Don't Breathe a Word (3 page)

But the dream life continued. They soon added some framed snapshots of the two of them camping and canoeing, looking like a couple in an L.L.Bean catalog. Slowly, Phoebe’s wardrobe changed from the sexy to the practical—hot pants and vintage camisoles were replaced by fleece and long johns. She let her hair grow out like a wild woman hippie chick. For Sam’s birthday that first year, Phoebe bought him an Audubon print of a barred owl in tribute to the bird that had brought them together. The print hung above their bed, the owl’s large eyes watching over them, casting a wise bird spell that bound them together each night.

Phoebe felt safe with Sam. For the first time in her life, there were no nightmares, no glimpses of figures watching her from the shadows or slithering out from under her bed. The foolish fears of her childhood and early adulthood vanished and came to feel far away, like something dreamed up by some other girl.

I
t was the first weekend in June and the blackflies were out in full force. They swarmed Phoebe, getting into her mouth, ears, and nose. She’d lived in Vermont on and off for fifteen years but had not yet gotten used to the blackflies. They didn’t seem to bother Sam. Phoebe’s theory was that they preferred flatlander blood, that a native Vermonter carried a certain degree of natural immunity.

She shoved the orange stone into the front pocket of her frayed Levi’s that were held up with her trucker belt (another thrift store find) that had a huge silver buckle with two semis beneath the words
KING OF THE ROAD
. Sam teased her about the belt, but he loved it, thought it was sexy. She’d do a hip-swiveling dance, flashing the buckle, singing the Roger Miller song in a low, teasing voice:
I’m a man of means by no means, King of the Road
. . . She slid the green memo pad from her back pocket and thumbed through it to the last page she’d written on.

GOALS FOR WEEKEND:

Meet and befriend Evie

Learn all I can about Lisa and the fairies

She was staring down at her notebook when she felt it: the overwhelming sense that she was being watched. Had Sam decided to join her after all? She turned to look back down the path, half expecting to see him trotting toward her. She’d say, “What, you didn’t trust me not to get lost?” and he’d laugh.

But there was nothing, no one.

Or was there? She could have sworn she saw a shadow dart swiftly behind a tree to her left, down the path about ten yards. Something too tall to be a fox or coyote. Phoebe’s scalp prickled. Her arms broke out in goose bumps.

“Hello?” she called, her voice squeaking out around the lump in her throat. She closed her notebook and walked slowly toward the tree. Nothing. She let out a long shaky breath.

“You’ve just been in the car too damn long,” she hissed to herself. Phoebe had been on edge since Evie had called. It seemed strange that the fairy book had shown up at the same time Sam’s long-lost cousin did. Sam had shrugged it off, said life was full of coincidences—it was superstitious to assign meaning to every one of them.

Feeling refreshed from the brisk walk and fresh air, Phoebe hooked her fingers into the belt and did her best trucker swagger back to the car. Dodging blackflies, she prayed Sam had remembered to pack the Off!. She couldn’t help walking a little faster than she had on her way down the path, or glancing back over her shoulder a few times. Once the car was in sight, she felt relieved and a little embarrassed.

Sam was still in the driver’s seat but didn’t notice her bowlegged trucker walk as she approached. He was looking down at the plastic Ziploc bag on his lap, the treasured
Book of Fairies
inside. All she’d seen so far was the cover: worn and green, the title handwritten in now-smudged calligraphy. Tonight, Sam and Evie were going to open it up, read through it carefully page by page. What Sam held on his lap might well be the biggest clue as to what happened to Lisa. The book, like Lisa, had been missing for fifteen years, and now here it was, balanced on Sam’s lap as he sat in the driver’s seat of their crappy old Mercury Sable.

“D
on’t you think we should show it to the police?” Sam’s mother, Phyllis, had asked after they discovered the fairy book, just last week, in an attic crawl space in her house. She gazed down at the book worriedly, wringing her hands together. “Why don’t you leave it here and I’ll call them, have them come out and pick it up.”

Sam shook his head. “I just want a little time to look it over myself first,” Sam had said. “Then I’ll bring it back and we can call the police together.”

But he hadn’t looked it over. At far as Phoebe knew, he hadn’t even been able to open the cover. He sealed it in a large Ziploc, like a cop bagging evidence, and hid it away someplace so secret, he wouldn’t even tell Phoebe. She didn’t press him. Phoebe knew she’d see the book soon enough. She just had to be patient.

They’d told his mom they’d found the book by chance, that Sam was looking through the attic for a box of old baseball cards that might be worth some money on eBay, but that wasn’t the truth. What really happened was that Phoebe had gotten a phone call from a little girl.

“Are you sure it was a girl? Like what age?” Sam had asked when he got home from work and she told him about the call. His words came hard and fast and sounded accusatory. Like he suspected Phoebe of imagining the whole thing.

“I don’t know. She sounded young. I could barely hear her.”

Phoebe left out her biggest impression: she sounded scared. And nearly breathless.

“She said, ‘Tell Sammy to look in the crawl space, behind the insulation.’ Then she hung up.”

Sam got pale.

“Does that mean something to you?”

He nodded. “It’s in the attic at my mom’s. A place Lisa used to play.”

A
t ten of six, Sam’s cousin and her husband arrived in a black Jeep with the top down. Sam had tried calling them, but there was no cell service this far out. The Jeep had Massachusetts plates.

“I thought they were from Philadelphia,” she said.

“Huh?” Sam replied, the question lost as he jumped out of the car to meet his cousin.

“Sorry we’re late,” announced Evie as she bounded out of the Jeep and threw her arms around Sam. She held him tight and said, “God, I can’t believe it’s you. It’s been way too long, Sammy!”

Sam had shown Phoebe an old snapshot of Evie at thirteen: chunky, bad haircut, wearing a pair of greasy mechanic’s coveralls and huge work boots. This woman bore no resemblance to that girl. She was in excellent shape, had neatly styled dark hair with highlights, and wore red lipstick in just the right shade for her complexion.

Elliot shook their hands and helped them get their stuff into the back of the Jeep. He was a gregarious, outdoorsy type dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and one of those vests with a hundred pockets. He had a neatly trimmed beard and wore wire-framed glasses.

“Ready?” he asked. “It’s not far. About two miles in.”

Phoebe and Sam climbed into the backseat. As Elliot navigated the Jeep along the washed-out once-upon-a-time road, Phoebe noticed what she thought at first glance was a ring, then realized was a tattoo: a band of Celtic knots around the ring finger of his left hand. Evie had a matching tattoo on her left ring finger. Permanent wedding bands. Evie was also, much to poor Sam’s half-disguised horror, a hugger. Evie had given them each a total of three hugs—excited, squeezy, full-body hugs—before they even stepped into the cabin. She smelled vaguely of patchouli (another thing Sam hated: he said it was such a cliché, though Phoebe was never sure a scent could count as a cliché).

Phoebe and Evie found themselves alone in the kitchen putting away provisions while the men unpacked the Jeep. Phoebe felt the other woman studying her. She stopped what she was doing to turn and catch Evie staring, a strange smile on her face.

Phoebe smiled back, nervous. “What?” she asked at last, feeling like there must be something she’d missed. She felt a little defensive, too, like maybe the joke was on her and she didn’t even realize it.

“What?” Phoebe repeated when Evie wouldn’t stop grinning.

Evie looked straight into Phoebe’s eyes and asked, “When are you due?”

Phoebe actually stumbled from the shock of the question, bumping against the worn Formica counter.

“What?” Phoebe whimpered.

“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?” Evie asked.

“Pregnant? No, I’m not. What made you think that?” She glanced self-consciously down at her stomach, wondering if the India pale ale she and Sam were so fond of was giving her a beer belly.

“Your eyes,” Evie explained. “You can always tell a pregnant woman by the light in her eyes.”

“Well, I’m not.” Most definitely not. Phoebe was sure she wasn’t even capable of having children. Over the years, she’d been less than careful numerous times and still, every twenty-eight days, her period came like clockwork. Just like it would now. She’d packed tampons for the weekend, sure it was getting to be that time.

Evie laughed, reaching out to put a hand on Phoebe’s belly, just above the King of the Road belt buckle. “My mistake. I’m sorry.”

Phoebe jumped a little at the strangely forward gesture but then caught herself and forced a smile.

“It’s fine,” she said, struggling to remember how long it had been since her last period.

Was it possible she was late?

She reached into her pocket to rub the little orange stone. Worry stone.

Chapter 2

Lisa

June 6, Fifteen Years Ago

W
hen Lisa first heard the bells, it was as if the whole forest was singing.

“Shh,” she said to Sam and Evie, finger over her lips. “Listen.”

Off in the distance, from the bottom of the hill, came the faintest tinkling of bells. It reminded Lisa of the little bell she’d had on her first bike that she rode up and down the driveway, dinging away as she pretended she was driving an ice cream truck or an ambulance.

“What is that?” Evie asked, scrunching her face up. Evie was thirteen—a year older than Lisa—and some people, when they first met Evie, figured she was kind of slow. She was a little overweight, never combed her hair, and dressed like a boy. Evie had real breasts already—not like the little mosquito bites Lisa had—and she tried to keep them hidden by putting on a tight white T-shirt under baggy men’s clothes. She wore a pair of tan steel-toed work boots that were several sizes too big.
My shitkickers
, she called them. For a finishing touch, she had a huge hunting knife in a leather sheath strapped to her belt.

The bells went on, calling to them.

Lisa rocked back on her heels, looked up at the sky through the fringed curtain of dark bangs. She was the tallest girl in her class, with a wiry frame, and when she stood beside her short, squat cousin she felt like a different species entirely. “It’s like the forest is talking to us,” she said. “Doesn’t it almost sound like little voices?”

“You’re nuts,” Sammy told her. “Trees don’t talk.” Sammy the serious.

“Well, what do you think it is then?” Evie asked, seeming a little twitchy, nervous.

“I don’t know, but trees and leaves and rocks don’t have vocal cords,” he said.

“There are other ways of speaking,” Lisa explained, thinking that sometimes her conversations with Sammy were more like sword fights: strike, parry, strike. “Sometimes you listen with your ears; sometimes it’s like your whole body becomes this antenna and you pick up on everything.” What she didn’t say was how it could almost hurt, could give you a terrible headache, all the voices you could hear if you tried: the cardinals, the worms, the squirrels with their mouths full of acorns all talking over one another. Even the trees had a story to tell.

“This way,” Lisa told them, galloping across the backyard and into the trees, jumping over roots and rocks.

“Wait up!” Evie called, but Lisa didn’t slow.

The kids in town called Evie
Stevie
. When Evie wasn’t around, Lisa hung out with other kids. Like Gerald and his sister, Pinkie, who lived down the road. But she dropped them when her cousin was visiting because they were such jerks about Evie.

“Gonna come to the movies with us, Lisa?” Gerald asked, mockingly, then added, “Oh, sorry, I forgot Stevie was here. Have fun with your favorite boy cousin!”

Everyone in school said Gerald had a crush on Lisa, but Lisa hated to think about that. She’d known him her whole life, and he was just geeky Gerald, a too-skinny boy with gold eyes who was always covered in paint and glue from the models he made.

“He’s just jealous,” Sam told Lisa. “You’d rather hang out with Evie than him, so he’s mad.”

It made Lisa’s stomach hurt to think about things like jealousy, crushes, breasts, and girls who seemed to want to be boys. She hated that all of a sudden, everything seemed much more complicated. This growing-up thing kind of sucked. Some days, she wished she could go back in time instead of moving forward—just keep getting younger and younger until she was a tadpole inside her mom’s belly, then a speck, then nothing at all, just the idea of Lisa O’Toole Nazzaro floating around out there in the cosmos.

“Gerald can be a jerk, but he’s not bad, really,” Sam said.

“I just wish he and his weirdo sister weren’t so mean,” Lisa said. She was disappointed in Gerald and Pinkie but also in Evie. If Evie would just try, just make some small attempt to fit in, things might have been easier. But then she wouldn’t be Evie, would she?

The summer before, Evie refused to comb her hair for a month until it became one big rat’s nest. Aunt Hazel finally gave Evie a buzz cut, making her head looked like a big old stubbly peeled potato. It was supposed to be this terrible punishment, to teach her a lesson, but Evie loved it. She went around begging everyone to feel her head. “Isn’t it just the best?” she asked, cooing like an animal when people stroked her dark stubble.

“When I’m with you,” she said to Lisa, “I just know something magical is bound to happen any second.” Evie believed in magic, in things like ghosts and reincarnation.

“We’ve known each other many lifetimes,” Evie told Lisa late at night, when they were out in the yard in sleeping bags, Sammy passed out beside them. The crickets chirped. Evie crossed her fingers, nails chewed ragged, and said, “You and I are like this.”

Lisa looked at the fingers. Two serpents entwined.

“Snake girls,” Lisa mumbled, twitching inside her sleeping bag, moving over so that she was right up against Evie. Evie wrapped her arm around Lisa, darted her tongue into Lisa’s ear.

“Hiss, hiss.”

T
hey flew through the forest, wind in their ears, branches tickling their faces. They knew the way by heart. The sound of the bells was coming from down the hill. From Reliance.

It was just getting dark, but Lisa’s mom and Aunt Hazel let them stay out late, especially with Da home from the hospital. They were supposed to be quiet. To let him rest. “The last thing your father needs,” Lisa’s mom said, “is three wild beasts racing through the house.” Lisa thought maybe a little racing might do him some good. Still, she bit her tongue and tiptoed around him like he was a sleeping giant. And that’s all he seemed to do since he got out—sleep. Aunt Hazel brought him trays of food, cups of tea, and all his medicine. She was a nurse, which her mom said was a big help right now. Hazel knew how to take care of people like Da. He stayed on the couch, buried beneath a pile of quilts, with his eyes closed most of the time. Even when they were open, it was like he was sleeping behind them. He looked right through you, like you were the ghost.

“Boo,” Lisa said to him sometimes, hoping for a reaction but getting nothing.

Reliance was full of ghosts. That’s what some folks in town said, anyway. People claimed they saw green lights, mist that turned into a man who walked the edge of the woods, mumbling in a language no one had ever heard before. Mrs. Mattock, who used to run Jenny’s Café before her hip got too bad, said that there was some kind of magic door hidden somewhere in the ruins of the old town. “People don’t just disappear without a trace like that—not a whole town anyway. You kids shouldn’t play out there.”

Old Carl Jensen said he’d lost two dogs in Reliance. They went into the woods and never came back out. “The weird thing is,” he’d say as he told the story over and over to whoever would listen, “sometimes, when I go walking by there, I still hear those dogs. I call to them, and they howl but never come. Once you go through that door out there, you can’t come back, no matter how bad you might want to.”

If there was a magic door in Reliance, Lisa was sure they would have found it by now. They’d been playing in those woods their whole lives in spite of the warnings. They knew every tree, every rock, every old mossy brick in every cellar hole. Lisa’s mother and Aunt Hazel told them that once there had been five houses, two barns, a blacksmith shop, and a church down in Reliance. All that was left of them were the foundations, roughly square pits, two to four feet deep with indefinite borders, choked with weeds and dead leaves, littered with crumbling masonry. Empty now, like the sockets where teeth should be. Back then, the woods had been open pasture full of cows, sheep, and horses. Sometimes, when Lisa was down there at dusk, if she squinted her eyes just right in the dying light, she was sure she could see the buildings and fields; sometimes she even caught a glimmer of movement—a face at the window, a door opening.

A haunted place
, people in town said, and Lisa thought maybe they were right. But it was a good kind of haunted. If there had been anything evil there, Lisa would have felt it.

On the southeast edge of the old settlement, behind the cellar hole they’d guessed was the church’s foundation, there was a tiny graveyard with five headstones, the slate so weatherworn that it was impossible to make out names or dates. In the early summer, Lisa would gather forget-me-nots and leave bunches of them on each grave.

They knew to steer clear of the old well on the north side of the village, which was circled with stones and deep and dark and smelled like sulfur. They were careful not to disturb what remained of the low stone walls that encircled Reliance. Over the years, they had learned that if they went out with a shovel and dug in the right places, they’d find things: rusty bolts, buttons, bottles made of opaque glass. Once, they found a long, stained bone. “Femur,” Sammy said. “Probably an animal but maybe not.” Evie took the bone back home, kept it on her bookcase, told everyone it was the fossilized remains of a caveman named Herb.

L
isa led Evie and Sam down the hill, toward the sound of the bells. It was a small, tinkling sound, like delicate glass being broken.

“Wait!” she said, grabbing Sammy by the neck of his T-shirt. He stopped short, choking a little. “Look,” she whispered, pulling him down so that they were both hunkered on their knees, like spies. Evie, who’d been a little behind them, caught up and crouched down with them. She had asthma, and when she ran, her breath got all whistley-sounding. It scared Lisa to death sometimes, to see her big, strong-as-an-ox cousin gasping for breath like a swollen pale fish out of water.

Lisa blinked, still not quite believing what she was seeing. “What is that?” she asked. At the bottom of the hill, inside one of the old cellar holes, little lights were dancing around. Two pinpricks of bright white light blinking, flying from one side of the cellar hole to the other, going up and down, bouncing off trees, then diving back down into the pit.

“Fireflies?” Sammy said, but these were no insects. Even Mr. Sammy Science himself knew that there was no way. Lisa could tell by the sound of his voice.

“Those,” Evie said, wheezing, “aren’t”—another labored breath—“fireflies.” Evie put a cold, sweaty hand on Lisa’s arm, giving her goose bumps.

Lisa held still, listening. But there was no sound. Only Evie’s wheezing. And the faint tinkling of the bells. It was like the rest of the forest was holding its breath.

“Come on,” Lisa said, pulling Sammy up. “Evie,” she said, listening to her cousin’s breath, realizing she didn’t have her inhaler. “Stay.”

“Bull crap,” Evie said, standing.

They galloped down the hill, but as they were running, the lights disappeared. And the sound stopped. They crossed the tiny brook, leaping like deer.

When they got to the cellar hole, there was nothing, not even the sound of a single cricket. But the air felt electric and alive, the molecules humming.

“Do you feel that?” Lisa asked.

Evie was bent over, hands on her knees, struggling to catch her breath. She looked up. Nodded. “They’re,” she gasped, “watching.”

Even Sammy Science seemed to pick up on it. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Lisa scanned the trees. There was no movement. No sound. But still, she felt it: somewhere out there, someone,
something
, was watching them.