The Poe Estate (14 page)

“Please, call me Elizabeth.”

Cole stood up straight and said, “I'm Cole Farley.”

“What's up, Cole?” Andre answered. “Is it true? Are you two really Laetitia Flint characters?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “At least, we're not in the part I read. Maybe we show up later. I didn't have a chance to finish it yet.”

“Huh. Neither did Laetitia Flint,” said Andre.

“Actually, Andre, I know you're joking, but you kind of have a point,” said Elizabeth. “Flint wrote about the nineteenth-century descendants of the Thornes and the Toogoods. She didn't put any twenty-first-century kids in the book. But she
never finished it—maybe if she'd kept going, she would have invented these two.”

“Me, maybe,” said Cole. “Nobody could invent Spooky.”

“Uh, thanks,” I said. “Cousin Hepzibah, did you know about this book—Laetitia Flint's unfinished novel, the one with Windy and Phinny in it?”

“Of course, dear. How else would I know about their story?”

Cole and I looked at each other. I could see we were thinking the same thing: Was it all just a mistake, then? Maybe Windy and Phinny weren't our ancestors—maybe they weren't real people at all, just characters Cousin Hepzibah had read about in a book. That made way more sense than being descended from fictional characters.

But then I saw another thought seem to pass behind Cole's eyes, just as it was hitting me too. The ghosts—the ghosts and the rings. I'd seen Phinny, and we'd both seen Windy. We had their rings on our fingers. That had really happened. It was proof.

Then another thought occurred to me. “How do we know Windy and Phinny were fictional?” I asked. “Maybe Laetitia Flint just wrote a story based on real people who happened to be our ancestors.”

“Yes, that's the way I always assumed it happened,” said Cousin Hepzibah.

“It's a plausible theory,” said Elizabeth, “but I can tell you from my years and years of experience with fictional-material houses, we're in one now. This is the real deal. I can smell it. Did Flint invent your ancestors out of whole cloth, or did she base her characters on your real ancestors? I don't think we'll
ever know for sure, and I bet the answer is both. Or somewhere in between.”

Andre walked over to a window and brushed the glass with his fingertips. “Check it out, Libbet!” he said excitedly. “This window glass is all wavy and green, like Flint describes in the book. It feels real. I bet they're the original panes!”

Elizabeth took a copy of
Flint's Last Works
from her shoulder bag and handed it to him. “Show me,” she said.

He thumbed through it and read, “‘Looking out the window, Obedience saw her sister as if through a wave of the deep, transfigured by the minute ripples and bubbles of the glass into something rich and strange.'”

“You're right,” said Elizabeth. She went to the window and sniffed at the glass, peering through it.

Andre pointed out the window. “And those could be the ‘crows that foretell change,' up there on the oak.”

As if they had heard him, the three birds squawked in unison and took off from the tree.

Elizabeth turned back from the window. “Your house is astonishing, Ms. Thorne,” she said. “I've never seen a better preserved example of literary-material architecture.”

Cousin Hepzibah shook her head. “Hardly well preserved. The entire roof needs replacing.”

“Even so, the spirit here is as strong as anything I've ever encountered. You've kept it safe. You have a treasure here.”

“Thank you. Would you like to see the rest of it?”

“Oh, yes! Could we?”

As Cousin Hepzibah led us all through the ground floor,
Elizabeth and Andre kept stopping to exclaim over details they recognized from Flint's unfinished novel. They identified old Obadiah's easy chair, the little sitting room where Windy turned down Japhet's proposal, and the desk where he opened the cask containing Phinny's hand. Cousin Hepzibah's music room turned bedroom—part of a nineteenth-century addition to the mansion—was where that generation's Hepzibah Thorne played duets with Robert Toogood, a descendant of one of Phinny's brothers. It had a plaster frieze of harps and flutes running around the walls just under the ceiling.

“Robert Toogood must have been my great-great-great-something-grandfather,” said Cole.

“I wish I could show you upstairs, but my arthritis is pretty bad today,” said Cousin Hepzibah.

“I could carry you,” suggested Andre.

“No, let me,” said Cole quickly.

“Why don't you do it together?” said Elizabeth.

“Well . . . all right. Thank you,” said Cousin Hepzibah.

Cole and Andre made a chair with their arms—Andre had to lean down a little awkwardly to keep it even.

“It's been years since I've been up here,” said Cousin Hepzibah when they set her down in the attic. “The leaks look worse than I remembered.”

Elizabeth pointed out Beedie's rag doll and a small piano—she called it a spinet—that might have been the one the sisters learned to play on.

Cole and Andre even carried Cousin Hepzibah up to my tower room. I wished I'd made my bed that morning, but at least the bed had curtains. I pulled them hastily shut.

“It's so clean up here now,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “Well done, Sukie.”

“This was Windy's room, wasn't it?” asked Elizabeth. “In the book, she has the tower room under the widow's walk.”

“Yes. It's still her room,” I said. “At least, this is where she tends to appear.”

Elizabeth's eyes lit up. “Can you call her forth? I would love to meet her!”

I shook my head. “The only ghost I can call forth is my sister.”

Cole apparently found that harder to take than the idea that our ancestors were characters in books. “Your
sister
is a ghost? A real, live ghost? I mean a real, dead ghost? Your dead sister?”

I nodded.

“Wow, that explains a lot!” said Cole. “I want to see her. Call her, okay?”

“No, that's not a good idea.”

“Why not? Come on, Spooky—a real ghost! I
need
to meet her!”

“No,” I said again. “We're not really getting along right now, me and Kitty. She disapproves of the whole treasure hunt—she thinks it's dangerous. And I'm afraid she's not so crazy about you, Cole.”

“Me? Why would anybody not like
me
?”

Andre snorted. “Are you ready to go back downstairs, Ms. Thorne?” he asked. “Come on, Cole.”

“Thank you again for showing us your amazing house,” said Elizabeth, once we were all in the drawing room again.

“It's a pleasure—I'm happy you appreciate it,” said Cousin
Hepzibah. “Most people just want to tear it down and build some monstrosity instead.”

“Oh, no! You're not considering selling it, are you?”

“Not so far. But I don't know how long we'll be able to afford it. It needs a lot of very expensive repairs.”

“That's why we have to find the treasure,” I said.

“If you ever do decide to sell, will you call us first?” said Elizabeth. “We would keep your house perfectly intact, ghosts and all.”

“How would that work?” asked Cousin Hepzibah.

“We have an annex, where we keep our literary-material structures. If you don't mind a little trip to Manhattan, I can show you.”

“I'd like that, but I don't travel so well these days,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “Cars don't really agree with me, and I'm far too old for broomsticks.”

“Next time, then,” said Andre. “We can bring transport. Meanwhile, though, the repository does have Pirate Toogood's compass—I checked. Maybe it'll help us find your treasure.”

“That repository sounds awesome! So does a pirate's compass! Let's go
now
!” said Cole.

He looked so eager, I had to laugh. “I'm ready whenever you are. You'll like it, Cole,” I said. “It's totally your kind of thing.”

The Lovecraft Corpus

T
he trip to the repository took longer this time. Elizabeth and Andre flew together on Elizabeth's walking stick, and Cole and I doubled up on my broom. I had to keep slowing down so Cole could get his balance.

“Why aren't you using your boots?” I called to Andre, swooping closer so he could hear.

“They're too fast. Got to stick with you, make sure you don't get lost.”

“Can't Elizabeth show us the way?”

“Libbet? Ha. She could get lost in her own bathroom.”

As I wobbled upward through a cloud with Cole hugging me a little too tightly around the waist, I was glad I'd practiced flying with my sister. I just hoped I'd practiced enough.

I remembered Kitty teaching me to ride a bike. Kitty standing at the end of our cul-de-sac to keep the cars away, like a redheaded flag post. Screaming at me, “Pedal, Sukie! Harder!
Turn!
” And then, when I finally caught the knack of it and she let me ride my bike after hers out onto the quiet streets of our neighborhood, I'd never felt so proud and alive.

For a wonderful moment a couple of weeks ago, as we looped through the air together, I had felt almost as though I'd never lost her.

But a ghost is not a sister, not really. As Cousin Hepzibah
had pointed out, Kitty was stuck in the past, unable to change, while I was growing past her. I was starting to think I couldn't have both Kitty and my real life. Especially not my new friends, Cole and Lola, Elizabeth and Andre. Even Griffin.

“Hey!” I said suddenly. “Where's Griffin? We left him behind! We have to go back!”

“Don't worry, he'll be along soon,” said Elizabeth. “He likes to go haring off after eagles, but he always gets where he's going in the end.”

Sure enough, the gigantic dog was waiting for us on the roof of the repository when we landed. “Rrrup!” he greeted us.

Cole leapt off the broom and held out his hand to help me down. “That was awesome!” he said.

“Do you believe me now?” I scrambled stiffly off the broom.

Cole said, “It's not that I didn't believe you before. But there's believing and then there's . . . flying.”

• • •

Cole and I followed Elizabeth and Andre to a room lined with card files.

“Oh, good—there's Dr. Rust, the head librarian,” Elizabeth said. “Come on, I'll introduce you.”

Dr. Rust looked like a small, friendly middle-aged lion, with a thatch of reddish hair and even more freckles than my sister. “What a treat! You're the first fictional girl I've ever met. At least, that I know of. Cole, are you another fictional cousin?”

“I don't think so—well, I guess I could be. Our ancestors are in the same book. Wow, that sounds so weird.” He made a face.

“I'm not sure we're fictional, actually,” I said. “Does having fictional ancestors make you fictional yourself?”

“It certainly makes you interesting,” said Dr. Rust. “What brings you to the repository?”

“They're looking for buried treasure,” Elizabeth said. “From
Pirate Toogood's Treasure
.”

“What we really need is a treasure map,” said Cole.

“Well, we have several of those—you can look in the subject catalog. We have old Peter's parchment from ‘Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure,' and a bunch of Captain Kidd maps, including the one from Poe's ‘The Gold-Bug.'”

“What's ‘Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure'?” I asked.

“It's a Hawthorne story about a man whose great-great-uncle supposedly sold his soul to the devil for gold and hid the money in his mansion. The map's illegible, so the great-grandnephew ends up tearing down his house looking for the treasure.”

An illegible treasure map didn't sound all that useful. “Does he find the treasure?”

“Sort of,” said Dr. Rust. “But it's not gold, just worthless bonds and colonial paper currency.”

“Sometimes I hate Hawthorne,” said Andre.

“I know what you mean,” said Elizabeth.

“What about that other parchment, the bug one?” asked Cole. “What's that?”

“You never read ‘The Gold-Bug'? It's one of Poe's most famous stories,” said Andre.

I made a face. “I find him kind of creepy.”

“You say that like it's a bad thing,” said Andre.

“Not everyone has your appetite for gore,” said Elizabeth. “In ‘The Gold-Bug,' a guy finds a solid gold insect next to a piece of parchment with mysterious drawings on it that lead them to Captain Kidd's buried treasure. The parchment's not a map, actually, just coded directions for finding the treasure. What does he call it again, Andre?”

“‘A lost record of the place of deposit.'”

Elizabeth went on, “We have plenty of other Captain Kidd material, too. Lots of writers wrote about him. There's that Stowe story, where they use a forked hazel stick like a dowsing rod to look for his treasure. I believe we have the stick.”

“Does it work? Or is the Poe parchment legible? Could we use it to find Captain Kidd's actual treasure?” Cole asked. “Is Kidd's treasure real or fictional, anyway?”

I shook my head. “It doesn't matter. We're not Kidd's heirs,” I said. “Those maps and parchments and sticks are all for finding other treasures from other books, right? They won't help us. We need Laetitia Flint's.”

“Yeah,” said Andre. “You're right. They're not really relevant. But they're still pretty cool.”

Elizabeth, meanwhile, had been copying numbers from a card in the author catalog onto a slip of paper. She waved the slip. “Here's the call number for Phineas Toogood's compass. It's downstairs in the Lovecraft Corpus, in the basement,” she said. “Hey, I just had a thought! Doc, how would you feel about a trade? We could give Sukie the Flint compass in exchange for her Yellow Sign.”

Dr. Rust considered. “That sounds more than fair. Okay with you, Sukie?”

“Totally!” I didn't want that creepy Yellow Sign. “What does the compass do?”

Elizabeth's eyes were twinkling. “Haven't you read the book?”

“Not yet—we just found it. I haven't had time.”

“It's a haunted compass. It leads Phineas Toogood to Red Tom Tempest's buried treasure.”

“You have that
downstairs
?” said Cole. “What are we waiting for? Let's go!”

• • •

The basement of the repository was a long white room with fluorescent tube lights that buzzed and flickered. Dr. Rust led us past rows of metal shelves and cabinets, interspersed here and there with metal doors. It all looked very ordinary, but my hands felt cold and I found that my heart was pounding.

“Here we are,” said Dr. Rust, stopping in front of a door with
*LC Love Corp
stenciled on it in black paint. “Elizabeth, do you have your key?”

Elizabeth fished in the neck of her blouse, pulled out an iron skeleton key on a long silver chain, and turned it in the lock. Then she squared her shoulders and placed her left hand on the center of the door. When she spoke, her voice sounded deep and hollow.

“Noisome sentinels, stand aside! Yours may be to guard, but mine is to enter. Ope now unto me your tenebrous portal!”

The door swung open with a loud, plopping squeal. A cold wind blew our hair back, stinging our eyes and skin. It carried a stench of rot. Beyond, all was shadow.

“Ugh! Somebody needs to clean out the fridge,” said Cole.

I said, “What is this place? Do we really have to go in there?”

“Only if you want to find your ancestor's treasure,” said Andre. “Welcome to my favorite Special Collection: the Lovecraft Corpus.” He stepped across the threshold.

“Come on, Spooky. Here goes nothing!” said Cole. He grabbed my arm and pulled me after him through the door.

• • •

We found ourselves in a shadowy room that seemed to be simultaneously closing in on us and dropping away into vast and terrifying chasms. The place felt crowded and chaotic, like the forests you try to run through in those nightmares where you're being chased by wolves. Threads of fog brushed our faces like cobwebs as we pushed past, leaving a sticky residue on our cheeks. The floor underfoot felt springy yet clinging. Every few steps it suddenly sank; I kept having to grab Cole's arm to keep from tumbling into some wet abyss.

But the worst thing was the charnel reek, which stung our lungs like acid. “It's like walking inside someone's intestine,” muttered Cole.

“Slow down, Andre! Where are we going?” I called. “I can't see my feet!”

“Oh, sorry. Hang on.” I heard a wet click, and then the floor started to glow unsteadily.

It didn't help much. The flickering light was a sick, yellowy green, and it cast confusing shadows upward. I couldn't tell if we were walking past trees or shelves, cliffs or cabinets.

“Are we almost there?” I asked. My voice sounded more panicked than I meant it to.

“What's the matter, the Corpus creeping you out? I was going to give you a tour, but we can just go straight to the compass if you want,” said Andre. “Wait, hang on, take a look at this.” He handed me something cold and heavy, the size of a bullet.

“What is it?” I peered into my hand, but I couldn't really make out anything.

“Poe's gold-bug.”

“Cool!” I squatted down and held it closer to the glowing floor. The insect had six hideous little scratchy legs, feathery antennae, and black markings on its back that made it look like a tiny skull. Griffin leaned down his vast head, snuffled at it, and sneezed.

“Can I see?” asked Cole.

The horrible little legs tickled my palm as I transferred it to his hand. “Ew! Is it
alive
?” I gasped.

“Not exactly,” said Dr. Rust. “I wouldn't call anything in this room alive, exactly. Well, except us.”

“But it
moved
!”

“The living are not all that move.”

I had to admit that was true. I knew it from personal experience.

“What's the gold-bug for, exactly?” Cole asked. “What does it
do
? You said it leads people to treasure—could we use it to find Phineas Toogood's?”

Andre shook his head, making the shadows flicker oddly up his cheekbones. “No, unfortunately. In the story, they just drop the bug through the left eye socket of a skull that's nailed to a tree to find where to dig. They could have used anything—a pebble or a bullet or whatever.”

“Oh, too bad.” Cole handed him back the gold-bug.

Andre put it away with a rustling noise and moved on a few paces. “Here's your compass, Sukie.” He put a cold, round object in my hand.

Something howled not too far off. As its lugubrious echoes fell away, Dr. Rust spoke. “Let's wrap this up, shall we? This place is a bit too fetid even for me.”

• • •

What with the trip back through the Lovecraft Corpus and the broomstick ride home, it was dinnertime when we returned.

Cole and I stumbled off my broom in the field behind the house and brushed stray twigs off each other, and he walked me to the kitchen door. “That smells good!” he said.

“Mom must be making her pesto lasagna. Want to come in for dinner?”

“Oh, yeah!”

Mom was taking the lasagna out of the oven when I pushed the kitchen door open. “There you are,” she said. “I was starting to worry.”

“Mom, Dad, this is Cole Farley. He's lab partners with me and Lola in science class. We just came back from the library.” Well, that was kind of true, at least. “Can he stay for dinner?”

Mom and Dad exchanged a glance I couldn't interpret, with a hint of a smile and a hint of alarm. “Come on in, Cole!” said Dad heartily. “Grab a plate and sit down.”

“Nice to see you again, Cole,” said Cousin Hepzibah.

“Oh, do you two know each other?” asked Mom.

“Yeah, Cousin Hepzibah was telling me about your family when I was here before. She has some great stories! Like my
grandpa's. And it even turns out we're related, if you go way back to that pirate.”

“Pirate? What pirate?” asked Dad. “You never told me about any pirates, Sally!”

“I don't know that story,” said Mom. So Cousin Hepzibah told it again, only I noticed she left out a lot, mostly the parts about the dead baby. She probably didn't want to remind my parents to be sad.

After dinner, Cole offered to help with the dishes, but he looked relieved when Dad said, “Looks like it might snow. I'll run you home in the truck before it starts.”

As he was putting on his coat, Cole said, “Don't start that lab project without me, Sukie.”

“What lab project?”

“You know! The one we were talking about in the library. With the compass.”

“Oh,
that
project!” Was he kidding? I had a magical compass that would help me finally find pirate treasure, and Cole wanted me not to use it?! “I don't know, Cole.”