“Wow,” he says, and I nod in agreement. My heart is beating so fast now that it feels like it’s about to burst from my chest. I’m breathing as hard as if I’d been running. Oscar circles my legs nervously, like he knows something’s wrong.
I can’t believe it. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t think I was right about what I was seeing and hearing, but still, I don’t know if I ever actually really believed I would capture proof. Or at least, not proof like this, not something so clearly visible to the naked eye, something that the person standing next to me can see as easily as I can.
At the center of the photo, in the center of my room, surrounded by board games and stuffed animals, is the very clear, very distinct, utterly undeniable shadow of a little girl.
Before I can stop him Nolan is sprinting up the stairs.
“What are you doing?” I shout as I run after him.
“I want to get a better look!” he shouts back. He throws the door to my room open and practically leaps up onto my desk chair. “This is where you were standing when you took the photo, right?”
I nod. “I thought I’d be able to capture the entire room from there.”
“You weren’t wrong,” Nolan says appraisingly, holding the photo out in front of him.
I shake my head. “Apparently not.”
“She was right there.” He points to the center of the room.
“You’re not going to forget about this in the morning, are you?”
“I’m never going to forget about this,” Nolan replies solemnly, stepping down from my chair. He looks around the room, blinking. “Geez. That’s a lot of pink.”
“Really?” I say breathlessly, feigning surprise. “I hadn’t noticed.” I pretend to look around like I’m seeing it for the first time. But when my gaze falls on my bed, I freeze, no longer worried what Nolan thinks of the pink or Dr. Hoo or my unicorn collection. Instead, I hold up my hand and point at the checkerboard.
Someone has made the next move.
CHAPTER TEN
Kat’s Eyes
It’s dark by the time Mom gets home, and it’s starting to—what else is new?—rain. The combination of the rain and the lower autumn temperatures creates a damp kind of cold I’ve never felt before, so that even when the thermometer says it’s in the fifties, I shiver as though it’s below freezing out. At least I’m getting more use out of all my oversized grandpa sweaters; I’ve been collecting them from thrift shops for years, even though Ashley correctly pointed out that I hardly needed them in Austin. I guess part of me knew I’d have a use for them eventually.
Nolan has long since left to get started on his homework. He asked whether he could take the photos with him, but I shook my head. I needed them, I insisted. I wasn’t about to postpone the chance to show Mom my evidence. I lay the pictures out on the kitchen table and waited.
When Mom finally walks in I have to scramble to keep Lex from running out the front door.
“That’s strange,” Mom says, and I brighten. Maybe this won’t actually be that hard. Maybe she’s already begun to accept that strange things are going on here.
“I know,” I agree enthusiastically. “Lex is an indoor cat. Plus, it’s raining, and cats hate the rain. Wonder why he’d want to run away.”
Mom’s face is wet with rainwater, and the files of papers she always carries with her are completely soaked.
“Did your umbrella break or something?” I ask, and Mom looks surprised by the question. She reaches into her bag and pulls out her umbrella, dry and folded up neatly.
“I guess I forgot I had it,” she says absently.
“How could you forget in weather like this?” I ask, but Mom doesn’t answer. Instead, she shrugs off her raincoat, letting it fall on the floor. Her straight hair is twisted into a damp ponytail, and her pastel-colored scrubs are wet up to her knees. She kicks off her chunky black clogs, and they land with a thud on top of her raincoat as she makes her way into the kitchen.
I shake my head. She usually rags on me for leaving a trail of clothes between the front door and my room when I get home. Maybe it’s just because it’s so wet and she didn’t want to hang it up, where it might . . . what? Dry?
I shake my head. It’s the end of a long day, she’s tired, and she’s soaked, so dropping her coat on the floor is no big deal. Everyone gets lazy from time to time, even someone as neat and organized as Mom.
I turn on all the lights in the kitchen. I’ve laid the photos out on the table by the window, the one with the little girl’s shadow smack in the center of the table, where she can’t miss it.
“I have something to show you,” I begin.
Mom shakes her head. “Can it wait? I haven’t even had anything to eat yet.”
I don’t mention that I haven’t had dinner either; I’d been waiting for her to get home. Instead, I say, “I’ll make you something. Anything you want.” My voice comes out extra-eager. But it’s not dinner I’m excited about.
“Right now I just want a hot bath and an even hotter cup of coffee.” Mom heads for the coffeemaker, her eyes half-closed.
“Coffee? At this hour?”
“Yes, Sunshine. At this hour. I still have work to do, and I’ve been exhausted all day.”
I sway backward as though I’ve just been shoved, away from her. I’m not sure she’s ever talked to me so curtly. I remind myself that it’s not her fault. She doesn’t know why she was so tired all day, and I do—we were up half the night, terrified.
Mom fills her mug and heads for the table, the soaking wet papers dripping in her arms. She’s about to set them down on the table—it’s like she doesn’t even see the photos lying there—and I shout, “No!”
Mom spins around. “What is it now?”
I shake my head, imagining my photos stained with a ring of coffee from the bottom of her mug, spattered with water from the edges of her files. They’d be useless then. She’d be able to blame the shadows on the damage.
“You could have ruined my photos,” I say, genuinely irritated. She might have destroyed them. I mean, okay, she doesn’t know how important they are.
“What?” Mom says, blinking as though she’s seeing them for the first time. “Oh, sorry, honey. I didn’t see them.”
Okay, I know they’re black and white, and I know that even with all the lights on, this room is still pretty dim—which is pathetic, considering that it’s the best-lit room in the house, with a fairly tacky chandelier hanging down above the table—but come on! I mean, there’s a stack of photos there. How could she not see them?
“Mom, I know you’re tired and I know you’re busy, but I have something I really want to show you.” I walk over to her and take the papers from her, placing them gently on the counter behind us, where they can drip all they want without doing any harm.
“Look,” I say, pointing at the photos. “It’ll only take a second.”
“You took some photos of the house. They’re great, honey. And it’s so nice to see you embracing our new home like this, finally.” She bends her head to sip from her coffee mug. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but from here it looks like the coffee is too hot for drinking. I don’t mean that it’s still steaming; I mean it looks like it’s bubbling, boiling.
I shake my head as Mom swallows the coffee smoothly. I must be imagining things.
“Look,” I try again, pointing to the photo in the center. The one where the shadow is most distinct. “Look at that.”
Mom lifts the photo off the table and holds it up in front of her face. She narrows her eyes.
“Sunshine, your room is a mess,” she says finally.
“What?”
“Why are your games and toys scattered everywhere like that? I hope you put everything away.”
I shake my head. “Don’t look at the toys. Look closer, at the center of the room.” I resist the urge to grab the photo and hold it up in front of her. Nolan didn’t need me to tell him to look closer. He thought the shadow was every bit as obvious as I did.
“What is it you want me to look at?” Mom asks, sighing impatiently. She lowers the photo out of her eye line.
I pause before answering. Maybe I should wait until tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow Mom will have had a good night’s sleep and maybe the sun will be shining so that the light will be better in here and Mom will be able to see.
A clap of thunder sounds in the distance, like maybe the universe is laughing at me for thinking that it might be sunny in the morning.
“Don’t you see it?” I ask, surprised at how small my voice sounds. I sound about half my age. “Don’t you see the shadow in the center of the room?”
Mom shakes her head. “I don’t see anything.”
I swallow a gasp, wringing my hands like an old lady who’s worried about the weather. I mean, it was one thing all those nights when I heard footsteps and laughter and Mom said it was just the wind, just branches from the Douglas firs hitting the side of the house—that was Mom just being her skeptical self. But this isn’t just a little cynicism. It was scary enough when she didn’t remember what happened this morning, but right now she literally doesn’t see the same image that Nolan and I saw in the photograph that’s right in front of her.
I look up at the ceiling, wondering what the ghost is doing up on our second floor, what kinds of tricks she’s played on my mother’s brain to blind her like this.
“Mom—” I start, but she cuts me off.
“Please tell me this isn’t more ghost nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense,” I say, still in that small voice.
“It is nonsense, Sunshine, and I really wish you’d cut it out.” Unlike mine, Mom’s voice is anything but small. “I know you’re not crazy about Ridgemont, but I am getting sick and tired of your complaining.”
“It has nothing to do with whether I like Ridgemont or not,” I say, and now my voice sounds even more like a little kid’s, and in the worst possible way. I take a deep breath and try to control it. I need to sound calm, to make a compelling argument, using scientific evidence—the photos—the kind of argument that Mom will understand. “I just wanted to show you—”
“Show me what?” Mom says almost shouting and she drops the photo. It flutters down to the floor and I pick it up frantically, scared she might step on it or something, relieved that at least she didn’t rip it in half before she let it go.
“Sunshine,” Mom says before I can answer. She’s not exactly yelling, but she still sounds angry. She puts her mug down on the counter with such a loud bang I’m surprised it doesn’t break into a thousand pieces. “I’ve had just about enough of this. Go to your room.”
“Go to my room?” I echo. She’s literally never, not once, sent me to my room. “Seriously?”
“I need some peace and quiet, and it’s quite clear I’m not going to get any with you around. Go to your room,” she repeats.
“Fine,” I answer. I gather up the photos—who knows what condition they’d be in in the morning if I left them down here with her—and stomp upstairs. I even slam my door behind me.
Alone in my room, I shuffle through the photos, looking at them one after the other. The shadow is still there, clear as daylight, and Mom couldn’t see it. And she yelled at me—she’s never yelled at me. Anytime we disagreed it always ended in a discussion. And I mean, don’t get me wrong, those conversations could get heated, but it never ended with me being sent to my room like a naughty child in a Victorian novel, banished to her room without any supper. This isn’t like her. This isn’t like us.
I put the photos on my desk and turn to face my bed. The checkers game is waiting for me, so I make my next move, sliding a second checker forward, then climb into bed, careful not to disturb the game.
I turn off the lights. Lightning flashes outside again, and this time the thunder follows almost immediately; the storm is practically directly on top of us. In the flash of light I see that the ghost has already made another move: it’s my turn again. I press another checker across the board and wait for another flash of lightning. The mildew smell in here is stronger than ever; maybe the rain brings it out.
Or maybe the ghost has something to do with it, I think, remembering the wet bathroom: the soaked tiles and the damp towels, the water dripping from every surface.
A few flashes of lightning go by, but the ghost doesn’t make her next move. “Your turn,” I say out loud, but another flash of lightning reveals that the checkers haven’t moved since my last turn. The mildew smell fades, just a little. Carefully I lower the checkerboard to the floor so I won’t disturb it in my sleep. I guess she’s done playing.
For now.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Home Alone
Mom is called back to the hospital for an emergency in the middle of the night. She wakes me up to let me know she’s leaving, and I consider begging her to stay, but I kind of think it won’t do any good. After all, she doesn’t think there’s anything worth staying for. And it must be a real emergency, if she’s being called back to work at this hour.
“I hope everything will be okay,” I call out to her before she leaves. She smiles at me; I guess that means our fight is over, at least for now. I have to concentrate to hear the sound of her car backing out of the driveway and turning on to the street over the thunder, wind, and rain. The thunder and lightning are simultaneous now; the storm has settled on top of us with such force that it feels like it will never stop.
Instead of falling back to sleep, I go over the evening’s events in my head: Is Mom really incapable of seeing what Nolan and I saw? Does that mean Nolan and I are both crazy and the shadow is some kind of joint hallucination—or is Mom crazy, because she can’t see it? Or is there something to this magic that you can’t perceive it above a certain age or something? Like maybe you have to be young and pure of heart, like in all those movies and fairy tales about children who slip into enchanted worlds without adult supervision?
I shake my head. No—a photograph is a photograph, and Nolan and I haven’t known each other long enough to have some kind of shared delusion.
Thunder crashes, and Oscar jumps onto my bed, curling himself up beside me the same way he did our first night in this house. “What’s the matter, buddy?” I ask, stroking the soft spot between his ears. He loves being petted like this; if he were a cat, he’d be purring right now. But instead, he’s shaking, trying to hide his face beneath my arm.
“You never used to be so scared of thunder, big boy,” I coo. Oscar is a little dog, but Mom and I both always describe him as big. Suddenly I hear something else, hiding in between crashes of thunder. It’s not the thunder that’s got Oscar so frightened.
It’s the sound of a child crying.
Okay, I know that in, say, a court of law or something, a dog can’t exactly testify as a witness. But there’s no denying that Oscar is another person—well, you know, another living creature—who feels that this house is haunted. He’s been scared and jumpy ever since we moved into this house. And Lex literally tried to run out the front door this evening, something he never, ever tried to do in our old house. So that’s four of us—Oscar, Lex, me, Nolan—at least one of whom is an impartial third party, may I add—who know something is going on here.
“Why are you crying?” I ask my empty room. “Didn’t you like playing with me? I thought that was what you wanted.” Oscar nestles under my arm. “Come on, please answer me! Are you the reason this house is so cold and creepy? Can I help you?” I shake my head: what am I doing, asking a ghost if she needs my help? I’m the one who needs help. I’m the one who’s stuck in a haunted house, fighting with my mother for the first time in sixteen years.
“Why are you crying?” I plead. I stare at the ceiling like I’m waiting for it to fall down on top of me. “What are you trying to tell me—that you want to play, that you need my help?”
Lightning rips across the sky, illuminating the room once more. What I see makes me scream. Oscar dives down to the ground and under the bed. “I’m sorry, boy,” I
say, but I’m whispering now instead of shouting, and even with his dog hearing, I doubt he can hear me. Even if he could hear me, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to make him feel any better.
Dr. Hoo is flying around in circles just beneath the ceiling, his wings dripping water as though he were flying through the rain outside—Dr. Hoo, my long-dead, long-since-stuffed owl. His wings make so much noise that I think maybe the entire room is about to levitate.
I reach for the light beside my bed, turn it on, and grab my cell phone. Maybe Mom will be able to see this. Maybe Mrs. Soderberg and I were wrong: sure, film can capture things that aren’t visible to the naked eye, but when the naked eye can see what I’m seeing now, digital should work just fine.
With my phone’s camera trained on the owl, I hit record even though my hands are shaking, so the video will be shaky too. Even though the camera doesn’t make a sound—no click, click, click like when I take photos with film—Dr. Hoo seems to sense a change in the air. Abruptly, he stops flying in circles and hovers in place for a heartbeat, his wings still flapping mightily. He looks around, his owl’s neck turning almost 360 degrees just like they said on all those nature shows. Finally he looks down, fixing his gaze on me. I shake my head; the owl’s eyes aren’t real. They’re made of glass, long since replaced by the taxidermist. Still, Dr. Hoo seems to perceive me, and he swoops down in my direction.
Oh my gosh, Dr. Hoo is going to kill me! Ashley was right all along. Taxidermied animals are creepy. I should have been grossed out by him.
I scream again—sorry Oscar!—but at the last second Dr. Hoo shifts, and instead of hitting me, he hits the lamp at my bedside, knocking it over and plunging the room into darkness. I drop my phone. I hear it thud against the carpet on the floor, and I tumble out of bed to search for it, but I can’t find it. There’s no more lightning to illuminate my dark room; the storm has moved on. The sound of flapping wings ceases. Even the falling rain has dwindled into just a slight trickle down the window-pane. Oscar peeks his head out from under the bed and crawls into my lap, panting as though it’s hot in here.
The Haunting of Sunshine Girl Page 8
