“This can’t be real,” Lea said aloud. She turned and ran to the ladder.
She was awakened the next morning by the wind rattling her twin bedroom windows. The noise startled her awake. She sat straight up in bed. The room felt cold. The morning sky outside the windows was gray and threatening.
Her covers were heaped at the foot of her bed, and Lea realized she must have kicked them off in the night.
While I was having that dream, she thought.
It was a dream—wasn’t it?
Lea had no memory of leaving the attic after seeing the ghost. She didn’t remember turning off the attic light, or climbing back down the metal ladder, replacing the trapdoor, returning to her room, or getting into bed.
It had to have been a dream, she told herself. A very vivid and frightening nightmare.
So real. So many details.
But a dream nevertheless.
At breakfast she decided not to trouble her parents with it. Her dad had already been to the lumber yard, which opened early on Sunday mornings for people like him, and he and her mother were heatedly discussing their project for the day—the renovation of the screened-in porch on the side of the house.
They’re so wrapped up in their plans, they don’t even know I’m here, Lea thought. She felt amused by their childlike enthusiasm, but also a little hurt, a little left out.
As Lea was finishing her pancakes, sopping up the last drop of dark syrup from her plate, the phone rang. It was Deena, asking if Lea’d like to go to the indoor tennis club Deena belonged to and hit a few balls.
Lea dressed quickly, pleased by the invitation. Watching the sky grow more threatening outside her bedroom windows, she pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt. Then she searched her dresser drawers for a more appropriate tennis outfit to change into at the club.
It’ll feel good to get some exercise, she thought. And I’ll be able to tell Deena about the weird dream I had last night.
Deena picked Lea up in her parents’ station wagon. Driving through the gray streets, a light, wet snow beginning to fall, she talked about Luke, her new boyfriend, telling Lea about the concert he took her to the night before, not leaving out a single detail, as far as Lea could tell.
It was warm and bright inside the domed tennis club, and most of the courts were taken even though it was Sunday morning. As they began to volley, Lea could tell right away that Deena was the better player.
They volleyed for a while, then played a game. “I really need a new racket,” Lea apologized after missing two of Deena’s serves in a row.
It’s funny how people stare at their rackets after missing a ball or messing up, Lea thought. As if the racket were at fault and not the arm that swung it.
Deena eased up on her serve, and the two girls continued their game. “You have a pretty good backhand,” Deena said as they changed into their street clothes afterward.
“You went easy on me,” Lea said, a little embarrassed.
“A little bit,” Deena admitted. “But only a little bit.”
Both girls laughed.
Outside, the snow had stopped, but the sky remained gray and threatening and the sidewalks were wet.
As they walked to Deena’s car, Lea began to tell her about the dream, about pulling the boards off the door, about the old-fashioned bedroom, and the girl behind the door.
As she talked, her breath formed puffs of white vapor in front of her. Like ghosts, she thought. Ghosts floating up and vanishing.
“And then I woke up and remembered every detail of the dream,” Lea said, fastening her seat belt as Deena pulled away from the curb. “I could even remember the smell of the little bedroom. It had a wood smell, sort of piney, but stale smelling, old.”
“Weird,” Deena said, her eyes straight ahead on the road.
“It was very frightening,” Lea told her. “Partly because it all seemed so real. And partly because the girl was so—so needy, so desperate for me to stay.”
Deena drove in silence for a while, slowing to turn onto Lea’s street, Fear Street. “I’ve never moved,” she said finally, glancing at Lea, then back to the street. “I’ve lived in the same house here in Shadyside my entire life. So I don’t really know what it must be like. You know. To do what you just did. Move to a new town, a new house, a whole new world. It must be pretty scary.” She paused thoughtfully, and then added, “Especially living on Fear Street.”
“Yeah, it is, I guess,” Lea admitted. “But I’ve moved before.”
“When you moved before, did you have bad dreams then too?” Deena asked thoughtfully.
“No. Well, yeah. I don’t know. I really don’t remember,” Lea said, watching the old houses on Fear Street slip by, gray and ominous looking under the darkening sky.
“After you’ve adjusted,” Deena continued. “I mean, after you’ve gotten used to the new house and everything, the nightmares are bound to stop, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Lea said doubtfully.
“You just have so many anxieties, and they have to come out somehow,” Deena said, pulling into Lea’s drive.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Lea said, gripping her tennis racket tightly in her lap. “Well, thanks for the consultation, Doctor.”
Deena laughed. “You can write me a check later.”
Lea reached for the door handle, but Deena grabbed her arm. The smile had faded from her face. “You know, I should tell you something,” she said seriously, keeping her hand on Lea’s jacket sleeve.
“What?” Lea let go of the door handle.
“Well—I don’t want to upset you even more or anything …” Deena said, staring out the windshield.
“Deena—what?” Lea asked impatiently.
“Well, you’ve made a real enemy of Marci Hendryx.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Lea snapped bitterly. She grabbed the door handle again.
“No. Listen,” Deena said with some urgency. “Marci is spreading all these stupid stories about you all over school. She’s saying that you’re throwing yourself at Don, and that he thinks you’re just pathetic. And she told some kids that you did the same thing at your old school.”
Lea sighed wearily. “She’s so mean.”
“Well, just stay away from her. And stay away from Don too. Marci will do anything to hold on to Don. You really don’t want her as an enemy. I wouldn’t tell you all this, but—”
“No. I’m glad you did,” Lea replied. She squeezed Deena’s hand and then opened the car door. “Really. Thanks,” she said, sliding out of the car.
“Talk to you later,” Deena called out to her.
Lea watched her back down the drive, then lined her eyes to the sky, dark as evening, the air heavy with the promise of more snow.
The old house loomed over her like a shadowy giant. Lea’s eyes moved up the weathered shingles to her twin bedroom windows. Was someone staring down at her from the window on the left?
No.
It was just the reflection of a tree.
Get a grip on yourself, Lea, she thought, shivering.
The house seemed to laugh at her foolishness, a high-pitched whine of a laugh. It took Lea a few seconds to realize that the sound came from her father’s power saw.
She could see him working on the porch wall. She called to him, but the power saw started its whining again, drowning out her voice.
Frowning, she gave up and hurried into the house.
She spent the afternoon helping her father. He usually insisted on doing everything himself. But that day he actually let her measure and mark some boards. And while he took a break to have a cup of tea, he reluctantly agreed to allow her to hammer in some nails. He stood right over her shoulder, watching every swing of the hammer intently, until she finally had to stop and playfully shove him away.
It was the first fun Lea had had in their new house. But it ended after only a few hours, when her mother returned from shopping with six Venetian b
linds that she insisted be put up in the downstairs bedrooms immediately.
That evening her parents were relaxing from their day-long home improvement efforts, watching TV in the den, a PBS nature documentary about gorillas. “They show the same gorilla show every week,” Lea complained.
“These are different gorillas,” her father said, straight-faced.
Lea went up to her room to take another stab at the chapter in the government text she should have read days before. The heat had come on. The radiator against the wall made a pleasant, steamy sound.
It’s so warm and toasty in here, I hope I don’t fall asleep, Lea thought, adjusting her desk lamp over the textbook.
She read for a few minutes, then stretched, the heat of the room making her feel drowsy as she had predicted.
And then she heard the soft thud over her head.
She slammed the textbook shut.
I’m fully awake now, she thought.
Or am I?
For most of the day she had been able to force all thoughts of the attic out of her mind. But, standing up, pushing her desk chair back, Lea realized she had to return to the attic.
She had to know the truth. She had to know if it had all been a vivid, terrifying nightmare or not.
Out in the hall she could hear the low murmur of the TV from downstairs. It was cooler out here. She felt wide-awake now.
Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the sides of the ladder and began to climb.
The door will be locked and boarded up, just as it had been for a hundred years, she told herself. Just as it was when I dragged Deena up here last Saturday night.
Deena really must think I’m crazy.
Maybe I am….
The door slid away easily. Lea grabbed the frame and hoisted herself up into the attic.
To her surprise, the light was on, casting its pale yellow light across the low, narrow space. It took Lea a moment to catch her balance. Then, ducking her head under the low ceiling, she turned toward the hidden room.
“Oh!”
The cry escaped her lips as she saw the two-by-fours in a pile on the attic floor.
Just as she had left them in the dream.
Which wasn’t a dream.
She stepped forward, leaned down, and touched one of the boards, just to make sure it was real, it was solid.
Yes.
Then, without thinking about it, she stepped up to the door and, with a trembling hand, turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.
The room was just as she had remembered it.
Lea gripped the doorknob tightly. She suddenly felt light-headed, unsteady. Her knees started to tremble, as if they couldn’t support her weight.
“Don’t be afraid,” the girl said. “I won’t hurt you. Really, I won’t.” She stood in front of the dresser at the back of the room, her hands at her sides, gently smoothing her long black skirt.
Lea stared wide-eyed at her, as if willing her to disappear.
The girl shimmered and seemed to fade for a second, flickered as the candlelight flickered.
I can see right through her, Lea thought, fascinated and horrified at the same time.
“My name is Catherine,” the girl said, lowering her eyes shyly.
Lea exhaled noisily. She suddenly realized that she had forgotten to breathe. Catherine watched her expectantly, waiting for her to reply.
But Lea was too frightened to tell Catherine her name, too overwhelmed to stand there and have a polite conversation.
She wanted Catherine to be a dream.
She wanted the room to be locked again, for the boards to be back in place. She wanted to be downstairs, safe in her room.
“Please—” Catherine started in her breathy, little-girl voice.
“Are you a ghost?” Lea blurted out, still standing in the frame of the doorway, her hand on the doorknob.
“Yes,” Catherine replied without hesitating. Then she added with some sadness, “It took me so long to find it out. So many years to accept it. But, yes, I accept it now. I really have no choice, do I?” She raised her small white hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“And now you’re going to haunt me?” Lea demanded.
In the shadowy light it was hard to tell if Catherine’s expression was one of confusion or hurt. Her entire form darkened until she was just an outline, a billowing puff of smoke. Then, slowly, her face and body filled in again. She studied Lea for a while, then said, “I’m sorry. I do not understand.”
“How did you get here? What are you doing here?” Lea asked.
“I told you. This is my house.”
“But it isn’t,” Lea told her impatiently. “It’s not your house. It’s my house.”
“Please come in and sit down,” Catherine insisted, motioning to the edge of the canopy bed. “I won’t harm you. I promise. I have been so lonely for so many years. I just want to talk.”
Lea reluctantly let go of the doorknob and took a few steps into the room, making sure to leave the door fully open.
If she makes any move at all, I’ll be out of here in a flash, she told herself. But she had to admit that Catherine seemed pretty harmless. And truly sad and lonely.
She looks like a sad little girl playing dress-up in those big, old-fashioned clothes, Lea thought.
“How long have you been a ghost?” Lea asked, standing in the center of the room, her arms crossed, as if for protection.
“I don’t really know,” Catherine replied, turning to stare down at the candle on the dresser. “I’ve lost all track of time. I’ve had no contact with the outside world. For a long time I just seemed to float. I wasn’t in this room, and I wasn’t anywhere. I was just floating.”
As she talked her hair, a waterfall of ringlets, brightened to a golden glow, framing her perfect features in light. Her expression rigid with sadness, Catherine floated to a stiff-backed, wooden chair beside the canopy bed and sat down.
“At first I thought it was all a dream, a long, strange dream,” Catherine continued. “But in time I came to realize the truth. That I was dead. That I had died in my own house. That I was now a spirit, a ghost Merely a ghost.”
She raised her pale, white hands and covered her face. Lea couldn’t tell if she was crying or not, but her whole body trembled, faded into a smoky gray vapor, disappeared for a brief second. When she reappeared a few seconds later, Catherine’s face was calm, composed.
“You died in this house?” Lea asked. The girl seemed so small, so sad, so helpless that Lea found herself losing some of her fear. She sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed, sinking into the soft pink quilt, and leaned toward Catherine to listen to her story.
“I was murdered in this house.”
Catherine’s words came out in her soft voice, flat and without emotion. Her chin trembled slightly, the only sign of the feelings behind the words.
“Murdered?” Lea suddenly felt chilled, despite the warmth of the attic room. The fragrant aroma of burning candle wax became too sweet, and she felt as if it would choke her.
“They said I was evil,” Catherine whispered, as if revealing a long-held secret. “All my life from the time I was born. I was their evil secret.”
“But why?” Lea asked. “What did you do?”
“What did I do?” Catherine laughed, a high-pitched child’s laugh. The laugh turned scornful, then died abruptly, and her face darkened. “I was born. That’s what I did. I was born, and they weren’t yet married.”
“I see,” Lea said quietly.
“And so I became their evil secret. They locked me up, in this very room. They kept me prisoner here my entire life. They were afraid that someone would find out about me, that their precious reputations would be ruined.”
Catherine faded until nothing remained but the chalky, white outline of her face, floating over the white, high-collared blouse. When she returned to view, her eyes burned into Lea’s.
“Can you imagine the horror of it?” she asked. “My entire life s
pent in this tiny room, between these four walls, under this low ceiling. This room was my prison. My cage. And all because of something I had no control over—my birth.
“They were the evil ones. Not me,” she continued, more loudly, her voice filling with vehemence. “They were the evil ones, so evil they would bring up a child as a caged animal.”
She stopped for a moment and sighed, her sad eyes liquid, wet in the dark light, her hands clasped in her lap, hidden in the folds of the black skirt.
“I tried to escape,” she continued after a moment. “I packed up my few belongings. I had been working on the door lock for months. I had it all planned. I didn’t know what was on the other side of the door. I had never seen the outside world. But I could hear voices outside. The sounds of hoofbeats, of carriage wheels. I heard my parents and their friends downstairs. I knew there was more to the world than my tiny room. I knew I had to escape.”
“And did you?” Lea asked, leaning forward, supporting her chin in her hands, drawn into the tragic story.
“My parents caught me as I was about to leave the house. I fought them. They killed me.” Her voice became flat again, flat and emotionless. The glow left her eyes. Her entire form darkened. “They killed me and brought me back up to this room, my prison, my cage. And then the cage became my tomb.”
Lea looked away, turned her eyes to the flickering candles on the dresser top. She couldn’t bear to see the grief, the look of betrayal on Catherine’s face.
Neither girl said anything for a while. Then Catherine broke the silence. “I came to accept it in time,” she said softly. “I came to accept the fact that I was no longer alive, no longer flesh and blood. That I was floating, floating through the years, a spirit reflection of myself. Look. I can make myself fade and disappear.”
Catherine darkened to smoke, and then the smoke fell away.
“And I can make myself appear and glow more brightly than any living creature.” The voice came out of air, but as she spoke, Catherine reappeared, the image brighter and brighter until her golden hair seemed as fiery as the sun, and Lea had to shield her eyes.