Ghost Wood Song

by Erica Waters

  “Holy shit,” Kenneth says. He turns to Orlando. “Good salt, man,” he adds.

  “Thank you, Abuelita,” Orlando whispers.

  After we make sure everyone is okay, we all file back down the stairs together into the living room. Everyone’s talking, but my head is too full to follow their conversation or answer their questions, so I wander off to the kitchen. Meeting my grandmother’s ghost again has unsettled me and raised even more questions I don’t have answers to. I’m definitely not hungry, but I pour myself a glass of orange juice and sit at the table, staring at the violet wallpaper pattern over the kitchen sink and thinking about what I’m going to do next.

  “Hey,” Sarah says from the doorway. “Can I come in?”

  I nod, and she sits in the chair next to me. Silence pools between us, but it feels restful now, like we’re finally going to be able to be real friends again.

  “So, Rose, huh?” I say, startling her. It hurts, but the hurt doesn’t make it to my voice.

  Sarah almost smiles, but she’s holding back. “Are you mad?”

  I shake my head. “How could I be? I’m dating Cedar. But I wish you’d talked to me. You said we’d talk, that night at the construction site. But then you disappeared on me again.”

  She fiddles with the lid on a plastic jar of honey shaped like a bear. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Anything would have been good. One single word.”

  Sarah looks up. “I do care about you. And I did—I do—have feelings for you, but . . .”

  “But I’m not Rose?”

  “It’s not that. I mean, yeah, I’ve always been hung up on Rose, but it wasn’t because of her.”

  “Then why? Why wouldn’t you ever trust me? Why wouldn’t you let me in?”

  “Because I knew I’d let you down,” Sarah says. “I’d never be enough for you. I’d never be able to be there for you the way you need. We’re just not right for each other. No matter how much we like each other, sometimes it’s not enough to want to be together. You need someone like Cedar.”

  “And you need someone like Rose?” I ask, holding her eyes.

  Sarah sighs. “Maybe. I don’t know yet. But you did help me. I thought I’d never be able to let anyone in again, and maybe I still haven’t, but you made me feel like I can. Like I need to.”

  None of this is what I wanted to hear, but at least Sarah’s finally talking. At least she’s finally opening up and telling the truth. At least I can have some closure.

  “Are you happy . . . with Cedar, I mean? I know everything else right now is crazy, but is he making it better?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He is.”

  She nods and gets up to go. When she’s at the doorway, I call her name, and she turns. “I know you’re scared to lose people, after your mom . . . but I’m not going anywhere. I’m always going to be there for you.”

  “I know,” she says. And then she heads back into the living room, where Rose is probably waiting on pins and needles.

  And that’s the end of Sarah and me, of whatever lingering dream of us I’d held on to in the back of my mind. I’m with Cedar and she’s probably going to be with Rose, or with someone else who isn’t me. I know deep down that it’s for the best, but it still hurt a little to hear her say it, to have the truth laid bare.

  I wish that was the hardest conversation I would need to have today, but there’s one more waiting for me.

  Twenty-Seven

  After I convince everyone except Cedar to go home, I make my way to the guest room on the first floor. Aunt Ena lies propped up on pillows, staring out the window. She looks awful. Bandaged cuts cover her pale face. Her hair still has bits of glass in it, which catch the light like crystals.

  She turns worried eyes on me. “What happened? I heard all the noise. I felt—I felt—I would have come, but . . .” She gestures to her pitiful form. But I know that’s not why she didn’t come.

  “How are you?” I ask, forcing myself to be patient and gentle when all I really want to do is shake the truth out of her.

  “I’ll be fine. Just got my head knocked around a little.” Her voice is finally normal, and she is firmly in our world, in the present, if unwillingly. “It’ll heal.”

  I finger the hem of my shirt, unsure how to begin.

  “Come here,” she orders. I sit at the foot of her bed, and she runs her eyes over me, searching for injuries. “Lucky girl.”

  “We’re both lucky, I guess.” She’s speaking of the accident, but I’m not.

  It feels cruel to do it, but I ask anyway. “Aunt Ena, what happened to Brandy?”

  She blinks at me for few seconds. “Hmm?”

  “All this family’s secrets almost got us killed. Isn’t it time to tell the truth? What happened to your sister?”

  Aunt Ena blanches. “That’s . . . How did you . . .”

  “Just tell me. Please. I’ve already figured out most of it anyway.” I pull out the creased picture and place it in her lap. “I know it’s painful for you talk about it, and I can’t imagine what it was like for you to lose her. But I’m losing Jesse, I’m losing my brother, and I can’t seem to do anything about it. Nothing I do is helping. Maybe . . . maybe somehow Brandy can.”

  Ena gazes down at the portrait, pain filling her eyes. She touches the moldy growth that obscures Brandy’s form. She looks like it nearly kills her to do it, but she finally speaks. “Brandy was my little sister. Our little sister, mine and Will’s.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Please don’t make me, Shady,” Aunt Ena says, meeting my eyes. “Please, it will destroy me.”

  “It won’t, Aunt Ena. Maybe . . . maybe it will help you. All this family ever does is bury its secrets, and yet they keep climbing out of the dirt and sneaking up on us. Maybe if we just dig them up and face them, they can’t hurt us all so much. Maybe if we speak them out loud, they won’t have so much power over us.”

  Aunt Ena squeezes her eyes shut tight, but a tear escapes and rolls down her cheek. “She was allergic to wasps.”

  “That’s how she died?” I say so quietly I’m not sure Ena hears me, but then she nods.

  “That’s what killed her, yes, but not who.”

  “Who was it?” I ask, my heart constricting, but she looks away, not speaking. “Was it . . . was it Daddy?”

  Aunt Ena startles. “No, of course not. Not your daddy.”

  I hear the emphasis on your—slight, but there. “It was yours,” I say. “Your daddy.”

  She nods, the tears spilling from both eyes now. A fear as old as this house twists her features as she looks up at the ceiling. But she takes a deep breath and goes on. “He used to lock us up there when we were bad. In the attic.”

  “When you were bad?”

  Aunt Ena stares ahead, not seeing anything, or maybe seeing a whole lot I can’t. “When we got in fights or broke things. Childish stuff. The day she . . . Brandy stole some cookies from the cabinet for our tea party. She didn’t ask.”

  “And he locked her up there?” God, for taking cookies. What else might a parent like that do? It’s too horrible to think about.

  Mama might have slapped my hand once or twice, but I never even got spanked when I was little. Jesse didn’t either, no matter how much he misbehaved. Even that time he got caught playing with matches, all Daddy did was send him to his room.

  Aunt Ena nods. “When we heard Brandy screaming, he said she was acting out. We didn’t know there were wasps up there. But then when she went quiet . . .” Aunt Ena can’t go on.

  “Why didn’t you or Daddy ever tell us?” I ask, a tremor starting deep inside me. This house was my home, the place where I was loved. I had no idea it held so much trauma.

  Aunt Ena wipes her eyes. “Some stories hurt too much to tell.”

  “What happened to your . . . father?” I can’t call him her daddy now. He’s not worthy of the name.

  She sighs. “He went to prison. He died before they l
et him out—another prisoner stabbed him. But Mama died first, I think at least partly of grief. She was never the same after . . . And Will and I stayed here. To be close to Brandy.”

  “Is that why the fiddle meant so much to Daddy? Because of Brandy? He wanted to see her again?”

  “That was a lot of it, I think,” she says vaguely, noncommittal. Then she’s quiet for a while, as if she’s steeling herself. What else could be left to tell after this?

  I think I know. “How did Daddy really get the fiddle? It wasn’t from your mother, was it?”

  She wrings her hands over the covers. “He came home with the wood for it the night Brandy died. Later on, he had a luthier make the fiddle special for him. But he’s the one who made it what it is.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “Aunt Ena,” I prompt.

  She shakes her head. “Grief, guilt, longing. He played it until it started bringing the ghosts to life. And then he kept on playing, found a purpose in it. Well, at first. But later I don’t think he could help himself. He was bound to it somehow. He always meant for you to have it once he was gone, but Jesse was determined to keep you from it.”

  That’s why grief makes the fiddle do its magic, I realize. It’s a fiddle made of grief.

  “Did Jesse know Daddy made the fiddle?”

  Aunt Ena shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so. I never told him. Will didn’t want you kids to know. He wanted you to love music.”

  It’s no harder to believe Daddy’s grief made our fiddle than it is to believe our Irish ancestors gave it ghost-raising magic. I know how powerful grief is. I’ve felt it pound through my body like ocean waves, leaving me half drowned. Of course grief could shape a fiddle into an instrument for summoning the dead. Of course the player’s grief could make it stronger. That doesn’t surprise me one bit.

  But that Daddy would lie to me like this, that he would draw me into his grief and make it my responsibility . . .

  I’ve never felt sorry for Daddy before—he always seemed so far above all that—but now I do. I feel pity for him, which is not a way a girl ever wants to feel about her father. I’ve held this perfect image of him for the last four years, an unbreakable source of comfort and support, this deep and unshakable knowing—and it’s starting to crack right down the middle.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” I tell Cedar when I leave Aunt Ena’s room.

  “What did she say?” he asks, jumping up from the couch. But when I shake my head, he follows me onto the front porch.

  I need to move, need to feel the ground under my feet. I grab Cedar’s hand and lead him around the back of the house and into the woods. I can feel him practically vibrating with questions, but he doesn’t ask a single one. Instead, he laces his fingers in mine and follows me through the dark woods, as if I’m leading him down a beach instead of into a haunted forest.

  We walk in silence, the pine needles soft and spongy under our feet, shafts of sunlight illuminating patches of moss across the forest floor. There are no birds singing, no squirrels leaping from tree to tree. The woods are empty and hushed, waiting. Every ghost for ten miles is holding its breath.

  I want to scream my rage into the silent trees, and I want to fall to the earth and ask it to hold me. I want to cut down every tree in this forest and burn down the house that is the wood’s beating heart. I want to . . .

  I snatch up an old limb from the ground and slam it into the nearest tree as hard as I can. The shock reverberates up my arm, and I feel it in my teeth. I hit the tree again and again until the limb snaps.

  I sink to my knees and let the emotions well up and then surge out of my body, leaving me shaking and weak. My fractured rib aches and makes my breath come short.

  “Shady,” Cedar croons, touching my back. “What’s wrong?”

  “Jesse is in jail and Frank is out free, and I can’t do anything about it,” I say, my words barely coherent. “And my daddy was a liar and so is pretty much everyone else I love.” I break down weeping again, the hurt of it too much for words.

  My family’s history is a dark stream that flows through my veins. I can’t escape it—it’s as much a part of me as my DNA.

  Is that all we’re here for? To hurt and then to die?

  And despite everything I’ve learned—despite the shadow man and the wasps—I still want to play Daddy’s fiddle. I need it. The depth of that need scares me worse than anything.

  Jim was right about me. I’m my daddy all the way through.

  Twenty-Eight

  When we get back to Aunt Ena’s, Mama and Honey are there. “Where’ve you been?” Mama says, her voice frantic. She clutches her cell phone tightly in one fist.

  “We went for a walk. What’s wrong?”

  She squeezes Honey to her chest. “I called Frank this morning.”

  “Why?” I ask, startled.

  “To give him a piece of my mind. You don’t treat my child like that,” Mama says, her anger flaring up for a moment. Mama has always defended Jesse and me against the slightest offense, like a bear when her cubs are threatened. But this time I wish she hadn’t.

  “You knew he was dangerous,” I say, exasperated. “What if he comes looking for us?”

  “I thought you were exaggerating,” Mama admits. “I’m sorry, baby. We’ll stay here at Ena’s.”

  “He’ll probably just come here next, since she was with me yesterday,” I fret. “What did you say to him? What did he say?” I ask, my panic rising.

  She shakes her head. “Something is wrong with him—he’s not right in the head. When I think how close you were yesterday to—” But a sob escapes her throat and she can’t go on. “I did what you wanted and called the police. I told them he threatened you and that I thought he was unhinged. They didn’t take it seriously. I’m still not sure Frank had anything to do with Jim’s death, but I don’t feel safe having you out here away from me right now. Not with Frank wandering around like that.” She turns to Cedar. “You can’t leave her alone. Promise me you’ll watch out for her.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says and puts an arm around me. I shake him off.

  “We can’t wait around. We have to do something,” I say, my whole body trembling. I’m sick to death of crying and waiting and talking.

  “Here, take your sister,” she says, handing Honey over to me. I wrap my arms around her and feel our hearts beating together, and I wonder if this is how Aunt Ena felt about Brandy. But Honey’s restless now, and slithers out of my arms to the floor and shoots into the room where Aunt Ena’s sleeping.

  “Come on,” Cedar says, pulling me toward the kitchen. “I’ll make you and Honey some lunch. You’ll feel better after you eat.”

  But then Mama cries out, and by the time we turn around, Frank is already barreling through the front door, just like I knew he would. We should have left here the moment Mama told me she called him.

  “Call 911,” Mama yells, and Cedar has his phone out of his pocket before I can even think to reach for mine. “Shady, take Honey upstairs. Now.”

  I start across the room to find Honey, but Frank’s screams stop my feet. “I’m going to kill them all, Jim. Is that what you want? You want your whole family dead?” He pulls a black handgun from his waistband and points it at Mama. “I’m going to kill them all.”

  “Shady, go,” Mama yells again, staggering away from Frank.

  “No, you stay, girl,” he yells, pointing the gun at me. Cedar leaps in front of me, still frantically speaking into his phone.

  “Hang up that phone right now,” Frank growls, pointing the gun at Cedar. His eyes are bloodshot and wild, scanning the room frantically. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, weeks even. Cedar puts the phone in his pocket and backs me toward the kitchen. “Stay right there,” Frank screams.

  This isn’t the same man I saw yesterday. Yesterday he was half mad from being haunted, but now he’s lost, practically a ghost himself.

  A motion out of the co
rner of my eye catches my attention at the same moment it catches Frank’s. He swivels the gun, pointing it at Honey and Aunt Ena, and a wave of terror washes over me. “Your baby girl, Jim. Your baby girl. Is that what you want?”

  Mama runs past Frank, heedless of his gun. She snatches Honey up into her arms. “Get out of here, Frank. Right now,” she says, her voice shaking hard. She stands next to me, pulling Aunt Ena beside her. Mama doesn’t understand why this is happening; she has always managed to ignore the ghostly parts of our family. But Aunt Ena knows how much danger we’re in. Her eyes look like a rearing horse’s, the whites showing bright.

  Frank settles his gaze on me again. “Shady, go get your fiddle. I want Jim to watch me kill you all, and I want to see his face while I do it.”

  I don’t need to be told twice. I race up to my bedroom and pull the case out from under the bed. Luckily, Frank doesn’t know what he’s asking. This fiddle is the closest thing I have to a weapon right now. I run back down the stairs so fast I stumble on the last step and nearly pitch into the wall.

  Back in the living room, I rip the case open and pull out the fiddle. “Play,” roars Frank. “Isn’t that what you threatened me with? My brother’s ghost? Bring him then.”

  Mama’s eyes grow wide. She grips Honey to her chest and watches me in silent confusion. Aunt Ena backs against the wall and slides down it, hiding her face in her hands. Cedar drops to his knees beside me. “Shady, you can’t do this.”

  “He’s going to kill us all if I don’t,” I hiss back, my hands shaking as I tune the instrument.

  “Play!” Frank screams. For good measure, he fires into the wall behind my head. Honey yelps and begins to wail. Mama puts her palm over Honey’s mouth and shushes her. My hands are trembling so hard I can barely hold the bow, but I have no choice but to play.

  I play “Omie Wise” again, since it worked the first time I raised Jim’s ghost. The notes come out crooked and shrill but loud enough to drown out Honey’s cries. But as I play, I grow more confident, pouring my fear and rage and shame into the fiddle. It melds to my emotions like melted plastic, and I lose track of the difference between wood and skin.