The House on Cypress Street

In a small town of deserted beaches and an impossible system of dead-end streets, beach shops, and alleys overgrown with blackberry bushes, a young boy lived with his mother, father, and brother. When the early mist cleared, he would look down past all this from an upstairs window and watch the ocean waves or draw with crayons. He especially liked exploring his world of pebbled streets and wooded pathways that led down to the sea.

He was old enough to go to the beach without parents, but was expected to stay with his brother who looked after him. His brother, who was three years older, accepted this responsibility with his own set of rules. He was never to go past Seal Rock Drive to the north or Maple to the south without someone with him. And he wasn't to go any farther than Lighthouse Street, which wandered parallel to the beach all the way to Cascade Head, where it curved east and joined 101. The parents agreed with these boundaries over dinner, and forbade the boys to wade in the ocean past their knees.

When the boys went to the store for salt-water taffy, they used to cut through yards onto Cypress Street, which twisted over a hill past storm-beaten houses. But recently, the older brother had been avoiding a house on this street, and they had taken an alternate route. He didn't give an explanation, which upset the boy, and it wasn't discussed when their parents were present. The boy understood this without asking, feeling his brother's glances across the table, and decided there must have been a good reason. His brother's word was truth, and he trusted his wisdom and sense of danger.

The older boy liked being depended on--deciphering the questions in his brother's eyes. He usually let the boy tag along with him. And he didn't mind waiting for him to rest when they ran down the farthest stretch of beach they were allowed to go, where the cliffs met the sea and there was no passage.

On top of a distant hill to the south was a mansion, which had been transformed in recent years, and was visible from almost anywhere in Shore City. Mr. Winingham, an ancient local their parents scorned for reasons vague to the boys, had built numerous additions, and now the place appeared to be in danger of toppling down the hill. It was surrounded by stone fences covered with moss and oak trees. For the boy, the only concern about the mansion was the rumor that it had been haunted ever since Mr. Winingham had died.

His brother didn't believe this rumor. He dragged the boy over fences and through bushes on a warm night when their parents had let them pitch a tent in the backyard, just to see their flashlights shine through the windows of the dead man's mansion. They didn't see any ghosts, or people in chains, or the pale-faced old man himself passing through rooms with body-parts falling off, as rumors had claimed. What they saw were boxes and heaps of junk, and rooms with no furniture. Through one of the windows their flashlights found the shiny lines of silverware placed across a massive table, awaiting guests that would never arrive. The boy's heart would shrink at the sight of dark movements in the inner rooms, but his brother sensed this and whispered, "Just shadows!" His brother could always sense the slightest fear or apprehension in him.

The boy pointed to where their light reflected off a mirror and into the branches of a huge tree. The trunk was toppled against a winding staircase, and a chandelier was caught up in the branches. His brother nodded without saying anything and peered through the window. In his last years, Mr. Winingham had instructed his groundskeepers to cut down the larger trees in the courtyard so they could be brought inside for his enjoyment. They apparently dragged them in with their muddy roots sawed off, knocking out walls to make way for their entry, and stood them in lifeless poses, secured to marble pillars by towropes. The mansion's dead forest was only a myth until the old man passed away.

On the way home the boy's brother gave him a piece of taffy from the candy store and told him how brave he'd been. They returned to the tent, and the boy lay awake until dawn while his brother talked in his sleep. Through a small gap where the door wasn't zipped all the way closed, he could see the mansion up on the hill, and it seemed amazing to him that they had just been there. Beyond the dark squares of rooftops in the moonlight, it looked make-believe.

The boy wondered sometimes what it was that made his brother so wary about the house on Cypress Street. The house looked abandoned; no one came or went. He pictured a light shining through windows, revealing shapes that floated, not walked, which couldn't be described as just shadows because their movement didn't match the movement of the light, as his brother had demonstrated on the walls of the mansion. He also thought of possibilities other than ghosts. He had seen people wandering the streets of their town, talking to themselves or yelling at no one, and living in the forest by the ocean. It seemed possible that one of these people, who were sort of like ghosts, might have taken over the old house and could have tried to harm his brother.

The exterior was gray and split like driftwood. It was hidden behind lichen, mushrooms the size of lamps, giant ferns, and ivy so old its branches were twisted like sycamore roots and strangling everything. It didn't look like the mansion of a ghost, but more like the meager dwelling of one. He knew from his brother that things werenąt always what they appeared to be.

On the way to the beach that day, the boy looked down the street toward the house. It was crowded between the other houses, sunken into its bed of vines and grass. A gray-haired woman was opening a mailbox out front. His brother didn't seem to notice. For a moment the boy thought to ask what it was about the house, and who the woman was. He gathered his breath and let words come up into his throat, ready to demand he know the secret. But he remembered times he had asked his brother similar questions, getting only looks of pity he couldn't understand. So he ran on by, forgetting the house, and felt the damp breeze from the ocean.

The boys followed a remote-control truck as it jumped over mounds and tore through yards and gardens. The older brother had finally gotten the truck after waiting anxiously for weeks. He gave the controls to the boy, who let the truck skid to a crash twice when it got caught up in leaves piled in the gutter. When they came to the beach, a seal swam close to the shore and bobbed its head up occasionally, as if to look where it was going. But the boy's brother said it always knew where it was, and that it was just playing. Its mate was probably waiting somewhere out in the deep. They stood watching with their identical mops of curly brown hair flopping in the wind. The animal disappeared below the waves.

The boys played beside the giant rock that sat at the edge of the sea. When the tide went down, they walked across the wet sand and climbed up onto it. The rock was like a small mountain. It had a forest on top and trails. They'd heard of houses being up in the forest, but the embankment was too steep to climb.

"Up here!" his brother would yell. "Just a little further!"

The boy would hold onto roots and stones that crumbled as he shinnied on his stomach to join his brother, but could get only to the first tree. Today it was so foggy the forest was hidden. They weren't supposed to cross the channel of ocean and climb the rock, even when low tide provided a passage of wet sand. But they played there until the tide began to come in and waves appeared down below. Then they waded back across the channel, which surged like a flooding river, and ran toward home.

In the evenings, after his mother finished reading to him, the boy would go up to his room and look at a magazine called Toy Box, which had toys that could be ordered by mail. His father had taken it from the toy store they often visited on Thursdays, after the boy's summer Scout meeting. The magazine opened to the same page, which had a picture of a sailboat floating in a swimming pool, every time now. There was another smaller picture of the same boat with colorful lights shining on the sails. In large letters next to the pool-picture was the word: UNSINKABLE! It cost $34. When the magazine became so worn that the pages were falling out, his father agreed to buy the boat for him. He was a kind man who accommodated as many of the boys' wishes as he could. The boy convinced him on the way to the dentist, knowing this would be a good time to ask, and they agreed it could be an early birthday present. After his father helped him fill out the order, the boy began to check the mailbox before his parents each morning.

On a Friday night the boy's brother stayed with a friend while their parents had a party. People drank wine and laughed, raising their voices as the night went on, and they seemed curious about the boy whenever he came in the room. He had half-heartedly accepted the duty of serving snacks, mainly because his mother had thought he looked bored. They said things behind hands and patted him on the head, none of which he found amusing. One man, who had been the loudest, gave him a quarter as a tip. The boy looked at it silently and put it in his pocket. A woman called him handsome, but he ignored this and handed her a piece of crab. After a while he became tired and went to his room.

He lay on his bed and looked at the expressionless faces in the cracks of the ceiling. Then he sat at his desk by the window, flipped to the picture of his ship, watched what must have been a stray dog running down Maple Street, and went to his brother's closet. He opened the door, letting a tent and baseball mitt fall to the floor, and pulled a large telescope from the back corner. The guests smiled strangely at him when he walked down the stairs lugging the telescope over his shoulder. He looked at his mother and went shyly toward her across the room, struggling a bit under the weight. "Can I go down to Stanley's field?" he whispered, as if it were a secret between them.

She sat on a leather couch with a glass of red wine in her hand, looking at him warily. Then she glanced at her watch and nodded.

"Be back in half an hour."

His father opened the back door. "It's a clear night--just to the field."

As the boy went onto the porch, he heard his mother's voice again.

"Half-hour!"

The field was an empty lot down past the house next door where Stanley lived. Stanley had owned the vacant property for years without building on it. The center of the lot was free from the glow of streetlights, and they sometimes went there with the telescope to look at the stars. The boys always used Stanley's yard as a shortcut, which the old man didn't particularly like, but since it was his senile and mostly blind giant schnauzer that had chewed the hole in the fence, he never said much. The boy crossed the street in front of Stanley's house. On the near side of Cypress were several blackberry bushes, which looked like giant black flowers under the moon. Past them he could see the house. A yellow light glowed in one of the back windows.

His arms and shoulders were aching as he set the main support down on the ground. When it was secure he pointed it toward the window, aiming at a small space between the bushes. Then he adjusted the focus until a blur of nothing began to grow lighter. The blurriness turned into a glowing mass of light, cracked with dark lines that ran across the circle of vision. He repositioned the telescope and adjusted the focus again. But this time there were only fuzzy black shapes and hardly any light. He knew that if he went any closer, the powerful telescope would show him nothing. The boy looked up at the stars in disgust.

He left the telescope sitting in the field and walked down toward the house, keeping the window in view between the bushes. It was like a yellow tunnel spilling light from the side of the house. The glow became steady behind the spindly lines of branches. He squeezed between the bushes and felt thorns snag his coat. There was no fence, just a small embankment that led down into the yard. He went close to the window and peered inside.

The first thing he saw was a wooden rocking chair. There was a birdcage with no bird, a desk cluttered with papers, and walls lined with bookshelves and pictures. There was a couch with an empty coffee table, an old metal fan lying on its back, a pile of records stacked against the wall, and a painting of an ugly old man above the couch. Then the boy saw something move. A person was sitting in a dim light at the other end of the house. He cupped his hands around his face and leaned forward until his nose touched the cold glass. Through the window, past the kitchen, down a long hallway, and in the half-light of a bedroom, he could clearly see a little girl sitting on the floor. She was bent over something, appearing to be holding a doll. Then the doll sprang from her lap and a cat made its way down the hallway toward the kitchen. The girl got up and began to write or draw something at a desk. The boy watched for a while, not realizing how long he'd been there. He thought the girl was about his age. In another room a light flicked on. He waited but only saw an occasional shape fall across the hallway from inside the room. Then a woman's voice rang out in the distance, coming from somewhere behind him. It was his mother. He wasn't sure what made the voice so recognizable--this tiny echo coming from the streets and houses above him. She called out again. The boy ran back to get the telescope and walked the rest of the way home, exhausted.

That night the boy stayed awake and thought. While brushing his teeth, he had imagined the little girl standing in front of a bathroom mirror as he was, brushing her teeth as he was. He lay awake, and everything seemed to be floating around in his mind: images of the girl, and the house, and the shadow in the hallway, and his brother running beside him through the night toward flashlight beams. And he remembered that ghosts don't make shadows because they're made of shadows, but still nothing made sense. He realized that the gray-haired woman he saw at the mailbox could perhaps live next door. No explanation was able to absorb the mysteries of the house or the little girl, and he was unable to arrive at a single, undeniable answer, as his brother could so easily. And then a thought sank through his heart like a stone dropped in a deep pool. He realized that he could be the only person who knew she lived there, and that whatever ghost, or wanderer, or unknown spirit lived with her, might be keeping her there in secret. Suddenly his fear washed away, and he felt an incredible burden. For the first time, he thought, someone might need his help. So he decided--in the morning he would discuss this with his brother.

The next day he got up and asked his brother, "What's in that house on Cypress Street?"

"Why?"

"You want us to stay away from it, so why don't you tell me what's in there?" The boy waited with hands folded in his lap.

"I think it's haunted," he said with a small shrug.

"Why? Rumors--like the mansion?"

The older boy looked at him in disgust. "One night Dad let me and Joe take the telescope down to the beach during a meteor shower--we snuck through the yard on the way home and saw something."

"A ghost?" The little boy's eyes didn't show whether he believed anything yet.

"We saw something through the window . . . in the hallway. Floating--not walking." He stared at his brother for a moment. "I just don't think we should go around that house."

"A little girl lives there," the boy said, wondering what it might prove.

His brother gave him a stern look. "Did you go down there?"

"No. I saw her playing in the yard. Why would a little girl be living in a haunted house?"

"I saw something. Besides, I don't think ghosts hurt the people they live with." He went downstairs, leaving the boy sitting on the bed.

That night the boy's brother left again. When their mother came in from the yard, the boy asked if he could walk to the store. He'd never been allowed to go alone before. She hesitated and then handed him a dollar.

"Straight there and back," she said. His father glanced from behind a newspaper without saying anything.

The boy passed the house. On the way home he saw the little girl in the backyard. She climbed steps nailed to a large tree and disappeared into a treehouse made of plywood fastened between a large branch and a stone fence. He slowed down in front of the house but only watched her in glances. The windows were dark from inside and glaring with the sun's pink reflection. He imagined the gaze that was probably following him.

Later that evening the boy's mother read from an old book he'd taken from his father's study. She sat on the sofa with the boy in her lap and read a story about knights searching for a castle in the woods, and a woman who sang from a balcony to guide them. The boy fell asleep at the part about the singing woman, but was jolted awake by the television. He hopped off his mother's lap and ran up to his room. After getting ready for bed, he turned the fan on in the hallway and lay down on top of his blanket with the light on. His mother poked her head in the door, and before she said goodnight, he asked her what another word for secret person was. She turned his light off, and before long he heard their voices become gradually softer, eventually ending with the deep last words of his father as a light was flicked off. He turned a lamp on, almost knocking it over in the dark, took a piece of paper from a drawer, and then lit a candle. From his pocket he pulled out a heavy black pen he'd taken from a desk in his father's study, and which lit up on the end when you pressed a little button with your thumb. On the paper he wrote:

Deer little girl,

Does a gost live in your house or any thing else thats bad?

--Inonimus

Satisfied with his note, he folded it into an envelope and dripped a glob of candle wax onto its seal, as he had seen in a movie. Then he waited. When the clock at the base of the stairs began to sound at midnight, he stepped carefully down each step, letting the floorboards squeak with each chime, as his brother had taught him once.

He went the long way down to the empty lot, avoiding the dog that couldn't see but could still hear quite well. No lights were on inside the house, and the yard was so dark he felt blind. He crouched under the bushes and squeezed his eyes shut, to avoid gouging them on thorns. A window around on the other side was barely reflecting a streetlight. He made his way through the overgrown grass and ferns, some of which were as tall as his chest, and stood below the treehouse. Then he felt his way up the steps on the trunk. He took the pen from his pocket and held it close to the tree, so that it wouldn't make a light that was too visible. Beside the door of the treehouse was the head of a nail that stuck out of the plywood. He pierced his note onto the nail and climbed back down.

He ran back across the lot, imagining something behind him. Once inside the house, there were no chimes to help him sneak back up the creaky staircase so he waited 30 seconds between each step, just as his brother had taught him.

During the next week he waited for his brother to leave overnight again. He would often leave on the weekends. On those nights, sundown seemed to have a different consequence for the boy. He dreaded the low resonating sound of his father's last words before sleep--always saying some last thing to his mother before turning the light off. Her voice only carried across the hallway if she raised it about something. He doubted anything would be watching from Stanley's back porch. But he thought that if there were something in the yard, or the low sounds of someone coming up the stairs, his brother was more likely to hear it first. The porch-light shone across the yard and transformed a potted plant into a crazy old woman's face.

He was also bothered by how his brother left on those nights--throwing his things into a backpack while a friend stood at the front door. He would hurry past, as if getting more important business in order, often running out of the house without a single word. The boy had learned to expect these subtle changes when friends were there, but he'd never been able to erase the feeling he'd done something wrong. Everything he said only made his brother more distant, until nothing was left but a lump in his throat in place of words.

But on Saturday morning, he felt a rush of warmth--an excitement in his chest--when his brother mentioned going to a friend's house. He had watched the house from the window for several days, never seeing the girl. He pictured her with the note, writing her response in a secret candlelight and exposing whatever lived there. He still continued to check the mailbox each morning for the boat. His days contained the empty excitement of waiting.

That night his brother left after dinner. The boy waited up in his room after his parents had gone to bed early. He sat with his light off, looking out the window at the sea that was nothing more than blindness past the shapes of houses. It was barely drizzling in the streetlights, and there were blue flares in the clouds all the way above Newport Bay.

At the clock's chime he went down the stairs and out the side door, crossed the vacant lot, and came to the blackberry bushes, taking the same route as before. The house was dark and silent, except for the rain's tapping on leaves and wood. Hanging on the nail next to the treehouse was his letter with the envelope missing, just as he had expected. With the penlight he read the writing splotched by raindrops:

Dear Inonimus,

First of all you need to practice your spelling. Secend of all there is not a ghost living in my house. Who are you?

Where do you live?

respond soon, S.

The boy thought for a moment, then shined the light and wrote:

I live with my famly on top of the big rock and I investugate ghosts.

I.

The boy walked home this time instead of running. Even though he imagined his brother walking beside him, knowing not to be afraid, he looked over his shoulder three times to see what was there. Before going in the house, he remembered to take his shoes off, thinking they might be muddy.

The next day he watched from the windows regularly to see if he could spot her reading the note. The fog had settled after the rain, so he saw no one.

Autumn was approaching, and on Monday morning the boy's brother started school. He would start as well in a few weeks. The days felt long when his brother was gone, but he found things to do. He sat by the window in the upstairs loft where he could see the ocean. It was a clear day. He colored a picture of his sailboat.

From the window, he could see the greenish-brown square of the little girl's house. This morning he'd noticed a police car circling the streets. It slowed in front of the house and turned into the tiny driveway. The boy put his face close to the glass, taking in a breath of dust and paint. The policeman disappeared around to the front of the house. The boy finished his picture and watched, then ran down the stairs into the kitchen where his mother was mopping the floor.

"Where do you think you're--" The phone cut her off and she answered it on the first ring. "Hi hun . . . okay . . . that's fine. You too." She hung up and glanced at the boy. "Daddy's coming home late tonight," she said, splashing the mop into a bucket of dirty water.

The boy was standing on the back porch now with a Popsicle. He had contemplated asking his question and then all of a sudden it came out. "Who lives in that house down on Cypress Street, with the tall grass?"

She was wiping the table. "That's Mrs. Freeman's place. You've never met Mrs. Freeman?"

The boy shrugged.

"Your brother's been going down there every week this summer to do jobs for her. He never told you?"

He shrugged again and looked at his feet.

"I guess she had surgery and needed help for a while--so she pays him $15 a week. It sure doesn't look like he does much in the yard though." She stood by the door now, looking at her son. "He really didn't tell you?"

"No."

"I kind of assumed you'd gone down there with him. He's supposed to be keeping an eye on you." She looked out toward the ocean, hands resting on her hips. "I guess he usually goes on Thursdays while you're with Dad. What brought it up?"

"I just saw a girl playing in the yard when I went to the store."

His mother smiled. "Her granddaughter's been staying with her. I think her parents went on some trip."

The boy held a chunk of Popsicle that had fallen on the ground, as if contemplating the dirt. He watched his mother go back into the kitchen. She called from inside, "Don't eat that--honey!"

He went back upstairs to see the police car still sitting in the driveway. Something was smoldering in his stomach, and he wondered what his brother would say if he were there. He looked at his brother's things while everything came through a fog of sadness. A hot feeling came up through him, gripping his throat until it ached--he thought of his brother and became angry. He walked over to the dresser and looked at the ceramic soldier his brother had recently taken from the closet. It had arrived several months ago in a package sent by one of their aunts--a belated gift for his brother's tenth birthday. Neither of them had been very excited about the toy, which had no moveable parts. The soldier watched him with its glossy, expressionless face as he picked it up with both hands. A chinking sound came from its body. He turned it upside down to expose a plastic cover below one of the boots, then dug his fingernails under this and pulled. For a moment he thought the soldier had shattered, but it was coins that spilled out. Green bills dropped like wet leaves to the floor. He picked up a $20 bill and looked at the rest of the money scattered across the room, stunned by a mixture of elation and anger. He had never seen so much money before. His brother's deceptions were somehow illuminated as he looked at the shiny coins. He put the money back and placed the soldier up on the dresser.

Later that day his worries were overshadowed. After lunch he noticed his package sitting by the door. It had been beaten on its journey, crinkled like an old person's skin. It was the first time he'd ever gotten anything in the mail. His mother simply looked at him and said, "What's that?" as he ripped through the paper. He saw the ship through the bubbly plastic cocoon as if it were frozen below ice, then stretched open the plastic and let it fall into his hands. It was smaller than he had imagined, but beautiful. He put his sandals on and ran for the door.

"Wait for your brother to come home!" his mother yelled. He heard but pretended not to. He had already made it onto the back porch, and her voice was drowned by the noise of a vacuum sucking up sand. He ran across the yard, squeezed through the hole in the fence by turning sideways and sucking in his belly, and ran through Stanley's yard over a path of dead grass.

When he came to Cypress Street, he stopped running. There were two police cars by the house now. A policeman stood in the driveway talking on a radio. The boy felt weak, and he wondered if the girl had told her grandmother about the note, but it seemed more likely that the woman may have discovered it, or perhaps heard noises outside one of those nights and decided to call the police. He wanted to see who came out of the house, but decided it would be best not to stand there looking.

He went on down the street, watching warily out of the corner of his eye for the Hannold's dog. Once in a while the black beast wasn't tied up, and he knew it could jump the chain-link fence--he had seen this. It sat calmly in the shade of the house with a rope around its neck, watching him gladly with saliva dripping from its pink tongue. He could never avoid looking at the animal directly, though it was the worst thing to do around big dogs. His brother always yelled not to stare at it.

He crossed the back parking lot of a hotel, eventually coming to the wooden steps that led down to the beach. This way was longer, and his brother would never have taken it. He always stayed close behind his brother in the woods. People slept there with their clothes hanging over bushes--people with dark ocean faces and scraggly beards. And even worse, sometimes they weren't there, but their clothes or blankets or cans or fires remained as evidence. Where were they then? He saw their faces in the bushes sometimes, or imagined them following behind.

He counted the steps. 143. They wobbled slightly in some places. A ring of black coals lay in the dunes and grass. Now he was on the sand. It was strange how the sound happened. There was silence before he came up over the first hill and heard the ocean's hiss. Warm powder filled his sandals as he ran across the beach. He leaped over a broken bottle. The hush of the ocean grew as he ran along in the sun and wind.

The forest on top of the rock was coming out of a white mist--he thought of a castle up there. A few clouds floated overhead and he could see for miles. The tide was high, and the rock was an island surrounded by a moat. He plunked his boat into the river that circled around the front of the rock. It bumped against a cliff of wet sand as fish investigated and then fled.

"To the sea," he said in excited words that left in the wind.

The boat took its course through the channel as the boy followed alongside. An occasional swell flooded it up onto the sand, but he nudged it adrift again with his toes. Then, as if summoned by something below the surface, the fish swam in unison toward the rock, vanishing in the shadow it laid on the water. The boy waded out until he was knee-deep. His feet sank into coldness as he moved closer to the dark water. The fish hadn't fled or been called away--they seemed to go toward something. Now he saw it too.

Out where the waves were bigger, a doll had floated into the sun. It lay face down in the sea. The boy squinted and thought he could see its hair fanned out like those paper-thin sea creatures in the aquarium. Someone's doll, he thought. He saw a glimpse of red that may have been its dress. The ocean swelled against his belly. Then from far away he heard his mother's voice. He looked back to see her running over the sand.

"Mom!" he tried to shout, but his call was sucked away by another rise in the sea.

She called his name, and as she came closer she could see it.

"Mom! It's a doll!" Behind his mother, two men were running toward them across the beach, and a police car was flashing its lights up by the hotel.

In her skirt and shoes, she splashed frantically to get to him. Water streamed down his legs and feet as she lifted him up. They passed the men in suits, which shocked the boy, but they ignored him and ran toward the water. The mother carried her son across the beach and back toward their little house up on the hill.

It wasn't long before the rumors started. The boy's brother had kept to himself with a book lately. His parents spoke quietly with concerned faces, and he had heard his mother whisper late into the night. In the afternoon she had taken the boys down to the beach. It was two days after she'd plucked her son from the sea. She had scolded him for being in the ocean, and all the time he could think of nothing but his boat.

The boy sat on the staircase and listened to his parents. They lowered their voices and referred to "it" and "this tragedy," but he couldn't hear everything. He had noticed strange glances and the remnants of conversations since that morning. He remembered the dress and the plastic-looking skin of the little girl. There wasn't a precise moment when he'd realized what had happened, but he felt stupid and horrified, and had said nothing. Now his parents were hiding something he already knew.

The boy went back into his room. He stood over his brother, who was lying on the bed reading. The boy waited with an expectant look. He didn't have to say anything since his brother already knew the question.

"A little girl drowned the other day by the rock," his brother said.

The boy was frozen in silence. It was true.

"They think she must have wandered up there during low tide. It was Mrs. Freeman's granddaughter. Mom and Dad weren't going to tell you." His expression tried to give the boy some assurance, but only became more troubled as they stared at each other.

"And she lived in the house where you've been working?" The boy already knew the answer. He watched his brother's eyes turn guilty, and nothing more was said.

The boy felt numb and exhausted as he lay in bed. But as his thoughts began to flow, guilt and fear settled into him. Something more powerful than the ocean was pressing into his heart. He was responsible for what had happened. For an instant a long hallway formed, and she was sitting at the end in a dim light. Then his breathing became difficult and he wanted to whimper like a baby, but was afraid his brother might hear. He looked at his brother's face in the window-light, thinking the other boy's eyes might still be open, but it was just a trick of the light. He wanted to wake him and tell him everything that had happened. His lips quivered and he imagined the words he might say. But the words stayed down inside, and he knew that he should never tell. He knew that nothing would change, and that it wouldn't bring the girl back, because ghosts don't exist, and once people are dead they're gone forever.

Eventually the boy fell asleep. The pulse of the storm became the ocean, and he was underwater for an instant. He opened his eyes and took in a gulp of air. A loose shingle was thrashing against the roof in the wind. He pulled the covers off and stepped with bare feet across the floor, careful not to make the floorboards creak, then slipped quietly into the hallway toward the dark outline of his parents' room. He turned the wooden handle, which clanked as the door came open. The rhythm of his father's breathing sounded just like his brother. He went to the near side of the bed and saw his mother's shape in a light that seemed to have no source; her hair was most visible, giving off a blue-white sheen. He went closer as the sheen of her hair moved, and she whispered without a trace of sleep in her voice.

"Sweetie?"

He stepped closer and put his hand on the warm blanket.

"Sweetie, what's wrong?"

"I can't sleep," the boy said.

"Is it the storm?"

He said nothing in the darkness and felt a warm rush of air as she lifted the blanket. The boy climbed into the bed and lay close to the edge so he wouldn't take up too much room. The storm didn't let up. For a moment, he thought he would have to hide his sobs under the rain. But as his mother pulled him closer, he felt the tears go away and went to sleep. She put her arm over his chest and kissed the top of his head, and they slept this way until morning.

The boy woke up alone in the bed. As he went down the stairs, he heard his mother scooting chairs across the back porch. She was looking down toward the ocean with hands on her hips. He ate a bowl of cereal as she came inside to take a piece of toast from the toaster. She sat down and stroked the boy's back with one hand.

"What would you like to do today?" she asked.

The boy looked at her briefly and then lowered his eyes. "I don't know."

"Should we go somewhere?"

"Where?"

"Drive up the coast. Maybe go for a hike or find a new beach."

He didn't say anything. He went to the porch and looked at the ocean. He looked at Stanley's flower garden, at the row of blackberry bushes past the lot, at the treehouse through the bushes. He watched a little boy run with his dog down Maple Street. He looked down at the giant rock, and the tiny white lines of waves that crashed near it. Now all of these things reminded him of a nightmare and could only make him sad.

His mother sat down on the steps. "Do you know what happened to that girl at the beach the other morning?"

The boy nodded, pretending to be busy scraping dried mud from his shoes.

"She's in a better place now. There is a world we go to after this one, and it's much better." She had been awake for much of the night, trying to decide what she would say. It was all she could think of.

That day they drove for miles and found beaches the boy had never visited. They stayed until the sun went down, and he waded in the ocean and made a castle in the sand. They didn't go home until the sky was an orange glow over the water.

After that summer the boy noticed how oddly time passed. The days went slowly, but then, looking back, it was as if they had hardly been there. He went to school, and before he knew it the year was over. Another summer passed, and his world grew, and he saw new things. One night his father got the boys out of bed to see a comet trace over the sky above the ocean. They watched the streak as the night-tide swelled up toward their feet.

The boy didn't know it, but he had forgiven his brother about making up the ghost. They no longer talked about ghosts or hauntings. His brother seemed to want forgiveness in ways without asking sometimes, like the evening they'd searched until sunset for the boy's boat. They ran up and down the shore until they came to where the cliffs met the sea but never found it.

Occasionally the boy would catch himself looking down past the blackberry bushes into the jungle of Mrs. Freeman's yard. She had gone to a nursing home, and the house was abandoned. When he played by the rock, he often pictured the girl climbing above the ocean in her red dress. At night he dreamed of her disappearing through the trees or lying in a patch of red flowers with petals like flames. He would think to call her name, but it came out as a whisper because the dream had taken his voice away. Come down, Sara. But it was impossible for her to hear. He dreamed this in different ways for a long time. He would always keep his secret. Eventually, he learned that things faded but never went away. Nothing was ever completely forgotten.