Deep and Dark and Dangerous (19 page)

I looked at my father and almost pitied him—reasonable Dad, the man who depended on logic and common sense. There was no room in his world for the supernatural. No matter how much proof I gave him, he'd never believe me.

"Please," Mom said. "Let's leave, right now, before—"

"Before what?" Dulcie watched us from the shadowy hall. "Before Teresa drags us into the lake and drowns us? Is that what you're scared of?"

Mom got to her feet and faced Dulcie, her fists clenched as if she wanted to punch her sister. "I won't stay here another second!"

Dad put his arm around her. "Claire," he said softly, "it's after ten. We'd never find a room at this hour. And, as much as I love you, I'm not going to sleep in the car."

"Pete's right," Dulcie said. "There aren't many motels, and you can bet they're all filled by now. Why don't I make up the sofa bed?"

Dad yawned. "One night, Claire. We'll go home tomorrow."

Mom turned to Dad, suddenly tearful. "I want to leave, but I'm so tired, I ache all over." Her eyes strayed to the window and the darkness pressing against it.

"How about a glass of warm milk with honey?" Dad asked. "That always helps you relax."

"Can we keep the light on all night?" Mom asked.

Dulcie laughed. "You sound just like Emma."

I braced myself for another quarrel, but before Mom could object, Dulcie added, "I might keep my light on, too."

After I kissed Mom and Dad good night, I gave Dulcie an extra-big hug for admitting she was scared. Maybe there was hope for her and Mom after all.

I climbed the stairs wearily, hoping to fall into bed and sleep till noon, but I should have known better. As usual, Sissy was waiting for me.

"I saw you bury that bird today," Sissy said. "It had a nice funeral. You sang a song and said the right words. All that fuss for a bird."

"Emma saw a cat kill it. She wanted to—"

"A bird shouldn't get better treatment than a person," Sissy said. "Or am I wrong about that?"

"I know what you're thinking," I said, "but you have a memorial in the cemetery. There must have been a funeral and flowers and the right words and lots of people crying,"

"But I'm not buried there, am I?" She held Edith a little tighter. "So none of it counts."

"But nobody knows where you are. Ms. Trent told me people searched the lake, the police sent down divers, they did all they could to find you, but—"

"They didn't try hard enough," Sissy interrupted. "Or I'd be buried in the cemetery instead of—" She broke off with a shudder and went to the window. "Do you think I like being out there?"

I joined her at the window and peered at the lake, barely visible in the rain and darkness. "If you tell me where you are, the police could get you."

"I tried to show you," Sissy said, "but you were scared to come and look. Remember?"

"I thought you were going to push me off the cliff."

Sissy laughed. "I just wanted to show you where I am. Deep down in the cold dark water, under three big rocks. All alone except for Edith ... and the fish."

"That's where you are?" My voice dropped to a whisper, and my skin prickled with goose bumps. It was almost as if I'd just realized I was actually talking to a girl who'd been dead longer than I'd been alive.

"Why would I lie about it?" Sissy shoved her angry face close to mine. "I'm sick of being there. I want to be buried in the graveyard where the angel is. Is that too much to ask?"

I drew away from the stale smell of the lake that clung to her. "Of course it's not too much," I stammered. "You
should
be there, it's where you belong."

"If the truth is told and I'm buried properly, if the right words are said over me and people bring flowers and someone cries, then I won't trouble anyone again."

Although it scared me to touch her, I put my arm around her shoulders. She felt solid but cold through and through, and I wished I could warm her somehow.

"Kathie Trent's gotten so old," Sissy said sadly. "Dulcie and Claire, too. I guess Linda must look different. But not me. I'm just the same. I'll never grow up. Or get old."

The sorrow in her voice hurt me. If only I could make it up to her, give her the life she should have had. But there was no way to undo what had happened that day on the lake. Thirty years ago, Sissy had lost her life, her future, and everything that might have been hers.

"Do you think I would've been as pretty as Linda?" Sissy asked. "Would I have gotten married like her, would I have had kids?"

It was hard to answer without crying. "I bet you would have been even prettier than Linda," I told her. "And you would've gotten married and had kids, and all that stuff."

Sissy pulled away, suddenly angry. "Don't you dare feel sorry for me! Just make sure all the things I said should happen
do
happen."

Leaving her words hanging in the air, she vanished, and I was alone at the window. The rain fell softly, the wind blew in the pines, the lake murmured—gloomy sounds, all of them. Sissy was right. What happened to her wasn't fair. It was sad and awful and it hurt my heart.

The next morning, I tiptoed through the living room. Dad snored on the sofa bed, and Mom slept beside him, curled close. Dulcie was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and staring at nothing.

I poured myself a glass of orange juice and sat down across from her. "Telling what happened isn't enough," I whispered. "She wants a proper burial."

Dulcie stared at me over the rim of her mug. "How can we do that? Her body was never found."

"She told me where it is."

Dulcie closed her eyes for a moment. Taking a deep breath, she said, "How will you explain that to the police? A ghost told you? I can imagine their reaction."

"I'll say I had a dream, I'm psychic, I'm—"

"Will this nightmare never end?" Dulcie lowered her head.

I leaned across the table to make my aunt look at me. "Sissy
must
be buried. The right words must be spoken. There must be flowers and somebody crying. She saw us do that for the bird. Doesn't she deserve the same thing?"

"Are you talking about Teresa?" Mom stood in the doorway behind me, her hair tangled from sleep.

Dulcie sighed. "Apparently, Teresa told Ali where her body is. She's demanding a proper burial."

I twisted around in my chair to face Mom. "She just wants peace, Mom. Is that too much to ask?"

"I dreamt about Teresa last night." Mom stood beside me and stroked my hair back from my face, her touch soft and tender, her voice calm. "She begged me to help her pass from this world to the next."

Dulcie jumped up and began pacing around the kitchen. If she'd been a tiger, her tail would have lashed furiously. "She came to me, too," she muttered. "With the same request. Usually, I don't put stock in that sort of nonsense—dreams, ghosts, things left undone, but..." She shrugged, and her shoulder blades shifted under her thin T-shirt. "Well, no matter. l agree that Teresa needs to be laid to rest, but how do we explain knowing where her body is? People will think we've known all along."

Dulcie's voice rose as she spoke. "Someone will say I shoved Teresa out of the canoe and left her to drown. Next thing you know, I'll be hauled off to jail."

"I was there, too," Mom said. "What we did was stupid, wrong, horrible, but you didn't push Teresa into the lake. You didn't mean for her to drown."

Dulcie sat back down and rested her head in her hands.

"Do you want more coffee?" I asked.

She surprised me by shaking her head. "All I want is to go to sleep and wake up and find out I dreamt the whole thing. It's what I've wished for all my life—it was a dream, it didn't really happen. But I just go on dreaming. I never wake up."

"I'll tell the reporter Teresa told me where her body is," I said. "I'll say I saw her ghost."

"Maybe—" Dulcie began, but she was interrupted by the arrival of a beat-up red sedan. A short man draped with cameras opened the car door and headed toward the cottage. He wore his gray hair in a scraggly ponytail, his jeans drooped below his belly, and his black T-shirt had an old rock star's picture on it. Mick Jagger, I thought. Or was it one of the Beatles—John, maybe?

"The photographer," Dulcie muttered. "He's early."

Mom ran to wake Dad, Dulcie hurried to greet the photographer, and Emma slid into a chair across the table from me. "Did you see Sissy last night?" she asked me.

"She came to my room."

"She came to my room, too." Emma paused and picked at a scab on her knee. In a low voice, she said, "She told me where her bones are."

"She told me the same thing."

Emma went on picking at the scab. Sunlight slanted through the window behind her and backlit her hair. "She wants to be buried. Like the bird."

"I know." Outside I saw the photographer taking pictures of the cottage. He posed Dulcie, tall and thin in a pair of paint-spattered denim overalls, head tilted, hair curling out of its topknot. She didn't smile. Her face was serious, contemplative, as if she were acting the part of the repentant adult.

Emma raised her head and looked at me. "If Sissy gets buried, will we ever see her again?"

I reached across the table and patted her hand. "Sissy's here because she wasn't buried. When everything's done properly and people know what happened, she'll be at rest."

"That's what I think, too." Emma sighed and returned her attention to the scab. "I'll miss her, though. Will you?"

"Think of it this way," I said slowly. "Sissy doesn't belong here anymore. Wherever she goes next, she'll be better off. Happier."

"How do you know?" Emma looked at me mournfully. "Maybe she'll just be gone."

Dulcie saved me from trying to answer an impossible question by coming through the kitchen door with the photographer in tow.

"This is Dan Nelson," she said, "from
The Sentinel.
He's come to take a few pictures of you two, as well as some of Claire and me."

Emma looked at him. "I wish you could take a picture of Sissy. She'd like to be in the newspaper."

Mr. Nelson smiled at Emma. "I'm sure I can fit another child into my shots. Is she a friend of yours?"

"Yes," Emma said. "Me and Ali both know her."

Behind Emma's back, Dulcie shook her head at Mr. Nelson, trying to tell him to drop the subject.

"I don't think you can take pictures of ghosts," Emma said.

Ignoring Dulcie, Mr. Nelson squatted down beside Emma and looked her in the eye. "Are you telling me your friend is a ghost?"

He said it in a joking, aren't-you-a-funny-little-thing sort of way, but Emma didn't notice. "Sissy has to be buried in the graveyard, all proper with a funeral and flowers and people crying. Somebody has to get her bones. Ali and me can show you where they are."

"That's enough, sweetie." Dulcie reached for Emma's hand, glanced at me, and then turned to Mr. Nelson. "My niece had a dream about Teresa. She told Ali where her body is."

The photographer looked from Emma to me and then to Dulcie, his whole face a question mark. "What are you talking about? Nobody knows where Teresa Abbott's body is."

"I believe in psychic powers," Dulcie lied. "If Ali says she knows where the body is, it will be there."

"We didn't just dream Sissy," Emma said. "We
saw
her. We talked to her, we played with her all summer. She was just as real as you!"

Mr. Nelson reacted the way Dad had. "You couldn't have seen her." He glanced at me. "And neither could you."

He had the look of a man who'd seen through many a hoax—UFO's, apparitions, mysterious lights—something that went with a news photographer's job, I supposed.

Mom came to the kitchen door, dressed neatly as usual, the perfect contrast to Dulcie. "You don't believe in ghosts?" she asked Mr. Nelson.

"Of course not."

Dad followed Mom into the kitchen. "I'm afraid you and I are outnumbered," he told Mr. Nelson. "Reason and common sense will not be found in this cottage."

Mr. Nelson made the mistake of laughing. "Maybe it's a female thing."

Dulcie turned on him fiercely. "Gender has nothing to do with this. It's not a hoax, either. Instead of laughing it off, maybe you should give the girls a chance to prove they're right."

"You
have
to believe us," Emma put in. "We promised Sissy."

"Please," Mom added, "let the girls show you the place. Send a diver down. It can't hurt to look."

"Think of it this way," Dad said, still joking. "If the kids are right, you'll have a great story, probably the biggest you'll ever stumble on in Webster's Cove."

Mr. Nelson rubbed his jaw. I could almost hear his thoughts.
national news, Pulitzer Prize, TV talk shows, a best-selling book
...
on the other hand, I could make a fool of myself, become the butt of jokes, a laughing stock, never live it down.
...

"You've got a point," he told Dad. Pulling a cell phone out of a pocket, he said, "I'll call the police."

A moment later, he said "Hello, Neil? This is Dan Nelson from
The Sentinel.
I'm at Gull Cottage doing a recap about the girl who drowned back in the late seventies."

A slight pause.

"Yes, Teresa Abbott," he went on. "The kids here say they know where her body is."

Another pause, a little longer this time.

"I'm not sure how they know, but I think it's worth following up. Maybe you could send a diver."

A pause again.

Mr. Nelson spoke a little louder. "What have you got to lose?"

When he hung up, his face was somewhere between pleased and worried. "They're sending a diver. He should be here in a half-hour or so."

Next he called the paper and asked for Ed Jones, the reporter who'd interviewed Dulcie. "Got something here you might be interested in," he said.

I could hear Ed Jones's voice but not what he was saying.

"I'll tell you this much," Mr. Nelson went on. "It involves the Abbott girl's remains—and a hint of the supernatural."

"I'll be right there," Mr. Jones shouted into the phone.

"The supernatural is Ed's thing," Mr. Nelson grinned at Dad as if to suggest they were linked by common sense and logic. "I keep telling him he should get a job with one of the rags—
The National Enquirer,
maybe."