Ruby turned the bear over and over in her hands, attempting to learn something about it, attempting to feel it. But after a moment, she gave up. The bear seemed lifeless, entirely empty of energy, nothing but a cloth shape stuffed with cotton, with two shiny black buttons for eyes and a stitched-on red mouth. Was she getting this feeling because she had for so long refused to use her gift in any important way, and now that she needed it, wanted it, it wasn’t available?
Well, maybe. But even as she considered that possibility, she knew that wasn’t what was happening here. The poignant truth was that the bear had spent its whole lonely existence, not in the hands of a child, but sitting on a shelf, on this shelf. She knew with a sad conviction that Angela had never loved this little bear, had never slept with it, had never even touched it. Regretfully, she put it back in its place on the shelf, and then, one after the other, picked up each of the toys: the other bears, the ball, the blocks, the jack-in-the-box. They all had the same blank and lifeless emptiness. They had never been played with. They had never been loved.
By now feeling deeply perplexed, she turned to the bed and picked up the child’s pillow, holding it against her and feeling the same lifelessness. On the top of the bureau, she found a pair of child’s white leather shoes, high-top, lace-up little Victorian boots. But the soles were immaculate and the leather showed no signs of wear. And when she opened the drawers of the bureau, she saw tidy stacks of clothing for a little girl of two or three—underclothes, play clothes, little dresses and pinafores, all well-made clothes and beautiful, in the old-fashioned style of a century before. Old-fashioned, yes, but new-looking, never worn. She picked up one of the little pinafores and saw, with a shiver of recognition, the name Angela embroidered on it in loopy pink letters. Now she was sure. This had been Angela’s nursery for the first three years of her life—the only three years of her life.
But there was something wrong with that idea, Ruby knew, for despite all the personal items that made the room look as if a child had once played and slept here, it was no more lived-in than the other rooms on the floor. It was like a stage set, with toys for props and drawers full of costumes. She stood for a moment, looking around, feeling bewildered, trying to puzzle it out. On the one hand, Claire’s aunt had insisted that only she and Mrs. Blackwood had ever lived in the house. On the other, there were five headstones in the graveyard, Angela’s among them. And this was Angela’s nursery. So why hadn’t her pillow been used? Why hadn’t her boots and little dresses been worn, her stuffed bear loved?
Ruby’s shoulders slumped. Well, it was still possible that she was the problem. It had been a long day. She was tired and hungry, and she had barely missed being struck by lightning an hour before. And while she was psychic, she wasn’t very skilled at it—skilled, that is, in using her gift to pick up information from people’s possessions. And since Angela’s mother had been in her nineties when she died, over thirty years ago, Angela herself must have been dead for longer than that, a hundred years, perhaps. And surely, in the decades since, the vibrations would have faded.
“When?” Ruby whispered into the twilit air of the empty room. “When did you die, Angela?” She was surprised when she heard her voice—she had thought she was just thinking the question, holding it in her mind. But now that the words were out there and audible, hanging in front of her like pale breath on a chilly morning, she went on.
“And how?” she persisted. “How did it happen? Did all five of you go at once, or over time? And what about your father? Was it an illness, an epidemic? An accident, or some sort of violent death? How?” She paused, and the question echoed eerily in the silence. “Hey, Rachel,” she said softly, “how about a little help here, huh?”
She stood listening for a moment, the aching loneliness of the five little graves in the cemetery, the sadness of the unloved toys, the emptiness of the small, silent bed—all of it washing over her like a chilling wave. But there was nothing more to be learned from this room, and Claire was waiting for her downstairs. She turned toward the door with a sense of something like resignation.
But just as she put her hand to the doorknob, she smelled the faint scent of violets, the same fragrance she had smelled in the drawing room, and heard the sound of choked sobbing, a woman’s hopeless, despairing weeping, just on the other side of the door.
The room had been warm, like the rest of the house, but all of a sudden, the temperature plummeted, as if an icy polar wind had suddenly breezed into the room, sweeping out all the warmth. Ruby stood trembling, cold inside and out, wanting desperately to open the door and comfort the crying woman, yet desperately afraid of what might happen if she did. She would come face-to-face with Rachel, or whatever the thing was that she and Claire had named Rachel. And if she did…
And if she did? She bit her lip until she tasted salty blood. She wasn’t sure what would happen, but she knew what she feared. She would be drawn into that restless, unmoored spirit, she would become sister to that undead soul of grief and lost to herself forever.
Feeling the almost irresistible, magnetic attraction, Ruby pressed her forehead against the door, tightening her muscles and her hold on the doorknob, pushing back with all her will and physical strength against the pull of whatever was on the other side, knowing with the most awful certainty that the closed door between her and Rachel was all that was saving her. Saving her from what? She didn’t know. But she knew that if she opened the door, if she stepped out into the hall, Rachel would take possession of her, would draw her into that terrible grief, would drown her in it. And that would be the end of her life as she knew it.
The sobbing went on, growing louder to a tremulous crescendo, then softer, as if muted by an unbearable grief. But loud or soft, the sound seemed to vibrate through Ruby’s flesh and bones, filling her, as if she were an empty vessel, with Rachel’s despairing bereavement and loss. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there—five minutes? Ten? A half hour? As she clung to the doorknob, feeling her knees weaken, her resolve falter, even as the cold seemed to wrap around her more intently than ever, its icy tentacles probing her veins, freezing her blood.
But as the moments passed, the contest—if that’s what it was—seemed to turn in Ruby’s direction. The power of the attraction seemed to diminish, lessening its pull on her, as if Rachel were yielding, reluctantly but at last, to Ruby’s strength, and to the fact that Ruby was firmly rooted in her own life and refused to be pulled into Rachel’s spectral existence.
But even as the tug-of-war eased, it seemed to shift its terms, as if Rachel had been taking the measure of Ruby’s physical and psychological strength. Understanding that she had met her match and realizing that she could not pull Ruby into herself, she would use her in another way. It was as if she had become practical. She was saying, Well, then, if not that, then this.
And then, just when it seemed that the balance of power had shifted in Ruby’s favor, an idea slipped, specter-like and seductive, into Ruby’s mind. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew that it came directly from Rachel, and that Rachel was telling her what she wanted, what she needed. Ruby couldn’t quite give words to the idea—it was more like a glimmer of a faraway lamp in a fog, a feeling-glimpse of an intention or a whisper of a prayer, too distant to quite catch. She closed her eyes and put her ear against the door.
What is it, Rachel? she cried silently. What? What do you want? What would ease this pain? What would release you from this—
At that moment, there was a loud metallic whir from the other side of the room. She turned, startled, to see the jack-in-the-box lid snap open. The jack itself—a sailor doll with a painted-on smile, wearing a blue uniform jacket and a white sailor cap—jumped up and began to wave his arms, accompanied by a tinny hurdy-gurdy melody, very loud, impossibly loud, so loud that Ruby had to put both hands over her ears. Sailing sailing over the bounding main For many a stormy wind will blow ere Jack comes home again Sailing sailing over the bounding main For many a stormy wind
<
br /> The fun-house music stopped abruptly. The sailor jack disappeared back into his box, and the lid snapped shut. Ruby dropped her hands and sucked in her breath. Then, quite suddenly in the silence, she heard a child’s sweet giggle—sweet, yes, reminding her of Baby Grace’s sweet laugh. To her horror, she saw that the little red rocking chair was rocking steadily, as if Angela herself were sitting in it, delighting in the musical antics of Sailor Jack.
And then, as if on cue, the tinny music-box melody came again, Sailing sailing, and Jack popped up again and saluted until the music ended and he dived back into his metal box. Sailing sailing over the bounding main For many a stormy wind will blow ere Jack comes home again Sailing sailing over the
Ruby watched, trying to catch her breath. The room was as empty and bare of life as it had been. But there sat the rocking chair, silently, steadily rocking. And in the quiet, the child’s happy giggle continued until, outside the door, Rachel’s sobbing began again, rising to a wail of unspeakable loss and grief.
Then it was over. The chair stopped rocking. The giggle ceased abruptly. The sobbing gradually faded into the distance, as if the weeping woman had walked to the end of the hall and turned to go down the stairs, carrying her grief with her. Then it, too, was gone, and there was absolute silence.
And at that moment, with a sound that seemed louder than it was in the stillness, a book slipped off the shelf and fell, open, onto the floor. Ruby fought against the urge for a moment, then crossed the room and bent to pick it up. It was a book of nursery rhymes illustrated with colorful Victorian drawings. It had fallen open to a page that bore the rhyme that had haunted her all day.
There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.
She stared at the page, her chest tightening, the pulse in her throat pounding. What was this supposed to mean? What did it have to do with this place? What was going on here?
Hurriedly, she closed the book and put it back on the shelf from which it had fallen, then went to the door. The jack-in-the-box, the rocking chair, the child’s sweet giggle, the anguished sobbing, the book. It was all too much, just too much. Moving like a woman clutched in the vise of a nightmare, fighting a wave of light-headed nausea, she left the room and groped her way down the shadowy hallway, which was still filled with the faint scent of violets.
But the glimmer of an idea that had slipped into her mind as she’d stood on the other side of the door was still with her as she went down the stairs.
* * *
IN the kitchen, Claire had taken the salad fixings out of the refrigerator and opened a package of spaghetti. It wasn’t quite seven yet, but outdoors, the dusky twilight had deepened. As Ruby came into the room, Claire flicked on the kitchen light. It didn’t work.
“Uh-oh,” Claire said, trying it again. “Were the lights working upstairs?”
“I didn’t try,” Ruby mumbled. “It wasn’t that dark.” She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. “Listen, Claire, I’ve been in the nursery. Have you spent any time there? Do you remember that little jack-in-the box on the shelf under the window? Have you ever heard—”
But Claire wasn’t paying attention. “Might be a circuit breaker,” she said worriedly, taking a flashlight out of a drawer. “Maybe there was some kind of surge on the power line when the lightning struck that tree. It could have knocked the breakers off. The breaker box is in the storeroom. I’ll go check.”
“I’ll go with you,” Ruby offered. She didn’t want to be alone right now. She would wait to tell Claire what had happened until after they had dealt with the lights. And by that time, maybe that glimmer of an idea would seem more clear. Right now, it was so shapeless, so amorphous, that she couldn’t put words to it.
“Sure, come along.” Claire clicked the flashlight in her hand, testing it. “Well, hell,” she said disgustedly. “I just put these batteries in last week. I—” She stopped and looked at Ruby. “You don’t think—” She clicked the switch again. “Rats,” she said disgustedly. “Just like the cell phones.”
“And the cars,” Ruby said, feeling resigned. She took the candle and matches that Claire handed her. “I’m afraid I don’t hold out much hope for the circuit breakers, either.”
She was right. The breakers were all on, although the power was indisputably off. Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t in the breaker box.
“Maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with Rachel,” Claire said as they made their way back to the kitchen through the dark hallway, Ruby carrying the flickering candle. “It could be a transformer out on the main road. In fact, for all we know, the power could be off all over this part of the county. It’s not like we can phone the electric co-op and ask whether the service is down.”
“Has this happened before?” Ruby asked.
“No, but there’s no reason it couldn’t. If I turn this place into a B and B, I should probably plan to buy a generator for backup power. It’s not going to be a big problem for just you and me, but if we had a houseful of guests, it would be another matter entirely.” She sighed. “Although I really wanted to watch the weather forecast on TV to see if we’re under some kind of alert. This morning, the forecasters on the San Antonio channels were talking about a tropical storm making landfall this evening. We’re so far inland, I wouldn’t think it could be a problem, but you never know. Sometimes those storms spin off tornadoes. That’s all we’d need—to get hit by one of those.”
“You don’t have a battery radio?” Ruby asked, as they came into the kitchen. She put the candle on the table. “Well, that’s dumb,” she said with a wry laugh. “If Rachel doesn’t want us to use our cell phones or the flashlight, she’d probably draw the line at the battery radio, too.”
But why? she wondered, even as she made the remark. Assuming that there was some kind of logic to cutting them off from the rest of the world in this way, what was it? But maybe ghosts didn’t need logic, or at least the kind of logic that would make sense to someone who wasn’t a ghost. She thought about the sobbing, the giggle, the sailor jack-in-the-box, and felt cold in her bones.
Claire, meanwhile, was thinking practical thoughts. “Here’s something else we have to consider, Ruby. Without electricity, the water well pump doesn’t work. There’s probably enough water in the pressure tank for flushing, if we’re careful, and there’s some in the fridge for drinking. But we’d better skip our showers tonight. If the power hasn’t come on by the time Sam gets back tomorrow, I’ll have to send him to find out what’s going on.”
“Assuming his truck will run,” Ruby remarked in a light tone, and managed a scrap of a smile.
Claire rolled her eyes. “Let’s not go there, shall we? At least we’ll have plenty of light tonight.” She went to one of the kitchen cupboards, took out two lamps and put them on the table, then stood staring at them. “I hope you know how to operate these things. I don’t.”
“Actually, I do,” Ruby said. “I have a couple at home, in case of emergencies. Do they already have lamp oil in them?” She saw that they did, so she took off the glass lamp chimney, turned up the wick, then lit a match and touched it to the wick. When it caught, she turned the wick down slightly so it wouldn’t smoke, and put the chimney back on.
“Voilà,” she said, setting one of the lamps in the middle of the kitchen table. “A little pioneer magic.”
“Laura Ingalls Wilder would be proud of you,” Claire said with a laugh, and blew out the candle. “Now, how about supper? The gas stove is working, so we can cook our spaghetti.” She stepped to the small stove and turned on a burner. “See? I guess Rachel didn’t think to zap our propane tank. Either that, or she can’t figure out how.” She put the lamp on the pine table next to the stove and took down a pan from the rack on the wall.
Ruby froze. “Claire,” she said. Her
chest felt tight. Her voice sounded as if it were strangling in her throat. “Claire, look.”
“Yeah?” Claire turned, the pan in her hand. “Look where?” Her eyes widened as she saw the look on Ruby’s face. “Are you okay, Ruby? What’s wrong?” She turned to look in the direction of Ruby’s gaze, and gasped. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
They were staring at the black chalkboard that hung on the wall next to the rack of pots and pans, with Menus printed across the top in an old-fashioned script and a chalk tray with a small eraser at the bottom. Earlier, the board had displayed Claire’s perfectly ordinary grocery list—bread, milk, yogurt, coffee. But in the flickering light of the oil lamp, they saw that the list had been erased, and in its place was a date, scrawled shakily across the width of the board. Sept. 8, 1900. And beneath that, four words, four nonsense words.
crooked
man
crooked
sixpence
Chapter Thirteen
Santolina (Santolina chamaecyparissus) is a shrubby gray or green plant twelve to eighteen inches tall, with yellow button-like flowers in summer. It does especially well on arid hillsides and in dry gardens. A moderately fast grower, a single plant is likely to spread three to five feet, rooting along the lower branches. It is often used as a border plant, and clipped. Medicinally, it was used as a children’s vermifuge. The dried leaves are strongly aromatic and were often placed in drawers and chests to protect clothing against moths.
Widow's Tears Page 18
