The Ever After

Chapter Five: What Lives in the Lake?

SOMBER KITTY WAS RIGHT OUTSIDE MAY'S DOOR that morning when she crawled out of bed. He looked up at her gleefully, doing a little arabesque.

"Some guard cat you are," May muttered.

"Meay?"

The two made their way down the stairs, one staggering, the other trotting, to the breakfast table. May slumped over her oatmeal, watching her mom putter around the kitchen. Occasionally Mrs. Bird watched her in return, the two doe-eyeing each other thoughtfully. But neither of them said anything.

"I'm going outside," May finally muttered.

"Remember, no woods," Mrs. Bird said, wiping the counter. May walked down the hall and outside, looked around to make sure there was no one standing in the grass, and planted herself on the stairs. She had been up most of the night, hiding under the covers and watching her door, knowing that at any moment the ghost would come through it. He hadn't. At dawn she'd dared to look out her window again, but he hadn't come back. She sat for several minutes, restless, eyeing the line of trees across the lawn. Then she got up and went down onto the grass. Now, walking under the sun to the edge of the woods, she felt like a dark blotch, moving across the ground.

At the edge of the trees she paused. Something fuzzy knocked into her calves, making her jump.

"Kitty, you scared me." She crouched and picked him up, his body stretching out underneath him like a piece of chewed gum. Together they stared into the darkness beneath the trees. May searched the branches above, as if the creature from last night would actually appear up there, swinging by his knees.

"What lives in the lake?" she asked Somber Kitty. 

"Meay."

"Do you think it's a ghost?"

"Mew."

"Do you think it's coming after me?" she whispered low. 

"Meow."

She didn't know whether that was a yes or no. She took it as a maybe, and hurried back into the house.

That afternoon May sank down at her desk, moved her materializer to the floor, and wrote down notes from The Ghost Hunter's Guide to the Paranormal, which she had found in the crooked-floored, crooked-shelved recesses of White Moss Manor's dusty library that afternoon. As she wrote, she leaned her head on her free hand and let out the occasional yawn. Her notes read:

          Come after dark

          Scared of: iron, obsidian, silver, periwinkle, horseshoes, spitting, salt

          When one is around, the temperature drops.

Upon copying this last line, May stood up and made a beeline down to the thermometer that hung outside the back door, then carried it back to her room and hooked it to the wall next to her bed.

A few seconds later she was back to reading again, and her eyelids were getting heavy. She began to droop farther and farther down on her desk, her elbows sliding, and her head finally resting on her hands. Somber Kitty, who'd curled up on the floor by her chair, listened to the steady noise of her breathing and watched the sun droop outside the window, below the horizon, until darkness slowly crept up from the trees.

May only stirred once, to turn her head to the side. And then she jerked up, suddenly wide awake.

There on the wall in front of her, among the many imaginary creatures May had drawn over the years, was one she had done when she was only three or four. The creature in the drawing had a round, lopsided head, like a pumpkin that had grown on its side, and a gash of a mouth. He was wearing a long, ripped shirt, a jacket, and a pair of trousers rolled up at the bottom. A tuft of yellow hair sprang from the top of his head.

May sat, her mouth hanging open, for several minutes. There was no mistaking him.

It wasn't possible.

As she tried to make sense of it, May's eyes drifted to her letter on the windowsill. She stood up and grabbed it, pulled it out of the envelope. Amazingly it was still legible, though even more blurred than before. She read bits of it: the danger you will endure and then great need of your help.

She looked at the envelope itself, and sighed.

The tree, and the woman's face hidden in its leaves, was gone. May stuck her thumbnail between her teeth.

"Mew?" Somber Kitty inquired.

"Shhh," May hissed, concentrating. One question after another started racing through her head.

Was the creature in her room the danger she had to endure? Was it the creature from the lake? Were they the same? What did it have to do with this Lady?

May looked out the window, pressing her nose against the glass. She could only see the shadow of the trees. She felt like a prisoner.

Are you out there? she thought, trying to picture the Lady from her letter. She squinted, trying to see her eyes in the trees. Do you need me? It was hard to imagine. May knew she wasn't much good for anything, not much that was useful. Wasn't that why her mom thought she needed Saint Agatha's?

A few minutes later a chill slid across her and roused her from her thoughts.

"Honey, why don't you take a bath?" her mom called from downstairs.

May sat on her bed and peeled off her black shorts and black slippers, not noticing that the mercury in the thermometer by her bed had dropped. She walked into the bathroom, smoothing her bangs away from her forehead and turning on the spigot. She had just turned to close the door when the bath water splashed behind her. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

She turned.

A woman with long black hair and pale white skin and hol- low, dark-circled eyes sat in the bathtub. She was completely translucent. And she was wearing a shower cap.

May felt a scream rise up in her throat, and clamped down on it, hard.

Slowly, pretending she didn't notice, she backed out through the bathroom door and tiptoed to her mom's room, where she found Mrs. Bird sitting in front of her computer.

She stopped on the edge of the room, squeaking to a halt and trembling.

Her mom looked up. "What's wrong?"

May's breath fluttered in her throat. Visions of Saint Agatha's suddenly danced in her head. "Um." She looked back over her shoulder, toward the bottom of the stairs.

"May?"

May hesitated. She didn't move. "Can you come, um, check the, um . . ." What could she say? "I think I saw a spider in the bathroom."

Mrs. Bird eyed her quizzically. "A spider? May, can't you squish it?"

"Um, I don't squish spiders." She paused, then whispered, "I think it's a tarantula."

"Oh, May." Mrs. Bird looked longingly at her laptop, then slowly stood up. The old floors creaking as she walked, Mrs. Bird led the way down the hall.

They passed the stairs.

Somber Kitty was sitting about halfway down, looking at the banister, clearly wondering if he should jump onto it and slide, which he sometimes liked to do.

As Mrs. Bird turned the corner into the bathroom, May waited for her to shriek or leap backward, but none of that happened. When May turned the corner, her mom was just pulling back from the bath, where the woman still sat.

"The water's spider-free, May. It's fine." She bent down to turn off the spigot.

The woman in the tub looked at May, her big, dark eyes mournful and horrible. May looked from her, back to her mom, and back to the woman. Somber Kitty entered the room and leaped up onto the sink, trying to catch the drips from the tap.

Both her mother and her cat were relaxed and carefree. May was on her own.