“It’s not Sondra. It’s just a wake.”
As soon as I said a wake, I realized my mistake. I quickly rephrased it. “It’s the waves from a boat, a passing boat.” I wondered if that was how these imaginings had startedsomeone saying it was “a wake” and Nora, haunted by the death of my mother, twisting the words in her mind.
She was shaking. I reached for her hands and felt the fear in her as she grasped mine with icy fingers. I wrapped my arms around her and held her tightly. The waves slapped against the outside of the building and rocked the water inside. But the motion of the water lessened quickly, the series of waves ending sooner than it had the last time.
And then it started, just as it had before, the slow rocking of the water back and forth, back and forth — sideways, I realized. The direction of the flow was wrong — it couldn’t be a wake.
“She’s here,” Nora said, her voice low and terrified. “She wants you. She wants her little girl.”
The water slapped hard against the walls. Nora’s arms wrapped around me, her fingers grasping my shirt, twisting it so hard I felt her knuckles digging into me. I braced myself, trying to keep myself from being pushed into the water. I felt her shifting her position, but before I could react and throw my weight against the wall, she did. She held me against it, as if protecting me.
At last the water grew quieter and settled into a dark restlessness.
“You’re okay,” Nora said. “She didn’t get you. I didn’t let her have you.”
A lump formed in my throat. She had tried to keep me from being “taken” by my dead mother.
“Nora,” I said. “Do you know how the knots happen?”
“I don’t try to do them.”
“Someone else does?”
“Someone else inside me. I can’t stop her. Only sometimes.”
Her unconscious, I thought. Sometimes she could control the emotions giving rise to the poltergeist, sometimes she couldn’t.
“Listen, I think I know how this water gets stirred up.
There’s a lot of stuff in here, things we threw in the water years ago. There are old ropes and nets, especially around the doors, where we used to fish. I think this person inside of you gets angry or afraid and moves those things, whips them around and ties them in knots. That’s what stirs up the water.”
“No, it’s Sondra,” she insisted.
“Remember how the lamp in the river room broke?” I continued. “When that person inside you got upset, she tied the knot in the cord, which yanked on the lamp and made it tip over. The same thing happened to the lamp in my room.
And the swing — with my weight at one end and the tree anchoring it at the other, it had to snap when it was forced into a knot.”
The heart necklace, too, I thought; it had risen against my neck because it was being tied.
“Nora, we just have to talk to that person inside you, and tell her that everything is all right It’s not Sondra. Sondra isn’t here.”
“But she is,” Nora insisted. “Holly said so.”
I sat back on my heels. Holly, who said she alone knew how to handle Nora — perhaps she alone knew how to torture her. I wanted to blame Frank, Frank entirely. But as I went over the various incidents in my head, I could see how easy it would be for Holly to hide behind Nora’s behavior. I reluctantly took the plunge. “Why did Holly hit you?”
“I didn’t tell, I didn’t!” Nora pleaded, like a child who had been suspected of telling a secret and threatened with punishment.
“Didn’t tell what?”
She wouldn’t answer.
“What did Holly hit you with?”
“I don’t remember.”
She might not, I reasoned, if she were hit on the back of the head. “Do you remember what Holly was carrying when she found you in the garage?”
“The lamp.”
“The lamp that was broken? Your mother’s work lamp?”
Nora nodded yes. “My head hurts,” she whimpered.
“Inside and outside it hurts.”
The mental pain was probably worse than the physical, and I hated to cause more, but if I didn’t know what had occurred and who the enemy was, I couldn’t help either of us.
“How did she hold it?” I asked, wondering if Holly was simply dumping the lamp in Frank’s trash or using it as a weapon.
“With a glove, my garden glove.”
My breath caught in my throat. She’d wear a glove if it were a weapon and she didn’t want her fingerprints on it But why use something as traceable as a brass lamp — why not a block of wood that could float away in the river? Holly was too good at details and planning — something wasn’t right.
I rested my hand on Nora’s. “You and Holly have a secret,” I said. “Holly thinks you told the secret. Now that she thinks you have told, you can.”
I waited for a response, struggling to be patient.
“The secret is about the night my mother died,” I ventured.
Nora didn’t reply, but I took this as a positive sign. She said no quickly when she wanted to deny something.
“You came to my room that night,” I went on, “looking for Bunny, your stuffed animal. You had left him on the dock. I said I would get him for you, but you said you could go as far as the dock. You left the house, and then what?”
She slipped her hand from beneath mine. In the dim light I saw her pull up her knees. She hugged them tightly.
“It’s okay. I just want to know what happened next Were you alone?” I changed the question to a statement “You were alone.”
“No. Holly was there, she was coming in.”
“Coming in as you went out?”
I remembered then, running down from the house to the dock, stepping on something sharp, waving Holly on — she was in her nightgown but wearing shoes.
“Did you say anything to Holly? Did she say anything to you?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I know you do,” I replied gently. “Did you tell her about Bunny?”
“Yes. I started getting scared about going out on the dock. I asked her to get him.”
“And she said?” I laid my hand on Nora’s arm and felt the tension in her muscles.
“She said I couldn’t be afraid of water and I’d have to get him myself.”
“And then?”
“I wanted her to come with me while I got him, but she said no.”
“So you got Bunny yourself? Where was he?”
“On the dock. He was all the way at the end. I had to go all the way to the end.”
I could hear the fear rising in her voice.
“It’s okay. We’re just remembering now. It’s not happening now. Did you pick up Bunny?”
“Yes.”
“Were you alone?”
“No.”
I held my breath.
