The Turning (10 page)

“But you’re not sure they did do anything to the kids,” I said. “The kids seem normal enough. Even if they’re not exactly the most ordinary kids. They’ve got character, right? Those looks Miles gives Flora sometimes … any brother and sister …” Did I really believe this? It was what Linda wanted to hear. And maybe it was what I wanted to believe.

“Thanks,” said Linda. “I’m glad you’re here, Jack. I’m going to write the school first thing tomorrow and ask them to be more specific about what they’re actually accusing Miles of and what kind of proof they have. We need to get to the bottom of this.”

“That sounds like a plan,” I said. “Good night. See you in the morning, Linda.”

“Pleasant dreams,” Linda said.

And pleasant dreams to you, too, Sophie.

Love,

Jack

DEAR SOPHIE,

Isn’t it bizarre how you can find out one tiny bit of information—well, maybe what Linda told me wasn’t exactly tiny—but anyway, you can find out one new thing and after that the whole world looks different? It’s as if you’ve had something wrong with your eyes, and you get new glasses, and the fuzzy outlines get sharp. Maybe sharper than you’d wanted them to be. Maybe sharper than you can stand.

By the time Linda told me about Lucy and Norris, and about Miles getting kicked out of school, I’d basically convinced myself that Miles and Flora were normal kids. A little old-fashioned, a little peculiar, but okay, what do you expect? They’d grown up practically alone on an island.

But now I’ve gone back to seeing them more like I did when I first met them, and all the little things about them I’d kind of stopped noticing—those funny looks they exchange, the way that Flora will start to say something, and one eyebrow twitch from Miles is all it takes to shut her up—now I notice them all the time. I’d told Linda it was just brother-sister stuff, but maybe it’s more than that.

Now I’ve stopped trying to make excuses for them and gone completely in the other direction, and the kids seem really peculiar and maybe damaged. Secretive and strange.

Sometimes I have debates with myself. I wonder: Did Norris and Lucy do something evil to the kids? Or did nothing happen? I don’t know why, but I feel like all my own weird experiences—the seagull, the scratched-out photo, to say nothing of the ghost at the library window—are starting to seem like evidence that something terrible occurred. I’m sorry, but since I set foot on the boat to come to this island, I’ve been feeling … not like myself at all. Why? What is it about this place, these kids?

More and more, I feel like I’m being paid to take care of kids who act friendly and open but who are keeping their little stash of precious secrets to themselves. If the kids were victims, I feel sorry for them. But I don’t think they are. In fact they almost seem like they have this bizarre kind of power. I think they enjoy their secrets, that it makes them feel special somehow.

Only half my mind is on whatever we’re supposedly doing—tennis lessons, rowing, picnics. And half my brain is trying to think of some way to ask about Norris and Lucy. I think I’ve become a little obsessed with Norris and Lucy.

Beyond the question of whether or not they hurt the children, it’s almost as if I’m jealous. I keep thinking about how when you and I first got together, I couldn’t get over the fact that you used to go out with Josh, though you always said it meant nothing. Now it’s almost as if I’m jealous of Norris and Lucy for having a much bigger effect on the kids than I’ll ever have. They’ve left the kids with a strong memory, a feeling: devotion or fear, I can’t tell. But whatever it is, it’s intense. No matter how many leading questions I ask, no matter what subtle way I try to pry some information loose, the kids go blank when I mention Norris and Lucy, and they give me these outer-space-alien stares. They shut me out, and I’m starting to really hate it.

Now when Flora and I take our botany walk, and she points out a flower and tells me its name, I ask, very innocently, “Oh, where did you learn that?” Flora looks at me. She knows I know something. Her eyes glaze over. It’s almost as if she’s hearing Miles, even though he isn’t there. And then she’ll say something like “I don’t remember” or “I read it in a book.”

Once when Miles was telling me how, when he grew up, he wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, I asked him how he got the idea. Maybe I imagined it, but Miles hesitated a beat. For an instant he looked almost scared. Then in a tone as close to contempt as a superpolite kid like Miles could allow himself, he said, “Oh, everybody knows that.”

I’ve been using every excuse to ask Miles about school. Did you learn that at school? Did you do that at school? And Miles says yes or no, he did or he didn’t, in that pure, sweet voice, as if he loved school and school loved him, and he’s eager to go back in the fall. I’m not going to be the one to tell him the bad news. So all I can do is wait for Linda to figure the whole mess out. Apparently, she’s written to Miles’s school, but they just ignore her letters.

I’ve begun to feel as if Norris and Lucy are everywhere I look. Now I’m sure that the photo behind the photo, the one with the scratched-out faces, is a picture of them. I wonder which kid scratched them out. Or maybe it was Lucy, maybe she messed up the photo after Norris left the island. You always hear stories about people doing crazy stuff after they get dumped.... Didn’t you tell me that Josh went off the deep end and got sent away to some rehab facility after you broke up?

I wonder if that book of poems in my room—
from Romeo to Juliet
—was a present from Norris to Lucy. One night, I took it out off the shelf and let it fall open because I figured that would be the page someone used to look at most. I read a poem I sort of remember studying in school, a poem in which some dude is trying to convince this girl to have sex with him because there’s not a lot of time and they’re not going to live forever. If it was a message from Norris to Lucy, he sure turned out to be right. They didn’t have much time. I put the book back on my shelf.

Some kind of tension seems to be developing between me and the kids. But meanwhile I’m learning a lot about children. Like for example: kids know when you’re trying to make them tell you something, especially when they don’t want to. It’s almost like a game they enjoy, as if they have something I want, and they’re not going to give it up. Capture the flag or whatever.

The only way I’ve found to decrease the tension is to play games that are so wild, with so much running and yelling, that we lose ourselves and forget the other stuff. We forget to think at all, really. It’s lucky the weather’s been good and there’s all this space to race around and make all the noise we want.

Yesterday, we played tag. I was “it,” chasing Miles and Flora across the lawns behind the house. I can pretty much catch Miles without breaking a sweat, so I let him get a head start. But Flora can move fast when she wants to, so I have to work. Plus, being little, she can make these quick turns and twist out of my reach just when I think I have her.

We were having a good time, running and yelling at the top of our lungs. I was pretending to be a monster chasing them. For a moment I paused to catch my breath, but Miles and Flora kept racing as if I was right behind them.

I wish I could send you a picture of how gorgeous it was. The green lawn shone in the summer sun, the trees were leafy and fat and full and just starting to cast a few shadows.

I took off after the kids again, but slower, so I could enjoy the scenery.

I’d been thinking of a story my dad told me once. He was working on a house, pouring cement for a new foundation, and he suddenly got this funny feeling, this sense that something was there, this … presence. He heard a rattle and turned and saw a huge rattlesnake sitting on a rock nearby. I know there aren’t supposed to be poisonous snakes around us, but there are a few here and there. Someone once told me a circus train dumped a carload of them in a wreck. My dad’s point was that he got that weird feeling when you sense something before you see it. Like when that bat got into our house.

Which is a long way of saying that as the kids and I were playing tag on the lawn, I suddenly sensed someone there. Watching us. I looked up.

And I saw him, standing on a balcony encircling one of the towers that rose from the Black House.

It was the guy I’d seen at the library window. He was looking down at us. But not at
us
. He was staring at Miles. Once more I was sure I’d seen him before—I mean, before I saw him outside the library.

After a while the children noticed I’d stopped chasing them. I stared at the guy, long enough so that the children would see me and look in the same direction. I needed to know if they saw him, too. I wanted to know how they would react. They looked at me. They looked at the tower. They looked at me. They looked at the tower. Even from a distance, I could tell they didn’t see him. Their little faces were puzzled as they came toward me.

Flora said, “Jack, what’s the matter?”

Miles said, “What are you looking at?” For a fraction of a second, I could have sworn that he knew and was lying. Then I thought, No, he doesn’t know. I’m being paranoid. Too much sun, too much running around. I needed a drink of water.

Suddenly, I felt weirdly faint, and bent over and grabbed my knees, the way Dad taught me to do if I got dizzy. When I looked up again, the man—or whatever he was—had vanished from the tower.

I couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten down or, for that matter, how he’d climbed up there. I told myself it was a trick of the light and the deepening shadows. But I knew what I’d seen, and I decided to tell Linda. Who’s calling me right now. Got to run.

Love,

Jack

DEAR JACK,

I’m glad to hear that you’re doing so well and have adjusted to the island and that you’re even having fun. It’s hard to believe that three weeks have passed since you left. Sometimes it seems like five minutes, and sometimes like five months. I miss you—even the loud music and the video games and all the stuff I used to complain about.

You know, Jack, something happened yesterday at work. I can’t remember if I told you I got a couple of weeks of cabinet work in a house that this doctor from Boston is renovating. My friend Russ is doing the painting. I hadn’t seen Russ for a while, and he asked how you were. I told him about your job on the island.... He got a strange look on his face and said he remembered reading about something strange that happened there, something nasty. Or maybe it was something that happened to some people
from
there. He thought maybe even a murder or a double murder.... I had to quit working for a minute and take a deep breath.

Russ always gets things wrong. He probably meant some other island completely. I figured you’d have heard about it by now, if there was anything … which I’m sure there isn’t.

Anyhow, keep having fun. Say hello to the kids for me, even though I’ve never met them. Likewise Linda. I’m sure I’d like her as much as you say I would.

Love,

Your dad

DEAR DAD,

First of all, don’t worry. I’m still having a nice time. I like the kids. I’ll tell you more when I see you. Which won’t be
all
that long. As for that story about the island … Russ did get it wrong. Or anyway, sort of wrong. There were two people who used to work here, then left and went someplace else, where they got into trouble and got shot or something … but they were losers to begin with. And they didn’t get into real trouble until after they’d gone and no longer had anything to do with the island, which—believe me, Dad—is totally cool and safe.

I have to go now. Linda’s calling me for dinner. She’s made shepherd’s pie, my favorite, with vegetables from the garden. You would like her garden, Dad, though I keep wondering what you would say about her using old golf clubs stuck in the ground to mark the rows.

Oh, and one more thing. Have you heard from Sophie or seen her or heard anything about her? I don’t imagine you would. I know your paths never crossed except that one time when her car broke down and I needed you to pick us up. Wasn’t that the first time you met?

But it’s just that I was expecting a letter from her on the ferry that just came in, and there was no letter. So I was wondering. I’m sure I’ll get a letter from her next time. But I was just wondering. Meanwhile, forget I asked.

Love,

Jack

DEAR SOPHIE,

Hi, remember me? Recognize the return address? Sophie, why haven’t you written?

I keep thinking your letters must be getting lost somewhere. Otherwise I would have heard from you by now. You have to write to me. In a way, you could say I’m only here because of you, and I miss you, and when I don’t hear from you … it makes me feel kind of crazy. Plus, out here on this island, there’s not much to do except think and worry, and suddenly there’s a lot to worry about. I worry about this ghost or whatever it is I’ve been seeing. Am I starting to lose my mind? I worry about Miles and Flora and what might have happened to them. I worry about everything they’re not telling me.

Did I used to seem like a worried guy to you? I never used to worry, though I had stuff to worry about. But now I worry about you and why you’re not writing to me and whether you’ve forgotten me completely. So you know what? I think I’ll just end the letter here and wait till I hear from you to write you another of those long letters where I tell you every little thing that’s happened on this wacko island with these strange little kids … and maybe a ghost or two.