The Boy from Tomorrow

by Camille DeAngelis

  Emily smiled. “That is what is called a dry sense of humor. Very British,” she said to Cass, stroking the little girl’s hair and resting the back of her hand on her forehead. “Still warm. You poor dear.”

  It was Sunday, but they returned to the nursery out of habit, and Josie hid the newspaper in the bottom drawer of her desk. Then she drew out a fresh sheet of stationery.

  He Fell 10,000 Feet and

  Landed Safely

  16.

  this is far and away the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me alec—

  “Me too,” he replied, grinning at the empty room. “I just wish I could write you back.”

  i have already begun a second letter—but where shall i hide it?

  “Maybe you could keep them all in one safe place. I can look for them and once I find them I’ll tell you where.”

  what a splendid idea alec—only dont read them all at once—

  “And maybe you could save something else for me, too. Like a time capsule!”

  Time capsules weren’t a thing yet, but Josie promised to leave him a “treasure box,” and on a weekend morning he went hunting for her letters, thinking over the conversations they’d had so far. The board didn’t seem to work like a telephone, since she’d always been there to answer apart from that one time in his room. If their dates always matched, a hundred years to the hour, there would have been times when one found the other absent.

  There were no hidden compartments in his closet. No loose floorboards either. Next, he took the cushion off the window seat, lifted the lid, and pulled out a stack of spare blankets. Now here would be the perfect place to hide something, provided no one else had found it in the intervening years. The compartment was lined in cedar wood, and he ran his fingers along the seams of the smooth red planks. There was a small notch at the edge of one of the planks, where the base of the cupboard met the side. Alec stuck his finger in and pulled, muttering “yessssss!” when the board yielded to his tugging.

  There was a four-inch gap between the bottom of the storage compartment and the floor. He pulled out the wooden panel and laid it on the rug. It didn’t look like there was anything but dead insects and dust bunnies in the hidden space, but he wouldn’t expect her to leave anything so easy to find. He leaned into the chest, dipping his hand into the dark perimeter of the space, his fingertips trailing over splinters and globs of gray dust.

  Finally he felt something soft but firm wedged between the cupboard base and the plank that kept it mounted above the floor, and he pried it free and brought it up into the light. The package was wrapped in oilcloth, and his heart thudded joyfully as he pulled off the covering and read his name on the first envelope in the stack. There were a dozen in all!

  It was a mild sunny day, so rare for November, and he brought the first letter down to the back terrace tucked inside his school copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This letter was longer than the one he’d found in the library, and when he finished it he felt he knew her better than ever. She gave him a scene-by-scene account of the Thanksgiving Day incident, and told how three days later Cass was still quiet and pale and couldn’t eat much; of jolly Dr. Jennings, his English accent and his bizarre conversations with her mother’s “spirit controls”; and of the suffrage rally, and “The Enchanted Head,” and Mrs. Gubbins’s prophecy that she would never marry. Of course it is balderdash, but why did it affect me so? I don’t know if you can understand why it upset me, being a boy, she wrote. He kept all her letters in a shoebox, along with the notebook he used when they communicated—a little archive of his own.

  “I don’t think about growing up or getting married,” he said a few nights later, once he’d told her of the hiding place beneath the window seat. “It’s a long time from now, you know? Plus people get married a lot later now than they used to.”

  i think of it all the time—it is different for us—it is an escape—into an even more difficult circumstance perhaps—but i suppose most women find it a risk worth taking—

  “I wonder why your mother got married,” he mused. “It seems like she didn’t really have to, with a rich patron like Mr. Vandegrift, and then Mr. Berringsley.”

  i cant imagine her falling in love with anybody the way heroines do in novels—i wish i could remember my father—perhaps she was different when he was alive—

  “Hey, you mentioned Dr. Jennings in your letter. I read about him in the archive, too. I was thinking about looking him up on the computer, to see if the spirit was right.”

  i am terribly curious but emily says none of us should know too much about the future—

  “Hold on a second.” He grabbed his mother’s iPad from the kitchen counter and did a Google search for “Henry Jennings.” The first hit was the doctor’s Wikipedia entry. President of the New York branch of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1912-1919. Died 1919, aged 39. “I found him. Do you want to know?”

  no—i mean yes—but dont tell me the date—

  “I don’t know how you’re gonna take this,” he said, “but Baldassare was right.”

  December came, and with it new traditions. Together Alec and his mother collected pine cones and spiky sweetgum seed balls from the bottom of the backyard, spray-painting them gold and silver for Christmas tree decorations. They arranged his grandfather’s antique train set and all the little shops and houses in a circle around the base of the tree, and his mother remarked with satisfaction that sometimes nostalgia really is as nice as it used to be. Grammy Sal drove over from Bridgeport to stay for a weekend, and Alec helped her bake and decorate an army of gingerbread men. They showed up in his lunchbox, so cheerful and perfectly iced that it felt wrong to eat them.

  Some nights he’d read another of Josie’s letters with a flashlight under the blanket. Her whole life was spent inside the four walls of this house, but she never ran out of things to write about: what she’d learned of the places she wanted to visit someday, Stonehenge and Delphi, the Colosseum and the Pyramids; ridiculous things Cass (or Mrs. Gubbins) had said or done; and her memories of the year they’d lived in New York City. Alec shivered to read of a carriage-ride through a slum on the way to Mr. Berringsley’s Wall Street office when an old woman with horrible red sores around her eyes reached into the cab, grabbed Josie’s hand, and offered to tell her fortune.

  She transcribed everything she could remember of the sessions with Dr. Jennings, and wrote that she didn’t know if she believed in a “higher power,” or an endless cycle of death and rebirth, or a lost continent at the bottom of the sea. I think of all the civilizations that have come and gone: they had their gods, just as we have ours. Emily says it is only sensible to question and to doubt.

  His mother said nothing more about the talking board or the impossible letters. He knew she was uneasy, but she had so many other things to worry about right now that he thought she must have filed the whole business under “my son’s overactive imagination.” Sometimes when he thought of Josie he had to wonder if he was making her up, if he’d been so struck by her picture that he’d convinced himself of something that was utterly nuts.

  But Danny believed in all of it, too, he knew the letters were as old as they appeared to be, and Alec took comfort in what Josie said about the sense in doubting. If you questioned your own convictions, you’d end up either smashing them or strengthening them, wouldn’t you? Alec questioned his every day, but the Clifford girls were still there—still here, in a manner of speaking. Talking to them made him happier than he’d been in what felt like forever, and that had to count for something.

  The Pillywinkis

  17.

  Emily always chose the most entertaining bedtime stories, and one of their favorites was She by Sir Henry Rider Haggard. The tale of a priestess in a remote African cave who has waited two lonely millennia for the return of her reincarnated soul mate, Emily knew it was rather grown up for them, but sh
e also knew that the descriptions of “She-who-must-be-obeyed”—the loveliest woman who ever lived—would thrill the girls to their very toenails. Night after night they clung to her as she read, rapt and rapturous, and went on begging for one more chapter until the hall clock tolled midnight. That book had been the highlight of their summer.

  Now Emily returned from a weekend in Manhattan with a gift from her uncle: Ayesha, the sequel to She. With great anticipation the girls set aside their Colored Fairy Books, but it soon became clear, even to Cass, that the sequel lacked the breathless sparkle of the original. Still they paid close attention, as to a dear old chum with whom they no longer had much in common.

  The next morning, as the girls were dressing for breakfast, Mrs. Clifford stormed into the nursery. She held in her hands a hair comb, fashioned out of silver and inlaid with delicate blue and green stones. More than once Lavinia Clifford had declared the pair of combs, another of Mr. Berringsley’s exotic gifts, her most precious possession. Now one of them was broken in two. “Who did this?” she shouted.

  Josie looked to Cass, who had turned the color of a tombstone. Emily appeared in her bedroom doorway, eyebrows raised in alarm.

  Mrs. Clifford flicked a glance between her daughters and cried out in frustration. “Of course it was Cassandra. Who else? You’re always putting your sticky little fingers on things that don’t belong to you.” She brandished the two pieces of the broken comb. “This was an antique. More than a hundred years old. And you broke it and stuffed the pieces in a drawer. Did you think I wouldn’t find them?”

  “I only wanted to see what it would look like in my hair,” Cass whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, you will be, by the time I’m through with you!” Mrs. Clifford turned to Emily. “Miss Jasper, is it too much to ask that you keep your charge occupied with her schoolwork and prevent her causing such mischief?”

  Emily respectfully averted her eyes. “No, ma’am.”

  “See that it does not happen again.” Mrs. Clifford cast a finger at her younger daughter. “Cassandra, come with me.” Cass backed away and huddled in the window seat with her rag doll, as if by removing herself to the furthest corner of the room she could somehow avoid the inevitable. Their mother pointed to the carpet beside her. “Cassandra. Come here.”

  Cassie crumpled into herself and shook her head. Mrs. Clifford strode across the nursery and grasped her by the ear. “No!” Cassie cried, clinging to Mrs. Gubbins as her mother pulled her from the room. “Oh, please, let go! It hurts!”

  Mrs. Clifford dragged her halfway down the front stairs to the landing, where a linen cabinet was built into the wall. The doors were fastened at the top with a simple wooden latch. “This is the place for you, since you have such an interest in other people’s closets!” And she pushed her daughter in among the tidy stacks of linen, fastening the cupboard door behind her.

  Emily followed them down the stairs, her pale hands fluttering like doves in a cage. “Oh, but Mrs. Clifford, isn’t there—”

  “You’ll have no meals today, Cassandra,” Lavinia was saying to the cabinet door. “Not until supper, and if any of you disobey me then she will go without supper as well. No one is to allow her out. Is that understood?”

  “But Mother, what if she has to—”

  “If I cared to hear your opinion, Josephine, I would ask for it.”

  “But Mrs. Clifford, how will I—” Lavinia stormed down the stairs, deaf to Emily’s pleading, and slammed the study door behind her. Emily dropped onto the landing-step and hid her face in her hands. “This is even more dreadful than Thanksgiving dinner.”

  At least she has Mrs. Gubbins to keep her company, Josie thought.

  This particular punishment had befallen poor Cass twice before, both times before Emily had come to live with them. On both occasions Cassie had cried herself to sleep in the darkness of the closet, passing in and out of consciousness throughout the day. When her penance had finally come to an end, Mrs. Pike announced in disgust that the little girl had wet herself.

  On those two terrible days Josie would talk to her sister through the door, or sneak her a biscuit or a drink of water, but it had never occurred to her that she might settle herself on the stairs and read to her, as Emily proposed. Their tutor gathered herself together, went up to her bedroom, and returned with Ayesha. “If you’re to be locked in there all day, then I must give you something to take your mind off your troubles. Cass?”

  Cass sniffled. “Yes, Em?”

  “Can you guess what I have in my hands?”

  A pause. “Is it Ayesha?”

  “Yes, little one.” Josie brought down two footstools from the nursery for them to sit on, and Emily began to read. Leo, the hero, and Horace, Leo’s dearest friend and guardian, had resumed their epic quest to find the faraway place where Leo’s great love, Ayesha, had been reborn. After many months of travel through the Himalayas, they arrived at the gates of an ancient monastery, where they conversed on spiritual matters with a wise old abbot. But they must continue their quest, and it led them through the snowy mountains. “‘Chapter four,’” Emily read. “‘The Avalanche.’”

  “What’s an avanatch?”

  Their tutor turned to address the linen closet door. “It’s called an avalanche, dear. It’s when there’s too much snow on a mountain, and it all comes falling down in a big terrible heap.”

  Merritt appeared at the foot of the stairs. “The child is being punished,” he said in his somber monotone. “What is the meaning of this?”

  Emily drew herself up, clasped the book to her chest, and lifted her chin. “Mrs. Clifford employs me to educate her children,” she said stiffly. “And that education must continue, even if one of my pupils is passing the day shut inside the linen closet.”

  For a moment Merritt regarded her as impassively as ever. Then he turned and went to the study door, and Mrs. Clifford’s voice called, “Come in.”

  Josie sensed her tutor bracing herself for Mrs. Clifford’s appearance, but she did not come, and in a few moments Emily had regained her rhythm. “‘Oh, what a sight was that! On from the crest of the precipitous slopes above, two miles and more away, it came, a living thing, rolling, sliding, gliding; piling itself in long, leaping waves, hollowing itself into cavernous valleys, like a tempest-driven sea, whilst above its surface hung a powdery cloud of frozen spray . . .’”

  “I can see it, Emily!” Cassie exclaimed. “When I close my eyes I can see the avanatch!”

  The day wore on. Josie knit while Emily read, and Josie read while Emily darned a stocking. Cass kept up her barrage of questions, and Emily answered every one. When the rich scent of beef stew wafted upstairs and Mrs. Pike rang the bell for luncheon, the two girls glanced at each other and were resolved. Josie continued to read. Mrs. Clifford appeared at the foot of the stairs, watching and listening, but she did not interrupt them. When one of their stomachs growled they smiled grimly to each other and continued on.

  Leo and Horace fell from a cliff and landed in an icy river where they were rescued from drowning by a beautiful and mysterious woman who carried herself like royalty. The queen—for queen she was—made love to Leo at every opportunity. “Don’t listen to her, Leo,” Cassie piped up. “She’s a witch.”

  Emily let the book fall closed with her finger marking the place. “Why would you use that word, dear?”

  “Mrs. Gubbins says ‘sorceress’ is just a fancy word for ‘witch.’”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  “But she says you shouldn’t use words like that when you don’t really mean them. Sometimes there are bad men and if you don’t do as you’re told, they’ll stick your fingers in the pillywinkis.”

  “What in heaven’s name is a pillywinkis?” asked Josie.

  She had no doubt her sister was shrugging in the darkness. “She hasn’t told me yet.”

  “Why don’
t you ask her?” said Emily, disregarding Josie’s incredulous look.

  The little girl paused. “She says this is a relatively civilized age we are living in, and so she trusts we shall never know.”

  That night Josie felt the pull of the talking board, but she did not yield to it. Cass had been allowed out for supper, but their mother’s mood had scarcely improved, and a midnight chat with her friend from the future would have been even more imprudent than usual. The following night she went down, and the planchette took off as soon as she touched it.

  i have my first appointment with the doctor tomorrow and im kind of nervous—

  “Why?” Josie leaned forward, as if she could communicate her concern without words. “Are you ill?”

  not that kind of doctor—im going to a psychiatrist—you know what that is?

  “A doctor for the mind,” she said.

  yup exactly—i havent told you this before but my parents are getting divorced—

  I haven’t seen my dad in two months. She’d been meaning to ask if he was employed away from home. “Oh,” Josie said softly. “I’m so very sorry to hear that, Alec.”

  thanks josie—i guess when people get divorced in 1915 its still pretty scandalous but here it happens a lot—we will be all right—but lets talk about you now—

  So Josie told him all about Cass spending the day shut inside the linen closet.

  what?—josie are you serious?—

  “It’s true, I’m afraid. Mother has done it before, but that was before Emily came.”

  you know thats abuse right?—so was making her eat pudding til she threw up—

  “It is cruel,” she said slowly. “I wish Mother would not let her temper get the best of her.”

  if somebodys mom did that today shed be arrested—

  Josie didn’t know what to say. It was horrid, but wasn’t it also a mother’s right to punish her child however she saw fit?

  can emily do anything to help you?—