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Thirty-One

Henry was dreaming about his mother. In the dream, Fabienne wore all white, her hair wrapped in a scarf.

She was standing in their old house in Tremé, where Henry had grown up, but the house looked different than he remembered.

Dust clung to the plants that lined the windowsill, growing wild out of chipped teacups, jelly jars, rusty coffee cans, all half-dead, yellow leaves clinging on for dear life.

Spent candles melted onto the surfaces, leaving frozen pools and rivers of wax in shades of red, green, yellow, black, and white.

The front door stood open, and leaves and refuse covered the floor, years of it, decaying in heaps, stinking of wet earth, as enormous swaths of black mold ate through the paint and stained the ceiling.

Henry’s mother stood in the midst of it all, hands on her hips in a gesture that was so familiar, it was synonymous with Fabienne herself. She looked like she was trying to tell him something, but though her lips were moving, no sound came out.

Mama, I can’t hear you , Henry said. Mama, hang on, back up—

A sound came out of his mother’s mouth like a needle scratching on a record, and then he heard her voice.

…the door . It sounded like she was in the middle of a scolding.

What? Mama, I don’t—

Don’t just stand there, Henry . There’s people waiting. Open the door.

People? Mama, we can’t have people over. The place is a mess.

The place doesn’t matter . They’re waiting. Open the door.

When he woke, Rebecca was watching him.

“Bad dream?”

Henry pushed himself up to sitting. His skin itched. “Strange dream.”

“Stranger than all this?”

He frowned. Already his mother’s words were slipping away from him. He was so sure they’d been important.

They were being held in an underground cave, with arched walls made of rough stone like they had been excised from the side of a mountain. Elaborate ironwork gates blocked them in from both sides, and from each gate hung an enormous iron padlock. A string of bare yellow bulbs hung overhead.

They had lost track of the days. It had happened so quickly, with no sun to mark the time.

At first Henry had kept track by counting the visits from the woman who brought them food.

She would come twice a day with bread or broth, and Henry could tell when one day had turned into another by the change in her clothes.

But the last few visits she had brought only water, and he was almost certain they had missed a day, if not more.

Rebecca was pacing. “We need to get out of here.”

“No kidding.”

“No. I mean right now. Today.”

Henry looked up. “Why?”

Rebecca looked agitated. “They’ve stopped feeding us. They’re bringing water, yes, but no food. I don’t think they’re planning on keeping us around much longer. A day. Maybe two.”

They fell silent as the grim reality set in. The sound of water dripping somewhere deeper in the tunnel seemed to grow louder.

Henry had been looking for ghosts. He thought if he could make contact that they might be able to help, but they had been here for days, and no one had appeared.

It seemed impossible that a place like this wouldn’t have one or two spirits lurking around.

Maybe it had once been full of them, but they’d since finished their business and moved on.

Maybe they didn’t like it underground. Maybe he’d lost the gift, his punishment for so many years spent running from it.

Open the door. That was what his mother had said to him, he remembered now. She’d said it simply, like a whole host of people were standing on the front porch, waiting to come in. And there was something else. Something about the house, or…

“The place doesn’t matter,” Henry said out loud.

Rebecca looked up. “What?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.” But even as he said the words, he felt something slip inside his mind, like tumblers in a lock, clicking into place.

The place doesn’t matter. They’re waiting. Open the door.

He closed his eyes.

As a child, Henry had always assumed that the spirits he met were tied to whatever place he was in at that moment—stuck there, like flies in amber.

He had never imagined bringing a spirit to him from somewhere else—not until that night in the Bouchers’ barn, when he had called out to Lydia through the void.

But even then, he had imagined his mind as a static place—a room full of doors for the dead to walk through.

Now, for the first time, he tried to imagine this space inside of himself as something else. Not a room, but a vehicle, a means of transit. A train that could carry the dead to him over any distance. He imagined calling into the darkness, calling for someone, anyone, to come join him.

All aboard , Henry thought.

When he opened his eyes, there was a woman there with them, standing very still.

She was in her late forties, tall and dark haired, prim but stylish in her gray dress and practical heels.

Her cheeks and eyes were sunken, her clothing too loose.

She stood with her back to the wall, inches from where Rebecca sat.

“Hello,” Henry said.

Rebecca saw the look in his eyes and knew what it meant. She inhaled sharply. Henry held up a hand.

“I’m Henry.” He kept his voice steady. The spirit did not look at him. She was looking at Rebecca. “What’s your name?”

Now the woman did look up, and in her eyes, Henry saw something he hadn’t seen in any of his previous conversations with the dead: the woman looked deeply sad.

Not just sad, but grief-stricken, her milky eyes shadowed with something more than just hunger.

The woman looked away from him again, returning her gaze to Rebecca.

She reached out and stroked Rebecca’s tangled hair, crouching so their faces were inches apart.

And then, as Henry watched, the woman’s lips parted and formed a silent phrase.

Ma petite colombe , she said. My little dove.

And then he saw. The likeness was undeniable: long neck, dark brows, a certain squarish set to the jaw, like someone always ready for a fight. As the woman reached out to wipe a smudge of dirt from Rebecca’s face, Henry saw a tear spill like quicksilver onto her sunken cheek.

“ Rebecca ,” Henry whispered, but then the spirit turned and looked at him, pressing one finger to her mouth, her eyes pleading. Don’t tell her.

Rebecca looked at him questioningly.

Henry shook his head. “It’s okay.”

He looked into the still, unseeing eyes of Rebecca’s mother.

“ It’s okay ,” he told her. She nodded gratefully. “We’re in trouble. Can you help us?”

The woman nodded again. She lingered for just a moment longer, taking in Rebecca’s face, and then she dissolved into the shadows.

···

They might have waited for five minutes, or ten.

In the cavernous underground silence, it was impossible to tell.

Just as Henry began to wonder if the woman was coming back, they heard footsteps, and a plain-faced girl appeared around the corner.

She reached through the bars and placed a pewter water pitcher on the floor of the cell.

Rebecca lunged with shocking speed, reaching for the girl and missing her by mere inches. The girl fell back, wide eyed, and Rebecca cackled.

“I’ll have to be faster next time.” She reached down and retrieved the pitcher, holding the girl in her stare the entire time.

The girl rearranged her face into a sour glare. “Don’t play with me, Jew —”

“Or what?” Rebecca drew herself up to her full height and stepped close to the bars. She was at least four inches taller than the girl, and even with the iron bars between them, Henry could see that the witch was rattled. “Will you come in here and teach me a lesson? Hmm?”

Behind the girl, Henry watched as the gray woman materialized once again from the shadows, statue still and watching with lifeless white eyes.

“Your friend has betrayed you,” the girl hissed, her cheeks flushed.

“Tonight, she will swear herself to the Führer, and then you will be of no more use to us. Most likely you’ll be dead before morning.

Then again, maybe we’ll ship you off to Poland with the other Jews.

Let you sort rags for a few months before they dump you in a hole in the ground. ”

The gray woman stepped closer.

“Nazi bitch—” Rebecca snapped, but her words were cut short.

One moment the spirit hovered just behind the witch, so close they nearly touched. The next, the dead woman seemed to step into her, slipping into the witch’s skin the way one might slip into a robe. The witch gasped, a spasm running through her, and then she blinked her milky eyes and was still.

Rebecca jumped back from the bars. Henry caught her by the shoulders.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay. She’s here to help.”

The dead woman, now wearing the young witch like a suit, moved her hand slowly to her hip, where it came to rest on a brass key ring.

She lifted the keys in front of her face and selected one, releasing the key from the ring and holding it delicately between her fingers before letting it fall to the ground.

The witch blinked again, and her clouded eyes cleared. “What did you say?”

Rebecca’s mouth hung open. Henry cleared his throat, prompting her to speak.

“ Nothing ,” she said feebly. “I said nothing.” Henry gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

The witch looked confused. She placed the brass ring back on her hip without looking at it.

Henry was careful not to glance at the iron key that lay on the floor between them, just within reach. The witch gave her head a shake, as if dispelling an unpleasant dream, then turned and walked back the way she had come.

The gray woman stood, still and silent, and watched her go.