Unraveling Isobel (6 page)

“Mr. Stripes?” The zebra just lay there. He didn't look like the kind of stuffed animal that would move across the room by himself. But then I remembered the picture.

I crossed the room and fished the scraps of the drawing out of the trash. I assembled them like puzzle pieces on the desktop until they were back in order. It was as I remembered it, Mr. Stripes in the same position on the window seat. Only in the picture he was leaning on a book. I looked around slowly. If the book suddenly appeared, I was fully prepared
to leave the house and sleep in the car. I'd had enough of things popping up out of the ether. Nothing. Just Mr. Stripes. It didn't look like he had moved. I must have propped him up for the picture and forgotten about it. I must have been imagining how the room had looked when Evelyn had lived in it, and then I must have drawn it, fallen asleep, and had a nightmare. That had to be it. There wasn't any other explanation, was there? No rational reason.

My heart was pounding. There was another option, one I didn't want to consider at all, even though it kept tickling at the back of my brain. Why couldn't I remember drawing the picture? I took after my dad in terms of art ability, but I was really hoping to avoid taking after him in the mental health area. Schizophrenia was thought to have a genetic component. It was one of those things that my mom and I never discussed, but there were times when I would catch her watching me. Evaluating. Was I being too emotional? Paranoid? Was I going to snap like he did? No wonder I tended to go from having a nightmare like any other normal person to assuming I had actually seen something. Everyone has nightmares. There's nothing odd about being freaked out when you first wake up.

I brushed the pieces of the picture back into the trash and then, for some reason, fished them back out. I shuffled them into a stack and stuck them in the back of one of my old Harry Potter books. I licked my finger and wiped the graphite dust off on my yoga pants. And Nathaniel thought I wore a
lot of black because I was making a statement. Little did he know that it covered up for my tendency to be a slob.

It was dark out. I couldn't see anything, but I could still hear the waves. I decided to check the latch again just to be safe. I stepped into a cold puddle of water and jumped back, startled. I bent down and trailed a finger through the water. The wind must have blown some of the rain in. I touched my finger to my lips. The water was salty. Ocean water. My heart sped up. Rainwater isn't salty, is it? I touched the water again and felt something slick. I held up my hand. A tiny sliver of seaweed hung down from my index finger.

I slept with the bedside light on.

Chapter 6

E
verything seemed different in the morning. Safer, more grounded. When I got up the house was silent. I looked out at the water and the blue sky. My fear from last night now seemed way out of proportion. I'd had a nightmare, nothing more. I hated to admit Dick might be right, but in this case he was. It had been a big day—the wedding, moving to the house, fighting with Nathaniel over the room. I woke up with the storm going on, saw the curtain blowing in the wind, and my brain filled in the rest. As for the puddle of water, it had dried up. Either I imagined the salty taste, or the fact that we lived next to the ocean made the rainwater salty. What was I, a meteorologist? How was I supposed to know what the rain tasted like out here? I took a deep breath and gave the window lock another shake proving to myself it was latched tight.

I wandered downstairs. There was a note in the kitchen from my mom. She and Dick had gone into town for groceries. I was willing to bet that when Dick went back to work, this whole “doing everything side by side as if he and my mom were Noah's-ark creatures” would stop. Dick struck me as the kind of guy who expected a cold martini and warm slippers waiting for him when he got home. Of course, he worked from home, so he wouldn't have far to go to keep an eye on my mom and make sure she was doing what he wanted. I looked around the counter. There wasn't any note from Nathaniel, not that I expected him to hang around and show me the place just because he had thawed out enough that we could have an actual conversation.

The kitchen was large and looked like it had last been updated around 1920. There wasn't even a dishwasher, and the stove was this huge metal behemoth. I would not have been shocked if someone told me it required coal. I rummaged around and found a bagel in the bread drawer and decided to eat it cold rather than bother trying to find a toaster. With my luck, this place didn't even have a toaster and I'd be expected to hold the bagel over an open flame in a fireplace or something.

I walked over to the pantry while I nibbled on the bagel. The wood on the door was grooved with notches, and names and dates had been carved into it. My fingers ran over the scars in the wood. The dates went back to the 1940s. I found one for Nathaniel. It looked like he had gotten tall at a young age.
There were a few grooves for Evelyn as well. I ran my finger over one of her notches.

I thought about going back up to my room, but since I had the house to myself, it was a perfect opportunity to do a bit of exploring in my new home. I skated around the wood floors in my socks.

We lived in the east wing. The main floor had the kitchen, a dining room that could comfortably seat twenty or so of my closest friends (assuming I could even come up with twenty people I wanted to hang out with), and what I guessed was a formal living room. The way the furniture looked completely unsuitable for actual use was the giveaway to the formal part. Based on the artwork hanging on the walls, it didn't look like the Wickham family was into modern stuff. Most of the paintings were either portraits (no doubt of long-dead illustrious Wickhams) or sea scenes.

Just past the formal living room was a slightly less formal family room. At least the sofa wasn't as hard as granite and there was a TV. I clicked the TV on and ran through the channels. The house had cable, thank God. I turned it off and continued exploring. Off the family room were glass French doors that were locked. Interesting. People should realize locking stuff up only makes it more intriguing. I peered in. It looked like it must be Dick's study. It was heavy on the man decor, including a couple of severed animal heads hanging on the wall. No doubt some Wickham had hunted them down and killed them while on
safari with Hemingway or something. I could see that the moose head was covered in a thick felt of gray dust. Something scurried about in the open mouth of a bear. It was a huge spider. Nasty. A modern flat-screen computer looked out of place on the desk.

Then I heard it. A high, tinkling laugh. A little girl's laugh. The bit of bagel I'd just bitten off froze in my throat. I took a few tentative steps down the hall. I heard it again coming from the last room. I stood outside the door and made myself count to five, doing the yoga breathing that Anita was always trying to teach me. I hadn't heard anything; it was just the wind in the trees or something. Then the laugh came again. I went from Zen to freak-out in .002 seconds. My hand clenched down on the doorknob.

“Who is that?” My voice came out shaky and thin, which hadn't been what I was going for. I had the sense it was better to come across as in charge when dealing with the undead, or the next thing you know they'd be haunting you like they owned the place. I cleared my throat and tried again, this time more firmly. “Who are you?”

The laugh carried through the door again.

“I mean you no harm.” I waited, but there was no response. Maybe she was waiting for more details. “Are you not at peace?” As soon as the words left my mouth I felt like kicking myself. Of course she wasn't at peace. She died in a tragic accident at a young age, and now someone had taken over her room, not to mention her stuffed zebra. She was a ghost with a lot of issues. You don't hear about ghosts at peace wandering around. Haunting
is strictly an occupation for seriously unpeaceful dead people.

I took another deep breath and flung the door open. It bounced against the far wall and then swung back, shutting in my face. One thing was becoming clear: if I was thinking of becoming an international ghost hunter, I was going to need some remedial training. I opened the door again, this time with a bit less vim and vigor.

“Show yourself,” I commanded.

It was a sunroom. The floors were slate tiles and there were floor-to-ceiling glass windows looking out onto the patio. The furniture was wicker with white cushions that looked past their prime, turning yellow. The room smelled vaguely of mildew, like damp towels forgotten in a washing machine. I had the sense that this had been a room Dick's first wife had liked. Since she was gone, it seemed no one used it.

Then I heard the laugh again. I whirled around, ready to confront the ghost. Right outside the window was a wind chime, some type of sea glass and shell thing. That was what had made the sound. Fantastic. I had been attempting to communicate with a home accessory. The chime gave another laugh to point out just how stupid the entire situation had become.

I nibbled on my bagel. I was going to have to face up to a few things. Either:

 

1. I had been visited by the ghost of my dead stepsister.

2. I was going (or already was) crazy.

3. All the upheaval and changes of the past couple of months had caught up with me, resulting in a bad dream and delusions of paranormal activity. However, now that I'd gotten it all out of my system, everything would be fine. Nothing more than a nightmare brought on by change rather than too much dessert.

Anita believed in the other side. She thought most horror movies were basically documentaries, but I had always been more of a skeptic. As far as I could tell, dead was dead. Even if I made the assumption that there were ghosts, and that my stepsister had become one, why would Evelyn pick me to haunt? Why not haunt her dad or brother?

As for going crazy, although half of my genetic makeup had a leaning in that area, I refused to believe that I'd gone from sane to full-blown delusional in one night. After some consideration, I determined I didn't have any other crazy thoughts. I didn't think I was Napoleon, or that my bagel was an alien, and I didn't have voices in my head warning me about terrorist plots. Near as I could tell, I was still on the right side of sane. Granted, crazy people don't always know they're crazy, but it seemed to me if I could think through the issue so carefully, then I couldn't be insane. I took a deep breath and was almost 100 percent convinced.

I finished my bagel and brushed my hands off. I decided that, given my options, C was my best bet. The past few weeks had been brutal, with tons of changes and upheavals: my mom announcing she was getting married, meeting Dick, coping with Nathaniel's obvious disdain, having to move. It was no wonder I was seeing things. Come to think of it, it was surprising I hadn't been plagued with visions of ghosts or dancing hippos before now. That was practically proof of how sturdy my mental status was. I nodded stiffly at the wind chime and pulled the door closed on both the sunroom and any further thought of ghosts.

Chapter 7

I
walked back through the living room and paused in the foyer. I placed my hand on the knob of the door that led to the west wing. It was ice cold. At first I thought it was locked, but the handle turned easily; the door itself was just stuck. When I pushed it, the door opened. I stepped inside.

The power was off in this wing, and although it was only the beginning of September, it felt like December. I sniffed. It smelled like mildew and a bit like the time my mom found a mouse dead in the walls of our last apartment. Dick might think the place only needed minor repairs, but it looked to me like this side of the house was in serious need of some major intervention. The hallway was wide, with paintings covered with sheets spaced every few feet along the wall. This must be the gallery. It certainly looked like I'd wandered down a random hallway of the Louvre.

I thought Dick was joking about there being a ballroom, but apparently not. The next room was huge and had a bank of windows along one wall. The curtains were a robin's egg–blue velvet, although there were dark splotches of what could be mold along the bottom of the fabric. I looked up. The ceiling had been painted white at one point but currently was sporting a serious case of yellow water spots like acne. At the far end of the room, next to a piano, was a riser, which must have been a platform for a live band. In the corner of the room there were a few pieces of furniture draped with dusty sheets.