Eleanor, Alice, and the Roosevelt Ghosts

by Dianne K. Salerni

  Alice shakes her head to clear the fuzziness. What am I doing? Abandoning the baby blanket, Alice forces herself onward. Teddy’s in danger! Corinne needs my help! But every step is a struggle. The room’s proportions aren’t right; shadows move where they shouldn’t.

  The room ends with a door that opens to a high-ceilinged foyer. Similar to the entranceway in Miss Barnstable’s house next door, there are twin marble staircases that curve up to the second floor. Blinking fiercely to stay focused, Alice climbs the steps. “Teddy!”

  “Alice!” Corinne shrieks. “Alice, help us!”

  On the second floor, nothing looks right. A corridor telescopes in front of her, stretching the same way Aunt Bye’s front hall did on the day after the eruption. Alice fumbles through the first open doorway…

  …and finds Corinne cowering on the floor, the bow torn from her hair and red marks around her throat. Teddy stands in front of her. His glasses are broken, hanging crookedly from one ear, and his hands are braced on the top rail of a crib, which he holds as a barrier in front of himself and Corinne. My crib. That is my crib.

  Then Alice’s attention shifts to the figure on the other side of the room.

  It’s a full-body physical manifestation, like Eleanor’s uncle Valentine. But while Valentine Hall is faded almost to transparency, this ghost is visible in its entirety, every fold of its white dressing gown crisp and clean as if the cotton garment were newly purchased and pressed.

  “Get away from them!” Alice screams.

  The vision turns like the hand of a clock jerking from minute to minute.

  Every feature of the apparition is familiar to Alice—the heart-shaped face, the little bow mouth, the direct gaze of the eyes.

  It’s the same face that peers out of the photograph beside her bed. Her mother, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt.

  DEATHS ATTRIBUTED TO VENGEFULS IN U.S., BY CAUSE, 1897

  Asphyxiation (Gas)

  1,312

  Blunt Trauma

  77

  Drowning

  9

  Fall

  56

  Fire

  1,566

  Heart Failure

  40

  Hypothermia

  2,015

  Poisoning

  112

  Stabbing

  3

  Strangulation

  127

  Suffocation

  339

  20

  ELEANOR REMEMBERS “WE’RE ROOSEVELTS”

  HIRING a cab in a snowstorm is almost impossible to start with, and when the fare is three young people slinging iron fire implements over their shoulders and carrying a bag of salt, one might as well hope for a passing unicorn. After the third cab refuses to stop for us, we resign ourselves to walking.

  I clench my fireplace shovel in both hands and crane my neck, searching the street. “Do you see Alice? I was hoping we could catch up with her.”

  Franklin shakes his head. “She could’ve cut across Madison Square Park or caught a cab.”

  A cab? That seems unlikely, but if anyone could find a unicorn, it would be Alice.

  “Is this Twenty-Fourth Street?” Helen stops suddenly and peers at a street sign. “I know what to do. You two—stay here.”

  “Stay here?” I exclaim. “Alice asked us to hurry.”

  “Stay here,” Helen repeats. “Trust me.” Tucking the salt under one arm and picking up her skirts, she breaks into a very un-Helenish canter across the street and around the corner.

  I pace. What in the world possessed Alice to go after Teddy and Corinne without waiting for us? As the snow falls more heavily, gray clouds press down, squeezing the heavens closer to the street. I turn to Franklin. “I have to go. I can’t let her down.”

  He nods, hefting a poker over his shoulder and taking my arm. “We’ll go together.”

  Before we’ve taken more than a few steps, the blast of a horn slices through the snow-muffled street. From the corner where we last saw Helen, a large carriage appears, oddly shaped and lacking a horse. Instead of the clip-clop of hooves, its approach is heralded by a horrible grinding noise and a dark cloud.

  I recognize this motorcar. There are only two or three in the whole city, and this one frequently passes by Grandmother’s house, making its terrible racket and belching smoke. Usually it’s driven by a large, bearded man, but today a boy in his teens holds the tiller. He’s bundled up in a coat, scarf, hat, and goggles. Helen sits beside him, waving at us.

  “It’s George with his father’s Benz!” Franklin exclaims. I assume this must be the George who called upon Helen on her first day in town and stayed for the séance.

  The vehicle huffs and puffs to a stop in front of us. “I hear you need transport!” George shouts over the motor of what Grandmother calls that infernal contraption.

  “Does it go faster than we can walk?” Franklin asks doubtfully.

  “It goes twenty miles an hour!” George crows.

  We climb aboard. “Good thinking, Helen!” Franklin says.

  “Good thing George talks constantly about this motorcar,” Helen replies. “Or I’d never have remembered it was nearby.”

  The Benz has an overhead cover but no windows to protect us from the snow and wind that pick up when the vehicle accelerates. The sting is so painful that we pull our hats and bonnets down as low as they will go and shelter against one another.

  The motorcar slides precariously through every intersection, its brakes no match for the slippery roads. Luckily, the horse-drawn carriages give us a wide berth. Between our speed, our lack of ability to stop, and the wariness of the general public, we arrive at the old Roosevelt house in a matter of minutes. George pulls off his goggles and gapes at the abandoned mansion with the yellow UNSAFE sign. “You aren’t going in there, are you?”

  “We will if we have to,” Helen replies grimly.

  Franklin runs to the fence that borders the house and peers at the snow on the other side. He shouts something I don’t catch and points at the house, specifically at the screened-in porch. My heart sinks as I sense evil watching us through the window eyes of the mansion. It lured in Teddy and Corinne, against common sense, and possibly Alice too. Now it’s beckoning to us.

  Franklin clambers over the fence. Helen runs to catch up with him—leaving George sputtering and protesting behind her—and I pelt after her through the snow. If we’re going to enter that deathtrap, we should go in together, not in dribs and drabs, the easier to be made victims.

  “Maybe you girls should stay with George,” Franklin says worriedly, turning back to meet us when we start climbing the fence.

  “Make yourself useful, Uncle Franklin,” Helen replies, “and take this.” She hands him the sack of salt and hauls her skirt over the top of the enclosure. I throw my fireplace shovel over first, then clamber up. My unfashionably short skirt and thick stockings make for better climbing attire than Helen’s Gibson Girl dress. It takes both me and Franklin to untangle her. At last we gather up our weapons and stumble into the cursed house while thunder rumbles through the weighted clouds.

  “We should stay together,” Franklin whispers, echoing my own thoughts. I tighten my grip on the shovel, not sure what I’m supposed to do with it but willing to do what I can.

  Inside the house, the cold bites and claws at us like a ferocious animal. Outside, thunder rumbles again. As the rumble trails off, the tail end of a scream filters down from the second floor.

  I run. O
r rather, my brain tells my body to run, but the haunting’s grip on me is so tight that nothing happens. The others don’t run either, despite the fact that one of our beloved cousins just cried out in terror. The air crackles as, bunched together, we cross a drawing room and reach the front of the house. Forcing my legs to mount each step of the marble staircase, I feel like an ant slogging through marmalade. My fingers cling to the back of Franklin’s coat even though they’re senseless with cold.

  A shout. A crash. Another scream.

  On the second floor, Franklin looks into a room, and I let go of his coat as he barrels over the threshold. Helen drops the bag of salt in the doorway before following him in. Clinging to the doorjamb, I stare at the nightmare inside.

  Corinne huddles in a corner, her face streaked with tears. Teddy struggles to climb out from beneath an infant’s crib, which has overturned on him. That was the crash. And Alice…Alice is pressed against a wall, thrashing and struggling for breath while a ghost tries to strangle the life out of her. The shock of what I’m seeing nearly sends me to my knees.

  It’s Alice’s mother. Dear heaven, help us. It’s Alice’s mother.

  I recognize it from the photograph Alice keeps on her bedside table, and even if I didn’t, I’d know it by the eyes. They’re the same color and shape as Alice’s, except that right now, Alice’s eyes are wide and pleading and the ghost’s are as vicious as icicles.

  I get one glimpse before Franklin swings his iron poker at the ghost. It vanishes before contact is made, and Alice slumps to the floor, gasping. The ghost reappears a second later, inches from Franklin. He swings again, and it flickers to a different location, teeth bared like an angry dog.

  Helen races to Corinne, grabs her hands, and pulls her upright, while Teddy climbs out from under the baby crib. But when the three of them run for the door, an unseen force lifts them off their feet and hurls them backward. Helen and Teddy sprawl headlong and skid across the floor, and I gasp at the sound of Corinne’s head thunking against a wall. Meanwhile, Franklin plays blindman’s buff with the actual ghost, except that he isn’t blindfolded; he just can’t predict where it will appear. His swings are wild and about as effective as swatting at a hornet.

  I want to help them, but something holds me back. No one who’s entered the nursery seems able to get back out. I watch Teddy try twice, only to be assaulted by the crib before he can make it to the doorway. Helen manages to get a stunned Corinne on her feet and tuck her under an arm for support, but they make no further progress. They stand with their heads down and feet spread apart as if buffeted by invisible winds. Franklin keeps swinging his poker, defending Alice, but the ghost stretches its arms to an impossible length, trying to wrap its fingers around her throat again, while Alice sobs on the floor, one hand weakly raised in defense.

  “Eleanor!” Helen wails. My knees knock together, and my breathing deafens me. But if I go into that room, I’ll be trapped with the rest of them. There has to be another way…

  We’re Roosevelts, after all.

  “Cooper Bluff!” I yell. “Make a chain!” Tossing the fireplace shovel aside, I wrap one arm around the doorjamb, straddle the threshold, and stretch out my other hand to Helen.

  Her fingers brush mine; our hands join. Then Helen swings Corinne in my direction, like she’s the tail on the end of Crack the Whip. Corinne staggers against me, stumbling out of the room. She looks dazed from the blow to her head, and I ask her worriedly, “Can you make it downstairs on your own? You need to get out of this house!”

  But Corinne plants herself beside me, linking her arm through mine to become the new anchor of the chain. Her eyes convey the Roosevelt family stubbornness. “We stand or fall together, just like Uncle Theodore says.”

  Helen grabs Teddy next, deftly inserting him between herself and me. This enables me and Corinne to back up a few steps so that Corinne reaches the top of the staircase. “My—my spectacles,” Teddy stammers. He has lost them in the struggle.

  “They can be replaced!” Helen snaps. “You can’t!”

  I no longer have a view into the nursery, but Helen yells through the doorway, “Franklin! Give her to me!”

  Alice is thrust out the door. Like Corinne, she’s battered and disoriented. Helen passes her to Teddy, who steadies her and pushes her toward me.

  Ice crystals explode in the air, pelting us with tiny shards. Alice throws both arms around my neck just as something yanks her backward. I grab her, digging my fingers into her clothing as best I can without unlocking arms with Corinne and Teddy. Alice hangs on to me, and over her shoulder, I lock eyes with the ghost.

  Its gaze is that of a prehistoric monster. A dinosaur. A shark. It strikes me to the core with its soulless, predatory intensity. My ears fill with a scratching noise.

  Mine. Mine. Mine.

  No, that’s not it.

  Mine to kill. Mine to kill. Mine to kill.

  There comes another yank, wrenching Alice away from me and toward the staircase. Her foot slips off the top step. I see her lose her balance, and I try to free my arms, to catch her before she topples headfirst and backward down the marble stairs. But I can’t.

  Another explosion of white envelops us, and for the second time I’m hit in the face. I taste the crystals in my mouth. Salt.

  Helen has thrown the bag of salt at us.

  The ghost splinters into ribbons of fog.

  Corinne catches Alice by the hand, and the weight and inertia of our chain are enough to rescue her from the brink of falling.

  “We’re all out!” Franklin shouts. “Start down the stairs, but don’t let go of anyone!”

  Salt or no salt, the ghost isn’t finished with us. It doesn’t physically manifest again, but I feel it in every blast of arctic wind, every icy stab that jolts its way through my bones. Corinne puts Alice between herself and me, and we try to support her. Corinne is nearly as badly injured as Alice, and Alice, our strong, bold, unflappable Alice, weeps brokenly.

  My foot slips on the salt-covered marble. Corinne and Teddy compensate for my unbalanced weight. Helen pulls on the chain from above, trying to keep me from falling.

  Below us, the front doors fly open so hard, they bounce against the walls.

  Shouts. Orders. Men.

  They’re wearing a light chain mail over their uniforms, which marks them as a SWAT squadron: Supernatural Weapons and Tactics. They rush up the stairs, two of them scooping up Alice and Corinne and carrying them down and out the doors, past a moon-faced George gaping at us from the front stoop. Another man fires a salt cannon, spraying the entire staircase. Other officers rush past me. One stops and looks me up and down. Instead of sweeping me into his arms the way the others did Corinne and Alice, he says, “You look like a sturdy girl. Are you harmed in any way?”

  I look down at myself. “No,” I tell him, rather surprised. I’m covered in salt and ice crystals, but there’s not a scratch on me.

  He takes me by the elbow. “Then you’re the one who’s going to tell me what happened here.”

  21

  ALICE LEARNS THE TRUTH, PART TWO

  ALICE can’t stop shivering. Worse, she can’t stop crying.

  Stop it. You don’t behave like this. You’re Alice Roosevelt!

  But that thought only generates a vivid memory of the voice inside her head.

  Kill you, Alice.

  The SWAT squadron commandeers a neighboring house to treat the victims of the attack. Officers bundle Alice in blankets and warm compresses. They ask questions, their voices muffled in her ears, and she shakes her head, wanting them to leave her alone. This seems to worry them, so they make Eleanor sit beside her for comfort.

  Tears leak down Alice’s face in a steady stream while she stares numbly at her surroundings. It’s as if everything is happening on the other side of a glass. Alice is grateful for that glass. She wishes she could wrap it around hers
elf and feel nothing ever again.

  Franklin and Corinne are being treated for injuries in the next room. A boy wrapped in a scarf with goggles on his head flutters around Helen. Alice belatedly recognizes him as that young man from the séance, George. It seems he’s the one who summoned authorities to rescue them from the house. Teddy sits opposite Alice, wrapped in a blanket and missing his spectacles as he explains to the ranking officer why he and Corinne entered the house in the first place.

  “We only meant to look through the windows. But we heard a baby crying inside. We thought—somehow—the ghost had gotten hold of a baby. We broke into the house to save it. We followed the cries to the nursery, and the crib was empty. There was no baby. Then she appeared. Sissy’s mother.” Teddy’s eyes wander across the room to Alice. “That was your mother, wasn’t it, Sissy?”

  Alice doesn’t answer.

  “She went after Corinne first,” Teddy continues, “but when Sissy came into the room, the ghost went straight for her.”

  Of course it went straight for Alice. Her darling daughter.

  Kill you, Alice.

  One SWAT man turns to another and says, “That Unsafe notice is over a decade old. If the Vengeful is this strong after all that time—and it’s taken to luring victims inside—that house needs to come down. It’s a menace.”

  The owners of this house grunt in agreement. They’re an older man and woman, gray-haired and white-faced. Although they didn’t object when the SWAT squadron invaded their home, they stand in a corner and make no attempt to help. The blankets and compresses were provided by the police. The residents have not offered so much as hot tea to their half-frozen visitors.

  “That house belongs to Commissioner Roosevelt,” the senior officer tells the junior one. The younger officer drops his eyes, chastised.