The Humming Room

by Ellen Potter

  A sudden sound made Roo shove the floorboard back into place and jump to her feet. If Ms. Valentine found her here, in what she suspected was the forbidden east wing, she would be furious. Maybe Ms. Valentine would even go through with her threat to send Roo back to the Burrows. She felt the urge to hide, but she fought it with cool common sense.

  What do I care if she sends me back there? One place is as good as another.

  She waited, watching the open door to see if someone would pass by, but no one did. Crossing the room, Roo peered around the door into the hallway. There was no one in sight, but the next moment she heard the sound again. It was a droning noise, and at first Roo thought it might be some sort of motor. But as she listened she could hear that it rose and fell in pitch and volume at irregular intervals. It was a human sound, absolutely. The sound of humming. She listened for a tune, but there wasn’t one. The voice hummed on and on, joyless, as if someone were forcing it to hum.

  Roo pressed her ear against the wall at the far end of the room. The sound was not there, not quite. Instead, it seemed to fill the air around her, to be everywhere and nowhere. Then, very suddenly, it stopped.

  “Is someone in there?” she whispered to the wall, and put her ear against it again. Nothing. She knocked at the Sheetrock.

  “Who’s there?” she asked more loudly.

  She was answered by a scream, so loud and piercing that Roo instantly crouched down, muscles clenched, like an animal readying itself to escape or, if necessary, fight.

  Chapter 4

  The scream quickly changed to an outburst of laughter, loud and unrestrained. Roo looked up to see a remarkably pretty girl staring down at her with surprised delight. She was quite tall and broad shouldered, and looked to be twenty or so. Her sleek black hair was pulled back in a long braid and she wore a white cable sweater over jeans.

  “Stop it!” Roo demanded, standing up. “Stop laughing at me!”

  The girl did stop laughing, disarmingly fast. Her eyes grew wide as she gazed at Roo. “Ooo, so there it is,” she said.

  When she didn’t explain herself, Roo was forced to ask, “There is what?”

  The girl laughed again.

  Roo lunged at her then, her hands stretched out, intent on slapping or shoving, but the girl caught Roo around her middle. She tipped her down so that she was parallel to the floor and held her like that as Roo kicked and screamed in a wild fit of anger. Remarkably, not a single kick landed.

  “There’s the Fanshaw pride in you. Ms. Valentine said she didn’t see a single speck of it, but I guess she didn’t get you mad enough.”

  “Let go!” Roo screeched.

  “First calm down.”

  “Let go!”

  “Calm down.”

  That infuriated Roo even more and she bellowed at the top of her lungs and flailed about so violently that this time she did manage a sharp jab of her elbow into the girl’s ribs.

  The girl pulled in her breath so suddenly that Roo paused in satisfaction. But then the girl said in a reasonably cheery tone, “Is that the best you can do?”

  Roo tried to do better, but the girl was strong and fast. She swiftly adjusted her hold. Now Roo’s arms and legs were held so fast that she could not move them at all. She frantically tried to squirm out of the girl’s grip but she only managed to paddle her feet and twist her head about.

  “Tsss, tsss,” the girl said quietly. Her mouth was so close to Roo’s head that Roo could feel the warmth of her breath against her scalp. It was strangely pleasant. In another second Roo would remember to be angry again, but the girl let go right before that happened. Free, Roo jumped to her feet and backed herself up against the wall, staring at the girl.

  “Well, that was fun,” the girl said, adjusting her sweater. “I’m Violet.”

  She waited, but when Roo didn’t respond, Violet answered for her. “Hi, Violet. I’m Roo.”

  Roo’s eyes were fixed on Violet, the way a wild cat watches a person who is cooing to it—steady and interested but exceedingly cautious.

  “If you keep staring at me like that, I’m going to laugh again,” Violet warned. “And then we’ll have to start all over.”

  Roo looked away.

  “Thank you. And just so you know, I wasn’t laughing at you—not the first time anyway. I was laughing because you scared the you-know-what-skees out of me. I thought you were the Yellow Girl. So…Ms. Valentine says I’m supposed to make sure you clean yourself up.”

  “That’s my business, not hers.”

  Violet cocked her head to the side and looked Roo up and down. “You know who you remind me of? My aunt Fiona. Last spring she rowed out of Donkey Island with a backpack full of beer and a five-pound bag of cheese curd, then climbed up to an old osprey nest on top of a navigational marker. She sat there for days and days, poor Fiona, looking just like a skinny old bird sitting on her eggs. Wouldn’t come down, though we all begged and yelled and threatened from our boats. She said it was her business where she sat, and if the osprey didn’t mind, neither should we. She lasted a good week until she rolled over in her sleep and fell straight into the river. Poor old thing floated like a dried-out leaf, still sound asleep, and where do you think she washed up? Right back on Donkey Island, not twenty yards from her house. How’s that for luck?”

  Roo’s jaw twitched. “Is that true?”

  “Of course.”

  “She sounds crazy.”

  “There’s all brands of crazy,” Violet answered, raising her eyebrows. “Personally, I don’t give a baked bean if you want to go around looking like something drug out of a swamp, but I like my job and I need it. I’m not going to lie to you, Roo. I’ll haul you into the shower and hose you off with your clothes still on, if I have to.”

  Had the threat come from Ms. Valentine, Roo might have challenged it. In any case, she would have kicked and screamed and made sure that Ms. Valentine took that shower right along with her. But with this girl…Roo could imagine her howling with laughter as she wrestled Roo into the shower. And that would be unbearable.

  In the large white-and-coral-tiled bathroom Roo stripped down. Her skin puckered up instantly from the cold. She took a furtive glance at herself in the mirror above the sink—bony, narrow shoulders. A hard boy’s chest. She lifted her eyes to see her face, and stared back at herself suspiciously. She didn’t wonder if she were pretty or not—she knew that she wasn’t. She shook her bangs to one side. In her reflection she saw what she always saw: the downcast chin, the angry, caged-looking eyes. Her reflection shouted back at her: This is what you are! It’s in the cells of your body, it’s in the coils of your brain!

  She looked away. On the sink was a dish of round pastel-colored candies that turned out to be soap. She picked them up, one at a time, and smelled each one. The smells were odd, flowery but not like any flowers she knew. She chose a yellow one and took it into the shower. The water was good and hot, not like the tepid trickle of the trailer’s shower. She showered quickly, rubbing the hard little ball of soap along the back of her neck and in her armpits, then sloshing a handful of shampoo through her hair. When she came out of the bathroom, wrapped in the bathrobe that had been left for her, she found Violet carrying in a tray of food.

  “Well, that’s an improvement,” Violet said as she looked Roo up and down. She placed the tray of food down on the window seat.

  “Nothing fancy,” Violet said. “Just chicken and salt potatoes. You can leave the tray, I’ll get it tomorrow.”

  She started to leave but Roo blurted out, “Don’t go.”

  Later Roo wondered why she had said it. She had never in her life wanted company. And if Violet had hesitated for even a second, Roo would have taken it back.

  “All right,” Violet said gamely, and she plunked herself down on Roo’s bed. She leaned back against the headboard and watched as Roo curled into the window seat. Violet was such a big, strong, capable-looking girl that people often mistook her for a beautiful brute; but during quiet moments, like
right now, her features were subtle and thoughtful.

  Roo picked up a salt potato in her fingers and felt the delicate skin tear as she bit into it. It was good, and she was hungry, so she took a few more bites before pausing to ask Violet, “Are you going to tell Ms. Valentine that I was in the east wing?”

  Violet tipped her head to one side and frowned. “When were you in the east wing?”

  “Just now. Back there.”

  “You mean back in the old girls’ dormitory? No, no, no.” Violet smiled, the worry leaving her face instantly. “That’s not the east wing. That’s the old part of the west wing.”

  “Who lives in the west wing?” Roo asked, thinking of the humming sound.

  Violet shrugged. “You. That’s all. No one’s lived in the west wing for years. This whole house used to be a tuberculosis sanitarium for children, oh, ages and ages ago. That’s why us locals call it Cough Rock. It had a more official name, of course, but no one ever remembers it. The girls’ dormitory was in this wing—that’s the last room down with all the beds—and the boys’ was in the east wing. After the hospital closed down, the place stood empty, right up until Mr. Fanshaw bought it. The Fanshaws had a house on Scotch Pine Island—it’s where your father spent his summers when he was a kid—but your uncle sold that about ten years ago and bought Cough Rock. It seems like a funny choice, but your uncle does things his own way.”

  Roo picked at the skin of a chicken leg, considering this. “What’s he like, my uncle?”

  Violet raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “We don’t see him very much. He travels.” She stopped talking abruptly, though it seemed like she would say more. Roo took this in. She turned back to her food, chewing and thinking.

  “I heard someone humming when I was in the hallway,” Roo said.

  “Humming?” Violet smiled a little. “Well, this house has got creaky old bones. It makes all kinds of noises, I guess.”

  “It was a person,” Roo insisted.

  “Maybe Ms. Valentine was humming,” Violet said falteringly.

  Roo could not imagine Ms. Valentine humming. And anyway the voice sounded lighter, younger.

  “You said something about a Yellow Girl,” Roo said. “Who is that?”

  Violet widened her eyes. “Do you like ghost stories?”

  “I don’t know,” Roo answered honestly.

  “Let’s find out.” Violet leaned forward, clasped her hands together in her lap and gazed intently at Roo. “Years ago, when Mr. Fanshaw first started renovations on the house, he hired some contractors from Clayton. Soon after they started work, the men began to see a little girl, walking through the hallway, wrapped in a yellow sheet. The girl would look right at them, her eyes going all wide, and she’d whisper, “Shoot.” Then she’d vanish right in front of their eyes. The men thought that someone must have shot the girl, but when one of them told this story to his great-uncle, who had been alive when the sanitarium was still open, the old man shook his head. ‘That child wasn’t talking about guns. She was talking about the chute.’ According to the old man, the sanitarium wasn’t very good about keeping their patients alive. When one of the poor little things died, the nurses would wrap them up in a yellow sheet and send them down a secret chute. The chute led to the basement, and from there the sanitarium workers would take the body on a boat back to the mainland to be buried. This way they wouldn’t upset the other patients and were able to keep the deaths quiet.”

  “That’s awful.” Roo looked away, out the window. Far below, the water was black now, except for filaments of moonlight clinging to the low crests.

  “I’m a dope!” Violet cried. “Here I am, talking about ghosts after everything you’ve been through. Ignore me! All us folks from Donkey Island are the most superstitious people you’ll ever meet. Don’t believe a thing that comes out of our mouths. Of course, ghosts are nonsense. You don’t believe in them, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Roo said irritably. And she didn’t, which made the humming all the more curious.

  Chapter 5

  The following day, the entire household seemed to have forgotten that Roo existed. That suited her perfectly. The first thing she did was to hurry down the hall in bare feet, still dressed in her pajamas, to listen for the humming. She waited for a while, sitting on the cold hallway floor, her arms wrapped around her legs to keep the chill off them. The only sound was the hiss of the waves outside. The silence in the house had an unnatural quality, as though everything were holding its breath, waiting. It reminded Roo of the silence right before the gunshots cracked above her head at their trailer. She fought an urge to flee and kept herself rooted, just as she had underneath the trailer. Waiting. Listening. But the house remained silent and still.

  Back in her room she opened the wardrobe and fingered the clothes they had bought for her. The material was softer and thicker than she was used to. But Ms. Valentine was right; they were too big for her. She put on her old corduroys and a T-shirt from her Hefty bag, pulled her hooded sweatshirt over that, and went downstairs.

  The first floor was as silent as the second, though the large windows in some of the rooms flooded the hallway with light and made the place seem less gloomy. Idly, Roo walked across the tiled floor, letting her fingers trail across the wall. Now she could see why the wall had seemed so lumpy the day before. Carved into the mahogany wainscoting were blooms of flowers. They trellised across the wall, huge and tropical looking. Hidden within the petals and crawling along the stem were tiny insects, their wings as thin as paper. Roo touched these very lightly, marveling at the hair-thin veins and the furled edges of wings. Farther up the hallway, she discovered the face of a carved monkey peering out from between a snarl of large leaves; its wide eyes stared back at her. She let her finger slip into its slightly open mouth and she felt the pinprick of tiny sharp teeth against her finger, poised to bite. She laughed at it, then stopped quickly when she heard a man’s voice from farther up the hall.

  “Dr. Oulette?”

  That’s my uncle, Roo thought.

  She felt a jumble of curiosity and nervousness, though she could not understand why she should be afraid. She waited another minute, then stealthily crept along the hallway toward the room that Ms. Valentine had knocked on the day before. The door was open now. Roo peered around the door frame. It was a huge room, paneled with dark wood, its high ceiling braced with thick timber beams. Opposite the door was a large window trimmed with stained glass, giving a fine view of the stormy, gray seaway. In the center of the room was a large pool table. The green baize top was almost completely covered with maps. The maps looked as if they were photos of treetops, taken from a plane, and it was here Roo’s uncle Emmett stood, with his back to Roo, studying the maps.

  He was tall and slim, dressed in loose tan trousers and a silky cream-colored shirt. He should have appeared elegant, but instead he looked frail. The wrists that poked out of his sleeves were too narrow and bony for a grown man. As he stared down at the map, the fingers of his right hand rested lightly on the edge of the pool table, while the other hand was in his pocket. Roo watched him for several minutes. He did not move the entire time, not the slightest bit.

  He knows how to be still. Like me.

  His head swiveled toward the door, quickly, as though he had just then felt her presence. When she saw him, her eyes went wide. In front of her stood her own father, miraculously alive again. Had his murder been a lie? Or was this…a ghost? No, that was impossible. She wanted to run to him, to fling her arms around him and press her face into his chest. But then she noticed his eyes—flat and hard looking. They were nothing like her father’s eyes. He gazed down at her, frowning absently, as though she were a disturbing thought that had suddenly popped into his head.

  “I’m Roo,” she said.

  “Who else could you possibly be?” he replied coldly.

  Now that she looked at him more carefully, she could see the differences. The thin nose was not as short as her father’s. The lips more pr
ecise. He looked displeased as he took in her old sweatshirt and the frayed corduroys.

  “Didn’t Ms. Valentine buy you new clothes?” he asked.

  “I like my own,” Roo replied, her voice matching his in coldness.

  He looked at her sharply, as though she had suddenly come into focus for him. “Your father was stubborn too. Much good it did him.” He paused, still staring at her circumspectly, then said, “Do you miss him?” He asked this in a peculiarly unemotional way, like a doctor might poke at a wound and say, “Does this hurt?”

  It made Roo angry, and she answered defiantly, “No.” But her voice sounded odd. Her throat had tightened, and she realized with horror that she was a hairsbreadth away from tears.

  Her uncle noticed. He sighed. His face softened, and suddenly Roo saw her father again, the likeness shocking. Mesmerizing.

  “I hope you’ll be happy here, Roo,” he said. “If there’s anything you need, you can ask Ms. Valentine.”

  Then he abruptly turned back to his maps. Roo stayed where she was, staring at him. She didn’t think she liked him. And he didn’t seem to like her very much either. Yet she wanted him to turn around again, to relive the sensation of her father being in front of her, still alive.

  Turn around, turn around…she willed him in her thoughts. But no, he was lost in the maps’ green wilderness once again. He was done with her.

  She retreated down the hallway until she found herself in the entrance lobby. Pushing open the massive front door, she stepped outside onto the cobblestone promenade. A light rain was falling, nudged this way and that by a fitful wind. Roo made her way down the granite steps toward a stretch of lawn mottled with thin patches of snow. She cut across it, past a semicircular patio, and headed toward the tiny lagoon where the moored Boston Whaler was now bobbing lightly. The wind blew more gently here, bringing with it a tangy odor of fish and cold fog. Following the path around the lagoon, she walked over the small footbridge that led to the stone archway. Here, she climbed out onto the great rocks that hemmed the edges of the island. The stones were splattered with gull droppings, but she found a clean spot and sat down.