A Curious Tale of the In-Between (10 page)

“They just mean to protect you,” Clarence said.

“Yes,” Pram said. “But I think it makes them sad that I can’t be like other children.”

They’d reached the alleyway that led to Lady Savant’s Spirit Show. Pram took a deep breath and held it.

Clarence took her hand.

“You don’t have to go in,” he said.

“Yes, I do,” Pram said, and stepped forward.

She raised her fist to knock on the door, but it opened before she could. The man with thick arms looked at Clarence. “The invitation is only for the girl.”

“I’m not letting her go in alone,” Clarence said. It was brave of him, Pram thought. The man at the door unnerved her.

“It’s okay, Brutus. The boy can come in.” Lady Savant sat on a coffee sack, waiting for them. She was not wearing her theatrical makeup, and when Pram saw her face, she remembered from her not-dream that her real name was Claudette. “Come in. Have a seat.”

Pram and Clarence shared a coffee sack and were so close to each other that their shoulders touched.

“
You’re the boy who came to one of my shows with Pram,” she said.

Pram vaguely recalled telling Lady Savant her name. It made her uneasy and a little mad to know she’d been tricked into thinking she was dreaming.

“Yes,” Clarence said.

“You were looking for your mother, I believe,” Lady Savant said. “Did you ever find her?”

“No,” Clarence said, pretending it didn’t hurt to talk about it. “I fear she’s moved on.”

“Most of us do,” Lady Savant said. “Those who stay usually have something important to attend to. So important that they’re able to ignore that force imploring them to move on. Very few will stay just for the sake of staying, though some are too scared to move on right away, and animals seem to enjoy haunting this world. When I was a girl, there was a tomcat’s ghost that ran around the apartment building, spooking the mice. He was my first.” She looked at Pram. “You remember your first ghost, too, don’t you?”

“Insects,” Pram said.

“But your first real ghost,” Lady Savant said.

“Yes, I remember,” is all Pram said.

“There’s no need to be secretive,” Lady Savant said. “I’ve been acquainted with your friend Felix.”

“
You have?” Pram said.

“We had a chat last night. He’d wanted my help moving on.”

Pram was certain her heart stopped beating in her chest. “Moving on?”

“He felt that it was time, and he needed me to show him the way. There’s nothing to worry about; I’ve done it dozens of times. You’ll learn to guide spirits, too. I can teach you.”

Pram couldn’t speak, so Clarence was the one to ask, “Can Felix come back? If he changes his mind? Or for visits?”

Lady Savant laughed. “If spirits could come back anytime they pleased, the planet might sink through the stars with the weight of them. No, he’s quite gone.”

Pram’s bones were aching. Her eyes were sore, but she was too stunned to fill them with tears. “He didn’t say good-bye.”

“It’s more common than you think,” Lady Savant said. “He told me that you’d always been so kind to him and that he’d been wanting to leave for some time, but it was your face that made him want to stay.”

It didn’t sound like Felix. “I thought he was afraid of leaving,” Pram said.

“Afraid of leaving you,” Lady Savant said. “But it was
time.
He knows that you’re growing too old for him now. He wants you to go on living. He was glad that you would be coming to see me, so that I could help you find your father.”

Pram was born orphaned, but she’d been fortunate, at least, that her losses came when she was too young to remember them. She had never lost someone who was a part of her every day, and the grief came too suddenly for her to realize that it was grief.
Felix will be at his tree
, she thought.
I’ ll go home and find him there.

Clarence said, “How will you help Pram find her father?”

“You wanted us to raise money doing spirit shows,” Pram remembered from her not-dream. “And we’d travel.”

“Travel, yes,” Lady Savant said. “But our journey would be guided by your mother’s spirit.”

“I thought Pram’s mother had moved on,” Clarence said.

“She was away,” Lady Savant said. She looked at Pram. “Your mother was troubled when she was alive. She made mistakes, and she has regrets, and it was too painful for her to watch you growing up.”

“Why has she come back now, then?” Pram asked.

“Because she was at my show the night you attended. She frequents them. Though she had never seen you
before,
she knew right away that you were her daughter. She feels that she owes it to you to help you find your father.”

Her father had been all Pram could think about for some time, but now the hope of finding him paled in comparison to losing Felix. How could he leave without saying good-bye? Had he tried to tell her he was ready to move on, and she’d missed the signs?

Something about this didn’t seem right, and Pram wanted to go home. She wasn’t certain she wanted to come back.

“I can’t leave without writing a note for my aunts,” Pram said. “So they won’t worry so much.” She stood, and Clarence stood with her. “And I’d need to pack. I should plan this before I make a decision.”

“What’s to decide?” Lady Savant said, though something about her tone made Pram think it wasn’t a question. She thought of what Felix had said about her being sent off to the circus if she told anyone about her abilities. She thought about her strange dream that wasn’t a dream at all, and she felt that Lady Savant had cheated her out of her secrets. And Pram didn’t know very much about Lady Savant, but she knew enough not to trust her. She didn’t trust anyone who took money to speak to ghosts, and she didn’t quite believe what she’d said about Felix wanting to move on, even though Felix was nowhere to be
found.
Pram wondered if Lady Savant had done something to him.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Pram said. “I don’t want to find my father. I want to go back.”

The man with the thick arms had closed the door. His face was in the shadows, but Pram could see his lips were set in an immovable line. Slowly those lips became a smile.

“Oh,” Lady Savant said, “but there is no going back now.”

CHAPTER

16

Lily,

I see your exquisite face at every port. I’ve made a horrible mistake leaving you behind. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.

Max

P
ram had memorized her father’s words to her mother, and she recited them over and over in her head, until the words began to feel distant, and Max and Lily became silhouettes being swallowed by sunlight. They were strangers to her, for they had been in love before she was born, and before she ever could have mattered to them.

Perhaps
she’d made a mistake pursuing her father. Perhaps he was angry with her. She had been more intrusion than daughter to him—the thing that went wrong.

Her breath was shuddering. She drew her knees to her chest.

It was dark, and Clarence couldn’t see her tears, but he sensed them and he said, “Don’t cry. It’ll be all right.”

She sniffed. “I’ve been stupid,” she said.

“No more stupid than me looking for my mother’s ghost,” Clarence said.

He was in the crate next to hers and they were covered by thick blankets, in a caravan filled with folding chairs and boxes from Lady Savant’s show.

Pram held her fingers before her face but could see nothing. She thought of Felix moving on, and she hoped there was something other than darkness waiting for him.

“Do you think it’s true what Lady Savant said about Felix moving on?” she asked.

“You know him better than I do,” Clarence said, “but it doesn’t sound right to me. Felix loves you. He wouldn’t leave without a proper good-bye. Could Lady Savant have forced him?”

Pram frowned. “I don’t think anyone has that power. I think it has to be a choice. But I don’t know; I’ve never helped anyone move on before.”

“
We’ll find out soon,” Clarence said as the caravan moved forward through the night.

“I think we’ll find out a lot of things,” Pram said.

They hadn’t fought when Lady Savant and the man with thick arms guided them into the crates. Their silence might have been taken for fear, and while it was true that Pram and Clarence were afraid, the bigger truth was that they were curious. They knew Lady Savant was devious, but they also understood that she could show them a great many things about what comes after life. And both Pram and Clarence had someone dead they wanted to speak to.

Pram wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry for taking your seat that day,” she said. “And for getting you into this mess.”

She could hear Clarence shifting in his crate. “I’ll never be sorry for that,” he said. “I’m glad we’re friends.”

Pram rested her head against the wall of the crate and pretended it was his shoulder. “I’m glad for that, too.”

After a pause, Clarence said, “Felix was trying to protect you. That’s why he didn’t seem to like me very much.”

“He only gets jealous,” Pram said.

“It was more than that,” Clarence said. “He knew how special you are. He thought the wrong sort of person would come along and cause trouble for you, if they knew about your ability to see ghosts. And he was right. I’m the one who led you to Lady Savant.”

“
This isn’t your fault,” Pram said.

But she worried that at least some of what Clarence had said was true. Felix had been trying to protect her, and in terms of both the living and the spirit world, he was the only one who could. But now, suddenly, he was nowhere to be found.

Pram slept and dreamed that she was adrift upon a dark sea. There were no stars, but she knew that she was moving away from home. There was something as heavy as a stone around her neck.

She awoke clutching her father’s compass.

The caravan jolted and creaked as it hit a dip in the road.

“Clarence?” Pram said. When he didn’t immediately reply, she thought he had been swallowed by the darkness like Felix had been, and she began to panic. “Clarence!”

Something rustled. “I’m here,” Clarence replied sleepily. And then, “I think we’ve stopped moving.”

Had they? Pram couldn’t tell. She still felt like she was drifting in the waters she had dreamed.

There was the sound of metal doors opening on their hinges, and Pram could see a bit of light stealing in around the blanket’s edges.

Someone
threw back the blanket. All the whiteness blinded Pram, and after a moment Lady Savant began to appear, her hair wild like the shadow of an angry flame.

Pram could smell the chilly morning air. Her aunts were up before the sun, and they’d surely discovered she was missing by now. They would be looking for her, but they might not go to the police right away, Pram thought. They would think she’d done something silly, and they would hope to find her without attracting too much attention, so that another Ms. Appleworth wouldn’t come to take her away.

Pram wondered how long it would take her aunts to realize that something was really wrong. But even that realization wouldn’t help them find her. She didn’t know where she was herself. She stiffened her shoulders and did her best to look brave.

“Good morning, doll,” Lady Savant said. “So dreadfully sorry for the squalid accommodations. We were driving through a city famous for its thieves, and they love children. Do unspeakable things to them. It was much safer for you to blend in among the collection of a silly spirit show’s props.”

The man with the thick arms climbed into the caravan. It shuddered under his weight, and the vibrations were in tandem with Pram’s pounding heart. But she felt a little better when the blanket was lifted over Clarence’s
crate
and a strip of sunlight illuminated his blue eyes. Something about his eyes always calmed her.

She reached through the slats in her crate, and he did the same, and their hands touched for a moment before the man with the thick arms lifted Clarence’s crate and carried him away. Pram crawled after him, as though she could follow. “Where are you taking him?”

“Not to worry,” Lady Savant said. She was wielding a crowbar, and Pram flinched, but Lady Savant used it only to pry away the lid of Pram’s prison.

Even after the lid was gone, Pram hesitated.

Lady Savant laughed. “Come out, silly girl,” she said. “You can ride up front with me now. If anyone asks, we’ll say you’re my niece; won’t that be fun?”

The idea only made Pram lonely for her real aunts. Now that she was so far from that two-hundred-year-old colonial, she realized it was the only place in which she’d ever felt safe. That house and the pond where she’d met Felix.

“If I come out, will you tell me more about where Felix has gone?” Pram asked.

“There isn’t much to tell,” Lady Savant said. “He’s moved on. But I can tell you more about the spirit world if you wish.”

It would have to do.

Pram climbed from the crate on unsteady legs. Lady
Savant
took her hand. Her fingers were plump and soft, and she smelled like every perfume that would ever fit atop a woman’s vanity. Her hair and face were done up, but none of this could conceal the menacing edge in her stare. Pram had seen that edge for the first time the night before, and it couldn’t be unseen.