The Poe Estate (22 page)

The Cursed Development

T
he next morning, I beckoned Cole over on the bus. “You've been avoiding me,” I said. I noticed he was still wearing Phineas Toogood's ring. I slid over to make room for him.

He sat down beside me. “No,
you've
been avoiding
me
.”

“Well, maybe. But I always did, and that never stopped you from pestering me before.”

He smiled. “You're kind of hard to resist, Spooky.”

“I'm really sorry about my sister,” I said. “You don't have to worry. She's gone now.”

“That's okay, Spooky. It wasn't that . . . I mean, your sister was scary, and she did push me off a cliff. But it's not about her. It's you. I guess I'm not sure what you want.”

“I'm not, either. But now I want you to not avoid me,” I said. “Deal?”

“Deal. Is that all you want?” He glanced at my hand, where I was wearing Windy's ring.

“Well, pirate treasure would be nice, but that's not going to happen.”

Cole laughed. “Don't be too sure, Spooky.
Pirate Toogood's Treasure
can't be the only novel with pirate gold buried in it.”

“You're right. Hey, want to come down to the repository
with me this weekend? I bet Andre has some ideas about where to start looking. Maybe we can bring Lola and Amanda, too.”

“Sure, but it's going to be hard to fit all four of us on one broomstick. I wonder if my family has any broomsticks, or anything else like that?”

“Maybe Cousin Hepzibah can help you find them, if you do,” I said.

“Yes, or maybe we could borrow that flying carpet from the repository,” said Cole.

“Good idea! We totally need to check out those other collections in the basement! I bet there's a ton of amazing stuff.”

“You know, Spooky,” said Cole, “I knew things were going to be interesting that day I sat next to you on the bus. You have to admit, I'm kind of a genius.”

“You're kind of a lot of things, Cole, I'll give you credit for that. And you're right. I may have underestimated you just a little.”

• • •

In the months after I said good-bye to Kitty, spring came early, and everything changed. Sometimes I can't believe I'm the same person I was a year ago.

I often go up to the top of Thorne Hill Road, where the old Thorne Mansion used to stand, to visit the grave of Windy,
little Jack, and Phinny's left hand. It's peaceful up there, with the smell of the roses and the view of the water.

The developers have had a terrible time getting their resort off the ground: first permit problems, then union disputes, then a fire tore through the architect's office, destroying the blueprints. They're saying the project is cursed.

My parents rented an apartment over a laundromat in North Harbor for my family to stay in while Dad's building the new house. It feels strange living with Internet and central heating again. Sometimes ghostly tremors make the glasses click together in the kitchen cabinets, but it's only the big clothes dryers shaking the floor downstairs.

We haven't found any pirate treasure yet, but I was right—Andre has lots of good leads. Lola and Amanda Pereira are helping us look, too. At first Andre wasn't so crazy about us telling other kids about the repository, but Elizabeth brought them to meet Dr. Rust, who gave them some kind of test, which they passed. Now Amanda turns pink and giggles whenever she sees Andre. I think she has a crush.

The repositorians didn't use a jinni or a walnut to transport the Thorne Mansion to the Poe Annex after all. Instead, they opened a portal in the graveyard and used a machine Leo Novikov had built to sort of twist the mansion through it. I was worried all the walls and furniture would shatter into toothpicks, but I should have trusted the repositorians. Whenever I visit Cousin Hepzibah—not with Leo's machine, just the ordinary way, by flying down on a broomstick and passing through the creeping horror of the Lovecraft Corpus—the
mansion stands as tall and crooked in the Poe Annex moonlight as if it's been there for three hundred years, with every table and hearthrug exactly where it should be. Even the crows are still there.

And sometimes, when I shut my eyes, I can almost feel a ghost of an echo of Kitty.

L
aetitia Flint exists (so far) only in this novel, and her books can be found only in libraries of fictional fiction. To read them, consult a spectral librarian.

My favorite spectral librarians are in the novel
Lilith
, by George Macdonald (Mr. Raven); various stories by Jorge Luis Borges, especially “The Library of Babel”; and “The Tractate Middoth,” by M. R. James (Dr. Rant).

All the other authors and books mentioned in this story are real. If you read them, you'll find many beautiful descriptions, heart-pounding adventures, and chilling visions. You'll also encounter attitudes that may jar today's sensibilities. Supernatural fiction from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often reflected the writers' anxieties, especially about women and people from other cultures, in ways that can seem ugly and shocking today.

I hope that won't scare you off. There's a lot to be learned—about the past, the present, and ourselves—from reading books we don't agree with. Take them with a spoonful of salt, and remember that our own great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandnieces and -grandnephews will probably need a dose of salt when they read our stories.

A few more details:

New York City's flea markets exist, though I moved them around and populated them with fictional characters. Some
of
the best markets are gone now, victims of the city's ravenous appetite for real estate. But perhaps new ones will spring up.

People often ask me why the New-York Circulating Material Repository has a hyphen in its name. That's how New York used to be spelled until about one hundred fifty years ago; the repository was founded when everyone hyphenated the city's name. The New-York Historical Society, a wonderful place to visit, still uses the hyphen too.

Readers sometimes ask me if the New-York Circulating Material Repository really exists. Not in this universe, as far as I know. If you ever find it, please tell me!

In case you do want to try reading the books referred to in this one, here's a not completely comprehensive list of the authors and their works. Except for Diana Wynne Jones's Chrestomanci series and C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (both of which I highly recommend for readers of all ages), none of them were written for children, so younger readers who find them hard going may want to try again after a few years.

Willa Cather: Various short stories, including “Consequences” and “Paul's Case”

Robert W. Chambers: Stories from
The King in Yellow
, especially the title story

Charles W. Chesnutt: Stories from
The Conjure Woman
, especially “The Goophered Grapevine” and “Po' Sandy”

James Fenimore Cooper: Various novels, especially
The Red
Rover
and
The Water-Witch

Mary Wilkins Freeman: Various stories from
The Wind in the Rose-bush
, especially “The Southwest Chamber” and the title story

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Various novels, novellas, romances, and short stories, including “Beneath an Umbrella,” “The Celestial Railroad,”
Fanshawe
, “Feathertop,”
The House of the Seven Gables
, “Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure,”
The Scarlet Letter
,
Septimus Felton
,
Twice-Told Tales
, “Young Goodman Brown”

Washington Irving: Various tales, especially from
A History of New-York
and
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent
.

Henry James: Novellas and short stories, including
The Turn of the Screw

H. P. Lovecraft:
The Necronomicon
and innumerable, unutterable other works

Thomas Moore: “The Flying Dutchman”

Edgar Allan Poe:
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
and many short stories, including “The Assignation,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Gold-Bug,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”

Sir Walter Scott:
Rokeby

Harriet Beecher Stowe:
Uncle Tom's Cabin
and various short stories in
Oldtown Fireside Stories
, especially “The Ghost in the Cap'n Browne House,” “Captain Kidd's Money,” and “The Sullivan Looking Glass”

Edith Wharton:
Ethan Frome
; various short stories, especially from
Tales of Men and Ghosts
, including “Afterward” and “The Eyes”

Herman Melville:
Moby-Dick

Tales from
The Arabian Nights

Finally, the Poe Annex's Spectral Library contains (among many others) fictional books that appear in the following works:

Hilaire Belloc:
Cautionary Verses

A. S. Byatt:
Possession

George Eliot:
Middlemarch

Diana Wynne Jones: The Chrestomanci series

C. S. Lewis:
The Silver Chair
, from the Chronicles of Narnia

Vladimir Nabokov:
Pale Fire

T
his book would not have had a ghost of a chance without the encouragement and advice of many generous friends, relatives, and colleagues: David Bacon, Sarah Banks, Mark Caldwell, Catherine Clarke, Liz Cross, Lisa Dierbeck, Cyril Emery, John Hart, Katherine Keenum, Ruth Landé, Josephine Lemann, Deborah Lutz, Anne Malcolm, Laura Miller, Laurie Muchnick, Alice Naude, Sharyn November, Marina Picciotto, David Prentiss, Maggie Robbins, Emily Saxl, Ted Shulman, Dee Smith, Andrew Solomon, Owen Thomas, Chelsea Wald, Howard Waldman, Jaime Wolf, Scott York.

I'm especially grateful to my first readers and warmest supporters: my husband, Andrew Nahem; my mother, Alix Kates Shulman; my sister-in-writing, Anna Christina Büchmann; my patient friend Tom Goodwillie; my brilliant editor, Nancy Paulsen; and my incomparable agent, Irene Skolnick.

I would also like to thank the ghost of my father, Martin Shulman. Dad may not have had much use for stories about magic, but he loved long yarns about sailing ships, pirate treasure, and adventure on the high
seas.

PRAISE FOR

THE GRIMM LEGACY

Bank Street Best Book

ALA Best Book for Young Adults

IRA Children's Choices

Mythopoeic Award finalist

School Library Journal
Best Book

Nominated for numerous state awards (TN, TX, GA, VT, PA, MO, AR, CT, OK, MD, RI, SC, OR, SD)

Finalist for le Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire and nominated for le Prix Elbakin (French fantasy awards)

“A fizzy confection . . . the story buzzes along at a delightful clip.”—
The New York Times Book Review

“This modern fantasy has intrigue, adventure, and romance, and the magical aspects of the tale are both clever and intricately woven. . . . Fast paced, filled with humor, and peopled with characters who are either true to life or delightfully bizarre. Fans of fairy tales in general and Grimm stories in particular will delight in the author's frequent literary references, and fantasy lovers will feel very much at home in this tale that pulls out all the stops.”—
School Library Journal
, starred review

“Captivating magic fills the pages. . . . Action fans will
find
plenty of heart-pounding, fantastical escapades as the novel builds to its satisfying, romantic conclusion. A richly imagined adventure with easy appeal for Harry Potter fans.”—
Booklist

PRAISE FOR

THE WELLS BEQUEST

Pennsylvania Keystone to Reading Middle School Book Award

Newsday
Summer Reading Pick

“Hilarious time-travel dialogue. . . . A clever, sparky adventure made of science fiction, philosophy and humor.”—
Kirkus Reviews
, starred review

“
The inside-out plot construction is ably handled, with plenty of book-geek discursions . . . will draw readers into the science-fiction-made-real landscape.”—
The Horn Book

“
Shulman once again crafts a marvelously engaging story that will have fantasy and sci-fi readers hooked. . . . The adventure, danger, and hints of romance will have readers swiftly turning pages, anxious to discover each new surprise.”—
School Library Journal

“
A fun science fantasy adventure for all ages.”—
Locus
magazine

“
A madcap adventure story with plenty of danger and mystery thrown in.”—
School Librarian

“
Full of . . . thought-provoking conundrums about the nature of time and reality, this is a stimulating story for imaginative readers.”—
Carousel: The Guide to Children's Books

“
Absorbing, fast-paced sci-fi fantasy . . . five stars.”—Common Sense
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