Wink Poppy Midnight

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  It seems like a million years ago, getting expensive lattes, shaken with ice, just the right combination of espresso to milk, just the right toffee color or I’d complain.

  I once convinced Buttercup and Zoe to help me dig my own grave. We were bored and I was in a macabre mood and I wanted to see what it was like, to lie in the dirt six feet under like a dead person. We tromped out to the woods with shovels stolen from outside Loren’s Hardware store. They whined and whined but eventually we got a good trench dug out between two trees. I plopped down inside and crossed my arms over my chest like Wednesday Addams, and Zoe leaned over the edge and said something about worms and spiders, but I didn’t care, I stayed there for twenty minutes with my eyes closed. I wasn’t scared, it didn’t even feel that morbid, it just felt sort of peaceful, really.

  Briggs caught me watching him in the woods.

  He called out my name, kind of sad and desperate, but by then I was already gone, flitting through the night like one of Wink’s fairies.

  Briggs had been digging in the dirt and muttering about a golden marble like some half-crazed, sweating farm laborer, and I couldn’t figure out why, not for a while. I had to sink down and lie on the dirt in the forest and put some pieces together before I got to the bottom of it.

  I SAW BUTTERCUP and Zoe on Midnight’s steps.

  Buttercup, sleek as a selkie, smooth black hair and olive skin like the taciturn enchantress in Lost Lies and Runaway Sighs.

  Zoe, sparkly hazel eyes and thick black lashes and a small, pointed nose like the fay in Rat Hall and the Broom Girls. When she smiled at Midnight, her smile was as sparkly as her eyes.

  All three talked for a while and then walked right through my farm, right into the forest, and down the path.

  I got the Orphans out of bed and took them into town to get ice cream for breakfast. I did this sometimes in the summer, when Mim had her readings. We went to the little place by the library that was run by a witchie lady with long white hair. She opened the shop at ten in the morning because she believed that ice cream was sometimes for breakfast too. Bee Lee got strawberry, she always got strawberry, but you never could tell about Peach and the twins. Felix went for the pistachio, and so did I.

  We were all sitting on the green benches in the park, eating in the sun, when I saw her, standing in a brick alley across the road, the shadows surrounding her like a pack of wolves.

  No one else could see her. I knew they couldn’t. Just me.

  I gave the rest of my waffle cone to Hops and walked across the street without another thought, like she was the blond, bloodthirsty siren in Three Songs for a Drowning.

  I walked into the alley, bravely, right into the pack of wolf-shadows . . . but she was already gone.

  I STOOD IN the kitchen and listened. Dad was upstairs in his attic, on the phone. His voice drifted down through the cracks in the floorboards and settled on my ears like dust. He was speaking German with the occasional Latin phrase thrown in. I only spoke a bit of French, but Alabama was fluent in it, like our mom. My dad spoke four languages, if you counted Latin, which I did.

  His voice was a song I didn’t want to end. It made me feel safe. It made me feel . . . normal.

  There was a knock on the front door. I’d been expecting it, somehow.

  Peach was standing on the steps, red curls and bare feet.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  So I followed her, short strong legs pounding into the ground with focused, kid-like purpose. Across the road and into the garden. Wink was sitting in the strawberry patch, feet in the dirt, fat white clouds shielding her from the passionate noonday sun.

  “I was up in the hayloft,” Peach said to both me and Wink, now that she’d gathered us together. “It didn’t smell like hay. It smelled like tea, or flowers. And this was on the floor.”

  She handed me a piece of black paper.

  Wink watched me take it, face calm and passive, like it was nothing, just an ordinary thing, another note from a missing girl, left in a hayloft.

  I felt Peach staring at me. “I can read,” she said. “I can read all kinds of things. I’m really good at it, better than you, probably.” I hadn’t questioned her reading skills, it hadn’t even occurred to me, but Peach wasn’t the kind of kid to let that stop her from putting me in my place.

  I didn’t want to open the letter.

  I wouldn’t.

  I had to.

  I did.

  My fingers were clammy. They left damp smudges on the page.

  Midnight.

  It’s up to you.

  Show me what you’re made of.

  Gather the Yellows.

  Go to the woods.

  Find me.

  Find me in the mist.

  I read it again. And again. And then I gave the note to Wink.

  Peach shook her curly hair, chin to the right and left. “I read the note and that’s how I knew it wasn’t for any of us Orphans. Going into the mist is what Mim calls contacting the spirits. If you’re having a séance, I want to come.”

  “No,” Wink said, softly. “Not to this. But later we can hold another séance in the hayloft, just us, and I’ll let you be the medium this time, all right?”

  Peach tapped her finger on the tip of her nose and started nodding. “I’ll make a great medium. The best ever.”

  Wink smiled, and the tips of her ears popped out between piles of red hair. “You will,” she replied, very serious.

  Peach ran off, shouting to Hops and Moon, wherever they were, about how they were going to be so jealous because Wink put her in charge of a séance and soon she would be bossing ghosts and spirits around, just wait until tomorrow in the hayloft.

  Wink picked the last three ripe strawberries off their green stems, and gave one to me.

  I fiddled with the strawberry, spinning it in my palm. “The flowery smell in the hayloft that Peach was talking about? It’s jasmine.”

  “Poppy wore jasmine oil.” Wink looked up, green eyes wide open and innocent, like always.

  I nodded. I didn’t tell her about my bedroom, about how the sheets and pillows smelled like Poppy at night. I just couldn’t do it. It came too close to admitting that Poppy had been in my bed. And I didn’t want Wink to know this.

  “Buttercup and Zoe came to my house this morning. Buttercup found a black note from Poppy too.”

  “What did it say?” Wink ate a strawberry, two small bites.

  “Something about me and something about the time they went apple picking. I walked them home and we found Briggs and Thomas in the woods. I told them, Wink. I told them we’re the reason Poppy is missing. I told them that we tied her up and left her in the Roman Luck house.”

  Wink dug her small, pink toes into the black soil, past her heel, up to the ankle. “I think Poppy threw herself in the Blue Twist, Midnight. I think she drowned. And I think one of the Yellows is writing the notes.”

  The world started spinning. I dropped my strawberry and pressed my hands to my eyes. Stop with the blur, stop all the blurring, I can’t take it, I can’t . . .

  I sat down in the dirt and Wink’s arms went around me, tight. I took deep breaths and moved my hands away from my face so I could hug her back. She was wearing a fraying green cardigan over her overalls and she smelled liked strawberries and soil and jasmine.

  I WAS THERE when Midnight found the Yellows down by the river, waiting for my body to wash ashore or something, though it never would, it never, ever would.

  I watched them all and they didn’t see me, not one damn speck of me. I liked being invisible, I was learning things, there were so many things I’d missed before, back when I always needed to be the center of attention.

  Midnight told them all about some letter I supposedly wrote that said I wanted them to come together in the woods for a séance, as if I would ever ever ever as
k them to hold a séance and contact my spirit, everyone knows that I don’t believe in that crap, Grandpa never had any patience for the mystical and neither do I. That stuff was for Wink and her mother and all their other fairy ilk, not for me.

  Midnight got three of them to agree right off the bat. Thomas wanted to get out his Ouija board and ask it about the letter clues, and Buttercup and Zoe nodded in that twee twin way that used to drive me up a wall. Briggs just laughed, though, he knelt down and splashed cold river water on his face and just laughed, and went on and on about how I hadn’t even been missing that many days, and I’d gone missing before, and it was nothing to get worked up about, the bastard. Midnight reminded him what he’d been up to lately, digging around in the forest for a marble like a lunatic, all because he’d gotten a letter too, and Briggs shut up after that.

  I was there when they met in a little meadow near the Roman Luck house at midnight, flashlights dancing across the forest floor. I was watching. Thomas set up the Ouija board on the ground, right on the pine needles and dirt. He was so serious and careful and solemn about it that I half wanted to laugh and half wanted to put my hand on my heart and swear him my everlasting loyalty.

  They set their fingers on the pointer and then started asking so many questions that the Ouija board could never have kept up, even if it actually worked, which it didn’t. Thomas asked about Three Death Jack and the Greek gods and what it all meant and I remembered the time the two of us sat up on the mountain watching the skiers and it made me kind of sad and nostalgic. Briggs asked about the gold marble and teacups and lemonade and it sounded like Alice in Wonderland gibberish, except it wasn’t.

  Buttercup and Zoe asked about apple picking and apple poems, and Midnight asked if the mist was a spiritual place or a real place and the pointer never moved, not once. Not even a flicker. Finally, finally, Midnight said they needed Wink, Wink could find me, if anyone could, and that was when it all really began, when it got aching and beautiful and palpable and true. They all started fighting, quiet at first, and then louder and louder until their voices echoed through the trees like the black-haired Bloodly Boys at one of their midnight feasts . . . oh hell, I was talking like her now, like Wink.

  Anyway, anyway, you should have heard them, arguing about who knew me best, and why I really disappeared, why I would run away, why I would throw myself in the Twist. Thomas said I did it because I was sad, but that’s because he’s sad, and Briggs said I would never do it, because I’m a fighter, but that’s because he’s a fighter, and Buttercup said I felt guilty about all my past cruelty because she feels guilty about hers, and Zoe said that if I wanted to run away or throw myself in the river it was my right to do so, because she wants that to be her right too.

  And none of them, not one, came close to the truth.

  Except Midnight.

  He repeated what he’d said earlier, about how they needed Wink, and off they went to get her.

  THEY NEEDED MY help. I knew they would.

  I washed my hair with cinnamon soap and put on my acorn skirt and waited for them in the hayloft.

  I told them we had to have the séance in the Roman Luck house. That it all had to end where it began. I took one of the extra quilts Mim kept in a trunk at the top of the stairs and I threw it over my shoulder and then grabbed my basket and we walked through the woods together.

  I laid the blanket on the floor in the music room. I took three white candles out of my basket and placed them in the middle. I knew how it went. I’d seen Mim hold séances seven times. She didn’t do it for every client, only the special ones, the special ones with a lot of money. I went off to the corner and stood there silently for a bit, as if I was preparing myself, but it was mainly for dramatic effect.

  Midnight was quiet, and didn’t say much. He was scared. All good Heroes are scared, if they know the evil they face.

  Briggs asked why I didn’t bring a Ouija board and when I told him I didn’t have one he looked like he didn’t believe me.

  Thomas clung to the shadows in the corner of the room like he was trying to hide, like he was Anthony Twilight in Fourteen Stolen Things.

  Buttercup and Zoe cuddled into each other and whispered in each other’s ears and held hands.

  I lit the candles.

  It began.

  ME AND THE Yellows found Wink in the hayloft.

  Her eyes had a look in them when she saw us all climbing up the ladder, like she’d known we’d come for her.

  She grabbed the quilt and basket that she’d already packed, that’s how ready she was. Wink and I walked side by side down the path, not talking, like that very first time, when we’d stumbled into Poppy’s party.

  Wink set the unlit candles on the blanket and then stood in one of the corners, in the dark. I figured she was meditating, or whatever it is that mediums do. I sat on the green sofa and listened to the floorboards groaning in the hallway, though no one was walking on them. I listened to the tree branches scraping the un-smashed pieces of the bay window. I listened to the old house make its old house sounds, rasp, creak, groan.

  Here I was again, in the Roman Luck house in the middle of the night.

  Tricking Wink and then tricking Poppy and kissing them both and tying them both up . . . and now I was back in the house again and Poppy was missing and I’d gathered the Yellows for a séance.

  Briggs tried to make a few jokes, about how stupid séances are, and how it’s all bullshit, just rapping tables and sliding panels and fake beards, but no one laughed or even looked at him.

  We all sat down on the blanket in a circle.

  Wink lit the candles.

  I MADE EVERYONE hold hands. I looked very grave and said that if they let go during the séance bad things would happen. Which wasn’t true, I just wanted to see if they believed me, and they did.

  Midnight was on my right, his fingers strong and sturdy, like Thief’s. Thomas was on my left. He had long, elfish fingers that were warm, almost hot. I waited until Buttercup and Briggs and Zoe were clasped and ready.

  Nothing happened.

  I asked Poppy if she was present.

  Nothing happened.

  The house creaked and moaned and the Yellows breathed and twitched and fidgeted and Midnight squeezed my hand.

  Nothing happened.

  I called out to Poppy again. I told her I was ready and listening.

  Nothing happened.

  The candles flickered and the wind picked up outside, but I wasn’t cold. I was warm suddenly, warm like I had a fire burning in me. I held my breath and pictured myself as a cavern, deep and open, a vessel that needed to be filled, just as Mim had taught me.

  Nothing happened.

  a

  n

  d

  t

  h

  e

  n

  My head flipped back. My mouth opened and my eyes shut and my tongue fluttered and the words . . . poured . . .

  I thrashed and whispered and shouted and the words poured and poured.

  I was Autumn Lind with the kitchen knife, and then I was Martin, screaming and screaming, the blood gushing out, gushing right here in this room, tell my children I love them, tell them, tell them, and then I was Autumn again, choking and shaking as my neck snapped in the noose . . .

  I thrashed and screamed and then the words . . .

  s

  t

  o

  p

  p

  e

  d.

  I brought my head upright again, opened my eyes, relaxed my shoulders. Midnight and the Yellows were shaking and I could feel their fear in the air, crackling like static during a thunderstorm.

  And right on cue, it started raining outside, like I’d commanded it, like I’d called it down from the night sky, the rain tore at the broken window and splashed inside and hit m
e on the cheek and I was the Queen now, bow down before me, this is how it was meant to be, this was how it was supposed to be, all of them watching and waiting on my every word, breaths held . . .

  I yanked my hands free from Midnight and Thomas, one swift move, and got to my feet.

  “God, you’re all such losers,” I said, first thing out of my mouth, and they all just stared and stared, as if I hadn’t called each of them a loser countless times in the past, hundreds, thousands, millions.

  I looked down at myself, touched my hair, stroked my bony knees with my palms. “Can you believe this shit? Feral Bell. Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.”

  They stared and stared and I just let them, let them take me in.

  “Poppy . . . Poppy, where are you? Are you okay? What happened to you?” Squeaking, pathetic little voices.

  “I’m dead,” I whispered. And then laughed. “Dead. I’m dead and this house is my tomb and I want you to burn it down. I want you to burn the Roman Luck house to the ground.”

  The rain pelted in and the lightning ran slick across the stars and I stood there with my hands on my hips and all of them watching my every move, frozen with fear, their pitiful faces stretched and open and so, so terrified.

  They asked me questions, so many questions, who did this and who did that and what about the letters and what about the clues and oh, they were so sorry, so very sorry . . . and it bored me to tears, so finally I put my hands on Thomas’s shoulders and straddled him, one skinny leg nestling up to each hip, knees squeezing in. I kissed him, I kissed him deep, I writhed my body and swung my hair and he kissed me back, I wasn’t sure he would, but oh yes he did, he pulled his other hand free and put both on me while they all just stared, and then I whispered in his ear, Remember the night we did it in the rain, in the wet grass by the Blue Twist? The cold drops hit our bare skin and we shivered like ghosts and were slippery like eels . . . I never told anyone, did you?