Violet

16

I had to go out to the hallway because Lily was there, and maybe not okay. I had heard her come out of the bathroom, then stop, and then the man had started making lots of noise. Not the hissing sound from before, but knocking on wood, and Lily hadn’t moved at all, so she had to still be there and was probably scared. I had to tell her that the man only bothered Aunt Clara. I didn’t know why that was, but I just knew, deep inside.

When I opened the door, I found my sister right outside it, her eyes glued to a spot farther down the hallway. She was wearing her blue pajamas and her mouth was half-open. Her eyes were very wide as she stared at the man who was banging on Aunt Clara’s door. I didn’t know why he did that, because he could just go through it, but maybe he just wanted to scare her. He did seem pretty scary, hammering on the door like that.

“Lily,” I whispered. “Do you see him, too, now?” I couldn’t be entirely sure that it wasn’t just the sound that scared her.

Lily didn’t look at me but nodded very slowly.

“He looks bad, doesn’t he?” I whispered from the doorway. I couldn’t help but feel happy that someone else finally saw him, even though I didn’t want Lily to be scared. At least now she couldn’t pretend that I didn’t see what I did anymore.

“His back,” Lily whispered hoarsely. “It’s so bloody.”

I nodded because it was true. “I don’t think it was an accident.”

Her head snapped in my direction. “What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “He couldn’t have fallen to be like that. Something else must have happened to him.”

Lily looked even more scared than before. “Why is he banging on Aunt Clara’s door?”

I shrugged again, because I didn’t know. “Maybe it was his room before?” I suggested.

“He doesn’t look that old, Violet. His suit doesn’t look that old.” She gave me a frightened look and I knew what she was thinking. We were both wondering if the man was the lost Mr. Woods. At least it would explain why he was so interested in Aunt Clara. “Why do I see him now and not before?” Lily asked. “What did you do in the garden, Violet?”

I shrugged for a third time because I didn’t know that either. I had thought that what I did would help—that he would vanish like the animals had—but instead he had started to move around and throw things. I had tried with the candle first. I had gone down there, all alone—even though it was scary—on the second night after he asked. Not even Irpa had wanted to come with me but had decided to wait inside on my bed. She didn’t like the man much, and neither did I—mostly because he was so angry all the time. But he had asked, and the asking had stayed inside me like a headache or an itch—something that it wasn’t possible to forget because it bothered me so much—and so I had taken matches, bread, salt, water, and a candle and gone outside, as close to the flower beds as I dared. When I lit the candle, the flame had shivered because I couldn’t keep my hand steady, and lots of wax had dripped down on my fingers. I had looked at the man even though he was ugly, and he had been standing all quiet again, like he had done the day before. The candle never went out either, but kept burning and shivering, while he just stood there, smiling as if he thought I was stupid, until I blew out the flame and ran back inside.

It hadn’t felt good at all, and the asking kept bothering me inside.

When I tried to talk to Irpa about it, she had just flapped her wings and showed me an image of the man walking away from the flower bed and up toward the house, so then I knew that he didn’t want to disappear but wanted to be able to walk around. I asked Irpa if this was a good idea or not, but she just cocked her head and gave me nothing at all. Since then, I have found out that she is better at showing me what to do than telling me if it is the right thing. She can help, but she doesn’t decide. I don’t think Irpa worries at all if a thing is right or wrong. To her, they just are, which I like.

After the candle didn’t work, I had spent days just thinking about it, looking at the man through the window, while the asking ached inside me. I knew that he wanted to walk around but didn’t know how to make his feet not be stuck in the black glue. I wanted to help him, if only to stop the burn of the asking—and because I felt sorry for him, wandering around in the flower bed alone. It didn’t seem right that he should be stuck there, bleeding and yelling, but I just didn’t know what to do—until I suddenly did.

It was just like with the candle, as if something I had forgotten just came shooting into my brain. As if I had always known, somehow. It was easy after that. All I had to do was find the food and the cider and the candle and bring them with me outside.

The only thing I hadn’t known inside me, but decided to do anyway, was to bring Lily along. It had been so scary the last time I went into the garden at night that I felt better having her there—even if she yelled at me and pretended that the man wasn’t real.

And he did get loose. He could walk up to the house now and hang around, and even though I didn’t like him much, I was happy to see that he could. It meant that what I did had worked, and he wasn’t stuck in the flower bed anymore. I hadn’t expected him to make such a mess, though—to throw all the books around—but then again it wouldn’t be fair to expect that a man who had been stuck in a flower bed would come just wandering in and act all polite. Perhaps he just needed some time to get used to it, like Lily and I had needed time to get used to living at Crescent Hill. I thought that he was happy to be able to throw things around, though.

He still couldn’t speak, but he had his own sound: a hissing in the air that reminded me of the noise from the TV or a radio when it didn’t have a signal. When I asked Irpa about it, she showed me the man pulling something out of the air around him—some sort of energy, I assumed—which he used to be able to do stuff. He must have drawn in a lot of it, though, to be able to do all he did in the living room, and still have enough energy to bang on Aunt Clara’s door.

As Lily finally stopped looking at the man and slipped into my room, closing the door behind us, I wondered if he really was Mr. Woods—and if so, what had happened to his clothes.