Paper Tigers (6 page)

The prickle of pins and needles under her flesh returned, and then disappeared. She thumped back down the stairs, sockfeet whispering discordant madness on the wood, and grabbed the photo album. She dropped it on the coffee table, sank to her knees, and flipped open the cover. Placed her trembling hand flat on George's picture.

“Please.”

Nothing happened. Tears fell from her eye, blurring her vision. She pressed her hand harder. Still nothing. She slapped her hand down once, twice, three times, each thud a painless meeting of unfeeling flesh and old paper. The album skittered across the coffee table and hung over the edge, wobbling slightly.

“Give it back,” she sobbed, reaching for the album. It toppled over and landed on the floor between the sofa and coffee table with a dull thud. A wisp of smoke curled up from the pages, followed by a faint laugh, then the cover slammed shut.

Alison scrambled back, breathing hard.

Crazy girl. Seeing things makes you crazy.

“I. Am. Not. Crazy. I know what I saw.”

A magic photo album that heals scars, crazy girl?

“It did. It took them away. I saw it. And when I touched it before, it gave me feeling. Real feeling.”

Then touch it again.

“Not yet.”

Why not? Are you afraid?

Holding the wall with one hand, she made her way into the kitchen. She called information and wrote down the number for the shop, her hands shaking. A sick feeling nestled in the pit of her stomach when she dialed the number. The phone rang once, twice, ten times. A young voice with the barest trace of an accent picked up on the twelfth ring. “Elena's Antiques.”

“Hello, I purchased a photo album a few days ago and wanted to find out more about it. Maybe who brought it in?”

“Elena isn't here. She's the one you'll have to ask. Call back later.”

“When do—”

Click.

“Hello?”

Alison sat down on a kitchen chair and rested her head on her forearms. Which was worse, crazy or afraid?

The second time she called the shop, several hours later, the phone simply rang. Alison lost count after fifteen. After the sun set, she slipped out of the house, walking with her head down. A car roared by, its speakers pushing out loud bass-heavy music, its engine trailing a stink of burning oil.

It's too early, too early.

She approached a group of teenagers smoking cigarettes next to a darkened window; laughter, high and derisive, pierced the night.
Her heart beat a chaotic tattoo and she turned her face away. One, two, three steps, and she was past.

“You're such a freak, Justin, you know that?” a young male voice piped up.

“I'm so not…”

Alison rounded the corner, and a light gust of wind gathered their voices and carried them away. She exhaled and a weight on her shoulders lifted. She hadn't been trying to hide. Not completely.

A solitary set of footsteps clicked on the pavement to her right. She stiffened. Too many people, despite the dark sky. She pressed closer to the buildings, into the shadows created by the awnings.

Go home where it's safe. Call them again tomorrow. You don't even know if they'll be open.

She shoved the voice down and away, and forced her feet into a short, clipped rhythm. Maybe she was pushing herself too hard. Maybe this counted as too big of a step, but she wanted, needed, to take it. As she drew close to the shop, where golden light spilled from the front window onto the pavement, she smiled.

“Sometime close, sometime open.” Maybe-Elena's words.

She tugged on the door, met resistance, and her smile fell into a flat, compressed line. The interior of the shop gleamed bright, cluttered with even more items. Old furniture, several large cardboard boxes with the top flaps hanging open, and several large black plastic bags with their tops tied into knots. Cast-offs, no doubt, delivered by people going through their attics or a deceased relative's home. Neither too valuable, nor too sentimental.

Alison knocked on the front door. The lamp and tricycle no longer sat in the front window, but the small dragon statues had been joined by a larger stone gargoyle, a creature half-cat and half-monkey perched atop a small brass-banded trunk. After a minute or two, she knocked again.

Through the glass she heard a thunk, a low curse (a man's voice,
not in English), the slam of an unseen door, and then two voices (one male, one female, neither in English) raised in argument. Alison knocked a third time, and the lights in the shop went out. The voices lowered in tone but not ferocity, and a face appeared, a quick, pallid flash in the gloom.

“Dammit,” Alison muttered, knocking louder.

The voices fell silent, and a figure advanced through the shadows of the shop. A man with a prominent nose and thick, unruly hair brought his face close to the glass.

“Closed now,” he said, his voice deep and raspy.

“Please, I want to ask a few questions about something I bought the other day.”

“Come back tomorrow. Daytime.”

“It will only take a minute. Please.”

“Tomorrow. Not open now.” He gave her his back and disappeared into the shop.

Alison's fingers trembled as she opened her front door. She nudged the album with the tip of her shoe and took a quick step back. No smoke. No laughter. No nursery rhymes. She left it on the floor, went upstairs with her laptop tucked under her arm, and closed her bedroom door behind her. Searching for online classes was a far better and healthier pursuit.

But she felt the album's presence in her mind, a dark little purr she knew she should ignore, although she suspected it was already too late for that.

CHAPTER 7

Come back tomorrow.

After a restless night spent tossing and turning beneath twisted sheets, Alison crept downstairs and hurried into the kitchen without looking at the album. Sunlight, detestable with its false cheer, was sneaking through the space between window and blinds. She made tea and toast, but after taking the first bite, an itch grew deep in the socket of her right eye. She brushed the crumbs from her hands, tilted her head down, and put pressure on the lower lid to reveal the bottom edge of the prosthetic, then dragged her finger sideways. The eye, a curved bit of plastic shaped to fit her rebuilt socket, slid out, dropping into her palm.

In the beginning, she'd rubbed her eyes without thinking, dislodging the eye on a daily basis. She found it once in the sink, floating in a teacup of soapy water; another time at the top of the stairs, a grim memento resting on the wood. The eye, the iris painted a perfect match to her real one, served no purpose other than to improve her appearance. A token enhancement, at best; a poor joke, at worst. Maybe in a few years they'd develop one that could actually see.

She finished eating and left the eye in the kitchen. Halfway to the stairs, she stopped and turned toward the album, still lying on the floor. She took one hesitant step closer. Then another. She wouldn't retreat to the safety of her bedroom because of a stupid photo album. She stalked over. Picked it up.

“None of it was real,” she muttered as she flipped open the cover. “Right, George?”

George's eyes gave a silent, somber stare. With a grunt, she dropped the album on the table. George's page lifted, offering a brief glimpse of the page and the edge of a photograph underneath before it settled back down.

Using the tip of her finger, she turned the page by its corner. All the air rushed out as the page flipped over with ease to reveal the photo. A house, Victorian in style, captured in the same sepia tones, with a curved turret at one end rising high over the roof. The house held a presence, a sense of command, owing more to the long rectangular windows and the peaked roof than to the impressive size. Not quite a mansion, yet more than a mere house.

Treetops heavy with leaves peeked above the roofline, a cluster of rosebushes with open blooms surrounded the porch, and a stone pathway led away from the front steps and disappeared off the picture. Alison inhaled a delicate trace of flowers.

Dark shutters bordered all the windows save those on the top floor of the turret. The windows there had curved tops, half-moon shapes above lacy curtains. Ignoring the shake in her fingers, she held out her hand, lowered it onto the picture, and counted off the seconds in her head. She stopped at forty-five, but kept her hand in place. With a slight shake of her head, she briskly rubbed her upper arms.

Let sleeping tigers lie.

She stalked back into the kitchen and grabbed her phone, punching the number in for the shop with sharp jabs of her finger. After three shrill rings, a deep voice answered.

“I'm not sure if you remember, but I stopped by last night with some questions about an item I purchased,” Alison said. “You told me to come back, but I wanted to find out—”

“No returns,” the man said.

“I don't want to return it. I wanted to find out if you knew where it came from.”

“Where it came from?”

“Yes, I bought an old photo album—”

He chuckled. “People drop things off. They don't want, so we take.”

“Yes, I know that, but I have some questions about the album, so I was hoping you could tell me who dropped it off. It's an old album and was in the front window.”

“I don't know, maybe wife, she know,” he said. The phone gave a loud clunk. After a brief, muffled conversation, he returned. “Bring in, she look and see. Maybe know, maybe not.”

The call disconnected. Alison dropped the phone on the table and glared at the eye on the napkin.

A storm rolled in, banishing the sun behind a heavy veil of grey. The extreme shift was typical for Baltimore weather.
Don't like it? Wait five minutes, it will change.
A common joke, yet one borne from truth. Late in the afternoon, with an oil slick of panic on her tongue, Alison donned her scarf and gloves and zipped her coat high under her neck. With sunglasses in place, never mind that there wasn't the slightest trace of a glare outside, she stepped into the autumn chill, holding tight to a shopping bag containing the album with one hand and an umbrella with the other.

She paused at the street sign. The tips of her shoes had not made it past.

Go back, go back.

She would not. She needed to know where the album came from. She crossed the street, sidestepping a puddle of scummy water. Despite the hour, she passed only three people, all too busy dodging raindrops to pay attention to her.

Several customers stood inside the shop and her stomach twisted
into a tight knot. She waited by the far end of the front window, away from the door. The customers moved to another aisle, their laughter a distant trill through the glass. An ache blossomed in Alison's fingers, and she shifted the bag to her other hand. The umbrella slipped, sending cold rain down her face. When the customers laughed again, she took a deep breath.

They saw you. They're laughing at you. You should leave now. Go home, where it's safe.

She cringed as the bell overhead announced her entrance. Keeping her back to the interior of the store, she closed the umbrella with a wet snap and wiped rain from her face and sunglasses.

The dark lenses coupled with the gloom outside transformed the shop into an indistinct maze. A man near the old desk gave her a quick glance and a second, longer one; two women next to the bookcase did the same, but after they turned away, they began speaking to each other in low tones.

I told you so.

Alison sidestepped still-unpacked boxes and plastic bags, her knuckles white, approached the counter, and took the album from the bag. Slowly, the whispers trailed off.

Conversation drifted out from the half-open door behind the counter. Soft, slurring words punctuated with brief pauses and rolling Rs.

“Did he write this one before or after the one you lent to me? I can never remember,” one of the women said, her voice thin and reedy.

“Eeep!” Another voice exclaimed, this one deeper-pitched, and a book thumped to the floor.

Alison hissed air between her teeth.

“Spiders, I hate them.” Nervous laughter followed. “I think I'll pick that one up new after all.”

Elena, her hair covered with a bright orange scarf, peeked out, saw Alison, and held up an index finger. She said something over
her shoulder before stepping out, and her gaze panned the sunglasses, on the visible skin, until recognition flashed in her eyes.

“Help you?”

“I'd like to find out if you know anything about this album's previous owner. I called a few days ago, and the man I spoke with told me to bring it in so you could take a look and see if you remember who dropped it off.”

She slid the album across the counter, and Elena waited until she took her hands away before opening the front cover, her brows drawn together and the corners of her mouth downturned.

“The pages are—”

Muttering something not in English, Elena flipped through the album, too fast for Alison to catch anything but a brief glimpse. A yellowed scrap of paper slid out from between two pages and landed on the counter. They both grabbed for it at the same time, and Elena pulled her hand away before their fingers met.

Told you, told you, told you.

The words fluttered inside with the insistence of a caged bird's wings.

“This left in back, I think. No owner. Is old,” Elena said, pushing the album back to Alison's side of the counter.

“Please, could you show me the pages again? The pictures?”

Elena gave the album another nudge. “You look and see.”

“But when I—”

Behind Alison, a man cleared his throat. “Excuse me. Could I interrupt for a moment? I'm interested in the desk, but I can't find a price.”

“Yes, I help you,” Elena said.

Go, please.

Alison shoved the album back in the shopping bag and the paper in her pants pocket and wound her way back around the plastic bags and the boxes.

Go away, Monstergirl.

We can't help you with the tiger.

Halfway home, the sky darkened from slate to charcoal, and the rain became a deluge whipped sideways by the wind. In seconds, Alison's pants turned dark and her shoes grew sodden and heavy, and she ducked under the awning of an empty building.

The pages had turned. All of them. Fighting the urge to pull the album from the bag and check it herself, she shifted her weight back and forth as rain tap-danced against the shopping bag.

Maybe they were only stuck together for her.

A jagged bolt of lightning split the sky, filling the air with an ozone stink. Thunder rumbled, long and low. Lightning flashed again. She stepped out from the awning, moving with quick, limping steps, her hip crying out in protest. The piece of paper in her pocket held the weight of a promise, but if she—

A muscle spasm struck near the base of her wrist, white-hot pain flaring below the scar tissue. Her fingers twitched, and the bag slipped from her fingers, landing on the pavement with a wet thump.

With a groan, she shifted the umbrella, pressing the handle close to her chest with her forearm. Her traitorous fingers skittered against the bag's corded handle and once she had it firmly in her grip, the umbrella slid forward. She jolted upright in response, but the umbrella kept its momentum, aided by the wind, and slipped from her grasp. Another gust carried it further away.

She barked a laugh and lurched forward. Rain soaked her scarf, pinning it to her head, and streaked the lenses of her glasses. Footsteps approached. Splashing, squeaking.

A scratchy voice said, “Here, let me help.”

Don't look at me. Oh, please, don't look at me.

Clutching the shopping bag tight, she took the umbrella from the stranger's hand. “Thank you,” she said.

“Most welcome. Take care now.”

Lightning pierced the gloom, turning everything momentarily bright. Alison whirled away, nearly losing the umbrella again in the process. But did he see her face, and she his? And what of the look in his eyes? She hunched her shoulders. It didn't matter what he saw or didn't see. He'd helped her, hadn't he?

The muscles in her wrist relaxed, but her hip continued its steady throb, and when she crossed onto her street, she let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a sob. Her front door loomed close, the promise of warm and dry tucked inside. A tiger of brick, plaster, and glass to swallow her whole—to swallow her away from the world.

The album banged against her leg, and she thought she heard the rustle of pages as she turned the key in the lock. A car door slammed shut, and someone called out her name. Her mother rushed over, shielding her face from the rain with one hand, and Alison laughed, urging her to hurry inside.

“Is everything okay?”

“Everything's fine,” Alison said, setting the shopping bag by the door. “Here, let me take your coat.”

“Don't worry about me. You need to get out of those clothes. You're soaking wet. What possessed you to go out in weather like this?”

“Trust me. It wasn't raining like this when I went out.” Alison peeled off her scarf and gloves. Inside the bag, the photo album beckoned. “But what are you doing here?”

“Don't you remember? We're having dinner tonight.”

Alison pressed a hand to her forehead. “That's right. I totally forgot. I'm sorry.”

“There's nothing to be sorry about. I'm a little early. Now go, change your clothes before you catch a cold.”

“Yes, Mother,” she said in a singsong voice.

Alison took the bag in hand again and headed upstairs with careful steps, her hip protesting every movement, her shoes leaving a trail of water. In her room, with a towel draped across her shoulders, she took the photo album from the bag and set it on the foot of the bed.