The Poe Estate (12 page)

“Yeah, she's a little over the top, but I like her. My cousin has her complete works in her library. I can't believe it's really that same house!”

“I like Poe better,” said Andre.

“Of course you do,” said Elizabeth affectionately. “You like Poe better than everything, you bloodthirsty creature.”

“Yeah, that's true. Horror beats gothic, no contest. More action, less melancholy.”

“Remember that time you talked Leo into helping you
build a model of the pit and the pendulum? And you tried to trap Griffin in it? How old were you, eleven?”

“Ten. And I did not!” Andre protested. “Griffin
volunteered
. I would never try to trap him! Anyway, can you imagine anybody actually trapping Griffin anywhere, no matter how hard they tried?”

“Well, there
was
that one time . . .” Elizabeth looked at me. “Sorry, Sukie. We're being rude, talking about people you don't know. Did you have more questions?”

I did. I had a million questions—too many to ask. An ocean liner full of questions had docked at the wharf of my brain, and they all poured out over the gangplank, wearing funny clothes and carrying bundles. Now they were all yelling at once, and none of them spoke English. I shrugged.

“What about that other thing?” prompted Andre. “Besides the broom. Didn't you say you wanted to show us something else?”

“Right.” I found myself strangely reluctant to take out the clasp in this tiny, cramped room, but I made myself do it. “I found this at an estate sale this afternoon,” I said, holding out the box. “The second I touched it, I knew it was . . . I don't know, something scary. Something bad. And that guy with the pipe, Adolphus T. Feathertop, he was there too, which seemed weird. Why would he show up all the way up in Rhode Island? He tried hard to buy it from me, but I didn't sell it—even though he offered a lot of money that I could really use. What is it? Should I be worried?”

Elizabeth took the mint tin and opened it. She unwrapped the clasp.

Andre gasped. Both of them stared in silence.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “Yes, you should be worried.”

This was when Kitty decided to put in an appearance.

• • •

Kitty materialized on top of Elizabeth's desk. Well, that's not quite the right word—she didn't become solid, just dimly visible.

Andre blinked and frowned, squinting. “Watch out! Something's here,” he said. “Don't let it get the Yellow Sign!”

Elizabeth snapped the lid back on the box, sniffing the air. “You're right. I definitely smell something,” she said. “Where is it?”

Andre said, “The shimmering's right on your desk.”

Kitty wanted to know who these bozos thought they were,
sniffing
at her, and what they thought they were doing with that disgusting clasp and all those dangerous objects all over the walls, and could they actually
see
her? She brightened herself, growing so intensely present she was practically glowing.

“Who's there?” asked Elizabeth tensely.

Andre pointed. “It's a
ghost
!” He sounded both alarmed and gleeful.

“It's okay,” I said. “It's just my sister. Kitty, get down from that desk. You're freaking everybody out.”

Kitty pointed out that there was really no place else to sit.

“You could stick to the wall like you were doing before.”

The wall, Kitty also pointed out, had all those shelves all over it, with things poking out. And anyway, people weren't freaking out about where she was sitting. They were freaking out about seeing a ghost.

I had to admit that was true. Especially when Andre said, “The ghost is your
sister
? Your sister is a
ghost
?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?” I said. “You just said you collected haunted houses! Aren't you used to ghosts?”

“Literary ghosts, yes,” said Elizabeth. “But I've never met a ghost of a
real
person! I didn't know they even existed. Was your sister real? I mean, was she a real, live girl who died?”

“Of course she was. What else would she be? She's my sister!”

“You sure
you're
not fictional?” asked Andre.

“How could I be? I'm right here!”

“Could a real girl have a fictional sister?” asked Andre.

“Sure,” said Elizabeth. “Her sister could be like an imaginary friend.”

“Well, she's not,” I said. “You can ask my parents.”

Kitty didn't like being talked about as if she weren't there.

I pointed out that we were talking about her precisely as if she
were
there. “We wouldn't have been talking about you at all if you weren't here,” I said.

“She can hear you?” asked Andre. “Kitty, can you hear me too?”

“She can hear you fine,” I said. “She just doesn't exactly
talk
.”

“How do you know what she's saying, then?”

I shrugged. “I just do.”

“Kitty, why are you here?” asked Elizabeth. “Is it about the clasp?”

Kitty rolled her eyes.

“No, it's about
me
,” I said. “Kitty's always been very protective, even while she was alive.” I explained about the family curse, my sickly childhood, Kitty taking care of me, Kitty
dying, and the blue whistle. I brought it out to show them.

Elizabeth and Andre examined it respectfully and gave it back to me. “It has that shimmer,” said Andre. “Definitely an object of power.”

Kitty wanted them to stop wasting time and explain about the clasp. I found I did too, so I asked again.

“Right, the clasp. How long have you had it?” asked Andre.

“Just a few hours. I brought it here right after I bought it.”

“And how much contact did you have with it? Have you worn it?”

“No, I've barely even touched it. I touched it once when I found it and once when I put it in that tin.”

“Good, you should be all right, then. I'm pretty sure you need to have more contact for it to affect you.”

“But what
is
it?” I was getting impatient.

“It's something called the Yellow Sign,” said Elizabeth. “It's from a book called
The King in Yellow
, which is a collection of stories about a book called
The King in Yellow
.”

“
The King in Yellow
is a book about itself?”

“I'm sorry—I know it's confusing. No, the book the clasp is
from
—by a writer named Robert W. Chambers—has the same title as the book it
discusses
, but they're two different books. The Chambers book is about what happens to people who read the book within the book.”

“What
does
happen to them?”

Andre said, “Basically, they all run mad, and some of them die mysteriously.”

“Oh.” That didn't sound good. “What about the Yellow
Clasp, though?”

“The Yellow
Sign
,” Elizabeth corrected me. She opened the box and pointed. “See this letter thing? It's the sigil—the sign—of the King in Yellow. In the book, the characters who wear this clasp with the Yellow Sign on it run mad and die mysteriously too.”

“Does the clasp drive them crazy and kill them?”

“We think so. Of course, all the ones who wear the clasp also read the book, so it's possible the clasp is harmless on its own.”

“It doesn't feel harmless,” I said.

“No,” she said. “It doesn't smell harmless, either.”

“What's
The King in Yellow
about, anyway? The dangerous
King in Yellow
, I mean, the book within the book.”

“Nobody knows for sure,” said Andre. “Nobody's read it, for obvious reasons. The librarians won't let me borrow it. Not even Libbet. I keep asking.”

“We're all rather fond of you,” said Elizabeth. “We don't want you to run mad and die mysteriously.”

“I bet it would be worth it,” said Andre. “The way Chambers describes it, it sounds awesome. All that stuff about twin suns sinking into the lake of Hali, and Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens, and the shadows of men's thoughts lengthening in the afternoon. And the Pallid Mask. If you let me read it, I bet I could figure out how to get hold of the Pallid Mask!” he said to Elizabeth. “You'd like that, wouldn't you, Dr. Associate Repositorian for Acquisitions?”

“Nope, sorry, no. Nopity nope nope no. Not going to let
you run mad and die mysteriously, not even for the chance to get the Pallid Mask. Your brother would kill me.”

He made a face at her, but I could tell he wasn't really mad.

“If this thing is so dangerous, what should I do with it?” I asked, pointing to the clasp with the Yellow Sign. “I don't feel safe keeping it at home. What if somebody finds it and runs mad? Could I—I don't know, donate it to the library here or something?”

Andre's eyes lit up greedily. My sister frowned. She liked the idea of my getting rid of the clasp, but she didn't want me to get cheated since I'd spent all my birthday money on it.

“Are you sure you want to do that? It's pretty valuable,” said Elizabeth.

“Would you guys want to buy it, then?”

“We certainly would, but it's worth more than money,” said Elizabeth. “What if you leave it here on loan with us, and we can think about a fair price—maybe work out a trade?”

Kitty nodded.

“All right. My sister approves.” She had faded to her usual see-through pallor. I wondered if all that brightness tired her out.

Elizabeth got a quill pen and a bottle of ink out of her desk and carefully wrote out a receipt, which I tucked in my pocket.

“What time is it?” I asked.

Elizabeth looked at her watch. “Almost six.”

“Yikes! I better get going.” I got to my feet and moaned. My arms still ached from my broomstick ride and my legs were chafed in embarrassing places. I didn't see how I could face the ride back.

Andre jumped up too. “You look tired. I can run you home,” he offered.

“You mean on the flying carpet?” asked Elizabeth.

They had a flying carpet here?!

“No, that would take too long. I can carry her. I still have the boots checked out.”

“Right, sounds good.”

“How are you going to carry me home? It's more than two hundred miles!”

“That's okay, they're seven-league boots. I may not be a basketball star, but you don't look that heavy. Where's your house, exactly?”

I told him the Thorne Mansion's coordinates.

“You can call us any time if you need help, Sukie, or if you just have questions,” said Elizabeth.

“Thanks. I don't really have a phone, though.”

“Oh, right. Hang on.” She rummaged around on her desk and handed me a little silver bell. “Ring this when you want to talk, and we'll call you on your phone like we did last time.”

“I'll go get the boots. Meet you up on the roof,” said Andre.

Phineas Toogood's Kiss

Y
ou know how to get to the roof?” asked Elizabeth. I shook my head. “No, of course you don't—this is your first time here, isn't it? Griffin better show you.”

She put two fingers in her mouth and let out an earsplitting whistle. A minute later, an enormous nose pushed the door open a crack and an eye peered in. “Griffin, can you take Sukie up to the roof?” Elizabeth leaned around a pile of stuff on her desk and held out her hand to me. “It was good to see you again. Nice to meet your sister, too. Get home safe.”

“Thanks for all your help.” I zipped up my parka, picked up my broom and backpack, and squeezed through the door.

The gigantic dog set off down the corridor, his nails clicking. He stopped expectantly in front of the elevators, so I pressed the up button. When the elevator came, he gave a little bark. It sounded like “Roof!”

I looked for a button marked
roof
but there wasn't one, so I just pushed the top button. “Is that what you meant?” I asked.

He sniffed.

Kitty thought it was ridiculous of me to have a one-sided conversation with a dog.

The top floor was way fancier than the floor with Elizabeth's chimney office. We passed rooms paneled in oak and
mahogany, rooms with mural-painted ceilings, a room lined with card-catalog drawers, and a big room with rows of tables and fantastic stained-glass windows on all four sides. I wanted to stop and stare, but Griffin bounded ahead, making me run a little to keep up.

At the end of a hallway, a ladder hung halfway down the wall, with a trapdoor at the top. Griffin stood on his hind legs, hooked his front paws around the bottom rung, and pulled. The ladder slid down. He bent his head, stuck his nose in the small of my back, and nudged me up.

“Thanks, Griffin,” I said, reaching behind me to pet his gigantic floppy ears. Then I tucked the broom under my arm and hauled myself up the ladder.

• • •

The sun had set. The roof stood in a grove of tall, twinkly-windowed city buildings, with glimpses of Central Park peeking through. Andre was waiting for me, wearing his hiking boots. They made him even taller.

“So what happens? Do your boots let you fly?”

“No, they're seven-league boots. They make me go seven leagues a step.”

“How far's that?”

“About twenty-four miles.”

“So, what, you just walk off the roof?”

He nodded. “Don't worry, I've done it before. Lots of times.”

“Carrying a person?”

“Carrying a person, carrying a dozen eggs, even carrying a haunted harp one time. Now,
that
was heavy! How do you want to do this—piggyback or fireman's lift?”

“I don't know—which way are you less likely to drop me?”

“I'm not going to drop you.”

“I thought you said you were so unathletic?”

“I never said I'm unathletic! I'm just bad at sports.
Big
difference. Fine, fireman's lift. Ready?” He took me under my arms and swung me around his shoulders, draping me like a scarf. “Comfortable?”

I wiggled a bit to even myself out, feeling very awkward. “More or less.”

“Hang on to that broom,” he said. “That way if you're worried I'm going to drop you, you can catch yourself.” Then, without bothering to warn me again, he stepped off the roof.

I managed not to scream—I didn't want to startle him. With my head hanging down and everything blurring together, I started to get motion sickness, so I screwed my eyes shut and hung on tight.

At least it was over fast. “Okay, Sukie!” said Andre eight or nine steps later. “We're here. I'm gonna put you down now, all right? You can let go.” He shook my arm.

I opened my eyes. He was standing in the field behind my cousin's mansion, where I'd practiced my flying. He swung me off his shoulders, gently but clumsily. I landed on my butt. He held out a hand and pulled me up, then reached out as if to brush the dirt off my backside. Apparently thinking better of
it, he dropped his hand.

“Thanks,” I said. “That was quick. So, um . . . do you want to come in for dinner?”

“I'd like to, but my dad's expecting me home.”

“Okay. . . . Bye, then.”

“Bye!” He waved over his shoulder, took a step, and disappeared.

Flying broomsticks! Magic boots! I wondered how I would travel next. On that magic carpet, maybe? A pirate ship?

I thought about the dim portraits of my ancestors hanging on Cousin Hepzibah's walls—the men in top hats and the ladies in frilly lace caps with their serious faces. They must have flown around on broomsticks themselves. I wished I could have seen it.

• • •

Once Kitty and I were alone together, she let me know how furious she was. How could I trust those awful people and their monster dog? They weren't family! They weren't friends! I didn't even
know
them! They were
dangerous
—and they could
see
her! How could I have let that awful giant carry me like a sack for hundreds of miles? How was she supposed to keep me safe if I was going to go running around with people like that?

“Kitty O'Dare, I am not a baby!” I yelled, just as I had yelled a thousand times when I
was
a baby. “I'm older than you are, now! You can't tell me what to do anymore, just because you always did!”

I thought of what Cousin Hepzibah had told me—that ghosts don't change and can't understand when we do. But I couldn't stop myself from ranting. “You know why kids treat
me like a freak? Because I
am
a freak—I'm a freak because of
you
! And
I'm
not the one who needs protecting. I'm
perfectly fine
! You're the one who's DEAD!”

Kitty's eyes blazed white lightning. She reared up like a tree in a gale. She was enormous. I'd never been afraid of her before, but now terror seized me. I tried to run, but my feet were rooted to the ground. “Stop it, Kitty! Stop it!” I screamed. A wind tore through the trees, and I couldn't hear my own voice. “Stop it, Kitty! Go away, go away!” I hid my face in my arms.

When I looked up, she was gone. Everything was still and cold and dark. The last time I had felt so alone was the day Kitty died.

• • •

It was just as well Andre hadn't come in for dinner. Mom was sitting in the kitchen looking upset, and Dad was comforting her.

A year ago I would have gone away before they saw me, to give them privacy. But now I was older. Hadn't I just told Kitty that? Maybe I could help somehow.

“Mom! What's wrong?”

They both looked up, startled.

“Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry. It's nothing.” Mom wiped her eyes.

“It can't be nothing. Can't I help?”

“It's nothing new. Not really. I'm just worried about Cousin Hepzibah. She's pretty strong for ninety-one, but . . .”

I knew what she meant. Mom loved Cousin Hepzibah, but it wasn't just her health she was worried about. “It's us too, isn't it?” I said. If something happened to our cousin, where would we go? “I'll help you, Mom. I can do more.” I could sell that
jewelry online. I could get Cousin Hepzibah to teach me how to make those lace barrettes and sell them at school. Lola and Amanda had liked them—I bet a lot of the girls would buy them. Or I could sell them online on that craft site.

Who was I kidding? I couldn't support our family selling barrettes.

Dad said, “We'll be okay, Sukie.”

Mom said, “You don't need to worry. We'll be fine. We're building up our savings. We've saved a little even just in the time we've been here.”

A little
would never be enough. I really needed to find that treasure.

• • •

I tossed and turned that night, falling at last into a long, muddled dream. I was at the bottom of a pit, which was really a chimney, with a clock ticking far away overhead, its pendulum swinging back and forth, sharp as a blade, getting lower and lower, only it wasn't exactly a pendulum, it was the evil letter from the evil clasp. Darkness began to close in on me, pressing against my skin like dense, wet, choking wool until I felt I was being buried alive. Then the bottom dropped out beneath me. One by one all my arms and legs dropped away separately, as if I'd somehow come apart like a skeleton, and each bone went crashing down, down, down, each bone screaming for all the other bones that were no longer me, just scattered pieces of something that had once been somebody.

I choked on a scream, trying to catch my breath.

Then someone was holding me, rocking me. Andre, I thought, shaking with relief. He had promised not to drop me,
and he hadn't. “Hush now, my own one,” said a voice, a man. “Hush now, my Hepzibah. Japhet can't hurt you now. I've got you safe.”

I opened my eyes and saw that it wasn't Andre at all, but a familiar-looking stranger. His long, silky black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, revealing sharply contoured cheekbones above a taut jaw. He was looking at me with storm-gray eyes full of anxiety and love. He pulled me closer, then kissed me.

The kiss was like nothing I'd ever imagined. It was cold, colder than the ocean in winter, and stronger and wilder too. The world spun and crashed, broke and foamed around that kiss like waves in a storm. I should have been scared, but I wasn't. The storm was tossing ships to their doom against rocks, sweeping barrels off deck and smashing them, but I wasn't a sinking ship. I wasn't a broken cask. I was the storm itself, wild and exultant—and somewhere deep in the center, cold and still.

Then a bell tolled—a church bell? A bell buoy?—and the kiss ended. He lifted my left hand. “Your ring! You're not wearing your ring! Did you lose it? Did you leave it in the desk drawer again? You must wear it. Promise me you will.”

“I promise,” I whispered.

“I'll come back to you, Windy,” said the man. “I promise too. Nothing will stop me. Not even death.” He took my hands in his cold hands and squeezed them. The bell stopped tolling, and he was gone.

I sat up in bed, shivering. What a dream! I rubbed my eyes.

My finger felt empty, the way it does when you've been wearing a ring for a few days and then you take it off. I got
out of bed, wincing at the cold floor, and went over to the desk. What drawer? I opened them all in the moonlight, more and more frantically. My ring! I needed my ring! What ring? I thought with part of my mind, but some other part seemed to know. That was the part that found the false bottom in the left-hand drawer and pulled out a little leather box. A silver ring gleamed inside. I slipped it on and sighed.

• • •

I was chilled through and too freaked out to stay in my room, so I pulled on my bathrobe and crept downstairs, the bare wood floor cold and creaking under my feet.

Cousin Hepzibah was sitting by the kitchen hearth. She had her lap full of the grandmother pants I'd gotten from the woman at the house sale.

“I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd see if I could alter these for you. I noticed your own trousers were getting a little short,” she said.

“Thank you, Cousin Hepzibah! You're the best.”

“Well, I like to sew. It's soothing. Here, hold these up to your waist. Yes, that looks about right. You couldn't sleep either?”

I shook my head. “Crazy dreams.”

“Warm milk?” She started to get up.

“Thanks, I can get it.” I reached down a mug and poured some milk from the saucepan on the stove. “Want more?”

“Yes, please.”

I took her mug and refilled it. As I handed it back to her, she touched the ring.

“This looks antique. May I take a closer look?” she asked.
I slipped the ring off my finger. She looked it over and read the inscription inside it: “P.B.T. to H.T.T. Your Heart is my Home.”

“Why, that must be Phineas and Windy! It's their initials,” she said. “Where did you find it?”

“That's the weird thing. I just knew where it was—in a secret compartment in the desk drawer. Phineas Toogood was in my dream—if it
was
a dream. He . . . he kissed me.” I stood still, my fingers to my lips, remembering the kiss.

Cousin Hepzibah shook her head. “Be careful, Sukie,” she said. “It's dangerous to get too close to a ghost.”

Thinking about Kitty, I knew she was right.