The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House Page 7

  “So it’s you,” he said, not looking up. “And didn’t I tell yez yesterday to go away from here and not come back?”

  “Yesterday,” she echoed. “Yesterday it was snowing.”

  “How the weather does change. Now ye’re Maureen Messerman.”

  “No, no,” she cried. “I’m Maureen Swanson and I live at 331 Beach Street.” Then she stepped closer to him and whispered, “What happened?”

  It was a half a minute before he stopped pounding. “You had the wish and they had the time. They got that out of my bag of tricks—them thieves.”

  “I want to go home. How can I get home?”

  “Why do yez want to go home from a fine place like this?” His blue eyes were looking into hers now, not blinking.

  “Because,” her voice was breaking, “because nobody slaps me there,” and she didn’t add, “I slap them.” She said out loud, “I want to go home; they treat me like a bug here. Oh, please tell me—how can I get home?”

  “Yer dreamin’, you know,” he told her. But she couldn’t believe that.

  “Dreaming! When you dream, you’re in bed asleep.”

  “That’s what you think,” he said, laughing, “but here’s what you do to get home.”

  Just then she heard Nora’s voice calling to her and then Nora herself running into the summerhouse.

  “Don’t come in here.” Nora looked around nervously, and then sighed with relief first before she put the question, “Did you see anyone at all in here?”

  The leprechaun lifted his head from behind the pile of hose and put his little brown finger to his lips.

  “No,” she answered. Nora pushed her out. “And don’t be comin’ here anymore.”

  The iron gates were swinging wide open, pulled apart by the footman, who had jumped off the back step of the carriage. The horses trotted past the summerhouse and three faces with brown velvet bonnets glared at her through the carriage windows. The carriage stopped at the house and the sisters were handed out. They ran, laughing, up to the door and Cleo reached out her hand to grasp the knob.

  But Maude laid a gloved hand on her sister’s. “Wait,” she told her coldly. Then she looked at the footman, who said, “Yes, miss,” and pushed open the door.

  Ingrid was now looking across the garden at Maureen. “That vile child is wearing Mavis’s coat.” Her voice rang out. “And she does not have it buttoned properly.”

  The door closed. The sisters were home for lunch.

  “Come in now,” said Nora, “and have lunch with the young ladies.”

  “No.” Maureen didn’t budge. She dug the thick heels of the high shoes deep into the wet ground. “I won’t. I’m going home.” She had seen the gates—now open.

  She ran across the lawn, out of the gates, and down the walk outside toward home—not noticing that it wasn’t a paved walk but a dirt path she was on.

  Somehow she had gotten into the Old Messerman Place when it was the new Messerman Place, something she had often dreamed of doing. But the seven ladies in the pictures-that-moved in the dusty upstairs of the Old Messerman Place being here now as young girls in the new Messerman Place was something she could never have even imagined.

  It had fine furniture now and curtains and cooking in the kitchen and horses in the stable, but it was the same place. She had been sure of that as soon as she saw him. What did he mean you could be dreaming without being asleep in bed?

  She was running fast, her coat making her stumble and fall twice in the muddy ground. Where were all the houses?

  At the corner where she always turned on the way home from school there was vacant ground with weeds. As far as her eyes could see there were no houses. Had the Swansons’ house been there? She couldn’t be sure. How could you tell with everything stretching away—empty?

  There was a house! She was happy to see it, though she didn’t remember it. It was yellow brick, with a small white porch with white wooden curlicues under the roof like paper cutouts. A sign said: “Music Lessons.” She pounded at the door. Maybe they had a telephone.

  The door was opened by a thin little woman. She had a thimble on one finger. She was wearing a long black dress. She looked suspiciously at Maureen and latched the screen.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m lost,” Maureen gasped, “and I want to get home.”

  “Where did you come from?” the woman asked her.

  “I was coming home from school and I saw a carriage with horses. Can I use the phone?”

  “The what?” Her eyes widened. “Can you use—what?” Then Maureen saw her looking past her at someone or something.

  The carriage was standing outside, with the horses stamping and tossing their manes. The sisters looked out of the window. Ingrid got out.

  “She’s lost.” Ingrid smiled at the music teacher as she took hold of Maureen’s elbow. “But she does know how to get home.”

  The woman closed the door, and Maureen heard the sound of a bolt drawn across it.

  She got into the carriage, where Lucrece, Constance, and Mavis were seated languidly against the cushions.

  Ingrid leaned back into the carriage. “You know how to get home?” she smiled, and said after a while.

  “You know?” echoed the others.

  “No, no, I don’t.” Her voice was tearful as the carriage stopped before the steps and the mother came out of the door.

  “Child,” she said gently, “you mustn’t run away again. You might get lost—more and more.”

  That night, after dinner, she told herself she would wait in the little room upstairs until everybody was asleep and then, when the house was dark, get out of bed and find the leprechaun again in the summerhouse.

  But the mother took her hand and said, “In the drawing room we shall have music whilst we wait for Mr. Messerman to return with word from your parents.”

  That was a strange word, “whilst,” instead of while, but Maureen didn’t mind it. She didn’t mind anything the mother said or did. She was always sweet, gentle, and patient.

  She held Maureen’s hand as they sat on a little satin-covered sofa, and Lucrece played for them. Tonight she didn’t play the soft rain kind of music but a sprightly, happy popular tune. The girls gathered around the piano and sang. Then Nora and Lizzie and the two men from the stable stood in the hall and sang, too. The words they sang were:

  Wait ’til the sun shines, Nellie, and the clouds go rolling by.

  We will be happy, Nellie, don’t you cry.

  Wait ’til the sun shines, Nellie, and the clouds go rolling by.

  We will be happy, Nellie—bye and bye.

  There was something so sad about those words—“bye and bye.” She thought of home. They would all be watching television after dinner. Henry would want cartoons, Diane would want music, her dad, the news.

  Her mother would be in the kitchen, stacking the dishes in the dishwasher, reminding them all, “Don’t quarrel, children. Someday you will be thousands and thousands of miles from each other.”

  She felt the taste of salt on her lips and knew then tears were rolling down her cheeks. Nobody noticed. Everybody was singing and smiling. Who were these people? How had she got here? The song was like a bridge, taking her thoughts home.

  Her heart was breaking.

  The door opened. Mr. Messerman stepped inside and motioned to his wife, who joined him in the hallway.

  Maureen knew before he spoke what he would say.

  “There’s no Wilbert Swanson in Cedar Hill. We’ll put an ad about her in the paper tomorrow, and if that doesn’t work…”

  He whispered in his wife’s ear, and she nodded. Then she said, “How sad it must be for them to have their daughter go away and not come back!”

  Here the mother’s eyes rested on her own daughters, sitting in the big room. She shivered. She must be cold, Maureen decided.

  —

  She was sitting in the chair in the little room on the third floor next to Nora’s. The stove was c
rackling with a fire when the door opened. Thinking it was Nora, she began to get into bed. It wasn’t Nora tonight, holding a candlestick. It was the mother. Her face looked so sad. She sat on the bed, next to Maureen, and smoothed her hair.

  “I saw you crying tonight,” she said gently.

  “I want to go home.” Maureen put her hands to her eyes.

  “I know,” she said, nodding. “And we’ll advertise in the papers beginning tomorrow. But if we shouldn’t hear, I want you to know—you can live here with us. You can be Maureen Messerman, and I will have eight daughters.”

  Maureen lifted her head. “No,” she said. “I want to go home.” And then she cried.

  The mother hugged her. “Don’t,” she said to comfort her, “don’t.” Then she was silent, before she spoke in a faraway tone—as to the air. “My daughters never cry. I wonder why not?”

  “Maybe,” Maureen said, speaking slowly, “because they’re always happy.”

  The mother shook her head back and forth. “No, that’s not it.”

  She got up and went to the door, then stopped, and impulsively turned around and ran to Maureen. “You!” She was looking at her so pleadingly. “If you can ever help them—will you do it—please?”

  “Me?” Maureen had never been so amazed in all of her life. “Me—help them?” Her help anybody? Nobody had ever said that to her before. She looked up into the mother’s anxious face, now fastened on hers. Didn’t she know Maureen was the Stinky Swanson everybody ran away from? The one nobody played with, the one always kept after school. No, the mother didn’t know about her. That’s why she asked her this—as though—as though—she were somebody else. Of all the strange sensations she had had since she followed the carriage, this was the most astonishing. She was not only far from home, she was even far from herself. She looked into the mother’s eyes and nodded her head slowly, feeling, somehow, like a cheat. With pity she watched her go out of the room.

  She was in bed, lying with her face downward on the pillow, when she knew somebody had come into the room. She didn’t move. By the light of the moon, she could see white fingers moving near her head. She lay very still. Then from the corner of her eye she could see them feeling in the pocket of her red sweater, hanging on the chair by the head of the bed. The fingers felt in both pockets. There was no sound of a door closing or feet moving across the floor, but she knew whoever had come in had gone out. When she was quite sure of this, she sat up in bed. Somebody was standing in the outside hall.

  Then she heard it. At first she didn’t understand the words clearly. As she listened and listened, she edged back more in the bed to get away from it, edged until her back was against the iron head of the bed and her own head against the wall.

  The voice was saying, “Give me my bracelet. Give me my bracelet. Give me my bracelet.”

  She heard another voice shouting. A second later she knew it was herself. “Take your old bracelet.”

  She waited for the door to open and grown-up Ingrid to come inside. How she could be here, Maureen didn’t know, but that was the voice that had called up to the bedroom that time by the side of the Swansons’ house.

  The door did open now, but it was Lucrece, Maude, and young Ingrid, not the woman in the suit with the long coat and the black hat with a drooping plume. Each wore a long white ruffled nightgown and each carried a flat silver saucer-type candleholder with one candle set in the center. They looked so anxious and so sweet.

  “What’s wrong, little girl?” Maude glided over to the bed.

  Then Nora, tying a cord around a long wrapper, pushed past Maude and Lucrece. “What’s goin’ on here with yez?” she asked crossly. And she put a hand on Maureen’s forehead.

  “A bad dream, poor child,” said Lucrece.

  “Poor child.” Maude and Ingrid smiled.

  “She’ll wake up the Mister and Missus.” Then Nora’s face softened. “Is it sick ye are, child?” she asked her kindly.

  Maureen shook her head and grabbed hold of Nora’s hand. “Don’t go, don’t go,” she whispered, her eyes on the three girls, lined up like three ghosts at the foot of the little iron bed.

  “Go back to bed, Nora.” Ingrid was smiling. “We’ll sit with her until she goes back to sleep.”

  “We’ll tell her a sweet story, won’t we, Maude?”

  “And say her prayers with her.” Lucrece smiled.

  Nora felt Maureen’s hand clutching her own, tighter and tighter. She studied them, the three girls standing there, looking so kind, gentle, and concerned, their gowns as white as snow, their hair soft and yellow falling down their backs.

  But she said, “Young ladies need their rest. Sure you run on back to yer own beds and I’ll sit here with the child awhile.” She waited for them to leave.

  Ingrid could make her voice as cold as an icicle, the sharp pointed kind, with the end like a needle. “That’s kind of you, Nora, but you need your rest for your work here. Good night—and goodbye.”

  “Goodbye?” echoed Nora. “And why are ye sayin’ goodbye at this time of night, I’d like to know?”

  “You’ll see.” Ingrid opened the door.

  “There’s somethin’ goin’ on here,” Nora told them, her voice rising. “Late or not late, I’m wakin’ up the folks. You stay there till I come back.” She pointed a stern finger at Maureen.

  They could hear her running down the hall, doors slamming in the passageway.

  Lucrece closed the door and leaned against it while Ingrid asked quietly, “Where is it?”

  “Here!” She picked up the shoe and, as they watched intently, she pried out the pigeon-feather bracelet and handed it to Ingrid. “I found it on the grass.”

  Ingrid didn’t hear. She slipped it onto her wrist. Her eyes glittered and her voice throbbed with excitement. “Freedom, sisters!” She laughed. “Freedom again. The sky is mine tonight. Let us fly westward.”

  “Westward,” they echoed, “westward—forever.” And they ran to the door.

  “Wait,” Maureen cried, “wait, wait.”

  Ingrid turned. “Wait? For what?” Her eyebrows were raised in surprise. “To say ‘thank you’ for returning what was mine, what I had to go to so much trouble to get back and take so much time.”

  As she said “time,” she smiled mysteriously. “Come, sisters.”

  And again they moved to the door.

  Maureen was frantic now. “Wait—please. Get me—back home again.”

  Lucrece seemed so surprised. “I—I am—too fooey. Perhaps Maude.”

  Maude couldn’t seem to believe her ears. “I—but I stink. You do it, Ingrid.”

  “I?” Ingrid didn’t smile at all. She glared at Maureen. “I—am too ugh. Come, sisters.” She went to the door.

  “Wait,” Maureen cried out after them, “I’m sorry I called you bad things. Get me home—please!”

  They didn’t hear. They didn’t stop. She could hear them running down the back stairs, calling the others. “Cleo, Mavis, Constance, Sylvia. Hurry! Hurry!”

  “Hurry!” Maureen dressed herself so fast. She would follow them. They must get her home. Oh, why had she called them bad names?

  Into the underwear, dress over the head, on with the socks, now into the brown scuffs, arms into the sweater, and into the hall.

  She could hear the sound of running feet everywhere, voices calling out, and doors slamming.

  The sisters were running down the wide stairs of the front hall toward the door.

  “Quick,” Ingrid urged them, “before they find us.”

  After Ingrid came Maude, Lucrece, Cleo, Constance, Mavis, and the smallest one, Sylvia.

  “Wait.” Maureen was breathless. “Wait—get me home.”

  “Girls! Girls! Where are you going? Stop!”

  They all stopped. Maureen looked up to see Mr. Messerman, halfway down the stairs after them, holding his candlestick close to his astonished face. The mother stood on the landing between Nora and Lizzie. Lizzie’s hair hung in two gray bra
ids. The daughters, all except Ingrid, stood in a row in the hall, their heads bowed, their arms at their sides in their snowy white gowns. Maureen’s eyes were on the mother’s face, so sad and anxious. She saw her shake her head as if saying “no, no” as Ingrid took one step up the stairs, then stopped. Ingrid raised one white arm up high, then brought it down quickly, like a slash cutting the air.

  There wasn’t a sound. Darkness settled on the hallway. The moonlight poured in through the lacy curtains on the landing with the clock. The clock ticked. No one was standing in the hall. No one was standing on the stairs. Had they ever stood there at all? Maureen wondered all of her life.

  She was wondering as she went out the front door. The garden was still and beautiful in the moonlight, the lawns closely clipped, the bricked driveway swept clean. She ran across the lawn to the high iron gates.

  They were locked! Through palings she could see the streetlamps dotting the road ahead out there, getting smaller and smaller in the distance. A carriage was rolling along, drawn by two black horses, only one man in the high seat. People inside were laughing. A man looked out the window and smiled at the little girl shaking the gates, crying out, “Let me out. Let me out.”

  Then she remembered. She raised her arm high and brought it—slash—down through the air. Nothing happened. The gates didn’t swing open. The street with the lamplight, the rolling carriage, and the laughing voices were still there. She did it again. Nothing happened.

  The voices in the carriage grew fainter and fainter. Then everything was still. She was locked back here in the “olden days” garden and there was no nice Nora in the house now, nor Lizzie, nor Mr. Messerman, and no nice mother. She was all alone!

  She jumped suddenly as she heard a flutter-flutter sound. Seven pigeons huddled on the roof of the house watching her. Only pigeons! She threw herself onto the ground and sobbed and kicked and screamed.

  A voice at her ear said, “Soft pedal. Ye’ll wake the dead.”

  It was the leprechaun, crouching down beside her.

  “I can’t get home. I gave her back her bracelet and I’ll never get home again.”