The Mediator #1: Shadowland Page 16

  "Here she is," Doc called, his voice wobbling in both pitch and volume. "Jake, I found her!"

  A second face joined the first one, this one framed by a curtain of over-long blond hair. "Jesus Christ," Sleepy drawled, when he got a look at me. "Are you all right, Suze?"

  I nodded, dazedly. "Help me up," I said.

  The two of them managed to get most of the bigger pieces of timber off me. Then Sleepy instructed me to wrap my arms around his neck, which I did, while David grabbed my waist. And with the two of them pulling, and me pushing with my feet, I finally managed to get clear of the rubble.

  We sat for a minute in the darkness of the courtyard, leaning against the edge of the dais on which the headless statue of Junipero Serra stood. We just sat there, panting and staring at the ruin which had once been our school. Well, that's a bit dramatic, I guess. Most of the school was still standing. Even most of the breezeway was still up. Just the section in front of Heather's locker and Mr. Walden's classroom had come down. The twisted pile of wood neatly hid the evidence of my evening's activities, including the candles, which had evidently gone out. There was no sign of Heather. The night was perfectly quiet except for the sound of our breathing. And the crickets.

  That's how I knew Heather was really gone. The crickets had started up again.

  "Jesus," Sleepy said again, still panting pretty heavily, "are you sure you're all right, Suze?"

  I turned to look at him. All he had on was a pair of jeans and an Army jacket, thrown hastily over a bare chest. Sleepy, I noticed, had almost as defined a six-pack as Jesse.

  How is it that I'd nearly been smothered to death, and yet I could sit there and notice things like my stepbrother's abdominal muscles a few minutes later?

  "Yeah," I said, pushing some hair out of my eyes. "I'm fine. A little banged up, maybe. But nothing broken."

  "She should probably go to the hospital and get checked out." David's voice was still pretty wobbly. "Don't you think she should go to the hospital and get checked out, Jake?"

  "No," I said. "No hospitals."

  "You could have a concussion," David said. "Or a fractured skull. You might slip into a coma in your sleep and never wake up. You should at least get an X-ray. Or an MRI, maybe. A CAT scan wouldn't hurt, either – "

  "No." I brushed my hands off on my leggings and stood up. My body felt pretty creaky, but whole. "Come on. Let's get out of here before somebody comes. They were bound to have heard all that." I nodded toward the part of the building where the priests and nuns lived. Lights had come on in some of the windows. "I don't want to get you guys in trouble."

  "Yeah," Sleepy said, getting up. "Well, you might have thought of that before you snuck out, huh?"

  We left the way we'd come in. Like me, David had wriggled in beneath the front gate, then unlocked it from the inside and let Sleepy in. We slipped out as quietly as we could, and hurried to the Rambler, which Sleepy had parked in some shadows, out of sight of the police car. The black and white was still sitting there, its occupant perfectly oblivious to what had gone on just a few dozen yards away. Still, I didn't want to risk anything by trying to sneak past him, and retrieve my bike. We just left it there, and hoped no one would notice it.

  The whole way home, my new big brother Jake lectured me. Apparently, he thought I'd been at the school in the middle of the night as part of some sort of gang initiation. I kid you not. He was really very indignant about the whole thing. He wanted to know what kind of friends I thought these people were, leaving me to die under a pile of roofing tiles. He suggested that if I were bored or in need of a thrill, I should take up surfing because, and I quote, "If you're gonna have your head split open, it might as well be while you're riding a wave, dude."

  I took his lecture as gracefully as I could. After all, I couldn't very well tell him the real reason I'd been down at the school after hours. I only interrupted Jake once during his little anti-gang speech, and that was to ask him just how he and David had known to come after me.

  "I don't know," Jake said, as we pulled up the driveway. "All I know is, I was catching some pretty heavy-duty Z's, when all of a sudden Dave is all over me, telling me we have to go down to the school and find you. How'd you know she was down there, anyway, Dave?"

  David's face was unnaturally white even in the moonlight. "I don't know," he said, quietly. "I just had a feeling."

  I turned to look at him, hard. But he wouldn't meet my eye.

  That kid, I thought. That kid knows.

  But I was too tired to talk about it just then. We snuck into the house, relieved that the only occupant who woke upon our entrance was Max, who wagged his tail and tried to lick us as we made our way to our rooms. Before I slipped into mine, I looked over at David just once, to see if he wanted – or needed – to say anything to me. But he didn't. He just went into his room and shut his door, a scared little boy. My heart swelled for him.

  But only for a second. I was too tired to think of anything much but bed – not even Jesse. In the morning, I told myself, as I peeled off my dusty clothes. I'll talk to him in the morning.

  I didn't, though. When I woke up, the light outside my windows looked funny. When I lifted my head and saw the clock, I realized why. It was two o'clock in the afternoon. All the morning fog had burned away, and the sun was beating down as hard as if it were July, and not January.

  "Well, hey, there, sleepyhead."

  I squinted in the direction of my bedroom door. Andy stood there, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded across his chest. He was grinning, which meant I probably wasn't in trouble. What was I doing in bed at two o'clock in the afternoon on a school day, then?

  "Feeling better?" Andy wanted to know.

  I pushed the bedcovers down a little. Was I supposed to be sick? Well, that wouldn't be hard to fake. I felt as if someone had dropped a ton of bricks on my head.

  Which, in a way, I suppose they had.

  "Uh," I said. "Not really."

  "I'll get you some aspirin. I guess it all caught up with you, huh? The jet lag, I mean. When we couldn't wake you up this morning, we decided just to let you sleep. Your mom said to tell you she's sorry, but she had to go to work. She put me in charge. Hope you don't mind."

  I tried to sit up. It was really hard. Every muscle in my body felt as if it had been pounded on. I pushed some hair out of my eyes and blinked at him. "You didn't have to," I said. "Stay home on my account, I mean."

  Andy shrugged. "It's no big deal. I've barely had a chance to talk to you since you got here, so I thought we could catch up. You want some lunch?"

  The minute he said it, my stomach growled. I was starving.

  He heard it, and grinned. "No problem. Get dressed and come on downstairs. We'll have lunch on the deck. It's really beautiful out today."

  I dragged myself out of bed with an effort. I had my pj's on. I didn't feel very much like getting dressed. So I just pulled on some socks and a bathrobe, brushed my teeth, and stood for a minute by the bay windows, looking out as I tried to work the snarls out of my hair. The red dome of the Mission church glowed in the sunlight. I could see the ocean winking behind it. You couldn't tell from up here that it had been the scene last night of so much destruction.

  It wasn't long before an extremely appetizing aroma rose up from the kitchen, and lured me down the stairs. Andy was making Reuben sandwiches. He waved me out of the kitchen, though, toward the huge deck he'd built onto the back of the house. The sun was pouring down there, and I stretched out on one of the padded chaise longues, and pretended like I was a movie star for a while. Then Andy came out with the sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade, and I moved to the table with the big green umbrella over it, and dug in. For a non-New Yorker, Andy grilled a mean Reuben.

  And that wasn't all he grilled. He spent a half hour grilling me pretty thoroughly…but not about what had happened the night before. To my astonishment, Sleepy and Doc had kept their mouths shut. Andy was perfectly in the dark about what had happene
d. All he wanted to know was whether I liked my new school, if I was happy, blah, blah, blah....

  Except for one thing. He did say to me, as he was asking me how I liked California, and was it really so very different from New York – uh, duh – "So, I guess you slept straight through your first earthquake."

  I nearly choked on a chip. "What?"

  "Your first quake. There was one last night, around two in the morning. Not a big one, really – round about a four pointer – but it woke me up. No damage, except down at the Mission, evidently. Breezeway collapsed. But then, that should come as no surprise to them. I've been warning them for years about that timber. It's nearly as old as the Mission itself. Can't be expected to last forever."

  I chewed more carefully. Wow. Heather's goodbye bang must have really packed a wallop if people all over the Valley, and even up in the hills, had felt it.

  But that still didn't explain how David had known to look for me down at the school.

  I'd moved upstairs, and was sitting on the window seat in my room flipping through a mindless fashion magazine, wondering where Jesse had gone off to, and how long I was going to have to wait before he showed up to give me another one of his lectures, and if there was any chance he might call me querida again, when the boys got home from school. Dopey stomped right past my room – he still blamed me for getting him grounded – but Sleepy poked his head in, looked at me, saw that I was all right, then went away, shaking his head. Only David knocked, and when I called for him to come in, did so, shyly.

  "Um," he said. "I brought you your homework. Mr. Walden gave it to me to give to you. He said he hoped you were feeling better."

  "Oh," I said. "Thanks, David. Just put it down there on the bed."

  David did so, but he didn't go. He just stood there staring at the bedpost. I figured he needed to talk, so I decided to let him by not saying anything myself.

  "Cee Cee says hi," he said. "And that other kid. Adam McTavish."

  "That's nice of them," I said.

  I waited. David did not disappoint.

  "Everybody's talking about it, you know," he said.

  "Talking about what?"

  "You know. The quake. That the Mission must be over some fault no one ever knew about before, since the epicenter seemed to be … seemed to be right next to Mr. Walden's classroom."

  I said, "Huh," and turned the page of my magazine.

  "So," David said. "You're never going to tell me, are you?"

  I didn't look at him. "Tell you what?"

  "What's going on. Why you were down at the school in the middle of the night. How that breezeway came down. Any of it."

  "It's better that you don't know," I said, flipping the page. "Trust me."

  "But it doesn't have to do with…with what Jake said. With a gang. Does it?"

  "No," I said.

  I looked at him then. The sun, pouring through my windows, brought out the pink highlights in his skin. This boy – this red-headed boy with the sticky-outy ears – had saved my life. I owed him an explanation, at the very least.

  "I saw it, you know," David said.

  "Saw what?"

  "It. The ghost."

  He was staring at me, white faced and intent. He looked way too serious for a twelve year old.

  "What ghost?" I asked.

  "The one who lives here. In this room." He glanced around, as if expecting to see Jesse looming in one of the corners of my bright, sunny room. "It came to me, last night," he said. "I swear it. It woke me up. It told me about you. That's how I knew. That's how I knew you were in trouble."

  I stared at him with my mouth hanging open. Jesse? Jesse had told him? Jesse had woken him up?

  "It wouldn't let me alone," David said, his voice trembling. "It kept on…touching me. My shoulder. It was cold and it glowed. It was just a cold, glowing thing, and inside my head there was this voice telling me I had to get down to the school and help you. I'm not lying, Suze. I swear it really happened."

  "I know it did, David," I said, closing the magazine. "I believe you."

  He'd opened his mouth to swear it was true some more, but when I told him I believed him, his jaw clicked shut. He only opened it again to say wonderingly, "You do?"

  "I do," I said. "I didn't get a chance last night to say it, so I'll say it now. Thank you, David. You and Jake saved my life."

  He was shaking. He had to sit down on my bed, or he probably would have fallen down.

  "So…" he said. "So it's true. It really was…the ghost?"

  "It really was."

  He digested that. "And why were you down at the school?"

  "It's a long story," I said. "But I promise you, it doesn't have anything to do with gangs."

  He blinked at me. "Does it have to do with … the ghost?"

  "Not the one who visited you. But yes, it had to do with a ghost."

  David's lips moved, but I don't think he was really aware he was speaking. What came out of his mouth was an astonished, "There's more than one?"

  "Oh, there's way more than one," I said.

  He stared at me some more. "And you … you can see them?"

  "David," I said. "This isn't really something I'm all that comfortable discussing – "

  "Have you seen the one from last night? The one who woke me up?"

  "Yes, David. I've seen him."

  "Do you know who he is? How he died, I mean?"

  I shook my head. "No. Remember? You were going to look it up for me."

  David brightened. "Oh, yeah! I forgot. I checked some books out yesterday – stay here a minute. Don't go anywhere."

  He ran from the room, all of his recent shock forgotten. I stayed where I was, exactly as he'd told me to. I wondered if Jesse was somewhere nearby, listening. I figured it would serve him right if he were.

  David was back in a flash, bringing with him a large pile of dusty, oversize books. They looked really ancient, and when he sat down beside me and eagerly began leafing through them, I saw that they were every bit as old as they looked. None of them had been published after nineteen ten. The oldest had been published in eighteen forty-nine.

  "Look," David said, flipping through a large, leather bound volume entitled My Monterey. My Monterey had been written by one Colonel Harold Clemmings. The colonel had a rather dry narrative style, but there were pictures to look at, which helped, even if they were in black and white.

  "Look," David said again, turning to a reproduction of a photograph of the house we were sitting in. Only the house looked a good deal different, having no porch and no carport. Also, the trees around it were much smaller. "Look, see, here's the house when it was a hotel. Or a boarding house, as they called it back then. It says here the house had a pretty bad reputation. A lot of people were murdered here. Colonel Clemmings goes into detail about all of them. Do you suppose the ghost who came to me last night is one of them? One of the people who died here, I mean?"

  "Well," I said. "Most likely."

  David began reading out loud – quickly and intelligently, and without stumbling over the big, old-fashioned words – the different stories of people who had died in what Colonel Clemmings referred to as the House in the Hills.

  None of those people, however, was named Jesse. None of them sounded even remotely like him. When David was through, he looked up at me hopefully.

  "Maybe the ghost belongs to that Chinese launderer," he said. "The one who was shot because he didn't wash that dandy's shirts fine enough."

  I shook my head. "No. Our ghost isn't Chinese."

  "Oh." David consulted the book again. "How about this guy? The guy who was killed by his slaves?"

  "I don't think so," I said. "He was only five feet tall."

  "Well, what about this guy? This Dane who they caught cheating at cards, and blew away?"

  "He's not Danish," I said, with a sigh.

  David pursed his lips. "Well, what was he, then? This ghost?'

  I shook my head. "I don't know. At least part Spanish. And…"
I didn't want to go into it right there in my room, where Jesse might overhear. You know, about his liquid eyes and long brown fingers and all that.

  I mean, I didn't want him to think that I liked him, or anything.

  Then I remembered the handkerchief. It had been gone when I'd woken up the next morning, after I'd washed my blood out of it, but I still remembered the initials. MDS. I told them to David. "Do those letters mean anything to you?"

  He looked thoughtful for a minute. Then he closed Colonel Clemmings's book, and picked up another one. This one was even older and dustier. It was so old, the title had rubbed off the spine. But when David opened it, I saw by the title page that it was called Life in Northern California, 1800-1850.

  David scanned the index in the back, and then went, "Ah ha."

  "Ah ha what?" I asked.

  "Ah ha, I thought so," David said. He flipped to a page toward the end. "Here," he said. "I knew it. There's a picture of her." He handed me the book, and I saw a page with a layer of tissue over it.

  "What's this?" I said. "There's Kleenex in this book."

  "It isn't Kleenex. It's tissue. They used to put that over pictures in books to protect them. Lift it up."

  I lifted up the tissue. Underneath it was a black and white copy on glossy paper of a painting. The painting was a portrait of a woman. Underneath the woman's portrait were the words Maria de Silva Diego, 1830-1916.

  My jaw dropped. MDS! Maria de Silva!

  She looked like the type that would have a handkerchief like that tucked up her sleeve. She was dressed in a frilly white thing – at least, it looked white in the black and white picture – with her shiny black hair all ringleted on either side of her head, and a big old expensive looking jewel hanging from a gold chain around her long neck. A beautiful, proud-looking woman, she stared out of the frame of the portrait with an expression you just had to call … well, contemptuous.

  I looked at David. "Who was she?" I asked.

  "Oh, just the most popular girl in California at around the time this house was built." David took the book away from me, and flipped through it. "Her father, Ricardo de Silva, owned most of Salinas back then. She was his only daughter, and he settled a pretty hefty dowry on her. That's not why people wanted to marry her, though. Well, not the only reason. Back then, people actually considered girls who looked like that beautiful."