The train rocking through the night gave a lonely wail. Whoo! Whoo-whoo-whooey! If ghosts had voices, that must be the way they would sound, Emily thought. Though settled in the comfort of a warm train compartment, she felt a sudden chill, and thrust her hands deeply into the white fur muff she held on her lap. Even her reflection in the window glass had a pale and unreal look, as if it were the ghost of a young girl outside the train trying to break in.
The flickering gaslight in the compartment appeared in the glass as a lantern, its light dancing eerily over the young ghost’s head as she wandered the world to find a home. Shreds of fog, like pale fingers, brushed against the window. The train wailed again, and Emily could not help shuddering. What if she had to roam the world seeking a home, and never found one?
To reassure herself, Emily reached inside her green velveteen coat, pulled out the gold locket that hung from a chain around her neck, and opened the clasp. There, smiling back at her across from a small photograph of Mama and Papa, were Aunt and Uncle Twice, who were all the family she had left now.
It still puzzled Emily that she had not seen them in such a long time. She had asked questions about this, but had been told that Uncle Twice was occupied with business matters, or that Aunt Twice had gone off to New York for her new spring wardrobe. That was all that was ever said.
In any event, Mr. Dowling, Mama’s and Papa’s lawyer, had told Emily of Aunt Twice’s letter, so Emily had no doubt that she and Uncle Twice would be there to greet the train when it arrived in San Francisco. Then once again Emily would be taken to the grand white mansion on the hill. She could still see it in her mind, even though she had only been a very young child the last time she was there.
Sugar Hill Hall! So named because Uncle Twice had bought the mansion with a fortune made in the sugar trade, it was grander even than Emily’s own home had been. Now, somewhere in the distance, lights that could break through a fog as dark and thick as a witch’s cloak were twinkling for her, and that was what she intended to think about. She would think only about the lights, and the fire already crackling in the marble fireplace that graced the huge, elegant parlor. She would think only about—
Suddenly, the train lurched, and lurched again. She clutched the red horsehair seat to keep from being tumbled to the floor. Outside the windows, lights were appearing. They were only the lights of the train station, of course, but it meant the train had arrived at last The engine squealed in anguish as the brakes were applied, belched forth clouds of angry steam, and finally came to a groaning stop. Eagerly, Emily slid from her seat and pressed her nose to the cold window to see if she could catch a glimpse of beautiful Aunt Twice and tall, handsome Uncle Twice, waving and smiling at her to welcome her home!
A deeper fog had begun to creep stealthily up from the sea, spreading over San Francisco to dim the lights of its buildings and turn them into monstrous shadows. The fog wrapped itself silently around Emily as she huddled with her travelling bag by the waiting room door of the train station.
It was nearly an hour later, and no one had yet come to greet her. Not Aunt Twice. Not Uncle Twice. Not anyone. Smudges of dirt from her long train ride already stained her white stockings and white, high-button shoes, but by now even the bright red ribbons knotted around her long golden braids had begun to droop. She shivered again and pulled her white fur tam-o’-shanter down about her ears, digging her chin deep into the collar of her velveteen coat. She had been trying to hold back the tears, but now they came perilously close to pouring down her cheeks.
Where were Aunt and Uncle Twice? Why had no one come to meet her? The streams of people passing by, deeply intent on their own cares and worries, looked through her as if she had indeed become a ghost. She stared at each face, hoping to find the one that would welcome her with a smile. But they all rushed past her, as if sucked up and swallowed by the fog. Would the fog eat her up too, she wondered, so that ever after she would be nothing but a ghostly face peering in train windows? The only reply she had to her question were two pinpricks of gaslight blinking murkily at her from across the street like rat’s eyes. She turned from them with a shudder.
Then all at once she heard her name being called. “Emily? Emily Luccock?” It sounded dim and hollow as if mixed with a bowlful of the fog.
She looked around eagerly for a familiar face, but all she saw was a strange woman approaching through the gloom. A shabby brown coat flapped wearily around her thin ankles. Her hair, of no particular color, straggled in drab, lifeless wisps from under a shapeless felt hat. Emily drew back, startled by the sight of the faded eyes set deep in the woman’s face, the deathly pale lips, and the skin like parchment drawn tight over sharp cheekbones.
“Emily, my dear child, don’t you know me? This is your Aunt Twice!”
Was it? Emily wondered with a sharp stab of fright. If so, where were the flyaway shining curls and dancing green eyes? Where was the fashionable coat with the nipped-in waist, and where the feathered Paris bonnet? And most important, where was the pink-cheeked face, as pretty as her own Mama’s had been? How could this thin, sunken person be the Aunt Twice she had once known?
The strange woman hesitated, and finally smiled. With the smile, shadows of long-forgotten dimples came to her cheeks. A faint sparkle lit her eyes. She dropped to her knees and held out her arms.
“Aunt Twice!” Emily cried. She ran at last to bury her face in the worn woolen coat.
“My poor little girl!” Tears flowing down her cheeks, Aunt Twice held Emily away to look deeply into her face. “My poor, poor child.”
Then all at once, Aunt Twice jerked sharply. With a sudden twist of her head, she turned toward the granite tower of the train station where a large, dimly lit clock peered through the fog like a pale, timekeeping moon. She stiffened and jumped to her feet.
“We must hurry, Emily! We must hurry! Is this the only travelling bag you’ve brought? Have you any trunks?” Fear made her voice sharp.
“T-t-two, Aunt Twice,” Emily stammered. She was frightened once more by the sudden change in her aunt. It was as if Aunt Twice had turned into a stranger again. “Mrs. Leslie, Mama’s and Papa’s housekeeper, said they had been sent. Haven’t they come yet?”
“No, but never mind. We must hurry now, Emily. Come along! We must not miss the next cablecar. We can’t!” With no word of explanation, Aunt Twice snatched up Emily’s bag and hurried across the sidewalk. Emily stumbled along beside her.
Her mind buried in her own troubled thoughts, Aunt Twice almost stepped off the curb in front of the horses of a tall black cab trotting to a stop in front of them.
“Cab, ma’am? It’s a bad evening out.” The heavyjowled cabman spoke with the glum, disappointed air of having no hope for a fare.
But Aunt Twice looked over her shoulder once more at the station clock, and then opened her worn purse with trembling fingers. Lest she change her mind, the cabman wasted no time. Cape flying out, he leaped down, nimble as a frog, and flung open the cab door.
“Sugar Hill Hall on Pacific Street,” Aunt Twice murmured to him in a voice barely above a whisper, and hurried Emily into the cab.
Tucked into a corner seat, Emily crossed her thin, white-stockinged legs neatly, and gave Aunt Twice a shy glance. Surely, Emily thought hopefully, now that the worry of getting home on time had been solved, she would be hugged once more and comforted for the terrible sudden loss of Mama and Papa in the boating accident at sea. And shouldn’t she be given news of Uncle Twice? Why had he not come in his splendid red phaeton to fetch them at the station?
But Aunt Twice did not enfold Emily in her arms, and she explained nothing. Instead, she perched stiff and silent as a stone wall on the edge of her seat, moving her pale lips wordlessly from time to time. She appeared to have forgotten all about Emily.
Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop! The sound of the horses’ hoofs drummed gloomily on the damp cobbled streets. Deep drifts of fog pressed against the windows, so she could see nothing but the dim flickering of an occasional lonely gaslight. Were they lost? She could not remember that Sugar Hill Hall was such a long ride from the train station. Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop! On and on they rode, horses’ hoofs drumming outside, deadly silence inside, up one hill and down another. It seemed as if they had covered a dozen dark-filled miles before Aunt Twice turned suddenly and took Emily’s hand in her own.
“Dear, darling child, will you promise me that no matter what happens, you will try to be a brave little girl, a very brave little girl?”
Be a brave little girl no matter what happens? What could that foreboding request mean? Emily was too frightened to do more than nod as she felt the chill of Aunt Twice’s hand go through her like an icy needle.
The hand over hers tightened. Aunt Twice threw the cabman a furtive look and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Now there is something else you must promise me. When we enter the parlor of Sugar Hill Hall, you must let me give the replies to whatever questions are asked. Only speak if directly spoken to, and you must then agree with whatever I say. Be as polite as you know how. Please, darling Emily, will you promise all these things, for your sake and—for mine too?” Aunt Twice’s voice broke in a hoarse sob.
Emily was more frightened than ever, and had only time to nod again when the cabman called out, “Sugar Hill Hall, ma’am!”
Aunt Twice gave a sharp gasp. “Please don’t go into the driveway! Stop right here at once!”
The cab lurched to such a sudden stop that Emily was almost catapulted from her seat. She had no time even to peer out the window before Aunt Twice rushed her from the cab. So it was not until her aunt was carefully counting out the coins from her worn purse and placing them in the cabman’s eager hand that she looked up the broad driveway for her first glimpse of Sugar Hill Hall. What she saw made her breath catch in her throat. For unlike Aunt Twice, the great mansion was exactly as Emily remembered it!
Through the fog and the deepening evening dusk it loomed, seeming nearly four times the size of the home she had left. Window after window reached endlessly across it, and the same giant columns held up the lofty portico that greeted a wide, circular driveway. But one thing she had forgotten was how brilliantly white the mansion was. If the paint had grown shabby like Aunt Twice, it was not noticeable in the dusky mist. With its columns that looked like huge white candy canes, the mansion did seem to have actually been carved out of sugar!
Suddenly, Emily felt her heart leap. As the cab lumbered off into the fog, and Aunt Twice clutched her hand, half dragging her up the wide driveway, she felt as if she wanted to laugh. And laugh and laugh! Now at last she knew what this was all about. It was a magnificent joke! Had Uncle Twice, long ago, not loved to tease and surprise her with his jokes? And had Aunt Twice not always encouraged him with her bubbling laughter? If Sugar Hill Hall was still as grand and beautiful as ever, how could anyone as sad and bedraggled as Aunt Twice be living there? Emily had to choke back the laughter so she would not spoil Aunt and Uncle Twice’s joke. For once inside that great door, she knew what she would find.
There would first, of course, be a joyous Uncle Twice with his arms outstretched to receive her. Behind him would be a welcoming fire popping and crackling in the marble fireplace. Lucy, the maid, would be standing beside it with a gleaming silver tray bearing fine white china cups, thin as eggshells, filled with steaming hot chocolate. Later, all smiles, she would pass crystal dishes heaped with little cream cakes, tiny sandwiches, and Emily’s favorite strawberry tarts. With Aunt and Uncle Twice watching from the silk-covered settee, Emily would curl up on the thick, soft rug before the fireplace, tasting first one thing and then another as Aunt and Uncle marvelled at how her appetite had grown.
Finally, they would all go together to the room where Emily had once stayed, now redone all in white with pink rosebuds to match her own room at home. After they had shed tears over Mama’s and Papa’s photographs, Aunt and Uncle Twice would hug and kiss her, telling her how wonderful it was that she had come to live with them.
Even the strange darkness of the windows, as if no one could possibly be inside the mansion, did not fool Emily. This was, she knew, Uncle Twice’s very best joke!
They reached the steps to the portico, and Aunt Twice paused. “Promise me, Emily, with all your heart, that you will do the things I asked!” Her voice was stretched so tight and thin it was trembling.
“I promise, Aunt Twice!” Emily said happily. She could hardly keep from skipping up the steps.
She watched eagerly as Aunt Twice removed a large brass key from her purse and thrust it into the keyhole of the massive door. A moment later, the door swung open, and they stepped into Sugar Hill Hall. And into a dim, musty, cavernous parlor lit only by four small gas lamps flickering weakly on the walls, with no trace of any fire ever having been laid in the stone-cold fireplace. But Emily barely had time to notice this, because her eyes were instantly riveted to the two figures standing before them, and neither one was a laughing, rollicking, joking Uncle Twice.
Both were women, one plump as a pudding in a lavender, full-skirted dress. All Emily could see of her head, however, was a tiny lace doily set on a crown of greying hair. She kept her face bent over a pair of long knitting needles and was busily plying them as if she had no interest whatsoever in the new arrival. But it was the figure beside her that made Emily’s blood suddenly freeze.
Click! Click! Click! To the curiously grim tune of the knitting needles, her eyes rose slowly up, up, up past the waist of a deadly black skirt, past a gold medallion with a glittering ruby eye in its center, past a high black collar coiled around a white, serpent-thin neck, past a chin sharp as an ice pick, past thin bloodless lips under a pale nose so pinched it seemed air could never pass through it, and arriving finally at the meanest, wickedest, evillest pair of eyes Emily had ever seen in her whole life!