Hush-a-Bye

by Jody Lee Mott

  I grabbed my backpack and unzipped it. A curl of yellow hair poked out. I jerked back and slammed the back of my legs against the bed. I didn’t just forget about the book. I’d forgotten she was still in there.

  I crept up to the bag and lowered my hands inside until I felt the sides of her body. They felt strangely warm. Like something alive. With shaking hands, and with my eyes focused above her head—I didn’t want to look into those blank green eyes ever again—I slowly pulled her out of the bag.

  The walk to the closet probably took no more than ten seconds, but it felt like hours. Every moment I waited for something horrible to happen, like my hair bursting into flames or a grizzly bear crashing through the trailer walls and eating me. But I managed to get her back on her stand in the closet and quietly close the door without the world ending. I knew a thin door was no protection for what she could do, but at least I didn’t have to look at her.

  I took a deep breath, pulled out the book from my bag, and sat cross-legged on the floor. Then I thumbed to the article about the young girl and her doll, and I read.

  A Hunter’s Moon Lodge Mystery

  This is a photograph of Rosetta Hesse, eleven-year-old daughter of the groundskeeper for the Hunter’s Moon Lodge, dated October 13, 1878. Two days later, a severe thunderstorm hit Hunter’s Moon Island. The hotel was struck with lightning several times. Despite the heavy rain, it quickly burned to the ground. All guests were successfully evacuated, including Rosetta’s parents. But Rosetta was not found among the evacuees. She had gone missing. Many assumed the girl had probably drowned.

  The morning after the storm, a group of men gathered by the boat dock to undertake a search for Rosetta. Few had expectations of finding her, until one of them spotted a young girl wandering by the bank of the river. Her hair and dress were completely drenched, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. When questioned about what had happened to her, she claimed to remember nothing. It was assumed she’d suffered a concussion, and she was reunited with her parents.

  Several decades later, a local author researching a book about the history of the hotel tracked down Rosetta at a state asylum. Although Rosetta suffered severe memory loss, in a rare moment of lucidity, she related an extraordinary story to the author—she claimed her doll was a demon. These are the author’s notes of what Rosetta said:

  I’ve never told anyone what really happened that night when the Hunter’s Moon Lodge burned down. I didn’t think anyone would believe me. But I need to tell it now while I still can. People need to know the truth.

  My story begins a few weeks before the storm hit. At that time, I was the only child living at Hunter’s Moon Lodge, and I was very lonely. Loneliness is an awful thing but so much worse when you are young and trying to fill up the endless days.

  One day while out walking alone, I heard a voice calling my name. I followed the sound, and eventually I came across a doll sitting in the crook of a tree. I was amazed. But what followed next was even more astounding—the doll began talking to me.

  The doll’s mouth didn’t move, but I could still hear her speak. Maybe it was because I was a child, but I never questioned how such a bizarre thing could be possible. Maybe it was what she said to me. She asked to be my friend. I had been so terribly lonely for so long, I said yes right away. It sounds odd, but at the time it seemed like the most perfectly ordinary thing, and I was thrilled to have a friend to play with, even if it was a doll.

  For a time, it was wonderful. I was finally happy. Then strange things began to happen around the hotel. There was a maid who’d scolded me after I’d run into her in the hallway. Later, while she was combing her hair, it began to pull out in huge clumps, leaving her with bald red patches. Then there was a cat that scratched me when I tried to pet him. He was found the next morning mewling wildly, buried up to his neck in an anthill.

  When I mentioned these weird occurrences to the doll, she said she had a secret to tell me—she was the one who’d made them happen. I acted like I was surprised, but part of me knew it all along. Still, I asked how it was possible.

  She said she was really a magical being from deep under the river, something like a water sprite. She had lived there for longer than I could imagine, long before the first human walked along the riverside. Where she came from, it was dark and cold and terribly lonely, but when she listened to the voices of the people who began to fill up the land around the river, she found them all to be selfish and cruel and dishonest. She wanted nothing to do with them.

  Then one day she heard me talking to myself at the river’s edge, and her heart filled with joy. At last she’d found someone who wasn’t like the others. Someone like her. Someone who needed a friend. So she rose to the surface and took the form of a doll so I wouldn’t be frightened. That’s when I found her. And because I was such a wonderful friend to her, she’d made sure anybody who tried to hurt me would think twice before doing it again by using her magic.

  “How do you do the magic?” I asked her.

  “Through you! Whenever you need my help,” she said, “the magic streams out of me and makes those things happen. And every time the magic streams out, a bigger portion of magic streams back into me, and I become stronger and stronger.”

  “How strong?” I asked. “What could you do?”

  “Anything you can imagine. I could split the world in two if I wanted.”

  I laughed. “But that’s impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” she said. “Not anymore.”

  I didn’t know what to make of that, but I didn’t let it bother me. Then I asked her one more question. “Can I see what you really look like?”

  For a long moment, she was silent. Then she said, “Soon, when the magic is strong enough, I will show you my true face. And then we can be together forever.”

  I was glad to have such a friend to watch over me, but when I thought of what she’d done to the maid and the cat, and what she meant by being together forever, it unsettled me. But I tried not to think about it too much. Then came the storm, and everything changed.

  That night, I was on the first floor of the hotel with the doll when the fire bells sounded. I’d heard the loud thunder crack and smelled the stench of burning, and I wondered aloud if there might be a fire in the hotel. Suddenly, the doll frantically screamed at me to get her away from the building. I was startled by the fearful tone in her voice, one I’d never heard before. I ran out into the storm and over to the docks to be as far from the fire as possible. Even then, she demanded—that’s the word for it: demanded—I take a boat out in the river to get her even farther away.

  As I rowed out in the middle of the swirling waters, she began muttering about the persons living in the hotel who were out to destroy her. I tried to explain the lightning was probably the source of the fire, but she wouldn’t listen. And then she laid out the things she would do to get her revenge on all of them, her voice dripping with anger and malice.

  The terrible, cruel things she said she would do to each of them—I can’t even repeat them. It still makes me sick when I think about it. And it was at that moment I knew she was no water sprite. She was surely a demon from hell, and when she grew strong enough and laid waste to everything, she’d drag me back down with her to the fiery pits. I knew what I had to do.

  I moved so quickly she had no time to react. First I tore off her head and threw it in the river. Then I did the same with her arms and her legs, and then finally her body. I threw them all in different directions and watched them sink.

  I don’t know how long I sat in that boat. It broke my heart to lose the only friend I’d made on the island, but I have no regrets. The world is a better place without that doll in it, and I hope she remains at the bottom of that river until the end of time.

  Rosetta died two weeks later after speaking with the author. No part of her strange story has ever been corroborated, an
d because she was often delusional—

  The front door of the trailer creaked open. I slammed the book closed and whipped my head around, half expecting Hush-a-bye’s limbless body to be floating there like some demented ghost. Nothing was there.

  I rapped my knuckle on my forehead a couple of times, scolding myself for being such a wimp. I grabbed the doll’s arms and shoved them and the book under my bed. When Antonia opened our bedroom door, I squeezed past, shouting “Taking a shower” before she had a chance to say anything.

  I stayed under the shower until I was shriveled as an old raisin. Mom would have killed me for wasting so much water, but that didn’t seem like the biggest thing in the world to worry about right then. I had to think this through without any distractions.

  I didn’t have any doubt that Rosetta’s doll and Hush-a-bye were the same. There were a whole lot of things about her story that were scarily familiar, especially the part about how the doll enjoyed causing pain. On the other hand, I really didn’t have a better idea of what Hush-a-bye was than before. Rosetta called her a demon from hell, but I never believed in a place like that. People might be mean and judgy, but I figured God, if there was one, would be better than that. And though Rosetta had taken Hush-a-bye apart and dumped her in the river, it was pretty clear it hadn’t put an end to her.

  After a while, it seemed the more I thought about it, the less I understood what was going on. So I shut off the water and got out of the shower.

  When I came back, the bedroom was quiet and empty, which was a relief. I sat cross-legged on my bed and started drying my hair with a towel. The closet door opened.

  Antonia came out, frowning. She closed the door and leaned back against it.

  “I don’t get it,” she said, fidgeting with her sparkly duckling barrette.

  “Don’t get what?” I pretended like the only thing that mattered was how dry I could get my hair.

  Antonia looked at me like she hadn’t realized I was in the room. She stared at me, turned toward the closet, and turned back again. It had been so many days since we’d had a real conversation together, it was like she’d forgotten how.

  “Hush-a-bye,” she said finally.

  “Oh? What about her?” I rubbed my hair so frantically I thought it might catch fire.

  “The sash around her dress is gone. But she won’t tell me why. She won’t even talk to me.”

  I stopped rubbing. Hush-a-bye not talking wasn’t what I expected, but it wasn’t unwelcome news. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You can still talk to me.”

  Antonia kicked backward at the door, so hard I thought it might splinter. “But she always talks to me. She always listens to me. I can’t even tell if she’s listening.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t feel like talking today.” I tossed the towel to the end of my bed. “Like I said, I’m still here. You can talk to me. If you want to.”

  Antonia stared at me. It was such a hard stare my skin felt prickly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Did you do something to her?”

  Now I was really feeling prickly. I hoped my face didn’t look as red as it felt. “Of course I didn’t do anything to her. Why would you say that?”

  “The last thing Hush-a-bye said to me before I left her in the closet was ‘Watch out for Lucy.’ I didn’t know what she meant, but now I’m wondering.”

  Watch out for Lucy. I shivered. How would Hush-a-bye have known I was going to take her on the field trip? Still, I made a big show of rolling my eyes and groaning. “Well, of course you should watch out for me. Just like I watch for you. We watch out for each other. That’s what sisters are supposed to do, aren’t they?”

  She frowned, but I could tell she was trying to figure out if what I said made sense. When the frown softened and she looked at me with shining eyes, I knew I’d convinced her.

  “You don’t think some river witch might have stolen her sash, do you? Like maybe that’s where she kept all her magic?” she asked in a pitiful voice. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying myself. “Maybe she blames me for not keeping her magic safe. Maybe she’s thinking about leaving me!”

  If only, I thought. “I don’t think so,” I said. “She had magic before you found the sash, remember? I bet she just wanted to loosen her up her clothes, so she poofed it away. You know she could do it.”

  Antonia nodded, frowning again. “I guess. Still doesn’t explain why she’s giving me the silent treatment.”

  “All that extra magic probably tired her out. She’s resting, that’s all. Just give her some time. Hey, you want to check out the ginkgo tree? I thought I saw a leaf falling down when I came home.”

  It was a lie, but I figured one more wouldn’t make any difference. She screwed up her face for a bit thinking it over, but after a few more glances over her shoulder, she nodded feebly and followed me out.

  Of course when we got outside, using the kitchen garbage lid as our umbrella, the leaves hadn’t come down, even with the downpour. Not a single one. But it felt good to be doing something with Antonia again, even if she was a little sulky. It had been too long.

  When I’d returned to school the next day, my role in the whole episode of Madison and the Gypsum Man was pretty well forgotten. All anyone could talk about was how Madison, so perfect and so put together, had dived off the deep end.

  Rumors about what caused it flew everywhere. Some said the strain of being an A++ student finally got to her, and some whispered about weird drugs. All anyone agreed on was she must have hallucinated her attack by the stone statue. Or, as her supposed best friend Ashley Oslo so nicely put it, “I think her brain overheated and melted. That’s a real thing that can happen, isn’t it?”

  It was all the twins gossiped about in the hallways. Without Madison to egg them on, they ignored me completely. After all, what was one mousy girl compared to a popular honor student losing it?

  You’d think it would’ve been a relief to me to have Madison out of the picture and not catching any flak for the whole mess. But I couldn’t shake the look of fear I’d seen on Madison’s face, and the cold light in Hush-a-bye’s eyes. Awful as Madison had been to me, I never wanted to hurt her. Not like that.

  But Hush-a-bye did. And I wondered, now that I’d threatened her, if she’d do the same to me. Each night when I tried to sleep, those horrible green eyes would flash before me. I’d bolt upright, panting and sweating.

  Sometimes I imagined myself throwing her back in the river like Rosetta just to get her out of the way. But I also imagined her dragging me with her down to the muddy bottom. Nothing is impossible. Not anymore.

  After the second sleepless night, I was sitting in Mr. Capp’s regular art class with the dog book open in front of me. My eyelids felt like they weighed about a hundred pounds each. My fingers could barely hold on to the pencil. The picture of the Doberman I was supposed to be drawing grew hazy and melted away.

  A clattering sound made me jerk my head up. I looked to my side and saw my pencil had dropped to the floor. I blinked my eyes rapidly, trying to get rid of the fog in my brain.

  Before I could bend down to retrieve the pencil, Mr. Capp was holding it and offering it back to me. His face wore a concerned smile. Unlike the principal’s smile, though, there was nothing fake about it.

  “You feeling okay, Lucy?” he asked as I took back the pencil. I gave a quick nod.

  He glanced out the window and sighed. “Must be this weather. It’s enough to put anyone off.” The rain beat against the pane loudly, and the sky was the color of wet clay.

  Ever since that thunderclap at the Old Hops Village, the rain hadn’t let up for a moment. The weatherman on the TV called it “the storm of the century.” There was already flooding in some of the lowlands close to the river. Our trailer rested on a rise several feet above where the river would crest if it did flood, but Mom, exha
usted as she was, still fretted over the weather report each night.

  “Why don’t you put that away for now,” Mr. Capp said, gently closing the book. “There’s time enough for that some other day. If you want to lay your head down and rest for a bit, I’ll pretend not to notice.”

  He winked and walked away. I didn’t put my head down, but I was grateful for the offer.

  By Thursday night, I was so worn-out that Madison’s face and Hush-a-bye’s eyes and Antonia’s buffalo snoring couldn’t stop my eyelids from closing. I finally fell asleep—and landed right in a nightmare.

  19

  IN MY DREAM, I stood on the bank of the Susquehanna, looking out toward the island. The morning sun was headache-bright in a cloudless sky, and the birch trees on the island glimmered.

  My feet were bare, and my toes were poking into the brown-green water. It felt so cool and inviting, I thought I’d wade right in. But the moment I put my foot forward, I found myself already standing on the grassy slope of the island.

  The birch trees above the slope were gone. I spotted a gravel path off to one side leading up from the river’s edge, and I followed the path until I came to a long white two-story building—the Hunter’s Moon Lodge I’d read about. It was in the same spot where I’d seen those charred pine posts when Antonia and I had come over in the boat to find Hush-a-bye’s body. Tinny, old-time piano music and a jumble of voices and laughter drifted toward me from inside the lodge.

  I searched around for a door but couldn’t find one. So I took a step forward to get a closer peek through one of the windows. Before I even set my foot down, I was already inside the building.

  It looked like the lobby of one of those hotels from a hundred years ago you see in movies about rich people. The carpet, dark red and an inch deep, led up to a mahogany front desk, while off to the side was a winding staircase with shiny, carved railings. A crystal chandelier glittered above my head as white sunlight streamed through a wide, clear window. Big stacks of luggage were piled up at the front desk.