Search for the Dead

by Sheila Connolly

  “Ned Newhall, are you telling me in all the years you’ve lived here, you’ve never put up storm windows?”

  “Uh, no? Upstairs I just shut the doors on the bedrooms I wasn’t using. Same with the parlors. The kitchen stayed warm enough. The pipes were okay because the furnace in the basement throws off enough heat to keep the water flowing. But I assume you don’t want to spend the winter huddling in two rooms wearing three layers of sweaters?”

  “I do not. Old houses are a lot of work, aren’t they?”

  “They are. And I don’t spend anywhere near as much time on maintenance as I should.”

  “You could always hire someone. You can afford it.”

  “Yes, but someone should be around to supervise the work, and not everyone understands Victorians. You volunteering?”

  “Maybe, if you’ll tell me what needs to be done. Authentically, that is. I assume plastic is taboo?”

  “Of course. As is aluminum, for windows or siding.”

  “Can we make the fireplace in the parlor functional?”

  “Last time I asked, I was told it needed to be relined. Or maybe the entire chimney had to come out and be replaced. I stopped asking. But if you want a working fireplace, go for it.”

  Some small part of Abby’s mind watched them bantering, as if everything was normal. Well, it was, except for one thing. Was Ned telling the truth when he said he loved her, with or without special abilities? Did she love him, if that special spark was gone for good?

  Abigail, you don’t have to decide today. Wait and see.

  Chapter 28

  Leslie dropped Ellie off at three minutes past ten the next morning. She didn’t come in, but waited at the curb in her idling car until she was sure Ellie was in the house. Abby waved, and then Leslie pulled away.

  Abby turned to Ellie. “Hi, sweetie,” she said. “You ready to get messy?”

  “You said we couldn’t make a mess,” Ellie said.

  “Well, we don’t want to spread paint around where it shouldn’t be, even if it washes off, but as far as I know, there is no way for a person to paint anything without ending up with paint on him or her. Fact of life. Have you eaten?”

  “Yeah. Mom said to tell you she’d pick me up at four. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. We’ll have lunch when we reach a good breaking point. That side of the house gets the afternoon sun, so the painting should be easier in the afternoon—better light.”

  “Cool. Hi, Ned,” Ellie said as Ned emerged from the basement. “Are you painting too?”

  “Hi, Ellie. I didn’t hear the car. No, I’m putting up storm windows.”

  “What’s that mean?” Ellie asked, and Abby realized she might never have seen them in her short life.

  “Well, back in the old days, a hundred years or more ago, people had regular glass windows, plus a second kind of window that you put up in winter to keep the house warmer. And screens for the summer, and sometimes even awnings, although most of those are long gone. We’ve got most of the storm windows for this house in the basement, but only a few screens—they were kind of lightweight, so a lot of them just fell apart over time. But they’re easy to make.”

  “It all sounds like a lot of work,” Ellie said dubiously.

  “Well, think of the house as a living thing. Sometimes you have to take care of it. Parts fall apart, or need replacing. It kind of never stops, but if you treat your house right, it will last a long time.”

  “Can’t you just go to a store and buy them?” Ellie asked.

  “You could, but then they’d be plastic or aluminum, and that doesn’t really go with the house. Abby and I like living with the history of it.”

  “Okay. But I think I’d rather paint,” Ellie said. “Could you teach me how to build things later?”

  “Sure. I warn you, I’m no expert. And I kind of prefer hand tools to electric ones—safer if you want to keep your fingers.”

  “Ewww,” Ellie said, sounding like the eight-year-old she was.

  Ned smiled at her reaction. “But I think girls and boys should know how to use a hammer and a screwdriver—simple things like that. Does your dad do much around the house?”

  Ellie shook her head. “I think Mom knows more about fixing things than he does. But he’s better than she is with computers and stuff.”

  “Well, we all have different talents. Abby? You need me to carry anything upstairs?”

  “No,” Abby told him. “I did most of the prep work on Friday. I didn’t want to move the bed out, but I pulled it away from the wall, and I covered it so we wouldn’t get paint on it. And I covered the floor, too. So we’re good to go! You ready, Ellie?”

  “Yup. Let’s go!”

  Upstairs Abby handed Ellie one of Ned’s old shirts, which Ellie put on and buttoned carefully. Abby did the same. “So, point one: make sure the paint is well mixed. We just bought it, and you saw them shake it up in that machine at the store, so it should be fine. Two, pick the right size brush for the job. I thought you could work on the baseboards, at least to get started, so you should probably use a middle-sized brush. Three: use tape to mask the parts you don’t want paint on, like the floor. The wall’s not as important because we’re going to paper over that part, but the paint has to be done first.”

  “What’re you going to do?” Ellie asked.

  “I thought I’d work on the windows. “As you can see, there are a lot of skinny bits, which take time. Plus, you don’t want to get too much paint around the edges, or the windows won’t open and shut. You can try it later if you want, but let me get a feeling for how the paint goes on first, okay?”

  “Sure. Will we finish today?”

  “I kind of doubt it, but we can wait and see. If you finish the baseboards, which are pretty easy, you can start work on the doors. But let me put tape over the hinges—they’re nice old ones.”

  “Why do you and Ned want to work so hard to keep the old stuff? Isn’t new stuff easier?”

  “It is, but we like to keep the old parts, sort of in honor of the people who built it. Sometimes you find notes from people who wallpapered a century ago. Or you can see where they mismeasured and had to fudge things to make them fit. It makes the house more human.”

  Abby filled a small plastic bucket with the trim color, and presented it to Ellie. “Here’s your paint. Take a look at the brushes and tell me which one you want to use.”

  Ellie took the paint bucket, then set it down on the plastic tarp that Abby had taped around the perimeter. Then she studied the baseboards. “They look about six inches high, right? So my brush should be maybe half that.”

  “Good thinking,” Abby told her. “One warning, though: this paint dries pretty fast, so you can’t go over and over it or the brush marks will show.”

  Ellie nodded. “So I have to get it right the first time.”

  “More or less. But don’t panic if you don’t—it’s only paint. I’ll start with the window on this side and we should meet in the middle around lunchtime.”

  Abby filled her own bucket and picked a more slender brush. She’d already rehung the windows that needed it, replacing the worn ropes, so she could start right in with the painting. Maybe it would have been easier to take the windows out to paint them, but it was a bit too chilly for that now. She’d set aside the window latches, so they wouldn’t get paint-covered. Dig in, Abby!

  She’d forgotten how soothing painting was. It took a certain amount of concentration, but it still left part of her brain available for thinking. Ellie was a quiet companion: she didn’t come begging every time she finished a patch to see if she’d done it right. She analyzed the task at hand, then proceeded carefully. She was one smart kid, no matter what other abilities she possessed. But then, Ned was smart in his own right, so she shouldn’t be surprised. Would there come a time when Ellie would realize she was smarter than both Leslie and George? But Ned would have to have had the Talk by then, wouldn’t he? Still, Abby visualized some stormy years ahead.

&
nbsp; Abby had finished most of one window—sashes and sill—when Ellie asked, “How’s this look?” She’d finished the baseboards for one whole side of the room, and done a really good job of it. “That looks terrific!” Abby told her. “You want to start on the next wall?”

  “In a minute. I was thinking about curtains. I mean, I know we need them for privacy, but I like light, and air moving around—you know, not being shut in. So could we keep them pretty light? Maybe a pale green, and not too thick?”

  “I think that sounds like a great idea.”

  “Are you going to buy them or make them?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it. We don’t have a sewing machine—or at least, not that I know of, although I haven’t explored all of the attic. But it would be easy enough to get one. Have you used one?”

  “No, not at home, and nobody at school will let us use machines like that. But maybe you could get one of those old ones that you pump with your foot?”

  “That could be kind of cool,” Abby agreed. “And it would fit with the house.”

  Ellie sat down on the covered bed, peeling bits of dried paint off her fingers. Without looking up, she said, “Abby, is something wrong?”

  Uh-oh. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because something feels different.” Before Abby could respond, Ellie jumped off the bed and reached out and grabbed Abby’s hand. Then dropped it again, quickly. “Oh,” Ellie said.

  “What, Ellie?” Abby said gently.

  “It’s not there. That thing.”

  So much for putting on a good face and hoping that Ellie wouldn’t notice anything. That hadn’t lasted long. “You’re right. Ellie, look at me, please.”

  Ellie turned her face up toward Abby, as Abby sat next to her on the bed. Were those tears?

  “I promised I wouldn’t lie to you, Ellie, so I won’t start now. Something happened yesterday. Ned wanted me to try out a machine and see if it showed where in our brain this thing of ours comes from. He did it first, and everything went fine. But when I tried it, something went wrong, but we don’t even know what yet. And now I can’t seem to read anything or anyone.”

  “Will it come back?”

  “I really don’t know. People don’t know much about this, and they don’t do a lot of research on it. It looks like maybe the psychic things comes from a particular part of the brain, but that’s not saying a lot, because many scientists don’t know how the brain works anyway.”

  Ellie looked devastated, far more than Abby had expected. “What is it, sweetie?”

  “I don’t want it to go away! That part of you, I mean. Mom and George, they don’t get it at all. If yours is gone, then there’s nobody who understands!”

  Without thinking, Abby wrapped her arms around Ellie and pulled her close. Poor Ellie—now she felt abandoned by the people she trusted. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Nothing should have happened. Ned was fine with it. I know it’s hard for you to deal with this ability of yours, and I want to help. I wish I could tell you mine will come back. But even if it does, I don’t know when. And I know that doesn’t help you at all, and I’m very sorry.”

  “Does Ned know?”

  “Of course he does. I couldn’t hide it from him even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

  “So what’re you going to do?” Ellie asked, scrubbing tears from her face.

  “Take it one day at a time? Wait and see?”

  Ellie took Abby’s hand again, twining her fingers with Abby’s. She didn’t say anything, just looked at their joined hands. Abby waited, wishing, hoping . . . but there was nothing. No tingle, no spark, no visions of anything. Just the warm sticky hand of a sad eight-year-old child.

  “It’ll be all right, Ellie,” Abby said, not sure if she believed her own words. “Now, let’s see if we can get some more painting done before lunch. Okay?”

  Ellie nodded and got up off the bed. Without looking at Abby, she picked up her paintbrush and started in on the baseboards of the adjoining wall. They worked in silence until Ned came to tell them that lunch was ready. When two bleak faces turned to greet him, he looked directly at Abby and raised one eyebrow. Abby nodded. “Yes, she knows.”

  “Well, come eat. You’ve made great progress with the room here.”

  Ellie scrambled to her feet. “What do I do with the wet brush?”

  “Give it to me,” Abby said. “I’ll wrap it in plastic so you can use it after lunch. At the end of the day we can wash them so they’re good to use again. It’s acrylic paint so you can do that.”

  “Okay. What’s for lunch, Ned?”

  “Chicken salad, potato chips, juice and cookies. Why don’t you go ahead and we’ll be right down?”

  “Okay.” Ellie trudged down the stairs, with no spring in her step.

  “Did she . . . ?” Ned began.

  “She sensed something had changed, and I told you I wouldn’t lie to her. It seems to have hit her hard, because now she has no one to talk to about this. Sure, she can talk to me, but it’s like she thinks I’ll be less able to understand now. I wish there was something I could do.”

  “Did you tell her it could come back?”

  “I did, but I couldn’t say when, and you know how long time seems when you’re young.”

  “Well, we shouldn’t leave her alone down there moping. Let’s go eat, and then you can decide how much more of the bedroom you want to get done today.”

  He reached out his hand to her. Abby looked at it, then up at his face. “Testing again?”

  “How else are we going to know? Besides, I like to hold hands with you. Should I stop?”

  “Please don’t!”

  Abby and Ellie made good progress after lunch. Ellie finished the baseboards, and Abby got her started on the four-panel doors, showing her how to paint the molded bits first, then fill in the fields between. Ellie worked silently, and Abby was struck by how seriously Ellie took this psychic connection of theirs—or its loss. It really mattered to her. Abby wished she had any idea what to do to bring it back, but she didn’t know what had caused it to vanish, or at least go underground, in the first place. The MEG machine was meant to read emissions, period. Not go hunting for them inside her head. Passive, not active. What had gone wrong?

  “We’re not finished,” Ellie pointed out. “Are you going to finish painting without me?”

  “Well, if you want me to wait until Thursday, when I’ll see you anyway, that’s fine. It’s your room.”

  Abby decided not to press the issue now. “We need to talk about Halloween—yikes! It’s tomorrow. Is your mom okay with you trick-or-treating here?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Ellie didn’t sound enthusiastic. “It’s better than our neighborhood.”

  “Do you have a costume?”

  “Not yet. I don’t want to buy one of those stupid ones at a store.”

  “You have any ideas?”

  “Mom said I could cut holes in a sheet and be a ghost,” Ellie said, with a bit of a sneer in her voice.

  Now that was a lame costume by any standard, Abby thought. “You want something from a book? Or from history? Or an animal or dragon or something?”

  “I was thinking . . .”—Ellie looked obliquely at Abby—“maybe something like the Headless Horseman? No horse, but no head, and lots of blood?”

  Interesting idea. “Well, you might scare the little kids, but it’s kind of cool. But you’d need eye-holes, right?”

  “Of course,” Ellie informed her.

  “Would it have to be a historic costume? Like knee britches and long coat?”

  “I dunno. Maybe I could find a picture. Or ask Mom to find one. But she’s kind of busy.”

  “Hey, Ellie, I’m happy to help. And if I can’t sew, there’s always SuperGlue, if it’s only for the one night. Unless your mom has her heart set on doing it for you?”

  “I don’t think so. Like I said, she’s busy.”

  And now Abby had to put together a convi
ncing costume with less than twenty-four hours to do it. “Well, let’s do this: you find pictures of what you’d like, and we’ll see how we can make the costume. Maybe Ned has some old jackets that we could alter. Do you want to carry a head?”

  “Could I?” Ellie asked eagerly.

  “We might have to buy a mask and just stuff it with paper or something, but I don’t see why not.” It struck Abby as ironic that Ellie had asked to appear as a dead person—or half dead?—for Halloween, but it was certainly appropriate to the season, which brought out a lot of strange ideas each year. She wondered what the Lexington trick-or-treat crowd was like: Old or young? Large or small? “Do you want Ned or me to go around with you? We’d stay out of your way, of course.”

  Ellie hesitated. “Uh, Ned, maybe? I mean, he’s a guy, so it would be safer, kind of.”

  “That’s fine. That means I get to stay here and hand out candy. Shall we go wash up now? Your mother will be here soon.”

  “Okay.” Ellie scampered down the hall to the bathroom and turned on the water, apparently cheered by the thought of the costume.

  Abby decided to wash up downstairs. She went to the kitchen and scrubbed most of the paint off her hands, then wandered out the kitchen door, to find Ned lining up storm windows against the side of the house. “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “Not too bad. Most of the windows are in fair condition, although they could use some new putty and paint. But as I feared, there aren’t a lot of markings on them, so I’m not sure which goes where.”

  “They aren’t interchangeable?”

  “In theory, yes. In practice, they’re all but hand-made, and each one is just a little different. So I’m trying to match them up as well as I can. You two finished?”

  “For today. Leslie’s coming soon. The paint in the room is maybe two-thirds finished, but Ellie asked if I could wait so we could finish it together. We can do that Thursday.”

  “She really does feel attached to that room, doesn’t she?”