Snow: Fog, Snow, and Fire

  SNOW

  Caroline B. Cooney

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney

  Chapter 1

  CHRISTINA WAS ALONE IN the cold mansion. January winds screamed off the Atlantic Ocean and tried to tug Schooner Inne off the cliffs and dash it onto the rocks far below. But Schooner Inne was very old, and the wind always lost the battle. Christina did not know why the Shevvingtons called it an “inne,” because although there were eight beautiful guest rooms, there were never any guests. Just the five island children boarding on the mainland for the school year. And the children were stashed up on the cold, dark third floor, not in the sunny guest rooms. Criminals, thought Christina, have better housing than we do.

  It was Saturday morning. Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington had taken Dolly shopping. They said Dolly needed new mittens. Christina knew it was true. But she felt so betrayed by Dolly, she wished Dolly’s fingertips would freeze off instead. “You may not leave the house,” Mrs. Shevvington had said to Christina. “Perhaps losing your weekend will teach you manners. What kind of example are you setting for Dolly? Accept your punishment as a thirteen-year-old should. If you leave the Inne, you will be confined to the house next weekend as well.”

  If Christina didn’t have a Saturday and a Sunday to run and be free, to hold the sky and the wind — then she had nothing.

  Dolly, hardly aware of Christina at all, let alone Christina’s agony at being shut up in the house, had smiled lovingly at the Shevvingtons. How could Dolly adore them, with their eyes like mad dogs? wondered Christina. They were evil. But Dolly took their hands and skipped between them.’

  Schooner Inne was the highest building in the little Maine village. Christina could see all the way to Blueberry Hill, where children were sledding and skiing without her. Scarlet, gold, and green ski jackets dotted the snow like splotches of kindergarten paint spilled on white paper.

  Anya came in. Christina had forgotten Anya was even alive, let alone at home. “Hi, Anya,” said Christina dully. “How are you?”

  “It’s so cold in here, Chrissie.”

  Christina got her a sweater. Sometimes Anya even forgot how to dress. Then Christina took Anya into the kitchen, where it was warmer.

  “Shall we watch TV?” said Christina hopelessly. Christina hated Saturday TV. “Shall we play a game? We could draw. Do you want me to get out the watercolors?”

  Anya did not respond. She just stood there, thin and lost among the kitchen cabinets. All her romantic, fragile beauty was lost, as if she had put her own face somewhere and forgotten it.

  After a while, Anya cleared the table of breakfast dishes. This winter Anya had ceased to be a teenager boarding for high school and had become a servant, good for laundry and dishes. She scraped every plate carefully, as if proud of this skill.

  Christina could not bear seeing Anya and remembering what she had been. Anya used to love the telephone, giggling continually in her soft, happy chuckle to any of a dozen girlfriends or Blake. Anya used to read aloud from her English books. How well Anya could memorize! One night it would be a speech from Hamlet; Anya’s slender body would take on a stern masculine pose while she flung her cloud of black hair like a cape. Another night her voice would deepen while in tragic tones she recited some grim poem about death in the trenches of World War I.

  Christina stared out the window at the fallen snow. She loved snow. It softened the edges of the world and hid things.

  “Do you remember Blake?” Anya said unexpectedly.

  Do I remember Blake! Christina thought. I think I remember him better and more often than you. I’m glad you don’t know the inside of my mind, where I pretend I’m on the dates you used to have with Blake, where I pretend he comes back to town … and it’s me he wants.

  It was wrong, this dream that had her heart. Christina remembered Blake standing on the rocks that bound the coast of Maine, framed against a blue sky and a black sea; that posture in which he looked like the owner, or even the conqueror, of any place he stood; those clothes, so casual, so expensive. “Yes,” said Christina. “I remember Blake.”

  “Is he alive?” asked Anya.

  “Yes. He’s at boarding school.” Where Blake’s parents had sent him after the fall from the cliff, which they had blamed on “those island girls,” meaning Anya and Christina. The school Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington had suggested.

  “Why doesn’t he write to me?”

  “I guess because you don’t write to him. I’ll help you write a letter to him,” Christina offered. If Anya is thinking about real things again, Christina thought, if she does a school-type thing like writing a letter, maybe part of her will be real again. Maybe she just needs to get cranked up, like an engine in cold weather.

  The big house shuddered as the tide hurtled into Candle Cove, slamming against the rocks on which Schooner Inne was built. Living with the tide was like living with a battalion of insane drummers, who every twelve hours beat on the foundations of the sea captain’s house.

  Christina had come to believe that the sea captain’s wife, who threw herself over the cliff a hundred years before, had done it because she couldn’t stand the noise anymore.

  “What shall I say to Blake?” Anya asked.

  “ ‘Dear Blake,’ ” dictated Christina, and to her delight Anya laughed.

  “I could have thought of that myself,” Anya said. Dear Blake, Anya wrote, and her handwriting looked like the old Anya, the Anya who should be graduating first in her class, come June. Not the Anya who had dropped out of high school and taken a job folding laundry at the laundromat.

  In the cellar, somebody giggled.

  Christina raised her head and listened again.

  They were alone in the house, she and Anya. Dolly had gone with the Shevvingtons. Dolly’s older brothers, Michael and Benjamin, had left hours before: Michael to basketball practice and Benjamin to his job pumping gas.

  The giggle came again, low and taunting.

  You can’t find me, it said.

  Christina’s eyes frosted, as if it had snowed in her brain. Nobody giggled, she told herself. The sea can make any noise. It can whisper, chuckle, clap hands. This time its noise is a giggle. That’s all.

  “Chrissie, I’m still cold,” said Anya sadly, as if there were no cure for this.

  The cellar giggled again. Christina looked at Anya, but Anya had heard nothing. Last fall, when Anya had been so afraid of the sea, the tide, and even the poster on her bedroom wall — when Blake had been pushed off the cliff into the oncoming tide and would have drowned except for the tourist who happened by — last fall Christina had thought the Shevvingtons must have a partner. Somebody who was able to do these terrible things for them. But she had found no evidence, unless you counted the man in the wet suit she kept seeing everywhere, but who vanished whenever Christina tried to show him to people.

  Christina pushed the thermostat up ten degrees, so Anya could toast along with her whole wheat bread. This was forbidden; it wasted fuel oil.

  Who cares? Christina thought. The Shevvingtons get paid to have us here.

  The furnace came on, rumbling. The house filled with deep shuddering noises from the sea, from the cellar. If there was still a giggle, it could not be heard o
ver those growls and claps.

  Maybe I’ll go down and find out what’s in the cellar, thought Christina Romney. It’s probably just the tide and my imagination. That’s what Michael and Benj would say. “You know what?” she said to Anya. “We’ve never explored the cellar. There are supposed to be passages from Candle Cove right up into this house. It’s one of the legends, like the sea captain’s bride falling to her death from the cupola. Let’s see if we can find the passages.” She located a flashlight on the shelf in the pantry and checked the batteries. Nice and strong. “You coming?” she said to Anya.

  Anya stared at her in awe. “You’re not afraid of anything, are you? I like being here with you.” She smiled as trustingly as a kindergartner at Christina, who was thirteen to Anya’s seventeen. “Listen to what I’ve written so far. ‘Dear Blake. It’s me, Anya. I miss you.’ How does that sound, Chrissie?”

  It did not sound like a girl who had memorized Shakespeare.

  Christina slid the bolt on the cellar door. She clung to her flashlight as if it were a grown-up. There is nothing down here, she told herself. “It’s a great start, Anya.” All fall her parents, her teachers and friends, and especially Michael and Benj had said to Christina, “Why do you blame the Shevvingtons for all the awful things that have happened? Why do you blame the Shevvingtons for Anya’s mental collapse? The Shevvingtons are wonderful people trying, their very hardest! You are making up all the connections you tell us about.”

  Anya said, “Shall I tell Blake we’re having toast and tea, Christina?”

  Christina turned the switch at the top of the splintery wooden stairs. The air was thick and dusty. “Yes, tell Blake that, Anya.” She thought, We’ll find out who’s making what up. This giggle is the kind of thing the Shevvingtons would do to frighten one of us. The fall before, when Mr. Shevvington’s eyes kept changing color, so that they were cold as gray steel one day and gaudy as bluebirds the next — why, it turned out to be as simple as two sets of contact lenses. And when the poster on the wall kept changing personality, so that Anya screamed whenever she looked at it — why, Mrs. Shevvington was just switching posters. Nobody would believe me. Grown-ups don’t do things like that, everybody would tell me. Why, Mr. Shevvington is the best high school principal we’ve ever had, and Mrs. Shevvington is the most creative seventh-grade English teacher! You’re the one making things up, Christina. That’s what they would say.

  I bet I’ll find a tape with remote control down here, so they can turn on insane giggles and try to make us insane, too.

  Down the stairs Christina went, flashing her light in the corners. She reached the bottom step and stared into the musty dark. A few old wooden sawhorses, a big wooden barrel, some discarded furniture, a broken table, old toolboxes, cans of paint. At some point in its long history the huge cellar had been divided into rooms. The doors of each room sagged on rusty hinges. One door had had a small glass pane in it once, but the glass was gone, and there was only a hole, as if a hand might inch through and touch Christina.

  Don’t think things like that, she ordered herself.

  “There’s a draft on my ankles, Chrissie,” said Anya from the kitchen. Her voice was a thin, distant whine, like her life.

  I’ll follow the electric wires first, Christina thought. She looked up. A single lightbulb hung over the rickety treads. And no wires went anywhere; the only electricity stopped right at that bulb.

  It could run on batteries, then, she thought.

  Cautiously, Christina walked into the first room. Stone floor, stone walls, and cobwebs. She backed out and tried the next room. Stone floor, stone walls, and cobwebs.

  The ocean in Candle Cove whiffled and whispered through the rocks.

  She flashed her light in the corners. She flashed her light at the ceiling.

  Up in the kitchen, Anya was muttering, “A draft. A draft. A draft.” Christina heard Anya push back her chair and cross the room. Then slowly, as if not sure she knew how to do it, Anya shut the cellar door. The door closed with a thick wooden slap.

  The light that had poured down from the kitchen vanished. The single bulb was weaker than Christina had realized. You could hardly even call it light; it was more like a fog.

  From the depths of the cellar, Christina heard the flat, solid sound of a footstep.

  Christina froze. It had not been her own foot. And Anya was too light.

  Outdoors, muffled by the rock walls of the cellar, the Atlantic Ocean forced its way into Candle Cove. She swallowed. That’s what it was, she told herself. Tide slapping rocks.

  For a moment Christina wanted to flee back upstairs. But this was like a test, and Christina intended to pass. So she walked past the furnace, going deeper into the cellar.

  She was tiptoeing. Why am I being quiet? she thought. Do I really think there’s a creature down here I don’t want to frighten? If there is anything down here, I definitely do want to frighten it.

  Now the light from the single bulb was behind her. Her shadow was long, darkening her own path. With her flashlight, she split her own shadow in two. “Now one of you go in that room,” she said to her two shadows, “and you there — you come with me.” She giggled.

  A deep, throaty voice giggled back.

  Chapter 2

  SHE DID NOT SCREAM.

  The giggle sucked the air out of her lungs and kept it. Christina turned blue. Fighting her lungs, fighting the giggle, she tried to reach the steps. She stuck out her skinny little seventh-grade arms to defend herself.

  The giggle thickened and grew deep until it became a groan. It was no tape. It was no trick. It lived; its inhuman noises reached for her like dead hands.

  It was between her and kitchen door; the furnace, black and banging, hid it. She swung her flashlight, trying to catch the giggle in its beam. Her arm jerked with nerves and the light leaped around the cellar like fireworks, illuminating nothing. “Go away,” Christina whispered.

  Immediately: silence.

  Christina and the giggle both ceased to breathe.

  She circled, trying to keep her back safe, but not knowing where safety lay. She felt like a slow-motion ballerina. “Anya, open the door!” Christina whispered.

  She passed the furnace, and nothing attacked.

  She passed the sagging door of the empty room, and nothing touched her. “Anya!” she croaked.

  The giggle began again, slithering off the stone walls like spiders.

  Christina bolted up the cellar steps and grabbed the tiny handle. The handle spun, opening nothing. “Anya!” screamed Christina, pounding on the door with the flashlight. “Anya, you locked it! Open the door! Let me out! Anya!”

  The foggy bulb above her head flickered.

  “No!” screamed Christina. “Don’t go out!”

  It went out.

  She turned, pressing her back against the kitchen door. “Please don’t swim out of the dark,” she prayed. “Please go away.” She was whispering, as if she could not allow the rubbery giggle to hear her beg.

  Christina touched her hair.

  The strange hair that always protected her. The hair of three colors, with its streaks of silver and gold and chocolate brown. She felt that in the dark the charm of her extraordinary hair could not work; the rubbery giggle would not know that she was Christina of the Isle, with tri-colored hair.

  She was afraid to aim her flashlight into the cellar.

  What if she saw it? Its rubbery fingers ready to crush her against the kitchen door?

  “Anya!” Christina kicked backward with her foot.

  There was no sound in the cellar. No sound in the kitchen.

  She could almost hear her own tears spilling down her thin cheeks. She was pressed so hard against the kitchen door, her own back ought to break through the solid wood like a tank.

  But it didn’t.

  She was alone in the dark, in the cellar, with the giggle.

  After a long, long time, she remembered her watch. It was digital and glowed in the dark. She st
ared at the tiny square numbers as they flickered away the seconds of time. Her skull filled with numbers and colons.

  10:32:01.

  10:32:02.

  10:32:03.

  At 11:17:45, Christina knew she was alone in the cellar. She did not know how she knew. But the giggle had gone. Evaporated like water? Or had it walked out another door? But there were no other doors.

  She slumped against the kitchen door. She could cry no more; her face was so blotchy her eyes felt swollen shut. “Anya,” she muttered once or twice, “please open the door.”

  How had this happened to her?

  How had Christina, born on Burning Fog Isle, only daughter of the most wonderful parents in the world, ended sobbing and defeated in the cellar of a sea captain’s house on the mainland?

  Burning Fog Isle lay far out to sea. There were so few year-round residents that once the children finished the sixth grade, they were sent to board on the mainland for junior and senior high. (Boarding. It turned out to be a terrible word. Flat and hard and full of splinters.)

  Christina had never been in a school with classrooms, a cafeteria, hallways, bells that rang, art, music, gym, and hundreds of kids. How thrilled she had been when at last, like Anya Rothrock, and Michael and Benjamin Jaye, she was old enough to get on Frankie’s boat with her trunks and bags, and land at the town dock.

  This was to be the year of being normal.

  The year of being just like everybody else.

  She had trembled with the joy of being ordinary.

  It was Anya’s senior year; Benjamin was a sophomore and Michael a ninth-grader. They would have friends; she would have friends; Michael would be on all the teams; Anya would gleam like a new moon; and Christina would be special and spoiled.

  But Anya — lovely Anya, with her black hair like a storm cloud around her fragile, white face — had lost her grip on reality. Anya had been terrified of the sea, of the tides that rose every twelve hours and smashed against the cliffs below the mansion. Anya had been terrified of a poster of the sea that hung on her wall and seemed to change texture and color with Anya’s sanity.