Prue finished drying the last of the dinner dishes and put them back in the
cabinet with a triumphant grin. "Done at last," she muttered as she threw
the dish towel into the wash. With a sigh, she walked over to the back door
to check on her sisters. Through the screen door, she watched as Phoebe ran
around under the sprinkler and as Piper settled herself on the long adult
swing on the swingset. The swing was swaying gently, but Piper looked like
her mind was miles elsewhere. Prue smiled sympathetically and stepped
outside, letting the screen door slam shut behind her.
She waited for the sprinkler to turn and spray the other side of the lawn, then ran across the yard and sat down on the swing with Piper. The second she sat, she gasped, lifted her feet off the ground and pulled her knees up to her chest. The swing was a lot hotter than she had expected it to be and the long metal slats burned her bare skin. "How are you sitting on this thing?" Prue asked, running her hands over the backs of her legs.
Piper started and whipped her head around, blinking as if shaken from a daydream. "What?"
"It's so hot." Prue took Piper's hand and held it down on the empty spot between them for a split second. Piper winced in pain and pulled her hand away, cradling her hurt hand in the other. "Doesn't it hurt your legs?" Prue asked.
Piper shook her head. "I wet it a little before I sat down," she said quietly. She wiggled her fingers, the pain in her hand now a mere tingle in her fingers. "It doesn't hurt."
Prue nodded, then looked her sister over. As much as Piper was trying to pretend that everything was okay, Prue could tell otherwise. "Piper, what's going on?"
"What?" Piper asked, staring straight ahead.
"Your mind is like, a zillion miles away. Is everything all right?"
"I'm fine," Piper answered with a small shrug. She was torn. Part of her wanted to tell Prue to go away and leave her alone, but another, more rational part of her wanted to confide in her sister. The thing with Melody really had her upset. First of all, she didn't understand how someone could just disappear into thin air, but what was bothering her the most was that it didn't seem like Melody existed at all. When they had arrived home, Piper had gone searching the phone book for Melody's number. She had intended to apologize for earlier and ask where the girl had disappeared to, but there was no listing at all for Thomason in the phone book. Nothing was adding up and she needed a little help figuring things out. "Prue, can I ask you something?"
"You can ask me anything. You know that."
She turned around on the swing so that she was sitting sideways, placing her heels on the metal. "My friend Melody . . . there's something weird about her."
Prue turned around as well, facing her sister. Could this be what was upsetting Piper so much? "What is it?" she asked, concerned.
"I met her yesterday," Piper said, shifting uncomfortably under Prue's gaze. "She sort of lied to me about where she lives. She told me she lived 'back there' and pointed towards the park. When I told her that she couldn't live back there because the park was back there, she said she lives next to the park. Then she disappeared today and I was going to call her to find out where she went, and her number wasn't in the phone book."
Prue thought a moment. So far, it didn't seem too bad. If Melody had only met Piper yesterday, she might not have wanted to tell her where she lived. And it was quite possible that Melody's phone number was unlisted. "Is there anything else?"
"Well . . ." Piper said hesitantly. She sighed, shaking her head. You have to go through with it now, she thought. "She dresses really old-fashioned and she talks funny, too. And I've never seen her before. Not in school, not at the park, not anywhere."
Prue sighed as well, trying to think. It did seem a little mysterious, but she was sure she could find some logical explanation for it all. "Maybe she just moved here," she said with a shrug. "That would explain why she doesn't know exactly where her house is, why her number's not in the phone book, and why you've never seen her in school."
Piper mulled that over for a moment and started to nod, then stopped herself. "But what about the clothes and the way she talks?"
"Well," Prue said thoughtfully. She honestly had no idea how to explain that part of the mystery. There was one explanation she could offer, but it was too much of a long shot for it to really satisfy Piper's curiosity. "Maybe she was raised in an old-fashioned household, like by a great aunt or something. She'd be used to dressing in a certain way and talking like they did back then, especially if she didn't get to play with kids her own age a lot."
Piper just nodded slightly. She appreciated Prue's effort, but Melody had told her that she lived with her mother. Plus, Prue's story didn't explain how Melody just seemed to disappear earlier that afternoon. Normal people don't just disappear into thin air, she thought to herself. "I guess that makes sense," she said, trying to humor her sister.
Prue smiled, though she knew Piper wasn't convinced. Truthfully, it all seemed a little strange to Prue, too, but she kept her mouth shut. She was lucky that Piper had confided in her this much. Her sister had been distancing herself a little and while it hurt, Prue didn't want to push her. The last thing she wanted was to make Piper feel like she was being babied.
Suddenly a spray of cold water hit Prue right in the chest. She screeched and jumped off the swing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Piper jump up as well. Then she heard giggling. As she whipped her head around in the direction of the sound, she got hit with another splash of water.
Andy was holding the garden hose, obviously having snuck into the yard and disconnected it from the sprinkler, laughing at the two of them. He gave Phoebe a high five, then turned back to Prue, a smug smile on his face. "Oh, I'm going to kill you!" Prue yelled as she rushed at Andy.
He wasn't expecting a tackle. Taking advantage of his surprise, she wrestled him to the ground, both of them getting soaked by the hose in the process. As soon as Prue had Andy pinned, Piper smirked, ran over, and grabbed the hose, turning it on her sister and Andy.
Pretty soon, they were all drenched, but they were laughing. Prue smiled when she heard Piper's high-pitched squeal as Andy sprayed her one last time. She was glad that Piper had, at least for a moment, forgotten about her little mystery and was able to enjoy herself.
**********
The next morning was brighter and hotter than any other day that summer. It was so hot and oppressive that Grams had refused to allow the girls to go down to the park. "You three will wind up with heatstroke if you play out in the sun all day," she had said, and that was that.
Piper had started to argue. If she couldn't go to the park, she wouldn't be able to see Melody at all. There was so much she wanted to ask Melody, and now she wouldn't be able to. However, Prue gently stopped her from causing a scene. Arguing wasn't going to get anyone anywhere. Instead, Prue had suggested that Penny drop the girls off at the library for a few hours. The building was air-conditioned, after all, and taking the girls to the library would get them out of the thick, humid air for a while. Plus, it would get them out of their grandmother's hair.
Penny had agreed and the girls had been at the library for a couple of hours already. Phoebe was happily settled in the children's section with a ghost story and Piper was nestled in an overstuffed chair with a few of the latest entertainment magazines. Prue checked on both her sisters, then turned back to her old newspapers.
It wasn't as though Prue was a history buff. She wasn't. She just thought that paging through the old newspapers was interesting. The library had copies of the local papers dating all the way back to the mid-1800s. The earlier papers were kept on microfilm, but the microfilm machine required the help of a librarian to set it up and feed the film through the machine. She didn't want to put a librarian through all that if she wasn't doing actual research.
The paper she was flipping through at the moment was from late July of 1881. There was nothing really going on in the news. There was a drought that summer, and a lot of the editorials were bemoaning that fact, but other than that, it was pretty standard stuff. She was just about to put that paper back and get another one when something caught her eye. It was a small story, one that could have easily been overlooked, but there was something about the picture under the headline that stopped her from turning the page. It was a picture of a rock overlooking a clearing. I know this, she thought to herself. Why do I know this?
After a moment of thought, she suddenly remembered why the spot looked so familiar. It was the climbing rock that Andy and his friends used to play on. He and a bunch of his buddies used to climb that rock every day. They were pretty good at it, too, until the day that Tommy MacIntosh fell and broke his arm. After that, the parents of all the boys had refused to let the boys go back.
Even still, Andy had taken Prue and her sisters there one day after Tommy fell so he could show them how fast he could climb up and down. Prue had pretended to be impressed, but in reality, she had been petrified. The drop off the rock was almost vertical and the few ledges Andy was using as footholds and places to hold onto were small and narrow. She had only been there that one time, and that was enough for her.
She looked back down at the article and began skimming it. Her jaw dropped open in horror. A little girl had been climbing the rock, just as Andy and his friends used to do, and she had fallen off the top. She hit her head on the way down. Once the doctor was able to get to her, he tried his hardest, but he couldn't save her. She died a couple of hours later. The paper wouldn't release her name because she was so young, but the reporter did write that she was only eleven years old. Just as old as Piper is, she thought, shaking her head. Glancing over her shoulder at her sister, she tried to imagine what she'd do without her. She couldn't. The thought was just too much for her.
She sighed and quickly turned the page, trying to put the horrible story out of her mind. The fact that she knew the spot where it happened, that she had been there, made everything more real. It could have just as easily been Tommy that hit his head, or even Andy. Or even . . .
She gasped, jumped out of her seat, and ran over to Piper, crouching down in front of her sister's chair. "Piper," she panted, "I need to know . . . when you go into the woods, do you go to the climbing rock Andy showed us?"
Piper's jaw dropped as if Prue had found out some big secret, but she quickly recovered. "It's none of your business, Prue," she said, a steely edge in her voice that surprised her.
"Piper, I'm serious!"
She closed the magazine she was reading and crossed her arms over her chest. "So am I."
Prue straightened halfway and grabbed her sister's arms. "Look, whether you already go there or not, you have to promise me you won't go there ever again."
Anger flashed into Piper's eyes as she tried to pull out of Prue's grasp. "I don't have to promise you anything!"
"Yes, you do." She tightened her grip on Piper's arms, trying to make her listen. "It's a dangerous place, Piper, and if you get hurt . . ." She trailed off, choking up a little, then she cleared her throat. "Just promise me you'll stay away. Please."
Piper stopped struggling and looked up at her sister, softening instantly when she saw how upset Prue was. "Okay, fine, I promise," she said after a moment.
Prue smiled, relief washing over her. "Good. You can go back to your reading now," she said as she stood up and let Piper's arms go.
Piper shot her a bewildered look, but she wordlessly reopened the magazine and began reading again. Prue headed back to her table, intent on seeing if she could find out anything else about the girl that died, but just as she sat down, she saw Penny walk in the door. Her grandmother was there to pick them up. Oh well, she thought with a sigh as she picked the newspaper up and put it away, my research will have to wait.
She waited for the sprinkler to turn and spray the other side of the lawn, then ran across the yard and sat down on the swing with Piper. The second she sat, she gasped, lifted her feet off the ground and pulled her knees up to her chest. The swing was a lot hotter than she had expected it to be and the long metal slats burned her bare skin. "How are you sitting on this thing?" Prue asked, running her hands over the backs of her legs.
Piper started and whipped her head around, blinking as if shaken from a daydream. "What?"
"It's so hot." Prue took Piper's hand and held it down on the empty spot between them for a split second. Piper winced in pain and pulled her hand away, cradling her hurt hand in the other. "Doesn't it hurt your legs?" Prue asked.
Piper shook her head. "I wet it a little before I sat down," she said quietly. She wiggled her fingers, the pain in her hand now a mere tingle in her fingers. "It doesn't hurt."
Prue nodded, then looked her sister over. As much as Piper was trying to pretend that everything was okay, Prue could tell otherwise. "Piper, what's going on?"
"What?" Piper asked, staring straight ahead.
"Your mind is like, a zillion miles away. Is everything all right?"
"I'm fine," Piper answered with a small shrug. She was torn. Part of her wanted to tell Prue to go away and leave her alone, but another, more rational part of her wanted to confide in her sister. The thing with Melody really had her upset. First of all, she didn't understand how someone could just disappear into thin air, but what was bothering her the most was that it didn't seem like Melody existed at all. When they had arrived home, Piper had gone searching the phone book for Melody's number. She had intended to apologize for earlier and ask where the girl had disappeared to, but there was no listing at all for Thomason in the phone book. Nothing was adding up and she needed a little help figuring things out. "Prue, can I ask you something?"
"You can ask me anything. You know that."
She turned around on the swing so that she was sitting sideways, placing her heels on the metal. "My friend Melody . . . there's something weird about her."
Prue turned around as well, facing her sister. Could this be what was upsetting Piper so much? "What is it?" she asked, concerned.
"I met her yesterday," Piper said, shifting uncomfortably under Prue's gaze. "She sort of lied to me about where she lives. She told me she lived 'back there' and pointed towards the park. When I told her that she couldn't live back there because the park was back there, she said she lives next to the park. Then she disappeared today and I was going to call her to find out where she went, and her number wasn't in the phone book."
Prue thought a moment. So far, it didn't seem too bad. If Melody had only met Piper yesterday, she might not have wanted to tell her where she lived. And it was quite possible that Melody's phone number was unlisted. "Is there anything else?"
"Well . . ." Piper said hesitantly. She sighed, shaking her head. You have to go through with it now, she thought. "She dresses really old-fashioned and she talks funny, too. And I've never seen her before. Not in school, not at the park, not anywhere."
Prue sighed as well, trying to think. It did seem a little mysterious, but she was sure she could find some logical explanation for it all. "Maybe she just moved here," she said with a shrug. "That would explain why she doesn't know exactly where her house is, why her number's not in the phone book, and why you've never seen her in school."
Piper mulled that over for a moment and started to nod, then stopped herself. "But what about the clothes and the way she talks?"
"Well," Prue said thoughtfully. She honestly had no idea how to explain that part of the mystery. There was one explanation she could offer, but it was too much of a long shot for it to really satisfy Piper's curiosity. "Maybe she was raised in an old-fashioned household, like by a great aunt or something. She'd be used to dressing in a certain way and talking like they did back then, especially if she didn't get to play with kids her own age a lot."
Piper just nodded slightly. She appreciated Prue's effort, but Melody had told her that she lived with her mother. Plus, Prue's story didn't explain how Melody just seemed to disappear earlier that afternoon. Normal people don't just disappear into thin air, she thought to herself. "I guess that makes sense," she said, trying to humor her sister.
Prue smiled, though she knew Piper wasn't convinced. Truthfully, it all seemed a little strange to Prue, too, but she kept her mouth shut. She was lucky that Piper had confided in her this much. Her sister had been distancing herself a little and while it hurt, Prue didn't want to push her. The last thing she wanted was to make Piper feel like she was being babied.
Suddenly a spray of cold water hit Prue right in the chest. She screeched and jumped off the swing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Piper jump up as well. Then she heard giggling. As she whipped her head around in the direction of the sound, she got hit with another splash of water.
Andy was holding the garden hose, obviously having snuck into the yard and disconnected it from the sprinkler, laughing at the two of them. He gave Phoebe a high five, then turned back to Prue, a smug smile on his face. "Oh, I'm going to kill you!" Prue yelled as she rushed at Andy.
He wasn't expecting a tackle. Taking advantage of his surprise, she wrestled him to the ground, both of them getting soaked by the hose in the process. As soon as Prue had Andy pinned, Piper smirked, ran over, and grabbed the hose, turning it on her sister and Andy.
Pretty soon, they were all drenched, but they were laughing. Prue smiled when she heard Piper's high-pitched squeal as Andy sprayed her one last time. She was glad that Piper had, at least for a moment, forgotten about her little mystery and was able to enjoy herself.
**********
The next morning was brighter and hotter than any other day that summer. It was so hot and oppressive that Grams had refused to allow the girls to go down to the park. "You three will wind up with heatstroke if you play out in the sun all day," she had said, and that was that.
Piper had started to argue. If she couldn't go to the park, she wouldn't be able to see Melody at all. There was so much she wanted to ask Melody, and now she wouldn't be able to. However, Prue gently stopped her from causing a scene. Arguing wasn't going to get anyone anywhere. Instead, Prue had suggested that Penny drop the girls off at the library for a few hours. The building was air-conditioned, after all, and taking the girls to the library would get them out of the thick, humid air for a while. Plus, it would get them out of their grandmother's hair.
Penny had agreed and the girls had been at the library for a couple of hours already. Phoebe was happily settled in the children's section with a ghost story and Piper was nestled in an overstuffed chair with a few of the latest entertainment magazines. Prue checked on both her sisters, then turned back to her old newspapers.
It wasn't as though Prue was a history buff. She wasn't. She just thought that paging through the old newspapers was interesting. The library had copies of the local papers dating all the way back to the mid-1800s. The earlier papers were kept on microfilm, but the microfilm machine required the help of a librarian to set it up and feed the film through the machine. She didn't want to put a librarian through all that if she wasn't doing actual research.
The paper she was flipping through at the moment was from late July of 1881. There was nothing really going on in the news. There was a drought that summer, and a lot of the editorials were bemoaning that fact, but other than that, it was pretty standard stuff. She was just about to put that paper back and get another one when something caught her eye. It was a small story, one that could have easily been overlooked, but there was something about the picture under the headline that stopped her from turning the page. It was a picture of a rock overlooking a clearing. I know this, she thought to herself. Why do I know this?
After a moment of thought, she suddenly remembered why the spot looked so familiar. It was the climbing rock that Andy and his friends used to play on. He and a bunch of his buddies used to climb that rock every day. They were pretty good at it, too, until the day that Tommy MacIntosh fell and broke his arm. After that, the parents of all the boys had refused to let the boys go back.
Even still, Andy had taken Prue and her sisters there one day after Tommy fell so he could show them how fast he could climb up and down. Prue had pretended to be impressed, but in reality, she had been petrified. The drop off the rock was almost vertical and the few ledges Andy was using as footholds and places to hold onto were small and narrow. She had only been there that one time, and that was enough for her.
She looked back down at the article and began skimming it. Her jaw dropped open in horror. A little girl had been climbing the rock, just as Andy and his friends used to do, and she had fallen off the top. She hit her head on the way down. Once the doctor was able to get to her, he tried his hardest, but he couldn't save her. She died a couple of hours later. The paper wouldn't release her name because she was so young, but the reporter did write that she was only eleven years old. Just as old as Piper is, she thought, shaking her head. Glancing over her shoulder at her sister, she tried to imagine what she'd do without her. She couldn't. The thought was just too much for her.
She sighed and quickly turned the page, trying to put the horrible story out of her mind. The fact that she knew the spot where it happened, that she had been there, made everything more real. It could have just as easily been Tommy that hit his head, or even Andy. Or even . . .
She gasped, jumped out of her seat, and ran over to Piper, crouching down in front of her sister's chair. "Piper," she panted, "I need to know . . . when you go into the woods, do you go to the climbing rock Andy showed us?"
Piper's jaw dropped as if Prue had found out some big secret, but she quickly recovered. "It's none of your business, Prue," she said, a steely edge in her voice that surprised her.
"Piper, I'm serious!"
She closed the magazine she was reading and crossed her arms over her chest. "So am I."
Prue straightened halfway and grabbed her sister's arms. "Look, whether you already go there or not, you have to promise me you won't go there ever again."
Anger flashed into Piper's eyes as she tried to pull out of Prue's grasp. "I don't have to promise you anything!"
"Yes, you do." She tightened her grip on Piper's arms, trying to make her listen. "It's a dangerous place, Piper, and if you get hurt . . ." She trailed off, choking up a little, then she cleared her throat. "Just promise me you'll stay away. Please."
Piper stopped struggling and looked up at her sister, softening instantly when she saw how upset Prue was. "Okay, fine, I promise," she said after a moment.
Prue smiled, relief washing over her. "Good. You can go back to your reading now," she said as she stood up and let Piper's arms go.
Piper shot her a bewildered look, but she wordlessly reopened the magazine and began reading again. Prue headed back to her table, intent on seeing if she could find out anything else about the girl that died, but just as she sat down, she saw Penny walk in the door. Her grandmother was there to pick them up. Oh well, she thought with a sigh as she picked the newspaper up and put it away, my research will have to wait.