Hey. I just felt.
“What’d you stop for?” Uncle George asked.
“Nothing.”
I filled in his eyes, and put Catherine’s hand in his. She smiled, one that almost burst with excitement. “Kitty—Catherine—comes to talk to us here. Now.”
“My, you are talented,” Aunt Millie said.
Please, God. Let her come.
“Amen,” I whispered.
Prove it, God. Prove it’s you.
We sat there and just looked at each other. My eyes darted around the room, at the door, at the stairs.
She has to show up. This always works if I can draw it.
We listened to the clock tick for half of forever.
And absolutely nothing happened.
* * * * *
“Well, then.” Aunt Millie smiled.
I wanted to curse. To throw something. To burn my sketchbook and all the letters, and then run away some more.
Patience, Julie.
My eyes shot to the ceiling, like Sweeney’s when the office paged her. “Oh, shut up!”
Uncle George and Aunt Millie looked at me.
“Who you talking to?” Uncle George asked.
“To the Lord, I reckon.” Aunt Millie reached over and touched my hand. “Be careful telling God to shut up, dear. Say it enough, and he just might.”
“It didn’t work!”
“Hasn’t worked yet, you mean,” Uncle George said.
“Oh, come on. God knows what I meant. He knows what we wanted.” I slammed the sketchbook. “He obviously doesn’t care. And neither does Catherine.”
He shook his head. “Holy Moses on a skateboard, you’re an agitate-able little booger.”
“Well then, what’s he waiting for?” I demanded.
“How should I know?” He sat back and folded his arms over his chest. “‘His ways are not our ways’.”
Blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard that all my life.
“I’m going home.” Or somewhere.
I shoved stuff into my bag. I’d have to hitchhike. Maybe whoever picked me up would be a serial killer.
Uncle George stood up. “Come on, then. I’ll drive you back to the station.”
“You write down your phone number and address for me, and I’ll give you ours,” Aunt Millie said. “I’ll call your parents, and I’ll want to hear from you when you get home safe.”
I pulled Catherine’s green fabric notebook out of her bag and opened it. She’d only used the first page, so I tore out the second and jotted down my info. Then I handed the notebook to Aunt Millie. Would she write the phone number I knew? Kitty’s?
It doesn’t matter. There is no Kitty.
She pushed the cover open and squinted at it.
“What’s this?” she asked.
I zipped my canvas bag. “It’s hers.”
Aunt Millie’s eyes got bigger and bigger as they scanned back and forth across the page. She handed the notebook to Uncle George.
“What is it?” He adjusted his glasses on his nose and held it up in the air. As he read he sank back into his chair.
Aunt Millie looked at me, one knobby-knuckled hand over her chest.
“What’s it say?” I asked Uncle George.
He didn’t answer. He just kept reading, then he put it on his lap and looked out the window with fat tears shining through his glasses. Then he read it again.
“Come on! Tell me!” I tried again.
He closed the notebook and rested his hand on top of it. “It’s for me.” He looked at Aunt Millie. “It’s about Carolyn.”
“Nonnie?”
Mrs. Tufte nodded. “She and George were very close.”
“So what does the letter say?”
He opened the notebook again. “It explains some things. About when Millie went back there during the war. While I was in France.”
Aunt Millie nodded. “That was when your grandmother came to know Jesus.”
“After she lost that first baby,” Uncle George added. His hand rubbed a circle over the notebook.
“What else does it say?” I asked.
“The rest of it is for me.”
“But I brought it here,” I pled.
“It’s not your business,” he said.
“Thanks a lot.”
Aunt Millie put her hand on my arm. “Juliet,” she said. “Think.”
“Think what?”
“Your drawing.” She squeezed my arm. “It worked. Catherine came.”
I sort of exhaled and snorted, then leaned back into my chair. “That’s totally not what I was trying to do.”
“It doesn’t matter what you were trying to do,” Uncle George said. “It matters what he wanted done.”
“He who?”
“He God.”
“Why can’t he just do it the way I meant it?”
“Listen to you! Because you know what you and everybody else needs so much better than him?” Uncle George looked at me over his glasses and tapped his fingers on the cover of the notebook. “Anyway, she added a P.S. for you, too.”
I scratched at my cuticles.
“Haven’t the foggiest what it means.” He opened the cover again and read from the letter. “She wrote, ‘Tell Julie that the gum was a gift from Wisdom’. That’s Wisdom with a capital W, by the way. ‘She’s the oldest of us all, and the best friend you could ever hope to have, next to Himself’.”
I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.
“Kitty,” I whispered.
Uncle George shook his head. “Catherine. And I thought you said your name was Juliet.”
I shook my head. “It’s Julie.” I looked up at the initials painted on the tree. “I’m really Julie.”
CHAPTER 40
Mom met me at the station. We walked to the car without a word.
I didn’t need the voice to tell me I had to apologize.
All the way home I stared straight ahead into the gray, wet drizzle. We pulled into the driveway before I could force my mouth to form the words.
She didn’t respond at first, but sat there with her fingers wrapped around the wheel as the car idled. I figured she had way more to be sorry about than I did.
“It can’t go on like this, Juliet.”
A wet icicle dropped off the garage roof and shattered.
“I know.”
“You had me worried sick.”
“You did throw me out.”
She turned to me with that look. “You know I didn’t mean that.”
About a dozen snarky things popped into my head. But I didn’t say one of them.
“I never thought you’d hop a train out of town. Waste all your prize money.”
“It wasn’t a waste.”
She closed her eyes. “I was angry.”
“Me, too.”
A gust of wind shook the car and whistled past the side mirrors.
“I know this is hard.” She laid her forehead on the backs of her hands. “For everyone.”
It didn’t seem so hard for them. “That’s because it’s wrong.”
“Oh, Juliet. Everything’s so easy for you, isn’t it?”
Easy?
I looked at her then, and I really saw her, for the first time in a long time.
Maybe ever.
“Juliet, I hope you won’t ever have to go through something like this, but you never know how life’s going to turn out.”
She seemed smaller, kind of. Scared, instead of scary. Cracked, maybe, like china that’s been glued and re-glued too many times.
“Things happen that you never wanted or planned for. People change.”
I felt sorry for her. But not for any of the reasons she wanted me to.
“When you grow up, you’ll understand.”
Something clicked then, and the voice didn’t have to say a word to explain it. It wasn’t about growing up at all. Just the opposite. Mom needed me to stay a little kid, to believe everything she said, just because she
said it.
But I couldn’t anymore.
“You don’t get it, Mom.”
She crossed her arms. “What don’t I get?”
“You and Dad got married. You made a promise. Now you’re breaking it, and throwing away everything. Everything of Mark’s and mine, too.”
She took a deep breath, shook her head and looked at me with the same condescending expression I’d seen a hundred million zillion times.
“It’s the truth. You can say whatever you want. But don’t expect me to agree with you, or feel bad for you, or tell you I’m okay. Because I’m not. Mark’s not. Nothing is.”
“Everything’s going to be fine, Juliet.”
“How’s it going to be fine?”
She snorted and turned the car off. “I’m going in the house. It’s cold.”
“No kidding.”
“You think you know so much,” she said as she got out of the car.
I slid out and pulled my bags over my shoulder. “I know more than I did yesterday.”
“You don’t know as much as you think you do.”
As I closed it, the icy door bit at my bare fingers. And I wanted to smack her across the face with them. “I know the difference between right and wrong.”
She slammed her door and pounded her palms on the hood. “Just who do you think you are?”
“Someone who knows about you and Jack.”
Her breath sucked in with a grisly squeak, like the sound a mouse makes when the trap snaps on it. “Jack is just my client.”
“Right.” I crossed my arms and leaned on the hood. “I may not be an adult, but that doesn’t make me stupid.”
We stared at each other. I don’t know what she saw or thought when she looked at me. But it didn’t matter. I knew what happened to me. I knew what God gave me, and I knew him a little better. And he knew me, and he saw me, and if I never had anything but that, it would be enough.
More than enough.
“What are you going to do?” Mom whispered.
Mark told me to shut up about Jack, in case we needed it later.
Don’t touch it, Julie. Not now. Not later. Not at all.
Seriously, God?
It felt like such a waste, but I knew that voice.
I shook my head. “Nothing. But you should.”
She swallowed and looked away. It took her quite a few tries. Her mouth opened and closed, and she breathed in and out. But she finally whispered, “I’m sorry.”
We walked into the house together and I slipped the last piece of gum into her purse.
She unlocked the door and pushed it open for me. “I hope someday you’ll understand.”
No. I hope someday you will.
* * * * *
Screams poured out of the darkness behind Wilbur Dugan’s web-cloaked barn door.
“I think I changed my mind.”
Damon took my right hand in his and put his left arm around my waist. “It’s all just pretend.”
Kitty’s—Catherine’s—letter echoed in my head. Don’t let go of him. I gripped Damon’s hand tighter.
“I’m right here.”
“Don’t lose me.”
“I won’t.”
I took a deep breath, let it out, and took another. “Okay. I’m ready.”
“You want me in front or behind you?”
“Both?”
He laughed. “Come on.”
We stepped over the threshold and disappeared into the dark.
“Why do people even like haunted houses?” I whispered. My heart pounded in my throat and my knees felt like two pieces of macaroni. Why do I kind of like this?
“It’s controlled terror. Safe danger.”
“Then why am I actually scared?”
He squeezed my hand. “Your mind knows you’re okay. That nothing’s really going to hurt you. But all your senses tell you something gruesome is about to happen.”
A strobe light flickered as we walked down a hallway made with ceiling-high stacks of hay bales. We looked like characters in a jerky, black-and-white silent film.
“And what is there to like about being scared?”
“The adrenaline rush you get.” He smiled. “Riding that dragon.”
A shrill shriek pierced the air and a hand thrust out between two bales of hay to grab at me. I screamed and cringed toward Damon.
He moved me to the other side of him, away from the hay wall, and laughed. “And that’s why guys like haunted houses. They make our girlfriends jump into our arms.”
His girlfriend. Whenever he called me that my heart did that trippy, thrumming thing.
I can feel again.
We passed under a thick, beaded curtain that opened into a room covered, floor to ceiling, with black-and-white spirals and geometric shapes. Scattered strobe lights pulsed and everything seemed to move around us. Sheet-clad ghosts circled the perimeter of the room, and intensified the dizzying sensation.
“The whole room is shaking!” I tripped over nothing as I moved toward the way out.
The walls shifted right and left in front of me. People screamed, laughed and stumbled all around us. A girl stepped on my foot as she fell sideways.
“This messes with your head,” Damon said. “Your equilibrium. Close your eyes.”
I did, and I held onto his arm. After a few seconds the spinning stopped and my feet felt solid against the floor again. “How do we get out if we can’t see?”
“Pick one spot on the wall and focus on that. Don’t look anywhere else.”
When my eyes blinked open the lights and geometric patterns assaulted them again, but I did what Damon said and looked at one shape, the center of a triangle.
“Have you got it?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.” My focus glued to the triangle, the rest of the shapes and lights swirled around me, but couldn’t unbalance me.
“Now use your peripheral vision to find the door. I’ve got it, if you can’t find it.”
“No. I see it, too.”
“Then let’s go. Keep looking at your spot. It won’t move, and the door won’t move, but you can move between them.”
This is so cool. “How do you know how to do this?”
“It’s common sense.”
“Come on. Where’d you learn this?”
“I’m serious. It’s just logic. You’re getting sensory overload, too much input in the environment. So you ignore all of it but one thing.”
We moved back into a dark hall, then into another dimly lit room. Mad scientists stood behind tables covered with the grossest stuff ever.
“Reach into the cauldron!” said a crackly-voiced, zombie-looking thing in a white lab coat.
Damon did it and pulled up a handful of what I hoped was just strings of very fat spaghetti. “Cool!”
“Intestinal Fortitude!” the zombie pointed to the sign in front of the bowl. “And you, my dear, would you help me find a lost marble?”
The card in front of a sheet cake pan full of slimy-looking green balls read, “The Eyes Have It.”
“No way.”
“Come on,” Damon said as he wiped his hand on his jeans. “it’s just grapes.”
I poked at the surface layer with one finger.
“They’re just grapes,” the zombie said.
I let go of Damon’s other hand and put both palms on top of the balls.
“Gross. They’re peeled,” I said.
Damon laughed.
With curled fingers I dug into the cold, slimy pile. “I’m looking for a marble?”
“Just a marble.” It smiled at me with crooked, black and yellow teeth.
My finger grazed something hard and cold, but it slid away. I felt for it along the bottom with both hands until I got it between my thumb and first finger. I pulled it out.
“Got it!”
I held it up and shrieked.
“You found my eyeball!” The zombie pointed to his empty eye socket.
The glass eye dropped out of my fingers
and rolled away just as the lights went out.
* * * * *
The zombie cursed in a normal person’s voice and said, “Oh, come on. Not again.”
One of the zombies on the other side of the room cried, “Brains! Brains!” and the people in front of his table screeched and clambered over to our side.
“Knock it off, Joe,” another zombie said. “Go tell Dugan the breaker popped again.”
Panic made chaos of the mad scientist’s room. Someone pushed between Damon and me. I reached for him, and I heard him call my name, but I couldn’t get to him in the dark. The table tipped over and the gross stuff crashed down. The zombie cursed again.
In an effort to get away from the slimy things all over the floor I tried to move toward the door, but I couldn’t remember exactly where it was, or exactly where I was.
“Damon?” I called, but his name got lost amid all the screams.
I felt a hand on my arm, and it led me out of the room. My shoulder knocked against the door frame. When we got into the hall I wrapped my arm through his elbow, then realized it wasn’t Damon’s and let go.
When the flashing lights and deafening, creepy music came back on I found myself in a hallway. Three openings lined the corridor, and I didn’t know which one to choose. “Over here!” someone called, and everyone headed for the last one.
“Juliet!” I heard my name from inside the first doorway.
I went in, but found only more darkness. “Damon?” I called, but got silence back. When I turned to go back out to the hallway, the door closed right in front of me.
Then it locked.
“Juliet…” the deep, creepy voice came from every direction, out of every inch of the darkness all around me.
“Damon?” I whispered.
Something brushed against me and chuckled low in its throat as a piece of fabric—or feathers—slid over me. It laughed, and long fingers slid up my arms as I screamed.
It’s fake. It’s just pretend.
“Juliet,” it screeched. Shivers rattled my spine.
How does it know my name?
“Damon, where are you?” I cried.
The thing cackled as it circled me.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
It’s not real.
It felt real, though.
Scratchy fingertips slid under my hair and I screamed again.
“Julie?” I thought I heard Damon’s faint voice through the music.
A strobe light flashed and I saw the monster. Big, black, and draped in swathes of shredded robe and black feathers, long claws reached over its head, toward me.
I screamed and threw myself backwards. My back hit the wall as the lights went out again and the monster charged toward me.