Lifelike

by Sheila A. Nielson

  “Felicity! Dear sister, what has happened to you?” the girl in white demands.

  “I was trapped in my dressing room wardrobe.” Felicity’s voice is hoarse, as if she’s worn it to tatters after shouting for a very long time. She attempts valiantly to continue. “I l-leaned in to get my gloves—someone s-shoved me in and l-locked me inside. One of the maids finally let me out.” Her voice breaks and the haggard young woman falls to sobbing against her sister’s shoulder.

  Fingers tighten painfully against my own. I hadn’t even realized I was still holding my dance partner’s hand. Up until that moment, he was like every other anonymous character in the dream. A nameless, faceless extra on a set. I turn to him in surprise. He is not looking at me, however. As pale and still as stone, he stares at the sobbing Felicity in unblinking silence. He takes short rapid breaths, as if something about the distraught girl in blue disturbs him. Horrifies him, in fact. He stares at her in deathly silence.

  I don’t know what I did to score a dream with the gorgeous young man from the painting in the study, but I’m really hoping nobody wakes me up anytime soon. He is so tall I feel like a child standing beside his towering frame. He wears the same dark suit and tails as the other men in the room, but his shows off a trim waist and broad shoulders. Short, dark curls grow thick over his head. They are swept up in a romantic, old-fashioned style, the kind you picture on a dashing sort of someone—like Mr. Darcy. With his hand still clasped around mine, I maneuver myself forward, so I can get a better look at his face. I drink in the sight of him like a cool mirage in the baking desert.

  Behind the young man’s jewel green eyes lurks something gentle, now overshadowed by fear and intense sympathy. I can see clearly that watching Felicity stumble along supported by her sister causes him a lot of pain. Yet he refuses to look away, almost as if punishing himself. My grip on his hand tightens instinctively as I try to comfort him with my touch.

  His attention snaps to me with such suddenness, it makes me start in surprise. We blink at one another in stunned silence for a moment. His eyes widen ever so slightly, as he searches my face several times over with dizzying speed. He glances down at my hand, still clutched within his own.

  How warm and alive his touch feels against my skin. It’s strange that I would dream such details even though I’ve never held a boy’s hand before. I open my mouth, wanting so badly to speak and say something—anything—to him. Before the right words form, he lets go, deliberately jerking his hand from mine.

  The moment he released me, the ballroom plunged into sudden darkness. For a few seconds I saw the afterimage of the boy’s silhouette, pulsing against the pitch blackness that hovered before my eyes. I half expected the other women in the ballroom to start screaming, but only deathly silence met my ears. Even the weeping Felicity had fallen still.

  “What the—?” My strangely slurred voice quickly evaporated into the vast, empty, blackness of the room around me.

  I stood there a moment, blinking blindly, trying to get my bearings. I was alone. My hand, which held the young man’s only a moment ago, now hovered in empty air. I could still feel the tingling where his fingers pressed into my skin. The ball gown I’d been wearing now felt like the rumpled sweats I always slept in.

  If I really was awake, then where was I?

  A thin stream of moonlight filtered down from a window high above my head, dimly illuminating many bulky box shapes spread out in dark rows before me. I put out my hand to touch the closest one and my fingers were stopped short by a smooth, invisible plate of glass. Many tiny objects glittered on the other side just beyond my fingertips. Miniature tables and chairs and something that might have been an itty-bitty canopy bed. All that was missing was the Twilight Zone theme music.

  There was a loud click and suddenly the room was flooded with blinding light. I shut my eyes tight against the searing pain.

  “Who’s there?” a man’s sharp voice demanded.

  I whirled around, shielding my squinting eyes with one hand. Behind me stood a massive man dressed in a khaki security uniform identical to the one Matt wore earlier. The man’s hair and beard had a touch of mature grey. He peered at me through narrowed eyes full of suspicion. He probably thought I was a burglar.

  Awk-ward.

  “Richard, the night watchman, I presume?” my voice skipped nervously into the squeaky range.

  Richard nodded slowly. With that rock-solid build and those bulging biceps, I could see why he’d gotten the job. He made muscular Matt look like a gawky teenager in comparison.

  “You’re Victoria’s niece? The one living upstairs?” Richard shot back at me without missing a beat.

  I nodded, quickly glancing over the room around us. Dollhouses. That’s what the big boxes were. I was a giant standing amid the streets of a miniature city. Somehow, I’d come to be downstairs in the museum and I didn’t have the faintest idea how I’d gotten there.

  “In the future, I’d suggest that you limit any nightly prowling to the second floor after hours,” Richard said gruffly. “There are security cameras and alarms hidden all over the museum down here. You were lucky you didn’t set the whole thing off. If I’d called 911, the police and fire department would have been swarming all over this place in no time.”

  Totally embarrassed, I ran a nervous hand through my hair. My sprained wrist gave a small twinge of pain in response. When I spoke it was in a slightly breathless voice, still more than a little dazed by the sudden shift in reality. “I think I’ve been sleep walking?” It came out sounding almost like a question rather than an explanation. “I was dreaming, and when I woke up, I was down here. I swear I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  Richard chewed at the inside of his cheek for a moment, considering the situation—and perhaps me. Uncertainty lingered within his dark eyes.

  “Your aunt told me about the rough time you’ve been through lately—with your family and such.” His voice was much softer this time. “They say stuff like that can make you sleep uneasy. Maybe you should head upstairs and let Victoria know about it.”

  “Right,” I said, glancing up at the ceiling. There above my head were the carved grapes and vines. The same ones I’d seen in my dream. For a moment my fingers tingled, remembering the feel of the mysterious, young man’s hand touching mine.

  “Did this used to be a ballroom?” I asked slowly.

  “Back in Margaret Kensington’s time it was.” Richard looked up at the ceiling in an attempt to discover what it was I found so fascinating up there.

  Hadn’t Aunt Victoria mentioned something like that? But I’d never actually come into this room before. How could I have known about the grapes carved into the ceiling?

  “It’s pretty late,” Richard said glancing at his watch. “Perhaps you’d better go back to bed now and get some sleep.”

  “Of course,” I said, heading for the exit. “Sorry for surprising you like that.”

  “No problem, kid. Better you than some criminal, or something worse.”

  I looked at him over my shoulder in surprise. “What could be worse than a burglar?”

  Richard broke into a wry smile. “With the reputation this place has, you could have been a ghost.”

  Chapter Six

  “Wren.”

  The voice was a mere whisper somewhere near my left ear. The speaker was so close their warm breath fluttered against my cheek, making it tingle.

  “Hmmm?” I mumbled, too tired to open my eyes. The rain had stopped and an unnatural stillness now lay over the house. I listened, but there was no answer from the person who’d spoken. I couldn’t even hear them breathing. I cracked my eyes open and turned my head slightly to the left, half expecting to see Aunt Victoria.

  No one was there.

  I sat up slowly in confusion. My shoulder throbbed in response. I probably had one heck of a bruise from slamming it into the wall yesterday. I glanced blearily around me, trying to get my bearings. I was back in the study, curled up in
the same armchair I’d fallen asleep in during the storm. I tried to think back to the moments after I finished talking with Richard. I vaguely remembered dragging my exhausted body up the grand staircase, passing Fiona, the porcelain doll, with a mumbled goodnight. I staggered into the study to get one more look at the young man in the painting.

  I must have passed out cold the second I sat down to rest.

  “Wren?” In one of those bizarre shifts of reality, the voice calling my name was now far away, echoing in the distance. It sounded like Aunt Victoria.

  “I’m in here,” I called out. There was a brief pause, then steady footsteps padding in my direction. The study door swung open as Aunt Victoria looked inside. I waved a hand at her to get her attention. The muscles in Aunt Victoria’s face softened with relief.

  “I went to your room, but couldn’t find you,” she said.” What are you doing in here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep last night,” I said, still blinking my bleary eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Half past ten. I let you sleep in.”

  I looked around me, rubbing my sore shoulder. Aunt Victoria zeroed in on it like a hawk on the hunt.

  “Are you in pain?”

  “No. I mean—yes—but it’s only a bruise.” I let my hand drop to the side as if it were no big deal.

  “Let me see.”

  “It’s fine really.” I knew what the bruise would look like. I didn’t want her to see it.

  Aunt Victoria ignored my protests and pushed the loose and baggy sleeve of my sweatshirt up past my shoulder. She stared at it in silence. I glanced down. Sure enough, the whole shoulder was a mottled mess of purple and blue, like someone had injected an entire bottle of ink under my skin. Mom would have freaked, but Aunt Victoria was as calm as ever.

  “Does it hurt much?” The gentleness of the question betrayed the true depth of her concern.

  “Not too bad. I’ve had worse.”

  Aunt Victoria scowled down at my injury, lips thin and taut. If she thought this bruise was bad, it was a good thing she couldn’t see what was hidden under my sweatpants. My legs looked like two overripe plums beaten with a blunt object. Of course, they pretty much looked like that before the accident, so no great loss there. My chest had an extra nasty black and blue stripe across it—seatbelts show no mercy when doing their job. Strangely enough, my neck and face came out of the accident completely untouched. Another testament to proper seatbelt use, I’m sure.

  I was the only person in the car wearing one.

  Aunt Victoria gently pulled my sleeve back down, hiding the ugly bruise from sight. She turned and walked slowly to the far side of the room, where she lowered herself onto a beautiful, velvet blue couch facing me.

  “This must be my favorite place in the whole house,” she said candidly. “Whenever I need to sort things out, I find myself coming here.”

  I tried to focus on Aunt Victoria’s words, but my attention kept straying back to the painting of the gorgeous boy hanging on the wall. He wasn’t even real. So how come couldn’t I keep my eyes off him?

  “Who is that?” I asked, lifting my chin in the general direction of the portrait.

  Aunt Victoria glanced at it over her shoulder. “That is Xavier Kensington, heir presumptive to the Kensington Estate.”

  “Xavier Kensington?” my voice rose in disbelief. “Xavier Kensington, the murderer?”

  Aunt Victoria gave a soft chuckle. “Been talking to Matt, have you?”

  The young man I’d danced with in my dreams was a cold-blooded killer? I remembered the beauty of his uncertain eyes and the warmth of his fingers pressing against my skin. I shivered.

  “This is the haunted study? The one all the ghost hunters from the four corners of the earth come to see?” I demanded.

  “One and the same.”

  I looked uneasily up at the portrait. “I imagined Xavier Kensington to be a lot older.” And a whole lot less good-looking—believe me.

  “He was so young when he died—barely nineteen,” Aunt Victoria said in a far-off voice. “He was considered quite a catch in his lifetime. There’s an old story Matt tells on his tours, about a young woman Xavier Kensington was romantically involved with. During the first ball of the season, an anonymous rival locked the unfortunate girl in a wardrobe, trapping her there for most of the evening. With Xavier’s favorite partner out of the way, all the other girls got a chance to dance with the young Mr. Kensington without interference.”

  Her words sent an icy chill trickling through my veins. I stared at Aunt Victoria in stunned silence—my mind spinning about in a vertigo of whirling thoughts. How could I have a full-on Technicolor dream about a historical event I’d never even heard of before?

  “Wren, are okay?” Aunt Victoria leaned forward in alarm. “You’ve gone very pale.”

  No way could I tell her the truth. I needed time to think things through. Preferably a moment when my heart wasn’t bouncing around like a panicked rabbit fleeing for its life.

  “No, I’m fine—it’s just—that’s pretty harsh. Locking up a rival like that just to get a guy’s attention. Especially when he was such a creep.” I said, forcing a ridged smile.

  Aunt Victoria did not look convinced by my less than stellar performance. “He wasn’t a murderer in those days,” she said, her eyes still searching my face. “It’s more than a little tragic when you come to think about it.”

  “Tragedy seems to be a recurring theme around here.” I hadn’t meant the words to come out sounding quite so bitter.

  “It’s okay be angry, Wren,” Aunt Victoria murmured.

  I was tied up in so many emotional knots these days, I didn’t know what I felt anymore. I stared down at my hands clenched tightly in my lap and watched as my knuckles turned a sickly white. They burned in protest. I forced myself to relax them, flexing my fingers. Finally, I looked up. Aunt Victoria studied me from across the room in silence.

  “It should have been me,” the words rasped out, only a ghost of a whisper. Aunt Victoria linked her fingers together and placed them against her mouth, watching me. Waiting.

  The compulsion to continue overwhelmed me. Words I’d silently sworn never to utter sprang from my mouth before I could stop them. “I’m the one with the cancer, Aunt Victoria. I’ve been dying by inches since I was thirteen years old. Even the doctors gave up on me. And yet, I’m the one who survived the crash with hardly a scratch? I have no future left but pain and suffering. You know as well as I do, it should be me who died in that accident, not my family!”

  The gentle blueness of the study’s four walls seemed to wrap up the sound of my furious words in comfortable softness, quickly stealing away their force. I fell into subdued silence.

  “Should?” Aunt Victoria raised one eyebrow at me in quiet question. “In a moment of bad judgment, a teenage boy chose to run a red light. He and your family died because of that decision. It was an accident. There is no should in an accident—only consequences.”

  “Benji was only ten years old,” I whispered. “He was healthy and strong. His whole life was ahead of him.”

  “Your brother is gone, Wren. Nothing can change that now. But you are still here.”

  “Not for much longer.”

  Aunt Victoria sat back against the cushions. “I guess the real question you need to ask yourself is what you plan to do until then?”

  “Do?” I choked back the mass knotting up my throat. “The doctors don’t think I’ll live even six months. What difference could I possibly make in that amount of time?”

  Aunt Victoria slowly pointed one finger in my direction, her eyes intent. “That is an excellent question, Wren. Maybe you should give its answer some thought.”

  Her words caught at me like sticky threads that can’t be shrugged off. What was I going to do with the short time I had left? Sit around and feel sorry for myself? NOT an option.

  “I was always so sick before,” I said. “There were times I thought I would die from the chemo and bone
marrow transplants rather than the cancer. Now that they’ve stopped trying to save me, I hardly feel sick at all. At least, not violently like with the treatments. How can I be dying and feel so alive?”

  “Are you afraid?” How tender Aunt Victoria’s voice was as she spoke those words. The voice of experience.

  “I’m done with fear. It won’t change anything in the end.”

  It was everyone else who couldn’t deal with my approaching death. Mom used to climb into her closet when she cried, thinking the clothes would muffle the sounds so I couldn’t hear her. I could. But then Mom hadn’t learned to use a pillow like I did. Nobody ever heard me cry. I made sure of it.

  Then there was Benji. After I was diagnosed, my little brother started picking fights at school. He sacrificed his state championship soccer game because I’d had to be rushed to the hospital—again. Dad missed so much work that his boss threatened to fire him if he didn’t start putting in longer hours. The idea that they might live without me some day haunted them every waking hour. Now I was left to go on without them. The irony of it was beyond reason.

  “I fought so hard to stay alive,” I said in a much calmer voice. “Just one more year. One more month. Even when it felt impossible. I survived for my family. Now they’re gone, what do I have to live for?”

  Aunt Victoria glanced down at the simple, gold engagement ring on her left hand, turning it slowly between her thumb and forefinger. “I asked myself that very same question when Jack died.”

  The sickly-sweet flow of self-pity inside me shut off cold. Did I really think I was the only one who knew about suffering? Talk about unfair twists of fate. Three weeks before their wedding was to take place, Aunt Victoria’s fiancé, Jack, suddenly contracted pneumonia and died. One day he was there, the next he was gone. Aunt Victoria was left all alone to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.

  “Do you think you’ll see Jack again?” The words were out of my mouth before I even realized what I meant to say.