Hazily, I conjured it: the helicopter dipping and circling, its propeller rippling into the oppressive heat, the metal sheet of ocean. Sebastian astride his bike at the bluff, sweating and motionless, his eyes trained in disbelief on that same disembodied jut of wing I’d seen on the AP photo that I’d found when I’d looked up the accident online.
I let my hand pause a moment on his scarred forearm. “Sometimes I feel almost guilty about it, like I’ve unearthed all these bad memories for everyone.”
“Jeez, I hope that’s not true. ’Cause the reality is the exact opposite. You’re a breath of life for Isa. Right before you came into the club, Noogie was telling us all how great you deal with her, how you’re already more like a mother to Isa than anyone she’s ever had before.”
“That’s nice, I’m glad to hear that. But this house freaks me out.” Shut up, Jamie. “It’s not at all peaceful; it’s restless and angry. It scares me.” I clamped my back teeth against my tongue. Shuttup shuttup.
“Pete Quint was one of my oldest friends,” Sebastian said. “We went to school together from kindergarten. That kid wasn’t at peace or very restful when he was alive. I like to think he is now.”
I nodded, mute. My head felt like a balloon being jerked by a string.
“Funny thing about Pete, he was really attached to this place,” Sebastian continued. “He could have been like one of those Victorian groundskeepers and lived here forever, puttering around and mulching or whatever Victorian groundskeepers did. It was people who made things complicated for him.” He let go of this last sentence almost as an afterthought.
“Jessie included?”
“Mostly Jessie included. Or what she represented. A lifetime of lucky breaks. A future on cruise control. She thought Peter was fearless, confident, a winner-take-all type, like her. Which is what he liked her to think.”
“Because that’s what she wanted?”
“Yeah, and maybe he did, too. Pete’s whole family’s off-kilter. His old man’s basically a hermit. Hasn’t spoken twenty words in twenty years.”
“And his mom?”
“She ditched them when Pete was a kid,” said Sebastian. “She’s been living somewhere, I wanna say somewhere outside Boston, for as long as I can remember. Pete used to visit her, and then not so much, when he got older. She never came to Little Bly. She wasn’t even at the services last summer.”
“Are you kidding?” I snapped a bit more awake at that one. “What kind of mom doesn’t go to her son’s funeral service?”
“The kind that he had, I guess.” Sebastian couldn’t disguise that he looked uncomfortable. “Seems morbid, to hash through all this. Anyway.” He stretched and shifted, preparing to go. I dropped my legs and stood up with him—if I didn’t move in the next minute or so, I’d pass out right here. “You know, Jamie, you might just be coming down with a plain old vanilla summer cold. Try hot water with honey before you crash, and avoid citrus tomorrow. Thousand-year-old theater tricks, but they work.”
“Thanks.” I walked him down the porch, and back to his bike. Then stepped back as Sebastian turned over the engine.
“Sometimes,” I told him, on impulse, “I really do feel that Pete’s still here.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Instantly, I wanted to take it back. Sebastian was embarrassed for me. Which, in a way, was worse than Milo. Milo’s contempt made me get defensive. Sebastian’s politeness made me feel pathetic.
It was a stupid thing to say. Even if I believed it. Even if it was true. Worse, the one night I’d gotten out and met a guy—a bona fide hottie of a guy, who’d even kissed me, an amazing fireworks of a kiss—I’d ruined everything with my pillhead spooky talk.
Don’t say another word Jamie you are way too out of it tonight.
I pressed my lips together, leaned my shoulder against the porch newel. My reserves were almost out.
“Go on … I’ll watch you in,” said Sebastian. “And, Jamie? Don’t be scared of the house. I promise, nobody’s out to hurt—or even haunt—you.” With a small smile. A charity smile?
“Right. G’night,” I mumbled, then turned and skimmed up the stairs and through the unlocked door.
I was tired, but not in the right way. Bypassing a toothbrush and a pajama change, I hit into the pillow like an ostrich into sand.
Smoke. Swimming up to consciousness, I knew that it was later. By how much? One hour? Two? My eyes cracked open. The room was black. Silence hung in the air like a spell. My breath tasted rank and my neck hurt, crimped into an unnatural position.
Where was it coming from? Was the house on fire? Fear froze me as Uncle Jim’s presence took hold. He was sitting, knees up and crossed like a daddy longlegs, at the foot of my bed. Hank, in the shadows, was in his place, too.
I had to get out and I couldn’t. I don’t want to see you anymore I don’t want to be you go away leave me alone. As my body stayed heavy, immobile, I couldn’t find my breath, but I needed to move, to leave the room now now now.
I snapped back the sheet and jumped like a runner off the block wee Willie Winkie runs through the town, down the hall, my breath in thin slices, chasing the steps upstairs downstairs in his nightgown to the third floor. The smoke was dense up here. My bare feet pounded as fast as my heart. I ran nearly blind down the hall to the spare room, where rapping at the windows calling through the locks I slammed through the door to find a fire blazing, a crackling violence of singeing heat, orange flames bursting up the chimney.
It took another moment to realize they were here, too. On their stomachs, propped by elbows, one leg each hooked at the knee, faces watching the fire are all the children in their beds for now as soon as I had opened the door, he turned his head. Through the darkness and the blanket of smoke, his empty stare locked on me, all the children all the children and held me tight.
I blinked away to my own reflection on the opposite wall, my shadow rising up like a witch. I jumped and it jumped. I’d gone wet with cold sweat. My eyes caught my shadow and refused to look at him again because you aren’t here, you’re in my head and nowhere else.
“You’re not real,” I said out loud, much as it petrified me. My voice wasn’t mine, but rather a disembodied sound from all around the room. I began backing out the door, my trembling hands like stop signs in front of me; at the last minute, I made the mistake of lifting my gaze to meet his eyes, which were dark and empty as pits.