Prospect Street (10 page)

“That would have to be one stupid burglar.” She edged past Remy and shook Alex off again. “There are a lot better ways to enter the house.”

“What?”

She cursed her words. “I mean if someone wanted to break in, he wouldn't do it from the roof. But nobody's going to break in. Nobody did. Nobody will.”

“Oh, right.” Remy flung herself to the middle of the bed and grabbed Alex. The two sworn enemies clung to each other like Velcro strips.

“I can see I'm not going to have any company.” Faith pulled on her robe, one of the few personal items she'd unpacked. Slippers were only a dream. She slipped on the flats she'd worn all day and tied her belt. She was halfway to the door when the keening began again.

“Mom!”

She held up her hand to silence Alex and waited until the noise ended; then she opened her door all the way and peered into the hall. A night-light in the lone hallway wall socket lit a sea of boxes and a narrow path between them. She was glad she'd thought to put it there.

She needed a flashlight. She tried to remember where she'd put hers. She had left it behind on the day of the cleanup and replaced the batteries on her next trip so it would function.

“The kitchen pantry.” She debated the journey. Down the stairs in the dark, into the kitchen, into the pantry, where a rat named Lefty had his hideout. McLean seemed a thousand miles away.

The keening began again. She took off down the stairs, turning on the dining room light when she got there. When she flicked the kitchen switch the bulb sputtered, then popped and went dark. She searched the pantry by feel.

“I swear, Lefty, if you show yourself right now, you're dead rat meat,” she whispered fiercely.

If Lefty was there, he lay low. Faith grabbed the flashlight and snapped it on. The light flickered, then died. She shook it and tried again. This time it stayed on.

“New flashlight. New flashlight.” She chanted the words as if there was some chance she might forget them by tomorrow morning. She climbed the stairs and peeked in Alex's room. Boxes crowded every corner. There was a path to his bed.

And a path to the attic door.

One of the movers had told Faith how lucky she was to have
a spacious attic. Right now she would gladly give him every single square foot. The keening began again, rising in pitch, falling, then rising until it ended in a terrified scream.

Silence fell.

Faith reconsidered. Her hands were shaking. If she waited until tomorrow morning, she might have better luck.

If she waited until tomorrow morning it was perfectly possible the children would never set foot in the house again.

She turned on Alex's light, then opened the attic door and reached for that light switch. Nothing happened when she flicked it on. She remembered that she hadn't replaced the lightbulbs. There had been plenty of daylight for the movers to see.

“Lightbulbs. Lightbulbs.” The chant gave her no courage.

She shone the flashlight on the steps, which looked clear of boxes. She took the first few with an eye toward her escape route. The attic was silent now.

She moved a little faster, waving the flashlight back and forth to make sure there were no surprises. On the top step, just before she entered the attic proper, she paused. The flashlight was woefully inadequate, She could only illuminate a small section of the room at one time. But from her vantage point, nothing looked amiss. The attic had a solid floor, and boxes were piled everywhere. The space was tall enough in the middle for an adult to stand up straight, the roof sloping gradually to the floor at the edges.

She stood poised for flight and continued to wave the flashlight around the room. At one point it flickered, and she shook it hard. It stayed on.

“Okay, what's going on up here?” she said into the darkness. Had someone answered, she probably would have tumbled down the steps.

Nothing moved. Nothing screeched, keened or wailed. And no ghost baby materialized to solve a mystery that was older than Faith herself.

“Personally, I don't believe in ghosts,” she said into the
darkness. “And this wouldn't be my favorite time to have my mind changed.”

“Mom?”

She jumped, and instinctively her hand covered her pounding heart before she realized Alex was calling from the bottom of the steps. “It's okay, honey.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Myself. Go back in my room.”

“You might need me….”

“I'm fine. Go take care of Remy.”

“I'm right here. I'm older than he is, remember?” Remy sounded a little less scared, a little more disgusted. Things were looking up.

“Okay, stay there, both of you.” Faith stepped into the attic, waving her flashlight as she moved between boxes.

“Mom?” Alex sounded worried.

“Nothing so far,” she shouted down to him. “Except a very messy attic.”

Suddenly something gray flew through the air in front of her. Faith shrieked. The specter shrieked, then disappeared behind boxes.

She didn't know a heart could beat so fast, and she was gulping air even faster. She was so relieved she felt faint.

“Cat!” She turned and made tracks for the stairs. “Cat. There's a cat up here. That's what we heard. Just a cat!”

She heard footsteps on the stairs and trained her flashlight in that direction so Alex could find his way. Remy was right behind him.

“Cat?” He sounded excited.

“Well, somebody should have been smart enough to figure that out.” Clearly Remy thought that someone was Faith.

Faith waited until the children joined her. “I don't know how it got in here, but this house is so old it probably had plenty of choices.”

“What's a cat doing here?” Alex was dancing from foot to foot in excitement now.

Faith tried to remember if cats could contract rabies. Surely a wild cat when cornered could do some serious damage even if it didn't harbor deadly diseases. “I don't know. Maybe it's a nice place to live.”

“Look!” Alex pointed as the cat darted between boxes and disappeared again. “He's gray.”

The cat, or what Faith had seen of it so far, looked to be pale gray and long-haired. Alex started past her before she could stop him. “Maybe he can't get outside. Maybe the movers blocked him in.”

Faith grabbed her son's arm. “Alex, don't go near him. I'm sure he's wild. If you get too close you could get torn to bits.”

“By a cat?” Remy edged past Faith. “It's just a little cat.”

“Not so little.” Faith barred her daughter's way. “I think we'd better leave well enough alone.”

“Mom, we have to look around. If the way out is blocked, it's going to keep yowling all night long.”

That prospect didn't appeal to Faith, either. She debated. Tomorrow morning they could check more thoroughly, perhaps even call the animal warden. But morning wouldn't arrive for hours.

“Just stay behind me,” she cautioned. She trained her light along the rafters leading down to the floor. The space where they met was, in most places, seamless, carefully planked so that no gaps existed. But in one spot a plank appeared to be missing. At least that was her best guess, judging from a small gap. A pile of boxes had been shoved over the rest of it.

She started in that direction, and the kids followed her. “Okay, let's check this out.” She shone the flashlight on that area and saw she'd been right.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” Remy said. “Nice kitty.”

Faith wasn't so sure about that. “It looks like the movers might have covered the cat's exit. This was the direction he came from when I first saw him.”

“Why didn't the movers tell us there was a cat up here?”

“It was probably hiding. Hold the light.” Faith held it out to Remy. “We'll move the boxes and see if there's a cat exit.”

“Maybe that's not a good idea.” Remy couldn't resist the urge to pass the flashlight beam over everything within twenty feet. “Then anything can get in, right?”

“Right now I just want something to get out.”

Remy shrugged, and the flashlight beam bobbed. “You're the mom.”

“Very funny.” Faith lifted the top box, one marked “Remy's winter clothing,” off the pile. It was lightweight and moved easily. By the time she set it down, Alex had the next one. They worked in silence, straining together over the box on the bottom marked “kitchen miscellaneous.”

The plank was missing, just as she'd thought. A space one plank wide ran along the edge of the roofline. “Shine the light in there, would you?” she asked Remy. “Let's see if we can see through to the outside.

“Mom!” Alex was on his knees peering into the gap already. “Listen…”

Faith squatted beside him and waited. The faintest whimpers greeted her. Her skin prickled in response.

“Mom!”

Faith turned just in time to see a streak of gray leap past Remy and into the gap. The cat disappeared in a flash.

“Our he's a she. With kittens,” Faith said. “Give me the light. Alex, stand back.”

She got to her knees and leaned down. She could just see a spot of gray under the plank that should have connected to the one that was missing. As she watched, the cat shifted, and Faith glimpsed movement beneath it.

Faith got to her feet. “Kittens. More than one, I think. She wasn't trying to get out. She's probably got another way outside and in. She was trying to get to her babies. Poor thing. They've been separated all day.”

“Kittens?” Remy sounded interested. She had wanted a cat from the time she was old enough to say the word. But David was allergic to animal dander.

“Wild kittens, honey,” Faith warned.

“That's why she was making all that noise,” Alex said. “She did sound like a ghost. Hey! Ghost! We can call her Ghost.”

Faith figured that things were quickly getting back to normal. “Come on, you two. We need to leave Ghost alone. She's been away from her babies, and she needs to take care of them without worrying about us. I'll put some water out for her.”

Reluctantly, Remy got to her feet. “You're not going to do anything to the kittens, are you? Like trap them, or have somebody come and take them away?”

Of course those would be sensible alternatives, but Faith was utterly incapable of being sensible when it came to small animals. “We'll figure out what's best for them.”

“Ghost belongs here,” Alex said. “She's lived in this house longer than we have.”

Remy stood, but she wasn't as careful as Faith. She knocked her head on a rafter as she straightened. “Ouch! Damn!”

Faith was surprised at the expletive, but it seemed fitting after the night they'd had. “I'll bet that hurt.” She put her arm around Remy's shoulder and shone the light on her head. “Let me see if it's bleeding.”

There wasn't any blood, but the flashlight beam caught something odd on the rafter. Faith leaned closer, shining the light directly on it. “Remy, are you okay?”

“I just want to go back to bed.”

Faith's own exhaustion had fled at the first yowl. She guessed she had a year's worth of adrenaline still running through her veins. “Look at this.”

Alex joined her. “What?”

“I'm not sure. Something carved into the rafter. Can you see?” Faith ran her fingertips over the wood, brushing aside years of cobwebs and dust. “I need something better to clean it with. Find me something.”

Alex ripped the tape off a box labeled towels that he had shoved out of the way. He handed her a monogrammed hand towel from her former master bath. “Here.”

“I want to go to bed.” Remy was beginning to sound like her new self again. “Who cares who carved what where?”

“Just wait one minute, okay?” Faith passed the towel over the rafter. Back and forth, until it was as clean as she could get it. Then she stepped closer and aimed the light directly on the carving.

“Oh, look!” Faith traced letters connected in beautiful old-fashioned cursive. “Millicent Charles.” She turned to her children. “Millicent was my grandmother. She carved her name here.”

“Awesome.” Alex sounded genuinely intrigued.

“So? What's the big deal?” Remy sounded less so.

“Well, it's not a big deal. It's just, well, nice. Don't you think?”

“I'm going to bed.”

“I put my name in wet cement once down the street from our house, but somebody came along and smoothed it out before the cement got hard,” Alex said.

Faith draped her arm over his shoulder, glad she was only hearing that particular story now. “Wood carvings are harder to erase. It's been here for years.”

“Hey, Mom, Dottie Lee said there was a surprise in the house. A mystery. Maybe that's it.” Alex stopped at the top of the steps. “I'm coming up here tomorrow to look around some more.”

“Well, you'll have company. Just stay out of Ghost's way.” Faith thought about that name. “We can't call the cat Ghost. Your grandmother won't understand.”

“Guest.” Remy pushed past Alex and started down the stairs. “It sounds like Ghost.”

“I like Ghost,” Alex said.

“Ghost Guest then. But Guest for short.”

“We're the guests.” Alex followed her. “She was here first.”

Faith waited until both children were back in their rooms with their doors closed before she found a bowl and filled it with water for the last attic trip. She doubted they would hear more noise tonight. Guest had gotten what she wanted.

Back in her own bed, she couldn't sleep, though all was quiet now. Her mind whirled in a thousand directions. She thought about the woman who had carved her name in the rafter, about
David, who had been turned away by his own children, about her own mother, who had experienced tragedy here. About Dottie Lee, who had made her feel welcome, and the man from O Street who had saved the spinet from destruction.