The Tale of Halcyon Crane (23 page)

I shook my head. “Not a thing.”

“That could say something in itself,” Will speculated. “I remember a lot about our childhood friendship. You don’t. It suggests you might have experienced some kind of trauma that was best forgotten.”

This theory had occurred to me while I was cowering in the kitchen, terrified, waiting for Will that day. The intense fear seemed familiar somehow, as though I had felt the same thing in the same place before.

“What do you remember about being here when we were kids?” I asked him.

Will smiled, thinking back. “We had a lot of fun together. We played outside, made tree forts, went swimming.”

“Did you ever see . . . you know. The girls?”

Will shook his head. “Not that I can recall. As far as I can remember, we had an altogether normal childhood.”

Our conversation was at a dead end. I didn’t know what else to say and neither did Will, so I decided to change the subject to a more real-world matter.

“I went to the police station today,” I told him.

“Why did you do that?”

“I wanted to see the old file concerning the Sutton case.”

He finished the last of his pasty and shook his head. “Let me guess. You got nowhere.”

“How did you know?”

“There’s not a chance the police would give you that file, Hallie. I told you that.”

I sighed. “Then how can I find out more about what happened that day? I’m the only one alive who was there, and I can’t remember anything about it. I thought if I could get my hands on that file, it might jog something loose in my brain.”

“I said they wouldn’t give it to
you
.”

“But they’d give it to
you
?”

Will smiled mischievously. “I’m not sure. But this is a very small town and its old records aren’t exactly housed in Fort Knox. I’ll see if I can get my hands on them.”

T
oday you’ll hear the story of your grandfather,” Iris began, over the next day’s morning coffee.

“He was the vet on the island, right?”

“That’s right. But before he was a veterinarian, Charles was a little boy. He was born on the second anniversary of the deaths of his sisters,” Iris said, her eyes closed in remembrance. “He was a happy baby, chubby and blue-eyed with a full head of blond hair. I was especially fond of Charles because we spent so much time together. I had been given the task of looking after him, you see.”

I pictured a young vibrant girl with long hair blowing in the breeze, pushing a baby stroller in the garden, singing to the baby inside it. Iris?

“I was eleven or twelve years old at the time—I had grown up considerably since the girls’ deaths—and my mother suggested that I be allowed to take charge of the baby as his nanny. This pleased Hannah, who was rather preoccupied. She never saw Martine after the séance on that horrible day, but not for lack of trying on her part. Martine had disappeared, her cottage on the other side of the island emptied
of its contents. Nobody ever knew what happened to the witch, where she went or how she got off the island without even the ferry captain seeing her. As time passed, Hannah came to distrust her own mind and her own memories, wondering if Martine had ever existed at all.”

“I know how she felt,” I murmured, sipping my coffee. As I swallowed, a vision swam and wavered in the air before me: Charles as a baby, under Iris’s watchful eye. I looked at Iris, questioning.

Iris explained: “You’ve always had the ability to see the spirits beyond the veil, Halcyon. They’re showing themselves to you—the important moments in their lives.”

“But how—”

Iris cut off my questioning. “You must wait. Yours is a tale for another day. Today we’re talking about Charles.”

Fair enough.
I took another sip as she continued. “Charles was such a good-natured child, sunny and obedient and pleasant, always laughing and cooing and smiling. Perhaps that’s the reason nobody thought anything of the fact that, by age two, he had not yet spoken a word.”

“Two? That’s pretty late to begin talking, isn’t it?”

Iris nodded. “It was indeed. After his second birthday, Hannah began to voice some concern about her silent child. I accompanied her on several trips to doctors on the mainland, none of whom ever came up with any sort of diagnosis that would explain his lack of speech. So I decided to try to teach Charles to speak myself. I read to him, teaching him the alphabet and rudimentary mathematics. I’d point to the letters and make the sounds:
aaaay
,
beeee
,
seeee
. Charles did not
respond in kind, but I knew he was listening and learning. When he was four years old—”

“Four?” I interrupted. “You mean to say he still wasn’t speaking at
four
?”

“That’s right. But he did begin wandering out of the kitchen door on his own, much to my consternation. I’d be frantic, searching everywhere—in the garden? on the cliff? But soon I learned to find him in one of two places: the barn or the back lawn.”

A watery, wavy image of a young boy formed in the air above the table, a blond-haired blue-eyed child sitting in the grass by the garden with a couple of dogs. A deer stood nearby, curious, and a hawk circled above.

“Animals?” I asked Iris, doubting what I was seeing.

“The boy had an otherworldly connection to animals. That was his gift. It was almost as though he could read their thoughts and understand what they were saying. Charles spoke their language even though he never made a sound. I’d find him lying in the stall with one of the cows, or sitting on the grass with a dozen robins perched around him, or lazily petting a wayward skunk that had found its way onto the grounds.

“I never bothered him during those times,” Iris continued. “I can’t explain why, but I knew I shouldn’t intrude. So I watched, amazed.”

“It sounds magical and wonderful, Iris,” I murmured, as I envisioned an enormous hawk landing on Charles’s tiny outstretched arm.

“It was indeed.” Iris smiled at me, a thrilled look in her
eyes. “One day when Charles was five years old, I found him on the back lawn curled up with a cougar!”

I gulped.”I had no idea there were big cats on this island.” With all of my wanderings, had I been in danger of meeting one?

“In those days, we had quite a few of them here, but they’re long since gone. We all knew what cougars—some used to call them panthers—were capable of, especially if they were hungry. Well, of course I was terrified, so I called out for Hannah, who did nothing but collapse to the floor, screaming at the sight of her child sitting with this big cat. I ran to get Simeon, telling him to come quickly and bring his rifle. He strode out the door toward Charles and the cougar, aiming at the cat’s great head.

“ ‘Don’t be afraid, now, son,’ Simeon said evenly to Charles. ‘Daddy’s here. Stay perfectly still.’

“But for once in his life, Charles did not do as he was told. He stood up, positioned himself between his father and the cat, and threw his arms open wide.

“ ‘Why would you want to shoot this cat, Father?’ Charles cried out. ‘Bella is here to protect me, taking her turn just as all the animals have done.’

“These were Charles’s first words. At the sound of his son’s voice, Simeon dropped his gun and sank to his knees.

“ ‘Don’t cry, Father,’ Charles said, running up to Simeon and throwing his little arms around his father’s neck.

“Simeon picked up the boy and hugged him tight, and as he did so the great cat stood up and padded toward them. Simeon was ready to reach for his gun—I saw the look of terror on his face—when Charles said, ‘It’s all right, Father. I’ve
told Bella you’re not hurting me.’ And with that, the cat rubbed against Simeon’s legs, just as a house cat would do, before taking her place in the yard again.”

“Amazing,” I murmured, having seen the whole thing.

Iris nodded. “Nobody could quite believe their eyes. Later on, after dinner, when everyone had gotten over the shock that the mute Charles was sitting at the table chattering away, Simeon asked his son, ‘Charles, why haven’t you spoken a word before today?’

“Charles looked at him, confused. ‘I don’t understand, Father.’

“Simeon repeated the question. ‘You haven’t said one word until today, son. We were wondering if you’d ever speak.’

“Charles just shook his head. ‘I’ve been talking for years, Father. Haven’t you been able to hear me?’

“A silence fell around the table. Nobody knew what to say. The boy had been silent as the grave his entire life, of that everyone was certain. Simeon answered his son in the best way he knew how. ‘No, Charles, we haven’t heard you. I’m so sorry, son. I guess we just weren’t listening carefully enough.’

“Charles smiled a great smile, then, and took his father’s hand. ‘That’s all right, Father. I was listening carefully enough for all of us.’ “

The compassion in my young grandfather’s voice—which I was able to hear as clearly as if he were standing right next to me—was overwhelming. I dabbed at my eyes with a Kleenex. “Charles sounds like a wonderful child.”

“He was a magical child, really,” Iris said.

“So the animals kept coming around as he grew up?”

“They did indeed,” Iris said. “Especially the wolves and
the big cats. None of them ever went after our chickens or cows or even the dogs. They were here for one purpose, to protect Charles.”

“Protect him from what?”

A smile spread slowly across Iris’s lined face as she shook her head. “Child, were you not listening to my story the other day?”

“Of course I was listening.”

“Then what do you suppose Charles needed protection from?”

The answer hit me like an icy wave as an image of three ghostly girls swept through my mind. He needed protection from his dead sisters.

I
decided not to tell Will about Iris’s latest tale. I had been enthralled by her storytelling, but when she left for home that day, Will’s words echoed in my head and I wondered how much of her story was true. I knew how it sounded: a young mute boy able to forge an otherworldly connection with the animal world? It was the stuff of a children’s book.

No, before I could tell Will any more stories, I would need to find some sort of proof. I was burning for it. On Saturday morning, I made my way up to the third floor, determined to find some old family photos that would confirm what Iris had told me.

I hadn’t ventured up to the third floor yet. There were many reasons for my reluctance to explore the top of the house, all of them admittedly silly. The third floor was accessible only by the back staircase because, I imagined, it had housed the servants, who needed to come and go from the kitchen and laundry without disturbing the main areas of the house. Even the staircase felt haunted, empty, forbidden, so I could only imagine what the floor itself might feel like.
Also, at the top of those stairs there was a locked door, with no sign of a key in sight.

Well, of course I might have simply asked Iris for it. She certainly had the key or knew where it was stashed, because from time to time I heard her scurrying around up there, cleaning. But I had the overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t supposed to go up there, which probably stemmed from my childhood. Whatever happened to my father and Julie Sutton had happened up there. Something about confronting that scene again made me feel queasy.

But on this day, curiosity got the better of me. It’s not as if I expected to find a photo of Martine in mid-séance, but I hoped I could find a shot of Charles with some animals, at the very least. Perhaps an old photo of the girls?

I set about finding that key and finally, after nearly an hour of searching, I slipped my hand onto the sill of the high window above the kitchen sink and felt something cool and metallic, an old skeleton key on a chain. That had to be it. I closed my palm around the metal, crept up the back stairs, my heart beating furiously, and slipped the key into the lock. The door opened easily.

I found myself standing in a long hallway similar to the one on the second floor. It was dark, the shutters on the windows at both ends of the hallway drawn tightly closed against the sun. I flicked the light switch—nothing. I opened the shutters at one end of the hallway and then the other, letting bright slim shafts of light stream in through the slats. There was nothing frightening about this third floor. Being servants’ quarters, it just wasn’t as opulently decorated as the rest of the house. A plain red carpet sat on the hallway floor
and the walls were painted a simple cream that had yellowed over time.

I grasped the knob on the first door and turned it to find a small room with a single bed (no sheets or bedding, just a bare mattress) and a little bedside table. A dresser sat against the wall, unused and empty. A small bathroom occupied one end of the hall. I imagined Iris and her mother living in these spartan rooms back when they would’ve been clean and comfy.

As I neared the doorway at the end of the hall, my pulse began to quicken. Had the incident with Julie Sutton, whatever it was, happened in that room? I held my breath and opened the door.

A set of twin beds, still made up with yellow and red quilts, were pushed to opposite walls; a rocking horse, its paint flaking in spots, sat between them. A rocking chair was positioned in the corner by the shuttered window. The walls were covered with a faded yellow wallpaper on which ducks, geese, and chickens paraded to a barnyard on the opposite side of the room. It was a delightful nursery, even now. I felt very much at home in this room. Had I played here as a child?