The Haunting of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  “Too bad I can’t bring you into my dream with me,” I murmur to Oscar. “Maybe you’d be able to hear that little girl with your supersonic dog hearing. Not that it would do me much good, since I don’t speak dog and you don’t speak English.”

  But then I hear whispers once more, the same muffled sounds from my dream. I pinch myself to make sure I’m still awake.

  “That wasn’t you, was it, Oscar?” I’m only half kidding. If he suddenly opened his mouth and started lecturing me in a tony British accent, I’m not sure I’d even find it surprising anymore.

  The whispers continue.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to the darkness, “I still can’t hear you.”

  I lean over and turn on my bedside light, as though I think that illumination will magically enable me to hear better.

  There, peeking out from beneath my worn copy of Pride and Prejudice, is a stack of the black-and-white pictures I took back in August. (Wowza, that feels like a million years ago now.) I glance at my camera perched on the bookshelves above my bed. I haven’t touched it in ages, just left it all alone, dust collecting in its gears; after the way my mom acted, it felt like all my pictures of this house were worthless.

  I push the book aside and gaze at the photo on top of the stack: a picture of this room that I must have taken from the bed. It’s a picture of my desk and the window, the shelf with my unicorn collection. I could never forget this picture. Because when I took it the unicorn with the broken horn had been in the back, hidden behind the ones that remained intact. But when I saw the developed photograph, there he was again, this time standing front and center.

  “How’d you pull that off?” I say out loud, picking the picture up and studying it. “You know how to work Photoshop or something?” Did her magical ghost powers follow the film to Austin? Did they seep into the machines when the people at Max’s developed it?

  There’s no answer. The nonsense whispers stop.

  In my hands the picture grows cold, like it’s made of ice instead of paper. I almost drop it, but I grip it harder and lean forward to take a closer look. Beads of water sprout along its edges, like someone with wet fingers is holding it alongside me.

  I lean over to place the photo beneath my bedside lamp. The hairs on the back of my neck start to prick and tickle. “What is it? What did you do?”

  There. There are words scrawled across my desk. No, not words. A name. I squint, wishing I had one of those magnifying glasses that fit in the crook of my eye like jewelers wear to inspect diamonds for flaws.

  I stand up and walk across the room and switch on my desk lamp. As I suspected, the words are traced out of water here in 3-D too. The muscles in my mouth finally, finally allow me the tiniest little bit of a smile.

  “Anna Wilde,” I read out loud, and the shelf that holds my unicorns begins to shake. “Anna Wilde,” I say again, louder this time, and Oscar stands up on the bed behind me, wagging his tiny tail back and forth frantically, as though he’d been waiting for me to say that name all this time.

  Maybe he could hear her after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Anna Wilde

  I sit down at my desk and open my laptop. I Google “Anna Wilde,” being careful not to smudge the wet letters on my desk.

  Hundreds of matches come up. This must be the opposite of how Nolan felt when he Googled “luiseach” for the first time.

  I reach for my phone. It’s the middle of the night, but I don’t think Nolan will mind being woken up when I have such a big development to share—

  No. I shake my head. For a second there I forgot that we fought earlier. Forgot that maybe he’ll never want to hear from me again. Forgot that I was the meanest version of myself that I’ve ever been, after he’d never been anything but nice to me.

  Forgot that I’m on my own now.

  I scroll down through the results on my screen. Apparently there’s more than one Anna Wilde in the world. I try to narrow it down. I search again, this time typing the words “Ridgemont, Washington” after Anna’s name. Fewer results come up, but there’s still plenty to choose from.

  I click on a link for the Ridgemont Herald. I blink at the bold headline scrawled across my computer screen: “Man Discovers Drowned Daughter, Dies from Shock.”

  I read that two years ago, a ten-year-old girl named Anna Wilde drowned in the bathtub of her family’s house somewhere in Ridgemont. When her father discovered her lifeless body, he had a heart attack and died on the spot. The man’s wife and girl’s mother, back home from a business trip, discovered their bodies later. A lump rises in my throat as I think about what happened to this poor family, to the little girl who’s been my playmate for months now.

  I turn around and look at my bedroom door, knowing that the bathroom is just outside. I shiver as I remember the sound of the girl—Anna—begging for her life, splashing against someone’s hold.

  I turn back to the article. It says that no foul play was suspected. It was just a terrible accident. A family tragedy. I shake my head. What I heard in the bathroom that night was no accident.

  I scroll down. There is a picture of an empty bathtub. I lean closer to my computer.

  And the lump in my throat shifts. Oh my gosh, I’m going to throw up. Literally.

  I get up so fast that I knock my chair over, and the thump of it hitting the carpet makes Oscar jump off my bed and hide beneath it. I barely make it to the bathroom in time. It’s been hours since I ate anything, so I don’t actually have much in me to throw up. Still, my body manages to empty itself, the muscles in my belly spasming and clenching until everything aches.

  I crouch beside the toilet and rest my head on the cool porcelain. For the first time in months—outside of Nolan’s presence—I’m warm. Not just warm. I’m hot. My face is covered in a sheen of sweat.

  I close my eyes.

  I’ve felt nauseated every time Nolan came too close, but that’s nothing compared to this. With Nolan I could usually swallow my gags, and I never actually threw up. Most of all, with him I could just take a step away and the feeling would subside.

  I wipe my mouth and flush the toilet. I lean over the sink and splash some cold water on my face. When Anna’s ghost was locked in this bathroom, was she reenacting the night of her death? Was she somehow forced to relive it? Just the thought makes me shudder with horror.

  No foul play was suspected. How did the police come to that conclusion? Maybe the police—just like my mother the next day—couldn’t see what I see now.

  I take a deep breath before I step back inside my bedroom. I pull my laptop from my desk and bring it to bed with me, slide under the covers, and prop the computer on my lap. I can hear Oscar’s breath coming from under the bed, steady and comforting.

  I look again.

  In the photos of the bathtub where Anna drowned, there are dozens—no, hundreds—of tiny scratches spread out across the tile. It’s hard to imagine that a young girl could make those marks, but I guess we find hidden stores of strength we never knew we had when we’re fighting for our lives. Anna’s death wasn’t just a terrible accident—a girl left alone too long. Someone held her down. And she struggled with all her might against that hold.

  I think of the sounds I heard in my mother’s bedroom tonight. Not the words, but before that—the way her breath sounded labored, like she was congested somehow. Like her lungs were wet.

  I continue reading. There’s a picture of Anna and one of her father—I imagine the police taking them from the living room fireplace’s mantle, where they’d been displayed for anyone to see. I study Anna’s photo, trying to see whether she resembles the little girl from my dreams. I can make out her dark hair, her pale skin, the eyes that are almost black.

  Tears spring to my eyes. It’s not like I didn’t know she was dead. I mean, she’s a ghost, after all. But somehow, reading all of this—knowing her name, seeing her face—the weight of it feels heavier somehow: a little girl is dead. So is her father.

  I
study his picture. He looks nothing like her; she must resemble her mother. He’s freckled, blond, tan, handsome. He looks like the picture of health. Hardly the person you’d expect to have a heart attack. Perhaps his heart simply broke when he saw his daughter was gone.

  Even though the house is silent, my ears ring with the memory of the little girl in the bathroom, begging for her life behind a locked door.

  According to the article, Anna’s father had been a devoted family man. Friends and neighbors were devastated but not completely surprised that the loss of his daughter destroyed him. He’d been a doting father—never missed a dance recital, coached the softball team, taught her to ride a two-wheeler in their driveway.

  The last paragraph of the article says that Anna’s mother had her daughter and husband cremated.

  Anna’s mother. Who was her mother? My gosh, that poor woman lost everything. Does she have any idea about what really happened to her daughter? I scan the article once more. Brief mentions are sprinkled throughout the article.

  The girl’s mother was out of town on business.

  Her mother had her body cremated.

  She had been married to her husband for fifteen years.

  It’s not until the final sentence that Anna’s mother’s name is revealed: The child’s mother, Victoria Wilde, could not be reached for comment.

  Victoria Wilde?

  As in, I’m Victoria Wilde, let’s make some art, shall we?

  As in All that death, good work, Nolan?

  As in lurking, skulking, spying Victoria Wilde?

  Could it be that Victoria Wilde?

  “Victoria Wilde?” I say out loud, almost as though I expect her to answer. It’s so cold that when I speak, I can see my breath. I hadn’t even noticed the drop in the temperature—maybe I’m getting used to it.

  “Victoria Wilde,” I repeat slowly, concentrating on the way my lips purse on the O and the W. Her name feels heavy in my mouth, a solid, certain thing. I shut the computer and swing my legs off the bed, planting my feet firmly on the floor.

  “Victoria Wilde,” I say once more. Maybe there’s a reason she’s always been nearby, listening, watching. Maybe she knows exactly what went on in her house while she was “out of town on business.”

  Maybe she knows everything.

  She Found Victoria

  I was wondering how long it would take, how much time would pass before Sunshine would confront the strange teacher who’d been eavesdropping on her conversations and discover that she’d found an elder luiseach. I am pleased she put the pieces together herself, without the boy.

  No, not herself—Anna helped her. Anna guided her seamlessly. Anna wants Sunshine to succeed not just for her own sake but for Sunshine’s sake too. Anna cares about her—a human feeling, to be sure, but it’s useful in this instance.

  After all, it is a human feeling—fear that she might lose Katherine forever—that will motivate Sunshine now. Clearly the girl needed to know what was at stake—learning that she was the only creature with the power to save her mother, to save Anna, to help Victoria—in order to accept what she really is.

  Perhaps she has lived among humans too long. If she passes her test, I will help her gain some distance from that. However motivating they might be, human emotions are a weakness. We don’t have room for weakness. Our work is too important. A rift to repair. A future to restore.

  Soon she will learn that there is so much more at risk than the life of one woman, the memory of one little girl.

  Soon she will understand that this test is actually quite small, quite simple, compared to the work she has yet to do. The rift must be addressed. The future of our race must be resolved.

  There is so much work yet to be done.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Victoria Wilde

  I left Mom home alone. I decided it was worth the risk after I looked up Victoria’s address and discovered that she lives only a ten-minute walk from our house. There are a couple of inches of snow on the ground—Nolan was right about snow weather. It fell overnight, and Ridgemont woke to a white almost-Christmas.

  It turns out that ten minutes is a long time when you’re alone with your thoughts. You realize that it’s seven in the morning on Christmas Eve, and you don’t exactly know what your weird teacher’s sleeping habits are. You realize you’re about to pound on practically a stranger’s door and tell her that you know her daughter is dead, and you don’t think her death was an accident, like the police said. You wonder how she’ll react to the fact that you’re not here to comfort her or even offer sympathy. Instead, you’re here because you think her daughter is a spirit caught between two worlds, trapped inside your house.

  You realize that, odds are, this woman is going to slam the door in your face and kick you out of her classroom when school starts again in January.

  Following a map on my phone, I turn onto Ms. Wilde’s street, then immediately decide that I’ve made a big mistake. I don’t mean in seeking out Ms. Wilde, I mean literally I think I made a wrong turn. No way does anyone live on this street. It’s so desolate that it makes our neighborhood look chipper and friendly and crowded.

  There are no houses to be seen here, only trees. Enormous, towering evergreens that make me feel as tiny as an ant. I glance down at my phone; Victoria’s address is number three Pinecone Drive, and the map insists that I’m on Pinecone Drive—there are enough pinecones littered across the ground to justify the name—though there’s no street sign to confirm my location.

  Slowly I walk down the street, and it’s like walking on a path through a forest. The branches are so thick that some of them touch overhead, like I’m walking through a tunnel. Under other circumstances I would probably find this place beautiful; I can’t hear a single car from the nearby streets or see any planes flying overhead. These trees have probably been here, growing tall and strong, for a hundred years or more. But I’m too worried about finding Ms. Wilde’s house to enjoy any of it. Finally I see a driveway on my right. If her house is number three, there ought to be at least a number one and a number two, but there are no other driveways, no other homes peering out from between the trees.

  I turn onto the driveway, and what I see is almost funny. Because Victoria Wilde’s house is, well . . . Victorian. The house itself is narrow, with a set of disproportionately wide stairs that lead to an enormous front porch. The second floor has a big wrap-around terrace, and the third floor—the attic, maybe—is literally a sloped, pointy turret, like the house is a teeny tiny little castle. It looks kind of like a wedding cake, but, surrounded by a dark forest of trees, it doesn’t look the least bit festive. It almost resembles a witch’s cottage, the way it’s set deep in the woods. I swallow as I walk up the driveway—here’s hoping she’s not planning on cooking me or something. I didn’t exactly leave myself a trail of breadcrumbs so I could find my way back home.

  My hand is shaking when I knock on Ms. Wilde’s door. I tell myself that’s the cold—not the nerves—but, seriously, who do I think I’m kidding?

  Ms. Wilde—or Mrs., I guess now—answers quickly, as though she’d been expecting someone to arrive. I don’t have to say anything; she just invites me inside.

  “I’m sorry about the hour—” I begin, but stop myself. Ms. Wilde is fully dressed in her long, flowing, witchy clothes. No pajamas here, but instead a charcoal gray skirt that’s so long it touches the ground around her feet. She’s wearing a black knitted shawl with an open weave so that it looks like it’s made of lace instead of wool over a loose-fitting black top. Another black shawl is wrapped around her neck like a scarf. I suddenly feel very underdressed in my jeans and puffy ski jacket. Her long dark hair hangs like a curtain almost all the way down to her waist. Another time, another place, I’d be jealous of how straight it is. Almost like my mom’s, but much longer and much darker.

  She smiles. Her eyes are dark brown—almost black—just like Anna’s. “Let’s have a seat in the living room.” She leads the way down a hall an
d into a brightly lit room decorated in creams and peaches. The exact opposite of the dark clothes she wears. Is this the house where Anna was killed? This cozy, cheerful home?

  “I’m sorry—were you expecting me?” I say to her back, but she doesn’t answer. There’s something strange about this house, but it takes me a second to put my finger on it.

  Oh my gosh. It’s warm. Not just warm, but bright, as though windows are flooded with sunlight instead of fog and mist.

  “You have a beautiful home,” I say dumbly, because I don’t know how else to begin. The inside looks nothing like the outside. Victoria gestures for me to sit down on a fluffy couch covered in tiny pink flowers. (A pretty kind of pink, by the way. Nothing like the ghastly—that’s right, ghastly, I can’t help it if the perfect word also happens to be a Jane Austen word—pink in my bedroom.)

  “Would you like some tea?” she offers, sitting down in an overstuffed white chair across from me. Between us is an ottoman topped with a tray holding a full tea set. Under other circumstances I’d probably love it; it’s very old fashioned, the kind of set I imagine Elizabeth Bennett sipped her tea from. But I don’t think I can stomach anything right now, not even tea, so I shake my head. Ms. Wilde pours herself a drink.

  “Ms. Wilde,” I begin, but she holds up her hand to stop me.

  “Victoria,” she says. “Please.”

  I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to call my teacher by her first name, but I’m probably not supposed to show up on her doorstep either, so I guess it doesn’t matter. “Okay,” I start again. “Victoria, I need to ask you something.” She raises her eyebrows expectantly. Now more than ever, she looks like a teacher, waiting for her student to ask the right question. But I don’t quite know what to say.

  So instead I look around the room. My eyes land on a stuffed white owl—not stuffed like Dr. Hoo is stuffed, but stuffed like a toy. Other than that, it looks exactly like Dr. Hoo.