A muscle spasm struck near the base of her wrist, white-hot pain flaring below the scar tissue. Her fingers twitched, and the bag slipped from her fingers, landing on the pavement with a wet thump.
With a groan, she shifted the umbrella, pressing the handle close to her chest with her forearm. Her traitorous fingers skittered against the bag’s corded handle and once she had it firmly in her grip, the umbrella slid forward. She jolted upright in response, but the umbrella kept its momentum, aided by the wind, and slipped from her grasp. Another gust carried it further away.
She barked a laugh and lurched forward. Rain soaked her scarf, pinning it to her head, and streaked the lenses of her glasses. Footsteps approached. Splashing, squeaking.
A scratchy voice said, “Here, let me help.”
Don’t look at me. Oh, please, don’t look at me.
Clutching the shopping bag tight, she took the umbrella from the stranger’s hand. “Thank you,” she said.
“Most welcome. Take care now.”
Lightning pierced the gloom, turning everything momentarily bright. Alison whirled away, nearly losing the umbrella again in the process. But did he see her face, and she his? And what of the look in his eyes? She hunched her shoulders. It didn’t matter what he saw or didn’t see. He’d helped her, hadn’t he?
The muscles in her wrist relaxed, but her hip continued its steady throb, and when she crossed onto her street, she let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a sob. Her front door loomed close, the promise of warm and dry tucked inside. A tiger of brick, plaster, and glass to swallow her whole—to swallow her away from the world.
The album banged against her leg, and she thought she heard the rustle of pages as she turned the key in the lock. A car door slammed shut, and someone called out her name. Her mother rushed over, shielding her face from the rain with one hand, and Alison laughed, urging her to hurry inside.
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Alison said, setting the shopping bag by the door. “Here, let me take your coat.”
“Don’t worry about me. You need to get out of those clothes. You’re soaking wet. What possessed you to go out in weather like this?”
“Trust me. It wasn’t raining like this when I went out.” Alison peeled off her scarf and gloves. Inside the bag, the photo album beckoned. “But what are you doing here?”
“Don’t you remember? We’re having dinner tonight.”
Alison pressed a hand to her forehead. “That’s right. I totally forgot. I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’m a little early. Now go, change your clothes before you catch a cold.”
“Yes, Mother,” she said in a singsong voice.
Alison took the bag in hand again and headed upstairs with careful steps, her hip protesting every movement, her shoes leaving a trail of water. In her room, with a towel draped across her shoulders, she took the photo album from the bag and set it on the foot of the bed.
“Okay,” she said, flipping the cover open.
So far, so good. She turned to George’s photo, then to the photo of the house, but when she tried to turn that page over, it didn’t budge. She held the album on its side and gave it a shake. “Come on,” she said. She flipped past George to the house, and once again, the page wouldn’t turn. It made no sense. Why would it let Elena look at all the pages and not her? How was that even possible?
She stuck her hand in her pocket, suddenly sure the paper had disappeared, but she found it tucked deep in the corner and breathed a sigh of relief that it was still dry. Holding her lower lip gently between her teeth, she unfolded the paper. It was a newspaper clipping, not nearly as old as she’d expected.
August 4, 1992. Last night, a four-alarm blaze destroyed the house known to local residents as Pennington House. Originally built in the 1800s by one of the state’s wealthiest families, the house had been vacant for years, caught up in a legal battle between distant relatives. Two children, identified as Michelle and Zachary Phillips were rescued from the fire. Arson is suspected.
The rest of the article was lost beyond a neat tear. Above the article, a photo showed a familiar house with curtained windows and gleaming paint. Another photo, obviously taken many years later, revealed peeling paint, boarded-up windows, and a definite lean on the right side of the porch, but there was no picture of the house post-fire.
Alison read the article twice. There was no indication as to whether or not the clipping was from a local newspaper, and the name of the house didn’t sound familiar at all, but both would be easy enough to find out.
Had the house burned down completely? They didn’t always. Sometimes only the inside burned, leaving an almost normal façade, save for the scorch marks leading from the windows and doors and a gaping hole where a roof should be—
“Alison?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to start making the salad, okay?”
“Okay, that’s fine,” Alison called out.
She put the newspaper clipping in her jewelry box, next to a plastic hospital identification bracelet and a tiny diamond
reminder
ring and changed her clothes.
Maybe the album wasn’t magic at all. Maybe it was haunted.
Her mother set down her fork. “Am I crazy, or do you smell flowers, too?”
Alison sniffed, shifting in her seat as her hip gave another twinge of pain. “I don’t smell anything except the food.”
“It smells like roses, lilies, lilacs, and a bunch of others.” She gave a small laugh. “Like we’re standing inside a garden.”
“Nope, no flowers here. Did you wear a new perfume today?”
Her mother’s brow creased. “I’m not wearing any at all. It’s so strange.” She shook her head in dismissal. “So, what prompted you to go out today?”
“It was nothing, really. I went back to that shop, where I got the photo album.”
“That’s twice now, and today, well, it was during the day. You haven’t gone out like that in a long time. I’m proud of you.”
Alison nodded. “I know you are.”
“It’s a big step, I know, and I hope it’s the first of many. You need to get out more often. It’s good for you. I know if you keep trying—”
“Not now, please. Let it go, okay?”
Her mother’s lips pursed as she speared a piece of lettuce with her fork, but she said, “Okay. I’ll let it go.”
Alison toyed with her own salad, her appetite gone. Even if her mother didn’t think she was moving forward fast enough, she was trying. She was.
Alison closed and locked the door behind her mom and brought the photo album back downstairs. When she set it on the coffee table, the room filled with the sweetness of roses. Her mother’s voice echoed in her ears.
Do you smell flowers?
But the scent vanished in the span of a heartbeat, as though it had never been there at all. Alison sank down on the sofa, grimacing at the knot of pain below her hipbone. After she kicked off her slippers, she traced her fingers over the illegible print.
Leave it alone.
She turned past George’s photo and stared at the house, imagining the walls blackened and charred, the wood scorched, the windows shattered, the roof caved in. She tried to turn the page again, but of course it didn’t budge.
She pressed her fingertips to her temple. She should throw it out before her
obsession
fascination with it grew any stronger.
But it took the scars away…or maybe she only thought it did. Maybe everything was in her imagination, another way to keep herself from facing what needed to be faced. That was far more like—
The curtain in the top window of the turret twitched. Alison sat back. Took a deep breath. Craned her neck forward, ignoring the pull of scar tissue.
A face peeked out from behind the lace curtain, a sepia flash of eyes and open mouth. The curtain shifted and the face disappeared. Alison pressed b
oth hands to her mouth.
Not real. It couldn’t be real. It was some sort of trick, that’s all. She needed to leave it alone, to close it up and throw it away.
The face appeared again, a doll-like face with dark eyes and round cheeks—a child, holding the curtain back with one pudgy hand. The little girl lifted her free hand, and opened and closed her fingers. Alison raised her hand and waved back even as the voice shouted alarm inside her head.
“It’s just a little girl,” she muttered, her voice thick at the edges.
A gust of rose-scented wind carried her voice away. The breeze rifled through her hair. An insect flitted across the page, a quick blur of fluttering wings. The little girl giggled a tiny, musical trill. Piano notes played in the background.
A woman’s voice called out, “Mary? Are you in there, Mary?”
Shoes tapped across a wood floor. The little girl peered back over her shoulder and dropped the curtain. The lace edge brushed against the other panel before it fell back into place. The girl’s shadow darted behind the lace, a quick flash of dark against light, two sets of clicking footsteps, one lighter and quicker than the other, faded back into the paper, and then all was still.
A silhouette remained, frozen in time, behind the curtain. A flash of color flew past, the vibrant orange and black of a Monarch butterfly. It spiraled down and lit on the rosebush, its wings slowly opening and closing. Then it melted into the photograph, growing smaller and smaller, its colors changing from brilliant to dull. Alison bent close until her nose was mere inches away. Yes, there on a rosebush, the butterfly sat motionless. She pressed the tip of her finger on the photo, covering the butterfly.
“Come in,” a man’s voice said.
Her finger slipped into the picture, disappearing through both butterfly and rosebush. Then her hand, all the way to her wrist. An unseen hand wrapped around hers, the fingers holding tight with an iron grip, hard enough to crush her bones together. She cried out. The hand tugged, pulling her down. Pulling her in. The world turned shades of brown and ivory. A sensation of spinning, of vertigo turned upside down and inside out. Pain. Heat like the kiss of flames against her skin. She shrieked wordless cries and a child’s merry laughter filled the spaces in-between. A sense of time standing still as she writhed in sepia-colored nothingness, spiraling down into the heat, into the album, into an absolute dark laced with the smell of flowers and tobacco and time.
PART III
DOORWAYS, SCARS, AND GRANDFATHER CLOCKS
She convinces the night nurse, an older woman with dark eyes and a serious mouth, to bring her a mirror. The doctors, including the psychologist whose words always come out laced with condescension, don’t think she’s ready for her reflection. It will be too traumatic at this stage, they say.
The nurse hands her a compact, pats her hand, and leaves her alone. She holds the compact for almost an hour. Dust from the face powder within drifts down onto the bedsheets, the scent mixing with the chemical stink of the hospital room.
She doesn’t pay attention to the smells. I want to see, I want to see, the words run in her head, around and around in circles. She’s felt the scars, oh yes, she has, but she wants—needs—to see. She’s seen most of the scars on her body, she’s traced her fingers along the shifted planes of her face, and she’s seen enough in her mother’s (and his and his and his, she can’t forget his) eyes to know what to expect.
When she looks, she doesn’t scream or cry out. She stares and stares, sure it’s a mistake. This isn’t her face. This is a stranger, a Monstergirl with overlapping bands of pink skin, white skin, shiny and raised, and an empty socket where an eye should be.
She turns her face from side to side, thinks she looks cleaved in two in some grim horror movie fashion. Her left side, the good side, is all pale skin and whole, the right is nightmarish. Monstergirl, she thinks again. She knows she will keep this word to herself—her secret name.
Finally, she cries, silent tears that burn like acid on her ruined face, but she doesn’t scream. She wants to leave this place of needles and scalpels. There’s too much pain here, and if she screams, they might make her stay longer, or worse—they might never let her go.
Now she knows why there won’t be any more weekend trips to the beach, no tipping her face to the sun, no walks down the boardwalk, no teaching, no children, no future—only shadows and dark and hiding.
CHAPTER 8
Alison came to, came awake, curled on her side with her arms arced protectively around her head. Her breath caught in her throat as she stood, holding onto the wall for support. A wall not in her living room, not in her house, not anywhere known, yet a wide, darkened foyer that held a strange familiarity. Beneath her bare feet, the floor was cool.
Surrounded by heavy silence, she brushed dust from her hands and clothes. Inside the album. She’d fallen inside the album.
Not possible.
She covered her eyes and counted to ten, but when she peeked through her fingers, the house remained. The air was heavy and stale but with a slight chill, and a taste of old, forgotten things crept into her mouth. An old chandelier missing half its crystals hung overhead, draped in a veil of cobwebs. Scratched and pitted wood peeked through the dust on the floor. Several arched openings led to other rooms, and a staircase stood off to the right, intricate carvings on the banister and newel post apparent even through the grime. She turned to the main door, a structure nearly as tall as it was wide. The brass doorknob was speckled with spots of dark and gave a loud creak when she turned it, the sound echoing off the walls. She twitched, glanced over both shoulders, and tried it again.
Locked.
Locked in a house? Trapped in a photo album? Was it real or merely a phantom? She pinched her left arm and grimaced at the resulting welt. No dream. She took one hesitant step toward an archway then another. There had to be a way out, a way back out into the real world.
The room, a large rectangular space, was devoid of furniture. Cobwebs clung to the corners of the high ceiling, dark curtains sagged over three windows, and dingy wallpaper adorned the walls. She pushed a curtain aside, dislodging a cloud of dust. Beyond the glass, a fine grey mist floated in the space beyond the glass, and past that, a blur of white with a darker blur in one corner. The mist rushed in to hide both the white and dark; the curtain gave a soft swish as it settled into place.
She left the room on quiet feet, tracing new prints on the floor, and stopped past the archway to shift her weight from side to side. Somewhere along the way from her living room to the house, the ache in her hip had vanished. The scars gave their normal pull and tug, but without stiffness or pain. Curious. She crossed the foyer and passed through another archway. Her limp, unfortunately, persisted.
The room, shaped much the same as the first, had two curtained windows with the same grey outside. Several fist-sized holes riddled the plaster on the far wall, next to a tall, narrow closed door. She tried the handle. Dust came off on her hand, revealing a cut-glass knob, but the door didn’t open.
If her memory served correctly, the door should lead to the turret room. She set her left shoulder against the door while turning the knob. The frame gave a low groan, but still didn’t open.
The rest of the rooms on the first floor contained curtained windows, cobwebs, and quiet. With a tremble in her fingers, she stood at the base of the staircase, unable to see the top third through the gloom.
A sudden sense of being watched washed over her; she whirled around. Held her breath. Willed herself completely still. The skin on the unburned side of her neck prickled. When her chest ached, she exhaled in one long shuddering breath.
She tried the front door again. Still locked.
Of course. It’s locked and you’ll be locked in here forever. Forgotten forever. Here in this house that’s not a house. Forever and ever.
Ignoring the voice, she turned back to the staircase. No one was watching. There was no one else in the house.
No one here but you and I, my dear,
a voice said. (Not Purple this time. The voice was far too deep. Inside her head, but not her voice at all. Neither Red, nor Yellow, nor Purple. A George voice.) You and I and fear, my dear.
A rough, masculine laugh broke through the silence. Not in her head. Not in her head at all. She backed up until her spine pressed against the wall next to the door. From her position, she could see all the entryways leading off the foyer as well as the staircase. She crossed her arms. Counted off seconds in her head. When three minutes had gone by, she stepped away from the wall.
An icy chill swirled around her ankles, curling up to brush against her left arm. Goosebumps pebbled her skin.
Someone is here. Someone here with you.
A kiss of cold swept across her shoulder then her cheek, the suggestion of fingers stroking. She turned her head, moaning low in her throat.
Welcome, the deep voice said. And the chill vanished.
She staggered forward, hands waving in the spaces where the touch had been. Stomach twisting in knots, she stumbled up the stairs, hair falling into her eyes, to a small landing. Another set of stairs led even higher, and when she cleared the last step, she skidded to a stop in a long hallway, the end swathed in murk. A narrow rug with pale swirls on a faded blue background ran down the center, and the tassels bordering each end of the carpet curled in twisted ropes resembling fat slugs. Embossed paper, stained in some spots and peeling in others, covered the walls. Closed doors lined each side, three on the right wall, two on the left, with sconces, their glass frames coated with soot, hanging on the walls between. Lacy cobwebs dangled from the ceiling.
Brushing her hair back from her forehead, she tiptoed to the first door on her right. Locked. She tried the next door on her left. The knob gave a high-pitched squeak, but the door didn’t open. She watched the top of the stairs with her jaw clenched tight as she waited for the echo to fade.
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