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The Accident Season Page 7
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Page 7
“It’ll be great,” says Martin. “We’ll sit around and talk about philosophy lectures—”
“It’s easy to do,” Joe cuts in. “Just make shit up and sound pretentious.”
“And drink a few beers, play some songs. You guys in?”
“Sounds great,” Sam says. He turns to us. “Melanie’s staying late at the studio, right? We can get a lift home with her.”
I give Sam a look that tries to convey the sense of Remember the plan? but I can’t fault him for wanting to go hang out with the popular guys for the evening.
“Bea and I have . . . some stuff to do,” I say vaguely. Bea nods and Carl looks slightly disappointed. “Definitely next time, though.”
“More spells to cast?” says Martin, who is in our French class. He waves his arms as if brandishing a magic wand, but his smile is playful.
“That’s right,” says Bea with a wicked grin. “Lots of dancing naked around bonfires and sacrificing virgins. Would you like to volunteer?”
Martin’s expression flickers. “Next time, maybe,” he says, only slightly frostily. I give Bea a kick. She spreads her hands to me as if to say What?
Alice tut-tuts. “Bea, play nice with the other children,” she says, and Martin and Joe laugh. Bea winks at Alice with a shake of her curls.
“Okay,” Alice says, looking at her phone. “I’m meeting Nick in the city in an hour anyway, so I’ll get the bus with you.”
“See you two later.” Sam gives me and Bea a one-armed hug good-bye and follows Alice and her friends to the bus stop.
I stare after them until Bea pulls me up. I sigh. “We had better find what we’re looking for,” I say. “And it had better be worth missing that.”
Bea and I sneak back into the main building. Bea sticks her head up to see through the mottled glass window in the top of the door to one of the classrooms that is used for supervised study. She makes a little whistling noise and quickly ducks her head back down. We giggle and run down the corridor to hide around the corner. A few minutes later, Toby Healy comes out of the classroom.
As well as being quite possibly the prettiest boy in school, Toby is also the son of the secretary. Alice has somehow managed to persuade him to steal his mother’s keys to the office for us. I don’t know how she did it; Toby is hardly the rule-breaking type.
When he hurries toward us, I get a butterfly-fluttery sense of nervousness and excitement that is either because we’re about to break into the secretary’s office, or because Toby is one of those guys who looks more like a character in a film than a real boy. And a little voice in the back of my mind wonders if maybe, just maybe, he might be helping us because he’s slightly interested in me. I’ve certainly noticed him smiling and saying hi to me in the halls lately, although maybe that’s just because I’m Alice’s sister.
Toby looks back over his shoulder and turns the corner to join us. “Right,” he says. “Mrs. Delaney thinks I’ve gone to the bathroom, so I better be quick.” He fishes a set of keys out of his jacket’s inside pocket. He holds them out but stops before Bea can grab them. “What do you want these for, anyway?”
“Never you mind,” says Bea.
Toby gives her a look. “I could get into a shitload of trouble over this—you know that, right?”
Bea rolls her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic,” she says, which I think is kind of funny coming from Bea. Toby mutters something that sounds a lot like witch.
“We’re just looking for someone’s phone number, that’s all,” I cut in quickly.
“Does it have anything to do with the masquerade ball? I’m really looking forward to Friday.”
I feel a little flustered all of a sudden. I knew Alice had invited her friends, but I didn’t know that Toby Healy was actually going to come.
“Yes,” says Bea emphatically. “It’s very important.”
Toby looks curious but he doesn’t ask any more questions. “Cool,” is all he says. He hands me the set of keys, pointing out the one that opens the office. “Slip it in my locker when you’re finished,” he says. “It’s number 503 outside Mr. Connolly’s class.” Then he flashes us a grin, says, “See you there, then,” and winks at me before he hurries away. I exchange a look with Bea, who barely suppresses a smile as I hand her the key to fit into the lock.
We try to be in and out of the office lickety-split, like lightning. The filing cabinets squeak and we muffle our laughter. Bea whispers that we’re lucky our school still lives in the Stone Age, that most schools’ files are on computer, password-protected, but here they’re kept in cardboard files in cabinets that don’t lock. This is one of the good things about living in a tiny speck of a town in Middle of Nowhere, County Mayo: We haven’t all quite caught up with the twenty-first century yet.
“What’s her last name again?” Bea asks, thumbing through the alphabetical files.
I open my mouth to answer, then frown. “I’ve been blanking on it for the last few days,” I say. “I know I know it.” I rub my forehead with exasperation. “Try under M?”
Bea shuffles through a few files before pulling one out triumphantly. “Got it!”
Elsie’s file has a tea stain on it, straight across the last name. The cardboard is stuck together—the tea, I imagine, was milky and sugary, turned to syrup when it dried—but the information we want is on the front cover. Bea jots down an address and a phone number in her homework notebook and we hightail it out of the office like bandits, running low under the classroom windows.
Once we’ve sped out of the main building, through the parking lot and out of the school, we screech and whoop in triumph. We skip and jump along the grassy side of the main road, and once we hit the smaller country road out of town, we spread our arms and spin like tops. Our uniform skirts swish out like tartan bells.
When we are properly breathless we throw ourselves down by the side of the road near the river and Bea pulls out Elsie’s phone number. Without saying anything, she hands it to me and I take out my phone and dial the number. Everything goes very quiet. Above us the trees rustle and the birds chirp. In the field, the sheep bleat. The air smells a little like rain. I put the phone to my ear and hold my breath. The call takes a moment to go through, then my phone makes a sad little beep beep beep noise and the connection dies. Bea looks at me expectantly. I shake my head. “Either her phone’s turned off, or this isn’t a real number.” I don’t know why, but it gives me a sinking feeling.
Bea looks disappointed. Then she sits up straighter. “Let’s go to her house,” she says.
“To her house?”
“Why not? If Alice is right and she’s just sick at home, we can take her some cookies and a box of chamomile tea and see how she’s doing.”
I think about the tiny Elsie like a voodoo doll on the mousetrap and I say softly, “I don’t know . . .”
“Come on, Cara,” says Bea. “Let’s just drop by to see if she’s okay and to invite her to our party. Maybe she’ll be happy to have visitors.”
I look out across the river to where the trees rustle. I think about the photos I printed out and all the questions I have. I turn to Bea and grin. “Okay,” I say, and she holds out her hand for the notebook with Elsie’s address on it. “Let’s go find Elsie.”
7
When we get to the address, even Bea won’t believe it.
“There must have been a mistake.”
We took the river road away from town in the opposite direction to where we live, past housing developments and vacation homes, past fields filled with sheep and cows and horses, past big modern houses like Bea’s and smaller cottages like the one my mother’s friend Gracie bought and renovated a few years ago. The last house we passed was maybe five minutes ago, and the next is far away up ahead, around a bend in the road and hidden by trees. To either side of us there are only fields.
We stand there staring at the house
from the road. It’s grand, like a manor house in a period film. It has big bay windows and a porch supported by pillars. But the windows are cracked and broken and the porch sags. Ivy has grown in through the cracks in the window frames and is slowly breaking down the walls.
“I saw you take down the address.”
Bea shakes her head. “I must’ve read it wrong.”
This isn’t Elsie’s house. This isn’t anybody’s house, or at least it hasn’t been for a very long time. We’ve followed the river all the way and we’ve lost it; it streams in under the garden before us and comes out the other side. The garden is enormous. The gates to the driveway are tall and wrought-iron, all curlicues like haunted houses in horror films. The whole house looks like it’s haunted.
“Why would she give this as her address?”
I shrug. “Maybe her parents are gangsters and she doesn’t want them to be found. Or maybe there’s a house with the same number on a different road on the other side of town that looks the same. The name, I mean.”
“Maybe.” Bea reaches out and rattles the gates. They’re padlocked shut.
I take off my gloves and touch the gates myself. The metal is startlingly cold. I try to judge the distance, then I take off my backpack and throw it over the gates. Bea shouts a laugh. She swings her satchel after my bag and we both grab hold of the gates and climb. I’m encumbered by multiple sweaters and a coat, but it’s Bea’s tights that get caught in the iron vines and swirls. We help each other over carefully.
“Climbing down’s a lot harder,” Bea observes when we’ve reached the ground on the other side.
I do a quick check: All my clothes—and, most importantly, my skin—are intact. “You know,” I say to Bea a bit breathlessly, “for someone who’s so afraid of accidents, I sure do a lot of stupid stuff.” Bea laughs and hugs me, and we both jump up and down inside the hug for a bit before pulling apart and considering the house in front of us.
It’s as if Bea senses my momentary hesitation. “Well,” she says, “we’ve come this far.” She firmly takes my hand and we march up to the front door like we belong there.
We huddle in under the dilapidated porch roof until I gather my courage and grasp the heavy doorknocker. Bea holds her breath. I raise the knocker and clack it back down loudly. The sound echoes dully through the house. I move aside and give Bea a turn. Unsurprisingly, nobody comes to the door.
That’s when the magic happens. Or maybe it isn’t magic. Maybe it’s only that the door was never closed, or that somebody else broke in before us, but it doesn’t matter. I wish at the door, I wish hard; I whisper, “Please be open, please open, open,” and Bea takes up the chant so that we are both repeating, “Open open open,” and I reach out and take the door handle in my non-gloved hand and it turns as if it’s inviting us in. The door swings open.
The hall is dark because of the thick layer of dust on the windows. It filters the light from outside, which was already gray to begin with, into a shadowy gloom. The windows not coated with dust are broken and a slight wind whistles mournfully through the house, lifts up the last shreds of wallpaper, rustles the mouse droppings, the carpet hairs, the cracks in the doors, stirs up the ghosts.
“Can you feel it?” Bea whispers.
My eyes are wide. I nod my head, just once. I can feel it. We take a couple of tentative steps farther into the entrance hall and stare up and up, standing in the middle and gazing through the staircase to the ceiling upstairs. I tilt my head back and close my eyes, and I can hear a faint whispering all around me. Bea moves forward, through the hall and down some steps into what used to be the kitchen, and she drops onto her hands and knees and presses her ear to the floor.
“It’s the river,” she tells me. I kneel down beside her and listen, and the whispering gets louder. The river runs here, right under the floor of the kitchen.
“This is a witch’s house,” says Bea. “It’s full of ghosts.”
I think about what Toby whispered in the school corridor. “It’s your house, then,” I tell her. “You’re more witch than anyone I know.”
Bea’s teeth glow in the gloom of the kitchen when she grins. “Let me show you around, then.” She gets up off the floor and holds out her hand. Her palms are black with dirt. Her skirt is no longer blue-green tartan—it’s dusty gray and flecked with rust from the iron gate, her tights are in tatters and her hair is wild and she’s never looked more beautiful. I think about Sam singing her ditties on the pier and feel the familiar pang of wishing I were—or maybe even just looked—a little more like Bea. But I quickly shake off the feeling and take my best friend’s hand and we explore the witchy house.
“Here’s the back kitchen,” says Bea in the pantry. “The river flows underneath us. We witches eat it for breakfast, because that’s where all the lost souls go to drown, and lost souls are the witches’ favorite meal.”
There are still cans and boxes stacked around the kitchen, food well past its expiration date, wall outlets oozing green metallic liquid from not having been used for so long. We walk through rooms like little girls lost in the woods.
“This is the ballroom,” Bea says when we reach the entrance hall again. “This is where the witches dance. Where we fly to the ceiling.” She points up at the roof above. “Where we waltz with the ghosts.”
The staircase is old and rotting. Wood gives slightly under our boots. We climb anyway.
“Once upon a time,” Bea says, “when the witches lived here, they enticed young virgins into their house with the promise of truths and stories.” Her hand is hot in mine. “And because the witches were so beautiful, in a fiery, midnight way, the pretty virgins would always follow them.”
We climb and climb. The staircase creaks.
“The witches would lead them upstairs and let them choose objects from their witchy bedrooms, and they told them stories about those charms. And when the stories were done, the witches would take as payment three hairs from the virgins’ heads, because every witch knows there’s nothing more potent for powerful spells.”
My hand leaves a trail in the dust of the banister.
“But every once in a while,” Bea continues, “the prettiest virgins would find an object they weren’t supposed to touch, and that was the witch’s kiss. All witches keep their kisses in everyday objects, so that their hearts won’t break too often.”
I look across at her, only slightly afraid I’ll miss my step. Bea is focused on the stairs below us, slowly picking out a path around the rotten steps. “What happens when somebody finds the object?” I ask her.
We reach the landing.
“I don’t know,” Bea says. Her lips are red and wide. “I’m just telling you a story.”
Upstairs, there is a long landing lined with doors. We count five bedrooms, a small closet, and a huge bathroom. The bathroom is beautiful but covered in grime. Bea and I write our names with our fingers in the dirt of the claw-footed tub. Except for one, all the bedroom doors are open. The mess inside reminds me of Sam’s room. We ghost through the four open rooms and consciously leave the closed double doors halfway down the landing for last. They are pale, once blue maybe, with paint peeling like lolling tongues to the carpet. They are intricately carved with the same vines and swirls and curlicues as the gates into the garden. Bea and I take a door handle each and swing into the master bedroom.
It’s empty. The other rooms were full and cluttered with the remnants of life: books and papers tattered and torn to dust, moth-eaten clothes, ripped sheets and feather-coughing pillows on the bed, knickknacks on the shelves. In one Bea whispered that dust is really made up of the skin of the dead. This room, though, is the deadest room of all.
Our footsteps echo despite the dust. The ceiling is high and the plaster around the light fixtures is carved with the same pattern as the bedroom doors. There is no bed. There are no wardrobes or bookshelves. There is only the peel
ing wallpaper, the wooden floorboards, the big bay windows with their heavy, half-rotted drapes shuttering out the light. I make my eyes wide, try to take everything in. When we step inside the room I notice that what I thought at first might be a pile of dirt in the middle is actually the remains of a fire pit, hollow and soot-blackened.
Bea’s face mirrors mine. We shuffle forward, trying to mute our steps by sliding across the floor. Ours are the only footprints on the carpet of dust.
“Whoever lit this fire did it a long time ago,” I say to Bea. All that’s left is the charred remains of logs and a huge scorch stain.
Bea is grinning, her teeth gleaming in the dim light. “What is this place?” She says it like an exclamation. “What happened here? Why have we never heard about this?” She laughs, and the music of it bounces around the walls.
I laugh along with her. “What a find.”
“What a find!”
That’s when I see the button. It’s big and red and nestled in amongst the blackened remains of the fire. I reach across the pile of old wood and pick it up. I rub it between two gloved fingers to make it shine. I show it to Bea. It’s the brightest thing in the room.
Bea touches the button with the tip of her finger. “Look,” she says. “It’s the witch’s kiss.”
And then her lips are on mine. She tastes like black-cat nights and chimney smoke and forever, and something sweet and redder, like a cherry inside of a flame. I’ve kissed Bea before, that soft lip-to-lip in spin the bottle when we’ve had too much red wine, but this is different, this is wilder. She’s kissing me like there’s something to prove, like there’s somebody watching, like she’s testing herself or maybe testing me. I break away from her, confused. The whole house sighs.
“Hear that?” Bea says breathlessly. “The house liked that.”
Then an idea lands in the palm of my hand like a big red button. “We should have the party here.”
Bea’s eyebrows disappear into her bangs. She grabs me by the shoulders and kisses me again, quickly and lightly, the way she usually does. “You’re brilliant! The ghost house presents the Black Cat and Whiskey Moon Masquerade Ball. It’s so perfect I could cry.”