A Coming Evil (3 page)

"Yes," Lisette said.

"Your parents will probably have to eat it. Are you ready to read to me now?"

"No," Lisette said, "I'm going for a walk."

"I'll go with you," Cecile said. "We can go anywhere except on that hill past the barn that overlooks the field with the chrysanthemum farm."

"Why can't we go there?" Lisette asked.

"Well, we
can
go there," Cecile said, "but
I
won't because it's haunted."

"Oh," said Lisette. "That's too bad, because that's where I'm going."

"Maman!" Cecile wailed, clambering down the stairs. "Maman, Lisette is being mean to me!"

Lisette took the stairs at a run also and reached the lower hall a mere two steps behind her cousin.

Cecile headed for the kitchen, no doubt assuming that Lisette would follow to give her own version of the story. Cecile was a born tattletale and wouldn't have passed up the opportunity if their positions had been reversed. But Lisette veered off to the right and flew out the front door. Her white patent leather shoes were meant for looking stylish, not for running outdoors. Lisette could feel the stones and twigs and bumps in the ground through the thin soles, and she
knew she'd never get the grass stains out. But for the moment she only worried about not slipping and falling.

Behind her, she heard Cecile shouting, "Lisette! Lisette! Maman says you have to play with me! Lisette!"

The last was an angry, frustrated, giving-up wail, which was a surprise. Lisette had been afraid that Cecile, wearing more sensible shoes, might actually be able to catch up despite her disadvantage of three-years-younger legs.

Lisette didn't dare look back since her best defense would have been, 'What? Cecile wanted to play? I couldn't hear her.' But, as she started up the hill, she had to go partway around the barn and she glimpsed Cecile at the edge of the lawn. Cecile had stopped, apparently when she realized that Lisette had been serious about her destination. "Lisette," she called, her voice faint because of the distance, "come back or the ghost will suck your brains out through your ear!"

Childish trick to get her to come back. And besides, Lisette didn't believe in ghosts.

The hill was steeper and taller than it had looked from below. And once Lisette reached the top, she realized that it was bigger, too. Big enough to get lost on. But then, Lisette got lost easily.

She didn't stay at the edge, where Cecile would be able to see her and might get up enough courage to
join her and make more hateful remarks about Mimi becoming somebody's dinner. Instead, she went in among the trees.

If I walk in a straight line, I won't really get lost
, Lisette thought.
And if I do get lost, well that's a good excuse to be away from Cecile.

Lisette walked in a straight line and in about five minutes came to where the ground jutted out from one of the surrounding limestone cliffs. It was unclimbable without ropes and special training. Lisette followed the wall of stone until she came to the edge of the hill.

From here she could see the south part of the chrysanthemum field and another section where a different crop, some sort of long grassy grain, was growing. There was a sprawling house with an orange-tiled roof in the distance beyond the grain field, probably belonging to Maurice and his family. If he had a family. Lisette didn't know anything about him, except that he was returning Papa to the railway station and she might never get back to Paris again. Beyond the house she could catch occasional glimpses of glitter, where the Dordogne River played peekaboo among the surrounding hills.

She went back into the trees, except this time she didn't walk in a straight line but headed for the middle, where the trees grew close together. They stretched tall toward the sky, their trunks thick and gnarled and incredibly old.

When she estimated she was in the exact center of
the old woods, she stretched her arms out. "I hate this place!" she shouted, turning slowly to include everything. "I hate every centimeter of it! And nobody's going to eat my cat!" Then, more softly, "I want to go home."

It didn't help. If anything, she felt worse. She couldn't avoid Cecile for the next six months—and she estimated it would take at least six months for the war to end, even if the Americans joined in tomorrow. And what if they didn't join in—or what if they did and the Germans conquered them, also? Everyone said that wouldn't happen, but they'd said Paris was safe, too.

Lisette sat down on the ground with her knees drawn up close to her chest. Maybe thirteen years old wasn't that wonderful after all. Maybe there was an advantage to being a younger child and not knowing what was going on around you. But thinking of younger children reminded her of the Jewish family on the train, and once she thought of them, she couldn't get their faces out of her mind. She rested her head against her upraised knees and tried not to feel sorry for herself.

A cold breeze touched the back of her neck.

Which was odd, since her hair covered her neck.

Lisette straightened up. Slowly.

The icy touch was gone, but she had a strong sensation that someone was watching her. She turned around quickly.

Nothing.

Silly
, she told herself. Anybody trying to sneak up behind her—and by "anybody," Lisette was thinking of Cecile—anybody would have given herself away for there were no paths up here and a great deal of undergrowth. She couldn't imagine Cecile getting this far without making a lot of noise. Little children tried to be sneaky, but they just weren't very good at it.

So then why did she suddenly feel sure that there was someone standing behind her?

She whipped around.

Nothing.

Except...

Except the possibility that one of the branches right at the edge of her sight had moved. Maybe.

Lisette scrambled to her feet and faced that area. "Stop it, Cecile," she demanded.

She hugged herself for warmth and realized that her nice sweater that she had been so worried about Cecile pulling out of shape now had leaves and twigs stuck to it. She tried to brush them away and left a dirty smudge. Her dress would need to be washed, and her white shoes were all scuffed and stained, too. She hadn't been here more than a half-hour and she'd already ruined her clothes. Cecile would be pouty and miserable about being left behind, and Aunt Josephine would be annoyed both about the clothes and about Cecile. Not off to a good start at all.

"I'm going back now, Cecile," Lisette said, although she didn't really believe that Cecile was watching her from the bushes. Nobody was.

She was stupid to let Cecile's brain-sucking ghost stories make her so jumpy.

She pushed her way through the branches, refusing to look back despite the prickly sensation between her shoulder blades. There was no reason to look back because there was nobody there. But she did let each branch go with a snap, just to discourage anybody from following too closely, just in case there was somebody following, even though she knew there wasn't.

That made her feel better for about fifteen minutes, until she realized that she was hopelessly lost.

The hill was at least twice as broad as it was long, but Lisette had walked across the shortest part in five minutes. Even given that she was walking at half the speed because this section was overgrown with tree roots and prickly bushes and fallen branches from years gone by, surely she should have reached the edge by now.

All she had to do was keep walking in a straight line.

But it was hard to walk straight when she had to keep circling around trees and clumps of bushes; in fact, it was hard to tell what
was
straight when she could only catch occasional glimpses of the sun because the trees were so tall and the branches frequently intertwined.

Lisette took her sweater off. She considered tying it around her head to keep the bugs out of her hair, but she decided if she was going to die here of starvation and exposure, she didn't want the search party that eventually found her body to think she looked ridiculous.

Don't be silly,
she told herself.
You can't die of starvation and exposure on a hill that's barely bigger than the groundfloor at I'Ecole Louis Pasteur. Somebody's bound to find you before then.
But she didn't put the sweater on her head.

What people would find ridiculous was that she could have gotten herself lost in such a small area. They'd probably send ten-year-old Cecile to find her.

But then she remembered that Cecile wouldn't come here. Cecile believed the hill was haunted.

Lisette thought she caught a movement off to the left. "Who's there?" she demanded.

Nobody answered.

Lisette intentionally walked toward where she had seen the movement, to prove to herself that she could. The area was much too overgrown for anybody to have been there. Could she have glimpsed an animal? Possibly a bird, because the movement had been at eye level, and she didn't want to think about any animal that would stand that tall.
Silly
, she told herself.
If it's too overgrown for a person, it's too overgrown for an ani
mal.
And there probably weren't any more dangerous animals in Sibourne than in Paris. So she stood looking into the thickest section of interwoven branches and called out, just to make herself feel brave, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

And there, not an arm's length away, she saw a face.

She gasped and took a quick step back.

It never occurred to her that it was anything besides a ghost because she could see right through him just the way that looking through a store window you can sometimes see both a reflection of the street and what's in the store itself. The ghost also took a quick step back, so that now a branch seemed to be growing in his transparent head and sticking out through his ear. Which was very disconcerting to Lisette, if not to the ghost.

But the ghost seemed at least as startled and afraid of her as she was startled and afraid of him. And then he made a quick sign of the cross. A Catholic ghost? Lisette put her hand over her heart, willing it to stop pounding so hard. Back in Paris, Brigitte always made her hold her breath when they passed a cemetery, saying that you didn't want to flaunt being alive in front of ghosts, who were notoriously jealous of the living. But this ghost didn't seem aware of her breathing or of the beating of her heart. In fact, whatever had killed him, he looked ready to die all over again of fright.

And he couldn't be any older than Lisette herself, which was more sad than scary. She found herself saying, "Don't be frightened. I won't hurt you."

That seemed to calm him a bit. He was a good-looking boy, with brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a baggy shirt that hung to his knees, skin-tight pants, and tall boots. Old-fashioned or just poor, she couldn't tell. How long did ghosts remain in one place, she wondered.

He seemed to be appraising her, too. He said something, except that no words came out. The poor boy must be mute as well as dead, except ... except wouldn't a mute boy have exaggerated the movements of his mouth so that she could read his lips more easily?

"What?" she asked. And the fact that he looked surprised at her question made her add, "I can't hear you."

This time, he did exaggerate it. In addition, he gestured toward her, then indicated himself, then touched his fingertips first to his lips, then to his ear. Obviously he was asking: "You can't hear me?"

She shook her head. "Can
you
hear
me
?"

He nodded.

This was getting stranger all the time. But now that she was over being startled, he certainly didn't seem frightening at all. She put her hand out to shake his. "My name is Lisette Beaucaire."

He hesitated, looking from her face to her hand, seeming uncertain what was expected of him. He stepped forward, and she felt a cold draft when his hand passed through hers.

She took an instinctive step back at the same time
he did. She wrapped her arms around herself, tucking her right hand under her arm to warm it.

He said something that she couldn't understand.

"What?" she asked.

He repeated it, and still she didn't understand.

"Your name?" she asked, and he nodded. "Say it more slowly."

Not only did he say it more slowly, but he shortened it, concentrating on the first name.

"Jean something?"

He shook his head.

"Gerard?"

He smiled. He had a wonderful smile.

"Gerard," she repeated. "Last name?"

He shook his head, looking more amused than out of patience.

"Do you come from around here?" She had changed the wording of her question at the last second, to avoid asking where he lived.

Still, he frowned in concentration and took another step back. He had gone right through the outermost branches, which now blocked part of his face.

"I'm not from here," Lisette said. "I'm just visiting and I'm lost."

At least he didn't retreat any farther.

"Can you show me how to get down from this hill?"

He only hesitated a moment before indicating for her to follow him. Then he took off into a tree.

"Gerard!" she called.

He must have turned around while he was actually in the tree, for he came back.

"I can't go that way. Can we go around?"

He looked at her quizzically.

Walking around that particular clump of tree and surrounding bushes, she walked as nearly in the direction he had started as she could.

In another moment he stepped back in front of her. But he had that wary expression again as if not quite sure he should trust her. When he thought she wasn't looking, he made another sign of the cross.

From the way he would walk around perfectly clear patches of ground, holding his arm up as though to force his way through nonexistent branches, and from the way he'd sometimes look back to check her progress and blink as though finding it hard to believe his eyes, Lisette gathered that just as he couldn't see all the surroundings that were obvious to her, he could see obstacles she couldn't.