Stranger Things Happen (7 page)

Two. The twins don't play the Dead game in front of grownups.
They have been summing up the babysitter, and have decided that she
doesn't count. They tell her the rules.

Three is the best and most important rule. When you are Dead,
you don't have to be afraid of anything. Samantha and Claire aren't
sure who the Specialist is, but they aren't afraid of him.

To become Dead, they hold their breath while counting to 35,
which is as high as their mother got, not counting a few days.

"You never lived here," Claire says. "Mr. Coeslak lives
here."

"Not at night," says the babysitter. "This was my bedroom when I
was little."

"Really?" Samantha says. Claire says, "Prove it."

The babysitter gives Samantha and Claire a look, as if she is
measuring them: how old, how smart, how brave, how tall. Then she
nods. The wind is in the flue, and in the dim nursery light they
can see the milky strands of fog seeping out of the fireplace. "Go
stand in the chimney," she instructs them. "Stick your hand as far
up as you can, and there is a little hole on the left side, with a
key in it."

Samantha looks at Claire, who says, "Go ahead." Claire is
fifteen minutes and some few uncounted seconds older than Samantha,
and therefore gets to tell Samantha what to do. Samantha remembers
the muttering voices and then reminds herself that she is Dead. She
goes over to the fireplace and ducks inside.

When Samantha stands up in the chimney, she can only see the
very edge of the room. She can see the fringe of the mothy blue
rug, and one bed leg, and beside it, Claire's foot, swinging back
and forth like a metronome. Claire's shoelace has come undone and
there is a Band-Aid on her ankle. It all looks very pleasant and
peaceful from inside the chimney, like a dream, and for a moment
she almost wishes she didn't have to be Dead. But it's safer,
really.

She sticks her left hand up as far as she can reach, trailing it
along the crumbly wall, until she feels an indentation. She thinks
about spiders and severed fingers, and rusty razorblades, and then
she reaches inside. She keeps her eyes lowered, focused on the
corner of the room and Claire's twitchy foot.

Inside the hole, there is a tiny cold key, its teeth facing
outward. She pulls it out, and ducks back into the room. "She
wasn't lying," she tells Claire.

"Of course I wasn't lying," the babysitter says. "When you're
Dead, you're not allowed to tell lies."

"Unless you want to," Claire says.

Dreary and dreadful beats the sea at the
shore. 
Ghastly and dripping is the mist at the door.
 
The clock in the hall is chiming one, two, three,
four. 
The morning comes not, no, never, no more.

Samantha and Claire have gone to camp for three weeks every
summer since they were seven. This year their father didn't ask
them if they wanted to go back and, after discussing it, they
decided that it was just as well. They didn't want to have to
explain to all their friends how they were half-orphans now. They
are used to being envied, because they are identical twins. They
don't want to be pitiful.

It has not even been a year, but Samantha realizes that she is
forgetting what her mother looked like. Not her mother's face so
much as the way she smelled, which was something like dry hay and
something like Chanel No. 5, and like something else too. She can't
remember whether her mother had gray eyes, like her, or grey eyes,
like Claire. She doesn't dream about her mother anymore, but she
does dream about Prince Charming, a bay whom she once rode in the
horse show at her camp. In the dream, Prince Charming did not smell
like a horse at all. He smelled like Chanel No. 5. When she is
Dead, she can have all the horses she wants, and they all smell
like Chanel No. 5.

#

"Where does the key go to?" Samantha says.

The babysitter holds out her hand. "To the attic. You don't
really need it, but taking the stairs is easier than the chimney.
At least the first time."

"Aren't you going to make us go to bed?" Claire says.

The babysitter ignores Claire. "My father used to lock me in the
attic when I was little, but I didn't mind. There was a bicycle up
there and I used to ride it around and around the chimneys until my
mother let me out again. Do you know how to ride a bicycle?"

"Of course," Claire says.

"If you ride fast enough, the Specialist can't catch you."

"What's the Specialist?" Samantha says. Bicycles are okay, but
horses can go faster.

"The Specialist wears a hat," says the babysitter. "The hat
makes noises."

She doesn't say anything else.

When you're dead, the grass is greener 
Over your grave. The wind is keener. 
Your eyes sink in, your flesh decays. You 
Grow accustomed to slowness; expect delays.

The attic is somehow bigger and lonelier than Samantha and
Claire thought it would be. The babysitter's key opens the locked
door at the end of the hallway, revealing a narrow set of stairs.
She waves them ahead and upwards.

It isn't as dark in the attic as they had imagined. The oaks
that block the light and make the first three stories so dim and
green and mysterious during the day, don't reach all the way up.
Extravagant moonlight, dusty and pale, streams in the angled dormer
windows. It lights the length of the attic, which is wide enough to
hold a soft-ball game in, and lined with trunks where Samantha
imagines people could sit, could be hiding and watching. The
ceiling slopes down, impaled upon the eight thickwaisted chimney
stacks. The chimneys seem too alive, somehow, to be contained in
this empty, neglected place; they thrust almost angrily through the
roof and attic floor. In the moonlight they look like they are
breathing. "They're so beautiful," she says.

"Which chimney is the nursery chimney?" Claire says.

The babysitter points to the nearest righthand stack. "That
one," she says. "It runs up through the ballroom on the first
floor, the library, the nursery."

Hanging from a nail on the nursery chimney is a long black
object. It looks lumpy and heavy, as if it were full of things. The
babysitter takes it down, twirls it on her finger. There are holes
in the black thing and it whistles mournfully as she spins it. "The
Specialist's hat," she says.

"That doesn't look like a hat," says Claire. "It doesn't look
like anything at all." She goes to look through the boxes and
trunks that are stacked against the far wall.

"It's a special hat," the babysitter says. "It's not supposed to
look like anything. But it can sound like anything you can imagine.
My father made it." "Our father writes books," Samantha says.

"My father did too." The babysitter hangs the hat back on the
nail. It curls blackly against the chimney. Samantha stares at it.
It nickers at her. "He was a bad poet, but he was worse at
magic."

Last summer, Samantha wished more than anything that she could
have a horse. She thought she would have given up anything for
one—even being a twin was not as good as having a horse. She still
doesn't have a horse, but she doesn't have a mother either, and she
can't help wondering if it's her fault. The hat nickers again, or
maybe it is the wind in the chimney.

"What happened to him?" Claire asks.

"After he made the hat, the Specialist came and took him away. I
hid in the nursery chimney while it was looking for him, and it
didn't find me."

"Weren't you scared?"

There is a clattering, shivering, clicking noise. Claire has
found the babysitter's bike and is dragging it towards them by the
handlebars. The babysitter shrugs. "Rule number three," she
says.

Claire snatches the hat off the nail. "I'm the Specialist!" she
says, putting the hat on her head. It falls over her eyes, the
floppy shape-less brim sewn with little asymmetrical buttons that
flash and catch at the moonlight like teeth. Samantha looks again
and sees that they are teeth. Without counting, she suddenly knows
that there are exactly fifty-two teeth on the hat, and that they
are the teeth of agoutis, of curassows, of white-lipped peccaries,
and of the wife of Charles Cheatham Rash. The chimneys are moaning,
and Claire's voice booms hollowly beneath the hat. "Run away, or
I'll catch you. I'll eat you!"

Samantha and the babysitter run away, laughing as Claire mounts
the rusty, noisy bicycle and pedals madly after them. She rings the
bicycle bell as she rides, and the Specialist's hat bobs up and
down on her head. It spits like a cat. The bell is shrill and thin,
and the bike wails and shrieks. It leans first towards the right
and then to the left. Claire's knobby knees stick out on either
side like makeshift counterweights.

Claire weaves in and out between the chimneys, chasing Samantha
and the babysitter. Samantha is slow, turning to look behind. As
Claire approaches, she keeps one hand on the handlebars and
stretches the other hand out towards Samantha. Just as she is about
to grab Samantha, the babysitter turns back and plucks the hat off
Claire's head.

"Shit!" the babysitter says, and drops it. There is a drop of
blood forming on the fleshy part of the babysitter's hand, black in
the moonlight, where the Specialist's hat has bitten her.

Claire dismounts, giggling. Samantha watches as the Specialist's
hat rolls away. It picks up speed, veering across the attic floor,
and disappears, thumping down the stairs. "Go get it," Claire says.
"You can be the Specialist this time."

"No," the babysitter says, sucking at her palm. "It's time for
bed."

When they go down the stairs, there is no sign of the
Specialist's hat. They brush their teeth, climb into the ship-bed,
and pull the covers up to their necks. The babysitter sits between
their feet. "When you're Dead," Samantha says, "do you still get
tired and have to go to sleep? Do you have dreams?"

"When you're Dead," the babysitter says, "everything's a lot
easier. You don't have to do anything that you don't want to. You
don't have to have a name, you don't have to remember. You don't
even have to breathe."

She shows them exactly what she means.

#

When she has time to think about it, (and now she has all the
time in the world to think) Samantha realizes with a small pang
that she is now stuck indefinitely between ten and eleven years
old, stuck with Claire and the babysitter. She considers this. The
number 10 is pleasing and round, like a beach ball, but all in all,
it hasn't been an easy year. She wonders what 11 would have been
like. Sharper, like needles maybe. She has chosen to be Dead,
instead. She hopes that she's made the right decision. She wonders
if her mother would have decided to be Dead, instead of dead, if
she could have.

Last year they were learning fractions in school, when her
mother died. Fractions remind Samantha of herds of wild horses,
piebalds and pintos and palominos. There are so many of them, and
they are, well, fractious and unruly. Just when you think you have
one under control, it throws up its head and tosses you off.
Claire's favorite number is 4, which she says is a tall, skinny
boy. Samantha doesn't care for boys that much. She likes numbers.
Take the number 8 for instance, which can be more than one thing at
once. Looked at one way, 8 looks like a bent woman with curvy hair.
But if you lay it down on its side, it looks like a snake curled
with its tail in its mouth. This is sort of like the difference
between being Dead, and being dead. Maybe when Samantha is tired of
one, she will try the other.

On the lawn, under the oak trees, she hears someone calling her
name. Samantha climbs out of bed and goes to the nursery window.
She looks out through the wavy glass. It's Mr. Coeslak. "Samantha,
Claire!" he calls up to her. "Are you all right? Is your father
there?" Samantha can almost see the moonlight shining through him.
"They're always locking me in the tool room. Goddamn spooky
things," he says. "Are you there, Samantha? Claire? Girls?"

The babysitter comes and stands beside Samantha. The babysitter
puts her finger to her lip. Claire's eyes glitter at them from the
dark bed. Samantha doesn't say anything, but she waves at Mr.
Coeslak. The babysitter waves too. Maybe he can see them waving,
because after a little while he stops shouting and goes away. "Be
careful," the babysitter says. "
He'll 
be coming soon.
It will be coming soon." She takes Samantha's hand, and leads her
back to the bed, where Claire is waiting. They sit and wait. Time
passes, but they don't get tired, they don't get any older.

Who's there? 
Just air
.

The front door opens on the first floor, and Samantha, Claire,
and the babysitter can hear someone creeping, creeping up the
stairs. "Be quiet," the babysitter says. "It's the Specialist."

Samantha and Claire are quiet. The nursery is dark and the wind
crackles like a fire in the fireplace.

"Claire, Samantha, Samantha, Claire?" The Specialist's voice is
blurry and wet. It sounds like their father's voice, but that's
because the hat can imitate any noise, any voice. "Are you still
awake?"

"Quick," the babysitter says. "It's time to go up to the attic
and hide."

Claire and Samantha slip out from under the covers and dress
quickly and silently. They follow her. Without speech, without
breathing, she pulls them into the safety of the chimney. It is too
dark to see, but they understand the babysitter perfectly when she
mouths the word, 
Up
. She goes first, so they can see
where the finger-holds are, the bricks that jut out for their feet.
Then Claire. Samantha watches her sister's foot ascend like smoke,
the shoelace still untied.