Sunday night, I reread The Catcher in the Rye until I felt tired enough to fall asleep. Only I never got tired enough. And I couldn't read, because reading didn't feel the same. I couldn't disappear into the character of Holden Caulfield, because I couldn't get lost in the story, not the way you need to be, to become somebody else.
I wasn't alone in my head. It was full of lockets, and fires, and voices. People I didn't know, and visions I didn't understand.
And something else. I put the book down and slid my hands behind my head.
Jack? You're there, aren't you?
I stared up at the blue ceiling.
It's no use. I know you're there. Here. Whatever.
I waited, until I heard it. His voice, unfolding like a tiny, bright memory in the darkest, furthest corner of my mind.
No. Not exactly.
You are. You have been, all night.
Ethan, I'm sleeping. I mean, I was.
I smiled to myself.
No you weren't. You were listening.
I was not.
Just admit it, you were.
You people. You think everything is about you. Maybe I just like that book.
Can you jus drop in whenever you want, now?
There was a long pause.
Not usually, but tonight it just sort of happened. I still don't understand how itnworks.
Maybe we can ask someone.
Like who?
I don't know. Guess we'll have to figure it out on our own. Just like everything else.
Another pause. I tried not to wonder if the "we" spooked him, in case he could hear me. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the other thing; he didn't want me to find out anything, if it had to do with him.
Don't try.
I smiled, and felt my eyes closing. I could barely keep them open.
I'm trying.
I turned out the light.
Good night, Jack.
Good night, Ethan.
I hoped he couldn't read all my thoughts.
Basketball. I was definitely going to have to spend more time thinking about basketball. And as I thought about the playbook in my mind, I felt my eyes closing, myself sinking, losing control. . . .
------------------------------------------
Drowning.
I was drowning.
Thrashing in the green water, waves crashing over my head. My feet kicked the muddy bottom of a river, maybe the Santee, but there was nothing. I could see some kind of light, skimming the river, but I couldn't get to the surface.
"It's my birthday, Ethan. It's happening."
I reached out. He grabbed at my hand, and I twisted to catch it, but he drifted away, and I couldn't hold on anymore. I tried to scream as I watched his pale hand drift down toward the darkness, but my mouth filled with water and I couldn't make a sound. I could feel myself choking. I was starting to black out.
"I tried to warn you. You have to let me go!"
I sat up in my bed. My T-shirt was soaking wet. My pillow was wet, my hair was wet. And my room was sticky and humid. I guessed I'd left the window open again.
"Ethan! Are you listening to me? You better get yourself down here yesterday, or you won't be having breakfast again this week."
I was in my seat just as three eggs over-easy slid onto my plate of biscuits and gravy. "Good morning, Anna."
She turned her back to me without so much as a look. "Now you know there's nothing good about it. Don't spit down my back and tell me it's raining." She was still aggravated with me, but I wasn't sure if it was because I had walked out of class or brought the locket home. Probably both. I couldn't blame her, though; I didn't usually get in trouble at school. This was all new territory.
"Anna, I'm sorry about leaving class on Friday. It's not gonna happen again. Everything'll go back to normal."
Her face softened, just a little, and she sat down across from me. "Don't think so. We all make our choices, and those choices have consequences. I expect you'll have some hell to pay for yours when you get to school. Maybe you'll start listening to me now. Stay away from that Jack McLoughlin, and that house."
It wasn't like Anna to side with everyone else in town, considering thar was usually the wrong side of things. I could tell she was worried by the way she kept stirring her coffee, long after the milk had disappeared. Anna was always worried about me and I loved her for it, but something felt different since I showed her the locket. I walked around the table and gabe her a hug. She smelled like pencil lead and Red Hots, like always.
She shook her head, muttering. "Don't want to hear about any blue eyes and brown hair. It's fixing to come up a bad cloud today, so you be careful."
anna wasn't just going dark. Today, she was going pitch black. I could feel it coming up a bad cloud, myself.
---------------------------------
Mark pulled up in the Beater blasting some terrible tunes, as usual. He turned down the music when I slid into the seat, which was always a ad sign.
"We got trubs."
"I know."
"Jackson's got itself a regular lynch mob this morning."
"What'd you hear?"
"Been going on since Friday night. I heard my mom talking and I tried to call you. Where were you, anyway?"
"I was pretending to bury a hexed locket over at Greenbrier so Anna would let me back in the house."
Mark laughed. He was used to talk about hexes and charms and the evil eye, where Anna was concerned. "At least she's not making you wear that stinking bag of onion mess around your neck."
"It was garlic. For my mom's funeral."
"It was nasty."
The thing about Mark was, we'd been friends since the day he gave me that Twinkie on the bus, and after that he didn't much care what I said or did. Even back then, you knew who your friends were. That's what Anston was like. Everything had already happened, ten years ago. For our parents, everything had already happened twenty or thirty years ago. And for the town self, it seemed like nothing happened for a few hundred years. Nothing of consequence, that is.
I had a feeling it was all about to change.
My mom would have said it was time. If there was one thing my mom liked, it was change. Unlike Mark's mom. Mrs. Fischbach was a rage-aholic, on a mission, with a network - a dangerous combination. When we were in the eighth grade, Mrs. Fischbach ripped the cable box out of the wall because she found Mark watching a Harry Potter movie, a series she had campaigned to ban from the Anston County Library because she thought it promoted witchcraft. Luckily, Mark managed to sneak over to Earl Petty's house to watch MTV, or Who Shot Lincoln would never have become Jackson High's premier - and by premier, I mean only - rock band.
I never understood Mrs. Fischbach. When my mom was alive, she would roll her eyes and say, "Mark might be your best friend, but don't expect me to join the DAR and start wearing a hoop skirt for reenactments." Then we'd both crack up, imagining my mom, who walked miles of muddy battlefields looking for old shell casings, who cut her own hair with garden scissors, as a member of the DAR, organizing bake sales, and telling everyone how to decorate their houses.
Mrs. Fischbach was easy to picture in the DAR. She was the Recording Secretary, and ever I knew that. She was on the Board with Savannah Snow's and Emily Asher's mothers, while my mom spent most of her time holed up in the library looking at microfiche.
Had spent.
Mark was still talking and soon I'd heard enough to start listening. "My mom, Emily's mom, Savannah's . . . they've been burning up the phone lines, last couple of nights. Overheard my mom talking about the window breaking in English and how she heard Old Man Ravenwood's nephew had blood on his hands."
Hee swerved around the corner, without even taking a breath. "And about how your boyfriend just got outta a mental institution in Virginia, and how he's an orphan, and has bi-schizo-maniac something."
"He's not my boyfriend. We're just friends," I said automatically.
"Shut up. You're so whipped I should buy you a saddle." Which he should've said about anybody I talked to, talked about, or even looked at in the hall.
"He's not. Nothing happened. We just hang out."
"You're so full of crap, you could pass for a toilet. You like him, Nestor. Admit it." Mark wasn't big on subtitles, and I don't think he could imagine hanging out with a girl for any reason other than maybe she played lead guitar, except for the obvious ones.
"I'm not saying I don't like him. We're just friends." Which was the truth, actually, whether or not I wanted it to be. But that was a different question. Either way, I must have smiled a little. Wrong move.
Mark pretended to vomit into his lap and swerved, narrowly missing a truck. But he was just messing around. Mark didn't care who I liked, as long as it gave him something to hassle me about. "Well? Did he?"
"Did he what?"
"You know. Fall outta the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down?"
"A window broke, that's all that happened. It's not a mystery."
"Mrs. Asher's saying she punched it out, or threw something at it."
"That's funny, seeing how Mrs. Asher isn't in my English class, last time I checked."
"Yeah, well, my mom isn't either, but she told me she was coming by school today."
"Great. Save her a seat at our lunch table."
"Maybe he's done this at all his schools, and thats why he was in some kinda institution." Mark was serious, which meant he'd heard a whole lot of something since the window incident.
For a second, I remembered what Jack said about his life. Complicated. Maybe this was one of those complications, or just one of the twenty-six thousand other things he couldn't talk about. What if all the Emily Ashers of the world were right? What if I had taken the wrong side after all?
"Be careful, man. Could be he's got his own place over in Nutsville."
"If yoh really believe that, you're an idiot."
We pulled into the school parking lot without speaking. I was annoyed, even though I knew Mark was just trying to look out for me. But I couldn't help it. Everything was different today. I got out and slammed the car door.
Mark called after me. "I'm worried about you, dude. You've been acting crazy."
"What, are you and me a couple now? Maybe you should spend a little more time worrying about why you can't even get a girl to talk to you."
He got out of the car and looked up at the administration building. "Either way, maybe you better tell your 'friend', whatever that means, to be careful today. Look."
Mrs. Fischbach and Mrs. Asher were talking to Principal Harper on the front steps. Emily was huddled next to her mother, trying to look pathetic. Mrs. Fischbach was lecturing Principal Harper, who was nodding ad if he was memorizing every word. Principal Harper may have been the one running Jackson High, but he knew who ran the town. He was looking at two of them.
When Mark's mom finished, Emily dove into a particularly animated version of the window-shattering accident. Mrs. Fischbach reached out and put her hand on Emily's shoulder, sympathetic. Principal Harper just shook his head.
It was a bad cloudy day, all right.
------------------------------------------------
Jack was sitting in the hearse, writing in his beat-up notebook. The engine was idling. I knocked on the window and he jumped. He looked back toward the administration building. He had seen the mothers, too.
I motioned for him to open the passenger door, but he shook his head. I walked around to the passenger side. The doors were locked, but he wasn't going to get rid of me that easily. I sat down on the hood of his car and dropped my backpack on the gravel next to me. I wasn't going anywhere.
What are you doing?
Waiting.
It's gonna be a long wait.
I've got time.
He stared at me through the windshield. I heard the door unlock. "Did anyone ever tell you that you're crazy?" He walked around to where I was sitting on the hood, his arms folded like Anna was ready to scold.
"Not as crazy as you, I hear."
I could imagine him staring at himself in the mirror, feeling like he was going to his own funeral, trying to cheer himself up. A long black T-shirt hung over a pair of black jeans and black Converse. Hee frowned and looked over at the administration building. The mothers were probably sitting in Principle Harper's office right now.
"Can you hear them?"
Hee shook his head. "It's not like I can read people's minds, Ethan."
"You can read mine."
"Not really."
"What about last night?"
"I told you, I don't know why it happens. We just seem to - connect." Even the word seemed hard for him to say this morning. He wouldn't look me in the eye. "It's never been like this with anyone before."
I wanted to tell him I knew how he felt. I wanted to tell him when we were together like that in our minds, even if our bodies were a million miles away, I felt closer to him than I'd ever felt to anyone.
I couldn't. I couldn't even think it. I thought about the basketball playbook, the cafeteria menu, the green pea-soup colored hallway I was about to walk down. "Yeah. Guys say that to me all the time." Idiot . The more nervous I got, the worse my jokes were.
He smiled, a wobbly, crooked smile. "Don't try to cheer me up. It's not going to work." But it was.
I looked back at the steps. "If you want to know what they're saying, I can tell you."
He looked at mr, skeptically.
"How?"
"This is Anston. There's nothing even close to s secret here."
"How bad is it?" He looked away. "Do they think I'm crazy?"
"Pretty much."
"A danger to school?"
"Probably. We don't take kindly to strangers around here. And it doesn't get much stranger than Macon Ravenwood, no offense." I smiled at him.
The first bell rang. He grabbed my sleeve, anxious. "Last night. I had a dream. Did you-"
I nodded. He didn't even habe to say it. I knew he had been there in the dream with me. "Even had wet hair."
"Me, too." He held out his arm. There was a mark on his wrist, where I tried to hold on. Before he had sunk down into the darkness. I hoped he hadn't seen that part. Judging from his face, I was pretty sure he had. "I'm sorry, Jack."
"It's not your fault."
"I wish I knew why the dreams are so real."
"I tried to warn you. You should stay away from me."
"Whatever. I'll consider myself warned." Somehow I knew I couldn't do that - stay away from him. Even though I was about to walk into school and face a huge load of crap, I didn't care. It felt good to habe someone I could talk to, without editing everything I said. And I could talk to Jack; at Greenbrier it felt like I could've sat there in the weeds and talked to him for days. Longer. As long as he wad there to talk to.
"What about your birthday? Why did you say you might not be here after that?"
He quickly changed the subject. "What about the locket? Did you see what I saw? The burning? The other vision?"
"Yeah. I was sitting in the middle of church and almost fell out of the pew. But I found out some things from the Sisters. The initials ECN, they stand for Ethan Carter Nestor. He was my great-great-great-great-uncle, and my three crazy aunts say I was named after him."
"Then why didn't you recognize the initials on the locket?"
"That's the strange part. I'd never heard of him, and he's conveniently missing from the family tree at my house.
"What about GKM? It's Genevieve, right?"
"They didn't seem to know, but it has to be. She's the one in the visions, and the M must stand for McLoughlin. I was gonna ask Anna, but when I showed her the locket her eyes almost fell out of her head. Like it was triple hexed, soaked in a bucket of voodoo, and wrapped in a curse for good measure. And my dad's study is off limits, where he keeps all my mom's old books about Anston and the War." I was rambling. "You could talk to your uncle."
"My uncle won't know anything. Where's the locket now?"
"In my pocket, wrapped in a pinch full of powder Anna dumped all over it when she saw it. She thinks I took it back to Greenbrier and buried it."
"She must hate me."
"No more than any of my other friends." I shrugged. "I think we'd better get to class before we get in even more trouble."
"Actually, I was thinking about going home. I know I'm going to habe to deal with them eventually, but I'd like to live in denial for one more day."
"Won't that get you in trouble?"
He laughed. " with my uncle, the infamous Macon Ravenwood, who thinks school is a waste if time and the good citizens of Anston are to be avoided at all costs? He'll be thrilled."
"Then why do you even go?" I was pretty sure Mark would never show up at school again if his mom wasn't chasing him out the door every morning.
He twisted one if the charms on his necklace, a seven pointed star. "I guess I thought it would be different here. Maybe I could make friends, join the newspaper or something. I don't know."
"Our newspaper? The Jackson Stonewaller?"
"I tried to join the newspaper at my old school, but they said the staff positions were filled, even though they never had enough writers to get the paper out on time." He looked away, embarrassed. "I should get going."
I opened the door for him. "I think you should talk to your uncle about it. He might know mire than you think."
"Trust me, he doesn't." I slammed the door. As much as I wanted him to stay, part if me was relieved he was going home. I was going to have enough to deal with today.
"Do you want me to turn that in for you?" I pointed at the notebook lying in the passenger seat.
"No, it's not homework." He flipped open the glove compartment and shoved the notebook inside. "It's nothing." Nothing he was going to tell me about, anyway.
"You'd better.go before Fatty starts scouting the lot." He started the car before I could say anything else, and waved as he pulled away from the curb.
I heard a bark. I turned to see the enormous black dog from Ravenwood, only a few feet away, and who it was barking at.
Mrs. Fischbach smiled at me. The dog growled, the hair on its back standing in end. Mrs. Fischbach looked down at it with such revulsion, you would've thought she was looking at Macon Ravenwood himself. In a fight, I wasn't sure which one of them would come out on top.
"Wild dogs carry rabies. Someone should notify the county." Yeah, someone.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Who was that I just saw driving off in that strange black car? You seemed to be having quite a conversation." She already knew the answer. It wasn't a question. It was an accusation.
"Ma'am."
"Speaking of strange, Principal Harper was just telling me he's planning on offering that Ravenwood boy an occupational transfer. He can take his pick, any school in three counties. As long as it's not Jackson."
I didn't say anything. I didn't even look at her.
"It's our responsibility, Ethan. Principal Harper's, mine - every parent in Anston's. We have to be sure to keep the young people in this town outta harm's way. And from the wrong sorta people."
She reached out her hand and touched me on the shoulder, just as she had done to Emily, not ten minutes ago. "I'm sure you understand my meaning. After all, you're one of us. Your daddy was born here and your mamma was buried here. You belong here. Not everyone does."
I stared back at her. She was in her van before I could say another word.
This time, Mrs. Fischbach was after more than burning a few books.
--------------------------------------------
Once I got to class, the day became abnormally normal, weirdly normal. I didn't see anymore parents, though I suspected they were loitering around the office. At lunch, I ate three bowls of chocolate pudding with the guys, as usual, though it was clear what and who we weren't talking about. Even the sight of Emily madly texting through English and chemistry seemed like some.kind of reassuring universal truth. Except for the feeling that I knew what, or rather who, she was texting about. Like I said, abnormally normal.
Until Mark dropped me off after basketball practice and I decided to do something completely insane.
Anna was standing on the front porch - a sure sign of trouble. "Did you see him?" I should've expected this.
"He wasn't in school today." Technically that was true.
"Maybe that's for the best. Trouble follows that boy around like Macon Ravenwood's dog. I don't want it following you into this house."
"I'm going to take a shower. Will dinner be ready soon? Mark and I have a project to do tonight." I called from the stairs, trying to sound normal.
"Project? What kinda project?"
"History."
"Where are you going and when are you fixing to get back?"
I let the bathroom door slam before I answered that one. I had a plan, but I needed a story, and it had to be good.
Ten minutes later, sitting at the kitchen table, I had it. It wasn't airtight, but it was the best I could do without a little time. Now I just had to pull it off. I wasn't the best liar, and Anna was no fool. "Mark is picking me up after dinner and we're gonna be at the library until it closes. I think it's sometime around nine or ten." I glopped California Gold onto my pulled pork. California Gold, a sticky mess of mustard barbecue sauce, was the one thing in Anston County was famous for that had nothing to do with the Civil War.
"The library?"
Lying to Anna always made me nervous, so I tried not to do it that often. And tonight I was really feeling it, mostly in my stomach. The last thing I wanted to do was eat three plates of pulled pork, but I had no choice. She knew exactly how !uch I could put away. Tow plates, and I would rouse suspicion. One plate, and she would send me to my room with a thermometer and ginger ale. I nodded and went to work clearing my second plate.
"You haven't been to the library since . . ."
"I know." Since my mom died.
The library was home away from home for my mom, and my family. We had spent every Sunday afternoon there since I was a little boy, wandering around the stacks, pulling out every book with a picture of a pirate ship, a knight, a soldier, or an astronaut. My mom used to say, "This is my church, Ethan. This is how we keep the Sabbath holy in our family."
The Anston County head librarian, Marian Ashcroft, was my mom's oldest friend, the second smartest historian in Anston next to my mom, and u til last year, her research partner. They had been brad students together at Duke, and when Marian finished her PhD in African-American studies, she followed my mom down to Anston to finish their first book together. They were halfway tough their fifth book before the accident.
I hadn't set foot in the library since then, and I still wasn't ready. But I also knew there was no way Anna would stop me from going there. She wouldn't even call to check up on me. Marian Ashcroft was family. And Anna, who had loved my mom just ad much ad Marian did, respected nothing more than family.c
"Well, you mind your manners and don't raise your voice. You know what your mamma used to say. Any book is a Good Book, and wherever th keep the Good Book safe is also the House of the Lord." Like I said, my mom would habe never made it in the DAR.
Mark honked. Hee was giving me a ride on his way to band practice. I fled the kitchen, feeling so guilty I had to fight the impulse to fling myself into Anna's arms and confess everything, like I was six years old again and had eaten all the dry Jell-O mix out of the pantry. Mayne Anna was right. Maybe I had picked a hole in the sky and the universe was all about to fall in on me.
-------------------------------------
As I stepped up to the door to Ravenwood, my hand tightened around the glossy blue folder, my excuse for showing up at Jack's house uninvited. I was dropping by to give him the English assignment he'd missed today - that's what I planned to say, anyway. It had sounded convincing, in my head, when I was standing on my own porch. But now I was on the porch at Ravenwood, I wasn't so sure.
I wasn't usually the kind of guy who would do something like this, but it was obvious there was no way Jack was ever going.to invite me over on his own. And I had a feeling his uncle.could help us, that he might know something.
Or maybe it was the other thing. I wanted to see him. it had been a long, dull day at Jackson without Hurricane Jack, and I was starting to wonder how I ever got through eight periods without all the trouble he caused me. Without all the trouble he made me want to cause myself.
I could see light flooding from the vine-covered windows. I heard the sounds of music in the background, old Savannah songs, from that Georgian songwriter my mom had loved. "In the cool cool cool of the evening . . ."
I heard barking from the other side of the door before I even knocked, and within seconds the door swung open. Jack was standing there in his bare feet, and he looked different - dressed up, in a casual black sportjacket with little birds embroidered on it, like he was going out to habe dinner at a fancy restaurant. I looked more like I was headed to the Dar-ee Keen in my holey Atari T-shirt and jeans. He stepped out onto the veranda, pulling the door shut behind him. "Ethan, what are you doing here?"
I held up the folder, lamely. "I brought your homework."
"I can't beleive you just showed up here. I told you my uncle doesn't like strangers." He was already pushing me down the stairs. "You habe to go, now."
"I just thought we could talk to him."
Behind us, I heard the awkward clearing of a throat. I looked up to see Macon Ravenwood's dog, and beyond him, Macon Ravenwood himself. I tried not to look surprised, but I'm pretty sure it gave me away when I almost jumped out of my skin.
"Well that's one I don't hear often. And I do hate to disappoint, as I am nothing if not a Southern gentleman." He spoke in a measured Southern drawl, but with perfect enunciation. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Nestor."
I couldn't beleive I was standing in front of him. The mysterious Macon Ravenwood. Only, I really had been expecting Boo Radley - some guy trudging around the house in overalls, mumbling some kind of monosyllabic language like a Neanderthal, maybe even drooling a bit around the edges of his mouth.
This was no Boo Radley. This was more if an Atticus Finch.
Macon Ravenwood was dressed impeccably, as if it was, I don't know, 1942. His crisp white dress shirt was fastened with old-fashioned silver studs, instead of buttons. His black dinner jacket was spotless, perfectly creased. His eyes were dark and gleaming; they almost looked black. They were clouded over, tinted, like the glass of the hearse windows Jack drove around town. There was no seeing in those eyes, no reflection. They stood out from his pale face, which was almost as white as snow, white as marble, white as, well, you'd expect from the town shut-in. His hair was salt and pepper, gray near his face, and black near the top.
He could have been some kind of American movie star, from before they invented Technicolor, or maybe royalty, from some small country nobody had ever heard of around here. But Macon Ravenwood, he was from these parts. That was the confusing thing. Old Man Ravenwood was the boogeyman of Anston, a story I'd heard since.kindergarten. Only now he seemed like he belonged here less then I did.
He snapped shut the book he was holding, never taking his eyes off me. He was looking at me, but it was almost like he was looking through me, searching for something. Mayne the guy had x-ray vision. Given the past week, anything was possible.
My heart was beating so loudly I was sure he could hear it. Macon Ravenwood had me rattled and he knew it. Neither one of us smiled. His dog stood tense and rigid at his side, as if waiting for the command to attack.
"Where are my manners? Do come in, Mr. Nestor. We were just about to sit down to dinner. Yoh simply must join us. Dinner is always quite the affair, here at Ravenwood."
I looked at Jack, hoping for some direction.
Tell him you don't want to stay.
Trust me, I don't.
"No, that's okay, sir. I don't want to intrude. I just wanted to drop off Jack's homework." I held the shiny blue folder up for the second time.
"Nonsence, you must stay. We'll enjoy a few Cubans in the conservatory after dinner, or are you more of a Cigarello man? Unless, of course, you're uncomfortable with coming in, in which I completely understand." I couldn't tell if he was joking.
Jack slipped his arm around Macon's waist, and I could see his face change instantly. Like the sun breaking through the clouds on a gray day. "Uncle M, don't tease Ethan. He's the only friend I have here, and if you scare him away I'll have to go live with Aunt Del, and then you'll have no one left to torture."
"I'll still have Boo." The dog looked up at Macon, quizzically.
"I'll take him with me. It's me he follows around town, not you."
I had to ask. "Boo? Is the dog's name Boo Radley?"
Macon cracked the smallest of smikes. "Better him than me." He threw back his head and laughed, which startled me, since there was no way I could have imagined his features composing themselves into even so much as a smile. He flung open the door behind him. "Realky, Mr. Nestor, please join us. I so love company, and it's been ages since Ravenwood has had the pleasure of hosting a guest from our own delicious little Anston County."
Jack smiled awkwardly, "Don't be a snob, Uncle M. It's not their fault you never speak to any of them."
"And it's not my fault that I have a penchant for good breeding, reasonable intelligence, and passable personal hygiene, not necessarily in that order."
"Ignore him, he's in a mood." Jack looked apologetic.
"Let me guess. Does it have something to do with Principal Harper?"
Jack nodded. "The school called. While the incident is being investigated, I'm on probation." He rolled his eyes. "One more 'infraction' and they'll expel me."
Macon laughed dismissively, as if we were talking about something completely inconsequential. "Probation? How amusing. Probation would imply a source of authority." He pushed us both into the hall in front of him. "An overweight high school principal who barely finished college, and a pack of angry housewives with pedigrees that couldn't rival Boo Radley's, hardly qualify."
I stepped over the threshold and stopped dead in my tracks. The entry hall was soaring and grand, not the suburban model home I had stepped into just days ago. A monstrously huge oil painting, a portrait of a terrifyingly beautiful woman with glowing violet eyes, hung over the stairs, which weren't contemporary anymore, but a classic flying staircase seemingly supported only by the air itself. Scarlett O'Hara could have swept down them in a hoop skirt and she wouldn't have looked a bit out of place. Tiered crystal chandeliers were dripping from the ceiling. The hall was thick with clusters of antique Victorian furniture, small groupings of intricately embroidered chairs, marble tabletops, and graceful ferns. A candle glowed from every surface. Tall, shuttered doors were thrown open; the breeze carried out the scent of gardenias, which were arranged in tall silver vases, artfully placed on the tabletops.
For a second, I almost thought I was back in one of the visions, except the locket was safely wrapped in the handkerchief in my pocket. I knew, because I checked. And that creepy dog was watching me from the stairs.
But it didn't make sense. Ravenwood had transformed into something entirely different since the last time I was there. It looked impossible, like I had stepped back in history. Even if it wasn't real, I wished my mom could have seen it. She would have loved this place. Only niw it felt real, and I knew this was the way the great house looked, most if the time. It felt like Jack, like the walled garden, like Greenbrier.
Why didn't it look like this before?
What are you talking about?
I think you know.
Macon walked in front of us. We turned a corner, into what was the cozy sitting room, last week. Now it was a grand ballroom, with a long claw-footed table set for three, as if he was expecting me.
The piano continued to play itself in the corner. I guessed it was one of those mechanical ones. The scene was eerie, as if the room should have been full of the tinkling of glasses, and laughter. Ravenwood was throwing the party of the year, but I was the only guest.
Macon was still talking. Everything he said echoed off if the giant walls and vaulted, carved ceilings. "I suppose I am a snob. I loathe towns. I loathe townspeople. They have small minds and giant backsides. Which is to say, what they lack in interiors they make up in posteriors. They're junk food. Fatty, but ultimately, terribly unsatisfying." He smiled, but it wasn't a friendly smile.
"So, why don't you move?" I felt a surge of annoyance that brought me back to reality, whatever reality I was currently in. It was one thing to make fun of Anston. It was different coming from Macon Ravenwood. It came from a different place.
"Don't be absurd. Ravenwood is my home, not Anston." He spat out the word like it was toxic. "When I pass on from the binds of this life, I will have to find someone to care for Ravenwood in my place, since I have no my children. It's always been my great and terrible purpose, to keep Ravenwood alive. I like to think if myself as the curator of a living museum."
"Don't be so dramatic, Uncle M."
"Don't be so diplomatic, Jack. Why you want to interact with those unenlightened townsfolk, I'll never understand."
The guy has a point.
Are you saying you don't want me to come to school?
No - I just meant-
Macon looked at me. "Present company excluded, of course."
The more he spoke, the more curious I was. Who knew what Old Man Ravenwood would be the third-smartest person in town, after my mom and Marian Ashcroft? Or maybe fourth, depending on if my father ever showed his face again.
I tried to see the book Macon was holding. "What is that, Shakespeare?"
"Betty Crocker, a fascinating woman. I was trying to recall what it is the local town constitutes considered an evening meal. I was in the mood for a regional recipe this evening. I decided pulled pork." More pulled pork. I felt sick just thinking about it.
Macon pulled out Jack's chair with a flourish. "Speaking of hospitality, Jack, your cousins are coming out for the Gathering Days. Let's remember to tell House and Kitchen we will be five more."
Jack looked irritated. "I will tell the kitchen staff and the house keepers, if that's what you mean, Uncle M."
"What are the Gathering Days?"
"My family is so weird. The Gathering is just an old harvest festival, like an early Thanksgiving. Just forget about it." I never knew anyone visited Ravenwood , family or otherwise. I'd never seen a single car take that turn at the fork in the road.
Macon seemed amused. "As you wish. Speaking of Kitchen, I am absolutely ravenous. I'll go see what she has whipped up for us." Even as he spoke, I could hear the pots and pans banging in some faraway room off the ballroom.
"Don't go overboard, Uncle M. Please."
I watched Macon Ravenwood disappear through a salon, and then he was gone. I could still hear the clip of his dress shoes on the polished floors. This house was ridiculous. It made the White House look like a backwards shack.
"Jack, what's going on?"
"What do you mean?"
"How did he know to set a place for me?"
"He must have done it when he saw us on the porch."
"What about this place? I was in your house, the day we found the locket. It didn't look anything like this."
Tell me. You can trust me.
He played with the hem of his jacket. Stubborn. "My uncle is into antiques. The house changes all the time. Does it really matter?"
Whatever was going on, he wasn't going to tell me about it right now. "Okay, then. Do you mind if I look around?" He frowned, but didn't say anything. I got up from the table, and walked over to the next salon. It was set up like a small study, with settees, a fireplace, and a few small writing tables. Boo Radley was lying in front of the fire. He started to growl the moment I set foot in the room.
"Nice doggy." He growled louder. I backed up our if the room. He stopped growling and put his head down on the hearth.
Lying on the nearest writing table was a package, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. I picked it up. Boo Radley began to growl again. It was stamped Anston County Library. I knew the stamp. My mom had gotten hundreds of packages like this one. Only Marian Ashcroft would bother to wrap a book like that.
"You have an interest in libraries, Mr. Nestor? Do you know Marian Ashcroft?" Macon appeared next to me, taking the parcel out if my hand and eyeing it with delight.l
"Yes, sir. Marian, Dr. Ashcroft, she was my mom's best friend. They worked together."
Macon's eyes flickered, a momentary brightness, then nothing. It passed. "Of course. How incredibly dull-witted of me. Ethan Nestor. I know your mother."
I froze. How could macon Ravenwood have known my mother?
A strange expression passed over his face, like he was recalling something he'd forgotten. "Only through her work, of course. I've read everything she's ever written. In fact, if you look closely at the footnotes for Plantations & Plantings: A Garden Divided, you see that several if the primary sources for their study came from my personal collection. Your mother was brilliant. A great loss."
I managed a smile. "Thanks."
"I'd be honored to show you my library, naturally. It would be a great pleasure to share my collection with the son of Lilia Evers.
I looked at him, struck by the sound of my mother's name coming out of Macon Ravenwood's mouth. "Nestor. Lilia Evers Nestor."
He smiled broadly. "Of course. But first things first. I beleive, from Kitchen's lack of din, that dinner has been served." He patted my shoulder, and we walked back into the grand ballroom.
Jack was waiting for us at the table, lighting a candle that had blown out in the evening breeze. The table was covered with an elaborate feast, though I couldn't imagine how it had gotten there. I hadn't seen a single person in the house, aside from the three of us. Now there was a new house, a wolf-dog, and all this. And I had expected Macon Ravenwood to be the weirdest part of the evening.
There was enough food to feed the DAR, every church in town, and the basketball team, combined. Only it wasn't the kind of food that had ever been served in Anston. There was something that looked like a whole roast pig, with an apple stuck in its mouth. A standing rib roast, with little paper puffs on the top of each rib, sat next to a mangled-looking goose covered with chestnuts. There were bowls if gravies and sauces and creams, rolls and breads, collards and beets and spreads that I couldn't name. And of course, pulled pork sandwiches, which looked particularly out of place among the other dishes. I looked at Jack, feeling sick at the thought of how much I'd have to eat to be polite.
"Uncle M, this is too much." Boo, curled around the legs of Jack's chair, thumped his tail in anticipation.
"Nonsense. This is a celebration. You've made a friend. Kitchen will be offended."
Jack looked at me anxiously, like I was going to get up to use the bathroom and bolt. I shrugged, and b began to lad my plate. Maybe Anna would let me skip breakfast tomorrow.g
Before Macon was filling his third glass of scotch, it seemed like a good time to bring up the locket. Come to think of it, I had seen him load up his plate with food, but I hadn't seen him eat a thing. It seemed to disappear off his plate, with only the smallest bite or two. Maybe Boo Radley was the luckiest dog in town.
I folded up my napkin. "Do you mind, sir, if I ask you something? Since you seem to know so much about history, and, well, I can't really ask my mom."
What are you doing?
I'm asking a question.
He doesn't know anything.
Jack, we have to try.
"Of course." Macon took a sip from his glass.
I reached into my pocket and pulled the locket out of the handkerchief. All the candles went out. The lights dimmed and then sputtered out. Even the music of the piano died.
Ethan, what are you doing?
I didn't do anything.
I heard Macon's voice in the darkness. "What is in your hand, son?"
"It's a locket, sir."
"Do you mind very much if you put it back in your pocket?" His voice was calm, but I knew that he wasn't. I could tell he was taking great efforts to compose himself. His glib manner was gone. His voice had an edge, a sense of urgency he was trying very hard to disguise.
I crammed the locket back into the pouch and stuffed it in my pocket. At the other end of the table, Macon touched his fingers to the candleabra. On by one, the candles on the table came back to light. The entire feast had disappeared.
In the candlelight, Macon looked sinister. He was also quiet for the first time since I'd met him, as if he was weighing his options on an invisible scale that somehow held our fate in the balance. It was time to go. Jack was right, this was a bad idea. Maybe there was a reason Macon Ravenwood never left the house.
"I'm sorry sir, I didn't know that would happen. My housekeeper, Anna, acted like the - like it, was really powerful when I showed it to her. But when Jack and I found it, nothing bad happened.
Don't tell him anything else. Don't mention the visions.
I won't. I just wanted to find out if I was right about Genevieve.
He didn't have to worry; I didn't want to tell Macon Ravenwood anything. I just wanted to get out of there. I started to get up. "I think I should be getting home, sir. It's getting late."
"Would you mind describing the locket to me?" It was more of an order than a request. I didn't see a word.
It was Jack who finally spoke. "It's old and battered, with a cameo on the front. We found it at Greenbrier."
Macon twisted his silver ring, agitated. "You should have told me you went to Greenbrier. That's not part of Ravenwood. I can't keep you safe there."
"I was safe there. I could feel it." Safe from what? This was more than a little overprotective.
"You weren't. It's beyond the boundaries. It can't be controlled, not by anyone. There is a lot you don't know. And he-" He gestured to me at the other end of the table. "He knows nothing. He can't protect you. You shouldn't have brought him into this."
I spoke up. I had to. He was talking about me like I wasn't even there. "This is about me too, sir. There were initials on the locket. ECN. ECN was Ethan Carter Nestor, my great-great-great-great-uncle. And the other initials are GKM, and we're pretty sure the M stands for McLoughlin."
Ethan, stop.
But I couldn't. "There's no reason to keep anything from us, because whatever it is that's happening, it's happening to both of us. And like it or not, it seems to be happening right now." A vase of gardenias went flying across the room and crashed into the wall. This was the Macon Ravenwood we'd all been telling stories about since we were kids.
"You have no idea what you are talking about, young man." He stared me right in the eye, with a dark intensity that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. He was having trouble keeping it together now. I had pushed him too far. Boo Radley rose and paced behind Macon like he was stalking prey, his eyes hauntingly round and familiar.
Don't say anything else.
His eyes narrowed. The movie star glamour was gone, replaced with something much darker. I wanted to run, but I was rooted to the ground. Paralyzed.
I was wrong about Ravenwood Manor, and Macon Ravenwood. I was afraid of both of them.
When he finally spoke, it was as if he was speaking to himself. "Five months. Do you know what lengths I will go to, to keep him safe for five months? What it will cost me? How it will drain me, perhaps destroy me?" Without a word, Jack moved next to him, and laid his hand on his shoulder. And then, the storm in his eyes passed as quickly as it had come, and he regained his composure.
"Anna sounds like a wise woman. I would consider taking her advice. I would return that item to the place where you found it. Please do not bring it into my home again." Macon stood up and threw his napkin on the table. "I think our little library visit will have to wait, don't you? Jack, can you see to it that your friend finds his way home? It was, of course, an extraordinary evening. Most illuminating. Please do come again, Mr. Nestor."
And then the room was dark, and he was gone.
I couldn't get out of that house fast enough. I wanted to get away from Jack's creepy uncle and his freak show of a house. What the hell had just happened? Jack rushed me to the door, like he was afraid of what might happen if he didn't get me out of there. But as we passed through the main hall, I noticed something I hadn't before.
The locket. The woman with the haunting violet eyes in the oil painting was wearing the locket. I grabbed Jack's arm. He saw it and froze.
It wasn't there before.
What do you mean?
That painting has been hanging there since I was a child. I've walked by it a thousand times. She was never wearing a locket.