Pretty Marys All in a Row Read online

  I take Red upstairs and hang her on the wall.

  “Are you okay, Rhee?” she asks.

  I hesitate. “Something else happened today,” I say. “I remembered something. A place.”

  She peers out at me, her face pressed against the glass. “The dancehall where you were that night?”

  I shake my head. “It was a house, I think. But run-down. Everything there was faded and broken.”

  Not the home I thought I’d find.

  Red watches me. “That’s a start,” she whispers. “We’ll figure this out.”

  I nod, though I can’t imagine a way that she could be right.

  In the ballroom, I pace along the walls, the distant tunes of Duke Ellington as this evening’s accompaniment. But there’s no comfort here tonight. My family is fading, will fade completely unless I can fix this.

  I close my eyes and strain to return to the place I found today. The place from my memories.

  And I see it again. Cracks in the window. Gingham on the walls. And something else. Engines whir overhead. They rumble into my blood, and I think how others are traveling—but not me. I’m still. I’m alone.

  Never alone, pretty Mary.

  I open my eyes, and the shadow curls around me.

  My fingers clench into tight fists. “You know what’s happening to Mack and Lew and Mistress,” I say, half-choking on my fury. “You’re the one responsible, aren’t you?”

  Not exactly. But rules are rules. I just enforce them.

  “So my sisters are disappearing.” The truth is ash in my mouth. “What about me? And Red?”

  The shape in the shadow laughs, and the sound rakes against my ears like talons. All in good time, pretty Mary.

  “You can’t have me.” Rage burns deep in my chest, and I move toward the darkness. “You can’t have any of us.”

  You won’t get a choice. The shadow drips down from the ceiling, stretching like saltwater taffy, and it wraps around my throat. Duke Ellington fades away, and his smooth voice is replaced with another sound.

  Weeping. Far away, girls are weeping again.

  “Not tonight.” I grit my teeth and stare into the roiling shadows. I stare until my eyes blur and focus again, focus into something deeper. Something that makes even the darkness uncomfortable.

  Your time is almost here, pretty Mary. Like it or not.

  The darkness dissolves, and I’m alone. Whatever comes next, I already know I won’t like it. And I also know I won’t wait here for it like a fool.

  Though I’ve never once tried it, I leave the ballroom before dawn. Nothing holds me here except tradition. And it’s time to shatter that ritual like a wicked looking glass.

  I march down the stairs and slip out the back door. Mistress lingers in the center of her garden, her chin tipped to the earth, as though meditating. The manicured rows of her sanctuary, once verdant and dangerous, have retreated to a sullen brown. Everything here is dying.

  I rustle through the overgrowth, and she glances up. For a moment, she looks at me like I’m a stranger.

  “Rhee,” she says as if reminding herself.

  “I’m sorry about tonight.” I circle her, the vine at her feet too listless to pursue me. “But I wasn’t lying. Something did happen.”

  “I believe you, Rhee,” she whispers. “I just think it’s too late to matter.”

  “It’s not too late,” I say and hold her hands in mine. “We don’t have to wait for the end to come.”

  She nods and wraps her fingers tighter around mine. “If you can do this—”

  “If we can do it.”

  The sun crests over the horizon. Tomorrow is almost here. We’re running out of time.

  “Tonight, you come to us,” Mistress says, the dawn flickering like wildfire in her gaze. “Or bring us to you.”

  I smile and close my eyes.

  * * *

  I look again, and I’m back on the highway. David is already waiting there.

  And so is someone else.

  The passenger door of the station wagon is wide open, and Abby sits on the seat that’s usually mine. “Hi, Aunt Rhee,” she says, waving.

  I wave back at her, my body steel against the night. “Why did you bring her again?” I whisper to David.

  He kicks the dirt. “Because she asked.”

  I scoff. “And do you always let a four-year-old tell you what to do?”

  His gaze locks on me. “You mean, when I’m not letting a ghost tell me what to do?”

  At this, I scowl but don’t answer. It’s a trick question anyhow, so I ask something else. “How long have I been gone?”

  David shakes his head.

  My stomach twists. “That long?”

  “No,” he says. “Not at all. It’s only tomorrow.”

  I exhale, and my breath fogs around me like smoke and fear. That’s good. That’s what I wanted. To reach him before it’s too late.

  “I thought I lost you last night,” he says. “When you vanished from the car. I thought that was it, that you were gone.”

  “I know.” I hesitate. “Something’s happening to us, to my sisters. And to me.”

  He nods but says nothing.

  “I need to try something. I don’t know how it will turn out.” I stare hard at him. “Will you stay with me?”

  He looks at me, his face gaunt with shadows. “Always.”

  I don’t know if this will work, but I told Mistress that I would try. More than ever, I wish that I could take David’s hand, that I could hold on to something real and ground myself to this place. But I can’t, so with my eyes squeezed closed, I focus. In the darkness, a darkness that doesn’t belong to the voice in the shadows, my sisters’ faces materialize, and I pull them toward me. First, I bring Mack into sharp focus. Sweet, little Mack. Our baby sister.

  I open my eyes, and the highway’s still here. I don’t feel any different.

  But I’m wrong. Something is different. At my side, Mary Mack is staring at me, her coffin slung over her shoulders like a too-heavy bookbag.

  “Rhee?” she asks, her voice thin and warbling.

  I take her shaking hand in mine. “Stay with me,” I say.

  But I’m not done yet.

  Lew. Next, I imagine Lew. And then I see her, standing in front of me. But not on the highway. She lingers on a doorstep, crooning a beautiful dirge no one can hear.

  Like Mack, she stares at me. Unlike Mack, it’s more a glare. “What are you doing?” she asks, more annoyed than impressed.

  With my free hand, I entwine her fingers with mine. “Mistress,” I say. “We need to pick her up next.”

  And with that, we’re in a garden somewhere. Not the garden in our backyard, but a real orchard. My body is numb from boomeranging back and forth. This is imperfect and uncomfortable, like a kid peddling unevenly on her first bicycle. But it’s working.

  “Good evening, Rhee,” she says and loops her arm through Lew’s.

  We’re together, the four of us. But it’s too much, and I can’t hold on. My focus dissolves, and I topple backward through the gloom to somewhere else.

  Nausea grips my body, and the world returns to me, one piece at a time.

  Cicadas in the trees. A rush of bald tires on concrete. A chill in the air.

  The highway. I’m back on the highway.

  But I’m not the only one. Though I couldn’t grasp them tight, it doesn’t matter. The four of us are here, side by side at the gates of the cemetery.

  David stares at me. “What happened?”

  “My sisters,” I say breathlessly, pointing next to me. “I’ve brought my sisters.”

  He searches the air helplessly, twisting all the way around like a drunken fool. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Rhee,” he says. “I can’t see anyone.”

  The car door still open, Abby giggles from the passenger’s seat. “Daddy, of course, you can see them.” She holds out her chubby little fingers and counts us off. “One, two, three, four. Four pretty ghosts.”
>
  She nods once, a kind of self-congratulations, and I’m not sure if she’s proud of herself for spotting ghosts or for counting that high. Either task is as ordinary as dirt to Abby.

  I hesitate. “These are my sisters,” I say, because introducing ectoplasm seems like the polite thing to do under the circumstances. “This is Lew and Mack and Mistress.”

  They each wave at Abby, and she waves back.

  “Nice to meet you,” Abby chirps.

  Lew looks from her to me and back again. “She can see us? That little girl can see us?”

  That little girl. The perfect mark. My muscles turn to stone, and I heave in a breath.

  “Lew, don’t you dare—” I start to say, but I’m too late.

  Lew lunges forward, a masquerade already in motion. It’s been so long since someone could see her that she’s pulling out all the stops. Her skin drips down her bones, revealing the sinew and organs and marrow beneath, transforming into her most frightful self—all to terrify Abby.

  I try to cut her off before she reaches the car, but Lew’s faster than me. She’s everywhere like a shadow draped over the world. At the sight of what Lew’s become, Abby exhales tiny curlicues of smoke, red as a dangerous sunset, but she doesn’t scream. Not one yip. Instead, her arms flail with wild abandon, and she squeals with glee. Even once Lew backs away, face returned to her, Abby won’t stop grinning.

  “Do it again, Lew,” she says, her cheeks flushed. “Scare me again.”

  We all inhale the smoke—me included shamefully—and Lew smiles. “I can do that, little one.” She moves forward, her face swirling and changing, but I shove her back with one finger.

  “That’s enough,” I say, and with a glower, Lew flips her hair and turns toward a rusted spire of the cemetery fence. She already got what she wanted anyhow.

  David watches me and watches Abby and watches the air between us before gaping at me. “Rhee?” His voice wavers. “What’s going on?”

  I wish I could explain it to him.

  I wish I could explain it to myself.

  * * *

  Dinner that evening is a grand affair.

  “We must have our best tablecloth!” Her complexion bright, Mistress hurries about the dining room with the vine at her feet as impetuous as ever. It trips me three times before I’ve even set down all the silverware.

  Red shakes her head. “And you, leaving me out of all the fun,” she says.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I say. Tonight was over so quickly I didn’t have a chance to pick up Red. “I’m not sure how it all works yet.”

  Red grins. “I’m only teasing,” she says. “It’s good you got them out.”

  But what if I can’t get you out? I want to ask. So far, I’ve only gone to Red. I haven’t brought her to me. What if there’s a reason for that?

  But it’s a question that has to wait until after dinner. Although we only have Abby’s fear to dine on—and of course, another generous helping from the twins—it’s plenty to satiate us.

  We sit back at the table, and for an instant, everything seems calm and kind and okay. Like we’re a circle of friends or even a real family, good and whole.

  Like we aren’t ghosts.

  “I don’t want to ruin dinner,” Mack says. “But what now?”

  We all look at her, unsure how to respond.

  She sniffles and traces her finger along the woodgrain of the table. “Because other than some little girl who’s mostly impervious to fear, no one else can see us.”

  Lew shrugs. “Maybe Abby will be enough.”

  “No,” I say, my chest aching. “We can’t rely on Abby. She’s only a child.”

  “Don’t blame me.” Lew cracks her back, and a shiver like a spider runs across my flesh. “You’re the one who took us to her.”

  “We went there together,” Mistress says, her voice resolute, and she’s right. It’s not just because of me. The four of us went as one. We chose to stay together. We’re changing the rules. Whatever’s in the darkness, we can beat it.

  We’re stronger together.

  A warmth flushes through me. Maybe that’s the key. If we’re together as a family like we are here every night, maybe we could do anything.

  “They can’t see you in their world,” I say.

  Lew laughs. “Yeah, Rhee, we already know that.”

  “So then,” I say, smiling, “we bring them here.”

  chapter five

  “But we don’t have enough time to prepare the house.”

  This is Mistress’s primary complaint. Her only complaint, in fact, or the only one she voices aloud anyhow. But even this protest is without any weight because Lew, Mack, and I are already up and out of our chairs, readying the house and readying ourselves, deciding how to make the house its most formidable self—“more cobwebs and bones obviously,” Lew says—and deciding that whatever we do, it must be done tomorrow night.

  “The sooner, the better,” Mack says.

  More like, the sooner, the less likely we evaporate into nothing.

  “So”—Lew yanks cobwebs from behind the sideboard and her liquor cabinet and drapes them like streamers from the ceiling—“who do we invite?”

  Invite. That word sounds so polite, the notion of issuing invitations rather than simply stealing someone from their world and pulling them into ours.

  “I’m sure the twins would be interested,” Red says. She sits inside the mirror, watching the rest of us work.

  Lucky Red, not having to lend a gory hand.

  Unlucky Red, suspended alone in her glass coffin.

  “I have someone in mind too,” Lew says, smirking to herself.

  “How about you, Rhee?” Mistress swathes our longest, reddest runner over the table. It looks like the whole dining room is bleeding. “Are you inviting anyone?”

  By anyone, she means David. They all wait, their heavy gazes lingering on me, needling me for a response. My chest tightens. I want to say no. I want to keep him out of this, especially until I’m sure I can do it correctly. What if something goes wrong? I don’t want him in the first-round trials.

  My sisters are still watching me, so I just shrug.

  “If he wants to,” I say at last.

  Lew grunts. “Of course, he’ll want to.” She tosses her skull in the air and catches it. Over and over, the head goes up and down like a child on a trampoline. I look away to avoid becoming seasick.

  “If we did disappear,” Mack says, pausing in the doorway of the hall, “what would happen to the house?”

  Silence settles among us, the sixth figure in the room. The house—and how we found it—is something we’d rather forget. That’s because when we arrived, it was already furnished like it was expecting us. Like it had already been lived in. We assumed the previous occupants would return, but when no one came calling, we tried to forget. It seemed the safest thing to do under the circumstance.

  Mistress breaches the silence by asking each of us what terrors we plan to contribute to the party. “I’ll be doing the floral arrangements, of course,” she says.

  “I’ll do the centerpiece,” Lew says and lobs her skull into the middle of the table. It lands with a thud, and she nods once, pleased with herself.

  Red promises extra blood. “As much as I can bring to the party,” she says, no particular inflection in her voice. She has an odd, wan look about her, and when she glances at me, I mouth, What’s wrong? But she shakes her head and turns back to watch Mistress.

  “I have something,” Mack says. “For decoration.”

  Hands clasped in front of her, she scurries to the basement. A moment later, she lugs her coffin upstairs on her back and leans it against the corner of the dining room.

  “I think it’s finally finished,” she says.

  “About time.” Lew grins at Mack and admires the finished piece.

  “This will do very nicely as décor,” Mistress says, and her vine curls into the coffin and spruces up the pink satin liner inside. “Well done,
Mack.”

  Mack blushes with pride, and in the hurricane-lamp glow of the dining room, she looks no older than a child.

  We finish readying the downstairs, ensuring it’s as dusty and creepy as we can make it. Dawn edges dangerously close, so we retire to our respective rooms, each of us giddy as schoolgirls. Each of us except Red.

  In the master bedroom, I stare at her. “Are you okay?”

  She shakes her head. “Aren’t you worried about tomorrow?”

  “Of course,” I say. “But we can’t stay like this. We can’t stay here forever.”

  Blood drips from her fingertips. “What if this is all a cycle? What if we think we’re choosing, but this is just part of the game, of what we’re supposed to do?”

  I’m chilled and tied tight inside, but I won’t let her know that. “Then we’ll find out tomorrow,” I say and place my open palm on the mirror. Through the glass, she matches her hand with mine.

  Upstairs, on the marble floor of the ballroom, I whirl in circles. We’re so close now. Tomorrow is so close.

  The darkness sways at my side. It’s still not too late to dance with me, pretty Mary.

  I put my back to him. Not tonight. I don’t want to see him tonight. Not when the shadows play tricks with the light and form into something that looks real. Like a man, broad and hulking and dangerous.

  What would you like me to bring to your party tomorrow night?

  My stomach clenches. “You’re not invited,” I say.

  You keep telling yourself that, pretty Mary. Either way, I’ll see you soon.

  At that, he dissipates into the night.

  “Goodbye,” I say. The darkness can come, but he won’t stop us. My sisters won’t fade. We’ll be together, and we’ll become stronger than we’ve ever been. We’ll get out of here. Not even darkness can keep us.

  Through the ballroom windows, the dawn pours like honey on my skin, and I fade away.

  * * *

  When I open my eyes, I don’t know if it’s night or day. And I don’t know where I am. This isn’t the highway. The room is cramped and gray, and something sticky pastes itself to the bottoms of my heels.