Don't Breathe a Word (30 page)
The Girl Who Would Be Queen
T
he room he brought her to was green and pink and smelled like sweet flowers, but there was something acrid, tangy, and biting just underneath.
“This is your home now,” he said.
The walls were made of flowers. Hundreds, thousands of blooms bursting with color. It was like living inside a valentine.
X
’s and
O
’s. Hugs and kisses. I love you. You love me. Soon we’ll be married under a cherry tree.
There was another girl in the room. She guessed the girl was her age, maybe a little older. Her hair was also dark and wild. She had tattoos up and down her stick-thin arms. There was a bump on her belly.
She didn’t know much about pregnant girls, but this one looked like she could have the kid any second. If she watched for long enough, she could see the baby moving around inside its tattooed mama. Pushing on her belly, making the skin bulge and ripple, like a monster that couldn’t wait to get out.
She tried to leave the room, but the door was bolted on the outside.
“Hey!” she shouted, pounding on the door. “Come back. You can’t just leave me here like this!”
She turned to the tattooed girl in desperation. “He can’t do this! This is against the law.”
“They’re keeping us safe,” the girl said.
“From what?” she asked.
The pregnant girl laughed.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The pregnant girl looked up, her eyes two black holes. “I’m Queen of the Fairies,” she said.
“But Teilo told me
I
was going to be queen.”
“He lies.”
Phoebe
June 13, Present Day
T
hey’d been driving for over an hour and were within five minutes of Aunt Hazel’s house in the far northeast corner of Vermont. Phoebe was hunched over a map with a flashlight. Lisa rode silently in the backseat.
Sam had already explained the impetus for the trip.
“That
call it a blessing, call it a curse
thing Lisa said one of the guardians used. It’s a saying Hazel used all the time.”
“So what? Now your kooky old aunt Hazel is supposed to be the one who took Lisa? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m just following a lead here, Bee. And Hazel’s the one person from that summer we haven’t talked to yet. I think it’s high time we paid her a visit.”
Now, studying the map and seeing how close they were, Phoebe was getting nervous. “Shouldn’t we call or something? Let her know we’re coming?”
“If she knows anything, she’d be more likely to talk if she’s caught off guard. Give her time to prepare and she could make up just about anything. Or get so completely blotto on booze that she’d be out cold by the time we got there.”
“Okay,” Phoebe agreed. She turned to Lisa in the backseat. “So tell us about these guardians. Who were they? What was their role?”
“The guardians kept us safe.”
“Who is ‘us’?” asked Sam.
Lisa didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “One of the guardians, she’d tell us stories. Lessons, she called them. About the fairies. About how important what we were doing really was. How special we were. How lucky.”
“Lucky,” Sam mumbled through clenched teeth. “Right.”
“Stop!” Lisa cried from the backseat.
Sam hit the brakes hard, sending all of them jolting forward, straining their seat belts. He scanned the dark road in front of them, then turned and scowled at Lisa. “What?”
There was no deer, no kid on a bicycle. Phoebe saw nothing but the dirt road ahead of them and trees on either side.
Then Lisa was out of the car, running across the dirt road and into the trees. She’d left the car door open. The dome light was on and a repeating chime dinged over and over, warning them about the open door.
“Jesus!” Sam muttered. “Lisa! Get back in the car.”
He pulled over to the side, and he and Phoebe got out and hurried off in the direction Lisa had run.
“Lisa?” Phoebe called. Sam broke into a run, Phoebe right behind him, following a narrow path through the trees. The moon had risen, big and bright, casting the woods in a cool blue glow.
The path opened up, and they found themselves in a grove of wild, sprawling trees with branches like gnarled hands and fingers. The branches were heavy with sweet-smelling white flowers. Some of the petals fell, drifting through the air like magic snow.
Phoebe was no nature girl, but she recognized apple trees when she saw them. They were in an old, abandoned orchard. The overgrown, unpruned trees were spaced evenly apart in neat rows.
Lisa was sitting on a stump, rocking and humming. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself and she was smiling.
“Sometimes we’d dance here,” Lisa said, eyes closed, a blissful smile still on her face.
“Who would? You and Teilo?” Phoebe asked.
Lisa nodded. “On full moon nights. He’d take us here.”
“Wait,” Sam said. “You mean right here, to this place?”
Lisa was up off the stump, walking, dancing through the trees, touching the branches, laughing. It was the first time since Phoebe had met her that she actually seemed happy.
Sam and Phoebe followed. The branches from the overgrown trees reached out and scratched their faces, caught on their clothing. Sam was right behind Lisa, but Phoebe was exhausted and having a hard time keeping up. It seemed to Phoebe that she’d spent entirely too much time running through trees this past week. She’d had enough of dark, creepy forests and was thinking that she’d much prefer wide-open spaces. When this was over, she wanted to go to the ocean. Or the desert. Someplace with endless horizons where you could see what was coming for miles. No surprises. No trees with branches like claws reaching for you. No place for shadowy figures to hide behind.
Up ahead, Lisa and Sam had stopped and were looking down at something on the ground.
Lisa turned and continued on, singing a song just under her breath.
Say, say my playmate, come out and play with me.
Sam stayed frozen, eyes fixed on the ground. Phoebe came up behind him, saw that there, under a great, gnarled apple tree, were four wooden crosses inside a large circle of rocks.
I cannot play with you. My dollies have the flu.
A crude cemetery—something a child might do for pets. The earth above one of the markers was freshly turned. And it was a huge rectangle, way too large to be anyone’s pet.
“What is this?” Phoebe asked, a chill working its way from the ground, up through her feet and legs, settling finally deep and low in her belly. Sam shook his head slowly, not taking his eyes from the ground.
“Lisa,” Phoebe said, turning to see that the other woman had disappeared into the darkness. She listened but couldn’t hear the singing anymore. Sam stepped away from the circle of graves.
“This way,” he called back. “I see lights through the trees.”
“I’m right behind you.”
The orchard ended abruptly and they found themselves at the top of a hill in a newly mown field. Lisa was running down it toward the house at the bottom. Sam and Phoebe chased behind.
The lights in the house were blazing, casting the yard around the house in a welcoming glow.
“It’s Aunt Hazel’s,” Sam said. It was an old white farmhouse with a metal roof and sagging porches. There was a circular gravel driveway with one old car parked in it—a big, boxy Cadillac.
Lisa reached the house and got down on all fours to peer into a low, rectangular basement window. Phoebe and Sam raced to catch up with her. There were broken, rusty nails hammered here and there around the edges of the basement window, like someone had tried to keep whatever was inside from coming out.
But it hadn’t held them.
Sam reached forward, pulled the window open, and, feetfirst, lowered himself through it until he was gone.
The Girl Who Would Be Queen
T
rolls. Ogres. Goblin babies, not meant for this world. That’s what the queen gave Teilo. And he raged. Called her a dirty human girl.
“I could crush you in an instant,” he said. “Grind you like salt. If you don’t give me a son soon, I will make the other girl my wife.”
He took the creatures off. At first they cried. Then they didn’t.
The queen cramped and bled. Her nipples leaked.
The girl’s heart broke for the queen. And she understood her role now: she was a handmaid. Her job, Teilo said, was to tend to the queen, be a companion. Try to keep her happy.
“You will get your turn one day,” he promised.
She washed the queen’s soiled rags in the bucket. Held her while she slept.
“I want to go home,” the queen whimpered.
“I know,” she told her queen, rocking her gently. “Me too.” But the truth is, she hardly remembered home anymore. It was a faraway place. Made up, like something from a fairy tale. A place she had been
once upon a time.
Phoebe
June 13, Present Day
F
ollowing Sam, Phoebe lowered herself down through the open window, scraping her back against the wooden frame. She hoped like hell she hadn’t scratched herself too badly on the rusty nails. Did they give tetanus shots to pregnant women?
She landed with a not-so-gentle thud and saw that they were in a dimly lit room with cinder-block walls. Lisa came through next, lowering herself down without a sound. Above them a single forty-watt lightbulb gave a dull glow. Covering the walls were pictures cut from magazines and books, held up with yellowing tape: flowers of every shape and color. Lilacs and lilies. Sweet peas and daffodils. Flowers from formal gardens and weed-filled roadside ditches. There was a twin mattress on the floor in the corner, piled high with dirty blankets. Two stained pillows were at the head. Next to it, a five-gallon plastic bucket and roll of toilet paper. The walls, between the taped-up flower pictures, were full of chalk drawings—lines, circles, dashes, Teilo’s mark. She saw Lisa’s name written in tiny scrawl, just beside the bed. Next to it, another name, in different, more bubbly writing:
Gabrielle
.
Phoebe blinked hard, tried to focus.
“There was another girl here with you,” she said to Lisa. “They’d taken someone else. A girl called Gabrielle.”
Lisa flinched a little at the name.
“Phoebe,” Sam called from the doorway. He held a heavy, open padlock in his hands, taken from the hasp on the frame. There was also a sliding bolt outside the door.
“Oh my God,” Phoebe said. “This is it, isn’t it, Lisa? This is your room in the garden?”
Could it be? The place Lisa had been kept, year after year? Taken by whom? Old drunk Aunt Hazel? It didn’t make any sense. But Phoebe felt strangely relieved to know once and for all that they were dealing with real people, not shape-shifting fairies who could get inside your dreams.
Lisa smiled, touched one of the taped-up flowers, bending the corner a little.
“Once upon a time,” she said, “there were two little girls out wandering in the forest. They met a wicked man.”
Sam slid the lock back into the hasp and walked across the cellar, past the furnace and water heater. Phoebe followed, green boots creeping over the damp cement floor. There was a dusty exercise bike, piles of newspapers and magazines, cardboard boxes. A tall bookcase rested against a wall, stuffed full of paperbacks, mostly romances. The bookcase looked slightly askew. Lisa went right up to it, grabbed the edge, and pulled.
“Lisa!” Phoebe yelled, sure the case would come toppling over, crushing her.
Instead, the bookcase swung out, its left edge held with heavy hinges. It opened like a door.
“Sam, look!” Phoebe called.
Behind the swinging bookcase was a heavy wooden door with a cut-glass knob. Phoebe turned the knob and pushed, but the door was locked. She glanced at the keyhole below the knob, then, taking a chance, reached into her pocket and took out Evie’s necklace. The key slid right into the hole and turned easily.
Lisa gave it to me. She told me this story that summer about two sisters who went on an adventure with a magic key that was supposed to save them. She said this was the key.
Phoebe opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was small but tidy. There was a high rectangular window, like in the flowered room. A twin bed rested in one corner, neatly made with a green wool blanket on top, tucked in so tightly Phoebe was sure you could bounce a quarter on it. A wooden bookcase was stuffed full of books on the occult, mythology, and fairies.
Next to it, a small desk. On it, an old red leather-bound diary, a stack of notebooks, a blank pad of paper, a pen and pencil, and a small microcassette recorder. There was an antique-looking pair of brass binoculars. Sam picked them up. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
“Sam? You okay?”
“We found these in the woods that summer. He was there. He was watching us the whole time!”
Taped to the wall above the desk were sketches of a girl Phoebe recognized from the family photos at Sam’s: Lisa. A young Lisa, smiling, laughing, stars in her eyes. Lisa in a hooded sweatshirt. Lisa in a summer dress, the straps loose on her narrow shoulders. The drawings were done in pencil and charcoal. Phoebe looked from the drawings to the older, haggard version of Lisa, who stood beside Phoebe smiling down at her younger self. It was impossible to believe this was the same person. It wasn’t just the sallow skin, the worn expression. It was as if the shape of her eyes had changed. Just how much could sorrow reshape a person?
“Sam, look,” Phoebe said, holding out the diary.
“Teilo’s?” he asked.
“No. It belongs to a girl. No dates, but listen to this:
Early Summer, 10 years old
Dear Diary,
Today, Sister and I met the King of the Fairies! Mother says we’re lucky girls, that when she was little, she could see him too.
Grandfather smiled, went back to reading his newspaper. Sometimes when Grandfather smiles at me, my throat feels like there’s an invisible noose around it, and as the corners of his mouth go up, the rope gets tighter.
People in town say we shouldn’t play back there. That those woods are haunted. An evil place where the Devil dances.
The King of the Fairies is no devil. He’s very handsome. That’s what Sister says anyway. It was so dark, and at first, he made us close our eyes. When we opened them, he was standing against a tree, and at first it was hard to see where the tree ended and he began. But as we looked longer, harder, we could make him out.
But it was a little like that game you play in the dark—the one where you stand in front of a mirror, chanting Bloody Mary until you see something, then you wonder if you really saw it at all, or if it was just your imagination.
What I saw was this:
A man with the blackest eyes I’d ever seen. Like oil, all reflective and glimmering. His hair is long and dark. His breath is sweet at first, like flowers, but then horrid and rank. He speaks in riddles. Sister loves riddles. He wears a cloak colored like tree bark, and when he wraps it around himself, you can’t see him at all.
He’s called Teilo and he says he’s lived here a long, long time.
“Jesus,” Phoebe said, closing the diary. “Who is this guy?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “But the diary sure isn’t Lisa’s. She didn’t have a sister.”
“So he went after other girls too,” Phoebe said.
Sam opened a chest of drawers, exposing neatly folded men’s briefs, white T-shirts, jeans. Sam reached into the back of the top drawer and pulled out a white face mask and a pair of black leather gloves.
“If you look upon the true face of a fairy, you’ll be driven mad,” Sam said, holding up the mask.
Phoebe picked up the gloves. “Look at the fingers!”
Six. There were six fingers on each hand.
“Who the hell is he?” Sam asked.
“He calls himself Teilo, the King of the Fairies,” Lisa said. “But he isn’t really.”
Sam was going through the bookshelf. Lisa stood in the doorway, looking in with worried eyes. Phoebe opened the diary, flipped ahead a couple of pages, and read another entry:
Middle of Summer, 11 years old
Dear Diary,
Sister says she’s going to marry Teilo.
I was angry at first. Not because I actually expected him to choose me over her or because I even wanted him to. It’s just that Sister has changed so much since he came. She’s become so serious. Each day, I feel her pulling away from me and getting closer to him.
So when she said she was getting married, I was silent.
“Don’t be a mope,” Sister said.
Later, when we went to the bottom of the hill, Sister told Teilo I’d been sulking all day. He laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You can both be my brides.”
Sister says we can live here forever, all three of us.
“Aren’t we the luckiest girls on earth?” she asks.
When we got back to the house, Grandfather asked, “Why the long face?”
“Because I’m one of the luckiest girls on earth,” I told him.
He laughed, throwing back his head. His teeth are perfect squares, whiter than white, like a mouth full of sugar cubes. His breath smells like dirt and minerals, like the inside of a cave.
He wrapped his cool fingers around my wrist like he does sometimes. It’s like he’s checking my pulse. Wanting to know if I’m alive or dead. Sometimes he just holds me like that awhile, his strong bony fingers encircling my wrist like a handcuff, and if I try to pull away, he just grips me tighter.
“Figured out who it belongs to yet?” Sam asked.
Phoebe shook her head. “No, but it’s damn creepy.”
She closed the diary and picked up the small recorder, saw there was a tape inside. She rewound it to the beginning, then pressed
Play
.
“Tell me a story,” a girl said. Another girl giggled.
The first girl cleared her throat and said, “Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, the world’s greatest storyteller, Lisa Nazzaro.” There was the sound of clapping, then another giggle.
Phoebe glanced over at Sam, who looked like he’d been hit with an arrow.
On the tape, Lisa said, “You’re too much, Evie.”
“Just tell the damn story.”
“Once upon a time,” Lisa began, “there was a poor peasant girl. Orphaned, she lived on her own at the edge of the woods. She came to town to gather rags and food scraps. Sometimes the townspeople would take pity on her and give her some soup. A slice of bread. A shiny coin. Mostly, they were cruel. They called her Rag Girl. But what none of them knew, including the girl herself, was that she was really a princess.”
“Ooo,” moaned Evie. “Will there be magic in the story?”
“There always is,” said Lisa. “What fun is a story without magic?”