Endless (8 page)

The stairs felt solid enough. And so far, so good on the squeaks, too. She continued, stepping carefully since there weren’t any handrails and she was holding her dad’s six-hundred-dollar camera.

The light from the hallway receded as she made her way up the stairs, slowly enveloped in the murky darkness of the attic. When she got to the top, she stepped gingerly onto the floorboards, hoping they were as well maintained as the stairs. She peered into the gray light, watching the dust motes dance in the sun fighting its way in through the small, arched window she’d seen from the ground.

Her eyes adjusted, and she scanned the room, fascinated by the strange shapes created by stacked boxes and trunks, the ghostly forms of sheet-covered furniture. Lifting the camera, she changed the settings and turned on the flash. She wanted to get a shot of the old hat box near the wall, a half-crushed top hat spilling from inside. Except there was something else there, too. Something … bigger. She refocused, zooming in even closer.

Ben’s eyes, appraising and not at all pleased, stared back at her through the viewfinder.

“Don’t tell me you have to measure the attic, too.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

She lowered the camera, letting her breath out in one loud gasp. “God! You scared the hell out of me.”

“I’d say I’m sorry,” he sneered. “Except this is my house. You’re the one who shouldn’t be here.”

She figured she should probably keep her cool. Then she decided against it.

Crossing the attic, she stopped in front of him, glaring. “Are you always such a jerk?”

“Are you always so nosy?” he muttered, his blondish hair flopping forward into his eyes as he rifled through some papers on his lap.

She thought about possible answers to the question, finally deciding on honesty. “Not always.”

He looked up, and for a split second she saw interest in his blue eyes. Then, he lowered them back to the papers in his hand.

“What have you got there?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he mumbled. “It’s in some kind of foreign language.”

“Can I see?”

She had no idea why she was trying to be friendly after the way he’d acted, except that he seemed kind of lonely. And she understood lonely. She even understood the way it sometimes made you push people away when it was the last thing you really needed or wanted.

He shrugged, passing the papers to her.

He was right. Not only was it in another language, but the words on the paper were handwritten in script that probably wouldn’t have been legible even if it had been in English. The paper, yellowing and curling at the edges, felt dry and fragile, like it might turn to ash if she held it too hard. She tipped it carefully toward the arched window.

“It looks like … Russian?” She looked up, meeting Ben’s eyes. “Or maybe Polish?”

“What? You’re a linguist?” he said sarcastically.

“No.” She tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “I’m just saying. The characters are different from ours. It’s not a regular alphabet, you know?” She handed the papers back to him.

He looked at her gloved hands. “Do you always wear those? It’s, like, a million degrees up here.”

She shrugged, turning her attention to the stuff strewn across the floor around him. “What is all this?”

He sighed. “Junk, mostly.”

“Your junk or someone else’s junk?”

He set the papers onto a pile to his right, reaching into a box for something else. “Someone else’s. We don’t usually stay in one place long enough to have junk.”

She caught something in his voice. It was bitter and full of loss, but when she looked into his eyes, she saw regret there, too. He already wished he hadn’t said anything.

“You guys move around a lot?” Jenny prodded.

“You could say that.”

Wow, cryptic much?
Jenny thought. He obviously didn’t want to talk, so she reached into the box, feeling around until her fingers grazed something smooth and scratchy. Grabbing ahold of it, she pulled her hand from the box, surprised to see an old wool fedora in her fingers.

“Hey! Look at this!” She shook it against one palm, trying to shake the dust free. She put it on her head, pulling it down mysteriously over one eye and bracing herself for criticism as Ben surveyed her silently.

But all he said was, “It’s not too bad.” He plucked it off her head and put it on his own. “But it probably looks better on me.”

“What?” Jenny laughed, wondering if that was really a smile fighting for life on Ben’s lips. “Okay. I see how it is. You do have rights to this junk, after all. But I totally have dibs on the next one.”

“Only if you can find it first,” Ben said, already lunging for a trunk near the wall.

He wasn’t exactly nice. He didn’t cross the line into friendly or anything. But he did let her work next to him, pulling stuff from the boxes and trunks and putting them in one of four piles: Keep, Give Away, Throw Away, and I Have No Idea. Sometimes they talked, though he was careful not to talk about himself.

Jenny didn’t mind. She wasn’t anxious to spill all her dirty secrets, either.

The silence stretched between them with nothing but an occasional burst of laughter from the kitchen or a bird fluttering in the eaves outside the window. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as it should have been, considering that they didn’t really know each other.

Jenny studied him when she thought she could get away with it, taking in the strong jaw and broad shoulders, the eyes that flashed as blue as the sea even in the half-light of the attic. He totally wasn’t her type. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t cute.

It was easy to get lost in the old stuff they were finding, and from the look of concentration on Ben’s face, she could see that he liked it, too. There was a lot of paper with writing in the strange language they’d seen in the first stack, and even some old photos of serious-looking people dressed so formally that it made Jenny itch just looking at them. There was also a lot of vintage clothing, and by the time they’d reached the last box, Jenny was draped in an old boa, wearing a vintage bed jacket with the crushed top hat, and gripping a cigarette holder—carefully wiped down with the end of her shirt between her teeth.

“I think we’re almost done.” Ben reached into the box, his arm swallowed past his elbow.

“Is there anything left?” Jenny wasn’t ready to leave their fairy-tale world of relics, not to mention this kinder, gentler Ben.

“I think there’s one … more … ” He moved his arm around, trying to get ahold of something. When he pulled his arm out of the box, he was holding a big wad of fabric in his hand. “ … thing.”

“What is it?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t know.” Ben let his hand bounce a little with the weight of it. “But it feels heavy.”

Jenny scooted a little closer. “Open it!”

“Okay, okay.” Ben lifted his long fingers to the fabric, peeling it back a layer at a time. Jenny had no idea what was inside, but it took forever for Ben to reach the last layer. When he finally pulled back the last of the cloth, it was to reveal a finely crafted wooden box with violet colored insets edged with silver.

“What the … ” Ben started, turning the thing over in his hand. He pulled at the top, lifting it on hinges set into one side of the object. “There’s a keyhole here. I think it’s a music box.”

Jenny leaned in, peering at the box. Inside it was empty and lined with worn, indigo velvet.

“No key,” she said.

“No. But I think that’s what it must be. It looks really old.” Ben turned it over, peering at the bottom. He tapped the underside once and then twice more.

The bottom swung open. A small key fell out, along with a piece of paper that fluttered to the floor. Jenny picked it up, holding it to the light to study it.

She shook her head. “It looks like the same language as all those other papers.”

“Wait!” Ben almost shouted as she lowered the paper. “Hold it up again.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Just … ” He waved his hands around. “Hold the paper up to the light again. Like you did before.”

She sighed. “Okay, but I’m telling you, we’re not going to be able to read it.”

She lifted the paper, holding it to the light as her eyes skimmed the oddly shaped characters.

“Do you mind telling me what I’m looking for?” she asked from behind the paper.

“You aren’t looking for anything,” Ben said. She heard the excitement in his voice as he reached up, plucking the paper from her hands and turning it so she could see the other side. “I am.”

“What?” She peered at the paper. The ink was faded, the light dwindling fast in the attic as nightfall approached.

But she saw it, and she felt Ben’s excitement build inside her as the letters began to coalesce into actual words.

She met his eyes. “This side’s in English.”

He nodded. “Read what the top part says.”

She lowered her eyes back to the paper, reading aloud. “Instructions for Mesmerization must be followed exactly.” She shook her head, meeting his eyes. “Mesmerization? But that’s … isn’t that like …
hypnosis
?”

“I’m no expert, but that’s what it sounds like,” Ben said. “Let me see it.”

Jenny passed him the piece of paper, already pondering the words and their strange hiding place inside the music box.

Ben held the paper close to his face, lowering his hand a second later as he considered the words.

“Maybe it’s some kind of game,” Jenny suggested. “It’s a music box, so it might have been owned by a child.”

Ben shook his head. “I doubt it. The handwriting sucks, but it doesn’t look like a kid’s writing to me.”

He reached for the box. Jenny could see the look of concentration on his face. Closing the bottom of it, the piece of paper still on the floor next to him, he turned the box right side up. It glimmered a little, and Jenny saw that it was encrusted with jewels. No doubt they were fake, but it was still a strange find in an attic that, until now, had produced only junk and some cool clothes.

Ben put the key in the hole and turned it. Then he opened the lid. A few creaky, tinkling notes stumbled from the box.

“It works!” Jenny laughed.

It was obvious Ben was as surprised as she was. “Wait a minute … ” He stopped, a look of total concentration falling over his eyes. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

He looked at the box with wonder and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

“It’s playing
Moonlight Sonata
,” he said softly.

Jenny listened more closely, finally catching the tune in the slightly off-key notes. “You’re right,” she said. “You were playing it yesterday when I came into your room.”

She was suddenly awash in a wave of nostalgia. She didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t from hearing Ben play
Moonlight Sonata
in his room. It went deeper, a sense of instinctual recognition like running into someone you knew but hadn’t seen for a long time. Even if the person looked a little different, you were almost positive that you knew them.

Ben turned his head toward her, his eyes meeting hers. He looked like he wanted to say something. Like he was trying to find the words.

“What?” she asked.

He was quiet for so long she wondered if he’d even heard her question. Then, he sighed, shaking his head. “Nothing.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Nothing, huh?”

“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “Nothing. That’s what I said.”

The bite had crept back into his voice. She stared at him as he wrapped the music box back in the cloth, setting it on top of the I Have No Idea pile.

The sight of it there, hidden by fabric and sitting on top of a bunch of junk, gave her an irrational stab of panic.

“Wait a minute.” She reached for it, pulling it off the pile.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“I … I don’t know. I just don’t think we should put it with all this other stuff, that’s all.”

“What else would we do with it?”

She hesitated, wondering if she was really going to suggest what she wanted to suggest. “I think we should try it out,” she finally said.

“What are you talking about?” Ben asked. “We already got it working.
Moonlight Sonata
, remember?”

“Not the music box,” she said. “The instructions on the piece of paper.”

“The instructions … ” Understanding dawned on Ben’s face. “You want to try the mesmerization thing? The hypnosis?”

She shrugged, trying to be nonchalant when her heart was beating so fast she thought it might jump out of her chest. “Why not?”

Actually, there was probably more than one reason why not, starting with the fact that it wasn’t smart to play around with things you didn’t understand. Things that couldn’t be explained. She knew that better than anybody.

But she couldn’t help thinking of the Ouija board. Of the presence that had reached to her from the darkness of her half unconsciousness and of the man named Nikolai who had been in her dream later that night. The man in her paintings. She felt like a door had been opened, just for a second, and then shut again. It seemed impossible to live her life without knowing what was on the other side.