Page 67 of Persephone's Curse
“Because he died in the house,” Bernie said, catching on.
“And the house is magic,” I finished.
“Magic is such a simple way of putting it,” Evelyn said. “But, yes. The house is magic. The land is magic. Farthings have always been here, lived here,breathedin it.”
“Of course Henry became a ghost,” Clara whispered. “He was drenched in that energy every day he lived in this house.Ourenergy.”
“But what about the others?” Bernie asked. “What about the other Farthing ghosts, the ones Winnie can see?”
“They’ve never been as real as Henry,” Evelyn said. “You’ve always said that, Winnie, about the other ghosts. They’re just copies.”
At the mention of other Farthing ghosts, I rememberedEvelyn’sghost, standing next to the Ouija board, standing in the kitchen, the way I knew the shape and size of her, how she had held her hand out to me, reaching for me, how I had let go of her in the backyard because of how much she was shaking, how Bernadette had stepped in and pulled her close, pulled her inside, turned on the fire and tried to bring some warmth back into the house.
I had seen Evelyn’s ghost because she had been in the Underworld. I had seen her because shehad,sort of, been dead. Or at leastmore dead, technically, during those three days, than she had beenalive.
“Persephone could come and go from the Underworld,” Clara said. “It must be like that, for us, sort of. Our…energy,maybe. It’stherebut it’s alsohere. The children of the in-between, like Aunt Bea says.”
“This is giving me a headache,” Bernie said, at the same time I said, “I saw you, Evelyn.”
Evelyn looked up at me and her eyes were, for a moment, unrecognizable. A full shade lighter than they had been three days ago. I wanted to scream. I wanted to pull her hair. I wanted to push her over and hold her down and tell her how sorry I was.
“I remember…” she said.
“Saw her when?” Clara asked.
“When she was down there… She was a ghost…”
“You didn’t tell us,” Bernadette said.
“Because I didn’t know if that meant she was…”
“I was,” Evelyn said. “Kind of.”
A moment of quiet, and then Clara said, a bit too loudly, “Doesn’t it kind of feel sometimes like we’reallghosts? You know?”
Evelyn blinked, blinked, blinked, then said, “I think I need to lie down for a while.”
She got up and brought her plate into the kitchen, then walked silently past us and went up to her room.
“Okay, so, either Evelyn has completely lost it or we’veallcompletely lost it ornoneof us have lost it, and I’m really trying to figureout which one it is,” Clara said that night, the three of us crammed into her small bedroom, Bernadette on the bed with Clara, me on the floor, rocking back and forth, unable to be still. Evelyn had gone to bed and not gotten up again and we’d all gone in to check on her at various points, finding her stripped down to her underwear underneath the covers of her bed, sleeping so soundly and so deeply it gave us the feeling that we couldn’t wake her even if we’d tried.
“Somethinghappened to her,” Bernadette said thoughtfully. “She was gone for three days. Clearly she wentsomewhere.”
“And the cameras…” Clara said.
“And Evelyn doesn’t lie,” I said.
“Mom and Dad come back tomorrow,” Clara said. “What are we going to tell them?”
“Nothing,” Bernadette and I said at the same time.
“Are we supposed to just go toschooltomorrow?” Clara asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I think we have to.”
“I think it’s all true,” Bernadette declared. “Don’t you think it must all be true? Everything she told us? Maybe we should call Aunt Bea.”
“Aunt Bea will tell Mom,” I reasoned. “Like,immediately.”
