The phone clicked and the line went dead.
20
Sleep wouldn’t come and Samuel lay in bed for an eternity looking up at the ceiling. Even the shadows from the oak tree outside, reaching across the ceiling like the talons of some malevolent sorceress, weren’t fearsome enough for him to shut his eyes. How could he sleep? It was foolishness to even try. His mind was a tempest of wild contemplation.
When Ruth came up to check on him, he pretended to be asleep. Which was a waste of time.
“You don’t fool me, Samuel Clay,” she said. “I know when you’re asleep and I know when you’re trying to make it look like you are.”
He opened his eyes. Ruth was standing over his bed, holding a cup and saucer, and Samuel knew it contained tea with the juice of a full lemon squeezed into it. Ruth took one with her to bed every night.
“Did you brush your teeth?” she asked.
Samuel had nodded.
“I see you were telling tales about tidying your room.” She was scowling at the planes scattered across the floor in battle formations and soldiers lying facedown. “No good can come from lying, Samuel, haven’t I told you that a thousand times?”
“Don’t you ever lie?” It seemed a fair question.
Ruth scooped up two or three of the planes with her free hand, placing them on the side table. “Not if I can help it.”
But that wasn’t really an answer and Samuel knew it. Perhaps the doubt played on his face because Ruth added, “Of course, there are times when it isn’t right to speak the full truth. To protect someone’s feelings and such.”
“Protect them from what?”
“Well,” said Ruth, taking a sip of her tea, “sometimes the very worst thing you can tell a person is the truth, especially if it will do more harm than good. My sister Alice once asked me what I thought of the dress she was wearing to a special dance. Now, the dress was nice enough but her hair was frightful and her makeup brought to mind a carnival clown—and I said so.” Ruth sniffed. “That went down like a lead balloon.”
“She was angry?”
“Oh, yes. I realized too late that some people, like my sister Alice, aren’t ready for the truth. Which is what I was trying to tell you.” She straightened her shoulders. “Mind you, I still prefer to speak my mind and suffer the consequences.”
The boy was staring up at her. “Have you ever lied to me?”
“What a thing to ask!”
“Have you?”
Ruth rested the cup on the saucer. “Never. Now it’s time you were asleep.”
It might have been time but there was no sleeping for Samuel. Each worry heaped atop the next, until it felt like there was a great mass pushing down on him, stealing the breath from his lungs.
He thought about his mother’s letter. Buried within the ornate curves of her words he sensed an undeniable jeopardy, though he couldn’t name what exactly. But Ruth had been riffling through his mother’s drawer, which meant she must have been looking for that letter. Perhaps it contained something she didn’t want Samuel to discover. Some clue about what Ruth had done to his mother. Or where she really was.
The boy stood up and another notion quickly hurried in, as they tended to do—Ruth didn’t know that Samuel had stolen the letter, because if she did, he would surely have heard about it by now and felt her wrath. Which meant that Ruth didn’t know about the letter; so perhaps that wasn’t what she was after. Still, Samuel felt that there was now nothing more urgent in the world than reading what his mother had written to his father. And that’s what he intended to do.
* * *
The door to his bedroom squeaked with treacherous glee as Samuel stepped into the corridor. The floorboards, too, seemed determined to betray him, creaking and moaning as if he were crawling along an aching back.
Samuel passed his mother’s bedroom first, a dark tomb. And for some reason this was a relief. As if a part of him instinctively knew he could not carry the burden of another fresh mystery that night. But Ruth’s bedroom had a story to tell. A faint blush of lamplight bloomed beneath her door.
He didn’t intend to stop. There was nothing unusual about Ruth being up late. Quite often, when Samuel had gotten up to use the toilet, he would see Ruth’s light on. So why did it seem to call to him now? He didn’t know. Samuel crept toward the door. Then he shut one eye, while the other found the keyhole.
It was an oval-shaped view, the orb blurring the edges of the bedroom. He saw the bed, still made, and the window across the room and the table under it. And he saw Ruth sitting there, in her nightdress, her hair out. A lamp was switched on and a dark bottle perched beside her—it looked just like the expensive wine his parents would drink at dinner. The same wine his mother said made his father prone to unsettling fits of national pride and falling asleep midsentence. Ruth was looking down, her usually straight shoulders hunched over, her right elbow bent and moving. Samuel supposed she was writing.
It wasn’t so very odd to be writing a letter at night, he reasoned. People did it all the time, didn’t they? Perhaps Ruth was writing to her sister Alice, who was getting married soon and for the second time (which wasn’t a scandal because her first husband had fallen under a train). So why did watching Ruth, fully occupied with the writing of something, twist the knot in his stomach? It wasn’t fear—what was there to be afraid of?—it was something far more urgent. Samuel needed to know what she was writing because he couldn’t imagine a world in which this late-night labor didn’t have something to do with his mother.
His hand gripped the doorknob. He knew she would be furious if he barged in; she might beat him, throw him across the room. She’d done that before. He wanted not to care; he wanted to be brave and take what she might give him, if it meant knowing what she was up to. But just as the tide had carried him to Ruth’s door and practically pushed him up to the keyhole, it drifted out just as suddenly. Now, barging into Ruth’s bedroom felt like a reckless idea. The hour was late and he could get his mother’s letter and take it to his room and that would be enough, at least for tonight. That’s what he told himself.
Samuel took his hand off the doorknob. But just like the creak of his bedroom door and the snap of the floorboards, the handle had no regard for his wish to slip away unnoticed. It was loose—Ruth was always meaning to fix it—and so it rattled. Not loudly or a lot. But enough.
Through the keyhole Samuel saw Ruth’s head lift. She opened the drawer in front of her, put away whatever she was writing and looked back at the door, her eyes narrowing darkly. It was as if she was looking right at him. But she couldn’t see him through the keyhole, could she? When Ruth shot up, her chair flew back, scraping along the floor and tilting back against the bed. Samuel pulled away. He heard Ruth’s rapid footsteps as she ran across the room, pounding like war drums. He was running, too, tearing down the hall. Ruth’s door flew open, just as he lunged through his own door, shutting it.
His back was pressed to the door, his breathing hurried, his throat so dry that swallowing was an ordeal. Ruth would surely hear him if he tried to reach his bed. It was too late to do anything but keep utterly still and quiet. Outside, he listened for Ruth. She wasn’t running now, and he guessed from the occasional crack of the floorboards that she was moving. But slowly.
“Who’s there?” Ruth’s voice was more a hiss than a whisper. “Samuel, is that you?”
Her footsteps drew closer. Samuel tried to steady his chest but every time he shut his mouth the breath would just about burst out of him. There was silence for a moment and the boy wondered if Ruth was still there. Then the boards groaned just outside his door. The door handle rattled and began to turn, its hideous screech snatching the strength from his legs. Samuel closed his eyes, held his breath.
A loud bang broke the silence.
He heard Ruth gasp. “Pa?” That’s what she whispered. “Pa?”
Samuel couldn’t say for sure, but he supposed the chair in her bedroom must have fallen over. The doorknob twisted back into place and then he heard rapid footsteps moving away from him. The surge of relief was so powerful it made him dizzy. He felt the door at his back, and though the danger had passed, he stayed frozen to the spot, the only movement the rapid rise and fall of his chest. It was a good minute or two before he dared to cross the room and crawl into bed.
He hadn’t been lying there long when the door opened and Ruth came in. The boy was lying on his side and did his best to breathe slowly, deeply, and look fast asleep. He felt the lamplight slip over his face and he heard her own breathing, which was more rapid than his, and smelled the sourness of her breath. Ruth stayed there for some time—he didn’t know how long—just looking at him. Then she muttered something—he thought he heard the word nonsense—and walked from the room, closing the door behind her.
Samuel kept his eyes shut long after she had left; he didn’t dare move or make a sound. He just lay there pretending to be asleep, fully aware that this was a wise thing to do, as there was every chance Ruth was watching him through the keyhole.
21
Ruth was bright and cheerful at breakfast, which wasn’t like her at all. She moved about the kitchen in good spirits, even making a low sound every now and then, like she was singing softly to herself.
“How did you sleep?” she asked Samuel when he sat down at the table.
“Okay.”
“I’m all out of eggs. There’s no butter left, either.” Ruth put a plate down in front of Samuel with two sausages on it and some bread. “You didn’t hear any loud noises?”
Samuel kept his eyes on the bread. “What kind of noises?”
“Oh, nothing.” Ruth released a short laugh. “I was reading in bed and must have fallen asleep. The book slipped from my fingers and hit the floor with a mighty bang. Loud enough to wake the dead, it was.” She took a seat at the table, the steam from her bowl of porridge rising up like a chimney pot. “It didn’t wake you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I had a strange dream last night.” He hadn’t, of course, but it was as if Ruth’s lie was a spark that ignited the boldest part of him. “At least, I think it was a dream... It felt real, though.”
Ruth took a spoonful of porridge, then wiped her mouth with a napkin. “What was the dream about?”
“A ghost,” said the boy softly.
“A ghost?” Ruth tilted her head.
“It was outside my bedroom door, walking up and down the hall.”
“If the dream troubled you, then you’d best not dwell on it,” said Ruth quickly.
“The ghost was white as snow, with long hair and breath so rotten it could knock you down. It was an angry ghost, Ruth, full of riddles that crawled along its flesh like maggots.”
“That will do, Samuel. This sort of talk doesn’t belong at a breakfast table.”
“The ghost walked back and forth along the corridor, glowing like a lantern, and even though the ghost had no feet, I could hear its boots creaking on the wooden floor. I thought the ghost was coming to get me, you see, and I was scared... I heard it whispering something over and over.”
“What a horrible dream.” Ruth said this with such sharp certainty it could only mean the subject was closed. “You best eat those sausages before they go cold.”
The boy looked only at Ruth. “Do you know what the ghost whispered in my dream, Ruth? Do you know what it said over and over?”
“Eat your breakfast, Samuel.” Ruth was churning the porridge with her spoon. “You’ve still got to get dressed for—”
“Pa.”
Ruth’s eyes clouded over, her lips pressed tight.
“That’s what the ghost said as it walked the halls. Pa! Pa! Pa!”
“Enough!”
Ruth threw the spoon down with such force porridge flew out, landing on the table. The might of her anger seemed to reach out and push Samuel back in his chair.
“I’ll hear no more of your dreams, Samuel Clay.” Ruth was gripping the edges of the table like she was trying to hold herself in place. “Something’s haunting you, boy, but I doubt very much it’s a ghost who’s to blame.”
The hair fell over Samuel’s eyes and he did not push it away. “What is it, then?”
“You tell me and we’ll both know.”
“I want Mother.”
“She isn’t here!” Ruth shouted. “You are here and I am here, God help me, but your mother isn’t and all your asking and wanting and fretting isn’t going to bring her back before she’s good and ready.”
Every word was a dagger scoring his flesh. How cleverly Ruth could say a thing so it was true and cruel all at once. “I’ll tell Mother. I’ll tell her what—”
“She can’t hear you, not where she is,” said Ruth coldly, “and I’ve had my fill of talking about her.”
It was a cowardly thing to do, he knew that, but sometimes the cowardly thing was the only way to keep from going under. Samuel jumped up and ran from the kitchen.
* * *
“Is that all?”
The boys were sitting at the base of the hill, beneath the shade of the elm tree, trying to figure things out. Samuel had shared news of the night before and what he had seen and Joseph was bitterly disappointed.
“She heard a noise and went out to see if anyone was there.” He was poking at the dirt with a stick. “It’s not like she knocked down your door and came running in with blood all down her nightdress and a knife in her hand. Now, that would be something.”
“She came to my door,” said Samuel, tucking his legs up and hugging them. “She had her hand on the doorknob and everything. If it wasn’t for that noise she would have come in.”
“Still don’t mean she was going to kill you.”
“I heard her say Pa.” Samuel hugged his legs tighter. “And when I told her about the dream I pretended to have, she got so angry. I was sure she was going to...”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
Samuel had confessed everything to Joseph on the walk to school. Well, all except for what Ruth said about his mother.
“Didn’t you say old Ruth’s father was dead?” said Joseph.
“Yes, I think he died when she was young.”
“Well, don’t you see? Ruth heard you rattle the doorknob and she thought it was the ghost of her dad come to visit her.”
Joseph had a great many foolish ideas but this wasn’t one of them.
“Some people want to be haunted,” continued Joseph. “That’s what my mum says.”
He hadn’t known he was doing it but Joseph’s words brought the color to Samuel’s cheeks. Something’s haunting you, boy. Ruth had said that very thing.
“When I found her in Mother’s bedroom,” Samuel said, “she looked scared. Truly scared. I caught her doing something she didn’t want me to see.”
“She’s a sneaky one, old Ruth.” Joseph allowed a faint nod of admiration. “’Course, she might really have been looking for her pin. Could be innocent enough.”
“She lies, Joseph. Last night, Ruth said that she was reading in bed and that her book fell on the floor, but I know that wasn’t true. She was writing at her desk...only I don’t know what.”
Joseph shrugged. “Grown-ups lie all the time. Maybe she was writing in a diary, confessing all her secrets, that sort of thing. Everything she doesn’t want anyone else to know.” The furious potential of this idea caused the boy to sit up and hit the ground with the stick. “Did you see what she did with it?”
“With what?” Samuel’s mind was elsewhere.
“The diary, stupid.”
“Ruth put whatever it was in a drawer.”
Joseph nudged Samuel in the arm. “If you could get hold
of that diary, you’d know whether old Ruth was up to no good. I reckon if she murdered anyone, she’d be just the sort to put it all down on paper. You know, so she could read it back when she’s old and remember all the rotten things she’s done.”
This notion had much to recommend it, being sinister and perfectly aligned to Samuel’s own prejudices, so the boy could hardly stop himself from reaching out and grabbing hold.
22
When he got home from school, Samuel didn’t ask if there had been word from his mother. He didn’t dare after what happened at breakfast. Instead, he went straight upstairs to get changed and then went out into the yard looking for Robin Hood. The rabbit was resting under the hedge and it was some consolation to feed it a full leaf of cabbage and marvel at a creature so utterly free. Samuel only ventured back inside when his hunger was intolerable, overpowering his dread of seeing Ruth.
He found her spreading icing on a small chocolate cake. “Thought you’d smell this baking and be in here half an hour ago,” she said.
Samuel walked silently into the kitchen. Yes, he very much wanted a slice of that cake, but seeing Ruth brought what happened hurrying back to him and the spark of outrage was soon aglow.
“How was school, then?” Ruth asked.
“Boring.” Samuel sat down, his arms folded.
“I see.” Ruth scattered a rainbow of sprinkles over the rich dark icing. She was wearing the thinnest of smiles. “You’ve nothing to learn, I suppose? You know all there is to know in the world?”
Samuel hadn’t said that. He’d just said it was boring, which was entirely truthful.
“All done.” Ruth wiped her hands on her apron and looked over at Samuel. “Would you like a slice?”
Of course he wanted a slice, but he couldn’t bring himself to say so.
“Not hungry?” Ruth said.
“A bit,” muttered Samuel.
The Boy at the Keyhole Page 10