“Sheesh! I won’t!”
I lead the way up to the third floor and then down the hallway until we get to the narrow steps that go up to the fourth floor. The walls close in together, tight and enfolding. The creaky steps are still creepy, but not as much during daylight hours — or with a companion.
“The room up here is Grammy Claire’s laboratory, isn’t it?” Riley asks. The narrow space is hot and airless. Sweat trickles like spider legs down my face. “Tara, you’re not supposed to go in there.”
“She’s — she’s — gone now. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Of course it matters. The laboratory is for the grown-ups to clean out and pack up. All that scientific stuff. Maybe they’ll donate her research to the university in Lafayette. Hey, maybe that’s why Butler Reginald is here. To clean up the house and yard and get it ready to sell.”
“Sell this house?” The thought freezes me to the floor. “But we can’t do that!”
“What are we gonna do with it? Mamma ain’t gonna take care of it. And the money will help keep up our own Civil War relic back in Bayou Bridge.”
She’s so heartless. So cold-blooded cruel. “But — but — we’re supposed to go inside first,” I tell Riley, and she gives me a peculiar look.
“Why?” she asks.
I shrug and keep climbing. My heart stutters inside my chest as I reach the thick oak door. Behind me, Riley flips the hall light and a yellowish light glows. Once again, the faint sound of music wafts through the floorboards, making me jump. “Whoa. Is that the organ?”
“Yep, all the way from the great room three stories below.”
Air wheezes through the hollow pipes, filling the house from top to bottom like a ghost.
Riley pinches my arm, trying to make me scream. “Sounds like a haunted house, huh?”
“Cut it out!” I hiss. “Look! See that note?”
We stare at the note I’d seen yesterday, the one in Grammy Claire’s handwriting.
Not yet, Tara. Not yet.
“What does that mean?” Riley demands.
“Just what it says. That I can’t go in until it’s time.”
“And is it?”
“Yep, it’s time.” I hold up Key Number Five as proof, and smile. But there’s a part of me that’s holding my breath, hoping I’m right. And an even bigger, scared-er part of me that is afraid to walk inside. But the biggest part of me — the one dying of curiosity — can’t wait to open that door. “I got the clue in the last letter.”
Riley pins her eyes on mine. I can’t tell if she believes me or not. “Where was that letter?”
“Underneath the —” I start, and then stop. I don’t want her to know Grammy Claire’s hiding places. Just in case … of what, I don’t know. But Grammy Claire is leaking the letters and notes and keys in slow dribbles, emphasizing the secrecy and danger. There must be a reason.
“Oh, sheesh, will you cut that out?”
“What?”
“You’re sucking your hair again. It’s sickening.”
Quickly, I drop the lump of hair, then wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I don’t even realize I’m doing it anymore.
Riley lowers her voice, eyes glittering in the dim light. “You ever think that maybe Grammy Claire went a little crazy the last couple of years?”
My skin starts to crawl.
“Maybe while she was living out there on that island she got some nasty gigantic African insect bite. Made her delirious, and she hasn’t been right in the head ever since.”
“For your information, the islands of Chuuk ain’t nowhere near Africa! And Grammy Claire didn’t get bit by some crazy bug!”
“Don’t take it personally, Tara. Coming here because Grammy Claire sent you a telegram — from beyond the grave — just feels dumb. Like there’s some big secret — but there isn’t. Our grandmother went nuts with her science experiments on some island thousands of miles from civilization. That butler dude probably just wanted a free ticket back to the States, and Madame See is trying to make a buck off of us because they think we’ve got money. But you do know that the family fortune is pretty much gone, right? We might lose the house if we can’t pay the taxes and insurance, and Mamma can’t face it. The family fortune has disappeared over the years, and Daddy keeps his own cash tight in his fist and won’t help us. And did you also notice, dear stupid sister, that we didn’t stay at the Doucet Mansion, we came here — probably to help clean out this place and help them find some hidden stash of money?”
“There ain’t no hidden stash of money!”
“We know that, but they don’t. And we already got Miz Landry back home so we wouldn’t need them.”
“Sometimes I just hate you, Riley Doucet! Grammy Claire sent the letters, not them! It’s her handwriting!” Tears prick behind my eyes. “You honestly think Mamma is pretending?”
“No, Mamma does need help. But I’m tired of living in that stuffy old plantation watching her lose her mind.”
“Stop saying that!” I hate to hear it, even if I think it myself.
“Okay, I’m exaggerating a little, but Grammy Claire knew Mamma would go off the deep end again if she died so she brought us here to stay out of the way, and Butler Dude and Madame See came along for the ride and a bit of cash. We’ll probably be home by next week. Maybe we can still go to California for summer vacation.”
My fists are tight against my legs. “No way Mamma will go to California.”
Riley uses the wall for a prop as she rubs her right foot against her left leg. I feel comforted just watching her. Like I’m suddenly watching a younger version of Grammy Claire. “Maybe she’ll meet some rich director. With lots of annuities.”
“Mamma is not a gold digger!” I start to shout, then wonder if they can hear us downstairs.
“You’re so dramatic! I didn’t say she was, but sometimes a woman needs money, especially if she can’t work herself. That’s just life, Tara, face it. Our family is broken up, and with Grammy Claire gone, Mamma needs options.”
“Then I hate real life — and our family is not broken!” Angry, I brush at the tears running down my cheek. But deep in my heart I know it is broken. Daddy’s off with a new wife and his Hollywood deals, Mamma’s nursing her grief in the South Wing, and Grammy Claire, the only light I had left, is dead. So sudden, so quick. So final.
“Can I see those keys?”
“No!” I turn away, the key digging into my palm. After all the terrible things Riley just said I never want to show her anything again! “Later,” I tell her. “Right now I’m gonna look for the next clue.”
Key Number Five slips into the keyhole and the door clicks open.
Riley and I stare at each other. My ears start to drone like a bumblebee.
“You’re scared,” she tells me in a loud stage whisper.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are, I can see it in your jiggly eyes. And you want to chew on your hair so bad you’re ready to chomp a whole chunk of it.”
“You’re a brat!”
She smiles like she knows it and doesn’t care a whit. Why were big sisters ever invented?
As I turn the knob, the oak door swings inward. With the very first step inside, my eyes are drawn to the ceiling.
The room is one huge circular shape, and the ceiling is a dome of windows staring straight up at the blue sky. White clouds float past the dusty panes. Two of the windows are propped open a few inches, and three seconds later, a cluster of butterflies swoops down through the window and heads straight for us.
I do not know whether I was then a girl dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a girl.
~ZHUANG ZHOU~
Fast as she can, Riley retreats, arms flailing, eyes bugging out. She collides into a table holding a stack of petri dishes and they all crash together, seconds away from dashing into pieces on the floor. The sound of cracking glass hurts my ears and I close my eyes, waiting to be drenched in thousand
s of glass shards. But the petri dishes right themselves again and the worst is averted. I peek open one eye and breathe a sigh of relief.
“Why are those things coming in here?” Riley yells, sticking her hands in front of her face.
I hide a smile. Never seen my sister react so scared. I thought she only had irrational aversions to cockroaches, centipedes, and snakes.
Instantly, I shoot out my arm and slam the laboratory door closed so the butterflies can’t escape. This room is obviously their home. This is where the butterflies came from. I know it down deep in my gut.
All three butterflies flutter around me, circling wildly as if they’re excited to see a real, live human. The purple-and-yellow butterfly as well as the translucent one alight on my arms. The Giant Pink latches on to a button of my shirt.
“Oh my gosh!” I whisper to Riley, holding as still as I can. The velvety wings brush my skin, soft as a kiss, gentle as a quiet sigh. “Look!”
“Believe me, I’m looking,” she croaks. “Just keep them away from me! Bugs flying around my face is the worst!”
I think about the times Riley screams when there are spiders scurrying along the bathroom tile. Cockroaches darting around the kitchen late at night.
A new thought comes to me, stronger than ever. This is why Grammy Claire chose me.
The butterflies open and close their wings, their little eyes staring at me, their feet so tiny it’s like a breath of air stirring the hairs of my arms. “Don’t you wish you knew what they were thinking, Riley?”
“Butterflies don’t have a brain.”
“I think they know who I am!” I whisper.
She snorts, moving away from the door to explore the room. “You just happen to be in the way of their flight pattern.”
“They came through the skylight like they knew where they were going.”
Now that I look more carefully, I realize that the room isn’t much of a true laboratory at all. The space does contain tables with lab paraphernalia, trays and test tubes and built-in sinks and faucets, but most of the room is a tangle of trees and vines. Shrubbery and flowers. Like a garden. As if my grandmother had landscaped this upper floor so she wouldn’t have to go outside to enjoy nature. Which is very odd. Grammy Claire loved the outdoors. That’s why she was a botanist. Why not enjoy the butterflies in a private flower garden outside?
Just then the three butterflies shoot off my arms, fluttering toward the sunshine flooding the windows, even though the glass is rain-spattered. “Must be hard to clean,” Riley mutters.
A path of blue tiles meanders through an arch of vines, disappearing into the center of a messy, overgrown garden. No pruning’s been done for at least a year. The place is wild. Trees reach skyward, but it’s like I’ve been transported inside a dark jungle island.
Then I notice splashes of color between the shades of green. As I step deeper into the foliage, I realize that the colors are actually butterflies. More butterflies!
Riley has left the blue-tile path completely. She checks out the tables and pokes around on Grammy Claire’s shelves. I hear glass moving and papers shuffling.
No more butterflies come to me, and the room goes still. Then I halt.
The butterflies aren’t hovering or darting among the flowers at all. Actually, there aren’t many flowers, period. Empty bushes and plants surround me where flowers should be blooming. The plants are dry, withering away. This whole place has been left alone for too long.
With a feeling of dread, I walk up to a spray of dry leaves. A small blue butterfly is perched on the leaf, horribly motionless. Because it’s dead. And then I see another one, and another, a whole pile of delicate blue butterflies.
My hands begin to sweat. I reach out to touch the tiny wings and they turn to dust between my fingers. Small blue butterflies, exactly like the one that danced around Mamma’s chair on the upstairs balcony. The butterfly that made her smile just a little bit.
Feeling sick, I weave through the garden like I’m dizzy. There are splashes of color everywhere, and every time I reach out to touch the yellow or orange or red or purple wings, they fall to powder in my fingers.
Every single butterfly is dead. This is a room full of corpses.
I stand on the blue tiles in the center of that dead garden, unable to believe my own eyes. Then I burst into tears.
“Tara!” Riley calls out. “Are you okay?”
I can hear her bumping into things, trying to find me from the other side of the thick shrubbery. When her arm grabs mine, I whirl around. “They’re dead!” I sob. “How can they all be dead? Every single one! Who killed them?”
I know my sister can’t stand doing what she does next, but she does it anyway. After hating her so frequently over the last five years, I start to love her again. She actually holds my hand tightly in hers and walks with me around the path, pulling me away from the terrible sight.
“You’re right, Tara, but I’m not sure some person killed them. They’ve been here a long time. Probably ran out of food or water,” she goes on. “This place feels like a tomb. No one’s been in here for ages.”
“But why didn’t they just fly through the windows like the other three did?”
She gives me a sympathetic look. “I have no idea.”
My eyes swim with tears until I can hardly see straight. Finally, I take a bunch of deep breaths, purposely not looking at so many butterflies sitting frozen on the shrubbery as we push through the tangle of branches and leaves until we reach the back wall.
“Let’s get out of here, Tara,” Riley finally says. “You’re just getting more upset.”
“But — it’s just so awful.”
“Hey, butterflies don’t last that long anyway. They all die after a season, right? Or a few weeks? Days at the most.”
She has a point, but these butterflies are different; I know it deep in my gut. The way they move, the way they look at me and aren’t afraid. Butterflies don’t just zoom up and land on your heart as a conversation-starter!
A gust of wind comes through the skylight and rustles the room. Grammy Claire must have some wind chimes because I can hear them tinkling like fairy bells. That’s when I see a small table sitting underneath a line of rosebushes without any blooms. On the table is an envelope with my name on it: Tara.
My hands start to shake. There’s the same puddle of purple sealing wax covering the flap.
I glance up, noticing that Riley has disappeared. “Hey, where’d you go?”
“Over here, going through a filing cabinet,” she calls back. “It’s pretty obvious this whole fourth floor used to be Grammy Claire’s laboratory, but the last dates on anything are from about five years ago. I wonder what she was researching about butterflies.”
“Five years ago? That’s when she started living on the islands of Chuuk.”
“Guess she moved all of her current research over there and left all this junk.”
“She was too busy doing amazing things to clean,” I say softly, clutching the new envelope. Shivers of suspense tingle up my spine. “Grammy Claire said she’d dust when she retired.”
Keeping an eye on Riley through the branches, I carefully split the wax seal. Quiet as I can, I unfold the letter with its second, smaller note, my heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings.
Dearest Tara,
How do you like my Secret Butterfly Garden? Isn’t it spectacular? I can only picture in my mind how much you will love it, and I wish I was there to share its beauty and wonder and secrets. Unfortunately, I’m sure the place is dying, but if you can imagine a thousand butterflies in that small space, you can also begin to imagine the excitement of my life’s work. More on that later, but I’m so grateful you’re a smart girl, a girl with a steady head on her shoulders — and a girl who can keep secrets.
Now comes a warning: There are those who would destroy my butterflies, suck the life out of them, and use their power to make themselves wealthy beyond imagination. Yes, I’m talking in riddles — but
I can’t reveal any more within a letter that may or may not reach your hands. I can only hope and pray … and once I’m gone, I can only look down from heaven and wring my hands. I’m afraid I’m already in my hand-wringing phase just writing these letters … and it hurts beyond belief to keep writing these words. Because I want to be with you. To share the beauty and joy and love and magic.
There … I’ve already said too much…. If the Butterfly Garden is dead, probably so much the better. The butterflies can escape through the windows and will hopefully die peacefully within their appointed life span. Unless … there! I just threw my pen across the room! I must smack myself for revealing more than I should.
I feel as though someone is reading over my shoulder….
Stay on course, darling girl. All will be well. I must have faith myself.
Follow the next instructions and don’t let anyone become aware of your actions.
All my love,
Your Grammy Claire
When I finish reading, I’m shaking so bad I slump against the table. My chin jerks up. Riley isn’t paying any attention. She’s reading some old files or ledgers in the far corner. The humming of the pipe organ swirls around the room as I slip the letter back into the envelope.
Quickly, I open the second note. Will someone try to steal it before I have a chance to find matches? The danger level has suddenly raised another notch.
The Secret Butterfly Garden did have answers. At least a few. Nipwisipwis is not a code word — there really are butterflies! And Grammy Claire was keeping them a secret! But why? She said I would have more questions, and she sure as heck got that right.
We’re moving onward! Key Number Six is up and you’ll be undertaking a secret journey, which this key will reveal. Just use your head, Tara.
IMPORTANT: Destroy this note ASAP!
No garden truly blooms until butterflies have danced upon it.
~K. D’ANGELO~
When the Butterflies Came Page 8
