I jumped out of bed and started pacing around the room. “There are all kinds of ghostly phenomena that people can experience without actually seeing a ghost: sounds, smells, sudden cold. I know them all. I’ve read so many ghost stories you wouldn’t believe. We just have to find a way for you to get your message across.”
Annie sat on the bed, her legs crossed, grinning at me. “Won’t she suspect something? Like it’s you doing it, not a real ghost?”
I shook my head. “Not if we make it really convincing.”
“And what if she thinks she’s going mad?”
“Well, if she got locked up in a mental hospital then I would have to go and live with Nan.”
“I wouldn’t feel right about that,” said Annie slowly.
“I’m kidding. We just need to find the right balance. Scare her enough not to show the paintings but not enough to push her over the edge. But anyway, Maisie really isn’t the type to go off her rocker. She’s too practical.”
“Then we’ll have to work extra hard to convince her that she’s being haunted.”
“Yes. But we need to start slowly. You can’t just jump out in front of her. We’ll have to do it scientifically.”
I went over to my desk and found an empty notebook and a pen, sat down and began to write. Annie came and stood beside me.
1. Can she see you?
2. Can she hear you?
3. Can she touch you?
4. Can she smell you?
Annie laughed. “Smell? Really?”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “Lots of ghosts bring their own smells with them. There’s a story about a fisherman’s ghost that was haunting his wife, and she always knew he was nearby because of a strong smell of fish.”
“Yes, but wouldn’t there often be a smell of fish around?”
“In church? In her bedroom?”
“Oh,” said Annie. “Right.”
A door slammed downstairs.
“Yikes,” I said, jumping up. “That’s Maisie. Hide! Under the bed!”
In a flash, Annie was under the bed. That girl could move.
“If she comes in,” I whispered, “try making a little noise. Like a knock on the floor. To see if she can hear you.”
ANNIE
IT WAS STRANGE to be under the bed again, with the quilt hanging down, just like on the first night. I had a sudden fear that I would be shaken out of the dream again and find myself in my bedroom at home. I didn’t know how to stay here.
“Claire?” called Maisie from downstairs.
“I’m up here,” answered Claire, and the bedsprings sagged as she sat on the bed.
Footsteps started up the stairs.
One of the empty cocoa mugs appeared in front of my nose, as Claire shoved it under the bed. Hiding the evidence.
“So you’re talking to me again, are you?” said Maisie from the door. I winced. Not the most tactful approach.
“I thought maybe if we talked some more you might start seeing things from my point of view,” Claire said quietly. One up for Claire.
“I can try,” said Maisie. Her footsteps approached the bed and she sat down, but more gently than the last time so I didn’t get knocked on the head again. “I see you’ve been having a snack,” she said.
“I was cold when I got home so I made hot chocolate.”
“Good. It’s miserable out there. Look, Claire, I know you’re upset about the Annie paintings. But I’ll do everything I can to make it easier for you.”
“Everything except not show them.”
“I told you. That isn’t an option. Think of it this way: it’s going to be in New York, not St. John’s, and I’ll make sure the publicity says as little as possible about the accident. The fact that you were there doesn’t even need to come up.”
“That’s not the point. I don’t think Annie would want those paintings to be seen. They’re so creepy.”
“I know they’re creepy. That’s what makes them good.”
“But it’s Annie you’re painting, Maisie! It’s like you’re using her and what happened to her for your own benefit. It’s not fair. She wouldn’t like it.”
“I don’t think we can start to speculate about what Annie would or wouldn’t like, Claire. This is my art. And we have to eat. If I don’t do the show, I’ll be completely broke by Christmas. I know it’s difficult for you, but you’re going to have to come to terms with it.”
Right. Time for Annie to have her say. I knocked on the floor three times. “What was that?” said Maisie.
Bingo! She could hear me!
“What was what?” said Claire innocently.
“That knocking. There must be someone at the door. Who on earth? In this fog?”
Maisie got up and I heard her footsteps going downstairs.
The quilt that was hanging down over the side of the bed flipped up and Claire’s head appeared upside down, grinning at me.
“That was great, Annie,” she whispered gleefully. “Keep it up!” and then she whisked her head away and the quilt fell back into place as Maisie’s footsteps returned up the stairs.
“That’s funny,” said Maisie. “There was no one there.”
“Maybe it was the wind,” said Claire.
“Maybe,” said Maisie. “Now, where were we?”
“I was saying that I don’t think Annie would want you to show those pictures. Have you even thought about that? It’s like the whole world will know what happened to her and think of her as that poor girl in those weird pictures.”
“I’m trying to show what she was like, Claire; it’s a tribute to her. It’s not taking anything away from her memory.”
“Do you think she’d want the world to know that she ran across the street after some stupid dog and that’s why she died? That’s what those pictures all say. Annie wouldn’t like it.”
“Claire, this is ridiculous. Annie is dead. Nothing we do now is going to hurt her.”
“But it hurts me! Can’t you see that?”
“I don’t understand, Claire. It just doesn’t make sense. The show will be in New York, and you don’t even have to go if you don’t want to. You can stay here and it doesn’t need to touch you at all.”
“It does touch me. And it touches Annie. She wouldn’t like it; I know she wouldn’t.”
My cue. I knocked on the floor again: three loud knocks.
“There it is again!” said Maisie. “You must have heard it that time.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Claire.
I had to bite my thumb not to start laughing. She sounded so innocent.
Maisie heaved herself off the bed and went stomping downstairs to investigate. I reached out to push the quilt aside so I could talk to Claire, but as I touched it, I felt that tilting feeling again. I thought for a second that I could feel Claire’s hand, but then it got really dark and I was lying on my own bed, holding tight to my quilt, with the Newfoundland book lying open beside me, just visible in the dim light filtering in my curtains from the streetlight outside my window.
CLAIRE
I REACHED DOWN TO push the quilt aside and talk to Annie. I touched her hand and then it slipped away. I stuck my head down to look but she was gone. There was nothing but dust under the bed.
Maisie was muttering to herself downstairs. I could hear her opening and closing the kitchen doors and then going down the hall to the check the other door. I laughed softly. We’d made a good start.
And I wish you wouldn’t keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.
Alice, ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
ANNIE
MY FLASHLIGHT WAS lying on the floor. The batteries were dead. I switched on the light beside my bed and looked at my clock. Three-fifteen.
The house was quiet. I picked up the Newfoundland book and looked at the fog picture. Funny. It said that Maisie painted it in 1978, the same year she painted the picture of Annie in my blue pajamas. But why were there two girls? One big, on
e smaller. Claire and Annie. If Maisie didn’t believe in ghosts, what was she painting? What she wanted to see? I wondered if she’d painted other pictures of Annie over the years.
I stared at the fog painting for a minute or two, trying to will myself into it. But nothing happened. Maybe it only worked once with each painting?
I turned the page.
Ida Doyle 1984. Acrylic on canvas. One of King’s innovative Portraits of a Landscape series where she paired portraits with landscapes. The companion painting (opposite) expresses the inner landscape of the subject.
The painting was of an older woman with graying hair pulled back from her weather-beaten face. Her eyes were tired and sad, and she wore an apron. On the opposite page was a painting of the ruins of a wharf out over the rocks in a small cove. Interesting. The two paintings were connected by color and tone. It was as if I was looking inside the woman’s life and experiencing her innermost heart, which took the form of this abandoned site.
I jerked up. I’d been staring at these paintings for a couple of minutes and there was no sign of me going into them. They didn’t seem to have any connection with Claire. I turned through the next few pages, but all the paintings were from later years, and although they were vivid and compelling, and I longed to linger over them, none of them brought me back to Crooked Head.
I had to find more of Maisie’s paintings.
CLAIRE
I WENT DOWNSTAIRS TO find Maisie standing at the front door, looking out into the rain. The wind had picked up and the fog was starting to lift.
“Did you find out what was making the knocking sound?” I asked.
She shook her head. “There’s no one here.”
“There’s lots of ghost stories with mysterious knocking. Sometimes it’s Death, calling to carry away a dead person’s soul.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Claire,” said Maisie, shutting the door with a slam and going into the kitchen.
“Or sometimes it’s a spirit trying to communicate with the living,” I said, following her. Maisie began unpacking the groceries.
“And I suppose the next thing you’re going to say is that it was Annie, come to tell me not to put the paintings of her in my show!”
“I didn’t say that. How many knocks were there?”
Maisie took a loaf of bread out of her shopping bag and put it on the kitchen table. “Three. Both times there were three sharp knocks.”
“Oh dear,” I said.
She turned on me. “What do you mean, oh dear?”
“When things come in threes in ghost stories that’s always a bad sign.”
She started loading tins of soup and tuna fish and condensed milk into cupboards.
“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation. This old house has lots of strange noises.”
“But they don’t usually come in threes.”
“Claire, if you’re playing some silly trick on me, you can just stop it. I’m not going to be spooked out of showing the paintings. This is just childish.”
“I’m not saying anything, Maisie. You were the one who heard the knocking. I didn’t. And you were sitting right beside me so you know it wasn’t me.”
“It’s all nonsense, Claire. I’m sorry you’re upset about the show but it’s going to happen. And there’s something else I want to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“I ran into Mrs. Matchim at the store and she asked me if we’d been discussing your plans for next year. I assumed she was talking about you going to the high school in Lattice Harbour, but when I brought it up, she got all evasive and said I should ask you. What’s that all about?”
Oh great. Now I had to tell her. I took a deep breath.
“I was talking to Mrs. Matchim about…about…about this idea I had for school.”
“What idea? Don’t you want to go to high school after all? I wondered if you were ready. I mean, it’s a big change—”
“No, it’s not that. I want to go ahead. But…but…”
Her eyes were fixed on me. I felt everything go tight in my chest. I took another deep breath and just said it.
“But I want to go in St. John’s. I want to go to St. Brigid’s and live with Nan.”
“What?” Maisie’s eyes kind of popped. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. It’s a good school. Way better than the one in Lattice Harbour. I’ll get a proper education there, and the teachers are really good, and some of my old friends go there, and I’ll have a better chance of getting a scholarship for university—”
“University?” said Maisie. “You’re not even thirteen yet. You don’t need to worry about university.”
“I need to plan ahead,” I said, and I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her.
“And you want to leave Crooked Head?”
I nodded.
“And live with Nan?”
I nodded again.
“Over my dead body,” she snapped, and stormed out of the room.
ANNIE
AT BREAKFAST THE next morning I was bleary-eyed. The air felt thick, like the fog in Crooked Head, and it was a big effort to move my arm to pick up my toast. Sitting across from me, Dad didn’t look much better. He had woken me up at seven o’clock, saying that it would be a good idea for me to go back to school today. Magda wouldn’t be able to come till the afternoon, and he had to go to the hospital.
It was one of those hot June mornings when the sun starts to bake the pavement as soon as it rises. I was wearing my green shorts with a white tank top and my sandals: the coolest clothes I could find. As I stood at the door with my knapsack on my back, about to leave for school, I stopped for a moment, looking out at our quiet, tree-lined street. Then I turned back to Dad, who was putting on his jacket and checking for his car keys.
I gathered my courage as best I could. “Dad?” I said. He looked up.
“About Mom.” My voice came out in a little squeak. I cleared my throat. “What does it mean that she’s on the ventilator now? Does it mean she’s getting worse?”
He sighed and came and put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s not a good sign, Annie. I don’t want you to worry though. Sometimes these cases are very unpredictable. She could be breathing on her own again in a day or two. They just can’t find any reason for it. It’s puzzling.”
“So she could still…she could still wake up?”
“Oh yes. There’s a very good chance she will. We just have to be patient.” He sounded a bit too hearty to me. Like he didn’t really believe it.
He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You go on to school now, Annie. Magda will be here when you get home. And I’ll call the school if there’s any change.”
I nodded and set off. When I got to Queen Street I stopped. If I turned right and walked about five blocks, I’d be at school. If I turned left and walked two blocks, I’d be at the library.
I turned left.
I had to skulk in the park for about half an hour before the library opened. I sat on a bench under a tree, staring blindly at some bright-red flowers in a formal flower bed. People were walking dogs and pushing strollers. I was hoping that the school would think I was still staying home because of Mom’s accident and wouldn’t start phoning Dad to see where I was. I needed to find more of Maisie’s paintings and get back to Crooked Head.
I was the first person through the door when one of the librarians unlocked it. I went right to the art section where I’d found the Newfoundland book. There were no more books of Newfoundland art there, and when I looked under K for King, there was nothing. I went to the desk where the computer was and looked it up in the catalogue.
Under Maisie King there was one book: Maisie King: A Retrospective. It had “Reference Library” listed beside it.
I knew where the Reference Library was: right downtown. It wasn’t that far from where I went for art lessons. Occasionally Mom and I would go there together on Saturdays after my class. She’d leave me in the art section looking at books of paint
ings while she wandered off to look at displays of rare books or do a bit of research. Mom loved libraries.
I could find my way there on the streetcar and the subway. Easy. As I left the library, I took a quick look around to see if Mrs. Silver was there. She said she came nearly every day. There was no sign of her. Maybe she was volunteering at the hospital today.
It was rush hour and the streetcar was packed. But I wiggled on and struggled through to the back, where there was always a seat. Mom taught me that. We usually went by transit to my art class because it was hard to park downtown. She’d go off and do errands, or go to the library until it was time to pick me up.
I couldn’t stop thinking of Mom. Everywhere I went there was something to remind me of her. How did she get from that unhappy girl at Crooked Head, Newfoundland, to become Professor Jarvis at Glendon College in Toronto? She never told me much about her life before university, meeting Dad and having me. One way or another, I was going to find out what happened. And bring her back.
I closed my eyes and I could see her lying in her bed in the hospital, with her white face and the tube in her mouth. I remembered how it felt when our hearts beat together making a circle of light around us.
“Hold on, Claire,” I said silently. “I’m coming.”
CLAIRE
CROOKED HEAD WAS too small to have a library. We had a Bookmobile. It was a bus fitted up like a library, with shelves full of books and a checkout desk. The Bookmobile came every three weeks and parked in the school parking lot for a few hours. Two sisters, May and June Teasel, drove it around from community to community, up and down all kinds of bad roads and awkward hills, from Conception Bay to Trepassey. It took them three weeks to make the circuit, then they’d start again.
I don’t know what I would have done without that Bookmobile. Every three weeks I was there returning books and getting more. At first I was only allowed four books at a time, but once I made friends with the Teasels, and they realized what a fast reader I was, they let me take out eight. I read Dickens, Mark Twain, Kipling, Wodehouse. And of course, all of L.M. Montgomery’s books, E. Nesbit, Arthur Ransome, Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier. Edgar Allan Poe and whatever ghost stories they could find for me. Nancy Drew and Philomena Faraday, and countless others. I never felt better than when I walked home from school with my eight new books weighing down my knapsack, with all that new reading ahead of me.
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