The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

“But that can’t be right,” I insist.

  A cute Asian girl in cutoffs and flip-flops walks past us going the opposite direction, her shoulder bag heavy with a laptop and books, and Annie shouts, “Hey! Put some clothes on!” right in her face.

  The girl doesn’t even so much as glance in our direction.

  “See?” Annie says pointedly.

  “But I don’t get it. Why would I be able to see you, and not her?” I ask, looking back at the girl in flip-flops.

  It’s not just me, I realize with a rush of certainty. It’s also Tyler. And Eastlin. Tyler actually saw her first. I was already thinking about her, the night we filmed the séance for Shuttered Eyes, but Tyler’s the one who made me go over and ask her to sit down. When I remember the séance, my heart turns over in my chest so hard I have to cough to get it going again.

  God. What if she was . . . I don’t know. Summoned. Or something. What if that’s why she’s here? What if it’s all my fault?

  “Annie,” I start to ask her if she knows. Why she’s here, right now.

  Annie, oblivious to my thoughts, watches the girl in cutoffs over her shoulder, muttering, “Bare legs. In a library.” Then she turns back to me. “Why? I don’t really know. Maybe they’re just not looking right.”

  She pauses, and I wait to see if she’s going to elaborate on this idea. Instead she glances back at me.

  “You’re always trying to find the right way to look. Aren’t you, Wes.”

  I stare down at her, wanting to finger the soft curls over her ears. But I don’t. Instead I swallow, and say, “I guess.”

  We arrive at a bank of computer terminals, and I wiggle the mouse at one of them to wake it up. Annie is behind me, peering over my shoulder with a mixture of interest and anxiety.

  I open up Google.

  “So, what was your thing called again? That party you went to?” I ask, ready to type.

  Her eyes jump between my fingers and the screen, baffled.

  “Um,” she says. “The Grand Aquatic Display.”

  Obediently I type the phrase into the search engine and hit enter. In my ear, Annie whispers, “My goodness. Will you look at that!”

  But nothing much comes up. There’s a lot of random stuff that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what she’s talking about, and a scanned version of some guy’s memoir that mainly talks about who all the aldermen were who were involved, and what all the different committees were in charge of, and it’s all really dry and boring.

  “Is that . . . is that a book?” she asks with wonder, reaching a hand out to touch the computer screen.

  “I guess,” I say, clicking through the other results. There’s nothing much useful, but I’m not sure what else to do.

  “Does it talk about anything strange happening, at the Display?” she asks.

  “Not really.” I frown, scrolling through the dense memoir on Google Books. “It just says there was some huge party celebrating the opening of the Erie Canal. The Aquatic Display started in Buffalo and came all the way down the canal and then the Hudson to the city. Is that true?”

  That’s pretty impressive, given that it took, like, a month for anyone to get a letter back then. And no electricity. They basically lived in the Dark Ages. It must have truly sucked.

  “Yes. Papa’s in charge. They’ve been preparing for months. It’s all anyone can talk about. Yesterday there were these men with him, in his study. And someone stabbed a letter up on our door.”

  “Someone stabbed a letter onto your front door? Are you serious?” I ask, eyebrows rising. “That’s so metal. What’d it say?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I never read it. But they panicked. Even Mother. That night we left the house and went to stay with my aunt Mehitable. Just before I found you, I’d sneaked out of the house to talk to Herschel, and tell him we’re removing for Hudson Square. But I never found him.”

  “Hudson Square?” I ask. “Where’s that?”

  She gives me a wide-eyed, puzzled look. “Why, where it’s always been, I imagine.”

  Great. That’s so helpful.

  I scroll through a few pages of the guy’s memoir, which looks like it was written right around then. He talks about how during the construction of the canal there were a couple of explosions that seemed deliberate, but it didn’t hold up the construction any. He doesn’t talk about anything weird happening at the Grand Aquatic Display. What a name. They couldn’t just call it a barge party? It’s kind of stiff, how the memoir’s written, but even I can tell it was an epic scene. I imagine I can see it, the flotilla of barges all lit with oil lamps and sparklers, drifting sedately down the river with Indians in canoes on either side, flags flying.

  Annie’s eyes are wide and blinking as she watches my fingers move on the keyboard, and the changing letters on the screen. It must look like magic to her. I can’t wait to take her to see a movie. Maybe I can take her to something tonight. I should rent The Others and show it to her! That would be hilarious. No, that might be too intense. We’ll go for some big monster CGI-type thing, something that will really blow her mind.

  “Let me try something else,” I mutter, typing quickly. Maybe I’m showing off, a little.

  “You play it like a pianoforte, almost,” she says.

  This time I try searching her last name, Van Sinderen, and cameo.

  She claps her hands with delight when pages of cameos on eBay and Etsy come up. Some of them are kind of pretty. For the name, there’s a street in Brooklyn, and a book award at Yale founded by some dead guy. But nothing that shows both terms together.

  I click through pictures of cameos, rings and brooches. They’re pretty old-fashioned. But seeing Annie’s face alight with pleasure gives me a shiver of satisfaction.

  “Are any of these yours?” I ask.

  She squints at the screen, her nose inches away.

  “No,” she says at length. “None of them.”

  I must look disappointed, because she quickly adds, “They’re quite nice, though!”

  I drum my fingertips on the desk by the computer, thinking.

  “The Society Library always had the daily newspapers for anyone to read. They were laid out on a large table in the center of the reading room. And they’d keep them, for a time. Does this library subscribe to the penny papers?” she asks, her fingertips together in front of her mouth.

  I laugh through my nose. Like NYU is going to have newspapers from two hundred years ago, just lying around. I’m sure they were all wrapped around fish and then thrown into the garbage within days. All the newspapers that might tell us what happened are in the bottom of Fresh Kills landfill, or maybe even at the bottom of the sea. Or they’ve been burned to cinders and we’re breathing them right now.

  “Annie,” I say, trying to be patient. “Do you have any idea what year it is? Right now, I mean. What year I live in.”

  A weird expression crosses her face, and she moves a little bit away from me. Her hand gropes over to the counter, lands on an abandoned pencil, and picks it up to fiddle with it.

  “I think,” she says, without looking at me, “that we might ask someone. About the newspapers. I think that’s what we should do.”

  I peer at her. Isn’t she curious? That’d be the first thing I’d want to know, if I was a Rip van Winkle.

  Maybe she doesn’t want to know.

  Maybe she can’t bear to look at it too closely.

  “All right,” I say slowly. “We’ll do that.”

  She glances at me, and her eyes are wet.

  I reach over and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her to me until the top of her head tucks under my chin. I can feel the soft cloud of her hair, tickling my throat. Her arms go around my waist. I close my eyes, relishing the rhythm of her breath and the texture of her dress under my hands. It doesn’t seem possible. She’s so ut
terly, completely real.

  “Hey,” whines a voice behind me. “You done yet?”

  I glance behind us and find a pimply kid with a mom haircut looking balefully at me. He’s holding a spiral notebook.

  “Not quite,” I say to him. “Sorry.” I realize he can’t see the girl in my arms. I must look pretty weird standing here, cradling nothing.

  The kid gives me a sketchy look and goes away.

  “Hey,” I whisper into her hair. “It’s okay.”

  She breaks away from me, wiping her nose on the back of her wrist. She nods.

  “Newspapers,” she says, not meeting my eyes.

  “Let me just do one other thing,” I say, turning back to the computer terminal. To be honest I haven’t used the library for much of anything except checking out DVDs of documentaries that aren’t available for streaming. They made all the freshmen do this library orientation thing at UW last year, but I wasn’t paying much attention. All I wanted to do was watch movies. And make movies. And watch the movies I made.

  I pull up the library home page, and type Annie’s last name into the BobCat book search engine thing.

  A few books come up by some other guy who’s dead, who seems like he was one of those old society gentlemen who sat on lots of committees. But they’re all from the twentieth century. Well after Annie’s time. I shiver, as that thought passes through me. That even times long ago are after her time.

  At the end of the list of stuff by the guy, there’s an entry that just says “Ephemera.” It’s in Special Collections. Sixth floor. On the reference table there’s a stack of Xeroxed pages with maps to all the call numbers.

  “Annie?” I ask.

  “Hmm?” she says, peering over my shoulder.

  “What’s ephemera? Do you know?” I’m embarrassed that I don’t know. But, heck. I don’t.

  “Ummm.” She furrows her brows. “I think it just means miscellaneous things. Things that exist? But nearly didn’t? Like the noun form of ephemeral.”

  “Huh,” I say. “So—it looks like the library has a box of random stuff that might belong to your family. Unless there’s lots of other Van Sinderens out there.”

  “Really? I don’t know any,” she reflects. “But then, I’m discovering there’s a lot in the world that I don’t know.”

  We exchange dry smiles.

  “Want to go see what’s in the box? Maybe your cameo’s in there!” I suggest.

  At this idea, her eyes brighten. “You think?”

  “I don’t know. Why not?”

  “How do we find it?”

  I pull out one of the library call number maps, draw a circle around the area that we want, and write the box’s call number down in the margin.

  “I guess we just go . . . ask for it,” I say.

  Annie bounces on her toes, like she does when she’s excited. Knowing she’s excited makes my heart rate trip faster. I love seeing her look hopeful and happy. It makes me excited, too. Now I’m really hoping we find it.

  At least, I think I hope we find it.

  We ride the elevator to the sixth floor in silence, none of the other students taking notice of the strange girl in the tattered antique dress standing in their midst, eyes glued to the dinging numbers in the elevator overhead just like all of ours.

  The doors ping open and Annie and I get off, walking faster than usual down the hall to find what we want. After several minutes of me showing my ID, inventing an independent study topic out of thin air, showing the inside of my bag, promising that I don’t have a pen, and being led through a couple of glass doors, I’m finally parked at a long library table covered with foam blocks and told to wait a couple of minutes. All the while Annie stays at my heels, sometimes making faces at me over the shoulder of the reference librarian. Once she strides with exaggerated stiffness and formality over to a disused card catalogue abandoned along one of the reading room walls, puts a finger to her lips, and curls her other finger into the handle of one of the drawers.

  Slowly, deliberately, she pulls the drawer open. I watch her do it, holding my breath. She skips back to my side giddy with mischief.

  “How did you do that?” I whisper to her.

  She’s laughing so hard she can’t answer me at first.

  “Annie! Come on! How’d you do that?” I insist.

  She’s leaning her head on my shoulder, wiping laughter out of her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says, gasping for breath. “I just did.”

  “Dude. You’re gonna get me kicked out of here,” I point out. “Also, I’d tell you that was totally ripped off from a movie I saw from the eighties, except you probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “Dude,” she says, in a mocking voice. “Come on! It was funny!”

  The librarian returns with a medium-size cardboard box, places it on the table in front of me, together with a pair of white cotton gloves, and says, “If you have any questions, I’ll be right over there.” It’s just like a scene in National Treasure, except without explosions.

  The librarian goes to return to her desk, and sees the card catalogue drawer open. She looks briefly at me, the likeliest culprit. I shrug, trying to look innocent. The librarian gives me the stink-eye and walks over and closes the card catalogue drawer.

  Annie is laughing so hard she’s having trouble not falling over.

  “Shhhh,” I say out of the corner of my mouth. “You’re going to make me laugh, too!”

  “Sorry!” she says. “You’re right, you’re right.”

  She smooths her curls out of the corners of her mouth, then settles her hands primly on the table in front of us.

  “Wes. May I please see if my cameo is in the box?” she asks with exaggerated care, teasing me for how neurotic I’m being.

  “Be my guest,” I say.

  She gives me a long look.

  “What, you can open drawers but not boxes?” I ask, incredulous.

  “I don’t know! Sometimes I can move stuff, and sometimes I can’t. Anyway, I think you should do it.” She casts a meaningful glance over her shoulder to where the librarian is sitting.

  “All right. You have a point,” I say.

  I put on the gloves and open the box.

  My first impression is that it’s full of junk. It’s like the box you keep under your bed and forget about until it’s time to move, and then you don’t know what to do with it, because it seems a shame to throw everything away, but the truth is you never look at it so it might as well not exist. Packets of birthday cards tied together with ribbon, yellowed wedding invitations, a party horn from a 1920s New Year’s Eve. Somebody’s passport from 1938. A couple of curled photographs of unsmiling 1910s people in dumpy ankle-length dresses and drooping hats. Annie looks into the box with awe while I gingerly start pawing through everything.

  Quickly I’m able to see that if there ever was any jewelry in here, it’s long gone. Nothing in here has any value. Not jewelry-type value, anyway.

  “I don’t think we’re going to find your cameo here,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t really think we would,” she says with a sigh.

  I pull out different bundles of correspondence and lay them out on the table one at a time. None of them look old enough to be hers. Most of the stuff in here is from the early twentieth century. Late nineteenth, max, I’m guessing. It’s impossible to tell who anyone is, though I spy Annie’s last name on some of the cards and letters.

  “What’s that?” Annie asks, pointing.

  I gingerly lift out a piece of paper folded into a tight square, so old that it’s turned brown and curling. There’s even sealing wax on it, which is crazy—I’ve never actually seen sealing wax before, except in movies. I guess I knew people really used it, but even so. I lift the paper on my palm and hold it out to Annie so she can see it.

 
Her eyes open wide, with that bottomless black glimmer they get. She reaches a fingertip over to touch the wax seal. It’s stamped in a pattern like a spindle.

  “Wes,” she breathes. “That’s it.”

  “That’s what?” I say.

  “The letter. See?” She points to a clean rip in the center of the paper, about an inch long. “What letter?” I’m confused.

  “The one they found on our door. The death threat.”

  I touch the note gently with my gloved finger. It doesn’t look like much.

  “Open it!” she cries. “Please! Please, you have to open it.”

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “Hang on. I don’t want to tear it.”

  Annie’s vibrating with urgency in her seat. I move my thumb along the edge of the paper, and the waxed seal lifts up cleanly, where it was broken long ago. I unfold one leaf. Then I unfold the other. The pattern of cuts made by one knife through all the complex folds is starlike, reminding me of when we’d make paper snowflakes in elementary school.

  Trembling, Annie reaches over and takes the paper from me. I’m astonished, that she can hold it. She cradles the letter delicately in her hands, looking down at it.

  “That’s all?” she asks, her voice catching.

  I don’t know if she’s talking to me, necessarily. I think maybe she’s asking the universe. I stare at Annie’s face, lit strangely by the fluorescent library lights. Something about her skin has changed. It’s like instead of the light shining on her, it’s shining in her. No, that’s not right.

  It’s shining through her.

  “Annie?” I whisper.

  She doesn’t seem to hear me. Or if she does, she doesn’t answer.

  “That’s all it says? Why would it say this?” she says, but her voice sounds sort of hollow. It’s hard for me to hear, and not just because she’s whispering.

  “Annie!” I hiss, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the librarian doesn’t hear me.

  She’s fading. A pit of terror and panic yawns open in my stomach. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Is she doing it on purpose? Does she know it’s happening? I can actually see the tabletop through her arms, as if the substance of her forearms has thinned, faded like an overexposed photograph. The paper almost looks like it’s floating a couple of inches off the library table, because Annie’s hands underneath it are disappearing.