He mutters under his breath. “‘Hail Mary . . . full of grace . . . the mister is with thee’ . . . No! ‘The Lord is with thee.’ They call the Lord ‘Señor.’ Yes, that makes sense. He’s essentially the preeminent mister. The biggest, best señor, so to speak.”
“Okay! There’s no reason to pray! I’m just asking . . . if you’ve ever noticed anything . . . funny in the house.” I’m trying to calm everybody down but they are sort of both interpreting this new information in their own ways.
“Aye, Evita, there is nothing funny about a ghost! My abuelita used to have a ghost that would come and lick her in the night!”
Henry squints. “Are you sure that was a ghost?”
“Yes, we used to call him ‘la lengua del más allá . . . the tongue from beyond’!” Marisol makes a dramatic gesture, arms out.
“Um . . . I think we’re getting really off-topic here. I just need to know if you’ve ever seen anything creepy around the house. At night. Upstairs.”
As if on cue, there is Terri the Terrible in the doorway.
“I have,” Marisol whispers, with a wink and a nod in Terri’s direction. Terri doesn’t hear.
“Why are you sitting down?” she accuses, looking at Marisol. “I’m sure you’re not getting paid to sit around everywhere.”
Henry stands up. “Marisol always sits with us at breakfast. She’s part of our family.”
“Oh, really? Is your name José?”
I stand in defiance. “Okay, that’s really . . . racist. And if you were ever awake for breakfast you’d know that we eat with Marisol, like, every day. You’re being, well, honestly, you’re being horrible right now!”
Marisol begins clearing the dishes.
“See, that’s right. Cleaning the dishes. That’s called work. Nobody is hiring anyone to just sit around.”
“OhmyGOD!”
I am on the verge of hyperventilating. So Henry attempts to explain. “Marisol is Guatemalan. From the Republic of Guatemala. The territory of modern Guatemala once formed the core of the Maya civilization—”
But Terri interrupts Henry.
“I don’t care where she’s from. Just because I’m not your mother doesn’t mean I can be taken advantage of!”
“Okay, let’s slow down here.” I try to placate her. “Terri, I know that we may do things differently than you’re used to, but Marisol has always been part of our family. And we need her now, more than ever. And right at this moment, we are eating breakfast. So if you have a problem with Marisol eating with us, then maybe you should leave.”
Terri and I stare at each other. Everyone else in the kitchen is frozen. There is total silence.
This fine moment is interrupted by Claude the Clod clomping through the kitchen, grabbing a cup of coffee, barely noticing us, and clomping out.
Terri, as if following his cue, grabs her own mug and storms out.
Henry and I turn to Marisol.
“Marisol. I’m so sorry. We need you. Honestly, we do,” I plead.
“It’s okay, mi vida, there are always going to be people like that. Not everyone is like your parents. Or you.”
There’s a moment of silence now. All three of us missing the warmth and sanctuary of bygone days.
Marisol, trying to make it better, musses up Henry’s hair and smiles.
“I’m going to the market today, but I’ll be back, Henrito, and tonight we’ll have your favorite paella. Don’t worry, I will not leave the feet on this time.”
She makes a claw gesture and a scary face, and retreats out the back of the house.
In case you’re wondering, Marisol used to leave the chicken claws sticking out of the paella. It was a thing.
Henry and I continue eating our waffles.
“So, why were you asking about ghosts?” Henry wants to know. “Do you think it has something to do with that thing we saw last night?”
I shake my head. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
We chew our breakfasts. There’s something like calm when—
Crrrrreeeeeeaaak.
The door to the pantry swings slowly open.
Henry and I look closer, craning our necks to see if someone is behind the door.
There’s no one.
“Huh. Has that ever happened before?” Henry asks.
And then, as if to answer, the door slams shut.
WHAM!
It shakes in its frame and the two of us look at each other. Stunned.
Henry walks over to inspect the door. Opens it. Examines the hinges.
“Eva. If it weren’t for the fact that I do not believe in paranormal activity, I would say this is paranormal activity.”
“Yes, I don’t believe in it, either, so obviously that didn’t just happen.”
“Right,” Henry agrees. “Pass the syrup.”
13
THERE MUST HAVE been a thousand little strange collectibles and tokens brought back to Henry and me by our mother. Every time she and Dad would have to go anywhere for work, she would come back with oodles of objects from the four corners of the globe. She would sit there, giddily watching as we opened our oddities. Dad would sit back, thinking it was just too much. But for Mom, it was never enough. She would tell him this way she was bringing us back the world. From the casbah of the Old City in East Jerusalem. From a tiny shop on stilts in Ko Samui. From a tienda near the Straits of Magellan.
It’s just that she hated leaving us. This way, she would say, it felt like she wasn’t really gone. Instead, she was just off running an errand for us.
She’d say she’d hear our little voices saying, “Yes, maybe this, and oh my God, what is that?!”
It makes it so much worse—knowing how much she hated leaving us.
I wonder if there are random gift shops in the sky? If there’s a heavenly road paved with glittering cobblestones and there she is, looking around, picking up the various sparkling trinkets, my dad behind her, staring at his watch. But why would he be? There probably aren’t watches up there. It’s not like you need a watch in eternity. Or even time.
Suffice to say, if there are random gift shops in heaven, I’d put money on finding my mom there. I wonder if she’s picking something out for me. Or Henry.
I wonder if she thinks she’s still coming home.
Of all the things my mom ever brought Henry, this here was his favorite. This teepee. It’s a ten-foot-high ivory-colored tent from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, and the outside is painted with burnt sienna and black, stripes near the bottom with triangles at the very top. In the middle, a scene of a hunt, warriors on horseback, twenty horses. At the top of the tent, wooden poles are fixed with leather straps at angles coming out, forming a kind of straw circle. It sits here, in the corner of our room, Henry’s escape.
Inside, it is its own world. There are embroidered pillows in here, a buffalo-hide rug, and a tiny buckskin lamp. The light in here is a warm glow of amber. And now, the two of us sit here, squinting at his laptop, trying to solve the mystery of what we saw on the beach.
And what I saw in the hallway.
And what we saw in the kitchen.
Now that I think about it, perhaps we aren’t just researching in here. Perhaps we are hiding.
“Giant tall whirlpool . . . ?” I offer.
Henry is curled over the keyboard, peering into the depths of the internet.
“Hydro spout? Definitely not. Ah, okay. Waterspout. Here we go.” He sits up. “‘Waterspout: A waterspout is an intense columnar vortex—usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud—that occurs over a body of water. Some are connected to a cumulus congestus cloud, some to a cumuliform cloud, and some to a cumulonimbus cloud. In the common form, it is a non-supercell tornado over water.’”
He looks over at me. I shrug.
“Would you categorize what we saw as a non-supercell tornado over water?”
I think about it. “I would categorize it as such . . . except in all these images the sky didn’t look
like the one we saw—with the colors and stuff.”
Henry and I peruse the myriad of images for “waterspout.” Most of the skies behind are bright blue. As if the waterspout appeared almost out of nowhere. Just waltzing along with the marble blue sky behind it. Like a happy, unexpected guest at a barbecue.
“Indeed,” Henry agrees. “The sky we saw was a kind of purple gray . . .”
“Almost plum. Or the color of a bruise.”
“Exactly. Also, let us not forget the acoustics.”
“I would call what we heard a howling sound.”
“But was it, exactly? It almost seemed like a distant voice—”
“—from another dimension? Maybe we should Google other dimensions.”
Henry looks at me. “I’m fairly sure that will get us straight to UFO conspiracy-ville, complete with foil hats. Perhaps we should do a little more research on the ground, as they say.”
“By on the ground . . . do you mean at the beach? Because I’m feeling pretty cozy in here, honestly.”
“Yes. This is a comforting environment, but we are probably not going to uncover the answers we seek from the safety of this teepee. We must continue our research.”
I yawn. “Well, if we just stayed here a little bit longer . . . I’m sure we could investigate further through the magic of the internet. Not to mention the low-level brain function you can access in your REM state, while you nap—”
But Henry is already out of the tent and filling his Minecraft backpack with investigative equipment. A magnifying glass. Microphone. Micro motion detector. Invisible ink pen.
“I’m pretty sure we won’t need an invisible ink pen.”
“Well, you never know. Also, it was part of the set.”
I do have a vague recollection of Henry receiving this very spy set one Christmas.
“Wait. Didn’t this come with binoculars? Also, we should have some sort of signal. A danger word. In case of emergency.”
“Okay. The signal is: spaghetti,” I suggest.
“Why spaghetti?”
“Well, it doesn’t really seem like there would be any other excuse to use it.”
“Okay, you’re right. Spaghetti,” Henry says, accepting this.
“Anyway, there’s no reason to expect we’ll be separated. We’re just going down the hill.”
We share a look. Even though there clearly is no reason we’d be separated, it’s safe to say the last twenty-four hours have not exactly been by the book.
“You know, I just want to say again, Googling continues to be a valid option. You haven’t even tried to search the term ‘paranormal phenomena.’ I mean, between the great bathroom ghost sighting and the infamous breakfast pantry door slamming, I think we have a lot to work with.”
“Eva, we are not just sitting around here in the teepee. We are going to be bold. Remember what Dad used to say. ‘Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.’”
“I feel like mighty forces are definitely a part of this equation, but I’m not sure they are exactly coming to our aid.”
Henry is already halfway down the hallway to the stairs.
I look around me. Suddenly, with no one else in the room, the possibility of paranormal sightings seems quadrupled.
“Wait! Hold on! I’m coming with you!”
14
THE TIDE IS pulled all the way out now, leaving a bed of slippery gray rocks, sand, and tide pools. Henry is ahead of me, inspecting the area below where the mysterious event originally took place.
I am leaning over the tide pools, studying a sea anemone with a microscope. This one is particularly lavender. One of Henry’s many contraptions is clicking away as he holds a microphone out and over the seabed.
“Eva. Look at this. I am detecting some kind of electromagnetic interference.”
He is literally holding a compass, a microphone, a digital recorder, and whatever that is making that repeated clicking noise. His head is tilted to one side, the microphone wedged between his chin and shoulder to keep it from slipping out into the breakers.
I love my brother. And he may be a boy genius, but he is no Ghostbuster.
I tell him, “I am detecting a sea anemone that has no right to be this bright a shade of purple.”
He sighs. “Eva. Do you mind? Seriously?”
And he is right. I should be helping him. But something about this situation is making me nervous, and when I get nervous I tend to try to distract myself. With things I find comforting. Like sea anemones.
“Okay, okay. What am I looking for?”
“Just hold this microphone here while I try to detect the apex of the electromagnetic disturbance.”
“Right.”
Henry is slowly waving his outstretched arm in front of him. His pants are rolled up to his knees as he wades into the breakwater.
“Be careful, Henry. Those rocks are slippery. And there might be crabs!”
But Henry is definitely only hearing the gears inside his head as he waves the compass around in a steady semicircle, moving forward meticulously, collecting data.
To this point, most of this has just seemed to be an exercise in futility, but I begin to pick up something. A faint, if not imaginary, sound that could easily be nothing more than the wind through the eucalyptus trees.
Henry must hear it, too, because he turns. “What is that?”
I shrug, holding out the equipment, not wanting to speak over the sound.
“Are you sure you’re recording?” he asks.
“Yes! I think.”
He looks back at me and rolls his eyes.
We stay still, trying to pick up the elusive whistling noise. It seems to come to a kind of crescendo and then falls away, fading into the sound of the surf over the rocks.
“Do you think we got it?” he asks.
“Who knows. I don’t even know what it is.”
“Well, stay there while I clear the area. Best to collect as much data as possible.” He continues forward, the bottoms of his rolled-up pants soaked past his knees.
I watch as he begins to move out, wading farther and farther into the water, moving millimeter by millimeter. I have a feeling this is going to take a while.
“Can I sit? I can still record if I’m sitting, you know.”
“No sitting. Just stay there,” he answers.
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes.
This goes on for about a billion years.
Finally, after Henry has pretty much combed the entirety of the shore, he comes back, flushed and a little bit sunburned.
“I forgot to put on sunscreen. Mom would kill me.”
There’s a moment here—just a split second—when we both remember a time when our biggest worry was sunscreen.
“Okay. I’ve determined the center of the disturbance, if that can even be calculated by the electromagnetic discrepancies, which is my current hypothesis.”
I nod. “Of course.”
(Entre nous, I have no idea what he’s talking about.)
“Right there. You see that rock there? The one that kind of looks like a leaning pyramid? Two rocks over from that. There. That’s the center.”
“Okay. Great.” I look at him. “So, now what?”
“I think if we play back the recording, digitally analyzing the sound . . . we might be able to triangulate each phenomenon and ascertain if there is some correlation between the audio and the electromagnetic center of the abnormality.”
“The pheno-electro who?”
“We can see if the clicks and the noise from yesterday are related.”
“Great. And then what?”
“And then . . . I don’t know exactly.”
The sun is starting to dip down into the sea, turning the clouds out west a shade of rose gold. We both look out over the lavender-painted sky.
Henry says, “I’d like to stay here a while, if you don’t mind.”
This is an unusual request from my kid brother. In fact, I can’t remember Henry ever as
king to just sit down and do nothing. Watching the sun set over the Pacific Ocean, this was always more of a Dad request. He was always the one trying to get us to stop and smell the roses or whatever.
I nod to Henry and we walk up just below the stairs, sit down on two flat rocks, and take in the vista. The sky is painting everything into an orange-and-pink blaze.
There is too much to think about. Between the super-strange waterspout, the mysterious sound over the waves, the bathroom ghost sighting, and the lone kitchen pantry door slamming, I’m actually starting to wonder if we might be going a little bit crazy. I mean, it is a distinct possibility. We have been through a terrible trauma. What if, as a result, we are both just simultaneously losing our minds?
“Do you think we imagined it? The pantry door this morning?”
“Maybe,” he answers.
“What about the thing I thought I saw during the execution of my routine dental hygiene?”
“Quite possibly.”
“And maybe the waterspout?”
“Eva, there is the possibility all of these are natural-occurring phenomena that we have imbued with some sort of otherworldly meaning due to psychological stressors. In fact, that is probably the most logical explanation.”
Something Dad used to say swims up to the surface of my brain. “Occam’s razor . . .”
Henry nods. “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions—the simplest answer, in other words—should be selected.”
“Right. So everything could be normal. Like totally normal. Except us.”
“Yup.”
I put my arm around Henry’s shoulder. We stare out over the breaking waves. The sun is cut in half now, a gold semicircle above the horizon with the rest disappeared over the edge of the earth.
“I’m going to choose that answer,” I decide. “The one where we are just imagining things. Akmed’s razor.”
“Occam’s.”
“Right.”
Henry thinks. “I will, too. And if we’re crazy, well, at least we’re crazy together.”
This is my favorite millisecond . . . that tiny moment when the sun hides itself behind the horizon and the only thing left is a little sliver . . . and then a tiny spot. Just a dot on the horizon of blazing light. Like everything in the world is contained, concentrated in that one shiny speck at the edge of everything you know.
Henry & Eva and the Castle on the Cliff Page 4
