Shadows

And he’d just discovered a perfect use for Amy Carlson.

14

Josh put the last of his belongings into the cardboard box. He’d already filled it three times, carried it to the rattling old elevator for the ride down to his new room on the second floor, emptied it, then taken it, and the elevator, back upstairs to repeat the process.

On each trip, as he’d pressed the elevator button and heard the ancient gears mesh and felt the car jerk into motion, he’d remembered once more the night that Adam had died, and the strange sounds he’d heard coming from the motionless elevator. By now, though, he’d all but convinced himself that Amy must have been right — that the whole thing had happened only in his imagination — for ever since that night when he’d heard the elevator operating and run to look at it, the car had always been in motion, and someone had been inside it. In fact, today he’d even stopped going to look.

Now, on the last trip from his old room, the box was almost overflowing, and as Josh crammed the last of his T-shirts into the few remaining crannies between the conglomeration of books, shoes, and the favorite pillow that his mother had brought him from Eden, he took a last glance around the room. He’d occupied it for no more than two weeks. Still, he found himself sort of missing it already, for it had seemed to him to be just about perfect. Big enough to hold all his stuff, but small enough that he’d felt cozy in it right from the start. By now, he’d almost convinced himself that Jeff Aldrich had simply made up the story about what had happened to Timmy Evans. Besides, the room downstairs didn’t have a dormer, with its window seat that was just the right size to curl up on while he was reading.

The room downstairs.

Adam’s room.

He’d felt an odd chill when Hildie had taken him to the room just before lunch. His first instinct had been to tell her he’d rather stay where he was, for although the room was now empty of all of Adam’s stuff, he could still clearly remember Adam sitting at the desk, hunched over his computer. At least he’d never actually known Timmy Evans. When he remained silently at the door, not even attempting to cross the threshold, Hildie had appeared to read his thoughts.

“Why don’t we move the furniture around?” she’d suggested. “That way it’ll be your room, and in a few days you won’t even remember that someone else used to be here.”

Someone else. She hadn’t mentioned Adam’s name, which Josh thought was strange. In fact, it seemed as though the grown-ups had stopped talking about Adam altogether, as if he’d never existed. Did they just want his friends to forget about him?

Before he could protest, Hildie had begun rearranging the furniture, and before he quite knew what was happening, Josh was helping shove the heavy iron bed to the wall where Adam’s desk had stood, and moving the desk over to stand by the window. Amazingly, Hildie had turned out to be right — just changing the placement of the furniture had made the room seem sort of like his own.

Sort of, but not quite. What would happen tonight, when he tried to sleep in Adam’s room?

As he hauled the last boxful of stuff toward the elevator, he heard it suddenly clank into life, and as he came to the shaft itself, he half expected to see the car still waiting where he’d left it, even though the machinery was running.

But this time — as on all the others since the night of Adam’s death — he could see the car descending and hear its door open and close as someone got on downstairs.

He watched as it came back up.

As it passed the third floor, Dr. Engersol looked out at him through the brass mesh that enclosed the car, nodded, then disappeared as the car moved up to the fourth floor and clattered to a stop.

Josh waited until he heard Dr. Engersol leave the car, then pressed the button that brought it back down to the third floor. At least I won’t be able to hear the elevator from my new room, he thought as he hauled the box into the little car.

But it wasn’t his room, he realized as he dropped the box on the bed a few moments later. It was still Adam’s room.

He hesitated for a minute, wondering if it was too late to go to Hildie and tell her he’d changed his mind, that he wanted to keep his old room. Then he decided he was being stupid. It was just a room, and it wasn’t as though Adam had actually died there. The thought alone made him shudder, and he determinedly told himself not to think about it anymore.

But what would happen tonight, he thought again, when he had to sleep here?

He decided not to think about that, either. He began unpacking the box, putting his clothes away in the chest, stacking the books on the shelves that now hung on the wall above the bed, since he and Hildie had rearranged the room. As he put the last of them away, he eyed the shelves suspiciously. If they collapsed during the night, everything on them would crash down onto the bed. Maybe tonight he’d find a screwdriver and move them over so they’d be back above the desk again.

Taking the empty box with him, he started down the wide hallway toward the stairs. Just as he got to the landing, he heard a mewing sound, then felt Tabby pressing up against his leg, his back arched, his tail standing straight up.

“Can’t you find Amy?” he asked. The cat mewed again, and Josh, setting the empty box down on the landing, picked him up and took him into the other wing of the floor, where Amy’s new room was.

“There you are!” Amy cried as she opened the door. The cat instantly leaped from Josh’s arms into her own. “Where were you? I kept calling you, but you didn’t come!”

The cat slithered out of the little girl’s arms, dropping to the floor and stalking the room suspiciously, inspecting every corner as if he was taking inventory. Apparently satisfied, he jumped up onto Amy’s bed, curled himself up on the pillow, and promptly went to sleep. “Isn’t this neat?” Amy asked. “These rooms are so much bigger than the ones upstairs. I just love it.” When Josh said nothing in reply, her happy grin wavered, then faded away. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m in Adam’s room,” Josh explained. “It’s kind of creepy.”

Amy stared at him. “They put you in there?” she breathed. “I’d hate that room. I’d never be able to go to sleep.”

Josh felt himself flush as Amy spoke the thought he’d had only a few minutes earlier. “It’s not that bad,” he told her, but Amy, her smile returning, saw right through him.

“It is, too,” she teased. “And I bet he comes back tonight. I bet there’s something in his room he forgot, and he’ll come for it, and when he finds you—”

“Amy!” Josh broke in. “Stop that!”

“Josh is a scaredy-cat, Josh is a scaredy-cat!” Amy singsonged.

“I am not! All I said was it was weird. I didn’t say I was scared!”

He turned and stomped out of the room, and in the sudden silence, Amy realized what she must have sounded like.

Just like all the kids who had teased her all her life.

“Josh?” she called out, running after him, leaving her door standing wide open. “Josh, wait up. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!”

Josh, at the head of the stairs, paused, her taunting words still burning in his head. “If you didn’t mean it, how come you said it?” he demanded.

“I was just kidding,” Amy pleaded. “Don’t be mad at me. Please?”

For a second Josh was tempted to ignore her, to turn his back on her and just walk away. But then he, too, remembered how it had been at school back home, and he relented.

“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “Just don’t tell any of the other kids, okay? If they know I’m scared, they’ll prob’ly pull some dumb trick on me in the middle of the night.”