The Girl With the Ghost Machine

by Lauren DeStefano

  Emmaline closed her fist protectively around the key. Tea was one thing, but she couldn’t bear to part with any of the treasures her mother had given her.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Gully told his brother. “It’s just a theory.”

  “What else could it possibly be?” Oliver said.

  “It could all have been a dream,” Gully reasoned. “Dreams can feel very real, even after you wake up sometimes.”

  Emmaline was sure that it hadn’t been a dream, but she didn’t try to argue. Gully was the most logical person she knew. She didn’t expect that he would believe something so strange without seeing it for himself.

  Still, he continued to think aloud. “It would explain why you don’t remember drinking tea with her when you were scared of the thunder,” he said. “Putting a memory into the machine is like spending a penny at the arcade. It’s gone now.”

  Emmaline’s brows knotted in worry as she considered this. Gone. She’d had a moment with her mother, and that short time had been enough to undo two years of grief and longing. But it was gone now, and it had taken a memory with it. Memories, at least, were supposed to be hers to keep. That was how it worked. They lived even when the person in them didn’t.

  “Have you told your father?” Gully asked.

  “No.” She forced herself to eat a slice of her orange, considering. After her mother died, Emmaline had learned the importance of meals even when she didn’t feel hungry. She knew that this small bit of order would keep her firmly in the world of the living, and she would not drown so readily in sadness. “I don’t know if it will even work again. What if I really have broken the machine forever, and he missed out because of me? I couldn’t bear to tell him that.”

  “We can help.” Oliver smiled, reassuring her.

  They huddled together, and they made their plan. At midnight, after her father had at last gone to bed, they would sneak out of their beds and meet her at her house. They would bring something that held a memory, and she would show it to the machine.

  CHAPTER 5

  It was with much debate that Gully and Oliver set about finding a memory to feed to the machine. They finally agreed on a blue plastic plant that had occupied the tank of their long-since-departed goldfish, Maggie. They didn’t miss the goldfish nearly as much as Tidbit, and it would be easier to bear, Gully had said.

  Emmaline lived in a tall, slender house made of brick, with flower boxes in the windows. They were empty now, save for some dirt and dead vines. The house sat at the heart of a quiet, if overcrowded, street, with narrow alleyways between homes. Gully and Oliver were still arguing about not summoning Tidbit’s ghost when they stepped beneath the green overhang at Emmaline’s front door.

  She had been waiting at the window, and she let them in.

  The twins were startled by how chilly and dark the house was, but they didn’t remark on it. They knew that Emmaline’s father had become stingy about things like electricity and heat since he’d started his machine.

  “What did you bring?” Emmaline whispered.

  “Fish plant,” Oliver replied unhappily.

  “I didn’t know you had a fish.”

  “It didn’t live for very long,” Oliver said. “But maybe it’ll be nice to see again.”

  Emmaline opened the basement door, revealing the purple glow of the machine. “After you,” she said.

  Gully went first, mystified by the throbbing hum of the machine. He had heard it faintly before, but the door to the basement had always been closed. Now at last he was able to see the thing that had intrigued him for some time.

  Swathed in its own glow, the machine was a pile of gears and scrap metal, with a gaping mouth that, combined with two bolts, made it look like an expression of astonishment.

  Oliver followed a step behind his brother, his eyes bright with excitement.

  Emmaline closed the door behind them, apprehensive.

  “Be careful,” she said. “When I poured my tea into the machine last night, it threw me back.”

  Gully took the blue plastic plant from Oliver’s hand. He wasn’t any bigger or stronger than his brother, but sometimes he seemed to think that he was. “Stand back. I’ll do it.”

  “Wait,” Oliver said. “When Maggie comes back, won’t she need water?”

  “Maggie is dead,” Gully said. “She doesn’t need anything.”

  Still, Oliver looked worried. Emmaline held his hand to reassure him, and together they moved out of the way.

  “Careful, Gully,” Emmaline said. He was smiling, though, in that studious way he took on whenever he was faced with the potential to learn something new.

  He dropped the blue plant into the mouth of the machine, and in that same second, Emmaline grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to safety.

  But the machine didn’t spark. It didn’t burst with blinding light or knock them from where they stood.

  It was quiet, save for the machine’s persistent hum. Gully’s expectant expression turned thoughtful, then disappointed.

  Guilt knotted in Emmaline’s stomach. She had broken it. And not only would there never be another ghost, she would never see her mother again.

  And then the machine began to rattle. Oliver twisted his fist around her sleeve and gasped. A moment later, Emmaline saw it: a bright orange goldfish, swimming in the air as though it were water. It sailed across Gully’s astonished eyes and swirled around Oliver’s head. He giggled as the fin flicked his nose.

  Gully held up a finger, and cautiously, thoughtfully, stroked the fish’s back. “It’s real.” He blinked.

  “Of course it’s real.” Oliver laughed.

  Maggie, the ghost, spiraled through the air a few more times and then disappeared as though she had never even been there.

  Gully was the first to move. He looked behind the machine, to the tangle of wires that led into the wall. He inspected the gears, ran his hand along the smooth metal. He peeked inside the mouth of the machine, squinting at the brightness of it. “The plant we fed it is gone,” he said.

  “Search your memories,” Emmaline said. “Does anything feel like it’s unclear?”

  Gully looked at her. “I can’t remember when we got her.”

  “Me either,” Oliver said. The blue in his dark eyes was shining.

  Gully went back to inspecting the machine, and Emmaline peeked over his shoulder. “Don’t touch anything,” she said.

  “Most of these wires seem to be feeding the light bulbs,” Gully said. “Why purple bulbs?”

  “It was my mother’s favorite,” Emmaline offered. “If that means anything.”

  “And the engine is definitely electric.” Gully was talking more to himself than to anyone. He slipped his hand in the narrow slot between the machine and the wall. “Plenty of fans are keeping it from overheating, and that’s what’s draining most of the electricity. The bulbs wouldn’t be using too much.”

  The machine shuddered and clanked, prompting Gully and Emmaline to look at it.

  No. The machine hadn’t made the noise. It was the sound of something falling into the machine.

  Oliver stepped back, looking sheepish. He put his hands behind his back.

  “What did you do?” Gully demanded.

  A dog barked in answer. Emmaline followed Gully’s gaze just in time to watch the copper bloodhound leap up and put his paws on Oliver’s shoulders and lick his cheeks. Oliver squinted and began to laugh, a loud, uninhibited, happy sound. He wrapped his arms around his dog. “It worked! It’s Tidbit!”

  “Oliver, how could you?” Gully rasped. But he reached forward to scratch his old dog’s ears.

  “I put one of his chew toys in the machine. I knew you’d want to see him again, no matter what you said,” Oliver told him.

  During the last year of his life, Tidbit had been listless and slow, but now that he was a ghost, he was energetic as a puppy. The twins knelt on the ground as Tidbit whimpered his excitement and lapped at their faces.

  Emmaline stood
at a distance to let the twins have a proper reunion, but she couldn’t resist reaching out just once to pet the dog’s head, to feel his silky coat.

  She was so caught up in how real he was, how much like a living dog the way he panted and whimpered and slobbered, that she almost didn’t hear the noise at the top of the stairs.

  The door creaked open, and she froze. Dread filled her even before she dared to raise her eyes.

  Her father stood at the top of the stairs, and he was staring at Tidbit. He saw him wag his tail and then disappear, leaving Oliver clinging to the air.

  “Papa.” Emmaline’s voice felt far away, drowning in the hum of the machine.

  The twins hurried to their feet. Oliver fidgeted, and Gully nudged his shoulder to still him.

  For the longest time, Emmaline’s father didn’t move. He didn’t move, and no one spoke.

  The dog must have woken him, Emmaline thought. She should have told Gully and Oliver to be quieter. Her father did not sleep very deeply, not since he’d begun making the machine. It was as though the machine had syncopated itself to his heart somehow. This was one of the many things Emmaline resented about the machine, and for a bitter moment, standing there, she wished she really had broken it. She did miss her father so.

  “Monsieur Beaumont,” Gully began, his tone steady. He always found a way to be steady. “I apologize. I know it’s late—”

  “Yes,” Julien Beaumont interrupted him. His own voice was dazed. His eyes were fixed on the humming machine. “It is quite late. Your parents will be worried if they wake and find you gone. Go on home, boys.”

  They didn’t need to be told twice. Side by side they climbed the steps. Oliver looked over his shoulder to give Emmaline a worried glance. He was biting his lip. Gully tugged him along.

  Seconds later, they were gone. Emmaline heard the front door open and close, and then she was alone, standing beside the machine.

  “It worked,” her father breathed. He didn’t sound angry, or happy, or frightened. Emmaline didn’t know what to make of him just then. It had been two years since her mother had died, and in that time, there were days when her father almost looked as he once had when her mother’s laughter filled the house. And there were days when Emmaline didn’t recognize him at all. Did not know what was happening behind his warm eyes.

  He thundered down the steps, and he ran once he reached the bottom. Emmaline thought he was running for the machine, but to her surprise he grabbed her and swept her up and spun her around.

  It had been so long—so long—since he had done this, but she erupted with a laugh the way she always had before. The moment lasted for a small forever.

  After he set her back on her feet, he took her cheeks in his hands. “How? What did you do?”

  They sat on the cold basement floor, and Emmaline told him all about the tea and her mother’s ghost, and Gully’s theory that the machine was using memories as fuel. She told him that her own memory of supposedly having tea with her mother during thunderstorms, as Oliver had said, was scratched out. Missing.

  Her father looked to the machine, its purple glow sharpening the edges of his face. He had gotten so much thinner, Emmaline realized.

  “Papa,” she said. “Once you feed a memory to the machine, it’s gone forever. Eventually you’ll just run out.”

  “It’s designed to work on memories,” he said. “But I had it all wrong. I was writing them down and throwing the paper into the machine. All this time, I should have been using objects associated with the memory.”

  “But then you can’t get it back ever again.” For the second time that day, Emmaline clutched the skeleton key hanging from her neck. “It’s a high price, Papa.”

  “This is progress,” he said, not seeming to have heard her. “I should dismantle the machine to see if the objects are still inside. Then they can be reused, perhaps. But no—doing that may break it. It’s quite a fickle thing.” He caught himself rambling and blinked at Emmaline. “All of this can be dealt with in the morning. You have school tomorrow.”

  Emmaline knew she was being dismissed. She fretted. Tomorrow was in fact Saturday, but she didn’t point it out. “Are you coming upstairs, too, Papa?”

  He reached forward and tousled her hair. Such a small gesture, but Emmaline clung to it. “In a bit,” he said. “I have some things to do. Go on and sleep. It’s very late.”

  Emmaline hid her concern and did as she was told.

  As she lay in bed, she waited for the sound of her father’s footsteps coming up the stairs, the creak of his door as he went to bed. But the sounds never came, and eventually, Emmaline drifted to sleep.

  A soft kiss on her cheek woke her. A cool, soft hand stroking her forehead.

  “Mama?” she whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “Where did you go when you died?”

  Her mother’s soft laugh made the room go warm. “That’s not for you to know. Not for a very, very long time.”

  “Do you miss us while you’re there? Do you wish you could come back home for real?” Emmaline’s voice was fading. She could not seem to stay awake.

  Her question went unanswered.

  She opened her eyes, and no one was there.

  Emmaline awoke to the sizzle of bacon on the skillet. The smell of fresh pressed oranges. The static voices in the kitchen radio. And singing. Her father was singing.

  In the years since her mother’s death, Emmaline had found ways to be happy again. Had found things for her heart to enjoy. But this—this sort of happiness was brighter than all of that. Still wearing her nightgown and tangled sleepy hair, she pushed her feet into her slippers and raced down the stairs.

  “Good morning,” her father sang to the tune of his song. He stood in a patch of morning sun, skillet in hand, smiling his brightest smile. “I thought you might be hungry. Why don’t you set the table?”

  The table.

  For once, the table was free of clutter. There were no traces of the stacks of paper or the rusted tools that had begun to devour it.

  Emmaline stood on tiptoe to retrieve the plates from the cabinet. She set them before two of the kitchen chairs and aligned the forks and butter knives neatly beside them.

  She sat and waited for her father to bring the food to the table before she spoke. She found it difficult to meet his eyes.

  “What did you throw into the machine?” she asked softly.

  “It doesn’t matter,” her father said. “Some little thing.”

  Emmaline scooped some eggs onto her plate and skewered slabs of bacon with her fork. “Oh.”

  “Emmaline, I want to be sure you understand how special this machine is. You shouldn’t have come to the twins before you came to me. If it were to get into the wrong hands, something bad might happen.”

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” she said. A cloud shifted in the autumn sky, darkening the room for a moment. “But they won’t tell anyone.” She was certain about that. Oliver and Gully kept all her secrets, but she didn’t say this.

  “I know how special they are to you,” her father said. “You’ve known each other since you were babies. But they must keep this secret, and you can tell no one else, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Emmaline said, penitent. “I understand.”

  She couldn’t help staring at her father as he sat in his old usual spot and filled his plate. There was softness in his eyes again. He wasn’t consumed by frustration and wild ideas. He wasn’t glancing anxiously at the basement door, waiting to leave her and get back to work.

  Still, Emmaline knew there was something he wasn’t telling her. He had summoned her mother’s ghost. She knew it. She sensed it, the way she had sensed the kiss on her cheek during the night. She didn’t know what they had talked about, or what he had given up for her brief return. She didn’t know what more he was planning.

  But when he spoke, all he said was, “There isn’t too much food in the house, is there? I think I’ve cooked all of it.”

  T
here was never much food in the house, in fact, but Emmaline decided not to point this out.

  “How would you like to go shopping with me?” he asked.

  Emmaline couldn’t help the smile that spread from her mouth to her eyes. “Really? You and me?”

  He nodded. “You and me.”

  When they left the house, Emmaline felt certain that there were eyes peeking out at them through the cracks of the curtains. Monsieur Beaumont, outside in full daylight! Dressed in something clean and pressed, even. He held Emmaline’s hand, the way he had when her mother had been alive, when he was the happiest anyone could ever be.

  He remarked how bright and white the clouds were, like clean linen against the cold blue autumn sky.

  The Copper Square Market was a sprawling place. Flowers were for sale just inside the doors—a bright ribbon of blossoms that grew bold and vibrant. Emmaline stopped to smell them, and her father let her select one for them to buy. It was pink and white, and it made Emmaline think of how their garden had once looked in the summer.

  They walked amid carts of fruit, vegetables crisp and damp, and they talked, actually talked about something other than ghosts. He asked her about school. He listened when she told him. They bought more eggs, and flour and sugar, and decided to bake a cake for lunch, with mint green frosting and cocoa shavings.

  The house was filled with words, and laughter, and life. For the first time in two years, Emmaline could scarcely hear the hum of the ghost machine in the basement.

  CHAPTER 6

  In the summer, the lake behind Gully and Oliver’s house was great for swimming. There was a cliff pressed up against it, slicing into the perfect, smooth blue, like a chip in a mirror. There was a giant tree that grew at the cliff’s edge, from which the twins’ father had secured a swing made from rope and an old truck tire.

  Emmaline, Gully, and Oliver were once so small that all three of them could sit in the tire at once, and take turns dropping into the lake one at a time. Emmaline liked to go last. She liked to wait until the twins swam away and the water was perfect again, and she could cut straight through it and find herself in a jet stream of bubbles. It felt like flying across the universe, past all the stars, into infinite nothingness.