Chapter X
X
Melinoe was born in the Underworld, amongst the dead things and the demons and the flaming blood rivers that boil souls.
Amongst the world her mother had been stolen into but grew to love, amongst the souls who spent their eternal rest in the Elysian Fields.
She was made the goddess of ghosts and it was fitting, for her, because she loved the ghosts, she loved them deeply, and she swore to always protect them and care for them and look after them.
Of course sometimes, rarely, a ghost wouldn’t make it to the Underworld. A ghost would get stuck behind, trapped in our world, where Melinoe could not reach them. For even though her mother spent half her year walking on our soil, Melinoe herself was eternally imprisoned below.
Did she miss them, then, these ghosts she could not reach, these souls she was forced to live without?
Yes. Yes, I think she missed them. I think she pined for them. I think she hated every moment they were forced to be apart …
The five of us sat on the floor, our witchy circle expanded.
The five of us, again:
Girl, girl, girl, girl, ghost.
As it always had been.
Henry held Evelyn’s hand in his lap.
It had been a bit of a shock.
It had been a lot of a shock.
He looked …
Alive.
More alive than I had ever seen him.
When he’d come through the doorway, when he’d come through Clara’s painting, there had been a sound. A loud sound, a ripping sound. When we looked through the window, we could see that the tear in the sky had gotten bigger.
A lot bigger.
“Right,” Henry said. “We’ll deal with that in a moment.”
And he’d hugged Evelyn, who’d risen to meet him, a long hug that made me uncomfortable, unsure of where to look.
And then he’d hugged me, and it was such a shock that I actually forgot to breathe for a moment, and when he pulled away I started choking, and Bernadette had to slap me on the back to get my lungs started up again.
“You touched her? You hugged her? You can touch her?” Clara had said, blinking rapidly like the light had hurt her eyes and she was still recovering, and then Henry had hugged her and then Bernadette and then we had all sat down and been mostly speechless, just processing, just trying to understand.
“How are you this solid?” I asked finally.
“I don’t know,” Henry said. “Something about the doorway?”
“How come you couldn’t follow me through?” Evelyn asked, and I saw him squeeze her hand tighter.
“I don’t know that, either,” Henry said. “But I think it’s because of the tear in the sky. I sort of … fit now. And I didn’t before.”
I couldn’t stop shivering, but I wasn’t cold.
Henry had hugged me. Henry had touched me. For our entire lives, the only one he’d been able to touch was Evelyn. I felt like my brain was short-circuiting. I couldn’t even look him in the eyes, I just kept remembering how horrible I’d been when I last saw him.
“I called to you,” I said, staring at my hands in my lap, twisting a ring around and around my pointer finger. “We used the Ouija board, we left paper and pens by our bedside…”
“I heard everything,” Henry said. “The crypt, the temple, the closet … It killed me that I couldn’t find a way to answer.”
“No pun intended,” Clara said, and giggled at her own joke.
“Can you see it in the Underworld?” Bernadette asked. From her place on the floor, she could see out the window, and she looked out it now, up at the black mark.
“Yes,” Henry said. “It’s affecting things there, too.”
“It’s affecting us,” Clara said. “Evelyn can’t play the piano anymore. Gosh, I probably can’t paint anymore. I didn’t even think of that. Did you guys think of that?”
“Deep breaths, Cece,” Bernadette said, turning back to the room. “Obviously, we’re going to have to figure out what to do about the tear. But maybe not tonight, you know? Maybe tonight we can just be happy that Henry’s back.”
“I’m happy that Henry’s back,” Clara said.
“I’m so happy,” Evelyn said, and truly, she was glowing.
And I was happy, of course I was so, so happy, but I still couldn’t make myself look at him.
Our mother woke up crying in the middle of the night.
I knew because Clara was still awake, and still sleeping in my room, and she nudged me until I woke up, too.
We could hear her through the vent (old house, old vents, and in certain places you could play telephone with other people, whispering into the grates, hearing each other perfectly).
Did she have a nightmare? Had Melinoe delivered a message to her, whispering into her ear as she tried to sleep?
Our father was awake, too, comforting her, saying low, soothing words too quiet to catch.
Clara and I looked at each other scared and wide-eyed until, finally, our mother stopped crying.
The house fell silent again. Clara fell asleep.
It was three in the morning. I was utterly, devastatingly, awake.
I stared at the ceiling as if, with enough concentration, I could burn a hole into Evelyn’s room and see her curled up with Henry, sleeping soundly.
Next to me, Clara was breathing heavily, twitching a little, fully immersed in dreamland.
I texted Maybe. She would want to know that Henry was back. After a solid six minutes of trying to come up with a witty or clever way of saying it, I settled on: Hi. Henry’s back. (Neither witty nor clever—perfect.)
I didn’t know if I really expected her to be awake or not, but she responded less than a minute later. My heart did a little flutter kick when I saw her start to type back, those three dots of infinite potential.
Damn, that’s great! How did you manage it?
Clara had to sacrifice her painting. It was a whole thing.
Aw, man. Poor Clara.
The tear in the sky also got bigger. When he came back.
A bit of a good news, bad news, situation then.
Maybe one day I’ll only have good news for you.
I will be waiting patiently. Now get some sleep, ghost girl. It’s late. xx
I fell asleep warm and quickly and buzzing with those two little letters: xx.
In the morning, I caught Mom alone in the kitchen, sipping from a mug of coffee, staring out the window at the jasmine bushes that lined our backyard, dead-like and bare in the winter.
They would return with a vengeance in spring; no matter how aggressively Dad cut them back, they’d blossom and explode all over again.
She turned, then, sensing me behind her. She still looked so sad. Her face was red and puffy and it scared me, how dark her eyes were.
“Good morning, third daughter,” she said.
“Hi, Mom.”
“I didn’t sleep that great. Did you?”
“Not really, no.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Your aunt isn’t sure, either. We’re both a little out of sorts, it seems, but neither of us knows why.”
Was the tear in the sky affecting Aunt Bea in Vermont?
Did my mother and aunt have gifts, too, that were being taken away from them?
Should I tell my mother everything, every single thing that had ever happened, starting from the very first time I could remember Henry, making funny faces at me over the railing of my crib?
Should I tell her about the tear in the sky and ask her how to fix it, beg her to fix it, pray that she knew how to fix it?
I wanted to, part of me desperately, desperately wanted to, but another part of me wouldn’t allow it, wouldn’t allow myself to admit just how much I had fucked up, didn’t want her to know what I had said to Henry, how I had sent him away, how Evelyn had followed him, how we had dragged her back again, how the sky had split open.
No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I—
“There are downsides to this Persephone thing, aren’t there?” she said, interrupting my spiraling thoughts, smiling almost sadly at me, like she knew there was so much I wasn’t telling her but also knew you couldn’t make a Farthing girl tell you anything she didn’t want to.
“Every so often,” I replied.
And she turned back to the windows, back to the jasmine bushes, and I watched her gaze move upward, up up up to the tear in the sky, which was only getting bigger.
Henry and Evelyn had so far spent the entire morning curled up on the attic couch, arms around each other, whispering and giggling.
“Barf,” Bernadette announced around ten, when she finally pulled herself out of bed and found Clara and me in the kitchen. “Barf, barf, barf.”
“Give them a break, Bernie, he’s just come back from the dead,” I said.
“Still dead, actually,” Clara said. “Although he does seem more solid, right?”
“And he can touch us, now,” Bernadette said. “That’s just weird. You can’t just touch someone after twenty years of not touching them. Where are Mom and Dad?”
“Brunch and tennis with the Zimmermans,” Clara recited automatically. “Not expected back until after two. I’ve compiled a list of questions for Henry.”
“Let’s hear ’em,” Bernie said, pouring herself a glass of water.
Clara took a neatly folded piece of paper from her mythology book, which was closed on the counter in front of her, cleared her throat, and started reading.
“Can we all go and see the Underworld? Do you know how to fix the hole in the sky? Is the Underworld anything like Dante’s Inferno?
Did you meet any famous dead people? Do you have to get a job in the Underworld?
Are dead girls better at braiding hair than living girls?
Is there a river you have to pay a token to be ferried across?
Are you sure we can’t go and see it? Oh, that last one is assuming that he said no to the first one. ”
“What circle of Hell would you want to live on?” Bernadette asked. “If you, like, had to.”
“Limbo, obviously,” I said. “Nothing ever happens there.”
“Heresy,” Clara replied. “I’d like to be trapped in the flaming tombs. I’m always cold.”
“Avarice,” Bernadette said. “It’s basically a big workout class.” Then, to me: “Of course you would pick the place where nothing ever happens. Boring.”
“Sorry if I don’t want to be burned alive,” I mumbled.