Amber House (17 page)

By the time we hit the Academy’s cove, half the pack was trailing. Slower boats, less capable sailors. I could see Richard still running first, with Morgan and two other boats pursuing him. They were past the first buoy, heading southeast almost directly into the wind, and I could see that Morgan’s crew was having difficulty tacking — the zigzag maneuver that was required. The
Backdraft
fell to third, then to fourth, with us coming up hard.

The lead boats veered northeast close around the marsh headland, but Jackson called a course that swung us wider. More distance to travel, but it paid off. First, we milked speed from the end of the river flow, and then I felt the
Amber
catch hold of a new underwater current.

“The tide,” Jackson yelled. “Turned a little while ago.”

The other boats, cutting closer to land, hadn’t got as much of a push from these two invisible hands. The
Amber
gained on them. We caught and passed Morgan’s boat, and then the two in front of him. Suddenly, we were in second place.

We were closing on Richard as we approached the next turn. Richard shifted sails and Chad started to turn. Since Jackson had already reset our sails, I leaned on the rudder.

“No, wait!” Jackson shouted.

Confused, I tried to abort, but the
Amber
was already coming about. I hadn’t seen that at the last second, Chad had straightened the
Swallow
out, so that my turn began before his. Richard grinned wide enough for me to see it across the water.

“Take a penalty, Parsons,” he yelled.

I’d been suckered. According to the rules, a following boat was not allowed to start its turn around a buoy before the leading boat did. The penalty was a forced tack and jibe — two unnecessary turns that would slow us down. Jackson and I executed the clumsy maneuver and slipped to fifth.

I caught Jackson’s eye and mouthed the words
I’m sorry
.

He shrugged, smiled, and shouted back, “We’ll catch ’em.”

With the wind blowing up the bay, the next leg southwest to the lighthouse was torture for any crew unskilled at tacking. Jackson, fortunately, was a genius with the sails. And I didn’t know how, but he had it timed out perfectly for our last, long westward tack to take us directly, and at the greatest possible speed, into the turn around the lighthouse.

I was anxious to slow up. I could see the rocks shoreward; I did not want to slew too wide and end up on those jags.

“Luff sail,” I shouted to Jackson, pleading with him to dump the wind from the
Amber
’s sails and slow her up. He shook his head.

“We’ll make it,” he shouted back. “Trust me.”

I slammed the tiller far to starboard, holding my breath, silently cursing him.
If he crushes the
Amber’
s hull with this stunt —

I watched the
Amber
swing south, then south-southwest, then more and more westerly. We struck rock — I could feel the small shudder in the hull as it scraped past some underwater obstruction. But then we were free, sails full, leaping east-northeast. We’d held an amazing amount of forward momentum around that turn. As the leaders struggled to regain speed, we pulled even with and passed all but Richard and Chad.

Their sail was full, as was ours, both of us running northwest now, before the wind. Approaching the north-shore cove, Richard pulled sail, slowing for a tight counterclockwise turn around the buoy, poised to catch me with a repeat sucker punch.

I yelled to Jackson, “Sixty degrees west.”

He got it, grinned, shifted sail. We turned in front of the buoy to swing around it the opposite direction. We sailed wide of Richard and Chad, losing some ground, but saving more of our speed. And when we completed the turn, we were in close haul, forty degrees athwart the wind. Richard and Chad had come out of the turn full against the wind and needed to tack across it.

I wasn’t certain, but I thought we’d pretty much pulled even.

“Eighty to port,” Jackson hollered, and I pushed the tiller and leaned back as the sail swung. We cut across the blade of the wind and tacked again, swinging back west. Richard and Chad were on an opposite course, skimming east toward us.

We both turned again — they tacked west, we tacked east — separating. I could hear the crowd cheering across the water now. We were close. The boats turned again, nosing toward each other, both of us entering the mouth of Spa Creek. Richard came about so we were running side by side. The
Swallow
was in the lead, but we’d been on this tack longer, so we had more momentum. The finish line was just ahead.

We passed between the marker buoys, and I couldn’t tell who had won. I looked at Jackson and he shrugged — he didn’t know either.

It seemed like Richard had it. I thought for sure he had it.

Until I heard him choking out a few choice four-letter words.

Jackson was grinning pretty wide as he tied the
Amber
up, but he didn’t join me for the award ceremony — “Not a member,” he explained. I could understand he felt a little awkward, because that’s sure the way I felt when I went up alone, mentally cursing him for a coward. Dad and Sammy cheered loudly, but Mom was nowhere to be seen.

I tracked down Dad in the crowd to tell him I was leaving.

“How are you getting home?”

“Jackson said he’d give me a ride on the
Amber
.”

“Your mom’s not going to be happy. First you win, then you duck out on her.”

“Yeah, well, when is she ever happy?” I said, shrugging.

On my way back to Jackson and the
Amber
, I spotted Richard again. He was sitting slumped over at the end of a dock, staring out over the choppy waters of the bay. His second-place trophy lay on its back beside him. I thought about telling him it had been a hell of a race — so close I’d figured he’d won it. But I didn’t. I just slipped on by. I almost wished I’d listened to my mother.

Jackson fixed the sail to catch the northerly breeze and took the helm for our trip back up the river. Stillness fell around us like a curtain.

“You’re a good sailor,” Jackson told me.

“You sound surprised,” I commented in mock puzzlement. “You’re never surprised by any of the things I do.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, come to think of it. Really. Why is that?”

I could scarcely see his face anymore, but I could hear the humor in his voice. “Why am I surprised? Or why am I not surprised?”

“Either. No. Let’s start with the ‘not surprised’ part.”

“I’m not surprised by some things, I guess, because they fit who you are. Or maybe Ida said something about it to me.”

“Gramma must’ve spent a whole lot of time talking about me,” I said. “She must’ve gotten pretty boring.”

“You think I know you that well?”

“Seems like it sometimes.”

He laughed. “Maybe you’re just predictable.”

“Maybe,” I said, vexed but amused. “I guess I’m the one that’s boring.”

“Not at all,” he said graciously. “Just think about poor Richard Hathaway — you surprised the hell out of him.”

Back at the house, we left the
Amber
shipshape and climbed the stone stairs. Jackson said good night and was about to go, but I stopped him.

“Hey,” I said, sticking out my hand, “congratulations on a great race.”

He took my hand, but didn’t shake — just held it in a firm, warm grip. He looked me in the eye and smiled. “A winning team.”

“Yes,” I said, and shook his hand once. He let me go. “Want to do some treasure hunting?” It would be maybe a couple of hours before Mom, Dad, and Sammy finished watching the club’s fireworks and returned home. And I didn’t want to be in the house alone.

“Sure.”

We found tape, scissors, and some flashlights in the kitchen.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“How about we go to the top of the stairs in here?”

He looked puzzled. “No stairs in the kitchen.”

“The dollhouse has some, so I just thought —”

His face went from thoughtful to excited. With a sudden sureness, he went to the stretch of wall to the right of the massive fireplace. The wall held a narrow full-length closet door, next to a cupboard stacked over a set of three wide drawers where Gramma had kept things like aluminum foil and rolling pins.

Jackson opened the closet, which proved to be mostly empty except for some cleaning supplies and an ironing board. He rapped on the left wall, sounding it like a watermelon: two shallow raps and then a solid
thunk
. “It’s hollow here,” he said. “But how do we get to it?”

He bent his head, considering, then went to the double doors of the cupboard to the left of the closet. They concealed a stack of many small drawers, each one with a sliding hasp that held it closed. I looked in some of them — they held various pieces of silver nestled in form-fitting, fabric-lined holes. I carefully closed all the drawers, sliding the catches back into place. It seemed
like the old kitchen stairs must have been removed many years before.

“See these?” Jackson said, pointing.

Just barely visible at the base of the set of locking drawers were two horizontal lines of dark metal.

“Hinges,” we said at the same time.

Again Jackson bent his head in thought and again he looked up with a new purpose. He felt his way along the upper frame of the panel of drawers. On the right-hand side, a three-inch piece of wood pressed inward with a small click. At that, the top edge of the panel popped forward a fraction of an inch.

My mouth dropped open in amazement. The entire set of upper drawers was designed to fold out and down, over the front of the wide lower drawers. Now I understood why all the little silver drawers locked — so they wouldn’t dump out as they were inverted.

Jackson smiled at me. Then he pulled on the handle of the uppermost drawer.

The top edge of the panel of drawers tipped out and down on mechanical arms designed to slow the drawers’ descent. The hidden backside of the drawers proved to be a short set of steps that rose to more steps inside the newly revealed opening.

A secret staircase.

“Wild,” Jackson commented. “I wonder if Ida knew this was here.”

I shined the flashlight in the opening. The stair was dark and narrow and twisting. “Shall we try it?” I asked dubiously.

In answer, he picked up his flashlight and started climbing. I flicked off the kitchen light and followed. He stretched back a hand to help me, and I took it, seeking courage more than support. I had to duck to pass through the small opening to the stairs, and once I was inside, Jackson pushed a smooth wooden
lever at one edge of the opening. It released a weight that pulled the door closed as it dropped. I backed up as the steps folded into place.

Dust was thick on the stairs, and every corner hung with webs. I tried not to think of the things that lived in the dark — centipedes and cockroaches and beetles and black widows. The stairs twisted and twisted again, a series of small triangular steps. I longed for a handhold, but couldn’t have made myself reach out and touch the rail for anything in the world.

I rounded a corner and stepped wrong, losing my balance. I fell toward the wall, reaching blindly to catch myself, my hand pushing through a net of webs. I shrieked. Jackson pointed the flashlight down at me.

“Hey,” he said. “Stay out of the webs.”

“Gladly,” I said, wiping my hand on my pants.

“No, I mean it.” He spotlighted something just a few feet from me — an orange spider vibrating furiously in her web. “See her?”

“Ick,” I confirmed.

“She’s called a good mother. Very protective of her nest. She’ll bite you if you get too close. And she’s pretty poisonous. If a bite doesn’t kill, it leaves a wound that never goes away. I don’t think you have any on the West Coast.”

“Jesus,” I said, edging around it carefully. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them before. Except maybe in a kind of nursery rhyme Sam told me the other day.”

“I know that one.”

“Wonder where he learned it?” I said, keeping my arms in and doing a thorough flashlight examination of every web I climbed past.

Jackson kept leading us higher, past a landing on the second floor. The stairs got narrower there, harder to negotiate, and the air stale. I was grateful he had gone ahead to clear a path through
the accumulated webs, but I didn’t like the feel of the darkness following behind me, rushing to close over the intrusion of our flashlights.

He halted abruptly. He’d reached a door of heavy planks, bound top and bottom with iron, and set with a keyhole. If it had ever been locked, it was not now. The knob turned, and Jackson pushed with his shoulder, forcing the complaining door open.

Our stabbing lights revealed a long, narrow, empty garret with a slanted ceiling and a single window at the far end. The air was chilled — I almost expected to see my breath ghosting out in front of me — and I felt reluctant to enter. Then my light found a wooden chest settled into the dark at the heart of the room.

I stopped breathing. I could actually feel the blood surging through the veins in my temples. My fingers had found Jackson’s arm and were grasping it, clawlike. And I thought,
Oh, my God, this is it. We found the diamonds.

Jackson unhooked my fingers, took my hand, and led me to the chest. Up close, we could see that it sat on an old Persian rug. And a heavy lock held it shut. And there was no visible key.

“What do you want to do?” he asked me.

“Are you kidding? Let’s open it. Don’t you want to?”

He didn’t answer. “Keep your light on the lock.” He used the butt end of his flashlight to hammer the ancient padlock repeatedly. The clanging rang brutally loud in the silent air of the attic. He paused. “I don’t know if this is a good idea. Maybe someone wanted it left shut.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I think the operative word in that sentence was
wanted
. Past tense. Judging by the layer of dust, no one has been up here in a long, long time. I think
we
get to decide now. Keep going!”

His face, distorted by the shadows and the unsteady lights in our hands, looked hungry. “I — I just have a bad feeling about it.
I want it opened, but you’re the one who’s always facing the things in the dark corners —”

“The visions can’t hurt me. I’ll be fine. Open it, already.”

He hit the lock one more time and it busted loose. He twisted it free of the hasp. The lid rose with a metallic groan.

He stood back a little, pointing his flashlight at the chest and its contents. Evidently I was to have the privilege of searching it.

I was so excited my chest was tight. I knelt down and my hand came to rest on a little pile of beads that had been dropped long ago on the old rug. I lifted them up into the light: a silver rosary.

Time opened up. I heard, first — a woman weeping. Then she appeared in my peripheral vision, kneeling beside me — in the act of clicking a lock shut on the chest’s hasp, the very same lock Jackson had just broken. I saw her yank on it to make sure it was closed.

I knew her face — she was beautiful, even with smears of dark makeup bleeding down her cheeks in the tears under her eyes. It was Fiona Warren. I’d seen her picture in her book. The fiery color of her hair surprised me — the old photo had been in the sepia tones of a century earlier. As I watched her, she started to turn her face toward me, and I had the irrational thought that I had to snuff out this vision before she
saw
me. I let the rosary spill from my fingers. She disappeared.

“You sure you want to do this?”

“What’s your problem?” I asked, feeling a little irritated. This whole treasure hunt had been
his
idea. We were about to find the diamonds. Why was he hanging back now?

“Haven’t you ever heard the old saying — sometimes the things that come out of a box can’t be put back in?”

I shook my head a little, disbelieving. Deliberately, I turned my attention to the chest’s contents. They were a jumble. The
diamonds could be in anything — a bag, an envelope, the hem of a coat, even.

I saw the tops of a pair of black boots, the end of a little wooden box, the handle of a riding crop, the crumbling silk of a dress. I reached in and picked out a glint of gold — the clasp on the end of a string of coral beads, with a large piece of carved jade at their center. I held it out to him, triumphant. “Look at th —”

But the words I started to say died on my lips as full daylight filled my vision. Before me I saw a little girl with golden ringlets, in a pink satin, hoop-skirted dress and the same coral necklace. She was bent over a wooden washtub, splashing in the water.

It seemed … odd. It looked as if … there was something in the water. Something moving. I leaned to see —

Oh, God.
Two little fists flailing; the dark curls on the top of a small head submerged under roiling water.

A black woman ran up, shoved the girl back, and snatched the baby from the tub, drying him gently as the infant coughed up water. “Sh-sh-shhh,” she crooned. “Mama’s here now, you’re safe.”

The little girl stood up and brushed herself off. She said to the woman, calmly, “Lay a hand on me again, girl, and I shall have you whipped.” She cocked her head to one side and shrugged a little: “You can’t save it, you know. The gypsy told Papa it has to die.”

A violent wish that I could shove that child back into the dirt kicked me loose of the vision, which drained down to darkness. Appalled and horrified, I dropped the coral beads back in the chest.
Who was that little girl? Please, not related to me.

Jackson was watching me. “Shall we stop?” he asked.

I felt something like nausea twisting inside me, but I wasn’t ready to quit. “No,” I told him. I reached back into the chest. “There’s good stuff in here.” I fished out a dagger, its handle made of gold set with glinting gemstones.

Candlelight settled around me, gentle and wavering. I recognized that I was in the parlor downstairs. Sarah-Louise stood, quietly weeping, above a seated black-haired woman, with a uniformed man behind them. Matthew lay on a quilt spread on the table. I had never seen a dead person before, not even my gramma, but Matthew’s ashy-white pallor was unmistakable.

The man — the Captain — gave directions to someone I couldn’t see: “We’ll bury my son come daybreak.”

The woman leapt up then to cover Matthew’s body with her own. “He’s not dead,” she said, horror in her voice. “He’s sleeping. I’ve seen him in my dreams. His spirit comes to me. I won’t let you put him in the ground.”

I knew she had to be Deirdre, the twins’ mother. I’d seen her before, in the ballroom, whirling across the floor. And I realized I’d heard her before too — in the attic, shouting in the dark. “He’s dead, you lunatic,” the Captain grated, taking her by the elbow and yanking her off.

She slammed back against the sideboard. Candlesticks toppled; china smashed on the floor. She caught herself there, then shot out a hand to grab something up. “No,” she screamed, turning and swinging the thing in her hand down in an arc.

He saw her at the last second and parried the thing with his forearm. Then he swore, reaching for the gem-set handle suddenly protruding from his shoulder.

He pulled out a handkerchief to staunch the blood streaming from his wound, but a grim smile curled his lips. “Lock her in the nursery,” he said. “I never want to see her again.”

The last thing I saw was the fear on Deirdre’s face. I dropped the dagger to make it all go away.

“What did you see?” Jackson asked.

I felt dizzy and shaken. So many visions so fast. And all of them so — ugly. He had been right, I conceded in my head — better not to have opened this box. I didn’t want to see any more.

“Shall we pull the rest of this stuff out, see what’s on the bottom?” Jackson had piled things on the floor beside him.

“We don’t have to. The diamonds aren’t in here. That’s not what this chest is for. Please put it all back.” He looked at me, confused. “Just put it back, now,” I said between clenched teeth. I snatched up an armful to shove back into the open lid and instantly, a different darkness filled my sight.