Through Her Eyes

  Through Her Eyes

  Jennifer Archer

  For Jeff,

  who makes this possible.

  Thanks for your love and support

  throughout the years.

  Contents

  Prologue

  I died on a bitter, cold night. Beneath a black…

  1

  Most people run from nightmares; my mother seeks them out.

  2

  Rain sprinkles down. I run around to the side of…

  3

  Soon after the Quattlebaums leave in their big, noisy truck,…

  4

  We stop at the Food Fair grocery store on our…

  5

  The next morning, I’m up before seven, wide awake in…

  6

  Somehow I manage to press the shutter release and take…

  7

  On Saturday night, Papa Dan’s voice wakes me sometime after…

  8

  At seven thirty on Monday morning, I walk beneath the…

  9

  I leave campus at noon the next day with my…

  10

  “You’re up early.” Mom slides her sunglasses to the tip…

  11

  As I’m driving home after lunch at Bethyl Ann’s house,…

  12

  “Henry! You dropped your watch. I hope it didn’t break.”

  13

  Scents of perfume and chalk, sweat and stale cigarette smoke…

  14

  “Stay with me longer, Bell. I’m not ready for you…

  15

  At noon, Bethyl Ann and I sit on the stadium…

  16

  I awake the next morning curled up on the floor…

  17

  Bethyl Ann’s bangs are choppy now, but in a good…

  18

  The next day, I forget to remove Papa Dan’s beret…

  19

  Anger, betrayal, and humiliation build to a crescendo inside me.

  20

  The image of Henry and Isabel, Daniel and Louise in…

  21

  Mom goes to her office after dinner to finish writing…

  22

  “You?” I step back. “You couldn’t have.”

  23

  Mom takes the last two candy canes from the box,…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Henry

  I died on a bitter, cold night. Beneath a black sky and a bruised winter moon, I tried to fly, hoping my arms might act as wings. When the howling wind refused to lift me, I closed my eyes and willed death to take me away.

  The end came quickly and without pain, but no angel of mercy appeared to help me escape this place; I’m as trapped here as I was in life, forced to roam Father’s remote house, the barren fields, this dusty wind-battered town full of small-minded bores. And it’s all the worse because the girl I love is gone.

  At least in the afterlife I fly with ease. I have learned to hover like mist and to soar like a bird. Today I mix with particles of debris and ride the wind as it circles the turret. I rattle the roof beams and roar at the sun, swoop down and around to the front porch, swirl up the steps and shove the old swing, causing the rusty hinges to screech.

  I push out into the yard, where a gust of wind carries me around to the side of the house and lifts me to the top of the mulberry tree. Green leaves tremble, and gnarled branches shudder beneath my breath. A small space between a dirty glass window pane and its frayed wooden frame allows me enough room to squeeze through into one of the house’s second-story bedrooms.

  Once inside I rush down the hallway past more vacant rooms, my silent screams bouncing off walls. Father’s precious house has sat empty too long, devoid of life except for insects and rodents, and they can’t help me ease my pain; they can’t accomplish what needs to be done.

  At the uppermost landing of the staircase, I slip beneath the door to the turret, my refuge in both life and death. I circle the room twice, once fast, the second time more slowly. Soothed by the plaster and wood that still contain strains of my violin music, I float on lost notes that echo from a time when I played for her, when I hoped my melodies might drift across the field and reach her ears.

  The wind calms outside, and the sound of a sneeze startles me out of my reverie. Curious, I sweep to the window that overlooks the land behind the house. The root cellar door stands open. Someone—a person—is climbing inside! A hand reaches up from the cellar and grabs a bag and two books from the ground beside the opening. The title on the spine of the top volume scatters particles of hope through me. Finally…finally. A lover of Yeats and Shelley, of Shakespeare and Dante. The sort of mind that I might reach…or possess.

  The cellar door closes. Drifting through the window and down, I sift through the minute cracks in the splintered wooden door, eager to meet my guest, hoping that this one will be my salvation. At last.

  1

  One Month Later

  Most people run from nightmares; my mother seeks them out. Her name is Millicent Moon, and she’s a horror novelist—the female version of Stephen King, minus the megabucks and movie deals. Whenever Mom starts working on a new book, she scouts out the perfect setting. Then she, my grandfather Papa Dan, and I move there. We’ve lived in a lot of cool places: the Queen Anne neighborhood in Seattle; a loft overlooking the Cumberland River in Nashville; a neighborhood in southwest Boston where writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau used to hang out. But we’ve never lived anywhere like the place we’re moving now, and I’d be a whole lot happier if we never did.

  “We’re almost there, Tansy,” Mom says, tucking a lock of straight black hair behind one ear and staring ahead at the dusty, rutted road as if it’s paved with diamonds.

  In the backseat, Papa Dan whistles. Loudly. I recognize the tune. The lyrics have something to do with mares eating oats and little lambs eating ivy.

  The novel Mom’s currently writing, The Screaming Meemies, takes place in the town where my grandfather spent his childhood: Cedar Canyon, Texas, population 2,250. Which, after driving through the town for the first time a minute ago, is a nightmare in itself, if you ask me. This will be my first small town experience, which is one reason why this move is the hardest one I’ve made so far.

  After he finished school, Papa Dan left Cedar Canyon and never returned, so I haven’t been here before and neither has Mom. She keeps saying it’ll be easy to make friends in a little town, but I know that the size of the place won’t change anything. There’s no convincing her of that, though. Mom’s chasing miracles by moving here. She hopes that Cedar Canyon will (1) make her forget and (2) make Papa Dan remember.

  “I wish you would look at the photo.” Mom slides her cat-eye sunglasses to the tip of her nose and glances across at me. “The place is incredible. Eloise said there’s an old wagon bridge at the edge of the property near the canyon.”

  I turn to stare out the window at a dark cloud in the distance and try to tune out my grandfather’s whistling. Over the past two days, I haven’t spoken more than five words to Mom. But then, since she told me we were moving again, I’ve hardly spoken much more than that, anyway. Maybe she’s getting used to my near-silence. Usually, it worries her and she asks me a million questions. Are you feeling okay? You want to talk about anything? Is something bothering you? But on this trip, she hasn’t seemed fazed. Not that she’s gone mute. Far from it. I guess that’s a good thing; somebody has to speak for this family.

  She could give it a rest, though. For hours on end, she’s rattled on nonstop about the old house she rented after finding a crumpled picture of it i
n a shoe box in Papa Dan’s room. She’s never seen the place except in that photograph, and Eloise—the leasing agent—said it’s been empty for years. Before Mom found that picture, we were going to live in a house in town, instead of out in the boonies. But she called and asked about the place, and just my luck, Eloise confirmed that the house is in Cedar Canyon and that it was available.

  “It even has a turret!” Mom gushes. “Can you imagine a turret in the middle of the Texas Panhandle?”

  I shoot her another glance. I haven’t seen my mother so excited since the day we first pulled up in front of our tiny bungalow in California, the place we just left. The day after my fifteenth birthday, we parked the U-Haul in San Francisco and stayed almost fourteen months, the longest I’ve lived in one place. I met Hailey there. Hailey Fremont. The best friend I’ve ever had—the only close friend, really. We shared more than rides to the movies and homework answers; we shared our secrets and dreams. I should have known not to get close to anyone. I let down my guard and forgot that making friends is a waste of time. It’s easier to move when you aren’t leaving behind something that matters.

  I’m supposed to call Hailey tonight. I would’ve tried sooner, but since we left San Francisco, I haven’t had a second alone to talk without Mom listening. I want to ask Hailey about Colin—a guy in our class who she’s been working with all summer at a music store. Hailey warned me that he was bad news, but I didn’t care. I think she just didn’t want me having a boyfriend unless she did, too. The first time Colin and I hung out, Mom ruined everything after I got home by telling me we were moving here. Colin called later, but we only saw each other once more. He probably thought going out with me was a lost cause, since I was leaving.

  “Say something, Tansy, would you?” Mom sounds exasperated, which makes me happy, though I’m not sure why.

  Without looking at her, I mumble, “I’m suffocating.”

  Aiming the air-conditioner vent at my face, she says, “Papa Dan, are you hot, too?”

  Mom doesn’t get it. I’ve never seen a more wide-open space; there’s hardly a tree or a tall building in sight or any sign of life whatsoever unless you count cows and prairie dogs. Just miles of flat, parched fields and endless sky. Yet, ever since we crossed the border into the Texas Panhandle, I’ve felt more trapped than ever…like I can’t breathe.

  Five minutes pass. Ten. While I’ve been watching the bland scenery pass by, my cheek numb from the stale, frigid air blowing at me through the vent, Mom has become abnormally quiet. I have a feeling she’s freaking out, worrying about my state of mind. But before I can even brace myself for an interrogation, the questions start.

  “What are you thinking, sweetie?”

  “About what?”

  “The turret, the bridge, the house, I don’t care. Anything. This silent-treatment bit you’ve got going on is getting really old.”

  So she did notice. My mother only listens to me when I’m not talking. “You’ve told me about the tower or turret or whatever it is at least ten times now. If I had something to say about it, I would’ve already said it. Why don’t you ask Papa Dan what he thinks?”

  Mom’s fingers grip and release the steering wheel, again and again. “Sarcasm isn’t very flattering on you, Tansy,” she says.

  Shame tightens my throat. Papa Dan can’t help that his mind has flickered from bright to dim. He’s my dad’s father and the last person on earth I would ever want to hurt. My grandfather has lived with us all of my life, ever since Dad and my grandmother died in a car accident a few months before I was born. The doctors think Papa Dan has some kind of dementia. But they’re stumped about why he clammed up and quit talking so suddenly a few months ago. I don’t know why, either, but I guess he has his reasons. If Papa Dan wants to be quiet, that’s fine with me. What’s hard, though, is the fact that the dementia has slowly changed him from the person I always leaned on most into a person who needs to lean on me. All my life, Papa Dan has been there for me. He’s going through a crappy time; I owe it to him to be strong for him.

  Mom reaches across the seat and touches my shoulder, as if she knows I feel like the world’s lowest living creature at the moment. “So what did you think of your first glimpse of Cedar Canyon?” she asks. “Isn’t it quaint?”

  “Yeah, quaint. A couple of gas stations and convenience stores. Oh, and let’s not forget that rodeo arena we passed. Every kid here probably wears a cowboy hat.”

  She blows her bangs off her forehead and sighs. “Didn’t you see all the antique stores and that cute old-fashioned diner on Main Street?”

  “Dairy Queen?”

  “No, not the Dairy Queen, the Longhorn Café.”

  “How could I miss that statue of a bull out front? Something tells me they don’t have a vegetarian menu.” I nibble my cuticle. “Did you notice they only have one theater and the movie that’s playing is over a month old?”

  “You could always stay busy by taking pictures again. I can’t remember the last time you picked up your camera.”

  My first camera was a gift from Papa Dan on my tenth birthday. We had just moved to Seattle, and the two of us walked around the city that summer taking pictures. Mom taped the photos all over her office walls. She says I have an eye for light and shading and atmosphere, for capturing beauty in unexpected things and places.

  “Maybe I will take some shots,” I tell her.

  “Great.” Cautious relief trickles through her voice. “I really miss having your photos for my research. Taking pictures will be good for you.”

  Translation: It will force me to quit feeling sorry for myself, keep me from going “peanutty as a Payday candy bar” in this boring town. That’s Papa Dan’s expression, one he used to describe our San Francisco neighbors the Cranes, “artistes” who painted faces on the rocks in their yard.

  We turn onto a dirt road and hit a pothole. The van rattles. Papa Dan whistles louder. From the corner of my eye, I glimpse Mom’s smile. “Look!” She steps on the brake, slinging me toward the dash before my seat belt jerks me back. “There it is!” Mom sticks her sunglasses onto the top of her head. “It’s perfect,” she says.

  I glance through the windshield at three stories of pure creepiness as Papa Dan ends the oat-and-ivy tune and starts whistling The Twilight Zone’s theme music. He couldn’t have chosen a more perfect song. Mom’s beloved turret tops the right side of the roof where it points like a finger at the gray cloud above. A little more centered and I would think it was flipping us off. The paint on the house, which might have once been a pretty shade of blue, is faded. A shutter dangles across a second-floor window, as if it’s unsure which would be worse—hanging on to the monster or the long drop to the ground. Weeds cover the yard, and the branches on the only tree in sight, a twisted giant on the house’s right side, start low on the trunk and reach wide.

  “Oh, look at that wonderful old mulberry!” Mom exclaims. She pulls the van into the rocky driveway and we climb out. As I’m helping Papa Dan from the backseat, Mom says, “Someone’s supposed to come by to talk about painting and repairs and cleaning up the yard. Eloise said the house is nice on the inside, though. She already sent over a cleaning service, and the owners left some furniture behind.”

  “That’s good. We’d never come close to filling up a house this big with our stuff.”

  A warm gust of rain-scented air flutters my hair. Without traffic noise, it’s spooky quiet outside. The only sounds I hear are a low rumble of thunder, the hiss of the wind, the twitter of a bird or two, and the constant chirp of insects—crickets or maybe cicadas.

  Beads of sweat break out on my forehead. Papa Dan grasps my hand tighter, as if he senses my tension…or shares it. A quiet, strangled noise escapes his throat. I follow his gaze to the house’s dark windows. A covered porch wraps around the front of the house. On its left side, a wooden bench swing hangs crooked from rusted chains that are attached to the ceiling. “It doesn’t look like anyone has lived here in a long time,” I say, squeezi
ng my grandfather’s fingers like he does mine. “At least nobody with flesh on their bones.”

  As if on cue, another blast of wind blows the porch swing back and forth and the rusty hinges creak. “Come on,” I say to Papa Dan, tugging his arm gently. He tugs back, and I feel a shudder pass through his body. Behind his round glasses, his eyes are pale green, confused…and scared. “You sure Papa Dan didn’t live here?” I ask Mom.

  “He lived somewhere in town.”

  “Why would he have a picture of this house?”

  “Maybe he knew someone who lived here. Or maybe he just liked the architecture. It’s fairly unusual for this part of the country.”

  I finally coax Papa Dan to follow Mom and me up the steps. “This is our new home,” I say to him, though I doubt he can hear me, since he’s not wearing his hearing aids. He always misplaces them, along with just about everything else. We step onto the porch, and I notice it’s made of warped gray boards. A few of them look as if they might cave in beneath our weight. “I hope you got a good deal on the rent,” I mumble to Mom.

  She slips the key into the lock and turns it. “We’re practically living here free.”

  I feel impatient as she jiggles the doorknob. I’d never admit it, but part of me can’t wait to explore this weird place. Something about the house, that creaking porch swing, even Mom’s precious turret, intrigues me. My grandfather’s sigh gives me the impression he doesn’t share my curiosity, though. He starts whistling so quietly, I can’t make out the tune. “Papa Dan doesn’t seem very happy to be here,” I say.

  “Oh, I think he is.” Mom swings open the door and steps across the threshold. “Before he got sick, he told me he wanted to come back to Cedar Canyon for a visit.”

  “Maybe he changed his mind.”

  A flock of birds takes flight inside my chest as I peek inside the house. Suddenly I’m not so eager to explore it anymore. I don’t know why I feel so conflicted—I mean, the house is definitely interesting. But I’ve just lived in too many rentals, and I sort of dread facing more rooms full of memories that aren’t mine. I wish Papa Dan would have a clear moment and say, Don’t worry, Tansy girl, it’s just another house in another town. No big deal. I’ll show you around my old stomping grounds. Instead he squints at the swing and keeps whistling.