Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator Page 7

  Gilda felt an electric chill when she saw Juliet. Wearing a disheveled white nightgown, the pale girl sat straight up in bed, apparently engaged in conversation with someone Gilda could not see. Juliet’s eyes were wide open, staring straight ahead, but they seemed unfocused, like the eyes of a blind girl. She spoke earnestly, but her words were incomprehensibly garbled: some words sounded like regular English, but most of her phrases were complete nonsense. Although Gilda thought she heard the phrase “you will see my eyes” and something that sounded like the “tower,” the girl seemed to speak an alien language, as if she were hypnotized—under some kind of spell.

  “Juliet?” Gilda whispered, feeling bewildered and wondering whether she should try to do something to help. Was it possible that Juliet was speaking to one of the ghosts that Rosa claimed to see? “Juliet, who are you talking to?”

  Juliet didn’t respond. She couldn’t hear or see Gilda.

  Gilda boldly stepped directly into Juliet’s room, but Juliet remained in her trance, completely oblivious to Gilda’s presence.

  As she observed with horrified fascination, Gilda reflected that something about Juliet’s demeanor reminded her of a kid she had known at Girl Scout camp who used to talk in her sleep. Sometimes the girl would even climb out of her bunk bed in the middle of the night and walk around the cabin. This had been a source of great amusement to her fellow campers, since she would sometimes blurt embarrassing nonsensical phrases from her dreams like “Butts ahoy!” and “Aren’t you wearing panties?”

  After that experience, Gilda had taken a brief interest in sleepwalking and sleep-talking, and had read about a man who once woke up waist-deep in a lagoon, surrounded by alligators, and a woman who awoke from a deep sleep to find herself in her car, driving down the highway. Clearly, there were people who did all kinds of strange things in their sleep.

  Juliet had now lowered her voice to a faint whisper, but her blank eyes remained focused on the same spot on the wall. Gilda reflected that even if Juliet wasn’t speaking to a ghost, there was something decidedly spooky about her entranced state of mind.

  Worried that Juliet might suddenly awaken, Gilda quietly retreated, closing the door behind her. She walked as fast as she could down the dark hallway leading to her own bedroom.

  Once safely back in the guest room, Gilda turned on the light and sat down in front of the typewriter. She typed one of her favorite quotations:

  “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

  The familiar click! clack! clack! of the typewriter was immediately comforting. In an attempt to distract herself from her own racing imagination, Gilda decided to write a letter to Wendy Choy. After all, she wanted Wendy to know that she had made good on her promise to get herself to San Francisco.

  Dear Wendy,

  I hate to interrupt the campfire debutante ball or whatever it is you’re doing, but just thought I’d write to say hello.

  You may be interested to know that I’m writing to you from San Francisco, from a haunted Victorian mansion. I’m getting great experience for my new business, Psychic Investigations Inc.

  The current inhabitants of the house are myself (dressed very stylishly); a Mexican housekeeper named Rosa (who makes a kick-ass margarita); an anorexic sociopath named Juliet who is either a sleep-talker or under a witch’s spell (it’s hard to say exactly how old she is); and Mr. Lester Splinter, who is so mysterious, he seems to be invisible. (I haven’t even met him yet.)

  Lester Splinter had a sister who killed herself about ten years ago by jumping out the window of a tower that’s attached to the house. Apparently it’s just on the other side of the wall of the room I’m staying in. There are rumors of something evil lurking in this tower, so in the event you never hear from me again, please try to get my novels published when you come home from camp. They’re in my bedroom closet. Thanks.

  To be honest, I wish you were here; it would be more fun.

  Miss you,

  Gilda

  P.S. Remind me to tell you about a fiasco involving Plaid Pants.

  A door slammed shut downstairs. Gilda froze. She heard footsteps moving from room to room. For a moment, Gilda panicked, then decided the intruder had to be Mr. Splinter, returning from work.

  Not wanting to face an awkward introduction and a series of questions, Gilda quickly pulled on a nightshirt, turned off the light, and jumped into bed. She drew the gauzy drapes around her bed and curled up in a ball under the covers. She heard Mr. Splinter’s quick footsteps moving upstairs and into a room on the second floor, then the sad mooing of the foghorn across the bay. Gilda squeezed her eyes shut and hoped to fall asleep quickly.

  10

  The Footsteps Behind the Wall

  At two o’clock in the morning, Gilda awoke to the sound of something moving behind her bedroom wall. She listened: thump, thump, thump, thump, thump … The sound grew louder, then softer, then louder again. Could it be the sounds of a small animal? Tree branches bumping against the house? No—these definitely sounded like footsteps pacing back and forth.

  Gilda remembered Rosa’s warning about the tower: There is something there that is evil.

  Gilda pulled the covers over her head, but it seemed that the sounds of nervous, pacing footsteps only grew louder. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump!

  I’m supposed to be a Psychic Investigator! Gilda chided herself. Would a real psychic investigator lie in bed, quaking with fear? No! She would get up and do her job!

  With a surge of courage, Gilda threw off her covers and ran to switch on the lamp perched on the writing desk. Flooded with light, the room suddenly fell eerily silent.

  Gilda rummaged in her suitcase until she found her small silver crucifix. Just in case it IS an evil spirit, she told herself. Clutching the cross, she pressed her ear against the wall and listened. The sounds of footsteps seemed to recede, as if they might be heading down a staircase behind the wall. Moving her hands over the floral wallpaper, Gilda half expected to push open a secret entranceway into the tower.

  “Hello?” she said hesitantly.

  SLAM! Somewhere on the other side of the wall, a door closed with violent force.

  Startled, Gilda stumbled backward into the writing table. The lamp crashed to the floor with a loud clatter. The lightbulb broke with a dull popping noise, leaving her in darkness.

  Gilda groped her way through the room in search of a light switch. Stubbing her toe in the process, she let out a shriek of pain before finally locating the doorknob and bursting into the hallway.

  A man’s voice called out from the floor below. “Juliet? Juliet, are you okay?” Gilda heard purposeful footsteps heading up the stairs.

  “It’s just me,” Gilda called out in a small voice. “I—I knocked over a lamp …”

  Light spilled up the stairway and Mr. Splinter appeared on the landing below, tying a maroon bathrobe over his matching pajamas. He was tall and silver-haired, with the same thin-lipped mouth as his daughter. Even in his pajamas, he had the look of a serious man—a man of business. Gilda couldn’t help but notice that this man was the exact opposite of her own father, who used to sleep in his underwear and a torn T-shirt that advertised great cars and bars of the motor city! In the morning, her father’s curly hair had always stuck up in clumps and spikes that seemed to defy gravity.

  A fleeting expression of horror, followed by blank confusion, crossed Mr. Splinter’s face when he saw Gilda standing at the top of the stairs wearing nothing but an oversized General Motors T-shirt that had once belonged to her father. He squinted, trying to see Gilda more clearly without his glasses.

  The terror Gilda had experienced just a moment before now turned to embarrassment. “Hi, I’m Gilda,” she said awkwardly.

  “Oh, you’re Patty’s daughter,” said Mr. Splinter, sounding relieved. “Now I remember—Summer said you would be arriving today.”

  Gilda felt as if she were a young child who had wandered into the wrong house by mistake. Mr. Splinter made no mo
ve to ascend the stairs, to shake her hand or give her a perfunctory hug as a long-lost, distant relative. It was impossible to tell whether he was mildly pleased, irritated, or secretly angry to see Gilda. He simply looked up at her from the landing below, as if expecting her to explain herself further. Gilda wondered if this was because she had essentially invited herself to visit.

  “Thanks for letting me visit,” she said.

  “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay here,” said Mr. Splinter.

  He sounds like a hotel manager, Gilda thought. Was this cool, formal politeness simply the way rich people talked to one another?

  “How is your mother?” Mr. Splinter asked, more out of politeness than genuine curiosity.

  “She’s very well, thank you,” said Gilda, attempting to mirror Mr. Splinter’s terse, formal manner.

  “And your father?”

  Was Mr. Splinter kidding? “Well, he’s dead, but otherwise fine,” said Gilda.

  Mr. Splinter looked confused and embarrassed. “Oh—I’m sorry. Perhaps I did hear something, but … I haven’t seen Patty in so long. I’m terribly sorry.”

  Gilda didn’t know what to say. When people said “I’m sorry” about her father’s death, she was supposed to say “That’s okay” to make them feel better. But it wasn’t okay. There couldn’t ever be enough “sorries” to make it “okay,” so instead she remained silent.

  “Well, I heard something fall, and I wanted to see if anyone was hurt.” Mr. Splinter glanced up in the direction of his daughter’s bedroom door, then turned to leave.

  “Wait—” Gilda blurted. “Something was making a strange noise near my room.”

  “You know how these old houses can be,” said Mr. Splinter dismissively.

  “But I’m sure I heard footsteps coming from the other side of the wall. There’s somebody—or something—in that tower!”

  Mr. Splinter’s shoulders stiffened, and his face contorted for just a split second, resembling the lopsided grimace one makes when avoiding tears. “Well, I know Rosa claims that we have some ghosts in the house, but I myself am not superstitious.”

  “Maybe it isn’t a ghost,” said Gilda impatiently, “but there’s something moving around in there!” Gilda realized that her tone had become shrill, but she couldn’t stand it when adults tried to dismiss something that was real. She had once had a lengthy argument with a biology teacher who had refused to believe that the starfish she was dissecting had moved on her tray, when Gilda was certain that it had.

  “There couldn’t be anything in that tower because it has been locked and completely sealed for the last ten years!” Mr. Splinter retorted, showing his irritation openly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get up early in the morning. Good night, Gilda. I’ll have Rosa see about the lamp in your room tomorrow.”

  “But—”

  Mr. Splinter disappeared down the stairs, leaving Gilda standing alone in the dim light.

  A door creaked open down the hall, and Gilda turned, breathless, to see Juliet peering at her.

  “I heard it, too,” said Juliet.

  11

  Melanie’s Ghost

  So I’m not crazy,” said Juliet, sitting on her bed with her arms wrapped around her legs, chin resting on bony knees. “You heard it, too.”

  The purplish hollows under Juliet’s eyes and cheekbones made her face look almost bruised in the gloomy light of her bedroom; she looked as if she hadn’t slept in weeks.

  A pile of dirty dishes and a plate covered with eggshells cluttered the night table next to Juliet’s bed, and a pair of pink ballet slippers hung sadly from a chair that also propped up a pair of crutches. In one corner, there was a television set that was much larger than any TV Gilda had ever seen in a kid’s bedroom. There were no random piles of books or clothes; there were no posters of celebrities or photographs of friends. Aside from the ballet shoes, something about the environment reminded Gilda of an elderly person’s bedroom in a nursing home.

  “I definitely heard something,” Gilda replied. “It sounded like footsteps coming from behind the wall in my room.”

  “I’ve heard noises coming from that tower for years,” said Juliet. “But my father always tells me I’m imagining things.”

  Gilda stared at Juliet, wanting to ask her about the unusual scene she had witnessed earlier that evening. “Do you ever talk to ghosts?” Gilda blurted.

  “No!” said Juliet, surprisingly offended by the question.

  “I only asked because I heard you talking to yourself in here earlier this evening. I mean, you seemed to be having a whole conversation with some invisible person! I just assumed you were talking in your sleep, but after hearing those footsteps, I wondered if it might be something else.”

  Juliet bit her fingernail. “I didn’t know I still did that,” she said. “When I was little, my nannies used to tell me that I said all kinds of nonsense in my sleep, but I haven’t done that in years, as far as I know.” Juliet glanced around the room nervously, as if wondering what other things she had done in her sleep.

  “I think you might have said the word tower,” said Gilda.

  “You mean you stood here and listened to me?”

  “Well, your door was open.”

  “Even if it was, I still think that was an invasion of privacy.”

  “Listen, I could hear you blabbing all the way down the hall,” said Gilda, exaggerating the truth.

  “Well, it doesn’t mean anything,” Juliet insisted, as if trying to convince herself more than Gilda. “It’s just gibberish.”

  “Maybe,” said Gilda. “Anyway, I still think your father’s wrong if he says there aren’t ghosts in the house. Rosa told me that she thinks there’s something in the tower, so we’re not the only ones who have heard things.”

  “Rosa sees ghosts in her coffee.” Juliet rolled her eyes. “You know how superstitious housekeepers are.”

  “Oh sure,” Gilda replied, thinking that there was something annoyingly snobbish about this statement, but not wanting to admit that she didn’t know a single person who actually had a housekeeper. “We used to have a housekeeper who was really superstitious,” Gilda lied. “She was convinced there was a ghost in the freezer who kept eating all the ice cream.”

  “Really?”

  “Well—it was actually something that my brother and I made up,” Gilda admitted, “but then my mother started believing it, which was kind of funny.”

  “You have a brother? That’s so lucky!”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you got to know him.”

  “I wish I had a brother,” said Juliet, suddenly wistful. “No—I wish I had a couple of brothers. Then I’d never be scared because I wouldn’t have to be here by myself. There would always be someone at home.”

  Gilda snorted, thinking that Juliet was very naive. “I’d rather have a sister,” she said.

  Juliet wrinkled her nose. “I have two stepsisters, and I can’t stand them. When my parents got divorced, I moved down to San Diego with my mom, but then she married Chuck and that meant living with his two airhead daughters. All they ever talked about was getting tans and shopping and which boys on the beach were ‘hotties’ and how much money their dad was going to give them for a new car. They sure hated having me around.”

  “Oh,” said Gilda, not knowing what to say. Juliet’s family situation sounded far more complicated than her own.

  “Anyway, when I was ten, I begged my mom to let me move here to live with my father. It’s better here than with her, but sometimes I almost miss those bimbos. I mean, even if they drove me crazy, I’d be less lonely.”

  Gilda felt a wave of sympathy at Juliet’s honest admission of loneliness, but she still felt exasperated. Why did only-children always pine for siblings? Gilda had little patience with people who needed other people to entertain them. She was sure that if she herself were an only child, she would be perfectly happy pursuing her various projects. On the other hand, she had always had Stephen around, so she gu
essed she didn’t really know what it felt like to spend days completely alone in an enormous house, just as Juliet had no idea what it was like to have someone slip ice cubes down your shirt when you weren’t expecting it, or sneak a spider under the sheets of your bed—a spider that bit you several times during the night. Still, Gilda reflected that it was possible that being all alone in a big house would be more terrifying than she realized.

  “I wish she would just leave me alone!” Juliet blurted.

  “Who?”

  Juliet’s gray eyes looked unusually dark. “Aunt Melanie, of course. My dad’s dead sister. I saw her the other day,” she whispered. Her voice grew quivery, and the pupils of her gray eyes were now two black wells.

  Gilda felt a prickly sensation all over her skin. This was the first time she had met anyone who had been face-to-face with a real ghost.

  “She was standing right in the hallway on the second floor,” Juliet continued, leaning closer to Gilda. “That’s when I fell and twisted my ankle.”

  “What did she look like?”

  Juliet closed her eyes, trying to visualize the phantom in her memory. “It’s hard to explain,” she said. “I’m not sure why, but I just knew it was her. She looked like a real person, but somehow she wasn’t completely there; I just knew I was looking at a dead person’s face.”

  Gilda could hardly contain her excitement at finding herself with a real psychic phenomenon to investigate. “Are you sure it was your aunt Melanie?” she asked, remembering that her psychic handbook advised against jumping to hasty conclusions about a ghost’s identity. “Rosa thinks the house is full of ghosts; she said a bunch of old ladies used to live here.”

  Instead of answering, Juliet flopped onto her stomach. Hanging halfway off her mattress, she searched for something underneath the bed and pulled out a small, dusty jewelry box. When she opened it, the room filled with the awkward, antique chimes of a music box, and a tiny ballerina stuck on a metal pole came to life, pirouetting jerkily upon stiff plastic legs.