The Year of Shadows Read online

  Too angry to be afraid, I pounded on the shades’ arms. Each thud burned my fists and sizzled like meat on a grill.

  Frederick picked at the violin’s strings. Tiny pizzicato notes plunked into the air. Frederick slowly drew his bow across the violin’s strings.

  A horrible, out-of-tune note skrrritched.

  “Well,” said Frederick sheepishly. “I’m a little out of practice, it would seem. Give me a moment.”

  We gathered around the Maestro’s podium at the edge of the stage and waited while Frederick relearned the feel of the violin. Faintly, the memory of Frederick’s talent came back to me. The night we shared with him, his talent had settled in my brain. It had felt like when I held a charcoal and sketchpad in my hands; that was my talent, my violin.

  “I wish we could hear it for real,” Henry whispered, scooting close to me. “You know, with a full orchestra. If I ever meet that Thomas guy in Death, I’ll have a thing or two to say to him, that’s for sure.”

  I nodded. It was all I could do. If I opened my mouth, I would ask Frederick to stop, to stay, and that wasn’t fair.

  After a few minutes, Frederick paused. “I want to thank you both. I don’t know what’s going to happen here, exactly, so I don’t know how much longer I’ll be with you.”

  He smiled at me, the kindest smile I’d ever seen. So what if it was dripping and black and deformed, like a melting jack-o-lantern? He was Frederick, my friend. And now he was about to leave, and I had to hope for him to leave, because that meant he would be safe and happy and wouldn’t have to fight Limbo anymore. What a horrible thing, to have to hope for your friend to leave you.

  “But I hope you’ll remember me. I know I’ll remember you. If that’s even possible, in Death.” Drops of black smoke rolled down Frederick’s cheeks. “Goodness. I’m nervous all of a sudden. And I’m horrid at good-byes.”

  Jax sniffled and hid his face in Mr. Worthington’s side. Tillie concentrated on her feet.

  Henry said, “It’s okay, Frederick. You can do it.”

  I stood there, trying to hold up this fake smile. My face felt close to breaking.

  Then Frederick began to play, and I know I hated music and everything to do with it, but even I knew when a piece of music was really good.

  Like this one.

  It’s this strange feeling, when you hear a good piece of music. It starts out kind of shaky, this hot, heavy knot in your chest. At first it’s tiny, like a spot of light in a dark room, but then it builds, pouring through you. And the next thing you know, everything from your forehead down to your fingers and toes is on fire. You feel like the hot, heavy knot in your chest is turning into a bubble. It’s full of everything good in the world, and if you don’t do something—if you don’t run or dance or shout to everyone in the world about this music you’ve just heard—it’ll explode.

  That’s what I felt that night. And, judging by the look on Henry’s face, he was feeling it too.

  Frederick played through the entire concerto and finished the last note with a flourish of his bow. He said, “Ha!” and bowed. We gave him a standing ovation, and he beamed at us for a second, but then his eyes widened and he said, “Oh,” and then, “Oh, dear.” Then he sighed, and all the bits of him fell away like a gust of wind had blown through a cloud of smoke. There was a bright flash of light, so quick we almost missed it.

  The high electric hum disappeared with a pop.

  And then Frederick was gone.

  The violin and bow crashed to the ground.

  For a long time, we stared at the empty stage, at Frederick’s music lying scattered across it. I was the first to move. I gathered up everything and put the pages in order, Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington drifting silently behind me. They didn’t say a word. When Henry and I left to go wait for his bus, I looked behind me. The ghosts were small and dark, floating onstage in a shivering huddle. They couldn’t stop looking at the spot where Frederick used to be.

  Outside, the sky was cold and starry. Henry and I didn’t say much. This heavy thing sat between us now, soaking up all the air. We had helped a ghost move on to the world of Death. Had it worked? Was Frederick happy now?

  “Well,” Henry said, as his bus pulled up, “see you at school.” His face looked about as sick as I felt.

  I stared at the dark windows of The Happy Place, swallowing hard. “Yeah. See you.”

  Once Henry left, I added Frederick’s concerto to the music library. It belonged there; it deserved to be played. I wondered what the Maestro would say when he found it—or if he would ever get a chance to find it, if the Hall would be around long enough for that.

  After filing it away, I pushed my cot close to Nonnie’s and crawled under my quilt and put my hand on her wrist, just to feel like I was still in this world.

  With Frederick gone, everything suddenly seemed more real:

  One ghost saved, three to go. Like a countdown.

  THAT NIGHT, I had the strangest dream. I dreamed that Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington hovered over me as I slept. Tillie and Jax whispered back and forth to me, talking over each other. They told me that Frederick moving on had scared them.

  “He just vanished,” Tillie said.

  “He disappeared, Olivia,” Jax whimpered. Smoky black tears rolled down his face, carving lines in his cheeks.

  “How do we know he really made it to Death?” they said together, their voices overlapping. “What if he went nowhere at all?”

  Mr. Worthington groaned softly. I took that to mean he agreed.

  But in my dream, I couldn’t respond. My mouth was sewn shut, and so were my eyes.

  “We’re scared, Olivia,” Jax whispered.

  “I’m not sure we can do this, Olivia,” Tillie said, folding her arms over her chest.

  “It’s nothing you did.”

  “It’s not because of you.”

  “It’s just because we’re scared,” Tillie and Jax whispered together. They were fading, drifting out of my dream like smoke out a window. “Don’t feel guilty. It’s okay.”

  “We just need time to think,” Jax said.

  “We just need to be alone for a while,” Tillie said.

  “Maybe it’s not so bad being ghosts forever.”

  “We know how to be ghosts. We don’t know how to be Dead.”

  Mr. Worthington stared sadly, twisting his hat in his fingers.

  Then they were gone.

  When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t think about my dream. It was just a dream, right? Besides, all I could think about was Frederick. How he’d disappeared in a flash, like he’d never been there at all. What do you do when a friend leaves you, even if it’s for the best? I didn’t know the answer to that. I still don’t. But I already missed Frederick so much, it felt like my heart had been replaced with emptiness.

  I stumbled out of bed, pulled on my boots, and trudged to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Igor followed me, meowing every couple of seconds.

  “You’re awfully talkative this morning,” I said.

  And then I felt it. That same emptiness in my chest was everywhere, like something important had been sucked out of the Hall itself. And, for the first time since the ghosts started hanging around me, I wasn’t cold.

  I breathed in and out. My breath didn’t puff. I looked at my arms. No goosebumps.

  “Tillie?” I clomped upstairs and out onto the stage, my bootlaces flying. “Jax? Mr. Worthington?”

  Igor was right at my heels. They’re gone, pet. I don’t know what happened, but I know they’re gone.

  “They’re not gone,” I said, trying not to cry. My dream rushed back to me in shadowy images. Had it not been a dream at all? Had it been real? “They can’t be gone. They’re just hiding. Tillie? Jax? Mr. Worthington!”

  Usually, the ghosts would appear as soon as I woke up, like they’d been waiting for me. Or if they were off floating somewhere in the Hall, I could just say their names, and they’d come right to me.

  But not toda
y.

  “Tillie,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “Jax. Mr. Worthington.” I said their names over and over.

  Nothing. The air remained still and my breath remained invisible.

  “Olivia!” I could hear Nonnie calling from downstairs. “Where are you? Is breakfast time!”

  As I stood there, looking around the empty Hall, anger flooded through me. They had left me, just like Mom.

  “Fine,” I said. “Fine, if that’s how you’re gonna be. If you’re gonna run scared, then fine!” I kicked over the music stand from the night before, the one Frederick had used. It crashed to the ground, sending Igor darting back downstairs. “Stay invisible, then! Cowards!”

  If they heard me, I couldn’t tell. And I didn’t wait to find out. I ran downstairs and slammed the stage door shut behind me.

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  I couldn’t eat my lunch. I couldn’t look at Henry. All I could do was stare at the back of my sketchpad, where I’d been doodling tiny pictures in a mural of scratchy ink.

  “I mean they’re gone. Invisible. Hiding.”

  I told him about my dream, which I didn’t think had been a dream at all. I was pretty sure it had really been the ghosts, saying good-bye.

  “After all that, after showing up and sharing with Frederick and everything, they’re just giving up?” Henry couldn’t believe it.

  Down at the end of the table, Joan nibbled furiously on her sandwich, trying to watch us without being obvious. It didn’t work.

  I shrugged. It was easier to pretend I didn’t care, with Henry getting so mad. “I guess so. Guess it really freaked them out.”

  “But they want to die!”

  “Maybe they changed their minds.”

  “What, are they just gonna hide in the Hall forever until the shades drag them into Limbo?”

  I forced myself to take a bite of potatoes. “Maybe. Who cares? If that’s what they want, let them do it.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Henry said quietly.

  “Henry, we did all we could for them. If they’re too chicken to follow through, that’s not our fault, and I’ve got too many problems to worry about scaredy-cat ghosts.”

  Henry didn’t say anything after that, eating his lunch in silence, this miserable expression on his face. But the thing is, he was right. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want the ghosts to be dragged into Limbo, to get stuck forever.

  But apparently, they did.

  That whole week, as I tried to ignore the ghosts’ absence, the Maestro’s words cycled through my head. Something about them nagged at me, but I couldn’t figure out what.

  I think that I see things, he’d said. I think that I see her. But when I look again, it is just a trick of the shadows.

  On Thursday, after I finished wiping down tables at The Happy Place, Mrs. Barsky pulled me aside to give me my money for the week. Then she put her hands on my face and made me look her in the eye.

  “Olivia,” she said, “is everything all right? You look worn out.”

  “No. Yes.” I stuffed the money into my pocket. “I don’t know.”

  She and Mr. Barsky looked at each other in that way married people do, when they talk without actually saying anything. I know because Mom and the Maestro used to do it.

  “You can always talk to us, cher,” Mr. Barsky said. “Zat ees what friends do, no?”

  “Really, Olivia.” Mrs. Barsky eyed my gloved hands. I’d found an old-fashioned dressy kind at the charity store. They were a stained white satin. “We’re here for you.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I stared at my gloves for a long time, swallowing until I could speak again. A million things raced through my brain. My gloves. The burns. The ghosts. Our ghosts.

  The Maestro. Mom.

  “Can I ask a question?” I said.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Barsky said. “Anything.”

  “How do you fall out of love with someone? How is that possible?”

  I don’t think that was the kind of question the Barskys were expecting. They shared one of those looks again. Mr. Barsky said in his normal voice, “Well. That’s a tough one, Olivia.”

  “People change,” Mrs. Barsky said slowly. “They aren’t always the same from year to year, or even from day to day. And sometimes when people change, the things in their life that they used to need or want, they don’t anymore. Or things they used to think were beautiful turn ugly.”

  “Oh.” I tried to wrap my head around that. “Have you ever fallen out of love with someone?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Barsky said. Beside him, Mrs. Barsky nodded and took hold of his hand. “I imagine it’s a bit like dying, in a way. It leaves you all cold and cracked open.”

  After I left, right before opening the Hall’s backstage door, I sighed and squinted up at the roof. The Hall was missing shingles everywhere, like holes in the moon.

  “Everything’s cold and cracked open these days,” I said to myself.

  Then I felt something brush my arm. I turned around, expecting to see Mr. Barsky, making sure I got a cookie. Or Mrs. Barsky, saying I should come back and talk it out some more. Mrs. Barsky loved talking things out.

  But it wasn’t them.

  It was a ghost.

  Five ghosts, although none of them were mine. Dozens of ghosts, stretching down Arlington Avenue in an orderly line. Poking their heads through each other to get a better look. Whispering in excitement.

  About me.

  IT MADE SENSE: Help one ghost move on, and others will want to be helped too.

  Just not mine. Not the ones I really cared about.

  I’m not sure why we never thought about the possibility of this happening. As I went inside to find Henry, the ghosts trailing behind me, I tried not to feel annoyed or freaked out.

  “They could’ve given us a heads-up about this,” I said to Henry through my teeth.

  “Maybe they didn’t know?” Henry said.

  “Oh, come on. I’m sure they knew how many ghosts were in the Hall. Or at least had a guess.”

  I threw open the door of the green room. “Come on, everybody inside.” I tried to make myself look and sound braver than I felt, like I was used to dealing with strange ghosts. They drifted in one by one. Some looked nervous. Some flashed me huge game-show-host smiles. That is, if the game-show hosts were missing chunks of face and had their heads on sideways.

  Something cold tapped my shoulder. “Excuse me.”

  I turned around to find the ghost who’d touched me on the street. She was a woman, and the palest ghost I’d yet seen. Even for a ghost, she looked sickly.

  “You are the girl who helps ghosts, right?”

  I felt like when a teacher calls on me to answer a question, and it turns out I’ve been drawing and not paying attention. My skin goes hot and my mouth dries out while everyone waits for me to say something, only I don’t know what to say.

  Henry inched closer to me. It made me feel better. I took a deep breath.

  “I guess, yeah. That’s me.”

  Excitement rippled through the ghost crowd.

  “I found Frederick van der Burg’s anchor,” I continued.” Henry and I shared our minds with him and helped him relive his last memories. We reunited him with his anchor, and then he moved on.”

  I caught Henry’s eye, and he smiled at me. It did sound pretty impressive.

  The ghosts looked at each other and then back at us, almost completely in unison. Before I could think how spooky that was, they rushed for us, in a wave of grays and whites and blues and blacks. Their bodies blended together in a confusing mix of fog and smoke, faces and body parts. Their arms reached for us, grabbed at us. They shouted:

  “Please, Olivia, you’ve got to help me!”

  “I’ll do anything to move on. Anything!”

  “Do you have any idea what it’s like?”

  “Me first!”

  “No, please, help me!”

  “Okay, stop,” I shouted, “or neither of us will help you!”r />
  Immediately, the ghosts retreated to the other side of the room, grumbling. One headless ghost reached over and slapped his hand over another ghost’s mouth, sending up curls of smoke.

  “You can’t go nuts on us like that, okay?” I said. “If—if— we decide to help you, you have to swear it. Right, Henry?”

  “Like no rushing at us, or touching us without permission.” Henry pulled a spiral notebook from his bag and started writing. He pointed his pen at the ghosts, and they nodded furiously. “That’ll be the number one rule.”

  “Rule number two: No hanging around in my and Nonnie’s bedroom. That’s my private space. And no following us around everywhere. That can get creepy.”

  One of the ghosts cleared his throat. “But the others went in your room, didn’t they? And they were always with you. The kids and the old-timer.”

  Henry stopped writing. My throat closed up. “Yes, but only after they earned my trust,” I said. Tillie. Jax. Mr. Worthington. Where are you guys? “You haven’t earned my trust yet. Remember that.”

  Then a thought occurred to me. “You haven’t seen them, have you? Tillie and Jax? Mr. Worthington?”

  The ghosts looked at each other, but they wouldn’t look at me. Their smoke drifted and twined together like a giant stormcloud.

  “We can’t tell you anything about them,” an older ghost, dark as Mr. Worthington, croaked. “Ghost’s honor. Confidentiality.”

  My heart sank. Henry bent over his notebook, frowning.

  “It’s not like we’re trying to be difficult,” the pale woman ghost said gently. “It’s just—”

  “Ghost’s honor. Right. Got it.” I turned away. Who cared what Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington did? If they didn’t want to have anything to do with us, then I wouldn’t waste my time. “I figure we’ll make a list. If we decide to help you, we’ll have to share with each of you, one by one.”

  I shot a look at Henry. He looked nervous. To be honest, I was too. Sharing with one ghost had been bad enough. But dozens of ghosts? And maybe even more, if word got out and more ghosts showed up. Who knew how many people had died around the Hall over the years? Probably too many to count. And even the memory of sharing with Frederick was enough to turn my stomach.