Haunted (4 page)

“It'll be brilliant to have you. Our lads go to the championship every year, but the females have been a little worse for wear. You're
fast
. You'll be head of team, no doubt, from what I just saw.”

I grinned. Finally, something was going right for me in Grenshire. “Do you have a good coach?”

“Yeah. It's just the sorry luck of the draw that we haven't had a strong girls' team.”

I continued treading water, feeling my heart rate slow back down.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Phoebe Irving.”

“I'm Miles Whittleby.” He extended his hand and we shook formally, lurching a little in the water.

“What's school like?” I asked.

“It's all right,” he said. “The usual collection of the clueless and the gifted, and everything in between.”

“Are your friends all on swim team, too?”

“No, I'm the only one. They're more into athletics . . . I think you call it ‘track and field.' And a few play in the band.”

“That's cool,” I said. “I always wanted to play an instrument.”

“Yeah, one plays violin and the other the oboe.”

“Are you musical at all?” I asked.

“No, just a listener. And don't even ask me about dancing.”

I burst out into a peal of laughter. “I'm sure you're fine,” I teased.

“No, it's an abomination. People have injured their eyes watching.”

“It can't be that bad!”

“Oh, worse. At dances I tend to huddle against the wall to spare everyone.”

“Well, no fear, I'll huddle with you.” As soon as I said it, I could have hit myself. What a lame thing to say . . . and so presumptuous. But he didn't react like it was either.

“Perfect! Another convert to the ‘let's
not
dance' club. David Bowie hates us.”

I smiled, relieved at his response. “Actually, I do kind of like to dance.”

“Maybe I can just shuffle my feet back and forth when no one's looking.”

“Sounds elegant.”

“And do the macarena,” he added.

“Um . . .”

He burst out laughing.

“Okay, okay!” I said. “I wasn't sure if you were joking.”

“I'll introduce you to my friends,” he said. “They'll like you. I imagine the first day of school can be hard when you don't know anyone?”

“I've never done it,” I admitted. Under the water, I clenched my hands in excitement. Things had just become easier. He was going to set me up with people who would most likely be my friends from now on. And a chance to keep hanging out with
him
? Über magnifico, as German Italians say. Or as Orwell would put it, double-plusgood.

“It'll be fine. We can get together beforehand, so you'll know some of them.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That's huge. I was a little nervous about the whole thing.”

“No worries,” he said. “So where do you live?”

“This really old place that's been in the family for a while. My stepdad's family, I mean. The Arnaud Manor.”

His mouth opened, then he closed it with a shudder. “You live
there
?”

“My stepdad couldn't sell it and we had to move anyway, so this was where we ended up. Wait, what?”

He had muttered something after I said, “couldn't sell it.”

“Nothing,” he said.

“No, really, what'd you say?”

He dipped his head backward in the water and got his hair wet again. It was sexy but also sort of self-conscious. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to insult you or your family. I said, ‘what a shocker.' ”

“I know what you mean,” I said, trying to figure out if I should feel offended. “It's been neglected.”

“Neglected. And haunted.”

“Uh . . . what?” I asked.

“There's the small matter of the undead woman who drinks blood. That tends to inhibit sales.”

“No one told you about Madame Arnaud?”

“ No. ”

“She's the one who built the house and supposedly still lives there. She's immortal from drinking blood.”

“
Whose
blood?”

“Children's blood.”

“You've got to be kidding me.”

“It's the local legend,” he said.

I wondered briefly if Steven knew the crazy rumors about the manor. I stared up into the mossy green glass of the faraway ceiling, trying to figure out how to respond.

Was Miles messing with me? Maybe he'd made it up on the spot. I'd always loved reading ghost stories, but that was because they had nothing to do with real life.

I looked at him uneasily. He just waited, a half smile playing on his plum-colored lips.

Finally I said, “
You
don't believe it, do you?”

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

Employment prospects for gardeners, groomsmen, smiths,
and all manner of servants of the interior.
Enquire at Arnaud Manor, service door of the west wing.

 

—Grenshire Argus
, October 5, 1721

“S
how yourself,” I said aloud. I was in the old part of the manor near the mouth of the gargantuan fireplace. A damp smell blew down through the network of chimneys. Dust motes swirled around like bacteria in a petri dish.

After we came home, Mom went to lie down, taking a nap at the same time as Tabby. Steven was working on his laptop. I considered asking him if I could go into the old part of the house, but Bethany taught me that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

So I had crept out the door and into the mottled sunshine, marching across the dirt to the official entrance to the manor. I had put the key in the screaming mouth, opened the heavy door, and entered.

Now I stood dwarfed by the enormous stones of the great hall. Trailing up to the ceiling like a bad idea was the grandiose staircase. I inhaled the ferment and automatically found myself slowing into my lap-swimming breathing pattern.

I went upstairs and soon was opening the thick wooden door to the library, staring up at the rows and rows of shelves. Miles's words flickered through my mind. A woman who drank blood for centuries, giving the manor a reputation akin to Castle Dracula. A village that turned a blind eye to her evil, too frightened to intervene.

Just on a whim, I pulled one book out at eye level. It had a French title, and inside were etchings of horses performing some kind of patterned dance. As I looked at its place on the shelf to put it back, I saw instead of wood . . . glass. It was a tiny window.

I pulled several more books off the shelf, letting them drop to the floor. The window wasn't very much wider than a few thick volumes' spines, though. I pressed myself closer so I could peer through it.

On the other side, I could see another room, which held a cot and a trunk. It was barely the size of a closet. I couldn't imagine a more bleak room. In many haunted house movies, the bookcase revolves to reveal a secret passageway. I looked around for whatever lever might activate it, so it would swing open to show a cackling Vincent Price holding a candelabra on the other side. I started pulling books down again, looking for a doorknob or switch.

In the end, the case didn't revolve. Instead, a little door was concealed within the larger bookshelf, and the books swung with the door, just like a robe hung from a hook on the bathroom door. I hadn't needed to take down all those books after all, and in fact their position on the floor blocked the door from completely opening. I took five minutes to put them back.

The door was heavy with all the books back on the shelves, held up by iron brackets painted to look like books, but I threw my hip into it until it creaked open wide enough for me. I opened it even more because if the weight of the books made it creep closed while I was inside, well . . . that would suck.

I went in.

The room was oppressively tiny, like a fairy's cottage. I raised my hand and laid it flat along the low ceiling, bringing down a stream of dust. I walked over to the iron cot that was covered in a patchwork quilt with lots of hand-tied knots. If possible, it seemed smaller than a twin bed. Who had had to sleep here?

I knelt on the floor to open the trunk. Its surprisingly heavy lid creaked. I stared inside at the network of cubbies. Rather than one big empty space, as I'd imagined those large trunks would hold, it was divided into little sections and drawers, all covered in peeling rosebud wallpaper. Poking around, I saw old-fashioned underthings in plain white muslin and lots of heavy black dresses. In the last place I looked, I found floor-length white aprons. Of course! Only a maid would sleep in a room this small.

I stood, holding one of the aprons to my chest. I was about to hook the ties around my neck, but instead let it drop to the floor, my fingers trembling.

I took two steps to reach the window to the outside. I pulled aside the gauzy curtain, thick with gray debris—and saw the long plunge down to the ground. But something embedded in the glass itself caught my eye. I rubbed my fingers against the window until a circle of clean glass showed through. Someone had etched a message.

I shook my head. No, I wasn't seeing this.

The poor little babes,
it said, in very old-fashioned writing.

It seemed to be evidence for what Miles had said, that Madame Arnaud drank children's blood. But I didn't want to believe it. I began thinking furiously, trying to craft different reasons for a maid to scratch this particular message into the glass. Her own miscarriages?

In the corner of the window, something began moving, and I saw that it was Mom, outside walking the courtyard with Tabitha on her hip. Tabby was wearing a blue seersucker dress, and pulling at Mom's hair. I can't describe how surreal that felt, stuck in the heart of that dark stone house, and seeing the two of them out there, smiling.

I tried to open the window, but it didn't budge. I began to panic, for no good reason. The house wasn't on fire, and I wasn't trying to cast myself out of the window. It didn't matter that it wasn't opening.

Below me, winding up the booky staircase from down the hall, came one note from the organ. A brief sound, almost ignorable.

But to make sound come from the organ, someone had to pump the foot pedals first. It would never utter a whisper by itself—a boulder could fall on the keys and they would sink down soundlessly.

I froze, my heart racing. “Steven?” I called.

He must have noticed the door key was gone and followed me in, and was playing the organ to let me know the jig was up.

“Steven?” I yelled again, at the top of my lungs.

Too loud, don't make the house angry
.

No answer.

My body flooded with adrenaline, my heart feeling three sizes larger and flailing around in my chest like an out-of-control animal. The servant's room had trapped me.

No one knew I was here. The mansion's size meant no one would hear me screaming. I was completely vulnerable to whoever was playing the organ.

The only way out was back through the ballroom . . . where the organ's player waited. I looked around the miniature room frantically—was there any kind of weapon? I pulled the house key from my pocket; although it was huge it was dull.

I tried to quiet my panting breath and listen.

The mansion was quiet . . . too quiet. It felt like it was listening to
me
.

I looked at the open bookcase door, wanting to push it closed, keeping me hidden in the maid's room. But I couldn't remember if it squeaked.

I crept toward it. If the person had hunted me into the library, my movement would be detected. I'd have to close the door quickly and absolutely silently. Thank God I had put back all the books on the other side, or the sprawl of books in front of the shelf would be a giveaway.

I sucked in a deep breath as I began to ease the door closed, just like I was taught in photography class: to be absolutely still, inhale while taking a picture.

The door creaked.

So loudly that I cringed. Still, I wedged the door closed and sank down to the floor with my back against it.

It's okay,
I tried to tell myself.
It wasn't as loud as you think. And how could they track it back to this door—it's closed now. If they don't know about it, you're safe.

I carefully looked up—even my hair rustling against the door sounded loud—toward the window in the door. I couldn't see it from this vantage point, which meant that I couldn't be seen, either.

I listened . . . I waited.

I looked at my wrist to see what time it was. No watch there. But eventually Mom and Steven would miss me and come looking. There was nowhere else to go on this monstrous estate except here . . . I just had to wait. They'd come get me. They would. Right? Unless they thought I was outside and started combing the woods. Oh God, that would take hours. Days.

I'm here, I'm here,
I tried to mentally tell them.

And who was
there
? Madame Arnaud looking for another child to taste?

Or . . . this house had been empty so long. Maybe someone had taken up residence. Someone who was supposed to be taking medications to control their mental disease, but failed to. Someone crazed and violent.

Someone who would bludgeon Steven with a baseball bat when he came to find me. Someone who would kill me, too, when I heard Steven's screams and rushed out to help. And after he'd eviscerated both of us, he'd go into the modern, clean apartment and take care of Mom and Tabby.

All four of our bodies gelling and cooling in the mansion. . . who would miss us? Maybe in the fall someone from the school would call, if Mom had already registered me. The police would come and find us glued to the floor by our own decomposing. We'd be morbid headlines.

I waited. I listened, listened, listened.

A lot of time passed. My mind wandered; I thought about Bethany. I eventually yawned.

Maybe there
was
a way for the organ to play without someone pumping the pedals. Maybe a mouse was inside the works, applying his rodent teeth to tubing that somehow emitted a mild sound upon puncture.

I yawned again. My heart had long ago slowed: that wild beast in my chest had its head tucked into its paws, sleeping.

I was stiff from sitting so long, so I carefully began moving my limbs and rolling my neck around. I waited probably another twenty minutes, then I stood up, dusted off my jeans, and opened the bookshelf door.

I listened again, carefully, looking into the vast depths of that gigantic library. I closed the door behind me, and began going back down the staircase, stealthily, just to be sure. I reached the floor and walked over to the door to the hallway leading to the ballroom.

Oh my God
.

I hadn't closed this door—and it was closed now.

I backed away from it. I had to return to the secrecy of the servant's room. That was my only chance. I took a few steps backwards, just a few . . . when something insane, totally insane, happened.

The library completely vanished.

Instead, I was in the ballroom, facing the organ, five feet in front of me. A woman sat on its bench, her back to me. She wore a rotted silk dress, her right arm extended to the side. Where the fabric had torn, decayed skin revealed the muscles underneath. Her right index finger had decomposed so much that just one long bone stuck out at the end. That bone was still resting on the organ key she had played about an hour ago.

Silently, she turned her head around. She had dark hair, but I couldn't see what her face was like since it was so undone by time. She had high cheekbones that shone through the frayed parchment of her skin.

A little smile played on her worm-destroyed lips, as she held my gaze. She stood up.

Like a parishioner making her way out of the pew after church, she walked sideways to free herself and her voluminous skirts off the bench. She turned, all the while watching me. She took a slow step toward me, gracefully, although so terribly
wrong
with her skirts falling apart and her face peeling as if she'd been horribly sunburned rather than having lived for many centuries.

She was coming to me.

I had to move. But this was a
vision
. I was there with my mind, not my body.

She took another step. Two more, and she would be able to touch me. I
willed
myself to move, and managed a single step backward. Relief flooded through me; I could escape, I could get the hell out of here. The exit was to my right, so I shifted my weight to that foot and began taking steady steps. I still couldn't force myself to run, but I was going faster than she was in her stately pursuit, as her frail cloth slippers took step after step.

It was the slowest, dripped-in-syrup hunt, and every step I took required intense will from me, incredible energy. In my peripheral vision, I saw I was approaching the door. Maybe once I stepped through its threshold her strange lock on me would be broken and I could
run
.

I thought my way carefully through each backward step. I counted the black-and-white parquet squares between us. She extended her hand to me, half flesh and half bone, as if beseeching me to stop. But I was so close, so close, so close. There was the door, the rounded stones in an arch, and then I was through it.

I could sense the grand staircase behind me, but I couldn't take my eyes off her. If I looked away, maybe she'd blurt forward like a rabbit. To keep her slow, I had to watch her. The floor changed under my feet to the stone tablets of the grand entryway. I kept going. Now I could see the balustrade. I would have to go down backward, watching her. I could clutch the banister and use it to guide me down the stairs.

I was there, I was there, I could feel the slight breeze drifting up from the front door open far below me. She shook her head at me.

Instantly the vision ended, and I was back in the library looking at the closed door.

I screamed.

The doorknob turned.

The ornate, oval golden knob slowly spun.

The door flung open and crashed against the wall. The woman wasn't there, but I heard a small moan in my ear, and cold air passed through my hair. The presence was behind me, so I ran forward, down the short hall, into the ballroom.

The organ began playing a complex song with half notes and quarter notes in a rapid volley, a virtuoso performance to mock my flight down the sharp, wicked stairs. It was as if the organ knew I had been trying to convince myself I hadn't heard it, and was rolling out its most deafening and grandiose performance.