The Tale of Halcyon Crane (33 page)

I nodded and smiled, always up for a fun adventure with my dad.

“Okay,” he began. “I want you to climb out of this kayak very carefully and stand on the sandbar. Can you do that?”

Of course. I was delighted that my father trusted me enough to do this important thing. He had never let me get out of the kayak before until we were on shore. But I wasn’t afraid. I knew I could do it. I slithered out of my seat and stood on the sandbar, wiggling my toes inside my sandals.

Then my dad did the most curious thing. He got out of the kayak, too, and turned it belly up, shoving it out into the water. Then he threw his wallet and hat into the water. I watched it all float away.

“This is our boat now,” he said, motioning toward the fishing boat. “Look. I’ve got some things in there for you.”

What could those be? I waded to the boat and looked in. Two backpacks, a hat, an old jacket, and a blanket sat on the bottom of the hull.

“Climb in,” Noah said. “This is the surprise I was telling you about. We’re going on an adventure, just you and me. Now, I want you to crawl into the boat and get under the blanket, and stay there until I tell you to come out. You’re hiding. It’s a game. Can you do that for me?”

Sure! It was simple. I hid under blankets all the time. I did as I was told, shivering with anticipation, wondering what would come next.

Noah untied the boat and started the engine. As we puttered slowly away, he put on a fishing hat with a wide brim and an old jacket he had stuff ed in the boat. He took out a fishing rod and laid it over the side. Anyone watching from shore would see a lone man out fishing, not a father and daughter in a kayak.

It was done. We were dead, or would be, hours from now, when Madlyn began wondering why we hadn’t come home. Noah imagined the frantic search, the cries of anguish when the kayak was found, the funeral of father and daughter. He pushed those thoughts out of his head and focused instead on the next tasks he would have to accomplish: finding an isolated spot to ditch the boat, hailing a taxi, getting to the airport. I saw all this swirling around my father’s head like an ethereal to-do list.

Thomas James was glad his daughter was obediently huddling under the blanket so she couldn’t see the tears in his eyes as he steered the boat toward the opposite shore.

This vision blurred, and I heard crying, a baby’s cry, and knew the tale wasn’t over. I saw Mira holding an infant. Was this my father’s child? I sat there in stunned silence for a moment or two as the vision floated out of view. Was there anything else about Mira I didn’t know? She had never told me she was a mother. I wondered if the baby had survived. Did I have a brother or a sister somewhere? Had my dad known?

I shook my head, sweeping the last wisps of the vision away, and suddenly became aware of my surroundings again. Iris was still sitting next to me on the bench. She now seemed
impossibly tired, as though this tale had sucked the life out of her. I also saw that the bright November day had turned dark and foreboding, as it had on so many other days here. Clouds were swirling and turning above us; the wind was changing direction; the horizon looked dark and threatening. A storm was brewing. It was time to go inside.

“Iris,” I said, taking her cold hand in mine, “let me help you into the house.” But Iris shook her head.

“My work here is done for the day, miss.” She started to stand up from the bench on what looked to be painful and creaky legs, but then I remembered what I wanted to ask her.

“May I ask one more thing before you go?” I spoke gently, holding her steady.

“What is it, child?” She was dead tired; I could see that clearly.

I began hurriedly. “Iris, my father took me away from here because of the girls. They’re still here, and they have harmed Will—pushed him down the stairs and scratched him. I want to live in this house for the rest of my life. It’s my legacy, my family history. I don’t know how to thank you for telling it all to me. But right now, I need to know one more thing: How do I get rid of the girls?”

Iris’s smile was weary. “They’re just children, Halcyon, and spirit children at that. You are a living adult. As such you are much more powerful than they are. You now know how to use your gift. You must simply tell them what to do.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

“To go, of course,” she said. “They have been earthbound for too long now, doomed to stay in a house where they have committed murder and mayhem for generations. They are
confused and lost without their mother and father. They view new people coming to the house as intruders, strangers to be feared—especially other children—Jane, Charles, Amelia, all the poor babies, Julie Sutton. And now your Will intrudes. You must tell them their family is waiting, Halcyon, or he will continue to be in danger. They’re not aware that they are dead, you see. It’s time for them to go where they belong.”

“That seems too easy,” I said, unconvinced.

Iris wrapped her arms around my shoulders and brushed her paper-thin cheek against mine, pressing her lips to my face. “I have done what I was to do, Halcyon. I have kept your family’s lore safe and tucked away in my heart until you arrived. And I have shown you their faces and told you their stories and, in the doing, helped you unlock your gift. You’re correct, child, in knowing that you belong in this house. Three little girls, even murderous ones, cannot take that away from you.”

I got the strangest feeling, then, that Iris had somehow taken us outside of real time and space, as though
we
were shadowy figures floating somewhere in the ether as she told her stories.

When I finally pulled away from her, I was up to my calves in snow. How long had I been standing there in Iris’s embrace? I whirled around, and all I could see was a wall of white. No house, no trees, no garden, no Iris. Only the blizzard that had suddenly descended upon me.

W
hy hadn’t I noticed that it had started to snow? Had I simply lost all awareness of everything around me? I couldn’t see the house, and I had no idea which way to turn.
It’s just like the storm that killed the girls.
This idea gave me a very sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I knew I had to be strong in order to get Iris and me back to the house.

“Iris!” I called, reaching blindly into the snow for her. “Iris!” But there was no answer. I bent down to the bench—perhaps she had simply sat down?—but she wasn’t there. She had wandered off into the storm.

The last thing I wanted to do was look for Iris in a raging blizzard. I wanted to get back to my warm house. But I knew I had to find her. And so I put one foot in front of the other, slowly and slower still, calling out her name. I rubbed my bare arms for warmth. That’s all I’d need, to freeze to death out here. Then I’d be another of Iris’s strange family tales. But whom would she tell? The last Hill—me—would be gone.

Then I heard it, soft and faint in the distance. “Hallie! Hallie! Where are you?”

Will! All of a sudden I remembered I had told him that
morning I’d meet him on the cliff for a picnic. Surely he didn’t think, in this weather . . . But there it was again. “Hallie! Hallie!”

“I’m over here!” I screamed. “By the garden!”

“Hallie?” But his voice was getting fainter and fainter. He was going the wrong way.

I started running toward the sound of his voice, stopping only when I remembered that there was an actual cliff somewhere nearby.

“Will!” I called out, and then, remembering, “Iris!” I had two people to find in this storm.

But I heard no response from either of them. I could see nothing but whiteness swirling in the air before me. I had no idea where I was, and no idea how to get back to the house. I was lost.

“Will!” I tried again. “Will!”

The silent snow wrapped around me. Panic was setting in as the whiteness descended around me, piling up at a very rapid rate. Now it was nearly to my knees, and I was having great difficulty moving around. I thought how restful it would be simply to sink to the ground and let that blanket of snow cover me. I slumped to my knees, almost giving up.

But then I heard it: laughter. “You’re ice cold!” I heard a voice say. “Hallie! You’re ice cold!”

I heard the voices clearly. It was the girls, I was sure of it. “Come on! You can’t stop now! You’re ice cold. Come and find us!”

Were they trying to lure me off the cliff? No. I remembered how Hannah always believed they had saved her life in
that storm. Their voices were getting louder and louder, as though the words were being shouted into my own ear. I put one foot in front of the other and began to move. “You’re getting warmer! Warmer now, Hallie!” A few more steps and then: “Colder! Colder! Turn around before you freeze!” I turned and walked another couple of steps. “Warmer! You’re getting hot!” A few more steps. “You’re burning up! You’re burning!”

My foot hit something hard and tall. I recognized it immediately as the stone wall adjacent to the stairs leading from the drive to the house. I was home. I was saved. I climbed the stairs blindly, feeling each one with my foot as I went.

“Hallie!” I heard, louder now. It was Will.

“Will! I’m at the stairs! Follow the sound of my voice!”
I just kept shouting until he collided with me.
Thank God.
We stood there for a moment, holding each other.

“Iris is out there,” I said to him. “We’ve got to look for her.”

“Hallie, I’m getting you back up to the house. Right now. You’re freezing.”

He led me up the rest of the stairs, one by one. I nearly died of joy when we reached the back door. I opened it and fell into the kitchen, shivering. Will ran to the living room and got me an afghan, which he immediately wrapped around me.

“My God, how long have you been out there?”

“I have no idea,” I said, though chattering teeth. It was then I noticed a pot of stew on the stove and smelled the
bread in the oven. “Did you make that?” I asked him, knowing he hadn’t. He shook his head. It must have been Iris. Who else would’ve done it?

Much later, after we had showered and eaten and thoroughly warmed up, I told Will the tale of Halcyon Crane. He kept shaking his head, muttering things like
Unbelievable
and
Wow
. I don’t know whether he took what I said at face value—especially the part about the girls saving me—or if he believed Iris was embellishing my story the same way she embellished the others.

I wasn’t sure either, but at that moment I didn’t much care. I was back in my house with the man I loved, and we were both safe from the storm. Iris had made it, too, as evidenced by the fine dinner she had prepared. I took Will up to bed that night with the distinct feeling that everything was going to be all right.

I
had it out with Mira after the storm passed. She had been planning to come to the house the night of the storm to help me exorcise the triplets—”Phase Two,” she called it—but there was no way she could get through the snow. So she came by a couple of days later when the island had begun to dig out.

“Thanks for the offer, but I think I can get the girls to leave on my own,” I told her.

“On your own? Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not,” I admitted. “I still might need your help. But the way I’m seeing it now, the girls aren’t the only demons of the past that my coming here has stirred up. Other things need to be exorcised, too.”

Mira seemed worried. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

So I confronted her with what I knew. She tried to deny it, sputtering and posturing and pretending that she was the wronged one—how could I possibly
think
such a thing?—but I stood firm and she basically collapsed under the weight of the truth.

“I’m sorry, Hallie,” she said finally, after pulling out a
chair from the kitchen table and sitting down hard. “I looked for you and your father for years. The man who I put him in touch with for new identity papers disappeared around the same time, so I couldn’t get your location or new name from him. It was impossible to find you, and then I realized Noah didn’t want me to. It’s true that I was furious when your father left me. I’ve been holding that grudge ever since. But I really felt as though I was helping him back then. He needed to get you out of here.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She made a face. “I’m not exactly excited about anyone else finding out. I don’t know the statute of limitations, but I might be charged as an accessory to murder. Or whatever they charge people with for helping murderers.”

Oddly enough, I felt for her. I don’t know if it was pity or empathy or something else, but seeing the way she was so resigned, I just couldn’t hate Mira. She was right. She had helped my dad, her selfish motives notwithstanding, and in doing so she had probably saved my life. Right then and there, I forgave her.

“But what about the child, Mira? Did you have my father’s child?”

At this, Mira’s face went white. “Who told you that?”

“The source is not important,” I said to her. “I just want to know if it’s true. No more lies, Mira. I’ve lived half a lifetime based on lies. I want the truth now, once and for all.”

She shook her head. “I’ve kept this secret for thirty years, Hallie. Nobody on this island knows who his father is.”