The Turning (17 page)

And here’s where things started to get weird. On one wall was a blown-up photograph of a seagull. I swear to you, it was the same bird that had yelled at me on the boat.

My legs started feeling funny, and I sat down at one of the little desks. It was the kind with the top that flips open. Inside was a crumpled sheet of notebook paper. I closed the lid again and smoothed the paper out on the desktop.

Up in one corner, it said
Flora Crackstone. Miss Lucy Jessel’s class. Winter essay
.

So that was her name. Jessel. Only now I realized that I’d never known her last name. Linda had never even bothered with it. To Linda she was just Lucy. Poor dead Lucy.

Flora’s handwriting was exactly what I would have expected. Neat printing, precise, perfect, no nonsense, no circles over the
i
’s. The title of her composition was “The History of Crackstone’s Landing.”

Many amazing people have lived on our island, from heroes of the American Revolution to Robert Crackstone, one of the earliest archaeologists to visit Pompeii and dig up all the dead Roman people who’d been buried by the volcano.

But it’s also true that a couple of bad things have happened on our island. People talk about the Crackstone curse, but in my opinion there’s no such thing. Everything that happened here was not because of supernatural powers but because of some bad thing that someone did.

In 1929, Louisa Crackstone, the youngest daughter of James Crackstone III, fell in love with the gardener, a man by the name of Nolan. From the first time she met him, she felt he had a magical power over her. And she was lost. There was nothing she could do. Theirs was a true love, a real love. But the family disapproved. The couple tried to elope by boat, but a big wave came up and drowned them.

The family was really sorry. They should have let them get married.

That was where Flora’s essay stopped. On the bottom, in red pencil, it said,
A+. Excellent job.

Lucy had touched the page I was holding in my hands. She had held it and written on it.

It’s funny, Sophie. Even though we’re broken up, it’s like I still have your voice in my head, like when we were together. So I can hear your thoughts collecting around some kind of outrage about Lucy teaching innocent little Flora a story about a woman who falls under some guy’s power and dies because of it. I can hear you thinking, What kind of story is that for a little girl to hear—and write? But you know what, Sophie? I’m sick of your girl-power crap. What was Flora supposed to write? A composition about the first woman president of the United States? Well, guess what, there was no woman president of the United States. And I think the story that Lucy probably told her and that she wrote was a very beautiful story. And you’ve got to admit that the way it was written is impressive for a girl Flora’s age.

I put Flora’s paper back in the desk, quickly, almost as if I was scared she was going to catch me reading it. Trying to calm down, I told myself that the picture on the wall couldn’t have been the same seagull that I saw on the boat. All seagulls look pretty much alike. It was just a coincidence that there was a picture of one on the wall. Not even a coincidence. The island was in the middle of the ocean. There were seagulls everywhere. Duh.

But I guess I was still on edge. Anyone who saw me from the outside—and I was so afraid that Norris’s ghost might be watching from the windows that I couldn’t look at the windows—might have thought I was really nervous. I roamed around the room, looking at everything, picking up everything. Every pencil, every piece of chalk, every eraser and empty notebook was a whole education for me. I could imagine myself back in this classroom, when everything was still innocent. When Flora was writing her composition, and Lucy was giving her an A+, and Miles was staring up at the map of Outer Mongolia and thinking about some story Norris had told him.

Some story Norris had told him.
It was never innocent. Norris had been making Lucy very unhappy, forcing her to play that cruel card game. And making the children play, too.

Or maybe I was just thinking this because I was looking at the cards.

I had wandered over to a little table, a square table with four chairs, the kind of table at which kids finger paint and make their lumpy art projects from clay and Play-Doh. The cards were dealt out in hands, seven cards at each of four places. The rest of the deck was in the middle of table.

They weren’t regular cards. They were death cards. The suits were the regular four suits—hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. But there were skeletons holding the hearts. The clubs were grinning skulls. The diamonds were gravestones. And the spades were tiny images of shovels digging graves.

Beside the cards were piles of pebbles like the ones I’d seen at the lakeshore. And it gave me the chills, because I remembered learning in school how in some places they leave stones by the graves of their loved ones, sort of like messages saying that the living relatives had been there to visit.

I picked the cards up; I put them down; I was careful not to disturb them, as if the game was still in progress and someone might get angry if I messed up his hand.

Or maybe I just thought that because I saw something that I should have noticed before. In the middle of the card table was a glass jelly jar, and in the jelly jar was a bouquet of wildflowers. They were fresh, or as near to fresh as Flora’s bouquets ever were.

The children had been here recently. Were they still playing that hideous card game? Were they playing it with the ghosts of Norris and Lucy? If the ghosts could appear to me, why couldn’t they make themselves known to the children? Had the children been pretending when they’d acted as if they hadn’t seen Lucy on the shore or Norris in the tower? I looked at the cards and the wildflower bouquet.

Suddenly, I knew. I knew what had happened. I knew what was still happening.

Everything was clear.

I grabbed a fistful of cards and shoved them in my pocket. Then I went out to the garden. Lucy and Flora and Miles were still there, weeding and digging. They were happy and smiling, but I knew that they would stop smiling once they heard what I had to tell them.

I let the garden gate close behind me. Did I imagine they shrank back when they saw me? Well, of course they were startled: I’d crept up on them from nowhere. And I can hardly imagine how filthy and freaked out I looked after a morning in Norris’s cottage and then my discovery in the schoolroom.

I said, “I know what happened. You can’t fool me anymore. It’s a creepy feeling to be lied to by little children. And maybe it only worked because all three of you were in on it. Conspiring. But it’s over. I know now, I know everything—”

“Jack, what do you know?” said Linda. The kids were hiding behind her, peeking out at me. Like terrified babies. “What’s over? You poor thing, you look so drawn and pale. I don’t think you’re getting better.... I think we need to get you to a doctor.”

“Sure,” I said. “Take me to a doctor who’s working for Jim Crackstone, some quack who’ll say I’m out of my mind and hallucinating all this. But I’m not imagining things. I understand it better than you do, Linda. Or maybe better than you’re pretending.”

“Please, Jack, don’t yell at Linda,” Flora said.

“Miles!” I said. “Stop hiding behind Linda for a change.”

Obedient as ever, Miles stepped out from behind his fake mommy.

I said, “I know what happened in your school. I know why they don’t want you back there.”

“They don’t want me back? Linda, what does he mean?”

I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that Linda still hadn’t told him. When was she going to announce it? The night before he was supposed to leave for school in the fall, when he was all packed and ready to go?

“Jack,” said Linda. “I can’t believe you’re doing this. What’s gotten into you? What’s wrong?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” I said. “It’s the card game, isn’t it, Miles? You taught the other kids at school to play that evil game. And the school found out about it, right? What happened? Did you destroy one of the other boys the way Norris destroyed Lucy? Did you play for their souls? And when you won their souls, Miles, what did you do with them?”

“Souls?” said Miles. “We played for pennies.”

“You played card games at school? What did you play, Miles?” said Linda.

“Poker,” said Miles. “Norris taught us. We’d play for pebbles at his cottage. Pebbles from the lakeshore. He told us that out in the real world people played for real money. So when I got to school I taught some of the other boys, though a lot of them knew already. I’m sorry I used some of Uncle Jim’s allowance, but I never won or lost more than a dollar the whole time I was there. But one kid lost a quarter in one night, and he got mad, though not because of the money. I guess he just didn’t like losing. So he told the principal, who called everyone into his office, one by one. And someone—I don’t know who—told on me. I said I was sorry. I thought the whole thing was over. I can’t believe they wrote to you and told you they didn’t want me to come back. It was just a few pennies!”

“Is that all?” Linda said. “Your school made it sound a whole lot worse than that.” Linda couldn’t help looking at me, because she and I were the only ones who knew the school had used the word
evil
.

“I swear to you,” Miles said. “On my life and Flora’s and yours and—” Little baby Miles had started crying. Linda bent down and hugged him. What a touching sight! I thought I was going to be sick.

“I think your school overreacted,” she said. “I knew it was some kind of church school. Very strict. Otherwise your uncle Jim wouldn’t have sent you there. So maybe they have very high standards. Maybe something like that seemed worse to them than it might have at another place. But you know it wasn’t good. Kids shouldn’t gamble, Miles. It was wrong of you to teach them....”

“I’m sorry,” said Miles. “I told them I was sorry.”

“Are you sorry for lying?” I said. “Because that’s what you’re doing right now. And if I were you, I’d be a little worried about having sworn on everyone’s life. If anything that I’ve been saying is true, you’re all going to wind up dead.”

Miles hid behind Linda again. “Jack, stop it!” Linda said. “What’s wrong with you? Go back into the house.”

I ignored her. I said, “You know that’s all a big lie about playing for pennies. You know what you were playing for, just like you know that you and Flora are still playing that evil card game. You’re still playing it in the schoolroom with Norris and Lucy. I saw Flora’s bouquet there.”

Flora cried out from behind Linda, “Please, Jack, stop. You’re frightening us. We haven’t been in the schoolroom since Kate left.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “I’m scary, but playing cards with two dead people isn’t scary? You think those cards aren’t scary? You think I don’t know they’re special cards? You think I don’t know what they look like?”

“Jack! What are you talking about? What cards?” asked Linda.

“If you don’t believe me, look!” I said. I grabbed the cards from my pocket and threw them on the ground. The skulls looked up at me, and the skeletons with their bleeding hearts, and the gravestones and the shovels. “You call those ordinary cards, Miles? They’re death cards!”

“But, Jack,” said Linda. “They are ordinary cards. Diamonds, hearts, spades, clubs. A regular pack of playing cards.”

So now I was completely surrounded by people trying to make me think I’d gone insane. I wanted to ask Linda why she was lying. I wanted to ask the kids if they thought they were regular playing cards, too. But I knew the children would lie, just like they always had. I wanted to make them admit that they were seeing Lucy and Norris and to ask Flora how her little bouquet got into the locked schoolroom when—

That was when I saw him. Norris had come for the children or for Lucy or to take revenge on all of us on the island. Maybe the cards had called him. I had no idea how he’d gotten there. But somehow I knew he meant to harm us.

Norris was walking across the lawn, looking straight at me. He was taller and stronger than I remembered from the boat and way more frightening than he’d seemed in the window and on the tower. He was obviously furious. I asked myself whether I was brave and strong enough to fight Norris—to fight a ghost. He seemed to get bigger as he approached. I didn’t think I could win.

Finally, he was so close that I could see his eyes, and I knew: they were the cold, black, beady eyes of the seagull that had warned me not to go to the island.

I wondered what he’d done with Lucy. Had she tried to stop him from coming after us? Were they in different places? Did she know? Or had he managed to hurt her even in another world, even after death?

“Get out of here!” I yelled.

“Jack! Who are yelling at?” said Linda.

“Don’t pretend you don’t see him,” I said. “Don’t any of you pretend. But I’ll protect you, don’t worry. That’s why I was hired. That’s why Jim Crackstone brought me here. He knew that this would happen. And he knew that I was the only one who could see it happening and prevent it.”

I don’t know if I even believed this. I don’t know what I believed. I was talking to calm myself down. Norris was coming closer.

He slammed into the garden.

“Get back,” I told the kids.

“You can’t hide from me,” Norris said. His voice was low. He reached toward me, lunged at me. Could a ghost actually touch me? Hurt me? Was he planning to take me with him to the other world? Me and Linda and the children? Would Hank the gardener find our bodies when he and his men came to work? Jim Crackstone would have to tell my dad that I was dead because he insisted on keeping two children prisoners on a cursed island where tragedies kept on happening.