A Curious Tale of the In-Between Page 9

  “Could your friend see ghosts?” Finley asked. “Or read palms? Anything?”

  “No,” Pram said. “He didn’t have any abilities, and he wasn’t going to hurt anyone.”

  “She won’t drown you,” Finley said. “Not if you have something she wants. She only kills useless things.”

  “Clarence wasn’t useless,” Pram said. “I loved him.”

  Saying it aloud was an admission as well. No wonder she’d grown up in a house where nobody said they loved anyone; what a terrible pain that word caused.

  Finley patted her shoulder. “I’m sure he was a fine friend.”

  Pram could hear a skeleton key rattling in a lock. It blocked a small bit of light that had been shining through the keyhole.

  Finley disappeared. Pram looked over both shoulders for him, but he was gone.

  The chain holding the cage creaked, and Pram tried to keep still if only to make it stop. She was sure she’d heard something like it in her nightmares.

  The door swung open, creating a triangle of light from the hallway that spread out to reveal green wallpaper with silver insects that gleamed and appeared to be almost crawling.

  “Awake now, are you?” Lady Savant said. “Good, good. I knew you’d be fresh as a daisy after a little rest.”

  Pram saw something move beside the door, where the light thinned and turned the insects black. Two long dark braids swung across the darkness, trailing a girl who chased after a firefly that had come out of the wall. She giggled and disappeared into the shadows.

  Lady Savant didn’t notice her. “There’s no electricity, but once the sun comes up, you’ll see that this room is very pretty,” she said. “Would you like to come out and have a better look?”

  Pram didn’t answer. Any word she’d ever spoken to that woman had caused her trouble. She would rather talk to the ghosts in the shadows—Finley with his burns, and the little girl chasing insects.

  And yet, despite knowing better, there was something within Pram that wanted to like Lady Savant. Her fragrance was intoxicating and sweet. Her eyes were as kind sometimes as they were cruel other times.

  “Come on, now,” Lady Savant said. “There’s no reason to be frightened. There’s a staircase just outside your little door, see?”

  Despite her bitterness, Pram couldn’t help peering beyond the arched door of her prison. An iron staircase, inlaid with flower shapes, reached down toward the darkness of the floor. She was curious about where the stairs led. Curious, and suddenly very hungry.

  “Come out,” a giggling voice said. The girl with the black hair leaned sideways into the light of the doorway. She waved shyly and scurried off again.

  Well, Pram thought, she wouldn’t mind having something to eat.

  But she wasn’t going to speak.

  CHAPTER

  18

  Pram walked barefoot down a hallway with a cold tile floor. Flames on sconces illuminated ovals of wallpaper on either side of her. She felt as though she were dreaming, and in this dream she wore a green plaid dress and yellow ribbons that streamed from her ponytail to down in front of her shoulders.

  She heard the footsteps of the girl with dark hair behind her. The girl was skipping and singing:

  Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry

  Go to sleepy, little baby

  When you wake, you shall have

  All the pretty little horses

  Way down yonder in the meadow

  Lies a poor little lambie

  Bees and butterflies, picking out its eyes . . .

  “You’ve slept for a day and most of the night,” Lady Savant said. “The sun will be up soon. We’ll have breakfast, and maybe you’ll feel like talking then.”

  Somewhere in her haze, Pram knew that she was being deceived. Felix? she called, but her mind’s voice was small. Felix was gone. Felix was a lifetime ago. Clarence had drowned a lifetime ago.

  Clarence. Pram thought of his blue eyes and his sad smile, and the tickets to Lady Savant’s Spirit Show in his hand, and then the feel of his hand in hers. She could taste the chocolate-raspberry ice cream he’d bought her, and the haze thinned.

  She thought of him and repeated his name over and over in her mind until her lips began to move. And Pram could see the dull yellow ribbons and the cracked tiles for what they were: unremarkable.

  Lady Savant looked at Pram, and Pram stopped moving her lips. She did her best to look as though she were still entranced and that the dingy paisley wallpaper looked clean and new.

  Behind them, the little girl stopped singing. Pram wanted to turn around and have a proper look at her, but she didn’t want to let on that the girl was there. Lady Savant didn’t seem to notice her.

  At the end of the hallway there was a large kitchen, and a fire was burning in the woodstove. The room was large, and full of appliances that seemed rusted and old. There was a small table beside the woodstove that had already been set with two plates and two teacups, and a tray of desserts and glazed fruits.

  Pram’s stomach was rumbling, but she hesitated when Lady Savant pulled out a chair for her.

  “It’s okay,” the little girl said, and hopped on top of the woodstove. “It isn’t poisoned.”

  Pram sat. She was curious about this place, and she wanted to ask Lady Savant, but she had already resolved not to speak to her. Nothing good happened when she did. And so Pram silently pondered. This was surely not a house; it was large and drafty, and the kitchen looked like it belonged in a restaurant.

  Lady Savant nudged the tray toward Pram, and Pram hesitantly retrieved a cookie. She took a bite, and it was one of the most delicious things she’d ever tasted, even though she no longer felt that she was dreaming.

  Lady Savant clapped happily. Her pink nail polish was chipping, and she looked a bit older. Fine lines had taken root around her eyes.

  How peculiar, Pram thought.

  “This is my home,” Lady Savant said. “You can stay for as long as you’d like. I know that we had discussed finding your father, but I’ve been thinking about that.”

  Pram set the cookie on her plate. Her hungry stomach had suddenly started to churn.

  “Your mother came to me in another dream last night,” Lady Savant said. “She told me that your father has made a new life for himself. He has a beautiful wife and a proper daughter.”

  Pram knew that Lady Savant was not to be trusted, and she didn’t believe this. But the idea was enough to sadden her. If her father truly did have a proper family, it would mean that he had gotten over Lily and fallen in love with someone new. It meant he had a daughter who surely adored him, and there was no room for a reminder of something that had happened eleven years ago.

  “Don’t look so glum,” Lady Savant said. “You can stay with me for as long as you like. I can give you something your aunts never could: I can show you how to reach the spirit world. I can make you the best spiritualist the world has ever seen, and one day you can use that skill to become a very wealthy woman.”

  If she were a wealthy woman, would her father want to meet her then? Pram wondered. She would have the money to sail across the ocean and find him on the other side of it, and he would see her at the helm and say that she took after him, with salt water in her veins, and they would have tea and it would be like they’d known each other all their lives.

  The little girl with dark hair was humming, and she stopped just long enough to say, “Stay, stay.”

  The sun was starting to rise. The rusted appliances were gleaming.

  Pram knew she didn’t have a choice.

  Lady Savant allowed the rest of their meal to carry on in merciful silence. Pram thought of Clarence every time she felt her mind going hazy again. She told herself, If you’re a ghost now, find me. You’re always welcome wherever I am. Always.

  She thought of her aunts kissing her cheeks and telling her, “We love you.” It had made her lips rise into a smile after they left the room.

  They didn’t mean it, Pram suddenly thought
. The idea forced itself into her mind, as though it had been whispered in her ear.

  Lady Savant smiled and poured a fresh round of tea.

  CHAPTER

  19

  The building was very sad. Pram could tell that its rooms had once been filled with screams. Lady Savant walked her down the halls and asked her if she felt anything, and still, Pram didn’t answer.

  “This used to be a hospital,” Finley said, suddenly walking beside her. “At least, I think that’s what it was. I can’t really remember.”

  Perhaps this was where he died from his burns. In Pram’s experience, ghosts rarely wandered far from a place that had relevance to them—even if they couldn’t remember what that relevance was.

  She had met plenty of forgetful ghosts, but Finley had the worst memory by far.

  They reached the end of the hallway, and Lady Savant brought Pram up a rickety staircase that led to another hallway that carried a different kind of sadness. Pram was frightened to know that such a place could exist. Felix used to tell her that if she let on about her abilities she could end up at the circus, but he was wrong; there were worse places one could go.

  “Do you like your dress?” Lady Savant asked. “Brutus made it for you.”

  Pram couldn’t hide her surprise at the idea of Brutus, the man with the thick arms, sewing a dress.

  Lady Savant’s smile was warm. “It’s a talent of his,” she said.

  It was absurd to think of that enormous man huddled over a sewing machine. Pram would have laughed if she weren’t so unnerved by her ordeal.

  “Lots of dresses,” came a whisper in the wall. Pram hugged her stomach and tried to warm herself against the sudden chill.

  Lady Savant could see that she was getting nowhere. Pram, with that beautifully defiant face, was not ready to trust her. She was quite stubborn, as Lady Savant knew children could be. So she brought Pram back to her room and said, “This morning has given you a lot to think about. I’ll get you when it’s lunchtime.” She closed the door behind her as she left, and locked it.

  The cage hung in the center of the room, the only thing that resembled a bed. Its white silk blankets were rumpled, and in the daylight Pram could see that her sleep had been a fitful one. The wallpaper was pale green, like grass that was slowly browning during a drought, and covered with silver insects. The floor was chipped marble tile. Shadows of picture frames covered the empty walls. There was a dresser with chipping white paint and ceramic ballet slippers for handles; every drawer was empty.

  The only window was barred from the outside, and beyond it, all Pram could see was an iron fence and some trees.

  Pram walked the length of the room, dragging her fingertips along the wall. Unlike the restlessness and worry she’d felt lingering in the rest of this place, this room was eerily silent.

  Pram sat on the floor, and her eyes began to fill with tears.

  “Don’t cry,” the little girl with dark hair said. She played hopscotch on the tiles for a few seconds and then bounced to a stop. “It really isn’t so bad here.”

  Pram swiped her wrist across her eyes. “I want to go home,” Pram said.

  “Oh, my, that is unfortunate,” Finley said. He was perched on top of the cage like a bird. He slid down one of the bars and landed beside the girl with dark hair. “Lady Savant doesn’t lose her belongings, nor does she set them free.”

  “I don’t belong to her,” Pram said.

  “But you do,” the girl said. “Any living thing in this place belongs to her.” She knelt before Pram and wiped at her tears. The tears fell through the girl’s ghostly fingers, but Pram felt the warmth of the girl’s touch, and for that she was grateful.

  “What’s your name?” Pram asked.

  “Adelaide,” the girl said.

  “Did you die here?” Pram asked.

  Adelaide shrugged. “I don’t remember. Maybe.”

  “Am I going to die here?” Pram asked.

  Adelaide’s eyes widened. “No,” she said. “The living things don’t die here. They disappear.”

  “Disappear?” Pram said. Her palms were sweaty.

  “One day we stop seeing them around,” Finley said. “They start out in that cage, and they stay for a while, and then one day they’re just . . . no more.”

  “How long has she been doing this?” Pram said.

  Adelaide and Finley looked at each other and then back at Pram. “A long time,” Adelaide said. “Maybe a hundred years. Maybe a million years.”

  “That’s impossible,” Pram said. “Lady Savant isn’t old. Certainly not a hundred.” She should have known better than to ask. Ghosts had a terrible sense of time. Felix used to say that they’d been friends for a hundred years, too.

  “Isn’t she?” Finley wondered aloud. “There was a girl in that cage before you, and a boy before that, and a woman once.”

  “Oh, yes,” Adelaide said. “I liked her. She smelled nice.”

  “You’re dead,” Finley reminded her. “You can’t smell anything.”

  “Well, she looked like she would smell nice,” Adelaide said.

  “Why were they here?” Pram asked.

  “I can’t remember,” Finley said.

  Adelaide shrugged. She had no cause to bother remembering such things, either. Memories were a way for the living to keep track of their lives, but for ghosts, there was no need to hold on to anything; Pram remembered an elder who had died, and his ghost stayed in the parlor for a week, reaching aimlessly into the jar of cough drops. When he was ready to go, he told Pram it was as though everyone and everything he’d ever known had been swallowed up by a cloud, and it was time to see what this cloud was all about.

  Pram tried a different question. “Did the others have anything in common with me?”

  Adelaide and Finley thought and thought.

  “I forget,” Finley said.

  “Yes,” Adelaide said. “They could see us.”

  Pram looked up at the cage; the lantern inside it still burned, casting shadows of bars on the walls, turning the entire room into a prison.

  CHAPTER

  20

  The snow was like feathers. It wasn’t cold, and Pram fell backward into it with a sigh.

  One day an elder had let a stray cat into the house, and it tore through the pillow on Pram’s bed, filling the room with feathers that floated in the air for days, despite Aunt Dee’s furious vacuuming. This snow reminded Pram of that.

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Lady Savant said. “I thought we could have our lunch outside, sort of like a picnic.” She laid a checkered blanket in the snow and set about unpacking the basket. Steam and the smell of fresh bread wafted toward Pram, whose stomach was growling again. It was hard to be stubborn when she was so hungry.

  It was her third day with Lady Savant. At least, she thought it was three. Her memory had become unreliable, just like her ability to reason dreams from reality. Thinking of Clarence still provided her with clarity, but her memory of him was becoming unreliable, too. She had been sure his hair was curly and light brown, the color of honey, but now she wondered if it had really been dark like oak, or blond like lemons.

  And Felix was even blurrier. If she wanted to think of him, she had to first go back to a memory of one of the afternoons they’d spent lying in the sunlight, when his skin felt warm and real. But she was losing the sound of his voice, and with that, the things he’d said to her.

  Finley and Adelaide were nice company, at least. Finley told jokes and sometimes danced and sang, and Adelaide played games. There were whispers in the wallpaper, old echoes in some of the rooms from ghosts who had long since moved on but left their thoughts behind. Pram talked to the echoes, and to Finley and Adelaide, and sometimes to herself.

  But she was always silent around Lady Savant.

  At first, Pram had thought silence was the best revenge against a woman who used her words against her, but Pram had overlooked something important: Lady Savant was the only living person Pram
encountered—aside from the man with the thick arms, who never spoke to her and didn’t seem to care whether she spoke to him. And though Finley and Adelaide were kind to her, Pram was lonely for conversation with someone from her own side, who still found relevance in the time of day. She missed the “Good mornings” and “Good nights.” She missed “Have you done your lessons?” and “It’s bath time.”

  Without these things to mark the hours, Pram was beginning to feel that she, too, was becoming a ghost.

  And so she decided it was time to speak.

  She said, “What time is it?”

  Lady Savant, who was biting into a croissant, raised her eyebrows. She took a moment to chew and swallow daintily before looking at her wristwatch, which was gold. “It’s quarter past noon.”

  Pram stuck out her tongue to catch a snowflake that fell all alone from the sky. “Thank you,” she said. She also missed manners.

  “You are most welcome,” Lady Savant said. “Would you like some tea? I’ve brought a jar of honey.”

  Pram was hungry, and now at the mention of tea, her tongue longed for the taste of it. She nodded and crawled through the snow, bringing herself onto the picnic blanket. “Why am I not cold?” Pram said.

  “Would you prefer to be cold?” Lady Savant asked.

  Pram shook her head. Ever since the day the cat tore into her pillow, she’d wished real snow could be as warm and as soft, so that she could enjoy it without having to also endure a runny nose or red fingertips.

  “Is this weather everything you’ve wished for?” Lady Savant said, as though she was reading Pram’s mind. “It is cold, but you don’t want to feel it, and so you don’t. You’re more powerful than you realize. I’d bet no one has ever told you that, because all that the world sees when it looks at you is a little girl.”

  Not everyone, Pram thought. There had been a boy and a ghost who saw something more when they looked at her, and she’d seen something extraordinary when she looked at them.

  Their names escaped her, and after much furious thought, she remembered. Felix and Clarence. They’d left her. They didn’t want her anymore.