Authors: Lynn Carthage

Haunted (7 page)

BOOK: Haunted

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Steven was the same way. He'd arrive home and instantly take Tabby off Mom's hands so she could relax and start dinner, so any kind of real discussion I tried to have with him was overrun by her. We'd try to talk over Tabby's head, but Tabby always interrupted.

“I really love her,” I told Mr. Pelkey. “She's such a cool kid. She's going to be amazing someday. She learns everything so fast.”

“But she's stepping on your toes,” he said.

“A little,” I admitted. I leaned down to look for his metal trash can to throw away my wet tissues, and he nudged it toward me with his foot.

“I'm glad you shared all this with me. I want you to know I'm here for you anytime. I'm happy to listen. And I can also get you in touch with some people who can
really
help you if you think you need it.”

Silence fell between us again. I knew what he meant. “I'm not sad like that,” I said. “I'm okay.”

He nodded. I was just about to stand up, when he asked, “Can I give you a phone number?”

It was a suicide hotline that he had written on a Post-it note preprinted with a picture of a German shepherd's head.
Oh my God. This did not just happen.
My mind reeled. He actually thought I could do it. He was giving me a goddamn suicide hotline number. I bowed my head over it while my face burned. Wow, this was really heavy. What on earth could I say?

“You must have a dog,” I said inanely.

“Yes,” he said. “Betty. She's eleven. Getting gray hairs under her chin.”

“That's pretty old in dog years,” I said. I stood up. “Thanks for this. I don't need it, though.”

“I know,” he said. “It's just in case. And you can talk to me anytime. I mean that.”

I wondered if I was supposed to hug him. How often do teachers in a big high school like this bother to have such an intense conversation with a student? He truly cared about me, and that showed in every inch of his worried face looking up at me.

Instead of a hug, I lightly touched him on the upper arm. Even that felt weird. “Thanks,” I said.

“You bet.”

I mustered up the most genuine smile I could under the circumstances, and picked up my books from his desk. I'd have to go to the bathroom first, to make sure my face didn't look like I'd been crying, before heading in to trig. If there had been a quiz, by now it was over.

“I won't read that story to the class,” he said. I turned back, surprised.

“It's okay if you do,” I said. “It's not a big deal.”

I walked back across the classroom, feeling his eyes on my back. He thought it might be the last time he'd see me, before I went home and offed myself.

“Thanks, Mr. Pelkey,” I called when I opened the door, but I didn't look back.

I opened my eyes.

I was sitting on the floor of the den. Sheets of paper surrounded me in a fan shape. It was a perfect, deliberate crescent. Cramped handwriting covered every page.

I gave a half scream and scrambled backward, as if the words were insects.

Had I written all this? I didn't even remember managing to pick out a pen, let alone getting the paper.

I crawled back to look at what was surely the first sheet, the one on the far left.

You invite me to write . . . well, I shall,
it started.

This wasn't my handwriting. The letters were so tiny they were difficult to read. And . . . it looked like the old-fashioned kind of writing where
s
's were
f
's and grandiose flourishes marked each capital letter. While I was sitting here daydreaming, Madame Arnaud had manipulated my body, moving the pen to her own use.

Apparently legend has soaked the countryside about my unholy appetite,
she wrote.
Half-toothed quarter-wits kneel by their firesides and tell the tale of Madame Arnaud . . . or perhaps there are no firesides anymore. From the glass tower atop the manor, I rarely see evidence of smoke wending upward on a crisp autumn twilight.

It had actually happened. She had used my body. There was no way I could've written this myself. I swallowed hard. Had she used my right hand? That was the one I wrote with. I tried to control my shaking, then settled back on my heels and continued reading the entire fusillade of pages.

But regardless, they must be telling the tale . . . they must be, for no one comes. No childrenâtheir blood heart-stoppingly fragrantâtap upon the door to be let inside. No workmen come to repair the stones that have begun to list. My parade of servants, with their starched aprons and caps: somehow they dwindled while I failed to pay attention, until one day no one came when I rang the little golden bell. I yawned in my bed, with its tapestries wrought by the finest French artisans, and awaited the tea that never came.

I slept again, and then rose, my throat acid with anger, crusading down the hall to strangle whatever maid had neglected her service . . . but as I walked I realized I couldn't remember the maid, couldn't think of her eye color or the shade of the hair tufts that escaped her cap. Who was my last lady's maid?

And no one was in the kitchens at all; a thick layering of dust covered the pots and kettles that had been in hourly use. The gigantic brick hearth contained a stubble of wood ash, which I bent to and found cold. Outside, I raced to the stables and there was nary a horse and nary a stable hand and nary a smithy. The wooden stalls didn't even smell of horse any longer. All the smith's tools were scattered by the forge, as if he had intended to work again and had simply stepped away.

I went outside again and stared at the gardens; nothing grew in order. There was a tangle worthy of some fairy-tale thicket a prince must work his way through. The topiary had grown outlandish and lost its borders; one could no longer detect that these had been deer, wolves, and rabbits playfully rendered in bush. I peered through the filthy window of the potting shed where previously seedlings had been moved from pot to pot by the diligent gardener, or his son as he grew, or the son's son as he grew, but this time the crockery held nothing but air.

Back inside, I walked room to room. Furniture was missing! An entire estate's worth of vases decorated with hand-painted goose girls; voluptuous ottomans; curved couches that could hold six or seven women, including their ample skirts; rugs that had been knotted by virgins who grew blind for it; the lamps that had cast a gentle glow over all the people who had attended my ballsâthe nobility who traveled great distances to see Madame Arnaud againâoh, it was all gone! And in their stead, a covering of dust as thick as my own hair spread across a pillow. Although the wing in which I kept my bedroom still retained its furnishings, the rest of the house was bare.

I combed the manor: I was the only living soul there. And I went back to my bed and gazed upon itâhow long had I slept? I must have been in a fog, a delirium of that which I drank, because I never noticed the house emptying. How does an entire household vanish while one dozes?

And if they had sold or burned my furnishings, why did they leave my wing intact? Were they frightened to wake me from my strange sleep with the dragging of bureaus and armoires?

I spent an entire day in marvelment. What had happened, and why was I untouched? If they all left me, knowing what they knew of the doings in my household, why had they not murdered me while I slept?

Perhaps they had tried.

That night so very long ago, as I went to my bed fearful I might sleep another century or so, I found a great surprise as I peeled back the bedclothes. I hadn't noticed when I arose that morning, but I had slept with a knife. It was a maid's knife, the kind she tucks into her apron pocket for opening letters or cutting twine.
Someone had tried to murder me:
feathers poked up from holes in the mattress. As enraged as I was at the thought of a knife plunging between my ribs, I was equally furious that she had ruined the work of Louis Des Anges, the premier mattress maker of Versailles. Hundreds of swans' feathers had been selected for this particular bed, deveined and washed with rose water until soft and fragrant as a cloud, then sewn into the golden ticking that some rat-brained maid had dared to spoil.

But if she had been stabbing me and not simply the mattress, why were there not bloodstains? Had the Louis Des Anges feathers spread their wispy fringes to gather the blood, as swans may stretch their wings for rain, and somehow returned it to me?

Why had her treacherous murder attempt failed? My strength, her weakness?

It hardly mattered since I could no longer recollect her name or face. I did know that I had to do her work . . . a noblewoman without any servants.

So, now, I dress my own hair, pushing away spiders that nest there overnight and picking out their egg clusters. I myself choose my gowns from the smear of dry rot in the closets and cupboards. Some days I fetch my own tea, bringing it to myself on a lacquered tray foxed with age; other days I don't bother.

I miss being waited on. I miss many things. Fine things. In France, we drank champagne like it was water.

The monk who perfected its aging said it tasted like stars. So we drank stars, the aristocracy: a bit of the sky was our due. I shan't forget the sight of hundreds of glasses carefully filled by servants with the lightest of amberâso light it was almost clearâfrothing from within like an excitable child.

I have always loved a beautiful vessel filled with a delicious drink. And sometimes what I choose to drinkâdear Phoebe, you shall learn!âmakes that champagne of centuries ago taste of nothing. Rather than stars, I swallow moons and galaxies and the vastness of space.

Back then, children meant nothing to me. I was so young myself. Then I left the elated pleasure of France to travel across the water to dark England with the grudging shuffle of my extended family . . . excepting of course my despised sister. If France is champagne, this country is common ale. I'll never forget the brutish wind on that crossing and the heavy roll of the boat on the waves.

We found land that called to me, that I knew from stories told to me, in a forest deep enough to provide a warren for me to wander in my belled skirts. But I discovered I took no pleasure in it unless accompanied by a gaggle of other laughing women. Believe me, my brother and his wife, and the odd aunts and uncles and their offspring that constituted our family, were not as high-spirited as me.

All of us were sobered, dampened, by this brooding country. The picnics and frolics of Versailles were a long way from these dim woods. Once the manor was built, I had a man paint my friends onto the wall in a long mural: Marie, Sabine, Pierre, Auguste, Gustav, Claire, and dozens of others I was lonesome for, lolling on a green lawn resplendent with flowers.

I eventually retreated to the house since walking the grounds only reminded me of what I had lost. But I found a sort of happiness. We began hosting balls in our glorious ballroom. Once again, champagne poured from the necks of elegant green bottles. I gazed at the gowns of women who had money enough to care about the fastening of the bodice, or whether a length of ribbon had been woven by cheap shopgirls or by devout Irish nuns handpicked for that purpose by God.

I simply stopped leaving. Outside, the cold sun knew my abnormal heart and cast cruel light into my clouded eyes, making me blink like a subterranean beast brought to the surface. The fine soles of my silk slippers fell prey to the ravages of pebbles digging into my arches, trying to insinuate a tear.

The manor was large enough to stretch my legs. Plusâit loved me. I felt this. It approved of my furnishings, my draperies. It adored me playing a trick on a woman who should have recognized it, for it was her own trick! And under my firm tutelage, the estate tempered the forces that had otherwise provided tumult. I will always preside over these stones, healthy and strong . . . years and worlds after Marie, Sabine, and the others laid their elderly necks upon a monstrous device and were beheaded. The manor and I are a perfect couple, in love endlessly.

I've so much more to tell you. I have plans, ideas. You

It just ended there. Mid-sentence.

My mouth was dry, and I felt incredible disquiet radiating through my body. I knew I should feel some sense of reliefâI had proof nowâbut that was the furthest thing from what I felt. Madame Arnaud had plans for me.

She was thinking about me. Plotting about me.

I was somehow her target just as much as Tabby was. What could she possibly want with me? I tried to control my shaking hands, to reach down and pick up the pages. I was going to gather them up in reverse order, so that the first page would be on the top of the pile, ready to hand to Mom and Steven to read. My fingers nearly touched the spidery script . . .

. . . and all of a sudden Miles was there.

I shrieked and stumbled up to stand, nearly stepping on the pages.

“Sorry!” he said, spreading his hands wide like I was about to attack him. He came farther into the room and made a sheepish face. He was wearing black jeans and a close-fitting slate-colored henley shirt with the sleeves pushed up below his elbow.

“What are youâhow did you get here?”

“There are lots of ways in,” he said. “I hadn't seen you for a while, so I thought I'd come round.”

“Did my mom let you in? She knows you're here?”

He shook his head, grinning. My jolting heart began a new rhythm, for a new reason.

BOOK: Haunted

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