Don't Breathe a Word (21 page)

Chapter 26

Phoebe

June 11, Present Day

P
hoebe was digging around in the office closet, looking for the air mattress, when she found Sam’s old green knapsack stuffed deep in the back corner, under a trash bag full of shredded bills to be recycled. Odd. Sam kept his hiking and camping gear in the front-hall closet. She pulled the bag out, realizing from its shape and weight that there was something inside. She dropped it on the desk, then went to the doorway to listen. She heard the faint splash of Lisa in the bath. In the living room, Sam and Evie were talking about whether or not they should take Lisa to see a doctor.

“Just think it through, Sam,” Evie said. “They’ll want to know her name. Your relationship to her. Shit, they’ll probably call the cops. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m just wondering if maybe we should hold off. Find out what we can on our own first.”

It was strange to hear Sam and Evie getting along so well—relying on each other in a whole new way. It almost didn’t matter if the girl turned out to really be Lisa—she’d brought Sam and Evie together again and that seemed like an incredible gift.

Phoebe eased the office door shut, went over to the desk, and hesitated over the knapsack. It was Sam’s. And obviously he hadn’t wanted her to see whatever was inside.

What if it turned out to be an early birthday gift and she ruined the surprise?

But what if it wasn’t?

Once more, she thought of what Becca had told her on the phone:
There are things he’s not telling you
.

The sliding closet door was open, and she was sure she saw the slightest hint of movement in the back left corner. She blinked. Impossible, she told herself. There’s nothing there. Heart thudding, she stepped to her right so that she was directly in front of it. She kicked at the trash bag full of shredded paper. Then, taking a deep breath, she pulled the winter coats aside.

Nothing.

Of course it was nothing. What had she been expecting?

Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she went back to the desk, unzipped the bag slowly, and peeked inside.

It was stuffed with papers. She reached in and pulled them out, fanning them out on the desk. Printouts from the computer were mixed up with sheets of legal paper full of Sam’s perfect penmanship.

“Son of a bitch,” said Phoebe, lowering herself into the chair in front of the desk. Her legs felt shaky, like the entire earth had shifted under her and the ground itself was not to be trusted.

Here, at last, was the answer to the mystery of what he’d been doing on the computer each night.

In Sam’s neat script were strange stories, notes in the margins saying what source they’d come from, books and website addresses.

In twelfth-century Suffolk, England, a boy and a girl appeared at the opening of a pit in the earth. Their skin was green and they spoke a strange language. The boy died. In time, the girl learned English and was able to explain that they had come from an underground world she called St. Martin’s Land.

A common story in Scottish witch trials between 1550 and 1670: A woman meets a man dressed in black or green. He asks her to be his servant, offers her something in return (sometimes the gift of clairvoyance). He has sex with her and often leaves a mark on her.

The Scottish Ballad of Tam Lin: A young maiden picks a rose at an abandoned castle. A handsome man in green appears. He lies with her and she becomes pregnant. He tells her he was once a mortal man, captured by the Queen of the Fairies. Now he’s a changeling, moving between two worlds.

The more Phoebe read, the more unsettled she became. These were not the sweet, winged fairies Phoebe remembered from the stories when she was young. These were dark, brooding, supernatural beings with the power to shape-shift, to read minds, to lure innocent young girls away.

But Sam didn’t believe in any of this. He’d been adamant about that. He was the voice of reason. The map and compass guy whom Phoebe knew she’d never get lost with.

The next sheet of paper was a printout that Sam had highlighted and put stars around:

Boston, 1919: A young woman named Jenny Hobbs was arrested after drowning her infant son in a wash pan in her rented room. When questioned by the police, she told a peculiar story. She claimed the child was only half human. His father, she insisted, was the devil himself, a shadow man without a face who claimed to be King of the Fairies. When asked where she had come from, where she met this man, she refused to answer, saying only a small village up north. “No one there anymore,” she told police. “The fairies took them all away.” Miss Hobbs was later committed to Danvers State Hospital, where she came down with pneumonia and died.

Phoebe ran a trembling hand through her hair. Had Jenny Hobbs come from Vermont? From Reliance?

She read over another sheet of notes Sam had taken:

The ability to shape-shift? To appear as a human or an animal?

My dreams of the dark whispering man.

Phoebe stabbed her finger at that line.
I thought you said you didn’t dream, Sam.

Her heart pounded. She thought of the trapdoor beneath her childhood bed, the shadow man she’d known but of whom she never spoke.

Don’t think about that.

Did Sam have his own shadow man too?

She went on reading:

A journey to the fairy realm is like a shamanic journey—few who go come back. Those who do are often mad. (Da?) Or gifted—clairvoyant, seers, masters of prophecy. Sometimes, a person is taken and a fairy changeling left in their place. Ugly, sickly. There are stories of humans going into the fairy world where they spend a day, but when they return, a hundred years have passed here and everyone they know is dead. Would Lisa still be a young girl? Is it possible that ten years in our time might only be ten minutes over there?

The world of fairies is the reverse of our world, like a photo negative.

Some say fairies are the dead. Like ghosts stuck in their own world. If Lisa returns, will she be alive or dead? Human or fairy?

To protect yourself from fairies: carry things made of iron, stay in or near running water, ring bells, carry a four-leaf clover, and wear your clothes inside out.

For a split second, everything dropped away—there was a rushing sound in her ears, and the words on the page seemed to pulse with a sickly rhythm. The description the landlord and police had given her of how her mother had been found—
An accidental drowning
, they’d said.
Blood alcohol content of .35.
Drunk, of course, beyond drunk—why else would you get into the bathtub in inside-out clothes, with a bunch of frying pans, knives, and assorted junk-drawer hardware, and leave the shower running full blast?

Just a creepy coincidence
, Phoebe told herself.

But what if. . .

Phoebe stopped herself cold and went back to Sam’s notes.

The fey are masters of disguise: people, plants, animals.

They can appear as anyone or anything, often appearing as just what the human was hoping to find.

(The fake Evie and Elliot? The old woman/girl?)

“Bee?” Sam called from the living room.

“Yeah?” She scrambled to stuff the papers back into the bag.

“It sounds like the water’s draining out of the tub. I think she’s done in there.”

“Coming!” Phoebe called, stashing the knapsack back where she’d found it.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked. She turned from the closet to find him standing in the doorway behind her, filling it.

“Looking for the air mattress.”

“It’s in the front-hall closet,” he said, “under the sleeping bags. I’ll get it set up. I think you better get into the bathroom with some clean clothes.”

“On my way,” Phoebe said, keeping her eyes on the ground, scared that if she looked at him, he’d know what she’d found. If he didn’t already.

She went to their bedroom to find something for Lisa to sleep in, her mind racing. The framed owl above their bed glowered at her.

She grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt from her drawer, knowing they’d hang on the skin-and-bones creature in the bathtub, the words from Sam’s notes haunting her:

They can appear as anyone or anything, often appearing as just what the human was hoping to find.

Chapter 27

Lisa

June 13, Fifteen Years Ago

“I
found something in the woods,” Sammy said. He was out of breath, dressed in his bright yellow rain slicker, plastered with mud and leaves. His shorts, sneakers, and socks were soaked. He stepped through the open garage door, out of the rain. Water pooled at his feet.

Evie and Lisa were sitting on the dirty, grease-stained floor of the garage. Behind them was Da’s kiln, throwing wheel, and shelves of glazes, brushes, and half-completed projects. The front of the garage was where they kept tools, gardening supplies, and junk that didn’t have any other place to go. As far as Lisa knew, the garage had never actually been used for a car—there was no room for one with all the other stuff in there.

Evie had her overalls on and was trying to get the mower going. She had taken it apart, pretending to know just what she was doing. There was a blade here, a filter there—nuts, bolts, and screws scattered everywhere across the stained cement floor. Lisa was pretty sure that Evie would never get it back together right. One of Evie’s greatest faults was that she always thought she was way smarter than she actually was.

The whole time Lisa had been watching Evie mess with the poor defenseless lawn mower, she’d been stewing over what Gerald had said:
She told us, you know. About the cellar hole.

What exactly had Evie said?

Lisa touched the charm bracelet, imagined Evie, Gerald, and Pinkie having a good laugh about crazy Lisa and the fairies. Poor pathetic Evie trying to seem cool by telling them all her secrets, trying to turn Lisa into the outsider Evie herself was so used to being.

“What’d you find?” Evie asked, wiping grease-stained hands on the bib part of her overalls.

“I think I’d better show you,” Sammy said. “Both of you. And I think we should bring your knife, Evie. And maybe some other weapons. Just in case.”

“Whoa there,” Evie said. “What the hell did you see? A rabid wild boar? Bigfoot?”

“It’s pouring out,” Lisa said. The rain was pelting off the driveway, running in rivers down to the road.

“So go get raincoats, whatever. Just hurry!”

“Okay, okay already.” Evie dropped the wrench with a clang and used the side door to get into the house. Lisa followed her to the front hall, where they grabbed rain slickers.

“What do you think it is?” Lisa asked as she zipped her coat and pulled up the hood.

“I don’t know,” Evie said, shrugging into her coat. “But whatever it is, it’s gotta be good. It takes an awful lot to get Sammy this worked up.”

Lisa nodded. Maybe he’d found another gift. Or something bigger. Like a door.

If there was a door, would they go through? Lisa knew her answer. She wouldn’t hesitate. But Sammy and Evie—no, she didn’t think so. They didn’t have it in them. Lisa would be on her own.

When they got back to the garage, Sam had a wooden baseball bat and the rusty machete Da used to hack back the raspberry brambles at the edge of the yard. “Let’s go,” he said, thrusting the baseball bat at Lisa, leading them out into the rain.

The rain drummed on the top of Lisa’s hood and seemed to be coming from all sides, working its way down her face and neck, soaking her shirt. It ran through her open cuffs and up her sleeves, giving her arms goose bumps. The baseball bat was slippery, and she gripped it tightly in both hands to keep from dropping it.

“Hell of a day to declare war,” Evie complained.

They trudged down the hill, slipping and sliding on wet leaves and mud.

“Hurry!” Sammy urged.

They crossed the brook, which was twice the size it had been earlier that morning, the chocolate-colored water looking angry and wild. Instead of leaping over it, they had to wade through. Their feet were soaked anyway, so it didn’t matter. The water was freezing, and the bottom of the brook was lined with slippery rocks. Lisa almost went tumbling down but caught her balance just in time, using the baseball bat like a cane.

Once they crossed the brook, Sam led the way through Reliance. They passed the cellar holes, skirted the cemetery with its worn stones. After they’d moved out of Reliance, the trees got thicker, but Sam seemed to be following a little path Lisa had never noticed before. A deer trail maybe. Lisa thought she recognized the place where she’d caught up with Gerald and Pinkie earlier.

She told us, you know. About the cellar hole.

Evie followed behind Sam, hunting knife drawn. Lisa kept her eyes on Evie’s back, feeling, for the first time in her life, that maybe she didn’t know Evie at all. If Evie was conspiring with Gerald and Pinkie, what else was she capable of?

“Just what did you see?” Evie asked Sammy again.

“Shh!” Sam hissed, finger over his lips, eyes wide open. “We’re almost there.”

Da had taken Lisa duck hunting once, and this reminded her of that day. How she walked quietly behind him, ears and eyes alert to any movement, all her senses on overdrive. And then, like now, she was afraid. Then, she was worried about doing something wrong, scaring the ducks, disappointing Da in some profound way. Now, she was just plain scared. Sammy’s fear was contagious. And it didn’t help that the one person she’d always counted on had turned out to be a two-faced trickster. She gripped the baseball bat tightly and walked on, her eyes on Evie’s back.

Sammy led them through a tight stand of maples, the path (if it even was a path) weaving in and out and seeming to go in circles. Lisa wondered if he was trying to get them lost on purpose. At last he stopped. Using the machete as a pointer, he showed them what he’d brought them to see.

There, in the midst of a dense thicket, was a small clearing—saplings had been cut, low-growing shrubs and plants flattened to the ground. In the center of the clearing was a thick bed of freshly picked ferns with a worn gray blanket on top. At the edge was an antique-looking pair of brass binoculars and a piece of rope coiled like a snake.

“What the hell is this?” Evie said.

“Shhh!” Sammy hissed, looking wildly around, warning them that whoever stayed here could be close by, watching.

Evie nodded, stepped into the clearing, picked up the blanket. There was nothing under it but a pile of crushed ferns. She grabbed the binoculars, wiped the rain off the lenses, and peered through them.

“What are you doing?” Sammy whispered frantically. “Get out of there!”

“I can see your nose hairs,” she said, pointing the binoculars right at Sam.

“Come on,” Lisa said. “Let’s go.” Then her eyes fell on something buried in the nest of ferns: a tan circle. She reached down, pulled back the ferns, and saw what it was.

Sammy gasped as Lisa picked it up. “Mom’s sewing basket,” he said.

Lisa nodded. She held up the dripping basket. The thread inside would be ruined; the needles, if not dried out, would rust.

“But how’d it get out here?” Sammy asked.

Lisa kicked through the nest of ferns, and her foot made contact with something hard. Setting down the basket and bat, she reached in. A can of peaches in heavy syrup.

Evie dropped the binoculars, looked down at the peaches, and said only, “Weird.”

“No kidding,” Lisa said, studying Evie’s face, daring her not to admit that she’d given Gerald and Pinkie a bag with a can of identical peaches just a couple of hours ago.

“I say we bug out before whoever’s been hanging out here comes back,” said Evie.

Lisa grabbed the bat and her mother’s sewing basket, following Sam and Evie back toward home.

“Maybe it’s Lisa’s Fairy King,” Sam said as they made their way through Reliance.

“Maybe,” said Lisa, even though she was thinking there was no way. “We should come back later, find some good hiding spots, hunker down and wait to see just who it is.”

And catch Gerald and Pinkie doing who knows what. . .

“I don’t know,” Evie said.

I bet you don’t.

“I think I got soaked enough for one day,” Evie said

It took Lisa the rest of the afternoon to talk Evie and Sam into returning—Sam was genuinely scared of getting caught, Lisa could see. Evie had one lame excuse after another. They only agreed once the rain finally stopped. But when they made their way back to the clearing after supper, the blanket, binoculars, and can of peaches were gone.

“Weird,” Evie said again, kicking at the crushed ferns with her giant work boot. On the way back, Evie talked a mile a minute, laughed too hard at things that weren’t funny. She seemed strangely giddy.

Relieved
, thought Lisa.
She seems relieved.