by Bre Hall
Alfie worked on the locket with as many fingers as would fit. His knuckles turned white from the force. He handed it back to her. “Sorry. I think it’s rusted shut.”
She needed something flat. Sharp. She opened the door and stepped into the hall.
“Where are you going?” Alfie asked.
She heard his sneakers quack along the floorboards as he followed her into the bathroom. When he stepped inside, she was already searching through the top drawer of the sink cabinet. It was full of old nail polishes, hair ties, and an assortment of makeup leftover from her brief affair with girly things in middle school. Before she found grunge and punk and dark eyeliner. Before she stopped caring completely what anyone in Wynn thought.
“Ah-ha.” She whipped out the metal nail file she’d stolen from Grams.
“Why are you so determined to open the locket? It’s probably empty,” said Alfie.
“It’s not.” Ren wriggled the edge of the file into the split. “I heard something inside. Didn’t you?”
She pulled the file back and forth. Flakes of rust dislodged and sprinkled onto her lace tights.
“Don’t break it,” Alfie said.
With one, final twist of the file, the locket clicked and cracked opened a hairline sliver. “I got it.”
She flipped back the top half of the locket and something miniature, colorful, jumped out. It pinged across the linoleum floor, bounced off the bathtub, and rolled beneath the sink cabinet. She abandoned the file, the bracelet, and hunted on hands and knees. She pawed around beneath the wooden cupboard, pulling out a clump of dust, hair and glitter woven through it.
“Yuck,” she said, shaking her hand free of the mess and sliding it back under.
“Ren, wait,” Alfie said.
It was too late. Her hand latched onto the smooth object the size of a pebble and, immediately, the room began to spin full-tilt. The bathroom, Alfie, everything vanished, and she plunged into a chasm of unknown.
Streaks of ultraviolet light flashed past her as she warped at high speed. She felt like she was on a carnival ride, glued to a seat, spinning so fast there was no room to breathe. Then, a white light in the far-off distance appeared. It drew her into its grasp, its brightness building, building, then blinding her completely. She wondered suddenly if this was death, if she had hit her head or been attacked by a deadly spirit like Grams had predicted. Then, slowly, she began to hear familiar sounds: Floorboards creaking, muffled voices talking, a piano humming. She felt warm, slimy water surround her body. The scent of lavender overwhelmed her. She blinked and suddenly the white light was gone. She could see clearly, with two eyes, not one, the strange, yet familiar world around her. The metal washtub she was soaking in. The kerosene lamp that lit a large room. A canopy bed in the corner, covers turned down. A bright blue dress in a heap on the floor. She was just starting to wonder what was happening when her knee banged, gong-like, against the side of the washtub and a few inches of lavender-soaked water sloshed out onto the wooden floorboards. A memory, not Ren’s, but someone else’s, surfaced: Bath water tumbling over the lip of the metal tub she squatted next to, her little brother, Cyrus, hazel eyes shining as he giggled and thrashed in the water. She shook the foreign memory away just as someone knocked on the door.
“Miss Charlotte?” a quiet voice asked from the other side of the door. “I heard a noise. Are you alright?”
“Yes, Alena,” she said. Her voice sounded so strange, flowing out in a deep, southern drawl. She rubbed her knee cap, an action she had no control over. That’s when she realized she had no control, period. She tried to wiggle her toes, but nothing happened. She tried to speak her name—Ren—but no sound came out. It was like watching a movie from inside the head of the main character. She caught her reflection in the water’s surface. Long, oil-black curls cascaded down to her wide hips, lined with a ring of pudge. Ren realized she wasn’t just stepping in for this Charlotte character, but was Charlotte herself. She found herself speaking up, saying, “I’m just fine, Alena.”
Just then, glass shattered behind her. She jumped to her feet, water rippling off of her skin. A cool breeze gushed into the room through a broken window. Her eyes tracked the smattering of glass shards across the room, to a hunk of jagged rock sitting near the door.
“Miss Charlotte, what was that?” Alena asked from the hall.
Charlotte stepped out of the bath, careful to avoid the glass on the floor. She reached for the dressing gown that had been laid across the foot of the bed. The doorknob chittered as Alena tried to press into the room.
Charlotte crossed the room in a hare’s second. She drove her hip into the wood to stop Alena from barging in. “It was just the lamp. I knocked it over. Nothing to worry about.”
“Then, let me in so I can clear it away,” Alena said.
“I’d appreciate the privacy, right now,” Charlotte said. A rock through the window could have been nothing more than one of the Cunningham boys from down the lane playing a trick on her. Or it could be something much more serious. Either way, Charlotte knew if she let Alena in, word would get back to Charlotte’s mother before the bath water even ran cold. The house servants were the woman’s eyes and ears. Whatever—or whoever—had sent the rock through her window would be finished. Her mother’s gossip spread faster than a brush fire and her opinion greatly influenced society. Charlotte held the door steady. “You can come back later if you’d like. Or I can clear it away myself.”
“Well…alright,” Alena said, her voice trailing off as if she was trying, and failing, to find an excuse to come into the room. “If you’re sure.”
“I am,” Charlotte said. “I’m quite sure.”
She stood against the door for a moment, waiting for Alena to leave. Water slipped off her skin, soaking into the cotton fabric of the dressing gown, falling onto the floor. On the other side of the door, the floorboards whined. Then, the tip-tap of Alena’s shoes faded down the hallway. Charlotte exhaled, relieved, and then quickly remembered the unexpected rock.
She flew across the room, to the window. A fleck of glass bit into her toe, but she hardly noticed. Outside, the moon gave off little light, but across the grassy yard along the side of the house, hanging on the outskirts of the oak woodland, she could just make out the broad shoulders, the tall frame, the outline of a man. The culprit of the broken window. Someone she thought she might know. Though it couldn’t be possible. Could it?
The man lingered on the edge of the woods for a moment, before folding himself back into the tree line, into the shadows. She knew she couldn’t let him get away, so she spun toward the door, but never made progress toward it, for the world began to twist. It swirled into a sharp cyclone of color and she fell back through the chasm of ultraviolet light, her breath stolen from her. She closed her eyes and didn’t open them until everything had become still again.
She stared with her good eye at the ceiling of her bathroom, the light turning wisps of Alfie’s blonde hair into silhouettes. Her heart was pounding in its cavity and her mouth was drier than the sand on the river banks.
“Ren?” Alfie asked. He rubbed her shoulder. “Are you alright?”
She nodded.
“You passed out,” Alfie said. “What happened?”
She remembered opening the locket, dropping what was inside, and crouching down to look for it. She began to fall as soon as she touched the object the charms had been hiding.
“Did you—” Her tongue was thick in her mouth. She swallowed. “Did you see what fell out of the locket?”
“You mean this?” Alfie held up a tiny orb the size of a pea, radiating with a soft glow of rainbow light. “What do you think it is?”
She lifted her head and sat up on her elbows. “I don’t know, but the strangest thing just happened when I touched it.”
“Tell me everything.”
chapter
3
REN AND ALFIE SAT ON the floor of her bedroom, the charm bracelet—pebble tucked safely insi
de—resting between them.
“I saw a different world,” she said.
Alfie leaned in so close she could smell spearmint on his breath. “What do you mean?”
“I was an entirely different person,” she said. “But it was all old.”
“Like you were an old lady?”
“No,” she said, picturing Charlotte’s bedroom clearly. “There was a big bath, like a metal washtub, and kerosene lamps, and the clothes looked ancient. Not raggedy-looking. They were new, but not from our time. It was like I time travelled.”
“Interesting,” Alfie said, pursing his lips.
“What happens if you touch it?” Ren nudged the bracelet toward him. He pushed it back.
“I’ve held it before, remember?” he said. “In the bathroom. Did I pass out, then? Did I fall into the past the way you described?”
“No,” she said.
“Exactly. It’s just you.”
“Weird,” she said, her brows furrowing.
“So, what else happened?” Alfie asked. “You’re in a bath tub.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And the window gets broken,” she said. “And I fling myself against the door so the maid can’t get in.”
“Why?”
“Because my mom is nosy and uses the maids as extra eyes and ears.”
“Your mom?”
“Well, whoever’s body I’m in,” she said. “Charlotte’s mom.”
“So, you stepped into someone named Charlotte’s body,” Alfie said.
“Yeah.”
“Like a movie?”
“Yes,” she said. “And no. It’s hard to explain. I’m just someone else, okay?”
Alfie nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“I know, I know. None of this makes sense,” she said as she stared down at the bracelet. Her hand inched toward it. “Maybe I should touch it again. See if it was all just a coincidence. A fluke.”
Alfie pulled the bracelet away from her. “What if it’s some kind of hoodoo or dark magic? You don’t want to release it, do you?"
“You think it’s cursed?”
“If what you’ve told me is true, I don’t think it’s something I would play around with,” he said. “Remember when Grams caught us with her Ouija board?”
They were both thirteen the afternoon they snuck into Grams’ room, rested their fingers on the wooden triangle of her Ouija board, and asked a question to the great beyond. Their answer came when Grams burst in. She flicked the backs of their hands with her sharp fingernails and told them never to play around with the Ouija. Not unless they had a clear vision, a purpose. Otherwise, they could unleash something wicked.
Ren shuddered. “Yeah. I remember.”
“Okay, so that’s that,” Alfie said.
“But I have a purpose,” she said, grabbing the bracelet. “I need to know it’s not a coincidence."
“I don’t like this,” Alfie said.
“You don’t have to,” she said as she peeled the locket apart. The pebble rolled from one end of the disc to the other. Her finger hovered over it for a second, then she let it fall onto the object. The moment her skin brushed the orb, her bedroom began to fold in on itself. Her stomach leapt into her throat and the sensation of falling overtook her. Colors whizzed past her. The white light came and vanished. She opened her eyes to the night, her breathing heavy in the warm air.
It was the same world as before, the same body. She felt the familiarity of its gait as she strode toward the edge of the tree line. Her hair was still wet from the bath and a thick housecoat was buttoned over her night gown. As she approached the closest oak tree, the figure of the man she had seen through the broken window stepped out. In the dim moonlight she could just make out a scraggly beard curling out from his square chin, the crooked angle of his nose. It was her older brother Billy. A rope cinched around her heart. She hadn’t seen Billy since the war broke out and their daddy encouraged him to take up arms.
“I’m sorry about your window,” he said. “I didn’t mean to break it.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I came home.”
Behind her, the hinges on the front door howled, and her mama’s sugar-sweet voice cartwheeled through the dark. “Charlotte?”
Charlotte captured Billy’s attention, pressed a finger to her plump lips, then turned toward the house. “I’m just gettin’ some fresh air, Mama.”
“I don’t want you catchin’ a chill, now.”
“I’ll be in soon.”
Her mama sighed. “Make it quick.”
The door trilled, clicked closed, and Charlotte and Billy were left alone. Charlotte’s eyes soaked Billy’s appearance up like a towel thrown over a puddle of freshly spilled wine. His face was weathered. Beaten. He wore a filthy white shirt that hung loose over tattered grey trousers. The sour smell coming off him matched the grime caked on his face, his neck, his hands. He was as unkempt as she had ever seen him.
“Billy, are you in trouble?” she asked. “Why aren’t you in your uniform?”
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” he said, his voice sounding as though he were sunk in the deep pit of a well.
“What does that mean?”
She watched the whites of her brother’s eyes open up wide, like their daddy’s precious cotton fields. She felt Billy gazing past her, eyes glazed, there, but not. “All of it. It was just—just…”
“Just what?” she asked.
Billy clamped his eyes shut. “Too much.”
She flashed back to when they were kids playing in the woods. They used to find all sorts of animals dwelling among the oaks. Deer, rabbits, birds. The Cunningham brothers, whom they tromped around with as children, would always want to chase down the animals, shoot them with their hand-carved bows and arrows if they could, but she remembered Billy would always stop them. Said he couldn’t bear to see them kill the creatures for sport. The Cunningham brothers had always laughed at him, even she had somedays, but Billy’s heart had always been softer than most. She imagined what the war had done to it.
“Billy,” she said softly. “Did you desert?”
He shrugged and whispered, “It was just too much.”
She clamped a hand over her mouth. “Billy, they shoot deserters. Or worse.”
“I couldn’t.” His eyes opened finally, the blacks of them engulfing the blue. “I couldn’t fight—couldn’t kill—anymore.”
“If Daddy knew,” she said. “If anyone around here knew.”
“There are rumors the other side will pull ahead in all of this,” Billy said. “I just need a place to lie low until then. Until it all passes us by. Can you help me with that?”
“What happens after it’s all over?” she asked. “What about when Daddy finds out you abandoned the Cause?”
“He won’t find out,” Billy said. She watched his eyes flit back to the house, then to her. “As long as no one else knows I’m here.”
She remembered long walks along the carriage path on spring afternoons, the sun warm and the live oaks dripping with long tendrils of Spanish Moss. She would read aloud passages from popular novels, because Billy used to mix up letters and, if she read to him, he could talk about the books at Society functions with ease, impress their mama’s friends, their daughters. He made her swear to never tell. That was their first big secret. But that one didn’t twist her insides. What if Billy was the first of thousands to desert? What if the other side triumphed, like he had said? What then? There would be no fancy dinner parties, no society functions in general, no money. At least if the other side was planning to do what everyone thought. Maybe, if she hid Billy, talked to him, convinced him, he’d go back. Go back to the men with a message from the families they were fighting to keep together. She’d like to think one message could spark the fight in all of those men. Maybe the tables could turn.
“Make a place for yourself in the old tree hollow. The one deep in the woods we’d play in as kids,”
she said. “I’ll sneak you what you need first thing tomorrow.”
Billy shook his head. “Father hunts in these woods. He’ll find me.”
“Daddy ruined his knee this winter; he walks with a cane now,” she said. “He doesn’t hunt anymore. You’ll be safe.”
“Thank you.” Billy wrapped her in a tight hug. She could smell weeks of sweat on him. She tried not to breathe.
“Quickly,” she said, pulling away from his embrace. “You have to go before Daddy comes out for his evening smoke.”
“You won’t forget I’m out here?”
She stepped out of the trees and into the grass. “Not even if I tried.”
She took one step toward the house, but when she planted her foot in the grass, the scene swirled. Charlotte faded and Ren returned fully; she was no longer the passenger, but the commander. She sailed through the ultraviolet between and landed sharply in her own body, which was sprawled out on the floor of her bedroom. She gasped.
“It wasn’t a fluke,” she said, her voice as dry as before. She eased herself upright and leaned against the bedframe. Her head reeled. Throbbed. Her stomach churned with sick.
Alfie picked up the luminescent pebble. “Then, what is this exactly?”
“I don’t know.” She scooted away from Alfie, from the orb. She didn’t think she could handle making another journey through the chasm of color too soon after her last. Her insides might explode. “But I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing right now.”
“Someone should have listened to me,” Alfie said, smirking.
She gestured to the charm bracelet lying on the floor. “Just put it back, alright?”
“Are you scared?” Alfie pushed the pebble toward her. She flinched.
“I just don’t want to touch it until I find out more,” she said. “I’m taking the bracelet to Richard’s. If it came from his shop, he’ll know something about it.”
“Maybe you should talk to your new friend Peter,” Alfie said. “The one who gave it to you in the first place.”
“No,” she said, rolling her shoulders forward. She could still feel the weight of Charlotte’s body on hers. Like the girl was clinging to her from the other side. “He just found it on the floor.”