The drumming hum of the steady rain backed me up and filled in the silence while she worked her way up to what she meant.
“Them. Yeah. Jesus. I don’t know. ” She took another swig and swallow, and stared out past me into the yard where the water was accumulating into ponds instead of puddles. “I swear, there were people. Dead people. I heard them all night long, beating their fists up against the floor and trying to reach us—it’s hard to explain. I counted maybe a dozen of them, using my ears, tracking the sounds around the floor. ”
“The floor?” I asked. “I don’t understand. ”
“We were up in the attic, I told you. The floor underneath us was the ceiling of the main storage area. And down there, everything had filled up with water. I guess they were floating in it, trying to get up. And whatever they were, they must have been bad, because Leslie twitched and mumbled about it all night even while she dozed off and on. Sometime the next morning, after the water went down a little, we were rescued by the police. ”
“Was there any sign of—of whatever you heard?”
“No, of course not. No one saw a thing except for us, and who were we? Two kids who were too dumb to come in out of the rain. Even if we’d talked, no one would have believed us. Except for Momma, maybe. But we weren’t about to tell her. ” She laughed a little, and it came out hoarse, and forced. “Your mother, though. She had these nightmares for a long time—where she would kick and fuss in bed, like a dog dreaming about chasing a car. But she could see, better than I can. ”
I knew what she meant, and I didn’t ask her to elaborate. She continued on her own, though.
“It always was like that. She’d tell me about things she saw, and it wasn’t like I didn’t believe her, because I did. But I was jealous, a little. I wished I could see things too, like she did. Like you do. ” She nodded at me for emphasis.
“Don’t say that,” I told her. “It’s not like you think. It makes me nuts. ”
“That’s what Leslie used to say, too. I believe you—like I believed her. But you know how kids are, especially when there’s a set of three. Each of us wanted to stand out in some way. That’s all. But we didn’t tell Momma. We didn’t tell her anything, ever, if we could help it. She had a way of using things against you. She had a way of taking things you were proud of and making you self-conscious. I don’t know if she meant to. She was just one of those people. ”
I mumbled some sound like I was agreeing with her, or listening, or paying attention, at least. If I’d ever met my grandmother, I didn’t remember it.
“Well, you know how it is. Anyway. After the thing at the armory, your mother would dream and fuss about burned-up people. She used to cry that they were coming for her, or something. And when she was really out of it, in the middle of the night, she’d try to talk to them—I guess she was trying to talk to them, anyway. She’d repeat over and over again, ‘It was a mistake. ’ Like she was apologizing. ”
“Wait,” I stopped her. “What did you say? Burned-up people?”
“Yeah. She said they looked like someone had set them on fire. And there was a little girl there too, she had something important to do with it. I never understood it any better than Leslie did, and that wasn’t much. ”
All burned up, just like them, Caroline had said. Her words ech
oed in my head alongside Lu’s, folding the two stories together and shuffling them like cards. It was a mistake.
“Lu, what if—” I started, but didn’t know how to finish. How strange, if they were connected.
“What?”
“There’s a ghost down at the Read House,” I said. “Her name’s Caroline. And she said something like that, like what you just told me. It’s not much to go on, but they could be related. ”
“A thirty-year-old incident and the White Lady?”
“You know about her?”
“Doesn’t everybody? Darling, I’ve lived here all my life. The White Lady’s name is Caroline, huh?”
“That’s what she said. ”
She looked interested then, and set the drink down. “You went and talked to her?”
“With Nick, yes. That’s what we’ve been doing hanging around together for the last few days—in case you were wondering. She’s been making trouble for the new hotel owners, and Nick wanted to see if he could get a human interest story out of it. He wanted to see if she’d talk to me, so we could flesh out the mystery a little. ”
“Did it work?”
“Sort of. She’s mad as a hatter—same as when she was alive. Back in the twenties, her family had her institutionalized, but then they checked her out and she lived in the hotel until she killed herself a few years later. ”
“Delightful. But she talked to you? She tried to communicate?”
“Mostly I was the one trying to communicate, and she was the one trying to be left alone. ”
“That’s certainly a coincidence, but maybe nothing more. There’s thirty years and several miles between our night in the armory and whatever Caroline was going on about. ”