“So why did she scream?” Tacey asks Jax, dipping her paintbrush into the open can on the ground between them.
“Nobody knows. It was in the middle of the night.”
“Did you hear it?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you scared?” she asks, trying not to drip the bright blue paint on her sandals or red-painted toenails as she brushes the rough wooden wall of the garden shed.
“Nope. I thought it was a bobcat, so I went back to sleep.”
“She sounded like a cat?”
“Bobcats sound like a girl screaming in the night. Don’t you have them in California?”
“Not in the last place we lived. We had real girls screaming in the night.”
“For real?”
“It was a rough neighborhood. Sometimes people screamed and yelled in the street, sometimes you’d hear tires screeching, and there were a lot of sirens.”
“Then why are you so homesick?”
“Because it was home,” she says simply.
It’s been two weeks since Tacey and her dad arrived in Cranberry Cove, Maine. They’re staying with Jax and his parents, her uncle Doug and aunt Milly, who was Mom’s sister.
They look alike, but Aunt Milly wears skirts and blouses and hosiery, and her gingery hair is always pulled back in a tight bun. Mom’s hair was long and loose, and she lived in blue jeans, with bare feet.
Tacey never even met her aunt until she came to California for Mom’s funeral. That’s when she talked Dad into moving East.
He didn’t really want to, but Aunt Milly has a bossy way of taking charge. Plus, Dad had lost his job after taking so much time off to care for Mom, and the landlord was about to kick them out for not paying rent. So here they are, staying in a big old shabby house next door to the even bigger, shabbier, older house where Felicia lives with her grandmother.
This is the first time Tacey has seen Felicia. Spotting her, Tacey told Jax they should go over and say hello, thinking it would be nice to have a friend around here other than her cousin.
“So she screamed in the night, and then she just stopped talking?” she asks Jax. “Did she hurt her vocal cords or something?”
“Nope.” Jax dunks his brush into the paint and slaps it on the wall, spattering the grass and his sneakers. He doesn’t seem to notice. “Her grandmother took her to a bunch of doctors, and the doctors said there’s nothing wrong with her throat. They said she’ll snap out of it sooner or later.”
“How do you know all this if she can’t talk?”
“Her grandmother told my mom. She thought Felicia had laryngitis, and she gave her tea with honey and lemon. But Felicia wouldn’t drink it, and she wouldn’t write anything down to answer questions. She just stares off into space.” Jax rubs a small blue blob on his sneaker. It smears into a big blue blob.
“Why don’t we go over and see if she’ll tell us what happened?”
“Because we’re painting.”
Aunt Milly decided the old shed on the back of the property urgently needed painting this morning, after Tacey and Jax baked brownies. It turned out they’d used some kind of fancy imported French dark chocolate she was saving for a special occasion, and they kind of made a mess, and the brownies burned and set off all the smoke alarms. The last straw, Aunt Milly said. She was still upset they hadn’t asked her permission to hang out at the fire pit in the park last night with a couple of high school kids.
“I was worried sick!” she shouted. “And don’t you know fires are against the law until the drought passes?”
“We didn’t start the fire,” Tacey said reasonably. “We just toasted marshmallows.”
Aunt Milly, who considers fruit a dessert, made a face.
This morning, after the brownie incident, she found some old paint in the garage and told them to paint the shed.
“That will keep you guys busy while I’m working,” she said. She’s a sales rep and spends most days on the phone in her home office.
Tacey grumbled to Dad that she can keep plenty busy on her own, reading books and playing video games with Jax. Dad reminded her that they’re guests here until he can find a job.
He doesn’t seem to be trying very hard. He still mopes around missing Mom, sometimes staring off into space like Felicia. Only, he can talk. He just doesn’t feel like it. She misses the old Dad, who smiled and joked around, and she misses her kindhearted mother. She misses everything, even their dumpy apartment.
“Anyway,” Jax says, “this isn’t the first time it’s happened.”
“What do you mean? The first time what’s happened?”
“A few months ago this kid down the street, Leo Katz, screamed really loud in the middle of the night and lost his voice too.”
Tacey stops moving the paintbrush over the shed wall. “What happened to him?”
“I heard he’s in a hospital in Boston.”
“Is something wrong with his throat?”
“No, something’s wrong with his brain.” Jax waves at a mosquito buzzing around his sweaty face. “It’s a psychiatric hospital. Some people think Felicia is trying to copy him.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Maybe she wants attention. She’s still upset that her mom took off and left her with her grandmother.”
“For good?”
“I guess.”
“It’s hard to lose your mom.”
He nods as if he knows, and Tacey finds herself resenting the fact that he doesn’t. Sometimes she feels as if she’s the sole member of a lonely little club with mandatory membership.
“What about Felicia’s dad?” she asks Jax, who’s still trying to shoo away the mosquito.
“She doesn’t have one.”
“Wow. Poor Felicia.”
“Yeah. My mom says that when stuff happens to kids, they act out with bad behavior.”
She narrows her eyes. “What stuff?”
“You know—bad stuff. Got it!” Jax smashes the mosquito against his glasses, leaving a rather patriotic if gory smudge of red mosquito blood and blue paint.
“You need to go wash that off.”
“Yeah. Be right back.” He tosses his paintbrush onto the ground and heads for the house.
She looks next door again. The motherless and fatherless girl is still sitting, still staring, still alone.
After a moment’s thought Tacey balances her brush on a tree stump with the bristles hanging off the edge and walks toward the straggly hedgerow.
Up close, Tacey can see that Felicia’s hands are gripping the swing’s rope handles so tightly her knuckles are white. She doesn’t glance in Tacey’s direction as she stops beside the swing.
She’s still fixated on the hillside.
Tacey turns in that direction. From the yard next door, she could see only trees. But from here, through the branches, she can see something about halfway up the incline. A house?
“What’s up there?” she asks Felicia.
No reply. She wasn’t really expecting one.
“I’m Tacey, by the way. I’m staying next door for the summer. Maybe longer.”
Still nothing.
“My cousin Jax said your mom left. Mine did too.”
It isn’t the truth, exactly. Her own mother couldn’t help leaving. But when she glances at Felicia, she swears she sees something flicker in her green eyes.
“I had to leave my home and my school and all my friends to come here to live with our relatives. I miss my mom,” she says, “and the way things used to be. Know what I mean?”
One of Felicia’s hands has let go of the rope swing. It’s still fisted, but not quite so tightly.
“Sometimes I get so mad that my mom is gone that I want to scream. And sometimes at night I have a hard time falling asleep, and when I do, I dream that she’s still here. But then I wake up, and she’s not. Do you ever have that dream?”
No response.
“How about nightmares? Is that why you screamed that night? Were you having a
nightmare? Or . . . did something happen to you?”
The green eyes close in a slow, deliberate blink.
Next door, the screen door creaks open and bangs shut.
“What happened to you?” Tacey asks gently.
“Tacey?” Jax’s voice calls from the other side of the hedge.
The girl flinches.
“Coming!” Tacey calls back to Jax.
She waits a little longer, hoping Felicia might respond.
“Tacey! Where are you?”
She sighs. As she turns to walk away, she notices that Felicia’s hand is open, slack against her knee. Her palm is raw and bloody from her fingernails digging into her flesh, and the nails . . .
Her nails are sallow, curved, and pointy, sharpened into claws.
Tacey finds Jax by the shed, picking specks of dirt and strands of grass out of his paintbrush.
“Hey, where were you?” There’s still a faint blue smudge on his glasses.
She doesn’t mean to lie, but when she opens her mouth, one drops out. “In the house.”
“No, you weren’t. I was in the house.”
“It’s a big house,” she says with a shrug. Her hand shakes as she picks up her paintbrush again.
Jax watches her as she dips it into the paint and spreads the paint over the wall.
Then he dips his own brush and gets back to work.
After a few silent minutes Tacey clears her throat. “Hey, Jax?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s up there?”
“Up where?”
“In the woods. On the hill. That house.” She points at the trees beyond Felicia’s house.
He squints. “How can you see it?”
“My eyes are a lot better than yours. I told you, I don’t even need my glasses anymore.”
“Oh. Well, it’s the witch’s house.”
“The witch’s house?”
“She’s probably not a real witch. I mean, she’s not. She’s just an old lady. But everyone calls her ‘the witch’ because she looks and acts like one.”
“You mean . . . does she ride around on a broomstick and wear a pointy hat and cast spells?”
“I’ve never seen her. I’ve just heard about her.”
“From who?”
He shrugs. “Everyone in town.”
“Let’s go check out her house.”
“No way!”
“You said she’s just an old lady.”
“She is. But I, um . . . I don’t like to hike in the woods. There’s poison ivy and bugs and, uh, you know. Wild animals.”
“I think you’re scared.”
“I think you’re crazy.”
They stare at each other for a long time.
“Anyway,” he says, “we have to finish painting.”
Tacey sighs.
She bends to dip her brush again, glancing into the yard next door as she straightens.
Felicia is gone.
She must have walked away when they weren’t looking, but . . .
Tacey can’t help wondering if she simply vanished.
After a late dinner and watermelon for dessert—her aunt’s idea of a special treat—Tacey collapses into bed in her small third-floor guest room.
She’s so exhausted that she’s positive she’ll go right to sleep for a change. Instead, she finds herself wide-awake.
The night is warm and humid. The windows are open. Crickets’ steady chatter floats in through the screens, along with the occasional barking dog and the hum of a fishing boat in the cove a few blocks away. Every so often, a slight breeze moves the tree branches to create weird shadows across the slanted ceiling. They look like arms reaching through the windows, reaching for her.
Remembering Felicia’s peculiar claw-fingernails, she tries to convince herself that it was just . . . just . . . a new style of manicure or something. Maybe the girls here in Maine polish their nails a sickly yellow shade and file them into points, or. . . .
Something.
She gets out of bed and looks out the window that overlooks the backyard and, beyond, the wooded hillside where Jax said the witch lives.
From here, she sees only trees.
Wondering about the view from Felicia’s house next door, she glances over.
In the windowed cupola above the mansard roof, she sees the silhouette of a girl motionlessly watching the woods.
Shuddering, Tacey pulls down the shades and climbs back into bed.
Just go to sleep. You’ll forget all about this in the morning.
But the more she thinks about the woods, and the witch, the more she wonders about Felicia. Tomorrow, she’ll convince Jax to go up the hillside with her. If he refuses, she’ll go alone. What could happen in broad daylight? She’ll bring her cell phone with her, just in case—
A scream, loud and shrill, shatters the night.
Heart pounding, Tacey jumps out of bed, throws open the door, and races down the narrow hall to her father’s room. His bed is empty.
She flies down the stairs to the second floor, rounds the corner—and crashes into a filmy figure in a long white dress with ghastly pale skin and flowing hair.
It’s her turn to scream, until she realizes that it’s not her mother’s ghost. It’s just Aunt Milly in her nightgown, with a layer of cold cream on her face.
“Shhh! Tacey, you’ll wake up Jax. And probably the whole neighborhood! What’s wrong?”
She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out.
For a terrible, terrifying moment she thinks that she too has lost her voice in the wake of a scream.
Then she manages to ask, “Where’s my father? He isn’t in his bed.”
“He’s downstairs talking to Uncle Doug. He’ll be up soon. Go back to—”
“I heard a scream.”
“That was just a bobcat in the woods.”
“It sounded like a person.”
Aunt Milly nods. “Yes, they do, don’t they?”
“How do you know it wasn’t?”
“Wasn’t what?”
“A person.”
She smiles. “We hear them all the time around here. You’ll get used to it, I promise.”
She doesn’t want to get used to it. She wants to go back home. Hot tears sting her eyes.
“Oh, sweetie.” Aunt Millie puts an arm around her and pulls her close. Her hair, finally out of its bun, tickles Tacey’s bare arms. She smells like spearmint toothpaste and lotion. Mom used to smell just like that at night. For a moment, Tacey closes her eyes and pretends that she is Mom, hugging her.
Then Aunt Millie’s voice says, “You need to go back up to bed. I need you and Jax to wash my minivan early tomorrow morning before I leave for my sales meeting.”
“But I need to talk to my dad.”
Aunt Milly hesitates. “He’s having a hard night, Tacey. He’s missing your mom. Let’s let him be, okay? Come on, I’ll come back up and sit with you if you’re frightened.”
“I’m not frightened. I just thought someone was screaming. I mean, I’m not a baby. I don’t need someone to tuck me in.”
But even as she says it, her voice catches. Mom still used to tuck her in sometimes, before she got sick. After she did, Tacey would tuck her in, making sure the blankets were snug around her mother’s frail body. She’d sit on the bed and watch her sleep, listening to her breathe.
Wordlessly, Aunt Milly steers her back to the stairway, up to the third floor, and back to bed.
Her aunt kisses her forehead, then settles in the wooden rocking chair across the room, watching, listening.
Tacey forces herself to breathe slowly, through her nose, and makes a little snoring sound as if she’s dozing off. If she pretends she’s fallen asleep, her aunt will leave. Then she’ll sneak downstairs, find her father, and tell him that they have to go home. Home to California, where no one makes her paint sheds or wash minivans, and there are no bobcats screaming in the night, no silent, staring girls next door or witches in the woods.
&nb
sp; The rocking chair rocks and creaks, back and forth, back and forth. . . .
Tacey breathes in and out, in and out. . . .
Tacey opens her eyes.
Aunt Milly is gone. The room is dark and still. She fell asleep after all.
She gets out of bed and walks over to the window. Lifting the shade, she looks at the cupola next door. No sign of the person she saw standing there earlier.
Unless she imagined it or maybe dreamed it? The whole thing, including the scream?
Maybe, she realizes, the whole experience was a bad dream—yesterday spent in the hot sun painting, Jax’s strange account of neighborhood kids who scream and then go inexplicably mute, the witch’s house. . . .
But this is exactly how she felt when Mom was sick. Every morning she’d wake thinking none of it was real. Then she’d see the hospital bed in the living room, and Mom’s wan face, and another dread-filled day would begin.
Beyond the window, the eastern sky is fringed with a glow of sherbet-colored sunrise.
Aunt Milly’s going to keep me and Jax busy again today. We probably won’t get a chance to investigate the house in the woods until later tonight.
Tacey doesn’t want to wait. And she doesn’t want to go at night—especially alone. Something tells her Jax isn’t going to accompany her. He might even tell on her.
She dresses swiftly, putting on long pants, sneakers, and a long-sleeved T-shirt to protect herself from poison ivy and yes, bugs. What about wild animals?
She grabs her cell phone from the nightstand and practices dialing 911 before tucking it into her pocket. She tries not to wonder how quickly she’d be able to dial if she were being mauled by a bobcat or a bear.
Slipping out into the hall, she sees that her father’s bedroom door is closed. She turns the knob slowly so that it won’t click, and pushes the door open a crack. Her father is sound asleep, curled on his side, hugging his pillow as if it were a person.
He’s missing your mom, Aunt Milly had said.
Tacey closes the door quietly and tries to swallow an aching lump. If she had to speak now, she wouldn’t be able to, and it has nothing to do with a scream.