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CHAPTER 1
On the day my brother North formally introduced me to the ghost, he whispered into my ear. "Come with us. We've decided you're old enough now. It's time."
"Time for what?"
We had just finished breakfast. The adults still lingered at the table, chatting over their coffee. Silently North and my older cousin Jane motioned me out of the breakfast room, into the foyer.
At the bottom of the stairs they placed hands on my shoulders, one each. North's was square, with little nicks from splinters he'd got whittling a Boy Scout neckerchief slide. Jane's was small and thin, pale as an almond. Together they gazed up the well.
"We want you to know that this can only happen now since you've reached the age of seven," North said. "You'll have to be very strong and brave, and able to walk in total silence, like an Indian, and not say a word. In fact, you'd better do everything we tell you, or else...."
His breath soured my nose; he hadn't yet brushed his teeth. I looked up, puzzled by his gravity. Back in those days North lorded over my life like Robin Hood, all the while slicking back his crew cut with one hand and picking his teeth with the other. His brown eyes had a foxy red cast to them, which shone when he began to cook up schemes. Now they'd gone dark, the color of mud; his cowlick was standing straight up. Never before had I seen him this serious. I turned to Jane, whose cat's features slipped into a blankness that made me think of her Young Queen Elizabeth Official Coronation Doll. She was thirteen this year. North was twelve.
"What are we doing?" I tried to shrug my shoulders beneath their grips, failed, and defiantly arched them instead.
"We're about to show you a family secret." North's voice rumbled in his chest, a foggy croak deep as a case of catarrh. "You see, Sarah, there's a ghost who lives here."
"A ghost? Here, in Grandmother's house?"
North nodded.
I studied him. "Aw. You're making that up."
"See, what'd I tell you? You've been protected from it. But now ... it's our duty to show you to the ghost." He glowered with the weight of responsibility. "Ever since we drove up here last night, Jane and I have been talking it over." I looked again to Jane, who lived here all the time, all year round, and whom we saw only on holidays and school vacations. She gazed down at me placidly, her brow smooth as china.
"I don't want to see it," I said.
"You have no choice," said North.
"I'd rather go back in to Mama."
North dug his fingers into my collarbone. "Never," he said, "never, never mention the ghost to Mama. Or to Daddy, or Auntie and Unc. Or especially — most especially — Grandmother. It would cause — something terrible." The solemnity remained, locking the mask of his awful smile. "It's totally up to us to make sure the ghost gets what he wants."
"What does it want?"
"You'll know when you meet it. Now repeat after me: I solemnly swear ..."
"I swear ..." A prickle broke out on my neck as the words connected.
"... never to mention the Ghost of Northgate Hall to anyone but my big brother North, my cousin Jane, or my cousin Buntie, as long as I shall live."
He and Jane nodded as I mumbled after him.
"This is your sacred trust. You are now one of us."
And then, suddenly, the meaning of what he was promising slammed into me, melting will.
One of them!
The nights I had been shunted out of their stories and games, doors closed on the sitting room where they listened to Spike Jones and Connie Stevens records and "You Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog"; the afternoons in summers past when I'd been chased from the musky shelter beneath the magnolia while they buried treasure or planned pantry invasions ...
"Yes, I swear! Cross my heart, North, stick a needle in my eye, hope to —"
"Hush! Just the Bibles, that's enough."
"Ready." The pair of hands loosened so that I could step up the first flight, but floated above my shoulders, guiding.
"Where in the Sam Hill do y'all think you're going?" We stopped. Buntie stood poised on the landing, staring coolly down. She had left the breakfast table early to feed medicine to her parakeet, who was going bald. Buntie was ten, and my idol.
"Shhh," Jane said.
"How come you got her all guarded like that? She'll start bawling if you treat her rough. Then you'll have your mother wringing your neck."
"This is business," North said. "We're taking her to meet the ghost."
"Oh." Her hand dropped from the armhole of her pajama top, where she'd been scratching a mosquito bite. "Right now? This early?"
"The time has come," said North.
"I thought y'all would wait until I had a chance to go feed the dogs, at least." She swung around and appraised me.
"Now I'll have to put it off, and Missy's nursing puppies. How do you know she won't holler and tell on us?"
"I won't." My throat was stiff. "I said I swear."
"Okay. I'll feed the dogs later. Come on up."
"Close your eyes and walk," North ordered in my ear. "This is a journey you make blind."
"Are you scared?" said Jane.
"No," I whispered. "No."
"Ha," laughed Buntie. "You better be."
When we reached the top of the stairs, North and Jane turned me to face the alcove next to the guest room. North said, "Open your eyes now." A whir sounded, the ceiling fans spinning through the heat: the constant summer music of the second floor. We stood at the heart of the house. The long hall led away to Auntie and Unc's suite. To my left I could see through wide double doors into the airy sunlit cave of the sitting room. Its wallpaper looked familiar, ordinary in the morning brightness: a blue-and-white lattice of cherry trees with a lady standing on a stump, filling her apron again and again. ...
"Not in there. Turn this way. Don't look back."
They steered me toward the two closed white doors side by side in the alcove. Then North jerked me to a halt.
"Look. What do you see?"
"The two doors," I said.
"What's behind them?"
"That one's the toy closet." I pointed, aimed up at him, mystified. "You mean the ghost lives in the toy closet? North, I haven't seen —"
"Be quiet!" His breath drafted hot down my neck. "What's the other door?"
"To the attic."
Silence.
"Oh — no ..."
But he gazed at the second door, his eyes narrowed, intense.
"We're not allowed, we can't go up there —"
"Shh." He released my shoulder and drew himself erect.
"It's full of old things we're supposed to let alone!" I said. "Grandmother says it's dangerous."
He lowered the scowl to me. "That's the fact, all right."
A pause suspended us. Even Buntie's easy air had left her.
"Come on," North said, and his heavy boy's hand fell like a stone, jarring my bones and flesh. "Sarah Lynn Grissom, daughter of a Northgate. Open the door," and I raised my hesitant hand.
The white panel swung outward, blinding me to the other reality of the house. Before us: the long vault of twilight, climbing into night; a smell of old wood, stale air, and dust. The smothered odor flowed down the uncarpeted steps to wrap over our faces, like a shawl packed away for a hundred years.
I stared up into that new world. A powdery gray light sifted somewhere above the turn of the tiny landing, filtering through dusk.
"You going to make her go up there by herself?" Buntie said. "I don't think —"
"Shh!" Jane nudged her.
"I'm just asking."
But Buntie's tone had dwindled to a mutter. It was the first time I had ever seen somebody else make her shut up.
"All right," North said. "Start walking."
To enter the dimness was an act of surrender. North and Jane had tensed around me; I could hear the friction of their clothes, the shallow explosions their lungs made as we stepped upward. North held my elbow pinned against him. The known summer world dropped away. Stair treads creaked underfoot. Then we were beyond the landing, emerging into an enormous room full of shapes. The light came from dormer windows set deep along the walls. My hand brushed against a rack of old coats and ballet costumes, and a red sequin glinted like a disembodied eye. Pale masses changed to tallboys and shrouded sofas; a skeleton turned into a floor lamp without a shade. North crowded us forward into the gloom.
No one spoke. I didn't know what to expect. When North halted, the four of us stood in a row, breaths knit, waiting.
Buntie grabbed my hand.
Then, after a long time, the ghost came.
I did not see its approach. It must have made its way through the clutter, stealing among birdcages and boxes, until it was a few yards away from us. I had goose bumps on my arms and a growing numbness inside my head. There was no way to tell exactly where it stood — behind the tallboy, or swamping the lamp stand with chill. The muffled space was drenched with its presence.
A sigh parted the air beside me. "Feel it," breathed Jane. "Cold ..." The eddies of daylight died.
Then abruptly North gasped, "Look! Over by that dresser. Oh, my Lord — that's it!"
I wheeled around. North was staring, eyes bulged, his arm thrust like a signpost. Jane and Buntie both stared in the same direction.
"See?" North said. "That white body, floating."
"Ahh!" moaned Buntie.
I saw the target of North's finger. It was an old wedding dress in a plastic bag, hung on a hook in the wall.
"Oh," Jane whimpered. "It's going to come towards us ...!"
I frowned for a second, puzzled. They didn't seem to realize their mistake.
Then I turned back around to where I knew the ghost really stood.
I felt it come toward me. And it began to gnaw. Hidden but felt, it drew the meaning from my brain. As I stood, helplessly offering myself to it, all sense left me, all warmth, blood, and feeling seeped away, along with courage.
I couldn't breathe.
Buntie's fingers went limp. She let go my hand. She, like the others, kept her eyes fixed in the opposite direction, on that empty wedding dress — I alone faced the hole in the darkness. The clothes racks, the covered chairs, and sofa lost their densities, and became ephemeral blots. I tried to wink, to shut the ghost out. I couldn't. My eyes stayed dry, too paralyzed for the relief of tears. It was calling me forward, wordlessly. Without the anchor of Buntie's grip, I leaned, seduced, into the void.
Slowly I began to fall....
A squeal broke through the cold. "Gotcha!" North yelped.
Then suddenly the others were running, wildly clattering down the stairs.
I felt them going. North ran fastest, Buntie next. It was Jane who stopped just in time to keep from leaving me behind and tugged me out of the trance, and before I realized it we plunged into the June day of the second floor. I scarcely knew what happened; I have no memory of storming down those steps. Behind us, North banged the attic door. We had escaped; the door stood shut again between death and life, sealing off that other realm, and the Thing that had nearly sucked me from myself. We shot through the hall straight to the first floor. Noise rang in my ears again; the racket of North and Buntie, their screams of laughter, Auntie's amazed look where she stood in the breakfast room overseeing the clearing-away.
At last we reared to a stop outside the back door, panting.
We leaned against the porte-cochere pillars and inhaled the clean heat, stomped on the pavement, filled our eyes with the rose gardens and lawns. North let loose a whoop: "Wahoo! Wahoooo!" Jane, the meek one, mashed at the dew on her upper lip.
Buntie caught a breath. Then suddenly she flew straight across the drive toward the dogs' yard.
I followed, yelling after her: "Hey, dogs! Hey, babies! Hey you doggies!" I ran and ran, until the fractured feeling was wrenched out by huge shrill cries, the ebbing parts of me gathered again, restored. "Sarah!" I screeched my own name, "Sarahhhhh!" Then we were rolling on the grass with the dogs and puppies licking at us. They tumbled across my legs, snuffling in delight. A warm red tongue batted my cheek. "Freckles," Buntie cried, "git off me! You baby, hey you pretty baby!" Lady charged my face. A whiff of flea powder, the flashing sheen of pelt — and behind it the ghost's vertigo, that vacancy hanging in the back of my mind. I felt the grass chafe as dogs and grass mingled against us, rough and silk together.
Buntie stood up to get their food. I lay spread-eagled on the turf, exhausted, and looked at her, wondering: Was the ghost's touch plain to see? Had he left marks on us? Would Buntie show the effects of his draining? the blue of his chill? One of the spaniels leaped toward her hand; she swatted his muzzle aside and teased him behind the ears, scrubbing into fur.
The movement was deft, practiced; and as I lay staring at her, something very odd happened.
Buntie's hair glowed like lemon taffy. Her body went luminous, as if the sun beyond had soaked her through and turned her into a human torch. Standing there, she mused for a moment, steeped in radiance. With a low growl she flipped the dog back down on his four legs; then, glancing at me transfixed upon her, at my gaping mouth, she suddenly laughed. "What's got into you?"
I couldn't recognize her. She was a stranger, burnished with light. Then a twist and she was gone.
My lids closed tightly on the empty sky. The surprise and shock froze me in place.
That was beauty. I had seen it.
Then I caught my breath, holding for one moment the new-born joy.
Through all the years since, I have never forgotten. Shining high above the events which found their beginnings on that day, this one moment hangs alone, with its image, the gold-drenched child. And, looking back, I can still feel the weightless burden of joy enter my mind, clean as a miracle: the compensation for what was to come, the payment in advance; and as I re-create the memories to tell this story, I am not sorry.
The ghost had given it to me, I knew. There was no question. The ghost had made it possible, whirling Buntie into light through its darkness, joining dark and light forever. Invisible horror gave me eyes.
My heart commenced again, knock, knocking inside my chest.
CHAPTER 2
"But who is he? The ghost? Where did he come from?"
The room was blue-dark. Out in the hall a sconce burned, fashioned like two candles in a bronze holder, with fake drips below the pointed bulbs. I watched the unwinking flames and listened for Buntie's answer.
"I don't know, heck. Some man. I always figured it was a tramp who died one time around here and picked this attic for a place to stay."
"A tramp?"
"Yeah. A hobo — you know." The East Texas night sponged up her voice. Once or twice a scurry came from the sheets: Buntie scratching the newest chigger bumps. "Those men who jump rides on trains — they carry their clothes in a bandanna on a stick. There were a lot of them around here during the oil boom."
"Did he die in Grandmother's yard?"
"I'm not sure there ever was such a person. It's just a guess. From stuff Grandmother's hinted about sometimes. She never said anything you could sink your teeth into, though. She never does."
"Oh."
Then, keeping my eyes pinned on the two electric fires, I said carefully, "Grandmother said there might have been a dead tramp?"
"I just told you. She doesn't really say anything. You know how they are." Buntie sighed. "I can tell what she's afraid of, that's all. So I thought: maybe the Ghost of Northgate Hall's a hobo."
"Yeah." I nestled into the pillow, recalling the visit upstairs. For a long time I said nothing.
"Buntie?"
"Huh?"
"Could it — could it be — somebody from the family who's dead?"
"You mean like an ancestor or something?"
I didn't know ancestor. "Well, there are some people in the family who have died. Like Granddaddy Northgate, for instance."
"Granddaddy?" The sheets rustled. "He wouldn't do that!"
"How do you know?"
"Lord, you're dumb. He just wouldn't. Coming back to haunt us. What a thing to imagine."
"But he's been dead an awful long time —"
"If you had ever seen him, you'd take that stupid idea right back." She sounded angry. "Shoot. Granddaddy was real. He loved to joke and play around. I remember him, see." Her voice slowed. "I remember him." She fell silent.
After a while she spoke again. "Granddaddy. He was happy." There was a wistful sigh from her bed. "He used to throw me up in the air, and tickle me. Swing me around. He wasn't like anybody else in this house. Not like anybody else I ever knew. I was only little. He bought me my first dog." Her voice changed; she sounded strange. "Mother like to had a fit. I can hear her now: 'A three-year-old girl has no business with a puppy,' she said. But she didn't say it to him, I'll bet. I remember — Chumper was still a tiny puppy when Granddaddy died."
"He's the only dead person I can think of. Besides, nobody ever talks about him."
"That's probably because they miss him."
This was a new possibility.
"But if it's not him —"
"Turn this way, will you? I can't hear you."
I was afraid, unwilling to turn and face the darkness. I made my voice louder. "Then it must be some stranger."
"I told you. A hobo."
She yawned.
"Buntie? What if it wasn't a person at all?"
I had dared it at last.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Waking Spell"
by .
Copyright © 1992 Carol Dawson.
Excerpted by permission of ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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