Eloise Read online

  He paused for a moment. I said: ‘Go on. Was there a dog or a cat?’

  For some reason, Peter fixed me with a funny look. I was about to ask him what the matter was when he revealed that the baby, Eloise, had died.

  In the house.

  Alone.

  ‘The mother was a drug addict,’ Peter murmured. ‘She went out and left the baby locked in the house. When she finally came back, it was dead.’

  Bettina covered her mouth with her hand.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘According to Mrs Fanciulli,’ Peter concluded, his fists wedged deep in his pockets, ‘the baby died of starvation.’

  CHAPTER # eight

  I was horrified when I heard about Eloise. It honestly made me sick to my stomach. The thought of a little baby, crying and crying, its cries becoming weaker and weaker … well, it was dreadful. Just dreadful.

  Bettina obviously felt the same. She went red, and her eyes filled with tears. Even Peter looked shaken.

  ‘Horrible, eh?’ he said. ‘Spooky.’

  ‘It must have happened in Bettina’s bedroom,’ I quavered. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘I’m never going in there again!’ Bettina yelped. ‘Never ever!’

  ‘We’ll have to tell your mum,’ Peter pointed out. So we did. We went straight back to Bettina’s house and told her mum, who went white when she heard.

  ‘Who said this?’ she demanded. ‘That old woman next door? She’s crazy.’

  ‘No, Mum.’ Bettina was pleading. ‘She’s Italian. Peter spoke to her. She knew the names and everything.’

  ‘It would make sense,’ Peter added grimly. ‘A primitive hunger. You can’t get much more primitive than a baby, can you?’

  ‘It’s nonsense,’ Bettina’s mum insisted, though she was still pale. ‘You’ll see. Tomorrow I’ll call Community Housing. They’ll tell me the truth.’

  ‘I’m not sleeping in there, Mum.’

  ‘Nobody asked you to!’ Mrs Berich snapped. ‘I told you, I will sleep there. I will sleep there and see what all the fuss is about.’

  ‘Do you really think you should, Mrs Berich?’ I couldn’t help wondering if that was a good idea. ‘Do you think anyone should?’

  Mrs Berich muttered something in Croatian. Peter said: ‘Maybe if you put some milk, or some baby food …’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Bettina exclaimed. ‘Maybe that would feed it!’

  ‘Will you children stop?’ Mrs Berich, who was wiping down the kitchen cupboards, suddenly threw her damp sponge into the sink. She put her hand to her forehead. ‘Stop talking like this. Go and play.’

  ‘Mum –’

  ‘Go and play.’

  Seeing that she was upset about something, we all tiptoed out of the kitchen. Then, without exchanging a single word, we went to stand at the door of Bettina’s bedroom.

  I couldn’t have crossed the threshold. I couldn’t have set foot in that room – not since learning what had happened in there. And yet it still looked quite ordinary. The green bedspread was slightly disturbed. The blinds were raised. A dusty cobweb trembled over the window.

  Something about it made me feel sick all over again.

  ‘It’s like there’s a coffin sitting in there,’ Peter said at last, in hushed tones. ‘I don’t even want to go in.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Bettina whispered.

  I turned away. All at once I was desperate for some fresh air. When Peter caught up with me, on the front doorstep, he asked me what was wrong.

  ‘You look green,’ he remarked.

  ‘This is worse than Eglantine.’ I blurted it out as if the words themselves tasted bad. ‘I don’t know why. I never felt sick with Eglantine. Not like this.’

  ‘Because Eglantine died a long time ago,’ Peter reminded me. ‘Eloise has only been dead two years.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the same carpet,’ choked Bettina, who had joined us. ‘Maybe it’s the same venetian blinds, and the same paint.’

  We all stared at each other. Peter winced.

  ‘God,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘I have to call Mum.’ It sounded rude, the way I said it, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘I’m going somewhere for dinner. I have to get home. Do you want a lift?’

  ‘You should phone Delora again,’ Peter suggested, ignoring the question. ‘She might know what to do.’

  ‘She won’t know what to do.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You heard what she said. She said she wouldn’t connect. She said a force like that could cause a lot of damage. Do you want a lift, Peter?’

  ‘But if you told her that it was a baby –’

  ‘We don’t know that it’s a baby. We won’t know until Mrs Berich talks to those housing people.’

  ‘Well, okay,’ Peter conceded. ‘But if we find out there was an Eloise, and she did die in there –’

  ‘I’m phoning my mum,’ I interrupted, and turned to go inside. Peter grabbed my arm.

  ‘Allie,’ he said, ‘what’s the matter?’

  He wasn’t cross, just puzzled. Maybe a bit concerned. It was awful, because I didn’t want to be gruff like that. If I hadn’t been on the edge of tears, I would have been nicer.

  ‘Sorry,’ I sniffed, wiping my nose. ‘I can’t do this.’

  Peter waited.

  ‘This is too much for me,’ I continued, trying not to cry. Everything was all muddled in my head, and knotted up in my stomach, but I knew that I wanted to get away from that room. ‘I can’t help with this, it’s too …’ (Real? Recent?) ‘It’s too horrible.’

  ‘But you’ve got to help!’ Bettina protested shrilly. ‘We’ve got to do something!’

  ‘It’s true, Allie,’ said Peter. He was still holding my arm. ‘What about poor Bettina?’

  ‘I know, but –’

  ‘What about the poor baby?’

  ‘Don’t!’ I jerked away, because I didn’t want to think about the baby. Peter narrowed his eyes at me.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Are you – did you feel something? Or see something?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. I felt sick.’ But I understood that Peter was right. Something had to be done – for Bettina and the baby. The poor, dead baby. ‘I’ll ring Delora,’ I promised. ‘See if she can help.’

  ‘And you should leave some milk in that room overnight,’ Peter instructed Bettina, who said: ‘You mean cow’s milk or that other stuff? That special baby’s milk?’

  ‘What special baby’s milk?’ I didn’t know what she was talking about. To my surprise, however, Peter did.

  ‘Formula,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s called formula.’

  ‘Is it expensive?’ Bettina wanted to know, and I felt sorry for her.

  ‘We’ll pay you back out of the club funds,’ I promised. ‘In fact, I’ll pay your share of Delora’s fee, to make up for the formula. But you other guys,’ I added, glancing at Peter, ‘should pay me back as soon as you can. Like at school tomorrow, or something.’

  ‘You should tell Michelle, then,’ he observed.

  ‘I will. I’ll call her tonight, and remind her about the ten dollars. I’ll tell her … I’ll tell her what we found out, too.’

  I must have gone green again, or at least looked sick, because Peter asked me gently if I wanted him to inform Michelle. It was really nice of him. I said that it might be better if he did it, because I was going out for dinner.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Bettina asked – almost wistfully, I thought. Perhaps she doesn’t eat out much.

  ‘Oh … nowhere,’ I mumbled. The last thing I wanted to do was start talking about Dad. I had a funny sort of feeling that if I even mentioned moving in with him, then it might actually happen. I know things don’t necessarily go away if you ignore them, but that’s how I felt. ‘Okay. So I’ll call Delora, and Peter will call Michelle.’

  ‘And I’ll make sure that Mum calls Community Housing,’ Bettina broke in. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Righ
t.’

  ‘And we’ll take it from there,’ said Peter, with a sidelong glance at me. Then he finally informed me that he would like a lift, thank you very much, and I passed that information on to Mum when I spoke to her on the phone. We didn’t talk much afterwards. Peter just kept looking at me in a funny way on the trip back to his place; I don’t know if he was afraid that I was having a nervous breakdown, or fascinated by the thought that I’d somehow been affected by the force in Bettina’s bedroom. Both, perhaps. It seemed odd that he hadn’t been more affected himself.

  Or maybe it wasn’t terribly odd. When I saw Michelle the next day, she was excited rather than upset, so maybe there is something special about me. That ‘dark aura’, or whatever it is. Maybe I respond more to paranormal vibrations than other people do – unless I’ve just got a better imagination. It’s possible that Michelle never pictured that little baby, crying and crying …

  Or was I just on edge anyway, because of Dad?

  Whatever the reason, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I talk about Monday, I should describe Sunday night – the dinner at Dad’s house, in other words. Dad lived in a really small terrace house in Newtown. It was right on the street, and you walked straight through the front door into the living room. Then there was a narrow hall leading down to the kitchen, past two bedrooms, and the bathroom was off the kitchen to the left. I thought to myself: this is way too small for Bethan and me. We couldn’t possibly live here. And I was relieved, until it occurred to me that my dad could always move. To somewhere more spacious.

  I was afraid to ask if he was going to. Just in case he said ‘yes’.

  Everything was very dark, because there were hardly any windows. Also, most of the overhead lights were turned off. Instead there were candles everywhere, and a few lamps with pink and green shawls draped over them. Everywhere you looked there were shadow puppets hanging on the walls and gold-embroidered cushions on the floor and incense sticks poking out of bits of Chinese pottery. The whole place smelled of incense, or something like that. Bethan asked if he could open a window.

  ‘You don’t like my aromatic oils?’ asked Matoaka, who wasn’t what I had expected. I suppose I thought she’d be Asian, or something, but she wasn’t. Her name was Matoaka Purkis. She had blue eyes and brown hair and looked a bit like Mrs Procter, our library teacher, only fatter. She was wearing a batik sarong around her waist, as a skirt, and an Indian cotton top that jingled. Her nose was sunburned.

  ‘They’re very nice oils,’ I said, coughing, ‘only Bethan’s allergic to patchouli. His nose swells up.’

  Matoaka frowned.

  ‘I don’t know if there’s patchouli in the jasmine oil,’ she began.

  But Bethan was firm. ‘I can’t breathe,’ he declared.

  So Matoaka had to go around blowing out all her scented candles and things. Dad, who was dressed in a sarong, too, showed us how we’d be sitting on the polished wooden floor and eating out of bowls, with our fingers. Bethan liked that. He also liked the ferocious wooden mask in the bathroom. (Matoaka said it was there to scare away cockroaches.) He didn’t like the wine, though, and he made Dad get him some Pepsi. I was really, really surprised that they had it in the house. Matoaka explained that it belonged to one of the other people who lived there.

  ‘So how was the séance?’ she said, changing the subject as we all seized our first handfuls of rice and passed the bowl around. ‘Jim told me you held a séance, last night.’

  ‘Uh, yeah.’ I felt embarrassed, because my séance was the reason we hadn’t been able to accept her first invitation. ‘Yeah, it was okay.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ Actually, I don’t like eating food with my fingers, because I tend to drop rice everywhere. Also, the coconut curry was making my hangnail sting. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. That’s why we’re sitting on the floor,’ Matoaka tinkled.

  ‘It’s one reason, anyway,’ my father added. ‘The other reason is that we don’t have a proper table.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Bethan. (He doesn’t like curry, but was doing his best with the rice, melon and yoghurt.)

  ‘No room.’ Dad was looking at me, licking his fingers. ‘Did your mother attend this séance?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And may I ask what purpose it served?’

  I didn’t know how to answer that, especially since Dad’s tone was a bit sarcastic. Fortunately, however, Matoaka butted in.

  ‘Yes, what were you trying to do?’ she inquired, sounding genuinely interested. Unlike Dad, who was obviously used to sitting cross-legged, she kept shifting and wriggling and changing her position. ‘Were you trying to reach somebody specific?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Dad said flatly.

  ‘No.’ I really didn’t want to talk about it. Bethan, however, looked up from the rice that he was picking off his leg and remarked: ‘I thought you told Ray that the house was haunted?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, you did. I heard you. Last night, when you came home.’

  ‘I said it might be haunted.’

  ‘And then you said you were going back there today, to ask the neighbours.’ Yoghurt was dribbling down Bethan’s arm. ‘Dad, can I have a spoon, please?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps you’d better.’ Dad got up to fetch a spoon. Matoaka leaned towards me. One of her teeth was grey, and she had a red nose stud so small that from a distance it looked like a little pimple.

  ‘What makes you think the house is haunted?’ she queried, smiling an encouraging smile. ‘Have you any idea who might be haunting it?’

  ‘Uh, well …’

  ‘I thought you said it was a dog,’ big-mouth Bethan remarked. This time he was picking bits of rice off the floor and putting them in his mouth.

  ‘It’s not a dog,’ I retorted crossly. ‘Bethan, don’t do that, it’s disgusting!’

  ‘You said it was a dog,’ he insisted.

  ‘I said it might be a dog. But it isn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because …’ I hesitated, as Dad returned with a spoon. He gave it to Bethan, and sat down again. ‘Because it’s probably a baby,’ I sighed.

  ‘A baby?’

  ‘We think a baby died in the house,’ I mumbled. ‘One of the neighbours said so.’

  ‘Now you see, that’s what I’m talking about,’ Dad frowned. He was shaking his head. ‘That’s the sort of nasty thing you’re going to get messed up in, holding séances. I warned your mother. I told her. It’s not enriching, it’s a drain. It’s spiritually draining.’

  ‘It can throw your balance out of whack,’ Matoaka agreed, through a mouthful of curry. ‘But that’s easily sorted. I can align her tonight, Jim, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  Align me?

  ‘Uh, no thanks,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Matoaka peered into my face. ‘Your colour’s not too good.’

  ‘That’s probably her diet,’ said Dad. ‘It’s pretty toxic, from what I can see.’

  Toxic! Before I could protest, however, Bethan observed in absent-minded tones: ‘She looks green because of that stuff on the lamp. We all look green, except you, Dad.’ He was trying to spread yoghurt on a slice of melon with the edge of his spoon. ‘You look kind of purple.’

  ‘Well, be that as it may,’ said Dad, ‘I don’t think you should be involved in this business, Alethea. It can’t be good for you.’

  I had a funny sort of feeling that he was right. So why was I annoyed? ‘Someone has to do something,’ I replied stiffly. ‘My friend won’t be able to sleep in her own bedroom, otherwise.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not a problem,’ Matoaka exclaimed. ‘You just want to cleanse it. A Sioux purifying ceremony, that’s what you want. Does the trick every time.’

  ‘A what?’ I had to ask.

  ‘Sioux,’ she repeated. ‘A Sioux purifying ce
remony. Don’t you know the Sioux? They’re one of the First Nations.’ I stared at her blankly, and she went on. ‘Native North Americans? You know?’

  ‘She means Red Indians,’ Bethan supplied, and drew a frown from our father.

  ‘We don’t use that term, Bethan,’ he reproved gently. ‘It’s insulting.’

  ‘I’ve been to a whole bunch of ceremonies in South Dakota, when I was on the reservation, and I’ve seen some amazing things,’ Matoaka revealed, wiping her mouth and scrambling to her feet. ‘Anyone for naan bread? I forgot the naan bread.’

  ‘Are you In – I mean, are you Native American?’ I had been struck by a sudden thought: perhaps Matoaka was her real name after all? She took a deep breath, and placed a hand on her chest, looking off into the distance.

  ‘In my heart, I am,’ she replied. ‘In my heart, I’m of the Powhatan. There’s a connection, I know that.’

  ‘The way you’ve responded to it, Mat, there must be,’ my father concurred. I got the feeling that they’d discussed the matter before. ‘Mat had a really deep, visceral response to the Powhatan culture,’ he explained to me. ‘She underwent a shamanic ritual, and she was transfigured. She really did reach the next level.’

  ‘I saw my spirit guide,’ Matoaka beamed. ‘I’ve been told that I’m a reincarnation of Matoaka. That’s why I changed my name.’

  ‘Matoaka?’ I was completely lost.

  ‘Pocahontas,’ Dad translated. ‘Matoaka was her real name. Her Powhatan name.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘That was a dumb movie,’ Bethan suddenly observed. ‘It was boring.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think Disney captured the essence of the Powhatan experience,’ Dad said drily, and Matoaka continued, as if she hadn’t heard: ‘The Playful One forged connections between two cultures, which is my role as well. It’s a destiny that transcends Time.’

  I don’t know what she was talking about, exactly, but at least it wasn’t Eloise. From then on we discussed reincarnation, and Ancient Egypt, and the constellation of Orion, and what Bethan and I normally ate at school.