Hide and Seek (3 page)

“We… we’re not playing anymore?” she asked.

Summer grinned at her, and Agatha felt icy fingers slide down her spine. The twins’ moods worked like a see-saw. If somebody else was happy, the girls were bored or irritated. And if they looked pleased, it meant somebody else was about to suffer. Her bravery from the moment before vanished and her stomach sank.

“Oh, we’re still playing.” Summer grabbed Agatha by the wrist and began hauling her back up the wooden stairs to the kitchen. “We’re just changing the game.”

Agatha eyed the square in the ceiling above her. It was the same dull shade of white as the rest of the hallway, but it was rimmed by narrow strips of moulding. The only indication that it was a door was the presence of a small bronze latch on one side.

“I didn’t know we had an attic,” she said.

“You didn’t notice the door this whole time? It’s right outside your bedroom,” said Summer.

“I guess I never looked up.”

Summer shook her head. “You’re so worthless.”

“Well, I’ve never seen anybody go up there. How do you know that even goes to the attic?”

“Where else would it go, dork? Besides, my dad said so. He doesn’t put anything up there because it’s easier to get into the basement, but he said the old lady that lived here before us left a bunch of her crap up there.”

For a moment, visions of finding an old cash box stuffed with money danced in Agatha’s mind. She’d spend it on books and candy and never share a single cent with her stepsisters. The fantasy was short-lived, however, as she realized that she’d never be able to sneak the treasure out of the attic without one of the twins sensing her happiness. They could smell it, the way sharks can smell blood in the water, and they’d charge in to take it away.

“It’s the perfect place for a scavenger hunt,” Summer went on. “I bet we find all sorts of cool stuff.”

“How are we going to get inside?” asked Agatha.

“With a ladder, stupid,” said Rain from behind her. She was dragging her father’s stepladder up the carpeted stairs. Summer helped her get it the rest of the way into the hallway, and together they spread the legs so that it reached up toward the trapdoor in the ceiling.

Rain was the first one to climb the ladder, and she pushed open the attic door, revealing nothing but darkness overhead. To Agatha, the black square felt ominous, like a window to another world… one filled with fire and brimstone and tiny devils who were there to punish little girls for using the stepladder without permission. Naturally, the twins’ feelings were the opposite.

“Cool,” breathed Rain. “It’s like a secret passage. Pass me the light.”

Summer handed up a yellow plastic flashlight. Rain clicked it on and climbed up the last steps so that her head disappeared into the ceiling. She turned on the spot, and Agatha could hear the wonder in her voice when she spoke again.

“This is amazing. We should’ve come here from the start. Come on up, you guys.”

Agatha’s eyes lit up. This was her chance; once Summer went up the ladder, she could run away and lock herself in the bathroom. It’d be boring in there waiting for her mom to come home from work, but it’d be a far sight better than playing with these two. Maybe she could even knock the ladder over so that they couldn’t get down. Then she could spend the day in front of the television instead, watching Christmas movies. It was the perfect plan.

Unfortunately, the twins were a step ahead of her.

“Get moving, twerp,” said Summer. “I’ll climb up after you.”

Dang it
, thought Agatha. But aloud, she said nothing. She planted her left foot on the bottom step of the ladder and gripped the metal sides. She craned her neck to look upwards—the hole in the ceiling was like a gaping maw, waiting to swallow her up.

“What are you waiting for?” Summer punched her in the shoulder. “Keep moving.”

Licking her lips, Agatha looked down at her shoes and forced herself to lift her right foot onto the next step. She didn’t think about where she was climbing; she just focused on moving her feet, one at a time. The ladder was spattered with paint, and she counted the white splotches on each step in front of her face. After a minute, the steps were replaced by the flat red plastic at the top of the ladder and then by the moulding that surrounded the attic door.

She’d done it. She’d made it.

She hoisted herself up and twisted around in the air to sit on the edge of the trapdoor, and stood to survey her surroundings. The attic smelled stale. Particles floated in the narrow bands of light filtering through the vents at each end of the space, and the air appeared to be ninety percent dust. Odd shapes surrounded her, and as her eyes adjusted to the dark she realized that they were piles of boxes covered with tarps. Like the basement, the attic mimicked the dimensions of the floor below it, but without any dividing walls. The insulation covering the floor looked like puffy black clouds, but there were long, narrow boards leading from the trapdoor in all four directions. They reminded Agatha of the kinds of planks that pirates were famous for making people walk.

Rain’s flashlight shone from the far corner of the room. Agatha moved toward it, testing each plank with part of her weight before committing to stepping on it. It was kind of fun; the boards gave a little as she walked them, and it felt like playing in a bouncy castle.

“What are we looking for?” she asked as she rounded a stack of boxes to reach the corner. “You said—”

The corner was empty. Rain’s flashlight was propped up between two piles of magazines, so that it lit up the beams overhead, but the blonde girl was nowhere to be seen.

Agatha’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. She knew, with a sudden awful certainty, exactly what was going on. She tore back around the boxes just in time to see Rain’s grinning face disappear back through the trapdoor.

“Wait!” she screamed, darting down the planks. “Wait for me!”

By the time she reached the square opening, the twins had already managed to slide the panel back into place. As Agatha dropped to her knees beside the door, she heard the faint metallic
clink
of the latch. The twins had locked her in.

She banged her fists against the panel. “Let me out! You can’t leave me up here!”

“But that’s the whole point!” one of the twins shouted back. Her voice was muffled by the wood of the door, and Agatha couldn’t tell which one was speaking. “If you haven’t figured it out by now, this isn’t a scavenger hunt. It’s just a different kind of Hide and Seek. We’ve hidden you in the attic for your mother to find when she gets home.”

“But she won’t be home for hours!”

“God, you’re just so
slow
!” the voice called back. “Once again, that’s the whole point! See you tonight, sis.”

The twins’ laughter boomed though the door, then faded away toward the back of the house. They’d gone down the stairs, back to the main floor. Moments later, Agatha heard the sounds of
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
coming from the television in the living room, which had been turned up to full volume so the music could carry all the way through the house. They were watching her favorite Christmas film without her, she realized. The twins couldn’t stand that movie. The only part they liked was when Rudolph was bullied by the other reindeer. They were just putting it on to add a little insult to injury.

Agatha rocked back on her heels and wrapped her arms around her body. Goosebumps sprang up on her skin. It was chilly up here, with cold air drafting in through the vents. Chilly, dark, and probably just as full of spiders as the porch.

And there was no way out.

After a few more minutes of banging on the trapdoor, more to warm up her limbs than because she thought it would do any good, Agatha returned to the corner to retrieve the flashlight. Once she had the light in her hand, she prowled through the attic, checking every corner and pulling each tarp off the piles of boxes. She’d heard a little boy on the playground talking about a family who was murdered by a man who’d been hiding out in their attic for weeks—better to not take any chances and risk getting killed while she was stuck up here.

Her sweep revealed nothing but cardboard boxes marked in faded black felt-tip pen with such exciting labels as
taxes 1978-1983
and
mortgage
. However, in a tote marked
winter clothes
, she found a moth-eaten sweater with a Christmas tree knitted into the front. She pulled it over her head and added a pink crocheted cap for good measure. The extra warmth made Agatha feel less panicked about being trapped in the attic, and she realized that despite the overall gloominess of the place it had one major redeeming quality: the twins weren’t with her.

I can have a scavenger hunt of my own
, she thought, gazing around at the piles of boxes. She recognized that she probably wouldn’t find a cash box or anything else of any real value, but she thought she might find something to help her pass the time. Maybe the previous tenant had packed away a collection of mystery novels or an unfinished coloring book and some crayons.

She set to work. Most of the boxes were stacked too high for her to reach, even on her tippy toes, and she didn’t dare climb on top of the lower ones. The cardboard felt thin and misshapen. She didn’t trust it to support even her slender frame. Along the back wall, however, there was a row of boxes without anything stacked on top of them, and she was able to lift open their cardboard flaps and paw through their contents with ease. None of them were labeled, which added to the mystery and excitement of her single-player game.

The first few boxes were stuffed full of sheets of paper. The writing on them was too faded for her to make out, but she felt sure they were boring receipts anyway. She skipped further down the row, opening a box at random and peering inside.

“Cool.”

Agatha lifted a long, thin wooden board out of the box. The numbers zero through ten were carved across the top, with the alphabet laid out below. The words “Yes,” “Goodbye,” and “No” were written along the bottom. It looked like some kind of a board game. She set it aside and peered back into the box, hoping to see a copy of Mouse Trap or Monopoly, but she found only black candles with the wicks partially burned down. She sniffed at them, hoping they might smell like licorice. Her mother’s red-colored candles were cinnamon scented, but these smelled of nothing but wax and dust.

“That’s stupid,” she said to nobody in particular. “Why would anyone want plain black candles?”

The contents of the next box looked like a photo album that had exploded. It was filled with hundreds of square Polaroid photographs. On top of the pile, there was a picture of a woman standing in front of a familiar two-story clapboard home. It was the Farraday’s house, only the oak tree in the front yard was smaller and there wasn’t a swing on the long, covered porch.

Agatha shone the flashlight down onto the picture and studied the woman. She decided it must be the “old lady” who’d lived in the house before the Farraday family, and had left all of her tax records and the world’s most boring candle collection in the attic. She had long, straight hair that fell down on both sides of her face like dark curtains, and her nose was narrow and pointed. She looked like the kind of cranky old woman who might chase children out of her yard with a broom. Or like a witch in a fairy tale. Agatha wondered what her name might have been.

She flipped through a few more photographs hoping see more pictures of the house or the old woman. Something that might tell her more about what kind of life the woman had led here. It felt like a little mystery, and she was eager to find the next clue. But as she went through the pile, she began to lose interest. They were all so dull, just pictures of antiques and vintage furniture. The only mildly interesting photo was of a room she recognized as her own bedroom, but instead of fuzzy velvet posters, the walls were covered with rows of shelves. Each one was crammed full of knickknacks and broken-looking toys. She spotted a Santa Claus doll on a top shelf and wondered if the room was some kind of holiday storage. After looking at six photos in a row of old clocks with cracked faces, she tossed the whole pile back into its box and moved on.

She squealed when she opened the next container. It was a treasure trove—strings of Christmas lights came right up to the rim. Agatha yanked out the topmost string and carried it around the boxes, draping the lights across the top. Once they were laid out, she picked up her flashlight and began searching the wooden beams around her for an outlet.

Please let there be somewhere to plug this in,
she silently begged.

In the second stroke of good luck that day, she found one in the floor near the trapdoor. The cord was just long enough to reach it. She crossed her fingers and plugged in the lights. To her surprise and delight, they worked.  Agatha clapped her hands and grabbed the other strings of lights. Within a few minutes, the attic was transformed from a gloomy prison to a proper place in which to spend Christmas Eve. Red and green lights twinkled from every stack of boxes and ringed Agatha like a protective border. They made her feel safe, like nothing from outside of them could sneak up from behind and scare her.

The next box contained even more decorations, and she was thrilled to find a sleigh and eight porcelain reindeer among the tree skirt and the tinsel. She lined them up along the plank, pointing right at the vent, so that they could take off and deliver presents if needed.

“There has to be a Santa around here somewhere,” she said to herself, digging down to the bottom of the box. But it seemed the magic of the Christmas decorations had run out; she couldn’t find one anywhere among the lights or other holiday trimmings.

From downstairs, she heard the music of another one of her favorite holiday films:
Frosty the Snowman
. But rather than making her feel angry or alone as she had when the twins first left her up here, the familiar song added to the pleasant atmosphere of the attic. She felt like she was visiting the North Pole, not locked up against her will.

If I was at the North Pole right now, I wonder if Mrs. Claus would make me lunch
, she thought as her stomach gave a low rumble. Her morning bowl of cornflakes felt like it had been days ago. She pushed the thought of food out of her mind; there wasn’t much she could do about it anyway.

Humming along with the sounds of the movie from downstairs, Agatha continued her scavenger hunt. After the excitement of finding the Christmas lights, the next several boxes she opened threatened to put her to sleep from boredom. They were full of the same types of dull objects that were pictured in the pile of photographs—an antique telephone, a cracked vase, an ugly gold necklace inlaid with a large black stone. Everything reeked of mothballs, and none of it interested Agatha in the slightest.

Until the last box in the row.

“Yes! Santa!” she crowed, pulling open the cardboard flaps.

Atop another pile of old junk lay the large Santa Claus doll from the photo. A curly white beard sprang out from under a red cap with white trim, and he held a green sack for presents in one hand. Agatha lifted him out from the box and studied his face. For a Santa, it was a little creepy. He had one bright blue eye, and the other was a cloudy green. He reminded her of a gypsy fortune teller she’d seen in a television show.

As odd looking as his eyes were, he was Santa Claus, and she knew right where he belonged. Agatha carried him over to the plank where his reindeer were standing and tried to fit him into the wooden sleigh. No matter how she tried to jam his legs into it, he just wouldn’t stay when she let him go. He kept falling over, and on the third try he took the sleigh with him.

Agatha sighed. “Okay, so you won’t fit. Well, instead of delivering presents, you can be my friend. Isn’t it nice up here?”

She nodded the doll’s head so that he appeared to be agreeing with her. His porcelain face was smudged with dirt and dust, and Agatha frowned at him.

“That’s no way for Santa to look,” she said, rubbing his face with one hand. The porcelain was stubborn, and she had to lick her thumb and scrub vigorously with her sweater sleeve to get it to come clean. After a few minutes, Santa’s face shone in the twinkling red and green lights.

“Much better.”

Agatha stared into the mismatched eyes of the doll. The last time she’d seen Santa, it had been at the mall the Christmas before. She’d sat on his lap, and instead of wishing for a bicycle or a Cabbage Patch doll, she’d asked him to help her mother find a nice man because she was lonely and had to work too many hours at the hospital. One month later, her mom met Frank, and now Agatha was locked in an attic by his awful daughters.

“Be careful what you wish for, I guess,” she muttered.

She wanted a do-over. She shouldn’t have been so vague the last time she’d asked Santa for something. That’s what had gotten her into trouble. This doll wasn’t large enough for her to sit on its lap, but she could reverse the order. It would probably work just as well. She sat down on the plank and settled the doll on her legs, facing her, and held his cold little hands in her own. She closed her eyes and tried to think of the perfect way to ask for what she really wanted this Christmas.

“I just wish Summer and Rain would leave me alone,” she whispered. “My life was so much better without them. I wish that they can never hurt me again.”

Agatha felt a pang in her belly and opened her eyes. The doll was staring straight back at her with blank, glassy eyes. She hoped that the real Santa could hear her wish, wherever he was.

A sudden movement from the far corner of the attic made Agatha jump to her feet. Something darted down from the rafters and sailed toward her face.

A bat!

Agatha screeched and tried to flee, tripping over a string of Christmas lights in the process. She scrambled to her hands and knees, darting her eyes around the attic and searching for the creature. After several seconds, she found it perched on the vent, staring back at her with its head cocked to one side.

It was a starling. A tiny, harmless starling. Agatha let out a great rush of breath, and her heart pounded in her chest. The sudden burst of adrenaline made her stomach hurt, and she remembered how hungry she was. There was nothing to eat up here though. At least nothing she’d want to try. There could be something in one of these old boxes, but not even chocolate lasted that long.

Hunger gnawed at her, and she felt exhausted. This wasn’t how Christmas Eve was supposed to feel. She was supposed to be warm and merry and comfortable. This was the day for eating cookies in front of a roaring fire. It wasn’t supposed to be a long battle with her stepsisters that ended with her getting locked up in an attic with nothing but an old doll to keep her company. She wanted to go to sleep and wake up when her mom got home, and then the real Christmas Eve could begin.

Agatha stretched out onto the wooden plank beside the reindeer. She reached out a hand and righted the overturned sleigh, then leaned the Santa Claus doll up against it. He could watch over her while she slept and make sure no spiders or mice climbed on her while her eyes were closed.

As soon as she lay down, she felt sleep begin to creep into her. Her body was taking over; it wanted to nap, and it wanted to nap right now. In that last hazy place between wakefulness and sleep, Agatha caught a glimpse of the Santa doll. As her own eyes closed, a porcelain lid slid down over his blue eye, leaving only his clouded green one to watch her sleep.