The Bone Flute (10 page)

15
Plain sight

S
uddenly it was all gone, the hall and the lights and the dancers. Camrose blinked. The jacket sprawled on the rocks at her feet, and Mark stood, hands fisted, scowling past her at Terence.

“Never touch that again,” Terence said in a voice like silk.

Mark tried to push past Camrose. “Th en keep it to yourself after this!”

She grabbed his wrist. A still moment, then Terence laughed and bent to scoop up the jacket. “So, my Camrose.” He smiled down at her. “Can you see things diff erently now?”

“I don't know.” Suppose what he said was true, and Rhianna really had loved him? Suppose what he said about Diarmid was true? Could Terence be the right claimant after all?

His eyes were so blue. They looked … not old, not like Diarmid's, but ageless, as if he'd always been both young and wise. Easy to see how Rhianna could have fallen in love with …

With … Was it the reflected light rippling across his face that made it look so strange?

Ripple, ripple.
Then … Ears long and pointed, eyes a narrow glitter, yellow as a cat's, eyebrows a sharp V, joined in the middle.

And on his shoulder leaned a crimson hound. It raised a horned head to stare at Camrose with eyes that burned red.

Its one front paw flexed, showing long, sharp claws.

She took a step back, but the edge of the rock was under her heel. Mark caught her arm. Nowhere to run.

“So you saw.” Terence scratched his jaw. He looked human enough now, and the red thing on his shoulder was just a jacket. “I should have known. You're becoming the Keeper, sure enough. Nothing but trouble. If I did not need you to get that flute, Sweetness, I'd have been rid of you long since.”

She folded her arms. “Maybe you wouldn't have found that such an easy thing to do.”

But her words were hollow, and he knew it. He laughed. Then he stood up and stretched. “Oh, here.” He pulled a folded paper from his jeans pocket and handed it to her. “You might as well have this. It's no use to me after all. When you come to make your decision, little cousin, think well on what happened to poor Gilda.”

He shrugged the jacket on. It slid up his arms with a deliberate movement and snuggled around his shoulders. After one last cheerful wave, he scrambled along the rocks to the shore.

Mark scowled after Terence's dwindling figure. “Don't ever trust that guy.”

“Don't worry, I won't. What … what happened just then?”

“You tell me. He put that jacket on you and for a minute you looked … not all there. I didn't like it, so I grabbed it off you.”

“I wasn't all there. I was someplace else.”

“What?”

She shook her head. “And then? What did you see after?”

“Don't get you.”

“His face. Didn't you see how his face changed?” Mark squinted at her. “Never mind,” she said. “It's nothing.”

He pointed. “What's that he gave you?”

The paper was still crumpled in her hand. As soon as she unfolded it, the determined black handwriting leaped out at her.

“It's page two of Gilda's letter. So he did have it!”

“Huh. But why give it back now?”

“Not just to be nice, that's for sure.” She looked it over. “Remember where the first page ended? At twilight go to the something, it said. So, here goes.

“...
hollow in the woods at the west end of the park on McKirdy
Street. That hollow, in case you aren't already aware of this piece of
family history, is all that remains of the house where I was born.

“
Perhaps not quite all. A memory or image of the house on the
night it burned, a ghost of that event, returns each time twilight
comes to the hollow. I have never gone back inside, because the
house is waiting for you, not me. It's your task to take charge of the
bone flute and keep it safe for the rightful claimant.

“
Who are these claimants, and why do they want this heirloom
of ours? That story is too long to tell here. You only need to know
that they are two, and neither one will show you his true face. Be
careful of them both! But so long as you hold the flute safe, you
have the upper hand—they depend on you to hand it over will
–
ingly. It will be up to you to decide between them.

“
I wish I could tell you how to choose, but the final judgement
must be yours alone. In
… ”

“In? What?”

“That's the end of the page. I'm not sure it helps much.”

Camrose wished things were as clear now as they had looked this morning. Then, it was simple. There were two claim–ants for the flute, one right and one wrong. That was that. “I wonder if it's true, that Diarmid knew it would kill Rhianna to bring her back?”

“Ask him.”

“I will. But even if that was true, and even if Gilda was right about him back in 1914, he could have changed since then, couldn't he? It's been a long time.”

“Maybe.” Mark looked over her shoulder. “Better be getting back. Storm's coming.”

Camrose glanced back. Then she jumped up and led the scramble to shore. Thunder castles were building in the west and coming on fast.

It was just before three, the hottest part of the afternoon, and the sunshine was as thick as mustard, the air almost too heavy to breathe. Out on the rocks, surrounded by cool water, they hadn't noticed the change.

“Better get inside before the rain starts!” Camrose said.

By the time they reached Market Square it was nearly deserted, except for storekeepers cranking down awnings, rolling in racks of T-shirts and folding up sandwich boards.

The edge of the cloud mass crossed the sun as they reached McKirdy Street. The thick yellow light shut off and everything went gray. Thunder boomed.

“Better run,” Mark said.

Camrose caught his arm. “Wait. Look!” The streetlights were going on all along the street. Streetlights in the middle of the day! “Mark, it's twilight!”

“Yes, but—”

“If the storm lasts, this could work. Don't you see? It could last even longer than a normal twilight!” She jigged with excitement.

“Or it could end any minute.”

“Only one way to find out!” She raced across the park to the band of trees and burst into the hollow with Mark close behind her. For a moment she thought she was wrong. The house wasn't there.

And then, as the sky darkened to purple and thunder rumbled, one window appeared, glowing with the warm yellow of lamplight.

16
Inside the ghost house

I
t grew up out of the grassy hollow, stone on stone, story on story. Its tall windows were capped with carved lintels.

Ivy twined beside the wide, front door whose two halves were paneled with dark, polished wood and shod with brass.

Each detail was clear, yet sheer as gauze. Smooth lawns surrounded the house, yet cedar chips crunched under Camrose's sneakers.

“Well?” Mark shook her arm.

“It's almost real. Almost. Can't you see it now?”

“No. Nothing.”

It was more solid now. Th e glow behind the window panes was brighter, but still warm and friendly. Th e dark green edges of the partly drawn curtains showed inside. A yellow tassel hung next to the glass. A rose bush by the front door carried blooms red as stoplights.

The lawn was a smooth sweep of green, still marked in parallel lines by the mower's wheels. Camrose started forward. The turf was springy under her shoes. She drew in a deep breath and smelled not woods, with their undertone of composting leaves, not flowers run wild, but freshly cut grass and blooming roses.

“Camrose!”

She turned. Mark looked very far away. “I'm going in,” she called.

“But if it's burning—”

“It's not burning yet.”

She looked up at the house and terror swamped her at the sight of this thing, standing here where it didn't exist, where it had no right to be.

Right ahead lay a path of flagstones, swept clean except for a few fresh grass clippings at the edges. She walked forward and climbed three stone steps to the front door. The brass handle was cold under her hand, and real as … as brass, she thought.

Deep breath. Heart, stop banging!

A click and a push, and the door swung open. She stepped inside. Mark called from the distance. The closing door cut off his voice.

Camrose stood perfectly still. She didn't know what she'd expected. Something more sinister than this, for sure. A wide hallway stretched away from her with closed doors on both sides. The light was the blue of early dusk. To one side she caught a sudden movement and whipped around. Her own white-faced reflection stared back at her from a mirror that hung beside the door.

I'm really here, she thought. I'm inside the ghost house.

She walked on, silent, breathing shallowly. Suppose someone living in the house were to hear her, and come out, and say …

Someone
living?

She pushed the thought away and concentrated on her task. Gilda said the flute was hidden. It wouldn't be anywhere obvious.

The house was beautiful, what she could see of it. The high ceiling was edged with a border of raised plaster shells and scrolls. To her right on a polished table stood a Chinese vase full of roses, a splash of scarlet in the blue air. Their perfume was so strong it made her feel dizzy. She smelled wood smoke too.

The hall carpet was midnight blue. The thick pile was velvety to the touch, as she found out when she bent down and brushed her fingers over it.

Why was I so afraid? she wondered. Now I'm right inside the house, and it's better than real. It's wonderful.

At the end of the hall a broad staircase curved gracefully up out of sight. She wished she could see what the upstairs rooms were like. Why not go up and take a look? There must be so many beautiful rooms, full of amazing things.

Quick as thought, she found herself at the foot of the staircase. The top of the newel post was carved in the shape of a coiled dragon. She rubbed its polished head—the wood was lighter there—and began to climb. The banister was warm and smooth under her palm.

She was halfway up when a sound caught her ear, the first sound she'd heard in this place. Voices. She looked back. A door stood open in the hallway, though it had been closed before. A fuzzy light streamed from it.

The voices came from there. They had a distorted, echoing sound, like the noises you hear underwater. They startled the glamor out of Camrose's head.

She walked down the stairs faster than she'd gone up, but still not very fast. There was a thickness in the bluish light that made it impossible to move quickly. And wasn't it a deeper blue than before?

Something in the hall had changed. Camrose looked for it and saw the red roses shriveled and black. Their scent had gone bad. How had that happened so fast?

She stopped just outside the open doorway looking in at a room with silky yellow walls. The tall windows were dark blue with dusk and a chandelier, a blaze of quivering light, hung from the ceiling.

Then she saw the girl and forgot the room. She knew at once who she was: her long, dark red braid hanging down the back of her loose white dress. Gilda stood sideways to the door, her hands wrapped tightly around a wooden box. Her eyes were fixed on someone farther inside the room, someone Camrose couldn't see.

“So you've made your decision.” A man's voice, slow and lazy. Camrose almost knew it.

“So she has. Leave her alone,” said a second voice, deep and soft, a lovely voice. “Come along, wise child, let's see it.”

Gilda looked down at the box. She glanced toward the door–way as if she wished she could run away and escape.

She doesn't see me, Camrose thought. Well, how could she?

I'm not there. Or, she's not here. Or … “Come now, you must choose.” An edge in the lazy voice now.