Sheila Connolly - Relatively Dead 02 - Seeing the Dead (20 page)

Lunchtime came, and Abby hadn’t heard from Leslie. “You hungry?” Abby asked.

“Kinda, maybe,” Ellie said.

“We should go out and get something, then.”

Ellie darted a glance at her. “How about we get some sandwiches and eat them in the cemetery? Yours, I mean.”

This child was beginning to scare her. She couldn’t possibly mean Sleepy Hollow, could she? “Not the one we already looked at?”

Now Ellie was regarding her steadily. “The one where you see the people.”

Okay. Yes. Right
. Abby fought off panic. She was still the adult here, still in charge—no matter what this precocious child in front of her seemed to know. “That sounds like a good idea. How much more do you think you need to do on your book?”

“I dunno. It’s almost finished. Maybe I am hungry.”

“Then let’s go now, and you can come back and finish it.”

They slipped on outer clothes and left the building, waving at the receptionist in passing. They stopped at the closest convenience store and picked up sandwiches and drinks, then turned around and kept going back the way they’d come, and beyond. They crossed the next road carefully—it was busy at lunchtime. Abby turned into the first gate they came to at Sleepy Hollow, at the end nearest the town where the oldest graves were, but Ellie waved impatiently. “No, back there.”

She was right, of course, so Abby led the way to the back section, with the more modern tombstones.

Ellie looked at her curiously. “Is this a kind of test?”

“Oh, Ellie, I don’t know. Maybe. Look, I don’t know what we’re doing, and I really don’t know how I’m going to tell your mother any of this. She doesn’t know?”

“Nope. She’d think I was being silly. But you don’t.”

“No, I don’t. How long has this been going on with you?”

“All my life, I guess. I thought everybody saw things. Then people started telling me they couldn’t see what I did. So I shut up.”

“Well, then, I’m newer at this than you are. I hope we can help each other.”

“Is it like being sick?” Ellie asked.

“No, just different. That’s not a bad thing, but sometimes people get scared when somebody’s different, and then they can be mean.”

“I could tell them I’ll put a hex on them. Would that help?”

“I don’t think so, Ellie. For one thing, it would be lying.”
Wouldn’t it?
“And trying to scare people with old stories like that doesn’t help. I think you’re doing better right now by not saying anything.”

“Even to Mom?”

“Well, we’re going to have to do something about that. Is she in your story?”

Ellie shook her head.

“What about the man you talk about, the one from the title—does he see you? Can you talk to him?”

Ellie shrugged. “Mom and Dad told me not to talk to strange men.”

It was all Abby could do to keep from laughing. Of course they’d given her that advice, but they probably hadn’t figured that it would apply to someone who had been dead for centuries. “That’s a pretty good idea, and I’d stick to it.”

“Okay. Let’s go eat over there, there’s a bench.” She pointed, and Abby didn’t know whether she’d chosen the seat closest to Abby’s own ancestors at random or on purpose. They sat, and Abby did her best to avoid looking for Reeds there.

“You know about all the authors?” she asked.

“You mean, the ones up the hill there? Yeah, sure. Everybody around here does.”

“Have you read
Little Women
yet? That used to be one of my favorite books, when I was just a little older than you are now.”

“Not yet.” Ellie took a large bite of her sandwich.

“You don’t see any of the people up on the hill here, do you?”

Ellie shook her head, still chewing. Abby didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. What would it be like to watch the Alcotts or the Hawthornes in the former flesh?

When Ellie had finally swallowed, she said, “You like it here.”

“You mean, in this cemetery? Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because it was one of the first places I saw … what you see. It scared me at first, but now I’m kind of used to it. They’re my relatives, and in a way it feels kind of nice to spend time around them. They were all … gone long before I was born, but I’m honoring them now. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yeah. I like this place too, and the others. It’s like the people are happy to see me, because they’re kind of lonely. They’re only here because they were real sad here, but nobody cares anymore.”

“I can understand that.” Abby fell silent as she finished her sandwich. After a while she said, “I guess we should get back and finish that story of yours. Will it have a happy ending?”

Ellie looked up at her. “Does it have to?”

“No. I told you, it’s your story, and you can make it end any way you like.”

“Does it have to be true?”

There was another can of worms: was the man from the title actually feeding her a real story somehow? This was not the time to explore that. “It has to feel true to you, that’s all. And never let anybody tell you what you feel.”

“Okay.” Ellie bounced up from the seat, apparently satisfied by Abby’s answer. “Trash?” she said, holding out her hand. Abby passed her their lunch wrappings, and Ellie dumped them in the nearest trash can as they headed back toward the museum.

Abby’s office was still empty when they returned to it. Inwardly Abby sighed with relief: she’d almost been expecting Leslie to be waiting for them, with steam coming out of her ears. She hated to admit it, but she really wanted Ned to be with her when they jumped into the whole mess. Ellie went straight to the computer and picked up where she’d left off. Abby checked her messages, both on her office phone and her cell phone, to make sure that Ned hadn’t gotten waylaid or invented a sudden business trip to, say, Singapore. Poor baby: he was having real trouble facing something he couldn’t understand and couldn’t control. Maybe that was a guy thing.

“Finished!” Ellie crowed suddenly. “Can I type ‘THE END’ at the end?”

“Sure,” Abby said, smiling. “You want to print it now?”

“Yeah, so you can look at it, editor.”

As Abby leaned over her to hit the Print key, she said sternly, “Now, you know that as a writer you have to learn to take criticism. Nobody writes something that’s perfect on the first try.”

“Okay,” Ellie said cheerfully. “You tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll fix it.”

Abby envied Ellie her simple optimism, that things could be easily fixed. “Can I read through it all at once first?”

“Sure. You got any games on this computer?”

“Not really. But then, it was somebody else’s before it was mine, so there might be something on it. Just don’t delete anything, okay?”

“Got it.” Ellie started clicking through directories while Abby scanned her latest pages.

It was a simple story. It started with a group of kids, with one uber-smart girl named Annie who wasn’t exactly a leader, but who the other girls listened to. One day on a school trip Annie saw a man wearing odd clothes, but when she pointed him out to a friend, the friend couldn’t see him. Annie got mad because she thought her friend was kidding her, but in the end she realized that nobody else saw the man—and so she stopped talking about him.

Abby thought that the story would have been more than adequate, especially coming from a second-grader, if Ellie had stopped there, but she went on with more. After the school trip, Annie went home and told her parents that she’d really liked the place they’d visited, and could they go again, please? Her parents had been happy to take her, so they went the following weekend. Annie saw the man again, but her parents didn’t. But this time the man saw Annie—and he smiled at her and waved, glad to see her again. And that was where the story ended.

Abby shut her eyes and tried to choose what she wanted to say. Or think. Someone who didn’t know what she knew would probably say, oh, nice imagination. Abby knew better. Was it a true story? Wishful thinking on Ellie’s part? Did one of these “people” actually respond to her, or had she made it up for this story?

Abby took a deep breath. After all, this was a child she was dealing with. “Ellie, this is lovely. Tell me, did it make Annie happy that the man saw her?”

“Yeah, because he looked like a nice man, one who could use a friend. And he was happy that she saw him. Hi, Mom!”

Abby turned to see Leslie waiting in the doorway again. “Hi, Leslie. Come to collect your budding writer?”

Ellie interrupted eagerly. “Mom, I finished the story, and Abby says it’s good! Can you read it now?” Ellie’s gaze flickered briefly toward Abby, and Abby could tell that Ellie knew exactly what she was doing: she was hoping to tell her mother what was happening, at least indirectly—to bust the whole thing open, right now. Oh, God, she was not ready for this. Where was Ned?

“You want to come to my office while I read it, sugarplum?” Leslie replied.

“Sure.” Ellie stopped and turned back to Abby. “Thank you, Abby. I had a nice day.”

“I did too, Ellie. Leslie, let’s talk after you’ve read the story, okay?”

Leslie looked harried. “Sure, but I don’t have a lot of time. I’ve got to pick up Peter at day care and then start dinner.”

“Whenever you have time, then,” Abby said. She wasn’t about to insist, but she had a suspicion that Leslie would be back sooner rather than later.

Abby was glad to hear Ned’s voice in the hall, and she realized she’d been gripping the edge of her desk like it was a life raft. He walked into her office and the first thing he said was, “What’s wrong?”

Abby handed him the last part of Ellie’s story. “Just read it. Leslie’s reading it now.”

He took it and sat in the other chair. It took him only a couple of minutes to read through it, and then he sat back and looked up at the ceiling. “The kid can really write.”

“Yes. What about the content?”

Ned looked at her for a long time before answering. “It scares me.”

“Good. Because it scares me too. You think what she wrote is real?”

“I don’t know, but it’s certainly possible.”

“What do you think Leslie’s going to say?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Leslie stood in the doorway. “Ned, why am I not surprised to see you here?”

Ned stood up quickly. “Leslie—”

Leslie ignored him. She held the printout of Ellie’s story crushed in her hand. “Ellie really wrote this?”

Abby faced her squarely. “Yes, she did. I didn’t help.”

“She says it’s a true story.”

“Yes,” Abby said, then stopped, wondering where to go next. So Ellie had come out with it—and now her mother wanted an explanation, of course.

“Yes, it is true, or yes, that’s what Ellie told you?” Leslie demanded. “Because that kid has got one vivid imagination.”

Here we go,
Abby thought, then said, “Leslie, it’s not just her imagination.”

Was that a flicker of fear in Leslie’s eyes? Had she sensed something, or discounted a few too many unexplained comments coming from Ellie? “What the hell do you mean?”

Abby glanced at Ned, who looked miserable. “I—we believe that Ellie sees people who aren’t there, just as she described. People who are dead.”

Now fear and anger battled in Leslie’s expression. “You’ve got to be kidding me! She’s a child! Smart, yeah—but I didn’t think she had this kind of problem. And why the hell are you talking about this?”

“Because Ned and I see them too.”

The color drained from Leslie’s face, and she made a kind of choking sound. It took her a few seconds to regain control of herself. When she finally managed to speak, she said, her voice hard, “Obviously we need to talk about this, but we can’t do it here, and I don’t want Ellie to overhear us, in case we kill each other. Abby, I assume you know the whole story, about Ellie … and Ned?” Her gaze was cold.

Abby wasn’t about to back down. “Yes, but there’s a good reason for that.”

“I should damn well hope so. Here’s what I want. I’m going to call my husband and tell him I’m bringing Ellie home and I want him to take both kids out for the world’s greasiest fast-food dinner and then to whatever Disney movie is playing within ten or twenty miles from here, and then we three can talk. Got it? Be at my house at six thirty. Yeah, Abby, I know you’ve never been there, but I’m sure Ned can fill you in.” She turned on her heel and marched toward her office before either Ned or Abby could say anything.

Abby and Ned looked at each other. “Well, I guess it could have been worse,” Abby ventured. “If she’d had a weapon, maybe.”

“It’ll get worse. It’s not over yet.” Ned’s expression was grim.

That was not encouraging. “How can we begin to explain this to her? Is Leslie the type to explode?”

Ned shook his head. “She’s given herself some breathing room now—smart move. She’ll listen to what we have to tell her, but I don’t think she’ll be too happy about it.”

“I know I wouldn’t be, under the circumstances. Ned, I’m sorry this had to happen, all of it.”

“Well, it has, and it’s just as well that it did now. Ellie’s writing that story and sharing it means she’s reaching out for help, and Leslie needs to understand that. And it’s certainly not your fault. You couldn’t have known this would happen when Ellie sat down to write the story.”

“And I thought Ellie would write something cute and simple,” Abby said bitterly. “Look, Leslie knows about us, as a couple, I mean. But she doesn’t know about the other thing. And you told me you’d never said anything about it to her?”

“Right. I hoped I’d never have to.”

He looked so unhappy that Abby came out from behind her desk and laid a hand on his face. She felt an immediate relief. No matter what they were dealing with, at least the two of them were on the same wavelength. “We have to be careful that we don’t come across like we’re ganging up on Leslie, which I guess means that we have to give her the story from the start. I mean, how we came together, and why. If she’ll listen.”

“Agreed. And we have to be careful that Ellie doesn’t get the wrong idea about any of this. Her parents—Leslie and George—love her, and she knows that. She doesn’t have to know that I’m involved.”

“Unless she takes one look at you and guesses. That kid is scary intuitive. By the way, she all but dragged me to Sleepy Hollow today and made us sit down next to the Reed tombstone. No, I didn’t tell her anything about them. She said she went there because she knew that was where I was seeing what she saw.”