The Back Door of Midnight (5 page)

On the other side of the wall were paths, many of them, but they all went to one place. Two tall figures stood close to me, still as statues. I moved past them, uneasy with the way they seemed to watch me.

Suddenly, the ground gave way. I was falling down a hole. A small light appeared in the distance, and I moved toward it. From my previous dream, I thought I knew where I was headed. I expected to smell fire and hear laughter and talking, but the night was silent. All I could smell was a pinelike sweetness and the sour odor of wet ashes. There was no flickering brightness tonight, just one small bobbing light and a single voice—Aunt Iris talking to herself.

I could see the shape of her, her loose dress and wild hair, but everything was blurry, one form melting into the next. “Aunt Iris, what is going on?”

She tilted her head as if she heard my voice.

“Please,” I begged. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I can’t see very well. Aunt Iris, I need to see.”

As soon as I spoke, I saw that the bobbing light was a flashlight. My vision had become clearer, although things still looked strange. I could see police tape in all four directions, as if I were standing in the center of a crime site and had eyes in the sides and back of my head.

The ground beneath me was dark and crusty—scorched, I realized; the car was gone, but this was where it had burned. Aunt Iris sat down, dug her fingers into the ground, and raised her palms, letting the ashy earth sift through her fingers. She looked bizarre, her legs spread out like a little girl’s, her hands scooping the soft surface like a child playing in a sandbox. She took a jar from her pocket and unscrewed the lid. After setting it next to her, she continued to sift through the ashy earth. When she found a handful she liked, she put it in the jar.

I watched for several minutes. “Aunt Iris, are you trying to collect Uncle Will’s ashes?”

Again she cocked her head, but she didn’t answer and didn’t look at me.

“The sheriff will give him back when the coroner is finished.”

She grimaced.

“Uncle Will was inside the trunk when the car burned. I don’t think those are his ashes.”

“Go away.”

“What are you trying to do?” I persisted.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” she snapped, as if she hadn’t heard me correctly. “I’m sick to death of listening to voices.”

“I’m not one of your voices,” I argued. “I’m—”

“I’m not listening! I can’t hear you!”

“—Anna.”

She dropped the jar and held her hands over her ears. “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you,” she chanted loudly.

Seeing that I was upsetting her, I backed away. As I did, she raised her head and looked in my direction.

“Anna? Anna, is that you? Are you dead?” she asked, then answered her own question before I could. “Yes, yes, I can see clearly, you’re on the other side now. I shouldn’t have let it happen, but I hope you will be happier.”

I quickly looked down at my body. I could see through it! It was more like light than substance, and through the sheer light that was me, I saw mud and tire tracks. I stretched out my hand. It was transparent. My God, I
was
dead!

Help me! Uncle Will, help me. I want to go home!

There was a rush of darkness, stars flying past me, as if Uncle Will had caught me with his fishing line and reeled me in through the night. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on my back in bed. I lifted my head to look across the long attic room. What was happening to me?

I could move and could see my fingers now, solid skin and bone tightening around the sheet. I was alive. Gradually, my body relaxed.
It was just a nightmare,
I told myself,
like the one I had the night Uncle Will died.
I didn’t want to think about why I was having these nightmares. All I wanted to do was stay awake, to keep myself from dreaming again, but my eyes felt tired and gritty, my lids heavy. The weight and weariness of my arms and legs, the humid air, even the damp feel of the sheets—the physical sensation of these things—was reassuring. I gave in and fell asleep.

WHEN I ROLLED
over to look at my travel clock the next morning, it was already nine thirty. I sat up quickly, bumping my head on the low ceiling. I listened for a moment, heard nothing but birds, then headed toward the hallway bathroom. Aunt Iris’s bedroom door was shut. The image of her sitting in ashy dirt, like a baby plopped down in a sandbox, flashed before my eyes. If the dream hadn’t been so weird, I would have laughed. But staying in your uncle’s house right after his murder, the same house where your mother was killed, kind of drains the humor from a dream in which your aunt thinks you’re dead and says she hopes you will be happier that way.

I put on a pair of capris and a clean top, then organized my backpack. The sheriff was first on my list for that day.

There was no sign of Aunt Iris downstairs. In the kitchen I unplugged and pocketed my cell phone. Hoping to find some cereal and tea, I started opening cupboard doors. I pulled a
box of Cheerios from the cabinet above the sink, then stopped, staring at the dish rack below. Sitting among the dried cups and plates was a jar filled with ashes.

I couldn’t move—couldn’t believe I was seeing it. The birds that had been singing happily a moment ago sounded screechy. The cool air off the creek gave me goose bumps. I gingerly picked up the jar, turning it with the tips of my fingers, then set it down. How had I known about this?

I had never been psychic, and I refused to believe I was becoming that now. If there was such a thing as paranormal ability, then certainly it was a talent you were born with, not a germ spread by contact.

Slow down, think it through,
I told myself.

I knew that Iris was upset about not having Uncle Will’s remains. I also knew she was crazy. She could have scooped some ashes from somebody’s barbecue and convinced herself it was him. As for me, knowing that my aunt was upset and angry, it made sense that I would dream about it.

I had nearly convinced myself of this theory when I noticed Aunt Iris’s shoes by the porch door. They were crusted with mud. I turned over the shoes. The ridged soles were covered with ashy earth. I examined my own shoes, speckled with small pieces of grass that had dried on them after last night’s walk down to the water, then I ran upstairs to check the slip-ons by
my bed and even my sandals still packed in their plastic bag. They were clean. Of course, why would my shoes be crusted like Aunt Iris’s, since, in my dream, I didn’t have solid feet to wear them? But it didn’t make me feel any better that the present situation was consistent with last night’s dream.

My search must have awakened Aunt Iris. I heard water running through the noisy pipes in the bathroom. For a moment I considered bolting from the house, driving till I found a Denny’s and could think things over with the help of a stack of pancakes. But I got a grip on my imagination and returned to the kitchen.

I was sipping tea and munching dry cereal when Aunt Iris entered the room. She blinked and straightened up, as if she was surprised to see me.
Oh, great,
I thought,
I’m going to have to explain who I am all over again.

“You’re still here,” she said.

“Yes. Good morning.”

“You’re
alive.
”

“I’m Anna,” I reminded her.

“I knew that.”

“Then why wouldn’t I be alive?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I’m not as sure about things as I used to be.”

She fixed herself tea and sat down at the table.

“Aunt Iris, what’s in that jar in the dish rack?”

“William,” she said, sounding
quite
sure about that. She reached over and took a handful of dry cereal from my bowl.

“You mean his ashes?”

She nodded and chewed.

“I thought he was at the coroner’s.”

“I got them from the place where he burned. I went last night.”

“Where the car burned,” I said.

“It’s been towed,” she informed me.

“Was anyone else there—last night, I mean?”

“Just the voices.”

The skin on the back of my neck crawled. “What did the voices say?”

“Nonsense, all nonsense. I didn’t listen.”

“And no one else was around?”

She gazed at me, her blue eyes luminous as if lit from behind—
just catching the light from the window,
I told myself.

“I thought you were, but maybe it was Joanna. I thought you were dead, Anna, but here you are alive.”

I found myself looking down, checking that my hands weren’t transparent.

“Do you want the rest of your cereal?” she asked, dipping her fingers into the bowl for more.

“No, you finish it.” I had lost my appetite, watching the
same fingers that had sifted the ashes digging in my Cheerios.

“I’m going into town this morning.”

She nodded. “I know, looking for a job. Perhaps, in time, you would like to take on some of my animal clients. The work is getting too much for me.”

“Thank you, but I’m not good at that kind of thing.”

“In time,” she repeated.

I didn’t argue. Excusing myself, I hurried upstairs to brush my teeth. I couldn’t wait to get back to the normal world.

I walked to town, the bridge being just a quarter of a mile away and the town not much bigger than my neighborhood in Baltimore. Most of Wisteria’s streets were tree-lined with brick and clapboard houses, a few dating back to the 1700s, when it was a port and center for commercial fishing. Now it was a college town and summer retreat, with rows of wooden porches and about a zillion flowerpots and hanging baskets. Many of the visitors docked their boats in the marinas along the Sycamore River or stayed at bed-and-breakfasts.

Zack had said the sheriff’s office was at the corner of Jib and Water. The one-story brick building looked like a house, except for the municipal flags that were flying outside. A handwritten sign hung on the door:
GONE FOR DONUTS
.

“Gone for how long?” I exclaimed, exasperated. Turning
on my heel, I ran head-on into a man carrying a paper bag and coffee.

“Sorry . . . Sheriff McManus?”

“That’s right.”

He was a small man with a sunburned face and short, bristly hair that caught the light like pale velour. He set his coffee and bag on a plastic chair, unlocked the door, and gestured for me to enter.

There was a neat disorder to the room we entered—papers everywhere, but all of them in distinct piles with bricks for paperweights.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, settling into a chair behind a desk. “Have a seat. You’re new around here.”

“I’m visiting. My name is Anna.”

He nodded, opened his bag, and pulled out three packets of sugar, adding all of them to his coffee.

“Anna O’Neill Kirkpatrick.”

He had been stirring his coffee. Now he stopped and gazed at me. “Joanna’s daughter. Iris’s great-niece.”

“That’s right.”

“Last time I saw you, you wore pigtails and ribbons and came up to my elbow. But I don’t expect you to remember me. Did Ms. Nolan send you around?”

“Ms. Nolan?”

“Will and Iris’s attorney. I’ve been meaning to ask her if she’d contacted you.”

“She didn’t.”

“Well, then, I’m glad Iris had the sense to call you. I been kinda worried. As far as I know, you’re the only other living relative.”

“No one called me. Uncle Will wrote to me several weeks back, and I came yesterday, expecting to spend the summer with him.”

The sheriff’s response was a stare, then a nod. “Must have been a shock. A real shock. Where you living? Was it Baltimore you went to?”

“Yes.”

At his request I gave him my home address and phone number, as well as my cell phone number, which he wrote down in a little notebook that he pulled out of his shirt pocket.

“Please tell me everything you know about my uncle’s death.”

He was silent for a moment, gazing down at his brown bag, then he reached in and asked, “Doughnut?”

“No thanks. I was told some things, but Aunt Iris gets very confused. I’m not sure what to believe. She said he was found in the trunk of a burning car.”

“That’s right. How old are you, Anna?”

“Almost eighteen. My birthday’s in July.”

He thought about this, then nodded and said, “The fire department found William in an abandoned car on Tilby’s Dream, an old farm on your side of the creek. About fifty percent of his body was burned.”

His tone of voice was matter-of-fact—he could have been describing last week’s weather—but he was watching me closely, I guess to see how I’d deal with the information. “He was dead before that—how long before, we’re waiting to hear. Looks like he died of blunt force trauma to the back of the head, but we’ll know more with the coroner’s report. We’re required to send our bodies to the lab in Baltimore—that’s why Iris can’t have him back yet. I know she’s upset about that.”

“She said it happened Wednesday.”

“Thursday, actually—after midnight—but we don’t yet know when or where he was murdered. Iris said she thought he was off fishing, but she couldn’t remember when he had left. She told us that sometimes William went for days. Is that true?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was William’s lawyer, Ms. Nolan, who noticed him missing Monday, the Monday before the fire. William didn’t keep a two o’clock appointment, and Ms. Nolan couldn’t reach him by phone. Actually, she mentioned this to me at the time, but I wasn’t worried, just figured William’s mind was going the same winding road as Iris’s.”

The sheriff turned in his chair and punched a button on a swiveling fan, making the piles of paper rustle from one side of the office to the other, demonstrating his need for a lot of bricks.

“So I’m guessing William died sometime before two o’clock on Monday. Ms. Nolan can’t tell me what the appointment was about, but I already know from William that he was petitioning for guardianship of Iris. Did he mention any of this to you?”

“No, sir. What does it mean?”

“He was going to file a request with the courts that he be put in charge of Iris—of everything pretty much—her finances and health care. Basically, the petition says that the other person is incapable of taking care of herself, mentally and otherwise. It’s as much power over a person as the law can give, and Iris was fighting it all the way.”