In the Shadows

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In the Shadows Page 5

by Kiersten White


  shadows of the room moved.

  “Look out!” Thomas cried, and they both jumped back before

  realizing they were seeing a reflection of themselves.

  Trying to calm his racing heart, Arthur stepped forward and

  stared into the mirror.

  “Come see this,” he whispered. Thomas stood next to him and

  his brow furrowed. Another mirror was placed on the wall directly

  opposite so the two reflected each other. Now that they stood

  between them, it created an eternity of Thomas and Arthur in a

  dark flickering tunnel. The candle leeched the color from their

  faces so their features were all contrast — pale cheekbones and

  lips, dark holes for eyes. After the second image repetition, the

  details were hazy enough that the boys could have been each other

  or no one at all.

  “Looks a bit like my vision of hell,” Thomas whispered.

  “At least there’s good company.” Arthur’s reflection gave a

  ghost of a smile, and Thomas’s met it.

  “What’s that?” Thomas leaned forward, touching a pendant

  hanging from the top of the mirror. “A bug?”

  Arthur grabbed Thomas’s hand, surprising the other boy into

  dropping the candle, which sputtered out. The walls of books

  leaned in, leering, and the old familiar breathless terror Arthur

  hadn’t felt since his mother had died now twitched through his

  muscles, begging him to run, run, run into the night, find a new

  town, find a new life, find a new place to hide.

  He had seen a necklace like that before. The green beetle fig-

  ure at the end of the chain was featured in every portrait his father

  collected, was scribbled in the endless, illegible notes Arthur had

  flipped through as a child, was even engraved on an ancient book

  his mother had used to prop up their kitchen table.

  His father had been clutching a necklace just like it the last

  time they’d ever seen him.

  Seeing the necklace here ended all his nights trying to tell

  himself that his father had been crazy, had poisoned his mother’s

  mind, had merely abandoned them instead of meeting a horrible

  fate. The green beetle meant that whatever dark secrets his father

  had chased and been consumed by . . .

  They were real.

  “Arthur!” Thomas hissed.

  “This is a bad place,” Arthur said. The initial shock of dread

  had settled into its old home in his bones now. The necklace wasn’t

  meant for him. He was never meant to see it. Unlike his father, he

  wouldn’t chase any of this. If they got out now, without being

  caught, then maybe he wouldn’t have to run.

  A soft creaking, the step of a light foot on the floor above

  them, had the same effect as a gunshot. Thomas and Arthur ran

  from the room just as they heard Cora scream outside.

  Thomas was through the door first and down the porch steps

  in a single leap. Arthur thought he’d keep going, but without

  pausing, Thomas scooped Cora up from where she had fainted to

  the ground, throwing her over his shoulder and continuing his

  mad race into the night.

  Arthur flew like their shadow down the hill, silent companion

  to Thomas’s crashing footfalls. When they reached the bottom,

  Thomas kept going, never looking back.

  Arthur wanted to do the same, more than anything. He

  wanted to fly and keep flying, to melt into the trees and disappear.

  He wanted to never have seen that beetle, the one his mother,

  weeping, sometimes drew on the skin over his heart, whispering

  about protection. He stopped instead, and turned back toward the

  house.

  There, on the second floor, a silhouette marked their retreat.

  As he watched, a dark hand raised and pressed itself against the

  glass.

  They had been seen.

  New Orleans

  Mardi Gras Parade &

  Aftermath

  March 4, 1924

  eight

  F

  OUR DAYS LATER, THOM HAD YET TO FIGUERE OUT WHAT HE

  HAD SEEN THAT NIGHT. The excitement had taken a toll on

  Charles’s fragile health, and Thom had stayed indoors to

  take care of him, despite the ministrations of all the women about.

  Arthur remained elusive, and Cora never wanted to talk — since

  she had woken up in his arms on that long walk home, she couldn’t

  so much as look at him without blushing. He had to admit he felt

  oddly exposed, too. For all the girls he’d danced with and kissed

  in dark corners, there was something intimate about being there

  the moment Cora had awakened after so much fright.

  Minnie was no help with the puzzle of what spooked Arthur

  so badly. She knew as little as Charles.

  Charles, of course, was not pleased with knowing so little. It

  messed with the way he organized the world. He had to figure out

  how things worked, trace the patterns and connections. He did

  not do well with mysteries, and Thom was worried that it was too

  much strain on a fevered brain.

  “What about Houdini?” Charles said, lying on his stomach on

  his narrow bed, arm draped over the side to trace the wood grains

  in the floor.

  “What about him?” Thom leaned his forehead against the

  window, his mind on the woefully out-of-tune piano downstairs.

  In New York they had a man, blind but with a perfect ear, who

  came round to tune their piano once a month. He’d asked Mrs.

  Johnson, but no one in town knew how. Maybe he could figure it

  out. Without music, everything felt so real, so airless.

  “You remember what Houdini did when we saw him! If he can

  break out of chains, surely this Mary woman could have faked her

  own death. What if she used a harness!”

  Thom raised a dark eyebrow. “Did it look like she had much

  room for a harness beneath what she was wearing?”

  Charles blushed. “Well, but something like that.”

  “And she put on the show knowing we’d be there at that

  exact time?”

  “I don’t know! What else makes sense?”

  Thom’s fingers sighed into a sonata against the rippled glass.

  “Arthur knows something. I wish he’d quit disappearing.”

  “You could always follow him up the side of the house in the

  middle of the night.” Charles looked smug at his brother’s sur-

  prised expression. “There are benefits to being a light sleeper, and

  sharing a room with your dreadful snoring. I’ve seen him, every

  night this week, scaling the wall straight up.”

  “Where is he going?” Thom briefly had an image of Arthur

  sneaking into Cora’s room. It filled him with a flare of jealousy . . .

  but certainly Cora didn’t seem the type to entertain those kinds of

  affections. Especially not if Arthur were related to them, though

  Thom couldn’t see any resemblance, and the story Charles had got-

  ten from Minnie was entirely speculation on her part.

  “He stays up on the roof, I think. Comes back down around

  dawn. Our housemate is a very odd sort of fellow.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Your fingers are driving me insane. Go play the piano. Oh!

  Better yet, go and
find me some fresh fruit. Mrs. Johnson’s pre-

  serves are so sticky sweet they give me a headache. I promise to nap

  like a good invalid while you’re gone, and then I promise to feel so

  well we can finally get out of this blasted room.”

  “Deal.” Mussing his brother’s hair as he walked by, Thom

  tightened his tie and took the stairs two at a time. He passed no

  one on his way out, and was soon in the middle of the main street

  of the town. Overpriced stalls to tempt summer vacationers were

  placed outside along the walkways. Doubtless there was a way to

  buy things for less money, but he didn’t care. If he had to pay twice

  what the fruit was worth, he’d do so happily both for his brother

  and for being outside.

  “And would you like a basket to carry everything in?” The

  woman, mid-thirties but pretty in a solid, healthy way, leaned for-

  ward. “It’ll look so much nicer.”

  Laughing at being conned by a small-town woman, Thom

  went along with it. “Well, of course. Can’t have fruit without the

  basket.” Beaming triumphantly, the woman loaded the basket

  with apples in the bottom and strawberries on top. The strawber-

  ries looked a bit anemic — still not the best time for them — but

  they’d do just fine. And he could give the basket to Mrs. Johnson

  as a gift. Charles was always telling him to pay more attention to

  details when it came to women.

  Something in the low, cheerful hum of sidewalk noise trig-

  gered an instant unease, making his stomach tighten. Looking up

  sharply, Thom handed his money to the woman and tried to iden-

  tify what was bothering him.

  He couldn’t see anything amiss and tried to shrug the sensa-

  tion away. Biting into an apple, he walked slowly along, glancing

  through store windows to see if anything else might make Charles

  happy. He saw some ribbons that reminded him of the ones

  Minnie used to hold her hair back, and wondered if it would be

  too forward to buy some for the sisters.

  He felt guilty for his role in that night, and what a toll it

  had taken on everyone. Some ribbons might be just the thing. . . .

  As he opened the door, a jingling bell matched the tone of

  voice of a woman talking. “. . . just this week. Yes, the cottage on

  the bay. Very lovely. And you can deliver?”

  The instinct to hide was sudden and overpowering. Thom

  ducked behind shelves displaying cookware, trying to place the

  voice and figure out why it affected him so.

  “Of course!” the shop worker answered, his young voice

  stretched and cracked by recent growth. “Anything you need. If

  we don’t carry it, I’ll get it somewhere else.”

  “There’s a good boy,” the woman said, and everything snapped

  into place. He knew her voice. She was the woman who had scared

  his father.

  What was she doing here?

  His father had sent them here the day after talking with her.

  And for her to be here, too? The world was not such a small place

  for something like this to be coincidence.

  Squaring his shoulders and standing straight, Thom came

  around the corner as casually as he could. He’d see who she was

  without her noticing him. Looking up from a set of china, Thom

  found himself facing her.

  She smiled, full red lips not showing her teeth. Her hair was

  dark and pinned back beneath an elegant hat. She stood nearly as

  tall as him, but there was something in her bearing and the way

  she held eye contact that made him feel smaller.

  “Hello,” she said, amusement pulling the corners of her

  mouth. “Shopping?”

  “I — no, I — well, yes,” Thom stuttered.

  She took an apple from his basket, tucking it into her bag.

  “Pick out something nice for your brother,” she said, teeth finally

  showing.

  Thom watched, speechless, as she swept out of the shop

  and away.

  New Orleans, Dusk

  March 4, 1924

  nine

  C

  HARLES SAT NEXT TO THOM, ON THE BANKS OF A STREAM

  HIDDEN BEHIND THE TOWN IN A TALL COPSE OF TREES. It

  was a cold clear singing dream of a creek, and he did not

  miss New York a bit. Cora and Minnie were here, they were his for

  the summer, and he took that gift very seriously.

  As Minnie finished her dramatic reading of The Rime of the

  Ancient Mariner, Cora triumphantly pulled Charles’s straw boat-

  ing hat from the large picnic basket she had packed this morning.

  “Here you are! I had a feeling you’d be wanting it.”

  He took it with a grateful exclamation, and Cora didn’t see the

  secret sly happiness to his thanks. Thom had everything wrong.

  He’d tried to tiptoe around Cora after that horribly wonderful

  night with the witch, but what a girl like her required was to be

  needed. In the six days since that incident, Charles had made a

  game of forgetting things, or requesting things, or otherwise being

  ridiculous. Cora was far more cheerful when she thought she was

  being useful.

  Minnie was harder than Cora, which was why Charles liked

  her more. He’d think he had her figured out, only to lose her

  attention to a far-off gaze or a discontented sigh.

  He missed the challenge of seeing problems and inventing

  ways to fix them. He’d been invaluable to his father last year,

  before he got sick, knowing he’d take over the business and spare

  Thom the agony of a trade his mind was incompatible with. Ah,

  sad fates! If only Charles could find a way around this truncation

  of his own future.

  No matter. All machines wore out with time, and the human

  body was no different. In the meantime, he’d figure out how to

  spin dreamy Minnie closer to him. He was determined to have a

  kiss from her before too long.

  Charles lay back on the picnic blanket, crossing his hands

  behind his head to stare up at the blue sky fighting through the

  lacework of branches. He was quite satisfied with the elements of

  this summer and how they were working together. And when he

  got melancholy, the ocean was constant and endless enough to

  swallow up any notions of human significance.

  The only disappointment was his mystery, Arthur. Charles

  had been primed for more adventure, but Arthur denied them.

  Right now he slept, propped up in the concave curve of a large tree

  trunk, cradled by the roots so that he looked like something out of

  one of Minnie’s fairy stories.

  “Does he ever do anything but nap?” Charles wondered aloud.

  He had hoped Arthur would be dark and brooding like the anti-

  hero of Wuthering Heights, which he was reading at Minnie’s

  insistence. But other than the odd bantering joke with Minnie or

  Cora, he was silent and forgettable.

  Cora’s eyes clouded with worry. “I think he must be ill.”

  “Or cursed!” Minnie watched Arthur, an unreadable play of

  emotions flitting across her features. “We did spy on a witch, after

  all. Maybe she’s stealing his life away, bit by bit, to cheat death and

  sneak
back into the world!”

  Cora looked up sharply, surprising Charles. She usually dis-

  missed Minnie’s stories, but this one seemed to spook her.

  “Or maybe he climbs on top of the roof and sits up there all

  night, every night,” Thom said, raising an eyebrow (another rea-

  son Charles was sure to catch a kiss before him, as smiles sang to

  other lips in a way annoyed eyebrows never could).

  “You’ve seen him?” Minnie glared at Thom, then at Arthur.

  Secrets! A sense of triumph flooded Charles as he found the key to

  Minnie. He’d go out of his way to tell her things he had never told

  anyone, wrap her in confidences until she was his. Doubtless

  before long he would run out of honest secrets and have to start

  inventing them, but when it came to Minnie, he didn’t think she

  would mind.

  “He’s been up there every night since we went out. Question

  is, why?”

  “None of your concern,” Arthur said, startling everyone. He

  hadn’t so much as twitched in an hour, and his eyes were still

  closed.

  Cora abandoned the basket and walked over to kneel next to

  him. Her hand flitted over his forehead, not quite touching him,

  then went to her skirt pocket. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”

  Arthur cracked open one eye and smiled at her. “Usually.”

  “Why the roof, though?” Thom asked.

  “Why not?”

  Minnie stood with a scowl, brushing away the leaves and dirt

  clinging to her skirt. She had refused to sit on the blanket, making

  tiny homes for fairies out of rocks and leaves instead. “The top of

  the roof? And you haven’t invited me?”

  “That’s not safe,” Cora said.

  “But it’s safe for Arthur?”

  “What Arthur does is his business.”

  “But what I do is yours?”

  “Strawberries!” Charles said, standing.

  Minnie’s scowl melted in confusion. “Strawberries?”

  “Do you think they’ll have any today? It’s Market Day down

  by the pier, isn’t it? I’d love some strawberries.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Cora answered, standing to fold the blanket

  and tuck it into the basket. “Market Day is overpriced nonsense

 

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