inch of my room, my eyes able to see perfectly even in the dark. There was no sign of Nanna Ellen.
“You have to be quicker than that!” she said.
A hand tapped the back of my shoulder, and I spun around again, ready to face her, yet there was nobody there.
“Stop this game!” I said.
“Shhhh,” she whispered at my ear. “You don’t want to awaken the family!”
I swatted at the sound as I had the dragonfly at the bog, but my hand found only air.
“It’s good to see you with so much energy! A week ago, you couldn’t stand there without help. Yet tonight you ransacked my room, sneaked outside, and ventured a great distance from home and back, without the slightest sign of exhaustion. If I didn’t know any better, I would say your Uncle Edward cured you with the tricks in that black bag of his!”
I dropped down to the floor and searched under my bed. Finding nothing, I darted across the room to my cupboard and pulled open the doors, expecting Nanna Ellen to come rushing out, but I found nothing inside except my clothes hanging above and my Sunday shoes side by side below. “Where are you?”
“I’m right here!”
Another tap on my shoulder.
This time I spun around in the opposite direction and simultaneously reached out with both hands. For a fleeting second, my fingertips slid across flesh, but she was simply too fast—gone from my grasp before I even got a look at her.
“Almost had me! My oh my, you are fast!”
Her skin was clammy, as if I had brushed a corpse. A shiver walked my spine, and I wiped my hand on my shirt, attempting to rid myself of the ghastly sensation.
“What was it like? To be covered in leeches? Could you feel those nasty little creatures sucking the blood through your pores? Your fever was so great I bet you didn’t even notice their tiny little teeth gnawing through your skin, did you? They looked like plump apples when your Uncle Edward finally peeled them away and dropped them back in his jar. He swore they pulled the illness right out of you, and I guess he was right; look at you now!”
“I know it wasn’t my uncle who cured me,” I said in a voice so low I wasn’t sure she heard me.
“No? Who, then?” she replied. “Because you look much better now than you have in all your days. I wouldn’t venture to say you’ve been cured, but you look much better, much better by far.”
“You asked if I trusted you, and I said I did.”
“Did I?”
“Then you did something to me.”
Again, she laughed. “Something, yes. Maybe. Maybe I did.”
I paced the chamber, my eyes sweeping over every shadow in search of Nanna Ellen. Her voice seemed to be coming from all around me yet from no direction in particular. She was close, though; I could feel her nearby. That cord which bound us together was pulled taut. I closed my eyes and focused on that image now, reeling in the line through sheer willpower, forcing the distance between us to close.
Nanna Ellen let out another laugh, this one so loud I was certain the others would be shaken from their slumber. “Perhaps your young age plays a part, but I have never seen someone accept and attempt to master a new skill so easily. Maybe it’s because adults lose the ability to imagine, to believe in that which is unknown. Children accept a mystery as fact, and move past it as clear as day, giving it nary a second thought. Nonetheless, I am impressed by you, young Bram.”
I pulled the cord tight, but it was still to no avail. Like her voice, she was all around me yet nowhere, a wraith loose in the void.
My arm itched, and I fought the urge to scratch it. “What did you do to me?” I regretted the words the moment I uttered them, for I wasn’t quite sure I wanted the answer.
“Well, I walked you back from the Gates of Hell last night