Paper Tigers (10 page)

CHAPTER 11

As awareness returned, Alison took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. She was inside the album again and there was nothing here that could hurt her.

She flexed her hands and rose on tiptoe. No trace of pain in her muscles. Once again, she was in the foyer. The air was cool but not quite cold; the silence, a weight. As soon as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she headed for the door to the turret room. The
closed
door. She twisted the knob to no avail and pressed her ear to the door. No ticking. No whisk-whisk of a swinging pendulum.

A giggle sounded from behind. She spun around, fingers trembling. A silvery column of dust motes, vaguely child-shaped, shimmered near the archway leading back into the foyer. Then it vanished.

A tiny smudge on the floor was all the ghost-shape had left behind. When she stepped through the space a cold chill wrapped around her ankles, but like the motes, it, too, disappeared. She shivered. Took a step forward. Then another. Both steps were smooth and even. All the scars were in their proper places, but her walk had most definitely changed.

“Tiger, tiger,” she murmured.

A long ribbon of cobweb loosened from the chandelier and drifted to the floor. She craned her neck and felt the scar tissue pull, a reminder that the house's magic extended only so far. At least while she was on the inside. One faceted crystal sparkled clean; the others remained dull behind their grey cloaks.

The photograph had shown a long, narrow room with one window.
Maybe the door would be open. The wood creaked on the third step and she jumped. Stripes were partially visible beneath the grime on the wallpaper, and she wiped a section clean with the side of her hand. The striping might have been navy blue or black, but it was impossible to tell in the murky light.

Maybe next time, she'd bring a flashlight. She let out a quick laugh. Would the tiger let her bring something into its lair? Halfway up the stairs, she paused. On the stairs below, her shoes had left impressions, but on the stairs she'd yet to climb, the dust obscured the wood with an even, unmarked veil. No trace she'd ever been there at all.

Her shadow on the wall waited patiently. She didn't think the house held enough light, yet there it was. Undeniable. Wrong. Or perhaps not. The house played by its own set of rules.

She continued up, but before she passed beyond the open railing, she cast another look toward the turret room. Until the door opened, she

was trapped

might as well look for the room in the picture. She tiptoed down the hallway on the second floor. No carpet cushioned her steps; each time her foot landed on the wood, a tiny sound echoed back. Four doors lined each side of the hall, directly across from each other with sconces in between; at the end of the hallway, wreathed in dark, another door. All closed.

She stopped before the first set of doors and brushed her hand across the wall, revealing more of the same striped wallpaper, yellow splotches of age resembling sickly flowers. A long strip hung a few feet away. The smoke-darkened glass in the nearest sconce was broken, the pieces scattered on the floor below.

The door on her right was locked, as was the door on her left. The next set of doors, the same.

When she approached the next door on her right, a tiny sound cut
through the quiet. A muffled
plink
, like dripping water. She leaned closer until she heard the sound again and confirmed it didn't come from behind the door. In the center of the hallway, she stood facing the door at the end, her head cocked to one side. Waiting.

Soft and distant voices slipped out from under the last door on the left. Alison came to a halt just short of the doorframe.

“So lovely.”

A man's voice. George's voice.

A rustle of fabric. A footstep.

“I only wanted to…”

The dripping sound returned. Ignoring the desert in her mouth, Alison opened the door. The room held an old spiderweb hanging in the space between ceiling and wall in the right corner. No furniture. No bright, happy flowers bobbing in a vase. The lace curtains at the window were shreds of torn fabric. She crossed the threshold and the air became an early winter's chill. Goosebumps rose along her left arm, her nipple pebbled hard and hurtful, and her breath turned to a frosty plume. Then the cold rushed past—
through
—her. She sagged back against the doorframe. Neither footprint nor streak marred the floor. The tiny sound of dripping water had gone away with the

ghosts

voices. Beyond the tattered lace at the window, grey mist swirled. Beyond that, formless white.

A flurry of movement flashed past and she spun around, hands to her throat. The room was still empty, the floor marked by only her footprints. Dark spots speckled the wallpaper to the left of the door. The air pressure changed, her chest tightened, and a shadow flickered across the wall. She blinked. Tipped her head. Shapes swam into view, transparent suggestions of a daybed and tall wardrobe, but when she blinked, the illusion vanished and the moving silhouette was closer now.

Purple spirals wound their way around her core. The shadow came closer still, and fingers of cold brushed against her cheek. She smelled pipe tobacco, thick enough to taste.

A voice said, “Alison.”

She bolted from the room, feet heavy on the wood, and cold caressed her shoulder and cheek, but once in the hallway, both the cold and the smell of smoke disappeared. She bent, hands on her knees, breathing hard.

I want to go home.

Home, with real light and real warmth and real—

Scars?
Red cut in.
Sure, go home and wallow in your self-pity and your ugly. Nothing happened.

“Leave me alone,” she said, turning toward the stairs.

Look and see. There's nothing there.

She paused and gave the room one last look. Darkness and old walls. No smoke. No voices. Wrapping her arms around herself, she left the hallway behind and stood at the stairs.

Go down, go down
, Purple urged.

Tiny footsteps pattered overhead and a soft giggle wound its way down the staircase. When Alison's feet met the third floor landing, she heard the giggle again, hidden behind a hand or a door.

The first door on the right, the first door on her left, and the second door on her right were all closed. She stepped deeper into the gloom. Another shadow, this one small and narrow, flitted across the wall on her right, swept along the floor in a puddle of dark up to the wall on her left, and stopped there, staining the wallpaper with its presence. It shimmered and separated from the wall, forming into the shape of a child with shoulders and head down, translucent grey and featureless, save for a deeper shading that suggested eyes, nose, and mouth.

“Please don't be afraid. I won't hurt you,” Alison said.

The ghost held out one unsubstantial hand. Alison took a step,
close enough now to feel the air change to cold. She held out her own hand. A girl's face came out of the grey, as though she were emerging from a waterfall. Wide-set dark eyes, elfin nose and chin, round cheeks, a tiny rosebud mouth. The girl from the photograph.

“Are you Mary?”

The girl nodded. Her face held no fear, no revulsion, only curiosity. Heavy footsteps sounded in the distance, panicked steps running across wood, thumping down stairs. Voices called out. The ghost's eyes widened, her hand retracted, and she spun around, her features blurring back to grey. She melted back onto the wall, and then she was gone.

“Zack? Where are you?” A young voice called out from somewhere far away, her words wavering.

Alison raced down the hallway to the stairs.

“Here, I'm here.” Another voice, even farther away. “Stay where you are.”

Alison descended the stairs. On the second floor landing, there were several footprints, too many for her passage alone. In the hallway, there were more, pointing away and toward the staircase, disappearing under locked doors, patterned in circles and wide looping arcs.

“Mitch! I can't see—” The boy's voice turned into a choking cough, nearby, yet muffled.

Then Alison smelled the smoke. Not from a pipe, but the reek of burning wood. She moaned low in her throat.

“Please, no. Not this,” she said.

“Zack! Zack?” The girl started to cry.

Despite the stink, despite Purple holding court in her chest, Alison shouted, “Where are you?”

There was no roiling smoke, no red-yellow flames licking at the walls, but the smell was everywhere, a dark promise of destruction. In her nose, her mouth, her throat, burning and hot. Footsteps ran
beside her, then a heavy pounding of fists against plaster, a groan of frustration.

“I'm coming, Mitch,” a voice yelled. “I'm coming.”

The voice was too close, too far away. Alison covered her mouth and nose with a hand and crept down the stairs. The girl's cries grew closer and closer still, but when Alison reached the bottom step, they cut off.

The house remained still and silent, an abandoned statue frozen in time. No fire. No smoke. No little girl, real or ghost. The visible prints belonged solely to her.

She took her hand away from her mouth. All a parlor trick. An illusion. There were no children trapped inside the house. The door to the turret room creaked open, swinging in a wide arc until it slid to a stop. The grandfather clock stood, a sentry or a silent witness, its hands unmoving.

Then it chimed.

Time to go home.

Smiling, she entered the turret room where the clock hands ticked their steady backward pace. She lifted one hand, raised it to the clock, and glanced over her shoulder.

The house shifted and her vision blurred behind a cloud of dark smoke and the creeping orange light of fire. Heat roared into the room, the sound of rumbling thunder or the roar of a hungry beast.

Smoke twisted and coiled on the floor. Alison screamed, tasting char on her tongue, and the clock ticked. A little girl ran into the foyer, her bright blue eyes round with fear, her blonde hair streaked with soot. Blood trickled from a comma-shaped gash above one eyebrow. She stopped, turned toward the turret, and her eyes met Alison's with a mirror of shock and fear. She opened her mouth as Alison did the same, drawing in breath for a shout. The girl's voice rose over the flames.

“Please help me.”

“Run away,” Alison shrieked.

The girl's eyes widened in abject horror.

“Wait,” Alison cried out. “I'll help you. I can help you.”

The girl screamed and raised her hands in front of her while her head shook from side to side.

“Run,” Alison screamed, tasting the heat, the stink, the smoke. “Run away, get out, you have to get out!”

Alison tried to pull away from the clock.

You can't help her. You have to get away.

The smoke and the fire were so close, she needed to help the girl, but the clock ticked on and on, running backward, and darkness struck the smoke from her eyes as the real world pulled her out and away.

Alison banged into the edge of the refrigerator with one shoulder, cried out, spun around, and raced back over to the counter, to the album.

She slammed her hands down, the skin of her palms tingling with the impact, and choked back a shriek. It wouldn't let her back in. Not yet. Her ticket to see the tiger was for one use only, and she had to wait for another photo. She crumpled to the floor, buried her face (and the skin was so soft, so soft and unscarred because it made her whole, like the last time, made her whole and human) in her hands, and broke into tears. The tiger wouldn't let her help the little girl.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” she said.

Was the little girl, Mitch, still trapped inside? Inside a paper fire? Would she die inside, unable to get out, get away? It couldn't. It wouldn't.

The names…

Her sob caught in her throat. Paper and fire and the names. Mitch was sometimes short for Michelle and Zack…she knew those names.

She took the stairs two at a time, her now-perfect legs moving with ease, flipped open her jewelry box, and unfolded the yellowed newspaper clipping. There, halfway down:
Two children, identified as Michelle and Zachary Phillips, were rescued from the fire.

It had to be the same children and if so, they were safe, both of them. Rescued years ago. She held the clipping to her chest until the last bit of panic subsided, then returned it to the box and held out her hands. Her fingernails shimmered nearly opalescent. Her cheeks were smooth and when she smiled, the skin didn't stretch, didn't pull. No more Monstergirl. She changed her clothes and Yellow came creeping in on tiny, destructive feet.

What are you doing? You can't go out. The people will look, the people will point.

But she
could
go out. She didn't have to be afraid. Nonetheless, her steps were slow as she made her way downstairs. What if it
was
all an illusion? What if she saw unscarred skin but others didn't?