Time for Andrew (4 page)

Before I went to bed that night, Aunt Blythe said, "I've been thinking about the marbles, Drew. If you're really worried, I'll put them back. Would that make you feel better?"

I was standing at the foot of the steps, afraid to go to my room, but ashamed to admit it. Without looking at my aunt, I picked at a fleck of peeling paint on the bannister. "Can we do it now?"

"Not in the dark." Aunt Blythe shuddered. "We'd probably fall through the floor."

"First thing in the morning then."

"Right after breakfast." She seized my hand and gave it a firm shake, a promise. "Go to bed now. It's past ten."

Slowly, I climbed to the landing. Above me the hall was dark. I'd forgotten to turn on the light at the bottom of the steps. If I went back, I'd prove I was a baby, scared of everything.

I put my foot on the first step and gripped the bannister. All I had to do was run up the rest of the steps, dash through my door, flick a switch, and leap into bed. I'd be safe in my own room. But I couldn't lift my other foot. It was like jumping off the high dive—the more you thought about it, the worse it seemed.

Suddenly, my scalp tightened. Something moved in the shadows above me. For a second, I saw a flickering image as insubstantial as a drawing on air. Two women stood outside my door. They wore long dresses and clung to each other, sobbing, their faces hidden.

Before I could make a sound, they vanished. The hall was empty. Moonlight patterned the walls and floor with shifting shadows. What had I seen? I didn't know, couldn't be sure. The figures had disappeared too quickly.

Beside me, the window curtains stirred in a breeze. It was cold on the landing. I wanted to fling myself into my aunt's arms and beg her to protect me, I wanted to jump into bed and pull the quilt over my head, but I was too scared to move. The ghosts might appear again, they might be waiting for me, they could be hiding anywhere.

Upstairs, the hall floor creaked, and Binky appeared at the top of the steps, grinning down at me. I took a deep breath and ran to him, scooped him up, hugged his warm, furry body. He'd protect me, keep me safe.

"Are they gone?" I whispered.

"Whuff." Binky licked my cheek and wagged his tail.

Holding the dog tightly, I looked around. The hall was definitely empty. I carried him into my room and turned on the light. Everything was the way I'd left it. No sobbing ladies in long dresses. No Andrew either.

Once more, I shoved the rocking chair in front of the attic door. Undressing quickly, I got into bed and put my arms around Binky. "You didn't see them, did you? If they'd been here, you would've barked."

Binky wagged his tail again, and I relaxed a tiny bit. "It was just my imagination, wasn't it?"

"Whuff."

Hoping
whuff
meant yes, I pulled the dog under the quilt with me and tried to fall asleep.

The next thing I knew, I was dreaming about a rocket ship traveling through space at hyperspeed. The captain had his back to me. He wore a jacket quilted with tumbling blocks. I couldn't see his face, but I knew he was old. Very old.

Suddenly a shower of marbles spun toward us out of the blackness—moonstones, cat's-eyes, immies, blood-red aggies. Like meteorites, they trailed fire. They struck the window, clickety click. They bounced and knocked against the ship's sides, clickety clickety click.

"You found them," the old man said. "Don't deny it. If he comes for them, you must take full responsibility."

When the captain turned and looked at me, it was my own face I saw. "Andrew," I cried. "Andrew!"

Wide awake, I sat up in bed and stared at the ceiling. Overhead, things bumped and clattered. Someone was in the attic. Then I heard his footsteps coming down the stairs slowly, one step at a time. I knew who it was, I knew what he wanted.

Binky knew too. He looked at the attic door and whimpered. Before I could stop him, he leapt off the bed and ran. I wanted to go after him, I wanted to call Aunt Blythe, but it was too late. The door was opening, pushing the rocking chair ahead of it.

On the threshold, a boy appeared. Except for the white nightshirt he wore, it might have been me. For a moment, he leaned against the door frame, struggling to catch his breath. When he stepped away from the wall, he tottered and almost fell. I heard him mutter something that sounded like
drat.

A few feet from the bed, Andrew stopped and stared at me, his eyes wide with surprise. "Who are you?" he whispered hoarsely. "What are you doing here?"

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Clutching the quilt, I shook my head.
Let me be dreaming,
I prayed,
oh, please let me still be dreaming. Make him go away.

Andrew came closer instead. I heard his bare feet patter across the floor. Without looking, I knew he was leaning over me, breathing hard. "Why, you're no bigger than I am," he muttered. "How dare you sneak into my house, steal my things, and then try to hide yourself in my bed?"

Before I knew what he was doing, Andrew grabbed my shoulders and tried to pull me out of bed. The effort made him cough. Letting me go, he leaned against the wall and gasped for breath. When he finally spoke, his voice was weak but still threatening. "If you don't give me my marbles at once, I shall call Papa. He's a lawyer, he'll have you locked up in jail so fast your head will spin."

I was crying now, I couldn't help it. "I'll give them to you tomorrow," I sobbed. "I promise, Andrew, I promise."

He held out his hand. It shook a little. "I want my marbles now!"

"My aunt has them—she said you had no use for marbles, she said you were dead."

Andrew drew in his breath. "I don't know who your aunt is or where she got such a fantastical notion. I'm not dead, as you can plainly see. Give me my marbles, you thief, and get out of my bed at once."

"Please go away," I begged. "This is my bed. You don't live here anymore. You, you—" For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to tell him again that he was dead, especially when he was so sure he wasn't. "I'm sorry about the marbles,
honest I am. I told my aunt not to take them, but she..."

Stumbling over words, repeating things I'd already said, I went on talking till I realized Andrew wasn't listening. He was prowling around the room, bumping into furniture like a blind man lost in a strange place. For the first time, he seemed to sense something was wrong.

"Where is my sister?" he asked. "When I went to the attic, she was fast asleep in that chair. Surely you saw her."

We both looked at the empty rocker. "Hannah doesn't live here either," I whispered. "She's very old now, almost a hundred—Aunt Blythe said so."

Andrew leaned over the bed and stared down at me. His face was deathly pale, but the skin below his eyes was dark.

"The fever," he whispered, "it's driven me out of my head. I'm standing here looking at my own self lying in bed. You aren't real, I'm dreaming, walking in my sleep."

Seizing the quilt, Andrew tried to jerk it out of my hands, but I held tight. Once more the effort exhausted him. "There's no sense fetching Papa," he muttered. "Hannah will know what to do, she always does."

I watched him go to the door and peer into the hall. "Hannah," he called. "Where are you?"

The house was silent. No one stirred. No one replied.

When Andrew turned to me, I realized he was even more frightened than I was. "Surely Hannah wouldn't leave. She promised Mama she'd stay with me all night. I heard them crying outside my door."

My scalp prickled. The sobbing women in the hall—had they been Andrew's mother and sister? No, no, this couldn't be happening. I closed my eyes.
Let him be gone when I open them, please, please, let him be gone.

But no matter how badly I wanted him to disappear,
Andrew stayed where he was, leaning against the door frame and gasping for air. The rasping sound of his breath made me shudder. At any moment I expected him to collapse, to die all over again before my eyes.

"You can't be alive," I whispered, "you can't—it's impossible."

"Do I look as bad as that?" Andrew came back to the bed and sat on the edge, close enough for me to see the fear in his eyes. "Dr. Fulton told Mama I was like to die before morning, but he saved me from blood poisoning last year and measles the year before that, and croup and whooping cough as well. Hannah lived through diphtheria. She says I will too."

He smiled uncertainly. "I hope Hannah is right, but the truth is I feel very weak. And cold. I should be in bed. If you don't let me under the covers, you'll surely be the death of me."

When Andrew reached for the quilt once more, I pulled it over my head. I didn't want to see his face again. I had to make him leave, I couldn't stand it anymore. "The cold can't hurt you," I cried. "Nothing can. You're already dead! Go back to your grave, rest in peace, let me be!"

Andrew yanked the covers away and forced me to look at him. "That's a wicked lie," he gasped. "If I'd died, I'd know it, I'd remember. Surely death is too powerful a thing to miss altogether."

The doubt in his voice made me braver. Switching on the lamp beside the bed, I cried, "Look, just look. Is this your room?"

Half-blinded, Andrew crouched at the foot of the bed and shielded his eyes from the brilliant electric light. When he finally lowered his hands, he gazed around the room,
taking in my posters, my running shoes, my jeans draped over the rocker, the radio. "Where are my pictures, my books?" he whispered. "What have you done with my things?"

"Great-grandfather got rid of them years ago." My voice shook with the power of truth. Harsh truth. Cruel truth. I was frightening Andrew, but I had to make him see this wasn't his house anymore. No matter what he thought, he couldn't stay here.

Andrew shook his head, still unconvinced. Ignoring his tears, I pointed to the calendar hanging above the bookcase. "See what year it is?"

He got to his feet and tottered across the room for a closer look. "No," he said, "no, that can't be right. It's 1910, I'm twelve years old, I have my whole life ahead of me."

Fighting fear and pity, I watched him press his hand to his chest. Before I realized what he was doing, he was back at the bed, grabbing my hand and holding it against his left side. "Feel that?" he whispered. "I can't be dead."

Under my palm, Andrew's heart pounded rapidly against his ribs. His skin was warm, his flesh solid over his bones. On the wall beside the bed, his shadow merged with mine.

I jerked my hand away, frightened by the living feel of him. Nothing made sense. Ghosts were transparent, insubstantial, they didn't cast shadows, they didn't have beating hearts.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. We sat on the bed staring at each other.

Andrew finally said, "I don't understand. If you, if I, if we both..." His words trailed away in confusion. Even though the room was warm, he shivered.

My thoughts were muddled too, but I knew one thing
for sure. No matter how badly I wanted to be rid of Andrew, I'd brought him here. If I let him return to the past, he'd die. But he wouldn't be gone. Every time I passed a mirror, I'd see his face. Every time I spoke, I'd hear his voice. His ghost would haunt me forever.

Whether Andrew realized it or not, it wasn't his marbles he'd come for. It was his life.

The room was so quiet I could hear Andrew's breath rattle in his chest. There was no other sound. The hall clock was silent. The curtains hung motionless at the window. Not a car, not a truck, not a plane disturbed the silence.

"How did I come here?" Andrew asked. "How do I go back?" He sat as still as stone, his eyes fixed on my face, waiting for me to explain.

"It's got something to do with the marbles," I said uncertainly. "Why did you hide them?"

He shrugged. "I wanted to put them where they'd be safe. They're mine, I won them all, mostly from my cousin. I thought he'd take them while I was sick. That's how Edward is. You can't trust him, he's always sneaking around. There's no telling what he'd do if he had the chance."

While he talked, Andrew traced the pattern on the quilt, his finger moving from one block to the next. "Mama made this for me when I was a baby," he said softly. "The colors have faded so much I scarcely recognize it, but this is her stitching. She sewed every thread."

Keeping his head down, Andrew studied the rows of tiny stitches as if he were reading a message from the past. He breathed deeply, slowly, deliberately.

To get his attention, I touched his hand. "Tell me everything that happened tonight."

Andrew thought hard. "I heard Mama and Hannah crying. They were in the hall, right outside my door. I wanted to say Dr. Fulton was wrong, I wasn't going to die, but I couldn't open my mouth, couldn't speak, couldn't even raise my head. Then Hannah sat down in that rocker."

He pointed to the chair I'd shoved in front of the attic door. "She said she'd watch me all night, she wouldn't leave me, she wouldn't let me die."

He rested a moment as if talking wearied him. "I guess I fell asleep. I dreamed my marbles were spinning through the air. I tried to catch them, but they flew away from me, getting smaller and smaller."

When he paused again for breath, I said, "I dreamed about marbles too. I was in a spaceship and they were coming toward me like a meteor shower—cat's-eyes, immies, moonstones, aggies____"

Paying no attention to me, Andrew went on talking. "All of a sudden, I woke up. Maybe it was the dream, but I was sure someone had stolen my marbles."

He looked at the empty rocking chair. "Hannah was sleeping right there. I sneaked past her, just as quiet as a shadow, and
floated
up the attic steps. It was as if I'd turned to smoke, I had no weight at all. I saw the hole in the floor. The cigar box was there, but the marbles were gone. Then the attic turned pitch black and everything spun round and round and round. The next thing I knew, I was in this room and you were in my bed."

Andrew let out his breath in a long sigh that made him cough. When he could speak, he said, "Maybe that's what dying's like—floating away, leaving everything behind,
never coming back." He leaned toward me, his eyes fever bright. "Do you suppose I died, after all?"