Wonders of the Invisible World (26 page)

He quickly slid into the seat beside me and slammed the door, then turned to plant a fast kiss on my cheek. “Hit it,” he said after he pulled away. Then he slapped the dashboard.

I pushed down on the gas and turned onto the road, hoping the Blue Bomb would get us to our destination without any mishaps. It was a good car, but it had come by its family name honestly.

Then we were off, kicking up dust on the back roads of Temperance as we drove east across the Pennsylvania border.

W
e were silent as we drove through the winter-barren fields, where old graying barns sat along the horizon like remnants of a lost civilization. And as the fields began to drop away and the hills of western Pennsylvania grew around us, Jarrod turned to ask a question that must have been sitting inside him since the night before, when I'd told him about the photograph. When I'd told him about my family having some kind of connection to Lily Dale.

“What do you think we'll find there?” he asked.

I shrugged, said, “I don't know. I suppose we'll find some people like my mom and me there. At least, that's how it seems from what I found online.”

“But some of the things you found also said the people up there are just, you know, fakes. Con artists exploiting people who are grieving or unsure of how to get on with their lives.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

“So what will you do if you don't find what you're looking for? If it all turns out to be just a village full of supernatural hucksters?”

“I'm sure there are a lot of fakes,” I said. “But there have to be some who are the real deal, right? Otherwise, why was my mom up there with Seth visiting this Aunt Carolyn? There has to be something there to find. There has to be something that will explain things.”

“What do you mean?” Jarrod asked. “What would it explain?”

“My mom, for starters. It would explain how she can do the things she does.” And then, with a little reluctance, I looked over and said, “And, you know, maybe it will explain who I am too. What I am, that is. Why I'm this way.”

Jarrod reached across the space between us and put his hand on my leg, squeezing gently. “You don't need to be explained, Aidan,” he said. “At least, not to me.”

I didn't know what to say. I was afraid he'd laugh at any moment after saying that, and then I'd look like a complete idiot if I'd said anything that indicated I believed him. He didn't laugh when I looked over at him, though. He just met my eyes and kept his hand on my leg for a long time after, squeezing harder.

He was so much more prepared for this thing between us. One night, a few weeks after my dad died, when I'd started to feel weird about us being together, especially after my mom started to imply that my dad wouldn't have liked it, Jarrod said, “If you could remember all the things you told me back when we were kids, when you could see the future clearly, you'd understand there's nothing wrong here. You'd understand this is our destiny.”

Now, when I glanced at him in the passenger seat and saw again how much he loved me, all I could do was look down at his hand on my leg and say “Thank you” before turning back to the road and driving us farther toward our destination.

Two hours after leaving, we turned off I-90 into a town called Cassadaga, where the land was soft and gently rolling and the grays of the landscape back in Ohio had turned into browns and greens as spring soaked into the soil. Split-rail fences stood along the border of every field we passed. Grape orchards grew in clusters, just like grapes do, and wineries, it seemed, came into view at every other bend of the winding roads. The sky was bluer than I'd seen in a long while, since before winter, since before what happened with my dad down in Marrow's Ravine. I even rolled down my window for a while. Just to inhale the crisp air, just to breathe something new and clean. It was only a few minutes of driving through that small town, though, before Jarrod pointed out a road sign and said, “Looks like we're headed in the right direction.”

I looked to where he pointed.
LILY DALE
, the sign read. And beyond it, a gravel road snaked off the highway into an old forest, thick with its new leaves starting to unfurl. That was where we had to go, then.

After we'd driven down that road for several minutes, with the tires crunching against gravel the entire way, we came to a large gated arch with the words
CITY OF LIGHT
etched on it. Beside the arch stood a small shack, where another sign was posted, stating how much it cost to enter for the day, the week, or the month, as if the place were a campground instead of a town you could come to and go from freely. No one was waiting inside that shack. It must still have been the off-season, I figured. So we drove through.

As we rounded a bend in the road, a glint of sunlight on water suddenly flashed through a keyhole opening in the woods, revealing a path down to a lake beyond. Then we passed by an old diner, which from all appearances seemed closed: the doors chained, the row of front windows battened down with peeling shutters. Up ahead, though, through the branches of trees hanging over the road, the roofs of houses finally sprouted into view, and when we passed under those trees, a village appeared before us like a mirage in the distance.

I slowed the car to a stop, the brakes squealing a little right there in the middle of that old gravel road, and said, “This must be it.”

But “it” wasn't much more than a small network of streets no more than three or four blocks long, each lined with tiny Victorian houses painted in a variety of pastel colors: pink, yellow, blue, grass green. “It's an Easter egg town,” I said as we peered out at it, and Jarrod agreed.

For a while we just sat there, looking at the place as if one of us might suddenly say “Well, that's it, let's go,” and then we'd back the car up and head home without really taking a look around. I wanted to do that, actually. I wanted to leave now that I was here, rather than face whatever it was I had to find. Eventually, Jarrod said, “Seems like this place is just nine or ten streets on a grid at most. At least we won't have to look too hard for the house in that photo. Are you ready to do this?”

Was I ready to do this? My knuckles had turned white from my tight grip on the steering wheel, and that was probably an indication that I wasn't ready for anything. But I didn't answer Jarrod. Not at first. I stared out the windshield as the engine occasionally shuddered from all the miles I'd forced the Blue Bomb to take us in one go. Somehow, that ancient heap of a car kept humming while we sat there. If the old wreck had made it this far, I figured I had to do right by it. I had to finish the journey. I had business here. I just wished I knew what to expect from the business.

Was I ready? No, not really. But I made myself nod in answer to Jarrod's question, then pressed down on the gas, allowing the Blue Bomb to crawl forward.

It only took us ten minutes of driving up and down the narrow roads of Lily Dale before we spotted a yellow house with the same kind of spindled front-porch railing I'd seen in the photo from Seth's memory album. Jarrod spotted it first, actually, and then I said there were probably ten other yellow houses around here just like that one, and that we wouldn't find the right one until we came to the very last house. But he was right. As we pulled closer, I took my foot off the gas and let the car idle in the street so I could get a better look. Was there a number posted above the door that sat in the shadows of the porch?

Yes, there was. The number four hung over the front doorway, like a sign from some jerk of a god who was leading me to this place, probably just to hand me some more trouble to deal with, as if I didn't already have enough.

And just being in this place, thinking about a sign from some jerk of a god, so far from home and with Jarrod beside me, made me shiver from this weird feeling that maybe there really were gods all around us—in the trees, in the bushes, in the sky, and in the water of the lake beside us—waiting, watching to see what we would do next, wondering how I would deal with whatever they were about to throw at me.

If that was true, then I hated them. I needed gods who would throw me a miracle for once in this brief life of mine. I'd had enough of dealing with all the trickster types.

At the last moment, I turned the wheel and pulled up the drive of the yellow house. And when I killed the engine, the sounds of that forest-hidden village invaded the vacuum of our silence. Birdsong, the water lapping at the lakeshore, the tinkling of wind chimes that hung from every porch I'd seen as we passed by the old gingerbread cottages that lined these gravel streets. The same kind of wind chimes that hung from my mother's porch back in Temperance. Great, the place was home to a cult, I thought. And my mother was a member. That would explain all of my misfortunes.

I looked over my shoulder again, stalling for time, and also waiting to see if a horse-and-buggy would come trotting around the bend, as if it were still the turn of the twentieth century, when this town was probably a pretty big deal. When no horse and cart appeared, though, I turned back to Jarrod, the vinyl covering of the seat rumpling with my movement, and said, “I guess we have to get out of the car now, don't we?”

Jarrod threw his head back against the seat and laughed, shaking his head, which made me feel a little bit better about having him here with me. To break the tension, to help me laugh instead of getting stuck in my own head.

After he collected himself, he left his head resting against the seat but turned his face in my direction, brushing locks of hair from his brow. “Aidan,” he said, “I don't know what's going to happen—not in the next few weeks, not in the next few days, not in the next few hours or even the next few minutes—but whatever does go on, I won't let anything bad happen to you if I can help it. And even if we discover that you're actually a demon or a werewolf or a vampire, or something equally unlikely, I'll still love you. Okay?”

He put his hand out and plucked one of mine from the steering wheel to squeeze. I gave him a halfhearted grin, but even with his words of encouragement, I couldn't help but worry. I didn't say it, but I kept wondering,
What if it's not you I have to worry about after I find what I'm looking for? What if
I'm
the one who can't deal with the truth?

As I got out of the car, my stomach began to pitch a little, the same way I've always suddenly grown anxious whenever I'm riding a roller coaster, that part where you climb slowly to the top of a high curve, then the rush of wind on your face as the train curls over and sends you plummeting to the bottom with your screams streaming behind you. What would I find when I knocked on that door? Who would answer? And what would they have to tell me? I wasn't sure I even wanted to know any longer.

As we stepped onto the porch a minute later, the front door was already opening to reveal a tall, elderly woman wearing a flowered housecoat and silver-framed glasses, which she adjusted on the bridge of her nose before opening the screen door. She had her hair bound up behind her in a long white braid, as if she were still a young woman. Or a hippie, I could hear my father saying, if he'd been there with me.

“Well, hello,” the old woman said, giving us a warm smile. “What can I do for you boys on this fine day?”

I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, the woman blinked and took off her glasses, and the smile she'd been offering like Halloween candy disappeared in the blink of an eye. “You're the youngest,” she said. Just that. Just at first. Then: “Three boys. Am I right? Three brothers. And you're the youngest of them?”

I turned to Jarrod for a second, a little afraid, but he only shrugged, eyebrows arched in a way that said
This isn't mine
to answer.

“Yeah,” I said as I turned back to the old woman. “I'm the youngest. Three boys. But one of us passed away a long time ago.”

“I knew that,” the woman said, nodding. She shook her head for a moment, pursing her lips, wincing a little, as though she was stifling a cry. When she got herself together again, she said, “Something to see, they are.”

“What's that?” I asked her.

She looked at me hard then, and said, “Those eyes. I haven't seen those eyes in years now. Not since your mother cut us off. Not since she told that story.”

I looked over at Jarrod again, hoping he'd know how to respond to that enigmatic statement, but his brows were already rising in surprise.
That story.
Of course we'd hear that simple phrase come out of this old woman.