Amber House (34 page)

“Maybe named after you, child,” she told Sarah-Louise, “but you ought not to have spoken.” Nyangu talked to the air. “Hope you can still hear me. You go back to Amber House and find me, Sarah. The power’s the strongest in that house. I’ll be looking for you in Sarah-Louise’s room, touching the canopy bed. You come find me, and I’ll try to help.”

I started walking, started trotting. “I have to find her again. She said she’d meet me in the flowered room. I wonder,” I said, as I started to run, “if she’ll remember.”

Back at the house, Jackson followed me upstairs. “What do you mean, ‘if she’ll remember’?”

“Been five minutes for us,” I said grimly, “but maybe twenty years for her.” I asked him to wait outside. “Please don’t make any noise — don’t break my concentration.”

I dropped to the floor and touched a corner of the bed. The atmosphere shifted, and I could see Nyangu sitting, her hand gripping the bedpost. It seemed she had gotten here before me. Two centuries before me. “Can you hear me, Nyangu?”

“You call me Nanga, child, like they all did.”

“It’s not your name.”

“Neither is Nyangu. Was the name of him I loved. What help you need, Sarah-to-come?”

“My brother — I found him unconscious in the maze, and then I saw him in the mirror.”

“In the mirror? Is that how it happened?” She was genuinely shocked. “Never heard of the gift in a boy child.”

“Sammy has visions like I do?” How had I missed that? How had I not known?

“It may be so. If he is in the mirror. If he’s stuck in the in-between world.”

“Stuck? How did he get stuck? How do I get him out?”

“He is lost somehow. Like a spirit that can’t find its way to the next world,” Nyangu explained. “You’ve got to find him. Help him remember the way back. Or he will die. Can’t be separated from your spirit for too long.”

“But how do I do that?”

“Can’t tell you how, child. Never done it myself. Find him. Help him remember he is alive.”

Sarah-Louise came in. “Nanga, I’ve been looking for you. Come down to supper with me.” Nyangu startled and could no longer see me.

“No, wait,” I cried, “I don’t know how to do this.”

And in my upset, I could no longer see her either. I went to the door. “What did she say?” Jackson asked.

“Sammy has the gift,” I recited flatly and hopelessly. “He went into an in-between world and lost his way. I’m supposed to help him find his way out. Fast.”

“An in-between world? What is that?”

“I don’t know. She said it was like the place where spirits get stuck if they don’t go where they’re supposed to.” I was angry and crying. I needed better help.

“So how do we get him?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated miserably. “Try to find out how he got lost?”

We knew Sam had wandered into the maze late the night before. I just had to connect with something that would allow me to see the moment when he went —
away
. Something, I thought, from his bed. I grabbed the door handle for the nautical room and saw another hand grabbing it before me. Nyangu was there.

She was as old and eroded as the Sphinx. White-haired. Her skin emptied into folds. Her eyes, cloud-cast with cataracts. But she would not have been able to see me even if she weren’t blind — I was looking into the past, but I could feel she was not looking forward.

She spoke to the empty air.

“Sarah, child. Been waiting to see you once more. Been looking for the right moment for a long time, but it never came. So I’m trusting you’ll see me here, before you go to find your little brother. Like I told you, long time ago for me now, Amber House got a way of answering a need.”

I didn’t answer her, since I knew she would not hear.

“Something else you got to know.” Her hand stayed on the knob, her fingers touching and not touching mine. “You have to find the box. You hear me? It’s the needful thing.” And she was gone.

I returned to myself with my hand on the door to Sammy’s room. I couldn’t go in yet. “Nanga said I would need the box.”

“She came back?”

“She was a lot older. Maybe thirty years older. It was like — she had something she had to add, something she figured out after we talked in my room, and she had to tell me before I went after Sam.”

“What box?”

I remembered the night Sammy came into my room sleepwalking, and Sammy’s presence in my last dream. Both times, he had been looking for a box. I realized, finally and much too late, that the whole time we’d been here, Sam had been caught up in something I hadn’t seen. Because I wasn’t paying enough attention. I’d been so involved in my own drama, I hadn’t once thought that Sam might have this “special” gift too. That maybe he had it even stronger than I did. That maybe I wasn’t as special as I thought.

I was an idiot. I’d let Sammy down.

“I think — I think it’s Matthew’s box. The Captain’s son.” I described the box to Jackson, using my hands to show him the size. “The very last place I saw it was in the tree house. My mom and Maggie were hiding it up there. But it was gone when we looked the other day.”

“Someone moved it.”

“It must have been my mom. After Maggie died. But I have no idea where she put it.”

“Call her. Ask.”

I was afraid to ask my mother. Afraid I’d reveal to her that I knew more than I should. That I’d —
heard
the house. Gotten involved with it. Woken it up. She hadn’t wanted to stay, wouldn’t have stayed if we hadn’t tricked her.

I didn’t want her to guess it was my fault that Sammy was lost in Amber House.

When I went to lift the phone to my ear, I slipped again into resisting space and saw a different hand on the receiver — my young mother’s. Her other hand held down the disconnect button, which she let up slowly, quietly. She was going to eavesdrop on the line.

I leaned in close, my head next to hers. I could hear the words coming from the receiver, small and tinny, like an insect’s voice.

“Margaret’s condition has not stabilized. We had to insert an endotracheal tube.”

A doctor, talking about Maggie.

“When will she wake up?” That was Gramma.

“The average coma lasts anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. A patient either recovers, progresses to a vegetative state, or — dies.”

“She’s not going to die.” Silence. “Tell me she’s not going to die.”

“At this point,” the doctor hedged, “we can’t be sure of the extent of the neurological damage caused by Margaret’s fall. Judging from her X-ray, I wouldn’t say that this was caused by head trauma at all. There’s little indication of hemorrhage. She shouldn’t have experienced anything beyond a transitory lack of consciousness. We need to run more tests. But — at this point,” he repeated, hesitating, “I can’t tell you that I expect her to make a recovery.”

“Oh, God,” I heard Ida say, before my mother quietly returned the phone to its cradle.

“Oh, God,” my mother echoed as she disappeared.

Maggie had fallen into a coma before she died. A coma they couldn’t figure out.

The house had taken her too.

The helpful nurse on the other end of the line found my mother in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit waiting room. They’d done an MRI on Sam.

“They find anything?” I asked.

“Nothing,” my mother said, her voice lifeless. She was back again with Maggie, I thought. Back again with the loss that had taken everything with it. “Your father’s in with Sam, consulting with the other doctors. They don’t know what’s wrong yet.”

I knew what was wrong. I exhaled heavily.

“There was a drawing,” I said, “in the nautical room. Of a puzzle box. I need to know where that box is.”

“Why?” Mom’s tone was suspicious.

“Sam … wanted it. I need to find it for Sam.” The words sounded unnatural coming out of my mouth. I wished I was a better liar.

I could hear her thinking, piecing things together. “What are you hiding, Sarah? What have you and Sam been doing?”

Do I tell her?
I wondered rapidly. Maybe she could help. Maybe —

Her voice was completely hard. “I want you out of there. Right this instant. You understand me?”

“Mom, I’ve got —”

“Right this instant. Tell Rose you have to leave now. If you’re not here in the waiting room in thirty-five minutes, I’ll call the
police to come get you. You understand me? I want you out of that house.”

And I knew there wasn’t a single thing I could say that would persuade Mom she was making the wrong decision. If I mentioned the box again, it would just make her want me out of there faster. The only thing I could do was squeeze out a little more time.

“Okay. I’m on my way. But — I’ll need a few minutes to change my clothes, grab a couple things.”

“You’ve got forty-five minutes, then. But that’s it. And when you get here, you and I are going to talk. You’re going to tell me, in detail, what you and Sammy have been doing.”

I was about to hang up, but my mother spoke again. “And I was going to tell you and Sam together, but you should know.” She cleared her throat. “Amber House is sold.”

Sold?

“A woman I’ve known since high school. She was at the party. I didn’t even realize. She made me an offer I just couldn’t turn down. Much more than the place is worth. Sarah, Claire Hathaway — Richard’s mother — is the one who is buying Amber House.”

The blonde in the mask
, I thought, unreasonably, but with absolute certainty. Why did the idea of Richard’s mother taking ownership of Amber House give me a feeling of dread?
Poor house.
I wondered if Richard had any idea. Grief hit me with such a force I doubled over, breathless. I could have wept.

“Are you still there?” I must’ve made some affirmative noise, because she went on. “She wants it furnished, with everything in it, as soon as we can close an escrow. So we’ll take a few personal things and that’s that. Meanwhile, you get yourself up to this hospital on the double. I’ve got to go. Your father’s come out to speak to me.” I heard the click on her end of the line.

No time for this.
I straightened up, wiping tears from the corners of my eyes, and turned to Jackson, all business. “We’ve got
an hour, tops, to get this done. Then a policeman will be here to take me to Baltimore. And I don’t think I’ll ever be back. Amber House is sold.”

The pain in his face matched my own. He looked like he wanted to ask questions or protest. But he just nodded.

“First, we need to go back to the tree house.”

I was pretty certain the box wasn’t up there any longer, but I was going to double-check. And then I’d see if I could summon up a vision of the person who’d moved it.

When I touched the tree to climb it, the past opened. A flash exploded — a woman and a child were posing for a photograph.
The photograph from Heart House
, I thought. I was just close enough to recognize that the child wasn’t the little girl in white after all. They were much alike — both beautiful and both of mixed-race parentage. But that little girl — Maeve’s daughter — was not my little girl.

No time for this.
I snapped back and started climbing. I had the tree-house floorboard pried open before Jackson poked his head above the ladder. “Definitely not here,” I said. I concentrated, touching things, trying to find a key to the right moment in the past. But I couldn’t see a thing.

Except. Something I hadn’t noticed before. Wedged between the end of a board and the branch it rested on, the remnants of a string of beads. Carefully, I lifted the rotting string and saw the beads as they once were — whole, glittering on the floor of the tree house among a mess of other childish treasures spilled from Matthew’s upended box.

A woman’s hand lifted the box. Then her other hand swept viciously through the treasures, knocking them off into space. I heard sobbing. “So stupid,” she said. “Like a lure to bring her here.”

My grandmother’s voice.

“Oh, God,” I said, holding my head in my hands. “What did she do with it? Where would she have put it?”

And then it hit me. There was only one place in Amber House to put something that had caused my grandmother so much pain.

“It’s in the trunk in the attic.”

He must have seen something tighten in my face, something that betrayed the horror I felt at going back to that lonely chest. “You don’t have to go,” Jackson said. “I’ll get it.”

“No. I might see something else, something that will help. I’ll go.”

I climbed down from the tree and took off running again. Time was slipping away. At the second-floor landing, Jackson grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the east hall. “Faster this way,” he said.

At the wall with the secret panel, he stopped and leaned with his palms against it. I saw his body stiffen, his head jerk back slightly, as a groan escaped him. Then he unclenched. With surety, he reached for a piece of molding that clicked under his fingers, and the wall panel popped in and open. I realized he had just seen the future, had seen himself finding the way in. I did not have time to wonder how that worked.

“It hurts you?” I asked him, as I climbed up and inside.

“Not enough to matter,” he said. “Can’t push it too much. Can’t push it too far. Wait one second.” He dashed into the nautical room, dumped something on the floor, and came back a half minute later with Sam’s flashlight. “Here.”

When I knew to listen for it, I could hear the weeping that filled that long room at the top of Amber House. Even though I was in
a deadly rush, I walked quietly to the chest, so as not to disturb the gathered sorrows. I knelt to undo the lock, and Fiona was there with her tears, and my grandmother with her tears, and many grandmothers, with a river of tears.

The wooden box I remembered from our last visit was buried under a layer of things I had to shift aside. At my touch, the griefs of centuries crowded my sight: a dusty-blue baby in a coffin; a man screaming as a surgeon sawed off his leg; a woman in the tub of the rose-tile bathroom, a puddle of blood below her slashed arm. I squeezed my mind closed against them, forcing myself to see the present moment. And there it was.