by Sara Hanover
“What was that?” Mom’s head, haloed by kitchen light, appeared at the doorway to the cellar.
“A mouse. One of those itty-bitty field mice. I think.”
“Oh, fantastic.” I could hear her retreat back to the sink cabinet and a moment later something clattered down the stairwell steps. “Set that before you come back up.”
I bent over to retrieve a mousetrap, the old wood and spring kind. “Okay.” I stuffed it in a pocket, not at all certain I wanted to set a trap that would probably cut the little thing in two. If it managed an existence down here, more power to it. I assessed the area. “No pentagrams on the floor or wall or anything dire like that.”
Hiram nodded absently, lost in his thoughts or whatever he was doing. A tall wardrobe cabinet stood near one corner, warped a little to one side from sitting forever on a down-sloping base, so its doors did not quite meet or hang right. Its ivory paint, yellowed with age, flaked at the corners, and its latch swung open, useless. I reached out and pried it wide, curious what it might hold.
A crimson drop fell from my finger as I did, into the depths of the wardrobe, my hand reaching inside.
“Tessa!” screamed Brian.
Too late. Something leaped from the hidden shelf and sunk its teeth deep into my left palm. It, and the pain, knocked me on my ass.
Hiram knocked the cabinet doors shut and bent over me, reaching out in concern. I could hear a racket upstairs, three voices in loud confusion but not sensible.
I looked up through sudden tears, clutching my left hand and saw—
Nothing.
The thing, whatever it was, had burrowed into my flesh on the other side, into my palm.
Jaw clenched as the waves of agony slowly ebbed about, I peeled my fingers open, bracing the back of my hand on my knee, determined to see what ravaged me.
An oval piece of what looked to be marble, and very beautiful marble at that, lay buried in my flesh. Its swirls of caramel, ivory, gold and ebony reminded me of the very nice marble in Evelyn Statler’s mansion counters and floors. Quality. Cool. Inanimate. Beautiful to look upon.
But this seemed anything but inanimate or stonelike. It pulsed in time to my racing heartbeat as its icy being burned in its cold. Even as I watched it, my heart calmed. The burn receded. I flexed my hand.
It felt liked it looked—something immovable embedded in my palm. A dollar piece welded into place. A bit of marble permanently attached to me.
Brian tumbled down the stairs. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“It—it’s stuck in me.” I held my hand up for him to see. He stopped dead in his tracks. Steptoe bounded down after him, and he said, softly, “Oh, Tessa.”
“What is it?”
“I d-don’t know,” Brian stammered. “That is to say, I’m not certain.”
“Well, I am. That’s a maelstrom stone.” Steptoe approached me cautiously, his sharp gaze with a speculative glitter that he shuttered away quickly by closing his eyes tightly a moment before looking on me again.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Brian told me, “you could be very, very dangerous.”
His words jolted me. They had to be wrong. He meant I could be in a lot of danger, right? Surely.
“I’m . . . I’m in trouble.”
He shook his head slowly. “No. I meant what I said. You could be very dangerous. It harnesses chaotic energy, but it doesn’t stay neutral. It all depends on you, and how long it takes you to master it, and keep control of it.”
“Get it out!”
“Not possible. It’s symbiotic.”
“Symbiotic. Like a parasite? A partnership?”
Brian nodded.
It would live in partnership with me. But it was stone, marble, albeit very handsome marble, not living! And yet I had felt it move with my rhythm and warm to my temperature. I dropped my hand in my lap and looked at the miserable thing. I wasn’t magic. I might have luck but that wasn’t magic, and I didn’t want to be magic. Look at all the trouble it caused Morty and the professor! “It’s got to come out.”
“When it’s done with you.”
“And what do you mean by that!”
“He means,” Steptoe said kindly, “it has a purpose, and when it’s fulfilled that, it’ll loosen, drop out, an’ wait for another for a different purpose.”
“Seriously? How long will that take?”
“No one knows. Some quests are lifelong. Some are generational. And some might be completed in a few days.”
I stared at it. “I guess I could wear gloves to the auction.” I looked up at Brian. “Is this the item you gave to my father? The business arrangement you had with him that didn’t go well?”
Brian blinked. Then he pursed his lips in thought. “No, no it’s not. And how did you—” He paused. “Morty talked too much.”
“Nailed it.” I got to my feet, leaning on Hiram. For a moment my head swam in dizzy circles and I held onto his arm for dear life. Everything went haywire and sparkles flooded the basement. Then everything steadied although the room seemed much, much dimmer. I narrowed my eyes to see better.
It was then I saw it.
Or rather, not an “it.”
A figure in the corner of the basement. An apparition, layered over the reality of where we all stood. A ghost watching me with an ineffable look of complete sadness.
I had found my father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I DIDN’T KNOW if anybody else could see him, and he certainly wasn’t looking at anyone but me, not even Mom when she appeared at the top of the shaky staircase, afraid to come down but more worried about me. “Tessa, are you all right?”
“Sort of.” I looked at the ghost. He wasn’t all white and misty but himself, although one dimensional and sepia colored, as though there had been colors to him once but something had leached them all out before flattening him. He looked almost like a vintage photograph back in the early days, one of those tintype thingies. When he realized I saw him, he gave a weary and crooked smile and lifted a hand.
I lifted a hand back.
“We thought the house was haunted. It was you, all this time. All the rattles and pots and pans.”
He inclined his head.
Mom came down a shaky step or two. “What is it? Who are you talking to?”
She knew something happened to me before anyone else did. The men around me stood stock still, but she fairly quivered with anticipation and worry. But then, she was my mom. I craned my head around to tell her.
“I can see him. They can’t.”
She didn’t ask who. She put shaking fingers to her mouth instead. “Is he . . . Is he . . .”
“Dead? I don’t know. Are you?”
Mom took another slow step down. “John?”
He glanced at her, and then away quickly, as if the sight of her burned him. He stared at the floor a moment. I saw his lips move long before the words reached me. “I don’t think so. But I can’t really tell. I’ve been trying to let you know I’m here somewhere.”
She didn’t react but I stepped back with a gasp.
“What is it?”
“I can hear him.” I whirled around to face her. “You didn’t hear that?”
She shook her head, blonde curls tumbling about her shoulders. “Not a thing.”
“He answered you. And I heard him.”
Steptoe drew himself up. “It’s the stone. We can’t perceive wot she does. Well, perhaps Hiram did, slightly. But she’s on ’er own.”
Brian put his hand on my arm. “Tell me, us, what’s happening?”
“The room got all wonky, but that might have been shock. Then it filled with sparkles and kind of dimmed. Hazy-like. And then I saw my father, only it’s not, he’s not quite real. He’s near transparent.”
My fat
her’s lips moved again and a few seconds later, I got the sense of what he said. “Tell the professor I still have it.”
“And he says to tell you he still has it.”
“Does he now? Well, that’s good, that’s good.” Brian frowned. “If I could only think of what it might have been.”
That caught my father’s full attention. He moved, wavering a bit, as if walking across the bottom of a swimming pool. “What happened to the old man?”
“It’s a long story,” I returned. “If you’re sticking around this time, I might be able to tell you.” My throat stung. I wanted to hug him and cry and then get mad all over again, then hug him again. I had missed him. I had.
My mother whispered, “How does he look?” as if afraid to draw attention.
I shrugged at Mom. “Not like Casper the Ghost or anything. It’s . . . strange. Like an old-timey picture. And his words come across slowly, out of synch.”
“Aha!” Brian jumped a step. “It might be, of course I can’t be certain, and it’s rare, but it can happen. He’s caught between dimensions. How on earth he managed that, I’ve no idea.”
“Then he’s not dead?”
“No, not yet.” Brian scratched the side of his jaw. “He’ll eventually fade away though to the other side if we can’t draw him back. I have to remember . . .”
“Is he carrying a relic you need?”
After a long, thoughtful moment, Brian shook his head. “I don’t believe so. An item of great importance. I remember being very distressed when he disappeared with it, but just what it is . . .” He sighed. “I can’t bring it to mind.”
My father said, “I never opened the box. I have no idea what it is, either.” His form rippled suddenly, winked out, and came back. He held shaking hands out to me. “What’s happening?”
“I have no idea!” I cried to the others, “He’s winking in and out. Are we losing him?” Not again. Not yet. I wasn’t ready. I know Mom wasn’t.
Both Brian and Steptoe said as one, “Not good.”
Steptoe added, “He’s weakening. It’s willpower that keeps him on the edge of this reality. But it draws on him, it has to.”
I grabbed for him before he could wink away totally. The stone in my hand went ice-hot and as I touched him, I felt him, the cloth of his shirt’s sleeve, the slightness of his shoulder, the smell of his old-fashioned after-shave, the warmth of his body.
Everyone else in the room gasped as they saw him. Just for a moment. Just for a flash. Then my stone cooled and he faded back to his sepia self and I let go.
I didn’t know how he got to where he was, but I knew that my stone might have the power to bring him back if we’d all seen him. Somehow, I’d brought him in line with us, just for that brief moment. So it gave me the power for that, among other uses. Would that be a dark thing to do? Would I be upsetting the worlds between here and wherever there was? Life and death?
I suddenly didn’t care.
“I’ll get you back, Dad. I will.”
The stone flared again and as I held my hand out, palm up, to look at it, a tiny flame danced over the surface, and then the marble absorbed it. I could feel a coldness go through my body.
“Ah, no, ducks, you shouldn’t have done that. Never make a vow with a maelstrom stone.”
I’d meant to do what I did, but a mantle of fear tried to settle over my shoulders, and I shook it off impatiently. “Too late now.”
“Too right that is.” Steptoe sighed again.
* * *
• • •
We left him there, in the basement. I tried to coax him upstairs with me, but it seemed he couldn’t cross the boundary. He had used all his energy strength over the past many months poltergeisting. He might cross later, Brian told me, if he gained it back.
Brian and Steptoe fastened a kind of rope hoist, a block and tackle, to get Hiram up the stairs, at his instruction, and it worked, more or less. The first thing he did was get his phone out and notify the family that he needed a small construction crew, and then he told us that he would get repairs and remodels done punctually. They’d arrive in a day or two. After that, we ordered pizzas.
I wouldn’t let anyone slide the pantry back into place. I wanted to be able to pop down and talk to him if I needed to, or if he needed me. Mom didn’t say much, but she cried quietly and clung to my right hand, the one without the maelstrom stone.
She, the pert and blonde one, cried enough that her nose finally turned red and her eyes looked a little bloodshot. I sat down with her, side-by-side on the couch, our bodies close from ankle to shoulder, and realized how much I’d grown to look like my father in the last two years. Tall, lanky, thick tangle of hair. I couldn’t remember if he had freckles too. I must remind her of him every single day, and I’d had no real idea. I’d been thinking of myself, mostly.
And I decided that I’d become as much of an adrenaline junkie as he was, searching for that surge of excitement, only I didn’t gamble for it. I played with magic.
I put my head back and waited for the doorbell to announce the delivery guy. I listened to three men who’d been absolute strangers just days ago, argue about what to do with my life. I wanted to object but suddenly felt too exhausted to join in.
I barely heard the last sentence: “I still don’t see how it could have bonded so strongly with her.”
A quiet fell among the three as they contemplated the meaning of that.
After many long moments, I lifted my chin. “I bled on it.”
“You what?”
“I’d cut my finger trying to get the pantry seam open, and I bled on it. Or on something on the cabinet shelves when I reached in.” Of course, I’d bled on it later too, when it dug itself in, but that didn’t seem quite as significant. It was almost as if I’d baited it, and it had responded.
Brian’s mouth fell open. He snapped it shut. “That is not good at all.”
“What does it matter?” I pushed away from my mother. “It’s done. Now all we have to worry about is undoing it.”
“No. What we have to do is make certain you stay strong enough to control it. Its bond with you will be that much more formidable. Because it is, it will take considerable effort to undo anything regarding the stone.”
“What do you mean, strong?” My mother’s voice took an edge.
“The stone has a mind of its own, in many ways. Although it looks like a static object, it can tap into other things.” Steptoe took the folded pamphlet out of his suit coat. “Give me a few hours to peruse this and I might be able t’ tell the lot of you more. If the stone embodies anything, it certainly does chaos.” He rattled a page as he opened it and the first sound out of his mouth was an “Uh-oh,” which didn’t give me much confidence.
The door knocker sounded. I stumbled to my feet, grabbed the wallet Mom tossed to me, and went to retrieve the pizzas. She couldn’t foot the bill for five pizzas (Hiram alone would eat two full ones and maybe a slice or two more), so I still carried Morty’s black credit card, but she insisted on leaving the tip. I opened our door to a frazzled looking Carter Phillips.
His mouth twisted and so did that off-center cleft scar. “Someone reported screams and a crash. Or maybe it was a crash and then screams.”
I quickly closed my left hand so I couldn’t flash him the maelstrom stone. I had the sudden thought that the Society would be less than thrilled. “We—ah—well, that would be us, because Hiram fell through the floor in the mudroom and Mom and I let out a yell. It was very traumatic at the time, but everyone’s okay.”
“He fell through the floor?”
“It’s an old house. There’s a basement we didn’t know about. And, you know, Iron Dwarves are weighty.”
“Wow.” He managed to look impressed despite being tired.
“Tessa, is that someone you’re going to let in or do we need to come help you th
row him out?” Mom called from the living room.
“It’s Carter Phillips.”
“Oh. Then do let him in. There’s pizza, when it gets here.”
Carter followed me to the living room and dropped in a wing chair. “That sounds good.”
“What flavor?”
He gave a diffident gesture. “Any. All.”
“That’s my man.” Hiram smiled widely at him.
Everyone lapsed into silence. I stayed on my feet and decided to pull paper plates and napkins out of the kitchen in preparation. Stumbling a bit, I kicked a lower cabinet and made the pot on the stove rattle ever so slightly. That pulled me into a dead stop.
Yes, my father had been trying to alert us. Yes, we hadn’t understood for months and months. But none of that explained the absolutely berserk rattles and crashes and clanking when Joanna was here, and I’d forgotten to ask him.
I dropped my pile of paper goodies on the kitchen table. Making sure no one saw me from the living room, I crept to the hole in the mudroom, lay down, and hung my head in, upside down.
We’d taken out two of the bulbs to reduce the lighting from a brilliant glare to muted, and it looked even dimmer through my inverted vision. Not the rest of the house, just here. Wherever it was my dad occupied.
“Dad!” I pitched my whisper sharply. If he lived in a dimension that was darker, who knew how well sound projected?
A waver, like a mirage, rippled below me. His head and shoulders appeared. Nothing else. I swallowed tightly, wondering if our meeting had drained him of valuable and necessary energy. I couldn’t back out now.
“I forgot to ask you, but . . . well, you got really noisy when I had a friend come over the other day.”
“A friend? Who? And when?”
“Joanna Hashimoto. She goes to college with me and Evelyn.”
“Statler’s daughter? Her, I remember. You’re friends now? She used to shun you in middle school. Hashimoto. That would be Hironori Hashimoto? Businessman, important, getting political, country club? Statler surprises me though.”
