Dreaming Darkly

by Caitlin Kittredge

  While I waited for the boat and tried to get hold of myself, I saw a sleek black cabin cruiser slip out from the bend in the harbor and head for the mainland. It wasn’t fair Doyle got a nice warm cabin and I got the rust-bucket express. Still, I was glad he hadn’t seen me. I didn’t want to have to explain why I was crying.

  I looked back up at the house. It squatted at the top of the cliffs, gray and rocky, like it had always been a part of the island. I wonder if my mother had ever felt like it was crushing her, holding her under the rocks, down in those caves Doyle had shown me. I knew she’d run away the second she could.

  I wondered if she’d already been crazy, or if living here had pushed her into it.

  I wondered if it was doing the same thing to me.

  Chapter 15

  I managed to avoid Doyle all day at school, mostly by keeping Betty at my side whenever we were between classes. I kind of wished I could take her home with me, wind her up, and just keep her chatting all night. Maybe then I’d stop dreaming about creepy bloodstained girls.

  “So are you game for that if I can get my dad to let me borrow his truck?” Betty said.

  I realized I’d totally tuned out, staring into the depths of my locker but really seeing that weird little cave of a room, the girl’s blood-soaked hands reaching out to me as I stood in the doorway. “What?” I said, grabbing my track uniform. Valerie was standing by the doors to the gym, giving me the stink eye.

  “I said, there’s this really awesome revival house in Camden. They’re showing An Affair to Remember tomorrow, and my dad won’t let me go alone but if you came we could see it. It was one of my mom’s favorite movies. She’d watch it and we’d make popcorn. You and I could get popcorn, unless you’re allergic to peanut oil. I’m allergic to shellfish. My throat won’t close up or anything, but I get a rash.”

  “Um,” I said, reaching for an excuse. It wasn’t like me to stumble on those, and I made the mistake of looking at her while I did. She’d already deflated like a parade balloon sprayed with buckshot. “That sounds like fun,” I heard myself saying, although sappy old movies on a big screen sounded like waterboarding-level torture.

  Betty scuffed her shoe across the floor and said shyly, “Maybe you could even sleep over?”

  “Can’t this weekend,” I said, thankfully recovering my ability to say no. “Some other time.”

  “Okay!” she chirped. “But not next week. Next week is A Clockwork Orange, and I don’t like violent movies. They make me agitated, and then I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep.”

  “Week after for the sleepover, then,” I sighed. “See you Monday.” I followed Valerie into the locker room.

  “Word of advice?” she said while we were lacing our shoes. “Stop hanging out with Betty Tyler. She’s a freak.”

  “You think everyone is a freak.” I rolled my eyes. “Yesterday, you were convinced I was some kind of Satan-worshipping deviant.”

  “That was yesterday,” Valerie said, glaring at me. “Betty’s been weird the entire time she’s lived here. I tried to be nice, but I had to cut her loose after summer school because she’s got her phasers set to maximum cling, twenty-four/seven. Who wants that?”

  “I have a pretty high tolerance for weird,” I said. “And I get the feeling you’re not gonna rush to put me on the prom committee.”

  “Whatever, I tried. Keep on being freak fodder if you want,” Valerie sighed. We clustered outside on the grass with the other girls and started stretching. “I’m just warning you—her family is even worse. Her dad is über-religious and looks like the Unabomber, and she’s always wandering around with like a Bible and stuff in her backpack. I think she’s one of those saving-it-for-marriage chicks, even.”

  “Like anyone would want it before marriage,” said one of Valerie’s girl-thugs—I think they called her Mandy or Tandy or something else that fell short of a real name.

  Valerie turned her back on me and started gossiping, so I concentrated on shaving down my mile. I didn’t mind that my foot was on fire by the time I was done—it was at least real, something that had actually happened and hadn’t been a figment of my imagination. I managed to shower and change without any more social faux pas, and I was almost on the last bus when Doyle caught up.

  “Are you hiding from me?” he said. “Not that I’d blame you.”

  I shrugged, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.”

  “You were the one who ran off,” Doyle pointed out. The bus driver tapped the horn and gestured angrily at me when I looked.

  “I need to go,” I said. “I’ve had a crappy day and my mom’s funeral is tomorrow, so that pretty much guarantees today was a walk in the park by comparison.”

  “Ivy, wait!” Doyle ran to catch up with me.

  “Stop following me,” I said. “Stop acting like we’re friends and then not and then getting upset when I get fed up. Either you want me around in spite of what your family thinks of mine or you’re toeing the party line and we can never be friends.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right, I’ve been kind of a jackass. I don’t really know how to act around you.”

  “Not like this?” I suggested, and Doyle chuckled.

  “Believe it or not, I’m usually pretty charming.” He reached out, hand hovering over my arm before I gave a small nod and he touched my shoulder. “Ivy, seriously. I don’t put that much stock in old family legends, but there is some very bad blood between your family and mine, and if we’re going to be friends it’s always gonna be there. I’m never going to be your uncle’s biggest fan, and we can’t exactly parade in front of my dad.”

  “Fine by me.” I shrugged. “I’m not your girlfriend. I don’t have to meet the parents.”

  “My father doesn’t like Valerie either,” Doyle said. “He doesn’t like anyone who isn’t family, and even some of them would probably just as soon shoot him on sight.”

  “I have to go,” I said again as the horn sounded a second time. “But I’m glad you decided you didn’t want to ditch me for our family feud.”

  “Me too,” Doyle said. He watched me as I got on the bus and kept watching until we turned out of the drive, like he’d watched the boat from the rocks the day I’d come to the island. Unlike then, his black stare didn’t unsettle me now—knowing Doyle was watching out for me made me feel safe, for the first time in longer than I could remember.

  It was almost dark by the time the boat docked at the manor’s slip. The days were getting shorter, and the air bit at my exposed skin with a relentless cold. The manor house looked like it was floating alone in the clouds, windows glowing in a jagged pattern of light against the iron-gray sky.

  Simon called me into the solarium when I came in. I had a feeling even before he made me sit that Mrs. MacLeod had ratted me out. In a way I was glad. I had a few choice things to say about old Hatchet Face myself.

  “I hear you and Veronica had an argument earlier,” he said. “Ivy, you know I can’t have you disrespecting her. Veronica and her entire family have worked hard for the Bloodgoods.”

  “She started it,” I grumbled. “She said something really shitty and uncalled for. She apparently thinks I could snap at any moment and go postal on you.”

  Simon flinched, then took off his glasses and started polishing them. “I see you found Myra’s room.”

  “Was I not supposed to? It didn’t look like anyone would care. Her stuff was just sitting there.” It wouldn’t make much difference if he told me I couldn’t go in there. She was my mother, and I knew next to nothing about her.

  “Of course you can look through her things,” Simon said. “I probably have some pictures from high school somewhere. A yearbook or two. I can try to dig them out of the attic if you like. I couldn’t bring myself to pack everything away but I did box up the photos and other things that were too painful for me at the time.”

  I nodded, surprised he’d let the thing with Mrs. MacLeod go so quic
kly. “Am I grounded or anything?”

  “No,” Simon said. “Just try to get along better with people, all right? Your mother had the same problem with authority, and it didn’t do her any favors.”

  He stood, looking at his watch. “I can’t exactly order up a pizza, but I think I have the frozen variety if that’s acceptable. I gave Veronica the night off.”

  I wisely didn’t say she probably took the extra time to bake children into pies, and just nodded instead.

  “I’ll call you when it’s ready,” my uncle said.

  I jumped up from my chair, making the iron legs scrape across the stone floor. “Do you know who my father is?”

  Simon stopped. His shoulders knotted up like I’d yanked on a string attached to his spine. He tipped his head from side to side before he faced me again, like he was getting ready to take a punch. “No, Ivy. I’m sorry. She never told us.”

  “She was pretty young, right?” She’d been seventeen, not all that much older than me.

  “Our mother had just died,” Simon said. “I have to think Myra’s getting pregnant was in some way a reaction. Your grandmother was disturbed for many years, Ivy, ever since she had to see the aftermath of what my grandfather did to the Ramseys. She was in and out of institutions her entire life. That hurt all of us, but Myra by far the most. She was becoming unstable even before she got pregnant, and I honestly thought that she’d died a long time before that social worker called me from Omaha and told me what happened.”

  I was two out of two for being a jerk tonight, and I decided to cut my losses. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this isn’t exactly a light topic for you either.”

  “It’s perfectly normal to want to know who you are.” Simon came back to me, looking like he wanted to hug me but was a little afraid I’d bite him. “Did your mother ever tell you anything? Any detail that I might be able to interpret? She talked to our mother, but she didn’t make much sense. Your grandmother’s nurse at the time encouraged me to commit your mother as well, and I’ve always regretted not doing it. But I was fifteen, and it’s not like I had any legal standing. Your grandmother died with no provision for any of our affairs, and your mother wasn’t exactly in a position to take care of me or herself. Our family lawyer had to manage things until I turned eighteen and even then, I had to learn a lot about being an adult the hard way, like when your sister is in the middle of a psychotic break, you move heaven and earth to get her hospitalized before it’s too late.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, realizing with a little start that Simon might not know that. He hadn’t spent the last sixteen years with Myra. He didn’t know the level she’d sunk to. “Even if you had managed to lock her up, I’m pretty sure we still would have ended up here.”

  Simon gave me that sad smile. “You’re much too young to carry all this tragedy, Ivy. But you’re right. It isn’t my fault, or yours either. As for your father, if she gave you any details at all I’ll try my best to narrow it down based on the friends of hers I knew about.”

  “She yelled that me and my dad were both worthless and evil a lot,” I said. “Beyond that, I’m guessing he was tall and had green eyes, since yours and Mom’s are both blue. You guys friends with any shiftless, green-eyed buff dudes about sixteen years ago? I mean, I’m guessing shiftless. Based on her later taste in boyfriends.”

  Simon gave his odd robot smile. “I can’t say I was. But if anyone springs to mind, you’ll be the first person I tell. We’re family, Ivy. You can ask me anything.”

  Doyle’s words slithered to mind then, unbidden and unwanted, like something that crawls up through your shower drain. You can’t trust him. He’s dangerous. I don’t know what he wants from you but it can’t be good.

  I brushed them away. Doyle had always had a family, at least one parent who as far as I could tell wasn’t an unemployed grifter, always gone to sleep knowing he’d wake up in the same place. “Thanks, Uncle Simon,” I said softly.

  Simon reached out his hand and laid it on my shoulder. “I’m . . .”

  The lights pulsed and went out with a low groan. Somewhere far off in the house a bulb shattered. Simon cursed under his breath. “Stay here. We’ve blown a fuse.”

  He moved away from me, fumbling near the plants for a battery-operated lantern.

  “Does this happen a lot?” I asked. I felt tingly, as if the darkness had brought the cold from my nightmare with it.

  “A fair amount,” he said. “This house is ancient and it badly needs upgrading, but try getting any of the toothless hicks from the mainland to come work on the home of the cursed Bloodgood family, and soon you get used to living with bad wiring and lukewarm bathwater.”

  He found a second flashlight and moved off, but I got bored sitting, so I took the lantern down the halls, wandering past rooms that looked foreign in the dark. I turned into the library at last, on the far end of the house from my bedroom, and shivered a little. It probably wasn’t such a great idea to go poking around now, when I still couldn’t quite shake off the nightmare. It had been way more than a normal dream, and I was just scaring myself for no reason.

  I held up the lantern, to assure myself the door was shut, and instead saw the same seamless green wallpaper printed with small pink flowers that encased the rest of the library, an oval mirror with a chipped gold frame hanging in the spot where a door should be.

  In a way, it was a relief. There had never been a room. It was a dream; it was over; I never had to feel that choking disconnection from my body again.

  On the other hand, that meant I’d come up with it entirely from my own mind . . . a mind that my mother had started losing right around the age I was now.

  The mirror glass threw the lantern light back into my face, until it looked like I wasn’t there at all, just a smear of a hand and my hoodie and a ball of light where my face should be. I could hear Simon banging around, muttering to himself, and the clunk of old-style plug fuses being changed.

  I sighed and lowered the lantern. Nothing to do now except go see if I could make myself useful, and if not, eat some cereal for dinner instead of the promised pizza and go to sleep.

  As the dazzle disappeared from my eyes, I swore that I saw someone standing in the door of the library watching me, a white shape just barely visible in the black. Fast as I saw it, it winked out of view, and when I spun around, the lantern fell out of my hands and clattered on the wood floor.

  “Ivy?” Simon called. “I think we’ll be back in business shortly. Only one fuse blown, and I have a spare.” After another few seconds, the lights flickered once, twice, and then burned steadily, flooding the house with light again.

  Nothing. There was nothing there, and never had been. I picked up the lantern and switched it off. I needed to get a grip.

  “Ivy?” Simon called again. I stopped at the library door, in the spot where I’d seen the shape. I turned back to the mirror. Just my own reflection, complete with frizzy hair and deep rings under my eyes. I looked more terrifying than anything I could dream up. I dropped my gaze, feeling a headache starting.

  Next to my boot, a set of small, wet footprints marred the wood floor, floating on the surface before they turned away and traveled down the hall toward the front door, each one perfectly delineated, a wet, gleaming trail under the dim old-style light bulbs in the tarnished brass lamps.

  Wet and red. Not water or mud but bright, red, still-gleaming blood. Girl’s shoes, heel and toe, the kind girls wore back when bloomers were also in fashion. Girl’s footprints in blood.

  I screamed, pasted against the wall, feeling my nails dig chunks out of the wallpaper and plaster. I screamed until Simon showed up and grabbed me, and then I shut my eyes, feeling the full body shakes envelope me until I could barely stand up.

  “It’s all right,” Simon said over and over. “Tell me what happened. It’s all right.”

  I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t even know why I’d started screaming, if it was out of fear or if I was just so overl
oaded my mind couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Ivy,” Simon murmured. “Open your eyes. Everything is all right.”

  I made myself do what he said. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, or anything in it. I was tougher than that. I was a Bloodgood, after all—we were the people everyone else was supposedly afraid of.

  The footprints were gone. Everything was normal, real, just a dusty old house and the uncle I barely knew holding me up so I didn’t collapse. I stopped shaking then, and started to cry, sobbing silently and violently into Simon’s shirt. He wrapped his arms around me tight, and didn’t ask me why I was crying. I don’t think either of us knew for sure.

  Chapter 16

  I managed to hold myself together after that. My uncle and I ate dinner in silence, neither of us wanting to bring up what had just happened. Simon, I assumed, because he was as crappy at handling the emotions of others as I was, and me because I didn’t have anything to say.

  That was a lie. I did have something to say, but it wasn’t anything I was ready to admit. If I spoke up, I’d have to ask Simon to call a doctor, get me an MRI, a psych eval, something. I couldn’t deny it anymore—there was something wrong with me, and it had started going wrong the second I set foot on the island.

  I couldn’t even begin to deal with that after what had happened in the library, so I just kept my mouth shut. It felt weird, just eating and not talking, like a normal dysfunctional family where nobody hallucinates a little girl’s bloody footprints, but it was better than either of us bringing up what had just happened.

  The painfully awkward silence was broken by the sound of tires pulling into the drive. Simon looked up. “That’s Veronica. Do you mind putting the dishes in the sink?”

  I shook my head, going one better and actually washing them. I was on my way upstairs to do homework when I heard my uncle and Mrs. MacLeod talking in the front hallway. I tiptoed to the edge of the staircase in my stocking feet, staying out of sight against the wall so they wouldn’t see me if they looked up at the landing.