Paper Tigers (7 page)

“Okay,” she said, flipping the cover open.

So far, so good. She turned to George's photo, then to the photo of the house, but when she tried to turn that page over, it didn't budge. She held the album on its side and gave it a shake. “Come on,” she said. She flipped past George to the house, and once again, the page wouldn't turn. It made no sense. Why would it let Elena look at all the pages and not her? How was that even possible?

She stuck her hand in her pocket, suddenly sure the paper had disappeared, but she found it tucked deep in the corner and breathed a sigh of relief that it was still dry. Holding her lower lip gently between her teeth, she unfolded the paper. It was a newspaper clipping, not nearly as old as she'd expected.

August 4, 1992.
Last night, a four-alarm blaze destroyed the house known to local residents as Pennington House. Originally built in the 1800s by one of the state's wealthiest families, the house had been vacant for years, caught up in a legal battle between distant relatives. Two children, identified as Michelle and Zachary Phillips were rescued from the fire. Arson is suspected.

The rest of the article was lost beyond a neat tear. Above the article, a photo showed a familiar house with curtained windows and gleaming paint. Another photo, obviously taken many years later, revealed peeling paint, boarded-up windows, and a definite lean on the right side of the porch, but there was no picture of the house post-fire.

Alison read the article twice. There was no indication as to whether or not the clipping was from a local newspaper, and the name of the house didn't sound familiar at all, but both would be easy enough to find out.

Had the house burned down completely? They didn't always. Sometimes only the inside burned, leaving an almost normal façade, save for the scorch marks leading from the windows and doors and a gaping hole where a roof should be—

“Alison?”

“Yes?”

“I'm going to start making the salad, okay?”

“Okay, that's fine,” Alison called out.

She put the newspaper clipping in her jewelry box, next to a plastic hospital identification bracelet and a tiny diamond

reminder

ring and changed her clothes.

Maybe the album wasn't magic at all. Maybe it was haunted.

Her mother set down her fork. “Am I crazy, or do you smell flowers, too?”

Alison sniffed, shifting in her seat as her hip gave another twinge of pain. “I don't smell anything except the food.”

“It smells like roses, lilies, lilacs, and a bunch of others.” She gave a small laugh. “Like we're standing inside a garden.”

“Nope, no flowers here. Did you wear a new perfume today?”

Her mother's brow creased. “I'm not wearing any at all. It's so strange.” She shook her head in dismissal. “So, what prompted you to go out today?”

“It was nothing, really. I went back to that shop, where I got the photo album.”

“That's twice now, and today, well, it was during the day. You haven't gone out like that in a long time. I'm proud of you.”

Alison nodded. “I know you are.”

“It's a big step, I know, and I hope it's the first of many. You need to get out more often. It's good for you. I know if you keep trying—”

“Not now, please. Let it go, okay?”

Her mother's lips pursed as she speared a piece of lettuce with her fork, but she said, “Okay. I'll let it go.”

Alison toyed with her own salad, her appetite gone. Even if her mother didn't think she was moving forward fast enough, she
was
trying. She was.

Alison closed and locked the door behind her mom and brought the photo album back downstairs. When she set it on the coffee table, the room filled with the sweetness of roses. Her mother's voice echoed in her ears.

Do you smell flowers?

But the scent vanished in the span of a heartbeat, as though it had never been there at all. Alison sank down on the sofa, grimacing at the knot of pain below her hipbone. After she kicked off her slippers, she traced her fingers over the illegible print.

Leave it alone.

She turned past George's photo and stared at the house, imagining the walls blackened and charred, the wood scorched, the windows shattered, the roof caved in. She tried to turn the page again, but of course it didn't budge.

She pressed her fingertips to her temple. She should throw it out before her

obsession

fascination with it grew any stronger.

But it took the scars away…or maybe she only thought it did. Maybe everything was in her imagination, another way to keep herself from facing what needed to be faced. That was far more like—

The curtain in the top window of the turret twitched. Alison sat back. Took a deep breath. Craned her neck forward, ignoring the pull of scar tissue.

A face peeked out from behind the lace curtain, a sepia flash of eyes and open mouth. The curtain shifted and the face disappeared. Alison pressed both hands to her mouth.

Not real. It couldn't be real. It was some sort of trick, that's all. She needed to leave it alone, to close it up and throw it away.

The face appeared again, a doll-like face with dark eyes and round cheeks—a child, holding the curtain back with one pudgy hand. The little girl lifted her free hand, and opened and closed her fingers. Alison raised her hand and waved back even as the voice shouted alarm inside her head.

“It's just a little girl,” she muttered, her voice thick at the edges.

A gust of rose-scented wind carried her voice away. The breeze rifled through her hair. An insect flitted across the page, a quick blur of fluttering wings. The little girl giggled a tiny, musical trill. Piano notes played in the background.

A woman's voice called out, “Mary? Are you in there, Mary?”

Shoes tapped across a wood floor. The little girl peered back over her shoulder and dropped the curtain. The lace edge brushed against the other panel before it fell back into place. The girl's shadow darted behind the lace, a quick flash of dark against light, two sets of clicking footsteps, one lighter and quicker than the other, faded back into the paper, and then all was still.

A silhouette remained, frozen in time, behind the curtain. A flash of color flew past, the vibrant orange and black of a Monarch butterfly. It spiraled down and lit on the rosebush, its wings slowly opening and closing. Then it melted
into
the photograph, growing
smaller and smaller, its colors changing from brilliant to dull. Alison bent close until her nose was mere inches away. Yes, there on a rosebush, the butterfly sat motionless. She pressed the tip of her finger on the photo, covering the butterfly.

“Come in,” a man's voice said.

Her finger slipped into the picture, disappearing through both butterfly and rosebush. Then her hand, all the way to her wrist. An unseen hand wrapped around hers, the fingers holding tight with an iron grip, hard enough to crush her bones together. She cried out. The hand tugged, pulling her down. Pulling her in. The world turned shades of brown and ivory. A sensation of spinning, of vertigo turned upside down and inside out. Pain. Heat like the kiss of flames against her skin. She shrieked wordless cries and a child's merry laughter filled the spaces in-between. A sense of time standing still as she writhed in sepia-colored nothingness, spiraling down into the heat, into the album, into an absolute dark laced with the smell of flowers and tobacco and time.

PART III

DOORWAYS, SCARS, AND GRANDFATHER CLOCKS

She convinces the night nurse, an older woman with dark eyes and a serious mouth, to bring her a mirror. The doctors, including the psychologist whose words always come out laced with condescension, don't think she's ready for her reflection. It will be too traumatic at this stage, they say.

The nurse hands her a compact, pats her hand, and leaves her alone. She holds the compact for almost an hour. Dust from the face powder within drifts down onto the bedsheets, the scent mixing with the chemical stink of the hospital room.

She doesn't pay attention to the smells. I want to see, I want to see, the words run in her head, around and around in circles. She's felt the scars, oh yes, she has, but she wants—needs—to see. She's seen most of the scars on her body, she's traced her fingers along the shifted planes of her face, and she's seen enough in her mother's (and his and his and his, she can't forget his) eyes to know what to expect.

When she looks, she doesn't scream or cry out. She stares and stares, sure it's a mistake. This isn't her face. This is a stranger, a Monstergirl with overlapping bands of pink skin, white skin, shiny and raised, and an empty socket where an eye should be.

She turns her face from side to side, thinks she looks cleaved in two in some grim horror movie fashion. Her left side, the good side, is all pale skin and whole, the right is nightmarish. Monstergirl, she thinks again. She knows she will keep this word to herself—her secret name.

Finally, she cries, silent tears that burn like acid on her ruined face, but she doesn't scream. She wants to leave this place of needles and scalpels. There's too much pain here, and if she screams, they might make her stay longer, or worse—they might never let her go.

Now she knows why there won't be any more weekend trips to the beach, no tipping her face to the sun, no walks down the boardwalk, no teaching, no children, no future—only shadows and dark and hiding.

CHAPTER 8

Alison came to, came
awake
, curled on her side with her arms arced protectively around her head. Her breath caught in her throat as she stood, holding onto the wall for support. A wall not in her living room, not in her house, not anywhere known, yet a wide, darkened foyer that held a strange familiarity. Beneath her bare feet, the floor was cool.

Surrounded by heavy silence, she brushed dust from her hands and clothes. Inside the album. She'd fallen inside the album.

Not possible.

She covered her eyes and counted to ten, but when she peeked through her fingers, the house remained. The air was heavy and stale but with a slight chill, and a taste of old, forgotten things crept into her mouth. An old chandelier missing half its crystals hung overhead, draped in a veil of cobwebs. Scratched and pitted wood peeked through the dust on the floor. Several arched openings led to other rooms, and a staircase stood off to the right, intricate carvings on the banister and newel post apparent even through the grime. She turned to the main door, a structure nearly as tall as it was wide. The brass doorknob was speckled with spots of dark and gave a loud creak when she turned it, the sound echoing off the walls. She twitched, glanced over both shoulders, and tried it again.

Locked.

Locked in a house? Trapped in a photo album? Was it real or merely a phantom? She pinched her left arm and grimaced at the resulting welt. No dream. She took one hesitant step toward an
archway then another. There had to be a way out, a way back out into the real world.

The room, a large rectangular space, was devoid of furniture. Cobwebs clung to the corners of the high ceiling, dark curtains sagged over three windows, and dingy wallpaper adorned the walls. She pushed a curtain aside, dislodging a cloud of dust. Beyond the glass, a fine grey mist floated in the space beyond the glass, and past that, a blur of white with a darker blur in one corner. The mist rushed in to hide both the white and dark; the curtain gave a soft swish as it settled into place.

She left the room on quiet feet, tracing new prints on the floor, and stopped past the archway to shift her weight from side to side. Somewhere along the way from her living room to the house, the ache in her hip had vanished. The scars gave their normal pull and tug, but without stiffness or pain. Curious. She crossed the foyer and passed through another archway. Her limp, unfortunately, persisted.

The room, shaped much the same as the first, had two curtained windows with the same grey outside. Several fist-sized holes riddled the plaster on the far wall, next to a tall, narrow closed door. She tried the handle. Dust came off on her hand, revealing a cut-glass knob, but the door didn't open.

If her memory served correctly, the door should lead to the turret room. She set her left shoulder against the door while turning the knob. The frame gave a low groan, but still didn't open.

The rest of the rooms on the first floor contained curtained windows, cobwebs, and quiet. With a tremble in her fingers, she stood at the base of the staircase, unable to see the top third through the gloom.

A sudden sense of being watched washed over her; she whirled around. Held her breath. Willed herself completely still. The skin on the unburned side of her neck prickled. When her chest ached, she exhaled in one long shuddering breath.

She tried the front door again. Still locked.

Of course. It's locked and you'll be locked in here forever. Forgotten forever. Here in this house that's not a house. Forever and ever.

Ignoring the voice, she turned back to the staircase. No one was watching. There was no one else in the house.

No one here but you and I, my dear
, a voice said. (Not Purple this time. The voice was far too deep. Inside her head, but not her voice at all. Neither Red, nor Yellow, nor Purple. A George voice.)
You and I and fear, my dear.

A rough, masculine laugh broke through the silence. Not in her head. Not in her head at all. She backed up until her spine pressed against the wall next to the door. From her position, she could see all the entryways leading off the foyer as well as the staircase. She crossed her arms. Counted off seconds in her head. When three minutes had gone by, she stepped away from the wall.

An icy chill swirled around her ankles, curling up to brush against her left arm. Goosebumps pebbled her skin.

Someone
is
here. Someone here with you.

A kiss of cold swept across her shoulder then her cheek, the suggestion of fingers stroking. She turned her head, moaning low in her throat.

Welcome
, the deep voice said. And the chill vanished.

She staggered forward, hands waving in the spaces where the touch had been. Stomach twisting in knots, she stumbled up the stairs, hair falling into her eyes, to a small landing. Another set of stairs led even higher, and when she cleared the last step, she skidded to a stop in a long hallway, the end swathed in murk. A narrow rug with pale swirls on a faded blue background ran down the center, and the tassels bordering each end of the carpet curled in twisted ropes resembling fat slugs. Embossed paper, stained in some spots and peeling in others, covered the walls. Closed doors lined each side, three on the right wall, two on the left, with sconces, their glass
frames coated with soot, hanging on the walls between. Lacy cobwebs dangled from the ceiling.

Brushing her hair back from her forehead, she tiptoed to the first door on her right. Locked. She tried the next door on her left. The knob gave a high-pitched squeak, but the door didn't open. She watched the top of the stairs with her jaw clenched tight as she waited for the echo to fade.

Once it did, she walked to the next door. When her hand hovered over the doorknob, the sound of tiny pattering feet trailed down the hall, first heading toward her, then away. A child's footsteps, light and teasing. A soft giggle, muffled. Pinching the inside of her cheek between her teeth, Alison took two more steps, pushing away a long tendril of dusty web.

A door slammed. One loud bang then a creaking shudder of wood. In the distance, not close. She clamped both hands over her mouth to hold in a shriek, spun around, and her foot caught on the rug. As her upper body pitched to the right, her knees bent and canted to the left. The skin on her hip and back pulled. With a moan, she swayed, one hand questing for the wall. She didn't find it in time to stop her descent, only to slow it down into a semi-controlled tumble. She landed hard on her hands and knees, her left hand resting on a hard patch of carpet, the fibers matted and dark with a stain.

She scrambled to her feet. Lumbered down the hallway, back toward the stairs. A sob caught in her throat. She had nowhere to run, nowhere to go. Maybe the front door had opened. Maybe she'd find the way out. She hobbled down the steps, her mouth dry, and paused at the second floor landing. Peered around the corner.

Another long hallway, twice as wide as the one she'd left; another thick layer of dust on the floor. Doors lined each side of the hall, all of them closed. She turned back to the staircase. Gripping the railing tight enough to make her fingers ache, she descended.

A low rhythmic squeal slid through the air. She gripped the railing
tight and kept moving, each step slow and careful. Violet chaos twisted inside her mind, a feverish babble of nonsense. Her brow glistened with a thin sheen of sweat, despite the chill.

The foyer appeared exactly the same. There was another squeak, the raspy squeal of old metal. The door leading into the turret stood open, but it had been locked. She'd tried it. On tiptoe, she headed for the open door, her mouth dry, pulse skittering.

Maybe it's a trap.

She shoved the voice away. The entire house held her trapped. What difference did one room make? Five feet from the door, a cold chill skimmed her arm then vanished. She recoiled. Footprints appeared on the floor, tiny footprints, not her own, heading through the doorway.

The circular room was larger than she expected. The tiny footprints curved past the doorway, over to the back wall, and disappeared inches shy of the baseboard molding. And standing in-between the side windows, a grandfather clock with carved, elegant wood in a deep, burnished shade of mahogany, with not a speck of dust anywhere. A long oval of glass revealed a brass pendulum below the ornate face. Black scrollwork hands stood frozen at a minute after twelve. The pendulum hung motionless. A spindle-thin second hand with a tip shaped like the sharp end of an iron gate sat atop the hand marking the hour.

A tiny tick sounded from inside the cabinet, and the pendulum swung in a slow arc from right to left. A sonorous chime rang out; she cried out and jerked back.

The pendulum swung back and forth. The second hand ticked counter-clockwise, its pointed tip skimming across the Roman numerals. “No,” she said. The clock chimed again. She held her hands over her ears. The second hand continued to move, giving time back instead of stealing it away.

She extended her hand. Her fingertips grazed the glass. Heat
flared through her palm, a deep heat, but that wasn't right because her fingers were dead and numb and she couldn't

no air

breathe. Grey mist swirled in place of air, creeping down into her throat. Heat pressed from the inside. The grey took her in, pulling her down. Her arms flailed as she tried to grab onto something. Anything. The clock chimed, the second hand ticked wrong, so wrong, and she, and she—

—reeled forward, her shin bumping against something unseen, and she fell to her knees. The quiet fading chime of the clock echoed away.

Trembling, Alison stood in the middle of her living room. The photo album lay face down on the coffee table. She took two steps forward before the strength left her legs, and she sank to the floor like a balloon full of empty.

When the rubbery sensation left her limbs, she raked cobwebs from her hair. A thin glimmer of dust coated her arms and legs.

“This isn't possible,” she said, her voice paper thin.

She wiped her hands on her pants and stiffened, staring at her hands. At her fingers. Ten finger-piggies, all lined up in a row, healthy and whole, with pink nails and the half-moon of white tucked against the cuticles. She flipped her hands over. The skin of her palms gleamed pale and lined.

She closed her eyes. A haunted photo album, a haunted house inside the album, a little ghost that left footprints in the dust, and a clock that ran backward. Yes, she could almost bring herself to believe in those things, but she had eight fingers, not ten. Ghosts and clocks could not bring back what doctors cut away. Using the tip of her left index finger, she poked her right eyelid and felt the hard
plastic beneath the lid. If she wasn't wearing her eye, would the album have replaced that, too?

Beneath her right sleeve, she found smooth skin with a layer of fine hairs. She clutched her chest and exhaled sharply. In a flash, she removed her shirt and traced her fingers around the curve of her breasts—two of them—the nipples hardening beneath her palms.

Perfect skin disappeared into the waistband of her pants. She discarded the rest of her clothing. Warm air from the heat vent caressed her legs.

Then she lifted her hands to her face. Traced her fingertips along her cheekbones, her jawline, her eyelashes, eyelids, and brows. Tears filled her eye.

Go away, Monstergirl. Go away and never come back.

She smiled, running her fingers along the curve of her lips. A real smile. No grimace. No ruined flesh. The Monstergirl had gone to live with the tiger.

She raced into the kitchen, her steps even. Pushed aside the window blind and angled her face until a ghostly image with high cheekbones and wide eyes appeared in the glass. Laughter bubbled up and out. Later, she would think about the how and why. For now, her reflection was enough. So much more than enough. Long, thick tendrils of hair spilled over her forehead, tickling her skin.

“How am I going to explain this?”

The tiger swallowed me up and made me whole.

The explanation didn't matter. She didn't have to hide anymore. She could go out in public. She could get a job, make friends, live.

She could stop being afraid.