by Lois Duncan
“But if she doesn’t have any talent for art,” Kit said, “how could she have drawn the picture of me? You call it a ‘freak occurrence,’ but that’s not an answer. How could someone produce something that expert, when the best she ever did before is this?” She gestured toward the dreadful sketch.
“That’s what’s so crazy,” Ruth said. “Maybe that picture of you isn’t as good as we first thought it was. Get it out so we can look at it again.”
“I can’t,” Kit said. “I don’t have it anymore.”
“You don’t have it?”
“Somebody took it,” Kit said. “The door was locked, but somebody got in anyway and took the picture off my desk.”
“Do you know who?” Ruth asked her.
“I have no idea. I can’t even think who would want the picture. We all have the keys to our own rooms, but I’m sure that Madame must have duplicates. Who could use them depends on where she keeps them.”
“Or she could have taken it herself,” Ruth suggested.
“Why would she do a thing like that? Why would a picture of me mean that much to her? Besides, as far as I know, she wasn’t even aware of the sketch. She wasn’t in the parlor when Lynda brought it in to show to us. Nobody was there then except us girls.”
“Professor Farley came in,” Ruth reminded her. “He saw it.”
“That’s right, he did. But why would he want it? The more we talk about it, the more ridiculous the whole thing seems. Lynda, who can’t draw, draws a wonderful picture. There’s no reason for anyone to want it except me, yet somebody goes into a locked room to steal it. Add that to Sandy’s nightmare about the woman by her bed—”
“A nightmare?”
“That’s what Jules thinks it was. Sandy isn’t so certain. She’s had experiences like that before. There was one time in particular, right after her parents were killed. They were in a plane crash, and before any report was received, Sandy knew about it. She says it just came to her from out of the blue, the absolute certainty that the plane was down and her parents were dead.”
“So she has it too.” Ruth spoke softly, and there was no surprise in her voice.
“Has what?” Kit asked blankly.
“ESP.” Ruth paused, and then, seeing the bewilderment on Kit’s face, elaborated. “Extrasensory perception. It’s a sort of sixth sense that some people are born with. It’s a special kind of sensitivity to things that are normally not seen or heard.”
“And you think Sandy has that?” Kit exclaimed. “But you said, ‘She has it too.’ Do you mean that you—”
“I’ve had it for as long as I can remember,” Ruth said. “For a while I didn’t realize what it was. I thought maybe it just came with being bright, my being able to sense things that other people couldn’t. It was part of how I got ahead so fast in school. I could look at a book and sometimes I wouldn’t even have to open it, I just knew without reading it what was inside. When my teachers asked questions, I’d know the answers even if I hadn’t studied the material. I could feel the answers in their minds. Then I’d tell them just what it was they wanted to hear.”
“And Lynda?” Kit asked shakily. “Does Lynda have this ability too?”
“Not in the same way,” Ruth said. “With Lynda it’s a different thing. Lynda remembers.”
“Remembers?” Kit repeated the word stupidly. “Remembers what?”
“This is going to sound crazy,” Ruth said. “It did to me the first time she told me. But now—after getting to know her so well—I almost believe it’s true. At least, I believe that Lynda thinks it is.”
“Well?”
Ruth’s eyes dropped to her hands, still gripped tightly in her lap.
“Lynda,” she said, “remembers another lifetime in which she was born in England and lived under Queen Victoria.”
“Oh my god!” Kit said in a cracked voice. There was a long moment of silence while she digested this information. Then she shook her head. “You’re right, it’s crazy. But it’s no crazier than the night I woke to see my father standing by my bed. In the morning I found that he had been killed in an accident the night before.”
“So,” Ruth said softly, “it’s you too.” She drew a deep breath. “I guess that now, at least, we realize what it is the four of us girls have in common, and why, out of all the applications, we were selected to be the first students at Blackwood.”
At first the thought occurred to her that she might be dreaming again. Of course, she knew that she wasn’t. It was midafternoon, and she was on her way to her literature class with Madame Duret. And yet, the music . . .
It was coming from behind the closed door of the music room. Strange and beautiful and achingly familiar, the melody swept over her, drawing from her a response she had never experienced from any music before. She placed her hand on the knob and opened the door. Jules was seated with his back toward her, and the music was coming from the stereo speakers on the recording equipment.
“What are you playing?” Kit asked him. When he did not respond, she realized that he was concentrating too hard on the music to have heard her. She raised her voice. “Jules, what is that music?” With a quick, startled gesture, Jules flicked a switch and the sound abruptly ceased. His expression when he turned was one of unreasonable anger.
“What do you mean, interruptin—” he began, and then, at the sight of Kit’s surprised face, he seemed to catch himself. His voice softened. “Oh—it’s you.”
“You didn’t have to turn it off,” Kit said. “I heard the music through the door. It’s beautiful. I had to know what it is.”
“I don’t think it has a name,” Jules told her.
“But it must. Everything that’s published has a name.”
“Well, sure. What I meant was, I don’t know what it is.”
“Doesn’t it say on the CD?”
“It’s not a commercial recording,” Jules said. “It’s just a collection of odds and ends I’ve taken from one source or another because I liked them.”
“I like them too,” Kit said. “Especially that last piece. Could you play it again?”
“You heard most of it.” Jules made no gesture to switch the sound back on again. Kit regarded him with bewilderment. Never had she seen Jules Duret with anything but complete control of himself. Now he looked off balance, as though he didn’t know how to handle the situation.
His eyes shifted from hers in a way that made him look almost guilty. Guilty about what? Kit could not imagine. She knew that she should get to class. She was already late, and Madame could not stand tardiness. Still, she stood there, anchored in the doorway, watching the play of expressions across Jules’ handsome face.
“You do know that song,” she said with certainty. “You’re a music graduate. If you don’t recall the title, you must at least know who wrote it. Who was the composer?”
“I’m not sure,” Jules said. “It sounds like—well, I guess it’s from something by Schubert.”
“By Schubert? And you don’t recognize it?” Kit was incredulous. “How can you possibly not know the work of someone so famous?”
“You don’t recognize it,” Jules said defensively.
“No, but I don’t claim to be a student of music. Even so, I know that Schubert died when he was very young. He couldn’t have written all that much.”
“Look, Kit—” Jules did meet her gaze now. His eyes were blazing, and the anger which he had shown when he had first turned and seen her lay somewhere in their depths. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you all of a sudden, but I don’t need this kind of interrogation. You don’t know a thing about music. You can’t have heard this piece before. It’s practically unknown.”
“But I have heard it,” Kit said quietly. She had not only heard it, but she knew where.
The melody on the tape was the same haunting song that she had been playing in her dream.
In October, Lynda completed a landscape and Sandy wrote a poem.
The landscape was don
e in oils. It was a large canvas, measuring two feet tall by three and a half feet wide. It was of a lake, serene and peaceful, throwing back the golden glint of the afternoon sun. The woods on the far side of the water were in shadow, but the immediate foreground was bright with sunlight and wild flowers.
“Where is it?” Kit asked.
“It’s in the Catskills,” Lynda said.
“A place you’ve been?”
“I don’t think so. I know how it looks though.” Lynda regarded the painting with pride. “Don’t you think it’s pretty?”
Kit nodded. The picture was beautiful.
“Lynda,” Ruth spoke gently, as one might to a small child. “I want you to think for a minute. Try to remember why you decided to paint this particular scene. Did it come from a calendar, maybe? Or did you see it on TV?”
“I don’t know,” Lynda said. She frowned, considering the question. “It’s a funny thing, but I don’t remember thinking about it at all. I just mixed the paints and took the brush in my hand, and I started painting.”
“How did you know how to mix the colors?”
“That’s not hard.”
“Could you teach me?”
“No,” Lynda said. “You just have to know it by yourself instinctively. I can do it, but I couldn’t explain how to somebody else.” She smiled apologetically, that sweet, bland smile that made her look so much younger than her actual years. “I’m sorry, Ruth. I guess a person just happens to be a natural artist, or she doesn’t.”
She showed the oil painting to Madame Duret, who admired it greatly and hung it on the wall in the dining room. In the week that followed, Lynda produced two more paintings, small ones. Both were landscapes. One seemed to be of the same lake, but from a different angle, for it showed a footpath leading down to its edge. The other was of fields, green with springtime, lying flat and rich beneath a blue sky. In the bottom right-hand corner of each picture, Lynda printed the initials T.C.
“T.C.?” Kit said. “Those aren’t your initials.”
“That’s the way I’m going to sign my work,” Lynda told her.
“But why? What do they stand for?” Kit was bewildered.
“Nothing really. I just picked the initials out of the air. People don’t have to paint under their real names, and I’m going to paint under T.C.”
It was soon after this that Sandy wrote the poem.
“I did this,” she said without preliminaries, tossing herself across the foot of Kit’s bed and handing her a sheet of lined paper which had evidently been torn from a spiral notebook. “Read it and tell me what you think.”
It was late afternoon and Kit, who was tired of studying, tossed her book aside and picked up the poem. It was titled “Leave-taking.” Quickly she scanned it and then went back to read it again:
I never thought it would be Paradise.
I walked a rugged pathway from the start.
No Ugliness was hidden from my eyes,
Nor was Life’s pain a stranger to my heart.
And yet, the earth sprung firm beneath my feet
And summer winds were gentle to my hair.
I breathed upon the dusk, and found it sweet,
I gazed upon the dawn and found it fair.
I know gray moors where shadow mists lie curled
And sunbright streams and night skies rich with stars.
For all its faults, I so have loved this World
And found it beautiful, despite its scars.
Though Angels sing of Glories greater still,
I leave in Sadness, much against my will.
“You wrote that?” Kit turned to her friend in amazement. “Why, Sandy, it’s—it’s—”
“You don’t have to say it,” Sandy interrupted. “I know it’s good. I also know I didn’t make it up.”
“You remembered it from somewhere?”
“I must have,” Sandy said. “I couldn’t have written it myself. On the other hand, I don’t recall ever having read it. I never read poetry unless it’s for a class assignment.”
“I certainly don’t recognize it,” Kit said. “Perhaps Ruth will know what it’s from. She’s very well-read.”
She started to get to her feet, but Sandy reached out a restraining hand.
“Let’s not bring Ruth into this.”
Kit was surprised. “Why not?”
“I just don’t like her,” Sandy said. “There’s something about her that turns me off. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but I have this feeling that down inside she’s a cold fish and that the only person in life who really matters to her is Ruth Crowder.”
“She’s incredibly smart,” Kit said.
“I’ll give you that. She makes me feel so stupid. Still—” Sandy drew a long breath. “I’m being silly, I guess. Okay, go get her. If this is famous, she’ll probably know what it is.”
Ruth, however, did not recognize the poem.
“It’s a type of sonnet,” she said, studying the paper. “It has a familiar ring to it, but I’ve never read it.” She glanced across at Sandy. “Where did you get it?”
When Sandy did not answer, Kit spoke for her.
“She wrote it this afternoon.”
“Then why—” Ruth stopped as the meaning of the statement became clear to her. Her sharp, dark eyes took on a sparkle of interest. “How did it happen, Sandy? Do you write poetry often?”
“Never,” Sandy said shortly. “And I don’t know one kind of sonnet from another. That’s what’s so crazy. I went up to my room after lunch and stretched out on my bed to check over some algebra problems. I must have dozed off, because suddenly I realized that a lot of time had gone by. I had a pencil in my hand, and on the page of my notebook opposite the math problems there was this poem.”
“ ‘Leave-taking,’ ” Ruth read the title again. Her face was flushed with suppressed excitement. “First Lynda and now you. It’s really incredible.”
“What does Lynda have to do with this?” Kit asked her.
“Don’t you see a connection? Lynda’s never painted before, and yet she suddenly seems to have this amazing talent and is turning out pictures that look as though they belong in museums. Sandy’s never written poetry, and here she is writing sonnets. And I—”
She paused. Kit regarded her in bewilderment. “And you?”
“I’ve been doing some pretty intricate math,” Ruth said carefully, “stuff I never could even have conceived of before. At first I thought I was just writing down a lot of numbers. I couldn’t see any meaning in them. But now I’m beginning to get glimmers of understanding. It’s as though I were being educated by a teacher who is more—much more—capable than Professor Farley.”
“What exactly are you getting at?” Sandy’s face was dead white beneath her freckles. “Are you trying to say that this is something supernatural?”
Ruth gave her a challenging look. “Do you have a better explanation?”
“Any explanation is better than that,” Sandy said shakily.
“There was that woman,” Ruth said, “that night in your room when Kit heard you screaming. And there was the time after your parents’ death when you knew about the plane crash. If those weren’t supernatural occurrences, I’d like to know what you would call them.”
“You told her about those things?” Sandy turned to Kit accusingly. “I told you about them in confidence.”
“I’m sorry,” Kit said. “I didn’t think of them as secrets. All these things are part of the mystery of Blackwood. We have to compare our experiences. Perhaps then we’ll see some kind of pattern. Ruth thinks that all four of us are capable of ESP, and that that’s how we came to be chosen as students here.”
“Those entrance exams we took,” Sandy said thoughtfully. “They were kind of unusual.” She paused. “Then, if that’s true—if we were selected for that particular reason—it means that Madame Duret . . .”
She could not bring herself to complete the sentence.
Ruth finished i
t for her. “It means that Madame Duret wanted us at Blackwood for exactly that reason.”
The room was silent as they digested this statement. Kit thought, This can’t be real, this conversation. We’re making this up; we’re inventing a story and giving ourselves roles in it, the way Tracy and I used to do when we were younger. But she was no longer twelve, and Tracy was not here, and Ruth was not one to play games. Sandy was not playing either; her thin face looked sick.
“We’ll have to ask her,” Sandy said in a half whisper.
“Ask Madame Duret?” Ruth shook her head. “There’d be nothing to gain by that. Any question we ask her, she’s bound to have an answer for. We don’t have proof that there’s anything wrong. So Lynda’s painting and Sandy’s turned into a poet—what does that prove? Only that Blackwood is a good school and is bringing out latent talents in its students.”
“It’s the same with your math,” Kit said. “She’ll just credit Professor Farley for being such a good instructor. I seem to be the only one here who hasn’t developed a new talent.” She tried to make her voice light. “I feel sort of left out.”
“I wish I were left out,” Sandy said. “This is scary. If we can’t ask Madame Duret outright, then what can we do? If Ruth’s theory is right and we’re all reacting because we’re sensitive personalities, then I want to know what it is we’re reacting to. I’m the same person I was back home, but I didn’t write poetry then. Why am I doing it here at Blackwood? Is it something about the place itself?”
“What do we know about Blackwood?” Ruth asked. “Other than the fact that it’s an old estate? I don’t even know the name of the family that used to own it.”
“I know that,” Kit volunteered. “It’s Brewer. But that doesn’t help much.”
“I can see no way of getting into town to ask about it,” Sandy said. “We haven’t been off the grounds since we got here. It’s a good fifteen miles down to the village, which is farther than I’m about to hike.”