The Back Door of Midnight

  I stood up, opened my mouth to suck in a big gulp of air and snort the smell out of my nose, then walked over to the man beneath the tree.

  As I delivered my report, he squinted at the goat and nodded in agreement. “You know, the grandkids have been around a lot since school let out, and they like the goats—the others, not her. Never thought about it till now. She’s hurtin’ for attention, with that bad breath and all.”

  From his pocket, he pulled out a cracked leather wallet, and I realized that he was going to pay me. I waved my hand. “No money.”

  “But I pay Iris,” he insisted.

  I couldn’t take money for making up stuff. “I’m just learning,” I said. “I can’t take money while I’m learning.”

  “Well . . . well, I thank you. And Maria thanks you. Come on, you silly girl. I’ll give you a nice grooming when we get home.”

  He herded his goats toward the long end of the house, and I figured the horse trailer parked out front was his. I also figured that Maria’s problems would prove easier to solve than Aunt Iris’s.

  “Nicely done.”

  I turned quickly and saw Zack sitting on the back step leading to the hall door. As I walked toward him, I could feel my cheeks getting warm, and I willed them not to. “I thought you went home.”

  He smiled. “No, I walked around the side of the house. I was curious.” He jumped up and held open the screen door to the hall. “May I?”

  What PBS miniseries had he hatched from? I didn’t know a single guy under thirty-five who would hold a door and ask to come in by saying, May I?

  He followed me into the house. “Are you psychic?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He tilted his head slightly, studying me again, considering my response. His eyes were the same kind of changeable blue as the creek. They were dangerous eyes.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Very. I arrived today expecting my uncle to be alive, hoping to spend a summer with him. That’s how psychic I am.”

  Now his face grew serious. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. . . . No one told you?”

  “According to Aunt Iris, Uncle Will always forgets to mention the important things.” I laughed, but Zack gazed at me, brow furrowed. “That was a joke,” I said, “although she really seems to have expected him to inform me of his death.”

  “No one told your parents?”

  I didn’t feel like explaining my family. “No.”

  “Do you want to borrow my cell phone and call someone?” For the first time he was less than smooth. He reached in one pocket then another, fumbling for his phone. “I’ve got a zillion minutes—”

  “No thanks. Mine’s charging.”

  He nodded and put the iPhone back in his pocket. “Will you be staying the summer? Will somebody else be coming to help you?”

  “I don’t know. My family’s on vacation, and I have a lot of things to figure out.” I looked up at him, meeting his eyes squarely. “What do you know about my uncle’s death?”

  Zack didn’t move, but I saw him pull back from the question. “What do I know?”

  “Aunt Iris says he was burned in the trunk of a car.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “And that it happened Wednesday night.”

  “It did.” He sounded cautious, like a lawyer being interviewed by a TV reporter.

  “If you’re worried about telling me something gory or morbid, just spill it. I’m going to learn what happened one way or another, the sooner the better.”

  “I don’t know much,” he said.

  I took a gamble, remembering my dream. “Were some kids there? Was it a party thing?”

  “That’s what they’re investigating. There have been three other fires—arsons—which the police think were set by a group of kids just fooling around.”

  “Murder’s not just fooling around!” The anger in my voice surprised me.

  Even with his tan, I saw the red creep into Zack’s face. “I didn’t mean to imply that.”

  He was holding back something, I could sense it. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “You should talk with Sheriff McManus. His office is on the corner of Jib and Water Streets. I’ve got to go now.”

  “I will talk to him,” I said as Zack headed for the door, “but I get the feeling you know something he doesn’t.”

  Turning back for a moment, Zack gave me a half smile. “And you said you weren’t psychic.”

  four

  WHILE AUNT IRIS was out, I checked out the rest of the house, searching for anything that might indicate what had happened to Uncle Will and what he had wanted to tell me.

  The living room, full of lumpy chairs with worn fabric, lay to the right of the stairs and center hall. The only thing I remembered in it was the tall grandfather clock. The dining room, to the left of the stairs, was smaller than I recalled. In the center hall, a table hugged the wall beneath a long and tarnished mirror. The phone on the table was old. Lifting the clunky receiver, I heard a reassuring dial tone.

  I picked up my suitcase and climbed the steps to the second floor. At the top of the stairway a window overlooked the backyard of the house. To the right was a large bedroom. I remembered its wallpaper, the big, blue mop-headed flowers, but despite the twin beds and crib, I didn’t recall sleeping there. My eyes slid over to the mahogany bureau. I told myself I needed to keep checking the house while Aunt Iris was gone, but that was just an excuse for not opening the drawers to see if they contained clothes worn by my birth mother.

  On the other side of the stairs and hall were a bath and two bedrooms. The front room, its walls green and shadowy from the press of trees, must have been Aunt Iris’s. I remembered its herbal smell, a good smell, but it brought back a feeling of fear. The back room, facing the water, was Uncle Will’s. Surveying the simple furniture of his room, my eyes stopped at a door opposite from where I was standing. I knew the moment I saw the door that I used to go through it.

  Opening it, I found the entrance to the left side of the house, the portion that lay beneath the sloping roof. A long, low-ceilinged room with bare planking and dormer windows—three facing the water, three facing the trees—it looked like an orphan’s dormitory in an old storybook. In the corner closest to Uncle’s Will’s room, snug against the sloping roof, was the bed where I had slept. I knew it the moment I saw it. Two painted bureaus, a rocking chair, and a child’s chair made a cozy little square. It was creepy, everything still in place as if the kindergartner who had slept there would be returning. Of course, I could imagine how it must have looked to the people from Social Services—kid kept in the attic—but I remembered the feeling of warmth and safety I’d had here. I set down my suitcase. This was where I would sleep tonight.

  Beyond my little corner were boxes, trunks, miscellaneous pieces of furniture, and a cemetery of television sets. There were ten TVs, most of them the same size, all of them having one obvious feature: a smashed screen. Ten times was nine times too many for an accident, and I doubted it was Uncle Will who had gotten mad.

  At the end of the long room was a massive chimney with steps next to it. I crossed the floor quickly and descended a turning staircase to a room full of books. Uncle Will’s den—I remembered playing dolls here. The huge fireplace and the brick floor indicated that it was the original kitchen of the homestead. I assumed the police had searched it for clues about Uncle Will’s death, but there were so many books and papers that if anything was hidden, it could have easily been missed. I planned to search it too.

  At that moment a cat that must have been following me came flying down the corner stairs and clawed at the door to the outside. I glanced at the clock on Uncle Will’s desk, then opened the door and listened for a moment. I could hear nothing, but I let the cat out so it could join the other cats, which were leaping onto the hood of Uncle Will’s pickup. A minute and a half later the gold car came roaring down the driveway. I had expected my aunt; still, the skin at the back of my neck prickled at the
sight of her. Was the cats’ hearing that good, or did she communicate with them in some way?

  She climbed out of her Chevrolet and stood with her head cocked, as if she, herself, were listening to something.

  “Hello, Aunt Iris,” I called before emerging from the house, hoping I wouldn’t startle her.

  She whipped around.

  “It’s me, Anna,” I said.

  She looked hard at me. “I remember. I remember everything that I want to.”

  The problem was, I had no way of knowing what she did not want to.

  “A man was here with his goats,” I went on. “He said he had an appointment.”

  “I knew he was here. I had to leave. The voices wouldn’t stop.”

  “The man asked for—for my advice about one of his goats, so I gave it to him.”

  She nodded, as if it were perfectly normal for me to be making suggestions about farm animals. “Maria gets her feelings hurt easily,” she said. Then she blinked and turned her head slowly. I looked where she looked but saw nothing, not even a porch post resembling Uncle Will.

  “Stop it!” she said angrily. “I won’t listen to you anymore!”

  I moved out of the shadow of the house and heard bits of jazzy music mixed with the rise and fall of voices. “The people next door are having a party,” I told her.

  “Even when they whisper, I can hear them telling me what to do.” Her voice quavered with emotion.

  “What to do about what?”

  “William. You.”

  “Oh.” In Baltimore I might have found this conversation humorous, but here in the gloom of the old house and encroaching trees, it made me uneasy.

  “You’ve been talking to William, haven’t you?” she said accusingly. “You were in his den.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “I was there, but he wasn’t. He’s at the coroner’s, remember?”

  “He never hears the voices.”

  “I don’t hear them either,” I told her. “But maybe, if you tell me what they are saying, I can help you figure out where they are coming from and what to do about them.”

  Her eyes flew wide. “I can’t! I can’t say a word! There are secrets I can tell no one.”

  “Secrets about what?”

  “I can’t tell you!” She sounded panicky and took a step back from me. “Don’t ask me, the voices will be angry.” She held her ears with her hands. “How they taunt me!” she moaned.

  She shook her head from side to side, then dug her index fingers into her ears. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  “Aunt Iris—”

  She backed against her car. When she started to fall, I rushed forward to catch her. She slid down the side of the car. I struggled to pull her up, but she was dead weight. She sank to the ground, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest.

  “Aunt Iris, everything’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

  She bent forward, her head and hands between her knees, as if they could help keep out the maddening voices. I knelt in front of her, my hands clenched, feeling useless.

  I wanted to run back to Baltimore—she scared me. But I owed it to Uncle Will to stay. When my mother died, he had taken care of me, giving all he could. Now he had died, leaving someone behind, and it was my turn.

  It would take weeks to figure out what Iris needed and how to get it for her. Maybe I could find the medicine she was supposed to take, a bottle with a doctor’s name on the label. I had to figure out if she was safe alone—and if others were safe from her when she was left alone.

  “Aunt Iris. Aunt Iris, listen to me!” I increased the volume of my voice until I was shouting at her. “There’s no one here but me. It’s just me.”

  Finally, she removed her hands from her ears.

  “We need to go inside now. I’ll fix us something to eat. You’ll feel better if you have some dinner.”

  She looked about, then reached for the car’s outside mirror and pulled herself to her feet. “How long will you be staying?” she asked.

  “For a while.”

  “What kind of job will you get? I hope you don’t read cards.”

  “Read cards?” I repeated, surprised. “You mean tell people’s fortunes? No way!”

  She nodded, brushed something aside with her hand—maybe a cobweb I couldn’t see—and headed toward the kitchen door. “Good. Stick to animals, Joanna. People are vicious. They will turn on you.”

  five

  A SEARCH OF the kitchen cupboards produced a box of macaroni with cheese flakes that could be mixed and cooked, which was filling and safer than the food in the fridge. Aunt Iris ate two mouthfuls, said she wasn’t hungry, and retreated to her bedroom. I waited five minutes, then carried her plate upstairs. Her door was closed. I knocked and asked her if she was feeling all right—she was. I asked if she would mind me opening the door—she would. I told her I had brought up her dinner in case she wanted a little more—she didn’t.

  Returning to the kitchen, I finished mine, then sat on the back stoop, watching the first shy stars appear. I wondered if Zack and his girlfriend had hung around for the party. A hedge about four feet high separated his yard from Aunt Iris’s. With no lights burning on the O’Neill property other than the beacon at the end of Uncle Will’s dock, I figured no one from the party could see me. I walked halfway down the slope to the water and looked back at the two houses. Aunt Iris’s was dark, huddled against the trees. Zack’s home was lit like a manse in a movie: lamps shining softly inside the long windows, candles flickering on the patio, torches winding a path down the black velvet lawn, red and gold lanterns on the dock.

  I walked down the mowed path to Uncle Will’s dock. His boat was missing. A new ladder had been installed on the side of the dock where he used to tie up. I guessed he wasn’t as agile as he’d once been.

  For some reason, I have always found black water scary. So I sat on the dock with my back to the dark creek and the party, facing the bridge with its old-fashioned lamps and the town twinkling beyond it. Wisteria was surrounded by water on three sides, the Sycamore River and the creeks of Oyster and Wist, creeks that were as wide as the river itself. It was Aunt Iris’s and Uncle Will’s father who had purchased this old house and property outside of town, next to the bridge over Oyster Creek, a perfect place for him to set up as a large-animal vet who called on farms.

  I wondered what it was like to be as old as Aunt Iris, living your whole life in this one house—except for the hospital stays, of course. Had Uncle Will joined the army to get away from the small town, to see the world? Too late now to ask him that. I wondered, if I had come a week earlier, whether I could have kept his death from happening.

  I sat swinging my legs above the water. The smell of the creek made me think of the summer days I had sat on the dock with him, wearing one of his fishing hats—they must have been his, they always fell over my eyes—each of us holding a rod. I fought back tears. For a moment I thought he was there—actually there—resting a hand on my shoulder. I turned quickly.

  At the same time, standing on a dock a hundred feet across the water, Zack turned toward me. The dark-haired girl I had seen earlier leaned against him casually, her head turned away from me. Zack gazed at me, his face thoughtful in the gold light of the lanterns. He looked . . . and looked. I finally glanced down. The dark stretch of creek between us reminded me of just how far apart our worlds were. I rose to my feet and headed back to the house.

  After entering the kitchen, it took me a few minutes to find the light switch. A bright kitchen is usually cozy, but with no streetlights around, I found the sudden blaze of light unnerving. I felt like a lit-up window display, unable to see what was outside in the trees. I turned off the light and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. Then I stepped out the front door of the kitchen onto the narrow porch that ran the length of the lower part of the house. I followed it to the end, past Aunt Iris’s Chevy, and retrieved a flashlight from my car’s emergency kit.

  Turning back to the long house, surveying it
from end to end, I saw that the old kitchen, now Uncle Will’s den, was connected to the main house by the new kitchen and another room. All the rooms on the left side of the house had a door to the front, facing the trees, and a door to the back, facing the creek. There was one room I hadn’t looked in, the one between the old and new kitchens. I walked toward it, shining my light on its entrance.

  I found the door locked, and not just the door, but the window, too. I shone my light through it, but I could see only a table and bookshelves. At home, when going to bed, we closed up and locked the windows on the first floor, but it appeared that, with the exception of this one room, Aunt Iris’s house was always open. Oh, well.

  Upstairs, I found the door to Aunt Iris’s room still shut. I pressed my ear against it and, hearing nothing, called her name softly.

  “William?” she replied, sounding as if she were half asleep.

  “No. It’s Anna. I’m going to bed now. I’ll be in the room next to Uncle Will’s, in the bed where I used to sleep, okay?”

  She didn’t answer, and I wondered if she had fallen back asleep. “Good night,” I said quietly.

  “Good night.”

  I changed into my nightshirt, put on clean athletic shorts, and laid a pair of slip-on shoes next to my bed, just in case. Exhausted by all the emotions of the day, I stretched out on the little bed and stared up at the sloping ceiling. The soft lamp next to my bed cast an arc of light against the low ceiling. I remembered as a child gazing at that particular pattern of light and shadow, staring at it until my eyes were too heavy to stay open.

  I awoke to a low throbbing sound. I lay there, eyes closed and listening. I felt anxious, as if some part of me knew what the sound was, knew what would happen next, and didn’t want it to. I couldn’t move my arms, couldn’t roll over to cover my face, couldn’t even turn my head to see what or who was next to me. My bed began to shake. A strange, electric energy traveled up my body, taking over me, leaving every muscle, tendon, and nerve tingling.