The Humming Room

by Ellen Potter

  “Well, I hope he managed to keep you in school while he was moving you hither and thither.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” Ms. Valentine exclaimed.

  In fact, they had moved around so much that she often missed long stretches of school, much to her relief. She hated school. Not the books and learning part; her mind was quick enough. What she hated was being forced to be around other kids. At every new school she went to, the kids made fun of her dirty, worn-out clothes and her wild-looking hair. She defied them by letting herself grow more wild until she looked so frightening that no one would come near her. And that suited her just fine.

  There was a small plastic table that was latched flat against the seat in front of her. Roo flicked the latch carelessly with her index finger, causing the table to slam down loudly. The man in front of her turned to frown at her, as did Ms. Valentine.

  Roo swung her legs up and rested her sneakers on the table.

  “Feet off,” Ms. Valentine hissed, staring with disgust at Roo’s sneakers. “People eat on that table.”

  It made Roo look at her feet more closely. The plastic soles of her sneakers were peeling up and the once-white tops were now gray. The bottoms of her pants were shredded from being too long and constantly stepped on. She felt Ms. Valentine’s eyes on her feet too. That made her mad, so she kept her sneakers on the table.

  “If you become too much trouble,” Ms. Valentine cautioned, “you’ll be sent back straight to the Burrows, that’s a promise. It’s madness for your uncle to take you on. I told him so.”

  She waited another moment for Roo to move her legs. When she didn’t, Ms. Valentine snuffled loudly through her fine, narrow nose. Then she rummaged through her bag, making the thick charm bracelet on her wrist chime, until she retrieved a copy of The New York Times and a store-bought yogurt parfait with a plastic spoon. She settled back into her seat, snapped the paper open, and from then on she pretended Roo no longer existed.

  That was fine with Roo. For the rest of the trip Roo watched the passing stretches of dreary brown hills and bare trees, their branches crosshatched against the cold gray sky. Occasionally they passed towns that looked much like Limpette, with their lopsided houses and scrappy backyards, until they vanished, giving way to long stretches of woods. It might have made most people feel both wistful and frightened. But for Roo, who understood things in terms of space, feeling wistful about the past and nervous about the future was too much like standing alone and exposed in acres of open field. It was unsafe. Instead she tucked her mind into a smaller thought: What was it that her uncle did not want her to ask about?

  Roo’s father and his girlfriend, Joley, had secrets, but they kept them very poorly. They fought too loudly, and all their troubles spilled out in an ugly mess. But most adults, Roo suspected, would be more careful.

  Was her uncle involved in something illegal, like her father? It seemed unlikely that a criminal would have a personal assistant. And it seemed even more unlikely that someone like Ms. Valentine would work for a criminal.

  Or maybe there was something wrong with him. Maybe he had a violent temper, like Joley. At least if it was a big house, she could find places to hide.

  The train turned sharply and the late afternoon sun flooded the car. Ms. Valentine shielded her face with her hat. Roo closed her eyes and slipped her hand in her jacket pocket to feel the cool smoothness of the little glass snake. It was so thin that she could have snapped it in half between her fingers.

  Another possibility occurred to her then, one that struck her as by far the most interesting. Maybe her uncle was exactly like her. Maybe he simply wanted to be left alone. Roo had never understood the strange attraction people had for one another. It baffled her the way people always herded up, endlessly talking, talking. What on earth did they have to say to each other?

  Roo’s father liked to talk, but with him it was different. He didn’t care if you spoke back. He just knew the sort of things that people liked to hear, and told it to them in his dreamy, slow way. Every so often, someone would call him charming.

  “Let’s see him charm the bars off his cell,” Joley had said as she stood at the top of the trailer’s steps and watched the police car haul him off one night. She laughed, the little metal stud in her tongue glinting off the police car’s headlights. But he was back home the following day, looking tired and with a bruise on his cheekbone but otherwise no worse for it.

  No matter what sort of trouble he got into, he had always managed to slip out of it. Until a few weeks ago.

  Thinking about her father made Roo’s chest ache. She forced her mind to collapse down again, until it was as narrow as a squint—just wide enough to numbly watch the miles and miles of dull brown views out the window. And to wonder what sort of place Cough Rock would be.

  Chapter 3

  They arrived in Clayton at dusk. The air was colder here. It pierced Roo’s lungs and made her cough. A steady wind blew her hair into her eyes so that she had to put up her sweatshirt hood and shove her hair beneath it in order to see.

  Like Limpette, Clayton was a small town but the houses here were neat and pretty. The main street was flanked by a river so vast and gray and agitated that it looked more like an ocean. Here and there chunks of ice floated upriver. They seemed to follow each other, like migrating fish.

  “This way,” Ms. Valentine said, and she began to walk briskly down the deserted main street. They passed souvenir shops and little eateries, some of which had signs hanging in the window saying CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. Finally they came to a pier, empty except for one gleaming white boat wildly bucking on the waves.

  Ms. Valentine walked up next to it, leaned across, and pulled it close to the pier.

  “Step in,” she told Roo.

  “Why?” Roo asked, eyeing the boat as it jumped about on the waves.

  “Because unless you have wings under your sweatshirt, there’s no other way. Cough Rock is an island.”

  “I don’t like water. I can’t swim,” Roo told her, staring warily at the tossing boat.

  “She’s a Boston Whaler. She won’t sink. In you go.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Roo stepped in the boat and immediately stumbled forward as it pitched, but caught herself before her chin slammed against the console. Meanwhile Ms. Valentine deftly untied the mooring ropes and hopped in. She pushed a button on the console, pushed forward a black lever, and turned the ignition. The motor burbled, then the boat sped away from the pier and into the open river.

  The water looked thick, like an expanse of angry gray muscle. It shoved at the boat mercilessly, tossing them about, making Roo feel helpless and angry. Ms. Valentine, on the other hand, seemed completely untroubled. She sat very upright, just as though she were still riding the train, and steered lightly with only two fingers on the wheel.

  There were islands everywhere, some quite small and others large enough to hold several houses. And not just houses; these were mansions, the sort that Roo had only ever seen on television, half hidden by a tangle of winter branches and evergreens. They looked as deserted as the town had.

  Above them, a slender shadow suddenly appeared. Roo looked up to see a large bird, its neck as long as a swan’s, awkwardly pushing through the dimming sky. The bird followed them for a while. Roo twisted her head to get a better look at it, but it seemed to dodge her glances, moving over the top of the boat where the canopy blocked her view until finally, with a rough croak, it flew away.

  “A heron,” Ms. Valentine told her. “Don’t worry, you’ll see plenty more.” Then added, more to herself, “Though it’s odd to see them this time of year.”

  Finally, they turned toward one of the islands. It rose up high out of the water, its banks a tall ledge of sharp-edged rocks. Above the rocks the land leveled out. Occupying most of the island was a huge stone building. Despite its size, it was plain, with no adornments except for a deck that wrapped around its lower floor. It didn’t look like someone’s house
, Roo thought. It looked like an old school or a factory. Someplace where no one would want to live.

  Ms. Valentine circled the island and pulled the throttle. The boat slowed, and Ms. Valentine guided it toward a tremendous stone arch that served as a gateway into the island’s small lagoon. Because of the darkening sky, they were nearly beneath the arch when Roo could finally make out the words carved across the top of it: ST. THERESA’S CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL. Her muscles tightened.

  Where had she been taken?

  Once in the lagoon, Ms. Valentine pulled up alongside the pier and cut the motor.

  “This is it,” Ms. Valentine said. “Out you go.”

  “No.”

  Ms. Valentine gazed down at Roo, and her slender nostrils dilated with indignation. Her purple hat was in her hand, the wind curling its rim up.

  “No what?”

  “I’m not going,” Roo said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You have nowhere else to go,” she said, stepping out onto the pier.

  “You lied to me,” Roo spat back at her.

  “Are you completely mad?” Ms. Valentine looked appalled.

  “I’m supposed to be going to my uncle’s, not a children’s hospital,” Roo said.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Ms. Valentine stared at Roo with angry befuddlement before she finally fluttered her eyes skyward and said, “The arch.”

  Reaching into the back of the boat, she heaved up Roo’s Hefty bag, then said, not unkindly, “It’s an old sign, Roo. This hasn’t been a children’s hospital in over sixty years.”

  Roo stared up at the windows of the house. There were many of them but no children in sight. The island was silent too. If anything, it seemed as abandoned as the other islands.

  Roo stood and climbed out of the boat awkwardly, then followed Ms. Valentine up a stone walkway. The walkway cut through the island’s sparse lawn, still snow flecked, up red-veined granite stairs and through a massive set of oak doors.

  In the entrance foyer, Ms. Valentine paused to remove her purple hat and place it on a brass peg on the wall before she led Roo into a large lobby, past a staircase, and then down a dark hallway. There were many rooms off the hallway. All of them, Roo noticed, were on the left-hand side. Most doors were shut but some were open, and in these Roo spied shadowy furnishings and large windows covered with heavy drapes. The walls along the hallway seemed strangely lumpy. Her fingers swiped at them surreptitiously but it was too dark in the hallway to see what they were.

  Finally, Ms. Valentine stopped in front of a closed door. She gave Roo a look of sharp appraisal before extending one disdainful forefinger, intent on pushing aside Roo’s overgrown bangs. But Roo knocked her hand out of the way before she could.

  “Fine, look like a beast then,” Ms. Valentine said. She gave the door a quiet rap with a flourish of her knuckles. After a pause, Roo heard a response from within.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  Roo listened hard to his voice. It sounded rough and tense. Nothing like her father’s easy crooning.

  “Your niece has arrived, Mr. Fanshaw,” Ms. Valentine called.

  There was no reply. Roo glanced up at Ms. Valentine to see what was wrong, but she seemed untroubled by the silence.

  “Roo is right here, Mr. Fanshaw. Shall we come in?” Ms. Valentine persisted, polite but determined.

  “No.” The response came. “Not now. I’ll see her later.”

  Ms. Valentine stood at the door a moment longer, then sniffed and turned.

  “Just as well,” she said to Roo. “You should have a bath first and fresh clothes. Come, I’ll show you your room.”

  “Why wouldn’t he see me?” Roo asked as they walked back up the hallway toward the lobby.

  “There’s no need to get offended,” Ms. Valentine said.

  “I’m not. I just want to know why.”

  After a moment Ms. Valentine said, “Your uncle has always been a private person. Circumstances have made him…more so.

  “This is the west wing of the house,” Ms. Valentine told her as they began to climb the staircase in the lobby. “The upstairs renovations are still underway.” There was a dry tone in her voice that made Roo think that this wasn’t exactly the truth.

  On the second-floor landing, Ms. Valentine’s low heels clicked briskly across the polished wooden hallway floor and turned into the first room on the left.

  It was a massive bedroom, easily twice the size of the living room in the old trailer. There were very few furnishings—just a bed and a plain wardrobe—which made the room seem even larger. By the window was a recessed window seat with a view of the river.

  “It’s nothing fancy but better than you’re used to,” Ms. Valentine said. “We’ve bought some clothes for you. They’re in the wardrobe, though I’m sure they won’t fit well. We didn’t expect you to be so small.” She opened a door by the wardrobe. “Bathroom.” She closed the door again. “Down the hall are some other rooms that have never been used. You are free to poke around. The east wing, however, is strictly off-limits. That’s one rule you do not want to break in this house.”

  And with that, Ms. Valentine click-clacked out of the room and back down the hall.

  It didn’t take Roo long to see that there was no good place to hide in this room. The bed was too low-slung. There was a wardrobe, but it was indeed full of clothes and difficult to close from the inside. It all made her feel so horribly trapped, like a wild young fox that someone had snatched from the woods, dropped into a strange cavernous room, and then left all alone.

  Roo collapsed on the floor and began to cry. Her sobs were awful—the agonized tears of old sorrows and sorrows too new and raw to understand. She jammed her wrist in her mouth and bit it to make herself stop, but she succeeded only in turning her sobs into a muffled wail. She cried and cried until, quite suddenly, the tears stopped. She lifted her head. Through bleary eyes she gazed around as if trying to remember where she was. Her fingers slipped into her jacket pocket and closed around the green snake. Snorting back mucus, she shook her bangs out of her eyes, and went out into the hallway. She paused to listen. There was only silence.

  Cautiously, she started up the hall, noting things along the way. The right side of the wall was covered with fresh Sheetrock, the screw heads still showing. The other side of the hall was painted a soft blue. There was an open door just past her bedroom. Peering in she found a smallish room with no furniture. The wooden floors were stripped down, dull, and pale and waiting for varnish. Up ahead, the hallway took a sharp turn. Everything here was different, as though she suddenly had stepped into another building. The right-hand walls still had the bare Sheetrock but the walls on the left were a liver color, peeling and grimy. The floors didn’t gleam as they did down the other hallway. Here they were scarred and worn, beneath a ceiling that dripped bare lightbulbs. The temperature had plummeted too, as though not even the heat wanted to linger here.

  Was this the east wing, where she was forbidden to go?

  She stood very still for a moment, listening. No, not listening exactly. It was more like sensing. She tested places in this way. In some places the air felt very full. These places smothered her; too many people came and went. She preferred the places where the air felt wispy, where everything passed through lightly and carefully. The crawlspace beneath the trailer had been like that. The dirt floor showed the occasional pinprick footprints of mice or the smudged ripple of a snake, but that was all.

  This place, though, was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. The air was dead, as if all living smells had been deliberately scoured away.

  She pushed on the doorknob of the first room she came to. This room was full of ancient, wicker-backed wheelchairs. Heaped on one of the wheelchairs were several white smocks, yellowed with age. There were three other doors in the hallway, one an old bathroom with its plumbing ripped out, and the other a room so tiny it could only have been some sort of closet.

  The last door in the hallwa
y wouldn’t open, but Roo could feel that it wanted to. She leaned all her weight against it. It budged a little but still would not give way. Holding the knob, she drew back and gave the door a sharp kick. With a crack the door flew open, and an acrid smell hit Roo’s nostrils, layered with the parched odor of dust. The room was large and painted the same awful color of the hallway, but there were curtains with a childish pattern of yellow and red rocking horses, faded where the sun hit it in the center but still bright along the edges. Lining two walls were a half-dozen iron bed frames, painted white, with no mattresses. The beds were small. Child-size. There was a washbasin in one corner, and a beadboard cabinet against the far wall. That was all. Except for the smell.

  This must have once been part of the children’s hospital, she thought.

  She walked over to one of the beds and ran her hand along the cold metal headboard. She sat on the bare springs and bounced a few times, listening to the squeak and breathing in the smell of rust. From this perch her sharp eyes slid across the room, studying every inch. She had learned that if you concentrated on anything long enough, the hidden things would show themselves. Sure enough, at the far end of the room, beneath a corner bed, she spotted a floorboard that did not lie flush with the floor. Hopping off the bed she went over to examine it. It was wedged tightly in place, though a sliver of its edges showed above the level of the floor. Roo pried at it with her narrow fingers, patiently nudging and pulling until the board came up in her hands. A puff of dust came up with it and in the space below was a wooden box painted a faded mustard color. She pulled it out and placed it in front of her. There was a small iron lock with a catch, which she flicked up with her pinky. Opening the lid, she found inside a flashlight, a ring, and an opened pack of Juicy Fruit gum. The flashlight was ancient looking, with a silver body and brass fittings on either end. She flipped the flashlight’s switch but the batteries were dead. The ring was nice though. A thin silver band with two tiny silver hearts fused together. She picked up the gum. The package was old-fashioned looking, with green and white stripes. She pulled out a stick of the gum. It was rock hard and wrapped in the same green-and-white paper, but instead of foil the gum itself was covered with a red wax paper. She put the flashlight and the gum back in the box, but slipped the ring on her finger. The feel of it steadied her and gave her more confidence. She shut the box’s lid and replaced it in its hiding place.