Amber House: Neverwas (19 page)

didn’t really like.

I was so tired. Drained. Confused. Afraid. I turned the knob,

ice-cold in my hand. My hand on the table by the door, helping

to hold me upright, I stood in the entry, wavering.

And saw someone climbing the stairs.

She was a young woman in dungaree-style pants unlike any

I’d seen before. She was a mess — her clothes and skin grimed

with dust and dirt, her hair veiled with spiderweb trailings. I had

no idea on earth who she could be.

“Hey,” I said. She didn’t turn. Her legs kept climbing mechan-

ically. She frightened me, but I forced myself to go after her.

Like moving against a current
, I thought.
Like walking into air that
rejected my presence.
The girl above me glanced at the mirror on the first landing, but didn’t pause. Made the turn to the next

rise of steps, moving with exhausted determination. I saw her

face then.

Gray with a pall of illness. Tear-streaked. Frightened.

I knew that face. I knew her.

Her features were backward, lopsided, distorted. Not the girl

from the mirror — not the girl I’d always seen. I felt inside out.

The girl was me.

CH A P T ER TE N

K

She was a Sarah I had never been. I’d never climbed those stairs

looking like that. What was I seeing? What was going on?

I followed up after her just to find out what would happen

next, numbed legs bending and straightening, bending and

straightening. The other Sarah paused at the top, as if listening,

then turned to climb to the third floor. When I reached the

upper hall, she was going through the farthest door, to the long

garret room on the end.

I stopped. Unwilling to go farther.
Of course she’d go into the old
nursery.
The place where the Monster lived.

Darkness milled in the hall, and the windows of the smaller

rooms shone silver from the light of a full moon. It was

night here, though it was daytime in my world.
So what world

is this?
I wondered dully. And would I be able to get back to my own?

I opened the last door. The nursery appeared candlelit, but I

saw no candles. The other Sarah was kneeling before a trunk,

speaking to someone invisible to me.

I made myself enter the room. My skin crawled, as if I was

losing all my heat. I stopped behind the girl so I could hear what

she said: “I brought your box. Weren’t you looking for it? Can

you see it? Can you see yourself in the mirror?”

Part of me felt angry and disgusted, as if I were being tricked.

The other Sarah was shaking her head. “You’re asleep,” she

was saying slowly, with a clumsy tongue. “You have to wake up.”

o97

She looked terrible, pushed beyond endurance, sagging for-

ward, her skin chalky. She struggled to form words. “I came to

find you, Sam.”

My little brother’s name jolted me. Something seemed to

shift sideways. And suddenly I could see — two children, sitting

side by side behind the trunk. Sammy, his sweet face gone slack.

And a little girl not much older, with the fine features she shared

with her sister, my mother. Maggie.

I had to be asleep; I had to be dreaming. None of this could be

real. Except that it all felt
familiar
. Like I knew what would happen next.

Sammy was going to jump up and run out of the room, and

then Maggie would say —

“It’s dark in the mirror.”

The mirror? Yes.

I remembered I had seen Sam’s face trapped in the mirror.

Until I found him in his dream. And Maggie with him.

What in God’s name?.

I staggered and almost fell, catching myself on an upright

post. The night attic vanished. I stood alone in a dusty storeroom

dimly lit by winter morning light.

Not a single thing I’d seen made any sense at all. I clung to the

post, trying to sort it out.

I’d had some kind of
what? Vision?
Of me, doing something I’d swear I hadn’t done, except I had some vague memory of it now

that I’d seen it play out in front of my eyes.
How come I didn’t
remember it before?
How could I forget something like that?
Sammy
trapped in the mirror?

I wondered if it was something that had actually happened

that I was only now remembering in this completely weird and

vivid way? Or if it was something that was
going
to happen, and I could — I didn’t know — see the future? Or if it was

98 O

maybe something I was just imagining because I was — What?

Completely out of my mind?

The light seemed to dim. I had a nauseating feeling someone

else was in the room with me, someone standing in the far cor-

ner, in the shadows —

I turned and ran.

At the foot of the stairs, I hugged the railing to steady myself.

Gramma’s mother was crazy. Maybe it’s in my genes.
I was sucking in air as if I had been holding my breath for a long time.

I heard Sammy running up to me, laughing. I struggled to get

hold of myself, to face him with a smile. But it wasn’t Sam.

I watched an auburn-haired child dart past and through the

arch to the west wing, her pale blue dress fluttering behind her.

I staggered after her. But when I reached the hall entrance, I

couldn’t understand what I was seeing. A few feet down, the girl

stood facing away from me, listening to a woman crouched in

front of her, pleading. The woman looked like my grandmother

from three decades before.

“You promised me you would stop doing this. Don’t you

understand, sweetie? I almost lost you. I thought I had lost

you. I could see you in the mirrors, but I didn’t know how to

get you out.”

“In the mirrors,” the girl repeated, and so did I, silently.

“It’s just too dangerous. We mustn’t listen to them anymore.

They don’t need our help.” She reached up and took the girl’s

chin in her fingers. “You’ve got to promise me —
promise me
—

you’ll stop seeing, stop hearing. Promise me, Magpie.”

Magpie?

“Maggie,” I said.

The woman and child disappeared and another woman

stepped into the space where they had been. “Sarah Too,” my

grown aunt answered.

o99

N

Maggie led me to a bench and made me sit. She crouched in front

of me, as her mother had with her. “Tell me what you saw.”

I realized I was crying noiselessly. I wiped my cheeks. I tried

to find some starting point for answering my aunt’s question.

“Gramma. From a long time ago. She was telling you — to stop

‘seeing.’ ”

My aunt nodded. “Yes.”

Yes?
“What do you mean? That happened?” I said. “In real life?”

“Yes,” she said. “It happened.”

I think I groaned. I couldn’t bear the way my head felt. I just

kept reaching new levels of — incomprehension. Did that mean

I
wasn’t
crazy? So what on earth had I seen? “Wait,” I said, realizing, “you don’t seem —
surprised
that I saw that. Why is that?

You know what that was?”

“Your gramma called them echoes.”

Echoes. The word itself seemed to resound in my mind as if

I’d heard it before. “Is that what Gramma wanted you to stop

seeing?”

“Yes,” she said. “She thought they were to blame for my coma.

And maybe they were, a little.”

Maggie could see them. It had all actually happened. I didn’t just
make it up. I wasn’t crazy.

“Wait,” I said again. “How did Gramma know about them?”

“She could see them too. A lot of the grandmothers could.”

Wonderful
, some part of me thought
. I’ve finally discovered the
family gift I inherited. I’ll have to tell Richard.
I felt like giggling hysterically but was afraid if I got started, I would not be able

to stop. I took a deep breath instead. “You have to explain it a

little better, Maggie, ’cause this is freaking me out. What is

an echo?”

100 O

“It’s like replaying a piece of the past. A moment played over

again. Like a scene from a movie. And only certain special people

can see them.”

It was as if I’d fallen down some kind of rabbit hole. Words

didn’t seem to have the same sense they used to. And yet it was

all somehow terribly, achingly
familiar
, as if I’d known it all along, had experienced this before. The past, replaying itself.

“Why haven’t I ever seen an echo before now? You could see

them when you were little.”

“It doesn’t happen the same way for everybody.” She shrugged.

“And your mama worked pretty hard to talk you out of seeing

them at all.”

The creepies
, I thought to myself, and then said, shocked, “Mom can see them?”

“She used to, before Gramma made her promise to stop.

Maybe she still can, but she just doesn’t tell. Like me.”

“Why did Gramma make you both promise?”

“I got stuck,” she said, “until you reminded me to wake up.”

That other thing I’d just seen. “In the attic,” I said.

“Yes.”

I woke Sam and Maggie up. They’d been asleep, and that

other Sarah —
I
— had been talking to their —
what?
Their
dream
selves? How was
that
even possible?
And
—

“Why don’t I remember doing that, Maggie? How could I see

myself doing something I don’t remember doing?”

Maggie looked confused. “I don’t know. I always figured it

hadn’t happened yet, for you, but if you saw it —”

I mentally finished her sentence:
If I saw it, it must be in the past
for me.
But I would swear on the Bible I hadn’t done it. “Maybe I saw an echo from the future?” I said.

Maggie shook her head. “As far as I know, that’s not what hap-

pens for our family.”

“Sarah?” My mom was calling up the stairs.

o101

What would Mom say when I told her about this?
Why hadn’t

she
ever just told me?
I forced myself to stand, to go out to the rail.

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Your dad called.” She stood at the foot of the stairs, smiling

up at me. “Jackson’s good to go, no problems. The folks at the

clinic even let your dad sew him up, which is lucky, because no

one makes neater stitches than he does.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I was managing to keep my voice level.

Light, even.

“Would you give me a hand for a little bit, hon? I have to get

the rest of the exhibit stuff packed up.”

Good Lord, please no
, I thought, but said, “Sure. Be right down.”

Maggie stopped me with a light hand on my elbow. Her voice

was low, pleading. “Don’t talk about this with your mom.”

“Why not? Why shouldn’t she know?”

She shook her head a little, trying to find the right words.

“She won’t like it. She’ll try to make it stop. And there’s stuff

you have to see.”

“Stuff I have to see?” It just kept coming. One crazy idea after

another. “What do you mean?”

She looked resigned. As if she knew she sounded lunatic.

“Sarah, that’s what the house does. That’s what it’s for. Just —

give it a chance.”

She said it so matter-of-factly. I wondered if she understood

what she was suggesting. “Maggie,” I said, “it’s just a house. Just

bricks and wood.”

She answered patiently, “I don’t think anything is just any-

thing, sweetie. Seems like everything has a piece of soul in it.

Only we don’t know it, because mostly we can’t feel it. But in

Amber House, the women of our family can.”

I didn’t answer her. I didn’t know how. I just turned and left.

Mom and I spent an hour or so packing up the exhibit pieces

we’d had on display at the party. I thought about telling her,

102 O

but each time I started, I shied away from it again. Some part of

me was unwilling, as if it wanted — needed — to hear what

Maggie’s “house” had to say.

So I channeled my thoughts away from what I’d seen and

learned. I tried to be “normal.” For once in my life, I forced my

mom to chat. Which by itself should have clued in Mom to real-

ize that something was wrong. But she probably just figured I

was upset about Jackson, which was also true.

We got everything packed, all padded and secure. Then I

taped the boxes while Mom stuck on address labels and huge

arrows beside the words this side up.

“I wanted to remember to ask you,” she said, “what did that

man talk to you about?”

“What man?”

She reddened a little. “That — German. At the party.”

That Nazi
, I thought. “He just introduced himself. Said he

heard that Amber House was haunted.”

“What did you say?”

“No ghosts. Just zombies who eat Germans.”

She grinned and rolled her eyes. “Where were they when we

needed them?”

I grinned back. It felt good. It felt normal.

“You know what he said to me?” A tone of disbelief had filled

her voice. “He asked if we would sell Amber House. Can you

imagine? He said he could pay in gold.”

“What did you say?”

“I said that Amber House would never be for sale under any

circumstances.”

Yes. Never for sale.
But then it seemed to me it might have been.