by Kelly Creagh
“Your son earned that car, Mr. Nethers,” Bruce said.
Isobel lowered herself to kneel in front of the door. Closing one eye, she peered through the old-fashioned keyhole.
Beyond the open archway, she could see Bruce standing behind the counter, his shoulders stooped and bent at a slight angle. He scowled at the man on the other side of the register, a tall, straight figure dressed in a spotless black business suit. He stood with his broad back to Isobel, his glossy hair shining like coal.
“Earned it how? Working for you?” Varen’s father pointed a finger in the old man’s face. “You are not his family,” he seethed.
Isobel felt her blood surge hot in her veins. Rage flared within her, and she had to clench her hands into fists to keep from tearing the door open and starting her own yelling. The fear of being caught, however, kept her rooted to her hiding place.
“I’m not so certain he has a family,” Bruce said. “He never talks of one. His mother left, that much I do know. ” He kept his own voice steady and low, wielding inflection in place of volume. And it seemed his aim had landed true. Varen’s dad turned his head in her direction, almost as though he’d been dealt a slap, and she saw his face for the first time.
His sharp and angular features collapsed before hardening again.
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“Our family’s business is none of your concern,” said Mr. Nethers. The anger and bravado in his tone had drained away and was replaced by a cold matter-of-factness.
Bruce spoke again, wheezing between his words, his throat clogged with suppressed coughs. “I’m . . . afraid that the reality here . . . is that he is no longer any of your business. Not anymore. He turned eighteen week before last. But you knew that, of course. ”
Varen’s birthday had passed? Isobel had never even asked him when it was. And now he’d turned—
“Eighteen, Mr. Nethers. Do you know what that means? It means that even if he does choose to return, he no longer has to go back to you, sir. ”
Isobel could see the tremble begin in those big, meaty hands, the quake traveling up his solid frame as they formed into boulder-shaped fists.
The outburst came like a roar of thunder. “He is my son!” Varen’s dad shouted, loud enough to cause the bowl-shaped light fixtures to ring. “You are not his father. I am!” He pounded the counter again, causing a row of stacked paperbacks to slide.
“Then why don’t you try acting like it,” Bruce said, at last starting to shout himself, “instead of waiting around until it’s too late? Until he’s run into trouble at school or vanished altogether? Where have you been, Mr. Nethers? Where have you been all this time besides at the bottom of a bottle?”
A hush fell over the shop.
The sound of her breathing became unbearably loud in Isobel’s ears.
Her phone vibrated in her hand. She fumbled to open it and found two texts from Gwen. The first, she realized, was the one she’d received upstairs but had neglected to check.
WHOA. SOME DUDE JUST PULLED UP IN A LEXUS. LOOKS LIKE PACINO FROM THE GODFATHER.
WHAT’S GOING ON IN THERE? WHO IS THAT GUY? WHY IS HE YELLING??? I CAN HEAR HIM FROM OUT HERE.
I sobel hurried to type a response. V’S DAD. STAY THERE.
Her thumb slid to the send button, but before she could press it, the phone slipped out of her grasp. She gasped as it hit the floor with a loud crack, snapping itself shut like a clamshell.
She clapped both hands over her mouth, staring at her phone in wide-eyed horror.
“What was that?” Varen’s father demanded.
Isobel’s eyes shot back to the door. Her heart began to pound like a fist against her sternum.
“Wh-what was what?” Bruce stammered. “What are you talking about?”
“That sound. ”
“I didn’t hear anything. ”
“Of course you didn’t. ”
“Really, Mr. Nethers, I’m surprised you can hear anything at all above your own—Wait! Where are you going?”
Footsteps. Hard, heavy footsteps. She heard them thumping against the worn wooden floorboards, getting closer.
Isobel began to quiver all over, bolted to the spot like an animal about to be eaten alive, knowing the predator had already caught her scent.
“You can’t go back there!” she heard Bruce call. “Stop! Do you hear me, I said stop!”
“Varen!” called Mr. Nethers in a gruff voice.
She stumbled back from the door, knowing that there was nowhere she could hide. There was nothing upstairs. No closets, no furniture. Nothing. She was stuck. Trapped.
Snatching her phone from the floor, Isobel clutched it tightly and whirled.
“Varen!” the voice boomed from just outside. “Varen! I swear to God if you’re here . . . ”
She clambered up the stairs, hands over feet, but the toe of her tennis shoe caught on the lip of one of the steps. The stair pulled loose with a clatter.
Isobel fell forward, the edges of the stairs jutting into her ribs and banging her shins. Wincing, she bit back a cry and twisted to look behind her, at the plank she had inadvertently yanked free. Beneath it lay a long black hole, a hollow space like a small, narrow grave, large and deep enough for a person to fit through sideways.
The doorknob jiggled, then began to turn.
Isobel sprang for the hole and dropped inside, landing on her feet. The top of her head still poked above the open stair. She reached an arm out to grab the loose plank and pulled it over her. Hearing the squeak of hinges, she sank down quickly, the board settling back into place with a muffled thump.
Isobel squatted in the tight space. Balancing on the balls of her feet, she tried not to think about the cobwebs she couldn’t see or the pill bugs or brown recluse spiders that might be crawling over her shoes at that very moment. Not when there were worse monsters stalking the world directly above.
Isobel’s phone, still in one hand, vibrated continuously. Isobel knew that Gwen must be trying to call her, but she silenced the hum and sent the call to voice mail.
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Overhead, footsteps hit the stairs like grenades on a battlefield. Dust and grit shook down around her, pieces of grime landing in her hair.
A heavy shadow tromped up the spine of the staircase, momentarily blotting out the horizontal strips of light that peeked through the thread-thin cracks between the rise and tread of each step.
“I know I heard something,” Varen’s dad muttered when he reached the top landing.
“What you heard,” Bruce grunted, “is an old house full of noisy ghosts. You won’t find anything up there, Mr. Nethers. At least nothing tangible enough for you to lay your hands on and bully around. ”
“Ghosts . . . ? I don’t believe in ghosts. ”
He began to descend, the step she had dropped through complaining the loudest beneath his weight.
“If you see my son,” Varen’s dad said, his tone calmer now, more controlled—businesslike, “tell him he needs to come home. So his stepmother can get some rest. So that goddamned cat of his will stop its whining. ”
After that, the footsteps began to fade away. Like a storm that had blown itself out, the thundering tapered off into hollow thudding, growing farther and farther away until she heard the jingle of the bells, followed by the slamming of the front door.
Bruce’s whistling breath dissolved into a stream of fresh coughing. Listening, Isobel heard him shuffle off, panting and winded.
She looked down at her phone as it buzzed yet again.
She flipped it open, ignoring the scroll of texts waiting for her.
IS HE LEAVING? she typed.
NO. NOT YET, Gwen texted back. HE’S SITTING IN HIS CAR. I THINK HE’S CRYING. ARE YOU OKAY?
Crying? Isobel reread the text. She found the image difficult to conjure.
YEAH. I’M OKAY. TEXT ME W
HEN HE LEAVES AND I’LL COME OUT.
K. HE’S JUST SITTING THERE WITH HIS FACE IN HIS HANDS. WHAT HAPPENED???
I’LL TELL YOU IN A SEC. WATCH HIM.
Isobel shut her phone and tucked it into her coat pocket. She straightened and, lifting her arms above her head, pushed against the loose board. She had to hit it twice with the side of her fist to dislodge it from where it had become pressed into place. The action sent not only a cloud of dust particles surging around, but also new shoots of fresh white light. Isobel poked her head through and, shifting one foot forward, angled herself so as to set the board aside.
Her toe brushed against something solid. It fell over with a quiet clank.
Isobel ducked back into the hole again. She looked down at her feet to see a half-melted candle in a tiny glass holder. She tilted her head at it, then glanced over her shoulder.
Beyond the crisscrossing frame of two-by-fours that supported the staircase, Isobel saw a small box-shaped area—a tiny room. A gray sleeping bag lay unrolled and pushed against the left side of the cramped crawlspace, its pillow positioned in the crook of one corner.
Her hands fell from the board. She swiveled away from the underbelly of the stairs toward the pocket of space, which was no bigger than the inside of a small walk-in closet.
Stepping forward, Isobel ducked and threaded her way through the support beams.
Drawings lined the plaster wall right next to the sleeping bag, the pictures etched in a soft and looping hand that Isobel recognized right away. Some of the etchings had even been colored with paint.
An image of a horse seemingly made of smoke reared its head, eyes bugging, hooves pawing at the air. A patch of clouds lit by purple lightning rolled beside a tuft of white lilies, their heads drooping under crowns of raindrops. Black trees marked the center of the wall. Tall and pencil thin, their limbs tangled with one another to create a twisted net dotted with the limp bodies of shriveled leaves. Or were those birds?
Isobel’s eyes followed the sprawl of the mural to the images closest to the sleeping bag’s pillow. There, the likeness of a certain Siamese cat seemed to hover just over the place where the sleeper might lay his head. The painted cat had a bright and curious look on her face, her eyes beaming through the gloom, the perfect piercing hue of ice.
Isobel sank to kneel on a thin burgundy throw rug sprawled across the concrete floor. Nearby, a pack of matches lay on top of a pile of books, next to a brass dish filled with the ashen bodies of burned incense cones, their stale scent barely detectable.
A small wooden box sat beside the books, its sides and lid carved in bas-relief with delicate rose patterns. A short stack of spiral-bound notebooks occupied the opposite corner, several sheets of loose-leaf paper sticking out around the edges. A coffee mug full of pens, pencils, charcoal sticks, and paintbrushes sat sandwiched between the notebooks and a bin full of multicolored paint tubes.
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Locating another candle, Isobel took the box of matches, struck one, and lit the wick.
Warm flickering light filled the space, sending shadows leaping up the walls and across the slanted ceiling.
It didn’t surprise Isobel that Varen would have a secret like this—a hiding place within a hiding place.
That thought made her smile, though her grin faltered as she passed the candle across the carved wooden box. The sputtering light revealed the fancy lettering of a name engraved into the lid.
Isobel set the candle aside and reached to draw the wooden box toward her.
Her fingertips traveled across the deep grooves and notches that formed the name MADELINE.
20
Lady Madeline
Isobel opened the box. The hinged lid tilted back, held at ninety degrees by two violet strips of ribbon in either corner.
A stack of photographs littered the top layer of the box’s contents. Beneath, Isobel saw an assortment of odd trinkets and pieces of old jewelry.
Her fingers went first to the photographs, and she pulled free the topmost picture, recognizing it as one that had come from her own cheerleading scrapbook.
Dressed in her blue, gold-trimmed uniform, the one with the smooth A-line miniskirt and the THS shell top, her own image beamed up at her from the glossy paper, pom-poms held up to either side of her head like giant puff-ball ears. She had one shimmer shadow–caked eye pinched shut in a squinty pirate–style wink while she puckered her lips at the camera for a kiss. Her hair sat on top of her head in a ponytail of corkscrew ringlets, and a painted star glittered on her left cheek.
All in all, she looked ridiculous.
She remembered that Nikki had snapped the photo at a regional competition last year, right before their performance.
But how did it get here?
She thought back to that night Varen had snuck onto her roof. After leaving her bedroom for several minutes, she’d returned to find him no longer waiting on the roof but perched on the edge of her bed. He’d had her cheer album in his lap, his nimble fingers flipping through it. Her face burned when she realized he must have slid the photo free from its plastic sheath and tucked it away somewhere during the time she’d been gone.
For a moment, she couldn’t decide whether she should be infuriated or flattered—or if it was better to default to the ever-appropriate choice of mortified.
Why, out of all the other pictures in the album, did he have to pick this one? Why not one of the ones with her actually posing, like, without a goofy face, bad hair, or stupid pom-pom antlers?
She flipped the photo over so she wouldn’t have to look at it anymore, when she noticed something written across the back.
Short lines scrawled in deep violet blazed against the white watermarked Kodak paper. Bringing the photo closer, Isobel began to read. She felt her heart stammer a beat when she realized that it was a poem. About her.
I keep telling myself
That you’re
just a girl.
Another leaf blown across my path
Destined to pass on
And shrivel into yourself
Like all the others.
Yet despite my venom
You refuse to wither
Or fade.
You remain golden throughout,
And in your gaze I am left to wonder if it is me alone
Who feels the fall.
Isobel’s hand sank, as though the photo had become too heavy for her to hold.
Like tiny knives, his words lacerated her heart.
Isobel pushed the photo back inside the box, prepared to shut the lid and leave, but through her bleary, stinging vision, she caught sight of another photo in the stack.
At first she could glimpse only the edge, and it was the wisps of soft, honey-colored hair that made her draw it free.
The woman in the picture watched the photographer with a steady pair of large eyes, her chin tilted slightly upward. Her beauty, natural and free of cosmetics, was undeniable.
Her lips, shapely and petal pink, seemed as though they wanted to smile, even though they didn’t. Her wavy blond hair lay in a gentle swoop across her smooth forehead, the soft flyaway ends disappearing behind her in what Isobel thought must be either a low ponytail or a loose braid.
The woman, slender and pale, wore a plum-colored peacoat buttoned to her chin, while a black knitted scarf laced her throat.
Even though the physical resemblance was subtle, Isobel knew that this was a photograph of Varen’s mother.
It was the woman’s eyes, the same hue of polished jade, that gave her away.
Taking a closer look, Isobel began to notice faint lines showing through from the other side. Curls and slanted loops appeared in raised bumps around the edges, like Braille, as if Varen had pushed too hard with his pen while writing.
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Isobel hesitated before flipping the photo over, afraid
of what she might find. She turned it slowly, allowing the candlelight to reveal another poem.
Previously, Varen had only mentioned his mother in passing, saying that she’d left when he was eight. He hadn’t elaborated, and Isobel had refrained from asking questions, knowing all too well how quickly his walls could snap into place.
Now, ten years later, he was still thinking of her, still holding on to the last remnants of her existence in his life.
Isobel found herself reluctant to read even a single line.
It was true that she had never hesitated to pry into Varen’s writing before. That was part of how this had all started, that day when she’d gone snooping in his journal. But there was something about this poem that made her dread its message. Perhaps it was the title, presented like a simple salutation in a letter. “To Madeline,” it said at the top, the letters scriptlike and looping, written in his best hand.
Isobel could not recall a single instance in which she had ever called her own mother anything other than “Mom. ” Of course, she couldn’t recall a single instance in which her mother hadn’t been there, either.
Swallowing, she began to read.
To Madeline,
This subtle second self
Sheaf of me
Can do more than you ever could.
Like you, it can leave
And go
Somewhere else.
The night splits me in two.
I disconnect—
To sink, to fall, to fly
And rage
Forever
And always
Without you.
Isobel read the lines again and then again. From the craterlike feeling of emptiness the words themselves left within her, there bubbled up a familiar echo, a repetition of things heard and learned of in the past.
Second self?
Lucid dreaming. Astral projection.
Isobel glanced back to Varen’s sleeping bag as, all at once, its presence there held new meaning. Her eyes returned to the mural on the wall, suddenly knowing that his canvas—his hideaway—stretched much farther than this room.
Isobel pressed the picture of Varen’s mother facedown on the floor next to her, then picked up the remainder of the stack. She flipped through the rest of the photos slowly, one at a time. There were no more people, though, only images of stone figures, and artsy shots of the same autumn tree, its red-and-gold-sleeved limbs in various states of undress, like he’d been in the process of creating a flip book.
