Whispers from the Dead (9 page)

Dad looked at me with a kind of funny expression on his face, so I quickly said, “I guess I was confused. There was so much to think about.”

“Yes,” he said. “There was.” He put an arm around my shoulder and kissed my forehead. “I’m proud of you, Sarah. If you’d been afraid to live in this house, I don’t know what we would have done. You even managed to reassure your mother with your sensible, practical attitude, and that took some doing.”

I hugged him tightly, wishing I could tell him about the vision and the woman who had asked me for help. But I couldn’t. I wished we could be back in Missouri, but that was a stupid wish that wouldn’t come true.

Mom returned and kissed me good night. I left them and took the stairs one slow step at a time, trying to sort everything out.

Who was the woman who had contacted me? Was she someone who really needed my help? Or had the evil in this house twisted itself into demons who pretended to be what they were not? Nervously I turned on the light switch in my room before I turned off the light in the hall.

With trembling fingers I closed my bedroom door and leaned against it, waiting for—no, actually
willing
—the voice to return.

T
he spirit chose her own moments to make contact. When I realized she wouldn’t come, I was free to think about Tony, who slipped from my conscious thoughts into my dreams.

I woke to slotted ribbons of sunlight streaming through the mini-blinds and to a whisper:
“Trate de encontrarlo.”

I sat up in bed, swinging my feet to the floor, and brushing my hair away from my face.
“Trate de encontrarlo”?
I said out loud. “What does that mean?” Had the words come from my dream?

If I’d moved, I would have missed the slight hiss of a breath taken and held. Hugging my arms to keep from shivering, I whispered, “Are you there?”

No one answered.

Anxious to escape whoever was with me, I rummaged through my shoulder bag to find a scrap of paper
and a pen and wrote down the words so I wouldn’t forget them.

It didn’t take long to pull on shorts and a T-shirt and race downstairs to join Mom in the kitchen where she was still rearranging pans in the lower cabinets.

She looked up at me in surprise. “You’re out of breath,” she said.

“Hungry, I guess,” I answered, and kissed the top of her head.

“Help yourself to some cereal,” she told me. “The bowls are now in the cupboard on the far right.”

As I poured milk over my cereal I asked, “Mom, have we got a Spanish-English phrase book?”

She looked up, surprised. “No. Why do you want one?”

Hunching over my cereal, I mumbled, “There are some things I want to look up. I need to brush up on my Spanish.”

“There are a number of bookstores near here,” she said. “Two on Memorial, not too far. Why don’t you buy one?”

“I think I will.” I waited until she was through rattling pans and asked, “What can I do to help you?”

“Nothing for the next few hours,” Mom said. “I want to get a little better organized first, then I’ll have lots for you to do.”

It was too early for the bookstores to be open, and I wanted to get away from the house—and the voice that haunted me. “I’m going to go for a quick bike ride,” I told Mom. “I’ll be back in about fifteen or twenty minutes.”

The sun was already hot, and as I wheeled my bike from the garage I felt as though I’d stepped from a hot shower into a room filled with steam. Moisture clung to my skin, and the hair at the back of my neck curled into damp ringlets.

“Wait up!”

Dee Dee ran barefoot across the lawn to the street. I pulled over to the curb, bracing one foot against it, and said, “You’re up early.”

She grinned. She was wearing a faded, ripped, over-size T-shirt with a purple dinosaur on it that she’d slept in, I guessed. Her hair was still tousled, and her face was scrubbed clean, making her look like a mischievous twelve-year-old. “I’m always up early. How was your date last night? Was he cute? I want to hear all about him.”

“The communication on this street is unbelievable,” I answered.

She giggled. “I was curious. I wanted to find out about this guy Eric told you about. I’ve never heard Eric even mention him, so I called Eric, and he just happened to tell me he fixed the two of you up with a date. So … what was Tony like? Was he cute? What did you talk about?”

I stared right into Dee Dee’s eyes without smiling. “We talked about the murder,” I said.

Dee Dee gasped, and tears filled her eyes. “Oh, damn!” she said. “You’re never going to want to speak to me again, are you?”

I got off my bike and laid it against the curb. “I’d like
us to be friends, but right now I’m awfully mad at your mother.”

“I guess I don’t blame you,” Dee Dee said. “But her job is selling houses. What was she going to do?”

“She should have been honest and told my father about the murder.”

“Then he wouldn’t have bought the house. No one would.” She glanced over her shoulder at our house and shivered. “It would have just sat there and crumbled. After the Holts moved out, somebody threw rocks into the front windows, and one night someone kicked in the back door. Nobody on the street wanted the house empty. Look at it our way. Don’t you understand?”

“No,” I said.

Dee Dee turned slowly and began to walk back to her house, so I added, “But I do want to be friends.”

She lifted her head and smiled hopefully. “It would be awful living next door to you if you hated me.”

I managed to smile back. “I doubt if anyone could hate you.”

“Eric does—sometimes,” she answered. “Of course, Eric hates almost everybody. He can be so mean when he feels like it.” She wiggled her shoulders, as though she were tossing off the problem between us. “About Tony,” she said. “I know he’s tall, but what does he look like?”

“Nothing special, just okay,” I answered, but I felt myself blush. Dee Dee grinned, but before she could say a word, I went on. “He’s tall—just as Eric said—and he has a good tan, and his hair and mustache are dark brown.”

“Mustache?” Her eyebrows rose. “How old is he?”

“He said he was a year older than Eric. That would make him nineteen.”

“And you like him,” Dee Dee said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. I guess I do.” I could feel my cheeks grow even warmer.

“Have you eaten breakfast?” Dee Dee asked. “I haven’t. Come on in. I’ll get Lupita to fix us something, and you can tell me all about Tony.”

I didn’t want to tell Dee Dee about Tony. I wanted to keep him to myself. I pointedly glanced at my watch, not really seeing it, and said, “I’ve got to get home. I told Mom I’d take a quick ride, then get back and help with the unpacking. I’ll see you later.”

“I could come over and help, too, if you’d like me to.” She glanced at our house again from the corner of her eye. “Sooner or later I’ll have to get used to being in the house.”

“Just like we’ll have to get used to
living
in it.”

Dee Dee flinched.

I hadn’t meant to hurt her. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “All of this wasn’t your fault.”

Dee Dee blinked a couple of times, managed a smile, and said, “I’ll be over in about an hour. Okay?”

“Great,” I answered. “We’ll put you to work.”

When I finished my bike ride, I wheeled the bike into the garage and went back inside the house, where Mom was on her hands and knees, her head inside one of the kitchen cupboards.

“Are you sure I can’t do that for you?” I asked.

She squirmed backward until she could sit upright. “No thanks,” she said. “I know exactly where I want to put everything in my kitchen.” She pointed toward the end of the counter. “I’ve made a shopping list. Why don’t you take the car and run down to the store? By the time you’ve bought the groceries, the bookstores will be open. Then you can stop by the vet’s and get Dinky.”

“Good! I can’t wait to see Dinky.”

Mom tilted her head and examined me. “Why this interest in Spanish all of a sudden?”

“Lots of people in Houston speak Spanish.” We’d always been open and honest with each other, so I felt uncomfortable about hiding my reason from her.

Mom sighed and said, “I know this move has been tough on you, Sarah, but when school starts, you’ll make some friends.”

“I have one friend here already—Dee Dee Pritchard.” Mom’s eyes clouded for an instant. Before she could say anything, I quickly added, “Dee Dee’s nice. Really. Don’t blame her for what her mother did.”

“I know you’re right,” Mom said, although she didn’t look very happy about it. “I’m still having trouble accepting what happened.”

“Everything’s going to be okay, Mom.” I picked up the shopping list and hurried from the room. She’d always been good at reading my face.

While I was standing in line at the bookstore, waiting to buy a Spanish-English phrase book, I looked up the section on familiar phrases.
Lo necesito esta noche
—I need it tonight.
Aqui tiene la lista
—Here is the list.
Trate de encontrarlo
—Try to find it.

Try to find it!
With trembling fingers I fumbled through my shoulder bag, pulled out the scrap of paper on which I’d written the words from my dream, and read them:
Trate de encontrarlo.
The same words. Try to find it. Try to find what?

“May I help you?” the clerk asked.

Quickly I paid for the book and hurried out to the car. I thumbed through the book, trying to find what I wanted to ask, but the verb to find,
encontrar
, was not conjugated. Here was
qué
, meaning “what.” Could I combine them? Or just answer
“¿Qué?”
to whoever was trying to reach me?

When I picked up Dinky, I was so glad to have her in my arms again that I snuggled against her fur. She looked at me as though she blamed me for her visit at the vet’s.

“It’s not my fault,” I told her, and tucked her inside the cat carrier. “Moving’s been hard on all of us. Why should you be an exception?”

Dinky just sneered and turned her back to me.

Dee Dee arrived at my house just as I pulled into the driveway. “I’m ready to work,” she said, and tugged one of the large grocery bags from the car. Spying the cat carrier, she said, “Hey! She’s pretty.”

Dinky looked at Dee Dee with a little more friendliness than she’d shown me, but once inside the house, Dinky went exploring, ignoring both of us. I watched her carefully to see how she reacted. Weren’t cats supposed to sense things people couldn’t see? But not a hair raised on Dinky’s calico back.

Mom and Dee Dee greeted each other a little awkwardly.

“I’ll put away the groceries,” Mom said. She nodded toward the maid’s room. “I’d appreciate it if you girls would do a really good job of wiping down the floor in there—especially in the little closet. It’s a hands-and-knees job, and my back is beginning to give out.”

Dee Dee and I equipped ourselves with soft old towels and the wood cleanser. “I’ll begin in the closet,” I said.

The closet was so small that I couldn’t get completely into it. I attacked the baseboards, scrubbing hard. I was so intent on my work that at first I didn’t notice that the air had changed. It grew warmer, and it touched my face in rhythm, as though someone were breathing.

I heard the words in my head.
Trate de encontrarlo.

¿Qué?
I demanded.
¿Qué, qué, qué?

There was no answer, but the breathing became more rapid.
How can I help you if you don’t tell me what you want?
I asked. Stubbornly I scrubbed even harder at the baseboard, working faster, trying to break the rhythm that surged against me. It was like an excited heartbeat, a gasping, a trembling, and it wouldn’t leave me alone.

Suddenly a piece of the baseboard came away in my hands. “Oh, no!” I said. “I think I broke something.” But I realized that I hadn’t broken it. The board must have been loose. It pulled away too quickly.

The breathing stopped.

“What did you break?” Dee Dee was right beside me, peering over my shoulder.

I picked up the small piece of board—about eight or ten inches in length—to see if there were nails I might drive in a little deeper in order to fasten it in place, and I glimpsed a shallow, hollowed-out place, a rough gap in the Sheetrock. Inside this hollow was a bundle of papers with a thin silver chain wound around them.

“Move back, Dee Dee. I’m coming out.” I squirmed backward into the room.

She plopped down beside me as I sat cross-legged on the floor, examining the small packet in my hands.

“What is it? Where did you find it?” she asked.

“It was tucked behind a loose piece of baseboard.”

“That’s a religious medal!” she said as I unwound the chain and exposed a round, silver medal, so small that I hadn’t noticed it at first.

The envelope on top was unsealed. Inside was a wad of currency, both United States money and Mexican pesos. “Ohhhh!” Dee Dee said. “How much money is in there?”

I thumbed through it. “About a hundred and fifty dollars in U.S. bills. I don’t know how much the pesos would be worth.”

“Is there a name somewhere in there?”