The Boy from Tomorrow

by Camille DeAngelis

  This was the real reason Josie held no faith in her mother’s celebrated ability to commune with the dead. She never spoke of Mr. Malcolm. She never spoke of Mr. Clifford. If their mother had a genuine connection to the spirit world, then why was there never any word from their fathers?

  Yet something always compelled Josie to listen for a revelation, shining and definitive, that would prove her right or wrong. There were two doors to the reading room—the front hall door and the back door opening onto the kitchen corridor—and sometimes Josie would steal down the back stairs and put her eye to the keyhole to watch her mother’s performance. The reading room was her stage: black curtains blotting out the daylight, the old-fashioned lantern lit on the mantelpiece, the smell of sandalwood incense, and all the waiting and hoping inside the silence. The bereaved—those who had lost someone—were always an ideal audience.

  Mrs. Clifford would close her eyes. Her pale hands would quiver, her eyelids fluttered, her head lolled to one side, and when she spoke again it was in the booming tones of a gentleman who claimed to have lived in the lost city of Atlantis a hundred thousand years ago, or another who had been a celebrated poet in Renaissance Italy, or someone—something—that had never lived at all.

  But on other occasions it was as if the spirits merely crept up behind her and whispered in her ear. Even when a person traveled three days by train—so that no one in Edwardstown could have heard anything of their private tragedies—Josie’s mother always knew. She told the whereabouts of lost fortunes and the bones of missing children. Of thieves and villains in the sitter’s own family. And for every mourner, out of a hundred different ways a person could die, Mrs. Clifford always named the right one: a nasty tumble down the basement stairs. Arsenic poisoning. Tuberculosis.

  Last week an elderly lady had come wanting to speak with her dead husband. Her face was cold and sharp, as if she’d never laughed once in all her life, but when Mrs. Clifford spoke the nickname of an old sweetheart—lost at sea nearly fifty years before—the old woman crumpled in her chair and sobbed for a good quarter of an hour, and everyone in the house had had to pretend as if they couldn’t hear it.

  Mrs. Clifford was clever enough to fool everyone who asked for a spirit reading, but the message through the talking board couldn’t possibly have been her doing. Josie lay in bed, her confusion compounding itself with each passing moment, while Emily tucked Cassie in. But when their tutor whispered, “Sleep well, dear ones,” the accumulated shadow of strangers, living and not, slithered back into the mouse-holes, and everything felt warm and certain once more. Emily pulled the pins from her hair and it tumbled down her back, gleaming in the moonlight from the side window. Her bedroom adjoined the nursery.

  Cassie sat up in bed, her ancient rag doll cuddled under her chin. “Can we talk to the not-alive boys again tomorrow?”

  “Oh, Cass. You know that’s impossible. Even if it were a good idea—and you know it isn’t—your mother hardly ever goes out to dinner. You mightn’t get another chance for months.”

  Josie propped herself on her elbow. “How do you know they’re boys?”

  “They said so,” Cassie replied.

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Come, now,” said Emily. “Put it out of your heads, or you won’t sleep a wink.”

  A Message on the Windowsill

  4.

  The house yielded another secret, and another. Mrs. Frost handed her son a cardboard envelope, stamped “Fairleigh Brothers Studio” in gold at the bottom right corner, and he lifted the flap.

  The girl smiled up at him as if she’d looked straight through the lens into the future. It was a sad smile, no parting of the lips, but her pale eyes seemed alight with secret knowledge. Her hair was pulled softly away from her face with a ribbon, and it fell, barely tamed, down her shoulders.

  “Her name is Josephine,” Mrs. Frost observed. “She looks like she’s about your age.” As Alec looked at the photograph he was aware of his mother’s eyes on him—amused, maybe, that he found the portrait even more interesting than she’d expected him to. “The contractor gave us two more boxes of bits and pieces to look through, and the photo was right on top,” she went on. “Maybe you can invite Danny over for a little armchair archaeology.”

  Alec noticed the handwritten caption in the bottom right corner—Josephine Clifford, 1915—along with the photographer’s signature.

  “Do you think she lived here?”

  “I hope she did,” Mrs. Frost replied. “She has a kind face.” He handed back the portrait, and his mother bent open the front flap and propped it on the mantelpiece. “I like the idea of her looking over us, like a benevolent spirit.”

  He went upstairs thinking of the girl in the picture. A benevolent spirit. Of course she must be dead by now—she’d be more than a hundred and ten otherwise—and yet it seemed preposterous, somehow, that those eyes could be closed forever.

  * * *

  Danny showed up that afternoon wearing a headlamp with an attached magnifying glass sticking out at an angle, so it bounced up and down as he bounded into the kitchen. “You got stuff for sandwiches, Mrs. Frost? Archaeological work sure makes a guy hungry.”

  Alec’s mother suppressed a smile. “I’ll have something fixed for you by the time you’re finished with your investigations.”

  “Your mom’s a good cook,” Danny said as he and Alec went up the back stairs. “Harold didn’t like that fake cheese on the pizza, but that’s Harold for you.”

  Alec felt himself getting red in the face. His mother had gone all out with that pizza, dough from scratch and caramelized onions and everything. Harold was a jerk.

  “That’s the kind of stuff we eat now,” he said as they climbed the steps to the attic. “My mom says if you’ve got to make two huge life changes, you might as well make three.”

  Danny shrugged. “I thought it tasted delish.”

  “Good, ’cause you’re getting Tofurky in your sandwich,” Alec laughed.

  Alec had carried the two wooden crates of old stuff up the back stairs to the attic, which seemed like a good place to sort through them. He knew from movies that people tended to hide their worst secrets in basements, whereas attics could be bright places where you might discover old and wonderful things. This attic was divided into four rooms, but all of them were empty. If you turned right at the top of the stairs, you’d find an open corridor with three doors along it— these were the old servants’ quarters, and each room was small and spare, with flaking white paint and built-in shelves for the servants’ belongings. The other side of the attic floor was one long room overlooking the street, and this was where the treasures should have been.

  Danny banged the door open and peered hopefully inside. “There are only a few boxes of old stuff,” Alec said. “Better than nothing, I guess.”

  “Some people are just too tidy,” Danny replied as he settled himself cross-legged on the dusty floor. Alec sat down beside him, and they began drawing items out of the boxes one at a time: more moldy books, a Gumby doll, a tiny spinning top all rusted over. Alec wanted to talk about the talking board, but he didn’t want to admit that he hoped it was for real until Danny confessed as much himself.

  Danny positioned the magnifying glass in front of his face (making one eye look enormous) as he read the newspaper aloud, advertisements for “cocaine toothache drops” and the “Venus-Adonis electric normalizer” that made Alec laugh. It felt so good to laugh that he went on for longer than the joke really warranted, which made Danny laugh, and then it seemed for a minute or so that they might never stop.

  It was stiflingly hot up there, and the windows looking out over the street were warped with age. Alec tugged at one sash while Danny, with a weird little smile on his face, wiped away the dust on the next sill over. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  Alec came over to look. Carved into the sill with clumsy strokes
were the words HELLO ALEC.

  “Did you . . .?” he began, but he knew Danny hadn’t done it. Decades’ worth of dust had filled in the gouges in the wood. A strange feeling trickled over him, as if he were being watched. All along he’d felt as if the house were communicating with him, and wasn’t this proof of it?

  “It’s them,” Danny whispered.

  “Who?” Alec asked, even though he knew.

  “The spirits.” There was a conspiratorial gleam in Danny’s eyes. “The ones we talked to through the board.”

  “What if it’s a coincidence?”

  But Alec wanted it not to be a coincidence. He wanted this greeting to be meant for him, not for some other Alec who had lived here years and years ago. From the foot of the attic stairs his mother called that their sandwiches were ready, and Danny gave him a look before darting for the door. Alec paused, passing his fingers one more time over the letters. You knew my name, he thought. Now you have to tell me yours.

  Tea and Gossip

  5.

  When the bell chimed, Josie reminded herself to descend the stairs at her usual pace.

  Mrs. Pike was answering the door as she turned the corner on the first landing. Josie came forward and the housekeeper retreated silently to the kitchen.

  “Hello, Josie!” Mabel took her hand and held it out as if to admire her. “That dress is so becoming. Did you get it in New York?”

  Josie nodded, flushing slightly. “Mother had it made for me.”

  “And that ribbon in your hair—it matches perfectly.”

  Josie’s fingers flew to the crimson bow Emily had tied for her. It felt strange to be complimented by someone like Mabel, who had the blonde curls and lustrous skin of a china doll.

  “Thank you. Shall we go out to the garden?”

  Mabel nodded, but her eyes lingered on the door to the reading room, which was shut, even though Mrs. Clifford never saw clients on a Sunday. Josie could hear her mother at the typewriter in the study directly across the hall. Her guest followed her down the corridor to the back of the house, a trifle reluctantly.

  “Oh, how enchanting!” Mabel said as they passed through the circle hedge, which was cut into quarters by pathways leading from each direction to the fountain and tea table. Sparrows hopped along the fountain rim, dipping their tiny beaks into the water and chirping away to each other. The air was warm and scented with honeysuckle. Josie’s guest was looking all around her—at the fountain, the tree line at the bottom of the yard, the perfectly laid bricks forming the patterned terrace underfoot. “No one can overhear us here,” she said with a smile of satisfaction. “We can see everyone who comes and goes.”

  Someone giggled from behind the hedge. “Not everyone,” Josie sighed.

  Cassie stood up, her favorite doll nestled in the crook of her arm, and pointed at Mabel. “You must be Mabel Foley.”

  “Why, you charming little thing! She looks just like you, Josie. How old are you, dear?”

  “I’m Cassie, and I’m six,” the girl said proudly, and held up her plaything. “And this is Mrs. Gubbins.” The doll had seen much cleaner days. One of her black button eyes had come loose and dangled below the other, giving her the air of a madwoman. “Mrs. Gubbins tells me everybody else’s secrets,” Cassie informed their guest. “Mine are the only ones she keeps.” No one could remember how Mrs. Gubbins had come into Cassie’s possession. There was no one from whom she might have inherited it.

  The little girl skipped around the hedge and went to one of the empty chairs, pulling it with a grating noise across the brick and arranging her doll on the seat.

  “No,” Josie said. “This tea is for Mabel and me. You’re to have yours inside.”

  “But it isn’t fair! Mother won’t let me invite any friends over . . .”

  You don’t have any friends, Josie thought. Neither of them did, really, though she hoped that would change after today.

  “But I never get to have a real tea party!”

  Mabel smiled indulgently. “Come here, Cassie. Will you find somewhere else to play if I give you something, just for you?” Cassie nodded eagerly as Mabel loosened the drawstring of her purse and took out a caramel. “It’s my last one, and it’s all for you.”

  Cassie picked up her filthy doll and skipped away, chewing happily. The screen door slammed, and they waited as Mrs. Pike crossed the lawn and began to set the table. The ham-and-cucumber sandwiches were neatly quartered on the diagonal. There was a plate of fresh scones, crocks of butter and currant jam, and a plate of frosted cakes from the Main Street bakery. Josie sighed with pleasure as Mrs. Pike gathered her tray and went back into the house.

  “I’m so glad we met at the park last week,” her guest began. “You don’t know how often I’ve passed by your house and wondered about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Your mother too, of course. She’s quite the figure of mystery around town.”

  Josie looked at her plate. This again.

  “Is it true what they say, that her ‘spirit control’ was a royal physician on the lost continent of Atlantis?”

  “That’s what she says.” Josie’s mother was a star, cold and remote. This felt like asking her to comment on something she knew nothing about.

  Mabel’s eyes grew wide. “You mean you don’t believe her?”

  “I’m not saying I don’t,” she replied, for it would not do to admit her skepticism openly. “But she isn’t as interesting as she’d have you believe.”

  “You don’t care for your mother?” Mabel seemed amused. “I’m sure you’d get along better if she’d only send you to school. I know I’d go batty if I had to stay cooped up with my mother all day.” The girl gave Josie an odd look—half sympathetic, half appraising. “Sometimes I see your mother around town in Mr. Berringsley’s motorcar, but you’re never with her. You don’t leave the house much, do you?”

  “Mother always says we’re safest at home.”

  “Why shouldn’t you be safe anywhere? There’s no crime to speak of in Edwardstown, and I should know—my uncle is chief of police, and he spends all day reading the newspaper.” As Mabel spoke, Josie picked up the teapot and poured them each a cup. “But I suppose it’s all to do with that horrid thing that happened to you the last time you lived here.”

  Josie shot her a wary glance. “You know about it?”

  “Why, everyone does. My uncle assures me it was an isolated incident. Certainly nothing like it has ever happened before, or since.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice as if someone else might be hiding behind the hedge. “That man—he said your mother had cheated him out of his inheritance, is that right?”

  Josie nodded, sighing inwardly. There was no way out of this conversation but through it.

  “But it was all perfectly legal, so I heard. The man’s uncle—Horace Vandegrift?—he’d already changed his will, long before he actually died. Of perfectly sound mind, they say.”

  Josie didn’t like to think about that time, the summer after Mr. Clifford died, when they were living in the house on the other end of town. First the man came to the door while her mother was with a client. He demanded to see her, and when Mrs. Pike denied him he rushed at her, screaming that Lavinia Clifford had bewitched his uncle and cheated him out of his rightful fortune. Josie watched from the nursery window as the police came and took him away.

  Two months later, they were out for a stroll in the park—she and her mother and Cassie and Cassie’s nurse—and the man, the Vandegrift nephew, sprang out of nowhere. She still remembered the vicious look on his face, and how the knife in his hand glinted in the sunlight. The nurse seized Cassie and ran shrieking across the lawn, and Josie was left alone to watch her mother struggling against the madman. He stabbed her twice, above and below her collarbone, before a policeman could overtake him.

  Other things happened afterward. Waking in th
e middle of the night to the sound of men’s voices in the front yard—a brick flung through the dining-room window at breakfast (she remembered how the broken glass shimmered on the oriental carpet)—and a white dress, soaked in pig’s blood, left in a sodden heap on the welcome mat. It seemed Mark Vandegrift had friends who felt equally entitled and equally cheated.

  All of this was why her mother had taken the dour Scotsman into her employ, and why they no longer lived in the house Cassie’s father had bought for them. As soon as she was well enough, Lavinia Clifford used part of her inheritance from Horace Vandegrift to purchase a house that did not yet exist, and while they waited for it to be built they’d gone to live for a time in Manhattan. There was never any question of leaving Edwardstown, for Mr. Berringsley had always lived there, and he was far too generous a patron.

  Mabel stirred a dollop of milk into her tea and added two lumps of sugar. “Your mother must have told Mr. Vandegrift some extraordinary things.”

  Josie nodded. “She made him even richer.”

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about now, though, have you? Hasn’t the nephew gone to prison?”

  “He’s in prison, yes. For now.”

  Her meaning was lost on her companion. “And your mother—was she as gravely injured as everyone says?”

  “I don’t know. We weren’t allowed to see her.”

  Cassie came skipping back to the tea table. “I’m hungry.” Josie handed her a sandwich and nudged her away again.

  “And what can you tell of her servant? You know what they say about him, don’t you?”

  Josie shook her head. She could see how Mabel relished this—turning the gossip back on its subject, or near enough.

  “They say he’s inhuman. Like some sort of dead thing she’s brought back to life”—here Mabel leaned forward and lowered her voice to an excited whisper—“to do her bidding.”