Haunted (17 page)

“You can release them,” I said. “Miles, you're the only one here connected to the children—to one of them.”

Eleanor had crept back to us, and seized my hand. I stared up at the glowing people and an idea inserted itself into my mind. I had been able to vanquish Madame Arnaud because I was an Arnaud. I swallowed as I admitted this to myself.

Miles could release the children because he was related to one of them. Lavinia had even said they'd been waiting for their families to come.

Miles took a step backward until he could hold my other hand. We stood together, the three of us, firm and strong.

“I release you,” he said. “I'm sorry your families couldn't come for you. I'm here now. And I'm so sorry.”

I closed my eyes in relief, thinking these were the words that mattered. The children would be gone when I opened them.

And perhaps Eleanor could release the servants, because she had been a servant in this house. We were a mighty triumvirate. We each had a role to play, a specific part that required us to be united with one another. It had something to do with the good force around the house. It had sent me to Eleanor's room to find her diary, but Madame Arnaud had interfered. It was the second time—with Miles—that we'd found our ally through her diary.

Maybe once we'd each done our particular job, we would release ourselves.

I would be so sad to say good-bye to Miles—and now to Eleanor, too. I would want one last glance at my mom, at Tabby . . . and at the man who was perhaps . . . no, who undoubtedly
was
my father.

I opened my eyes. The children were still there. I looked at Miles's face in profile. I saw a muscle in his jaw twitch: he was grinding his teeth. Frustrated.

I heard Eleanor gasp and whipped my head around. Coming through the gates of the cemetery was a long parade of the servants. They came, hundreds of them, and formed in regimented lines facing the children. It reminded me of how servants would come outside the manor to greet important guests, arranging themselves in their obvious servitude.

They were sobbing.

Even the men, stoic, had tears running down their cheeks.

“We need someone to speak for us,” said Maud Pike, the maid who had been looking for Cook for her orders. She pointed to Eleanor. “You're the one to do it.”

Eleanor bowed her head and I thought she was going to refuse. When she lifted her head, her face was streaked with tears.

“I will,” she said. “I will humbly and with great remorse speak for the servants.” I squeezed her hand and she squeezed back.

She pivoted her head around, giving eye contact to each of the grown children in turn, a long, silent passage of acknowledgment, flowing to and from them.

“Children came into this household,” she said. “And better than the somber issue of the Arnauds, you village children knew how to laugh. That is, if you were old enough to. The high spirits you brought to the manor . . . well, at first we thought 'twas a fine and good thing. Who can ever hear a child chortling down a hallway and not get up to grinning oneself?

“It took us a bit to understand what was truly going on. Rumblings among the servants who saw the feeding chamber firsthand. But it is difficult, almost impossible, to believe in such a vile and desperate bit of gossip.”

The children watched her quietly.

“By the time we fully grasped what was happening, we felt it was too late. Children were already dead. We didn't know what to do. We would pass the word along to the new servants, thinking they might have the energy to do what we were too foolish to try . . . and so time passed. Children, I eventually got up my courage. I tried to kill Madame Arnaud—but I failed.”

She ran her hands over her cap in a gesture of complete and utter disconsolation. “I failed at the only important thing I could have ever done.”

“You tried,” cried slender Maud Pike, her face twisted in concern. “You tried and the saints bless ye for it!”

“And 'twas your death that let me leave this hell-forsaken place,” said another servant, a man I hadn't seen before. “After the day the village uprose, I returned to a simple honest life, as did most of us that had been in service here.”

Eleanor turned to me and gave me a shocked look. How had her death helped?

“What wretchedness has plagued the stones of this manor,” said Lavinia, before I could follow the line of reasoning. “It is a doomed place of much sadness.”

She was as transparent as convent-made crystal, seemingly frail, but her voice carried. “I forgive you, all of you,” she said.

The servants of one accord gave a raw moan.

“Bless you, dear girl,” said Eleanor.

“You're my family,” said Miles to Lavinia. “I hope you find peace now.”

Lavinia gave him a rueful smile, then disappeared. Not in the vapory slow way I would expect; she vanished as if someone had snapped his fingers.

Another man cleared his throat. He was a plowman and held a bread-sized stone dislodged centuries ago. Its pitted surface still held soil from the Arnaud fields. “I forgive you, all of you,” he said. He gave a brief nod, as if for a job neatly completed, and disappeared.

A laundress spoke up, holding her basket of washing to her tilted hip. “I forgive you, all of you,” she said. She winked out like a lamp.

A seamstress, a chambermaid with her ash-filled bucket and brush, a blacksmith with his anvil lightly floating by his feet, a stablehand holding leather, a scullery maid with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, on and on. Each one took their turn with dignity.

I saw the toddler from the back gardens; he had lost his feral look as he became an affable-looking gentleman who held a black medical bag.

Miles and I shared a look. “Thank God,” he said.

When the last glowing being had extinguished, I turned to look at the rank of servants. I could barely see them in the dark. I was aware of their shapes, grieving and yet exhilarated. One woman untied her apron and threw it to the side. It landed on one of the tombstones. It looked like one of the monuments in the family's graveyard, where a sculpted mantle draped an urn.

“Our work here is finally done,” said Eleanor to the gathered servants.

Ice filled my gut as I watched all of them turn their gaze to me. Eleanor, too. She let go of my hand and went to stand with them.

I understood this at the deepest level possible. They saw me as the mistress of the house.

“I . . .” I faltered. Miles stepped closer to me so I could lean against his shoulder.

“I release you all. I thank you for your years of good and faithful service.” I closed my eyes, moved beyond belief—and sickened to think I truly was an Arnaud.

When I opened them, the servants were gone. Without a word, as they'd done all their lives, they'd withdrawn silently. Only Eleanor remained, looking frightened.

But . . . what about us? We'd conquered Madame Arnaud, we'd released the children, freed the servants . . . wasn't that the mission we had to accomplish, to be able to move on to whatever stage death held for us?

“I don't get it,” said Miles.

“Why didn't I go with them?” cried Eleanor. I let go of Miles's hand and rushed to her, enfolding her in a fierce embrace.

“Looks like we're all still stuck together,” I said.

Miles gave me a determined, cockeyed grin, but Eleanor could not be consoled. He and I had been dead only awhile. She'd spent over a century in that state, and she wanted release.

“Eleanor, we'll figure it out,” I pleaded with her. “There's another step we're missing. There's something else we have to do.”

“What else could there be?” she implored. “The house is punishing me for trying to kill Madame Arnaud.”

“But you told us there had been other attempts on her life,” said Miles. “You're the only servant left standing.”

“I wish Austin was here,” she said, wiping away a tear. I nodded. Death wasn't so lonely for me . . . my family was alive, and I had Miles. She didn't have anyone.

“You did a wonderful thing,” Miles said, lifting her chin. “You were a leader for the servants, and you knew exactly what to say to the children.”

Sometimes it seemed like Eleanor might be a better choice for Miles than I was. I felt like I should turn my head away from such intimacy.

“You did,” I said. “You were perfect.”

“Thank you,” she said, blushing. It was so strange to see just a trace of tint on her wan face. We still experienced living emotions, but they were incredibly muted.

“You were perfect, too, miss,” she said. “I can't even imagine how you went underwater like that, with her down there with you.”

“How can you call me ‘miss' after all this?” I asked. “You are absolutely my equal. I don't know if I could have stabbed her while she slept.”

We looked at each other warmly, shyly.

“You would have,” she said quietly. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to my cheek. My sister of sorts. This was the kiss Tabby would never be able to give me.

“Miles didn't perform too shabbily, either,” I remarked, and laughed . He pretended to be offended for my benefit, staring stonily into the distance.

“No, he was a true champion,” said Eleanor with admiration clear in her voice.

Oh dear
. I wondered if Miles and I would ever get close again. I flashed to our night kissing in his bed, and quickly suppressed the memory.

“Let's go see my sister,” I said huskily. I felt Miles put his hands on my shoulders from behind. I felt as good as it was possible to feel.

Everyone was asleep. Mom and Steven lay in bed in the master bedroom, which I peeked into as we progressed down the hall. Good for them, I thought, asleep to everything, buffered from trouble. They had no idea of the spectacle that had taken place. They had no idea I was with them, stuck on some plateau between life and death. For them was still reserved the pleasure, the absolute climactic swooning contentment, of being able to sleep.

Down the hall, and in the pool of light cast by the night-light, Tabby slumbered, too.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Even a cursory perusal of the microfilm shows how despondent
was the life of servants in the earlier part of the nineteenth
century. An abundance of suicide was reported in the pages of
the
Grenshire Argus,
a paper first publishing in January of 1715
in the small, rural town of Grenshire. A large manor house
built there in 1721 employed hundreds of servants over the
years, and a strikingly disproportionate number of these took
their own lives. Rather than assume cruel behavior on the part
of the masters there, this paper shall examine “life in service” in
general, and the socioeconomic and psychological reasons
behind this rash of suicide.

 

—From Trudy Bilkington's sociology senior thesis,
University of York, 2008

G
ood things.

Good things were happening.

It turned out some of the books in the Arnaud library were rare editions, and Steven was planning to sell them to antique book collectors. They would bring in an astounding amount of money—Madame Arnaud had in particular spirited out one of Louis XIV's diaries, and the discovery was going to cause an international sensation. A few years ago, a fake diary had been published, and Steven had an appointment with scholars and conservators to verify this book's authenticity.

Something else arose out of the pending book sales. Interest in the manor.

The town's residents had so carefully hushed up the story of Madame Arnaud that the grandiosity of her estate was also lost to the outside world. The National Trust, a group that preserves important homes, was beside itself with the chance to have a basically untouched manor from the early 1700s, with a link to the French royal court, to adopt as a project. So maybe those lawns would again be bright green and the gardens full of flowers.

Miles, Eleanor, and I took regular tours of the manor to be sure Madame Arnaud was gone, and that no left-behind ghosts lingered. “What do you think will happen when your mom and dad find the children's cemetery?” asked Miles. We were standing in the same spot where, earlier, we'd first discovered that lost, angry boy. I was tempted to correct his use of the word
dad,
but wondered if it really was the correct term.

Standing just below Miles on the rise, I looked at his solidness against the backdrop of the manor. He looked like the master of the property. He was magisterial, far older than his years somehow. I pictured him in jodhpurs and a long velvet coat, holding a riding crop: England itself.

“I have no idea,” I answered honestly. Would they understand what they saw? Who would give them the village gossip about Madame Arnaud, as Miles had done for me? And would it be delivered with a wink and a grin . . . or with a believer's solemnity?

“The unfortunate thing is, the human hunger for scandal and bloodthirst probably means the National Trust can capitalize on the cemetery,” said Miles. “They'll probably charge extra to access that portion of the grounds.”

I thought how horrible it was that some gleeful sense of the macabre might spur people to visit the children's cemetery, without any understanding that real people had been hurt. I remembered when, as a child, I'd begged Mom to let me visit the torture chamber area of the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum at the San Francisco waterfront. . . and how I'd burst into tears when I realized that those instruments had actually been used on people.

“Maybe they'll have a sense of propriety about it,” I said. “Maybe they'll lock it up and keep people out.”

“Isn't it wild to think tour buses will roll up, and people will be picnicking here?” Miles asked. “The Versailles of Britain, that's how they'll market it.”

“I for one think it shall be pleasant to have happy people here on holiday,” said Eleanor. “It's too big an estate for just one family without servants.”

I smiled. It was true; the servants were part of what made the house feel full—or at least I imagined that was the case in the manor's heyday.

“And as for us? Will we be happy?” asked Miles.

I couldn't answer that question and avoided his eyes. “We need to learn more about the history here,” I said.

“I wish we had your Austin. It seems like there are conflicting pagan forces, and we need to destroy one and enable the other.”

“I used to do that all the time when I was alive,” said Miles nonchalantly. I burst out laughing.

“I shall be happy,” said Eleanor stoutly. “I've spent years upon years in my narrow room, guilt filled and lonelier than you can probably imagine. Now I have two wonderful companions to fill my days with pleasant conversation.”

“There could be worse places to be stuck,” I admitted.

I wanted to learn more about the runes I'd seen on the tree in the woodland pool, and figure out how we were all to “graduate.” But I had to shrug. It was nothing I could control. And it would be nice to keep an eye on Tabby, watch her grow into an adult . . . just like that maid had said she'd done with her favorite brother . . . and to see my mom and Steven heal from my death.

Which reminded me.

 

I reclined on the living room carpet next to Tabby, running my fingers through the shag, feeling it massage under my fingernails. How sad that the house offered tactility when I craved the human touch instead: the soft fat-filled cheek of Tabby, my mom's perfumed neck.

I'd been working on Tabby for a few days now. She reacted to me only in a very minor way, and unpredictably. Sometimes it seemed she heard me as plainly as if I were still alive; other times, I'd chant until my tongue tired and she heard nothing.

I'd tried various phrases. I'd worked on the word
forgive
—just in case Mom really thought I blamed her for not listening to me about the fainting—but for some reason Tabby often refused to say it.

I'd tried “Phoebe loves you” and “Phoebe misses you” and all the various permutations of that concept. Tabby was able to get some of them out, but never in the way I'd fantasized about, with Mom and Steven sitting, rapt and attentive, waiting for her next words.

I once got Tabby to say “Phee forgive” and I'd shouted with excitement, but Mom had turned on the garbage disposal at that very minute and no one heard. I dogged Tabby for an hour after that, but she wouldn't repeat it.

Today I was giving it a rest, just enjoying watching her place animal shapes into a puzzle. They were the wooden kind with pegs attached to the back, so they could be lowered into their carved-out silhouettes. Sometimes she tried to put them in upside down. I marveled that her brain wasn't yet ready to notice that. It was so very obvious! But I had to give her credit for noticing something that no one else in the house could: me.

Steven was lounging on the floor next to her, lightly helping. His reclined body and mine formed an acute angle, with Tabby in the middle as our bisector. Across the room, Mom was sitting on the sofa knitting. She'd never done that in California—probably a hobby taken up to keep her mind busy, to keep her from thinking about me. It looked like she was making a hat for Tabby, with a deep eggplant-colored yarn. The winter here in Grenshire would be cold.

My mind went back to my own childhood, to the handmade things Mom had created for me. She didn't knit but she did sew, and for my eighth birthday she'd given me the most beautiful doll.
Eglantine
.

Eglantine had a muslin face on which Mom had carefully applied oil paints, to make remarkably realistic features. Her eyes were the same green as mine. Even though I didn't know why at the time, I remembered Mom mixing up the paint, holding the plastic pallet right up to my eyes, adding in more white, more viridian, squeezing her tubes until she got a color that matched. Somehow she even painted a nice blush on the doll's cheeks, without it looking blatant.

Eglantine's hair was flax. Mom had sent away for it on the internet, sewed it onto her head, and plaited it in a loose, Germanic braid. Eglantine had a red goose-girl kerchief that was removable.

The clothes were what were so stunning. Making her own patterns, Mom had sewn a little alpine dirndl. The close-fitting burgundy corset had miniature silver buttons that truly worked, through quarter-inch buttonholes. Her loden skirt had a jacquard ribbon trim along the bottom, with a white eyelet apron over it. Eglantine wasn't a particularly German name, but it's what I assigned her.

She was my constant companion for two weeks, sitting on my lap in the car, propped up on the bathroom counter to watch me brush my teeth, tucked into bed beside me. Then I lost her.

To this day, I had no idea where she went. It wasn't the sort of situation where you have a toy before you go somewhere and don't have it afterward, so you know you lost it there, whether or not you can retrieve it.

No. Somehow although all my waking thoughts had been of Eglantine, I couldn't nail down when I'd lost track of her.

Mom had been furious. So much labor had gone into the doll, and I'd been careless of something I clearly loved. I'd begged her to make me another, but she claimed it wasn't possible. I think she wanted to teach me a lesson about guarding valuable things. Ironic.

Now, as I watched her fingers swiftly moving in strange controlled gestures with the knitting needles dully clicking, it occurred to me that someone from another culture might wonder what ritualistic behavior she indulged in, what spells she cast. All the while the purple swath of weave grew magically, row by row.

I wished I could shout out Eglantine's name, make Mom's face bloom in memory of the doll who'd been lost nearly a decade ago.

Ohhhhhhhh.

I
could,
in a manner of speaking.

Holy sweet Jesus. If I could coach Tabby to say
Eglantine,
there was no doubt Mom would know I was in some way still with them. First of all: three syllables. Not something Tabby would come up with on her own. Secondly: an oddball name. I'd never before or since met another Eglantine. They say monkeys could type randomly for hundreds of years and come up with a Shakespearean play . . . but I didn't think Tabby could ever put together those particular syllables on her own.

I was energized by the idea. Eglantine would be the key to open the door of their attention. Once Tabby said that, they'd
listen
.

I lay for a while, just enjoying the sensation of anticipation. It's not an emotion very often experienced by the dead. Perhaps called to me by that rawness of sensation, Miles and Eleanor were suddenly there.

“What's up?” asked Miles.

“I have an idea to get through to Mom and Steven,” I said. I ran through the story quickly. Their faces registered the same warm excitement I felt. Eleanor took a seat next to Mom on the sofa to watch, while Miles became another spoke to our wheel, lying on his stomach, propping his chin up on his palms. Seen from above, we would appear like a child's drawing of a four-petaled daisy.

I leaned over and kissed Tabby's hand as it struggled to place a horse in its painted pasture. Of course, I was kissing only where I believed the hand to be, because no skin was there to meet my lips—or rather, no lips to meet her skin. She dropped the puzzle piece.

I grinned.

“Oops, here you go,” said Steven, handing it back to her.

She carefully lowered it, correctly oriented, head to head, and tail to tail with the depression carved out to receive it; and I kissed her hand again. “Phee!” she protested as she again dropped it.

Miles whooped. “She knows it's you!” he exulted.

Predictably, Steven didn't seem to react to her shortening of my name. I guess she hadn't really been talking much before I died, not enough for him to recognize her version of
Phoebe
.

I savored the moment. I was beginning a process that would change everything. And as frustrating as it was to not have Mom and Steven know I was there, it was frightening to think of how astounded—and possibly disturbed—they'd be when they learned.

And . . . it would never permit them to let go of me, either, I realized. I wanted the family to heal. I didn't want to be forgotten, necessarily, but I wanted them to be able to go forward and take pleasure from life.

Should I really do this? Wouldn't Mom and Steven be better off
not
knowing their dead teen watched their every movement?

“I didn't really think this through,” I said. I sat up abruptly. Miles crawled over to me—
through
Tabby, I noticed with a flinch—and took my hand.

“What's going on?” he asked.

“I know this will work,” I said. “And I'm not sure I want it to.”

“Why?”

“I want Mom and Steven to go on to build their life. They moved all the way across the world to get away from the idea of me—and now I'm going to blow their minds by telling them I came along, too?”

“But didn't you want to tell your mom you didn't blame her? About not listening to you when you were worried about fainting?” The pressure from his hand was comforting; he continued to squeeze long past the time most people would simply revert to holding.

“Yes, but . . .”

I struggled to put into words what I felt.

“You want to deliver that message and then essentially disappear,” said Eleanor from the sofa.

“Exactly!” I said.

“Well . . . you can do that,” said Eleanor.

I thought for a while until I figured out what they meant. I could get Mom to understand I forgave her, then I could say good-bye. She didn't need to know that I didn't really leave. I'd be the person who pretends to end a phone call but stays on the line.