Ruby shone the flashlight around the room. It seemed to be empty, except for a small trunk on the far wall.
“I’ll get a book,” she said, and bending her head, went back through the door and into the closet.
As her steps faded away into our bedroom, the darkness swallowed me up, and I had that panicky feeling again, like the walls were going to close in on me. I swallowed, and tried to breathe deeply, but then Ruby was back with the light. She propped a book between the door and the wall so it couldn’t close.
Then we took a closer look at the hidden room. The walls were unfinished wood. Above the trunk was a round window, the one we had seen from the other side in the picture. But on the other side of the glass was the back of the clapboard on the outside of the house.
The trunk was dark red, about two feet wide, one foot deep and one foot high. We went and knelt beside it. The hasp was tied shut with a silky green ribbon, tied in a bow.
Ruby pulled one end of the ribbon and it fell away. She opened the trunk.
A strange scent drifted up from inside. Some kind of sweet flowers, dried grass and salt wind. I drew a deep breath, and for a moment I saw a hillside, high above the sea, with a blue sky above and grasses dotted with flowers. Then the scent faded, and the picture was gone.
Ruby was rummaging around in the trunk.
“Nothing here,” she said. “Just a bunch of dried grass and flowers and a book.”
She pulled it out and shone the flashlight on it.
“The Secret Garden?” she said, and opened it.
“Oh, I loved that book,” I said, and peered over her shoulder.
Inside the front cover was written in flowing script, “Molly Duggan.”
“Oh,” said Ruby in a funny voice. “Mom.” She began to turn the pages slowly.
Something fell out. Ruby bent to pick it up. It was a pale-blue envelope. She brought it into the light. Then we gasped, both together, like we were one person.
The envelope was addressed in that same flowing handwriting to Ruby Peddle.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE LETTER
There were several sheets of thin, pale-blue paper folded inside, filled with handwriting. Ruby held the flashlight so we could both read it.
December 9, 1967
My darling Ruby,
I am writing this letter for you on the night before your second birthday. Maybe you will read it, maybe you won’t. It’s hard to imagine you grown up enough to read a letter. You’re such a funny girl, always running, always into something. And so curious and sweet! But I must write it. I will leave this letter in the nursery, and put my trust in fate. After Mother died, Meg and I found this room, and it became our secret. If you’re anything like we were as girls, I have no doubt you will find out about this room and its sad history. I think we were meant to find it and discover its secrets, and perhaps you are too.
Meg and I have thought long and hard about how much you should know, and we have disagreed about it, and debated it for many sleepless nights while I was still in Toronto. And since I’ve been home, we’ve written back and forth and talked on the phone about it, weighing the dangers with the benefits, and we are now finally in agreement.
We will leave it to the Fates. If you find this letter, then you were meant to, and it all begins again. If you find it, Ruby, and I am still with you, come to me and I will tell you the whole long, sad story. But if I am gone, you must try to contact Ruth, and the two of you must work together.
Work together to break the curse. As Meg and I did. Or tried to do. If we are both dead, dying on the same day, then you know we were unsuccessful.
The Finns are cursed. It goes way back to Ireland. Every generation has twin girls, and none of them live to see their children grow up. They all die young, and they both die on the same day.
We found out about the curse at the age of twelve, when our mother died. She and Doll were the exceptions, because Doll was never a Finn, but a Duggan through and through. So Doll lived, but our mother died. And we heard Doll one night, in the week after the funeral, talking to Eldred. She was crying and saying she thought they would be okay, because they weren’t identical twins, and all the others who were cursed were identical. And Eldred said he didn’t know how it worked, but it was a terrible thing, the curse.
And then Doll got really mad and said, “Well, I won’t have it. I won’t have Meg and Molly growing up believing in it. It’s believing in it that makes it happen, it’s superstition. People can talk themselves into anything,” and then she started crying again. But she made Eldred promise never to tell us about the curse.
So that’s when we started searching. We went through the cemetery, looking at the dates, and we realized that every set of twins had died young, on the same day. Except for Doll and our mother.
We knew better than to ask Doll about it. We asked Eldred, but he wouldn’t break his promise to Doll. But he told us that maybe if we went to Slippers Cove, we might find out more. And he told us about the Sight.
Of course, we already knew the story of the flood, and how the twins Fiona and Fenella Finn had been found in the root cellar. But Eldred told us that one of the twins always had the Sight, come down through the generations from Ireland, and that the twin with the Sight could see the Ghost Road and find Slippers Cove, where no one had been since 1902, because it was lost, lost by sea and lost by road and no one could find the way there.
Well, we already knew that Meg had the Sight. She’d had strange experiences, seeing and hearing things I couldn’t, and knowing sometimes when things were going to happen. We kept quiet about it, the way we did about a lot of things. Grown-ups, except for Eldred, would just laugh at us if we talked about ghosts or premonitions, so we didn’t tell anyone. When Eldred said there was always one twin with the Sight, it came as no surprise to us. Or to him.
But he wouldn’t talk about the curse and said it was best left alone. Then he closed up like a clamshell and we couldn’t get anything else out of him. When we told him what we knew about the curse, he just shook his head and said the damage was done. And he said he didn’t know anything more himself.
All we could think of to do was to find Slippers Cove, and see if there was anything there that could help us.
The funny thing was that Meg had seen the Ghost Road for years. She was always saying things like, “I wonder where that road goes,” and then I’d look and I wouldn’t see anything, and I’d think she was imagining it. But that summer, after our mother died, we set out to find it and follow it to Slippers Cove.
It’s getting late now so I can’t write any more. I’m going to put this in the nursery tonight, and hope to write more tomorrow.
In case I don’t get the chance to write more, Meg and I agreed that if you found your way this far, you will probably go farther, the way we did, and you need to know something: you and Ruth aren’t cousins; you’re twins. In the end we thought all we could do to stop the curse was to keep you and Ruth apart, so you’d never know. We hoped that would keep you safe.
I found out I was pregnant after Meg and I moved to Toronto to go to nursing school. I didn’t tell George. We had broken up when I left Newfoundland because he didn’t want me to go to Ontario with Meg. I didn’t know what to do, but for a while I thought I could bring up the baby myself with Meg’s help. I was so mad at George. But then when we found out I was going to have twins, Meg and I started planning.
We thought that if you never knew about the curse and you never knew you were twins, you might be protected from it. And I did want to be with George, because I’ve always loved him, ever since I was a teenager. So after you were about two months old, I told him that I’d had his baby and I wanted to go home to Newfoundland and get married.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, leaving Ruth behind with Meg. But we thought it might break the curse. If you’ve found this letter, Ruby, and Meg and I are both gone, then our plans have come to nothing. This letter is a backup
plan. Because if you know about the curse, then you must fight it. You must break it. You must find a way. To save your lives, and the lives of your future children.
I will write more tomorrow about what we found in Slippers Cove, and maybe that will help you. Know that I love you and Ruth more than I can ever say, and all that Meg and I have done was the best we could think of to try and save you two from this awful thing that has haunted our family for so many years.
Till tomorrow, my sweet girl.
Mommy
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE SECRET
The world seemed to tilt. Ruby and I knelt beside that dusty old trunk clutching the letter as if we were on the edge of a cliff about to slide off.
We stared at each other.
“Twins,” we both whispered at the same time, and then the world lurched upright again. A look of wonder and delight flooded Ruby’s face, and I knew she was seeing the same look on my face.
“Twins,” we both said again at exactly the same time, and began to laugh. Tears started to my eyes and I could see the same in hers.
“I knew there was something,” said Ruby, flicking away her tears. “I knew there was something uncanny about it. The way you look just like me and how we say things at the same time and think things and—”
“We’re sisters!” I said, grinning. “You’re my sister. I can’t believe it. This is so amazing!” And I hugged her. She hugged me back and I felt happier than I ever had before. More than Christmas. More than holidays with Dad. I felt like I was home.
She pulled away and there was more wiping of tears and laughing. And all the time we just kept staring at each other in the dim light from the flashlight, which Ruby had dropped into the trunk. I was looking at her face again, my face, and seeing me in her, looking back. And yet she wasn’t me, not inside. She was different; she was Ruby, but so much connected to me, more than anyone, more than my dad—
“My dad!” I said. “I don’t understand. He’s not my father?”
I pictured him, with his glasses slipping down his nose, peering at some flower, touching it delicately with one finger, turning to talk to me with his eyes alight with enthusiasm. He was my father. He had always been my father. He always would be. But Uncle George? He was also my father?
Ruby had picked up the flashlight and was searching through the box.
“Where’s the other letter? She said she was going to finish telling us the next day.”
The box was empty. Just a small bunch of dried flowers and grasses, tied with a green silk ribbon. I untied it and looked more closely at the flowers. Yellow lady slippers, perfectly preserved—the flowers, not the leaves, which could give you a rash. And tiny, delicate flowers in sets of two on one stem—twinflowers.
I smiled. How perfect. Molly must have loved wildflowers, like I did. Molly. My mother.
I thought of the girl with the blonde hair who had shown me this room, and the smiling face in my photograph. No. Meg was my mother, just like Dad was my father. Molly was my…birth mother. And Uncle George was my birth father. It was like I suddenly had four parents instead of two.
Ruby was looking at the letter again.
“She said she was going to write another letter,” said Ruby. “I don’t understand. Where is it?”
I was carefully gathering the dried flowers and grasses. I put them to my nose and sniffed. They held the same faint, sweet scent that I’d noticed when we opened the trunk.
Lady slippers and twinflowers. I hadn’t seen any on our walk yesterday. Lady slippers need a sheltered spot, some woods or a gully. Twinflowers? I wasn’t so sure about where they grew. I needed to look them up in the book.
“Oh no,” said Ruby, her voice breaking.
I looked up. She was staring at the letter.
“It’s dated December ninth. She said it was my second birthday the next day. That’s when she died, Ruth, December tenth. My birthday.”
Of course. I should have seen that. My mother had died on December 10 too. But not on my birthday. My birthday was December 5. I wondered which date was the true one.
“She never wrote another letter. She died the next day.” Ruby’s eyes were filling with tears again. “We’ll never know what she was going to tell us.”
I put my arm around her.
“Oh yes we will, Ruby. We’re going to figure it out. One way or another, we’re going find the answers.”
“It’s just that…I wanted to hear more from her,” said Ruby. “Getting this letter…she’s talking to me. I want her to keep talking. I don’t want it to stop.”
I hugged her. I knew exactly how she felt. All my life I had wanted something of my mother’s. Something to hold on to. Something more than a picture in a frame and a wisp of a memory. Seeing her ghost was like having her brush up against me for just a moment. This letter was all either of us had of Molly. We needed more.
“I have to go and talk to the witch,” I said suddenly. “She knows. She told me she knows what really happened and she said she would tell me.”
“Nan?” said Ruby, horrified. “Nan knows?”
“Yes. When you ran out the other day, she said I should come back. I think…I think she knows I have the Sight. I think she has it too.”
“But she hates me,” said Ruby. “She won’t tell me anything.”
“I have to go alone,” I said. “She’ll tell me. I know she will.”
“If you say so,” said Ruby doubtfully. Her eyes strayed back to the letter.
“The curse,” she whispered. “Mom said the curse was real. And that they were trying to break it—”
“But they didn’t,” I finished. A shiver went down my spine. “And they died.” Ruby looked back at me and the full horror of what the letter had said finally sunk in.
“We’re next,” said Ruby.
“Yes,” I replied. “Because we’re identical twins, we’re cursed too. If we don’t break it, we’ll die young too.”
“On the same day,” said Ruby. “At the same time. Just like Meg and Molly.”
“And all the others.”
We stared at each other. It was impossible, incredible.
And true.
And with that light of understanding dawning between us, a creeping cold came into the room, that same breathless feeling I’d had before, only this time it was so much stronger, and I saw the fear I felt reflected in Ruby’s eyes.
And then the flashlight went out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
WHISPERING
Ruby made a little squeak and I felt her hand on my arm. I gripped it tightly.
“It’s just the flashlight,” I began. “The batteries must have given out—” but even as I said it, that breathless, smothering feeling was growing, filling the room. Fear seemed to pour into me from the heavy darkness.
“What’s happening?” whispered Ruby, gasping. “I can’t breathe.”
“We gotta get out of here,” I said, pulling Ruby to her feet. “Come on.”
We stumbled in the direction of the secret door, but we must have got turned around, because all we could find was solid walls.
“It’s this way,” said Ruby, yanking on my arm. But there was only wall.
“Did it close again?” said Ruby. “Are we trapped in here?”
A whispering, like a thin breeze, began in the walls around us. A murmuring. Like the voices in the wind in the cemetery and on the ship. I could almost make out the words, but not quite.
“Ruth?” said Ruby. “Did you hear me? I said, did the door close?”
I tried to focus. “No, we would have heard it if it closed,” I said, and pulled her in the direction where I thought the door was. The whispering grew, but this time I felt the opening and we ducked through it and back into our room. Everything was pitch-black.
Ruby let go of my hand. It sounded like she was heading toward the bedside table.
“I’ll just light the candle,” she said.
The whispering followed us.
“What is that?” I said.
A match flared and illuminated Ruby’s white face. She looked terrified.
“What?” she said, lighting the candle. The flame flickered, then steadied.
“That whispering. It started in the secret room.”
Ruby stood very still, listening.
“I don’t hear anything,” she said.
It was getting louder.
“Ruth, Ruth!” she cried, coming toward me with the candle. “What’s wrong? You look all funny—”
I could hear the words now. Someone was hissing in a horrible voice: “By fire! By fire! By fire!”
The candle flame was growing, spreading through the room, and then suddenly everything was on fire, an orange blaze shot up, and around me furniture crackled in a roaring fire. It wasn’t our bedroom anymore. The walls were dark, there were no windows, and a big fireplace filled one side of the room. A table and chairs were overturned on the floor, burning, and a man lay on the floor. I could see his eyes staring. He was dead. The flames engulfed the room, and then it all blinked out.
I was standing in our bedroom and Ruby’s hands were on my shoulders. The candle burned gently behind her on our bedside table. There was no fire.
“Ruth, Ruth, are you okay?”
“I—I don’t know…” I said slowly, and then coughed. My mouth tasted of bitter wood smoke.
“Sit down,” she said, and brought me over to my bed. I obeyed, and sat staring at the candle. She pushed a glass of water into my hands.
“Drink,” she said.
The water was sweet.
“What happened? Your eyes went all funny, like in the barn before. Like you weren’t here anymore. Like you were somewhere else.”
“I was somewhere else.” In a shaky voice, I told her what I had seen and heard.
“Oh, Ruth,” she whispered, when I finished. “It’s the Sight. You’re seeing something that happened.”
“Didn’t you hear the whispering? It was all around us in the secret room. And then it followed us in here, and when you lit the flame…Ruby, am I going crazy?” I gripped her arm. “I feel so weird…” And I started to shake. “I don’t know what’s real anymore or when I’m dreaming or awake…I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”
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