Don't Breathe a Word (20 page)
The Shadow People
If you receive a gift from the fairies, treasure it. Know that no matter how ordinary the object may seem, it is infused with fairy magic. Guard this object with your life. Tell no one where it has come from.
When you are in possession of such a gift, you and the fairies are bound.
Phoebe
June 11, Present Day
“D
o you think it’s her?” Evie whispered. She was standing with Phoebe and Sam in the kitchen. The girl from the cellar hole was in the living room eating her third bowl of corn flakes with a quarter cup of sugar sprinkled on top. Before that, she’d finished off the leftover strawberry cake.
“I don’t know,” said Sam, opening a bottle of beer. “It could be. But then again I was fooled by that woman at the cabin pretending to be Evie. What do you think?” he asked, turning to his cousin.
“I’m not sure,” Evie said, chomping on her chapped lower lip, peering anxiously through the doorway into the living room where Lisa sat on the couch, noisily slurping milk out of her bowl. “It could be. But her eyes aren’t like I remember.”
If anything, Evie seemed frightened of the girl. She kept her distance, looked down or away when the girl glanced in her direction. And was Evie so wrong? There was something spooky about the girl. Even the animals picked up on it, all of them panicking in their cages, as if a dog had come in.
“Shit, Evie. Nothing about her is anything like the Lisa I remember. But does that mean it’s not her? I don’t know. And if it’s not her, who the hell is she and why’s she going around pretending to be my sister? If it is her, where’s she been all these years? And don’t either of you dare so much as mention the freaking land of the fairies.”
“But Sam, the letter she left,” Evie said.
“There are no fairies!” Sam said. “It’s all some made-up bullshit meant to lure little girls off and scare thickheaded people who don’t know any better.” Sam looked furious. “Let’s get real, huh?” he said, looking right at Evie. “If this is Lisa, how are we going to find out?”
Phoebe guessed that the young woman they picked up was in her late twenties or early thirties, but there was a phantomlike quality about her that made her seem ageless. She had scraggly long dark hair and black jeans with holes in the knees. She wore a baggy lace-up blouse with long sleeves that looked like a leftover from a pirate costume. On her feet, which were caked with filth, was a pair of cheap drugstore flip-flops. Her skin was sallow and her teeth were in bad shape—yellow, brown in places. She carried nothing. Around her neck was the string of little brass bells, and tied at the bottom was a dingy cloth bag. The whole ride home, she hummed to herself and played with the bells around her neck. So far, she had ignored all their questions.
“I just don’t know, Sam,” Evie said. “I wonder if maybe we should call your mom.”
“No!” Sam shouted. “The last thing she needs is for us to get her hopes up and then find out it’s a hoax.”
“I just thought,” said Evie, “that since she’s her mother and all, she might know, might have some mother’s intuition or whatever.”
“We’re not calling her,” Sam said. “Not until we’re sure that this is really Lisa.”
“But how are we going to find out?” Phoebe asked. She agreed that going to Phyllis right away was a bad idea, but she wasn’t sure where they should start.
Sam groaned. “This is ridiculous! There’s got to be some way to find out.”
“There’s DNA testing,” Phoebe suggested.
“That could take forever,” Sam said. “There must be something we can do now. Something we can ask her that only Lisa would know.”
Evie cleared her throat. “I don’t know that she’d be able to answer. She hasn’t been all that cooperative so far. We don’t even know that she’s capable of speaking.”
“Well, we’ve gotta try,” Sam said, leading the way out of the kitchen into the living room. The girl from the woods was rocking in her chair, smiling into her empty bowl.
“Would you like more cereal?” Phoebe asked.
The girl shook her head. Tangles of matted dark hair fell across her face. Phoebe thought of stories she’d heard about feral children, boys and girls raised by wolves. Myths, surely.
“What’s your name?” Sam asked.
She clicked her spoon against the side of the bowl.
Tap, tap, tap.
Maybe she was trying communicate with Morse code.
“If you’re really Lisa, then where have you been all these years?” he asked.
She tapped so hard, Phoebe was afraid she’d cracked the bowl. Then she stared down at the dregs of milk and soggy cereal crumbs.
“Say something, damn it!” Sam snapped in a tone that gave Phoebe chills. He was up on his feet, leaning toward their guest.
The girl dropped her spoon and growled at Sam, showing her teeth like an angry dog. Sam backed away.
Evie, who was still hovering in the doorway to the kitchen, flashed Sam a holy-shit look.
“Lisa,” Phoebe said, placing her hand gently on the girl’s arm. She didn’t have a clue whether or not this was really Lisa, but for now, the girl needed a name, so she went with the obvious choice. “It looks like you’ve had a long, hard journey. Would you like a hot bath and some clean clothes?”
Lisa shrugged. Her lips hadn’t relaxed completely after the growl, and she was left with a little lopsided sneer.
“Why don’t you come with me,” Phoebe said. “I think you’ll feel a lot better. Then we’ll get you off to bed. It’s very late.”
Lisa nodded and stood up, following Phoebe. When she was nearly out of the living room, she stopped and turned back to Sam. “I think I’d like my bracelet, first,” she said in a child’s unsure voice.
“What?” Evie demanded.
Sam stared, openmouthed like a fish out of water, gulping at air. “Bracelet?” he stammered.
“I gave it to you the night I left. Made you promise not to tell. Don’t you remember, Sammy?”
Sam lurched forward and hurried out of the living room toward the kitchen.
“Sam, what’s going on?” Phoebe asked. She and Evie had followed him into the kitchen and were now watching as he balanced precariously on a wobbly wooden stool, going through the top cupboard where they stored things rarely used: a crusty old bottle of molasses, kosher salt, cooking wine. The girl hovered in the doorway, smiling.
Sam pushed the sediment-filled bottle of wine aside and pulled out a dusty box of blue-tipped kitchen matches. The box looked as if it had been there since long before they’d moved in. Did they even make blue-tipped kitchen matches anymore?
“Here,” he said, climbing down, wiping the dust off the cardboard matchbox on his faded Green Mountain Club T-shirt.
He took a step toward the girl and opened the matchbox. His fingers gently pushed through the layer of matches on top and pulled out a small bundle, wrapped in crumpled white tissue paper. He carefully held it in his palm and unfolded the paper. A tarnished bracelet stared up at them.
“You said you didn’t know what happened to it,” Phoebe said, her voice sounding thin and papery. “I asked you when we were back at the cabin.”
There are things Sam isn’t telling you.
She looked to Evie, but Evie’s eyes were focused on the bracelet.
Sam worked his fingers over the charms. Lisa’s name. A starfish. A Saint Christopher medal. An old wheat penny.
She still couldn’t figure out why a fairy would leave such human gifts. Wouldn’t acorns, flowers, and pretty stones make more sense?
“You’ve had it all these years,” Evie said, sucking in her bottom lip. “We all figured she must have been wearing it when she went missing. She had it on that night at dinner. She never took the thing off.”
Sam held the bracelet out to the girl, who smiled, took it, and clasped it on her bony wrist. She touched the
Lisa
charm and let out a little laugh that sounded more like a sigh.
P
hoebe drew a bath, dumping some lavender bath salts in.
“I love the smell of lavender,” she told the girl. “Some people think it’s an old lady smell, but to me, it’s just so soothing. Sam’s mother,” she hesitated, wondering to herself if she should have said
your mother
, “gave us these little sachets of it and I put them in my drawers. Sam says that’s an old lady thing to do, but when I open the drawers, it smells like summer year-round.”
Lisa undressed, leaving her ratty clothes in a pile on the floor. Phoebe took in a sharp breath, heard herself, then forced a warm everything’s-okay smile.
Lisa was stick-thin, her bones clearly visible under her pale skin. It wasn’t only the emaciated look that got to Phoebe, but the tattoos. The girl (and Phoebe clearly thought of her as a girl, even though she was an adult) was covered in tattoos: line drawings of stick figures, strange letter-like symbols. Lisa stepped forward, lowered herself slowly into the steaming tub. There, between her shoulder blades, was Teilo’s mark—the same tattoo she’d seen on Elliot back at the cabin. It didn’t seem possible that their night at the cabin had happened only one week ago.
“I’ll just take these things and wash them,” Phoebe said, her voice trembling a little. “I’ll bring in something cozy for you to sleep in. And I’ll get a bed made for you. You can have our room—it’s the most comfortable. Sam and I can sleep in the office. We’ve got an air mattress.”
Lisa didn’t respond. She was opening and closing her hand under the water, looking down at her fingers as if they didn’t belong to her. She’d kept the bracelet on and fiddled with the charms, studying them, mumbling something under her breath. Phoebe gathered up the things: stained, baggy white panties, tattered black jeans, lace top that was torn in places and full of leaves and pine needles from the forest. Beneath all of this was the necklace of bells, which she wrapped inside the filthy clothes so they would stay silent.
Phoebe left the bathroom and dumped the clothes on the living-room floor in front of Evie and Sam.
“You should see her,” Phoebe said. “You can practically count her bones. And she’s covered in tattoos. Including Teilo’s mark. It’s between her shoulder blades.”
Sam gave a shiver.
“Jesus,” Evie said.
Phoebe started going through the pockets of Lisa’s jeans and found only two dimes and a nickel. “I told her I’d wash these, but I think we’d be better off throwing them away.”
“It’s all she’s got,” Sam said. “I say we wash them.”
Phoebe nodded, thinking,
This is more like it. This is the Sam I know.
She picked up the necklace. She felt the cloth bag tied at the bottom. “There’s something inside.” Her fingers untied the drawstring that held the bag closed. She pulled it open and turned it upside down, giving it a shake.
Four things fell out onto the floor: two pieces of colored chalk (one blue, one yellow), a key on a string, and a plastic laminated card that Sam immediately snatched up and studied.
“What is it?” Phoebe asked.
“A library card. From the Aldrich Public Library over in Barre.”
“Does it have a name?” Evie asked, leaning in for a better look.
“There’s a signature on the back. It says Mary Stevens.”
“Who the hell is Mary Stevens?” Evie asked.
“No idea,” Sam said. “But there’s one thing I know for sure. No one else knew I had that bracelet. Only Lisa and me.”
Lisa
June 13, Fifteen Years Ago
“H
as anyone seen my sewing basket?” Lisa’s mom asked. The others were all finishing up breakfast, but Phyllis was walking around the house flapping Da’s rainbow trout pajama top.
“Not me,” Lisa said. The others all shook their heads. No one had seen it. Her mother was now clutching the pajamas to her chest as though the fish beneath her fingers were live trout struggling to get free. She looked thinner to Lisa, more fragile. More disturbing was the fact that she kept losing things: her gardening trowel, the kitchen shears, and now her sewing basket.
“There’s a button missing,” Phyllis said, plucking at the fabric. “I thought I could mend it. I thought I could do this one thing . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Dave’s got plenty of other pajamas,” Hazel said, putting a spoon of corn flakes to his mouth. He kept his lips closed tight and she bumped the spoon against them gently, coaxing them open and sliding the cereal in. Milk dribbled down his chin.
Phyllis stared at her. “I think I’m well aware of how many sets of pajamas my husband has. But what you might not be aware of, Hazel, what only a wife would know, is that this is his favorite pair!” She charged out of the kitchen.
Sammy watched his mother leave with his jaw open, like a cartoon boy about to speak in a big white bubble, but no words came.
Evie finished her cereal with a slurp and burped hugely. It was just like her to try to lighten the mood by being stupid on purpose, but really it was just plain gross.
“Maybe,” said Hazel in an unsure voice, “maybe one of you should go help Phyllis find her sewing basket.” Her hand shook a little as she reached for her mug, took a big sip of coffee that was so heavily laced with brandy that Lisa could smell it from across the table.
“I’ll go,” said Lisa, eager to get away from Evie, who was now making more repulsive sounds as she picked her teeth. Lisa got up and followed her mother upstairs. The door to her bedroom was locked.
“Mom?” she called, knocking.
There was no answer.
But she knew what to do. She’d find the missing sewing basket, leave it outside her mother’s door. It wasn’t much, but it was one small thing she could do to restore order to the world, to make her mother a little happy. She started in the hall closet and found linens, extra rolls of toilet paper, unopened bottles of shampoo, but no sewing basket. She checked the guest room, where Hazel was staying, which smelled sweet and boozy. Opening the drawer of the bedside table, Lisa found a bottle of brandy and some Valium. No sewing basket. Were you even supposed to mix alcohol and Valium? Hazel would know. She was a nurse, after all.
Under the brandy and pill bottle was a paperback book. Lisa picked it up. It was one of Hazel’s cheesy romance novels with a hunky guy on the cover, holding a swooning woman in his arms. Fairy tales for adults, that’s what these were. Evie said some of them had dirty parts, scenes where the relationships were consummated in sometimes steamy ways. It made Lisa’s stomach hurt to think about. But still, she was curious. She flipped through it. Near the middle, she found a photograph tucked between the pages. Lisa pulled it out and blinked hard at it. Da was in the picture, looking young and happy. No eyeglasses, no crow’s-feet or worry lines on his forehead. His hair was longish and shaggy. Standing in front of him, wrapped in his arms, was a girlish, thin Hazel with perfectly coiffed hair and a little wry smile on her face.
Lisa’s face felt tight. Her head began to pound.
Where had the picture come from? And what was Hazel doing with it now, hidden like this? Lisa realized right away that she didn’t want to know the answers to these questions. The best thing to do was to get rid of the picture, make sure no one else ever found it.
She crumpled the photo, jammed it into her pocket, and threw the book back in the drawer.
Standing up, Lisa glanced out the window into the backyard. There was Evie, casting a quick glance back at the house before slipping into the woods with her backpack on. The same backpack she’d given Gerald.
Pleased to have something to distract her from the photo, Lisa took the stairs two at a time, racing through the kitchen and out the door into the yard.
B
y the time Lisa caught up to Evie, she was down in Reliance, talking with Gerald and Pinkie. Lisa crouched behind a nearby tree. There weren’t any good trees in the clearing where the cellar holes were, so she had to hang back and couldn’t hear well. A mosquito buzzed around her face, landed on her ear. She swatted at it, missing. The air felt soggy and gray. The sky was darkening, threatening to rain at any second.
Once again, Lisa watched as Evie took off the backpack and handed it to Gerald. He nodded at her, said, “Thanks, Stevie,” but she didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t raise a fist or reach for her knife, or even so much as flinch. She just backed away slowly, looking humble and defeated. This was
so
not the Evie Lisa knew. Evie did a slow shuffle-walk toward home, looking more like a strange hunched-over gorilla than a girl.
Were they blackmailing her? Swearing they’d get her in trouble for breaking Gerald’s arm if she didn’t pay them? But what did Evie have to give them?
Determined to get to the bottom of this one way or another, Lisa waited until Evie was back up the hill, then took off after Gerald and Pinkie. They were walking in the other direction, deeper into the woods. If they kept going, they’d eventually hit Rangley Road, which ran along the back side of the woods. If you went left on Rangley, you’d reach Hill Road, which brought you back into the center of town. Were they just taking the long way home?
“What are you two doing to Evie?” Lisa demanded once she’d caught up with them. The forest was more grown up down here, and there were no clear paths. The ground felt damp and spongy under her feet.
Gerald and Pinkie turned, surprised. They were standing in a cluster of ferns.
“We’re not doing anything,” Gerald said, adjusting the knapsack with his good arm. His cast was decorated in little drawings and scribbles—airplanes and cartoon faces and a huge, swirly
BECCA
signature done in pink marker. There was a skull and crossbones, which might have looked tough and cool on someone else’s arm, but on his, it just seemed dorky. As Lisa studied the drawings on the cast, her eye was drawn to one of the cartoon faces. It was thin, vampire-like, with dark circles under the eyes. Evie’s work, no doubt.
“What’s in the bag?” Lisa asked.
“None of your beeswax,” Pinkie said. She had a spot of blood on her left check from a mosquito bite. There was a chintzy little toy compass pinned to her shirt.
“You two are messing with my cousin, so that makes it my business. Now are you gonna let me see what’s in the bag, Gerald, or do I have to figure out a way to make sure your other arm gets broken?” Hanging out with Evie so much was rubbing off on her.
“Jeez!” Gerald, said, adjusting his glasses. “You can look already. Fine.” He shrugged the bag off and held it out to her. Lisa opened it and peeked inside, holding her breath.
It wasn’t money, the family silver, body parts, or drugs.
It was food.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Apples. A package of pink cupcakes swiped from a box in their pantry at home. A can of cling peaches in heavy syrup.
“What the hell is all this?” Lisa asked.
“A picnic,” Gerald said, smiling.
“Not for ants, either,” Pinkie added.
“Why did Evie give you all this?”
Gerald shrugged his shoulders. “ ’Cause we looked hungry, I guess.” He laughed and added something in his ridiculous made-up language, a long series of half-swallowed sounds.
“What?” Lisa demanded. Her head spun. She hated to be the one left in the dark. How could Evie do this to her?
“Nothing,” Gerald said, snickering to himself. His hair was greasier than ever, and the pimples on his forehead looked painful. Pinkie giggled along with him, though Lisa was sure she had no clue how to speak a word of Minarian.
“I don’t know what kind of hold you two have over Evie, but whatever it is, you need to quit messing with her. If you don’t, there will be consequences.”
Gerald laughed, shook his head. “Consequences, right,” he said. “You don’t have a clue.”
Pinkie gave a twitchy little smile and said, “You think you’re so special, Lisa. But I’m special too.” She rubbed at the spot of blood on her cheek, smearing it. Then she touched the little compass, peering down at it as she jiggled the needle.
“Good for you, Pinkie. Good for you.” Lisa turned to walk back home. It was starting to sprinkle.
“She told us, you know,” Gerald shouted after her.
Lisa stopped, turned back to face them. “Told you what?”
The drizzle picked up and the rain began coming down in huge, heavy drops.
Gerald was putting the backpack onto his shoulder. His bangs were already plastered to his head. “About the cellar hole,” he said, the words nearly drowned out by the rain pounding down on the canopy of leaves above them.
Lisa took in a deep breath and held it as she turned away from Gerald and Pinkie and kept walking, rain pelting her.
Act like it’s no big deal. Don’t ask what Evie told them. Act like it doesn’t matter.
But it did matter.
Evie had betrayed her.