The Ghost in the Glass House

by Carey Wallace

  Clare closed the window and laid the tapers in a drawer. She trailed silently around the landing to the boy’s room, where she settled the original key back among the tin men. Then she went out, her hand closed around the new key in her pocket.

  Eight

  “THE OCEAN NEVER STOPS,” Bridget complained, staring out at the dark surf beyond the circle of light from the fire they’d built on the beach. “Not even when the sun goes down. It’s like some awful machine that works all night and doesn’t make anything.”

  “You’ve suffered so much,” Teddy said. “I don’t know how you bear it.”

  Bridget kicked sand in his direction, but her aim was compromised by her extreme slouch in the wooden chair. The sand landed in the fire between them. The flames guttered, then blazed up again. Clare glanced at the dark sea. All along the water’s edge, paper lanterns hung between poles anchored in the wet sand. The poles were about the height of a man, so the party guests had to duck under them to reach the surf, where colored light reflected on the water between washes of white foam.

  A few guests lingered at the shoreline. Most of them milled around linen-covered buffet tables surrounded by another lazy square of lanterns a safe distance from the tide. But the five young people had dragged their chairs down the beach and lit a fire of their own.

  This had been Denby’s idea. He and Bram had only arrived that afternoon, but as usual Denby had already taken charge of everything. For her part, Clare had been glad to leave the general party. Bridget’s father had taken a marked interest in Clare’s mother that evening, and instead of putting him off, Clare’s mother had embarked with him on an intense conversation. When Clare noticed the glances cast in their direction she had begun to loiter nearby, but her presence hadn’t interrupted the discussion, which at that point centered on sea monsters. Her mother played the skeptic, but Bridget’s father insisted there must be creatures so rare or shy that they’d escaped mankind. He was also unwilling to concede the possibility of mermaids. In fact, he said, he’d rather not live in a world where it could be proved that they did not exist. When Bridget had come to collect Clare, Clare hadn’t objected.

  On the other side of the fire, Bram glanced at Denby.

  “We could take them to the cave,” he said.

  Denby raised his eyebrows, considering.

  “What cave?” Bridget asked.

  Bram and Denby’s eyes locked in a silence that conveyed the strong impression that they had learned somewhere to communicate using only their minds. From the time they could walk, the two boys, born less than a month apart, had been almost inseparable, a situation that had become permanent after Bram’s mother died the summer he turned seven. By the time Bram’s father emerged from his fog of grief, he discovered that Denby had established a cot for Bram in his room and claimed a sailor’s hammock in Bram’s room for himself. These arrangements were only minor tactical moves in pursuit of Denby’s main object, which was that the two boys should spend no waking hour apart. Denby’s father, a universally feared sugar magnate whose far-flung business concerns kept him on a seemingly endless circuit of the globe, offered no objection. Neither did Denby’s mother, who smiled so rarely that it was a topic of discussion whether she didn’t think the jokes she heard were funny or didn’t realize they were jokes. And after his wife’s death, Bram’s father found it almost impossible to refuse his son anything.

  From that point on, Bram and Denby were the terror and pride of their set. They smeared cats with jam and tied jewelry to the tails of patient dogs. They eluded their maids on outings and returned home hours later, their faces black with soot, their hair adorned with goose feathers. Because everyone was secretly pleased to see that good blood hadn’t run too thin to boil yet, they became a favorite topic of conversation, their exploits inflated over countless retellings. A stray dog they’d tamed became a lion cub. A tutor who had fallen victim to their pranks was promoted to ambassador from France.

  The boys were both fourteen this summer, two years older than Clare, a year older than Bridget, but a year younger than Teddy. Denby, tall, pale, with angular features and a mop of straight brown hair, was the clear leader. He conceived the plans, but Bram made them happen. Handsome, with clear blue eyes and sandy curls, Bram was always the first to scale a tree or hop a fence, then reached back to pull the others up. He had been Bridget’s crush since the previous summer, but so far her determined flirting had yielded inconclusive results.

  “There’s a cave on the water,” Denby announced. “Under the bluff.”

  Most of the summer homes were built on the rise above the beach. But north along the shore a few of the homes, including the one Denby’s family had taken that summer, sat on a stone cliff that dropped directly into the sea.

  “It’s the biggest cave I’ve ever seen,” Denby went on. “We could only go so far without a torch. But we didn’t find the end of it.”

  Clare wondered what artifacts the local gossip would furnish the cave with by the end of the summer: a trove of pirate treasure, a set of human bones.

  “You couldn’t have found it under the bluff,” Teddy objected. “The surf would break you up on the rocks.”

  “Not when the tide goes out,” Denby countered.

  “The tide’s out now,” said Teddy.

  Suddenly, all three boys were on their feet. Bram gave a whoop and sprinted away across the sand. Teddy stooped to retrieve the box of matches and a branch of driftwood. Denby looked down at Bridget.

  “Well?” he said. “Are you coming?”

  The five of them straggled north along the beach. The back of Clare’s neck prickled, but she didn’t know if it was from fear of the dark ahead, or from fear they’d be caught before they escaped into it. But all five of them passed through the swirl of the party and back into the night without attracting a single comment.

  When they passed the last light, Clare put her hand in her pocket. It closed on the stem of the key she had copied that afternoon. The handle was a clumsy blob, but the key itself was blunt and perfect.

  “There’s no cave,” Teddy called through the darkness. “You’ve brought us out here to sell us to pirates.”

  “They wouldn’t take you,” Denby retorted. “Your father isn’t rich enough.”

  The stripe of beach narrowed. Overhead, the grassy rise gave way to the soaring stone of the bluff. Then the sand ran out at a jumble of large black rocks, still shining with seawater from the tide that had gone out. The surf lapped at the damp sand a dozen feet off.

  Ahead of them, on the last slip of dry beach, Bram kicked off his shoes and socks. Then he struck out across the wet sand, leaving deep prints that filled immediately with dark water, until the bluff seemed to swallow him up.

  When the rest of them reached the spot where Bram had stopped, Teddy and Denby shed their shoes and socks as well. Teddy bent to roll up his trousers while Bridget and Clare fumbled with the clasps of their sandals. Then, single file, they followed in Bram’s tracks across the sand.

  As they came around the curve of the bluff, the dark mouth of a cave yawned in the sheer rock. A long finger of the tide cut a channel into its hidden depths. The dimensions were hard to make out in the dark, but to Clare the cave looked to be about as wide as a three-car garage and high enough for a small sailboat to pass into without dropping its mast. Bram was already clambering over chunks of the bluff that had fallen into the sea, which were so jagged and slick that as the rest of them ventured after Bram, even Teddy hesitated, looking for the next sure step. Clare and Bridget clung together, steadying each other as they crept barefoot from rock to rock. But finally the four of them clustered at the lip of the cave on a narrow ledge that ran along the black water back into darkness.

  “Hang on,” Teddy said as Denby took his first step into the cave. Wood rattled inside cardboard. Then Teddy struck a match to reveal one of his argyle socks wrapped around the stick of driftwood he’d carried down the beach. He held the flame to the blue and white knit. W
hen it caught and flared, a terrible keening wail split the darkness.

  Denby staggered back into the girls. Bridget clutched Clare’s arm. Teddy thrust his torch forward.

  Laughter echoed through the cave. A minute later, Bram emerged from the shadows, his face red with torchlight. “Denby,” he said, breathless with glee. “You should see your face.”

  “You sounded just like a ghost,” Bridget said, and touched Bram’s arm. “I was so scared.”

  “Ghosts aren’t real,” Denby snapped.

  “Yes, they are,” Teddy said. Then he added, with a victor’s scorn: “But they’re dead.”

  To reclaim his authority, Denby snatched the torch from Teddy and set off along the ledge, leaving the rest of them in deepening shadow. Bram sprang after him. Bridget trailed after Bram. Clare followed Bridget, with Teddy bringing up the rear.

  As they pressed deeper into the cave, the low ceiling rose and the channel from the sea opened into a black pond that rocked gently against its stone banks with each pull of the tide. Over it, the rough walls leapt up to a domed ceiling several stories high, like the atrium of a fine hotel. When they reached the far bank of the pond, the ledge gave out onto uneven gray stones.

  Denby hesitated.

  “Go ahead,” Bram said. “We got farther than this before.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Denby said.

  “Yeah,” Bram insisted. “I couldn’t see the sun then, but I can still see the moon from here.”

  Clare glanced back. The glimmer oflight was faint but clear on the ocean beyond.

  “Follow the wall,” Bram said. “That’s all we did last time.”

  Denby set off again, reluctant, his upraised palm brushing the stone beside him. A few steps later, they came to the turn that Bram and Denby must have taken on their earlier visit: a slit in the stone, perhaps half as wide as a proper door. Denby raised the torch, but all it revealed was a cramped passage, not what lay beyond.

  “That’s it!” Bram exclaimed. “Where does it go?” He scrambled over the rocks and craned his neck to see in.

  Not to be outdone, Denby pushed past him into the passage. Bram dove after. Bridget followed Bram. The light of the torch vanished with them.

  Teddy brushed past Clare, but she didn’t budge. She wouldn’t have hesitated on the threshold of the world’s finest hotel, but the cave was so dark and strange that she had no way to guess what might happen next—and so she couldn’t act. She couldn’t bring herself to step through the stone gap. She couldn’t imagine walking back down the ledge to the beach on her own. And if she waited any longer, she’d be left in the dark by the pond, alone.

  In the stone gap, Teddy turned back. He held out his hand. “Clare,” he said.

  She took it and followed him.

  The passage proved to be little more than a few steps, a sharp turn, and a few more steps. Then it let out into a giant cavern. This ceiling was even higher than the one over the pond, festooned with pale tapered columns of rock that dropped down from the ceiling like the pendants of a gigantic chandelier. Below them, the floor was covered with the same weird white stone, but on the ground it lay in overlapping pools, like wax that had dropped from huge candles far above.

  In the center of the room, Denby held the torch up, over his head. Bram was halfway across it, catching up to him. Bridget gamely picked her way along behind them. Clare tried to pull her hand from Teddy’s, but he slid his arm around her waist. His lips found her face just under her eye.

  Clare’s skin crawled as if a spider had just run over it. She yanked free. But inside she had another feeling, as if warm caramel had just spilled in her rib cage.

  At the sound, Denby turned.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “What are you two doing?”

  “Nothing,” Teddy called as he strode forward. “Clare’s just getting used to the dark, is all.”

  Nine

  CLARE GLANCED AROUND THE glass house, looking for a heat shimmer or a stray shadow that might give Jack away.

  No books sailed from the buffet. No trinkets levitated from their place.

  In the few days since she made the wax key, Clare had carried it with her everywhere she went. But this was the first time she had returned to the glass house with it.

  Despite the civilized veneer of Bridget’s mother’s mediums, Clare had never been able to forget the fact that ghosts were dead. They had something to do with the stench of jellyfish rotting on sand, and the glossy coffin that held her father underground. It wasn’t that she was afraid of death. The loss of her father had robbed death of its mystery. She knew how it looked and felt, so it could no longer terrorize her the way it did other children. But she didn’t want to share it.

  Her father had never returned to talk with her the way Jack talked to her. Despite all the times she’d longed for him, she’d never felt her father’s presence as she walked down another lonely hall or tried to will herself to sleep on another speeding train. But death was where she would find him again, a secret world that belonged only to the two of them. It had become a retreat for her: an escape and a shelter like the glass house, where she and her father could watch the world go by with all the sound cut off.

  So to speak with someone from the other side now carried the threat of truth. It reminded her that death was not her private retreat, but everyone’s common fate, vast and unknown, like the moment she’d been left in the cave alone, multiplied forever.

  Several days had passed before her curiosity about Jack had overcome her reluctance to face this. On the way down the hill, she’d steeled herself against fear, and braced for a prank.

  But the thought that she might return to find Jack gone had never crossed her mind.

  She folded her arms against a wave of disappointment. Wind in the leaves above made the shadows on the furniture ripple like shallows at the water’s edge. Jack hadn’t terrified her when he was there, but now that he was gone, the glass house seemed truly haunted by the other world where he belonged.

  She went over to the divan and sat down.

  Before her father’s death, on some Sunday mornings, they had crossed the park their house stood on to visit the small stone church on the other side. Among the garble of ideas Clare collected there, she had gleaned that God knew everything. This made her cautious. Life, as far as she could tell, was an elaborate dance that turned on knowing when to tell the truth and when to keep it secret. In her experience, the truth could only be tolerated sparingly. If people knew what she thought of them, or if she actually did whatever she wanted, she and her mother would never be invited anywhere again. So if God knew all these things, could he be trusted to keep them secret? More important, what must he think? Better, she thought, to give him wide berth, like a man at a party who has had too much to drink and is temporarily capable of saying anything.

  But now, when she wanted an answer that nobody else knew, God’s omniscience suddenly seemed useful. And from what she remembered, God also held sway in the other world that Jack belonged to.

  She bowed her head and tried to remember whether or not to close her eyes. After some hesitation, she left them open.

  Dear God, she began.

  A shower of shreds of turquoise and white paper rained down on her upturned hands.

  Clare’s head snapped up.

  Jack laughed.

  Clare’s hands flew from her lap. The scraps scattered on the carpet. An instant later, she was on her feet, her fists clenched.

  “You look just like an Apache brave!” Jack crowed, his voice delighted.

  His admiration seemed genuine, but Clare didn’t take it as a compliment. She shook off her fighting posture and brought her heels together in a more ladylike stance.

  “No one else ever jumped up to fight like that,” Jack said. “Usually they’re scared out of their wits.”

  “Do you drop paper on everyone?” Clare demanded.

  “No,” Jack said, with a note of pride. “They’re the endpapers from a rom
ance of the sea. It took me days to tear them up.”

  His voice came from overhead, as if he were inside the glass chandelier that hung from the central peak of the roof.

  Clare’s curiosity edged her fury aside. “Can you fly?” she asked the chandelier.

  “Nope,” Jack said cheerfully. The chandelier began to sway. Its crystal drops chimed and clinked. “But it doesn’t hurt when I fall, so I can climb just about anything.”

  Clare scanned the panes of the glass ceiling that sloped over the chandelier. There was nothing a child could have gotten purchase on to reach the fixture. “How did you get up there?” she asked.

  “The joints,” Jack said. “You see? The metal beams.”

  The copper bones of the structure, which had gone green from exposure outdoors, still retained their pink and brown sheen inside the glass house. But they were hardly ideal for climbing: just half-moon tubes, less than a hand’s-breadth wide.

  Jack must have caught the doubt on Clare’s face. “I don’t need much,” he said. “It’s like swimming, when you push yourself from rock to rock.”

  “Like flying,” Clare insisted.

  “No,” Jack said. “Because if I don’t have something to hold on to, I fall.”

  The chandelier gave a loud rattle, and then Jack’s voice drifted down, at about the same speed a feather might drop to the ground. “But I don’t . . . fall . . . very fast.”

  Clare lurched back, out of his trajectory.