The House on Hoarder Hill

by Mikki Lish

  “What’s that?” Spencer asked.

  “An experiment. A way of seeing things,” Mrs. Pal said, closing the door.

  “With Spam?” Hedy joked.

  Mrs. Pal looked amused. “You may be surprised by what one can see with Spam.”

  “Why? Is Spam powerful?”

  “Many things can grow or intensify over time—their core qualities simmer and bind until they are much more than they were.” But the old woman chuckled in a way that made Hedy wonder if she was joking.

  A clap interrupted them, drawing their attention to the oddest thing yet: a collection of golden hands affixed to a massive wooden board that was mounted on the wall. There were over twenty of them, each clutching cards, scarves, or some other prop. As they approached, the hands began to move. Some waggled their fingers, some closed and opened fists, some circled around at the wrist. There were name plaques under each pair of hands, stage names like the Fantastic Forrest Maymon, Ethel the Incredible, the Remarkable Rastafarian.

  “What is this?” exclaimed Spencer.

  “Souvenez-vous la main,” Mrs. Pal replied.

  Spencer tried to copy. “Souvenir voo lemon?”

  “It’s French for ‘remember the hand.’ These hands are all casts of late magicians. Everyone,” she said to the hands, “these are John Sang’s grandchildren.”

  All twenty-two hands stopped moving, shocked. Hedy had never felt the weight of scrutiny so heavily before. The hands seemed in awe of them.

  The first set to recover waved at Spencer. He nervously approached the hands of Samuel Garcia, Magician, which held up a couple of old coins. Samuel opened his hands flat, palm up, showing Spencer what he had to do. When Spencer opened his own hands, Samuel pointed a long index finger to pretend it was a pistol. First one and then two jolts, at which one coin, and then another, plopped into Spencer’s hands. The silver coins were old and unfamiliar, with a cross of shields on them. Samuel’s hands cupped and shook, then pointed at Spencer to do the same. Spencer copied the gesture, the coins clinking against each other inside. At Samuel’s gesture, he opened his hands. The coins were gone.

  “What?!” Spencer exclaimed.

  The hands grasped Spencer’s and turned them over back and forth, making a show of looking for the coins that had disappeared. Then Samuel indicated Spencer should make a pistol out of his own hand and fire two pretend shots. One coin, and then another, dropped seemingly out of Spencer’s finger, into Samuel’s hands. Hedy gaped.

  “How did he do that?” marveled Spencer.

  Samuel’s hands waved a long index finger to and fro, as if saying, No.

  “Was it magic or a trick?” asked Hedy.

  “A true magician never reveals …” Mrs. Pal trailed off, distracted by something.

  Both children turned around to find the old woman examining them intently. The hairs on the back of Hedy’s head stood up.

  “You have been contacted by something,” Mrs. Pal murmured.

  Hedy and Spencer glanced at each other. Was she talking about Doug and Stan? Simon? Mrs. Pal closed her eyes behind her thick glasses but kept her wrinkly face toward them.

  “You have been contacted by a family spirit,” Mrs. Pal went on.

  “Grandma Rose,” Hedy whispered, heart leaping. “How do you know? She hasn’t said anything to us for ages.”

  “Her touch on you is there, even though she is not, like a fading bruise that you’ve forgotten.”

  “Can Grandpa John tell?”

  Mrs. Pal shook her head and opened her eyes. “Your grandfather is so bathed in her memory that for him it would be like seeing one raindrop in a storm.”

  “She wants me and Spencer to find her,” Hedy blurted.

  Mrs. Pal’s eyes widened.

  “We haven’t told Grandpa yet,” Hedy added.

  “Your grandfather believes your grandmother is dead.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  Frowning, the old woman took her glasses off and cleaned them with a silk magician’s scarf from her pocket. “There were rumors. But they were a long time ago, and from sources I would not trust.”

  “Why can she touch us but not him?” Spencer asked.

  Mrs. Pal thought for a long moment. “Perhaps because you are blood kin, and he is not.” She paused. “But I think the real reason is that he is closed off now, to the doing of great magic. And in the process he has closed himself off to Rose as well. He collects and he guards, but he chooses not to look magic straight in the eye.”

  She rubbed her head thoughtfully, looking just like Soumitra, Hedy thought. As her sleeves rode up, Hedy could see the edges of tattoos on the woman’s wrists. “So, young ones, where is she?” Mrs. Pal asked.

  “We don’t know,” Hedy said. Hesitantly at first, and then in a rush, Hedy told her about seeing “FIND ME” written in the dust, and about Doug, Stan, and Simon. “Do you know where she would be?”

  “Rose must be somewhere in the house if she can see you, but …” Mrs. Pal trailed off helplessly.

  “How can we find her?”

  The old woman cast her eyes around her workroom, searching for inspiration.

  “I hear Grandpa John,” Spencer said.

  They could hear steps down the hall and Soumitra making some joke.

  “Mrs. Pal, what do we do?” Hedy whispered urgently.

  But there was no more time to find out. Grandpa John was there, poking his head around the doorframe, asking, “Ready to go?”

  Mrs. Pal stood and gave him a genial smile as though they had spoken of nothing but Spam.

  As Hedy passed the golden hands, one pair—Ethel the Incredible—waved to bring her to a stop. Ethel brought her hands together in a heart shape, and Hedy grinned, returning the gesture. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Samuel had made a pistol as though shooting at her pocket. With a chuckle, she did the same back at him, then hurried after the others.

  The air on the street felt chillier than before, and both children shivered. Soumitra led Hedy and Spencer through a complicated farewell handshake, and Mrs. Pal patted both their heads and invited them to visit again. There was no chance for her to answer Hedy’s question.

  It wasn’t until they were halfway to Marberry’s Rest that Hedy thought twice about Ethel and Samuel’s send-off. A business card had been slipped into her pocket, the one that Samuel had pretended to shoot at. On one side, the card read The Palisade, with a phone number. On the other, in very curly writing, was a strange warning:

  Ask Nobody for help.

  Grandpa John wouldn’t bring his purchase into the house while the children were watching. “Soumitra helped me dismantle it so it would fit,” he said breezily, locking the car. “It’s not so heavy now that it’s in pieces. I’ll bring it in later.”

  “What about the parcels?” Spencer hinted. “The ones in the Christmas wrapping paper?”

  Grandpa John smothered a smile. “Go on, into the house,” he said. “You’re shivering.”

  It was true. The cold feeling that had begun when they’d poked Simon had spread from their hands up their arms and into their chests, and the wintry outdoor air seemed to bite through their sleeves. Inside the house, Hedy put on her fingerless gloves so that she could still turn the pages of her book while she was warming the hand she’d touched Simon with. Spencer had lost his own gloves, of course, so he pulled a long soccer sock onto his hand and up to the elbow instead.

  Despite Grandpa John’s good mood after visiting the Palisade, he wouldn’t let Spencer wear a sock on his hand to the dinner table, nor Hedy her gloves.

  “But my hand is so cold,” Spencer protested.

  “Why? What did you do to it?” Grandpa John asked.

  They held their tongues. Of course they couldn’t say, We touched a ghost.

  Soup and warm showers did help, but the children pulled on extra sweaters over their pajamas when they hopped into bed. Hedy flipped the message on the card over and over in her mind, unable to sleep until fi
nally she whispered, “Spence, what do you think ‘Ask Nobody for help’ means? It sounds a bit like what Simon told us.”

  “Dunno,” he mumbled into his pillow. “Doesn’t it mean don’t ask anybody for help?”

  “So we’re on our own.” Hedy stared at the ceiling. “Does that mean we shouldn’t be talking with anyone at all about this?”

  “Doug and Stan don’t have any bodies,” Spencer said, “so it must be okay to ask them for help.”

  Hedy rolled her eyes at her brother’s eight-year-old logic, but something about Spencer’s words—“don’t have any bodies”—nagged at her like a pea under the mattress. She pressed the heels of her hands over her eyes. A fragile thread of an idea wafted in the dark, ready for her to grasp if she didn’t reach out too quickly and scare it away.

  Any bodies, somebody, nobody. What was it? Somebody, nobody, no body …

  Hedy sat up in bed.

  “What is it?” Spencer asked.

  She swung her duvet back and pulled on her robe, slipping Mrs. Pal’s card into her pocket. “Come on.”

  “Where to?”

  “There’s something we need to look at.”

  “What are you two rogues up to?” Stan asked as they poked their faces around the door.

  “We’re looking for a clue.” Spencer grinned.

  Hedy scanned the shelf for the leather-bound book that had thrown itself onto the floor on their first night. By the time she’d found it, Spencer had rolled himself up in the bottom half of Doug the Rug and was peering at the paw that he’d used to open Simon’s door. The fur had turned even more pale and seemed to have spread.

  Doug craned his head back. “What’re you doing there, cub?”

  “Trying to keep warm,” Spencer said. “Me and Hedy have been feeling colder and colder ever since we touched Simon.”

  Stan shook his head, looking worried. “I wonder if it was a good idea, sneaking into that room and involving him.”

  “Not the best idea you’ve had,” Doug agreed.

  Stan’s brown eyes narrowed. “What was that, you shabby hide? Ah yes, you’re right, it was both our ideas.”

  “Guys, guys,” Hedy interrupted, “it’s okay, I think Simon gave us a clue, about ‘Nobody.’ And today, the hands of these old magicians told me to ‘ask Nobody for help.’ ” She sat on the floor near Spencer and Doug, opening the scrapbook over her knees. Then she began turning the pages one by one, scanning the newspaper clippings and flyers pasted inside.

  “What are you looking for?” Spencer asked, peering over her knee.

  “An ad” was all Hedy would say, afraid that voicing her theory would jinx it into being untrue.

  As she read, the right-hand pages began to lift by themselves. It was like they wanted to be turned. She took their cue and began to flip the pages over more quickly, through years of the acclaimed shows of the Amazing John Sang, Magician. But then pages began to flick over more forcefully.

  “I’m not doing this!” Hedy cried, raising her hands.

  The pages were turning in a frenzy now, as if the scrapbook had a mind of its own, and a wind whipped up from nowhere. Hedy knocked the book off her knees and scuttled backward. Spencer shrank his head back into his roll of bear fur.

  Driven by the wind, the window suddenly shoved open, and frosty air swirled into the room. An entire page tore away from the scrapbook and blew into the air, flying upward. It fluttered to and fro, like a bird not wanting to be caught, but as it passed between Stan and the wall, he threw his head back. The tip of his antler fastened the page to the wall.

  “Oh, well done, Stanley!” Doug congratulated his friend.

  The wind died away as quickly as it had stirred. Stan released his head from its awkward angle, and the page drifted calmly to the floor.

  “What was that?” Spencer asked. “Was the book doing that?”

  “Was it Grandma Rose?” Hedy wondered.

  Stan shook his head, unsure. “First time I’ve ever seen anything like that in here.”

  The children knelt over the scrapbook page, and the breath caught in Hedy’s throat. There it was. Whatever had torn this page from the book had known what Hedy was looking for: one slightly repellent article that she’d seen on that first night.

  The article was about the magician whose most famous trick was self-decapitation—seemingly cutting off his own head and reattaching it later. He called himself the Amazing Albert Nobody.

  “Grandpa John knows him!” Spencer exclaimed. He pointed to a photo showing a group of five magicians in cloaks, gleefully throwing top hats into the air. The caption noted that between the Brothers of the Bifrost (Anders and Morten) and the Amazing Albert Nobody were the Astounding Sang Brothers. It was Grandpa John and Uncle Peter as young men.

  “I don’t think that’s going to help us much,” Hedy said, feeling like the air had been sucked out of her. She had read ahead, and the article was really an obituary—a short biographical piece on someone who was—

  “Dead,” Hedy whispered. “Albert Nobody is dead.”

  Between their discovery of who Albert Nobody was and the cold spreading through them, Hedy and Spencer slept badly. They awoke late the next morning feeling like one of Mrs. Vilums’s frozen dinners. Hedy joined Spencer in wrapping a woolen blanket over her clothes and they waddled down to breakfast wrapped like parcels.

  “What’s this?” Grandpa John asked, eyeing their blankets askance.

  “I think we’ve caught a cold,” Hedy said, which was sort of true.

  “Is there any more of that soup left?” Spencer asked hopefully.

  There wasn’t, but Grandpa John made them each a lemon and honey tea, and they ate slice after slice of warm toast until the loaf was gone.

  Mrs. Vilums arrived while they were finishing the dishes, calling out a cheery hello as she hung her cloak on a hook by the back door. Hedy sensed her observing them as they awkwardly tried to put away dishes with one hand.

  Her eyebrows crinkled in concern, and she held a hand to Hedy’s forehead, then both her cheeks. “You’re cold,” she said slowly. Hedy had a feeling Mrs. Vilums knew all about the ghost at the piano. “You need to go outside. Into the sunshine.”

  “Mrs. Vilums, I don’t think going outside in the cold is wise when Hedy’s caught one,” Grandpa John protested, pausing in the doorway on the way to his study.

  “And I don’t think there’s much sun today,” Hedy added doubtfully.

  “Sunlight for this type of cold,” Mrs. Vilums said again, urgently. “You can wrap up as much as you like, for all the good it will do. Don’t worry, Mr. Sang, I’ll keep an eye on them. Spencer?” She beckoned him with a crooked finger and felt Spencer’s cheek with a frown. “You need sunlight too, young man.”

  Flinging open the kitchen door, Mrs. Vilums stared at the sky, still as the carvings on Grandpa John’s roof. In the distance, a wide strip of blue sky could be seen. She pointed a white finger out to the garden.

  “There are many cold things in this house already,” she said quietly as the children trooped outside. “You should not be one of them.”

  That left Hedy more worried than ever.

  “Come on, let’s go look at those statues again,” Spencer said, nudging her.

  A leafless sycamore tree overshadowed the yard that backed down the slope of the hill. The children wandered along the path that led from the house, slippery with old snow and overrun with plants creeping over its borders. Above the path was a long wooden archway of thorns that would turn into a tunnel of rambling roses in summer.

  Two walls ran across the yard. The first was a low brick wall, behind which was a barren vegetable patch. The second wall, lower down, was taller and looked older, shielding a haphazard collection of large stone statues.

  There was a large Chinese guardian lion with a lion cub under its paw, a ram whose curving horns rose close to Hedy’s height, and a robed woman holding a basin that was overgrown with ivy. And at the end of the garden was a bench wi
th two hooded figures of black stone sitting at either end, with a gap in the middle.

  “What are all these things d-d-doing here?” Spencer asked, his teeth chattering.

  “It’s like a statue graveyard,” Hedy said.

  Spencer peered into the stone basin held by the ivy-covered woman. “Hedy, look at this!”

  The basin was lined with twigs and dried grass, and inside it were three large eggs. The shells were a dark pebble gray, although they didn’t look like stone. Hedy picked one up curiously, and Spencer followed suit. They felt light.

  “I think these are real eggs,” she said.

  “But from what type of bird?” Spencer asked.

  “Too big for chickens,” said Hedy. “And chicken eggs aren’t this color.” She shivered so violently that she almost dropped the egg; she placed it back gently in the basin to keep it safe. Her toes and fingers were beginning to feel numb.

  “Your lips are blue,” Spencer told her, slipping an egg into his coat pocket. “Are we turning into ghosts because we touched Simon?”

  “That can’t be right,” Hedy said, trying not to worry that he was right. “Ghosts are spirits of dead people, not living people turned into spirits.”

  “But what if we’re turning into something in between?” asked Spencer anxiously.

  “We’re not turning into anything,” Hedy said, more firmly than she felt. She rubbed her cheeks. “Mrs. Vilums said to stand in the sunlight and we’ll be fine. Look.” She pointed to a patch of clear blue sky.

  They trudged, blankets flapping, to the bit of lawn where weak rays of sun fell. It was a minute before they felt anything, but slowly, Hedy felt her toes, fingers, arms, and legs thaw and loosen up. Spencer lost the cold mauve color in his lips, and his teeth stopped chattering.

  “It worked,” Spencer murmured. “I’m never poking a ghost again. What would’ve happened to us if we hadn’t managed to get some sunshine?”

  Through the kitchen window, Hedy could see Mrs. Vilums moving here and there. “Mrs. V seems to know.”

  Spencer followed Hedy’s gaze. “Do you think we should ask her about Nobody?”