PROLOGUE It''s strange living in our old house, now that Uncle Roderick is dead. I already know my house is haunted. It''s always been haunted. That hasn''t changed. We avoid the freezing cold spot in the corner of the living room because someone probably died there. Windows slam themselves open or shut on the stillest days. So do doors, and these doors are heavy. For a long time I thought it was normal to sense someone standing behind you, or next to you, and not be able to see them.
For invisible hands to brush past your hair, your clothes. And it looks haunted: wooden, unpainted, weathered with time. There''s an elaborately carved front door, peaked roofs jutting out in all directions, tall windows with shapes flickering behind them. The porch wraps around front to back with rocking chairs that sometimes rock on their own. We''re out in the middle of nowhere, and at nighttime there''s moonlight and starlight and nothing else. When I was in kindergarten I checked a book out of the library because the house on the front cover looked like a photograph of my home. Uncle Roderick tried reading it to me that night, my head resting on his chest, his arm tucked beneath my shoulders. We always read together before bed.
He had to stop after the first chapter because it was a collection of scary stories; he believed that dreams were important, and he didn''t want to give me bad ones. But now this old house seems haunted in a different way. A way that''s both more boring and more frightening. There''s a half-empty jar of okra Uncle Roderick picked and pickled that he''ll never finish eating, and Mom and I both hate okra. His winter boots are jammed in the closet. He always put off wearing them for as long as possible, saying they made him look like a lumberjack, but now he''ll never need them again. He subscribed to magazines, the New Yorker, National Geographic, and they''ll keep being addressed to him until we tell them to stop. Until they take his name off the list.
Forever. I prefer the ghosts. CHAPTER ONE The moment he dies, I know. It''s the middle of the night. My eyes open, and I grip the mattress with both hands. I''m suddenly, irrationally convinced that my bed is toppling over. Like it''s unbalanced, perched precariously on the top of a mountain and about to come crashing down. Or like it''s teetering on the edge of a black hole, with nothing familiar on the other side.
Uncle Roderick''s room is at the top of the stairs. Mom''s is at the end of the hall. For eleven years I''ve fallen asleep snug in the middle, their warmth and weight keeping me grounded from both sides. Even these past couple months, when he''s been in the hospital and then the hospice, I could still feel him there, keeping me safe at the top of the stairs. But now I know my uncle is gone. The stairs creak, sharp and loud. That doesn''t mean anything. They creak all the time.
"The house is settling" is what Mom says, and sometimes it might be a harmless ghost. But now I hear the groan of a foot on a step. And then another. It''s like the sound of someone slowly moving up our wide staircase, someone with a heavy tread. It''s mid-June, and hot, and I''m lying under a sheet with a fan blowing warm air around the room. I pull the sheet up to my chin, wishing for the weight of a comforter to press me into the mattress, something to hide under. The creaks stop at the top, right in front of Uncle Roderick''s bedroom door. I hold my breath and strain my ears.
I can''t hear anything, but it doesn''t sound like no one''s there. It sounds like someone being silent. I only exhale when the creaks descend the stairs, as slowly as they came. Uncle Roderick always told me that passing spirits and lingering presences are a normal part of living in a house almost as old as the dirt it sits on. Mom says that the creepy things I sense or feel or hear are just part of an active imagination, and that Uncle Roderick shouldn''t encourage it, that ghosts aren''t real. I only occasionally believe my mom: When the sun is bright and I can explain away strange hands touching my neck or a mysteriously slammed-shut door as stray gusts of wind in a drafty old building. I believe my uncle now, surely and suddenly. But I don''t want to.
"There''s no one on the stairs," I tell myself, wanting it to be true, still holding on to the mattress for dear life. "There''s no one on the stairs. There''s no one on the stairs. There''s no one on the stairs." The rhythm pounds through my brain, repeating itself over and over, crowding out every other thought that also must be true. I manage to fall asleep by curling up into a ball, my back turned toward the half of the room that echoes the new emptiness in my chest. I wake up again a few hours later because the phone rings. I feel grounded now.
Not in a free fall, not hurtling through space. But there''s an empty room inside my chest. Mom''s voice struggles through the wall. None of the words are clear, but if I didn''t know about Uncle Roderick already, I would know now from her tone, the rise and fall of sentences. She comes into my bedroom a few minutes later and I sit up. She holds me and cries. I''ve seen my mother cry before, but it''s never been my job to comfort her. It''s always been Uncle Roderick''s job.
But her brother''s not here, and I am. I hold her tight, and breathe as shallowly as possible until her sobs subside. I should have cried that first day, almost a year ago, when Uncle Roderick came home from the doctor with bad news, but I couldn''t. I remember a rushing sound filling my ears, drowning out the details, my brain refusing to take in anything beyond one main truth. Something too big to touch, with no details to snag on. I told myself I''d only cry once he was gone. But that day has come and I''ve got nothing. No tears, and no anything else.
There''s sadness, but it''s whirling around outside of me. Like a hurricane of grief, and I''m the dry, unmoving eye. "He loved you very much, you know," Mom says, after a bit. She lets go, sits up straight, palms the tears off her cheeks. I wish I had a tissue to offer her. "I know he did," I say. And I do. But it doesn''t help.
Mom hugs me once more, then says she has to make some phone calls. I stare across my room, sunlight streaming through the tall window with rippled glass, and wonder what happens after this. CHAPTER TWO Mom and Uncle Roderick and I rattled around our house like peas in an oversized pod. Sometimes we would have houseguests from New York City or Burlington or Montreal, filling it up with noise and laughter and memories. But the three of us could fill it up just as well. Tonight the house is full of people and memories, but not much laughter. Family friends have come from all over. But not many people from our little pocket of Vermont show up.
We moved here when I was a baby, and old Vermonters don''t acknowledge you until there''s "six in the ground." Six dead people, they mean, in a row, stretching back through the years. Well, we''ve got our first. But Uncle Roderick isn''t even in the ground. Not really. He didn''t want a funeral, he said, or a burial. Just sprinkle my ashes on the land, he told us toward the end. We did, putting handfuls in the creek, the woods, the garden, everywhere.
Mom says that everyone deserves a chance to say goodbye. I wish they could say goodbye somewhere else. The house has never been this full before, and I can''t go hide with Uncle Roderick in his room. I have to wear this dress that makes me look like Samantha from the American Girl books. It''s rumpled from being at the bottom of my closet for months, and Uncle Roderick usually took care of the ironing. People pat me on the shoulder or hug me, and since I''m the one with a dead uncle it''s okay that I don''t hug back. My dress is like a force field; it blocks out the pressure of their hands or arms around me, which is good because if I actually feel anyone touch me I''ll break apart into smithereens. In between I focus on tightening my ponytail and tugging at the wrinkles in my dress.
It''s too small for me, and if I hunch forward the material pulls across my back, keeping me a gasp away from a full breath. Conversations pause if I walk by them, but tucked into a corner of the living room I catch snatches here and there. "Awfully young, he was only thirty-two, right?" "It''s so sad, especially since Sabrina''s husband died right after she gave birth. A car accident, if I''m remembering correctly." "No, they don''t have anyone else. This place started out as a vacation home, and it''s been in their family for a while, but no one else is left." One of Uncle Roderick''s ex-boyfriends is across the room, down from Portland. I think his name is Tobias.
He''s tall and thin, like Uncle Roderick, but with a shaved head and a beard. He was nice, but had wanted kids, and my uncle decided that I was enough kid for him, so they broke up but stayed friends. Tobias catches my eye and gives me a small, sad smile. I turn up the corners of my mouth in what might be a smile, and skitter away before he can come over to shake my hand or hug me or pay whatever respects he has. I duck into the kitchen but catch my dress on the doorframe. I reach down to tug it away, from a nail or whatever. It''s not stuck on anything, but there''s a rip that I don''t think was there before. Oh well, I''m getting too big for it anyway.
No one else is in the kitchen. There are dishes cluttered on the wide wooden counter, crusted with food, so I dump them in the sink and turn on the faucet. I''ve always begged Mom for a dishwasher, especially since I only just got tall enough to reach the bottom of the huge sink, but right now scrubbing at dishes.