“Oh. Holy. Gophers,” I breathe.

Rotham Manor hulks at the end of the long, straight road, wearing the fog like a cloak. Dark red brick with a brown shingled roof, smallish windows with wavy glass that reflect the dull sky. Two imposing columns, a crumbling porch, and two giant wooden front doors. Dead ivy mauls the exterior, and where there isn’t dead ivy, there are dead trees lining the walkway leading to the circular drive. And that’s what I can see through the storm. It’s grimmer than the pictures made it look.

Maybe it’s the storm making it seem so . . . yikes.

I glance over at Mom. Her mouth is hanging open, which is weird because it’s not like this is the first time she’s seeing the place in real life.

“Mom, that’s not a mansion. That’s a . . .”

A what? Say something positive. A museum! More like an asylum. An abandoned asylum. An abandoned asylum museum. I don’t want to live there. I want to run screaming.

Cat yowls.

I know, girl, I know, I think.

“What happened to the trees?” Mom mutters.

The trees? This house looks like it wants to eat us, and she’s worried about the trees?

“Um, they died?” I guess.

“Do you know how hard it is to kill those?” she asks.

So we’re living in a house that takes its killing seriously. Awesome. Just awesome.

Mom stops the car on the circular driveway, and I get a better view. The manor used to be fancy; I can tell that much. It has the vibe of an old lady who puts on a bunch of costume jewelry and coral lipstick and dances to jazz all alone in her apartment. Mrs. Belford in 4B used to do that when we lived in the walk-up on Eighth Avenue.Well, Mrs. Belford never tried to kill me, so maybe this won’t be so bad. Deep breaths, Gus.

The headlights of a tiny electric car cut through the shadows on the opposite side of the drive. Mom jumps in her seat at the car’s sudden appearance.

“See? Told you he’d be here!” I say with the confidence of someone who actually believed the dude with the keys hadn’t abandoned us. Mom forgets the dead trees and braces herself to face this Jeremy Cleave guy.

“Let’s remember to buy rain jackets,” she says before pulling the collar of her denim jacket up. I lift my side of the tarp so I can watch how this plays out.

Mom makes it halfway to the electric car before its door flings wide open and two long legs in rumpled khakis emerge. The legs belong to a guy who must be almost seven feet tall. His rain jacket hood is closed so tightly over his head that he’s left only a small hole for his face.

“You’re late!”

“I know; I’m sorry. I tried to call—”

Mom and the guy shout over the rain and one other, each trying to get the first word in. Mom laughs it off, but the guy doesn’t seem amused. Into Mom’s hand he shoves a single key, one of those ancient-looking ones that could probably unlock an old jail cell.

“This is it?” Mom says, staring down at the key. “There should be more.”

“It’s all I’ve got,” the man says gruffly. “Furnace is on the fritz. Don’t flush the downstairs toilet. And, uh, there might be a few other things.”

The man trails off, gazes toward the manor, then at the muddy ground. I’m so focused on trying to hear their conversation that I almost don’t notice the flicker of movement in the side mirror of the golf cart.

It’s a face, or maybe what would pass for a face if its skin weren’t sagging so far away from its wide, bloodshot eyes. Or if its jaw wasn’t hanging halfway down its long, thin, crooked neck.

I whip around, but there’s nothing over my shoulder. No sagging face. No gaping mouth. No wide, pleading eyes. I turn back to the mirror to find a tiny patch of fog fading from the glass—like dissipating breath.

“Hello?” I call to the rear of the cart, peering behind me again. Only rain.

I shake my head. “Not yet,” I whisper to myself. It can’t be happening already. I haven’t even stepped foot in the place.

Mom’s concerned voice rises over the swirling storm, recapturing my attention.

“I noticed the trees,” I hear her say. “I don’t want to sound critical, Mr. Cleave, but if there’s anything else I should know—”

“What’re you accusing me of?” the man growls. He leans over Mom with the nearly two-foot advantage.

“Hey!” I call out to the man, instinctively defensive.

Mom turns when she hears me. As soon as she does, the tall guy casts one last wary glance at Rotham Manor before backing away and scurrying off to his car.

“Wait a second!” Mom shouts, chasing after Jeremy Cleave. “What about the paperwork from your father, contacts for the contractors, schematics—”

“It’s all in the binder!” the man shouts over the wind as he slams the car door shut.

He backs out of the driveway, tires screeching. Without a wave or a honk, Jeremy Cleave bumps down the road as fast as his little electric car will carry him and disappears around the corner. Mom stands in the rain, staring at the road for a second before hurrying back to the golf cart, soaked and making squishing noises as she flops back into the plastic driver’s seat.

“At least he waited to turn over the key,” I say.

Mom nods. “I thought he’d be more . . .”

“Helpful?” I try.

“Sure. Let’s go with that,” Mom says. “He should be thrilled. All he has to worry about now is the lighthouse.”

Right. More fun facts from this past spring’s Nameless Island Introductory Course (a.k.a. Mom). Cue the black-and-white film footage narrator voice!

Nameless Island has three major landmarks: Rotham Manor, Nameless Cemetery, and the Lighthouse. Founding this illustrious if not somewhat mysterious little island were three families of considerable wealth and high standing: the Rothams, the Cleaves, and the Makewells. Over the years, care of the island’s landmarks has changed hands between members of these families several times over, with various intermediaries in between.

Translation: Jeremy Cleave may be a jerk, but he’s an important jerk, and he’s in charge of one of the other historical buildings on the island, which means this marks only the beginning of the beautiful relationship Mom and him are definitely going to have.

“He hates me,” Mom frowns.

Like I said, a beautiful relationship.

“Can we have this conversation inside?” I plead. I’m shivering. The tarp can do only so much to keep the storm out, and my blood’s still running cold from that whole side mirror situation.

“You know,” Mom says, ignoring me, “I’ll bet I can still win him over if I fix those bits he mentioned first.” She bites her lip, thinking. “What was it he said? The furnace? And the toilet?”

“I don’t remember,” I reply, my teeth chattering. “Let’s go in and check it out. That the key?” I nod to her hand in her lap.

Mom scrunches up her nose like she’s smelling a fart. It wasn’t me!

“Hang on a second!” she says defensively. “Why am I trying to impress him?”

Oh. Okay, she’s just getting her Mom-ness back, which is great and all, but—

“That’s the spirit,” I say, reaching for the key, but she flails her arms.

“He should be trying to make a good impression on me! I’m the one who’s gonna bring the business back to this sleepy island with my gorgeous renovation.”

“There she is,” I say, gently taking her raised fists into my soaked hands. “Mom, can we do this victory dance inside? I’m so cold I can’t feel my ears.”

Mom finally gets it. “Grab Cat,” she winks and smirks at me. “Let’s go.”

I’m about to take my first step out of the cart when I see a foot-sized print in the ground on my side.

The face.

“Care to join me?” Mom shouts a bit louder than usual from the splintered porch.

“Now you’re in a hurry?” I grumble.

Bags and Cat in hand, I book it up the porch steps while the rain blows sideways, flooding my ear. Mom hasn’t managed to get the door open yet.

“Maybe lift the handle?”

No luck.

“Turn it the other way!” I holler.

“Oh, what a wonderful suggestion! So glad you’re here to help!” she snaps.

She takes a step back, lowers her shoulder, releases a terrifying warrior cry (which Cat weirdly echoes), and throws an entire day of frustrations at the heavy doors.

“Was that popping sound wood or bone?” I ask.

Before she can answer, one of the two doors slowly gives way against Mom’s weight. Or rage. Maybe it’s the rage.

Mom smiles. “Doesn’t matter.”

Definitely the rage.

She strides inside. I’m still reaching for the handle of the bag I set down when the door slams in my face, leaving me in the rain on the outside of Rotham Manor. I wiggle the knob, but it won’t budge. Mom opens it a second later.

“A self-locking door?” she asks, her forehead creasing. “Didn’t notice that this summer.”

“So weird,” I say, rain streaming down the back of my collar. “Can I come in now?”

Mom stands aside.

“Let’s add that to the list,” she says. “A new knob. I can see us locking ourselves out. That would be a nightmare.”

I could think of worse nightmares, judging by what I’ve already seen, but I keep that to myself while Mom mumbles under her breath something about how it’s going to be a long list.

The storm outside rages, but there’s a sudden swell of silence as we stand in the foyer, our backs against the tall double doors.

“Lights,” Mom says. “The switch was somewhere over . . .”

I hear her slide her hand along the wall, and like magic, a dim light from high above flickers on, and a tiny inhale breathes Rotham Manor to life.

“This can’t be real,” I mutter, trying to take it all in at once, which is impossible.

The silence lasts only a second.

Mom is the first one to say something.

“What in the ever-loving—”

“Ferrets!” I cut her off, because of all the things my eyes could land on first, it’s a faded portrait of three ferrets playing croquet in a grassy field. Each one is wearing a little checkered vest (of course). Appropriate croquet attire for three ferrets.

“Please let there be an entire animals-playing-fancy-sports-themed art collection in this place,” I say. “It’ll make the whole move worth it.”

 

 

Mom isn’t laughing, though. In fact, she might be hyperventilating. I try to see what’s setting her off, but it’s pretty dark. There’s a massive hat rack next to us, the ferret portrait, and a crystal chandelier swaying above. Hopefully it’s sturdy enough not to fall and crush us.

“Mom, are you having a—”

She shakes her head and takes a few deep inhales, but the problem is she isn’t exhaling.

“Okay, remember what Dr. Frankputter said,” I tell her, searching for a soothing tone, but Cat is yowling from her crate, so she isn’t making things better. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Mom hiccups.

“You’re not doing the out-through-your-mouth part,” I say.

“Don’t I get credit for getting it half right?” she says, finally exhaling with a tiny laugh.

It’s enough to make me finally exhale too.

We didn’t used to need these reminders—how to breathe, when to flex and relax our muscles, where to fix our sight when the world goes blurry. Therapists have all kinds of tricks to teach people whose family members suddenly go missing. Funny thing is those tricks just teach you how to keep on living. They don’t teach you anything about when your dad is coming back. Or why he disappeared in the first place. Just to keep on being.

Now that we’re both breathing, I can try to figure out what it was that triggered Mom’s panic attack. Another helpful term I learned in therapy. Panic attacks are brief periods of anxiety triggered by fear. The rest of the manor is mostly in shadow, but from the foyer, it looks like your basic stuffy old mansion, something out of that board game where you try to figure out who murdered someone. It was Colonel What’s-His-Name in the public library with the meat cleaver!

“It’s a disaster zone,” Mom says.

Clearly, there were a few details I missed upon entering. For instance, Mom is fixated on the staircase at the moment, maybe because the bottom half of it is missing. Where there should be steps is a giant hole, and at the top of the stairs, where there should be a landing, is a plywood wall blocking the whole second floor except for one little doorway. It’s hilarious because, again, no bottom stairs equals no way of getting to that little doorway at the top.

Sticking with the theme of “holes,” we find a giant patch of missing floor in the hallway leading away from the manor’s kitchen.

“For easier basement access?” I suggest.

“Basement door is around back,” Mom mutters.

Somehow, the holes aren’t the weirdest feature. It’s all of the . . . stuff.

“Um, when you came here for the interview in November,” I say slowly, trying to process what I’m seeing, “were all the chairs and books and dishes and car parts and portraits of miserable people—”

“Everywhere?” Mom cuts me off. “No, Gus, they were most definitely not.”

“Yeah,” I reply, dazed. “I didn’t think so.”

Every usable surface is covered with piles of random junk. It’s like a yard sale puked up a flea market.

“Fry, be careful where—ouch!” I hear Mom stumble, and an off-key chord echoes. “What is that, a harpsichord?”

I find some towels. After we pat ourselves down, we strip off our soggy shoes and socks and leave them by the door.

“I’m releasing the beast,” I tell Mom, remembering that Cat is still in her crate.

I unlock the little metal grate and watch her disappear, slipping seamlessly with her all-black fur into the shadows of Rotham Manor. I leave food and fresh water bowls out in case she decides to grace us with her presence later. I used to worry about bringing Cat to live with us in the homes we renovated; what if she got lost or tried to escape or got hurt with all that construction equipment lying around? Once I realized that not only could she see the same ghosts I could but also that she wasn’t afraid of them, I sort of came to the conclusion that Cat’s more or less invincible. Honestly, she’s most cuddly with me when one of them is nearby, which leaves me feeling kinda conflicted.

“Found the bathroom!” I call to Mom from a hallway past the huge living room. “The toilet has one of those old pull chains.”

“Don’t flush it!” she yells back.

Right, right. The broken toilet. I follow the hallway to the remaining room at the dark end; its door is closed. A heaviness settles in the air that feels familiar, and I slow my steps as my chest tightens. It’s cold. A puff of white breath appears in front of my face as I slowly exhale. The hallway grows darker, and I know to approach with caution. This is the part I recognize all too well.

Breathe. Just breathe.

When I reach the end of the hallway, I open the door and practically pee myself.

“Body! Headless body in here!” I blurt.

The figure is silhouetted against the window, and half a dozen more shapes loom against the moonlight pouring through the window. I rub the fog and fear from my eyes and see not a body but a mannequin, the kind dressmakers use. The rest of the shapes are furniture covered in sheets. Random items stashed in what must be the sewing room. Old houses always have a sewing room.

I wish I could laugh at myself for being afraid of a cloth dummy. Except I know that’s not what I was feeling a minute ago. That’s not what was causing the heavy feeling, the wave of coldness. I still feel it. Cat’s heavy purring at my feet only makes me more certain. I didn’t notice her following me down the hall.

“Where are you?” I whisper to the room.

I hear a groan coming from the corner, weight pressing on a loose floorboard. A lump swells in my throat as I watch the wooden door of a closet by the window slowly open.

Always closets.