Don't Tell a Soul

by Kirsten Miller

  I was twelve years old. I’d never seen a dead body before. I’d been trained to dial 911 since I was old enough to read numbers. But when I pulled the phone out of my pocket, I couldn’t figure out who to call. Even I could tell there was nothing any doctor or ambulance driver could do. When I thought I heard someone else in the house, I was relieved. Help had arrived. I was no longer needed. I slipped through the kitchen, where my aunt’s cat lay dead beside its water bowl, and left via the service entrance. Then I walked home through the snow, sat on my bed, and waited.

  I wasn’t going to tell anyone that I’d been there. I didn’t want them to know what I’d seen. I was sure that if I didn’t breathe a word, I could pretend none of it had ever happened. I wish I’d known then—that’s not how it works.

  Five hours later, the news finally arrived. I’d been sitting on the side of my bed, still wearing my winter coat, since eleven-thirty. It was dark when my mother came to my room to tell me my father and aunt Sarah had died. I remember her face was so pale that I wondered if she might be dying, too. Nothing she said made any sense. She told me that Sarah’s maid had discovered the bodies when she’d arrived at work at three o’clock.

  “Where is James?” I asked when she’d finished.

  “He’s flying back from Chicago,” my mother told me.

  “I’ll wait here for him,” I told her. James would know what was true.

  I waited all night. James never came.

  My therapist used to tell me that everyone responds to grief differently. Some people look to those they love for support. Other people push their loved ones away. And some people choose to run. I was told that all reactions to grief are valid and normal. When I was twelve, I didn’t buy it.

  I only saw James once in the days after my father and Sarah died. He was shaking hands with guests at Sarah’s memorial. I was surprised to see him there. He hadn’t joined my mother and me during the service. When I’d been told he was having trouble coming to terms with Sarah’s death, I’d imagined him in bed with the curtains pulled. But there he was in a perfectly cut black suit, thanking the mourners who’d come to say goodbye to his wife. All the stress had whittled away at him. His cheeks were sunken and his body skeletal. He barely looked alive himself.

  I was too timid to cut through the crowd. I decided to wait for the guests to leave. When I took a seat in one of the chairs that lined the walls, it felt as though I’d vanished from view. The mingling grown-ups didn’t notice me.

  “It was a carbon monoxide leak,” I heard a woman whisper. I glanced up to see a classmate’s mother.

  “I know,” said a lady standing beside her. “I swear to God, I had our boiler guy in our basement thirty minutes after I heard.”

  “I think we all did.”

  My classmate’s mother lowered her voice. “They found him on top of her,” she whispered. “They were both half-clothed.”

  The other woman gasped. “You’re kidding!”

  “Think about it—why else would he have been there at three on a weekday?”

  “I wonder how long it had been going on,” said the woman. “Oh my God, I feel so terrible for Jane. What a way to find out.”

  “Apparently, James is completely broken. I don’t think anyone could love another human being as much as he loved Sarah.”

  It took me a minute to realize what was being said. I knew about sex, of course, but back then it wasn’t the first place my mind took me. When I finally caught on, I was horrified. I didn’t believe it for a moment. But I thought maybe that was why James was avoiding us. He must have heard the rumors, too. He thought my father had destroyed his life. I could lose James, too, unless I set the record straight and told the truth.

  I searched the funeral home until I found my mother in the luxurious powder room touching up her makeup. I stood behind her and waited until her lips were perfectly painted and her cheeks tastefully rouged. The woman in the mirror was stunning. I could understand why my father had fallen into her trap. And I knew she took no pleasure in looking back at me. At the time, it seemed like I might never grow into my face. I had my father’s bushy black eyebrows and untamable hair, along with a nose that seemed several sizes too large. And yet my mother and I both knew that, despite her great beauty, I was the reason my father had chosen to stay.

  “Yes?” my mother said.

  “I heard two women talking,” I said. “They said Dad and Aunt Sarah were having sex.”

  “Oh dear.” My mother’s face softened. She was the picture of compassion when she turned and took my hand. “I was hoping you wouldn’t hear the gossip until you were old enough to process it.”

  “I don’t need to process anything,” I told her. “What they said isn’t true.”

  My mother sighed. “I’m afraid it is, sweetheart,” she told me. She only called me “sweetheart” when she thought I was being childish or stupid.

  “No, it’s not,” I insisted. “I was there before the maid. I saw them. They both had their clothes on, and Dad was lying on the floor a few feet from Sarah. They looked like they’d been talking before they died.”

  My mother recoiled and dropped my hand as if it were rotten or diseased. “Why would you make up something like that?” she asked.

  I was confused. “I’m not making anything up,” I insisted. “That’s what I saw. I thought you and James would want to know.”

  Her expressions shifted so quickly that I couldn’t keep track. For a moment, though, I was sure she believed me. “Oh, darling,” my mother said, bending down so we were eye to eye. “I think this tragedy has damaged you much more than I thought. Don’t worry—we’ll get you help. But for now, promise me, Bram. Keep all of this to yourself. Don’t tell a soul. You’re all I have left. I can’t lose you, too.”

  And so began my long relationship with the mental health industry. Though I was only allowed to speak to my therapist, I continued to insist that I’d seen what I’d seen. I couldn’t help it. The images never went away. My father’s face, blue and lifeless. Sarah’s toes, perfectly packaged in her Wolford hose. The cat dead by its water bowl. These pictures were always in the back of my mind, waiting for the moment when I let down my guard.

  On my thirteenth birthday, I made one last attempt to convince my mother. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I hoped she’d believe me now that I was officially a teenager and no longer a child.

  “Why do you insist on lying like this?” she snapped. “If they weren’t having an affair, why would your father have been there when James wasn’t home?”

  Somewhere deep down inside, I knew the answer. Back then, it was only a collection of sounds and feelings. I couldn’t figure out how to interpret them. I couldn’t put what I knew into words.

  My therapist told me that sometimes we invent stories we’d like to be true. It’s not lying, she said. It’s called wishful thinking. I must be pretty sick, I thought, to wish I’d seen the corpses of two people I loved. So, I tried making up nicer stories. None of them were true, but my therapist was thrilled with my progress. I didn’t dare tell her I still saw the bodies every hour of the day. A couple of years later, I discovered drugs that could turn off the slideshow inside my head. I raided my friends’ medicine cabinets for painkillers. I checked their parents’ nightstands for sleep aids. Before I went to bed at night, I’d pop a few painkillers and chug them down with wine from the bottle my mother always had open. And then I’d fall into a dark, dreamless oblivion as quiet and peaceful as a grave. The ghosts in my head never bothered me there.

  Then one morning, a year before I arrived in Louth, I slept straight through my alarm. My mother’s maid, sent to shut the damn thing off, found me unresponsive. When I regained consciousness three days later, I was in the hospital. By the end of that week, I’d been shipped off to rehab.

  * * *

  —

 
In the storeroom below the manor, I finally opened my eyes. I felt nothing, the way I had when I’d woken up all alone on a cot in an unfamiliar rehab facility. I saw nothing, just the darkness all around me. I figured I’d slipped back down to the bottom of my hole, and this time I planned to stay. I’d crawled out once before, but I didn’t have the strength to do it again.

  Then I heard something. Someone knocking on the storeroom door. Softly, but insistently. Whoever it was knew I was in there. Then I remembered where I was and how I’d gotten there. It had to be Sam, coming to check on me. I let the sound guide me to the door. When I opened it, there was no one standing outside. The knocking had been replaced by the patter of bare feet, and I caught a brief glimpse of a girl in a white satin dress running for the stairs.

  I sprinted upstairs and came to a stop in the entrance hall, beneath the twinkling chandelier. I listened for footsteps but heard nothing. Outside the windows, the world had gone dark. Inside, the house looked deserted. But it wasn’t. Someone was there with me. I just couldn’t see her.

  I didn’t need to pinch myself. I knew I was awake. This time, I couldn’t dismiss what I’d heard. It wasn’t a dream. There were three options to choose from: prankster, ghost, or hallucination. I didn’t like any of the choices, but the last scared me far more than the others.

  “Who’s there?” I whispered. I got silence for an answer.

  “Grace? Is that you?” It was worth a try.

  “April?” I tried. Nothing. “Dahlia?”

  “Please!” I begged. “Someone talk to me! Tell me I’m not going crazy!”

  Then the doorbell tolled. It was deep and solemn—like the sound of an old church calling people to prayer.

  I spun around to face the door. I couldn’t believe it. I’d called and she’d come. A Dead Girl could be waiting for me behind door number one. I glanced up at the stairs, half expecting Miriam or James to appear. Neither seemed to be home. I slid silently toward the door. The peephole was too high for me, and I had to lift myself up on my tiptoes. My eye was almost to the glass when the bell rang again. I stumbled backward, my heart beating wildly. It took so long for me to gather my wits that I was sure there would be no one there when I looked again. And yet, there was.

  A tall figure stood with his back to the house, as though he was taking in the view from the manor’s front door. But it was dark out there. There was nothing to see. His black hair and dark coat blended into the night, and I couldn’t make out who it was. I watched until my feet ached from standing on tiptoe, but he didn’t move an inch. He seemed perfectly content to wait.

  I wasn’t going to answer. I planned to slip away. Then, as I dropped down to my heels, the button on my jeans scraped against the door handle. It wasn’t loud. I didn’t think he could have heard. When I shot back up to my tiptoes to check, a face stared back at me from the other side. Under the blue outdoor lights, his skin appeared bloodless, and the fish-eye lens inside the peephole stretched the man’s smile into a Joker’s grin. I yelped and dropped down to my heels.

  “Bram? That you?” Nolan called through the door.

  I kept a hand pressed to my chest. It felt like my heart might burst right through my ribs.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  There was a pause, then laughter. “Middle of the night? Have you cracked the lock on the liquor cabinet? It’s not even seven o’clock.”

  That threw me. I had to stop and repeat the last part to myself. I’d been certain it was the dead of night. “Show me your phone,” I ordered.

  It was his turn to be confused. “What?”

  “Your phone—hold it up to the peephole so I can see the time.”

  “If you insist,” he said as though indulging a child.

  I rose to my tiptoes and saw a lovely photo of a frozen lake surrounded by snowy mountains. The time at the top of the screen was 6:58. My face flushed with embarrassment, I cracked open the door.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you, too.” He seemed amused by my brusqueness, which annoyed me. I wondered if there was anything he didn’t find funny. “Your uncle and my father had to drive down to Manhattan. I came by to see if you’d like to have dinner.”

  I opened the door wider. “Miriam probably has dinner waiting for me downstairs,” I told him. “I don’t want to be rude.”

  “Your housekeeper has tonight off,” Nolan countered.

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck. He’d come at a time when he’d known I’d be alone and I couldn’t help but think of Maisie’s warnings. “Who told you that?”

  Nolan sighed wearily. “My father and your uncle work together, remember? Look, if you don’t want to eat, that’s okay by me.”

  My stomach chose that very moment to rumble loudly. I had no idea what food was in the house—and no clue if any shops or restaurants would be open in town. There was also the matter of the girl in the white satin dress. Whether she was a human, ghost, or hallucination, I wasn’t sure I was ready to be all alone with her in the manor.

  “Fine,” I said, opening the door all the way. “Where do you want to go?”

  “How ’bout my house?” Nolan said.

  “You know how to cook?” I found that extremely hard to believe.

  “You underestimate me, Miss Howland,” Nolan replied. “I’m a man of many surprises.”

  He was kidding. I knew that. I also knew what nasty little truths often hid beneath jokes. “I don’t like surprises. The last guy who surprised me spent the night in the hospital.”

  I kept my eyes trained on Nolan until his smile faded.

  “Well, okay, then,” he said, not sure what to make of my warning. “The truth is, I don’t cook. Our housekeeper, Janna, had a pot of soup on the stove when I left.”

  My stomach rumbled again. “Your housekeeper is there?” That made the invitation much more appealing.

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of soup is it?”

  Nolan grinned. “I believe she said it was clam chowder.”

  “Manhattan or New England?” I demanded.

  “Manhattan, of course. New England clam chowder is like eating hot yogurt.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more. “Then we have a deal. Wait here for a second while I get my stuff.”

  I ran upstairs and grabbed my bag off the vanity chair. I checked to make sure everything I might need was inside. Wallet, phone, bear repellent, and box cutter. I hadn’t been joking. Not even a little bit. I planned to be ready for anything.

  As I came down the stairs, I realized that Nolan had entered the house. I also noticed that his expression had changed. He seemed nervous—perhaps even spooked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I thought we were here alone.”

  I paused. “We are,” I said, carefully.

  “I just heard someone on the second floor walk into the north wing.”

  I swear, I could have hugged him at that moment. I wasn’t going insane. Hallucinations don’t make noises other people can hear.

  I let out my breath. “I caught a glimpse of a girl just before you arrived,” I told him, in a rush. “Maybe it was Maisie playing a prank on me?”

  “No.” Nolan shook his head. “Maisie’s at home. I saw her just before I got in the car.”

  I tried to offer another rational explanation, but I couldn’t seem to find one, so I shook my head.

  “Holy shit, Bram. Does that mean I just heard the ghost of Grace Louth?” Nolan asked.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked, watching him carefully.

  “I guess I do now,” Nolan said, eyes wide. “Aren’t you scared?”

  I thought about it for a moment and realized something I hadn’t yet realized. “No,” I told him. “I’m not.”
/>   * * *

  —

  The snow was coming down hard, as though the heavens were trying to bury the town. The clock on the SUV’s dashboard confirmed it was early evening, yet Louth had already closed up shop for the night. The sidewalks were empty. Even the lights at JOE were off. It felt as if all the living had fled—and whatever had scared them away could be crouching around the next corner.

  While Nolan steered the car down one of the narrow streets, I searched for signs of life. Then he slammed on the brakes, throwing me against the seat belt. A figure had stepped out in front of the car. She stood in the center of the road, less than two feet from our bumper, one hand to her face to shield her eyes from the glare. The headlights washed the color from her hair and drained the blood from her skin. A long white nightgown fluttered in the wind beneath an open bathrobe. Despite the snow, she wore only slippers on her feet. For a moment, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles it was April Hughes.

  “Good God,” Nolan groaned. “Not again.”

  As she came closer, I could see it wasn’t a dead girl, but a living woman. “There’s something wrong with her,” I said.

  “Yeah, she’s drunk,” Nolan said.

  “We need to get her inside,” I said. “She’ll freeze to death out here.”

  I went to open the door and was startled to see the woman right outside my window, her palms pressed against the glass. Then she began to pound with her fists. I didn’t want to be scared, but I was. Mascara smudges ringed her eyes, and dried blood filled the deep cracks in her lips. “Get out!” she shrieked. Nolan stepped on the gas, and she jumped back.

  I twisted in my seat to look for her. “What are you doing?” I demanded. “We can’t just drive away! That woman needs help!”

  “She won’t let us help her,” Nolan said. “Believe me. I’ve tried.” He turned the corner and pulled to the side of the road, picked up his phone, and tapped out a message. I leaned over and could see what he was writing. She’s on the loose in town again.