Nhà Hoa is a bride to be unearthed on her wedding day. A white veil has fallen over the house and its grounds. There is no rain, only mist—tiny little specks that I imagine taking between my fingers like snowflakes. Dispelling the mist bit by bit until I can see all of her—beyond brick and wood, and chipping paint, into her bones.
It’s a morbid thought, I know. It feeds my anxiety, but that’s the thing, isn’t it?
Sometimes, you can’t stop yourself.
Sometimes, there might actually be something for you to be worried about.
I hope not. I really, really hope not.
The rustling pines shed their sweet scent as I walk by. My feet are sure on where I need to go, the soil beneath them as familiar as the curve of the hallway outside my room.
You shouldn’t have come here, she had said.
Me, alone, or does she mean Lily too? All three of us in something we don’t get. But Lily wouldn’t hide a real haunting, not even for love, which is why she’s the perfect supporting witness. My insides churn. What if I caused the stress that led to her sleepwalking? It has to be a coincidence, or maybe it’s the house’s residual creepy vibes, as the theory goes.
The fallen tree lies open as before, the wood soggy with chewed-out tunnels. Carpenter ants swarm inside. I study the vegetation hanging over them. Where before there were a few ants stuck to the leaves, now there are dozens. A thin brown webbing hugs them close, but it’s unneeded. Their mandibles have already attached to the green. The stalks on their heads barely a fingernail’s length.
None have been pinched between a ghost’s fingers.
It’s all too gross. All insects are, even butterflies.
People think they’re beautiful, but I see their feelers. Their black eyes. Their fuzzed skin. The faces they wear on their wings.
Yet I can’t look away from the ants and how shit it is to be stuck in one place. Victims of a fungus.
The ghost wants us to leave, and I can tell Ba. Ask again to be believed.
My hand reaches out, and I smash them between thumb and pointer. Again, again, and again, my breath hitching.
Free them. That’s what I’m doing, right? I am not afraid, I think, every time a head is squashed in my hand, as jammy as a Fig Newton.
I turn to go back, my heart beating fast and well. I am not afraid.
The mist breaks apart as the house reappears in view. On this pale morning, the hydrangeas are even more beautiful. Brightened, in contrast, to the house. My eyes drift to the attic window where the red-haired woman had been in my sleep.
Balanced at the top of a short ladder on the porch is Ba, hanging wind chimes. They sway in the breeze, a collection of chuckling metal. “Đang làm gì đấy?” he asks as I speed up the steps. We haven’t talked about last night. The dinner and Lil’s incident—all tucked away now. Another family secret.
“I was talking to Mom,” is the lie I go with. I rub my hands across the bottom of my shirt, leaving him behind. I go to the second floor and peek through the crack of Lily’s room. Napping. Good. I shut her door as quietly as I can.
No one should see me right now, looking like shit, so this plan will cost my pride. I click on Florence’s name on my phone.
“This is weird,” she says as soon as she picks up. “We do calls now?” Florence yawns.
“I don’t have time to explain,” I say. There’s no rush searching for an attic revealed through supernatural means, but I have to do it while I’m not afraid. “That dream, or whatever limbo, I told you about, it gave me the idea to go into the attic.”
Florence sits up quickly on the call, saying, “Uhh, Jade, no. Bad things happen in attics. Only second to basements.”
If I slow down, I may not do it. Once my brain catches up, I won’t. The guts on my hands prove that I am braver when I don’t think. “I require your virtual company, that’s all. It’ll be fast.”
“At least take Lily with you.”
“That would make me more scared,” I reply, then whisper. “She’s a wreck after our prank.” It would make her nerves worse. We held hands almost all night.
The ceiling is a stretch of plain white. Our town house in the States doesn’t have an attic, but I’ve seen plenty in friends’ homes. Usually the hatch is right in the middle of a hall. I walk down the hallway again to make sure I didn’t miss it. Nothing.
I’ve inspected each and every room for the website descriptions, except …
I shove aside hangers in the hallway closet. At the rear, sure enough, are the thin lines of a door. Smartly hidden and unobtrusive. A single brass lock hangs from it. Ba installed this one new, and there’s no padlock on it yet.
“What’s up?” Florence asks.
I angle the camera. “The attic entrance is through the hallway closet.”
“Sounds awesome. Very normal.”
Surely Ba would’ve told us if any part of the house was dangerous. I tilt my head back. There’re no holes in the ceiling, no potentially spongy spots as with the floor in the master bedroom.
The door gives easily under my pull. A steep staircase leads to the top. I feel for a light switch, but there’s nothing. Short as I am, I still have to duck to get inside. It’s slightly wider than my hips, making it awkward to swivel around.
Several locks, some with the color rubbed off, are on this side of the door. These must’ve been with the house on purchase. “I’m going up,” I report to Florence. Each step is taken carefully as I run one palm against the wall to steady myself.
Then her breath cuts out over the phone. I scowl, swiping through the screen, but I have neither data nor Wi-Fi. I’m barely at the top of the stairs. “What the hell.” The smart thing would be to turn around. That’s also the paranoid option, and I am not paranoid or delusional. I am simply curious.
Taking the last few steps in a hurry, I make it to the attic where drapeless windows allow plenty of gray sunshine in. The attic is large and coated in a thin layer of dust, undisturbed except for Ba’s footprints, drag marks leading to several plain brown boxes, and the scuttling of furry rats.
The vaulted ceiling is a large rib cage, arching steadily and holding the body together. This is a room that really bears its age on the surface. Sections of the walls are opened, revealing yellow stuffing.
If the ghosts don’t kill me first, the asbestos will.
I step farther in, skin already itching from dust. The chimney runs up through the room, all exposed brick. One wall has a number of hooks and a rack lined with velvet, once a gun display. On the opposite end is an old writing desk wedged underneath a window. It’s the only thing other than the boxes that isn’t covered with a sheet.
My fingers slide over the wooden top before pulling on the handles. Dust and webs break apart, spilling into the air. From the stacks of paper comes a gray thing, squeaking and baring teeth, as I shout, “Rat!” It scurries off the desk.
With one hand over my chest, I pick through the stacks. The paper feels so thin I’m afraid it’s going to turn into dust. When I examine a pile, I see them: tiny pink and hairless things with black eyes. Baby rats that make no sound but curl into one another. The future source of our eaten wires.
This, I could tell Ba and he would believe. I won’t though. They can’t even see how close they are to death. “Why are you leaving the walls,” I murmur, carefully gathering a photograph stack and avoiding where I’d disturbed a perfectly good home. Scared a parent away.
I turn one page over and suck in a breath. Photographs. Black-and-white photographs from a world not that long ago. Nothing surprises me since they’re mostly nature, this house, white people in Vietnam, until I reach a formal family portrait.
The woman from the window sits at the center of this photograph, surrounded by her family. Her eyes are sharp and deep-set, the angle of her nose narrow. Her family blends into the background drapes. They’d taken it in our dining room, the hint of wooded wallpaper scratching at the edges.
Her dress is a beautiful lace and buttoned at the front with a wide sash. Her hat is even nicer, with a variety of flowers. A girl stands to her right, and the husband towers on the left, hand on their son. The kids are obviously twins, both wearing their mother’s dark line for mouths and deep eyes.
My gut tells me she’s the Lady of Many Tongues. Marion Dumont and her husband, Roger. The ones Alma told us about. Loopy handwriting stains the back—1925, le sauvage l’a ruinée. A visceral dislike rips through me.
Turning it again, I review the photograph section by section, certain that something else tugs my attention. Three-quarters of the way down, I find what must’ve displeased the Dumonts. A face peers from the long drapes. It’s a Vietnamese girl, probably the kids’ age, with round eyes. Her mouth curves in a dimpled smile. The eyes give her away. Ba’s bà ngoại, my great-grandmother.
“Oh shit,” I say, then cover my mouth as if she can hear me through a photo. Leaning closer, I search for other shared features, but the details haven’t survived aged technology. She wasn’t meant to be in this family portrait. Has Ba seen this? Did he put it back like it doesn’t matter? The paper crinkles under my fingers. Maybe it hurt him to see, the same way a dull ache has started in my ribs.
I rummage through the rest, but Bà Cố is nowhere else. I place the photograph in the pouch I’ve made with my shirt. At the bottom of another pile, wedged under a side panel, is a picture with a face I know. In it, Cam wears a traditional bridal áo dài and a wooden smile, arm looped around a man in uniform. Standing on their other side is Roger Dumont, a near double of Cam’s partner. The house looms behind them with Marion waiting at a window.
What is it like to open your eyes and see your world completely gone wrong? The invaders emerging from the mist like pale ghosts, taking and building, and taking. Latching on and draining you dry. Then calling you a savage. It doesn’t take a genius to parse that word from the handwriting on the photograph. Bà Cố and Cam are incidental relics. The racism is not subtle once you start to look.
A loud thump from the chimney startles me into a string of curses. No one is there. I shut the drawers. The chimney thumps again. Against every instinct, I move closer to the pillar. My steps are slow, as deliberate as an animal ready to run. The thumping doesn’t resume, but I don’t dare check around the corner.
The exposed brick is cold and crumbly, absolutely silent. Maybe Ba had moved inside to fix the chimney, though I haven’t seen it used once. It’s kismet, how everything lined up. Compelled by all the puzzle pieces fitting together, I lean forward to place my ear against the surface.
“Jade!” A girl’s voice, to my left. Florence quickly crosses the room and snatches my arm, pulling me back down the stairs. She slams the door to the attic, turning on me in the tight space. “What the hell?”
I blink several times before it sinks in that Florence Ngo is standing here with me. In what look like full-length plaid pajamas. As my phone gets service, several pings set off. I explain, “I had no service up there.” I scroll through my messages—most from Florence and one from Mom’s phone. The latter is clearly from Bren because of the caps and punctuation, and also because it says, WHY ARE YOU IGNORING MOMS CALLS???
Her nose flares. “I thought you fell and broke your neck or something!”
“Were you still lounging around in bed?” I ask, still energized by the photographs.
“Don’t change the subject,” she says, though she already looks less mad.
“You could’ve called your uncle and told him to call my dad.”
“Oh yeah. Dear sir, your daughter is having prophetic dreams and went into a hole in the closet and then suddenly disappeared while on the phone with me. Can you please make sure she isn’t being choked out by a ghost?” She rolls her eyes. “It sounds bananas.”
My nerve is pressed, briefly. “It’s not,” I argue or lie. “You don’t have to help me.”
Florence gestures at the large pile of photos. “Yeah, I do.”
“Well,” I say, brain computing faster than I can follow. “It paid off. I found the sixth bedroom.” When she raises a brow in confusion, I elbow the small door. “Sixth bedroom, the one that keeps being added to the website. It’s the attic. It’s huge.” The answer to every question I have is close. It feels right that she would be here with me. “I’ll explain more in my room. You can change into some of my stuff.”
“Your clothes are too short. I’ll freeze,” Florence says, eyes flickering down my legs. A wave of satisfaction hits me. “Anyway, plaid is very in.” She adjusts her collar with a jock’s confidence.
“I’m just surprised you like matching pj’s,” I say. “So orderly, boarding school girls.”
A grin lights up her face. “You think about what I sleep in a lot?”
“I am now.” I don’t back down. “But let’s get out of the closet.” After a moment, we roll in laughter, snorting and coughing dust and probably snot by the end of it all. This whole week has been ridiculous, but the photograph is something definitive that I found all on my own.
And Florence, well. I really look at her. Her hair is windswept and wild, shining down her back. The cold has lashed her cheeks red during the drive to me. I can’t help but smile. When those clever eyes brighten, I know that she’s noticed.