A Curious Tale of the In-Between

by Lauren DeStefano

  But while Pram and her mother had both been strange, Pram had never seemed sad. She was gentle and kind and bright, and so the aunts had hope that she would turn into a lovely sort of woman one day. But that night’s actions had the aunts thoroughly afraid. They pinched her cheeks and left her to sleep, and they spent the night whispering at the kitchen table and compiling a list of rules:

  No more school—it was clearly too overwhelming.

  No more adult books—they gave her too many ideas.

  No more imaginary friends—she had a fine friend in the Blue boy now.

  No more pond—this was where Pram spent most of her time talking to herself.

  And most importantly: No more talk of ghosts.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Pram awoke with sunlight in her eyes and a feeling like she needed to be someplace important.

  The flowers in the wallpaper were rustling on a breeze. “Felix?” she said.

  One of the flowers spiraled away from the wall and landed on her shoulder. By the time she reached for it, it was gone. How strange, she thought. Felix was the only one who did such things, and she could swear she felt him nearby, but she couldn’t see him. She crawled under the bed to be certain he wasn’t playing a hiding game. “Felix?” She opened her window and called out into the cool morning air, “Felix? I don’t like this game.”

  The door opened, but it wasn’t Felix. “Close the window,” Aunt Nan said. “You’ll catch cold.”

  Pram did as she was told, and her worried frown was reflected in the glass.

  “Who were you talking to just now?” Aunt Nan asked.

  “No one,” she said, distressed to know this was the truth. She watched the tree from her window but saw no trace of her best friend.

  “I thought we might have a talk, then, you and me,” Aunt Nan said, sitting on Pram’s bed.

  Pram pulled the chair away from her desk and sat. “Am I in trouble?” she asked. She couldn’t think why she would be but felt inexplicably that she was.

  “No,” Aunt Nan said. “But I think we should talk about last night.” She looked at Pram and could see in her eyes that she didn’t understand. “Do you remember last night?”

  Pram didn’t remember, though she could taste the crisp night air on her tongue. She wasn’t sure how to answer, so she didn’t.

  “Do you remember having unusual dreams?” Aunt Nan said.

  Pram always had unusual dreams, so she said, “Not especially.” She moved her shoulders uncomfortably. Many things weren’t right about this morning; she wasn’t used to being questioned, and her feet ached, and she wanted to look for Felix.

  “There won’t be any school from now on,” Aunt Nan said, forcing a smile. “That ought to cheer you up, right?”

  “No school? Why?”

  “Your aunt Dee and I are worried that it’s too much for you,” Aunt Nan said. “We’ll be speaking with Ms. Appleworth and letting her know that you’ll resume home schooling.”

  “It isn’t too much for me.” Pram was thinking of Clarence. “Honestly.”

  “It’s just that we’re concerned for you,” Aunt Nan said.

  “Don’t scare the girl,” Aunt Dee said. She was standing in the doorway with a tray of oatmeal and toast. The aunts had also decided that Pram should no longer have desserts for breakfast and lunch, no matter how guilty they might have felt. “There’s nothing to be concerned about at all. Only growing pains.”

  “Growing pains?” Pram asked.

  “I had imaginary friends when I was about your age,” Aunt Dee said, setting the tray in Pram’s lap. “It was difficult for me to let them go. But I was much better for it.”

  “I don’t have any imaginary friends,” Pram said, feeling wounded.

  “Felix, wasn’t it?” Aunt Nan said.

  Pram had told her aunts about Felix when she was five years old, too young to realize that certain things should remain a secret. She hadn’t mentioned him in years, but sometimes, when she and Felix were talking, she would hear a floorboard creak and suspect someone had been eavesdropping.

  “Oh,” she said. “Felix hasn’t been around for a while.”

  “Just as well,” Aunt Nan said. “He was fine when you were little, but you’ve outgrown him now.”

  “You should spend more time with the Blue boy,” Aunt Dee said. “He must have other friends he could introduce you to.”

  He didn’t, not anymore, but Pram could see that this was important to her aunts, and she didn’t want them to worry. “Okay,” she said, feeling scrutinized. Pram couldn’t know her aunts’ worry; she had spent her entire life worrying that she could never be the woman her mother had been, while her aunts had worried that she would. And now that she was getting taller, and her face more angled, they worried more than ever. And so they did something for Pram that they had never done for their younger sister. They stood and each kissed one of her cheeks, and they said together, “We love you,” for the first and perhaps only time.

  The cold taste on Pram’s tongue spread down her throat and into her lungs, and despite her thick sweater, the chill wouldn’t leave her. Her nose was running, and she didn’t understand why. She also didn’t understand why her aunts wouldn’t allow her to go outside, or why they’d laid the subtle hint that she should no longer speak to Felix.

  When there came a knock at the door, sometime after three o’clock, Pram somehow knew that it would be for her. She raced past her aunts to open the door.

  Clarence stood on the front step with his hands in his pockets. His cheeks were flushed, and Pram could tell he’d been running.

  She sniffled. “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” Clarence said. “You weren’t in school, so I came to check on you.”

  “Isn’t that nice?” Aunt Dee said. “Pram, don’t stand there gaping. Let the boy in.”

  Pram blushed and stepped aside for him. “We’ll be upstairs,” she said. She took Clarence’s hand without giving it a thought, and as she led him up the stairs, she didn’t look back to see the way her aunts smiled at the pair of them. And she didn’t see that the photo of her mother had gone crooked, as though it was trying to tell her something.

  Pram led Clarence into her closet. She turned on the light and closed the door.

  “Something bad has happened to Felix,” she said.

  “What could have happened?” Clarence said. He didn’t know much about ghosts, but he presumed that they couldn’t be kidnapped or killed.

  “I don’t know, but he’s gone,” Pram said. “And my aunts are acting strange. They won’t let me out of the house, and they told me that I had outgrown Felix.” She dabbed her runny nose with her sleeve. “And all day I’ve had a chill, and I don’t know why.”

  “You really don’t remember?” Clarence said. “About last night?”

  “What’s to remember?” Pram said.

  “You were sleepwalking,” Clarence said. “That’s how your aunts explained it when my father and I brought you home.”

  Pram went pale with worry. “I dreamed I went to see Lady Savant,” she said. “She said she had been speaking with my mother and that I should visit her again.”

  “It must not have been a dream,” Clarence said. “You must have really been to see her.”

  Pram chewed on her bottom lip.

  “What could it mean?” Clarence asked.

  “I don’t know. But there has to be a reason she wants to see me. Maybe it has to do with Felix.”

  Clarence thought about Pram lying unconscious on the sidewalk late at night, and it made him uneasy to think Lady Savant could have had something to do with it. Pram was an extraordinary girl—one who thought nothing of speaking to ghosts—and it would be dangerous for the wrong sort of people to know about her. “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “Something strange is happening,” Pram said. “I’ve never sleepwalked, and Felix has never hidden from me like this. I have to see Lady Savant and find out what she wants f
rom me.”

  “Didn’t she tell you?” Clarence asked.

  “I can’t remember. I thought I was dreaming. When I woke up, what she’d said sort of . . . flew away.”

  Clarence frowned. “If you see her, I’m coming with you. I’m the one who took you to her show in the first place.”

  Pram squeezed his hands. “Thank you,” she said. “It will have to be after my aunts have gone to bed. They won’t let me outside right now, even if it’s with you.”

  “What time, then?” Clarence asked. It would be easy for him to leave in the middle of the night, assuming he didn’t wake the maids.

  “Ten thirty,” Pram said. “By the pond.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  Clarence arrived at the pond at ten thirty exactly. It was especially cold, and the remaining leaves of Felix’s tree seemed to be in a state of panic. “Hello, if you can hear me,” Clarence said to Felix. “Pram is very worried, you know.”

  He heard footsteps, and he hoped it would be Felix, whom he had never seen. It was strange that he didn’t even know what Felix looked like. But Pram was the one to step out of the shadows.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I had to be sure Aunt Nan was snoring.” She looked up at the leaves and frowned.

  “Is he here?” Clarence asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The other day I had talked to him about moving on, and now I’m afraid he’s gone because of me.”

  “He wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye,” Clarence said.

  “No,” Pram said. But she couldn’t help feeling that she was to blame.

  They walked toward the center of town. Pram kicked pebbles and said very little.

  Above them, the stars shifted in their sky. Neither of them looked up to notice.

  “Pram?” Clarence said. “When did you start seeing them? Ghosts, that is.”

  “When I was a baby, I think,” she said. “It’s hard to know. It’s like if I asked you when you realized you were human.”

  Clarence considered this.

  “It’s just a part of me,” she said.

  “A gift, then,” Clarence said.

  Pram shrugged. “Sometimes it’s nice,” she said. “Sometimes it makes me sad.” She didn’t know about the dogwood tree in front of the hospital, nor did she know that she was brought into the living world as silent and as gray as the ashes in the fireplace. All Pram knew was that she was tethered to the murky place between this world and the one that comes after it. How this came to be wasn’t important to her.

  “It sounds like a burden,” Clarence said. “But I think it’s amazing.”

  For the first time all night, a smile shone through Pram’s worried expression. “You’re the only one who hasn’t thought it was strange. It bothers my aunts, so I try to pretend like I’m normal, but they know anyway.”

  “They just mean to protect you,” Clarence said.

  “Yes,” Pram said. “But I think it makes them sad that I can’t be like other children.”

  They’d reached the alleyway that led to Lady Savant’s Spirit Show. Pram took a deep breath and held it.

  Clarence took her hand.

  “You don’t have to go in,” he said.

  “Yes, I do,” Pram said, and stepped forward.

  She raised her fist to knock on the door, but it opened before she could. The man with thick arms looked at Clarence. “The invitation is only for the girl.”

  “I’m not letting her go in alone,” Clarence said. It was brave of him, Pram thought. The man at the door unnerved her.

  “It’s okay, Brutus. The boy can come in.” Lady Savant sat on a coffee sack, waiting for them. She was not wearing her theatrical makeup, and when Pram saw her face, she remembered from her not-dream that her real name was Claudette. “Come in. Have a seat.”

  Pram and Clarence shared a coffee sack and were so close to each other that their shoulders touched.

  “You’re the boy who came to one of my shows with Pram,” she said.

  Pram vaguely recalled telling Lady Savant her name. It made her uneasy and a little mad to know she’d been tricked into thinking she was dreaming.

  “Yes,” Clarence said.

  “You were looking for your mother, I believe,” Lady Savant said. “Did you ever find her?”

  “No,” Clarence said, pretending it didn’t hurt to talk about it. “I fear she’s moved on.”

  “Most of us do,” Lady Savant said. “Those who stay usually have something important to attend to. So important that they’re able to ignore that force imploring them to move on. Very few will stay just for the sake of staying, though some are too scared to move on right away, and animals seem to enjoy haunting this world. When I was a girl, there was a tomcat’s ghost that ran around the apartment building, spooking the mice. He was my first.” She looked at Pram. “You remember your first ghost, too, don’t you?”

  “Insects,” Pram said.

  “But your first real ghost,” Lady Savant said.

  “Yes, I remember,” is all Pram said.

  “There’s no need to be secretive,” Lady Savant said. “I’ve been acquainted with your friend Felix.”

  “You have?” Pram said.

  “We had a chat last night. He’d wanted my help moving on.”

  Pram was certain her heart stopped beating in her chest. “Moving on?”

  “He felt that it was time, and he needed me to show him the way. There’s nothing to worry about; I’ve done it dozens of times. You’ll learn to guide spirits, too. I can teach you.”

  Pram couldn’t speak, so Clarence was the one to ask, “Can Felix come back? If he changes his mind? Or for visits?”

  Lady Savant laughed. “If spirits could come back anytime they pleased, the planet might sink through the stars with the weight of them. No, he’s quite gone.”

  Pram’s bones were aching. Her eyes were sore, but she was too stunned to fill them with tears. “He didn’t say good-bye.”

  “It’s more common than you think,” Lady Savant said. “He told me that you’d always been so kind to him and that he’d been wanting to leave for some time, but it was your face that made him want to stay.”

  It didn’t sound like Felix. “I thought he was afraid of leaving,” Pram said.

  “Afraid of leaving you,” Lady Savant said. “But it was time. He knows that you’re growing too old for him now. He wants you to go on living. He was glad that you would be coming to see me, so that I could help you find your father.”

  Pram was born orphaned, but she’d been fortunate, at least, that her losses came when she was too young to remember them. She had never lost someone who was a part of her every day, and the grief came too suddenly for her to realize that it was grief. Felix will be at his tree, she thought. I’ ll go home and find him there.

  Clarence said, “How will you help Pram find her father?”

  “You wanted us to raise money doing spirit shows,” Pram remembered from her not-dream. “And we’d travel.”

  “Travel, yes,” Lady Savant said. “But our journey would be guided by your mother’s spirit.”

  “I thought Pram’s mother had moved on,” Clarence said.

  “She was away,” Lady Savant said. She looked at Pram. “Your mother was troubled when she was alive. She made mistakes, and she has regrets, and it was too painful for her to watch you growing up.”

  “Why has she come back now, then?” Pram asked.

  “Because she was at my show the night you attended. She frequents them. Though she had never seen you before, she knew right away that you were her daughter. She feels that she owes it to you to help you find your father.”

  Her father had been all Pram could think about for some time, but now the hope of finding him paled in comparison to losing Felix. How could he leave without saying good-bye? Had he tried to tell her he was ready to move on, and she’d missed the signs?

  Something about this didn’t seem right, and Pram wanted to g
o home. She wasn’t certain she wanted to come back.

  “I can’t leave without writing a note for my aunts,” Pram said. “So they won’t worry so much.” She stood, and Clarence stood with her. “And I’d need to pack. I should plan this before I make a decision.”

  “What’s to decide?” Lady Savant said, though something about her tone made Pram think it wasn’t a question. She thought of what Felix had said about her being sent off to the circus if she told anyone about her abilities. She thought about her strange dream that wasn’t a dream at all, and she felt that Lady Savant had cheated her out of her secrets. And Pram didn’t know very much about Lady Savant, but she knew enough not to trust her. She didn’t trust anyone who took money to speak to ghosts, and she didn’t quite believe what she’d said about Felix wanting to move on, even though Felix was nowhere to be found. Pram wondered if Lady Savant had done something to him.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Pram said. “I don’t want to find my father. I want to go back.”

  The man with the thick arms had closed the door. His face was in the shadows, but Pram could see his lips were set in an immovable line. Slowly those lips became a smile.

  “Oh,” Lady Savant said, “but there is no going back now.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  Lily,

  I see your exquisite face at every port. I’ve made a horrible mistake leaving you behind. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.

  Max

  Pram had memorized her father’s words to her mother, and she recited them over and over in her head, until the words began to feel distant, and Max and Lily became silhouettes being swallowed by sunlight. They were strangers to her, for they had been in love before she was born, and before she ever could have mattered to them.

  Perhaps she’d made a mistake pursuing her father. Perhaps he was angry with her. She had been more intrusion than daughter to him—the thing that went wrong.