Paper Tigers (13 page)

“He's walking this way. Please leave,” he said. “Once he gets hold, he won't let go. And then it will be too late.”

“Thomas, you should stop monopolizing our guest. I believe Edmund wishes to speak to you.” He nodded his head in the direction of the man with the monocle.

Thomas gave George a small nod. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Alison. Thank you for the pleasure of your company.”

“I'm sure you will see her again,” George said, reaching for her arm as Thomas walked away. “Here, have more wine.”

She took the glass. The floor moved beneath her feet, a gentle tremor that sent the liquid in her glass tipping back and forth. The candles dimmed. The conversation paused. George frowned, and
Thomas turned toward Alison, his eyes grave. The floor trembled again, the glass slipped from her hand, and wine spilled out.

When the drops hit the floor, they remained in perfect spheres, balanced on the wood. The glass followed, striking with a dull thud, but it stayed intact. Then everything reversed. The glass spiraled up, heading back to her hand. The wine dripped up, in search of the glass.

She let out a breathy shout and gasped. George, Thomas, and all the others had faded, their shapes an outline of shimmering air. Like melting reflections. As her fingertips met glass, everything winked out of sight, the air rushing in with a soft whoosh to fill the spaces. A soft brush of fabric tickled her ankles, then that, too, disappeared. She stumbled back, blinking hard, a scarred, barefoot girl in pajamas.

Footprints covered the floor, footprints in circular patterns tracing the line of a dancing couple. But had she been dancing? She rubbed her forehead. No, she'd been upstairs, upstairs, sitting down on the rug. And then, and then…her thoughts were muddled.

Cold kissed her hand. The air wavered into a small child's shape, darker spots marking eyes, nose, and mouth.

“Mary?”

With a giggle, a cool hand curled around hers, pulling somehow, despite missing the warmth and substance of real flesh.

The grandfather clock chimed, a loud peal in the quiet hush of the house. She jumped and the ghost child tugged again.

She can't tug, she's not real. None of it is real.

Alison followed her through the foyer, the room beyond, and into the turret room. The clock chimed again, but the little girl pulled her away from clock toward the wall.

“It's time for me to go,” Alison said, twisting her hand away from the chill.

A shadow darkened the wall, as though a portion of the wall had
melted away or folded back in on itself. In the darkness, the ghost girl shimmered.

The clock chimed.

The little girl waved and gave another giggle. As Alison disappeared back into the world of the real, the sound changed. Deepened into a growl.

A hungry one.

CHAPTER 14

Alison spilled out onto the kitchen floor, banging her elbow on the counter, and caught herself before her knees hit the floor. The taste of wine lingered on her tongue and a foggy sensation had taken residence in her head. She lurched over to the table, her hip aching, and exhaled sharply as she sat down.

But she wasn't supposed to hurt yet. Not until the scars came back. And the scars were gone. She touched her face and everything faded away except the sensation of flesh touching flesh, smooth skin beneath ten fingertips.

Grey film coated her pajamas; dark streaks marred one leg. She scraped her fingernail over the dried edges, remembering the sticky spot on the wall of the bedroom. She dislodged several loose flakes onto the floor, and held out her hands, turning them from side to side.

Whole again, whole again. But at what price?

She shoved the voice away.

More of the inscription had revealed itself, dark and spidery against the pale paper, another hint of

the secrets

the words it contained.

Yet it still made no sense. She rubbed her arms, imagining she could feel the scars hiding under the skin, waiting to slip back in. But for now, she'd shed her Monstergirl skin; she wasn't going to waste the day sitting in her kitchen pining over an old inscription.

Halfway up the stairs she stopped, curling her toes on the wood. Wood and carpet, wood and carpet. She tapped her lower lip with one finger. The carpet in the second floor hallway of the paper house had
not
been there on her previous visit. The floor had been wood, hard under its coating of grey, and one of the sconces had been broken, littering the floor with jagged little glass teeth.

The house had changed. Like her.

Once showered and dressed, she stood by her front door, jingling her keys in the palm of her hand. Daylight peeked around the edges of the window blinds, a harsh reminder that she couldn't hide behind the gloom of night, but she straightened her spine. She could do this, and this time, things would be better.

Something teased in the back of her mind, something about the house and a party, then the taxi arrived, the driver honking the horn three times in rapid succession. After an instant of hesitation, Alison grabbed her coat and scarf.

The inside of the car reeked of stale food and old cigarettes. The driver, a young man with long hair, watery green eyes, and forearms riddled with old tattoos, flipped on the meter and soon enough, her neighborhood lay far behind.

She caught the driver looking at her in the rear view mirror with an odd light in his strange eyes and had a sudden fear that she'd dreamt it all. Photo albums couldn't heal scars, couldn't turn Monstergirls whole, but when she touched her cheek, the skin was smooth.

The driver started to hum, then broke into a song about a girl who was fine, but his deep, gravelly voice turned the words into an unpleasant growl. She dropped her eyes and kept them down until the taxi arrived at her destination.

“Is this the right place?” the driver asked.

“Yes, thank you. I won't be that long.”

She clasped her shaking hands together and stepped onto the land where Pennington House once lived. Leaves crunched beneath her feet; the air smelled of the winter to come. Other houses stood not far away, none so large as Pennington House had been, but all with the design and character of houses built long ago. Empty lots lured trash and stray feet as the sun lured an upturned face, but there was neither gum wrapper nor plastic bag and the grass was well-trimmed.

A large rectangular depression on the property revealed where the house had stood. Alison stood at the edge of the space with her hands in her pockets. She took a step forward, holding her breath. She'd expected some residue, some trace of the eerie or strange, but the air didn't change in weight nor were there any odd sounds. Nothing but the chilly air and the grass.

She ignored the ache in her muscles as she walked, bending down here and there to run her fingers through the grass, but neither stone nor sliver of wood had survived the demolition. In the real world, Pennington House was as gone as gone could be.

She wiped her hands on her pants and surveyed the grounds. In the far left corner, near a huge oak tree, she saw a wrought iron fence.

The fence was as high as her shoulders, with ornamental pointed
ends to dissuade climbing, the tips sharp enough to injure thigh and groin. A chain and padlock held the gate shut. Inside, seven tombstones stood in two neat rows. The four stones in the back row were tall and ornately carved; the three in front, smaller rectangular slabs of grey stone with slightly curved tops. The lettering on all was weathered but not weathered enough to prevent her reading the names: Lillian, Edmund, Eleanor, and George in the back row; William, Elizabeth, and Mary in the front.

Her knees felt wobbly. She rested her head against the fence, ignoring the bite of cold against her skin. William had died at three months of age, Elizabeth had died before her fourth birthday, and Mary soon after her fifth. Alison knew mortality rates were higher then and it wasn't uncommon for children to die young but seeing it in front of her like this…

“Can I help you?”

Alison jumped, instinctively tucking her chin down. Standing a few feet away was a man with a wrinkled face, a slight stoop to his back, and grey wisps of hair peeking out from a baseball cap emblazoned with the Orioles logo. Even though his face was kind, his expression soft, her stomach twisted and she clutched her hands together.

“I was just reading the gravestones. That's okay, isn't it?”

The old man shrugged. “As long as you're not defacing anything, there's no law against it. I live over there,” he nodded toward a stone house, half of which was visible through the trees, “and I saw you walking around and thought I'd come over and check. Sometimes kids try to break in. I like to keep an eye on things.”

She unclasped her hands. Forced her breath even. She didn't have to be afraid. She'd managed to keep calm with the strange taxi driver; she could manage the same now.

“I wasn't trying to break in. Just looking. All the kids died so young.”

“Lots of kids died young back then. My mother had eight siblings, and only five made it to adulthood. Some families live long and healthy and happy, some get stuck with tragedy. Luck of the draw.”

“Did you know them? The Penningtons?”

He gave a dry little chuckle. “By the time I came around in 1939, they were all gone. My parents knew the old man, George, though. I remember hearing my dad talk about him. He was supposedly a cranky old bastard, if you don't mind my speaking such language.”

“Not at all, but he was…cranky?”

“That's what my dad used to say anyway. I inherited the house from them, and they bought it in, I guess…” He stared off into the trees, his forehead creased. “1932 or 3, maybe, so yeah, they knew him for a few years. Or knew of him, I should say. They said he rarely left the house. One of them eccentric recluse fellows, I guess. The only way anyone knew he was dead was because he paid people to deliver his food and such and one day he didn't answer the door. Otherwise, he could've been in the house forever without anyone noticing.”

Alison shivered.

“Damn shame about the house, though. My mother said it was beautiful, but it was already falling apart when I was a kid. Doesn't take long for a place to fall to pieces if no one's there to take care of it. Family members fighting over or it or some such. Like I said, a shame, and the fire was something else. I hope never to see another one in my life; the sound was like something out of a monster movie.”

Alison rubbed her lower lip with the side of a finger. “Did you ever go in it? The house, I mean, before it burned down?”

He grinned. “Sure. A big empty house like that? All the neighborhood kids did.”

“Did you ever see anything?”

“What? Like ghosts?” The dry chuckle again. “All I ever saw was mouse droppings and cigarette butts. Once we came across crazy
Mr. Nichols passed out drunk in the upstairs hallway, but he was harmless. Oh, we used to tease each other that we heard voices, and some kids swore they saw things or heard things, but it wasn't anything other than an old house stretching its bones. By that time, there wasn't anything left in the place, just walls and dust.”

“And now there's nothing at all,” Alison said in a soft voice.

“Maybe it's for the best that the place burned down, though. It brought nothing but bad luck to that family.”

“What do you mean?”

“They all died in the house. Not all at once, mind, but they died in the house and then got buried here behind it. Might be why the state's never built anything on the land, on account of the bodies.”

“Do you know how they died?”

“They didn't cut people up like they do nowadays. People just died. Anyway, it was nice chatting with you, young lady, but I need to head back over before the wife sends out the cavalry to look for me.”

He extended his hand. Alison held the inside of her cheek between her teeth as she did the same. His skin was calloused but warm.

When she turned back to the graves, his words echoed in her mind:
They all died in the house.

The playground was small, nestled at the end of a side street. Alison's limbs felt heavy, and the thought of her bed held more appeal that they should this time of day, but she didn't want to go home yet. She was safe; the playground, deserted. The swing, large enough to hold an adult comfortably, creaked as she pumped her legs to get it started. Her hair blew around her face in a tangle of dark. Her neighborhood didn't have a public playground anymore. Often vandalized, it had been paved over for a convenience store.

Enough time had passed for her fingers to start to cramp around
the chains when a high-pitched voice carried through the air. A small boy dressed in a bright red coat entered the park with a woman talking on her cell phone.

Alison dragged her feet in the hollow beneath the swing to bring it to a stop, started to get up, then forced herself to stay put. The child didn't pay Alison any attention as he ran over to the monkey bars. When another boy and his mother arrived a few minutes later, the latter joining the first child's mother on a bench off to the side, Alison left the swing behind.

As she crossed the playground on her way out, a little girl came running in her direction and hit her legs with a loud, “Oof.” Alison staggered back to keep her balance.

The girl's eyes went wide, her mouth formed a small circle, and Alison blinked rapidly as it triggered a memory. Alison in a wheelchair with a nurse pushing her toward the front door of the hospital, and a little girl walking with her mother, and Alison hid her face too late because for one moment, she'd forgotten about her scars, and the little girl stopped and tugged her mother's hand. “Mommy, what's wrong with the lady?” Her voice like a beacon, drawing more eyes, and Alison felt them crawling over her like insects, and it wasn't the little girl's fault, but they all looked and then they—

A woman with dark hair rushed over. “Becky, say you're sorry. You almost knocked the lady down.”

Alison tossed her hair and the memory aside. Everything was fine.

“Sorry, lady,” the girl said, her words even and dutiful.

“It's okay,” Alison said with a smile. “I'm fine. Honestly.”

And she was. If her mouth was dry, if her heart was racing, it was because she'd been on the swing for too long.