“What else could there be?” she implored. “The house is punishing me for trying to kill Madame Arnaud.”
“But you told us there had been other attempts on her life,” said Miles. “You’re the only servant left standing.”
“I wish Austin was here,” she said, wiping away a tear. I nodded. Death wasn’t so lonely for me … my family was alive, and I had Miles. She didn’t have anyone.
“You did a wonderful thing,” Miles said, lifting her chin. “You were a leader for the servants, and you knew exactly what to say to the children.”
Sometimes it seemed like Eleanor might be a better choice for Miles than I was. I felt like I should turn my head away from such intimacy.
“You did,” I said. “You were perfect.”
“Thank you,” she said, blushing. It was so strange to see just a trace of tint on her wan face. We still experienced living emotions, but they were incredibly muted.
“You were perfect, too, miss,” she said. “I can’t even imagine how you went underwater like that, with her down there with you.”
“How can you call me ‘miss’ after all this?” I asked. “You are absolutely my equal. I don’t know if I could have stabbed her while she slept.”
We looked at each other warmly, shyly.
“You would have,” she said quietly. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to my cheek. My sister of sorts. This was the kiss Tabby would never be able to give me.
“Miles didn’t perform too shabbily, either,” I remarked, and laughed . He pretended to be offended for my benefit, staring stonily into the distance.
“No, he was a true champion,” said Eleanor with admiration clear in her voice.
Oh dear. I wondered if Miles and I would ever get close again. I flashed to our night kissing in his bed, and quickly suppressed the memory.
“Let’s go see my sister,” I said huskily. I felt Miles put his hands on my shoulders from behind. I felt as good as it was possible to feel.
Everyone was asleep. Mom and Steven lay in bed in the master bedroom, which I peeked into as we progressed down the hall. Good for them, I thought, asleep to everything, buffered from trouble. They had no idea of the spectacle that had taken place. They had no idea I was with them, stuck on some plateau between life and death. For them was still reserved the pleasure, the absolute climactic swooning contentment, of being able to sleep.
Down the hall, and in the pool of light cast by the night-light, Tabby slumbered, too.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Even a cursory perusal of the microfilm shows how despondent
was the life of servants in the earlier part of the nineteenth
century. An abundance of suicide was reported in the pages of
the Grenshire Argus, a paper first publishing in January of 1715
in the small, rural town of Grenshire. A large manor house
built there in 1721 employed hundreds of servants over the
years, and a strikingly disproportionate number of these took
their own lives. Rather than assume cruel behavior on the part
of the masters there, this paper shall examine “life in service” in
general, and the socioeconomic and psychological reasons
behind this rash of suicide.
—From Trudy Bilkington’s sociology senior thesis,
University of York, 2008
Good things.
Good things were happening.
It turned out some of the books in the Arnaud library were rare editions, and Steven was planning to sell them to antique book collectors. They would bring in an astounding amount of money—Madame Arnaud had in particular spirited out one of Louis XIV’s diaries, and the discovery was going to cause an international sensation. A few years ago, a fake diary had been published, and Steven had an appointment with scholars and conservators to verify this book’s authenticity.
Something else arose out of the pending book sales. Interest in the manor.
The town’s residents had so carefully hushed up the story of Madame Arnaud that the grandiosity of her estate was also lost to the outside world. The National Trust, a group that preserves important homes, was beside itself with the chance to have a basically untouched manor from the early 1700s, with a link to the French royal court, to adopt as a project. So maybe those lawns would again be bright green and the gardens full of flowers.
Miles, Eleanor, and I took regular tours of the manor to be sure Madame Arnaud was gone, and that no left-behind ghosts lingered. “What do you think will happen when your mom and dad find the children’s cemetery?” asked Miles. We were standing in the same spot where, earlier, we’d first discovered that lost, angry boy. I was tempted to correct his use of the word dad, but wondered if it really was the correct term.
Standing just below Miles on the rise, I looked at his solidness against the backdrop of the manor. He looked like the master of the property. He was magisterial, far older than his years somehow. I pictured him in jodhpurs and a long velvet coat, holding a riding crop: England itself.
“I have no idea,” I answered honestly. Would they understand what they saw? Who would give them the village gossip about Madame Arnaud, as Miles had done for me? And would it be delivered with a wink and a grin … or with a believer’s solemnity?
“The unfortunate thing is, the human hunger for scandal and bloodthirst probably means the National Trust can capitalize on the cemetery,” said Miles. “They’ll probably charge extra to access that portion of the grounds.”
I thought how horrible it was that some gleeful sense of the macabre might spur people to visit the children’s cemetery, without any understanding that real people had been hurt. I remembered when, as a child, I’d begged Mom to let me visit the torture chamber area of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum at the San Francisco waterfront… and how I’d burst into tears when I realized that those instruments had actually been used on people.
“Maybe they’ll have a sense of propriety about it,” I said. “Maybe they’ll lock it up and keep people out.”
“Isn’t it wild to think tour buses will roll up, and people will be picnicking here?” Miles asked. “The Versailles of Britain, that’s how they’ll market it.”
“I for one think it shall be pleasant to have happy people here on holiday,” said Eleanor. “It’s too big an estate for just one family without servants.”
I smiled. It was true; the servants were part of what made the house feel full—or at least I imagined that was the case in the manor’s heyday.
“And as for us? Will we be happy?” asked Miles.
I couldn’t answer that question and avoided his eyes. “We need to learn more about the history here,” I said.
“I wish we had your Austin. It seems like there are conflicting pagan forces, and we need to destroy one and enable the other.”
“I used to do that all the time when I was alive,” said Miles nonchalantly. I burst out laughing.
“I shall be happy,” said Eleanor stoutly. “I’ve spent years upon years in my narrow room, guilt filled and lonelier than you can probably imagine. Now I have two wonderful companions to fill my days with pleasant conversation.”
“There could be worse places to be stuck,” I admitted.
I wanted to learn more about the runes I’d seen on the tree in the woodland pool, and figure out how we were all to “graduate.” But I had to shrug. It was nothing I could control. And it would be nice to keep an eye on Tabby, watch her grow into an adult … just like that maid had said she’d done with her favorite brother … and to see my mom and Steven heal from my death.
Which reminded me.
I reclined on the living room carpet next to Tabby, running my fingers through the shag, feeling it massage under my fingernails. How sad that the house offered tactility when I craved the human touch instead: the soft fat-filled cheek of Tabby, my mom’s perfumed neck.
I’d been working on Tabby for a few days now. She reacted to me only in a very min
or way, and unpredictably. Sometimes it seemed she heard me as plainly as if I were still alive; other times, I’d chant until my tongue tired and she heard nothing.
I’d tried various phrases. I’d worked on the word forgive—just in case Mom really thought I blamed her for not listening to me about the fainting—but for some reason Tabby often refused to say it.
I’d tried “Phoebe loves you” and “Phoebe misses you” and all the various permutations of that concept. Tabby was able to get some of them out, but never in the way I’d fantasized about, with Mom and Steven sitting, rapt and attentive, waiting for her next words.
I once got Tabby to say “Phee forgive” and I’d shouted with excitement, but Mom had turned on the garbage disposal at that very minute and no one heard. I dogged Tabby for an hour after that, but she wouldn’t repeat it.
Today I was giving it a rest, just enjoying watching her place animal shapes into a puzzle. They were the wooden kind with pegs attached to the back, so they could be lowered into their carved-out silhouettes. Sometimes she tried to put them in upside down. I marveled that her brain wasn’t yet ready to notice that. It was so very obvious! But I had to give her credit for noticing something that no one else in the house could: me.
Steven was lounging on the floor next to her, lightly helping. His reclined body and mine formed an acute angle, with Tabby in the middle as our bisector. Across the room, Mom was sitting on the sofa knitting. She’d never done that in California—probably a hobby taken up to keep her mind busy, to keep her from thinking about me. It looked like she was making a hat for Tabby, with a deep eggplant-colored yarn. The winter here in Grenshire would be cold.
My mind went back to my own childhood, to the handmade things Mom had created for me. She didn’t knit but she did sew, and for my eighth birthday she’d given me the most beautiful doll. Eglantine.
Eglantine had a muslin face on which Mom had carefully applied oil paints, to make remarkably realistic features. Her eyes were the same green as mine. Even though I didn’t know why at the time, I remembered Mom mixing up the paint, holding the plastic pallet right up to my eyes, adding in more white, more viridian, squeezing her tubes until she got a color that matched. Somehow she even painted a nice blush on the doll’s cheeks, without it looking blatant.
Eglantine’s hair was flax. Mom had sent away for it on the internet, sewed it onto her head, and plaited it in a loose, Germanic braid. Eglantine had a red goose-girl kerchief that was removable.
The clothes were what were so stunning. Making her own patterns, Mom had sewn a little alpine dirndl. The close-fitting burgundy corset had miniature silver buttons that truly worked, through quarter-inch buttonholes. Her loden skirt had a jacquard ribbon trim along the bottom, with a white eyelet apron over it. Eglantine wasn’t a particularly German name, but it’s what I assigned her.
She was my constant companion for two weeks, sitting on my lap in the car, propped up on the bathroom counter to watch me brush my teeth, tucked into bed beside me. Then I lost her.
To this day, I had no idea where she went. It wasn’t the sort of situation where you have a toy before you go somewhere and don’t have it afterward, so you know you lost it there, whether or not you can retrieve it.
No. Somehow although all my waking thoughts had been of Eglantine, I couldn’t nail down when I’d lost track of her.
Mom had been furious. So much labor had gone into the doll, and I’d been careless of something I clearly loved. I’d begged her to make me another, but she claimed it wasn’t possible. I think she wanted to teach me a lesson about guarding valuable things. Ironic.
Now, as I watched her fingers swiftly moving in strange controlled gestures with the knitting needles dully clicking, it occurred to me that someone from another culture might wonder what ritualistic behavior she indulged in, what spells she cast. All the while the purple swath of weave grew magically, row by row.
I wished I could shout out Eglantine’s name, make Mom’s face bloom in memory of the doll who’d been lost nearly a decade ago.
Ohhhhhhhh.
I could, in a manner of speaking.
Holy sweet Jesus. If I could coach Tabby to say Eglantine, there was no doubt Mom would know I was in some way still with them. First of all: three syllables. Not something Tabby would come up with on her own. Secondly: an oddball name. I’d never before or since met another Eglantine. They say monkeys could type randomly for hundreds of years and come up with a Shakespearean play … but I didn’t think Tabby could ever put together those particular syllables on her own.
I was energized by the idea. Eglantine would be the key to open the door of their attention. Once Tabby said that, they’d listen.
I lay for a while, just enjoying the sensation of anticipation. It’s not an emotion very often experienced by the dead. Perhaps called to me by that rawness of sensation, Miles and Eleanor were suddenly there.
“What’s up?” asked Miles.
“I have an idea to get through to Mom and Steven,” I said. I ran through the story quickly. Their faces registered the same warm excitement I felt. Eleanor took a seat next to Mom on the sofa to watch, while Miles became another spoke to our wheel, lying on his stomach, propping his chin up on his palms. Seen from above, we would appear like a child’s drawing of a four-petaled daisy.
I leaned over and kissed Tabby’s hand as it struggled to place a horse in its painted pasture. Of course, I was kissing only where I believed the hand to be, because no skin was there to meet my lips—or rather, no lips to meet her skin. She dropped the puzzle piece.
I grinned.
“Oops, here you go,” said Steven, handing it back to her.
She carefully lowered it, correctly oriented, head to head, and tail to tail with the depression carved out to receive it; and I kissed her hand again. “Phee!” she protested as she again dropped it.
Miles whooped. “She knows it’s you!” he exulted.
Predictably, Steven didn’t seem to react to her shortening of my name. I guess she hadn’t really been talking much before I died, not enough for him to recognize her version of Phoebe.
I savored the moment. I was beginning a process that would change everything. And as frustrating as it was to not have Mom and Steven know I was there, it was frightening to think of how astounded—and possibly disturbed—they’d be when they learned.
And … it would never permit them to let go of me, either, I realized. I wanted the family to heal. I didn’t want to be forgotten, necessarily, but I wanted them to be able to go forward and take pleasure from life.
Should I really do this? Wouldn’t Mom and Steven be better off not knowing their dead teen watched their every movement?
“I didn’t really think this through,” I said. I sat up abruptly. Miles crawled over to me—through Tabby, I noticed with a flinch—and took my hand.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I know this will work,” I said. “And I’m not sure I want it to.”
“Why?”
“I want Mom and Steven to go on to build their life. They moved all the way across the world to get away from the idea of me—and now I’m going to blow their minds by telling them I came along, too?”
“But didn’t you want to tell your mom you didn’t blame her? About not listening to you when you were worried about fainting?” The pressure from his hand was comforting; he continued to squeeze long past the time most people would simply revert to holding.
“Yes, but …”
I struggled to put into words what I felt.
“You want to deliver that message and then essentially disappear,” said Eleanor from the sofa.
“Exactly!” I said.
“Well … you can do that,” said Eleanor.
I thought for a while until I figured out what they meant. I could get Mom to understand I forgave her, then I could say good-bye. She didn’t need to know that I didn’t really leave. I’d be the person who pretends to end a phone call but stays on
the line.
“I see what you’re saying,” I said.
“It’s a good idea,” said Miles.
“Thanks, Eleanor,” I said, smiling across the room at her. I prepared. Poor Mom, knitting away furiously to create something bright to adorn her daughter’s head, and Steven, placidly helping place puzzle pieces with Zen-like patience … their world would never be the same again.
Their questions about death, the afterlife, would be answered by knowing their dead child could communicate with them.
There would be tears, I knew. There would be an outgush of emotion so unedited that it would splinter the souls of each of us here. It would wring me out, exhaust me, make me experience anew the catastrophe of having died.
But I needed to do it. I couldn’t stand the idea that Mom constantly replayed in her mind the discussion that day, when I’d told her I’d fainted and she’d laughed and told me to keep breathing when talking to cute guys.
I let go of Miles’s hand and leaned in closer to Tabby. She did something she’d never done before. She raised her gaze and looked at me.
I felt it deep to my core, a stabbing impact to my very heart, or what was left of it.
“Oh, Tabby,” I whispered.
She continued to level her gaze at me, with those eyes that appeared huge since the face enclosing them was so small. Everything about her was perfect, untouched, curved with the beautiful lines of childhood.
“Phee,” she said.
“Oh thank God, Tabby,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes. “You see me.”
“Here you go,” said Steven. He was trying to hand her a puzzle piece. “What are you staring at?” He waved his hands in front of her face. “Earth to Tabby!”
Mom laughed. “Her teen spaciness begins already. It’s a little early, Tabby!”
Tabby and I looked at each other for long moments, serious and intense as lovers. She sees me.
“Tabby, I need you to say a word for me,” I said, my voice trembling through the tears.
She waited.
“The word is Eglantine. Can you please say it?”
She just looked at me, sadness pouring all over her features. It was so wrong. No one that young should have that adult expression of wretchedness. A toddler’s rounded face should show nothing but glee and wonder at the new things the world showed them on a daily basis.
Haunted Page 17