Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator

by Jennifer Allison

  The music box contained nothing but a faded snapshot of a woman whose slight frame and pale coloring bore a close resemblance to Juliet’s. The woman, squinting into the sun, stood on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Her straight blond hair blew behind her, as did the long silk scarf she wore loosely around her neck. There was something blurry and uncertain about the picture; it was difficult to see the woman’s face clearly enough to determine exactly what she would look like in person.

  “This is the only belonging of hers I’ve ever found in the house,” said Juliet. “I don’t think my dad kept any of her clothes or anything.”

  Gilda realized that she hadn’t seen a single picture of Aunt Melanie displayed anywhere in the house. It was the opposite of her own home in Michigan, where her mother kept the mantel over the fireplace devoted to memories of her father, and even a closet where some of his favorite clothes still hung.

  “I was just a little kid when she died, so I don’t really remember anything about her.” Juliet stared at the faded picture of her aunt. “When I was younger, I used to ask both of my parents lots of questions about Aunt Melanie, but it seemed to make them both so angry—especially my father—that I just stopped asking. It seems like they both want to pretend she never existed in the first place.”

  “Very interesting,” said Gilda, standing up to hold the picture closer to Juliet’s bedside lamp, but not quite sure what she was hoping to see. “But tell me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Why do you think your aunt is haunting you?”

  “I have no idea,” said Juliet. “I just wish she’d stop.”

  Gilda nodded. “Listen,” she said matter-of-factly, “I happen to be a part-time psychic investigator, and I think I could help you communicate with your aunt’s ghost. She’s probably trying to tell you something.”

  “You’re a psychic investigator?”

  “It’s one of my careers,” said Gilda, trying to convey more self-confidence than she actually felt.

  “You have careers?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  “I’ll be fourteen next month.”

  “Oh. I thought you were younger than me, but I guess we’re about the same age. I’ll be fourteen in September.”

  “Well, I assumed you were about twelve,” said Gilda, eyeing Juliet’s skinny arms.

  “Same to you,” said Juliet. “You kind of act younger than your age.”

  “Well, you act bitchier than your age.” Gilda was unable to resist laughing out loud at her own joke. It wasn’t often that she came up with a rude comeback so quickly, and she couldn’t help but feel proud of herself.

  “Excuse me?! You can’t talk to me that way, Gilda. For one thing, nobody even invited you to be here!”

  Gilda didn’t see how this had anything to do with whether or not she could perform a psychic investigation. “Well, do you want me to help you or not?”

  “No, I don’t want you to help me.”

  “Why not?”

  “First of all, I don’t see how you could be a real psychic investigator, and secondly, what makes you think I even want to communicate with Aunt Melanie?! It’s not like I miss her! I never even knew her!”

  “Suit yourself,” said Gilda, feeling miffed. “No wonder you don’t have any friends.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Just guessing,” said Gilda, abruptly walking out of the room and closing the door behind her.

  It was dark in the hallway—so dark that Gilda almost turned around and went right back into Juliet’s room, but instead, she groped her way down the hallway until she reached the doorway to her room. What a strange kid Juliet was: one minute you felt sorry for her, and the next minute you wanted to strangle her.

  Holding her breath and peering through squinted eyes, Gilda stumbled blindly into her bedroom and tripped over the lamp on the floor. “Ow!” she yelled for the second time that night.

  This time, nobody in the house stirred in reply. Gilda fell onto her bed and threw the covers over her head.

  Downstairs, the grandfather clock chimed three times. For some reason Gilda thought of her father. Dad, she whispered to herself, I wish you hadn’t died. But at least you didn’t jump out a window.

  Gilda fell asleep quickly and slept so soundly she didn’t hear the restless sounds of a haunted house awakening in the night—the clinking of antique china and the soft shuffling of footsteps wandering from room to room.

  12

  The Hidden Truth

  Juliet couldn’t sleep. She sat up in bed and wondered if Gilda might be right. Was it possible that Aunt Melanie’s ghost wanted to tell her something?

  Juliet had always tried to ignore the sounds of clinking china, rustling curtains, and footsteps, that she sometimes heard echoing through the house—sounds that kept her awake, leaving her exhausted when it was time to go to school.

  Juliet had learned at an early age that she must never tell anyone about the “haunted house” in which she lived; they would assume she was delusional or merely imagining things.

  But now this strange girl—Gilda—believed that there really was a ghost. Gilda wanted to help her. So why had she pushed her away? True, Gilda was not the sort of girl Juliet would expect to befriend. For one thing, Gilda was terribly blunt—almost rude. Besides, she lived in a very unfashionable Midwestern city and wore bizarre clothes. But Juliet had to admit that she admired something about her. Gilda had a kind of brash courage; she was brave.

  I can see why you don’t have friends, Gilda had said. Juliet was surprised that this comment had stung like a hard slap even though she had decided some time ago not to care about friends.

  She thought about the clique of girls at school that had included her when she first moved to San Francisco. On the surface, they had seemed very much like herself—girls who lived in large houses and had wealthy, divorced parents. But Juliet had let the loose ends of her friendships unravel. She had become an observer rather than a participant in the activities of her peers: she watched as the girls around her passed notes to one another in class; she watched as boys and girls flirted in the hallways. The margins of her notebooks were filled with nervous sketches of her classmates’ faces.

  When did I become such an outsider? Juliet wondered.

  The question led her to a memory—the morning of her eleventh birthday. She had stood next to her father, looking at the sailboats in the marina. The water glistened in the morning sun, and the two of them had just eaten an enormous breakfast of pancakes at Juliet’s favorite restaurant. Juliet knew that she was supposed to feel happy, but instead she felt awkward. There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Well, how’s school going these days?” her father asked.

  It was the second time he had asked the question that morning. “It’s okay,” Juliet replied, feeling more annoyed than usual by the predictable conversation. Aside from the fact that she didn’t want to think about school on her birthday, it often seemed to Juliet that when her father spoke to her, he might as well be addressing a stranger—someone he had just met. True, she preferred her father’s cool politeness to her mother’s forced, pushy cheerfulness, but on her birthday she was painfully aware of the wall of silence between herself and her father—a wall that grew thicker as the two of them stared at the boats bobbing on the sparkling waves.

  “Are you enjoying math?” her father asked with a hopeful note in his voice.

  “I’m only getting a B in math this time.” Juliet knew that her father would be disappointed by this response.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll get an A next semester. That’s one thing your mother and I agree about—the importance of good grades and a great education. You have wonderful opportunities ahead of you if you just work hard and stay competitive.”

  Juliet sighed.

  “If you set goals and stick to them, you’ll really go places.”

  Juliet nodded dutifully. She
knew that her parents had invested a lot of money in her private school and that she was supposed to take her education very seriously—so how could she explain to her father that she didn’t have any goals that excited her?

  “Dad …” Juliet ventured, wanting to change the subject completely and break through some invisible barrier. “Why exactly did you and Mom get divorced?” The question came out spontaneously, like an unexpected belch.

  Mr. Splinter’s eyebrows shot up, but instead of answering he tilted his head and looked thoughtfully at the ground, as if expecting to find an explanation written there. “I suppose your mother and I just grew apart,” he said. “It was such a long time ago.”

  Juliet waited for him to continue.

  “Of course,” he added, “you know that our divorce had nothing to do with us caring about you.”

  “I know.” Juliet wasn’t sure what she had expected to discover. She already knew that her parents had been a mismatched couple, and that her mother had met her new husband at a marketing conference while she was still married to Juliet’s father—an obvious trigger for the separation. Still, Juliet felt she wanted to explore something—some mystery about her family that was buried in the past. The problem was that she didn’t even know where to begin digging.

  “A long time ago—when I was really little and you and Mother lived here in San Francisco together—Aunt Melanie lived in the house with you, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. My mother left the two of us the house when she died, and we decided to stay here.”

  Juliet nodded. “Did Mom and Aunt Melanie get along?”

  Her father turned away from her and started walking along the path. His steps were slow, as if he had to remind the muscles in his legs to work. Juliet followed close behind.

  “Melanie and your mother didn’t always see eye to eye,” Mr. Splinter replied haltingly, “but they certainly got along. We all got along just fine living in the house where Melanie and I grew up. Melanie was my sister, and I cared for her very much!”

  “Okay,” said Juliet, taken aback by her father’s sudden outburst. She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to explain further, but he obviously wished that she would simply change the subject. Normally she would have, but something made her push ahead. “How exactly did Melanie die?” Juliet blurted.

  “Juliet, you know the answer to that question,” said Mr. Splinter impatiently. “You’ve asked me that before.”

  “I guess I forgot the answer.” This was a lie; the truth was that something had always seemed wrong with her father’s answer. It always seemed that he was concealing something.

  “I told you,” Mr. Splinter said. “Your aunt fell.”

  “So she just fell from the window in the tower.”

  “That’s why I’ve always told you not to play there; it’s dangerous.”

  “I still don’t see how a person could just fall out a window.”

  “She—I suppose she was looking out at the bay and she leaned out the window too far. She wasn’t being careful enough.”

  “But why—”

  “Don’t you want to think about more pleasant things on your birthday?”

  Juliet fell silent, but her mind churned with questions. Why didn’t her father want to talk about his sister? What kind of person was her aunt Melanie? What was she doing in the tower on the day she fell to her death?

  “You must be excited about your party!” Mr. Splinter declared brusquely.

  “Sure,” said Juliet, feeling an inexplicable sense of dread.

  Juliet had invited her four “best friends” from school over to celebrate her eleventh birthday with a slumber party: Emily, a freckled, sporty girl who had an infectious laugh; Liz, an extremely outgoing, boy-crazy girl who had bouncy brunette hair and braces on her teeth; Meghan, who was known for her sense of humor; and quiet, refined Jenna. Each of these girls wore her hair in long layers with sunny highlights in shades of platinum or honey. Each wore pale pink nail polish and took ballet lessons and occasionally vacationed with one of their estranged parents in Hawaii.

  “This is an awesome house!” Liz peered at the carved lion’s feet beneath one of the chairs in the parlor. “Can we see the rest of it?”

  Juliet showed her guests the narrow stairways that ascended three floors, the antique velvet furniture, the library stuffed with books, her own pink bedroom with the giant television, the curved windows that offered a view of the foggy bay far below the hill. Although she saw her four friends regularly at school, at ballet lessons, and at their houses for parties, Juliet had never actually invited them to her own house before. This was partly because her father didn’t encourage houseguests and partly because Juliet herself felt uneasy about the prospect of bringing friends into the darkened, aged atmosphere of her home—as if they might discover some truth about her that was better kept hidden.

  “Wow! This place is so cool!” they exclaimed.

  So far, so good, Juliet thought.

  “What’s in that tower behind the house?” Liz asked, peering through an upstairs window at the pointy turret that rose from the house’s rooftop. “Can we go in there and take a look?”

  “It’s locked,” said Juliet, feeling uneasy. “I’m not allowed to go in there.”

  “Why not?”

  “My father says I can’t.” Juliet didn’t feel like explaining to her friends how her aunt Melanie had fallen from the tower, and how it had been locked ever since because her father insisted that it was “too dangerous.” She thought she saw Emily nudge Liz with her elbow, as if trying to shut her up, but perhaps she was just being paranoid.

  “It looks like something out of a fairy tale,” said Liz wistfully.

  “I think it looks kind of spooky,” said Jenna. “I think it would be scary to be alone in this house.”

  “I’d pee my pants if I had to stay here alone!” said Emily.

  Then they all looked at Juliet.

  “Well, I’m not alone here,” she protested. “There’s my father, and the nanny, and the housekeeper comes a couple times a week.”

  “Still,” said Jenna. “It must be kind of spooky sometimes.”

  “Sounds like it’s time for a ghost story,” said Liz.

  The girls sat on their sleeping bags in Juliet’s bedroom. Liz knew lots of ghost stories, and she was the type of girl who stayed calm and unruffled while everyone else grew hysterical. She told the story of Bloody Mary (“if you say her name three times while looking in the mirror, she appears behind you”). Then she told a “true story” about a man who had married a beautiful woman who always refused to remove the red silk scarf that she kept tied around her neck—even on her wedding day and wedding night. Years passed, and still the scarf remained around the woman’s neck. Finally, her husband had had enough of the scarf, and while his wife was asleep, he untied the material that was tightly bound around her throat. When he whisked the scarf away, he watched in horror as her head rolled away from her neck, down the pillow, and onto the floor with a heavy thud.

  Juliet was appalled. “Did that really happen?”

  “Of course it did,” said Liz. “I just told you it happened.”

  “That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard!” Juliet exclaimed.

  The other girls laughed. “You mean you’ve never heard that one before?” said Emily

  Juliet shook her head.

  “You’re an innocent one, Juliet,” said Meghan.

  “That’s why she’s a good audience for ghost stories,” Liz said.

  “Can we talk about something else?” Jenna exclaimed. “It’s so scary talking about this stuff in this house!”

  “What do you mean?” Juliet was growing weary of hearing about how spooky her home supposedly was.

  “It reminds me of a house in a horror movie,” said Jenna.

  “It’s not that scary,” said Juliet defensively.

  “Not to mention the fact that that lady who used to live here killed herself and every
thing,” Liz blurted.

  The girls collectively caught their breath. Suddenly there was not quite enough oxygen in the room. “You mean my aunt. But she didn’t kill herself,” Juliet explained, feeling for some reason as if she had just been punched in the stomach. “She fell.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Liz unsympathetically. “You mean you didn’t know she committed suicide?”

  “It was an accident,” Juliet insisted.

  The other girls stared at the floor.

  “She jumped on purpose,” Liz said. “Everybody knows that. My mother told me; she said she read about it in the newspaper years ago.”

  “I think my own father would know what happened—”

  “Your father is lying if he says it didn’t happen that way. My mom told me she jumped!”

  Juliet felt a bleakness spreading through her body. They were right. Juliet had never fully believed her father’s weak explanation for Aunt Melanie’s death. At some unconscious level, she had known; perhaps that was why she continued to ask her father: How did she die?

  Juliet nevertheless felt an inexplicable desire to defend her father’s version of the story. “My father told me the truth,” she insisted.

  “Why don’t you go ask your father right now if you don’t believe me?” Liz persisted.

  “Liz,” said the ever-diplomatic Emily, “it sounds like Juliet’s dad didn’t want her to know that her aunt committed suicide right here in her house. You can’t blame him.”

  “He told me she fell,” Juliet repeated coldly. She suddenly heard her own voice as a hollow thing—something lost in the internal desert that seemed to be spreading like dry sand in the wind, taking her very far away from her four houseguests.

  “Listen, I can see why he told you it was an accident,” said Liz, backpedaling a bit now that she had been chastised by Emily. “It’s all very freaky.”