were both in bed. Far too much excitement for one evening. You were very disobedient to go to that party but ... but let's talk about all that another time."
"OK," Rebecca agreed, stifling a yawn. She'd save the rest of her questions for tomorrow: Tonight had been exhausting and tumultuous in every way. The kiss from Anton seemed like a distant dream.
