More Than You Know (4 page)

But I’m supposed to be telling how it was when I first knew

something was wrong with the house. He who hesitates is lost, my

grandfather used to say.

You may have noticed I said just now that Miss Hamor had had

a shock. I assumed at the time that Mrs. Pease meant a stroke. That’s

the usual name for it here. But later I was fairly sure something fright-

ened her down the stairs. I’m sure something tried to. There was some-

thing in there that was furious, bitter, that other people were going on

with their lives.

That first afternoon, as I returned home from the village, I saw

that somebody had put a handful of beach roses in a glass and set it

in the front window. The house was very quiet. Stephen was out in

the side yard, where an old canvas hammock was strung between two

pine trees. He was tucked into it reading about the Hardy Boys, and

he had Whitey, his little terrier, in the hammock with them. As I stood

with my armful of books, reluctant to go into the dark indoors, and

thinking of going down to sit on the rocks by the water instead, I

looked up and saw someone in my bedroom. She was standing at the

window looking down at me, and I felt a wash of resentment. I didn’t

want Edith prowling around my things. I knew she had tried to read

Stephen’s Top-Secret Mirror Code Journal, and I knew she would read

my diary if she could find it. I had put my clothes away neatly and

carried all the suitcases to the cellar, as I’d been told. Edith had no

need to be in my room, and no right either.

I went straight inside ready to charge up the stairs, but I didn’t

get any farther than the little mudroom, because I could see from there

right through to the kitchen in the back. There was Edith at the sink,

scrubbing out cook pans that hadn’t been cleaned to her liking. I was

confused and alarmed, and felt a pricking up the back of my neck.

I went back outside. I looked up at my window. There was no

one there, but there
had
been. Who could it have been? The house

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was wide open, a stranger could have walked right in, but . . . had I

imagined it? Was I so primed to be indignant at Edith that I made up

things to be mad at her for? I forced myself to go in again, speak to

Edith, and climb the stairs to my room. Everything was in order; the

filmy curtains moved in the breeze. But the room felt cold, invaded.

Altogether I decided to go down to the shore after all, and found a

sun-warmed rock to lean against, and settled into a book that Mrs.

Pease had recommended.

The rest of the afternoon was peaceful. When my bottom got

tired of the hard rocks, I gathered my books and went up to my room

to put them away. I helped Edith get the supper ready and washed the

dishes afterward. It was a pleasant evening. When Stephen went up to

take his bath, I said good night and went to read in my room.

There was my stack of the books on the bedside table. No one

had been in the room; no one could have been. And yet, someone had

picked up my book and done something to it. It was not placed the

way I’d left it, and the bookmark was gone.

When Stephen came out of the bathroom in his pajamas, I fol-

lowed him to his room and told him what had happened. I showed

him the book.

“Are you
sure
?” He was solemn but seemed rather pleased. I

had been frightened up to then, but his reaction calmed me down. He

was practical and boylike; he wanted to set a trap so we would know

for sure. Edith came in and shooed me out, back to my own room,

and this time it seemed cozy and benign. I found my place in the

tampered book and read on in peace.

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1856

ThefirsttimeClarisOsgoodrememberednoticingDanialHas-

kell, it was the Fourth of July. The parade was forming on the lawn of

the Congregational Meeting House, down the hill from the Osgoods’.

Claris’s youngest brother, Otis, was to drive the donkey cart carrying three

little cousins, all dressed in stars and stripes. Shiny bunting of red, white,

and blue was woven in and out of the wheel spokes. The cart was to be

pulled by Elmer, the pet burro Uncle Asa brought home from California,

but Elmer had chosen this moment to refuse to be driven. He was head

down in the grass border of the minister’s vegetable garden, and Otis, red

in the face from hauling on the reins to no effect, was fighting tears. As

Claris tugged on the burro’s bridle and Colonel Dodge was calling to the

marchers to Form Up, Please, Claris noticed the young man sitting by

himself in shirtsleeves on the stone step of the meeting house, watching

her. She didn’t know who he was but thought with irritation that he

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might have offered them some help instead of sitting there idle; he could

see that she needed it.

Later she saw him again, marching with the boys from the islands;

he had his jacket on and stepped out proudly, shoulders back and eyes

straight ahead, bearing the colors. He had a slight limp that suddenly

touched her heart. Next came the marching band, in which her sisters

Alice and Mabel played cymbals and drums, and then came Otis, earnestly

flogging Elmer, while the little girls in the cart waved small flags at their

parents and cousins and neighbors along the parade route.

The parade ended at the playground above the shipyard, across from

the schoolhouse. There were tables set up on the grass, loaded with cold

chicken and lemonade and all kinds of cakes and doughnuts. Elmer was

taken out of the cart shafts and allowed to graze, to his delight. Otis and

the little girls had run across to the school yard, where their school chums

were playing under the elm trees, and the grown-ups had settled down

on blankets to listen to speeches. Claris was standing alone when she

found that the boy with the limp who hadn’t helped her before the parade

was now standing at her elbow holding two dishes of peach ice cream.

She looked at the dishes, and she looked at him. He had large dark

eyes and a very high forehead. His hands were huge.

“I brought you this,” he said and held one of the dishes out to her.

She was so surprised, she took it.

“I’m Danial Haskell,” he said, and took a bite of ice cream.

“I’m Claris Osgood,” she said.

“I know who you are,” said Danial. And then, to her bafflement,

he walked away and sat down by himself on a rock overlooking the bay,

and ate his ice cream.

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SometimesIwassureIheardbedroomdoorsopenandclose,

or someone moving around the upstairs when we were all together

below. Stephen believed me, but he never seemed to be near when it

happened. I told Edith about it, but she thought I was just complaining.

Then one night when I was washing up after dinner I distinctly

heard someone crying somewhere in the room behind me. My heart

moved in sympathy, and I turned around, but there was no one there.

It was not a child’s weeping; at first I thought it was Edith herself in

some kind of trouble and I wondered if I could help her. I left the

kitchen but found that Stephen was upstairs and Edith was sitting in

the living room reading
The Saturday Evening Post.
I went back into

the kitchen, and in a minute the weeping started again. This time it

slightly irritated me, as weeping that can be turned on and off tends

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to. I took a deep breath, turned around, and said as bravely as I could

to the dark corners of the room, “Now
listen.
There’s no need for this.

And it won’t do any good, so cheer up and get ahold of yourself.”

The weeping stopped.

I stood, hardly daring to breath. It was silent; I was silent. I

thought, Well, that was easy, and turned back to the dishes. Suddenly

I felt, or smelled, something cold and nasty right behind me, and then

a glass I had washed and set carefully on the drainboard was swept

violently back into the deep metal sink as if someone had hit it. I felt

as if I’d been slapped, and cried out as it broke. Edith came running

as I grabbed for the glass, thinking . . . what? That I could put it back

together? I managed to cut myself across the web of my thumb, so

there I was as she rushed in, bleeding into the sink with my heart

hammering.

“Now what is going on in here? First you’re talking to yourself

and now you’re smashing things! Oh!” she said, and took the broken

stem of the glass from my hand. “
Oh!
Now look!” She was staring at

it as if her whole heart had been wrapped up in that glass. It was a

fragile one, an orphan we had found that matched no others in the

cupboards, which Edith liked to use at dinner. The gash in my palm

had begun to throb. I tried to stop the bleeding with a dish towel, but

that made Edith madder.

“Don’t do that! You’re always destroying things that have value

for other people!” She took the dish towel from me and threw it into

the hamper. Then she went for her Red Cross box. When she came

back she wrapped my hand so tightly that it took some effort not to

wince.

I said, “Mother—there was something in here! I heard someone

crying, and I spoke to it. Then it knocked that glass into the sink.”

“What do you mean, something?”

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“I mean—another person. Something. Not us.” Our eyes locked

for a moment, but I couldn’t stand what I saw in hers, the dislike in

the way she looked at me. I looked down; I guess that means I lost.

She said, “
Honestly,
Hannah!” She chewed her lip as she went

back to strapping my hand. “I suppose you think if you do your

chores badly, you won’t have to do them anymore.” Meanwhile, she

wasn’t doing such a tidy job with the adhesive tape herself. She

seemed to expect an answer from me, but I couldn’t give one. I was

wondering if whatever had knocked the glass into the sink was en-

joying this scene. How nice to know that now even creatures from

beyond knew my stepmother was as much comfort to me as a bale

of barbed wire.

As soon as I could I went up to be with Stephen. He was reading

a Little Lulu comic and had his new “specs” on. The glasses had steel

rims, like Father’s. He looked very cute in them, like a tiny business-

man. I sat on the end of his bed; his room had wallpaper with flowers

on it, quite faded, but more welcoming than mine. It must have be-

longed to one of the schoolteachers. He had two narrow beds with

iron bedsteads and an old pine table between the beds, which had been

painted green, inexpertly. Stephen was very upset when I told him

about the broken glass and my cut hand.

“You shouldn’t have spoken, you made it mad at you!”

“I think it’s mad anyway,” I said. “Otherwise what’s it doing

creeping around our house? Does it think it still
lives
here?”

“Don’t talk to it,” he said. “Ignore it.” I said I’d try and went

reluctantly into my cold front bedroom. Stephen had put ghost traps

in the form of bookmarks on special pages in all the books on my

bedside table; I checked them every night. That night I also began

checking the closet. What if it hid in there and waited for me to turn

out the light? What would I do if I opened my eyes in the dark and

found the closet door opening?

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*

*

*

Some nights later, Edith was in her bedroom overlooking the

sea. It had been a bone-chilling day of gray fog, and the night was

thick and black. She had built up the fire in the cookstove in the

kitchen so it would heat all night, and she had the radio going in her

room. She used to listen to that late into the night and scribble, writing

to my father, I guess. Stephen’s light was out, and I was in my room

in front, in bed more because my room was cold than because I was

sleepy. Edith didn’t let me use the stove in my room. She said I might

do it wrong and burn the house down.

Distinctly I heard the front door just below me open and close.

The old-fashioned thumb latch on that door made an unmistakable

clacking sound, and it could not possibly open by itself. Or close. Fear

pricked my scalp and down my neck, and my heart began to race. I

waited for Edith to come out and investigate; what if there were a

burglar in the house? The last thing I wanted to do was leave the

safety of my bed, but I was more scared to do nothing. I made myself

put my bare feet on the floor and went to the door.

Things were absolutely quiet downstairs. I could hear a dark

cedar tree close to the front door move in the wind and scratch at my

window, but this was a comforting sound. In the downstairs dark there

still hung a faint aroma of cheese from the Welsh rabbit we’d had for

dinner. I listened and listened, but nothing changed, nothing moved.