Long Lost

by Jacqueline West

  Fiona’s eyes drifted across the empty bed.

  “Charlie,” she breathed. “Look.”

  Lying on the silk covers, its cover tinted a deeper shade of green by the dimness, was a book.

  The Lost One.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fiona and Charlie raced to the bed.

  Fiona snatched up the book, gripping it tight. “But—I left this on my bed just a couple of hours ago.”

  “Like I said, it’s cursed,” said Charlie. “It can’t leave this place for long. But it wants someone to find it.”

  Fiona dragged her eyes away from the book long enough to stare back at him. “You really believe that?”

  “The book chose us,” said Charlie, as confidently as if he was giving an answer in math class. “We both keep finding it, or it keeps finding us. We’ve both seen Pixie. We found the knife. Why wouldn’t I believe it?”

  Fiona flipped through the book’s familiar pages, trying to think of a logical reply. Halfway through, she stopped, her breath catching.

  “Charlie.” She held up the open book. “There are new pages.”

  It was impossible. Books didn’t just write themselves. Of course, they didn’t usually move themselves from room to room in rambling old libraries or around whispery old towns, either.

  “Let’s read it,” said Charlie logically.

  They leaned over the open book.

  Afterward, no matter who asked, Pearl was never able to answer questions about what she had been doing in the water at night.

  As the days passed, the grand brick house grew quieter and quieter. Where once lively music had poured from a gramophone and songs had chimed from a grand piano, there were now closed lids and locked doors. Where staff had bustled upstairs and down, chatting in the kitchen, whistling in the yard, there were bowed heads and whispers and worried looks.

  And where there had been the noise of two girls running, laughing, followed by a barking dog, there was nothing at all.

  Meanwhile, outside the grand brick house, the search went on. The sheriff and deputies and an army of hired help combed the town. They knocked at farmhouse doors, examined tumbledown barns and rocky caves, tromped the far reaches of the woods behind a pack of leashed bloodhounds. But there was no trace of Hazel.

  Until, at last, there was.

  Fiona reached the bottom of the page. She could read faster than almost everyone she knew, and she was used to having to stop and wait for school partners to catch up. But when she glanced over at Charlie, she found him already looking back at her.

  “You’re done?” she asked.

  “I finished a few seconds ago,” said Charlie. “You can turn the page.”

  Fiona did. She read even faster now, wanting to know what happened next, and wanting to know it just before Charlie.

  Though quiet had filled all the chambers of the grand brick house, nowhere was that quiet so complete as at the end of the third floor.

  Hazel’s bedroom was empty, of course. Pearl remained shut in the room next door, emerging more and more rarely. Mrs. Rawlins and Mrs. Fisher checked on her nearly every hour, bringing trays and tea, freshening bedding, and changing clothes.

  For days, this routine persisted, until its abnormality had almost become normality. And then, one sunless afternoon, Mrs. Rawlins withdrew from the third-floor bedroom with an untouched tea tray in her arms and a haunted expression on her broad face. She hurried down the corridor so fast that Pixie, who had been sprawled listlessly on the floor outside Hazel’s room, raised his head with a curious woof.

  Mrs. Rawlins tapped at the door of the study, where the man and lady of the house were closed up together, writing a plea for information that would appear in newspapers all across New England.

  “Ma’am?” Mrs. Rawlins called softly. “May I have a word?”

  Minutes later, the girls’ mother and the housekeeper climbed the stairs together, with tight lips and anxious eyes.

  Mrs. Rawlins stood guard outside the bedroom door. Pixie lay at her feet.

  When Pearl’s mother emerged, her face was so bloodless it might have been sculpted of snow.

  “Please call Father Carson,” she told Mrs. Rawlins. “I must speak to my husband.”

  That evening, a long, murmured conversation tinged the silence of the house. Father Carson, Dr. O’Malley, and Mr. Bronty, the family’s longtime attorney, remained locked in the study with the girls’ parents until nearly midnight.

  The door opened at last, sending the doctor and the attorney hurrying out of the house. Father Carson lingered, paying a brief visit to the quiet bedroom at the end of the third-floor hall. Then he too rushed out into the dark.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Rawlins,” said the man of the house, stepping out of the study to meet her in the great room. “You should retire for the night.”

  “Are you sure, sir?” Mrs. Rawlins asked. “I’m glad to wait up. I could bring a fresh pot of coffee or tea. . . .”

  “No. Thank you.” He clasped her on the shoulder. “We’ll never be able to thank you for your kindness. And your loyalty.”

  Mrs. Rawlins still didn’t depart. “Pearl. The poor child. Will she be all right?”

  “It’s the grief and shock of it all.” Her employer shook his head. “She hardly knows what she’s saying. After some more rest, we shall see. Now, Mrs. Rawlins.” He managed the semblance of a smile. “Off to bed with you. I insist.”

  Mrs. Rawlins nodded.

  There came the snap of a turning bolt as her employer withdrew into the study once more. Mrs. Rawlins turned toward the back staircase. But before departing, she caught the click of a lifting earpiece, and a low voice speaking into the telephone.

  By morning, the joyful news had spread through half the town.

  Hazel had come home.

  “What?” Fiona whispered to herself, just a second before Charlie muttered, “What?”

  They glanced at each other and whipped to the next page.

  Of course the poor girl was exhausted.

  She had been out in the elements for days, scrounging for food, sleeping in the cold and damp. It was no wonder she had a fever, or that she looked so thin and worn. For the time being, she would be shut in her room, tucked into bed, fed by Mrs. Fisher’s broths and visited frequently by Dr. O’Malley.

  All of this news the family put out themselves.

  The other statements that spread through the town—that Hazel had run away from home just to give her parents an awful fright, that she was a reckless and spoiled girl who had wasted everybody’s time, and that she was lucky the Searcher hadn’t taken her after all—spread on their own, like seeds from a weed, growing faster and stronger than the tended plants around them.

  Several days passed. The hush that filled the grand brick house changed only slightly, from one of shock to one of illness and worry.

  A new rumor began to travel the town: Hazel’s fever, contracted during those long days and nights of exposure, had worsened. The doctor’s car was seen in the drive of the quiet brick house at least once each day. To prevent contagion and too much excitement, only he, the girl’s parents, and Mrs. Rawlins were allowed into Hazel’s room.

  Charlie Hobbes tried to visit her once, creeping up the stairs with an eagle feather and a bright-winged moth in a jar, but he was caught and turned away by the stalwart Mrs. Rawlins.

  “Can you at least give these to Hazel?” he asked, passing over the gifts.

  Mrs. Rawlins sighed and held out her hands. She gave Charlie a look that was softer than usual. “I will,” she promised. “You go on now.”

  Charlie hurried back down the stairs. The gift he would have most liked to bring to Hazel was her own pocketknife, still hidden in the soil beneath the oak tree. But it was Pearl who had hidden it, and he knew better than to get himself into the middle of a battle between the sisters. Besides, Pearl would surely return it eventually.

  This is what Charlie told himself as he stepped out of the house onto the back la
wn. He was only a moment too late to see Mrs. Rawlins opening a third-floor window and releasing a moth into the June air.

  Another day ticked by.

  The house, impossibly, grew quieter still, as though every door and wall and window was holding its breath. One more bit of news slipped across its threshold.

  Hazel had succumbed to the fever, and died.

  And died. And died. And died.

  The words repeated again and again, to the bottom of the page.

  Fiona flipped forward, not even checking to see if Charlie had kept up this time. The rest of the pages were still blank.

  “So . . . it was a lie, right?” Fiona whispered to Charlie, her throat tight. “Hazel didn’t really come home at all.”

  Charlie shook his head, still staring down at the pages. “The family just pretended she did.”

  “And they got everybody else to pretend, too. But why?”

  Charlie didn’t answer. Which meant he didn’t know.

  Fiona brushed her fingers over the dusty bed. The bed where Evelyn Chisholm hadn’t died after all.

  “Hey,” she said, barely able to believe the unscientific things heading out of her own mouth. “What if the book only tells the whole story if it trusts the person reading it? What if that’s why we found it in the first place, and that’s why it’s showing us more of the story now? Because it thinks we’ll understand?”

  Charlie looked thoughtful. “That’s an interesting theory,” he said. “And if someone, or something, can move the book, it makes sense that it could alter the book too.”

  They stood side by side in the hush for a moment.

  “What do we do now?” Fiona asked, thinking aloud. “Do we take the book with us, or—”

  “I think we should leave it right here,” said Charlie. “This is where it came on its own. This is where new pages appeared.”

  Fiona nodded. “Maybe if we leave it here, it will happen again.” She closed the book, letting her fingers slide across the soft leather cover. She thought of the archeologists who discovered sacred things, like graves and temples and relics, and who decided to leave them where they’d been placed. Because the past deserved respect.

  She reached into her pocket.

  “This belongs here too.” She set the knife on the closed book.

  Charlie nodded. “I’m sure Evelyn . . .”

  But he didn’t finish. Because the pocketknife had begun to move.

  It wobbled on its rounded handle like an egg set on a countertop. As Fiona and Charlie stared, it spun faster and faster, making several full circles before coming back to a halt.

  “The—the floor must be uneven,” said Fiona shakily, grasping for explanations. “Or there’s a draft or something.”

  “Do you hear that?” Charlie whispered.

  His eyes went from the knife to the far side of the room—to the spot where the knife’s handle was pointing.

  The spot where a peephole was drilled through the wall.

  They both dashed toward it.

  Charlie got there first. “Look,” he breathed, leaning to the side.

  Fiona squinted through the tiny opening.

  On the other side was a room that looked very much like the one where they stood now, with gilt-framed pictures, a carved wooden vanity and dresser, and a silk-blanketed bed.

  But someone was lying in that bed.

  As Fiona stared, holding her breath, she saw the silky blankets stir, and heard the sound of a girl’s voice, quietly, brokenly, sobbing.

  Fiona and Charlie raced out of Evelyn’s bedroom. They skidded toward the next door in the hall. Fiona yanked it open.

  The room beyond was empty.

  Chapter Twenty

  Fiona and Charlie stared into the dimness.

  The glow of light was gone. The furniture and pictures and silk bedding were gone. And the figure in the bed was gone as completely as if it had never been there.

  “But I saw her,” said Fiona, half to herself. “I heard her.”

  She rushed back into Evelyn’s room and pressed her face to the peephole, Charlie right behind. The room beyond remained dark and empty.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Fiona muttered.

  “Yes, it does,” Charlie answered, in his most know-it-all way.

  Fiona spun toward him. “How?”

  “Like you said yourself, the book chose us. It must be trying to tell us something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” said Charlie, after a begrudging pause. But then he added, “Yet. We just need time to figure it out.”

  “Well, we don’t have extra time right now.” Fiona took a step backward. “I have to get home before my family does. And we have to get out of here before any librarians find us.”

  “I know what we should do,” said Charlie as they crept back along the hall. “We should come back here tonight. After the library is closed.”

  “After it’s closed?” Fiona glanced at him.

  Charlie’s eyes had started to glow again. “So we can check the book and see if there’s more to the story. And we can explore the whole building with nobody stopping us. Plus, apparitions are more likely to appear after dark. I’ve read half of the paranormal section in this place. I know.”

  “How are we going to get inside? Do you have a key?”

  “We don’t need one. We’ll both go home and act like everything is normal. Then I’ll sneak back here right before closing, during the dinner rush at the diner, and hide inside when the librarians leave.”

  Fiona paused at the top of the third-floor staircase. “You think that will work?”

  “If I’m careful. I’ll open the door for you, and we’ll have the whole night to look around.”

  Fiona folded her arms, considering. “I won’t be able to sneak out until my family is asleep. They all go to bed pretty early, though.”

  “Can you meet me here at ten?”

  “Ten,” Fiona repeated slowly. “Ten should work.”

  She and Charlie nodded to each other. Then, as quietly as they could, they crept back down the STAFF ONLY stairs.

  That night, after the sky had turned from deep blue to black, Fiona inched through her bedroom door.

  It had been an ordinary evening at home. The Crane family had eaten dinner together before scattering in separate directions. If anybody had noticed that Fiona was more distracted and jumpy than usual, they didn’t say so. And no one, Fiona included, noticed that Arden was quieter than usual too.

  By nine thirty, they had all been closed in their bedrooms, leaving the old colonial house dim and quiet. Now the squeak of the stairs under Fiona’s feet was the only sound.

  She stopped in the hallway to adjust her backpack. The flashlight and spare batteries inside clicked softly. Swinging it back over her shoulder, she padded past the kitchen, past the living-room doors and—

  Someone was in the living room.

  Fiona froze in the doorway.

  The figure was sitting on the couch, still and silent. No lights were on, and the moonlight that pushed its way through the wobbly glassed windows wasn’t strong enough for her to see it clearly. But it had a human shape, with thin arms and hunched shoulders and a head that swiveled to face her. Something glowed faintly in its hand.

  The screen of a smartphone.

  “Arden?” Fiona squeaked.

  “Oh my gosh. You scared me.” Arden gasped back. “Why are you creeping around down here in the dark?”

  “Why are you?” Fiona countered.

  Arden dropped the phone to her lap, its glow lighting the edges of her face. “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to watch a few videos and work on things without waking Mom and Dad.”

  Fiona craned toward the phone. On its screen, a miniature Arden whirled silently around an ice rink. Arden tapped a button, and the video disappeared.

  Thicker darkness filled the room.

  The darkness came too late, though. Arden could have already noticed the backpa
ck over Fiona’s shoulder, and the sweatshirt and shoes she was wearing. There was no point in Fiona saying she had just come downstairs for a glass of water.

  But before she could settle on an excuse, Arden sniffled. She brushed her cheek with a shirt cuff, turning her face away.

  “Were you crying?” Fiona asked.

  “No,” said Arden, in a congested voice.

  “Yes, you were. You still sound all sniffly.”

  “Being at the rink all day makes my nose run. You know that.”

  “Does it make your eyes water too?”

  Arden threw herself back against the couch cushions. “I’m fine, Fiona. Go back to bed.”

  “You’re not fine.” Fiona slipped the backpack strap from her shoulder and lowered it to the floor beside the couch, hoping her sister hadn’t seen it after all. If she could just get Arden to go upstairs, she should still be able to slip out. “If you were fine, you’d be asleep right now. Aren’t you supposed to get nine hours of sleep a night when you’re training? That’s what Mom always says.”

  “Yes, I’m supposed to,” said Arden. “There are lots of things I’m supposed to be doing right now.”

  “So maybe you should at least try to rest. Not just sit there watching videos of yourself.”

  Arden made a sound that was a mixture of a snort and a mean laugh. But then she sniffed again. Fiona saw her swipe a hand over her eyes, quickly, like she was hoping Fiona wouldn’t catch it.

  “What’s wrong?” Fiona asked, growing impatient. “Did you only get second place at that last competition or something?”

  Arden gave another snort. “The Longfellow Open? I didn’t even place.”

  “You didn’t?” Fiona absorbed most things about Arden’s life just by being present, smacked by the constant waves of figure-skating talk like an anemone in a tide pool. She must not have been listening when her family discussed this competition. Or maybe Arden hadn’t wanted to talk about this one. “What happened?”

  “I just didn’t skate well, okay? The judges didn’t like my new program. It wasn’t smooth enough or heartfelt enough or whatever, and I had to skate right after the girl who ended up taking first in the whole thing, and Mom wasn’t even there, and I’d just had that stupid fight with you, and I missed two jumps, and I’ve been doing horribly at everything ever since we moved here. That’s what happened.”