“Partly. I went to a private school, and they taught it there, but I didn’t really need that. My mom’s from Ontario. English is her first language. French is Dad’s. We speak both at home.”
“And you know a third one. Cree?”
“Right,” he said. “That’s more like you and French. I know enough to carry on a halting conversation. Mamé, my dad’s mother, speaks it, and she lives with us. She speaks French, but she’ll switch to Cree to teach me.”
“You and your sisters? You mentioned you have some.”
“Two. They’re a lot older than me. Married with kids.”
She grinned. “So you’re the baby?”
He made a face. “I guess. It doesn’t feel like that. My parents are pretty liberal. Once we’re old enough to act like adults, we’re treated like adults. All the freedom and independence we want, as long as we’re responsible about it. Like me being here. They’re fine with it. They trust me.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost eleven. We should find you something to sleep on. I don’t suppose you brought a blanket?”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t planning to rough it. But I can spread out my clothes and sleep on those.”
“No, there’s a drawer of blankets in one of the bedrooms. We’ll get you one that isn’t too moth-eaten.”
Tess took an old blanket and settled into the large pantry. An odd place to pick as a bedroom, but Jackson insisted.
“There aren’t any windows here,” he said.
“Which means it’ll be too dark.”
“The moon will shine in through the doorway, and I’ll give you the flashlight.”
She looked around the pantry. “Why here?”
“Because there aren’t any windows.” Impatience edged into his voice, clearly frustrated by her inability to see what seemed obvious to him. After a moment of silence, he said, “No one can see you’re in here alone.”
“Who would see me?”
He didn’t answer, as if again waiting for her to jump to the right conclusion. This time she did.
“Steve? The man who chased me? You don’t think he’d find me up here—”
“Are you going to take that chance?”
He was right, and she conceded it with a nod. “I’ll stay in here.”
“I would give you my switchblade, but you don’t know how to use one, and that makes it more dangerous. It can be taken and turned against you.”
“All right.”
“If you’re going to be out in the world on your own, you should have a weapon though. You just need to learn how to use it first.”
“All right.”
He started to leave then, but stopped and turned. “We have to do something about Etienne. At the very least, inform the police.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’d rather let him go after another girl? Give it some thought. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Tess knew she should give it thought—but as soon as he left and she lay down, other thoughts consumed her. Ones of the house. Of the small rooms. Of the boxes.
She listened to Jackson in the other room as he settled into his blankets. He tossed and turned for a few minutes, but the day’s work had taken its toll, and soon the swish and thump of his movements stopped and deep breathing took their place.
Tess glanced toward the basement door. The answers were down there, and now that he’d drifted off, she was free to get them in her own way.
Her own way.
She rubbed the goose bumps rising on her arms. Her own way did not mean searching for a clue they’d missed. It meant searching for the clues Jackson couldn’t see. Ghosts. Visions.
Is that what she thought they were now? Ghosts and visions? Not madness?
Tess didn’t know. She’d heard someone last night, speaking French, crying for help. Then they’d discovered that the house seemed to have been used for mental patients. That there were rooms like the ones in her nightmares. Boxes like the ones in her nightmares.
Nightmares? Or memories?
Or hallucinations? Signs that she belonged in a place like this. That she was crazy.
There was a way to answer that, wasn’t there? Go downstairs. See what happened. If she saw something, she could investigate and get two kinds of answers from it—one that told her what had happened in this house and one that told her she wasn’t crazy. Or she could investigate, find nothing and get the answer she dreaded—that she was crazy. It was still an answer, though, and she wanted that, whichever way it went.
So all she had to do was go downstairs. Into the pitch-dark basement, with no stairs, with walled-in rooms and empty closets and boxes that looked like caskets. Go down there and purposely try to call forth terrifying visions.
She shivered convulsively, pulling the blankets tighter, wrapping herself in them. The chill still seeped into her bones.
Finally, she threw off the blanket, got up and walked into the library, where Jackson slept. If he wasn’t really sleeping as soundly as it seemed, that would give her the excuse she needed to stay upstairs, because if he heard her sneak into the basement, he’d be angry, and she couldn’t afford to upset him. She needed his help.
Did she still have his help? They hadn’t discussed what would happen after his day of work was over. She could offer him another five, but she realized now that the money hadn’t made any difference. He had only pretended it did to fend off questions.
She wished he did need the money. That would be a clear-cut way to gain his assistance. She didn’t want him to go. His French was a help, and having someone at her side meant she wasn’t easy prey for men like Steve. All excellent reasons to keep him. Yet none were the real one.
Tess imagined the other girls from the orphanage here with her, watching him sleep. Some of them would giggle about how cute he was. Yes, he was cute. Still, that wasn’t the reason she wanted him to stay. Seeing him asleep, all she thought about was waking him up. About going over, bending down and…kissing him? Definitely not. The very thought sent a flash of unease through her gut, confusion mingled with exhilaration and a dozen other emotions she couldn’t name, most of them uncomfortable.
What Tess wanted to do was wake him up and say, Talk to me. Just talk. I don’t care what you say.
Part of that was fear—the overwhelming feeling that she should go down to that basement and she was a coward if she didn’t, that she’d miss the best opportunity for answers. She wanted to wake him and get him talking to chase the shadows away. Postpone the decision.
But there was more to it than mere distraction. She simply wanted to hear him talk, the sound of his voice, the look on his face, animated as he launched into whatever topic occupied his busy mind.
Talk to me. Tell me something new. About the world. About your world. About you.
That was why she wanted to wake him. Because he was a fascinating boy. Brilliant and loquacious one minute, guarded and wary the next. Rude, impatient, easily irritated. Then kind and concerned and conscientious, worried about a man who might go after girls he’d never met. A private-school boy who carried a switchblade and knew how to pick a lock, who came from a good, solid family. A loving and close family too—she could tell that by the way he talked about them.
She wanted to know more about him. And she might never get the chance. Come morning, he could be gone, and she’d never even gotten his last name.
That was life, she supposed. Real life, outside the orphanage. Outside Hope. You meet people in passing. Kind people like the old couple who’d bought her tea and the man who’d helped her buy the scarf. Or people like Steve, who she never wanted to see again but who would leave an impression forever. Or people like Jackson, who she wanted to get to know better, even though she knew that might not be her decision to make.
Tess rubbed her hands over her face and looked through the dark house toward the basement door.
This was her decision to make. Jackson would go down there in a heartbeat. Not because he was a boy, or be
cause he was stronger or tougher, but because he wouldn’t let anything stop him from getting answers.
Tess clenched the flashlight in her hand and walked to the basement door.
Seventeen
WITH THE FLASHLIGHT stuffed in her waistband, Tess lowered herself into the basement. Then she took out the flashlight and ventured into the basement.
She knew exactly where she wanted to go. The room with the boxes. She found it easily enough. The basement might be a warren of short halls and interconnected rooms, but she’d mentally mapped it out as she’d considered coming down. Having that map felt like having a plan. Solid and firm.
As she stepped into the room, she held her breath, waiting for…well, she didn’t know what she was waiting for. A vision? A voice? All these years of wishing the visions gone, and now she hoped to conjure one and had no idea if such a thing was possible.
If it was, it didn’t happen on demand. She walked into that room and saw nothing except the four boxes. She sat on one and waited. Long minutes ticked past. She closed her eyes then, or tried to, but that was like closing them on a haunted-house ride, knowing something would jump out at any moment. It didn’t take long for Tess to decide to keep her eyes open.
Another twenty minutes, and not so much as a mouse skittered past. Tess rose and looked around. She opened one box, but as soon as she did, a chill slid down her spine, and she closed it fast. She walked around the room once, weaving in and out of the boxes. Then she headed into the hall.
Tess wandered through the other rooms. She’d read enough about ghosts to know people thought the best way to contact them was to open yourself up to the possibility. To radiate welcome and invitation. Which was probably much easier if your stomach wasn’t tied in knots and part of you wasn’t desperately hoping you wouldn’t see anything.
After about an hour in the basement, though, Tess genuinely began wanting to see something. It was like dreading a test and then finding out it had been postponed, and feeling annoyed because she’d studied for it and she was ready now. With each minute that passed, she grew more frustrated, searched harder, struggled to catch a glimpse of something, anything.
A man walked past the end of the hall as she swung into it. Tess jerked back, jamming her fist into her mouth to keep from crying out. He disappeared through a doorway before she could get a good look.
Tess looked down the hall. The doors were closed…and they’d been open a moment ago. She and Jackson had left them all open as they’d walked through, so they’d know which rooms they’d looked inside.
Then she noticed the hallway now glowed with a sickly yellow light. She looked around. Nothing else in the hall seemed to have changed, but when she glanced down, the floor was clean. Still concrete but scrubbed, the faint lines from a mop still showing.
The man had disappeared into a room down the hall. The door was half closed, and a stronger light emanated from within. Tess tried to peek inside, but the angle wasn’t quite right. She put her fingers against the door. She could feel it, cold and solid, yet when she nudged, nothing happened. She pushed harder. Still nothing.
I’m the invisible one, she thought. Like a ghost in his world. This proves it.
That wasn’t exactly true. It might only prove that she thought she was the ghost, so in her hallucination she behaved as she expected. But she wasn’t letting herself tumble down that rabbit hole. She tried the door once more and then turned sideways and wriggled through the opening, which remained as solid and unyielding as if the door was nailed in place.
Before she went through, she made some noise, testing whether the person inside could hear her. As expected, she seemed as invisible and silent as a ghost, and when she squeezed through the door with a grunt, the occupant never even turned around.
A man of about twenty-five sat at a desk, writing furiously with his back to Tess. He wore a tweed jacket, dress shirt and tie. His clothing looked a little out of date, but not unreasonably so—she’d seen old men in Hope wearing a similar cut of shirt and trousers, as if they hadn’t cleared their closets in a couple of decades.
Tess looked around the room. She vaguely recalled from earlier that there’d been a desk pushed up on its side and two tables. Now the tables were gone and the desk was upright, with a proper chair, and there was a filing cabinet. On the wall hung a chalkboard displaying a hand-drawn chart of names and various codes and numbers.
Tess had no idea what the chart meant. If she had to hazard a guess, she’d say it was a list of patients and their medical data. The names were French. André W., Corrine P., Dorothée J., Jacques K., Stéphanie R.
On another wall was a calendar, turned to December 1946. The year before she was born.
She walked to the man and peered over his shoulder. He was scribbling quickly in a journal. His handwriting would be near-illegible under the best of circumstances. The fact it was in French meant she could only decipher the odd word, meaningless out of context.
Distant footsteps sounded. The man yanked open a desk drawer and slid the journal under it. When Tess crouched, she could see a leather strap stapled or nailed to the bottom of the drawer, a secret holder for the journal.
The man locked the drawer and walked to the door. He opened it and said, “Ah, Pierre.” Then: “Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas?” What’s wrong?
Another man’s voice answered in French. “Stéphanie won’t go in the box.”
“Can you blame her?” the young man muttered, but under his breath so only Tess heard. Louder, he said, “Perhaps she needs a day off. She’s making excellent progress—”
“Which is why we cannot give her a day off. I’ll need your help restraining her.”
The man in the office shifted his weight. “I did not agree to any use of force with the patients. I was quite clear—”
“Take it up with the doctor. I’m telling you our orders. Get Stéphanie in the box, one way or another.”
The room went dark. Tess jumped, her back going to the wall. She fumbled to turn on the flashlight. When she did, she saw the room as it had been when she’d investigated with Jackson.
She walked over to the desk, on its side again, and pulled on the top drawer. It was locked.
“Aidez-moi…”
The voice seemed to whisper all around her, and every hair on Tess’s body rose. She strained to listen.
“Je suis désolée.”
The voice snaked through the open door. Tess squelched the twitch of relief, the one that said, “Good, she’s out there.” Wasn’t this what she’d come downstairs for? In hopes of hearing something, seeing something?
“Aidez-moi, s’il vous plaît.”
Tess gripped the flashlight and walked to the door. It opened easily now, meaning she was definitely back in her own world.
“Aidez-moi, s’il vous plaît. Je suis désolée.”
The voice started close and then drifted, drawing her down the hall. Tess followed. The crying began, a soft sniffling. When Tess saw where it led, she rubbed the goose bumps on her arms and forced her feet to keep moving.
Tess shone the flashlight into the room. Across the boxes that looked like caskets, no matter what Jackson said. The crying stopped. Tess exhaled and adjusted her sweaty fingers on the flashlight. She glanced back toward the room with the desk and hidden journal. The drawer lock couldn’t be that hard to break. Or perhaps if she removed the drawer below it…
A noise. She froze. It came again. A slow scratching. Tess swiveled, her gaze tracking the sound to one of the boxes.
No. No, no, no.
She took a slow step backward. She’d seen enough. There could be a journal in the other room. If she got that, she’d have answers. She didn’t need to do this.
If she got that. If the journal was still there now, in the present time. There was a very good chance it was not.
The scratching stopped, and choked sobs began.
“S’il vous plaît. S’il vous plaît. S’il vous plaît.” Please, please, please.
/> Tess took a slow step into the room. The scratching resumed, harsh now, frantic. Coming from one of the boxes, mingled with cries and sobs, and it didn’t matter that Tess thought she was hearing a ghost, an echo of the past—she heard the frantic scratching turn to pounding, saw one of the boxes shaking, and she threw herself forward. She raced to the moving box, grabbed the lid and wrenched it off, staggering with the effort, the top coming free in her hands and knocking her to the floor. She sat there, stunned, holding the huge, heavy wooden lid. Then she shoved it aside, letting it clatter to the concrete floor as she leaped to her feet and looked into the box.
It was empty.
Tess stood there, heaving breath, as she stared into the dark box. Then she lifted the flashlight and shone it inside. Empty. Completely empty.
Of course it was. She’d known there wasn’t anyone actually trapped inside. Perhaps, though, she’d expected to open it and see the ghost of whoever had been crying and scratching and pounding. But the box lay empty, and the room had gone silent.
Tess turned away. As she did, her flashlight beam flitted across the discarded wooden lid. She briefly saw markings on the underside, like writing. She shone the light at it. Not writing. Brown marks and gouges, like someone had carved initials into the wood.
Carved initials? No. That wasn’t what she was seeing. Not at all.
Tess dropped to her knees beside the lid and touched the gouges. They were exactly the width of her fingernails. Deep, splintered gouges, the edges dulled by time. When she moved the flashlight closer, the brown splotches turned reddish. Dried blood. That’s what she was seeing. Bloodied scratches in the wood.
Eighteen
THE ROOM WENT dark as Tess envisioned herself trapped in that box herself, crying out, in French now, like the woman. “Aidez-moi! Je suis désolée!” Clawing at the lid, feeling hot blood drip onto her face, feeling the splintering wood digging in, the sharp pain, her nails cracking and breaking, fingers raw and bloody—
The Unquiet past Page 10
