Starter House(57)

Ella Dane came into the kitchen. Lacey rolled a four, and the red piece joined the green one at the top of the ladder. “My sheets reek,” Lacey said. “I think Bibbits had an accident.”

“Poor little guy. He feels bad about it. Solitaire Chutes and Ladders, really? How bored are you?”

Lacey took a breath. Now or never. “It’s not solitaire. I’m playing with Drew. You know, the kid who lives here.”

“You stop that,” Drew said.

“Oh, you’re playing with Drew.” Ella Dane sat at the table and hoisted Bibbits into her lap. She fed him half a cookie. Lacey thought of mentioning that the cookies contained eggs. “Who’s winning?” Ella Dane said.

“We’re tied. Drew’s green. It’s his turn.”

Drew rolled a two and landed on a chute. Lacey provided sound effects as he moved his piece. “Oh no—here I go—I’m falling, I’m falling—aaaaaaah thump!”

Drew laughed as his piece landed all the way back on the second square. Lacey rolled a three and avoided the chute.

Ella Dane frowned over the board. “Why doesn’t Drew move his own piece?”

“He is. Watch. Your turn, kiddo.”

Drew rolled a six and clicked his piece along the board, square by square. Lacey looked at Ella Dane: What was Ella Dane seeing, if she couldn’t see Drew? Was she seeing the green piece move alone, step by deliberately counted step? She was taking it very calmly; she looked more worried than surprised. Lacey took her turn and landed on another ladder.

Drew cupped the die in his two hands and shook it hard, the way children did, as if by hard shaking they could change its disposition. Maybe he’d forgotten that he could make it land the way he wanted, or maybe he was just playing along, acting out the game. And what did Ella Dane see: the die rattling in a three-inch globe of air?

The air was dense and hot, and the smell of sugar nauseated Lacey. Her mouth was sour with fear. She swallowed again and again, choking her sickness down, smiling for Drew. He threw a five, which brought him to a ladder. He and Lacey cheered as his piece climbed. Just as he reached the top step, Ella Dane’s hand flashed out and grabbed his wrist. Lacey felt a sympathetic pain in her own wrist.

“Ow,” Drew and Lacey cried together, “let go.”

“Look,” Ella Dane said. “Whose hand is this?”

“It’s him. Drew.” She saw Ella Dane’s fingers squeeze the child’s fragile wrist, and her own bones ached. “Can’t you see?”

Ella Dane yanked Drew’s hand in front of Lacey’s face. “Can’t you see? Look!”

Lacey looked. The hand was too big. Tiny pellets of cookie dough clung to the lifeline and the heart line. The fingernails were coral, and needed a touch-up, since the polish had begun to flake around the tips. . . . And the ring needed cleaning, the big diamond was looking dull.

Lacey touched the hand. She slid her fingers down to Ella Dane’s hand, still clamped around the wrist. “That’s my hand,” she said blankly. “How did you do that?”

“I grabbed the hand that was moving the green piece. Your hand. You were shaking the die. It was all you.”

“No.”

She could not accept this. Hearing voices, acting on unseen commands—those were things crazy people did. She wasn’t crazy; CarolAnna Grey, Greeley Honeywick, and Beth Craddock had all seen him. Ella Dane couldn’t deny it, after what he’d done to her room.

“That was Drew. Drew was moving the piece.”

“Is he still here?”

Drew’s chair was empty. “He must have left. Let go, you’re hurting me.”

Ella Dane didn’t let go. “You rolled the die. You moved the pieces.”

“Drew was here. He ate the cookies.” Lacey felt grease on her lips; she ran her tongue along her teeth, finding smears of chewed cookie. How many cookies had Drew eaten—eight, twelve? She felt bloated with sweetness, and she didn’t even like cookies. “He went up into the attic and got the game.”

Ella Dane threw Lacey’s hand back to her. “You’ve been climbing ladders? What were you thinking?”

Lacey bowed her head over the game, rubbing her wrist. There was dirt on her arms and under her fingernails, and a smell of hot baked dust, an attic smell, on her clothes. She flashed to a memory of herself walking on the plywood floor of the attic, dipping her head to avoid the big silvery ducts, searching through four cardboard boxes of her old classroom things. This had not happened. She was on semi bed rest to save the life of her child. She had never been in the attic. Eric took the boxes up there—she didn’t even know what it looked like. “Drew did it,” she insisted.