A chill crept down Max’s spine, and in his mind he heard his name, Mr. Wolf, spoken in his bedroom.
“I thought, my goodness Gitta has escaped,” Maria continued. “And I popped out of bed and looked for her, but she was not there. No one was there. A few nights later, she spoke my name again from the crevice beneath my bed, and again, I did not find her. I grew determined to catch her. I lay in my bed with my mother’s hand mirror tilted toward that dark crack. And this time when she spoke my name, I saw her in the mirror. Her face looked like driftwood, gray and gnarled, and her eyes were dark and shining. She looked sunken.”
Maria rotated the gold band on her ring finger as if it were talisman and might protect her from the memory.
“Gitta opened her mouth and a flood of ash poured out. I screamed and dropped the mirror, cracking the glass. My mother and father rushed in. They’d been asleep in bed. They looked almost as terrified as me. I couldn’t even speak to tell them about Gitta and the ashes.”
Max’s skin crawled and he shifted in his chair.
“My mother slept with me that night. In the morning, I told her all about the girl. We cleaned my room that day. Moved the bed to the opposite wall, swept the dust and dirt free. My mother burned candles and said a prayer. I never saw Gitta again.”
Max finished his coffee, his arms prickling with goosebumps. As he’d done with his own terrifying childhood tale, he wanted to dismiss her experience as the wild imaginings of a child in wartime.
Instead, he said, “I think I’m being haunted.”
She finished her cake, sliding the fork over the porcelain to get the last of the frosting.
“Have you invited someone in? A spirit?”
“The hell if I know.” He threw up his hands.
“Words, young man,” she scolded him.
“Sorry, Mom. The heck if I know.” He winked at her. “It’s the girl who went missing, Melanie Dunlop. I heard her voice the other night in my room, and then I saw her reflection in a store window.”
Maria frowned and reached a loving hand to Max’s, caressing his fingers. “You are my sensitive child, Max. My heart. I love Jakey like my own two legs, but Jake is a thinker, and you are a feeler. It’s always the feelers they come to, the ghosts. The thinkers simply think them away.”
“It means she’s dead, right? If I’m seeing her ghost, she’s dead?”
“I’ve never met a live one,” Maria murmured. “What a shame, a young girl, hardly more than a baby.” Maria pressed her hands into her cheeks, her eyes filling with tears. “So much suffering in this world.”
“Could it be a hallucination?” he wondered out loud. “Something I’m imagining because I’ve been thinking about her so much?”
Maria tilted her head to the side. “The mind is tricky. That’s true enough, but what does your heart tell you?” She leaned over and placed a hand on his chest.
He closed his eyes. “That she’s dead.”
22
Ashley and Sid fed the raccoons and returned to the street.
“Here,” Sid pulled a dollar out of his pocket.
She didn’t take it, planting her hands on her hips.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
Sid’s parents rarely gave him pocket money, and when they did, he spent it on candy within an hour.
“My dad gave it to me for helping him haul some old furniture down from the attic.”
“Don’t you want to get candy?”
Sid shook his head and waved his t-shirt away from his body as if suddenly hot.
“I’d rather you get your bike a little sooner.”
Ashley smiled and took the money shoving it in the back pocket of her shorts.
“Thanks, Sid,” she said.
“So where to?” he asked. “We could see if Benny McKenzie has his pool open.”
Ashley shook her head. There was only place Ashley had wanted to go since the idea had popped into her head two days earlier.
“The Crawford House,” Ashley said.
Sid paled, slowing his walk.
“Let’s go tomorrow, Ash. It’s too hot today. The bug’s will be terrible.”
“Not any worse than they were back there.” She hiked a thumb at the woods behind her. “Look, you don’t have to go inside. Deal? I just want to poke around there and see if we notice anything.”
Sid sighed, and Ashley noticed how he dragged his feet as they walked out of their neighborhood, skirting the southern end of town.
The woods that ran behind the train tracks buzzed with gnats.
Sid swatted them away. “Ugh, I swallowed one,” he complained.
“Breathe through your nose.”
Ahead of them, Ashley spotted birds circling above the trees. She counted twelve vultures floating in the still sky.
“Sid,” she croaked, grabbing his arm.
“What?” he asked.
She pointed to the birds, and when he saw them, he turned as if to run the other way.
At the end of the street, Ashley saw Shane Savage walking toward the woods, oblivious to the birds circling above.
Ashley didn’t think. She sprinted down the street.
Shane hadn’t noticed her. She darted forward and grabbed his hand, wrenching him back as he stepped onto the grassy embankment edging the trees.
“What are you doing?” he asked, surprised.
“Don’t go in there,” she told him, trying to catch her breath.
Sid lumbered toward them, less than a half a block away, but red-faced and visibly winded.
Ashley looked into the sky where the birds continued to hold vigil over whatever lurked beneath them.
“It’s in there,” she said.
“What? What do you mean?”
She pointed a shaky finger toward the birds.
Shane frowned. “Okay? So, there’s like a dead opossum in there or something.”
He started to pull away, to walk back toward the tree line, but she snatched the back of his shirt in her hand and pulled so hard she almost ripped the fabric.
“It’s not a dead opossum, Shane. There’s…” she looked for Sid. She wanted him there to back her up. If they both told their stories, it wouldn’t seem so nuts. He’d stopped, hands planted on his thighs, as he wheezed for breath.
“He doesn’t look so good,” Shane murmured.
“He’s fine. Come on.” She dragged Shane toward Sid.
“No, I-”
“Just give us five minutes, okay. Five minutes, and if you still want to go in there, whatever. It’s your funeral.”
Shane gave her a funny look, but she didn’t offer more.
When they reached Sid, he’d managed to stand back up straight, but his mouth still hung wide as if trying to suck as much air in as humanly possible.
“Screw running,” he panted.
“I don’t see track in your future, Sid Putnam,” Shane told him.
Sid flipped him the finger and then wandered to the curb, sitting down and stretching his legs out in front of him.
“We’ve got to tell him about the monster, Sid,” Ashley said.
“What monster?” Shane asked, looking back and forth between them.
“You… you go first,” Sid puffed.
Ashley glanced at Shane, noticing his long dark eyelashes and then frowned, exasperated with her own stupid thoughts.
Shane revealed little as he listened first to Ashley’s story of the boy who attacked her in the night followed by Sid’s.
“We think it might be Warren,” she said at the end.