Tara’s smile felt too tight. “Sure. But can I call the hospital first?”
“Of course, my dear. Of course.”
Tara was very aware of May watching her as she went into the sitting room and dialled the rotary phone. She spoke to a new nurse who hadn’t been on the ward for long and couldn’t tell her much about Chris’s condition—only that she hadn’t woken. When Tara put the receiver down, May wrapped an arm around her shoulder in a soft hug and gently led her back to the dining room, where a new board game had been set up on the table.
She tried her hardest to be cheerful during the game. Kyle was no help; he’d withdrawn again, pulling into his own mind until it was a challenge to get even one-word answers out of him. Tara was relieved when the clock hit nine and May told them it was bedtime.
The house seemed to be creaking more than normal. Low, grating groans echoed around them as they climbed the stairs. When Tara met Kyle in the bathroom, she saw spits of rain shining on the window.
“Looks like a storm,” she said.
Kyle scowled as he scrubbed at his teeth with more aggression than they deserved.
“Kyle? You okay?”
He spat his toothpaste out. “Can I stay in your room again?”
“Yeah, of course you can.”
Lightning arced across the sky, blinding them before fading. Kyle shook with the thunder, and Tara squeezed his shoulder to let him know it was okay.
They split up to change, and when Kyle arrived at Tara’s room, he was carrying two books.
“What, not just one, but two?”
He glowered at her defensively. “In case I can’t sleep.”
“Don’t think you’re keeping the light on all night.”
Kyle shuffled his bare feet over the floor, and Tara sighed. “Come on. Our fort’s still set up. Grab a blanket and get warm.”
Tara tried to nap for the following half hour while Kyle read, but the lamplight and the storm made sleep impossible. She finally rolled over and grumbled, “Aren’t you ready for bed?”
“Not while it’s storming.” He sat with his back against the bedframe, the quilt draped over his head and his book propped up against his knees. Tara squinted at him, wondering if it was worth pushing to get the light off. It took her a few seconds to realise Kyle’s eyes weren’t moving. He’s still frightened.
She looked towards the window. Rain lashed the glass, and every flash of lightning highlighted the black forest. She chewed her lip, thinking. “What if we block the window?”
“You don’t like your windows covered.”
“I’ll survive it for one night.” Tara crawled out of their tent and went to the glass. Lightning flashed, and she saw two figures pacing over the lawn. Tara pressed her lips together and leaned forward, trying to see their faces, but as the lightning faded, the figures blended back into the inky darkness.
Is that Peter and May? What are they doing out in the storm?
“Is something wrong?”
She turned back to the fort. Kyle had poked his head through the gap in the quilt, his eyes huge in the lamp’s dim light.
“Nah,” she lied. “Just watching the rain.”
Tara untied the curtains and pulled them together to cover the window. They were made from a thin, gauzy material that didn’t do much to block the view. She sucked on the inside of her cheek as she thought then turned towards the wardrobe and eyeballed its width. “Hey, come and help me move this.”
“Are we allowed?”
“I guess we should be. It’s supposed to be my room now.”
Kyle crawled out of the tent and took one side of the wardrobe. It didn’t hold anything except a couple of Tara’s shirts and jeans, so they scraped it across the floor without too much trouble. Once they’d lined it up in front of the window, they went to its front and shoved it against the glass.
A harsh cracking noise made Tara freeze. She looked down and swore. The base of the wardrobe had broken.
Kyle’s face fell. “We’re going to be in so much trouble.”
“Shh, I might be able to fix it.” Tara got on her hands and knees. One of the boards had come off, and she tried to push it back into pace. It caught against something. She pulled the board back and looked behind it. A small black shape had fallen down to block the board, so she fished it out with two fingers.
“Cool, a book,” Kyle said, and Tara had to muffle a laugh.
“Trust you to say that.” She pushed on the board, felt it lock back into its slot, then picked up the book. It was narrow—barely a pamphlet—but the cover was leather. Dust and decades of grime had stuck to the surface, but when she wiped it clean, she couldn’t see any title.
“Look on the first page.” Kyle had crept up close to her, and his warm breath tickled her neck.
She grimaced against the sensation and opened the book to the title page. In dark-blue ink, “Christine’s Journal - 1985” was written across the page in flowing cursive.
Tara gasped and nudged Kyle. “Mum’s diary. This used to be her room. She probably hid it in the wardrobe and forgot about it.”
He jostled her back. “Then turn the page.”
Tara did. The page was blank. She turned another, then another, and felt her heart sink as she realised the book was blank. “She never wrote in it.”
“Jeeze.” Kyle slumped back as Tara reached the last page. “You’d think she’d at least have one entry. ‘Dear Diary, I just got you this morning. I promise I’m going to write in you every single day.’ That’s what I put in all of mine before forgetting about them forever.”
Tara snickered and flipped back to the first page. A shadow by the spine caught her eye, and she opened the book. A series of ragged edges marked where pages had been torn out.
“Huh.” Kyle bit his thumb. “Maybe she didn’t forget about it, after all. Buy why’d she tear the pages out?”
Tara raised an eyebrow. “Unlike you, I have actually kept journals. And honestly, if there was even a tiny chance they’d be read, I’d burn them.”
“Really? I’d think the whole blogging thing would harden you against that sort of stuff.”
“Oh, don’t worry, plenty of blog posts get deleted, too.” Tara ran a finger along the ragged edges. “It’s a shame she pulled them out. I’d like to know more about what she was like back then.”
“How old would she have been?”
“Uhh…” Tara counted back in her mind. “Sixteen or seventeen, I think.”
“Shame,” Kyle echoed. He kicked away from her and shuffled back into his fort, ostensibly to return to books that had words.
Tara sat cross-legged on the bedroom floor for a few more minutes, leafing through the paper and wishing her mother had left something of herself for her children to find. She’d joked with Kyle about destroying her own journals, but something about the situation struck her as unusual. Why remove every page she’d written on but leave the book behind?
Thunder crackled. The wardrobe did its job to mute the noise and block out the light, so Tara opened the lowest drawer and put the journal inside. Suddenly feeling painfully, achingly lonely, she crept back inside the tent.
9
Unlocked Doors
Her first thought was that her mother had come home early—but her mother had her own key; she never knocked. Maybe a neighbour needed something?
Tara crossed to the front door, passing Kyle stretched out on the couch and reading a book. Her fingers tingled as she reached for the handle. Her mind screamed at her not to open it, that bad things would happen if she did, that there was still time to avert the disaster, but her hand moved on its own.
“Tara Kendall?” The police officer’s hair was bright red and curly and barely contained in a ponytail. She smiled, her teeth very white and dimples appearing in her cheeks, but the expression sent fear rushing into Tara’s stomach.
“What happened?”
Her partner, a tall, flat-faced man, clasped his hands behind his back as he tilted h
is head towards her. “There’s been an accident.”
Tara twitched awake. Cold sweat drenched her and made her shiver. She felt behind herself, found the lamp, and turned it on.
Kyle slept on his side with his knees tucked under his chin. His breathing was slow and even, and Tara watched him as she waited for her pounding heart to slow. The storm had calmed, at least; she could hear rain beating against the house’s side, but the thunder and lightning had stopped, and the wind no longer rattled the building.
Tap… tap… tap…
Tara crept to the quilt tent’s opening and squinted at the door. A noise echoed from the other side, making her imagine fingernails being scraped against the surface. “May?”
The noise continued. Tara glanced at Kyle’s sleeping form a final time then shimmied out of the tent. The night was cold, and she wrapped her arms around herself as her breath plumed from her lips.
Tap… tap… tap…
“May? Peter? Is that you?”
The tapping was accompanied by a soft shuffling. Tara hesitated then forced herself to walk towards the door. Her mind was filled with awful possibilities. The previous year, one of the blogger friends had written about his mother’s stroke; she’d fallen in the bathroom, and mute and unable to walk, she could only knock on the door until someone heard.
Tara’s mind constructed the image of May collapsed on the ground, her body twisted and her eyes locked open as she scrabbled at the door, silently pleading for help. Fear tasted bitter on her tongue, and she swallowed, reaching a hand forward. The air was still, almost suffocatingly close. Her lungs burnt as she inhaled. She touched the cold metal handle, fastened her fingers around it, and turned it.
The tapping noise fell silent as the door gently swung open. Tara stared into the dim hallway but couldn’t see anyone.
A low, grating groan made her gasp. The door next to hers—the locked door—drifted open, its hinges wailing in protest.
Fear clawed its way through Tara’s body. Part of her wanted to wake Kyle so that she could have company, but she knew that would only make it worse. He would be terrified.
“May?” She whispered the words. “Peter? Is that you?”
No reply came from the open door. Tara could barely see inside from where she stood. Thin moonlight painted shimmers of light over some kind of furniture. She thought she saw a rocking chair. Was there someone sitting in it? She squinted and took a step closer.
The door slammed closed. Tara sucked in a gasp and pressed her hand over her mouth. The bang echoed through the old building; a thousand reverberations surrounded Tara before finally fading.
“Is something wrong, my dear?”
Tara turned. May stood at the top of the stairway. Her long grey hair hung in sheets around her shoulders, and her white nightdress appeared grey in the flickering light of her candle. Her face, normally so warm, was flat and filled with dark shadows. Tara’s tongue was too dry to make noise. She mutely shook her head.
May didn’t move for a moment, then a smile softened her expression. “You must have had a bad dream. Storms sometimes do that.” She stepped forward, hand extended, and ushered Tara into her bedroom. “Go back to sleep, and try not to wake your brother.”
“Okay.” Tara’s mind burned with questions. What’s in the room? Why did the door open? Why wasn’t May sleeping? But her head was still filled with echoes from the slamming door, and her tongue felt numb. She let May nudge her back into her room.
“Tara.” May stopped in the doorway, her candle casting strange shadows over her face and brightening her eyes. “Stay in your room until morning. All right?”
She swallowed. “All right.”
“Good night, my dear.”
The door clicked closed, and Tara, certain she wouldn’t be able to sleep, crept back into her tent. Kyle’s eyebrows pulled together as he rolled over in his sleep. As Tara pulled a blanket around herself, she was grateful that she had Kyle to stop her from feeling alone.
10
Cleanup
Tara dozed patchily but woke before Kyle. Cooking sounds coming from downstairs told her May was awake, so she gathered clothes and changed in the bathroom. Thick fog had developed following the rain, and Tara couldn’t see anything except white through the window.
A deeply stuck worry about what May might say about the locked room had dogged Tara through her dreams, but when she entered the kitchen, she was pulled into a brief hug before being shooed towards the table.
“Here,” May said, her smile indulgent. “I cooked a special ‘congratulations on surviving the storm’ breakfast. I hope you like bacon.”
Along with bacon were pancakes, fried eggs, fritters, and platters of fresh fruit. Tara’s mouth watered. “Wow. Thanks.”
Kyle appeared in the doorway, scratching at his messy, mousy hair and blinking in the light. Peter wasn’t at the table, but as Tara sat down, she caught sight of him pacing through the mist at the front of the house.
May took her seat, smoothing her skirts down, and picked up her cup of tea. “Eat while it’s warm, my dears. I’ll cook a cake later. I think we need it today. You must have had uneasy sleeps—the storm passed right over us. It certainly kept me awake.”
Tara glanced at Kyle. He seemed strangely subdued. Maybe he hadn’t slept as well as she’d thought.
Peter passed the window again, his arm full of spindly branches and leaves. Tara tilted her head to the side as she watched. “What’s Peter doing?”
“He’s seeing what’s broken and cleaning up a bit. Some trees came down last night.”
Tara was feeling antsy, and the idea of burning some energy outside appealed much more than it would have if she’d had a computer. “Kyle and I can help. I don’t really know about fixing stuff, but I can haul branches.”
“Oh, you’re sweet.” May laughed. “I’m sure he’d love some company. Just don’t over-exert yourself. And finish your breakfast first.”
“Sure.” Tara shovelled food into her mouth, eating as quickly as she could without being rude, then nudged Kyle. “You ready?”
“Okay.” He blinked twice, his green-grey eyes unusually serious.
Tara brought her plate to the sink then hesitated. “Um, but first—”
May gave an encouraging nod. “Yes, go and phone your mother, my dear. I hope she’s feeling better today.”
Tara hurried into the sitting room. As she lifted the receiver to her ear, she was met with a dull dial tone. She frowned, pressed several buttons without success, and turned back to the kitchen. “The phone’s not working.”
“Perhaps a tree fell over the line. If that’s the case, Peter will have a look at it.”
She nodded then waited by the door for Kyle to zip up his jacket. As they stepped out of the house, tendrils of mist wrapped around them, and Tara blew out a wavering breath. “Icy.”
“Yeah. Tara—”
Kyle broke off as Peter emerged through the fog, dragging a massive branch behind him. He nodded to them, and Tara matched his pace. “Can we help?”
“If you want. Pick up the branches around the house and pile them over there.”
Dozens of felled tree limbs and fractured sticks littered the grass, and Tara filled her arms as she followed Peter towards the pile of debris he’d been building.
“I didn’t realise the storm was so bad.”
“Mm. We don’t get them often, but they do a fair bit of damage when they come.” He dropped his branch and turned back towards the house. “Not too much work this time. A few missing shingles and a cracked window. Could have been worse.”
“Um…” Tara hurried to keep pace with him. “The phones seem to be out, as well. May said a line might have come down.”
“That’s exactly what happened. I’ll see about having it fixed, but it’ll likely be a few days.”
Tara’s heart plunged. Not being able to ask about her mother that morning was painful enough; she wasn’t sure she could cope with days of radio silence.
Peter glanced at her and snorted. “Stop fretting, child. There’s a payphone in town. Ask May nicely enough, and I’m sure she’ll take you.” He bent to pick up a branch thicker than Tara’s arm, slung it over his shoulder, and began dragging it back to the pile. “She adores the two of you.”
“She’s been really kind,” Tara said quickly. “You both have.”
He grunted. Tara, not willing to let the conversation drop, gathered more debris as she kept pace with her grandfather. “I saw you and May outside during the storm last night. Did something happen?”
He sent her a quick glance then shrugged. “It’s important to shutter the windows. Stop them from breaking.”
“Oh.” He was walking quickly, and Tara had to jog to keep up. “You should have woken Kyle and me. We could have helped.”
His laughter was like a hacking bark. “No. May would have had a fit. It was too dangerous for kids.”
Tara pursed her lips. “I’m fifteen.”
“Still a kid,” he insisted. “You don’t get to be considered an adult until you can live on your own.”
Kyle wanted us to stay by ourselves while Mum was in hospital. We could have, too—probably would have, if Mrs. Jennings hadn’t butted in. Tara knew the argument would have no power, so she swallowed it and dumped her branches on the pile. Peter straightened, pulled a cloth from his pocket, and used it to wipe mingling perspiration and condensation from his face. “Wish this mist would clear.”
“Yeah.” Tara frowned through the swirling white soup. She hadn’t seen Kyle in several minutes. Faint unease niggled at her, and as Peter returned to hauling branches, she stepped into the fog.
The landscape was disorienting. When the mist swirled, trees and rocks blurred in and out of focus, creating the impression that they were moving. Tara squinted against the grey as she circled around the house, one hand brushing the stone corner as she passed it.
The vegetable garden was barely visible; only the tall, empty stakes identified it. They poked out of the earth like blackened matchsticks, and a figure paced amongst them.
The Folcroft Ghosts Page 5