“I only arrived this morning, and barely had to time to make the front rooms presentable again. The police have come and gone, so feel free to touch what you wish.”
“I appreciate that. We’ll be out of your way soon.”
I followed my grandfather down the hallway. He opened doors here and there. A dining room. A bathroom. A coat closet. The ceilings were low and the rooms were small and dark. Still, this part of the house seemed far more welcoming than the front. There were pictures on the walls: watercolors, needlepoints, and photographs of Miss LaBarge as a child, jumping through a sprinkler or sitting in the garden playing with a shovel. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to smile or cry.
“Pay attention, Renée,” my grandfather said over his shoulder.
I frowned. “I am paying attention.”
“Do you notice anything?” he said, his voice low.
“Not really,” I murmured, shoving my hands into my pockets.
He turned around. “You’re not even trying.”
I let my arms drop to my sides in frustration. “Trying to do what?” I asked. I was trying as hard as I could to keep myself together, to appear normal.
“Don’t you want to learn from her death?”
“Why does everything have to be a learning experience? Why does everything have to lead to something else? Why can’t I just be?” I knew I sounded childish, but I couldn’t help it.
Glancing down the hall, my grandfather took me by the arm and pulled me aside. Lowering his voice, he growled, “Who do you think broke into this cottage? Who do you think rooted through all of Annette’s things?” His jowls shook. When I didn’t respond, he answered his own question. “The Undead. Don’t you want to find the Undead who killed a Monitor and then invaded her home? Don’t you want to bury the Undead who would do a thing like that? If we don’t, any of us could be next. You could be next.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why would I be next—”
My grandfather cut me off. “Renée, you can keep fooling yourself into thinking you’re a normal teenager. The truth is, you’re not. You’re a Monitor now. Start thinking like one.”
I wriggled out of his grip.
“Now, what do you see?” he asked.
I crossed my arms and glanced at the decorations. It almost felt like I was in the creaky corridor in Horace Hall that led to Miss LaBarge’s office. “There are more of her things here. It feels more like her.”
My grandfather nodded and began walking. “Why do you think that is?”
I followed him until we reached the end of the hallway, where there stood a single door. On the floor was a mat identical to the one in Miss LaBarge’s office at Gottfried. It said: WELCOME FRIENDS. I stepped before it, wishing that she would open the door, a plate of cookies in one hand, a book in the other. Only Miss LaBarge would have a welcome mat in the middle of her house. My grandfather stepped across it and opened the door. The room beyond was pitch black.
FRIENDS. I touched the word with my foot and then gazed at the walls. It was dark in this part of the house because there were no windows, and there were no windows because the back half of the cottage was nestled into the hillside.
“Because we’re underground,” I said with wonder, realizing that some people couldn’t enter this part of the house. The Undead. “She was protecting her things. Or herself.”
“My thoughts exactly,” my grandfather said from within the room, and turned on the lights. “Oh, my.”
He was standing in an office cluttered with books and papers. In the corner of the room was a desk, and above it was a map of the world, marked up with scribbles and circles. Tacked up next to the map was an assortment of newspaper clippings. Almost immediately, my grandfather and I were there, pushing aside the desk lamp and stacks of files to get a better look.
I felt my pulse flutter. On the map, Lake Erie, along with several other lakes, had been circled. I scanned the clippings. All of the articles had been published within the last year, but the stories varied. Some of them were about deaths, others about disappearances, and still others about strange sightings. The Loch Ness Monster. Bodies floating in the water. Two women mysteriously murdered in Utah. A woman vanishing from a bridge in Amsterdam. Judging from the way the papers were torn, it looked like some of the clippings had been taped and then moved around and retaped to new locations on the wall.
My grandfather was leaning so close to the wall that his nose almost touched it, but he seemed just as baffled as I felt. “What were you up to, Annette?” he murmured.
I wondered the same thing.
On the far side of the room was a set of French doors that led to a bedroom. While my grandfather tried to piece together the wall of clippings, I slipped inside.
It was a cozy room, with tiny white lights strung around the ceiling, a heavy quilt on the bed, and a collection of Russian nesting dolls on the dresser. I went to pick one up, when I noticed a photograph leaning on the wall behind them. It was of a teenage Annette, sitting on a braided rug, hugging her knees beside two other girls. One was a slender blonde; the other a defiant-looking girl with a face just like mine. My mother. The girls stared into the camera, their eyes wide like deer, as if the photographer had caught them doing something in secret.
My mother’s expression haunted me as I touched the edge of her lips, which were pursed in an O. The blonde beside her looked tall, like a ballerina, and familiar, incredibly familiar. Where had I seen her before? I reached for the frame to get a better look, but when I lifted it, something slid out the back onto the floor. It was a letter.
August 1, 2009